Homilies on the Statues

^3. Aforetime there was nothing happier than our city; nothing more melancholy than it is now become. As bees buzzing around their hive, so before this the inhabitants every day flitted about the forum, and all pronounced us happy in being so numerous. But behold now, this hive has become solitary! For even as smoke does those bees, so fear has driven away our swarms; and what the prophet says, bewailing Jerusalem, we may fitly say now, “Our city has become 'like a terebinth that has lost its leaves, and as a garden that has no water.'” For in like manner as a garden when its irrigation fails, exhibits the trees stripped of their leaves, and bare of their fruits, so has it now fared with our city. For the help from above having forsaken her, she stands desolate stripped of almost all her inhabitants.