Latin — 1533, repaired
Contigit etiam, non modo dormientes, sed et vigilantes nonnunquam, soluto animo, suisque stimulis impulso, divinare — quam divinationem Aristoteles furorem vocat, et ab humore melancholico procedere docet in tractatu de divinatione, inquiens: Melancholici propter vehementiam longe bene coniiciunt, et cito habitu imaginantur, facillimeque caelestium recipiunt impressionem. Et in Problematibus ait: Sibyllas, et Bacchidas, et Nicceratum Syracusanum, et Homerum, a naturali melancholica complexione fuisse divinatores atque poetas. Causa itaque furoris, si qua intra humanum corpus est, humor est melancholicus: non quidem ille qui atra bilis vocatur, qui adeo prava horribilisque res est, ut impetus eius a physicis ac medicis ultra maniam, quam inducit, etiam malos daemones ad obsidenda humana corpora illicere perhibeatur. Humorem igitur hic intelligimus melancholicum, qui naturalis et candida bilis vocatur: haec enim quando accenditur, atque ardet, furorem concitat, ad scientiam nobis ac divinationem conducentem, maxime autem si iuvetur influxu aliquo caelesti, praecipue Saturni, qui, cum ipse frigidus sit atque siccus, qualis est humor melancholicus, illum quotidie influit, augetque atque conservat. Praeterea, cum sit ipse arcanae contemplationis autor, ab omni publico negotio alienus, ac planetarum altissimus, animam ipsam, cum ab externis officiis ad intima semper revocat, tum ab inferioribus ascendere facit, trahendo ad altissima, scientiasque ac futurorum praesagia largitur: et hoc est quod intendit Aristoteles in libro Problematum: Ex melancholia, inquit, quidam facti sunt sicut divini praedicentes futura, et quidam facti sunt poetae. Ait praeterea omnes viros in quavis scientia praestantes, ut plurimum extitisse melancholicos: quibus etiam Democritus et Plato attestantur, asserentes melancholicos nonnullos in tantum praestare ingenio, ut divini potius quam humani videantur. Sic melancholicos perplures primum rudes, ineptos, insanos, quales extitisse aiunt Hesiodum, Ionem, Tynnichum, Chalcidensem, Homerum, et Lucretium, saepe furore subito corripi, ac in poetas evadere, et miranda quaedam divinaque canere, etiam quae ipsimet vix intelligant. Unde divus Plato in Ione: Plerique, inquit, vates, postquam furoris remissus est impetus, quae scripserunt non satis intelligunt, cum tamen recte de singulis artibus in furore tractaverint, quod singuli harum artifices legendo diiudicant. Tantum praeterea tradit melancholici humoris imperium esse, ut suo impetu etiam caelestes daemones in humana corpora nonnunquam rapiant, quorum praesentia, et instinctu, homines debacchari, et mirabilia multa effari, omnis testatur antiquitas: idque sub triplici differentia, iuxta triplicem animae apprehensionem, videlicet imaginativam, rationalem, et mentalem, contingere putant. Dicunt itaque, quando anima melancholico humore impulsa, nullo cohibente, habenas corporis membrorumque vincula transgressa, tota in imaginationem transfertur, subito efficitur inferiorum daemonum habitaculum, a quibus manualium artium saepe miras accipit rationes. Sic videmus rudissimum aliquem hominem subito in pictorem egregium aut architectum, vel alterius cuiusque artis evadere magistrum. Quando vero eiusmodi daemones futura nobis portendunt, tunc ostendunt ea quae ad elementorum turbationes, temporumque vicissitudines attinent, ut futuram pluviam, tempestatem, inundationem, terraemotum, mortalitatem, famem, stragem, et eiusmodi: quemadmodum apud Aulum Gellium legimus, Cornelium sacerdotem, quo tempore Caesar et Pompeius in Thessalia confligebant, Patavii furore correptum, et tempus, et ordinem, et exitum pugnae praenarrasse. Quando vero anima tota in rationem convertitur, mediorum daemonum efficitur domicilium: hinc rerum naturalium humanarumque nanciscitur scientiam atque prudentiam. Sic videmus hominem aliquem subito in philosophum, vel medicum, vel oratorem egregium evadere, ex futuris aut praedicere quae ad regnorum mutationes et seculorum restitutiones pertinent, quemadmodum Sibylla Romanis. Dum vero anima tota in mentem assurrexerit, tunc sublimium daemonum receptaculum effecta, ab illis arcana ediscit divinorum, pura Dei legere, ordines angelorum, et quae ad aeternarum rerum cognitionem animarumque salutem pertinent. De futuris vero providet quae divinae providentiae adiacent, ut futura prodigia seu miracula, futurum prophetam, vel legis mutationem. Sic de Christo Sibyllae ante adventum eius longo tempore vaticinatae sunt. Sic Vergilius, nasciturum Christum iam in propinquo intelligens, Cumanae Sibyllae recordatus, cecinit ad Pollionem:
Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas; Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; Iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto. (verse, summarized — see flag)
Et paulo post, innuens originalem culpam irritam fore, ait:
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras. (verse, summarized — see flag)
Et subiungit:
Ille deum vitam accipiet, divisque videbit Permixtos heroas, et ipse videbitur illis, Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem. (verse, summarized — see flag)
Subditque inde serpentis occasum, et ligni mortis, sive ligni scientiae boni et mali, venenum sopitum iri, inquiens:
Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni. (verse, summarized — see flag)
Mansuram tamen originalis peccati fomitem innuit, cum dicit:
Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis. (verse, summarized — see flag)
Tandem, qua potest maxima hyperbole, hanc prolem acclamando Dei sobolem adorat his verbis:
Cara deum soboles, magnum Iovis incrementum, Aspice, convexo nutantem pondere mundum, Terrasque, tractusque maris, caelumque profundum, Aspice, venturo laetentur ut omnia saeclo. O mihi tam longae maneat pars ultima vitae, Spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta. (verse, summarized — see flag)
Sunt etiam quaedam prognostica, quae inter confinia naturalis et transnaturalis divinationis media sunt, ut in his qui morti proximi, et fenestra debilitati, nonnunquam futura praevident, qui, ut inquit Plato in Republica, quisensibus minus praepediti sunt, eo acutius intelligunt, et quia loco quo sunt migraturi viciniores sunt, et quasi iam paululum relaxatis vinculis, non omnino corpori amplius obnoxii sunt, divinae revelationis lumina facile percipiunt.
Close translation
It happens too, not only to those asleep, but sometimes also to those awake, with the mind loosened and driven by its own goads, to divine — which divination Aristotle calls fury, and teaches, in his treatise On Divination, to proceed from the melancholic humor, saying: The melancholic, on account of vehemence, conjecture far well, and quickly, in their disposition, form images, and most readily receive the impression of the heavens. And in the Problems he says: the Sibyls, and the Bacchides, and Niceratus the Syracusan, and Homer, were, from natural melancholic constitution, diviners and poets. The cause of fury, then, if there is any within the human body, is the melancholic humor — not indeed that which is called black bile, which is so depraved and horrible a thing that its onset, beyond the mania it induces, is said by physicists and physicians even to entice evil demons to besiege human bodies. By humor here, then, we understand the melancholic, which is called the natural and bright bile: for this, when it is kindled and burns, stirs up a fury conducive to knowledge and divination for us — most of all if it is aided by some celestial influx, especially that of Saturn, who, being himself cold and dry, as the melancholic humor is, daily flows into it, and increases and preserves it. Moreover, since he himself is the author of secret contemplation, alien from all public business, and the highest of the planets, he continually calls the soul itself back from external duties to inward things, and also makes it ascend from lower things, drawing it to the highest, and grants knowledge and presentiments of things to come: and this is what Aristotle intends in the book of Problems: From melancholy, he says, some are made as if diviners, foretelling the future, and some are made poets. He says besides that all men outstanding in any science have for the most part been melancholics: to which Democritus and Plato also attest, asserting that certain melancholics excel so much in genius that they seem divine rather than human. Thus very many melancholics, at first crude, unskilled, mad — such as they say Hesiod, Ion, Tynnichus the Chalcidian, Homer, and Lucretius were — are often suddenly seized by fury, and turn into poets, and sing certain marvelous and divine things, even things they themselves scarcely understand. Whence the divine Plato, in the Ion, says: Most poets, after the impetus of their fury has subsided, do not sufficiently understand what they have written, although they have treated correctly, in their fury, of the several arts — which the practitioners of each of these arts judge by reading. He teaches further that the rule of the melancholic humor is so great that by its impetus it even sometimes snatches celestial demons into human bodies, by whose presence and instinct men rave and utter many wondrous things, as all antiquity attests: and this they think happens under a threefold difference, according to the threefold apprehension of the soul, namely the imaginative, the rational, and the mental. They say, then, that when the soul, driven by the melancholic humor, with nothing restraining it, having transgressed the reins of the body and the bonds of the limbs, is wholly transferred into imagination, it is suddenly made a habitation of lower demons, from whom it often receives marvelous accounts of manual arts. Thus we see some very unskilled man suddenly turn into an outstanding painter or architect, or a master of some other art. But when demons of this kind portend the future to us, then they show those things that pertain to disturbances of the elements and changes of the seasons, such as future rain, storm, flood, earthquake, plague, famine, slaughter, and the like: as we read in Aulus Gellius, that Cornelius the priest, at the time when Caesar and Pompey were fighting in Thessaly, seized by fury at Padua, foretold beforehand the time, the order, and the outcome of the battle. But when the soul turns wholly into reason, it is made the dwelling-place of middle demons: from this it acquires