Writings of Augustine. The City of God.
Advanced Information
The City of God.
translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.
Published in 1886 by Philip Schaff,
New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
.
Book V. [188]
Argument--Augustin first discusses the doctrine of fate, for the sake
of confuting those who are disposed to refer to fate the power and
increase of the Roman empire, which could not be attributed to false
gods, as has been shown in the preceding book. After that, he proves
that there is no contradiction between God's prescience and our free
will. He then speaks of the manners of the ancient Romans, and shows
in what sense it was due to the virtue of the Romans themselves, and
in how far to the counsel of God, that he increased their dominion,
though they did not worship him. Finally, he explains what is to be
accounted the true happiness of the Christian emperors.
Preface.
Since, then, it is established that the complete attainment of all we
desire is that which constitutes felicity, which is no goddess, but a
gift of God, and that therefore men can worship no god save Him who is
able to make them happy,--and were Felicity herself a goddess, she
would with reason be the only object of worship,--since, I say, this
is established, let us now go on to consider why God, who is able to
give with all other things those good gifts which can be possessed by
men who are not good, and consequently not happy, has seen fit to
grant such extended and long-continued dominion to the Roman empire;
for that this was not effected by that multitude of false gods which
they worshipped, we have both already adduced, and shall, as occasion
offers, yet adduce considerable proof.
|
|
Chapter 1.--That the Cause of the Roman Empire, and of All Kingdoms,
is Neither Fortuitous Nor Consists in the Position of the Stars. [189]
The cause, then, of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither
fortuitous nor fatal, according to the judgment or opinion of those
who call those things fortuitous which either have no causes, or such
causes as do not proceed from some intelligible order, and those
things fatal which happen independently of the will of God and man, by
the necessity of a certain order. In a word, human kingdoms are
established by divine providence. And if any one attributes their
existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God
itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his
language. For why does he not say at first what he will say
afterwards, when some one shall put the question to him, What he means
by fate? For when men hear that word, according to the ordinary use
of the language, they simply understand by it the virtue of that
particular position of the stars which may exist at the time when any
one is born or conceived, which some separate altogether from the will
of God, whilst others affirm that this also is dependent on that
will. But those who are of opinion that, apart from the will of God,
the stars determine what we shall do, or what good things we shall
possess, or what evils we shall suffer, must be refused a hearing by
all, not only by those who hold the true religion, but by those who
wish to be the worshippers of any gods whatsoever, even false gods.
For what does this opinion really amount to but this, that no god
whatever is to be worshipped or prayed to? Against these, however,
our present disputation is not intended to be directed, but against
those who, in defence of those whom they think to be gods, oppose the
Christian religion. They, however, who make the position of the stars
depend on the divine will, and in a manner decree what character each
man shall have, and what good or evil shall happen to him, if they
think that these same stars have that power conferred upon them by the
supreme power of God, in order that they may determine these things
according to their will, do a great injury to the celestial sphere, in
whose most brilliant senate, and most splendid senate-house, as it
were, they suppose that wicked deeds are decreed to be done,--such
deeds as that, if any terrestrial state should decree them, it would
be condemned to overthrow by the decree of the whole human race. What
judgment, then, is left to God concerning the deeds of men, who is
Lord both of the stars and of men, when to these deeds a celestial
necessity is attributed? Or, if they do not say that the stars,
though they have indeed received a certain power from God, who is
supreme, determine those things according to their own discretion, but
simply that His commands are fulfilled by them instrumentally in the
application and enforcing of such necessities, are we thus to think
concerning God even what it seemed unworthy that we should think
concerning the will of the stars? But, if the stars are said rather
to signify these things than to effect them, so that that position of
the stars is, as it were, a kind of speech predicting, not causing
future things,--for this has been the opinion of men of no ordinary
learning,--certainly the mathematicians are not wont so to speak
saying, for example, Mars in such or such a position signifies a
homicide, but makes a homicide. But, nevertheless, though we grant
that they do not speak as they ought, and that we ought to accept as
the proper form of speech that employed by the philosophers in
predicting those things which they think they discover in the position
of the stars, how comes it that they have never been able to assign
any cause why, in the life of twins, in their actions, in the events
which befall them, in their professions, arts, honors, and other
things pertaining to human life, also in their very death, there is
often so great a difference, that, as far as these things are
concerned, many entire strangers are more like them than they are like
each other, though separated at birth by the smallest interval of
time, but at conception generated by the same act of copulation, and
at the same moment?
Footnotes
[188] Written in the year 415.
[189] On the application of astrology to national prosperity, and the
success of certain religions, see Lecky's Rationalism, i. 303.
Chapter 2.--On the Difference in the Health of Twins.
Cicero says that the famous physician Hippocrates has left in writing
that he had suspected that a certain pair of brothers were twins, from
the fact that they both took ill at once, and their disease advanced
to its crisis and subsided in the same time in each of them. [190]
Posidonius the Stoic, who was much given to astrology, used to explain
the fact by supposing that they had been born and conceived under the
same constellation. In this question the conjecture of the physician
is by far more worthy to be accepted, and approaches much nearer to
credibility, since, according as the parents were affected in body at
the time of copulation, so might the first elements of the foetuses
have been affected, so that all that was necessary for their growth
and development up till birth having been supplied from the body of
the same mother, they might be born with like constitutions.
Thereafter, nourished in the same house, on the same kinds of food,
where they would have also the same kinds of air, the same locality,
the same quality of water,--which, according to the testimony of
medical science, have a very great influence, good or bad, on the
condition of bodily health,--and where they would also be accustomed
to the same kinds of exercise, they would have bodily constitutions so
similar that they would be similarly affected with sickness at the
same time and by the same causes. But, to wish to adduce that
particular position of the stars which existed at the time when they
were born or conceived as the cause of their being simultaneously
affected with sickness, manifests the greatest arrogance, when so many
beings of most diverse kinds, in the most diverse conditions, and
subject to the most diverse events, may have been conceived and born
at the same time, and in the same district, lying under the same sky.
But we know that twins do not only act differently, and travel to very
different places, but that they also suffer from different kinds of
sickness; for which Hippocrates would give what is in my opinion the
simplest reason, namely, that, through diversity of food and exercise,
which arises not from the constitution of the body, but from the
inclination of the mind, they may have come to be different from each
other in respect of health. Moreover, Posidonius, or any other
asserter of the fatal influence of the stars, will have enough to do
to find anything to say to this, if he be unwilling to im pose upon
the minds of the uninstructed in things of which they are ignorant.
But, as to what they attempt to make out from that very small interval
of time elapsing between the births of twins, on account of that point
in the heavens where the mark of the natal hour is placed, and which
they call the "horoscope," it is either disproportionately small to
the diversity which is found in the dispositions, actions, habits, and
fortunes of twins, or it is disproportionately great when compared
with the estate of twins, whether low or high, which is the same for
both of them, the cause for whose greatest difference they place, in
every case, in the hour on which one is born; and, for this reason, if
the one is born so immediately after the other that there is no change
in the horoscope, I demand an entire similarity in all that respects
them both, which can never be found in the case of any twins. But if
the slowness of the birth of the second give time for a change in the
horoscope, I demand different parents, which twins can never have.
Footnotes
[190] This fact is not recorded in any of the extant works of
Hippocrates or Cicero. Vives supposes it may have found place in
Cicero's book, De Fato.
Chapter 3.--Concerning the Arguments Which Nigidius the Mathematician
Drew from the Potter's Wheel, in the Question About the Birth of
Twins.
It is to no purpose, therefore, that that famous fiction about the
potter's wheel is brought forward, which tells of the answer which
Nigidius is said to have given when he was perplexed with this
question, and on account of which he was called Figulus. [191]For,
having whirled round the potter's wheel with all his strength he
marked it with ink, striking it twice with the utmost rapidity, so
that the strokes seemed to fall on the very same part of it. Then,
when the rotation had ceased, the marks which he had made were found
upon the rim of the wheel at no small distance apart. Thus, said he,
considering the great rapidity with which the celestial sphere
revolves, even though twins were born with as short an interval
between their births as there was between the strokes which I gave
this wheel, that brief interval of time is equivalent to a very great
distance in the celestial sphere. Hence, said he, come whatever
dissimilitudes may be remarked in the habits and fortunes of twins.
This argument is more fragile than the vessels which are fashioned by
the rotation of that wheel. For if there is so much significance in
the heavens which cannot be comprehended by observation of the
constellations, that, in the case of twins, an inheritance may fall to
the one and not to the other, why, in the case of others who are not
twins, do they dare, having examined their constellations, to declare
such things as pertain to that secret which no one can comprehend, and
to attribute them to the precise moment of the birth of each
individual? Now, if such predictions in connection with the natal
hours of others who are not twins are to be vindicated on the ground
that they are founded on the observation of more extended spaces in
the heavens, whilst those very small moments of time which separated
the births of twins, and correspond to minute portions of celestial
space, are to be connected with trifling things about which the
mathematicians are not wont to be consulted,--for who would consult
them as to when he is to sit, when to walk abroad, when and on what he
is to dine? --how can we be justified in so speaking, when we can
point out such manifold diversity both in the habits, doings, and
destinies of twins?
Footnotes
[191] I.e. the potter.
Chapter 4.--Concerning the Twins Esau and Jacob, Who Were Very Unlike
Each Other Both in Their Character and Actions.
In the time of the ancient fathers, to speak concerning illustrious
persons, there were born two twin brothers, the one so immediately
after the other, that the first took hold of the heel of the second.
So great a difference existed in their lives and manners, so great a
dissimilarity in their actions, so great a difference in their
parents' love for them respectively, that the very contrast between
them produced even a mutual hostile antipathy. Do we mean, when we
say that they were so unlike each other, that when the one was walking
the other was sitting, when the one was sleeping the other was
waking,--which differences are such as are attributed to those minute
portions of space which cannot be appreciated by those who note down
the position of the stars which exists at the moment of one's birth,
in order that the mathematicians may be consulted concerning it? One
of these twins was for a long time a hired servant; the other never
served. One of them was beloved by his mother; the other was not so.
One of them lost that honor which was so much valued among their
people; the other obtained it. And what shall we say of their wives,
their children, and their possessions? How different they were in
respect to all these! If, therefore, such things as these are
connected with those minute intervals of time which elapse between the
births of twins, and are not to be attributed to the constellations,
wherefore are they predicted in the case of others from the
examination of their constellations? And if, on the other hand, these
things are said to be predicted, because they are connected, not with
minute and inappreciable moments, but with intervals of time which can
be observed and noted down, what purpose is that potter's wheel to
serve in this matter, except it be to whirl round men who have hearts
of clay, in order that they may be prevented from detecting the
emptiness of the talk of the mathematicians?
Chapter 5.--In What Manner the Mathematicians are Convicted of
Professing a Vain Science.
Do not those very persons whom the medical sagacity of Hippocrates led
him to suspect to be twins, because their disease was observed by him
to develop to its crisis and to subside again in the same time in each
of them,--do not these, I say, serve as a sufficient refutation of
those who wish to attribute to the influence of the stars that which
was owing to a similarity of bodily constitution? For wherefore were
they both sick of the same disease, and at the same time, and not the
one after the other in the order of their birth? (for certainly they
could not both be born at the same time.) Or, if the fact of their
having been born at different times by no means necessarily implies
that they must be sick at different times, why do they contend that
the difference in the time of their births was the cause of their
difference in other things? Why could they travel in foreign parts at
different times, marry at different times, beget children at different
times, and do many other things at different times, by reason of their
having been born at different times, and yet could not, for the same
reason, also be sick at different times? For if a difference in the
moment of birth changed the horoscope, and occasioned dissimilarity in
all other things, why has that simultaneousness which belonged to
their conception remained in their attacks of sickness? Or, if the
destinies of health are involved in the time of conception, but those
of other things be said to be attached to the time of birth, they
ought not to predict anything concerning health from examination of
the constellations of birth, when the hour of conception is not also
given, that its constellations may be inspected. But if they say that
they predict attacks of sickness without examining the horoscope of
conception, because these are indicated by the moments of birth, how
could they inform either of these twins when he would be sick, from
the horoscope of his birth, when the other also, who had not the same
horoscope of birth, must of necessity fall sick at the same time?
Again, I ask, if the distance of time between the births of twins is
so great as to occasion a difference of their constellations on
account of the difference of their horoscopes, and therefore of all
the cardinal points to which so much influence is attributed, that
even from such change there comes a difference of destiny, how is it
possible that this should be so, since they cannot have been conceived
at different times? Or, if two conceived at the same moment of time
could have different destinies with respect to their births, why may
not also two born at the same moment of time have different destinies
for life and for death? For if the one moment in which both were
conceived did not hinder that the one should be born before the other,
why, if two are born at the same moment, should anything hinder them
from dying at the same moment? If a simultaneous conception allows of
twins being differently affected in the womb, why should not
simultaneousness of birth allow of any two individuals having
different fortunes in the world? and thus would all the fictions of
this art, or rather delusion, be swept away. What strange
circumstance is this, that two children conceived at the same time,
nay, at the same moment, under the same position of the stars, have
different fates which bring them to different hours of birth, whilst
two children, born of two different mothers, at the same moment of
time, under one and the same position of the stars, cannot have
different fates which shall conduct them by necessity to diverse
manners of life and of death? Are they at conception as yet without
destinies, because they can only have them if they be born? What,
therefore, do they mean when they say that, if the hour of the
conception be found, many things can be predicted by these
astrologers? from which also arose that story which is reiterated by
some, that a certain sage chose an hour in which to lie with his wife,
in order to secure his begetting an illustrious son. From this
opinion also came that answer of Posidonius, the great astrologer and
also philosopher, concerning those twins who were attacked with
sickness at the same time, namely, "That this had happened to them
because they were conceived at the same time, and born at the same
time." For certainly he added "conception," lest it should be said to
him that they could not both be born at the same time, knowing that at
any rate they must both have been conceived at the same time; wishing
thus to show that he did not attribute the fact of their being
similarly and simultaneously affected with sickness to the similarity
of their bodily constitutions as its proximate cause, but that he held
that even in respect of the similarity of their health, they were
bound together by a sidereal connection. If, therefore, the time of
conception has so much to do with the similarity of destinies, these
same destinies ought not to be changed by the circumstances of birth;
or, if the destinies of twins be said to be changed because they are
born at different times, why should we not rather understand that they
had been already changed in order that they might be born at different
times? Does not, then, the will of men living in the world change the
destinies of birth, when the order of birth can change the destinies
they had at conception?
Chapter 6.--Concerning Twins of Different Sexes.
But even in the very conception of twins, which certainly occurs at
the same moment in the case of both, it often happens that the one is
conceived a male, and the other a female. I know two of different
sexes who are twins. Both of them are alive, and in the flower of
their age; and though they resemble each other in body, as far as
difference of sex will permit, still they are very different in the
whole scope and purpose of their lives (consideration being had of
those differences which necessarily exist between the lives of males
and females),--the one holding the office of a count, and being almost
constantly away from home with the army in foreign service, the other
never leaving her country's soil, or her native district. Still
more,--and this is more incredible, if the destinies of the stars are
to be believed in, though it is not wonderful if we consider the wills
of men, and the free gifts of God,--he is married; she is a sacred
virgin: he has begotten a numerous offspring; she has never even
married. But is not the virtue of the horoscope very great? I think
I have said enough to show the absurdity of that. But, say those
astrologers, whatever be the virtue of the horoscope in other
respects, it is certainly of significance with respect to birth. But
why not also with respect to conception, which takes place undoubtedly
with one act of copulation? And, indeed, so great is the force of
nature, that after a woman has once conceived, she ceases to be liable
to conception. Or were they, perhaps, changed at birth, either he
into a male, or she into a female, because of the difference in their
horoscopes? But, whilst it is not altogether absurd to say that
certain sidereal influences have some power to cause differences in
bodies alone,--as, for instance, we see that the seasons of the year
come round by the approaching and receding of the sun, and that
certain kinds of things are increased in size or diminished by the
waxings and wanings of the moon, such as sea-urchins, oysters, and the
wonderful tides of the ocean,--it does not follow that the wills of
men are to be made subject to the position of the stars. The
astrologers, however, when they wish to bind our actions also to the
constellations, only set us on investigating whether, even in these
bodies, the changes may not be attributable to some other than a
sidereal cause. For what is there which more intimately concerns a
body than its sex? And yet, under the same position of the stars,
twins of different sexes may be conceived. Wherefore, what greater
absurdity can be affirmed or believed than that the position of the
stars, which was the same for both of them at the time of conception,
could not cause that the one child should not have been of a different
sex from her brother, with whom she had a common constellation, whilst
the position of the stars which existed at the hour of their birth
could cause that she should be separated from him by the great
distance between marriage and holy virginity?
Chapter 7.--Concerning the Choosing of a Day for Marriage, or for
Planting, or Sowing.
Now, will any one bring forward this, that in choosing certain
particular days for particular actions, men bring about certain new
destinies for their actions? That man, for instance, according to
this doctrine, was not born to have an illustrious son, but rather a
contemptible one, and therefore, being a man of learning, he choose an
hour in which to lie with his wife. He made, therefore, a destiny
which he did not have before, and from that destiny of his own making
something began to be fatal which was not contained in the destiny of
his natal hour. Oh, singular stupidity! A day is chosen on which to
marry; and for this reason, I believe, that unless a day be chosen,
the marriage may fall on an unlucky day, and turn out an unhappy one.
What then becomes of what the stars have already decreed at the hour
of birth? Can a man be said to change by an act of choice that which
has already been determined for him, whilst that which he himself has
determined in the choosing of a day cannot be changed by another
power? Thus, if men alone, and not all things under heaven, are
subject to the influence of the stars, why do they choose some days as
suitable for planting vines or trees, or for sowing grain, other days
as suitable for taming beasts on, or for putting the males to the
females, that the cows and mares may be impregnated, and for such-like
things? If it be said that certain chosen days have an influence on
these things, because the constellations rule over all terrestrial
bodies, animate and inanimate, according to differences in moments of
time, let it be considered what innumerable multitudes of beings are
born or arise, or take their origin at the very same instant of time,
which come to ends so different, that they may persuade any little boy
that these observations about days are ridiculous. For who is so mad
as to dare affirm that all trees, all herbs, all beasts, serpents,
birds, fishes, worms, have each separately their own moments of birth
or commencement? Nevertheless, men are wont, in order to try the
skill of the mathematicians, to bring before them the constellations
of dumb animals, the constellations of whose birth they diligently
observe at home with a view to this discovery; and they prefer those
mathematicians to all others, who say from the inspection of the
constellations that they indicate the birth of a beast and not of a
man. They also dare tell what kind of beast it is, whether it is a
wool-bearing beast, or a beast suited for carrying burthens, or one
fit for the plough, or for watching a house; for the astrologers are
also tried with respect to the fates of dogs, and their answers
concerning these are followed by shouts of admiration on the part of
those who consult them. They so deceive men as to make them think
that during the birth of a man the births of all other beings are
suspended, so that not even a fly comes to life at the same time that
he is being born, under the same region of the heavens. And if this
be admitted with respect to the fly, the reasoning cannot stop there,
but must ascend from flies till it lead them up to camels and
elephants. Nor are they willing to attend to this, that when a day
has been chosen whereon to sow a field, so many grains fall into the
ground simultaneously, germinate simultaneously, spring up, come to
perfection, and ripen simultaneously; and yet, of all the ears which
are coeval, and, so to speak, congerminal, some are destroyed by
mildew, some are devoured by the birds, and some are pulled by men.
How can they say that all these had their different constellations,
which they see coming to so different ends? Will they confess that it
is folly to choose days for such things, and to affirm that they do
not come within the sphere of the celestial decree, whilst they
subject men alone to the stars, on whom alone in the world God has
bestowed free wills? All these things being considered, we have good
reason to believe that, when the astrologers give very many wonderful
answers, it is to be attributed to the occult inspiration of spirits
not of the best kind, whose care it is to insinuate into the minds of
men, and to confirm in them, those false and noxious opinions
concerning the fatal influence of the stars, and not to their marking
and inspecting of horoscopes, according to some kind of art which in
reality has no existence.
Chapter 8.--Concerning Those Who Call by the Name of Fate, Not the
Position of the Stars, But the Connection of Causes Which Depends on
the Will of God.
But, as to those who call by the name of fate, not the disposition of
the stars as it may exist when any creature is conceived, or born, or
commences its existence, but the whole connection and train of causes
which makes everything become what it does become, there is no need
that I should labor and strive with them in a merely verbal
controversy, since they attribute the so-called order and connection
of causes to the will and power of God most high, who is most rightly
and most truly believed to know all things before they come to pass,
and to leave nothing unordained; from whom are all powers, although
the wills of all are not from Him. Now, that it is chiefly the will
of God most high, whose power extends itself irresistibly through all
things which they call fate, is proved by the following verses, of
which, if I mistake not, Annæus Seneca is the author:--
"Father supreme, Thou ruler of the lofty heavens,
Lead me where'er it is Thy pleasure; I will give
A prompt obedience, making no delay,
Lo! here I am. Promptly I come to do Thy sovereign will;
If thy command shall thwart my inclination, I will still
Follow Thee groaning, and the work assigned,
With all the suffering of a mind repugnant,
Will perform, being evil; which, had I been good,
I should have undertaken and performed, though hard,
With virtuous cheerfulness.
The Fates do lead the man that follows willing;
But the man that is unwilling, him they drag." [192]
Most evidently, in this last verse, he calls that "fate" which he had
before called "the will of the Father supreme," whom, he says, he is
ready to obey that he may be led, being willing, not dragged, being
unwilling, since "the Fates do lead the man that follows willing, but
the man that is unwilling, him they drag."
The following Homeric lines, which Cicero translates into Latin, also
favor this opinion :--
"Such are the minds of men, as is the light
Which Father Jove himself doth pour
Illustrious o'er the fruitful earth." [193]
Not that Cicero wishes that a poetical sentiment should have any
weight in a question like this; for when he says that the Stoics, when
asserting the power of fate, were in the habit of using these verses
from Homer, he is not treating concerning the opinion of that poet,
but concerning that of those philosophers, since by these verses,
which they quote in connection with the controversy which they hold
about fate, is most distinctly manifested what it is which they reckon
fate, since they call by the name of Jupiter him whom they reckon the
supreme god, from whom, they say, hangs the whole chain of fates.
Footnotes
[192] Epist. 107.
[193] Odyssey,xviii. 136, 137.
Chapter 9.--Concerning the Foreknowledge of God and the Free Will of
Man, in Opposition to the Definition of Cicero.
The manner in which Cicero addresses himself to the task of refuting
the Stoics, shows that he did not think he could effect anything
against them in argument unless he had first demolished divination.
[194]And this he attempts to accomplish by denying that there is
any knowledge of future things, and maintains with all his might that
there is no such knowledge either in God or man, and that there is no
prediction of events. Thus he both denies the foreknowledge of God,
and attempts by vain arguments, and by opposing to himself certain
oracles very easy to be refuted, to overthrow all prophecy, even such
as is clearer than the light (though even these oracles are not
refuted by him).
But, in refuting these conjectures of the mathematicians, his argument
is triumphant, because truly these are such as destroy and refute
themselves. Nevertheless, they are far more tolerable who assert the
fatal influence of the stars than they who deny the foreknowledge of
future events. For, to confess that God exists, and at the same time
to deny that He has foreknowledge of future things, is the most
manifest folly. This Cicero himself saw, and therefore attempted to
assert the doctrine embodied in the words of Scripture, "The fool hath
said in his heart, There is no God." [195]That, however, he did not
do in his own person, for he saw how odious and offensive such an
opinion would be; and therefore, in his book on the nature of the
gods, [196] he makes Cotta dispute concerning this against the Stoics,
and preferred to give his own opinion in favor of Lucilius Balbus, to
whom he assigned the defence of the Stoical position, rather than in
favor of Cotta, who maintained that no divinity exists. However, in
his book on divination, he in his own person most openly opposes the
doctrine of the prescience of future things. But all this he seems to
do in order that he may not grant the doctrine of fate, and by so
doing destroy free will. For he thinks that, the knowledge of future
things being once conceded, fate follows as so necessary a consequence
that it cannot be denied.
But, let these perplexing debatings and disputations of the
philosophers go on as they may, we, in order that we may confess the
most high and true God Himself, do confess His will, supreme power,
and prescience. Neither let us be afraid lest, after all, we do not
do by will that which we do by will, because He, whose foreknowledge
is infallible, foreknew that we would do it. It was this which Cicero
was afraid of, and therefore opposed foreknowledge. The Stoics also
maintained that all things do not come to pass by necessity, although
they contended that all things happen according to destiny. What is
it, then, that Cicero feared in the prescience of future things?
