Writings of Augustine. The City of God.
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The City of God.
translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.
Published in 1886 by Philip Schaff,
New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
.
Book III.
Argument--As in the foregoing book Augustin has proved regarding moral
and spiritual calamities, so in this book he proves regarding external
and bodily disasters, that since the foundation of the city the Romans
have been continually subject to them; and that even when the false
gods were worshipped without a rival, before the advent of Christ,
they afforded no relief from such calamities.
Chapter 1.--Of the Ills Which Alone the Wicked Fear, and Which the
World Continually Suffered, Even When the Gods Were Worshipped.
Of moral and spiritual evils, which are above all others to be
deprecated, I think enough has already been said to show that the
false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them
from being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated the
ruin. I see I must now speak of those evils which alone are dreaded
by the heathen--famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre,
and the like calamities, already enumerated in the first book. For
evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil;
neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil
among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad
house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have
everything good but himself. But not even such evils as were alone
dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they
were most unrestrictedly worshipped. For in various times and places
before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed with
numberless and sometimes incredible calamities; and at that time what
gods but those did the world worship, if you except the one nation of
the Hebrews, and, beyond them, such individuals as the most secret and
most just judgment of God counted worthy of divine grace? [120]But
that I may not be prolix, I will be silent regarding the heavy
calamities that have been suffered by any other nations, and will
speak only of what happened to Rome and the Roman empire, by which I
mean Rome properly so called, and those lands which already, before
the coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest become, as it were,
members of the body of the state.
Footnotes
[120] Compare Aug. Epist. ad Deogratias, 102, 13; and De Præd. Sanct.,
19.
Chapter 2.--Whether the Gods, Whom the Greeks and Romans Worshipped in
Common, Were Justified in Permitting the Destruction of Ilium.
First, then, why was Troy or Ilium, the cradle of the Roman people
(for I must not overlook nor disguise what I touched upon in the first
book [121] ), conquered, taken and destroyed by the Greeks, though it
esteemed and worshipped the same gods as they? Priam, some answer,
paid the penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon. [122]Then
it is true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen. For
the story goes that he promised them wages, and then broke his
bargain. I wonder that famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a
work, and never suspected Laomedon was going to cheat him of his pay.
And Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it
really was not seemly that he should be ignorant of what was to
happen. For he is introduced by Homer [123] (who lived and wrote
before the building of Rome) as predicting something great of the
posterity of Æneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer says, Nep
tune also rescued Æneas in a cloud from the wrath of Achilles, though
(according to Virgil [124] )
"All his will was to destroy
His own creation, perjured Troy."
Gods, then, so great as Apollo and Neptune, in ignorance of the cheat
that was to defraud them of their wages, built the walls of Troy for
nothing but thanks and thankless people. [125]There may be some
doubt whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons to be
gods, than to cheat such gods. Even Homer himself did not give full
credence to the story for while he represents Neptune, indeed, as
hostile to the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though
the story implies that both were offended by that fraud. If,
therefore, they believe their fables, let them blush to worship such
gods; if they discredit the fables, let no more be said of the "Trojan
perjury;" or let them explain how the gods hated Trojan, but loved
Roman perjury. For how did the conspiracy of Catiline, even in so
large and corrupt a city, find so abundant a supply of men whose hands
and tongues found them a living by perjury and civic broils? What
else but perjury corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the
senators? What else corrupted the people's votes and decisions of all
causes tried before them? For it seems that the ancient practice of
taking oaths has been preserved even in the midst of the greatest
corruption, not for the sake of restraining wickedness by religious
fear, but to complete the tale of crimes by adding that of perjury.
Footnotes
[121] Ch. 4.
[122] Virg, Georg. i. 502, Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ.
[123] Iliad, xx. 293 et seqq.
[124] Æneid. v. 810, 811.
[125] Gratis et ingratis.
Chapter 3.--That the Gods Could Not Be Offended by the Adultery of
Paris, This Crime Being So Common Among Themselves.
There is no ground, then, for representing the gods (by whom, as they
say, that empire stood, though they are proved to have been conquered
by the Greeks) as being enraged at the Trojan perjury. Neither, as
others again plead in their defence, was it indignation at the
adultery of Paris that caused them to withdraw their protection from
Troy. For their habit is to be instigators and instructors in vice,
not its avengers. "The city of Rome," says Sallust, "was first built
and inhabited, as I have heard, by the Trojans, who, flying their
country, under the conduct of Æneas, wandered about without making any
settlement." [126]If, then, the gods were of opinion that the
adultery of Paris should be punished, it was chiefly the Romans, or at
least the Romans also, who should have suffered; for the adultery was
brought about by Æneas' mother. But how could they hate in Paris a
crime which they made no objection to in their own sister Venus, who
(not to mention any other instance) committed adultery with Anchises,
and so became the mother of Æneas? Is it because in the one case
Menelaus [127] was aggrieved, while in the other Vulcan [128] connived
at the crime? For the gods, I fancy, are so little jealous of their
wives, that they make no scruple of sharing them with men. But
perhaps I may be suspected of turning the myths into ridicule, and not
handling so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well, then,
let us say that Æneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing to admit
it; but is Romulus any more the son of Mars? For why not the one as
well as the other? Or is it lawful for gods to have intercourse with
women, unlawful for men to have intercourse with goddesses? A hard,
or rather an incredible condition, that what was allowed to Mars by
the law of Venus, should not be allowed to Venus herself by her own
law. However, both cases have the authority of Rome; for Cæsar in
modern times believed no less that he was descended from Venus, [129]
than the ancient Romulus believed himself the son of Mars.
Footnotes
[126] De Conj. Cat.vi.
[127] Helen's husband.
[128] Venus' husband.
[129] Suetonius, in his Life of Julius Cæsar (c. 6), relates that, in
pronouncing a funeral oration in praise of his aunt Julia, Cæsar
claimed for the Julian gens to which his family belonged a descent
from Venus, through Iulus, son of Eneas.
Chapter 4.--Of Varro's Opinion, that It is Useful for Men to Feign
Themselves the Offspring of the Gods.
Some one will say, But do you believe all this? Not I indeed. For
even Varro, a very learned heathen, all but admits that these stories
are false, though he does not boldly and confidently say so. But he
maintains it is useful for states that brave men believe, though
falsely, that they are descended from the gods; for that thus the
human spirit, cherishing the belief of its divine descent, will both
more boldly venture into great enterprises, and will carry them out
more energetically, and will therefore by its very confidence secure
more abundant success. You see how wide a field is opened to
falsehood by this opinion of Varro's, which I have expressed as well
as I could in my own words; and how comprehensible it is, that many of
the religions and sacred legends should be feigned in a community in
which it was judged profitable for the citizens that lies should be
told even about the gods themselves.
Chapter 5.--That It is Not Credible that the Gods Should Have Punished
the Adultery of Paris, Seeing They Showed No Indignation at the
Adultery of the Mother of Romulus.
But whether Venus could bear Æneas to a human father Anchises, or Mars
beget Romulus of the daughter of Numitor, we leave as unsettled
questions. For our own Scriptures suggest the very similar question,
whether the fallen angels had sexual intercourse with the daughters of
men, by which the earth was at that time filled with giants, that is,
with enormously large and strong men. At present, then, I will limit
my discussion to this dilemma: If that which their books relate about
the mother of Æneas and the father of Romulus be true, how can the
gods be displeased with men for adulteries which, when committed by
themselves, excite no displeasure? If it is false, not even in this
case can the gods be angry that men should really commit adulteries,
which, even when falsely attributed to the gods, they delight in.
Moreover, if the adultery of Mars be discredited, that Venus also may
be freed from the imputation, then the mother of Romulus is left
unshielded by the pretext of a divine seduction. For Sylvia was a
vestal priestess, and the gods ought to avenge this sacrilege on the
Romans with greater severity than Paris' adultery on the Trojans. For
even the Romans themselves in primitive times used to go so far as to
bury alive any vestal who was detected in adultery, while women
unconsecrated, though they were punished, were never punished with
death for that crime; and thus they more earnestly vindicated the
purity of shrines they esteemed divine, than of the human bed.
Chapter 6.--That the Gods Exacted No Penalty for the Fratricidal Act
of Romulus.
I add another instance: If the sins of men so greatly incensed those
divinities, that they abandoned Troy to fire and sword to punish the
crime of Paris, the murder of Romulus' brother ought to have incensed
them more against the Romans than the cajoling of a Greek husband
moved them against the Trojans: fratricide in a newly-born city
should have provoked them more than adultery in a city already
flourishing. It makes no difference to the question we now discuss,
whether Romulus ordered his brother to be slain, or slew him with his
own hand; it is a crime which many shamelessly deny, many through
shame doubt, many in grief disguise. And we shall not pause to
examine and weigh the testimonies of historical writers on the
subject. All agree that the brother of Romulus was slain, not by
enemies, not by strangers. If it was Romulus who either commanded or
perpetrated this crime; Romulus was more truly the head of the Romans
than Paris of the Trojans; why then did he who carried off another
man's wife bring down the anger of the gods on the Trojans, while he
who took his brother's life obtained the guardianship of those same
gods? If, on the other hand, that crime was not wrought either by the
hand or will of Romulus, then the whole city is chargeable with it,
because it did not see to its punishment, and thus committed, not
fratricide, but parricide, which is worse. For both brothers were the
founders of that city, of which the one was by villainy prevented from
being a ruler. So far as I see, then, no evil can be ascribed to Troy
which warranted the gods in abandoning it to destruction, nor any good
to Rome which accounts for the gods visiting it with prosperity;
unless the truth be, that they fled from Troy because they were
vanquished, and betook themselves to Rome to practise their
characteristic deceptions there. Nevertheless they kept a footing for
themselves in Troy, that they might deceive future inhabitants who
re-peopled these lands; while at Rome, by a wider exercise of their
malignant arts, they exulted in more abundant honors.
Chapter 7.--Of the Destruction of Ilium by Fimbria, a Lieutenant of
Marius.
And surely we may ask what wrong poor Ilium had done, that, in the
first heat of the civil wars of Rome, it should suffer at the hand of
Fimbria, the veriest villain among Marius' partisans, a more fierce
and cruel destruction than the Grecian sack. [130]For when the
Greeks took it many escaped, and many who did not escape were suffered
to live, though in captivity. But Fimbria from the first gave orders
that not a life should be spared, and burnt up together the city and
all its inhabitants. Thus was Ilium requited, not by the Greeks, whom
she had provoked by wrong-doing; but by the Romans, who had been built
out of her ruins; while the gods, adored alike of both sides, did
simply nothing, or, to speak more correctly, could do nothing. Is it
then true, that at this time also, after Troy had repaired the damage
done by the Grecian fire, all the gods by whose help the kingdom
stood, "forsook each fane, each sacred shrine?"
But if so, I ask the reason; for in my judgment, the conduct of the
gods was as much to be reprobated as that of the townsmen to be
applauded. For these closed their gates against Fimbria, that they
might preserve the city for Sylla, and were therefore burnt and
consumed by the enraged general. Now, up to this time, Sylla's cause
was the more worthy of the two; for till now he used arms to restore
the republic, and as yet his good intentions had met with no
reverses. What better thing, then, could the Trojans have done? What
more honorable, what more faithful to Rome, or more worthy of her
relationship, than to preserve their city for the better part of the
Romans, and to shut their gates against a parricide of his country?
It is for the defenders of the gods to consider the ruin which this
conduct brought on Troy. The gods deserted an adulterous people, and
abandoned Troy to the fires of the Greeks, that out of her ashes a
chaster Rome might arise. But why did they a second time abandon this
same town, allied now to Rome, and not making war upon her noble
daughter, but preserving a most steadfast and pious fidelity to Rome's
most justifiable faction? Why did they give her up to be destroyed,
not by the Greek heroes, but by the basest of the Romans? Or, if the
gods did not favor Sylla's cause, for which the unhappy Trojans
maintained their city, why did they themselves predict and promise
Sylla such successes? Must we call them flatterers of the fortunate,
rather than helpers of the wretched? Troy was not destroyed, then,
because the gods deserted it. For the demons, always watchful to
deceive, did what they could. For, when all the statues were
overthrown and burnt together with the town, Livy tells us that only
the image of Minerva is said to have been found standing uninjured
amidst the ruins of her temple; not that it might be said in their
praise, "The gods who made this realm divine," but that it might not
be said in their defence, They are "gone from each fane, each sacred
shrine:" for that marvel was permitted to them, not that they might
be proved to be powerful, but that they might be convicted of being
present.
