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.
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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.
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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 of the heavens,--that is, the
air,--so Salacia possesses the lower part of the sea, and Proserpine
the lower part of the earth. They seek how they may patch up these
fables, but they find no way. For if these things were so, their
ancient sages would have maintained that there are three chief
elements of the world, not four, in order that each of the elements
might have a pair of gods. Now, they have positively affirmed that
the ether is one thing, the air another. But water, whether higher or
lower, is surely water. Suppose it ever so unlike, can it ever be so
much so as no longer to be water? And the lower earth, by whatever
divinity it may be distinguished, what else can it be than earth? Lo,
then, since the whole physical world is complete in these four or
three elements, where shall Minerva be? What should she possess, what
should she fill? For she is placed in the Capitol along with these
two, although she is not the offspring of their marriage. Or if they
say that she possesses the higher part of the ether,--and on that
account the poets have feigned that she sprang from the head of
Jove,--why then is she not rather reckoned queen of the gods, because
she is superior to Jove? Is it because it would be improper to set
the daughter before the father? Why, then, is not that rule of
justice observed concerning Jove himself toward Saturn? Is it because
he was conquered? Have they fought then? By no means, say they; that
is an old wife's fable. Lo, we are not to believe fables, and must
hold more worthy opinions concerning the gods! Why, then, do they not
assign to the father of Jove a seat, if not of higher, at least of
equal honor? Because Saturn, say they, is length of time. [170]
Therefore they who worship Saturn worship Time; and it is insinuated
that Jupiter, the king of the gods, was born of Time. For is anything
unworthy said when Jupiter and Juno are said to have been sprung from
Time, if he is the heaven and she is the earth, since both heaven and
earth have been made, and are therefore not eternal? For their
learned and wise men have this also in their books. Nor is that
saying taken by Virgil out of poetic figments, but out of the books of
philosophers,
"Then Ether, the Father Almighty, in copious showers descended
Into his spouse's glad bosom, making it fertile," [171]
--that is, into the bosom of Tellus, or the earth. Although here,
also, they will have it that there are some differences, and think
that in the earth herself Terra is one thing, Tellus another, and
Tellumo another. And they have all these as gods, called by their own
names distinguished by their own offices, and venerated with their own
altars and rites. This same earth also they call the mother of the
gods, so that even the fictions of the poets are more tolerable, if,
according, not to their poetical but sacred books, Juno is not only
the sister and wife, but also the mother of Jove. The same earth they
worship as Ceres, and also as Vesta; while yet they more frequently
affirm that Vesta is nothing else than fire, pertaining to the
hearths, without which the city cannot exist; and therefore virgins
are wont to serve her, because as nothing is born of a virgin, so
nothing is born of fire;--but all this nonsense ought to be completely
abolished and extinguished by Him who is born of a virgin. For who
can bear that, while they ascribe to the fire so much honor, and, as
it were, chastity, they do not blush sometimes even to call Vesta
Venus, so that honored virginity may vanish in her hand-maidens? For
if Vesta is Venus, how can virgins rightly serve her by abstaining
from venery? Are there two Venuses, the one a virgin, the other not a
maid? Or rather, are there three, one the goddess of virgins, who is
also called Vesta, another the goddess of wives, and another of
harlots? To her also the Phenicians offered a gift by prostituting
their daughters before they united them to husbands. [172]Which of
these is the wife of Vulcan? Certainly not the virgin, since she has
a husband. Far be it from us to say it is the harlot, lest we should
seem to wrong the son of Juno and fellow-worker of Minerva. Therefore
it is to be understood that she belongs to the married people; but we
would not wish them to imitate her in what she did with Mars.
"Again," say they, "you return to fables." What sort of justice is
that, to be angry with us because we say such things of their gods,
and not to be angry with themselves, who in their theatres most
willingly behold the crimes of their gods? And,--a thing incredible,
if it were not thoroughly well proved,--these very theatric
representations of the crimes of their gods have been instituted in
honor of these same gods.
Footnotes
[169] Virgil, Æneid, i. 47.
[170] Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 25.
[171] Virgil, Georg. ii. 325, 326.
[172] Eusebius, De Proep. Evang. i. 10.
Chapter 11.--Concerning the Many Gods Whom the Pagan Doctors Defend as
Being One and the Same Jove.
Let them therefore assert as many things as ever they please in
physical reasonings and disputations. One while let Jupiter be the
soul of this corporeal world, who fills and moves that whole mass,
constructed and compacted out of four, or as many elements as they
please; another while, let him yield to his sister and brothers their
parts of it: now let him be the ether, that from above he may embrace
Juno, the air spread out beneath; again, let him be the whole heaven
along with the air, and impregnate with fertilizing showers and seeds
the earth, as his wife, and, at the same time, his mother (for this is
not vile in divine beings); and yet again (that it may not be
necessary to run through them all), let him, the one god, of whom many
think it has been said by a most noble poet,
"For God pervadeth all things,
All lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the depth of the heavens,"
[173]
--let it be him who in the ether is Jupiter; in the air, Juno; in the
sea, Neptune; in the lower parts of the sea, Salacia; in the earth,
Pluto; in the lower part of the earth, Proserpine; on the domestic
hearths, Vesta; in the furnace of the workmen, Vulcan; among the
stars, Sol and Luna, and the Stars; in divination, Apollo; in
merchandise, Mercury; in Janus, the initiator; in Terminus, the
terminator; Saturn, in time; Mars and Bellona, in war; Liber, in
vineyards; Ceres, in cornfields; Diana, in forests; Minerva, in
learning. Finally, let it be him who is in that crowd, as it were, of
plebeian gods: let him preside under the name of Liber over the seed
of men, and under that of Libera over that of women: let him be
Diespiter, who brings forth the birth to the light of day: let him be
the goddess Mena, whom they set over the menstruation of women: let
him be Lucina, who is invoked by women in childbirth: let him bring
help to those who are being born, by taking them up from the bosom of
the earth, and let him be called Opis: let him open the mouth in the
crying babe, and be called the god Vaticanus: let him lift it from
the earth, and be called the goddess Levana; let him watch over
cradles, and be called the goddess Cunina: let it be no other than he
who is in those goddesses, who sing the fates of the new born, and are
called Carmentes: let him preside over fortuitous events, and be
called Fortuna: in the goddess Rumina, let him milk out the breast to
the little one, because the ancients termed the breast ruma: in the
goddess Potina, let him administer drink: in the goddess Educa, let
him supply food: from the terror of infants, let him be styled
Paventia: from the hope which comes, Venilia: from voluptuousness,
Volupia: from action, Agenor: from the stimulants by which man is
spurred on to much action, let him be named the goddess Stimula: let
him be the goddess Strenia, for making strenuous; Numeria, who
teaches to number; Camoena, who teaches to sing: let him be both the
god Consus for granting counsel, and the goddess Sentia for inspiring
sentences: let him be the goddess Juventas, who, after the robe of
boyhood is laid aside, takes charge of the beginning of the youthful
age: let him be Fortuna Barbata, who endues adults with a beard, whom
they have not chosen to honor; so that this divinity, whatever it may
be, should at least be a male god, named either Barbatus, from barba,
like Nodotus, from nodus; or, certainly, not Fortuna, but because he
has beards, Fortunius: let him, in the god Jugatinus, yoke couples in
marriage; and when the girdle of the virgin wife is loosed, let him be
invoked as the goddess Virginiensis: let him be Mutunus or Tuternus,
who, among the Greeks, is called Priapus. If they are not ashamed of
it, let all these which I have named, and whatever others I have not
named (for I have not thought fit to name all), let all these gods and
goddesses be that one Jupiter, whether, as some will have it, all
these are parts of him, or are his powers, as those think who are
pleased to consider him the soul of the world, which is the opinion of
most of their doctors, and these the greatest. If these things are so
(how evil they may be I do not yet meanwhile inquire), what would they
lose, if they, by a more prudent abridgment, should worship one god?