Doubtless it was this,--that if all future things have been foreknown,
they will happen in the order in which they have been foreknown; and
if they come to pass in this order, there is a certain order of things
foreknown by God; and if a certain order of things, then a certain
order of causes, for nothing can happen which is not preceded by some
efficient cause. But if there is a certain order of causes according
to which everything happens which does happen, then by fate, says he,
all things happen which do happen. But if this be so, then is there
nothing in our own power, and there is no such thing as freedom of
will; and if we grant that, says he, the whole economy of human life
is subverted. In vain are laws enacted. In vain are reproaches,
praises, chidings, exhortations had recourse to; and there is no
justice whatever in the appointment of rewards for the good, and
punishments for the wicked. And that consequences so disgraceful, and
absurd, and pernicious to humanity may not follow, Cicero chooses to
reject the foreknowledge of future things, and shuts up the religious
mind to this alternative, to make choice between two things, either
that something is in our own power, or that there is
foreknowledge,--both of which cannot be true; but if the one is
affirmed, the other is thereby denied. He therefore, like a truly
great and wise man, and one who consulted very much and very
skillfully for the good of humanity, of those two chose the freedom of
the will, to confirm which he denied the foreknowledge of future
things; and thus, wishing to make men free he makes them
sacrilegious. But the religious mind chooses both, confesses both,
and maintains both by the faith of piety. But how so? says Cicero;
for the knowledge of future things being granted, there follows a
chain of consequences which ends in this, that there can be nothing
depending on our own free wills. And further, if there is anything
depending on our wills, we must go backwards by the same steps of
reasoning till we arrive at the conclusion that there is no
foreknowledge of future things. For we go backwards through all the
steps in the following order:--If there is free will, all things do
not happen according to fate; if all things do not happen according to
fate, there is not a certain order of causes; and if there is not a
certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things
foreknown by God,--for things cannot come to pass except they are
preceded by efficient causes,--but, if there is no fixed and certain
order of causes foreknown by God, all things cannot be said to happen
according as He foreknew that they would happen. And further, if it
is not true that all things happen just as they have been foreknown by
Him, there is not, says he, in God any foreknowledge of future events.
Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason, we assert
both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we
do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only
because we will it. But that all things come to pass by fate, we do
not say; nay we affirm that nothing comes to pass by fate; for we
demonstrate that the name of fate, as it is wont to be used by those
who speak of fate, meaning thereby the position of the stars at the
time of each one's conception or birth, is an unmeaning word, for
astrology itself is a delusion. But an order of causes in which the
highest efficiency is attributed to the will of God, we neither deny
nor do we designate it by the name of fate, unless, perhaps, we may
understand fate to mean that which is spoken, deriving it from fari,
to speak; for we cannot deny that it is written in the sacred
Scriptures, "God hath spoken once; these two things have I heard, that
power belongeth unto God. Also unto Thee, O God, belongeth mercy:
for Thou wilt render unto every man according to his works." [197]
Now the expression, "Once hath He spoken," is to be understood as
meaning "immovably," that is, unchangeably hath He spoken, inasmuch as
He knows unchangeably all things which shall be, and all things which
He will do. We might, then, use the word fate in the sense it bears
when derived from fari, to speak, had it not already come to be
understood in another sense, into which I am unwilling that the hearts
of men should unconsciously slide. But it does not follow that,
though there is for God a certain order of all causes, there must
therefore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our own wills,
for our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is
certain to God, and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human wills
are also causes of human actions; and He who foreknew all the causes
of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of
our wills. For even that very concession which Cicero himself makes
is enough to refute him in this argument. For what does it help him
to say that nothing takes place without a cause, but that every cause
is not fatal, there being a fortuitous cause, a natural cause, and a
voluntary cause? It is sufficient that he confesses that whatever
happens must be preceded by a cause. For we say that those causes
which are called fortuitous are not a mere name for the absence of
causes, but are only latent, and we attribute them either to the will
of the true God, or to that of spirits of some kind or other. And as
to natural causes, we by no means separate them from the will of Him
who is the author and framer of all nature. But now as to voluntary
causes. They are referable either to God, or to angels, or to men, or
to animals of whatever description, if indeed those instinctive
movements of animals devoid of reason, by which, in accordance with
their own nature, they seek or shun various things, are to be called
wills. And when I speak of the wills of angels, I mean either the
wills of good angels, whom we call the angels of God, or of the wicked
angels, whom we call the angels of the devil, or demons. Also by the
wills of men I mean the wills either of the good or of the wicked.
And from this we conclude that there are no efficient causes of all
things which come to pass unless voluntary causes, that is, such as
belong to that nature which is the spirit of life. For the air or
wind is called spirit, but, inasmuch as it is a body, it is not the
spirit of life. The spirit of life, therefore, which quickens all
things, and is the creator of every body, and of every created spirit,
is God Himself, the uncreated spirit. In His supreme will resides the
power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the
good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not
granting it to others. For, as He is the creator of all natures, so
also is He the bestower of all powers, not of all wills; for wicked
wills are not from Him, being contrary to nature, which is from Him.
As to bodies, they are more subject to wills: some to our wills, by
which I mean the wills of all living mortal creatures, but more to the
wills of men than of beasts. But all of them are most of all subject
to the will of God, to whom all wills also are subject, since they
have no power except what He has bestowed upon them. The cause of
things, therefore, which makes but is made, is God; but all other
causes both make and are made. Such are all created spirits, and
especially the rational. Material causes, therefore, which may rather
be said to be made than to make, are not to be reckoned among
efficient causes, because they can only do what the wills of spirits
do by them. How, then, does an order of causes which is certain to
the foreknowledge of God necessitate that there should be nothing
which is dependent on our wills, when our wills themselves have a very
important place in the order of causes? Cicero, then, contends with
those who call this order of causes fatal, or rather designate this
order itself by the name of fate; to which we have an abhorrence,
especially on account of the word, which men have become accustomed to
understand as meaning what is not true. But, whereas he denies that
the order of all causes is most certain, and perfectly clear to the
prescience of God, we detest his opinion more than the Stoics do. For
he either denies that God exists,--which, indeed, in an assumed
personage, he has labored to do, in his book De Natura Deorum,--or if
he confesses that He exists, but denies that He is prescient of future
things, what is that but just "the fool saying in his heart there is
no God?" For one who is not prescient of all future things is not
God. Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed
and foreknew that they should have; and therefore whatever power they
have, they have it within most certain limits; and whatever they are
to do, they are most assuredly to do, for He whose foreknowledge is
infallible foreknew that they would have the power to do it, and would
do it. Wherefore, if I should choose to apply the name of fate to
anything at all, I should rather say that fate belongs to the weaker
of two parties, will to the stronger, who has the other in his power,
than that the freedom of our will is excluded by that order of causes,
which, by an unusual application of the word peculiar to themselves,
the Stoics call Fate.
Footnotes
[194] De Divinat.ii.
[195] Ps. xiv. 1.
[196] Book iii.
[197] Ps. lxii. 11, 12.
Chapter 10.--Whether Our Wills are Ruled by Necessity.
Wherefore, neither is that necessity to be feared, for dread of which
the Stoics labored to make such distinctions among the causes of
things as should enable them to rescue certain things from the
dominion of necessity, and to subject others to it. Among those
things which they wished not to be subject to necessity they placed
our wills, knowing that they would not be free if subjected to
necessity. For if that is to be called our necessity which is not in
our power, but even though we be unwilling effects what it can
effect,--as, for instance, the necessity of death,--it is manifest
that our wills by which we live up-rightly or wickedly are not under
such a necessity; for we do many things which, if we were not willing,
we should certainly not do. This is primarily true of the act of
willing itself,--for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is
not,--for we should not will if we were unwilling. But if we define
necessity to be that according to which we say that it is necessary
that anything be of such or such a nature, or be done in such and such
a manner, I know not why we should have any dread of that necessity
taking away the freedom of our will. For we do not put the life of
God or the foreknowledge of God under necessity if we should say that
it is necessary that God should live forever, and foreknow all things;
as neither is His power diminished when we say that He cannot die or
fall into error,--for this is in such a way impossible to Him, that if
it were possible for Him, He would be of less power. But assuredly He
is rightly called omnipotent, though He can neither die nor fall into
error. For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He
wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that
should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He
cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent. So
also, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by
free choice, in so saying we both affirm what is true beyond doubt,
and do not still subject our wills thereby to a necessity which
destroys liberty. Our wills, therefore, exist as wills, and do
themselves whatever we do by willing, and which would not be done if
we were unwilling. But when any one suffers anything, being unwilling
by the will of another, even in that case will retains its essential
validity, --we do not mean the will of the party who inflicts the
suffering, for we resolve it into the power of God. For if a will
should simply exist, but not be able to do what it wills, it would be
overborne by a more powerful will. Nor would this be the case unless
there had existed will, and that not the will of the other party, but
the will of him who willed, but was not able to accomplish what he
willed. Therefore, whatsoever a man suffers contrary to his own will,
he ought not to attribute to the will of men, or of angels, or of any
created spirit, but rather to His will who gives power to wills. It
is not the case, therefore, that because God foreknew what would be in
the power of our wills, there is for that reason nothing in the power
of our wills. For he who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing.
Moreover, if He who foreknew what would be in the power of our wills
did not foreknow nothing, but something, assuredly, even though He did
foreknow, there is something in the power of our wills. Therefore we
are by no means compelled, either, retaining the prescience of God, to
take away the freedom of the will, or, retaining the freedom of the
will, to deny that He is prescient of future things, which is
impious. But we embrace both. We faithfully and sincerely confess
both. The former, that we may believe well; the latter, that we may
live well. For he lives ill who does not believe well concerning
God. Wherefore, be it far from us, in order to maintain our freedom,
to deny the prescience of Him by whose help we are or shall be free.
Consequently, it is not in vain that laws are enacted, and that
reproaches, exhortations, praises, and vituperations are had recourse
to; for these also He foreknew, and they are of great avail, even as
great as He foreknew that they would be of. Prayers, also, are of
avail to procure those things which He foreknew that He would grant to
those who offered them; and with justice have rewards been appointed
for good deeds, and punishments for sins. For a man does not
therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin. Nay, it cannot
be doubted but that it is the man himself who sins when he does sin,
because He, whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew not that fate,
or fortune, or something else would sin, but that the man himself
would sin, who, if he wills not, sins not. But if he shall not will
to sin, even this did God foreknow.
Chapter 11.--Concerning the Universal Providence of God in the Laws of
Which All Things are Comprehended.
Therefore God supreme and true, with His Word and Holy Spirit (which
three are one), one God omnipotent, creator and maker of every soul
and of every body; by whose gift all are happy who are happy through
verity and not through vanity; who made man a rational animal
consisting of soul and body, who, when he sinned, neither permitted
him to go unpunished, nor left him without mercy; who has given to the
good and to the evil, being in common with stones, vegetable life in
common with trees, sensuous life in common with brutes, intellectual
life in common with angels alone; from whom is every mode, every
species, every order; from whom are measure, number, weight; from whom
is everything which has an existence in nature, of whatever kind it
be, and of whatever value; from whom are the seeds of forms and the
forms of seeds, and the motion of seeds and of forms; who gave also to
flesh its origin, beauty, health, reproductive fecundity, disposition
of members, and the salutary concord of its parts; who also to the
irrational soul has given memory, sense, appetite, but to the rational
soul, in addition to these, has given intelligence and will; who has
not left, not to speak of heaven and earth, angels and men, but not
even the entrails of the smallest and most contemptible animal, or the
feather of a bird, or the little flower of a plant, or the leaf of a
tree, without an harmony, and, as it were, a mutual peace among all
its parts;--that God can never be believed to have left the kingdoms
of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of His
providence.
Chapter 12.--By What Virtues the Ancient Romans Merited that the True
God, Although They Did Not Worship Him, Should Enlarge Their Empire.
Wherefore let us go on to consider what virtues of the Romans they
were which the true God, in whose power are also the kingdoms of the
earth, condescended to help in order to raise the empire, and also for
what reason He did so. And, in order to discuss this question on
clearer ground, we have written the former books, to show that the
power of those gods, who, they thought, were to be worshipped with
such trifling and silly rites, had nothing to do in this matter; and
also what we have already accomplished of the present volume, to
refute the doctrine of fate, lest any one who might have been already
persuaded that the Roman empire was not extended and preserved by the
worship of these gods, might still be attributing its extension and
preservation to some kind of fate, rather than to the most powerful
will of God most high. The ancient and primitive Ro mans, therefore,
though their history shows us that, like all the other nations, with
the sole exception of the Hebrews, they worshipped false gods, and
sacrificed victims, not to God, but to demons, have nevertheless this
commendation bestowed on them by their historian, that they were
"greedy of praise, prodigal of wealth, desirous of great glory, and
content with a moderate fortune." [198]Glory they most ardently
loved: for it they wished to live, for it they did not hesitate to
die. Every other desire was repressed by the strength of their
passion for that one thing. At length their country itself, because
it seemed inglorious to serve, but glorious to rule and to command,
they first earnestly desired to be free, and then to be mistress.
Hence it was that, not enduring the domination of kings, they put the
government into the hands of two chiefs, holding office for a year,
who were called consuls, not kings or lords. [199]But royal pomp
seemed inconsistent with the administration of a ruler (regentis), or
the benevolence of one who consults (that is, for the public good)
(consulentis), but rather with the haughtiness of a lord
(dominantis). King Tarquin, therefore, having been banished, and the
consular government having been instituted, it followed, as the same
author already alluded to says in his praises of the Romans, that "the
state grew with amazing rapidity after it had obtained liberty, so
great a desire of glory had taken possession of it." That eagerness
for praise and desire of glory, then, was that which accomplished
those many wonderful things, laudable, doubtless, and glorious
according to human judgment. The same Sallust praises the great men
of his own time, Marcus Cato, and Caius Cæsar, saying that for a long
time the republic had no one great in virtue, but that within his
memory there had been these two men of eminent virtue, and very
different pursuits. Now, among the praises which he pronounces on
Cæsar he put this, that he wished for a great empire, an army, and a
new war, that he might have a sphere where his genius and virtue might
shine forth. Thus it was ever the prayer of men of heroic character
that Bellona would excite miserable nations to war, and lash them into
agitation with her bloody scourge, so that there might be occasion for
the display of their valor. This, forsooth, is what that desire of
praise and thirst for glory did. Wherefore, by the love of liberty in
the first place, afterwards also by that of domination and through the
desire of praise and glory, they achieved many great things; and their
most eminent poet testifies to their having been prompted by all these
motives:
"Porsenna there, with pride elate,
Bids Rome to Tarquin ope her gate;
With arms he hems the city in,
Æneas' sons stand firm to win." [200]
At that time it was their greatest ambition either to die bravely or
to live free; but when liberty was obtained, so great a desire of
glory took possession of them, that liberty alone was not enough
unless domination also should be sought, their great ambition being
that which the same poet puts into the mouth of Jupiter:
"Nay, Juno's self, whose wild alarms
Set ocean, earth, and heaven in arms,
Shall change for smiles her moody frown,
And vie with me in zeal to crown
Rome's sons, the nation of the gown.
So stands my will. There comes a day,
While Rome's great ages hold their way,
When old Assaracus's sons
Shall quit them on the myrmidons,
O'er Phthia and Mycenæ reign,
And humble Argos to their chain." [201]
Which things, indeed, Virgil makes Jupiter predict as future, whilst,
in reality, he was only himself passing in review in his own mind,
things which were already done, and which were beheld by him as
present realities. But I have mentioned them with the intention of
showing that, next to liberty, the Romans so highly esteemed
domination, that it received a place among those things on which they
bestowed the greatest praise. Hence also it is that that poet,
preferring to the arts of other nations those arts which peculiarly
belong to the Romans, namely, the arts of ruling and commanding, and
of subjugating and vanquishing nations, says,
"Others, belike, with happier grace,
From bronze or stone shall call the face,
Plead doubtful causes, map the skies,
And tell when planets set or rise;
But Roman thou, do thou control
The nations far and wide;
Be this thy genius, to impose
The rule of peace on vanquished foes,
Show pity to the humble soul,
And crush the sons of pride." [202]
These arts they exercised with the more skill the less they gave
themselves up to pleasures, and to enervation of body and mind in
coveting and amassing riches, and through these corrupting morals, by
extorting them from the miserable citizens and lavishing them on base
stage-players. Hence these men of base character, who abounded when
Sallust wrote and Virgil sang these things, did not seek after honors
and glory by these arts, but by treachery and deceit. Wherefore the
same says, "But at first it was rather ambition than avarice that
stirred the minds of men, which vice, however, is nearer to virtue.
For glory, honor, and power are desired alike by the good man and by
the ignoble; but the former," he says, "strives onward to them by the
true way, whilst the other, knowing nothing of the good arts, seeks
them by fraud and deceit." [203]And what is meant by seeking the
attainment of glory, honor, and power by good arts, is to seek them by
virtue, and not by deceitful intrigue; for the good and the ignoble
man alike desire these things, but the good man strives to overtake
them by the true way. The way is virtue, along which he presses as to
the goal of possession--namely, to glory, honor, and power. Now that
this was a sentiment engrained in the Roman mind, is indicated even by
the temples of their gods; for they built in very close proximity the
temples of Virtue and Honor, worshipping as gods the gifts of God.
Hence we can understand what they who were good thought to be the end
of virtue, and to what they ultimately referred it, namely, to honor;
for, as to the bad, they had no virtue though they desired honor, and
strove to possess it by fraud and deceit. Praise of a higher kind is
bestowed upon Cato, for he says of him "The less he sought glory, the
more it followed him." [204]We say praise of a higher kind; for the
glory with the desire of which the Romans burned is the judgment of
men thinking well of men. And therefore virtue is better, which is
content with no human judgment save that of one's own conscience.
Whence the apostle says, "For this is our glory, the testimony of our
conscience." [205]And in another place he says, "But let every one
prove his own work, and then he shall have glory in himself, and not
in another." [206]That glory, honor, and power, therefore, which
they desired for themselves, and to which the good sought to attain by
good arts, should not be sought after by virtue, but virtue by them.
For there is no true virtue except that which is directed towards that
end in which is the highest and ultimate good of man. Wherefore even
the honors which Cato sought he ought not to have sought, but the
state ought to have conferred them on him unsolicited, on account of
his virtues.
But, of the two great Romans of that time, Cato was he whose virtue
was by far the nearest to the true idea of virtue. Wherefore, let us
refer to the opinion of Cato himself, to discover what was the
judgment he had formed concerning the condition of the state both then
and in former times. "I do not think," he says, "that it was by arms
that our ancestors made the republic great from being small. Had that
been the case, the republic of our day would have been by far more
flourishing than that of their times, for the number of our allies and
citizens is far greater; and, besides, we possess a far greater
abundance of armor and of horses than they did. But it was other
things than these that made them great, and we have none of them:
industry at home, just government without, a mind free in
deliberation, addicted neither to crime nor to lust. Instead of
these, we have luxury and avarice, poverty in the state, opulence
among citizens; we laud riches, we follow laziness; there is no
difference made between the good and the bad; all the rewards of
virtue are got possession of by intrigue. And no wonder, when every
individual consults only for his own good, when ye are the slaves of
pleasure at home, and, in public affairs, of money and favor, no
wonder that an onslaught is made upon the unprotected republic." [207]
He who hears these words of Cato or of Sallust probably thinks that
such praise bestowed on the ancient Romans was applicable to all of
them, or, at least, to very many of them. It is not so; otherwise the
things which Cato himself writes, and which I have quoted in the
second book of this work, would not be true. In that passage he says,
that even from the very beginning of the state wrongs were committed
by the more powerful, which led to the separation of the people from
the fathers, besides which there were other internal dissensions; and
the only time at which there existed a just and moderate
administration was after the banishment of the kings, and that no
longer than whilst they had cause to be afraid of Tarquin, and were
carrying on the grievous war which had been undertaken on his account
against Etruria; but afterwards the fathers oppressed the people as
slaves, flogged them as the kings had done, drove them from their
land, and, to the exclusion of all others, held the government in
their own hands alone. And to these discords, whilst the fathers were
wishing to rule, and the people were unwilling to serve, the second
Punic war put an end; for again great fear began to press upon their
disquieted minds, holding them back from those distractions by another
and greater anxiety, and bringing them back to civil concord. But the
great things which were then achieved were accomplished through the
administration of a few men, who were good in their own way. And by
the wisdom and forethought of these few good men, which first enabled
the republic to endure these evils and mitigated them, it waxed
greater and greater. And this the same historian affirms, when he
says that, reading and hearing of the many illustrious achievements of
the Roman people in peace and in war, by land and by sea, he wished to
understand what it was by which these great things were specially
sustained. For he knew that very often the Romans had with a small
company contended with great legions of the enemy; and he knew also
that with small resources they had carried on wars with opulent
kings. And he says that, after having given the matter much
consideration, it seemed evident to him that the pre-eminent virtue of
a few citizens had achieved the whole, and that that explained how
poverty overcame wealth, and small numbers great multitudes. But, he
adds, after that the state had been corrupted by luxury and indolence,
again the republic, by its own greatness, was able to bear the vices
of its magistrates and generals. Wherefore even the praises of Cato
are only applicable to a few; for only a few were possessed of that
virtue which leads men to pursue after glory, honor, and power by the
true way,--that is, by virtue itself. This industry at home, of which
Cato speaks, was the consequence of a desire to enrich the public
treasury, even though the result should be poverty at home; and
therefore, when he speaks of the evil arising out of the corruption of
morals, he reverses the expression, and says, "Poverty in the state,
riches at home."
Footnotes
[198] Sallust, Cat. vii.
[199] Augustin notes that the name consul is derived from consulere,
and thus signifies a more benign rule than that of a rex (from
regere), or dominus (from dominari).
[200] Æneid, viii. 646.
[201] Ibid. i. 279.
[202] Ibid. vi. 847.
[203] Sallust, in Cat. c. xi.
[204] Sallust, in Cat. c. 54.
[205] 2 Cor. i. 12.
[206] Gal. vi. 4.
[207] Sallust, in Cat. c. 52.
Chapter 13.--Concerning the Love of Praise, Which, Though It is a
Vice, is Reckoned a Virtue, Because by It Greater Vice is Restrained.
Wherefore, when the kingdoms of the East had been illustrious for a
long time, it pleased God that there should also arise a Western
empire, which, though later in time, should be more illustrious in
extent and greatness. And, in order that it might overcome the
grievous evils which existed among other nations, He purposely granted
it to such men as, for the sake of honor, and praise, and glory,
consulted well for their country, in whose glory they sought their
own, and whose safety they did not hesitate to prefer to their own,
suppressing the desire of wealth and many other vices for this one
vice, namely, the love of praise. For he has the soundest perception
who recognizes that even the love of praise is a vice; nor has this
escaped the perception of the poet Horace, who says,
"You're bloated by ambition? take advice:
Yon book will ease you if you read it thrice." [208]
And the same poet, in a lyric song, hath thus spoken with the desire
of repressing the passion for domination:
"Rule an ambitious spirit, and thou hast
A wider kingdom than if thou shouldst join
To distant Gades Lybia, and thus
Shouldst hold in service either Carthaginian." [209]
Nevertheless, they who restrain baser lusts, not by the power of the
Holy Spirit obtained by the faith of piety, or by the love of
intelligible beauty, but by desire of human praise, or, at all events,
restrain them better by the love of such praise, are not indeed yet
holy, but only less base. Even Tully was not able to conceal this
fact; for, in the same books which he wrote, De Republica, when
speaking concerning the education of a chief of the state, who ought,
he says, to be nourished on glory, goes on to say that their ancestors
did many wonderful and illustrious things through desire of glory. So
far, therefore, from resisting this vice, they even thought that it
ought to be excited and kindled up, supposing that that would be
beneficial to the republic. But not even in his books on philosophy
does Tully dissimulate this poisonous opinion, for he there avows it
more clearly than day. For when he is speaking of those studies which
are to be pursued with a view to the true good, and not with the
vainglorious desire of human praise, he introduces the following
universal and general statement:
"Honor nourishes the arts, and all are stimulated to the prosecution
of studies by glory; and those pursuits are always neglected which are
generally discredited." [210]
Footnotes
[208] Horace, Epist. i. l. 36, 37.
[209] Hor. Carm. ii. 2.
[210] Tusc. Quæst.i. 2.
Chapter 14.--Concerning the Eradication of the Love of Human Praise,
Because All the Glory of the Righteous is in God.
It is, therefore, doubtless far better to resist this desire than to
yield to it, for the purer one is from this defilement, the liker is
he to God; and, though this vice be not thoroughly eradicated from his
heart,--for it does not cease to tempt even the minds of those who are
making good progress in virtue,--at any rate, let the desire of glory
be surpassed by the love of righteousness, so that, if there be seen
anywhere "lying neglected things which are generally discredited," if
they are good, if they are right, even the love of human praise may
blush and yield to the love of truth. For so hostile is this vice to
pious faith, if the love of glory be greater in the heart than the
fear or love of God, that the Lord said, "How can ye believe, who look
for glory from one another, and do not seek the glory which is from
God alone?" [211]Also, concerning some who had believed on Him, but
were afraid to confess Him openly, the evangelist says, "They loved
the praise of men more than the praise of God;" [212] which did not
the holy apostles, who, when they proclaimed the name of Christ in
those places where it was not only discredited, and therefore
neglected,--according as Cicero says, "Those things are always
neglected which are generally discredited,"--but was even held in the
utmost detestation, holding to what they had heard from the Good
Master, who was also the physician of minds, "If any one shall deny me
before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven,
and before the angels of God," [213] amidst maledictions and
reproaches, and most grievous persecutions and cruel punishments, were
not deterred from the preaching of human salvation by the noise of
human indignation. And when, as they did and spake divine things, and
lived divine lives, conquering, as it were, hard hearts, and
introducing into them the peace of righteousness, great glory followed
them in the church of Christ, they did not rest in that as in the end
of their virtue, but, referring that glory itself to the glory of God,
by whose grace they were what they were, they sought to kindle, also
by that same flame, the minds of those for whose good they consulted,
to the love of Him, by whom they could be made to be what they
themselves were. For their Master had taught them not to seek to be
good for the sake of human glory, saying, "Take heed that ye do not
your righteousness before men to be seen of them, or otherwise ye
shall not have a reward from your Father who is in heaven." [214]
But again, lest, understanding this wrongly, they should, through fear
of pleasing men, be less useful through concealing their goodness,
showing for what end they ought to make it known, He says, "Let your
works shine before men, that they may see your good deeds, and glorify
your Father who is in heaven." [215]Not, observe, "that ye may be
seen by them, that is, in order that their eyes may be directed upon
you,"--for of yourselves ye are, nothing,--but "that they may glorify
your Father who is in heaven," by fixing their regards on whom they
may become such as ye are. These the martyrs followed, who surpassed
the Scævolas, and the Curtiuses, and the Deciuses, both in true
virtue, because in true piety, and also in the greatness of their
number. But since those Romans were in an earthly city, and had
before them, as the end of all the offices undertaken in its behalf,
its safety, and a kingdom, not in heaven, but in earth,--not in the
sphere of eternal life, but in the sphere of demise and succession,
where the dead are succeeded by the dying,--what else but glory should
they love, by which they wished even after death to live in the mouths
of their admirers?