Footnotes
[130] Livy, 83, one of the lost books; and Appian, in Mithridat.
Chapter 8.--Whether Rome Ought to Have Been Entrusted to the Trojan
Gods.
Where, then, was the wisdom of entrusting Rome to the Trojan gods, who
had demonstrated their weakness in the loss of Troy? Will some one
say that, when Fimbria stormed Troy, the gods were already resident in
Rome? How, then, did the image of Minerva remain standing? Besides,
if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Troy, perhaps they were at
Troy when Rome itself was taken and set on fire by the Gauls. But as
they are very acute in hearing, and very swift in their movements,
they came quickly at the cackling of the goose to defend at least the
Capitol, though to defend the rest of the city they were too long in
being warned.
Chapter 9.--Whether It is Credible that the Peace During the Reign of
Numa Was Brought About by the Gods.
It is also believed that it was by the help of the gods that the
successor of Romulus, Numa Pompilius, enjoyed peace during his entire
reign, and shut the gates of Janus, which are customarily kept open
[131] during war. And it is supposed he was thus requited for
appointing many religious observances among the Romans. Certainly
that king would have commanded our congratulations for so rare a
leisure, had he been wise enough to spend it on wholesome pursuits,
and, subduing a pernicious curiosity, had sought out the true God with
true piety. But as it was, the gods were not the authors of his
leisure; but possibly they would have deceived him less had they found
him busier. For the more disengaged they found him, the more they
themselves occupied his attention. Varro informs us of all his
efforts, and of the arts he employed to associate these gods with
himself and the city; and in its own place, if God will, I shall
discuss these matters. Meanwhile, as we are speaking of the benefits
conferred by the gods, I readily admit that peace is a great benefit;
but it is a benefit of the true God, which, like the sun, the rain,
and other supports of life, is frequently conferred on the ungrateful
and wicked. But if this great boon was conferred on Rome and
Pompilius by their gods, why did they never afterwards grant it to the
Roman empire during even more meritorious periods? Were the sacred
rites more efficient at their first institution than during their
subsequent celebration? But they had no existence in Numa's time,
until he added them to the ritual; whereas afterwards they had already
been celebrated and preserved, that benefit might arise from them.
How, then, is it that those forty-three, or as others prefer it,
thirty-nine years of Numa's reign, were passed in unbroken peace, and
yet that afterwards, when the worship was established, and the gods
themselves, who were invoked by it, were the recognized guardians and
pa trons of the city, we can with difficulty find during the whole
period, from the building of the city to the reign of Augustus, one
year--that, viz., which followed the close of the first Punic war--in
which, for a marvel, the Romans were able to shut the gates of war?
[132]
Footnotes
[131] The gates of Janus were not the gates of a temple, but the gates
of a passage called Janus, which was used only for military purposes;
shut therefore in peace, open in war.
[132] The year of the Consuls T. Manlius and C. Atilius, a.u.c. 519.
Chapter 10.--Whether It Was Desirable that The Roman Empire Should Be
Increased by Such a Furious Succession of Wars, When It Might Have
Been Quiet and Safe by Following in the Peaceful Ways of Numa.
Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have been so widely
extended, nor so glorious, save by constant and unintermitting wars?
A fit argument, truly! Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to
be great? In this little world of man's body, is it not better to
have a moderate stature, and health with it, than to attain the huge
dimensions of a giant by unnatural torments, and when you attain it to
find no rest, but to be pained the more in proportion to the size of
your members? What evil would have resulted, or rather what good
would not have resulted, had those times continued which Sallust
sketched, when he says, "At first the kings (for that was the first
title of empire in the world) were divided in their sentiments: part
cultivated the mind, others the body: at that time the life of men
was led without coveteousness; every one was sufficiently satisfied
with his own!" [133]Was it requisite, then, for Rome's prosperity,
that the state of things which Virgil reprobates should succeed:
"At length stole on a baser age
And war's indomitable rage,
And greedy lust of gain?" [134]
But obviously the Romans have a plausible defence for undertaking and
carrying on such disastrous wars,--to wit, that the pressure of their
enemies forced them to resist, so that they were compelled to fight,
not by any greed of human applause, but by the necessity of protecting
life and liberty. Well, let that pass. Here is Sallust's account of
the matter: "For when their state, enriched with laws, institutions,
territory, seemed abundantly prosperous and sufficiently powerful,
according to the ordinary law of human nature, opulence gave birth to
envy. Accordingly, the neighboring kings and states took arms and
assaulted them. A few allies lent assistance; the rest, struck with
fear, kept aloof from dangers. But the Romans, watchful at home and
in war, were active, made preparations, encouraged one another,
marched to meet their enemies,--protected by arms their liberty,
country, parents. Afterwards, when they had repelled the dangers by
their bravery, they carried help to their allies and friends, and
procured alliances more by conferring than by receiving favors." [135]
This was to build up Rome's greatness by honorable means. But, in
Numa's reign, I would know whether the long peace was maintained in
spite of the incursions of wicked neighbors, or if these incursions
were discontinued that the peace might be maintained? For if even
then Rome was harassed by wars, and yet did not meet force with force,
the same means she then used to quiet her enemies without conquering
them in war, or terrifying them with the onset of battle, she might
have used always, and have reigned in peace with the gates of Janus
shut. And if this was not in her power, then Rome enjoyed peace not
at the will of her gods, but at the will of her neighbors round about,
and only so long as they cared to provoke her with no war, unless
perhaps these pitiful gods will dare to sell to one man as their favor
what lies not in their power to bestow, but in the will of another
man. These demons, indeed, in so far as they are permitted, can
terrify or incite the minds of wicked men by their own peculiar
wickedness. But if they always had this power, and if no action were
taken against their efforts by a more secret and higher power, they
would be supreme to give peace or the victories of war, which almost
always fall out through some human emotion, and frequently in
opposition to the will of the gods, as is proved not only by lying
legends, which scarcely hint or signify any grain of truth, but even
by Roman history itself.
Footnotes
[133] Sall. Conj. Cat. ii.
[134] Æneid, viii. 326-7.
[135] Sall. Cat. Conj. vi.
Chapter 11.--Of the Statue of Apollo at Cumæ, Whose Tears are Supposed
to Have Portended Disaster to the Greeks, Whom the God Was Unable to
Succor.
And it is still this weakness of the gods which is confessed in the
story of the Cuman Apollo, who is said to have wept for four days
during the war with the Achæans and King Aristonicus. And when the
augurs were alarmed at the portent, and had determined to cast the
statue into the sea, the old men of Cumæ interposed, and related that
a similar prodigy had occurred to the same image during the wars
against Antiochus and against Perseus, and that by a decree of the
senate, gifts had been presented to Apollo, because the event had
proved favorable to the Romans. Then soothsayers were summoned who
were supposed to have greater professional skill, and they pronounced
that the weeping of Apollo's image was propitious to the Romans,
because Cumæ was a Greek colony, and that Apollo was bewailing (and
thereby presaging) the grief and calamity that was about to light upon
his own land of Greece, from which he had been brought. Shortly
afterwards it was reported that King Aristonicus was defeated and made
prisoner,--a defeat certainly opposed to the will of Apollo; and this
he indicated by even shedding tears from his marble image. And this
shows us that, though the verses of the poets are mythical, they are
not altogether devoid of truth, but describe the manners of the demons
in a sufficiently fit style. For in Virgil, Diana mourned for
Camilla, [136] and Hercules wept for Pallas doomed to die. [137]
This is perhaps the reason why Numa Pompilius, too, when, enjoying
prolonged peace, but without knowing or inquiring from whom he
received it, he began in his leisure to consider to what gods he
should entrust the safe keeping and conduct of Rome, and not dreaming
that the true, almighty, and most high God cares for earthly affairs,
but recollecting only that the Trojan gods which Æneas had brought to
Italy had been able to preserve neither the Trojan nor Lavinian
kingdom rounded by Æneas himself, concluded that he must provide other
gods as guardians of fugitives and helpers of the weak, and add them
to those earlier divinities who had either come over to Rome with
Romulus, or when Alba was destroyed.
Footnotes
[136] Æneid, xi. 532.
[137] Ibid. x. 464.
Chapter 12.--That the Romans Added a Vast Number of Gods to Those
Introduced by Numa, and that Their Numbers Helped Them Not at All.
But though Pompilius introduced so ample a ritual, yet did not Rome
see fit to be content with it. For as yet Jupiter himself had not his
chief temple,--it being King Tarquin who built the Capitol. And
Æsculapius left Epidaurus for Rome, that in this foremost city he
might have a finer field for the exercise of his great medical skill.
[138]The mother of the gods, too, came I know not whence from
Pessinuns; it being unseemly that, while her son presided on the
Capitoline hill, she herself should lie hid in obscurity. But if she
is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed some of her
children to Rome, but left others to follow her. I wonder, indeed, if
she were the mother of Cynocephalus, who a long while afterwards came
from Egypt. Whether also the goddess Fever was her offspring, is a
matter for her grandson Æsculapius [139] to decide. But of whatever
breed she be, the foreign gods will not presume, I trust, to call a
goddess base-born who is a Roman citizen. Who can number the deities
to whom the guardianship of Rome was entrusted? Indigenous and
imported, both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers; and,
as Varro says, gods certain and uncertain, male and female: for, as
among animals, so among all kinds of gods are there these
distinctions. Rome, then, enjoying the protection of such a cloud of
deities, might surely have been preserved from some of those great and
horrible calamities, of which I can mention but a few. For by the
great smoke of her altars she summoned to her protection, as by a
beacon-fire, a host of gods, for whom she appointed and maintained
temples, altars, sacrifices, priests, and thus offended the true and
most high God, to whom alone all this ceremonial is lawfully due.
And, indeed, she was more prosperous when she had fewer gods; but the
greater she became, the more gods she thought she should have, as the
larger ship needs to be manned by a larger crew. I suppose she
despaired of the smaller number, under whose protection she had spent
comparatively happy days, being able to defend her greatness. For
even under the kings (with the exception of Numa Pompilius, of whom I
have already spoken), how wicked a contentiousness must have existed
to occasion the death of Romulus' brother!
Footnotes
[138] Livy, x. 47.
[139] Being son of Apollo.
Chapter 13.--By What Right or Agreement The Romans Obtained Their
First Wives.
How is it that neither Juno, who with her husband Jupiter even then
cherished
"Rome's sons, the nation of the gown," [140]
nor Venus herself, could assist the children of the loved Æneas to
find wives by some right and equitable means? For the lack of this
entailed upon the Romans the lamentable necessity of stealing their
wives, and then waging war with their fathers-in-law; so that the
wretched women, before they had recovered from the wrong done them by
their husbands, were dowried with the blood of their fathers. "But
the Romans conquered their neighbors." Yes; but with what wounds on
both sides, and with what sad slaughter of relatives and neighbors!
The war of Cæsar and Pompey was the contest of only one father-in-law
with one son-in-law; and before it began, the daughter of Cæsar,
Pompey's wife, was already dead. But with how keen and just an accent
of grief does Lucan [141] exclaim: "I sing that worse than civil war
waged in the plains of Emathia, and in which the crime was justified
by the victory!"
The Romans, then, conquered that they might, with hands stained in the
blood of their fathers-in-law, wrench the miserable girls from their
embrace,--girls who dared not weep for their slain parents, for fear
of offending their victorious husbands; and while yet the battle was
raging, stood with their prayers on their lips, and knew not for whom
to utter them. Such nuptials were certainly prepared for the Roman
people not by Venus, but Bellona; or possibly that infernal fury
Alecto had more liberty to injure them now that Juno was aiding them,
than when the prayers of that goddess had excited her against Æneas.
