Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.5.1 (82.1)

Summary: The building pauses; the virgins guard the tower.

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:228

Καὶ ἐτελέσθη τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ ἡ οἰκοδομή, οὐκ ἀπετελέσθη δὲ ὁ πύργος· ἔμελλε γὰρ πάλιν ἐποικοδομεῖσθαι· καὶ ἐγένετο ἀνοχὴ τῆς οἰκοδομῆς. ἐκέλευσαν δὲ οἱ ἓξ ἄνδρες τοὺς οἰκοδομοῦντας ἀναχωρῆσαι μικρὸν πάντας καὶ ἀναπαυθῆναι· ταῖς δὲ παρθένοις ἐπέταξαν ἀπὸ τοῦ πύργου μὴ ἀναχωρῆσαι. ἐδόκει δέ μοι τὰς παρθένους καταλελεῖφθαι τοῦ φυλάσσειν τὸν πύργον.

English · Claude translation

And the building was finished on that day, but the tower was not completed; for it was to be built up further; and there was a pause in the building. And the six men ordered all the builders to withdraw a little and rest; but they commanded the virgins not to withdraw from the tower. And it seemed to me that the virgins had been left to guard the tower.

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:228 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1913), 138–305 · Greek text: K. Lake, The Apostolic Fathers (LCL, 1912-1913), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Lake, LCL 25. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Lake (LCL 25, 1913), and from the ancient Latin version where Lake prints it because the Greek is lost (from Sim. 9.30.3); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Cite this passage

Herm. Sim. 9.5.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/9/5/1/).

Plain text

Herm. Sim. 9.5.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-sim/9/5/1/).