Commentaria in Judith
Titan, therefore, is an epithet of the Sun. For the Sun is called the son of heaven and earth, because in the morning it seems to rise out of earth and sea, and, as the son of Jove, to shine in heaven as in its father’s house. Hence many derive Titan from the Hebrew *tit*, that is, clay, mud, earth, so that from *Tit* are named Tethys and Titaea, mother of the six Titans. Others derive Titan from *teinô*, because Titan, that is the Sun, extends his rays in every direction. Moreover the Poets fable that Titaea is the earth from which sun and moon sprang. For the earth had various names. For, as M. Varro says in St. Augustine, book VII *On the City of God*, earth or tellus was called Ops, because it becomes better by help (ops) and cultivation; and Mother, because it bears the most; and Alma, because it provides food; and Proserpina, because fruits creep (proserpant) from it; and Vesta, because it is clothed with herbs, or, as others say, because it stands by its own force. Hence there exists a Hymn of the Titans in Orpheus. Hence, secondly, by the sons of Titan could be understood Phaethon with his offspring, whom the Poets say is the son of the sun; who, while he carelessly drove the horses and chariot of the sun, burned up everything on earth with the sun’s heat; as if to say: Holofernes was struck down not by the sun or Phaethon, but by a woman, Judith.
Third, some think that by the Titans, sons of heaven and earth, are signified spirits and winds (likewise storms and lightnings), which, sent down from heaven, that is from the air, to earth, are hidden in it, from the verb *teinô*, that is, I extend, because the winds, extending their hands and acting by force, do harm; whence arises the earthquake by which many perish; as if to say: Not winds, not storms, not lightnings, not earthquake, but a single woman laid low Holofernes. To this serves what Pausanias writes in his *Corinthiaca*, that on the hill of the Titans at Sicyon there was an altar of the winds, on which each year the priest sacrificed to mitigate the fierceness of the winds. The first sense, as it is the more common, is also the more fitting: for the Titans were most powerful giants, whom no one could resist. Hence the proverbs: “Titanic aspect,” that is, grim, fierce and horrible. “Older than the Titans and Cronus (than time and Saturn), you are calling on the Titans.” See Apollodorus at the beginning of book I *On the Origin of the Gods*, Hesiod in the *Theogony*. Note from St. Jerome on chapter 5 of Amos, verse 8, and St. Gregory, IX *Moralia* chapter 6, that interpreters both the Septuagint, as our translator also at times, translate Hebrew names, which among them are called otherwise, into Greek and Latin by the names of the fables of the Greek and Latin Gentiles, not as though narrating or approving fables; but because we do not rightly or fully understand what is said except through those words which we have learned by use and drunk in as it were with milk, says St. Jerome, especially when fables take their origin from Holy Scripture, as is done here. For the fable of the Titans was made and fashioned from the history of the giants, Genesis 6:4, and chapter 14:5. So the Septuagint in Job 42:14 for “horn of antimony” put the horn of Amalthea, whom the Poets feign to be a goat who nursed Jove with her milk. So Lamentations 4:3 our translator has “lamiae,” whereas in Hebrew it is *tannim*. The word signifies dragons or empty and terrifying monsters, such as
21. “FOR HE WILL GIVE FIRE AND WORMS INTO THEIR FLESH.”
lamiae are. The same is the judgment about Arcturus, Orion and the like, says St. Jerome, of which mention is made
He looks round at Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, the twin Triones, and armed Orion with gold.
The sons of Titan, or of the Titans, are therefore sons of giants, that is, huge, strongest and most robust giants, who are called Rephaim, for which the Septuagint put Titans, II Kings 5:18. It is a metonymy: by the father’s disposition and strength are signified the disposition and strength of the sons. By Titans, therefore, by the common usage of the vulgar, none other are understood than giants.
It could also be said that this word *Titan* was in use for signifying giants from the fables spread over the whole world among the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Hebrews and other nations, so that it is signified that Holofernes and the Assyrians, proud of their strength and forces, had compared themselves to the Titans, and said that they were equal to the Titans, or feared nothing from the Titans or beyond the Titans: so that something Titanic was heard in their camp, alluding to which Judith says: The Assyrians did not fall by the hand of their Titans, but by my hand, who am a weak and unarmed woman. So Sanchez.
12. “THE PERSIANS QUAKED AT HER CONSTANCY, AND THE MEDES AT HER BOLDNESS.”—Hence it is clear that in the camp of Holofernes Persians and Medes were mixed with the Assyrians; especially because the leader Holofernes himself was a Persian, says Cedrenus: and the Medes, Arphaxad their prince having been conquered, had by now been subdued by Nabuchodonosor, to whom therefore many of the neighbouring Persians also deserted on account of the sloth and shameful defeat and flight from Greece of Xerxes their king, as I said in the Preface.
13. “THEN THE CAMP OF THE ASSYRIANS HOWLED, WHEN MY LOWLY ONES APPEARED, PARCHED WITH THIRST,”—namely my citizens of Bethulia, nearly killed by thirst, when, Holofernes having been slain by me, they themselves fell upon his camp and pursued the fleeing Assyrians.
14. “THE SONS OF THE DAMSELS,”—that is, little boys, or youngsters: for those whose mothers are still damsels and young girls cannot be grown or adult: hence it is plain that youths and boys rushed with the men upon the fleeing Assyrians.
“HAVE PIERCED THEM THROUGH” with their little knives and short swords.
17. “THOU DIDST SEND FORTH THY SPIRIT, AND THEY WERE CREATED.”—By “Spirit” understand the Spirit of the mouth, that is, the word and command by which God, Genesis 1, said and commanded: Let there be sun, moon, birds, fishes, etc., and at once they were made. She alludes to Psalm 32:6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth.”
18. “THE MOUNTAINS SHALL BE MOVED FROM THE FOUNDATIONS,”—when God shall command; as if to say: So great is the power of God that by His nod alone He can transfer mountains and melt rocks; just so He has now overcome the camp of the Assyrians, which, like lofty mountains and hard rocks, seemed insurmountable, through me, a woman, and has scattered it like melting wax.
Hence St. Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Theophilus, Haymo, Lyra, Abulensis, Dionysius, the Gloss, Ribera, Maldonatus, Serarius and others probably judge that in hell there are corporeal worms which gnaw the flesh of the damned, as there is a true fire burning them: see what is said on Ec-
22. “AND AS SOON AS THEY WERE PURIFIED”—from the uncleanness and legal irregularity contracted from the slaughter of the Assyrians and contact with the dead, by washing their bodies and garments, according to the law of Numbers 31:24.
23. “ANATHEMA OF OBLIVION.”—The Hebrew *cherem* signifies anathema, that is, a gift removed from profane uses, wholly set apart and consecrated to God. The word “of oblivion” is not in the Greek: whence some think one should read “of oblation,” but all the Latin copies have “of oblivion,” and it fits this place aptly: for it is called an anathema of oblivion because it was dedicated to God to ward off forgetfulness among posterity of so great a benefit and victory. So Serarius; or because it brought oblivion of the past famine, thirst and a thousand hardships which the Hebrews had previously suffered from the Assyrians: so Sanchez. So Joseph called his son “Manasses,” that is, oblivion, saying: “God hath made me to forget all my labours,” Genesis 41:51, and Isaias, chapter 65, verse 16: “The former distresses are given to oblivion.” On which place Jerome says excellently: “Let former evils be forgotten, not by forgetfulness of memory, but by the succession of good things, according to that which is written: In the day of good things there is forgetfulness of evils;”