Footnotes
[211] John v. 44.
[212] John xii. 43.
[213] Matt. x. 33.
[214] Matt. vi. 1.
[215] Matt. v. 16.
Chapter 15.--Concerning the Temporal Reward Which God Granted to the
Virtues of the Romans.
Now, therefore, with regard to those to whom God did not purpose to
give eternal life with His holy angels in His own celestial city, to
the society of which that true piety which does not render the service
of religion, which the Greeks call latreia, to any save the true God
conducts, if He had also withheld from them the terrestrial glory of
that most excellent empire, a reward would not have been rendered to
their good arts,--that is, their virtues,--by which they sought to
attain so great glory. For as to those who seem to do some good that
they may receive glory from men, the Lord also says, "Verily I say
unto you, they have received their reward." [216]So also these
despised their own private affairs for the sake of the republic, and
for its treasury resisted avarice, consulted for the good of their
country with a spirit of freedom, addicted neither to what their laws
pronounced to be crime nor to lust. By all these acts, as by the true
way, they pressed forward to honors, power, and glory; they were
honored among almost all nations; they imposed the laws of their
empire upon many nations; and at this day, both in literature and
history, they are glorious among almost all nations. There is no
reason why they should complain against the justice of the supreme and
true God,--"they have received their reward."
Footnotes
[216] Matt. vi. 2.
Chapter 16.--Concerning the Reward of the Holy Citizens of the
Celestial City, to Whom the Example of the Virtues of the Romans are
Useful.
But the reward of the saints is far different, who even here endured
reproaches for that city of God which is hateful to the lovers of this
world. That city is eternal. There none are born, for none die.
There is true and full felicity,--not a goddess, but a gift of God.
Thence we receive the pledge of faith whilst on our pilgrimage we sigh
for its beauty. There rises not the sun on the good and the evil, but
the Sun of Righteousness protects the good alone. There no great
industry shall be expended to enrich the public treasury by suffering
privations at home, for there is the common treasury of truth. And,
therefore, it was not only for the sake of recompensing the citizens
of Rome that her empire and glory had been so signally extended, but
also that the citizens of that eternal city, during their pilgrimage
here, might diligently and soberly contemplate these examples, and see
what a love they owe to the supernal country on account of life
eternal, if the terrestrial country was so much beloved by its
citizens on account of human glory.
Chapter 17.--To What Profit the Romans Carried on Wars, and How Much
They Contributed to the Well-Being of Those Whom They Conquered.
For, as far as this life of mortals is concerned, which is spent and
ended in a few days, what does it matter under whose government a
dying man lives, if they who govern do not force him to impiety and
iniquity? Did the Romans at all harm those nations, on whom, when
subjugated, they imposed their laws, except in as far as that was
accomplished with great slaughter in war? Now, had it been done with
consent of the nations, it would have been done with greater success,
but there would have been no glory of conquest, for neither did the
Romans themselves live exempt from those laws which they imposed on
others. Had this been done without Mars and Bellona, so that there
should have been no place for victory, no one conquering where no one
had fought, would not the condition of the Romans and of the other
nations have been one and the same, especially if that had been done
at once which afterwards was done most humanely and most acceptably,
namely, the admission of all to the rights of Roman citizens who
belonged to the Roman empire, and if that had been made the privilege
of all which was formerly the privilege of a few, with this one
condition, that the humbler class who had no lands of their own should
live at the public expense--an alimentary impost, which would have
been paid with a much better grace by them into the hands of good
administrators of the republic, of which they were members, by their
own hearty consent, than it would have been paid with had it to be
extorted from them as conquered men? For I do not see what it makes
for the safety, good morals, and certainly not for the dignity, of
men, that some have conquered and others have been conquered, except
that it yields them that most insane pomp of human glory, in which
"they have received their reward," who burned with excessive desire of
it, and carried on most eager wars. For do not their lands pay
tribute? Have they any privilege of learning what the others are not
privileged to learn? Are there not many senators in the other
countries who do not even know Rome by sight? Take away outward show,
[217] and what are all men after all but men? But even though the
perversity of the age should permit that all the better men should be
more highly honored than others, neither thus should human honor be
held at a great price, for it is smoke which has no weight. But let
us avail ourselves even in these things of the kindness of God. Let
us consider how great things they despised, how great things they
endured, what lusts they subdued for the sake of human glory, who
merited that glory, as it were, in reward for such virtues; and let
this be useful to us even in suppressing pride, so that, as that city
in which it has been promised us to reign as far surpasses this one as
heaven is distant from the earth, as eternal life surpasses temporal
joy, solid glory empty praise, or the society of angels the society of
mortals, or the glory of Him who made the sun and moon the light of
the sun and moon, the citizens of so great a country may not seem to
themselves to have done anything very great, if, in order to obtain
it, they have done some good works or endured some evils, when those
men for this terrestrial country already obtained, did such great
things, suffered such great things. And especially are all these
things to be considered, because the remission of sins which collects
citizens to the celestial country has something in it to which a
shadowy resemblance is found in that asylum of Romulus, whither escape
from the punishment of all manner of crimes congregated that multitude
with which the state was to be founded.
Footnotes
[217] Jactantia.
Chapter 18.--How Far Christians Ought to Be from Boasting, If They
Have Done Anything for the Love of the Eternal Country, When the
Romans Did Such Great Things for Human Glory and a Terrestrial City.
What great thing, therefore, is it for that eternal and celestial city
to despise all the charms of this world, however pleasant, if for the
sake of this terrestrial city Brutus could even put to death his
son,--a sacrifice which the heavenly city compels no one to make? But
certainly it is more difficult to put to death one's sons, than to do
what is required to be done for the heavenly country, even to
distribute to the poor those things which were looked upon as things
to be massed and laid up for one's children, or to let them go, if
there arise any temptation which compels us to do so, for the sake of
faith and righteousness. For it is not earthly riches which make us
or our sons happy; for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime,
or be possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or perhaps by
whom we would not. But it is God who makes us happy, who is the true
riches of minds. But of Brutus, even the poet who celebrates his
praises testifies that it was the occasion of unhappiness to him that
he slew his son, for he says,
"And call his own rebellious seed
For menaced liberty to bleed.
Unhappy father! howsoe'er
The deed be judged by after days." [218]
But in the following verse he consoles him in his unhappiness, saying,
"His country's love shall all o'erbear."
There are those two things, namely, liberty and the desire of human
praise, which compelled the Romans to admirable deeds. If, therefore,
for the liberty of dying men, and for the desire of human praise which
is sought after by mortals, sons could be put to death by a father,
what great thing is it, if, for the true liberty which has made us
free from the dominion of sin, and death, and the devil,--not through
the desire of human praise, but through the earnest desire of fleeing
men, not from King Tarquin, but from demons and the prince of the
demons,--we should, I do not say put to death our sons, but reckon
among our sons Christ's poor ones? If, also, another Roman chief,
surnamed Torquatus, slew his son, not because he fought against his
country, but because, being challenged by an enemy, he through
youthful impetuosity fought, though for his country, yet contrary to
orders which he his father had given as general; and this he did,
notwithstanding that his son was victorious, lest there should be more
evil in the example of authority despised, than good in the glory of
slaying an enemy;--if, I say, Torquatus acted thus, wherefore should
they boast themselves, who, for the laws of a celestial country,
despise all earthly good things, which are loved far less than sons?
If Furius Camillus, who was condemned by those who envied him,
notwithstanding that he had thrown off from the necks of his
countrymen the yoke of their most bitter enemies, the Veientes, again
delivered his ungrateful country from the Gauls, because he had no
other in which he could have better opportunities for living a life of
glory;--if Camillus did thus, why should he be extolled as having done
some great thing, who, having, it may be, suffered in the church at
the hands of carnal enemies most grievous and dishonoring injury, has
not betaken himself to heretical enemies, or himself raised some
heresy against her, but has rather defended her, as far as he was
able, from the most pernicious perversity of heretics, since there is
not another church, I say not in which one can live a life of glory,
but in which eternal life can be obtained? If Mucius, in order that
peace might be made with King Porsenna, who was pressing the Romans
with a most grievous war, when he did not succeed in slaying Porsenna,
but slew another by mistake for him, reached forth his right hand and
laid it on a red-hot altar, saying that many such as he saw him to be
had conspired for his destruction, so that Porsenna, terrified at his
daring, and at the thought of a conspiracy of such as he, without any
delay recalled all his warlike purposes, and made peace;--if, I say,
Mucius did this, who shall speak of his meritorious claims to the
kingdom of heaven, if for it he may have given to the flames not one
hand, but even his whole body, and that not by his own spontaneous
act, but because he was persecuted by another? If Curtius, spurring
on his steed, threw himself all armed into a precipitous gulf, obeying
the oracles of their gods, which had commanded that the Romans should
throw into that gulf the best thing which they possessed, and they
could only understand thereby that, since they excelled in men and
arms, the gods had commanded that an armed man should be cast headlong
into that destruction;--if he did this, shall we say that that man has
done a great thing for the eternal city who may have died by a like
death, not, however, precipitating himself spontaneously into a gulf,
but having suffered this death at the hands of some enemy of his
faith, more especially when he has received from his Lord, who is also
King of his country, a more certain oracle, "Fear not them who kill
the body, but cannot kill the soul?" [219]If the Decii dedicated
themselves to death, consecrating themselves in a form of words, as it
were, that falling, and pacifying by their blood the wrath of the
gods, they might be the means of delivering the Roman army;--if they
did this, let not the holy martyrs carry themselves proudly, as though
they had done some meritorious thing for a share in that country where
are eternal life and felicity, if even to the shedding of their blood,
loving not only the brethren for whom it was shed, but, according as
had been commanded them, even their enemies by whom it was being shed,
they have vied with one another in faith of love and love of faith.
If Marcus Pulvillus, when engaged in dedicating a temple to Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva, received with such indifference the false
intelligence which was brought to him of the death of his son, with
the intention of so agitating him that he should go away, and thus the
glory of dedicating the temple should fall to his colleague;--if he
received that intelligence with such indifference that he even ordered
that his son should be cast out unburied, the love of glory having
overcome in his heart the grief of bereavement, how shall any one
affirm that he had done a great thing for the preaching of the gospel,
by which the citizens of the heavenly city are delivered from divers
errors and gathered together from divers wanderings, to whom his Lord
has said, when anxious about the burial of his father, "Follow me, and
let the dead bury their dead?" [220]Regulus, in order not to break
his oath, even with his most cruel enemies, returned to them from Rome
itself, because (as he is said to have replied to the Romans when they
wished to retain him) he could not have the dignity of an honorable
citizen at Rome after having been a slave to the Africans, and the
Carthaginians put him to death with the utmost tortures, because he
had spoken against them in the senate. If Regulus acted thus, what
tortures are not to be despised for the sake of good faith toward that
country to whose beatitude faith itself leads? Or what will a man
have rendered to the Lord for all He has bestowed upon him, if, for
the faithfulness he owes to Him, he shall have suffered such things as
Regulus suffered at the hands of his most ruthless enemies for the
good faith which he owed to them? And how shall a Christian dare
vaunt himself of his voluntary poverty, which he has chosen in order
that during the pilgrimage of this life he may walk the more
disencumbered on the way which leads to the country where the true
riches are, even God Himself;--how, I say, shall he vaunt himself for
this, when he hears or reads that Lucius Valerius, who died when he
was holding the office of consul, was so poor that his funeral
expenses were paid with money collected by the people?--or when he
hears that Quintius Cincinnatus, who, possessing only four acres of
land, and cultivating them with his own hands, was taken from the
plough to be made dictator,--an office more honorable even than that
of consul,--and that, after having won great glory by conquering the
enemy, he preferred notwithstanding to continue in his poverty? Or
how shall he boast of having done a great thing, who has not been
prevailed upon by the offer of any reward of this world to renounce
his connection with that heavenly and eternal country, when he hears
that Fabricius could not be prevailed on to forsake the Roman city by
the great gifts offered to him by Pyrrhus king of the Epirots, who
promised him the fourth part of his kingdom, but preferred to abide
there in his poverty as a private individual? For if, when their
republic,--that is, the interest of the people, the interest of the
country, the common interest,--was most prosperous and wealthy, they
themselves were so poor in their own houses, that one of them, who had
already been twice a consul, was expelled from that senate of poor men
by the censor, because he was discovered to possess ten pounds weight
of silverplate,--since, I say, those very men by whose triumphs the
public treasury was enriched were so poor, ought not all Christians,
who make common property of their riches with a far nobler purpose,
even that (according to what is written in the Acts of the Apostles)
they may distribute to each one according to his need, and that no one
may say that anything is his own, but that all things may be their
common possession, [221] --ought they not to understand that they
should not vaunt themselves, because they do that to obtain the
society of angels, when those men did well-nigh the same thing to
preserve the glory of the Romans?
How could these, and whatever like things are found in the Roman
history, have become so widely known, and have been proclaimed by so
great a fame, had not the Roman empire, extending far and wide, been
raised to its greatness by magnificent successes? Wherefore, through
that empire, so extensive and of so long continuance, so illustrious
and glorious also through the virtues of such great men, the reward
which they sought was rendered to their earnest aspirations, and also
examples are set before us, containing necessary admonition, in order
that we may be stung with shame if we shall see that we have not held
fast those virtues for the sake of the most glorious city of God,
which are, in whatever way, resembled by those virtues which they held
fast for the sake of the glory of a terrestrial city, and that, too,
if we shall feel conscious that we have held them fast, we may not be
lifted up with pride, because, as the apostle says, "The sufferings of
the present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which
shall be revealed in us." [222]But so far as regards human and
temporal glory, the lives of these ancient Romans were reckoned
sufficiently worthy. Therefore, also, we see, in the light of that
truth which, veiled in the Old Testament, is revealed in the New,
namely, that it is not in view of terrestrial and temporal benefits,
which divine providence grants promiscuously to good and evil, that
God is to be worshipped, but in view of eternal life, everlasting
gifts, and of the society of the heavenly city itself;--in the light
of this truth we see that the Jews were most righteously given as a
trophy to the glory of the Romans; for we see that these Romans, who
rested on earthly glory, and sought to obtain it by virtues, such as
they were, conquered those who, in their great depravity, slew and
rejected the giver of true glory, and of the eternal city.
Footnotes
[218] Æneid, vi. 820.
[219] Matt. x. 28.
[220] Matt. viii. 22.
[221] Acts ii. 45.
[222] Rom. viii. 18.
Chapter 19.--Concerning the Difference Between True Glory and the
Desire of Domination.
There is assuredly a difference between the desire of human glory and
the desire of domination; for, though he who has an overweening
delight in human glory will be also very prone to aspire earnestly
after domination, nevertheless they who desire the true glory even of
human praise strive not to displease those who judge well of them.
For there are many good moral qualities, of which many are competent
judges, although they are not possessed by many; and by those good
moral qualities those men press on to glory, honor and domination, of
whom Sallust says, "But they press on by the true way."
But whosoever, without possessing that desire of glory which makes one
fear to displease those who judge his conduct, desires domination and
power, very often seeks to obtain what he loves by most open crimes.
Therefore he who desires glory presses on to obtain it either by the
true way, or certainly by deceit and artifice, wishing to appear good
when he is not. Therefore to him who possesses virtues it is a great
virtue to despise glory; for contempt of it is seen by God, but is not
manifest to human judgment. For whatever any one does before the eyes
of men in order to show himself to be a despiser of glory, if they
suspect that he is doing it in order to get greater praise,--that is,
greater glory,--he has no means of demonstrating to the perceptions of
those who suspect him that the case is really otherwise than they
suspect it to be. But he who despises the judgment of praisers,
despises also the rashness of suspectors. Their salvation, indeed, he
does not despise, if he is truly good; for so great is the
righteousness of that man who receives his virtues from the Spirit of
God, that he loves his very enemies, and so loves them that he desires
that his haters and detractors may be turned to righteousness, and
become his associates, and that not in an earthly but in a heavenly
country. But with respect to his praisers, though he sets little
value on their praise, he does not set little value on their love;
neither does he elude their praise, lest he should forfeit their
love. And, therefore, he strives earnestly to have their praises
directed to Him from whom every one receives whatever in him is truly
praiseworthy. But he who is a despiser of glory, but is greedy of
domination, exceeds the beasts in the vices of cruelty and
luxuriousness. Such, indeed, were certain of the Romans, who, wanting
the love of esteem, wanted not the thirst for domination; and that
there were many such, history testifies. But it was Nero Cæsar who
was the first to reach the summit, and, as it were, the citadel, of
this vice; for so great was his luxuriousness, that one would have
thought there was nothing manly to be dreaded in him, and such his
cruelty, that, had not the contrary been known, no one would have
thought there was anything effeminate in his character. Nevertheless
power and domination are not given even to such men save by the
providence of the most high God, when He judges that the state of
human affairs is worthy of such lords. The divine utterance is clear
on this matter; for the Wisdom of God thus speaks: "By me kings
reign, and tyrants possess the land." [223]But, that it may not be
thought that by "tyrants" is meant, not wicked and impious kings, but
brave men, in accordance with the ancient use of the word, as when
Virgil says,
"For know that treaty may not stand
Where king greets king and joins not hand," [224]
in another place it is most unambiguously said of God, that He "maketh
the man who is an hypocrite to reign on account of the perver sity of
the people." [225]Wherefore, though I have, according to my
ability, shown for what reason God, who alone is true and just, helped
forward the Romans, who were good according to a certain standard of
an earthly state, to the acquirement of the glory of so great an
empire, there may be, nevertheless, a more hidden cause, known better
to God than to us, depending on the diversity of the merits of the
human race. Among all who are truly pious, it is at all events agreed
that no one without true piety,--that is, true worship of the true
God--can have true virtue; and that it is not true virtue which is the
slave of human praise. Though, nevertheless, they who are not
citizens of the eternal city, which is called the city of God in the
sacred Scriptures, are more useful to the earthly city when they
possess even that virtue than if they had not even that. But there
could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that, by the
mercy of God, they who are endowed with true piety of life, if they
have the skill for ruling people, should also have the power. But
such men, however great virtues they may possess in this life,
attribute it solely to the grace of God that He has bestowed it on
them--willing, believing, seeking. And, at the same time, they
understand how far they are short of that perfection of righteousness
which exists in the society of those holy angels for which they are
striving to fit themselves. But however much that virtue may be
praised and cried up, which without true piety is the slave of human
glory, it is not at all to be compared even to the feeble beginnings
of the virtue of the saints, whose hope is placed in the grace and
mercy of the true God.
Footnotes
[223] Prov. viii. 15.
[224] Æneid, vii. 266.
[225] Job xxxiv. 30.
Chapter 20.--That It is as Shameful for the Virtues to Serve Human
Glory as Bodily Pleasure.
Philosophers,--who place the end of human good in virtue itself, in
order to put to shame certain other philosophers, who indeed approve
of the virtues, but measure them all with reference to the end of
bodily pleasure, and think that this pleasure is to be sought for its
own sake, but the virtues on account of pleasure,--are wont to paint a
kind of word-picture, in which Pleasure sits like a luxurious queen on
a royal seat, and all the virtues are subjected to her as slaves,
watching her nod, that they may do whatever she shall command. She
commands Prudence to be ever on the watch to discover how Pleasure may
rule, and be safe. Justice she orders to grant what benefits she can,
in order to secure those friendships which are necessary for bodily
pleasure; to do wrong to no one, lest, on account of the breaking of
the laws, Pleasure be not able to live in security. Fortitude she
orders to keep her mistress, that is, Pleasure, bravely in her mind,
if any affliction befall her body which does not occasion death, in
order that by remembrance of former delights she may mitigate the
poignancy of present pain. Temperance she commands to take only a
certain quantity even of the most favorite food, lest, through
immoderate use, anything prove hurtful by disturbing the health of the
body, and thus Pleasure, which the Epicureans make to consist chiefly
in the health of the body, be grievously offended. Thus the virtues,
with the whole dignity of their glory, will be the slaves of Pleasure,
as of some imperious and disreputable woman.
There is nothing, say our philosophers, more disgraceful and monstrous
than this picture, and which the eyes of good men can less endure.
And they say the truth. But I do not think that the picture would be
sufficiently becoming, even if it were made so that the virtues should
be represented as the slaves of human glory; for, though that glory be
not a luxurious woman, it is nevertheless puffed up, and has much
vanity in it. Wherefore it is unworthy of the solidity and firmness
of the virtues to represent them as serving this glory, so that
Prudence shall provide nothing, Justice distribute nothing, Temperance
moderate nothing, except to the end that men may be pleased and vain
glory served. Nor will they be able to defend themselves from the
charge of such baseness, whilst they, by way of being despisers of
glory, disregard the judgment of other men, seem to themselves wise,
and please themselves. For their virtue,--if, indeed, it is virtue at
all,--is only in another way subjected to human praise; for he who
seeks to please himself seeks still to please man. But he who, with
true piety towards God, whom he loves, believes, and hopes in, fixes
his attention more on those things in which he displeases himself,
than on those things, if there are any such, which please himself, or
rather, not himself, but the truth, does not attribute that by which
he can now please the truth to anything but to the mercy of Him whom
he has feared to displease, giving thanks for what in him is healed,
and pouring out prayers for the healing of that which is yet unhealed.
Chapter 21.--That the Roman Dominion Was Granted by Him from Whom is
All Power, and by Whose Providence All Things are Ruled.
These things being so, we do not attribute the power of giving
kingdoms and empires to any save to the true God, who gives happiness
in the kingdom of heaven to the pious alone, but gives kingly power on
earth both to the pious and the impious, as it may please Him, whose
good pleasure is always just. For though we have said something about
the principles which guide His administration, in so far as it has
seemed good to Him to explain it, nevertheless it is too much for us,
and far surpasses our strength, to discuss the hidden things of men's
hearts, and by a clear examination to determine the merits of various
kingdoms. He, therefore, who is the one true God, who never leaves
the human race without just judgment and help, gave a kingdom to the
Romans when He would, and as great as He would, as He did also to the
Assyrians, and even the Persians, by whom, as their own books testify,
only two gods are worshipped, the one good and the other evil,--to say
nothing concerning the Hebrew people, of whom I have already spoken as
much as seemed necessary, who, as long as they were a kingdom,
worshipped none save the true God. The same, therefore, who gave to
the Persians harvests, though they did not worship the goddess
Segetia, who gave the other blessings of the earth, though they did
not worship the many gods which the Romans supposed to preside, each
one over some particular thing, or even many of them over each several
thing,--He, I say, gave the Persians dominion, though they worshipped
none of those gods to whom the Romans believed themselves indebted for
the empire. And the same is true in respect of men as well as
nations. He who gave power to Marius gave it also to Caius Cæsar; He
who gave it to Augustus gave it also to Nero; He also who gave it to
the most benignant emperors, the Vespasians, father and son, gave it
also to the cruel Domitian; and, finally, to avoid the necessity of
going over them all, He who gave it to the Christian Constantine gave
it also to the apostate Julian, whose gifted mind was deceived by a
sacrilegious and detestable curiosity, stimulated by the love of
power. And it was because he was addicted through curiosity to vain
oracles, that, confident of victory, he burned the ships which were
laden with the provisions necessary for his army, and therefore,
engaging with hot zeal in rashly audacious enterprises, he was soon
slain, as the just consequence of his recklessness, and left his army
unprovisioned in an enemy's country, and in such a predicament that it
never could have escaped, save by altering the boundaries of the Roman
empire, in violation of that omen of the god Terminus of which I spoke
in the preceding book; for the god Terminus yielded to necessity,
though he had not yielded to Jupiter. Manifestly these things are
ruled and governed by the one God according as He pleases; and if His
motives are hid, are they therefore unjust?
Chapter 22.--The Durations and Issues of War Depend on the Will of
God.
Thus also the durations of wars are determined by Him as He may see
meet, according to His righteous will, and pleasure, and mercy, to
afflict or to console the human race, so that they are sometimes of
longer, sometimes of shorter duration. The war of the Pirates and the
third Punic war were terminated with incredible celerity. Also the
war of the fugitive gladiators, though in it many Roman generals and
the consuls were defeated, and Italy was terribly wasted and ravaged,
was nevertheless ended in the third year, having itself been, during
its continuance, the end of much. The Picentes, the Marsi, and the
Peligni, not distant but Italian nations, after a long and most loyal
servitude under the Roman yoke, attempted to raise their heads into
liberty, though many nations had now been subjected to the Roman
power, and Carthage had been overthrown. In this Italian war the
Romans were very often defeated, and two consuls perished, besides
other noble senators; nevertheless this calamity was not protracted
over a long space of time, for the fifth year put an end to it. But
the second Punic war, lasting for the space of eighteen years, and
occasioning the greatest disasters and calamities to the republic,
wore out and well-nigh consumed the strength of the Romans; for in two
battles about seventy thousand Romans fell. [226]The first Punic
war was terminated after having been waged for three-and-twenty
years. The Mithridatic war was waged for forty years. And that no
one may think that in the early and much belauded times of the Romans
they were far braver and more able to bring wars to a speedy
termination, the Samnite war was protracted for nearly fifty years;
and in this war the Romans were so beaten that they were even put
under the yoke. But because they did not love glory for the sake of
justice, but seemed rather to have loved justice for the sake of
glory, they broke the peace and the treaty which had been concluded.
