The Wise Man: O deceitful world, is this then the end to which you lead those who serve you as you wish and as pleases you? So as the reward for their labor you show them hell? How then can you not be deceitful and false? Did you not just tell me that your goods have no end? But is not your wealth smoke, and your goods dust, your delights dust scattered by the wind, and your honor and glory shame and reproach? What have you done with the scepter of the emperor before whom the whole world trembled and grew afraid, at whose coming, merely upon hearing of it, a man would send out the keys of his city before he had even arrived; whose riches were without number and whose power was unconquerable; whose horses and chariots were swift and many; whose horsemen were valiant, whose foot-soldiers were mighty and clad in mail, and whose weapons were sharp and terrible, ever ready for bloodshed; whose cities were great and spacious, with high and thick walls, deep and wide moats, and the columns of their gates thick and solid; whose cattle were numerous, costly, and fine? Where are his chosen concubines, who surpassed in beauty all the maidens of the world? What of his vineyards rich with the fruit of the vine, his gardens adorned and beautified with every kind of lovely flower, his wondrous buildings and palaces, built of hewn and skillfully carved stone, finely paved with every kind of costly marble? Answer me, then, about these things too — honestly and in full — what have you done with them?
God Changes and Removes Kingdoms
The World: O woe is me, I told you that you know little, and most things you do not know. I am not deceitful, as you mock me, but I am just, and I do everything with justice, for all whom I embrace I treat as my own children. Just as a father with many sons, among whom he divides his estate and goods, if one of them happens to die, divides that one’s share among the surviving brothers, and so among his children, so do I likewise. Therefore I will not be ashamed to tell you the truth about all you have asked, for my conduct has not been unjust and worthy of blame, but just and worthy of praise: his scepter I gave to another; his wealth and goods I divided among those who did not labor to obtain them; his might and terror I bound between four boards and laid in the belly of the earth; his horses and chariots I shattered upon the plains; his horsemen, in the mountains, and his foot-soldiers, in the valleys, were devoured by eagles and other birds; his weapons were eaten by rust; his cities were destroyed by others, who leveled them to the ground; their moats were filled with refuse, and their fine columns were scattered by desolation; his cattle I made into a broad feast for wild beasts; the fences of his vineyards I gave as prey to fire, and his grapes were trampled by foreign feet; his orchards and sweet-fruited trees were cut down by every axe and every hand that had not planted them; his chosen concubines I made into harlots of the city; the flowers of his gardens were gathered by foreign hands and smelled by foreign nostrils; his palaces I turned into dwellings for owls and screech-owls. Behold, then, this is justice: that all my gifts should be inherited and possessed by all.
The Wise Man exposes the World with her own words: if wealth has no end, why is it that what belonged to an emperor yesterday is nowhere to be found today? His question is not empty rhetoric; it presses on the very wound from which the whole philosophy of vanity bleeds — the World promises eternity and delivers only a loan, for a term fixed by someone other than herself.
And that someone else betrays himself in her very answer, without her meaning to: „I am not deceitful, but just,” the World protests, unknowingly shifting the glory of the deed from herself to the One who truly orders all things. For it is not she who parts an emperor from his scepter, but the One of whom the prophet Daniel testified: „He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21). The World is merely the hand through which a judgment not her own is carried out — an unwilling servant of God’s justice, even when she believes she is dividing the inheritance according to her own order, as „a father with many sons.”
The image of palaces turned into „dwellings for owls and screech-owls” is not merely Cantemir’s poetic flourish; it echoes directly the word of the prophets. Isaiah foretold the very same fate for proud Babylon — the city of power was to become a dwelling of desert creatures and owls, its vineyards trodden by foreign feet (Isaiah 13:19-22, 34:11-15). And the history itself of the emperor Cantemir has in mind here — whose scepter broke apart immediately after his death, his empire torn among his own generals — only confirms the word of the Book of Wisdom: „Wealth was of no profit to the ungodly in the day of wrath” (Wisdom of Solomon 5:8), and the word of the Psalmist: „Man, being in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and became like them” (Psalm 48:12/49:12).
St. John Chrysostom says that nothing reveals the smallness of human power more clearly than the very speed with which it scatters: a whole age is needed to build a palace, and a single instant for it to become an owl’s nest. St. Basil the Great adds the spiritual meaning of this swiftness: God allows worldly glory to crumble so quickly precisely in order to heal the passion attached to it — the one who sees with his own eyes how what seemed unshakable yesterday perishes today has no reason left to place his hope in passing things, and turns instead toward the one Kingdom that „shall have no end” (the Nicene Creed).
The folly this word’s title speaks of, then, is not that of those who labor and gather, but of those who forget Who it is that removes kingdoms, and who mistake the World’s gift for an inheritance with no true Owner.
