day flitted about the forum, and all pronounced us happy in being so numerous. But behold now, this hive hath become solitary! For even as smoke does those bees, so fear hath driven away our swarms; and what the prophet says, bewailing Jerusalem, we may fitly say now, “Our city is become ‘like a terebinth that hath lost its leaves,1080 and as a garden that hath no water.’”1081 For in like manner as a garden when its irrigation fails, exhibits the trees stripped of their leaves, and bare of their fruits, so has it now fared with our city. For the help from above having forsaken her, she stands desolate stripped of almost all her inhabit- ants. 4. Nothing is sweeter than one’s own country; but now, it has come to pass that nothing is more bitter! All flee from the place which brought them forth, as from a snare. They desert it as they would a dungeon; they leap out of it, as from a fire. And just as when a house is seized upon by the flames, not only those who dwell therein, but all who are near, take their flight from it with the utmost haste, eager to save but their bare bodies; even so now too, when the wrath of the Emperor is expected to come as a fire1082 from above, every one presses to go forth in time, and to save the bare body, before the fire in its progress reaches them. And now our calamity has become an enigma; a flight without enemies; an expulsion of inhabitants without a battle; a captivity without capture! We have not seen the fire of barbarians, nor beheld the face of enemies: and yet we experience the sufferings of captives. All men now hear of our calamities; for receiving our exiles, they learn from them the stroke which has fallen upon our city. 5. Yet I am not ashamed, nor blush at this. Let all men learn the sufferings of the city, that, sympathizing with their mother, they may lift up their united voice to God from the whole earth; and with one consent entreat the King of heaven for their universal nurse and parent.1083 Lately our city was shaken;1084 but now the very souls of the inhabitants totter! Then the foundations of the houses shook, but now the very foundations of every heart quiver; and we all see death daily before our eyes! We live in constant terror, and endure the penalty of Cain; a more pitiable one than that of those who were the former inmates of the prison; undergoing as we now do a new and strange kind of siege, far more terrible than the ordinary kind. For they who suffer this from enemies, are only shut up within the walls; 1080 E.V., as an oak whose leaf fadeth, Heb. ” which may be either tree. 1081 Isa. i. 30. 1082 Ben. πυρ‚ς, “burning pile” (as of beams, &c.). 1083 St. Chrysostom alludes more than once in these Homilies to the distinction referred to in Acts xi. 26, as one that all must still recognize. 1084 Antioch suffered much from earthquakes before and after this period. It was almost demolished by this visitation, A.D. 340, and so again at several periods afterwards. More than 60,000 of its inhabitants perished from the same cause, A.D. 588. 478 Homily II