VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 373

the Heathen, but the other by the Christian only. Thus Virgil to Sordello:

“Loco e laggiù, non tristo da martiri

Ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti

Non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri:

Quivi sto io, con quei che le tre sante

Virtù non si vestiro, e senza vizio

Conobber l’ altre, e seguir, tutte quante.”

. . . . “There I with those abide

Who the Three Holy Virtues put not on,

But understood the rest, and without blame

Followed them all.”

-CARY.¹

§ 51. This arrangement of the virtues was, however, productive of infinite confusion and error: in the first place, because Faith is classed with its own fruits,-the gift of God, which is the root of the virtues, classed simply as one of them; in the second, because the words used by the ancients to express the several virtues had always a different meaning from the same expressions in the Bible, sometimes a more extended, sometimes a more limited one. Imagine, for instance, the confusion which must have been introduced into the ideas of a student who read St. Paul and Aristotle alternately; considering that the word which the Greek writer uses for Justice, means, with St. Paul, Righteousness.² And lastly, it is impossible to overrate the mischief produced in former days, as well as in our own, by the mere habit of

¹ [Purgatorio, vii. 28-36. In the first draft Ruskin again praised the translation (see above, p. 307): “Cary’s translation is very true and beautiful.” The translation of the three lines first quoted is:-

“There is a place

There underneath, not made by torments sad,

But by dim shades alone; where mourning’s voice

Sounds not of anguish sharp, but breathes in sighs.”]

² [dikaiosunh, Plato’s Justice, is regarded by St. Paul as the supreme aim and crown of the Christian life; thus in 2 Timothy iv. 8: o thV dikaiosunhV steqanoV (“a crown of righteousness”), and in Romans iv. 3: “Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (dikaiousunhn).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]