These things I mention, because many, ignorant of past things, and
some also dissimulating what they know, if in Christian times they see
any war protracted a little longer than they expected, straightway
make a fierce and insolent attack on our religion, exclaiming that,
but for it, the deities would have been supplicated still, according
to ancient rites; and then, by that bravery of the Romans, which, with
the help of Mars and Bellona, speedily brought to an end such great
wars, this war also would be speedily terminated. Let them,
therefore, who have read history recollect what long-continued wars,
having various issues and entailing woeful slaughter, were waged by
the ancient Romans, in accordance with the general truth that the
earth, like the tempestuous deep, is subject to agitations from
tempests--tempests of such evils, in various degrees,--and let them
sometimes confess what they do not like to own, and not, by madly
speaking against God, destroy themselves and deceive the ignorant.
Footnotes
[226] Of the Thrasymene Lake and Cannæ.
Chapter 23.--Concerning the War in Which Radagaisus, King of the
Goths, a Worshipper of Demons, Was Conquered in One Day, with All His
Mighty Forces.
Nevertheless they do not mention with thanksgiving what God has very
recently, and within our own memory, wonderfully and mercifully done,
but as far as in them lies they attempt, if possible, to bury it in
universal oblivion. But should we be silent about these things, we
should be in like manner ungrateful. When Radagaisus, king of the
Goths, having taken up his position very near to the city, with a vast
and savage army, was already close upon the Romans, he was in one day
so speedily and so thoroughly beaten, that, whilst not even one Roman
was wounded, much less slain, far more than a hundred thousand of his
army were prostrated, and he himself and his sons, having been
captured, were forthwith put to death, suffering the punishment they
deserved. For had so impious a man, with so great and so impious a
host, entered the city, whom would he have spared? what tombs of the
martyrs would he have respected? in his treatment of what person would
he have manifested the fear of God? whose blood would he have
refrained from shedding? whose chastity would he have wished to
preserve inviolate? But how loud would they not have been in the
praises of their gods! How insultingly they would have boasted,
saying that Radagaisus had conquered, that he had been able to achieve
such great things, because he propitiated and won over the gods by
daily sacrifices,--a thing which the Christian religion did not allow
the Romans to do! For when he was approaching to those places where
he was overwhelmed at the nod of the Supreme Majesty, as his fame was
everywhere increasing, it was being told us at Carthage that the
pagans were believing, publishing, and boasting, that he, on account
of the help and protection of the gods friendly to him, because of the
sacrifices which he was said to be daily offering to them, would
certainly not be conquered by those who were not performing such
sacrifices to the Roman gods, and did not even permit that they should
be offered by any one. And now these wretched men do not give thanks
to God for his great mercy, who, having determined to chastise the
corruption of men, which was worthy of far heavier chastisement than
the corruption of the barbarians, tempered His indignation with such
mildness as, in the first instance, to cause that the king of the
Goths should be conquered in a wonderful manner, lest glory should
accrue to demons, whom he was known to be supplicating, and thus the
minds of the weak should be overthrown; and then, afterwards, to cause
that, when Rome was to be taken, it should be taken by those
barbarians who, contrary to any custom of all former wars, protected,
through reverence for the Christian religion, those who fled for
refuge to the sacred places, and who so opposed the demons themselves,
and the rites of impious sacrifices, that they seemed to be carrying
on a far more terrible war with them than with men. Thus did the true
Lord and Governor of things both scourge the Romans mercifully, and,
by the marvellous defeat of the worshippers of demons, show that those
sacrifices were not necessary even for the safety of present things;
so that, by those who do not obstinately hold out, but prudently
consider the matter, true religion may not be deserted on account of
the urgencies of the present time, but may be more clung to in most
confident expectation of eternal life.
Chapter 24.--What Was the Happiness of the Christian Emperors, and How
Far It Was True Happiness.
For neither do we say that certain Christian emperors were therefore
happy because they ruled a long time, or, dying a peaceful death, left
their sons to succeed them in the empire, or subdued the enemies of
the republic, or were able both to guard against and to suppress the
attempt of hostile citizens rising against them. These and other
gifts or comforts of this sorrowful life even certain worshippers of
demons have merited to receive, who do not belong to the kingdom of
God to which these belong; and this is to be traced to the mercy of
God, who would not have those who believe in Him desire such things as
the highest good. But we say that they are happy if they rule justly;
if they are not lifted up amid the praises of those who pay them
sublime honors, and the obsequiousness of those who salute them with
an excessive humility, but remember that they are men; if they make
their power the handmaid of His majesty by using it for the greatest
possible extension of His worship; if they fear, love, worship God; if
more than their own they love that kingdom in which they are not
afraid to have partners; if they are slow to punish, ready to pardon;
if they apply that punishment as necessary to government and defence
of the republic, and not in order to gratify their own enmity; if they
grant pardon, not that iniquity may go unpunished, but with the hope
that the transgressor may amend his ways; if they compensate with the
lenity of mercy and the liberality of benevolence for whatever
severity they may be compelled to decree; if their luxury is as much
restrained as it might have been unrestrained; if they prefer to
govern depraved desires rather than any nation whatever; and if they
do all these things, not through ardent desire of empty glory, but
through love of eternal felicity, not neglecting to offer to the true
God, who is their God, for their sins, the sacrifices of humility,
contrition, and prayer. Such Christian emperors, we say, are happy in
the present time by hope, and are destined to be so in the enjoyment
of the reality itself, when that which we wait for shall have arrived.
Chapter 25.--Concerning the Prosperity Which God Granted to the
Christian Emperor Constantine.
For the good God, lest men, who believe that He is to be worshipped
with a view to eternal life, should think that no one could attain to
all this high estate, and to this terrestrial dominion, unless he
should be a worshipper of the demons,--supposing that these spirits
have great power with respect to such things,--for this reason He gave
to the Emperor Constantine, who was not a worshipper of demons, but of
the true God Himself, such fullness of earthly gifts as no one would
even dare wish for. To him also He granted the honor of founding a
city, [227] a companion to the Roman empire, the daughter, as it were,
of Rome itself, but without any temple or image of the demons. He
reigned for a long period as sole emperor, and unaided held and
defended the whole Roman world. In conducting and carrying on wars he
was most victorious; in overthrowing tyrants he was most successful.
He died at a great age, of sickness and old age, and left his sons to
succeed him in the empire. [228]But again, lest any emperor should
become a Christian in order to merit the happiness of Constantine,
when every one should be a Christian for the sake of eternal life, God
took away Jovian far sooner than Julian, and permitted that Gratian
should be slain by the sword of a tyrant. But in his case there was
far more mitigation of the calamity than in the case of the great
Pompey, for he could not be avenged by Cato, whom he had left, as it
were, heir to the civil war. But Gratian, though pious minds require
not such consolations, was avenged by Theodosius, whom he had
associated with himself in the empire, though he had a little brother
of his own, being more desirous of a faithful alliance than of
extensive power.
Footnotes
[227] Constantinople.
[228] Constantius, Constantine, and Constans.
Chapter 26.--On the Faith and Piety of Theodosius Augustus.
And on this account, Theodosius not only preserved during the lifetime
of Gratian that fidelity which was due to him, but also, after his
death, he, like a true Christian, took his little brother Valentinian
under his protection, as joint emperor, after he had been expelled by
Maximus, the murderer of his father. He guarded him with paternal
affection, though he might without any difficulty have got rid of him,
being entirely destitute of all resources, had he been animated with
the desire of extensive empire, and not with the ambition of being a
benefactor. It was therefore a far greater pleasure to him, when he
had adopted the boy, and preserved to him his imperial dignity, to
console him by his very humanity and kindness. Afterwards, when that
success was rendering Maximus terrible, Theodosius, in the midst of
his perplexing anxieties, was not drawn away to follow the suggestions
of a sacrilegious and unlawful curiosity, but sent to John, whose
abode was in the desert of Egypt,--for he had learned that this
servant of God (whose fame was spreading abroad) was endowed with the
gift of prophecy,--and from him he received assurance of victory.
Immediately the slayer of the tyrant Maximus, with the deepest
feelings of compassion and respect, restored the boy Valentinianus to
his share in the empire from which he had been driven. Valentinianus
being soon after slain by secret assassination, or by some other plot
or accident, Theodosius, having again received a response from the
prophet, and placing entire confidence in it, marched against the
tyrant Eugenius, who had been unlawfully elected to succeed that
emperor, and defeated his very powerful army, more by prayer than by
the sword. Some soldiers who were at the battle reported to me that
all the missiles they were throwing were snatched from their hands by
a vehement wind, which blew from the direction of Theodosius' army
upon the enemy; nor did it only drive with greater velocity the darts
which were hurled against them, but also turned back upon their own
bodies the darts which they themselves were throwing. And therefore
the poet Claudian, although an alien from the name of Christ,
nevertheless says in his praises of him, "O prince, too much beloved
by God, for thee Æolus pours armed tempests from their caves; for thee
the air fights, and the winds with one accord obey thy bugles." [229]
But the victor, as he had believed and predicted, overthrew the
statues of Jupiter, which had been, as it were, consecrated by I know
not what kind of rites against him, and set up in the Alps. And the
thunderbolts of these statues, which were made of gold, he mirthfully
and graciously presented to his couriers who (as the joy of the
occasion permitted) were jocularly saying that they would be most
happy to be struck by such thunderbolts. The sons of his own enemies,
whose fathers had been slain not so much by his orders as by the
vehemence of war, having fled for refuge to a church, though they were
not yet Christians, he was anxious, taking advantage of the occasion,
to bring over to Christianity, and treated them with Christian love.
Nor did he deprive them of their property, but, besides allowing them
to retain it, bestowed on them additional honors. He did not permit
private animosities to affect the treatment of any man after the war.
He was not like Cinna, and Marius, and Sylla, and other such men, who
wished not to finish civil wars even when they were finished, but
rather grieved that they had arisen at all, than wished that when they
were finished they should harm any one. Amid all these events, from
the very commencement of his reign, he did not cease to help the
troubled church against the impious by most just and merciful laws,
which the heretical Valens, favoring the Arians, had vehemently
afflicted. Indeed, he rejoiced more to be a member of this church
than he did to be a king upon the earth. The idols of the Gentiles he
everywhere ordered to be overthrown, understanding well that not even
terrestrial gifts are placed in the power of demons, but in that of
the true God. And what could be more admirable than his religious
humility, when, compelled by the urgency of certain of his intimates,
he avenged the grievous crime of the Thessalonians, which at the
prayer of the bishops he had promised to pardon, and, being laid hold
of by the discipline of the church, did penance in such a way that the
sight of his imperial loftiness prostrated made the people who were
interceding for him weep more than the consciousness of offence had
made them fear it when enraged? These and other similar good works,
which it would be long to tell, he carried with him from this world of
time, where the greatest human nobility and loftiness are but vapor.
Of these works the reward is eternal happiness, of which God is the
giver, though only to those who are sincerely pious. But all other
blessings and privileges of this life, as the world itself, light,
air, earth, water, fruits, and the soul of man himself, his body,
senses, mind, life, He lavishes on good and bad alike. And among
these blessings is also to be reckoned the possession of an empire,
whose extent He regulates according to the requirements of His
providential government at various times. Whence, I see, we must now
answer those who, being confuted and convicted by the most manifest
proofs, by which it is shown that for obtaining these terrestrial
things, which are all the foolish desire to have, that multitude of
false gods is of no use, attempt to assert that the gods are to be
worshipped with a view to the interest, not of the present life, but
of that which is to come after death. For as to those who, for the
sake of the friendship of this world, are willing to worship vanities,
and do not grieve that they are left to their puerile understandings,
I think they have been sufficiently answered in these five books; of
which books, when I had published the first three, and they had begun
to come into the hands of many, I heard that certain persons were
preparing against them an answer of some kind or other in writing.
Then it was told me that they had already written their answer, but
were waiting a time when they could publish it without danger. Such
persons I would advise not to desire what cannot be of any advantage
to them; for it is very easy for a man to seem to himself to have
answered arguments, when he has only been unwilling to be silent. For
what is more loquacious than vanity? And though it be able, if it
like, to shout more loudly than the truth, it is not, for all that,
more powerful than the truth. But let men consider diligently all the
things that we have said, and if, perchance, judging without party
spirit, they shall clearly perceive that they are such things as may
rather be shaken than torn up by their most impudent garrulity, and,
as it were, satirical and mimic levity, let them restrain their
absurdities, and let them choose rather to be corrected by the wise
than to be lauded by the foolish. For if they are waiting an
opportunity, not for liberty to speak the truth, but for license to
revile, may not that befall them which Tully says concerning some one,
"Oh, wretched man! who was at liberty to sin?" [230]Wherefore,
whoever he be who deems himself happy because of license to revile, he
would be far happier if that were not allowed him at all; for he might
all the while, laying aside empty boast, be contradicting those to
whose views he is opposed by way of free consultation with them, and
be listening, as it becomes him, honorably, gravely, candidly, to all
that can be adduced by those whom he consults by friendly disputation.
Footnotes
[229] Panegyr, de tertio Honorii consulatu.
[230] Tusc. Quæst.v. 19.
.
Book VI.
Argument--Hitherto the argument has been conducted against those who
believe that the gods are to be worshipped for the sake of temporal
advantages, now it is directed against those who believe that they are
to be worshipped for the sake of eternal life. Augustin devotes the
five following books to the confutation of this latter belief, and
first of all shows how mean an opinion of the gods was held by Varro
himself, the most esteemed writer on heathen theology. Of this
theology Augustin adopts Varro's division into three kinds, mythical,
natural, and civil; and at once demonstrates that neither the mythical
nor the civil can contribute anything to the happiness of the future
life.
Preface.
In the five former books, I think I have sufficiently disputed against
those who believe that the many false gods, which the Christian truth
shows to be useless images, or unclean spirits and pernicious demons,
or certainly creatures, not the Creator, are to be worshipped for the
advantage of this mortal life, and of terrestrial affairs, with that
rite and service which the Greeks call latreia, and which is due to
the one true God. And who does not know that, in the face of
excessive stupidity and obstinacy, neither these five nor any other
number of books whatsoever could be enough, when it is esteemed the
glory of vanity to yield to no amount of strength on the side of
truth,--certainly to his destruction over whom so heinous a vice
tyrannizes? For, notwithstanding all the assiduity of the physician
who attempts to effect a cure, the disease remains unconquered, not
through any fault of his, but because of the incurableness of the sick
man. But those who thoroughly weigh the things which they read,
having understood and considered them, without any, or with no great
and excessive degree of that obstinacy which belongs to a
long-cherished error, will more readily judge that, in the five books
already finished, we have done more than the necessity of the question
demanded, than that we have given it less discussion than it
required. And they cannot have doubted but that all the hatred which
the ignorant attempt to bring upon the Christian religion on account
of the disasters of this life, and the destruction and change which
befall terrestrial things, whilst the learned do not merely
dissimulate, but encourage that hatred, contrary to their own
consciences, being possessed by a mad impiety;--they cannot have
doubted, I say, but that this hatred is devoid of right reflection and
reason, and full of most light temerity, and most pernicious
animosity.
Chapter 1.--Of Those Who Maintain that They Worship the Gods Not for
the Sake of Temporal But Eternal Advantages.
Now, as, in the next place (as the promised order demands), those are
to be refuted and taught who contend that the gods of the nations,
which the Christian truth destroys, are to be worshipped not on
account of this life, but on account of that which is to be after
death, I shall do well to commence my disputation with the truthful
oracle of the holy psalm, "Blessed is the man whose hope is the Lord
God, and who respecteth not vanities and lying follies." [231]
Nevertheless, in all vanities and lying follies the philosophers are
to be listened to with far more toleration, who have repudiated those
opinions and errors of the people; for the people set up images to the
deities, and either feigned concerning those whom they call immortal
gods many false and unworthy things, or believed them, already
feigned, and, when believed, mixed them up with their worship and
sacred rites.
With those men who, though not by free avowal of their convictions, do
still testify that they disapprove of those things by their muttering
disapprobation during disputations on the subject, it may not be very
far amiss to discuss the following question: Whether for the sake of
the life which is to be after death, we ought to worship, not the one
God who made all creatures spiritual and corporeal, but those many
gods who, as some of these philosophers hold, were made by that one
God, and placed by Him in their respective sublime spheres, and are
therefore considered more excellent and more noble than all the
others? [232]But who will assert that it must be affirmed and
contended that those gods, certain of whom I have mentioned in the
fourth book, [233] to whom are distributed, each to each, the charges
of minute things, do bestow eternal life? But will those most skilled
and most acute men, who glory in having written for the great benefit
of men, to teach on what account each god is to be worshipped, and
what is to be sought from each, lest with most disgraceful absurdity,
such as a mimic is wont for the sake of merriment to exhibit, water
should be sought from Liber, wine from the Lymphs,--will those men
indeed affirm to any man supplicating the immortal gods, that when he
shall have asked wine from the Lymphs, and they shall have answered
him, "We have water, seek wine from Liber," he may rightly say, "If ye
have not wine, at least give me eternal life?" What more monstrous
than this absurdity? Will not these Lymphs,--for they are wont to be
very easily made laugh, [234] --laughing loudly (if they do not
attempt to deceive like demons), answer the suppliant, "O man, dost
thou think that we have life (vitam) in our power, who thou hearest
have not even the vine (vitem)?" It is therefore most impudent folly
to seek and hope for eternal life from such gods as are asserted so to
preside over the separate minute concernments of this most sorrowful
and short life, and whatever is useful for supporting and propping it,
as that if anything which is under the care and power of one be sought
from another, it is so incongruous and absurd that it appears very
like to mimic drollery,--which, when it is done by mimics knowing what
they are doing, is deservedly laughed at in the theatre, but when it
is done by foolish persons, who do not know better, is more deservedly
ridiculed in the world. Wherefore, as concerns those gods which the
states have established, it has been cleverly invented and handed down
to memory by learned men, what god or goddess is to be supplicated in
relation to every particular thing,--what, for instance, is to be
sought from Liber, what from the Lymphs, what from Vulcan, and so of
all the rest, some of whom I have mentioned in the fourth book, and
some I have thought right to omit. Further, if it is an error to seek
wine from Ceres, bread from Liber, water from Vulcan, fire from the
Lymphs, how much greater absurdity ought it to be thought, if
supplication be made to any one of these for eternal life?
Wherefore, if, when we were inquiring what gods or goddesses are to be
believed to be able to confer earthly kingdoms upon men, all things
having been discussed, it was shown to be very far from the truth to
think that even terrestrial kingdoms are established by any of those
many false deities, is it not most insane impiety to believe that
eternal life, which is, without any doubt or comparison, to be
preferred to all terrestrial kingdoms, can be given to any one by any
of these gods? For the reason why such gods seemed to us not to be
able to give even an earthly kingdom, was not because they are very
great and exalted, whilst that is something small and abject, which
they, in their so great sublimity, would not condescend to care for,
but because, however deservedly any one may, in consideration of human
frailty, despise the falling pinnacles of an earthly kingdom, these
gods have presented such an appearance as to seem most unworthy to
have the granting and preserving of even those entrusted to them; and
consequently, if (as we have taught in the two last books of our work,
where this matter is treated of) no god out of all that crowd, either
belonging to, as it were, the plebeian or to the noble gods, is fit to
give mortal kingdoms to mortals, how much less is he able to make
immortals of mortals?
And more than this, if, according to the opinion of those with whom we
are now arguing, the gods are to be worshipped, not on account of the
present life, but of that which is to be after death, then, certainly,
they are not to be worshipped on account of those particular things
which are distributed and portioned out (not by any law of rational
truth, but by mere vain conjecture) to the power of such gods, as they
believe they ought to be worshipped, who contend that their worship is
necessary for all the desirable things of this mortal life, against
whom I have disputed sufficiently, as far as I was able, in the five
preceding books. These things being so, if the age itself of those
who worshipped the goddess Juventas should be characterized by
remarkable vigor, whilst her despisers should either die within the
years of youth, or should, during that period, grow cold as with the
torpor of old age; if bearded Fortuna should cover the cheeks of her
worshippers more handsomely and more gracefully than all others,
whilst we should see those by whom she was despised either altogether
beardless or ill-bearded; even then we should most rightly say, that
thus far these several gods had power, limited in some way by their
functions, and that, consequently, neither ought eternal life to be
sought from Juventas, who could not give a beard, nor ought any good
thing after this life to be expected from Fortuna Barbata, who has no
power even in this life to give the age itself at which the beard
grows. But now, when their worship is necessary not even on account
of those very things which they think are subjected to their
power,--for many worshippers of the goddess Juventas have not been at
all vigorous at that age, and many who do not worship her rejoice in
youthful strength; and also many suppliants of Fortuna Barbata have
either not been able to attain to any beard at all, not even an ugly
one, although they who adore her in order to obtain a beard are
ridiculed by her bearded despisers,--is the human heart really so
foolish as to believe that that worship of the gods, which it
acknowledges to be vain and ridiculous with respect to those very
temporal and swiftly passing gifts, over each of which one of these
gods is said to preside, is fruitful in results with respect to
eternal life? And that they are able to give eternal life has not
been affirmed even by those who, that they might be worshipped by the
silly populace, distributed in minute division among them these
temporal occupations, that none of them might sit idle; for they had
supposed the existence of an exceedingly great number.
Footnotes
[231] Ps. xl. 4.
[232] Plato, in the Timæus.
[233] Ch. xi. and xxi.
[234] See Virgil, Ec. iii. 9.
Chapter 2.--What We are to Believe that Varro Thought Concerning the
Gods of the Nations, Whose Various Kinds and Sacred Rites He Has Shown
to Be Such that He Would Have Acted More Reverently Towards Them Had
He Been Altogether Silent Concerning Them.
Who has investigated those things more carefully than Marcus Varro?
Who has discovered them more learnedly? Who has considered them more
attentively? Who has distinguished them more acutely? Who has
written about them more diligently and more fully?--who, though he is
less pleasing in his eloquence, is nevertheless so full of instruction
and wisdom, that in all the erudition which we call secular, but they
liberal, he will teach the student of things as much as Cicero
delights the student of words. And even Tully himself renders him
such testimony, as to say in his Academic books that he had held that
disputation which is there carried on with Marcus Varro, "a man," he
adds, "unquestionably the acutest of all men, and, without any doubt,
the most learned." [235]He does not say the most eloquent or the
most fluent, for in reality he was very deficient in this faculty, but
he says, "of all men the most acute." And in those books,--that is,
the Academic,--where he contends that all things are to be doubted, he
adds of him, "without any doubt the most learned." In truth, he was
so certain concerning this thing, that he laid aside that doubt which
he is wont to have recourse to in all things, as if, when about to
dispute in favor of the doubt of the Academics, he had, with respect
to this one thing, forgotten that he was an Academic. But in the
first book, when he extols the literary works of the same Varro, he
says, "Us straying and wandering in our own city like strangers, thy
books, as it were, brought home, that at length we might come to know
of who we were and where we were. Thou has opened up to us the age of
the country, the distribution of seasons, the laws of sacred things,
and of the priests; thou hast opened up to us domestic and public
discipline; thou hast pointed out to us the proper places for
religious ceremonies, and hast informed us concerning sacred places.
Thou hast shown us the names, kinds, offices, causes of all divine and
human things." [236]
This man, then, of so distinguished and excellent acquirements, and,
as Terentian briefly says of him in a most elegant verse,
"Varro, a man universally informed," [237]
who read so much that we wonder when he had time to write, wrote so
much that we can scarcely believe any one could have read it
all,--this man, I say, so great in talent, so great in learning, had
he had been an opposer and destroyer of the so-called divine things of
which he wrote, and had he said that they pertained to superstition
rather than to religion, might perhaps, even in that case, not have
written so many things which are ridiculous, contemptible,
detestable. But when he so worshipped these same gods, and so
vindicated their worship, as to say, in that same literary work of
his, that he was afraid lest they should perish, not by an assault by
enemies, but by the negligence of the citizens, and that from this
ignominy they are being delivered by him, and are being laid up and
preserved in the memory of the good by means of such books, with a
zeal far more beneficial than that through which Metellus is declared
to have rescued the sacred things of Vesta from the flames, and Æneas
to have rescued the Penates from the burning of Troy; and when he
nevertheless, gives forth such things to be read by succeeding ages as
are deservedly judged by wise and unwise to be unfit to be read, and
to be most hostile to the truth of religion; what ought we to think
but that a most acute and learned man,--not, however made free by the
Holy Spirit,--was overpowered by the custom and laws of his state,
and, not being able to be silent about those things by which he was
influenced, spoke of them under pretence of commending religion?
Footnotes
[235] Of the four books De Acad., dedicated to Varro, only a part of
the first is extant.
[236] Cicero, De Quæst. Acad. i. 3.
[237] In his book De Metris,, chapter on phalæcian verses.
