{"id":13094,"date":"2010-06-13T12:25:10","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T19:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2010\/06\/13\/the-mills-of-the-gods.html"},"modified":"2018-02-03T09:16:43","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T17:16:43","slug":"the-mills-of-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2010\/06\/13\/the-mills-of-the-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"The mills of the gods"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Back in 2002, I posted an entry in my main blog about the Longfellow line “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small<\/a>” and its antecedents, specifically a German poem written by Friedrich von Logau in 1654.<\/p>\r\n

A new comment on that entry spurred me to finally write up some info I collected in 2007, when I discovered that in that 2002 entry, I didn't go nearly far enough back.<\/p>\r\n

A slightly earlier rendition appeared in George Herbert's Jacula Prudentum<\/cite>: “God's mill grinds slow, but sure.” (Though there's apparently some doubt as to his authorship.) I'm not sure whether that line was in the first (1640) edition; the second edition appeared in 1651. But Herbert died in 1633, so if he wrote the book, then he wrote that line earlier. And it was a book of aphorisms, not necessarily things he came up with.<\/p>\r\n

But that's still not nearly far enough back. Sextus Empiricus, in the 2nd or 3rd century A.D., wrote something in Latin (“Est mola tarda dei, verum molit illa minutim”) that's been translated as “The mill of god is slow [or late], but it grinds fine [or small].” (From Against the Professors<\/cite>, I.xiii.287; maybe specifically from Against the Grammarians<\/cite>.)<\/p>\r\n

And then there's a line from a Latin translation of the Sibylline Oracles<\/a><\/cite> (“a collection of oracular utterances [...] ascribed to the Sibyls,” which Wikipedia says were composed from the second to the fifth century A.D.), book VIII, line 14: “Sed mola postremo pinset divina farinam<\/a>,” which I've seen translated as “Late will the mills of God grind the fine flour.”<\/p>\r\n

And before that (probably sometime in the late first or early second century A.D.), Plutarch wrote something (in Moralia<\/a><\/cite>) that's been translated as “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind to powder.” (From “De Sera Numinis Vindicta,” “On the Delays of Divine Vengeance,” end of chapter 3.)<\/p>\r\n

Going another step further back, I'm told that Tibulius's Elegies<\/cite> I.IX.4 has a relevant line (sometime before 19 B.C.), but I don't know what the line was.<\/p>\r\n

And Horace wrote, in Carmina<\/cite> III.II.31<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n
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raro antecedentem scelestum<\/p>\r\n

deseruit pede Poena claudo<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Semi-literal translation: “Rarely does Punishment desert the retreating criminal, although her foot is lame.” Conington translation: “Though Vengeance halt, she seldom leaves \/ The wretch whose flying steps she hounds.”<\/p>\r\n

And finally, the farthest-back reference I know of comes from Euripedes around 405 B.C., translated as “Slow but sure moves the might of the gods.” (The Bacchae<\/a><\/cite>, line 882.)<\/p>\r\n

So, in summary:<\/p>\r\n