Palaces as virtues razed; demolition not of proud heights

“Palaces” he says for the houses, which Symmachus rendered “kingdoms.” And he takes up the laments again, as someone greatly pained upon mourning. And again he shows that she has taken on a lowly reckoning and a lowly thought, the things like houses and fortresses having been taken down, as filling the leading part. For virtues are the houses—for by them we are sheltered—and fortifications the irrefutable reasonings. For the demolition now is not of worse heights, “lifting themselves up against the knowledge of God,” nor of lowliness according to which one “learns the judgments of God”; for these are of a character for joy, not for grief.