Chapter 3.--Varro's Distribution of His Book Which He Composed
Concerning the Antiquities of Human and Divine Things.
He wrote forty-one books of antiquities. These he divided into human
and divine things. Twenty-five he devoted to human things, sixteen to
divine things; following this plan in that division,--namely, to give
six books to each of the four divisions of human things. For he
directs his attention to these considerations: who perform, where
they perform, when they perform, what they perform. Therefore in the
first six books he wrote concerning men; in the second six, concerning
places; in the third six, concerning times; in the fourth and last
six, concerning things. Four times six, however, make only
twenty-four. But he placed at the head of them one separate work,
which spoke of all these things conjointly.
In divine things, the same order he preserved throughout, as far as
concerns those things which are performed to the gods. For sacred
things are performed by men in places and times. These four things I
have mentioned he embraced in twelve books, allotting three to each.
For he wrote the first three concerning men, the following three
concerning places, the third three concerning times, and the fourth
three concerning sacred rites,--showing who should perform, where they
should perform, when they should perform, what they should perform,
with most subtle distinction. But because it was necessary to
say--and that especially was expected--to whom they should perform
sacred rites, he wrote concerning the gods themselves the last three
books; and these five times three made fifteen. But they are in all,
as we have said, sixteen. For he put also at the beginning of these
one distinct book, speaking by way of introduction of all which
follows; which being finished, he proceeded to subdivide the first
three in that five-fold distribution which pertain to men, making the
first concerning high priests, the second concerning augurs, the third
concerning the fifteen men presiding over the sacred ceremonies. [238]
The second three he made concerning places, speaking in one of them
concerning their chapels, in the second concerning their temples, and
in the third concerning religious places. The next three which follow
these, and pertain to times,--that is, to festival days,--he
distributed so as to make one concerning holidays, the other
concerning the circus games, and the third concerning scenic plays.
Of the fourth three, pertaining to sacred things, he devoted one to
consecrations, another to private, the last to public, sacred rites.
In the three which remain, the gods themselves follow this pompous
train, as it were, for whom all this culture has been expended. In
the first book are the certain gods, in the second the uncertain, in
the third, and last of all, the chief and select gods.
Footnotes
[238] Tarquin the Proud, having bought the books of the sibyl,
appointed two men to preserve and interpret them (Dionys. Halic.
Antiq. iv. 62. These were afterwards increased to ten, while the
plebeians were contended for larger privileges; and subsequently five
more were added.
Chapter 4.--That from the Disputation of Varro, It Follows that the
Worshippers of the Gods Regard Human Things as More Ancient Than
Divine Things.
In this whole series of most beautiful and most subtle distributions
and distinctions, it will most easily appear evident from the things
we have said already, and from what is to be said hereafter, to any
man who is not, in the obstinacy of his heart, an enemy to himself,
that it is vain to seek and to hope for, and even most impudent to
wish for eternal life. For these institutions are either the work of
men or of demons,--not of those whom they call good demons, but, to
speak more plainly, of unclean, and, without controversy, malign
spirits, who with wonderful slyness and secretness suggest to the
thoughts of the impious, and sometimes openly present to their
understandings, noxious opinions, by which the human mind grows more
and more foolish, and becomes unable to adapt itself to and abide in
the immutable and eternal truth, and seek to confirm these opinions by
every kind of fallacious attestation in their power. This very same
Varro testifies that he wrote first concerning human things, but
afterwards concerning divine things, because the states existed first,
and afterward these things were instituted by them. But the true
religion was not instituted by any earthly state, but plainly it
established the celestial city. It, however, is inspired and taught
by the true God, the giver of eternal life to His true worshippers.
The following is the reason Varro gives when he confesses that he had
written first concerning human things, and afterwards of divine
things, because these divine things were instituted by men:--"As the
painter is before the painted tablet, the mason before the edifice, so
states are before those things which are instituted by states." But
he says that he would have written first concerning the gods,
afterwards concerning men, if he had been writing concerning the whole
nature of the gods,--as if he were really writing concerning some
portion of, and not all, the nature of the gods; or as if, indeed,
some portion of, though not all, the nature of the gods ought not to
be put before that of men. How, then, comes it that in those three
last books, when he is diligently explaining the certain, uncertain
and select gods, he seems to pass over no portion of the nature of the
gods? Why, then, does he say, "If we had been writing on the whole
nature of the gods, we would first have finished the divine things
before we touched the human?" For he either writes concerning the
whole nature of the gods, or concerning some portion of it, or
concerning no part of it at all. If concerning it all, it is
certainly to be put before human things; if concerning some part of
it, why should it not, from the very nature of the case, precede human
things? Is not even some part of the gods to be preferred to the
whole of humanity? But if it is too much to prefer a part of the
divine to all human things, that part is certainly worthy to be
preferred to the Romans at least. For he writes the books concerning
human things, not with reference to the whole world, but only to Rome;
which books he says he had properly placed, in the order of writing,
before the books on divine things, like a painter before the painted
tablet, or a mason before the building, most openly confessing that,
as a picture or a structure, even these divine things were instituted
by men. There remains only the third supposition, that he is to be
understood to have written concerning no divine nature, but that he
did not wish to say this openly, but left it to the intelligent to
infer; for when one says "not all," usage understands that to mean
"some," but it may be understood as meaning none, because that which
is none is neither all nor some. In fact, as he himself says, if he
had been writing concerning all the nature of the gods, its due place
would have been before human things in the order of writing. But, as
the truth declares, even though Varro is silent, the divine nature
should have taken precedence of Roman things, though it were not all,
but only some. But it is properly put after, therefore it is none.
His arrangement, therefore, was due, not to a desire to give human
things priority to divine things, but to his unwillingness to prefer
false things to true. For in what he wrote on human things, he
followed the history of affairs; but in what he wrote concerning those
things which they call divine, what else did he follow but mere
conjectures about vain things? This, doubtless, is what, in a subtle
manner, he wished to signify; not only writing concerning divine
things after the human, but even giving a reason why he did so; for if
he had suppressed this, some, perchance, would have defended his doing
so in one way, and some in another. But in that very reason he has
rendered, he has left nothing for men to conjecture at will, and has
sufficiently proved that he preferred men to the institutions of men,
not the nature of men to the nature of the gods. Thus he confessed
that, in writing the books concerning divine things, he did not write
concerning the truth which belongs to nature, but the falseness which
belongs to error; which he has elsewhere expressed more openly (as I
have mentioned in the fourth book [239] ), saying that, had he been
founding a new city himself, he would have written according to the
order of nature; but as he had only found an old one, he could not but
follow its custom.
Footnotes
[239] Ch. 31.
Chapter 5.--Concerning the Three Kinds of Theology According to Varro,
Namely, One Fabulous, the Other Natural, the Third Civil.
Now what are we to say of this proposition of his, namely, that there
are three kinds of theology, that is, of the account which is given of
the gods; and of these, the one is called mythical, the other
physical, and the third civil? Did the Latin usage permit, we should
call the kind which he has placed first in order fabular, [240] but
let us call it fabulous, [241] for mythical is derived from the Greek
muthos, a fable; but that the second should be called natural, the
usage of speech now admits; the third he himself has designated in
Latin, call ing it civil. [242]Then he says, "they call that kind
mythical which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the
philosophers use; civil, that which the people use. As to the first I
have mentioned," says he, "in it are many fictions, which are contrary
to the dignity and nature of the immortals. For we find in it that
one god has been born from the head, another from the thigh, another
from drops of blood; also, in this we find that gods have stolen,
committed adultery, served men; in a word, in this all manner of
things are attributed to the gods, such as may befall, not merely any
man, but even the most contemptible man." He certainly, where he
could, where he dared, where he thought he could do it with impunity,
has manifested, without any of the haziness of ambiguity, how great
injury was done to the nature of the gods by lying fables; for he was
speaking, not concerning natural theology, not concerning civil, but
concerning fabulous theology, which he thought he could freely find
fault with.
Let us see, now, what he says concerning the second kind. "The second
kind which I have explained," he says, "is that concerning which
philosophers have left many books, in which they treat such questions
as these: what gods there are, where they are, of what kind and
character they are, since what time they have existed, or if they have
existed from eternity; whether they are of fire, as Heraclitus
believes; or of number, as Pythagoras; or of atoms, as Epicurus says;
and other such things, which men's ears can more easily hear inside
the walls of a school than outside in the Forum." He finds fault with
nothing in this kind of theology which they call physical, and which
belongs to philosophers, except that he has related their
controversies among themselves, through which there has arisen a
multitude of dissentient sects. Nevertheless he has removed this kind
from the Forum, that is, from the populace, but he has shut it up in
schools. But that first kind, most false and most base, he has not
removed from the citizens. Oh, the religious ears of the people, and
among them even those of the Romans, that are not able to bear what
the philosophers dispute concerning the gods! But when the poets sing
and stage-players act such things as are derogatory to the dignity and
the nature of the immortals, such as may befall not a man merely, but
the most contemptible man, they not only bear, but willingly listen
to. Nor is this all, but they even consider that these things please
the gods, and that they are propitiated by them.
But some one may say, Let us distinguish these two kinds of theology,
the mythical and the physical,--that is, the fabulous and the
natural,--from this civil kind about which we are now speaking.
Anticipating this, he himself has distinguished them. Let us see now
how he explains the civil theology itself. I see, indeed, why it
should be distinguished as fabulous, even because it is false, because
it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the
natural from the civil, what else is that but to confess that the
civil itself is false? For if that be natural, what fault has it that
it should be excluded? And if this which is called civil be not
natural, what merit has it that it should be admitted? This, in
truth, is the cause why he wrote first concerning human things, and
afterwards concerning divine things; since in divine things he did not
follow nature, but the institution of men. Let us look at this civil
theology of his. "The third kind," says he, "is that which citizens
in cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and to
administer. From it is to be known what god each one may suitably
worship, what sacred rites and sacrifices each one may suitably
perform." Let us still attend to what follows. "The first theology,"
he says, "is especially adapted to the theatre, the second to the
world, the third to the city." Who does not see to which he gives the
palm? Certainly to the second, which he said above is that of the
philosophers. For he testifies that this pertains to the world, than
which they think there is nothing better. But those two theologies,
the first and the third,--to wit, those of the theatre and of the
city,--has he distinguished them or united them? For although we see
that the city is in the world, we do not see that it follows that any
things belonging to the city pertain to the world. For it is possible
that such things may be worshipped and believed in the city, according
to false opinions, as have no existence either in the world or out of
it. But where is the theatre but in the city? Who instituted the
theatre but the state? For what purpose did it constitute it but for
scenic plays? And to what class of things do scenic plays belong but
to those divine things concerning which these books of Varro's are
written with so much ability?
Footnotes
[240] Fabulare.
[241] Fabulosum.
[242] Civile.
Chapter 6.--Concerning the Mythic, that Is, the Fabulous, Theology,
and the Civil, Against Varro.
O Marcus Varro! thou art the most acute, and without doubt the most
learned, but still a man, not God,--now lifted up by the Spirit of God
to see and to announce divine things, thou seest, indeed, that divine
things are to be separated from human trifles and lies, but thou
fearest to offend those most corrupt opinions of the populace, and
their customs in public superstitions, which thou thyself, when thou
considerest them on all sides, perceivest, and all your literature
loudly pronounces to be abhorrent from the nature of the gods, even of
such gods as the frailty of the human mind supposes to exist in the
elements of this world. What can the most excellent human talent do
here? What can human learning, though manifold, avail thee in this
perplexity? Thou desirest to worship the natural gods; thou art
compelled to worship the civil. Thou hast found some of the gods to
be fabulous, on whom thou vomitest forth very freely what thou
thinkest, and, whether thou willest or not, thou wettest therewith
even the civil gods. Thou sayest, forsooth, that the fabulous are
adapted to the theatre, the natural to the world, and the civil to the
city; though the world is a divine work, but cities and theatres are
the works of men, and though the gods who are laughed at in the
theatre are not other than those who are adored in the temples; and ye
do not exhibit games in honor of other gods than those to whom ye
immolate victims. How much more freely and more subtly wouldst thou
have decided these hadst thou said that some gods are natural, others
established by men; and concerning those who have been so established,
the literature of the poets gives one account, and that of the priests
another,--both of which are, nevertheless, so friendly the one to the
other, through fellowship in falsehood, that they are both pleasing to
the demons, to whom the doctrine of the truth is hostile.
That theology, therefore, which they call natural, being put aside for
a moment, as it is afterwards to be discussed, we ask if any one is
really content to seek a hope for eternal life from poetical,
theatrical, scenic gods? Perish the thought! The true God avert so
wild and sacrilegious a madness! What, is eternal life to be asked
from those gods whom these things pleased, and whom these things
propitiate, in which their own crimes are represented? No one, as I
think, has arrived at such a pitch of headlong and furious impiety.
So then, neither by the fabulous nor by the civil theology does any
one obtain eternal life. For the one sows base things concerning the
gods by feigning them, the other reaps by cherishing them; the one
scatters lies, the other gathers them together; the one pursues divine
things with false crimes, the other incorporates among divine things
the plays which are made up of these crimes; the one sounds abroad in
human songs impious fictions concerning the gods, the other
consecrates these for the festivities of the gods themselves; the one
sings the misdeeds and crimes of the gods, the other loves them; the
one gives forth or feigns, the other either attests the true or
delights in the false. Both are base; both are damnable. But the one
which is theatrical teaches public abomination, and that one which is
of the city adorns itself with that abomination. Shall eternal life
be hoped for from these, by which this short and temporal life is
polluted? Does the society of wicked men pollute our life if they
insinuate themselves into our affections, and win our assent? and does
not the society of demons pollute the life, who are worshipped with
their own crimes?--if with true crimes, how wicked the demons! if with
false, how wicked the worship!
When we say these things, it may perchance seem to some one who is
very ignorant of these matters that only those things concerning the
gods which are sung in the songs of the poets and acted on the stage
are unworthy of the divine majesty, and ridiculous, and too detestable
to be celebrated, whilst those sacred things which not stage-players
but priests perform are pure and free from all unseemliness. Had this
been so, never would any one have thought that these theatrical
abominations should be celebrated in their honor, never would the gods
themselves have ordered them to be performed to them. But men are in
nowise ashamed to perform these things in the theatres, because
similar things are carried on in the temples. In short, when the
fore-mentioned author attempted to distinguish the civil theology from
the fabulous and natural, as a sort of third and distinct kind, he
wished it to be understood to be rather tempered by both than
separated from either. For he says that those things which the poets
write are less than the people ought to follow, whilst what the
philosophers say is more than it is expedient for the people to pry
into. "Which," says he, "differ in such a way, that nevertheless not
a few things from both of them have been taken to the account of the
civil theology; wherefore we will indicate what the civil theology has
in common with that of the poet, though it ought to be more closely
connected with the theology of philosophers." Civil theology is
therefore not quite disconnected from that of the poets.
Nevertheless, in another place, concerning the generations of the
gods, he says that the people are more inclined toward the poets than
toward the physical theologists. For in this place he said what ought
to be done; in that other place, what was really done. He said that
the latter had written for the sake of utility, but the poets for the
sake of amusement. And hence the things from the poets' writings,
which the people ought not to follow, are the crimes of the gods;
which, nevertheless, amuse both the people and the gods. For, for
amusement's sake, he says, the poets write, and not for that of
utility; nevertheless they write such things as the gods will desire,
and the people perform.
Chapter 7.--Concerning the Likeness and Agreement of the Fabulous and
Civil Theologies.
That theology, therefore, which is fabulous, theatrical, scenic, and
full of all baseness and unseemliness, is taken up into the civil
theology; and part of that theology, which in its totality is
deservedly judged to be worthy of reprobation and rejection, is
pronounced worthy to be cultivated and observed;--not at all an
incongruous part, as I have undertaken to show, and one which, being
alien to the whole body, was unsuitably attached to and suspended from
it, but a part entirely congruous with, and most harmoniously fitted
to the rest, as a member of the same body. For what else do those
images, forms, ages, sexes, characteristics of the gods show? If the
poets have Jupiter with a beard and Mercury beardless, have not the
priests the same? Is the Priapus of the priests less obscene than the
Priapus of the players? Does he receive the adoration of worshippers
in a different form from that in which he moves about the stage for
the amusement of spectators? Is not Saturn old and Apollo young in
the shrines where their images stand as well as when represented by
actors' masks? Why are Forculus, who presides over doors, and
Limentinus, who presides over thresholds and lintels, male gods, and
Cardea between them feminine, who presides over hinges? Are not those
things found in books on divine things, which grave poets have deemed
unworthy of their verses? Does the Diana of the theatre carry arms,
whilst the Diana of the city is simply a virgin? Is the stage Apollo
a lyrist, but the Delphic Apollo ignorant of this art? But these
things are decent compared with the more shameful things. What was
thought of Jupiter himself by those who placed his wet nurse in the
Capitol? Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who, not with the
garrulity of a fable-teller, but with the gravity of an historian who
had diligently investigated the matter, wrote that all such gods had
been men and mortals? And they who appointed the Epulones as
parasites at the table of Jupiter, what else did they wish for but
mimic sacred rites. For if any mimic had said that parasites of
Jupiter were made use of at his table, he would assuredly have
appeared to be seeking to call forth laughter. Varro said it,--not
when he was mocking, but when he was commending the gods did he say
it. His books on divine, not on human, things testify that he wrote
this,--not where he set forth the scenic games, but where he explained
the Capitoline laws. In a word, he is conquered, and confesses that,
as they made the gods with a human form, so they believed that they
are delighted with human pleasures.
For also malign spirits were not so wanting to their own business as
not to confirm noxious opinions in the minds of men by converting them
into sport. Whence also is that story about the sacristan of
Hercules, which says that, having nothing to do, he took to playing at
dice as a pastime, throwing them alternately with the one hand for
Hercules, with the other for himself, with this understanding, that if
he should win, he should from the funds of the temple prepare himself
a supper, and hire a mistress; but if Hercules should win the game, he
himself should, at his own expense, provide the same for the pleasure
of Hercules. Then, when he had been beaten by himself, as though by
Hercules, he gave to the god Hercules the supper he owed him, and also
the most noble harlot Larentina. But she, having fallen asleep in the
temple, dreamed that Hercules had had intercourse with her, and had
said to her that she would find her payment with the youth whom she
should first meet on leaving the temple, and that she was to believe
this to be paid to her by Hercules. And so the first youth that met
her on going out was the wealthy Tarutius, who kept her a long time,
and when he died left her his heir. She, having obtained a most ample
fortune, that she should not seem ungrateful for the divine hire, in
her turn made the Roman people her heir, which she thought to be most
acceptable to the deities; and, having disappeared, the will was
found. By which meritorious conduct they say that she gained divine
honors.
Now had these things been feigned by the poets and acted by the
mimics, they would without any doubt have been said to pertain to the
fabulous theology, and would have been judged worthy to be separated
from the dig nity of the civil theology. But when these shameful
things,--not of the poets, but of the people; not of the mimics, but
of the sacred things; not of the theatres, but of the temples, that
is, not of the fabulous, but of the civil theology,--are reported by
so great an author, not in vain do the actors represent with
theatrical art the baseness of the gods, which is so great; but surely
in vain do the priests attempt, by rites called sacred, to represent
their nobleness of character, which has no existence. There are
sacred rites of Juno; and these are celebrated in her beloved island,
Samos, where she was given in marriage to Jupiter. There are sacred
rites of Ceres, in which Proserpine is sought for, having been carried
off by Pluto. There are sacred rites of Venus, in which, her beloved
Adonis being slain by a boar's tooth, the lovely youth is lamented.
There are sacred rites of the mother of the gods, in which the
beautiful youth Atys, loved by her, and castrated by her through a
woman's jealousy, is deplored by men who have suffered the like
calamity, whom they call Galli. Since, then, these things are more
unseemly than all scenic abomination, why is it that they strive to
separate, as it were, the fabulous fictions of the poet concerning the
gods, as, forsooth, pertaining to the theatre, from the civil theology
which they wish to belong to the city, as though they were separating
from noble and worthy things, things unworthy and base? Wherefore
there is more reason to thank the stage-actors, who have spared the
eyes of men and have not laid bare by theatrical exhibition all the
things which are hid by the walls of the temples. What good is to be
thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when
those which are brought forth into the light are so detestable? And
certainly they themselves have seen what they transact in secret
through the agency of mutilated and effeminate men. Yet they have not
been able to conceal those same men miserably and vile enervated and
corrupted. Let them persuade whom they can that they transact
anything holy through such men, who, they cannot deny, are numbered,
and live among their sacred things. We know not what they transact,
but we know through whom they transact; for we know what things are
transacted on the stage, where never, even in a chorus of harlots,
hath one who is mutilated or an effeminate appeared. And,
nevertheless, even these things are acted by vile and infamous
characters; for, indeed, they ought not to be acted by men of good
character. What, then, are those sacred rites, for the performance of
which holiness has chosen such men as not even the obscenity of the
stage has admitted?
Chapter 8.--Concerning the Interpretations, Consisting of Natural
Explanations, Which the Pagan Teachers Attempt to Show for Their Gods.
But all these things, they say, have certain physical, that is,
natural interpretations, showing their natural meaning; as though in
this disputation we were seeking physics and not theology, which is
the account, not of nature, but of God. For although He who is the
true God is God, not by opinion, but by nature, nevertheless all
nature is not God; for there is certainly a nature of man, of a beast,
of a tree, of a stone,--none of which is God. For if, when the
question is concerning the mother of the gods, that from which the
whole system of interpretation starts certainly is, that the mother of
the gods is the earth, why do we make further inquiry? why do we carry
our investigation through all the rest of it? What can more
manifestly favor them who say that all those gods were men? For they
are earth-born in the sense that the earth is their mother. But in
the true theology the earth is the work, not the mother, of God. But
in whatever way their sacred rites may be interpreted, and whatever
reference they may have to the nature of things, it is not according
to nature, but contrary to nature, that men should be effeminates.
This disease, this crime, this abomination, has a recognized place
among those sacred things, though even depraved men will scarcely be
compelled by torments to confess they are guilty of it. Again, if
these sacred rites, which are proved to be fouler than scenic
abominations, are excused and justified on the ground that they have
their own interpretations, by which they are shown to symbolize the
nature of things, why are not the poetical things in like manner
excused and justified? For many have interpreted even these in like
fashion, to such a degree that even that which they say is the most
monstrous and most horrible,--namely, that Saturn devoured his own
children,--has been interpreted by some of them to mean that length of
time, which is signified by the name of Saturn, consumes whatever it
begets; or that, as the same Varro thinks, Saturn belongs to seeds
which fall back again into the earth from whence they spring. And so
one interprets it in one way, and one in another. And the same is to
be said of all the rest of this theology.
And, nevertheless, it is called the fabulous theology, and is
censured, cast off, rejected, together with all such interpretations
belonging to it. And not only by the natural theology, which is that
of the philosophers, but also by this civil theology, concerning which
we are speaking, which is asserted to pertain to cities and peoples,
it is judged worthy of repudiation, because it has invented unworthy
things concerning the gods. Of which, I wot, this is the secret:
that those most acute and learned men, by whom those things were
written, understood that both theologies ought to be rejected,--to
wit, both that fabulous and this civil one,--but the former they dared
to reject, the latter they dared not; the former they set forth to be
censured, the latter they showed to be very like it; not that it might
be chosen to be held in preference to the other, but that it might be
understood to be worthy of being rejected together with it. And thus,
without danger to those who feared to censure the civil theology, both
of them being brought into contempt, that theology which they call
natural might find a place in better disposed minds; for the civil and
the fabulous are both fabulous and both civil. He who shall wisely
inspect the vanities and obscenities of both will find that they are
both fabulous; and he who shall direct his attention to the scenic
plays pertaining to the fabulous theology in the festivals of the
civil gods, and in the divine rites of the cities, will find they are
both civil. How, then, can the power of giving eternal life be
attributed to any of those gods whose own images and sacred rites
convict them of being most like to the fabulous gods, which are most
openly reprobated, in forms, ages, sex, characteristics, marriages,
generations, rites; in all which things they are understood either to
have been men, and to have had their sacred rites and solemnities
instituted in their honor according to the life or death of each of
them, the demons suggesting and confirming this error, or certainly
most foul spirits, who, taking advantage of some occasion or other,
have stolen into the minds of men to deceive them?
Chapter 9.--Concerning the Special Offices of the Gods.
And as to those very offices of the gods, so meanly and so minutely
portioned out, so that they say that they ought to be supplicated,
each one according to his special function,--about which we have
spoken much already, though not all that is to be said concerning
it,--are they not more consistent with mimic buffoonery than divine
majesty? If any one should use two nurses for his infant, one of whom
should give nothing but food, the other nothing but drink, as these
make use of two goddesses for this purpose, Educa and Potina, he
should certainly seem to be foolish, and to do in his house a thing
worthy of a mimic. They would have Liber to have been named from
"liberation," because through him males at the time of copulation are
liberated by the emission of the seed. They also say that Libera (the
same in their opinion as Venus) exercises the same function in the
case of women, because they say that they also emit seed; and they
also say that on this account the same part of the male and of the
female is placed in the temple, that of the male to Liber, and that of
the female to Libera. To these things they add the women assigned to
Liber, and the wine for exciting lust. Thus the Bacchanalia are
celebrated with the utmost insanity, with respect to which Varro
himself confesses that such things would not be done by the Bacchanals
except their minds were highly excited. These things, however,
afterwards displeased a saner senate, and it ordered them to be
discontinued. Here, at length, they perhaps perceived how much power
unclean spirits, when held to be gods, exercise over the minds of
men. These things, certainly, were not to be done in the theatres;
for there they play, not rave, although to have gods who are delighted
with such plays is very like raving.