For what part of him could be contemned if he himself should be
worshipped? But if they are afraid lest parts of him should be angry
at being passed by or neglected, then it is not the case, as they will
have it, that this whole is as the life of one living being, which
contains all the gods together, as if they were its virtues, or
members, or parts; but each part has its own life separate from the
rest, if it is so that one can be angered, appeased, or stirred up
more than another. But if it is said that all together,--that is, the
whole Jove himself,--would be offended if his parts were not also
worshipped singly and minutely, it is foolishly spoken. Surely none
of them could be passed by if he who singly possesses them all should
be worshipped. For, to omit other things which are innumerable, when
they say that all the stars are parts of Jove, and are all alive, and
have rational souls, and therefore without controversy are gods, can
they not see how many they do not worship, to how many they do not
build temples or set up altars, and to how very few, in fact, of the
stars they have thought of setting them up and offering sacrifice?
If, therefore, those are displeased who are not severally worshipped,
do they not fear to live with only a few appeased, while all heaven is
displeased? But if they worship all the stars because they are part
of Jove whom they worship, by the same compendious method they could
supplicate them all in him alone. For in this way no one would be
displeased, since in him alone all would be supplicated. No one would
be contemned, instead of there being just cause of displeasure given
to the much greater number who are passed by in the worship offered to
some; especially when Priapus, stretched out in vile nakedness, is
preferred to those who shine from their supernal abode.
Footnotes
[173] Virgil, Georg. iv. 221, 222.
Chapter 12.--Concerning the Opinion of Those Who Have Thought that God
is the Soul of the World, and the World is the Body of God.
Ought not men of intelligence, and indeed men of every kind, to be
stirred up to examine the nature of this opinion? For there is no
need of excellent capacity for this task, that putting away the desire
of contention, they may observe that if God is the soul of the world,
and the world is as a body to Him, who is the soul, He must be one
living being consisting of soul and body, and that this same God is a
kind of womb of nature containing all things in Himself, so that the
lives and souls of all living things are taken, according to the
manner of each one's birth, out of His soul which vivifies that whole
mass, and therefore nothing at all remains which is not a part of
God. And if this is so, who cannot see what impious and irreligious
consequences follow, such as that whatever one may trample, he must
trample a part of God, and in slaying any living creature, a part of
God must be slaughtered? But I am unwilling to utter all that may
occur to those who think of it, yet cannot be spoken without
irreverence.
Chapter 13.--Concerning Those Who Assert that Only Rational Animals
are Parts of the One God.
But if they contend that only rational animals, such as men, are parts
of God, I do not really see how, if the whole world is God, they can
separate beasts from being parts of Him. But what need is there of
striving about that? Concerning the rational animal himself,--that
is, man,--what more unhappy belief can be entertained than that a part
of God is whipped when a boy is whipped? And who, unless he is quite
mad, could bear the thought that parts of God can become lascivi ous,
iniquitous, impious, and altogether damnable? In brief, why is God
angry at those who do not worship Him, since these offenders are parts
of Himself? It remains, therefore, that they must say that all the
gods have their own lives; that each one lives for himself, and none
of them is a part of any one; but that all are to be worshipped,--at
least as many as can be known and worshipped; for they are so many it
is impossible that all can be so. And of all these, I believe that
Jupiter, because he presides as king, is thought by them to have both
established and extended the Roman empire. For if he has not done it,
what other god do they believe could have attempted so great a work,
when they must all be occupied with their own offices and works, nor
can one intrude on that of another? Could the kingdom of men then be
propagated and increased by the king of the gods?
Chapter 14.--The Enlargement of Kingdoms is Unsuitably Ascribed to
Jove; For If, as They Will Have It, Victoria is a Goddess, She Alone
Would Suffice for This Business.
Here, first of all, I ask, why even the kingdom itself is not some
god. For why should not it also be so, if Victory is a goddess? Or
what need is there of Jove himself in this affair, if Victory favors
and is propitious, and always goes to those whom she wishes to be
victorious? With this goddess favorable and propitious, even if Jove
was idle and did nothing, what nations could remain unsubdued, what
kingdom would not yield? But perhaps it is displeasing to good men to
fight with most wicked unrighteousness, and provoke with voluntary war
neighbors who are peaceable and do no wrong, in order to enlarge a
kingdom? If they feel thus, I entirely approve and praise them.
Chapter 15.--Whether It is Suitable for Good Men to Wish to Rule More
Widely.
Let them ask, then, whether it is quite fitting for good men to
rejoice in extended empire. For the iniquity of those with whom just
wars are carried on favors the growth of a kingdom, which would
certainly have been small if the peace and justice of neighbors had
not by any wrong provoked the carrying on of war against them; and
human affairs being thus more happy, all kingdoms would have been
small, rejoicing in neighborly concord; and thus there would have been
very many kingdoms of nations in the world, as there are very many
houses of citizens in a city. Therefore, to carry on war and extend a
kingdom over wholly subdued nations seems to bad men to be felicity,
to good men necessity. But because it would be worse that the
injurious should rule over those who are more righteous, therefore
even that is not unsuitably called felicity. But beyond doubt it is
greater felicity to have a good neighbor at peace, than to conquer a
bad one by making war. Your wishes are bad, when you desire that one
whom you hate or fear should be in such a condition that you can
conquer him. If, therefore, by carrying on wars that were just, not
impious or unrighteous, the Romans could have acquired so great an
empire, ought they not to worship as a goddess even the injustice of
foreigners? For we see that this has cooperated much in extending the
empire, by making foreigners so unjust that they became people with
whom just wars might be carried on, and the empire increased. And why
may not injustice, at least that of foreign nations, also be a
goddess, if Fear and Dread and Ague have deserved to be Roman gods?
By these two, therefore,--that is, by foreign injustice, and the
goddess Victoria, for injustice stirs up causes of wars, and Victoria
brings these same wars to a happy termination,--the empire has
increased, even although Jove has been idle. For what part could Jove
have here, when those things which might be thought to be his benefits
are held to be gods, called gods, worshipped as gods, and are
themselves invoked for their own parts? He also might have some part
here, if he himself might be called Empire, just as she is called
Victory. Or if empire is the gift of Jove, why may not victory also
be held to be his gift? And it certainly would have been held to be
so, had he been recognized and worshipped, not as a stone in the
Capitol, but as the true King of kings and Lord of lords.