Andromache in captivity was happier than these Roman brides. For
though she was a slave, yet, after she had become the wife of Pyrrhus,
no more Trojans fell by his hand; but the Romans slew in battle the
very fathers of the brides they fondled. Andromache, the victor's
captive, could only mourn, not fear, the death of her people. The
Sabine women, related to men still combatants, feared the death of
their fathers when their husbands went out to battle, and mourned
their death as they returned, while neither their grief nor their fear
could be freely expressed. For the victories of their husbands,
involving the destruction of fellow-townsmen, relatives, brothers,
fathers, caused either pious agony or cruel exultation. Moreover, as
the fortune of war is capricious, some of them lost their husbands by
the sword of their parents, while others lost husband and father
together in mutual destruction. For the Romans by no means escaped
with impunity, but they were driven back within their walls, and
defended themselves behind closed gates; and when the gates were
opened by guile, and the enemy admitted into the town, the Forum
itself was the field of a hateful and fierce engagement of
fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. The ravishers were indeed quite
defeated, and, flying on all sides to their houses, sullied with new
shame their original shameful and lamentable triumph. It was at this
juncture that Romulus, hoping no more from the valor of his citizens,
prayed Jupiter that they might stand their ground; and from this
occasion the god gained the name of Stator. But not even thus would
the mischief have been finished, had not the ravished women themselves
flashed out with dishevelled hair, and cast themselves before their
parents, and thus disarmed their just rage, not with the arms of
victory, but with the supplications of filial affection. Then
Romulus, who could not brook his own brother as a colleague, was
compelled to accept Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as his partner
on the throne. But how long would he who misliked the fellowship of
his own twin-brother endure a stranger? So, Tatius being slain,
Romulus remained sole king, that he might be the greater god. See
what rights of marriage these were that fomented unnatural wars.
These were the Roman leagues of kindred, relationship, alliance,
religion. This was the life of the city so abundantly protected by
the gods. You see how many severe things might be said on this theme;
but our purpose carries us past them, and requires our discourse for
other matters.
Footnotes
[140] Virgil, Æn. i. 286.
[141] Pharsal. v. 1.
Chapter 14.--Of the Wickedness of the War Waged by the Romans Against
the Albans, and of the Victories Won by the Lust of Power.
But what happened after Numa's reign, and under the other kings, when
the Albans were provoked into war, with sad results not to themselves
alone, but also to the Romans? The long peace of Numa had become
tedious; and with what endless slaughter and detriment of both states
did the Roman and Alban armies bring it to an end! For Alba, which
had been founded by Ascanius, son of Æneas, and which was more
properly the mother of Rome than Troy herself, was provoked to battle
by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, and in the conflict both inflicted
and received such damage, that at length both parties wearied of the
struggle. It was then devised that the war should be decided by the
combat of three twin-brothers from each army: from the Romans the
three Horatii stood forward, from the Albans the three Curiatii. Two
of the Horatii were overcome and disposed of by the Curiatii; but by
the remaining Horatius the three Curiatii were slain. Thus Rome
remained victorious, but with such a sacrifice that only one survivor
returned to his home. Whose was the loss on both sides? Whose the
grief, but of the offspring of Æneas, the descendants of Ascanius, the
progeny of Venus, the grandsons of Jupiter? For this, too, was a
"worse than civil" war, in which the belligerent states were mother
and daughter. And to this combat of the three twin-brothers there was
added another atrocious and horrible catastrophe. For as the two
nations had formerly been friendly (being related and neighbors), the
sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii; and
she, when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of her betrothed,
burst into tears, and was slain by her own brother in his anger. To
me, this one girl seems to have been more humane than the whole Roman
people. I cannot think her to blame for lamenting the man to whom
already she had plighted her troth, or, as perhaps she was doing, for
grieving that her brother should have slain him to whom he had
promised his sister. For why do we praise the grief of Æneas (in
Virgil [142] ) over the enemy cut down even by his own hand? Why did
Marcellus shed tears over the city of Syracuse, when he recollected,
just before he destroyed, its magnificence and meridian glory, and
thought upon the common lot of all things? I demand, in the name of
humanity, that if men are praised for tears shed over enemies
conquered by themselves, a weak girl should not be counted criminal
for bewailing her lover slaughtered by the hand of her brother.
While, then, that maiden was weeping for the death of her betrothed
inflicted by her brother's hand, Rome was rejoicing that such
devastation had been wrought on her mother state, and that she had
purchased a victory with such an expenditure of the common blood of
herself and the Albans.
Why allege to me the mere names and words of "glory" and "victory?"
Tear off the disguise of wild delusion, and look at the naked deeds:
weigh them naked, judge them naked. Let the charge be brought against
Alba, as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge,
none like it found: the war was kindled only in order that there
"Might sound in languid ears the cry
Of Tullus and of victory." [143]
This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that social and
parricidal war,--a vice which Sallust brands in passing; for when he
has spoken with brief but hearty commendation of those primitive times
in which life was spent without covetousness, and every one was
sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on: "But after Cyrus
in Asia, and the Lacedemonians and Athenians in Greece, began to
subdue cities and nations, and to account the lust of sovereignty a
sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory
consisted in the greatest empire;" [144] and so on, as I need not now
quote. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race
with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she
triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory.
For, as our Scriptures say, "the wicked boasteth of his heart's
desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth." [145]
Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes,
that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell
me that this and the other was a "great" man, because he fought and
conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism
has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take the
consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such arms.
And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father,
the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? who would not be
revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war which a
daughter-state waged against its mother? Or did it constitute a
difference, that the battlefield was not an arena, and that the wide
plains were filled with the carcasses not of two gladiators, but of
many of the flower of two nations; and that those contests were viewed
not by the amphitheatre, but by the whole world, and furnished a
profane spectacle both to those alive at the time, and to their
posterity, so long as the fame of it is handed down?
Yet those gods, guardians of the Roman empire, and, as it were,
theatric spectators of such contests as these, were not satisfied
until the sister of the Horatii was added by her brother's sword as a
third victim from the Roman side, so that Rome herself, though she won
the day, should have as many deaths to mourn. Afterwards, as a fruit
of the victory, Alba was destroyed, though it was there the Trojan
gods had formed a third asylum after Ilium had been sacked by the
Greeks, and after they had left Lavinium, where Æneas had founded a
kingdom in a land of banishment. But probably Alba was destroyed
because from it too the gods had migrated, in their usual fashion, as
Virgil says:
"Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine,
Are those who made this realm divine." [146]
Gone, indeed, and from now their third asylum, that Rome might seem
all the wiser in committing herself to them after they had deserted
three other cities. Alba, whose king Amulius had banished his
brother, displeased them; Rome, whose king Romulus had slain his
brother, pleased them. But before Alba was destroyed, its population,
they say, was amalgamated with the inhabitants of Rome so that the two
cities were one. Well, admitting it was so, yet the fact remains that
the city of Ascanius, the third retreat of the Trojan gods, was
destroyed by the daughter-city. Besides, to effect this pitiful
conglomerate of the war's leavings, much blood was spilt on both
sides. And how shall I speak in detail of the same wars, so often
renewed in subsequent reigns, though they seemed to have been finished
by great victories; and of wars that time after time were brought to
an end by great slaughters, and which yet time after time were renewed
by the posterity of those who had made peace and struck treaties? Of
this calamitous history we have no small proof, in the fact that no
subsequent king closed the gates of war; and therefore with all their
tutelar gods, no one of them reigned in peace.
Footnotes
[142] Æneid, x. 821, of Lausus: "But when Anchises' son surveyed The
fair, fair face so ghastly made, He groaned, by tenderness unmanned,
And stretched the sympathizing hand," etc.
[143] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 813.
[144] Sallust, Cat. Conj. ii.
[145] Ps. x. 3.
[146] Æneid, ii. 351-2.
Chapter 15.--What Manner of Life and Death the Roman Kings Had.
And what was the end of the kings themselves? Of Romulus, a
flattering legend tells us that he was assumed into heaven. But
certain Roman historians relate that he was torn in pieces by the
senate for his ferocity, and that a man, Julius Proculus, was suborned
to give out that Romulus had appeared to him, and through him
commanded the Roman people to worship him as a god; and that in this
way the people, who were beginning to resent the action of the senate,
were quieted and pacified. For an eclipse of the sun had also
happened; and this was attributed to the divine power of Romulus by
the ignorant multitude, who did not know that it was brought about by
the fixed laws of the sun's course: though this grief of the sun
might rather have been considered proof that Romulus had been slain,
and that the crime was indicated by this deprivation of the sun's
light; as, in truth, was the case when the Lord was crucified through
the cruelty and impiety of the Jews. For it is sufficiently
demonstrated that this latter obscuration of the sun did not occur by
the natural laws of the heavenly bodies, because it was then the
Jewish Passover, which is held only at full moon, whereas natural
eclipses of the sun happen only at the last quarter of the moon.
Cicero, too, shows plainly enough that the apotheosis of Romulus was
imaginary rather than real, when, even while he is praising him in one
of Scipio's remarks in the De Republica, he says: "Such a reputation
had he acquired, that when he suddenly disappeared during an eclipse
of the sun, he was supposed to have been assumed into the number of
the gods, which could be supposed of no mortal who had not the highest
reputation for virtue." [147]By these words, "he suddenly
disappeared," we are to understand that he was mysteriously made away
with by the violence either of the tempest or of a murderous assault.
For their other writers speak not only of an eclipse, but of a sudden
storm also, which certainly either afforded opportunity for the crime,
or itself made an end of Romulus. And of Tullus Hostilius, who was
the third king of Rome, and who was himself destroyed by lightning,
Cicero in the same book says, that "he was not supposed to have been
deified by this death, possibly because the Romans were unwilling to
vulgarize the promotion they were assured or persuaded of in the case
of Romulus, lest they should bring it into contempt by gratuitously
assigning it to all and sundry." In one of his invectives, [148] too,
he says, in round terms, "The founder of this city, Romulus, we have
raised to immortality and divinity by kindly celebrating his
services;" implying that his deification was not real, but reputed,
and called so by courtesy on account of his virtues. In the dialogue
Hortensius, too, while speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun, he
says that they "produce the same darkness as covered the death of
Romulus, which happened during an eclipse of the sun." Here you see
he does not at all shrink from speaking of his "death," for Cicero was
more of a reasoner than an eulogist.
The other kings of Rome, too, with the exception of Numa Pompilius and
Ancus Marcius, who died natural deaths, what horrible ends they had!
Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and destroyer of Alba, was, as I said,
himself and all his house consumed by lightning. Priscus Tarquinius
was slain by his predecessor's sons. Servius Tullius was foully
murdered by his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him on
the throne. Nor did so flagrant a parricide committed against Rome's
best king drive from their altars and shrines those gods who were said
to have been moved by Paris' adultery to treat poor Troy in this
style, and abandon it to the fire and sword of the Greeks. Nay, the
very Tarquin who had murdered, was allowed to succeed his
father-in-law. And this infamous parricide, during the reign he had
secured by murder, was allowed to triumph in many victorious wars, and
to build the Capitol from their spoils; the gods meanwhile not
departing, but abiding, and abetting, and suffering their king Jupiter
to preside and reign over them in that very splendid Capitol, the work
of a parricide. For he did not build the Capitol in the days of his
innocence, and then suffer banishment for subsequent crimes; but to
that reign during which he built the Capitol, he won his way by
unnatural crime. And when he was afterwards banished by the Romans,
and forbidden the city, it was not for his own but his son's
wickedness in the affair of Lucretia,--a crime perpetrated not only
without his cognizance, but in his absence. For at that time he was
besieging Ardea, and fighting Rome's battles; and we cannot say what
he would have done had he been aware of his son's crime.
Notwithstanding, though his opinion was neither inquired into nor
ascertained, the people stripped him of royalty; and when he returned
to Rome with his army, it was admitted, but he was excluded, abandoned
by his troops, and the gates shut in his face. And yet, after he had
appealed to the neighboring states, and tormented the Romans with
calamitous but unsuccessful wars, and when he was deserted by the ally
on whom he most depended, despairing of regaining the kingdom, he
lived a retired and quiet life for fourteen years, as it is reported,
in Tusculum, a Roman town, where he grew old in his wife's company,
and at last terminated his days in a much more desirable fashion than
his father-in-law, who had perished by the hand of his son-in-law; his
own daughter abetting, if report be true. And this Tarquin the Romans
called, not the Cruel, nor the Infamous, but the Proud; their own
pride perhaps resenting his tyrannical airs. So little did they make
of his murdering their best king, his own father-in-law, that they
elected him their own king. I wonder if it was not even more criminal
in them to reward so bountifully so great a criminal. And yet there
was no word of the gods abandoning the altars; unless, perhaps, some
one will say in defence of the gods, that they remained at Rome for
the purpose of punishing the Romans, rather than of aiding and
profiting them, seducing them by empty victories, and wearing them out
by severe wars. Such was the life of the Romans under the kings
during the much-praised epoch of the state which extends to the
expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus in the 243d year, during which all
those victories, which were bought with so much blood and such
disasters, hardly pushed Rome's dominion twenty miles from the city; a
territory which would by no means bear comparison with that of any
petty Gætulian state.
Footnotes
[147] Cicero, De Rep. ii. 10.
