Mills of God

Roman-era depiction of an animal-driven flour mill.[1]
An edge mill with two millstones. Katherine Maltwood portrayed a similar arrangement in her bronze, The Mills of God (1918/9), which was inspired by the suffering of the Great War.[2]

The proverbial expression of the mills of God grinding slowly refers to the notion of slow but certain divine retribution.

Plutarch (1st century AD) alludes to the metaphor as a then-current adage in his Moralia (De sera numinis vindicta "On the Delay of Divine Vengeance"):

"Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills of the gods said to grind so late as to render punishment hard to be recognized, and to make wickedness fearless."[3]

Plutarch no doubt here makes reference to a hexameter by an unknown poet, cited by sceptic philosopher, Sextus Empiricus (2nd century) in his Adversus Grammaticos as a popular adage:[4]

Ὀψὲ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά.
"The millstones of the gods grind late, but they grind fine."[5]

The same expression was invoked by Celsus in his (lost) True Discourse. Defending the concept of ancestral fault, Celsus reportedly quoted "a priest of Apollo or of Zeus":

Ὀψὲ, φησι, θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, και Ἐς παίδων παῖδας τοί κεν μετόπισθη γένωνται.
'The mills of the gods grind slowly', he says, even 'To children's children, and to those who are born after them.'[6]

The Sibylline Oracles (c. 175) have Sed mola postremo pinset divina farinam ("but the divine mill will at last grind the flour").[7]

The proverb was in frequent use in the Protestant Reformation, often in the Latin translation Sero molunt deorum molae due to Erasmus of Rotterdam (Adagia, 1500),[8] but also in German translation.[9]

The expression was anthologised in English translation by George Herbert in his collection of proverbs entitled Jacula Prudentum (1652), as "God's mill grinds slow but sure" (no. 743). German epigrammatist Friedrich von Logau in his Sinngedichte (c. 1654) composed an extended variant of the saying, under the title "Göttliche Rache" (divine retribution),[10]

Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein,
ob aus Langmut er sich säumet, bringt mit Schärf 'er alles ein.

translated into English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Retribution", Poetic Aphorisms, 1846):[11]

Though the mills of God grind slowly; Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all.

References

  1. ↑ Urnholder of the miller Publius Nonius Zethus (1st century AD), found in Ostia Antica, now in the Museum of the Vatican.
  2. ↑ Rosemary Alicia Brown (1981), Katherine Emma Maltwood (PDF), Victoria: Sono Nice. University of Victoria Art Collections M964.1.357
  3. ↑ A. P. Peabody (1885), Plutarch on the Delay of Divine Justice. Plutarch, Ian Kidd, Robin Waterfield, "On God's Slowness to Punish", Essays
  4. ↑ Adversus Mathematicos I Cap. 17 D.L. Blank, trans. (1998) p. 311. John Pairman Brown, Israel and Hellas 3.
  5. ↑ The Greek μύλοι is plural, referring to two grindstones (i.e. quern and handstone) forming a single mill; the Latin translation by Gentian Hervetus (1569) renders this as mola "mill" in the singular: Est mola tarda dei, verum molit illa minutim.
  6. ↑ Gagné, Renaud (2013). Ancestral Fault in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-107-03980-3.
  7. ↑ Book 8 verse 15 Sibylline Oracles trans. M. S. Terry (1890) "Late will the mills of God grind the fine flour". On the date of c. AD 175 for book 8, verses 1–216 see: J. J. Collins "Sibylline Oracles (Second Century B.C.–Seventh Century A.D)" in: Charlesworth (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, Hendrickson Publishers (1983), 317–472 (here: p. 416).
  8. ↑ Erasmus of Rotterdam, Adagia 3382 (4.4.82) Sero molunt deorum molae: Plutarchus in commentario cui titulus Πέρι τὦν ὑπὸ τοῦ θείου βραδέως τιμωρουμένων : Ὥστε οὐχ ὁρὦ τί χρήσιμον ἔνεστι τοῖς ὀψὲ δὴ τούτοις ἀλεῖν λεγομένοις μύλοις τὦν θεὦν, id est Itaque non video quidnam utilitatis insit istis deorum molis quae sero dicuntur molere. Caeterum ex his quae praecedunt eodem in loco, colligere licet dici solitum de his qui, licet serius, tamen aliquando poenas dant malefactorum vindici deo.
  9. ↑ Early New High German variants: Gots mül steht offt lang stil; Die götter malen oder scheren eim langsam, aber wol. Nina-Maria Klug, Das konfessionelle Flugblatt 1563–1580: Eine Studie zur historischen Semiotik und Textanalyse, volume 112 of Studia Linguistica Germanica, Walter de Gruyter, 2012 p. 189
  10. ↑ "Göttliche Rache", Sinngedichte III, 2, 24.
  11. ↑ Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner, ed. (2006). "God, 8". The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-19-516823-5.

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Justice
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Retribution
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