Chapter 16.--What Was the Reason Why the Romans, in Detailing Separate
Gods for All Things and All Movements of the Mind, Chose to Have the
Temple of Quiet Outside the Gates.
But I wonder very much, that while they assigned to separate gods
single things, and (well nigh) all movements of the mind; that while
they invoked the goddess Agenoria, who should excite to action; the
goddess Stimula, who should stimulate to unusual action; the goddess
Murcia, who should not move men beyond measure, but make them, as
Pomponius says, murcid--that is, too slothful and inactive; the
goddess Strenua, who should make them strenuous; and that while they
offered to all these gods and goddesses solemn and public worship,
they should yet have been unwilling to give public acknowledgment to
her whom they name Quies because she makes men quiet, but built her
temple outside the Colline gate. Whether was this a symptom of an
unquiet mind, or rather was it thus intimated that he who should
persevere in worshipping that crowd, not, to be sure, of gods, but of
demons, could not dwell with quiet; to which the true Physician calls,
saying, "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall
find rest unto your souls?"
Chapter 17.--Whether, If the Highest Power Belongs to Jove, Victoria
Also Ought to Be Worshipped.
Or do they say, perhaps, that Jupiter sends the goddess Victoria, and
that she, as it were acting in obedience to the king of the gods,
comes to those to whom he may have despatched her, and takes up her
quarters on their side? This is truly said, not of Jove, whom they,
according to their own imagination, feign to be king of the gods, but
of Him who is the true eternal King, because he sends, not Victory,
who is no person, but His angel, and causes whom He pleases to
conquer; whose counsel may be hidden, but cannot be unjust. For if
Victory is a goddess, why is not Triumph also a god, and joined to
Victory either as husband, or brother, or son? Indeed, they have
imagined such things concerning the gods, that if the poets had
feigned the like, and they should have been discussed by us, they
would have replied that they were laughable figments of the poets not
to be attributed to true deities. And yet they themselves did not
laugh when they were, not reading in the poets, but worshipping in the
temples such doating follies. Therefore they should entreat Jove
alone for all things, and supplicate him only. For if Victory is a
goddess, and is under him as her king, wherever he might have sent
her, she could not dare to resist and do her own will rather than his.
Chapter 18.--With What Reason They Who Think Felicity and Fortune
Goddesses Have Distinguished Them.
What shall we say, besides, of the idea that Felicity also is a
goddess? She has received a temple; she has merited an altar;
suitable rites of worship are paid to her. She alone, then, should be
worshipped. For where she is present, what good thing can be absent?
But what does a man wish, that he thinks Fortune also a goddess and
worships her? Is felicity one thing, fortune another? Fortune,
indeed, may be bad as well as good; but felicity, if it could be bad,
would not be felicity. Certainly we ought to think all the gods of
either sex (if they also have sex) are only good. This says Plato;
this say other philosophers; this say all estimable rulers of the
republic and the nations. How is it, then, that the goddess Fortune
is sometimes good, sometimes bad? Is it perhaps the case that when
she is bad she is not a goddess, but is suddenly changed into a
malignant demon? How many Fortunes are there then? Just as many as
there are men who are fortunate, that is, of good fortune. But since
there must also be very many others who at the very same time are men
of bad fortune, could she, being one and the same Fortune, be at the
same time both bad and good--the one to these, the other to those?
She who is the goddess, is she always good? Then she herself is
felicity. Why, then, are two names given her? Yet this is tolerable;
for it is customary that one thing should be called by two names. But
why different temples, different altars, different rituals? There is
a reason, say they, because Felicity is she whom the good have by
previous merit; but fortune, which is termed good without any trial of
merit, befalls both good and bad men fortuitously, whence also she is
named Fortune. How, therefore, is she good, who without any
discernment comes--both to the good and to the bad? Why is she
worshipped, who is thus blind, running at random on any one whatever,
so that for the most part she passes by her worshippers, and cleaves
to those who despise her? Or if her worshippers profit somewhat, so
that they are seen by her and loved, then she follows merit, and does
not come fortuitously. What, then, becomes of that definition of
fortune? What becomes of the opinion that she has received her very
name from fortuitous events? For it profits one nothing to worship
her if she is truly fortune. But if she distinguishes her
worshippers, so that she may benefit them, she is not fortune. Or
does, Jupiter send her too, whither he pleases? Then let him alone be
worshipped; because Fortune is not able to resist him when he commands
her, and sends her where he pleases. Or, at least, let the bad
worship her, who do not choose to have merit by which the goddess
Felicity might be invited.
Chapter 19.--Concerning Fortuna Muliebris. [174]
To this supposed deity, whom they call Fortuna, they ascribe so much,
indeed, that they have a tradition that the image of her, which was
dedicated by the Roman matrons, and called Fortuna Muliebris, has
spoken, and has said, once and again, that the matrons pleased her by
their homage; which, indeed, if it is true, ought not to excite our
wonder. For it is not so difficult for malignant demons to deceive,
and they ought the rather to advert to their wits and wiles, because
it is that goddess who comes by haphazard who has spoken, and not she
who comes to reward merit. For Fortuna was loquacious, and Felicitas
mute; and for what other reason but that men might not care to live
rightly, having made Fortuna their friend, who could make them
fortunate without any good desert? And truly, if Fortuna speaks, she
should at least speak, not with a womanly, but with a manly voice;
lest they themselves who have dedicated the image should think so
great a miracle has been wrought by feminine loquacity.
Footnotes
[174] The feminine Fortune.
Chapter 20.--Concerning Virtue and Faith, Which the Pagans Have
Honored with Temples and Sacred Rites, Passing by Other Good
Qualities, Which Ought Likewise to Have Been Worshipped, If Deity Was
Rightly Attributed to These.
They have made Virtue also a goddess, which, indeed, if it could be a
goddess, had been preferable to many. And now, because it is not a
goddess, but a gift of God, let it be obtained by prayer from Him, by
whom alone it can be given, and the whole crowd of false gods
vanishes. But why is Faith believed to be a goddess, and why does she
herself receive temple and altar? For whoever prudently acknowledges
her makes his own self an abode for her. But how do they know what
faith is, of which it is the prime and greatest function that the true
God may be believed in? But why had not virtue sufficed? Does it not
include faith also? Forasmuch as they have thought proper to
distribute virtue into four divisions--prudence, justice, fortitude,
and temperance--and as each of these divisions has its own virtues,
faith is among the parts of justice, and has the chief place with as
many of us as know what that saying means, "The just shall live by
faith." [175]But if Faith is a goddess, I wonder why these keen
lovers of a multitude of gods have wronged so many other goddesses, by
passing them by, when they could have dedicated temples and altars to
them likewise. Why has temperance not deserved to be a goddess, when
some Roman princes have obtained no small glory on account of her?
Why, in fine, is fortitude not a goddess, who aided Mucius when he
thrust his right hand into the flames; who aided Curtius, when for the
sake of his country he threw himself headlong into the yawning earth;
who aided Decius the sire, and Decius the son, when they devoted
themselves for the army?--though we might question whether these men
had true fortitude, if this concerned our present discussion. Why
have prudence and wisdom merited no place among the gods? Is it
because they are all worshipped under the general name of Virtue
itself? Then they could thus worship the true God also, of whom all
the other gods are thought to be parts. But in that one name of
virtue is comprehended both faith and chastity, which yet have
obtained separate altars in temples of their own.