[148] Contra Cat.iii. 2.
Chapter 16.--Of the First Roman Consuls, the One of Whom Drove the
Other from the Country, and Shortly After Perished at Rome by the Hand
of a Wounded Enemy, and So Ended a Career of Unnatural Murders.
To this epoch let us add also that of which Sallust says, that it was
ordered with justice and moderation, while the fear of Tarquin and of
a war with Etruria was impending. For so long as the Etrurians aided
the efforts of Tarquin to regain the throne, Rome was convulsed with
distressing war. And therefore he says that the state was ordered
with justice and moderation, through the pressure of fear, not through
the influence of equity. And in this very brief period, how
calamitous a year was that in which consuls were first created, when
the kingly power was abolished! They did not fulfill their term of
office. For Junius Brutus deprived his colleague Lucius Tarquinius
Collatinus, and banished him from the city; and shortly after he
himself fell in battle, at once slaying and slain, having formerly put
to death his own sons and his brothers-in-law, because he had
discovered that they were conspiring to restore Tarquin. It is this
deed that Virgil shudders to record, even while he seems to praise it;
for when he says:
"And call his own rebellious seed
For menaced liberty to bleed,"
he immediately exclaims,
"Unhappy father! howsoe'er
The deed be judged by after days;"
that is to say, let posterity judge the deed as they please, let them
praise and extol the father who slew his sons, he is unhappy. And
then he adds, as if to console so unhappy a man:
"His country's love shall all o'erbear,
And unextinguished thirst of praise." [149]
In the tragic end of Brutus, who slew his own sons, and though he slew
his enemy, Tarquin's son, yet could not survive him, but was survived
by Tarquin the elder, does not the innocence of his colleague
Collatinus seem to be vindicated, who, though a good citizen, suffered
the same punishment as Tarquin himself, when that tyrant was
banished? For Brutus himself is said to have been a relative [150] of
Tarquin. But Collatinus had the misfortune to bear not only the
blood, but the name of Tarquin. To change his name, then, not his
country, would have been his fit penalty: to abridge his name by this
word, and be called simply L. Collatinus. But he was not com pelled
to lose what he could lose without detriment, but was stripped of the
honor of the first consulship, and was banished from the land he
loved. Is this, then, the glory of Brutus--this injustice, alike
detestable and profitless to the republic? Was it to this he was
driven by "his country's love, and unextinguished thirst of praise?"
When Tarquin the tyrant was expelled, L. Tarquinius Collatinus, the
husband of Lucretia, was created consul along with Brutus. How justly
the people acted, in looking more to the character than the name of a
citizen! How unjustly Brutus acted, in depriving of honor and country
his colleague in that new office, whom he might have deprived of his
name, if it were so offensive to him! Such were the ills, such the
disasters, which fell out when the government was "ordered with
justice and moderation." Lucretius, too, who succeeded Brutus, was
carried off by disease before the end of that same year. So P.
Valerius, who succeeded Collatinus, and M. Horatius, who filled the
vacancy occasioned by the death of Lucretius, completed that
disastrous and funereal year, which had five consuls. Such was the
year in which the Roman republic inaugurated the new honor and office
of the consulship.
Footnotes
[149] Æneid, vi. 820, etc.
[150] His nephew.
Chapter 17.--Of the Disasters Which Vexed the Roman Republic After the
Inauguration of the Consulship, and of the Non-Intervention of the
Gods of Rome.
After this, when their fears were gradually diminished,--not because
the wars ceased, but because they were not so furious,--that period in
which things were "ordered with justice and moderation" drew to an
end, and there followed that state of matters which Sallust thus
briefly sketches: "Then began the patricians to oppress the people as
slaves, to condemn them to death or scourging, as the kings had done,
to drive them from their holdings, and to tyrannize over those who had
no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive
measures, and most of all by usury, and obliged to contribute both
money and personal service to the constant wars, at length took arms
and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus secured for
themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the second
Punic war that put an end on both sides to discord and strife." [151]
But why should I spend time in writing such things, or make others
spend it in reading them? Let the terse summary of Sallust suffice to
intimate the misery of the republic through all that long period till
the second Punic war,--how it was distracted from without by unceasing
wars, and torn with civil broils and dissensions. So that those
victories they boast were not the substantial joys of the happy, but
the empty comforts of wretched men, and seductive incitements to
turbulent men to concoct disasters upon disasters. And let not the
good and prudent Romans be angry at our saying this; and indeed we
need neither deprecate nor denounce their anger, for we know they will
harbor none. For we speak no more severely than their own authors,
and much less elaborately and strikingly; yet they diligently read
these authors, and compel their children to learn them. But they who
are angry, what would they do to me were I to say what Sallust says?
"Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common,
while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, affected
supreme power under the seemly pretence of seeking the good of senate
and people; citizens were judged good or bad without reference to
their loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the
wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens, because
they maintained the existing state of things." Now, if those
historians judged that an honorable freedom of speech required that
they should not be silent regarding the blemishes of their own state,
which they have in many places loudly applauded in their ignorance of
that other and true city in which citizenship is an everlasting
dignity; what does it become us to do, whose liberty ought to be so
much greater, as our hope in God is better and more assured, when they
impute to our Christ the calamities of this age, in order that men of
the less instructed and weaker sort may be alienated from that city in
which alone eternal and blessed life can be enjoyed? Nor do we utter
against their gods anything more horrible than their own authors do,
whom they read and circulate. For, indeed, all that we have said we
have derived from them, and there is much more to say of a worse kind
which we are unable to say.
Where, then, were those gods who are supposed to be justly worshipped
for the slender and delusive prosperity of this world, when the
Romans, who were seduced to their service by lying wiles, were
harassed by such calamities? Where were they when Valerius the consul
was killed while defending the Capitol, that had been fired by exiles
and slaves? He was himself better able to defend the temple of
Jupiter, than that crowd of divinities with their most high and mighty
king, whose temple he came to the rescue of were able to defend him.
Where were they when the city, worn out with unceasing seditions, was
waiting in some kind of calm for the return of the ambassadors who had
been sent to Athens to borrow laws, and was desolated by dreadful
famine and pestilence? Where were they when the people, again
distressed with famine, created for the first time a prefect of the
market; and when Spurius Melius, who, as the famine increased,
distributed corn to the famishing masses, was accused of aspiring to
royalty, and at the instance of this same prefect, and on the
authority of the superannuated dictator L. Quintius, was put to death
by Quintus Servilius, master of the horse,--an event which occasioned
a serious and dangerous riot? Where were they when that very severe
pestilence visited Rome, on account of which the people, after long
and wearisome and useless supplications of the helpless gods,
conceived the idea of celebrating Lectisternia, which had never been
done before; that is to say, they set couches in honor of the gods,
which accounts for the name of this sacred rite, or rather sacrilege?
[152]Where were they when, during ten successive years of reverses,
the Roman army suffered frequent and great losses among the Veians and
would have been destroyed but for the succor of Furius Camillus, who
was afterwards banished by an ungrateful country? Where were they
when the Gauls took sacked, burned, and desolated Rome? Where were
they when that memorable pestilence wrought such destruction, in which
Furius Camillus too perished, who first defended the ungrateful
republic from the Veians, and afterwards saved it from the Gauls?
Nay, during this plague, they introduced a new pestilence of scenic
entertainments, which spread its more fatal contagion, not to the
bodies, but the morals of the Romans? Where were they when another
frightful pestilence visited the city--I mean the poisonings imputed
to an incredible number of noble Roman matrons, whose characters were
infected with a disease more fatal than any plague? Or when both
consuls at the head of the army were beset by the Samnites in the
Caudine Forks, and forced to strike a shameful treaty, 600 Roman
knights being kept as hostages; while the troops, having laid down
their arms, and being stripped of everything, were made to pass under
the yoke with one garment each? Or when, in the midst of a serious
pestilence, lightning struck the Roman camp and killed many? Or when
Rome was driven, by the violence of another intolerable plague, to
send to Epidaurus for Æsculapius as a god of medicine; since the
frequent adulteries of Jupiter in his youth had not perhaps left this
king of all who so long reigned in the Capitol, any leisure for the
study of medicine? Or when, at one time, the Lucanians, Brutians,
Samnites, Tuscans, and Senonian Gauls conspired against Rome, and
first slew her ambassadors, then overthrew an army under the prætor,
putting to the sword 13,000 men, besides the commander and seven
tribunes? Or when the people, after the serious and long-continued
disturbances at Rome, at last plundered the city and withdrew to
Janiculus; a danger so grave, that Hortensius was created
dictator,--an office which they had recourse to only in extreme
emergencies; and he, having brought back the people, died while yet he
retained his office,--an event without precedent in the case of any
dictator, and which was a shame to those gods who had now Æsculapius
among them?
At that time, indeed, so many wars were everywhere engaged in, that
through scarcity of soldiers they enrolled for military service the
proletarii, who received this name, because, being too poor to equip
for military service, they had leisure to beget offspring. [153]
Pyrrhus, king of Greece, and at that time of widespread renown, was
invited by the Tarentines to enlist himself against Rome. It was to
him that Apollo, when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise,
uttered with some pleasantry so ambiguous an oracle, that whichever
alternative happened, the god himself should be counted divine. For
he so worded the oracle [154] that whether Pyrrhus was conquered by
the Romans, or the Romans by Pyrrhus, the soothsaying god would
securely await the issue. And then what frightful massacres of both
armies ensued! Yet Pyrrhus remained conqueror, and would have been
able now to proclaim Apollo a true diviner, as he understood the
oracle, had not the Romans been the conquerors in the next
engagement. And while such disastrous wars were being waged, a
terrible disease broke out among the women. For the pregnant women
died before delivery. And Æsculapius, I fancy, excused himself in
this matter on the ground that he professed to be arch-physician, not
midwife. Cattle, too, similarly perished; so that it was believed
that the whole race of animals was destined to become extinct. Then
what shall I say of that memorable winter in which the weather was so
incredibly severe, that in the Forum frightfully deep snow lay for
forty days together, and the Tiber was frozen? Had such things
happened in our time, what accusations we should have heard from our
enemies! And that other great pestilence, which raged so long and
carried off so many; what shall I say of it? Spite of all the drugs
of Æsculapius, it only grew worse in its second year, till at last
recourse was had to the Sibylline books,--a kind of oracle which, as
Cicero says in his De Divinatione, owes significance to its
interpreters, who make doubtful conjectures as they can or as they
wish. In this instance, the cause of the plague was said to be that
so many temples had been used as private residences. And thus
Æsculapius for the present escaped the charge of either ignominious
negligence or want of skill. But why were so many allowed to occupy
sacred tenements without interference, unless because supplication had
long been addressed in vain to such a crowd of gods, and so by degrees
the sacred places were deserted of worshippers, and being thus vacant,
could without offence be put at least to some human uses? And the
temples, which were at that time laboriously recognized and restored
that the plague might be stayed, fell afterwards into disuse, and were
again devoted to the same human uses. Had they not thus lapsed into
obscurity, it could not have been pointed to as proof of Varro's great
erudition, that in his work on sacred places he cites so many that
were unknown. Meanwhile, the restoration of the temples procured no
cure of the plague, but only a fine excuse for the gods.
Footnotes
[151] Hist. i.
[152] Lectisternia, from lectus, and sterno, I spread.
[153] Proletarius, from proles, offspring.
[154] The oracle ran: "Dico te, Pyrrhe, vincere posse Romanos."
Chapter 18.--The Disasters Suffered by the Romans in the Punic Wars,
Which Were Not Mitigated by the Protection of the Gods.
In the Punic wars, again, when victory hung so long in the balance
between the two kingdoms, when two powerful nations were straining
every nerve and using all their resources against one another, how
many smaller kingdoms were crushed, how many large and flourishing
cities were demolished, how many states were overwhelmed and ruined,
how many districts and lands far and near were desolated! How often
were the victors on either side vanquished! What multitudes of men,
both of those actually in arms and of others, were destroyed! What
huge navies, too, were crippled in engagements, or were sunk by every
kind of marine disaster! Were we to attempt to recount or mention
these calamities, we should become writers of history. At that period
Rome was mightily perturbed, and resorted to vain and ludicrous
expedients. On the authority of the Sibylline books, the secular
games were re-appointed, which had been inaugurated a century before,
but had faded into oblivion in happier times. The games consecrated
to the infernal gods were also renewed by the pontiffs; for they, too,
had sunk into disuse in the better times. And no wonder; for when
they were renewed, the great abundance of dying men made all hell
rejoice at its riches, and give itself up to sport: for certainly the
ferocious wars, and disastrous quarrels, and bloody victories--now on
one side, and now on the other--though most calamitous to men,
afforded great sport and a rich banquet to the devils. But in the
first Punic war there was no more disastrous event than the Roman
defeat in which Regulus was taken. We made mention of him in the two
former books as an incontestably great man, who had before conquered
and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would have put an end to the
first Punic war, had not an inordinate appetite for praise and glory
prompted him to impose on the worn-out Carthagians harder conditions
than they could bear. If the unlooked-for captivity and unseemly
bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath, and his surpassingly
cruel death, do not bring a blush to the face of the gods, it is true
that they are brazen and bloodless.
