Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6.3

Two paths lie before us in human life, one that carries us to heaven, another that presses us down to the lower world, and both poets in their songs and philosophers in their treatises have set them forth.

The philosophers, for their part, designated one path for virtue and the other for vice, assigning the steep and rugged first approach to virtue; if someone overcomes that initial difficulty and gains the summit, the way thereafter becomes level, a bright and pleasant field where he reaps rich and delightful fruits from all his labors, but those whom the first steepness deters slip aside into the path of vice, which at its entrance appears pleasant and well‑trodden, yet once they have gone a little farther the pleasantness is suddenly withdrawn and a precipitous way arises, now rough with rocks, now blocked with thorns, now cut off by whirlpools or rapid torrents, so that to toil, to stick, to slip, and to fall becomes inevitable.

All this is set forth to show that the pursuit of virtue entails the greatest labors, but once virtue is attained it yields the greatest fruits and solid, uncorrupted pleasures, while vice allures men's minds with natural enticements and leads those captured by the show of empty pleasures into bitter hardships and miseries.

It would be a wise discussion if the philosophers had known the true forms and boundaries of the virtues themselves, for they had not learned what the virtues are or what reward from God awaits them, and that is what we shall teach in these two books.

Because they were ignorant or doubted that human souls are immortal, they measured virtues and vices by earthly honors or punishments, and so their whole discourse on the two paths looks only to frugality and luxury.

They liken the course of human life to the letter Y: each person, upon reaching the threshold of early youth and arriving at the place where the way divides in two, stands hesitant, not knowing which branch to take; if he finds a guide who directs his stumbling steps toward better things — that is, if he learns philosophy or eloquence or some honorable art by which he may escape to good fruit, which cannot happen without the greatest labor — they say he will lead an honorable and abundant life; but if he lacks a teacher of frugality, he falls into the left‑hand path that pretends to be better, surrendering himself to idleness, inertia, and luxury, which seem sweet for a time to one ignorant of true goods, yet after he has lost all dignity and property he will live in every misery and ignominy.

Thus they referred the boundaries of those paths to the body and to this earthly life; the poets perhaps did better by placing the fork in the lower world, yet they erred in proposing those paths to the dead.

Both, therefore, are true in a sense, yet both are not correct, because the paths themselves ought to be referred to life, their boundaries to death.

We, therefore, speak better and more truly when we say that those two paths are the paths of heaven and the lower world, because immortality is set before the just and eternal punishment before the unjust.

How these paths either raise to heaven or precipitate to the lower world I will explain, and I will reveal the virtues which the philosophers did not know; then I will show the rewards of those virtues, and at the same time the vices and their punishments.

Perhaps someone expects me to treat vices and virtues separately, but when we discuss good or evil the contrary can also be understood: without virtues vices depart of their own accord, or if you remove vices virtues come of their own accord; the nature of good and evil is so constituted that they always fight against each other and always expel each other, so that vices cannot be removed without virtues nor virtues introduced without the removal of vices.

We therefore introduce these paths in a far different way than the philosophers do: first, we say that a leader is set over each, both immortal, but one honored, who presides over virtues and goods, the other condemned, who presides over vices and evils; the philosophers place a leader only on the right‑hand path, and not a single or perpetual one, since they bring in any teacher of a good art who recalls men from laziness and teaches them frugality, and they admit no one to that path except boys and young men, evidently because arts are learned at those ages.

We, however, lead into this heavenly path all people of every sex, kind, and age, because God, who is the leader of that path, denies immortality to no human being born.

The very form of the paths is not as they imagined: what need is there of the letter Y in things that are contrary and diverse? Rather, the better path turns toward the sunrise, the worse toward the sunset, because he who follows truth and justice, having received the reward of immortality, will possess eternal light, while he who, allured by that evil leader, prefers vices to virtues and falsehood to truth, must be carried away to the setting and to darkness eternal.

I will therefore describe each path and show their properties and habits.