Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/301

 IX] EARLY LATIN CHRISTIAN POETRY 283 — the fall of man, or " Paradise Lost." Avitus was a precursor of Milton, who appears to have used the Latin poet. Book the first sings of God moulding man from dust, which He transforms to living flesh and blood. In the night succeeding the sixth day, God formed Eve from the side of Adam, as the Church sprang from the pierced side of Christ. The Creator bids them live together in concord and fill the earth. A description of Paradise follows, and then the Almighty's prohibition. The second book, — " The Fall," — opens with a picture of the happy life in Paradise. Then comes a description of the Devil's nature, and of his jealousy, his utter pride,^ and his elation, in misery, at the power left to him of work- ing evil — summa virtus nocendi. He takes on the Serpent's form and, "terrible in his fearful beauty," he seeks Eve, whom he deceives with serpentine ad- dress. The poet pictures Eve toying with the apple, till she tastes. Then Adam tastes. After two digressions on Lot's wife and Astrology, the book closes with the Serpent's song of triumph — " God made you," he cries to the guilty pair ; " I taught you ; you are as much mine as His." The third book tells the shame which leads Adam and Eve to clothe themselves, then Adam's proud plaint to God — better had he remained wifeless ! — and then the sentence, and the expulsion to the world without, which seems so ugly after Paradise, the day 1 Both Avitus and Milton. In the character of Satan, have been trne to the oommon Christian conception of pride as chief of