Nor were there wanting at that time very heavy disasters within the
city itself. For the Tiber was extraordinarily flooded, and destroyed
almost all the lower parts of the city; some buildings being carried
away by the violence of the torrent, while others were soaked to
rottenness by the water that stood round them even after the flood was
gone. This visitation was followed by a fire which was still more
destructive, for it consumed some of the loftier buildings round the
Forum, and spared not even its own proper temple, that of Vesta, in
which virgins chosen for this honor, or rather for this punishment,
had been employed in conferring, as it were, everlasting life on fire,
by ceaselessly feeding it with fresh fuel. But at the time we speak
of, the fire in the temple was not content with being kept alive: it
raged. And when the virgins, scared by its vehemence, were unable to
save those fatal images which had already brought destruction on three
cities [155] in which they had been received, Metellus the priest,
forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and res cued the sacred things,
though he was half roasted in doing so. For either the fire did not
recognize even him, or else the goddess of fire was there,--a goddess
who would not have fled from the fire supposing she had been there.
But here you see how a man could be of greater service to Vesta than
she could be to him. Now if these gods could not avert the fire from
themselves, what help against flames or flood could they bring to the
state of which they were the reputed guardians? Facts have shown that
they were useless. These objections of ours would be idle if our
adversaries maintained that their idols are consecrated rather as
symbols of things eternal, than to secure the blessings of time; and
that thus, though the symbols, like all material and visible things,
might perish, no damage thereby resulted to the things for the sake of
which they had been consecrated, while, as for the images themselves,
they could be renewed again for the same purposes they had formerly
served. But with lamentable blindness, they suppose that, through the
intervention of perishable gods, the earthly well-being and temporal
prosperity of the state can be preserved from perishing. And so, when
they are reminded that even when the gods remained among them this
well-being and prosperity were blighted, they blush to change the
opinion they are unable to defend.
Footnotes
[155] Troy, Lavinia, Alba.
Chapter 19.--Of the Calamity of the Second Punic War, Which Consumed
the Strength of Both Parties.
As to the second Punic war, it were tedious to recount the disasters
it brought on both the nations engaged in so protracted and shifting a
war, that (by the acknowledgment even of those writers who have made
it their object not so much to narrate the wars as to eulogize the
dominion of Rome) the people who remained victorious were less like
conquerors than conquered. For, when Hannibal poured out of Spain
over the Pyrenees, and overran Gaul, and burst through the Alps, and
during his whole course gathered strength by plundering and subduing
as he went, and inundated Italy like a torrent, how bloody were the
wars, and how continuous the engagements, that were fought! How often
were the Romans vanquished! How many towns went over to the enemy,
and how many were taken and subdued! What fearful battles there were,
and how often did the defeat of the Romans shed lustre on the arms of
Hannibal! And what shall I say of the wonderfully crushing defeat at
Cannæ, where even Hannibal, cruel as he was, was yet sated with the
blood of his bitterest enemies, and gave orders that they be spared?
From this field of battle he sent to Carthage three bushels of gold
rings, signifying that so much of the rank of Rome had that day
fallen, that it was easier to give an idea of it by measure than by
numbers and that the frightful slaughter of the common rank and file
whose bodies lay undistinguished by the ring, and who were numerous in
proportion to their meanness, was rather to be conjectured than
accurately reported. In fact, such was the scarcity of soldiers after
this, that the Romans impressed their criminals on the promise of
impunity, and their slaves by the bribe of liberty, and out of these
infamous classes did not so much recruit as create an army. But these
slaves, or, to give them all their titles, these freed-men who were
enlisted to do battle for the republic of Rome, lacked arms. And so
they took arms from the temples, as if the Romans were saying to their
gods: Lay down those arms you have held so long in vain, if by chance
our slaves may be able to use to purpose what you, our gods, have been
impotent to use. At that time, too, the public treasury was too low
to pay the soldiers, and private resources were used for public
purposes; and so generously did individuals contribute of their
property, that, saving the gold ring and bulla which each wore, the
pitiful mark of his rank, no senator, and much less any of the other
orders and tribes, reserved any gold for his own use. But if in our
day they were reduced to this poverty, who would be able to endure
their reproaches, barely endurable as they are now, when more money is
spent on actors for the sake of a superfluous gratification, than was
then disbursed to the legions?
Chapter 20.--Of the Destruction of the Saguntines, Who Received No
Help from the Roman Gods, Though Perishing on Account of Their
Fidelity to Rome.
But among all the disasters of the second Punic war, there occurred
none more lamentable, or calculated to excite deeper complaint, than
the fate of the Saguntines. This city of Spain, eminently friendly to
Rome, was destroyed by its fidelity to the Roman people. For when
Hannibal had broken treaty with the Romans, he sought occasion for
provoking them to war, and accordingly made a fierce assault upon
Saguntum. When this was reported at Rome, ambassadors were sent to
Hannibal, urging him to raise the siege; and when this remonstrance
was neglected, they proceeded to Carthage, lodged complaint against
the breaking of the treaty, and returned to Rome without accomplishing
their object. Meanwhile the siege went on; and in the eighth or ninth
month, this opulent but ill-fated city, dear as it was to its own
state and to Rome, was taken, and subjected to treatment which one
cannot read, much less narrate, without horror. And yet, because it
bears directly on the matter in hand, I will briefly touch upon it.
First, then, famine wasted the Saguntines, so that even human corpses
were eaten by some: so at least it is recorded. Subsequently, when
thoroughly worn out, that they might at least escape the ignominy of
falling into the hands of Hannibal, they publicly erected a huge
funeral pile, and cast themselves into its flames, while at the same
time they slew their children and themselves with the sword. Could
these gods, these debauchees and gourmands, whose mouths water for fat
sacrifices, and whose lips utter lying divinations,--could they not do
anything in a case like this? Could they not interfere for the
preservation of a city closely allied to the Roman people, or prevent
it perishing for its fidelity to that alliance of which they
themselves had been the mediators? Saguntum, faithfully keeping the
treaty it had entered into before these gods, and to which it had
firmly bound itself by an oath, was besieged, taken, and destroyed by
a perjured person. If afterwards, when Hannibal was close to the
walls of Rome, it was the gods who terrified him with lightning and
tempest, and drove him to a distance, why, I ask, did they not thus
interfere before? For I make bold to say, that this demonstration
with the tempest would have been more honorably made in defence of the
allies of Rome--who were in danger on account of their reluctance to
break faith with the Romans, and had no resources of their own--than
in defence of the Romans themselves, who were fighting in their own
cause, and had abundant resources to oppose Hannibal. If, then, they
had been the guardians of Roman prosperity and glory, they would have
preserved that glory from the stain of this Saguntine disaster; and
how silly it is to believe that Rome was preserved from destruction at
the hands of Hannibal by the guardian care of those gods who were
unable to rescue the city of Saguntum from perishing through its
fidelity to the alliance of Rome. If the population of Saguntum had
been Christian, and had suffered as it did for the Christian faith
(though, of course, Christians would not have used fire and sword
against their own persons), they would have suffered with that hope
which springs from faith in Christ--the hope not of a brief temporal
reward, but of unending and eternal bliss. What, then, will the
advocates and apologists of these gods say in their defence, when
charged with the blood of these Saguntines; for they are professedly
worshipped and invoked for this very purpose of securing prosperity in
this fleeting and transitory life? Can anything be said but what was
alleged in the case of Regulus' death? For though there is a
difference between the two cases, the one being an individual, the
other a whole community, yet the cause of destruction was in both
cases the keeping of their plighted troth. For it was this which made
Regulus willing to return to his enemies, and this which made the
Saguntines unwilling to revolt to their enemies. Does, then, the
keeping of faith provoke the gods to anger? Or is it possible that
not only individuals, but even entire communities, perish while the
gods are propitious to them? Let our adversaries choose which
alternative they will. If, on the one hand, those gods are enraged at
the keeping of faith, let them enlist perjured persons as their
worshippers. If, on the other hand, men and states can suffer great
and terrible calamities, and at last perish while favored by the gods,
then does their worship not produce happiness as its fruit. Let
those, therefore, who suppose that they have fallen into distress
because their religious worship has been abolished, lay aside their
anger; for it were quite possible that did the gods not only remain
with them, but regard them with favor, they might yet be left to mourn
an unhappy lot, or might, even like Regulus and the Saguntines, be
horribly tormented, and at last perish miserably.
Chapter 21.--Of the Ingratitude of Rome to Scipio, Its Deliverer, and
of Its Manners During the Period Which Sallust Describes as the Best.
Omitting many things, that I may not exceed the limits of the work I
have proposed to myself, I come to the epoch between the second and
last Punic wars, during which, according to Sallust, the Romans lived
with the greatest virtue and concord. Now, in this period of virtue
and harmony, the great Scipio, the liberator of Rome and Italy, who
had with surprising ability brought to a close the second Punic
war--that horrible, destructive, dangerous contest--who had defeated
Hannibal and subdued Carthage, and whose whole life is said to have
been dedicated to the gods, and cherished in their temples,--this
Scipio, after such a triumph, was obliged to yield to the accusations
of his enemies, and to leave his country, which his valor had saved
and liberated, to spend the remainder of his days in the town of
Liternum, so indifferent to a recall from exile, that he is said to
have given orders that not even his remains should lie in his
ungrateful country. It was at that time also that the pro-consul Cn.
Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome the luxury
of Asia, more destructive than all hostile armies. It was then that
iron bedsteads and expensive carpets were first used; then, too, that
female singers were admitted at banquets, and other licentious
abominations were introduced. But at present I meant to speak, not of
the evils men voluntarily practise, but of those they suffer in spite
of themselves. So that the case of Scipio, who succumbed to his
enemies, and died in exile from the country he had rescued, was
mentioned by me as being pertinent to the present discussion; for this
was the reward he received from those Roman gods whose temples he
saved from Hannibal, and who are worshipped only for the sake of
securing temporal happiness. But since Sallust, as we have seen,
declares that the manners of Rome were never better than at that time,
I therefore judged it right to mention the Asiatic luxury then
introduced, that it might be seen that what he says is true, only when
that period is compared with the others during which the morals were
certainly worse, and the factions more violent. For at that time--I
mean between the second and third Punic war--that notorious Lex
Voconia was passed, which prohibited a man from making a woman, even
an only daughter, his heir; than which law I am at a loss to conceive
what could be more unjust. It is true that in the interval between
these two Punic wars the misery of Rome was somewhat less. Abroad,
indeed, their forces were consumed by wars, yet also consoled by
victories; while at home there were not such disturbances as at other
times. But when the last Punic war had terminated in the utter
destruction of Rome's rival, which quickly succumbed to the other
Scipio, who thus earned for himself the surname of Africanus, then the
Roman republic was overwhelmed with such a host of ills, which sprang
from the corrupt manners induced by prosperity and security, that the
sudden overthrow of Carthage is seen to have injured Rome more
seriously than her long-continued hostility. During the whole
subsequent period down to the time of Cæsar Augustus, who seems to
have entirely deprived the Romans of liberty,--a liberty, indeed,
which in their own judgment was no longer glorious, but full of broils
and dangers, and which now was quite enervated and languishing,--and
who submitted all things again to the will of a monarch, and infused
as it were a new life into the sickly old age of the republic, and
inaugurated a fresh régime;--during this whole period, I say, many
military disasters were sustained on a variety of occasions, all of
which I here pass by. There was specially the treaty of Numantia,
blotted as it was with extreme disgrace; for the sacred chickens, they
say, flew out of the coop, and thus augured disaster to Mancinus the
consul; just as if, during all these years in which that little city
of Numantia had withstood the besieging army of Rome, and had become a
terror to the republic, the other generals had all marched against it
under unfavorable auspices.
