A Wounded am I by the darts of desires, by soul-destroying darts; as a physician, as the merciful one, grant me healing. I have had the earth for my first mother, and back to earth I return: what is the enjoyment of temporal things? What is the pleasure of life? Lament with me here, weep with me here, you whose spirit is compassionate, whose mind is kind. I have alienated my soul from salutary things and moved it toward harmful ones; O cruel error! I lead a life, but not a quiet one; my evil actions even before the end persuade me to live in fear and anguish. B I have sinned against you who will sit as Judge over human nature: what shall I do? Where shall I flee? Where shall I hide from you? I groan and am fiercely driven by thoughts of death, not fearing the end, but what follows after the end. Look mercifully, O Savior, upon a miserable soul that has sinned in many things, that has provoked your wrath. The splendor of light is prepared for those who live rightly here, darkness for those who transgress; flee, my soul, from this darkness. Grant me, O Christ, the remission of my evil deeds, you who are the abyss of goodness and the fountain of benignity. After the end, every groan is useless, every lamentation; now is the groan efficacious, efficacious is the mourning. C I have despised the laws of Christ, while being a diligent observer of the law of desires: who then will not lament for me? Who will not weep for me? I have not looked upon strangers kindly, I have not been inclined toward the poor, I have closed my house to the needy: alas, for a cruel mind! You are wholly, O Savior, sweetness, unexhausted gentleness: turn the bitterness of my soul into sweetness. I am tossed by the sea, O Christ, of sins; give me, as to Peter, your hand; save me as a helmsman. Negligently have I wasted my whole life. Woe is me! How shall I escape the intolerable punishments? I have compelled your bowels to wrath, your paternal bowels; but correct me benignly, and do not punish me in your wrath. D What is your goodness, O Christ, what the abundance of your patience, that you do not burn those who dote upon perishable things, but sustain them? I have gathered a forest of desires, the material for fire. [The text below describes the merits of the poet's style, suggesting comparison with the distichs of Symeon Metaphrastes.]
But shower upon me a drop of mercy before the end. A
Guardian assigned to me, incorporeal Angel, not enduring the mire of my vices, you have departed. Charon is preparing the scythe of the end, O soul; why do you not care? Why do you not mourn? Woe to you for your sloth! O soul, seek the things that are divine; have affection for the things that are beyond reason; for the disturbance of corruption leads to punishment. Alas! How shall I stand before you? How shall I render an account of my actions to you, my Creator? Save me, as you know how, save me. Do not despise me, through the prayers of your immaculate Mother, you who alone are without sin, alone merciful. Receive me as the prodigal, the harlot, the publican, B as the thief; and save me, for the sake of your mercy.
SUIDAS. NOTICE.
(FABRIC. *Bibliotheca Graeca* ed. Harles tom. VI p. 390.)
A man most deserving of note in our memory, and most learned and skilled to the highest degree in the Greek and Latin languages, is Ludolphus Neocorus, or Kusterus, who, having left his ancestral faith in Paris and embraced the Roman faith, died on the 12th of October, A.D. 1716. After his *Diatribe on Suidas*, which was published at Cambridge in 1701, in which he recounts the faults and defects of the edition of Portus, and relates with what resources and what apparatus he himself undertook a new one, correcting and illustrating various passages of Suidas by way of a specimen, he brought the work itself to completion five years later, and allowed his new Greek-Latin Suidas with notes to issue from the Cambridge press in the year 1705, in three folio volumes. In the Preface to this edition, while he discusses accurately the author whom he undertook to illustrate, his age, the virtues and faults of his Lexicon, and the previous editions, I did not wish to do what had already been done, but to present here to you the complete Dissertation of that most famous man—my friend while he lived—together with my own observations.
The Lexicon of Suidas, as it does not belong to our project, we omit; but so that you may bear this less painfully, diligent Reader, we present to you: 1st, A *Notitia* in which the age of Suidas and the value and dignity of his book are discussed; 2nd, Three very extensive indices, arranged according to the order of the alphabet, which represent the whole of Suidas, albeit concisely. The first displays the writers about whom Suidas treats; the second, those whom he cites; the third, the writers investigated by learned men in Suidas, where he attributes passages to unnamed authors. EDITOR OF THE PATROLOGY.