knowledge and prudence of natural and human affairs. Thus we see some man suddenly turn into an outstanding philosopher, physician, or orator, or predict from things to come what pertains to changes of kingdoms and the restoration of ages, as the Sibyl did for the Romans. But when the soul has risen wholly into mind, then, made the receptacle of the sublime demons, it learns from them the secrets of things divine, to read the pure things of God, the orders of angels, and what pertains to the knowledge of eternal things and the salvation of souls. Concerning the future, it foresees those things that lie close to divine providence, such as future prodigies or miracles, a future prophet, or a change of law. Thus the Sibyls prophesied concerning Christ a long time before his coming. Thus Virgil, understanding that Christ was already about to be born soon, recalling the Cumaean Sibyl, sang to Pollio: (verse, summarized — see flag: the last age of the Sibylline song has come; a great new order of ages is born from the beginning; the Virgin returns, the Saturnian kingdoms return; a new offspring is sent down from high heaven). And a little after, hinting that the original guilt would be made void, he says: (verse, summarized — see flag: under your guidance, whatever traces of our wickedness remain, made void, will free the lands from perpetual dread). And he adds: (verse, summarized — see flag: he shall receive the life of the gods, and shall see heroes mingled with gods, and shall himself be seen by them, and shall rule a world pacified by his father's virtues). And he further adds that the fall of the serpent, and of the tree of death — or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — its poison shall be put to sleep, saying: (verse, summarized — see flag: the serpent too shall die, and the deceiving poison-herb). Yet he hints that a tinder of original sin will remain, when he says: (verse, summarized — see flag: yet a few traces of the ancient wrong will remain). At last, with the greatest hyperbole he can manage, acclaiming this child as offspring of God, he worships it in these words: (verse, summarized — see flag: dear offspring of the gods, great increase of Jove, behold the world nodding with its vaulted weight, and the lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the deep sky — behold how all things rejoice at the age to come. Oh, may the latter part of so long a life remain to me, and breath enough to tell of your deeds).
There are also certain prognostications, which lie on the border between natural and trans-natural divination, as in those near death, and weakened in their windows [of sense], who sometimes foresee the future — who, as Plato says in the Republic, the less they are hindered by the senses, the more keenly they understand; and because they are nearer to the place to which they are about to migrate, and, their bonds now a little loosened, are no longer wholly subject to the body, they easily perceive the lights of divine revelation.
Modern rendering
It also happens — not only to people asleep, but sometimes to people wide awake, when the mind is loosened and driven by its own inner prompts — that they prophesy. Aristotle calls this kind of divination 'fury,' and in his treatise On Divination he traces it to the melancholic humor: 'Melancholics, because of their intensity, guess far ahead accurately, form images quickly, and most readily pick up impressions from the heavens.' And in the Problems he says that the Sibyls, the Bacchides, Niceratus of Syracuse, and Homer were prophets and poets because of their natural melancholic temperament. So the cause of this fury, to the extent it's physical, is the melancholic humor — not the kind called black bile, which is so vicious and dreadful that physicians say its onslaught, beyond the madness it causes, can even draw evil demons to possess human bodies. What we mean here by melancholic humor is the natural, bright form of bile: when it heats up and burns, it stirs a fury that actually serves knowledge and divination — especially when reinforced by some influence from the heavens, above all from Saturn. Saturn, being cold and dry like the melancholic humor itself, feeds it daily, strengthens it, and sustains it. What's more, since Saturn governs secret contemplation, stays clear of public affairs, and sits highest among the planets, he continually pulls the soul back from external business toward its inner life, lifts it above lower things, draws it toward the highest, and grants it knowledge and premonitions of what's to come. That's what Aristotle means in the Problems when he says that melancholy turns some people into seers who predict the future, and others into poets. He adds that people outstanding in any field of knowledge have mostly been melancholics — Democritus and Plato both confirm this, saying some melancholics have such extraordinary minds they seem more divine than human. So it goes: many melancholics start out crude, clumsy, even unhinged — Hesiod, Ion, Tynnichus of Chalcis, Homer, and Lucretius are all supposed to have been this way — and then get suddenly seized by fury and turn into poets, singing astonishing, almost divine things they barely