Chapter 22.--Of the Edict of Mithridates, Commanding that All Roman
Citizens Found in Asia Should Be Slain.
These things, I say, I pass in silence; but I can by no means be
silent regarding the order given by Mithridates, king of Asia, that on
one day all Roman citizens residing anywhere in Asia (where great
numbers of them were following their private business) should be put
to death: and this order was executed. How miserable a spectacle was
then presented, when each man was suddenly and treacherously murdered
wherever he happened to be, in the field or on the road, in the town,
in his own home, or in the street, in market or temple, in bed or at
table! Think of the groans of the dying, the tears of the spectators,
and even of the executioners themselves. For how cruel a necessity
was it that compelled the hosts of these victims, not only to see
these abominable butcheries in their own houses, but even to
perpetrate them: to change their countenance suddenly from the bland
kindliness of friendship, and in the midst of peace set about the
business of war; and, shall I say, give and receive wounds, the slain
being pierced in body, the slayer in spirit! Had all these murdered
persons, then, despised auguries? Had they neither public nor
household gods to consult when they left their homes and set out on
that fatal journey? If they had not, our adversaries have no reason
to complain of these Christian times in this particular, since long
ago the Romans despised auguries as idle. If, on the other hand, they
did consult omens, let them tell us what good they got thereby, even
when such things were not prohibited, but authorized, by human, if not
by divine law.
Chapter 23.--Of the Internal Disasters Which Vexed the Roman Republic,
and Followed a Portentous Madness Which Seized All the Domestic
Animals.
But let us now mention, as succinctly as possible, those disasters
which were still more vexing, because nearer home; I mean those
discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil
interests. The seditions had now become urban wars, in which blood
was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another, not
with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force and
arms. What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and
devastations were occasioned in Italy by wars social, wars servile,
wars civil! Before the Latins began the social war against Rome, all
the animals used in the service of man--dogs, horses, asses, oxen, and
all the rest that are subject to man--suddenly grew wild, and forgot
their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and wandered at
large, and could not be closely approached either by strangers or
their own masters without danger. If this was a portent, how serious
a calamity must have been portended by a plague which, whether portent
or no, was in itself a serious calamity! Had it happened in our day,
the heathen would have been more rabid against us than their animals
were against them.
Chapter 24.--Of the Civil Dissension Occasioned by the Sedition of the
Gracchi.
The civil wars originated in the seditions which the Gracchi excited
regarding the agrarian laws; for they were minded to divide among the
people the lands which were wrongfully possessed by the nobility. But
to reform an abuse of so long standing was an enterprise full of
peril, or rather, as the event proved, of destruction. For what
disasters accompanied the death of the older Gracchus! what slaughter
ensued when, shortly after, the younger brother met the same fate!
For noble and ignoble were indiscriminately massacred; and this not by
legal authority and procedure, but by mobs and armed rioters. After
the death of the younger Gracchus, the consul Lucius Opimius, who had
given battle to him within the city, and had defeated and put to the
sword both himself and his confederates, and had massacred many of the
citizens, instituted a judicial examination of others, and is reported
to have put to death as many as 3000 men. From this it may be
gathered how many fell in the riotous encounters, when the result even
of a judicial investigation was so bloody. The assassin of Gracchus
himself sold his head to the consul for its weight in gold, such being
the previous agreement. In this massacre, too, Marcus Fulvius, a man
of consular rank, with all his children, was put to death.
Chapter 25.--Of the Temple of Concord, Which Was Erected by a Decree
of the Senate on the Scene of These Seditions and Massacres.
A pretty decree of the senate it was, truly, by which the temple of
Concord was built on the spot where that disastrous rising had taken
place, and where so many citizens of every rank had fallen. [156]I
suppose it was that the monument of the Gracchi's punishment might
strike the eye and affect the memory of the pleaders. But what was
this but to deride the gods, by building a temple to that goddess who,
had she been in the city, would not have suffered herself to be torn
by such dissensions? Or was it that Concord was chargeable with that
bloodshed because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, and was
therefore incarcerated in that temple? For if they had any regard to
consistency, why did they not rather erect on that site a temple of
Discord? Or is there a reason for Concord being a goddess while
Discord is none? Does the distinction of Labeo hold here, who would
have made the one a good, the other an evil deity?--a distinction
which seems to have been suggested to him by the mere fact of his
observing at Rome a temple to Fever as well as one to Health. But, on
the same ground, Discord as well as Concord ought to be deified. A
hazardous venture the Romans made in provoking so wicked a goddess,
and in forgetting that the destruction of Troy had been occasioned by
her taking offence. For, being indignant that she was not invited
with the other gods [to the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis], she
created dissension among the three goddesses by sending in the golden
apple, which occasioned strife in heaven, victory to Venus, the rape
of Helen, and the destruction of Troy. Wherefore, if she was perhaps
offended that the Romans had not thought her worthy of a temple among
the other gods in their city, and therefore disturbed the state with
such tumults, to how much fiercer passion would she be roused when she
saw the temple of her adversary erected on the scene of that massacre,
or, in other words, on the scene of her own handiwork! Those wise and
learned men are enraged at our laughing at these follies; and yet,
being worshippers of good and bad divinities alike, they cannot escape
this dilemma about Concord and Discord: either they have neglected
the worship of these goddesses, and preferred Fever and War, to whom
there are shrines erected of great antiquity, or they have worshipped
them, and after all Concord has abandoned them, and Discord has
tempestuously hurled them into civil wars.
Footnotes
[156] Under the inscription on the temple some person wrote the line,
"Vecordiæ opus ædem facit Concordiæ."--The work of discord makes the
temple of Concord.
Chapter 26.--Of the Various Kinds of Wars Which Followed the Building
of the Temple of Concord.
But they supposed that, in erecting the temple of Concord within the
view of the orators, as a memorial of the punishment and death of the
Gracchi, they were raising an effectual obstacle to sedition. How
much effect it had, is indicated by the still more deplorable wars
that followed. For after this the orators endeavored not to avoid the
example of the Gracchi, but to surpass their projects; as did Lucius
Saturninus, a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius the prætor,
and some time after Marcus Drusus, all of whom stirred seditions which
first of all occasioned bloodshed, and then the social wars by which
Italy was grievously injured, and reduced to a piteously desolate and
wasted condition. Then followed the servile war and the civil wars;
and in them what battles were fought, and what blood was shed, so that
almost all the peoples of Italy, which formed the main strength of the
Roman empire, were conquered as if they were barbarians! Then even
historians themselves find it difficult to explain how the servile war
was begun by a very few, certainly less than seventy gladiators, what
numbers of fierce and cruel men attached themselves to these, how many
of the Roman generals this band defeated, and how it laid waste many
districts and cities. And that was not the only servile war: the
province of Macedonia, and subsequently Sicily and the sea-coast, were
also depopulated by bands of slaves. And who can adequately describe
either the horrible atrocities which the pirates first committed, or
the wars they afterwards maintained against Rome?
Chapter 27.--Of the Civil War Between Marius and Sylla.
But when Marius, stained with the blood of his fellow-citizens, whom
the rage of party had sacrificed, was in his turn vanquished and
driven from the city, it had scarcely time to breathe freely, when, to
use the words of Cicero, "Cinna and Marius together returned and took
possession of it. Then, indeed, the foremost men in the state were
put to death, its lights quenched. Sylla afterwards avenged this
cruel victory; but we need not say with what loss of life, and with
what ruin to the republic." [157]For of this vengeance, which was
more destructive than if the crimes which it punished had been
committed with impunity, Lucan says: "The cure was excessive, and too
closely resembled the disease. The guilty perished, but when none but
the guilty survived: and then private hatred and anger, unbridled by
law, were allowed free indulgence." [158]In that war between Marius
and Sylla, besides those who fell in the field of battle, the city,
too, was filled with corpses in its streets, squares, markets,
theatres, and temples; so that it is not easy to reckon whether the
victors slew more before or after victory, that they might be, or
because they were, victors. As soon as Marius triumphed, and returned
from exile, besides the butcheries everywhere perpetrated, the head of
the consul Octavius was exposed on the rostrum; Cæsar and Fimbria were
assassinated in their own houses; the two Crassi, father and son, were
murdered in one another's sight; Bebius and Numitorius were
disembowelled by being dragged with hooks; Catulus escaped the hands
of his enemies by drinking poison; Merula, the flamen of Jupiter, cut
his veins and made a libation of his own blood to his god. Moreover,
every one whose salutation Marius did not answer by giving his hand,
was at once cut down before his face.
Footnotes
[157] Cicero, in Catilin, iii. sub. fin.
[158] Lucan, Pharsal. 142-146.
Chapter 28.--Of the Victory of Sylla, the Avenger of the Cruelties of
Marius.
Then followed the victory of Sylla, the so-called avenger of the
cruelties of Marius. But not only was his victory purchased with
great bloodshed; but when hostilities were finished, hostility
survived, and the subsequent peace was bloody as the war. To the
former and still recent massacres of the elder Marius, the younger
Marius and Carbo, who belonged to the same party, added greater
atrocities. For when Sylla approached, and they despaired not only of
victory, but of life itself, they made a promiscuous massacre of
friends and foes. And, not satisfied with staining every corner of
Rome with blood, they besieged the senate, and led forth the senators
to death from the curia as from a prison. Mucius Scævola the pontiff
was slain at the altar of Vesta, which he had clung to because no spot
in Rome was more sacred than her temple; and his blood well-nigh
extinguished the fire which was kept alive by the constant care of the
virgins. Then Sylla entered the city victorious, after having
slaughtered in the Villa Publica, not by combat, but by an order, 7000
men who had surrendered, and were therefore unarmed; so fierce was the
rage of peace itself, even after the rage of war was extinct.
Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of Sylla slew whom
he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond computation, till
it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow some to survive, that
the victors might not be destitute of subjects. Then this furious and
promiscuous licence to murder was checked, and much relief was
expressed at the publication of the proscription list, containing
though it did the death-warrant of two thousand men of the highest
ranks, the senatorial and equestrian. The large number was indeed
saddening, but it was consolatory that a limit was fixed; nor was the
grief at the numbers slain so great as the joy that the rest were
secure. But this very security, hard-hearted as it was, could not but
bemoan the exquisite torture applied to some of those who had been
doomed to die. For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed hands of the
executioners; men treating a living man more savagely than wild beasts
are used to tear an abandoned corpse. Another had his eyes dug out,
and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced to live a long
while, or rather to die a long while, in such torture. Some
celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms; and one was
collectively condemned to slaughter, just as an individual criminal
would be condemned to death. These things were done in peace when the
war was over, not that victory might be more speedily obtained, but
that, after being obtained, it might not be thought lightly of. Peace
vied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for while war overthrew
armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless. War gave liberty to him who
was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted to the survivors
not life, but an unresisting death.
Chapter 29.--A Comparison of the Disasters Which Rome Experienced
During the Gothic and Gallic Invasions, with Those Occasioned by the
Authors of the Civil Wars.
What fury of foreign nations, what barbarian ferocity, can compare
with this victory of citizens over citizens? Which was more
disastrous, more hideous, more bitter to Rome: the recent Gothic and
the old Gallic invasion, or the cruelty displayed by Marius and Sylla
and their partisans against men who were members of the same body as
themselves? The Gauls, indeed, massacred all the senators they found
in any part of the city except the Capitol, which alone was defended;
but they at least sold life to those who were in the Capitol, though
they might have starved them out if they could not have stormed it.
The Goths, again, spared so many senators, that it is the more
surprising that they killed any. But Sylla, while Marius was still
living, established himself as conqueror in the Capitol, which the
Gauls had not violated, and thence issued his death-warrants; and when
Marius had escaped by flight, though destined to return more fierce
and bloodthirsty than ever, Sylla issued from the Capitol even decrees
of the senate for the slaughter and confiscation of the property of
many citizens. Then, when Sylla left, what did the Marian faction
hold sacred or spare, when they gave no quarter even to Mucius, a
citizen, a senator, a pontiff, and though clasping in piteous embrace
the very altar in which, they say, reside the destinies of Rome? And
that final proscription list of Sylla's, not to mention countless
other massacres, despatched more senators than the Goths could even
plunder.
Chapter 30.--Of the Connection of the Wars Which with Great Severity
and Frequency Followed One Another Before the Advent of Christ.
With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence,
with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these
disasters to their own gods, and impute the present to our Christ!
