One last thing remains: since it often happens, as we read in histories, that the gods seem to have shown their majesty through auguries, dreams, and oracles, and also by the punishment of those who had committed sacrilege, I should show what cause brought this about, so that no one may even now fall into the same snares into which those ancients fell. When God, by the power of his majesty, had founded the world out of nothing and adorned the heaven with lights, and filled the earth and sea with living things, then he formed man from clay after the image of his likeness, breathed into him for life, and placed him in Paradise, which he had planted with every kind of fruit-bearing tree; and he commanded him not to taste of one tree, in which he had placed the knowledge of good and evil, threatening that he would lose life if he did so, but if he kept the command he would remain immortal. Then the serpent, who was one of God's ministers, envying man because he had been made immortal, enticed him by deceit to transgress God's command and law. And in this way he did receive the knowledge of good and evil, but lost the life which God had given him to be everlasting. So he cast the sinner out of the holy place and banished him into this world, to seek his food by labor and to endure hardships and troubles as he deserved; and he surrounded Paradise itself with a rampart of fire, so that no human being might try to creep into that place of everlasting blessedness until the day of judgment. Then death followed man by God's sentence; and yet his life, although it had begun to be temporal, took its limit at a thousand years, and that was the span of human life until the time of the flood. For after the deluge the life of men was gradually shortened and reduced to a hundred and twenty years. But that serpent, who from his deeds received the name devil, that is, accuser or informer, did not cease to persecute the seed of the man whom he had deceived from the beginning. Finally he armed him who was first born in this world, breathing envy into him, for the murder of his brother, so that of the first two men born he might destroy the one and make the other a fratricide. Nor did he rest thereafter from pouring the poison of malice into human hearts in each generation, corrupting and depraving them, overwhelming them finally with such great crimes that an example of righteousness was now rare, and people lived in the manner of beasts. When God saw this, he sent his angels to cultivate human life and protect people from every evil. He gave them a command to keep themselves from earthly things, so that they would not lose their angelic honor by becoming defiled. But that same crafty accuser, while they were living among men, enticed them also to pleasures, so that they defiled themselves with women. Then, condemned by God's sentence and cast down for their sins, they lost both the name and the substance of angels.⁠a So, having become the devil's henchmen, to have some consolation for their own ruin they turned to ruining the men they had come to protect.