---
title: "Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian and Origen"
author: "Various Church Fathers"
translator: "S. Thelwall and others; A. Cleveland Coxe (ed.)"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Church Fathers"
section: 37 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/37/
cite: "Various Church Fathers, tr. S. Thelwall and others; A. Cleveland Coxe (ed.), Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian and Origen, section 37. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/37/"
---

# Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian and Origen

*Various Church Fathers, tr. S. Thelwall and others; A. Cleveland Coxe (ed.)*

Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian, and Origen's On First Principles and Against Celsus.

## 37. A Strain of Sodom · 4 of 6

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/37/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/37/#p-N

[¶0] He said, “I speed my flight: scarce with its walls

[¶1] ’Tis visible; nor is it far, nor great.”

[¶2] They, favouring his prayer, safety assured

[¶3] 135 To him and to the city; whence the spot

[¶4] Is known in speech barbaric by the name

[¶5] Segor. Lot enters Segor while the sun

[¶6] Is rising, the last sun, which glowing bears

[¶7] To Sodom conflagration; for his rays

[¶8] 140 He had armed all with fire: beneath him spreads

[¶9] An emulous gloom, which seeks to intercept

[¶10] The light; and clouds combine to interweave

[¶11] Their smoky globes with the confused sky:

[¶12] Down pours a novel shower: the ether seethes

[¶13] 145 With sulphur mixt with blazing flames: the air

[¶14] Crackles with liquid heats exust. From hence

[¶15] The fable has an echo of the truth

[¶16] Amid its false, that the sun’s progeny

[¶17] Would drive his father’s team; but nought availed

[¶18] 150 The giddy boy to curb the haughty steeds

[¶19] Of fire: so blazed our orb: then lightning reft

[¶20] The lawless charioteer, and bitter plaint

[¶21] Transformed his sisters. Let Eridanus

[¶22] See to it, if one poplar on his banks

[¶23] 155 Whitens, or any bird dons plumage there

[¶24] Whose note old age makes mellow!

[¶25] Here they mourn

[¶26] O’er miracles of metamorphosis

[¶27] Of other sort. For, partner of Lot’s flight,

[¶28] His wife (ah me, for woman! even then

[¶29] 160 Intolerant of law!) alone turned back

[¶30] At the unearthly murmurs of the sky)

[¶31] Her daring eyes, but bootlessly: not doomed

[¶32] To utter what she saw! and then and there

[¶33] Changed into brittle salt, herself her tomb

[¶34] 165 She stood, herself an image of herself,

[¶35] Keeping an incorporeal form: and still

[¶36] In her unsheltered station ’neath the heaven

[¶37] Dures she, by rains unmelted, by decay

[¶38] And winds unwasted; nay, if some strange hand

[¶39] 170 Deface her form, forthwith from her own store

[¶40] Her wounds she doth repair. Still is she said

[¶41] To live, and, ’mid her corporal change, discharge

[¶42] With wonted blood her sex’s monthly dues.

[¶43] Gone are the men of Sodom; gone the glare

[¶44] 175 Of their unhallowed ramparts; all the house