These bloody civil wars, more distressing, by the avowal of their own
historians, than any foreign wars, and which were pronounced to be not
merely calamitous, but absolutely ruinous to the republic, began long
before the coming of Christ, and gave birth to one another; so that a
concatenation of unjustifiable causes led from the wars of Marius and
Sylla to those of Sertorius and Cataline, of whom the one was
proscribed, the other brought up by Sylla; from this to the war of
Lepidus and Catulus, of whom the one wished to rescind, the other to
defend the acts of Sylla; from this to the war of Pompey and Cæsar, of
whom Pompey had been a partisan of Sylla, whose power he equalled or
even surpassed, while Cæsar condemned Pompey's power because it was
not his own, and yet exceeded it when Pompey was defeated and slain.
From him the chain of civil wars extended to the second Cæsar,
afterwards called Augustus, and in whose reign Christ was born. For
even Augustus himself waged many civil wars; and in these wars many of
the foremost men perished, among them that skilful manipulator of the
republic, Cicero. Caius [Julius] Cæsar, when he had conquered Pompey,
though he used his victory with clemency, and granted to men of the
opposite faction both life and honors, was suspected of aiming at
royalty, and was assassinated in the curia by a party of noble
senators, who had conspired to defend the liberty of the republic.
His power was then coveted by Antony, a man of very different
character, polluted and debased by every kind of vice, who was
strenuously resisted by Cicero on the same plea of defending the
liberty of the republic. At this juncture that other Cæsar, the
adopted son of Caius, and afterwards, as I said, known by the name of
Augustus, had made his début as a young man of remarkable genius.
This youthful Cæsar was favored by Cicero, in order that his influence
might counteract that of Antony; for he hoped that Cæsar would
overthrow and blast the power of Antony, and establish a free
state,--so blind and unaware of the future was he: for that very
young man, whose advancement and influence he was fostering, allowed
Cicero to be killed as the seal of an alliance with Antony, and
subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the republic in defence
of which he had made so many orations.
Chapter 31.--That It is Effrontery to Impute the Present Troubles to
Christ and the Prohibition of Polytheistic Worship Since Even When the
Gods Were Worshipped Such Calamities Befell the People.
Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits,
blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly when
these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and there
rose the mingled fragrance of "Sabæan incense and fresh garlands;"
[159] the priests were clothed with honor, the shrines were maintained
in splendor; sacrifices, games, sacred ecstasies, were common in the
temples; while the blood of the citizens was being so freely shed, not
only in remote places, but among the very altars of the gods. Cicero
did not choose to seek sanctuary in a temple, because Mucius had
sought it there in vain. But they who most unpardonably calumniate
this Christian era, are the very men who either themselves fled for
asylum to the places specially dedicated to Christ, or were led there
by the barbarians that they might be safe. In short, not to
recapitulate the many instances I have cited, and not to add to their
number others which it were tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am
persuaded of, and this every impartial judgment will readily
acknowledge, that if the human race had received Christianity before
the Punic wars, and if the same desolating calamities which these wars
brought upon Europe and Africa had followed the introduction of
Christianity, there is no one of those who now accuse us who would not
have attributed them to our religion. How intolerable would their
accusations have been, at least so far as the Romans are concerned, if
the Christian religion had been received and diffused prior to the
invasion of the Gauls, or to the ruinous floods and fires which
desolated Rome, or to those most calamitous of all events, the civil
wars! And those other disasters, which were of so strange a nature
that they were reckoned prodigies, had they happened since the
Christian era, to whom but to the Christians would they have imputed
these as crimes? I do not speak of those things which were rather
surprising than hurtful,--oxen speaking, unborn infants articulating
some words in their mothers' wombs, serpents flying, hens and women
being changed into the other sex; and other similar prodigies which,
whether true or false, are recorded not in their imaginative, but in
their historical works, and which do not injure, but only astonish
men. But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained
stones--not hailstones, but real stones--this certainly was calculated
to do serious damage. We have read in their books that the fires of
Etna, pouring down from the top of the mountain to the neighboring
shore, caused the sea to boil, so that rocks were burnt up, and the
pitch of ships began to run,--a phenomenon incredibly surprising, but
at the same time no less hurtful. By the same violent heat, they
relate that on another occasion Sicily was filled with cinders, so
that the houses of the city Catina were destroyed and buried under
them,--a calamity which moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their
tribute for that year. One may also read that Africa, which had by
that time become a province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious
multitude of locusts, which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of
the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud;
so that when they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was
polluted, and so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of
Masinissa alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a
much greater number in the neighboring districts. At Utica they
assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived
only ten. Yet which of these disasters, suppose they happened now,
would not be attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus
thoughtlessly accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet
to their own gods they attribute none of these things, though they
worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same
kind, and do not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were
not preserved from these serious disasters.
Footnotes
[159] Virgil, Æneid, i. 417.
.
Book IV. [160]
Argument--In this book it is proved that the extent and long duration
of the Roman empire is to be ascribed, not to Jove or the gods of the
heathen, to whom individually scarce even single things and the very
basest functions were believed to be entrusted, but to the one true
God, the author of felicity, by whose power and judgment earthly
kingdoms are founded and maintained.
Chapter 1.--Of the Things Which Have Been Discussed in the First Book.
Having begun to speak of the city of God, I have thought it necessary
first of all to reply to its enemies, who, eagerly pursuing earthly
joys and gaping after transitory things, throw the blame of all the
sorrow they suffer in them--rather through the compassion of God in
admonishing than His severity in punishing--on the Christian religion,
which is the one salutary and true religion. And since there is among
them also an unlearned rabble, they are stirred up as by the authority
of the learned to hate us more bitterly, thinking in their
inexperience that things which have happened unwontedly in their days
were not wont to happen in other times gone by; and whereas this
opinion of theirs is confirmed even by those who know that it is
false, and yet dissemble their knowledge in order that they may seem
to have just cause for murmuring against us, it was necessary, from
books in which their authors recorded and published the history of
bygone times that it might be known, to demonstrate that it is far
otherwise than they think; and at the same time to teach that the
false gods, whom they openly worshipped, or still worship in secret,
are most unclean spirits, and most malignant and deceitful demons,
even to such a pitch that they take delight in crimes which, whether
real or only fictitious, are yet their own, which it has been their
will to have celebrated in honor of them at their own festivals; so
that human infirmity cannot be called back from the perpetration of
damnable deeds, so long as authority is furnished for imitating them
that seems even divine. These things we have proved, not from our own
conjectures, but partly from recent memory, because we ourselves have
seen such things celebrated, and to such deities, partly from the
writings of those who have left these things on record to posterity,
not as if in reproach but as in honor of their own gods. Thus Varro,
a most learned man among them, and of the weightiest authority, when
he made separate books concerning things human and things divine,
distributing some among the human, others among the divine, according
to the special dignity of each, placed the scenic plays not at all
among things human, but among things divine; though, certainly, if
only there were good and honest men in the state, the scenic plays
ought not to be allowed even among things human. And this he did not
on his own authority, but because, being born and educated at Rome, he
found them among the divine things. Now as we briefly stated in the
end of the first book what we intended afterwards to discuss, and as
we have disposed of a part of this in the next two books, we see what
our readers will expect us now to take up.
Chapter 2.--Of Those Things Which are Contained in Books Second and
Third.
We had promised, then, that we would say something against those who
attribute the calamities of the Roman republic to our religion, and
that we would recount the evils, as many and great as we could
remember or might deem sufficient, which that city, or the provinces
belonging to its empire, had suffered before their sacrifices were
prohibited, all of which would beyond doubt have been attributed to
us, if our religion had either already shone on them, or had thus
prohibited their sacrilegious rites. These things we have, as we
think, fully disposed of in the second and third books, treating in
the second of evils in morals, which alone or chiefly are to be
accounted evils; and in the third, of those which only fools dread to
undergo--namely, those of the body or of outward things--which for the
most part the good also suffer. But those evils by which they
themselves become evil, they take, I do not say patiently, but with
pleasure. And how few evils have I related concerning that one city
and its empire! Not even all down to the time of Cæsar Augustus.
What if I had chosen to recount and enlarge on those evils, not which
men have inflicted on each other; such as the devastations and
destructions of war, but which happen in earthly things, from the
elements of the world itself. Of such evils Apuleius speaks briefly
in one passage of that book which he wrote, De Mundo, saying that all
earthly things are subject to change, overthrow, and destruction.
[161]For, to use his own words, by excessive earthquakes the ground
has burst asunder, and cities with their inhabitants have been clean
destroyed: by sudden rains whole regions have been washed away; those
also which formerly had been continents, have been insulated by
strange and new-come waves, and others, by the subsiding of the sea,
have been made passable by the foot of man: by winds and storms
cities have been overthrown; fires have flashed forth from the clouds,
by which regions in the East being burnt up have perished; and on the
western coasts the like destructions have been caused by the bursting
forth of waters and floods. So, formerly, from the lofty craters of
Etna, rivers of fire kindled by God have flowed like a torrent down
the steeps. If I had wished to collect from history wherever I could,
these and similar instances, where should I have finished what
happened even in those times before the name of Christ had put down
those of their idols, so vain and hurtful to true salvation? I
promised that I should also point out which of their customs, and for
what cause, the true God, in whose power all kingdoms are, had deigned
to favor to the enlargement of their empire; and how those whom they
think gods can have profited them nothing, but much rather hurt them
by deceiving and beguiling them; so that it seems to me I must now
speak of these things, and chiefly of the increase of the Roman
empire. For I have already said not a little, especially in the
second book, about the many evils introduced into their manners by the
hurtful deceits of the demons whom they worshipped as gods. But
throughout all the three books already completed, where it appeared
suitable, we have set forth how much succor God, through the name of
Christ, to whom the barbarians beyond the custom of war paid so much
honor, has bestowed on the good and bad, according as it is written,
"Who maketh His sun to rise on the good and the evil, and giveth rain
to the just and the unjust." [162]
Footnotes
[160] In Augustin's letter to Evodius (169), which was written towards
the end of the year 415, he mentions that this fourth book and the
following one were begun and finished during that same year.
[161] Comp. Bacon's Essay on the Vicissitudes of Things.
[162] Matt. v. 45.
Chapter 3.--Whether the Great Extent of the Empire, Which Has Been
Acquired Only by Wars, is to Be Reckoned Among the Good Things Either
of the Wise or the Happy.
Now, therefore, let us see how it is that they dare to ascribe the
very great extent and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom
they contend that they worship honorably, even by the obsequies of
vile games and the ministry of vile men: although I should like first
to inquire for a little what reason, what prudence, there is in
wishing to glory in the greatness and extent of the empire, when you
cannot point out the happiness of men who are always rolling, with
dark fear and cruel lust, in warlike slaughters and in blood, which,
whether shed in civil or foreign war, is still human blood; so that
their joy may be compared to glass in its fragile splendor, of which
one is horribly afraid lest it should be suddenly broken in pieces.
That this may be more easily discerned, let us not come to nought by
being carried away with empty boasting, or blunt the edge of our
attention by loud-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples,
kingdoms, provinces. But let us suppose a case of two men; for each
individual man, like one letter in a language, is as it were the
element of a city or kingdom, however far-spreading in its occupation
of the earth. Of these two men let us suppose that one is poor, or
rather of middling circumstances; the other very rich. But the rich
man is anxious with fears, pining with discontent, burning with
covetousness, never se cure, always uneasy, panting from the perpetual
strife of his enemies, adding to his patrimony indeed by these
miseries to an immense degree, and by these additions also heaping up
most bitter cares. But that other man of moderate wealth is contented
with a small and compact estate, most dear to his own family, enjoying
the sweetest peace with his kindred neighbors and friends, in piety
religious, benignant in mind, healthy in body, in life frugal, in
manners chaste, in conscience secure. I know not whether any one can
be such a fool, that he dare hesitate which to prefer. As, therefore,
in the case of these two men, so in two families, in two nations, in
two kingdoms, this test of tranquility holds good; and if we apply it
vigilantly and without prejudice, we shall quite easily see where the
mere show of happiness dwells, and where real felicity. Wherefore if
the true God is worshipped, and if He is served with genuine rites and
true virtue, it is advantageous that good men should long reign both
far and wide. Nor is this advantageous so much to themselves, as to
those over whom they reign. For, so far as concerns themselves, their
piety and probity, which are great gifts of God, suffice to give them
true felicity, enabling them to live well the life that now is, and
afterwards to receive that which is eternal. In this world,
therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for
themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is
hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own
souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under
them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the
just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the
punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man,
although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns,
is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous,
of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine
Scripture treats, it says, "For of whom any man is overcome, to the
same he is also the bond-slave." [163]
Footnotes
[163] 2 Pet. ii. 19.