understand themselves. That's why Plato, in the Ion, says most poets, once their fit of fury has passed, don't really understand what they wrote, even though, while in the grip of it, they spoke correctly about whatever art they were addressing — a fact only practitioners of that particular art can judge by reading it. He goes further and says the melancholic humor's power is so strong that it can even pull celestial demons directly into human bodies, and everyone in antiquity agrees that their presence and influence make people rave and say astonishing things. This is thought to happen in three different ways, matching the soul's three faculties: imagination, reason, and mind. When the soul, driven by melancholic humor with nothing holding it back, breaks free of the body's reins and the limbs' constraints and pours entirely into imagination, it instantly becomes a dwelling for lower-order demons, who often teach it remarkable skill in the manual arts — which is why we sometimes see a completely untrained person suddenly become a brilliant painter, architect, or master of some other craft. When these demons want to show us the future, they reveal things tied to disturbances in the elements and shifts of season — coming rain, storms, floods, earthquakes, plagues, famine, slaughter, and so on. Aulus Gellius records that the priest Cornelius, at Padua, seized by fury at the very moment Caesar and Pompey were fighting in Thessaly, described in advance the timing, sequence, and outcome of the battle. When the soul instead turns wholly toward reason, it becomes home to middle-order demons, and from them gains knowledge and good judgment about both nature and human affairs — which is why we see someone suddenly become a brilliant philosopher, physician, or orator, predicting things about the rise and fall of kingdoms and the turning of ages, the way the Sibyl did for Rome. And when the soul rises entirely into mind, it becomes a vessel for the highest demons, learning from them the secrets of divine things — reading the pure truths of God, the orders of angels, and whatever concerns eternal knowledge and the soul's salvation. As for the future, it foresees things bound up with divine providence itself — coming signs and wonders, a coming prophet, or a change in the law. This is how the Sibyls prophesied about Christ long before he came. This is why Virgil, sensing that Christ's birth was already near and recalling the Cumaean Sibyl, sang to Pollio (verse, summarized — see flag: the last age foretold by the Sibylline song has arrived; a great new cycle of the ages is beginning; the Virgin returns, the golden age of Saturn returns; a new race descends from high heaven). And a little further on, hinting that the guilt of original sin would be undone, he says (verse, summarized — see flag: under your guidance, whatever traces of our old wickedness remain will be wiped out, freeing the world from endless dread). Then he adds (verse, summarized — see flag: he will receive the life of the gods, will see heroes mingling with gods, and be seen by them in turn, and will rule a world made peaceful through his father's virtues). He goes on to say the serpent will fall, and the tree of death — or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — will have its poison put to sleep, saying (verse, summarized — see flag: the serpent too will die, and the deceptive poison-plant). Yet he implies a residue of original sin will remain, saying (verse, summarized — see flag: still a few traces of the old deceit will linger). Finally, in the boldest possible terms, hailing this child as offspring of God, he addresses it (verse, summarized — see flag: dear child of the gods, great increment of Jove, look how the vaulted world sways under its own weight — the lands, the reaches of the sea, the deep sky — see how everything rejoices at the age to come. Oh, may the last stretch of a long life be granted me, and breath enough to tell of your deeds).
There's also a kind of foreknowledge that sits on the border between natural and supernatural divination — the kind found in people near death, or weakened in their senses, who sometimes see the future coming. As Plato says in the Republic, the less someone is hampered by the senses, the more sharply they perceive; and because they're closer to the place they're about to move on to, with their bonds already somewhat loosened, no longer entirely subject to the body, they pick up the light of divine revelation more easily.
Editorial flags — draft status
- uncertain: 'Amonem' restored to 'Homerum' by analogy with the later list of melancholic poets in the same chapter — only medium confidence; could also be a corrupted separate proper name (e.g. a poet's name not otherwise attested here)
- verse: Virgil, Eclogue 4 (Fourth Eclogue / 'Messianic Eclogue'), multiple excerpts quoted — all summarized in prose per spec rule 2 rather than reconstructed line-by-line, though this is a very well-known text and the Latin given is close to the standard edition
- uncertain: 'fenestra debilitati' ('weakened in their windows') — unusual phrase for sense-organs approaching death; translated literally, sense preserved but idiom uncertain