But what kind of distinction is this which he makes between the
religious and the superstitious man, saying that the gods are feared
[243] by the superstitious man, but are reverenced [244] as parents by
the religious man, not feared as enemies; and that they are all so
good that they will more readily spare those who are impious than hurt
one who is innocent? And yet he tells us that three gods are assigned
as guardians to a woman after she has been delivered, lest the god
Silvanus come in and molest her; and that in order to signify the
presence of these protectors, three men go round the house during the
night, and first strike the threshold with a hatchet, next with a
pestle, and the third time sweep it with a brush, in order that these
symbols of agriculture having been exhibited, the god Silvanus might
be hindered from entering, because neither are trees cut down or
pruned without a hatchet, neither is grain ground without a pestle,
nor corn heaped up without a besom. Now from these three things three
gods have been named: Intercidona, from the cut [245] made by the
hatchet; Pilumnus, from the pestle; Diverra, from the besom;--by which
guardian gods the woman who has been de livered is preserved against
the power of the god Silvanus. Thus the guardianship of
kindly-disposed gods would not avail against the malice of a
mischievous god, unless they were three to one, and fought against
him, as it were, with the opposing emblems of cultivation, who, being
an inhabitant of the woods, is rough, horrible, and uncultivated. Is
this the innocence of the gods? Is this their concord? Are these the
health-giving deities of the cities, more ridiculous than the things
which are laughed at in the theatres?
When a male and a female are united, the god Jugatinus presides.
Well, let this be borne with. But the married woman must be brought
home: the god Domiducus also is invoked. That she may be in the
house, the god Domitius is introduced. That she may remain with her
husband, the goddess Manturnæ is used. What more is required? Let
human modesty be spared. Let the lust of flesh and blood go on with
the rest, the secret of shame being respected. Why is the bed-chamber
filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen [246] have
departed? And, moreover, it is so filled, not that in consideration
of their presence more regard may be paid to chastity, but that by
their help the woman, naturally of the weaker sex, and trembling with
the novelty of her situation, may the more readily yield her
virginity. For there are the goddess Virginiensis, and the god-father
Subigus, and the goddess-mother Prema, and the goddess Pertunda, and
Venus, and Priapus. [247]What is this? If it was absolutely
necessary that a man, laboring at this work, should be helped by the
gods, might not some one god or goddess have been sufficient? Was
Venus not sufficient alone, who is even said to be named from this,
that without her power a woman does not cease to be a virgin? If
there is any shame in men, which is not in the deities, is it not the
case that, when the married couple believe that so many gods of either
sex are present, and busy at this work, they are so much affected with
shame, that the man is less moved, and the woman more reluctant? And
certainly, if the goddess Virginiensis is present to loose the
virgin's zone, if the god Subigus is present that the virgin may be
got under the man, if the goddess Prema is present that, having been
got under him, she may be kept down, and may not move herself, what
has the goddess Pertunda to do there? Let her blush; let her go
forth. Let the husband himself do something. It is disgraceful that
any one but himself should do that from which she gets her name. But
perhaps she is tolerated because she is said to be a goddess, and not
a god. For if she were believed to be a male, and were called
Pertundus, the husband would demand more help against him for the
chastity of his wife than the newly-delivered woman against Silvanus.
But why am I saying this, when Priapus, too, is there, a male to
excess, upon whose immense and most unsightly member the newly-married
bride is commanded to sit, according to the most honorable and most
religious custom of matrons?
Let them go on, and let them attempt with all the subtlety they can to
distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous, the cities from the
theatres, the temples from the stages, the sacred things of the
priests from the songs of the poets, as honorable things from base
things, truthful things from fallacious, grave from light, serious
from ludicrous, desirable things from things to be rejected, we
understand what they do. They are aware that that theatrical and
fabulous theology hangs by the civil, and is reflected back upon it
from the songs of the poets as from a mirror; and thus, that theology
having been exposed to view which they do not dare to condemn, they
more freely assail and censure that picture of it, in order that those
who perceive what they mean may detest this very face itself of which
that is the picture,--which, however, the gods themselves, as though
seeing themselves in the same mirror, love so much, that it is better
seen in both of them who and what they are. Whence, also, they have
compelled their worshippers, with terrible commands, to dedicate to
them the uncleanness of the fabulous theology, to put them among their
solemnities, and reckon them among divine things; and thus they have
both shown themselves more manifestly to be most impure spirits, and
have made that rejected and reprobated theatrical theology a member
and a part of this, as it were, chosen and approved theology of the
city, so that, though the whole is disgraceful and false, and contains
in it fictitious gods, one part of it is in the literature of the
priests, the other in the songs of the poets. Whether it may have
other parts is another question. At present, I think, I have
sufficiently shown, on account of the division of Varro, that the
theology of the city and that of the theatre belong to one civil
theology. Wherefore, because they are both equally disgraceful,
absurd, shameful, false, far be it from religious men to hope for
eternal life from either the one or the other.
In fine, even Varro himself, in his account and enumeration of the
gods, starts from the moment of a man's conception. He commences the
series of those gods who take charge of man with Janus, carries it on
to the death of the man decrepit with age, and terminates it with the
goddess Nænia, who is sung at the funerals of the aged. After that,
he begins to give an account of the other gods, whose province is not
man himself, but man's belongings, as food, clothing, and all that is
necessary for this life; and, in the case of all these, he explains
what is the special office of each, and for what each ought to be
supplicated. But with all this scrupulous and comprehensive
diligence, he has neither proved the existence, nor so much as
mentioned the name, of any god from whom eternal life is to be
sought,--the one object for which we are Christians. Who, then, is so
stupid as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth and opening
up so diligently the civil theology, and by exhibiting its likeness to
that fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful theology, and also by
teaching that that fabulous sort is also a part of this other, was
laboring to obtain a place in the minds of men for none but that
natural theology, which he says pertains to philosophers, with such
subtlety that he censures the fabulous, and, not daring openly to
censure the civil, shows its censurable character by simply exhibiting
it; and thus, both being reprobated by the judgment of men of right
understanding, the natural alone remains to be chosen? But concerning
this in its own place, by the help of the true God, we have to discuss
more diligently.
Footnotes
[243] Timeri.
[244] Vereri.
[245] Intercido, I cut or cleave.
[246] Paranymphi.
[247] Comp. Tertullian, Adv. Nat. ii. 11; Arnobius, Contra Gent. iv.;
Lactantius, Inst. i. 20.
Chapter 10.--Concerning the Liberty of Seneca, Who More Vehemently
Censured the Civil Theology Than Varro Did the Fabulous.
That liberty, in truth, which this man wanted, so that he did not dare
to censure that theology of the city, which is very similar to the
theatrical, so openly as he did the theatrical itself, was, though not
fully, yet in part possessed by Annæus Seneca, whom we have some
evidence to show to have flourished in the times of our apostles. It
was in part possessed by him, I say, for he possessed it in writing,
but not in living. For in that book which he wrote against
superstition, [248] he more copiously and vehemently censured that
civil and urban theology than Varro the theatrical and fabulous. For,
when speaking concerning images, he says, "They dedicate images of the
sacred and inviolable immortals in most worthless and motionless
matter. They give them the appearance of man, beasts, and fishes, and
some make them of mixed sex, and heterogeneous bodies. They call them
deities, when they are such that if they should get breath and should
suddenly meet them, they would be held to be monsters." Then, a while
afterwards, when extolling the natural theology, he had expounded the
sentiments of certain philosophers, he opposes to himself a question,
and says, "Here some one says, Shall I believe that the heavens and
the earth are gods, and that some are above the moon and some below
it? Shall I bring forward either Plato or the peripatetic Strato, one
of whom made God to be without a body, the other without a mind?" In
answer to which he says, "And, really, what truer do the dreams of
Titus Tatius, or Romulus, or Tullus Hostilius appear to thee? Tatius
declared the divinity of the goddess Cloacina; Romulus that of Picus
and Tiberinus; Tullus Hostilius that of Pavor and Pallor, the most
disagreeable affections of men, the one of which is the agitation of
the mind under fright, the other that of the body, not a disease,
indeed, but a change of color." Wilt thou rather believe that these
are deities, and receive them into heaven? But with what freedom he
has written concerning the rites themselves, cruel and shameful!
"One," he says, "castrates himself, another cuts his arms. Where will
they find room for the fear of these gods when angry, who use such
means of gaining their favor when propitious? But gods who wish to be
worshipped in this fashion should be worshipped in none. So great is
the frenzy of the mind when perturbed and driven from its seat, that
the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of
the greatest ferocity and fable-renowned cruelty vent their rage.
Tyrants have lacerated the limbs of some; they never ordered any one
to lacerate his own. For the gratification of royal lust, some have
been castrated; but no one ever, by the command of his lord, laid
violent hands on himself to emasculate himself. They kill themselves
in the temples. They supplicate with their wounds and with their
blood. If any one has time to see the things they do and the things
they suffer, he will find so many things unseemly for men of
respectability, so unworthy of freemen, so unlike the doings of sane
men, that no one would doubt that they are mad, had they been mad with
the minority; but now the multitude of the insane is the defence of
their sanity."
He next relates those things which are wont to be done in the
Capitol, and with the utmost intrepidity insists that they are such
things as one could only believe to be done by men making sport, or by
madmen. For having spoken with derision of this, that in the Egyptian
sacred rites Osiris, being lost, is lamented for, but straightway,
when found, is the occasion of great joy by his reappearance, because
both the losing and the finding of him are feigned; and yet that grief
and that joy which are elicited thereby from those who have lost
nothing and found nothing are real;--having I say, so spoken of this,
he says, "Still there is a fixed time for this frenzy. It is
tolerable to go mad once in the year. Go into the Capitol. One is
suggesting divine commands [249] to a god; another is telling the
hours to Jupiter; one is a lictor; another is an anointer, who with
the mere movement of his arms imitates one anointing. There are women
who arrange the hair of Juno and Minerva, standing far away not only
from her image, but even from her temple. These move their fingers in
the manner of hairdressers. There are some women who hold a mirror.
There are some who are calling the gods to assist them in court.
There are some who are holding up documents to them, and are
explaining to them their cases. A learned and distinguished comedian,
now old and decrepit, was daily playing the mimic in the Capitol, as
though the gods would gladly be spectators of that which men had
ceased to care about. Every kind of artificers working for the
immortal gods is dwelling there in idleness." And a little after he
says, "Nevertheless these, though they give themselves up to the gods
for purposes superflous enough, do not do so for any abominable or
infamous purpose. There sit certain women in the Capitol who think
they are beloved by Jupiter; nor are they frightened even by the look
of the, if you will believe the poets, most wrathful Juno."
This liberty Varro did not enjoy. It was only the poetical theology
he seemed to censure. The civil, which this man cuts to pieces, he
was not bold enough to impugn. But if we attend to the truth, the
temples where these things are performed are far worse than the
theatres where they are represented. Whence, with respect to these
sacred rites of the civil theology, Seneca preferred, as the best
course to be followed by a wise man, to feign respect for them in act,
but to have no real regard for them at heart. "All which things," he
says, "a wise man will observe as being commanded by the laws, but not
as being pleasing to the gods." And a little after he says, "And what
of this, that we unite the gods in marriage, and that not even
naturally, for we join brothers and sisters? We marry Bellona to
Mars, Venus to Vulcan, Salacia to Neptune. Some of them we leave
unmarried, as though there were no match for them, which is surely
needless, especially when there are certain unmarried goddesses, as
Populonia, or Fulgora, or the goddess Rumina, for whom I am not
astonished that suitors have been awanting. All this ignoble crowd of
gods, which the superstition of ages has amassed, we ought," he says,
"to adore in such a way as to remember all the while that its worship
belongs rather to custom than to reality." Wherefore, neither those
laws nor customs instituted in the civil theology that which was
pleasing to the gods, or which pertained to reality. But this man,
whom philosophy had made, as it were, free, nevertheless, because he
was an illustrious senator of the Roman people, worshipped what he
censured, did what he condemned, adored what he reproached, because,
forsooth, philosophy had taught him something great,--namely, not to
be superstitious in the world, but, on account of the laws of cities
and the customs of men, to be an actor, not on the stage, but in the
temples,--conduct the more to be condemned, that those things which he
was deceitfully acting he so acted that the people thought he was
acting sincerely. But a stage-actor would rather delight people by
acting plays than take them in by false pretences.
Footnotes
[248] Mentioned also by Tertullian, Apol. 12, but not extant.
[249] Numina. Another reading is nomina; and with either reading
another translation is admissible; "One is announcing to a god the
names (or gods) who salute him."
Chapter 11.--What Seneca Thought Concerning the Jews.
Seneca, among the other superstitions of civil theology, also found
fault with the sacred things of the Jews, and especially the sabbaths,
affirming that they act uselessly in keeping those seventh days,
whereby they lose through idleness about the seventh part of their
life, and also many things which demand immediate attention are
damaged. The Christians, however, who were already most hostile to
the Jews, he did not dare to mention, either for praise or blame,
lest, if he praised them, he should do so against the ancient custom
of his country, or, perhaps, if he should blame them, he should do so
against his own will.
When he was speaking concerning those Jews, he said, "When, meanwhile,
the customs of that most accursed nation have gained such strength
that they have been now received in all lands, the conquered have
given laws to the conquerors." By these words he expresses his
astonishment; and, not knowing what the providence of God was leading
him to say, subjoins in plain words an opinion by which he showed what
he thought about the meaning of those sacred institutions: "For," he
says, "those, however, know the cause of their rites, whilst the
greater part of the people know not why they perform theirs." But
concerning the solemnities of the Jews, either why or how far they
were instituted by divine authority, and afterwards, in due time, by
the same authority taken away from the people of God, to whom the
mystery of eternal life was revealed, we have both spoken elsewhere,
especially when we were treating against the Manichæans, and also
intend to speak in this work in a more suitable place.
Chapter 12.--That When Once the Vanity of the Gods of the Nations Has
Been Exposed, It Cannot Be Doubted that They are Unable to Bestow
Eternal Life on Any One, When They Cannot Afford Help Even with
Respect to the Things Of this Temporal Life.
Now, since there are three theologies, which the Greeks call
respectively mythical, physical, and political, and which may be
called in Latin fabulous, natural, and civil; and since neither from
the fabulous, which even the worshippers of many and false gods have
themselves most freely censured, nor from the civil, of which that is
convicted of being a part, or even worse than it, can eternal life be
hoped for from any of these theologies,--if any one thinks that what
has been said in this book is not enough for him, let him also add to
it the many and various dissertations concerning God as the giver of
felicity, contained in the former books, especially the fourth one.
For to what but to felicity should men consecrate themselves, were
felicity a goddess? However, as it is not a goddess, but a gift of
God, to what God but the giver of happiness ought we to consecrate
ourselves, who piously love eternal life, in which there is true and
full felicity? But I think, from what has been said, no one ought to
doubt that none of those gods is the giver of happiness, who are
worshipped with such shame, and who, if they are not so worshipped,
are more shamefully enraged, and thus confess that they are most foul
spirits. Moreover, how can he give eternal life who cannot give
happiness? For we mean by eternal life that life where there is
endless happiness. For if the soul live in eternal punishments, by
which also those unclean spirits shall be tormented, that is rather
eternal death than eternal life. For there is no greater or worse
death than when death never dies. But because the soul from its very
nature, being created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life,
its utmost death is alienation from the life of God in an eternity of
punishment. So, then, He only who gives true happiness gives eternal
life, that is, an endlessly happy life. And since those gods whom
this civil theology worships have been proved to be unable to give
this happiness, they ought not to be worshipped on account of those
temporal and terrestrial things, as we showed in the five former
books, much less on account of eternal life, which is to be after
death, as we have sought to show in this one book especially, whilst
the other books also lend it their co-operation. But since the
strength of inveterate habit has its roots very deep, if any one
thinks that I have not disputed sufficiently to show that this civil
theology ought to be rejected and shunned, let him attend to another
book which, with God's help, is to be joined to this one.
.
Book VII.
Argument--In this book it is shown that eternal life is not obtained
by the worship of Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the other "select gods"
of the civil theology.
Preface.
It will be the duty of those who are endowed with quicker and better
understandings, in whose case the former books are sufficient, and
more than sufficient, to effect their intended object, to bear with me
with patience and equanimity whilst I attempt with more than ordinary
diligence to tear up and eradicate depraved and ancient opinions
hostile to the truth of piety, which the long-continued error of the
human race has fixed very deeply in unenlightened minds; co-operating
also in this, according to my little measure, with the grace of Him
who, being the true God, is able to accomplish it, and on whose help I
depend in my work; and, for the sake of others, such should not deem
superfluous what they feel to be no longer necessary for themselves.
A very great matter is at stake when the true and truly holy divinity
is commended to men as that which they ought to seek after and to
worship; not, however, on account of the transitory vapor of mortal
life, but on account of life eternal, which alone is blessed, although
the help necessary for this frail life we are now living is also
afforded us by it.
Chapter 1.--Whether, Since It is Evident that Deity is Not to Be Found
in the Civil Theology, We are to Believe that It is to Be Found in the
Select Gods.
If there is any one whom the sixth book, which I have last finished,
has not persuaded that this divinity, or, so to speak, deity--for this
word also our authors do not hesitate to use, in order to translate
more accurately that which the Greeks call theotes;--if there is any
one, I say, whom the sixth book has not persuaded that this divinity
or deity is not to be found in that theology which they call civil,
and which Marcus Varro has explained in sixteen books,--that is, that
the happiness of eternal life is not attainable through the worship of
gods such as states have established to be worshipped, and that in
such a form,--perhaps, when he has read this book, he will not have
anything further to desire in order to the clearing up of this
question. For it is possible that some one may think that at least
the select and chief gods, whom Varro comprised in his last book, and
of whom we have not spoken sufficiently, are to be worshipped on
account of the blessed life, which is none other than eternal. In
respect to which matter I do not say what Tertullian said, perhaps
more wittily than truly, "If gods are selected like onions, certainly
the rest are rejected as bad." [250]I do not say this, for I see
that even from among the select, some are selected for some greater
and more excellent office: as in warfare, when recruits have been
elected, there are some again elected from among those for the
performance of some greater military service; and in the church, when
persons are elected to be overseers, certainly the rest are not
rejected, since all good Christians are deservedly called elect; in
the erection of a building corner-stones are elected, though the other
stones, which are destined for other parts of the structure, are not
rejected; grapes are elected for eating, whilst the others, which we
leave for drinking, are not rejected. There is no need of adducing
many illustrations, since the thing is evident. Wherefore the
selection of certain gods from among many affords no proper reason why
either he who wrote on this subject, or the worshippers of the gods,
or the gods themselves, should be spurned. We ought rather to seek to
know what gods these are, and for what purpose they may appear to have
been selected.
Footnotes
[250] Tert. Apol. 13, Nec electio sine reprobatione; and Ad Nationes,
ii. 9, Si dei bulbi seliguntur, qui non seliguntur, reprobi
pronuntiantur.
Chapter 2.--Who are the Select Gods, and Whether They are Held to Be
Exempt from the Offices of the Commoner Gods.
The following gods, certainly, Varro signalizes as select, devoting
one book to this subject: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury,
Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sol, Orcus, father Liber, Tellus,
Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus, Vesta; of which twenty gods,
twelve are males, and eight females. Whether are these deities called
select, because of their higher spheres of administration in the
world, or because they have become better known to the people, and
more worship has been expended on them? If it be on account of the
greater works which are performed by them in the world, we ought not
to have found them among that, as it were, plebeian crowd of deities,
which has assigned to it the charge of minute and trifling things.
For, first of all, at the conception of a foetus, from which point all
the works commence which have been distributed in minute detail to
many deities, Janus himself opens the way for the reception of the
seed; there also is Saturn, on account of the seed itself; there is
Liber, [251] who liberates the male by the effusion of the seed; there
is Libera, whom they also would have to be Venus, who confers this
same benefit on the woman, namely, that she also be liberated by the
emission of the seed;--all these are of the number of those who are
called select. But there is also the goddess Mena, who presides over
the menses; though the daughter of Jupiter, ignoble nevertheless. And
this province of the menses the same author, in his book on the select
gods, assigns to Juno herself, who is even queen among the select
gods; and here, as Juno Lucina, along with the same Mena, her
stepdaughter, she presides over the same blood. There also are two
gods, exceedingly obscure, Vitumnus and Sentinus--the one of whom
imparts life to the foetus, and the other sensation; and, of a truth,
they bestow, most ignoble though they be, far more than all those
noble and select gods bestow. For, surely, without life and
sensation, what is the whole foetus which a woman carries in her womb,
but a most vile and worthless thing, no better than slime and dust?
Footnotes
[251] Cicero, De Nat. Deor ii., distinguishes this Liber from Liber
Bacchus, son of Jupiter and Semele.
Chapter 3.--How There is No Reason Which Can Be Shown for the
Selection of Certain Gods, When the Administration of More Exalted
Offices is Assigned to Many Inferior Gods.
What is the cause, therefore, which has driven so many select gods to
these very small works, in which they are excelled by Vitumnus and
Sentinus, though little known and sunk in obscurity, inasmuch as they
confer the munificent gifts of life and sensation? For the select
Janus bestows an entrance, and, as it were, a door [252] for the seed;
the select Saturn bestows the seed itself; the select Liber bestows on
men the emission of the same seed; Libera, who is Ceres or Venus,
confers the same on women; the select Juno confers (not alone, but
together with Mena, the daughter of Jupiter) the menses, for the
growth of that which has been conceived; and the obscure and ignoble
Vitumnus confers life, whilst the obscure and ignoble Sentinus confers
sensation;--which two last things are as much more excellent than the
others, as they themselves are excelled by reason and intellect. For
as those things which reason and understand are preferable to those
which, without intellect and reason, as in the case of cattle, live
and feel; so also those things which have been endowed with life and
sensation are deservedly preferred to those things which neither live
nor feel. Therefore Vitumnus the life-giver, [253] and Sentinus the
sense-giver, [254] ought to have been reckoned among the select gods,
rather than Janus the admitter of seed, and Saturn the giver or sower
of seed, and Liber and Libera the movers and liberators of seed; which
seed is not worth a thought, unless it attain to life and sensation.
Yet these select gifts are not given by select gods, but by certain
unknown, and, considering their dignity, neglected gods. But if it be
replied that Janus has dominion over all beginnings, and therefore the
opening of the way for conception is not without reason assigned to
him; and that Saturn has dominion over all seeds, and therefore the
sowing of the seed whereby a human being is generated cannot be
excluded from his operation; that Liber and Libera have power over the
emission of all seeds, and therefore preside over those seeds which
pertain to the procreation of men; that Juno presides over all
purgations and births, and therefore she has also charge of the
purgations of women and the births of human beings;--if they give this
reply, let them find an answer to the question concerning Vitumnus and
Sentinus, whether they are willing that these likewise should have
dominion over all things which live and feel. If they grant this, let
them observe in how sublime a position they are about to place them.
For to spring from seeds is in the earth and of the earth, but to live
and feel are supposed to be properties even of the sidereal gods. But
if they say that only such things as come to life in flesh, and are
supported by senses, are assigned to Sentinus, why does not that God
who made all things live and feel, bestow on flesh also life and
sensation, in the universality of His operation conferring also on
foetuses this gift? And what, then, is the use of Vitumnus and
Sentinus? But if these, as it were, extreme and lowest things have
been committed by Him who presides universally over life and sense to
these gods as to servants, are these select gods then so destitute of
servants, that they could not find any to whom even they might commit
those things, but with all their dignity, for which they are, it
seems, deemed worthy to be selected, were compelled to perform their
work along with ignoble ones? Juno is select queen of the gods, and
the sister and wife of Jupiter; nevertheless she is Iterduca, the
conductor, to boys, and performs this work along with a most ignoble
pair--the goddesses Abeona and Adeona. There they have also placed
the goddess Mena, who gives to boys a good mind, and she is not placed
among the select gods; as if anything greater could be bestowed on a
man than a good mind. But Juno is placed among the select because she
is Iterduca and Domiduca (she who conducts one on a journey, and who
conducts him home again); as if it is of any advantage for one to make
a journey, and to be conducted home again, if his mind is not good.
And yet the goddess who bestows that gift has not been placed by the
selectors among the select gods, though she ought indeed to have been
preferred even to Minerva, to whom, in this minute distribution of
work, they have allotted the memory of boys. For who will doubt that
it is a far better thing to have a good mind, than ever so great a
memory? For no one is bad who has a good mind; [255] but some who are
very bad are possessed of an admirable memory, and are so much the
worse, the less they are able to forget the bad things which they
think. And yet Minerva is among the select gods, whilst the goddess
Mena is hidden by a worthless crowd. What shall I say concerning
Virtus? What concerning Felicitas?--concerning whom I have already
spoken much in the fourth book; [256] to whom, though they held them
to be goddesses, they have not thought fit to assign a place among the
select gods, among whom they have given a place to Mars and Orcus, the
one the causer of death, the other the receiver of the dead.