Footnotes
[175] Hab. ii. 4.
Chapter 21.--That Although Not Understanding Them to Be the Gifts of
God, They Ought at Least to Have Been Content with Virtue and
Felicity.
These, not verity but vanity has made goddesses. For these are gifts
of the true God, not themselves goddesses. However, where virtue and
felicity are, what else is sought for? What can suffice the man whom
virtue and felicity do not suffice? For surely virtue comprehends all
things we need do, felicity all things we need wish for. If Jupiter,
then, was worshipped in order that he might give these two
things,--because, if extent and duration of empire is something good,
it pertains to this same felicity,--why is it not understood that they
are not goddesses, but the gifts of God? But if they are judged to be
goddesses, then at least that other great crowd of gods should not be
sought after. For, having considered all the offices which their
fancy has distributed among the various gods and goddesses, let them
find out, if they can, anything which could be bestowed by any god
whatever on a man possessing virtue, possessing felicity. What
instruction could be sought either from Mercury or Minerva, when
Virtue already possessed all in herself? Virtue, indeed, is defined
by the ancients as itself the art of living well and rightly. Hence,
because virtue is called in Greek arete, it has been thought the
Latins have derived from it the term art. But if Virtue cannot come
except to the clever, what need was there of the god Father Catius,
who should make men cautious, that is, acute, when Felicity could
confer this? Because, to be born clever belongs to felicity. Whence,
although goddess Felicity could not be worshipped by one not yet born,
in order that, being made his friend, she might bestow this on him,
yet she might confer this favor on parents who were her worshippers,
that clever children should be born to them. What need had women in
childbirth to invoke Lucina, when, if Felicity should be present, they
would have, not only a good delivery, but good children too? What
need was there to commend the children to the goddess Ops when they
were being born; to the god Vaticanus in their birth-cry; to the
goddess Cunina when lying cradled; to the goddess Rimina when sucking;
to the god Statilinus when standing; to the goddess Adeona when
coming; to Abeona when going away; to the goddess Mens that they might
have a good mind; to the god Volumnus, and the goddess Volumna, that
they might wish for good things; to the nuptial gods, that they might
make good matches; to the rural gods, and chiefly to the goddess
Fructesca herself, that they might receive the most abundant fruits;
to Mars and Bellona, that they might carry on war well; to the goddess
Victoria, that they might be victorious; to the god Honor, that they
might be honored; to the goddess Pecunia, that they might have plenty
money; to the god Aesculanus, and his son Argentinus, that they might
have brass and silver coin? For they set down Aesculanus as the
father of Argentinus for this reason, that brass coin began to be used
before silver. But I wonder Argentinus has not begotten Aurinus,
since gold coin also has followed. Could they have him for a god,
they would prefer Aurinus both to his father Argentinus and his
grandfather Aesculanus, just as they set Jove before Saturn.
Therefore, what necessity was there on account of these gifts, either
of soul, or body, or outward estate, to worship and invoke so great a
crowd of gods, all of whom I have not mentioned, nor have they
themselves been able to provide for all human benefits, minutely and
singly methodized, minute and single gods, when the one goddess
Felicity was able, with the greatest ease, compendiously to bestow the
whole of them? nor should any other be sought after, either for the
bestowing of good things, or for the averting of evil. For why should
they invoke the goddess Fessonia for the weary; for driving away
enemies, the goddess Pellonia; for the sick, as a physician, either
Apollo or Æsculapius, or both together if there should be great
danger? Neither should the god Spiniensis be entreated that he might
root out the thorns from the fields; nor the goddess Rubigo that the
mildew might not come,--Felicitas alone being present and guarding,
either no evils would have arisen, or they would have been quite
easily driven away. Finally, since we treat of these two goddesses,
Virtue and Felicity, if felicity is the reward of virtue, she is not a
goddess, but a gift of God. But if she is a goddess, why may she not
be said to confer virtue itself, inasmuch as it is a great felicity to
attain virtue?
Chapter 22.--Concerning the Knowledge of the Worship Due to the Gods,
Which Varro Glories in Having Himself Conferred on the Romans.
What is it, then, that Varro boasts he has bestowed as a very great
benefit on his fellow-citizens, because he not only recounts the gods
who ought to be worshipped by the Romans, but also tells what pertains
to each of them? "Just as it is of no advantage," he says, "to know
the name and appearance of any man who is a physician, and not know
that he is a physician, so," he says, "it is of no advantage to know
well that Æsculapius is a god, if you are not aware that he can bestow
the gift of health, and consequently do not know why you ought to
supplicate him." He also affirms this by another comparison, saying,
"No one is able, not only to live well, but even to live at all, if he
does not know who is a smith, who a baker, who a weaver, from whom he
can seek any utensil, whom he may take for a helper, whom for a
leader, whom for a teacher;" asserting, "that in this way it can be
doubtful to no one, that thus the knowledge of the gods is useful, if
one can know what force, and faculty, or power any god may have in any
thing. For from this we may be able," he says, "to know what god we
ought to call to, and invoke for any cause; lest we should do as too
many are wont to do, and desire water from Liber, and wine from
Lymphs." Very useful, forsooth! Who would not give this man thanks
if he could show true things, and if he could teach that the one true
God, from whom all good things are, is to be worshipped by men?
Chapter 23.--Concerning Felicity, Whom the Romans, Who Venerate Many
Gods, for a Long Time Did Not Worship with Divine Honor, Though She
Alone Would Have Sufficed Instead of All.
But how does it happen, if their books and rituals are true, and
Felicity is a goddess, that she herself is not appointed as the only
one to be worshipped, since she could confer all things, and all at
once make men happy? For who wishes anything for any other reason
than that he may become happy? Why was it left to Lucullus to
dedicate a temple to so great a goddess at so late a date, and after
so many Roman rulers? Why did Romulus himself, ambitious as he was of
founding a fortunate city, not erect a temple to this goddess before
all others? Why did he supplicate the other gods for anything, since
he would have lacked nothing had she been with him? For even he
himself would neither have been first a king, then afterwards, as they
think, a god, if this goddess had not been propitious to him. Why,
therefore, did he appoint as gods for the Romans, Janus, Jove, Mars,
Picus, Faunus, Tibernus, Hercules, and others, if there were more of
them? Why did Titus Tatius add Saturn, Ops, Sun, Moon, Vulcan, Light,
and whatever others he added, among whom was even the goddess
Cloacina, while Felicity was neglected? Why did Numa appoint so many
gods and so many goddesses without this one? Was it perhaps because
he could not see her among so great a crowd? Certainly king Hostilius
would not have introduced the new gods Fear and Dread to be
propitiated, if he could have known or might have worshipped this
goddess. For, in presence of Felicity, Fear and Dread would have
disappeared,--I do not say propitiated, but put to flight. Next, I
ask, how is it that the Roman empire had already immensely increased
before any one worshipped Felicity? Was the empire, therefore, more
great than happy? For how could true felicity be there, where there
was not true piety? For piety is the genuine worship of the true God,
and not the worship of as many demons as there are false gods. Yet
even afterwards, when Felicity had already been taken into the number
of the gods, the great infelicity of the civil wars ensued. Was
Felicity perhaps justly indignant, both because she was invited so
late, and was invited not to honor, but rather to reproach, because
along with her were worshipped Priapus, and Cloacina, and Fear and
Dread, and Ague, and others which were not gods to be worshipped, but
the crimes of the worshippers? Last of all, if it seemed good to
worship so great a goddess along with a most unworthy crowd, why at
least was she not worshipped in a more honorable way than the rest?
