Afterword to Origen on Romans

Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia, probably about the year 407.

I trust that the Commentary on the Letter to the Romans has now been brought to a satisfactory close, though writing it has cost very great labor and time. I confess, my most loving brother Heraclius, that in trying to meet your request I have almost forgotten the precept, “Do not lift a burden beyond your strength.” Even in my other translations of Origen’s works into Latin, which were made because you earnestly asked for them, or rather demanded them of me like a hired workman’s task, the labor was very great. For I made it my aim to fill out what Origen delivered on the spot in the church’s lecture room, since his aim there was to apply the subject so as to build up his hearers rather than to explain the text. I have done this with the Homilies, and the short talks on Genesis and Exodus, and especially with those on the book of Leviticus, where he spoke as one urging his hearers on, whereas my translation takes the form of an explanation. I took up this duty of supplying what was lacking because I thought that his habit of raising questions and then leaving them unsolved, which he often does in his preaching, might put off the Latin reader. The works on Joshua and the book of Judges and the thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth Psalms I translated simply as I found them, with no great labor. So while in the other cases I mentioned above I spent much labor in supplying what Origen had left out, in this work on the Letter to the Romans the labor that fell on me, for the reasons described in the preface, was immense and full of complications. [a]

But there will have been nothing but pleasure in these labors, provided only that what I have met with in other cases is not repeated, ill-disposed minds repaying my toil and sleepless nights with insults, and that my studies do not earn me slander, nor my labor a conspiracy to ruin me. For in dealing with these people I have to face a new kind of accusation. They say to me, “When you write these things, in which many pieces are of your own composition, you ought to put your own name in the title and let it read like this: ‘The books of Rufinus’s commentary on,’ for instance, ‘the Letter to the Romans.’ For that,” they say, “is what is done with secular writers: the name in the title is not that of the Greek author who is translated but of the Latin author who translates him.” But all this obligingness, by which the works are put down to me, comes not from love for me but from hatred of the author. I care far more for my conscience than for my reputation. It may be plain that I have added some things to supply what was lacking and shortened what was too long; but to steal the title from the man who laid the foundations on which the building was raised is something I cannot think right. It must be left, I admit, to the reader’s judgment, once he has examined the work, to credit it to whoever he thinks right. But my aim has been not to win the applause of students but the good of those who want to be built up.

I will turn next to the work that was laid on me long ago but is now demanded with still greater force by Bishop Gaudentius: to put into Latin the books called the Recognitions of Clement, bishop of Rome, the successor and companion of the apostles. I know well that in this work, to judge by the usual rule, I will have labor upon labor. In this case I will do what my friends want: I will put my own name in the title of the work, though I will have the author’s there too. It will be called Rufinus’s Clement. If the Lord enables me to finish this task, I will afterward return to what you want and say something, God willing, on the books of Numbers or of Deuteronomy (for this alone is missing from my whole work on the Heptateuch); or else I will write what I can, with the Lord as my guide, on the remaining letters of the apostle Paul. [d]