Since, therefore, we see that even the select gods themselves work
together with the others, like a senate with the people, in all those
minute works which have been minutely portioned out among many gods;
and since we find that far greater and better things are administered
by certain gods who have not been reckoned worthy to be selected than
by those who are called select, it remains that we suppose that they
were called select and chief, not on account of their holding more
exalted offices in the world, but because it happened to them to
become better known to the people. And even Varro himself says, that
in that way obscurity had fallen to the lot of some father gods and
mother goddesses, [257] as it fails to the lot of man. If, therefore,
Felicity ought not perhaps to have been put among the select gods,
because they did not attain to that noble position by merit, but by
chance, Fortune at least should have been placed among them, or rather
before them; for they say that that goddess distributes to every one
the gifts she receives, not according to any rational arrangement, but
according as chance may determine. She ought to have held the
uppermost place among the select gods, for among them chiefly it is
that she shows what power she has. For we see that they have been
selected not on account of some eminent virtue or rational happiness,
but by that random power of Fortune which the worshippers of these
gods think that she exerts. For that most eloquent man Sallust also
may perhaps have the gods themselves in view when he says: "But, in
truth, fortune rules in everything; it renders all things famous or
obscure, according to caprice rather than according to truth." [258]
For they cannot discover a reason why Venus should have been made
famous, whilst Virtus has been made obscure, when the divinity of both
of them has been solemnly recognized by them, and their merits are not
to be compared. Again, if she has deserved a noble position on
account of the fact that she is much sought after--for there are more
who seek after Venus than after Virtus--why has Minerva been
celebrated whilst Pecunia has been left in obscurity, although
throughout the whole human race avarice allures a far greater number
than skill? And even among those who are skilled in the arts, you
will rarely find a man who does not practise his own art for the
purpose of pecuniary gain; and that for the sake of which anything is
made, is always valued more than that which is made for the sake of
something else. If, then, this selection of gods has been made by the
judgment of the foolish multitude, why has not the goddess Pecunia
been preferred to Minerva, since there are many artificers for the
sake of money? But if this distinction has been made by the few wise,
why has Virtus been preferred to Venus, when reason by far prefers the
former? At all events, as I have already said, Fortune herself--who,
according to those who attribute most influence to her, renders all
things famous or obscure according to caprice rather than according to
the truth--since she has been able to exercise so much power even over
the gods, as, according to her capricious judgment, to render those of
them famous whom she would, and those obscure whom she would; Fortune
herself ought to occupy the place of pre-eminence among the select
gods, since over them also she has such pre-eminent power. Or must we
suppose that the reason why she is not among the select is simply
this, that even Fortune herself has had an adverse fortune? She was
adverse, then, to herself, since, whilst ennobling others, she herself
has remained obscure.
Footnotes
[252] Januam.
[253] Vivificator.
[254] Sensificator.
[255] As we say, right-minded.
[256] Ch. 21, 23.
[257] The father Saturn, and the mother Ops, e.g., being more obscure
than their son Jupiter and daughter Juno.
[258] Sallust, Cat. Conj. ch. 8.
Chapter 4.--The Inferior Gods, Whose Names are Not Associated with
Infamy, Have Been Better Dealt with Than the Select Gods, Whose
Infamies are Celebrated.
However, any one who eagerly seeks for celebrity and renown, might
congratulate those select gods, and call them fortunate, were it not
that he saw that they have been selected more to their injury than to
their honor. For that low crowd of gods have been protected by their
very meanness and obscurity from being overwhelmed with infamy. We
laugh, indeed, when we see them distributed by the mere fiction of
human opinions, according to the special works assigned to them, like
those who farm small portions of the public revenue, or like workmen
in the street of the silversmiths, [259] where one vessel, in order
that it may go out perfect, passes through the hands of many, when it
might have been finished by one perfect workman. But the only reason
why the combined skill of many workmen was thought necessary, was,
that it is better that each part of an art should be learned by a
special workman, which can be done speedily and easily, than that they
should all be compelled to be perfect in one art throughout all its
parts, which they could only attain slowly and with difficulty.
Nevertheless there is scarcely to be found one of the non-select gods
who has brought infamy on himself by any crime, whilst there is scarce
any one of the select gods who has not received upon himself the brand
of notable infamy. These latter have descended to the humble works of
the others, whilst the others have not come up to their sublime
crimes. Concerning Janus, there does not readily occur to my
recollection anything infamous; and perhaps he was such an one as
lived more innocently than the rest, and further removed from misdeeds
and crimes. He kindly received and entertained Saturn when he was
fleeing; he divided his kingdom with his guest, so that each of them
had a city for himself, [260] the one Janiculum, and the other
Saturnia. But those seekers after every kind of unseemliness in the
worship of the gods have disgraced him, whose life they found to be
less disgracful than that of the other gods, with an image of
monstrous deformity, making it sometimes with two faces, and
sometimes, as it were, double, with four faces. [261]Did they wish
that, as the most of the select gods had lost shame [262] through the
perpetration of shameful crimes, his greater innocence should be
marked by a greater number of faces? [263]
Footnotes
[259] Vicus argentarius.
[260] Virgil, Æneid, viii. 357, 358.
[261] Quadrifrons.
[262] Frons.
[263] Quanto iste innocentior esset, tanto frontosior appareret; being
used for the shamelessness of innocence, as we use "face" for the
shamelessness of impudence.
Chapter 5.--Concerning the More Secret Doctrine of the Pagans, and
Concerning the Physical Interpretations.
But let us hear their own physical interpretations by which they
attempt to color, as with the appearance of profounder doctrine, the
baseness of most miserable error. Varro, in the first place, commends
these interpretations so strongly as to say, that the ancients
invented the images, badges, and adornments of the gods, in order that
when those who went to the mysteries should see them with their bodily
eyes, they might with the eyes of their mind see the soul of the
world, and its parts, that is, the true gods; and also that the
meaning which was intended by those who made their images with the
human form, seemed to be this,--namely, that the mind of mortals,
which is in a human body, is very like to the immortal mind, [264]
just as vessels might be placed to represent the gods, as, for
instance, a wine-vessel might be placed in the temple of Liber, to
signify wine, that which is contained being signified by that which
contains. Thus by an image which had the human form the rational soul
was signified, because the human form is the vessel, as it were, in
which that nature is wont to be contained which they attribute to God,
or to the gods. These are the mysteries of doctrine to which that
most learned man penetrated in order that he might bring them forth to
the light. But, O thou most acute man, hast thou lost among those
mysteries that prudence which led thee to form the sober opinion, that
those who first established those images for the people took away fear
from the citizens and added error, and that the ancient Romans honored
the gods more chastely without images? For it was through
consideration of them that thou wast emboldened to speak these things
against the later Romans. For if those most ancient Romans also had
worshipped images, perhaps thou wouldst have suppressed by the silence
of fear all those sentiments (true sentiments, nevertheless)
concerning the folly of setting up images, and wouldst have extolled
more loftily, and more loquaciously, those mysterious doctrines
consisting of these vain and pernicious fictions. Thy soul, so
learned and so clever (and for this I grieve much for thee), could
never through these mysteries have reached its God; that is, the God
by whom, not with whom, it was made, of whom it is not a part, but a
work,--that God who is not the soul of all things, but who made every
soul, and in whose light alone every soul is blessed, if it be not
ungrateful for His grace.
But the things which follow in this book will show what is the nature
of these mysteries, and what value is to be set upon them. Meanwhile,
this most learned man confesses as his opinion that the soul of the
world and its parts are the true gods, from which we perceive that his
theology (to wit, that same natural theology to which he pays great
regard) has been able, in its completeness, to extend itself even to
the nature of the rational soul. For in this book (concerning the
select gods) he says a very few things by anticipation concerning the
natural theology; and we shall see whether he has been able in that
book, by means of physical interpretations, to refer to this natural
theology that civil theology, concerning which he wrote last when
treating of the select gods. Now, if he has been able to do this, the
whole is natural; and in that case, what need was there for
distinguishing so carefully the civil from the natural? But if it has
been distinguished by a veritable distinction, then, since not even
this natural theology with which he is so much pleased is true (for
though it has reached as far as the soul, it has not reached to the
true God who made the soul), how much more contemptible and false is
that civil theology which is chiefly occupied about what is corporeal,
as will be shown by its very interpretations, which they have with
such diligence sought out and enucleated, some of which I must
necessarily mention!
Footnotes
[264] Cicero, Tusc. Quæst. v. 13.
Chapter 6.--Concerning the Opinion of Varro, that God is the Soul of
the World, Which Nevertheless, in Its Various Parts, Has Many Souls
Whose Nature is Divine.
The same Varro, then, still speaking by anticipation, says that he
thinks that God is the soul of the world (which the Greeks call
kosmos), and that this world itself is God; but as a wise man, though
he consists of body and mind, is nevertheless called wise on account
of his mind, so the world is called God on account of mind, although
it consists of mind and body. Here he seems, in some fashion at least,
to acknowledge one God; but that he may introduce more, he adds that
the world is divided into two parts, heaven and earth, which are again
divided each into two parts, heaven into ether and air, earth into
water and land, of all which the ether is the highest, the air second,
the water third, and the earth the lowest. All these four parts, he
says, are full of souls; those which are in the ether and air being
immortal, and those which are in the water and on the earth mortal.
From the highest part of the heavens to the orbit of the moon there
are souls, namely, the stars and planets; and these are not only
understood to be gods, but are seen to be such. And between the orbit
of the moon and the commencement of the region of clouds and winds
there are aerial souls; but these are seen with the mind, not with the
eyes, and are called Heroes, and Lares, and Genii. This is the
natural theology which is briefly set forth in these anticipatory
statements, and which satisfied not Varro only, but many philosophers
besides. This I must discuss more carefully, when, with the help of
God, I shall have completed what I have yet to say concerning the
civil theology, as far as it concerns the select gods.
Chapter 7.--Whether It is Reasonable to Separate Janus and Terminus as
Two Distinct Deities.
Who, then, is Janus, with whom Varro commences? He is the world.
Certainly a very brief and unambiguous reply. Why, then, do they say
that the beginnings of things pertain to him, but the ends to another
whom they call Terminus? For they say that two months have been
dedicated to these two gods, with reference to beginnings and
ends--January to Janus, and February to Terminus--over and above those
ten months which commence with March and end with December. And they
say that that is the reason why the Terminalia are celebrated in the
month of February, the same month in which the sacred purification is
made which they call Februum, and from which the month derives its
name. [265]Do the beginnings of things, therefore, pertain to the
world, which is Janus, and not also the ends, since another god has
been placed over them? Do they not own that all things which they say
begin in this world also come to an end in this world? What folly it
is, to give him only half power in work, when in his image they give
him two faces! Would it not be a far more elegant way of interpreting
the two-faced image, to say that Janus and Terminus are the same, and
that the one face has reference to beginnings, the other to ends? For
one who works ought to have respect to both. For he who in every
forthputting of activity does not look back on the beginning, does not
look forward to the end. Wherefore it is necessary that prospective
intention be connected with retrospective memory. For how shall one
find how to finish anything, if he has forgotten what it was which he
had begun? But if they thought that the blessed life is begun in this
world, and perfected beyond the world, and for that reason attributed
to Janus, that is, to the world, only the power of beginnings, they
should certainly have preferred Terminus to him, and should not have
shut him out from the number of the select gods. Yet even now, when
the beginnings and ends of temporal things are represented by these
two gods, more honor ought to have been given to Terminus. For the
greater joy is that which is felt when anything is finished; but
things begun are always cause of much anxiety until they are brought
to an end, which end he who begins anything very greatly longs for,
fixes his mind on, expects, desires; nor does any one ever rejoice
over anything he has begun, unless it be brought to an end.
Footnotes
[265] An interesting account of the changes made in the Roman year by
Numa is given in Plutarch's life of that king. Ovid also (Fasti, ii.)
explains the derivation of February, telling us that it was the last
month of the old year, and took its name from the lustrations
performed then: Februa Romani dixere piamina patres.
Chapter 8.--For What Reason the Worshippers of Janus Have Made His
Image with Two Faces, When They Would Sometimes Have It Be Seen with
Four.
But now let the interpretation of the two-faced image be produced.
For they say that it has two faces, one before and one behind, because
our gaping mouths seem to resemble the world: whence the Greeks call
the palate ouranos, and some Latin poets, [266] he says, have called
the heavens palatum [the palate]; and from the gaping mouth, they say,
there is a way out in the direction of the teeth, and a way in in the
direction of the gullet. See what the world has been brought to on
account of a Greek or a poetical word for our palate! Let this god be
worshipped only on account of saliva, which has two open doorways
under the heavens of the palate,--one through which part of it may be
spitten out, the other through which part of it may be swallowed
down. Besides, what is more absurd than not to find in the world
itself two doorways opposite to each other, through which it may
either receive anything into itself, or cast it out from itself; and
to seek of our throat and gullet, to which the world has no
resemblance, to make up an image of the world in Janus, because the
world is said to resemble the palate, to which Janus bears no
likeness? But when they make him four-faced, and call him double
Janus, they interpret this as having reference to the four quarters of
the world, as though the world looked out on anything, like Janus
through his four faces. Again, if Janus is the world, and the world
consists of four quarters, then the image of the two-faced Janus is
false. Or if it is true, because the whole world is sometimes
understood by the expression east and west, will any one call the
world double when north and south also are mentioned, as they call
Janus double when he has four faces? They have no way at all of
interpreting, in relation to the world, four doorways by which to go
in and to come out as they did in the case of the two-faced Janus,
where they found, at any rate in the human mouth, something which
answered to what they said about him; unless perhaps Neptune come to
their aid, and hand them a fish, which, besides the mouth and gullet,
has also the openings of the gills, one on each side. Nevertheless,
with all the doors, no soul escapes this vanity but that one which
hears the truth saying, "I am the door." [267]
Footnotes
[266] Ennius, in Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 18.
[267] John x. 9.
Chapter 9.--Concerning the Power of Jupiter, and a Comparison of
Jupiter with Janus.
But they also show whom they would have Jove (who is also called
Jupiter) understood to be. He is the god, say they, who has the power
of the causes by which anything comes to be in the world. And how
great a thing this is, that most noble verse of Virgil testifies:
"Happy is he who has learned the causes of things." [268]
But why is Janus preferred to him? Let that most acute and most
learned man answer us this question. "Because," says he, "Janus has
dominion over first things, Jupiter over highest [269] things.
Therefore Jupiter is deservedly held to be the king of all things; for
highest things are better than first things: for although first
things precede in time, highest things excel by dignity."
Now this would have been rightly said had the first parts of things
which are done been distinguished from the highest parts; as, for
instance, it is the beginning of a thing done to set out, the highest
part to arrive. The commencing to learn is the first part of a thing
begun, the acquirement of knowledge is the highest part. And so of
all things: the beginnings are first, the ends highest. This matter,
however, has been already discussed in connection with Janus and
Terminus. But the causes which are attributed to Jupiter are things
effecting, not things effected; and it is impossible for them to be
prevented in time by things which are made or done, or by the
beginnings of such things; for the thing which makes is always prior
to the thing which is made. Therefore, though the beginnings of
things which are made or done pertain to Janus, they are nevertheless
not prior to the efficient causes which they attribute to Jupiter.
For as nothing takes place without being preceded by an efficient
cause, so without an efficient cause nothing begins to take place.
Verily, if the people call this god Jupiter, in whose power are all
the causes of all natures which have been made, and of all natural
things, and worship him with such insults and infamous criminations,
they are guilty of more shocking sacrilege than if they should totally
deny the existence of any god. It would therefore be better for them
to call some other god by the name of Jupiter--some one worthy of base
and criminal honors; substituting instead of Jupiter some vain fiction
(as Saturn is said to have had a stone given to him to devour instead
of his son,) which they might make the subject of their blasphemies,
rather than speak of that god as both thundering and committing
adultery,--ruling the whole world, and laying himself out for the
commission of so many licentious acts,--having in his power nature and
the highest causes of all natural things, but not having his own
causes good.
Next, I ask what place they find any longer for this Jupiter among the
gods, if Janus is the world; for Varro defined the true gods to be the
soul of the world, and the parts of it. And therefore whatever falls
not within this definition, is certainly not a true god, according to
them. Will they then say that Jupiter is the soul of the world, and
Janus the body --that is, this visible world? If they say this, it
will not be possible for them to affirm that Janus is a god. For
even, according to them, the body of the world is not a god, but the
soul of the world and its parts. Wherefore Varro, seeing this, says
that he thinks God is the soul of the world, and that this world
itself is God; but that as a wise man though he consists of soul and
body, is nevertheless called wise from the soul, so the world is
called God from the soul, though it consists of soul and body.
Therefore the body of the world alone is not God, but either the soul
of it alone, or the soul and the body together, yet so as that it is
God not by virtue of the body, but by virtue of the soul. If,
therefore, Janus is the world, and Janus is a god, will they say, in
order that Jupiter may be a god, that he is some part of Janus? For
they are wont rather to attribute universal existence to Jupiter;
whence the saying, "All things are full of Jupiter." [270]Therefore
they must think Jupiter also, in order that he may be a god, and
especially king of the gods, to be the world, that he may rule over
the other gods--according to them, his parts. To this effect, also,
the same Varro expounds certain verses of Valerius Soranus [271] in
that book which he wrote apart from the others concerning the worship
of the gods. These are the verses:
"Almighty Jove, progenitor of kings, and things, and gods,
And eke the mother of the gods, god one and all."
But in the same book he expounds these verses by saying that as the
male emits seed, and the female receives it, so Jupiter, whom they
believed to be the world, both emits all seeds from himself and
receives them into himself. For which reason, he says, Soranus wrote,
"Jove, progenitor and mother;" and with no less reason said that one
and all were the same. For the world is one, and in that one are all
things.
Footnotes
[268] Georgic, ii. 470.
[269] Summa, which also includes the meaning--last.
[270] Virgil, Eclog. iii. 60, who borrows the expression from the
Phoenomena of Aratus.
[271] Soranus lived about B.C. 100. See Smith's Dict.
Chapter 10.--Whether the Distinction Between Janus and Jupiter is a
Proper One.
Since, therefore, Janus is the world, and Jupiter is the world,
wherefore are Janus and Jupiter two gods, while the world is but one?
Why do they have separate temples, separate altars, different rites,
dissimilar images? If it be because the nature of beginnings is one,
and the nature of causes another, and the one has received the name of
Janus, the other of Jupiter; is it then the case, that if one man has
two distinct offices of authority, or two arts, two judges or two
artificers are spoken of, because the nature of the offices or the
arts is different? So also with respect to one god: if he have the
power of beginnings and of causes, must he therefore be thought to be
two gods, because beginnings and causes are two things? But if they
think that this is right, let them also affirm that Jupiter is as many
gods as they have given him surnames, on account of many powers; for
the things from which these surnames are applied to him are many and
diverse. I shall mention a few of them.
Chapter 11.--Concerning the Surnames of Jupiter, Which are Referred
Not to Many Gods, But to One and the Same God.
They have called him Victor, Invictus, Opitulus, Impulsor, Stator,
Centumpeda, Supinalis, Tigillus, Almus, Ruminus, and other names which
it were long to enumerate. But these surnames they have given to one
god on account of diverse causes and powers, but yet have not
compelled him to be, on account of so many things, as many gods. They
gave him these surnames because he conquered all things; because he
was conquered by none; because he brought help to the needy; because
he had the power of impelling, stopping, stablishing, throwing on the
back; because as a beam [272] he held together and sustained the
world; because he nourished all things; because, like the pap, [273]
he nourished animals. Here, we perceive, are some great things and
some small things; and yet it is one who is said to perform them all.
I think that the causes and the beginnings of things, on account of
which they have thought that the one world is two gods, Jupiter and
Janus, are nearer to each other than the holding together of the
world, and the giving of the pap to animals; and yet, on account of
these two works so far apart from each other, both in nature and
dignity, there has not been any necessity for the existence of two
gods; but one Jupiter has been called, on account of the one Tigillus,
on account of the other Ruminus. I am unwilling to say that the
giving of the pap to sucking animals might have become Juno rather
than Jupiter, especially when there was the goddess Rumina to help and
to serve her in this work; for I think it may be replied that Juno
herself is nothing else than Jupiter, according to those verses of
Valerius Soranus, where it has been said:
"Almighty Jove, progenitor of kings, and things, and gods,
And eke the mother of the gods," etc.
Why, then, was he called Ruminus, when they who may perchance inquire
more diligently may find that he is also that goddess Rumina?
If, then, it was rightly thought unworthy of the majesty of the gods,
that in one ear of corn one god should have the care of the joint,
another that of the husk, how much more unworthy of that majesty is
it, that one thing, and that of the lowest kind, even the giving of
the pap to animals that they may be nourished, should be under the
care of two gods, one of whom is Jupiter himself, the very king of all
things, who does this not along with his own wife, but with some
ignoble Rumina (unless perhaps he himself is Rumina, being Ruminus for
males and Rumina for females)! I should certainly have said that they
had been unwilling to apply to Jupiter a feminine name, had he not
been styled in these verses "progenitor and mother," and had I not
read among other surnames of his that of Pecunia [money], which we
found as a goddess among those petty deities, as I have already
mentioned in the fourth book. But since both males and females have
money [pecuniam], why has he not been called both Pecunius and
Pecunia? That is their concern.
Footnotes
[272] Tigillus.
[273] Ruma.
Chapter 12.--That Jupiter is Also Called Pecunia.
How elegantly they have accounted for this name! "He is also called
Pecunia," say they, "because all things belong to him." Oh how grand
an explanation of the name of a deity! Yes; he to whom all things
belong is most meanly and most contumeliously called Pecunia. In
comparison of all things which are contained by heaven and earth, what
are all things together which are possessed by men under the name of
money? [274]And this name, forsooth, hath avarice given to Jupiter,
that whoever was a lover of money might seem to himself to love not an
ordinary god, but the very king of all things himself. But it would
be a far different thing if he had been called Riches. For riches are
one thing, money another. For we call rich the wise, the just, the
good, who have either no money or very little. For they are more
truly rich in possessing virtue, since by it, even as re spects things
necessary for the body, they are content with what they have. But we
call the greedy poor, who are always craving and always wanting. For
they may possess ever so great an amount of money; but whatever be the
abundance of that, they are not able but to want. And we properly
call God Himself rich; not, however, in money, but in omnipotence.
Therefore they who have abundance of money are called rich, but
inwardly needy if they are greedy. So also, those who have no money
are called poor, but inwardly rich if they are wise.
What, then, ought the wise man to think of this theology, in which the
king of the gods receives the name of that thing "which no wise man
has desired?" [275]For had there been anything wholesomely taught
by this philosophy concerning eternal life, how much more
appropriately would that god who is the ruler of the world have been
called by them, not money, but wisdom, the love of which purges from
the filth of avarice, that is, of the love of money!
Footnotes
[274] Pecunia,that is, property; the original meaning of pecunia being
property in cattle, then property or wealth of any kind. Comp.
Augustin, De discipl. Christ. 6.
[275] Sallust, Catil. c. 11.
Chapter 13.--That When It is Expounded What Saturn Is, What Genius Is,
It Comes to This, that Both of Them are Shown to Be Jupiter.
But why speak more of this Jupiter, with whom perchance all the rest
are to be identified; so that, he being all, the opinion as to the
existence of many gods may remain as a mere opinion, empty of all
truth? And they are all to be referred to him, if his various parts
and powers are thought of as so many gods, or if the principle of mind
which they think to be diffused through all things has received the
names of many gods from the various parts which the mass of this
visible world combines in itself, and from the manifold administration
of nature. For what is Saturn also? "One of the principal gods," he
says, "who has dominion over all sowings." Does not the exposition of
the verses of Valerius Soranus teach that Jupiter is the world, and
that he emits all seeds from himself, and receives them into himself?
It is he, then, with whom is the dominion of all sowings. What is
Genius? "He is the god who is set over, and has the power of
begetting, all things." Who else than the world do they believe to
have this power, to which it has been said:
"Almighty Jove, progenitor and mother?"
And when in another place he says that Genius is the rational soul of
every one, and therefore exists separately in each individual, but
that the corresponding soul of the world is God, he just comes back to
this same thing,--namely, that the soul of the world itself is to be
held to be, as it were, the universal genius. This, therefore, is
what he calls Jupiter. For if every genius is a god, and the soul of
every man a genius, it follows that the soul of every man is a god.
But if very absurdity compels even these theologists themselves to
shrink from this, it remains that they call that genius god by special
and pre-eminent distinction, whom they call the soul of the world, and
therefore Jupiter.
Chapter 14.--Concerning the Offices of Mercury and Mars.
But they have not found how to refer Mercury and Mars to any parts of
the world, and to the works of God which are in the elements; and
therefore they have set them at least over human works, making them
assistants in speaking and in carrying on wars. Now Mercury, if he
has also the power of the speech of the gods, rules also over the king
of the gods himself, if Jupiter, as he receives from him the faculty
of speech, also speaks according as it is his pleasure to permit
him--which surely is absurd; but if it is only the power over human
speech which is held to be attributed to him, then we say it is
incredible that Jupiter should have condescended to give the pap not
only to children, but also to beasts--from which he has been surnamed
Ruminus--and yet should have been unwilling that the care of our
speech, by which we excel the beasts, should pertain to him. And thus
speech itself both belongs to Jupiter, and is Mercury. But if speech
itself is said to be Mercury, as those things which are said
concerning him by way of interpretation show it to be;--for he is said
to have been called Mercury, that is, he who runs between, [276]
because speech runs between men: they say also that the Greeks call
him ;;Ermes, because speech, or interpretation, which certainly
belongs to speech, is called by them hermeneia: also he is said to
preside over payments, because speech passes between sellers and
buyers: the wings, too, which he has on his head and on his feet,
they say mean that speech passes winged through the air: he is also
said to have been called the messenger, [277] because by means of
speech all our thoughts are expressed; [278] --if, therefore, speech
itself is Mercury, then, even by their own confession, he is not a
god. But when they make to themselves gods of such as are not even
demons, by praying to unclean spirits, they are possessed by such as
are not gods, but demons. In like manner, because they have not been
able to find for Mars any element or part of the world in which he
might perform some works of nature of whatever kind, they have said
that he is the god of war, which is a work of men, and that not one
which is considered desirable by them. If, therefore, Felicitas
should give perpetual peace, Mars would have nothing to do. But if
war itself is Mars, as speech is Mercury, I wish it were as true that
there were no war to be falsely called a god, as it is true that it is
not a god.