For is it not intolerable that Felicity is placed neither among the
gods Consentes, [176] whom they allege to be admitted into the council
of Jupiter, nor among the gods whom they term Select? Some temple
might be made for her which might be pre-eminent, both in loftiness of
site and dignity of style. Why, indeed, not something better than is
made for Jupiter himself? For who gave the kingdom even to Jupiter
but Felicity? I am supposing that when he reigned he was happy.
Felicity, however, is certainly more valuable than a kingdom. For no
one doubts that a man might easily be found who may fear to be made a
king; but no one is found who is unwilling to be happy. Therefore, if
it is thought they can be consulted by augury, or in any other way,
the gods themselves should be consulted about this thing, whether they
may wish to give place to Felicity. If, perchance, the place should
already be occupied by the temples and altars of others, where a
greater and more lofty temple might be built to Felicity, even Jupiter
himself might give way, so that Felicity might rather obtain the very
pinnacle of the Capitoline hill. For there is not any one who would
resist Felicity, except, which is impossible, one who might wish to be
unhappy. Certainly, if he should be consulted, Jupiter would in no
case do what those three gods, Mars, Terminus, and Juventas, did, who
positively refused to give place to their superior and king. For, as
their books record, when king Tarquin wished to construct the Capitol,
and perceived that the place which seemed to him to be the most worthy
and suitable was preoccupied by other gods, not daring to do anything
contrary to their pleasure, and believing that they would willingly
give place to a god who was so great, and was their own master,
because there were many of them there when the Capitol was founded, he
inquired by augury whether they chose to give place to Jupiter, and
they were all willing to remove thence except those whom I have named,
Mars, Terminus, and Juventas; and therefore the Capitol was built in
such a way that these three also might be within it, yet with such
obscure signs that even the most learned men could scarcely know
this. Surely, then, Jupiter himself would by no means despise
Felicity, as he was himself despised by Terminus, Mars, and Juventas.
But even they themselves who had not given place to Jupiter, would
certainly give place to Felicity, who had made Jupiter king over
them. Or if they should not give place, they would act thus not out
of contempt of her, but because they chose rather to be obscure in the
house of Felicity, than to be eminent without her in their own places.
Thus the goddess Felicity being established in the largest and
loftiest place, the citizens should learn whence the furtherance of
every good desire should be sought. And so, by the persuasion of
nature herself, the superfluous multitude of other gods being
abandoned, Felicity alone would be worshipped, prayer would be made to
her alone, her temple alone would be frequented by the citizens who
wished to be happy, which no one of them would not wish; and thus
felicity, who was sought for from all the gods, would be sought for
only from her own self. For who wishes to receive from any god
anything else than felicity, or what he supposes to tend to felicity?
Wherefore, if Felicity has it in her power to be with what man she
pleases (and she has it if she is a goddess), what folly is it, after
all, to seek from any other god her whom you can obtain by request
from her own self! Therefore they ought to honor this goddess above
other gods, even by dignity of place. For, as we read in their own
authors, the ancient Romans paid greater honors to I know not what
Summanus, to whom they attributed nocturnal thunderbolts, than to
Jupiter, to whom diurnal thunderbolts were held to pertain. But,
after a famous and conspicuous temple had been built to Jupiter, owing
to the dignity of the building, the multitude resorted to him in so
great numbers, that scarce one can be found who remembers even to have
read the name of Summanus, which now he cannot once hear named. But
if Felicity is not a goddess, because, as is true, it is a gift of
God, that god must be sought who has power to give it, and that
hurtful multitude of false gods must be abandoned which the vain
multitude of foolish men follows after, making gods to itself of the
gifts of God, and offending Himself whose gifts they are by the
stubbornness of a proud will. For he cannot be free from infelicity
who worships Felicity as a goddess, and forsakes God, the giver of
felicity; just as he cannot be free from hunger who licks a painted
loaf of bread, and does not buy it of the man who has a real one.
Footnotes
[176] So called from the consent or harmony of the celestial movements
of these gods.
Chapter 24.--The Reasons by Which the Pagans Attempt to Defend Their
Worshipping Among the Gods the Divine Gifts Themselves.
We may, however, consider their reasons. Is it to be believed, say
they, that our forefathers were besotted even to such a degree as not
to know that these things are divine gifts, and not gods? But as they
knew that such things are granted to no one, except by some god freely
bestowing them, they called the gods whose names they did not find out
by the names of those things which they deemed to be given by them;
sometimes slightly altering the name for that purpose, as, for
example, from war they have named Bellona, not bellum; from cradles,
Cunina, not cunæ; from standing corn, Segetia, not seges; from apples,
Pomona, not pomum; from oxen, Bubona, not bos. Sometimes, again, with
no alteration of the word, just as the things themselves are named, so
that the goddess who gives money is called Pecunia, and money is not
thought to be itself a goddess: so of Virtus, who gives virtue;
Honor, who gives honor; Concordia, who gives concord; Victoria, who
gives victory. So, they say, when Felicitas is called a goddess, what
is meant is not the thing itself which is given, but that deity by
whom felicity is given.
Chapter 25.--Concerning the One God Only to Be Worshipped, Who,
Although His Name is Unknown, is Yet Deemed to Be the Giver of
Felicity.
Having had that reason rendered to us, we shall perhaps much more
easily persuade, as we wish, those whose heart has not become too much
hardened. For if now human infirmity has perceived that felicity
cannot be given except by some god; if this was perceived by those who
worshipped so many gods, at whose head they set Jupiter himself; if,
in their ignorance of the name of Him by whom felicity was given, they
agreed to call Him by the name of that very thing which they believed
He gave;--then it follows that they thought that felicity could not be
given even by Jupiter himself, whom they already worshipped, but
certainly by him whom they thought fit to worship under the name of
Felicity itself. I thoroughly affirm the statement that they believed
felicity to be given by a certain God whom they knew not: let Him
therefore be sought after, let Him be worshipped, and it is enough.
Let the train of innumerable demons be repudiated, and let this God
suffice every man whom his gift suffices. For him, I say, God the
giver of felicity will not be enough to worship, for whom felicity
itself is not enough to receive. But let him for whom it suffices
(and man has nothing more he ought to wish for) serve the one God, the
giver of felicity. This God is not he whom they call Jupiter. For if
they acknowledged him to be the giver of felicity, they would not
seek, under the name of Felicity itself, for another god or goddess by
whom felicity might be given; nor could they tolerate that Jupiter
himself should be worshipped with such infamous attributes. For he is
said to be the debaucher of the wives of others; he is the shameless
lover and ravisher of a beautiful boy.