Chapter 4.--How Like Kingdoms Without Justice are to Robberies.
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great
robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?
The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a
prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty
is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned
men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes
abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes
the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now
manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by
the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply
which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been
seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping
hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou
meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty
ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet
art styled emperor." [164]
Footnotes
[164] Nonius Marcell. borrows this anecdote from Cicero, De Repub.
iii.
Chapter 5.--Of the Runaway Gladiators Whose Power Became Like that of
Royal Dignity.
I shall not therefore stay to inquire what sort of men Romulus
gathered together, seeing he deliberated much about them,--how, being
assumed out of that life they led into the fellowship of his city,
they might cease to think of the punishment they deserved, the fear of
which had driven them to greater villainies; so that henceforth they
might be made more peaceable members of society. But this I say, that
the Roman empire, which by subduing many nations had already grown
great and an object of universal dread, was itself greatly alarmed,
and only with much difficulty avoided a disastrous overthrow, because
a mere handful of gladiators in Campania, escaping from the games, had
recruited a great army, appointed three generals, and most widely and
cruelly devastated Italy. Let them say what god aided these men, so
that from a small and contemptible band of robbers they attained to a
kingdom, feared even by the Romans, who had such great forces and
fortresses. Or will they deny that they were divinely aided because
they did not last long? [165]As if, indeed, the life of any man
whatever lasted long. In that case, too, the gods aid no one to
reign, since all individuals quickly die; nor is sovereign power to be
reckoned a benefit, because in a little time in every man, and thus in
all of them one by one, it vanishes like a vapor. For what does it
matter to those who worshipped the gods under Romulus, and are long
since dead, that after their death the Roman empire has grown so
great, while they plead their causes before the powers beneath?
Whether those causes are good or bad, it matters not to the question
before us. And this is to be understood of all those who carry with
them the heavy burden of their actions, having in the few days of
their life swiftly and hurriedly passed over the stage of the imperial
office, although the office itself has lasted through long spaces of
time, being filled by a constant succession of dying men. If,
however, even those benefits which last only for the shortest time are
to be ascribed to the aid of the gods, these gladiators were not a
little aided, who broke the bonds of their servile condition, fled,
escaped, raised a great and most powerful army, obedient to the will
and orders of their chiefs and much feared by the Roman majesty, and
remaining unsubdued by several Roman generals, seized many places,
and, having won very many victories, enjoyed whatever pleasures they
wished, and did what their lust suggested, and, until at last they
were conquered, which was done with the utmost difficulty, lived
sublime and dominant. But let us come to greater matters.
Footnotes
[165] It was extinguished by Crassus in its third year.
Chapter 6.--Concerning the Covetousness of Ninus, Who Was the First
Who Made War on His Neighbors, that He Might Rule More Widely.
Justinus, who wrote Greek or rather foreign history in Latin, and
briefly, like Trogus Pompeius whom he followed, begins his work thus:
"In the beginning of the affairs of peoples and nations the government
was in the hands of kings, who were raised to the height of this
majesty not by courting the people, but by the knowledge good men had
of their moderation. The people were held bound by no laws; the
decisions of the princes were instead of laws. It was the custom to
guard rather than to extend the boundaries of the empire; and kingdoms
were kept within the bounds of each ruler's native land. Ninus king
of the Assyrians first of all, through new lust of empire, changed the
old and, as it were, ancestral custom of nations. He first made war
on his neighbors, and wholly subdued as far as to the frontiers of
Libya the nations as yet untrained to resist." And a little after he
says: "Ninus established by constant possession the greatness of the
authority he had gained. Having mastered his nearest neighbors, he
went on to others, strengthened by the accession of forces, and by
making each fresh victory the instrument of that which followed,
subdued the nations of the whole East." Now, with whatever fidelity
to fact either he or Trogus may in general have written--for that they
sometimes told lies is shown by other more trustworthy writers--yet it
is agreed among other authors, that the kingdom of the Assyrians was
extended far and wide by King Ninus. And it lasted so long, that the
Roman empire has not yet attained the same age; for, as those write
who have treated of chronological history, this kingdom endured for
twelve hundred and forty years from the first year in which Ninus
began to reign, until it was transferred to the Medes. But to make
war on your neighbors, and thence to proceed to others, and through
mere lust of dominion to crush and subdue people who do you no harm,
what else is this to be called than great robbery?
Chapter 7.--Whether Earthly Kingdoms in Their Rise and Fall Have Been
Either Aided or Deserted by the Help of the Gods.
If this kingdom was so great and lasting without the aid of the gods,
why is the ample territory and long duration of the Roman empire to be
ascribed to the Roman gods? For whatever is the cause in it, the same
is in the other also. But if they contend that the prosperity of the
other also is to be attributed to the aid of the gods, I ask of
which? For the other nations whom Ninus overcame, did not then
worship other gods. Or if the Assyrians had gods of their own, who,
so to speak, were more skillful workmen in the construction and
preservation of the empire, whether are they dead, since they
themselves have also lost the empire; or, having been defrauded of
their pay, or promised a greater, have they chosen rather to go over
to the Medes, and from them again to the Persians, because Cyrus
invited them, and promised them something still more advantageous?
This nation, indeed, since the time of the kingdom of Alexander the
Macedonian, which was as brief in duration as it was great in extent,
has preserved its own empire, and at this day occupies no small
territories in the East. If this is so, then either the gods are
unfaithful, who desert their own and go over to their enemies, which
Camillus, who was but a man, did not do, when, being victor and
subduer of a most hostile state, although he had felt that Rome, for
whom he had done so much, was ungrateful, yet afterwards, forgetting
the injury and remembering his native land, he freed her again from
the Gauls; or they are not so strong as gods ought to be, since they
can be overcome by human skill or strength. Or if, when they carry on
war among themselves, the gods are not overcome by men, but some gods
who are peculiar to certain cities are perchance overcome by other
gods, it follows that they have quarrels among themselves which they
uphold, each for his own part. Therefore a city ought not to worship
its own gods, but rather others who aid their own worshippers.
Finally, whatever may have been the case as to this change of sides,
or flight, or migration, or failure in battle on the part of the gods,
the name of Christ had not yet been proclaimed in those parts of the
earth when these kingdoms were lost and transferred through great
destructions in war. For if, after more than twelve hundred years,
when the kingdom was taken away from the Assyrians, the Christian
religion had there already preached another eternal kingdom, and put a
stop to the sacrilegious worship of false gods, what else would the
foolish men of that nation have said, but that the kingdom which had
been so long preserved, could be lost for no other cause than the
desertion of their own religions and the reception of Christianity?
In which foolish speech that might have been uttered, let those we
speak of observe their own likeness, and blush, if there is any sense
of shame in them, because they have uttered similar complaints;
although the Roman empire is afflicted rather than changed,--a thing
which has befallen it in other times also, before the name of Christ
was heard, and it has been restored after such affliction,--a thing
which even in these times is not to be despaired of. For who knows
the will of God concerning this matter?
Chapter 8.--Which of the Gods Can the Romans Suppose Presided Over the
Increase and Preservation of Their Empire, When They Have Believed
that Even the Care of Single Things Could Scarcely Be Committed to
Single Gods.
Next let us ask, if they please, out of so great a crowd of gods which
the Romans worship, whom in especial, or what gods they believe to
have extended and preserved that empire. Now, surely of this work,
which is so excellent and so very full of the highest dignity, they
dare not ascribe any part to the goddess Cloacina; [166] or to
Volupia, who has her appellation from voluptuousness; or to Libentina,
who has her name from lust; or to Vaticanus, who presides over the
screaming of infants; or to Cunina, who rules over their cradles. But
how is it possible to recount in one part of this book all the names
of gods or goddesses, which they could scarcely comprise in great
volumes, distributing among these divinities their peculiar offices
about single things? They have not even thought that the charge of
their lands should be committed to any one god: but they have
entrusted their farms to Rusina; the ridges of the mountains to
Jugatinus; over the downs they have set the goddess Collatina; over
the valleys, Vallonia. Nor could they even find one Segetia so
competent, that they could commend to her care all their corn crops at
once; but so long as their seed-corn was still under the ground, they
would have the goddess Seia set over it; then, whenever it was above
ground and formed straw, they set over it the goddess Segetia; and
when the grain was collected and stored, they set over it the goddess
Tutilina, that it might be kept safe. Who would not have thought that
goddess Segetia sufficient to take care of the standing corn until it
had passed from the first green blades to the dry ears? Yet she was
not enough for men, who loved a multitude of gods, that the miserable
soul, despising the chaste embrace of the one true God, should be
prostituted to a crowd of demons. Therefore they set Proserpina over
the germinating seeds; over the joints and knots of the stems, the god
Nodotus; over the sheaths enfolding the ears, the goddess Voluntina;
when the sheaths opened that the spike might shoot forth, it was
ascribed to the goddess Patelana; when the stems stood all equal with
new ears, because the ancients described this equalizing by the term
hostire, it was ascribed to the goddess Hostilina; when the grain was
in flower, it was dedicated to the goddess Flora; when full of milk,
to the god Lacturnus; when maturing, to the goddess Matuta; when the
crop was runcated,--that is, removed from the soil,--to the goddess
Runcina. Nor do I yet recount them all, for I am sick of all this,
though it gives them no shame. Only, I have said these very few
things, in order that it may be understood they dare by no means say
that the Roman empire has been established, increased, and preserved
by their deities, who had all their own functions assigned to them in
such a way, that no general oversight was entrusted to any one of
them. When, therefore, could Segetia take care of the empire, who was
not allowed to take care of the corn and the trees? When could Cunina
take thought about war, whose oversight was not allowed to go beyond
the cradles of the babies? When could Nodotus give help in battle,
who had nothing to do even with the sheath of the ear, but only with
the knots of the joints? Every one sets a porter at the door of his
house, and because he is a man, he is quite sufficient; but these
people have set three gods, Forculus to the doors, Cardea to the
hinge, Limentinus to the threshold. [167]Thus Forculus could not at
the same time take care also of the hinge and the threshold.
Footnotes
[166] Cloacina, supposed by Lactantius (De falsa relig. i. 20),
Cyprian (De Idol. vanit.), and Augustin (infra, c. 23) to be the
goddess of the cloaca, or sewage of Rome. Others, however, suppose it
to be equivalent to Cluacina, a title given to Venus, because the
Romans after the end of the Sabine war purified themselves (cluere) in
the vicinity of her statue.
[167] Forculum foribus, Cardeam cardini, Limentinum limini.
Chapter 9.--Whether the Great Extent and Long Duration of the Roman
Empire Should Be Ascribed to Jove, Whom His Worshippers Believe to Be
the Chief God.
Therefore omitting, or passing by for a little, that crowd of petty
gods, we ought to inquire into the part performed by the great gods,
whereby Rome has been made so great as to reign so long over so many
nations. Doubtless, therefore, this is the work of Jove. For they
will have it that he is the king of all the gods and goddesses, as is
shown by his sceptre and by the Capitol on the lofty hill. Concerning
that god they publish a saying which, although that of a poet, is most
apt, "All things are full of Jove." [168]Varro believes that this
god is worshipped, although called by another name, even by those who
worship one God alone without any image. But if this is so, why has
he been so badly used at Rome (and indeed by other nations too), that
an image of him should be made?--a thing which was so displeasing to
Varro himself, that although he was overborne by the perverse custom
of so great a city, he had not the least hesitation in both saying and
writing, that those who have appointed images for the people have both
taken away fear and added error.
Footnotes
[168] Virgil, Eclog. iii. 60.
Chapter 10.--What Opinions Those Have Followed Who Have Set Divers
Gods Over Divers Parts of the World.
Why, also, is Juno united to him as his wife, who is called at once
"sister and yoke-fellow?" [169]Because, say they, we have Jove in
the ether, Juno in the air; and these two elements are united, the one
being superior, the other inferior. It is not he, then, of whom it is
said, "All things are full of Jove," if Juno also fills some part.
Does each fill either, and are both of this couple in both of these
elements, and in each of them at the same time? Why, then, is the
ether given to Jove, the air to Juno? Besides, these two should have
been enough. Why is it that the sea is assigned to Neptune, the earth
to Pluto? And that these also might not be left without mates,
Salacia is joined to Neptune, Proserpine to Pluto. For they say that,
as Juno possesses the lower part o