25. See Virgil's Aeneid. V1H,332.
Book VIII 355 painful reality that was going to follow on its being touched in spite of the prohi bition.
On the rivers ofParadise
7, 13. Now a river came outfrom Eden, which was watering Paradise, and from there it was divided intofourparts. Ofthese the name of one is Pishon; this is what goes round the whole land ofHavilah, where there is gold. Now the gold of that land is good, and there is carbuncle there and leek-green stone. And the name of the second river Gihon; this is what goes round the whole Ethiopian land. The third river, though, Tigris; this is what flows over against the Assyrians. The fourth river, though, Euphrates (Gn 2:10-14). About these rivers, why should I bother any more to establish that they are real rivers, notjust metaphors, as though they did not exist but only the names signified something, seeing that they are obviously known in the regions they flow through, and indeed their fame has spread abroad to practically all peoples? On the contrary, since it is agreed that they certainly exist, two of them, though, have had their names changed since antiquity, just as the river now called the Tiber was earlier known as the Albula.25 Gihon, that is to say, is the one now called the Nile, while the one that used to be called Pishon is the one they now call the Ganges. The two others, the Tigris and Euphrates, have kept their ancient names; we should let ourselves be advised to take all the rest to begin with according to the strict literal sense and not to assume that it is being talked about figuratively, but that the things and events which are being related both exist and also stand figuratively for something else.
This is not because the parable mode of speech could not take something from real life which without question is not being mentioned in any proper historical sense; take the way the Lord speaks, for instance, about the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.26 Is there anybody who would not perceive straightaway that this is obviously a parable, and that the whole story has a figurative meaning? And yet there are two cities named in it, which can be shown you to this very day in their own place. But that is the way in which we would take these four rivers too, if any necessity obliged us to take the other things that are told about Paradise only in a figurative and not a proper sense. Now however, since there is no reason preventing us from taking these things first of all in a proper, literal sense, why should we not simply follow the authority of scripture in its narrative of things done, and first accept that the things really were done, and then only after that investigate what else they signify?
25. See Virgil's Aeneid. V1H,332. 26. See Lk 10:30-35.