Chapter 26.--Of the Scenic Plays, the Celebration of Which the Gods
Have Exacted from Their Worshippers.
"But," says Cicero, "Homer invented these things, and transferred
things human to the gods: I would rather transfer things divine to
us." [177]The poet, by ascribing such crimes to the gods, has
justly displeased the grave man. Why, then, are the scenic plays,
where these crimes are habitually spoken of, acted, exhibited, in
honor of the gods, reckoned among things divine by the most learned
men? Cicero should exclaim, not against the inventions of the poets,
but against the customs of the ancients. Would not they have
exclaimed in reply, What have we done? The gods themselves have
loudly demanded that these plays should be exhibited in their honor,
have fiercely exacted them, have menaced destruction unless this was
performed, have avenged its neglect with great severity, and have
manifested pleasure at the reparation of such neglect. Among their
virtuous and wonderful deeds the following is related. It was
announced in a dream to Titus Latinius, a Roman rustic, that he should
go to the senate and tell them to recommence the games of Rome,
because on the first day of their celebration a condemned criminal had
been led to punishment in sight of the people, an incident so sad as
to disturb the gods who were seeking amusement from the games. And
when the peasant who had received this intimation was afraid on the
following day to deliver it to the senate, it was renewed next night
in a severer form: he lost his son, because of his neglect. On the
third night he was warned that a yet graver punishment was impending,
if he should still refuse obedience. When even thus he did not dare
to obey, he fell into a virulent and horrible disease. But then, on
the advice of his friends, he gave information to the magistrates, and
was carried in a litter into the senate, and having, on declaring his
dream, immediately recovered strength, went away on his own feet
whole. [178]The senate, amazed at so great a miracle, decreed that
the games should be renewed at fourfold cost. What sensible man does
not see that men, being put upon by malignant demons, from whose
domination nothing save the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord
sets free, have been compelled by force to exhibit to such gods as
these, plays which, if well advised, they should condemn as shameful?
Certain it is that in these plays the poetic crimes of the gods are
celebrated, yet they are plays which were re-established by decree of
the senate, under compulsion of the gods. In these plays the most
shameless actors celebrated Jupiter as the corrupter of chastity, and
thus gave him pleasure. If that was a fiction, he would have been
moved to anger; but if he was delighted with the representation of his
crimes, even although fabulous, then, when he happened to be
worshipped, who but the devil could be served? Is it so that he could
found, extend, and preserve the Roman empire, who was more vile than
any Roman man whatever, to whom such things were displeasing? Could
he give felicity who was so infelicitously worshipped, and who, unless
he should be thus worshipped, was yet more infelicitously provoked to
anger?
Footnotes
[177] Tusc. Quæst.i. 26.
[178] Livy, ii. 36; Cicero, De Divin. 26.
Chapter 27.--Concerning the Three Kinds of Gods About Which the
Pontiff Scævola Has Discoursed.
It is recorded that the very learned pontiff Scævola [179] had
distinguished about three kinds of gods--one introduced by the poets,
another by the philosophers, another by the statesmen. The first kind
he declares to be trifling, because many unworthy things have been
invented by the poets concerning the gods; the second does not suit
states, because it contains some things that are superfluous, and
some, too, which it would be prejudicial for the people to know. It
is no great matter about the superfluous things, for it is a common
saying of skillful lawyers, "Superfluous things do no harm." [180]
But what are those things which do harm when brought before the
multitude? "These," he says, "that Hercules, Æsculapius, Castor and
Pollux, are not gods; for it is declared by learned men that these
were but men, and yielded to the common lot of mortals." What else?
"That states have not the true images of the gods; because the true
God has neither sex, nor age, nor definite corporeal members." The
pontiff is not willing that the people should know these things; for
he does not think they are false. He thinks it expedient, therefore,
that states should be deceived in matters of religion; which Varro
himself does not even hesitate to say in his books about things
divine. Excellent religion! to which the weak, who requires to be
delivered, may flee for succor; and when he seeks for the truth by
which he may be delivered, it is believed to be expedient for him that
he be deceived. And, truly, in these same books, Scævola is not
silent as to his reason for rejecting the poetic sort of gods,--to
wit, "because they so disfigure the gods that they could not bear
comparison even with good men, when they make one to commit theft,
another adultery; or, again, to say or do something else basely and
foolishly; as that three goddesses contested (with each other) the
prize of beauty, and the two vanquished by Venus destroyed Troy; that
Jupiter turned himself into a bull or swan that he might copulate with
some one; that a goddess married a man, and Saturn devoured his
children; that, in fine, there is nothing that could be imagined,
either of the miraculous or vicious, which may not be found there, and
yet is far removed from the nature of the gods." O chief pontiff
Scævola, take away the plays if thou art able; instruct the people
that they may not offer such honors to the immortal gods, in which, if
they like, they may admire the crimes of the gods, and, so far as it
is possible, may, if they please, imitate them. But if the people
shall have answered thee, You, O pontiff, have brought these things in
among us, then ask the gods themselves at whose instigation you have
ordered these things, that they may not order such things to be
offered to them. For if they are bad, and therefore in no way to be
believed concerning the majority of the gods, the greater is the wrong
done the gods about whom they are feigned with impunity. But they do
not hear thee, they are demons, they teach wicked things, they rejoice
in vile things; not only do they not count it a wrong if these things
are feigned about them, but it is a wrong they are quite unable to
bear if they are not acted at their stated festivals. But now, if
thou wouldst call on Jupiter against them, chiefly for that reason
that more of his crimes are wont to be acted in the scenic plays, is
it not the case that, although you call him god Jupiter, by whom this
whole world is ruled and administered, it is he to whom the greatest
wrong is done by you, because you have thought he ought to be
worshipped along with them, and have styled him their king?
Footnotes
[179] Called by Cicero (De Oratore, i. 39) the most eloquent of
lawyers, and the best skilled lawyer among eloquent men.
[180] Superflua non nocent.
Chapter 28.--Whether the Worship of the Gods Has Been of Service to
the Romans in Obtaining and Extending the Empire.
Therefore such gods, who are propitiated by such honors, or rather are
impeached by them (for it is a greater crime to delight in having such
things said of them falsely, than even if they could be said truly),
could never by any means have been able to increase and preserve the
Roman empire. For if they could have done it, they would rather have
bestowed so grand a gift on the Greeks, who, in this kind of divine
things,--that is, in scenic plays,--have worshipped them more
honorably and worthily, although they have not exempted themselves
from those slanders of the poets, by whom they saw the gods torn in
pieces, giving them licence to ill-use any man they pleased, and have
not deemed the scenic players themselves to be base, but have held
them worthy even of distinguished honor. But just as the Romans were
able to have gold money, although they did not worship a god Aurinus,
so also they could have silver and brass coin, and yet worship neither
Argentinus nor his father Aesculanus; and so of all the rest, which it
would be irksome for me to detail. It follows, therefore, both that
they could not by any means attain such dominion if the true God was
unwilling; and that if these gods, false and many, were unknown or
contemned, and He alone was known and worshipped with sincere faith
and virtue, they would both have a better kingdom here, whatever might
be its extent, and whether they might have one here or not, would
afterwards receive an eternal kingdom.
Chapter 29.--Of the Falsity of the Augury by Which the Strength and
Stability of the Roman Empire Was Considered to Be Indicated.
For what kind of augury is that which they have declared to be most
beautiful, and to which I referred a little ago, that Mars, and
Terminus, and Juventas would not give place even to Jove, the king of
the gods? For thus, they say, it was signified that the nation
dedicated to Mars,--that is, the Roman,--should yield to none the
place it once occupied; likewise, that on account of the god Terminus,
no one would be able to disturb the Roman frontiers; and also, that
the Roman youth, because of the goddess Juventas, should yield to no
one. Let them see, therefore, how they can hold him to be the king of
their gods, and the giver of their own kingdom, if these auguries set
him down for an adversary, to whom it would have been honorable not to
yield. However, if these things are true, they need not be at all
afraid. For they are not going to confess that the gods who would not
yield to Jove have yielded to Christ. For, without altering the
boundaries of the empire, Jesus Christ has proved Himself able to
drive them, not only from their temples, but from the hearts of their
worshippers. But, before Christ came in the flesh, and, indeed,
before these things which we have quoted from their books could have
been written, but yet after that auspice was made under king Tarquin,
the Roman army has been divers times scattered or put to flight, and
has shown the falseness of the auspice, which they derived from the
fact that the goddess Juventas had not given place to Jove; and the
nation dedicated to Mars was trodden down in the city itself by the
invading and triumphant Gauls; and the boundaries of the empire,
through the falling away of many cities to Hannibal, had been hemmed
into a narrow space. Thus the beauty of the auspices is made void,
and there has remained only the contumacy against Jove, not of gods,
but of demons. For it is one thing not to have yielded, and another
to have returned whither you have yielded. Besides, even afterwards,
in the oriental regions, the boundaries of the Roman empire were
changed by the will of Hadrian; for he yielded up to the Persian
empire those three noble provinces, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and
Assyria. Thus that god Terminus, who according to these books was the
guardian of the Roman frontiers, and by that most beautiful auspice
had not given place to Jove, would seem to have been more afraid of
Hadrian, a king of men, than of the king of the gods. The aforesaid
provinces having also been taken back again, almost within our own
recollection the frontier fell back, when Julian, given up to the
oracles of their gods, with immoderate daring ordered the victualling
ships to be set on fire. The army being thus left destitute of
provisions, and he himself also being presently killed by the enemy,
and the legions being hard pressed, while dismayed by the loss of
their commander, they were reduced to such extremities that no one
could have escaped, unless by articles of peace the boundaries of the
empire had then been established where they still remain; not, indeed,
with so great a loss as was suffered by the concession of Hadrian, but
still at a considerable sacrifice. It was a vain augury, then, that
the god Terminus did not yield to Jove, since he yielded to the will
of Hadrian, and yielded also to the rashness of Julian, and the
necessity of Jovinian.The more intelligent and grave Romans have
seen these things, but have had little power against the custom of the
state, which was bound to observe the rites of the demons; because
even they themselves, although they perceived that these things were
vain, yet thought that the religious worship which is due to God
should be paid to the nature of things which is established under the
rule and government of the one true God, "serving," as saith the
apostle, "the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for
evermore." [181]The help of this true God was necessary to send
holy and truly pious men, who would die for the true religion that
they might remove the false from among the living.
Footnotes
[181] Rom. i. 25.
Chapter 30.--What Kind of Things Even Their Worshippers Have Owned
They Have Thought About the Gods of the Nations.
Cicero the augur laughs at auguries, and reproves men for regulating
the purposes of life by the cries of crows and jackdaws. [182]But
it will be said that an academic philosopher, who argues that all
things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these
matters. In the second book of his De Natura Deorum, [183] he
introduces Lucilius Balbus, who, after showing that superstitions have
their origin in physical and philosophical truths, expresses his
indignation at the setting up of images and fabulous notions, speaking
thus: "Do you not therefore see that from true and useful physical
discoveries the reason may be drawn away to fabulous and imaginary
gods? This gives birth to false opinions and turbulent errors, and
superstitions well-nigh old-wifeish. For both the forms of the gods,
and their ages, and clothing, and ornaments, are made familiar to us;
their genealogies, too, their marriages, kinships, and all things
about them, are debased to the likeness of human weakness. They are
even introduced as having perturbed minds; for we have accounts of the
lusts, cares, and angers of the gods. Nor, indeed, as the fables go,
have the gods been without their wars and battles. And that not only
when, as in Homer, some gods on either side have defended two opposing
armies, but they have even carried on wars on their own account, as
with the Titans or with the Giants. Such things it is quite absurd
either to say or to believe: they are utterly frivolous and
groundless." Behold, now, what is confessed by those who defend the
gods of the nations. Afterwards he goes on to say that some things
belong to superstition, but others to religion, which he thinks good
to teach according to the Stoics. "For not only the philosophers," he
says, "but also our forefathers, have made a distinction between
superstition and religion. For those," he says, "who spent whole days
in prayer, and offered sacrifice, that their children might outlive
them, are called superstitious." [184]Who does not see that he is
trying, while he fears the public prejudice, to praise the religion of
the ancients, and that he wishes to disjoin it from superstition, but
cannot find out how to do so? For if those who prayed and sacrificed
all day were called superstitious by the ancients, were those also
called so who instituted (what he blames) the images of the gods of
diverse age and distinct clothing, and invented the genealogies of
gods, their marriages, and kinships? When, therefore, these things
are found fault with as superstitious, he implicates in that fault the
ancients who instituted and worshipped such images. Nay, he
implicates himself, who, with whatever eloquence he may strive to
extricate himself and be free, was yet under the necessity of
venerating these images; nor dared he so much as whisper in a
discourse to the people what in this disputation he plainly sounds
forth. Let us Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our
God--not to heaven and earth, as that author argues, but to Him who
has made heaven and earth; because these superstitions, which that
Balbus, like a babbler, [185] scarcely reprehends, He, by the most
deep lowliness of Christ, by the preaching of the apostles, by the
faith of the martyrs dying for the truth and living with the truth,
has overthrown, not only in the hearts of the religious, but even in
the temples of the superstitious, by their own free service.
Footnotes
[182] De Divin.ii. 37.
[183] Cic. De Nat. Deorum, lib. ii. c. 28.
[184] Superstition, from superstes. Against his etymology of Cicero,
see Lact. Inst. Div. iv. 28.
[185] Balbus, from balbutiens, stammering, babbling.
Chapter 31.--Concerning the Opinions of Varro, Who, While Reprobating
the Popular Belief, Thought that Their Worship Should Be Confined to
One God, Though He Was Unable to Discover the True God.
What says Varro himself, whom we grieve to have found, although not by
his own judgment, placing the scenic plays among things divine? When
in many passages he is exhorting, like a religious man, to the worship
of the gods, does he not in doing so admit that he does not in his own
judgment believe those things which he relates that the Roman state
has instituted; so that he does not hesitate to affirm that if he were
founding a new state, he could enumerate the gods and their names
better by the rule of nature? But being born into a nation already
ancient, he says that he finds himself bound to accept the traditional
names and surnames of the gods, and the histories connected with them,
and that his purpose in investigating and publishing these details is
to incline the people to worship the gods, and not to despise them.
By which words this most acute man sufficiently indicates that he does
not publish all things, because they would not only have been
contemptible to himself, but would have seemed despicable even to the
rabble, unless they had been passed over in silence. I should be
thought to conjecture these things, unless he himself, in another
passage, had openly said, in speaking of religious rites, that many
things are true which it is not only not useful for the common people
to know, but that it is expedient that the people should think
otherwise, even though falsely, and therefore the Greeks have shut up
the religious ceremonies and mysteries in silence, and within walls.
In this he no doubt expresses the policy of the so-called wise men by
whom states and peoples are ruled. Yet by this crafty device the
malign demons are wonderfully delighted, who possess alike the
deceivers and the deceived, and from whose tyranny nothing sets free
save the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The same most acute and learned author also says, that those alone
seem to him to have perceived what God is, who have believed Him to be
the soul of the world, governing it by design and reason. [186]And
by this, it appears, that although he did not attain to the
truth,--for the true God is not a soul, but the maker and author of
the soul,--yet if he could have been free to go against the prejudices
of custom, he could have confessed and counselled others that the one
God ought to be worshipped, who governs the world by design and
reason; so that on this subject only this point would remain to be
debated with him, that he had called Him a soul, and not rather the
creator of the soul. He says, also, that the ancient Romans, for more
than a hundred and seventy years, worshipped the gods without an
image. [187]"And if this custom," he says, "could have remained
till now, the gods would have been more purely worshipped." In favor
of this opinion, he cites as a witness among others the Jewish nation;
nor does he hesitate to conclude that passage by saying of those who
first consecrated images for the people, that they have both taken
away religious fear from their fellow-citizens, and increased error,
wisely thinking that the gods easily fall into contempt when exhibited
under the stolidity of images. But as he does not say they have
transmitted error, but that they have increased it, he therefore
wishes it to be understood that there was error already when there
were no images. Wherefore, when he says they alone have perceived
what God is who have believed Him to be the governing soul of the
world, and thinks that the rites of religion would have been more
purely observed without images, who fails to see how near he has come
to the truth? For if he had been able to do anything against so
inveterate an error, he would certainly have given it as his opinion
both that the one God should be worshipped, and that He should be
worshipped without an image; and having so nearly discovered the
truth, perhaps he might easily have been put in mind of the mutability
of the soul, and might thus have perceived that the true God is that
immutable nature which made the soul itself. Since these things are
so, whatever ridicule such men have poured in their writings against
the plurality of the gods, they have done so rather as compelled by
the secret will of God to confess them, than as trying to persuade
others. If, therefore, any testimonies are adduced by us from these
writings, they are adduced for the confutation of those who are
unwilling to consider from how great and malignant a power of the
demons the singular sacrifice of the shedding of the most holy blood,
and the gift of the imparted Spirit, can set us free.
Footnotes
[186] See Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 2.
[187] Plutarch's Numa, c. 8.
Chapter 32.--In What Interest the Princes of the Nations Wished False
Religions to Continue Among the People Subject to Them.
Varro says also, concerning the generations of the gods, that the
people have inclined to the poets rather than to the natural
philosophers; and that therefore their forefathers,--that is, the
ancient Romans,--believed both in the sex and the generations of the
gods, and settled their marriages; which certainly seems to have been
done for no other cause except that it was the business of such men as
were prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion,
and in that very thing not only to worship, but also to imitate the
demons, whose greatest lust is to deceive. For just as the demons
cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived with guile, so
also men in princely office, not indeed being just, but like demons,
have persuaded the people in the name of religion to receive as true
those things which they themselves knew to be false; in this way, as
it were, binding them up more firmly in civil society, so that they
might in like manner possess them as subjects. But who that was weak
and unlearned could escape the deceits of both the princes of the
state and the demons?
Chapter 33.--That the Times of All Kings and Kingdoms are Ordained by
the Judgment and Power of the True God.
Therefore that God, the author and giver of felicity, because He alone
is the true God, Himself gives earthly kingdoms both to good and bad.
Neither does He do this rashly, and, as it were,
fortuitously,--because He is God not fortune,--but according to the
order of things and times, which is hidden from us, but thoroughly
known to Himself; which same order of times, however, He does not
serve as subject to it, but Himself rules as lord and appoints as
governor. Felicity He gives only to the good. Whether a man be a
subject or a king makes no difference; he may equally either possess
or not possess it. And it shall be full in that life where kings and
subjects exist no longer. And therefore earthly kingdoms are given by
Him both to the good and the bad; lest His worshippers, still under
the conduct of a very weak mind, should covet these gifts from Him as
some great things. And this is the mystery of the Old Testament, in
which the New was hidden, that there even earthly gifts are promised:
those who were spiritual understanding even then, although not yet
openly declaring, both the eternity which was symbolized by these
earthly things, and in what gifts of God true felicity could be found.
Chapter 34.--Concerning the Kingdom of the Jews, Which Was Founded by
the One and True God, and Preserved by Him as Long as They Remained in
the True Religion.
Therefore, that it might be known that these earthly good things,
after which those pant who cannot imagine better things, remain in the
power of the one God Himself, not of the many false gods whom the
Romans have formerly believed worthy of worship, He multiplied His
people in Egypt from being very few, and delivered them out of it by
wonderful signs. Nor did their women invoke Lucina when their
offspring was being incredibly multiplied; and that nation having
increased incredibly, He Himself delivered, He Himself saved them from
the hands of the Egyptians, who persecuted them, and wished to kill
all their infants. Without the goddess Rumina they sucked; without
Cunina they were cradled, without Educa and Potina they took food and
drink; without all those puerile gods they were educated; without the
nuptial gods they were married; without the worship of Priapus they
had conjugal intercourse; without invocation of Neptune the divided
sea opened up a way for them to pass over, and overwhelmed with its
returning waves their enemies who pursued them. Neither did they
consecrate any goddess Mannia when they received manna from heaven;
nor, when the smitten rock poured forth water to them when they
thirsted, did they worship Nymphs and Lymphs. Without the mad rites
of Mars and Bellona they carried on war; and while, indeed, they did
not conquer without victory, yet they did not hold it to be a goddess,
but the gift of their God. Without Segetia they had harvests; without
Bubona, oxen; honey without Mellona; apples without Pomona: and, in a
word, everything for which the Romans thought they must supplicate so
great a crowd of false gods, they received much more happily from the
one true God. And if they had not sinned against Him with impious
curiosity, which seduced them like magic arts, and drew them to
strange gods and idols, and at last led them to kill Christ, their
kingdom would have remained to them, and would have been, if not more
spacious, yet more happy, than that of Rome. And now that they are
dispersed through almost all lands and nations, it is through the
providence of that one true God; that whereas the images, altars,
groves, and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown, and
their sacrifices prohibited, it may be shown from their books how this
has been foretold by their prophets so long before; lest, perhaps,
when they should be read in ours, they might seem to be invented by
us. But now, reserving what is to follow for the following book, we
must here set a bound to the prolixity of this one.
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