Footnotes
[276] Quasi medius currens.
[277] Nuncius.
[278] Enunciantur.
Chapter 15.--Concerning Certain Stars Which the Pagans Have Called by
the Names of Their Gods.
But possibly these stars which have been called by their names are
these gods. For they call a certain star Mercury, and likewise a
certain other star Mars. But among those stars which are called by
the names of gods, is that one which they call Jupiter, and yet with
them Jupiter is the world. There also is that one they call Saturn,
and yet they give to him no small property besides,--namely, all
seeds. There also is that brightest of them all which is called by
them Venus, and yet they will have this same Venus to be also the
moon:--not to mention how Venus and Juno are said by them to contend
about that most brilliant star, as though about another golden apple.
For some say that Lucifer belongs to Venus, and some to Juno. But, as
usual, Venus conquers. For by far the greatest number assign that
star to Venus, so much so that there is scarcely found one of them who
thinks otherwise. But since they call Jupiter the king of all, who
will not laugh to see his star so far surpassed in brilliancy by the
star of Venus? For it ought to have been as much more brilliant than
the rest, as he himself is more powerful. They answer that it only
appears so because it is higher up, and very much farther away from
the earth. If, therefore, its greater dignity has deserved a higher
place, why is Saturn higher in the heavens than Jupiter? Was the
vanity of the fable which made Jupiter king not able to reach the
stars? And has Saturn been permitted to obtain at least in the
heavens, what he could not obtain in his own kingdom nor in the
Capitol?
But why has Janus received no star? If it is because he is the world,
and they are all in him, the world is also Jupiter's, and yet he has
one. Did Janus compromise his case as best he could, and instead of
the one star which he does not have among the heavenly bodies, accept
so many faces on earth? Again, if they think that on account of the
stars alone Mercury and Mars are parts of the world, in order that
they may be able to have them for gods, since speech and war are not
parts of the world, but acts of men, how is it that they have made no
altars, established no rites, built no temples for Aries, and Taurus,
and Cancer, and Scorpio, and the rest which they number as the
celestial signs, and which consist not of single stars, but each of
them of many stars, which also they say are situated above those
already mentioned in the highest part of the heavens, where a more
constant motion causes the stars to follow an undeviating course? And
why have they not reckoned them as gods, I do not say among those
select gods, but not even among those, as it were, plebeian gods?
Chapter 16.--Concerning Apollo and Diana, and the Other Select Gods
Whom They Would Have to Be Parts of the World.
Although they would have Apollo to be a diviner and physician, they
have nevertheless given him a place as some part of the world. They
have said that he is also the sun; and likewise they have said that
Diana, his sister, is the moon, and the guardian of roads. Whence
also they will have her be a virgin, because a road brings forth
nothing. They also make both of them have arrows, because those two
planets send their rays from the heavens to the earth. They make
Vulcan to be the fire of the world; Neptune the waters of the world;
Father Dis, that is, Orcus, the earthy and lowest part of the world.
Liber and Ceres they set over seeds,--the former over the seeds of
males, the latter over the seeds of females; or the one over the fluid
part of seed, but the other over the dry part. And all this together
is referred to the world, that is, to Jupiter, who is called
"progenitor and mother," because he emitted all seeds from himself,
and received them into himself. For they also make this same Ceres to
be the Great Mother, who they say is none other than the earth, and
call her also Juno. And therefore they assign to her the second
causes of things, notwithstanding that it has been said to Jupiter,
"progenitor and mother of the gods;" because, according to them, the
whole world itself is Jupiter's. Minerva, also, because they set her
over human arts, and did not find even a star in which to place her,
has been said by them to be either the highest ether, or even the
moon. Also Vesta herself they have thought to be the highest of the
goddesses, because she is the earth; although they have thought that
the milder fire of the world, which is used for the ordinary purposes
of human life, not the more violent fire, such as belongs to Vulcan,
is to be assigned to her. And thus they will have all those select
gods to be the world and its parts,--some of them the whole world,
others of them its parts; the whole of it Jupiter,--its parts, Genius,
Mater Magna, Sol and Luna, or rather Apollo and Diana, and so on. And
sometimes they make one god many things; sometimes one thing many
gods. Many things are one god in the case of Jupiter; for both the
whole world is Jupiter, and the sky alone is Jupiter, and the star
alone is said and held to be Jupiter. Juno also is mistress of second
causes,--Juno is the air, Juno is the earth; and had she won it over
Venus, Juno would have been the star. Likewise Minerva is the highest
ether, and Minerva is likewise the moon, which they suppose to be in
the lowest limit of the ether. And also they make one thing many gods
in this way. The world is both Janus and Jupiter; also the earth is
Juno, and Mater Magna, and Ceres.
Chapter 17.--That Even Varro Himself Pronounced His Own Opinions
Regarding the Gods Ambiguous.
And the same is true with respect to all the rest, as is true with
respect to those things which I have mentioned for the sake of
example. They do not explain them, but rather involve them. They
rush hither and thither, to this side or to that, according as they
are driven by the impulse of erratic opinion; so that even Varro
himself has chosen rather to doubt concerning all things, than to
affirm anything. For, having written the first of the three last
books concerning the certain gods, and having commenced in the second
of these to speak of the uncertain gods, he says: "I ought not to be
censured for having stated in this book the doubtful opinions
concerning the gods. For he who, when he has read them, shall think
that they both ought to be, and can be, conclusively judged of, will
do so himself. For my own part, I can be more easily led to doubt the
things which I have written in the first book, than to attempt to
reduce all the things I shall write in this one to any orderly
system." Thus he makes uncertain not only that book concerning the
uncertain gods, but also that other concerning the certain gods.
Moreover, in that third book concerning the select gods, after having
exhibited by anticipation as much of the natural theology as he deemed
necessary, and when about to commence to speak of the vanities and
lying insanities of the civil theology, where he was not only without
the guidance of the truth of things, but was also pressed by the
authority of tradition, he says: "I will write in this book
concerning the public gods of the Roman people, to whom they have
dedicated temples, and whom they have conspicuously distinguished by
many adornments; but, as Xenophon of Colophon writes, I will state
what I think, not what I am prepared to maintain: it is for man to
think those things, for God to know them."
It is not, then, an account of things comprehended and most certainly
believed which he promised, when about to write those things which
were instituted by men. He only timidly promises an account of things
which are but the subject of doubtful opinion. Nor, indeed, was it
possible for him to affirm with the same certainty that Janus was the
world, and such like things; or to discover with the same certainty
such things as how Jupiter was the son of Saturn, while Saturn was
made subject to him as king:--he could, I say, neither affirm nor
discover such things with the same certainty with which he knew such
things as that the world existed, that the heavens and earth existed,
the heavens bright with stars, and the earth fertile through seeds; or
with the same perfect conviction with which he believed that this
universal mass of nature is governed and administered by a certain
invisible and mighty force.
Chapter 18.--A More Credible Cause of the Rise of Pagan Error.
A far more credible account of these gods is given, when it is said
that they were men, and that to each one of them sacred rites and
solemnities were instituted, according to his particular genius,
manners, actions, circumstances; which rites and solemnities, by
gradually creeping through the souls of men, which are like demons,
and eager for things which yield them sport, were spread far and wide;
the poets adorning them with lies, and false spirits seducing men to
receive them. For it is far more likely that some youth, either
impious himself, or afraid of being slain by an impious father, being
desirous to reign, dethroned his father, than that (according to
Varro's interpretation) Saturn was overthrown by his son Jupiter: for
cause, which belongs to Jupiter, is before seed, which belongs to
Saturn. For had this been so, Saturn would never have been before
Jupiter, nor would he have been the father of Jupiter. For cause
always precedes seed, and is never generated from seed. But when they
seek to honor by natural interpretation most vain fables or deeds of
men, even the acutest men are so perplexed that we are compelled to
grieve for their folly also.
Chapter 19.--Concerning the Interpretations Which Compose the Reason
of the Worship of Saturn.
They said, says Varro, that Saturn was wont to devour all that sprang
from him, because seeds returned to the earth from whence they
sprang. And when it is said that a lump of earth was put before
Saturn to be devoured instead of Jupiter, it is signified, he says,
that before the art of ploughing was discovered, seeds were buried in
the earth by the hands of men. The earth itself, then, and not seeds,
should have been called Saturn, because it in a manner devours what it
has brought forth, when the seeds which have sprung from it return
again into it. And what has Saturn's receiving of a lump of earth
instead of Jupiter to do with this, that the seeds were covered in the
soil by the hands of men? Was the seed kept from being devoured, like
other things, by being covered with the soil? For what they say would
imply that he who put on the soil took away the seed, as Jupiter is
said to have been taken away when the lump of soil was offered to
Saturn instead of him, and not rather that the soil, by covering the
seed, only caused it to be devoured the more eagerly. Then, in that
way, Jupiter is the seed, and not the cause of the seed, as was said a
little before.
But what shall men do who cannot find anything wise to say, because
they are interpreting foolish things? Saturn has a pruning-knife.
That, says Varro, is on account of agriculture. Certainly in Saturn's
reign there as yet existed no agriculture, and therefore the former
times of Saturn are spoken of, because, as the same Varro interprets
the fables, the primeval men lived on those seeds which the earth
produced spontaneously. Perhaps he received a pruning-knife when he
had lost his sceptre; that he who had been a king, and lived at ease
during the first part of his time, should become a laborious workman
whilst his son occupied the throne. Then he says that boys were wont
to be immolated to him by certain peoples, the Carthaginians for
instance; and also that adults were immolated by some nations, for
example the Gauls--because, of all seeds, the human race is the best.
What need we say more concerning this most cruel vanity. Let us
rather attend to and hold by this, that these interpretations are not
carried up to the true God,--a living, incorporeal, unchangeable
nature, from whom a blessed life enduring for ever may be
obtained,--but that they end in things which are corporeal, temporal,
mutable, and mortal. And whereas it is said in the fables that Saturn
castrated his father Coelus, this signifies, says Varro, that the
divine seed belongs to Saturn, and not to Coelus; for this reason, as
far as a reason can be discovered, namely, that in heaven [279]
nothing is born from seed. But, lo! Saturn, if he is the son of
Coelus, is the son of Jupiter. For they affirm times without number,
and that emphatically, that the heavens [280] are Jupiter. Thus those
things which come not of the truth, do very often, without being
impelled by any one, themselves overthrow one another. He says that
Saturn was called Kronos, which in the Greek tongue signifies a space
of time, [281] because, without that, seed cannot be productive.
These and many other things are said concerning Saturn, and they are
all referred to seed. But Saturn surely, with all that great power,
might have sufficed for seed. Why are other gods demanded for it,
especially Liber and Libera, that is, Ceres?--concerning whom again,
as far as seed is concerned, he says as many things as if he had said
nothing concerning Saturn.
Footnotes
[279] Cælo.
[280] Cælum.
[281] Sc. Chronos.
Chapter 20.--Concerning the Rites of Eleusinian Ceres.
Now among the rites of Ceres, those Eleusinian rites are much famed
which were in the highest repute among the Athenians, of which Varro
offers no interpretation except with respect to corn, which Ceres
discovered, and with respect to Proserpine, whom Ceres lost, Orcus
having carried her away. And this Proserpine herself, he says,
signifies the fecundity of seeds. But as this fecundity departed at a
certain season, whilst the earth wore an aspect of sorrow through the
consequent sterility, there arose an opinion that the daughter of
Ceres, that is, fecundity itself, who was called Proserpine, from
proserpere (to creep forth, to spring), had been carried away by
Orcus, and detained among the inhabitants of the nether world; which
circumstance was celebrated with public mourning. But since the same
fecundity again returned, there arose joy because Proserpine had been
given back by Orcus, and thus these rites were instituted. Then Varro
adds, that many things are taught in the mysteries of Ceres which only
refer to the discovery of fruits.
Chapter 21.--Concerning the Shamefulness of the Rites Which are
Celebrated in Honor of Liber.
Now as to the rites of Liber, whom they have set over liquid seeds,
and therefore not only over the liquors of fruits, among which wine
holds, so to speak, the primacy, but also over the seeds of
animals:--as to these rites, I am unwilling to undertake to show to
what excess of turpitude they had reached, because that would entail a
lengthened discourse, though I am not unwilling to do so as a
demonstration of the proud stupidity of those who practise them.
Among other rites which I am compelled from the greatness of their
number to omit, Varro says that in Italy, at the places where roads
crossed each other the rites of Liber were celebrated with such
unrestrained turpitude, that the private parts of a man were
worshipped in his honor. Nor was this abomination transacted in
secret that some regard at least might be paid to modesty, but was
openly and wantonly displayed. For during the festival of Liber this
obscene member, placed on a car, was carried with great honor, first
over the crossroads in the country, and then into the city. But in
the town of Lavinium a whole month was devoted to Liber alone, during
the days of which all the people gave themselves up to the must
dissolute conversation, until that member had been carried through the
forum and brought to rest in its own place; on which unseemly member
it was necessary that the most honorable matron should place a wreath
in the presence of all the people. Thus, forsooth, was the god Liber
to be appeased in order to the growth of seeds. Thus was enchantment
to be driven away from fields, even by a matron's being compelled to
do in public what not even a harlot ought to be permitted to do in a
theatre, if there were matrons among the spectators. For these
reasons, then, Saturn alone was not believed to be sufficient for
seeds,--namely, that the impure mind might find occasions for
multiplying the gods; and that, being righteously abandoned to
uncleanness by the one true God, and being prostituted to the worship
of many false gods, through an avidity for ever greater and greater
uncleanness, it should call these sacrilegious rites sacred things,
and should abandon itself to be violated and polluted by crowds of
foul demons.
Chapter 22.--Concerning Neptune, and Salacia and Venilia.
Now Neptune had Salacia to wife, who they say is the nether waters of
the sea. Wherefore was Venilia also joined to him? Was it not simply
through the lust of the soul desiring a greater number of demons to
whom to prostitute itself, and not because this goddess was necessary
to the perfection of their sacred rites? But let the interpretation
of this illustrious theology be brought forward to restrain us from
this censuring by rendering a satisfactory reason. Venilia, says this
theology, is the wave which comes to the shore, Salacia the wave which
returns into the sea. Why, then, are there two goddesses, when it is
one wave which comes and returns? Certainly it is mad lust itself,
which in its eagerness for many deities resembles the waves which
break on the shore. For though the water which goes is not different
from that which returns, still the soul which goes and returns not is
defiled by two demons, whom it has taken occasion by this false
pretext to invite. I ask thee, O Varro, and you who have read such
works of learned men, and think ye have learned something great,--I
ask you to interpret this, I do not say in a manner consistent with
the eternal and unchangeable nature which alone is God, but only in a
manner consistent with the doctrine concerning the soul of the world
and its parts, which ye think to be the true gods. It is a somewhat
more tolerable thing that ye have made that part of the soul of the
world which pervades the sea your god Neptune. Is the wave, then,
which comes to the shore and returns to the main, two parts of the
world, or two parts of the soul of the world? Who of you is so silly
as to think so? Why, then, have they made to you two goddesses? The
only reason seems to be, that your wise ancestors have provided, not
that many gods should rule you, but that many of such demons as are
delighted with those vanities and falsehoods should possess you. But
why has that Salacia, according to this interpretation, lost the lower
part of the sea, seeing that she was represented as subject to her
husband? For in saying that she is the receding wave, ye have put her
on the surface. Was she enraged at her husband for taking Venilia as
a concubine, and thus drove him from the upper part of the sea?
Chapter 23.--Concerning the Earth, Which Varro Affirms to Be a
Goddess, Because that Soul of the World Which He Thinks to Be God
Pervades Also This Lowest Part of His Body, and Imparts to It a Divine
Force.
Surely the earth, which we see full of its own living creatures, is
one; but for all that, it is but a mighty mass among the elements, and
the lowest part of the world. Why, then, would they have it to be a
goddess? Is it because it is fruitful? Why, then, are not men rather
held to be gods, who render it fruitful by cultivating it; but though
they plough it, do not adore it? But, say they, the part of the soul
of the world which pervades it makes it a goddess. As if it were not
a far more evident thing, nay, a thing which is not called in
question, that there is a soul in man. And yet men are not held to be
gods, but (a thing to be sadly lamented), with wonderful and pitiful
delusion, are subjected to those who are not gods, and than whom they
themselves are better, as the objects of deserved worship and
adoration. And certainly the same Varro, in the book concerning the
select gods, affirms that there are three grades of soul in universal
nature. One which pervades all the living parts of the body, and has
not sensation, but only the power of life,--that principle which
penetrates into the bones, nails and hair. By this principle in the
world trees are nourished, and grow without being possessed of
sensation, and live in a manner peculiar to themselves. The second
grade of soul is that in which there is sensation. This principle
penetrates into the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and the organs of
sensation. The third grade of soul is the highest, and is called
mind, where intelligence has its throne. This grade of soul no mortal
creatures except man are possessed of. Now this part of the soul of
the world, Varro says, is called God, and in us is called Genius. And
the stones and earth in the world, which we see, and which are not
pervaded by the power of sensation, are, as it were, the bones and
nails of God. Again, the sun, moon, and stars, which we perceive, and
by which He perceives, are His organs of perception. Moreover, the
ether is His mind; and by the virtue which is in it, which penetrates
into the stars, it also makes them gods; and because it penetrates
through them into the earth, it makes it the goddess Tellus, whence
again it enters and permeates the sea and ocean, making them the god
Neptune.
Let him return from this, which he thinks to be natural theology, back
to that from which he went out, in order to rest from the fatigue
occasioned by the many turnings and windings of his path. Let him
return, I say, let him return to the civil theology. I wish to detain
him there a while. I have somewhat to say which has to do with that
theology. I am not yet saying, that if the earth and stones are
similar to our bones and nails, they are in like manner devoid of
intelligence, as they are devoid of sensation. Nor am I saying that,
if our bones and nails are said to have intelligence, because they are
in a man who has intelligence, he who says that the things analogous
to these in the world are gods, is as stupid as he is who says that
our bones and nails are men. We shall perhaps have occasion to
dispute these things with the philosophers. At present, however, I
wish to deal with Varro as a political theologian. For it is possible
that, though he may seem to have wished to lift up his head, as it
were, into the liberty of natural theology, the consciousness that the
book with which he was occupied was one concerning a subject belonging
to civil theology, may have caused him to relapse into the point of
view of that theology, and to say this in order that the ancestors of
his nation, and other states, might not be believed to have bestowed
on Neptune an irrational worship. What I am to say is this: Since
the earth is one, why has not that part of the soul of the world which
permeates the earth made it that one goddess which he calls Tellus?
But had it done so, what then had become of Orcus, the brother of
Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis? [282]And where, in
that case, had been his wife Proserpine, who, according to another
opinion given in the same book, is called, not the fecundity of the
earth, but its lower part? [283]But if they say that part of the
soul of the world, when it permeates the upper part of the earth,
makes the god Father Dis, but when it pervades the nether part of the
same the goddess Proserpine; what, in that case, will that Tellus be?
For all that which she was has been divided into these two parts, and
these two gods; so that it is impossible to find what to make or where
to place her as a third goddess, except it be said that those
divinities Orcus and Proserpine are the one goddess Tellus, and that
they are not three gods, but one or two, whilst notwithstanding they
are called three, held to be three, worshipped as three, having their
own several altars, their own shrines, rites, images, priests, whilst
their own false demons also through these things defile the
prostituted soul. Let this further question be answered: What part
of the earth does a part of the soul of the world permeate in order to
make the god Tellumo? No, says he; but the earth being one and the
same, has a double life,--the masculine, which produces seed, and the
feminine, which receives and nourishes the seed. Hence it has been
called Tellus from the feminine principle, and Tellumo from the
masculine. Why, then, do the priests, as he indicates, perform divine
service to four gods, two others being added,--namely, to Tellus,
Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor? We have already spoken concerning Tellus
and Tellumo. But why do they worship Altor? [284]Because, says he,
all that springs of the earth is nourished by the earth. Wherefore do
they worship Rusor? [285]Because all things return back again to
the place whence they proceeded.
Footnotes
[282] See ch. 16.
[283] Varro, De Ling. Lat. v. 68.
[284] Nourisher.
[285] Returner.
Chapter 24.--Concerning the Surnames of Tellus and Their
Significations, Which, Although They Indicate Many Properties, Ought
Not to Have Established the Opinion that There is a Corresponding
Number of Gods.
The one earth, then, on account of this fourfold virtue, ought to have
had four surnames, but not to have been considered as four gods,--as
Jupiter and Juno, though they have so many surnames, are for all that
only single deities,--for by all these surnames it is signified that a
manifold virtue belongs to one god or to one goddess; but the
multitude of surnames does not imply a multitude of gods. But as
sometimes even the vilest women themselves grow tired of those crowds
which they have sought after under the impulse of wicked passion, so
also the soul, become vile, and prostituted to impure spirits,
sometimes begins to loathe to multiply to itself gods to whom to
surrender itself to be polluted by them, as much as it once delighted
in so doing. For Varro himself, as if ashamed of that crowd of gods,
would make Tellus to be one goddess. "They say," says he, "that
whereas the one great mother has a tympanum, it is signified that she
is the orb of the earth; whereas she has towers on her head, towns are
signified; and whereas seats are fixed round about her, it is
signified that whilst all things move, she moves not. And their
having made the Galli to serve this goddess, signifies that they who
are in need of seed ought to follow the earth for in it all seeds are
found. By their throwing themselves down before her, it is taught,"
he says, "that they who cultivate the earth should not sit idle, for
there is always something for them to do. The sound of the cymbals
signifies the noise made by the throwing of iron utensils, and by
men's hands, and all other noises connected with agricultural
operations; and these cymbals are of brass, because the ancients used
brazen utensils in their agriculture before iron was discovered. They
place beside the goddess an unbound and tame lion, to show that there
is no kind of land so wild and so excessively barren as that it would
be profitless to attempt to bring it in and cultivate it." Then he
adds that, because they gave many names and surnames to mother Tellus,
it came to be thought that these signified many gods. "They think,"
says he, "that Tellus is Ops, because the earth is improved by labor;
Mother, because it brings forth much; Great, because it brings forth
seed; Proserpine, because fruits creep forth from it; Vesta, because
it is invested with herbs. And thus," says he, "they not at all
absurdly identify other goddesses with the earth." If, then, it is
one goddess (though, if the truth were consulted, it is not even
that), why do they nevertheless separate it into many? Let there be
many names of one goddess, and let there not be as many goddesses as
there are names.
But the authority of the erring ancients weighs heavily on Varro, and
compels him, after having expressed this opinion, to show signs of
uneasiness; for he immediately adds, "With which things the opinion of
the ancients, who thought that there were really many goddesses, does
not conflict." How does it not conflict, when it is entirely a
different thing to say that one goddess has many names, and to say
that there are many goddesses? But it is possible, he says, that the
same thing may both be one, and yet have in it a plurality of things.
I grant that there are many things in one man; are there therefore in
him many men? In like manner, in one goddess there are many things;
are there therefore also many goddesses? But let them divide, unite,
multiply, reduplicate, and implicate as they like.
These are the famous mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, all of
which are shown to have reference to mortal seeds and to agriculture.
Do these things, then,--namely, the tympanum, the towers, the Galli,
the tossing to and fro of limbs, the noise of cymbals, the images of
lions,--do these things, having this reference and this end, promise
eternal life? Do the mutilated Galli, then, serve this Great Mother
in order to signify that they who are in need of seed should follow
the earth, as though it were not rather the case that this very
service caused them to want seed? For whether do they, by following
this goddess, acquire seed, being in want of it, or, by following her,
lose seed when they have it? Is this to interpret or to deprecate?
Nor is it considered to what a degree malign demons have gained the
upper hand, inasmuch as they have been able to exact such cruel rites
without having dared to promise any great things in return for them.
Had the earth not been a goddess, men would have, by laboring, laid
their hands on it in order to obtain seed through it, and would not
have laid violent hands on themselves in order to lose seed on account
of it. Had it not been a goddess, it would have become so fertile by
the hands of others, that it would not have compelled a man to be
rendered barren by his own hands; nor that in the festival of Liber an
honorable matron put a wreath on the private parts of a man in the
sight of the multitude, where perhaps her husband was standing by
blushing and perspiring, if there is any shame left in men; and that
in the celebration of marriages the newly-married bride was ordered to
sit upon Priapus. These things are bad enough, but they are small and
contemptible in comparison with that most cruel abomination, or most
abominable cruelty, by which either set is so deluded that neither
perishes of its wound. There the enchantment of fields is feared;
here the amputation of members is not feared. There the modesty of
the bride is outraged, but in such a manner as that neither her
fruitfulness nor even her virginity is taken away; here a man is so
mutilated that he is neither changed into a woman nor remains a man.
Chapter 25.--The Interpretation of the Mutilation of Atys Which the
Doctrine of the Greek Sages Set Forth.
Varro has not spoken of that Atys, nor sought out any interpretation
for him, in memory of whose being loved by Ceres the Gallus is
mutilated. But the learned and wise Greeks have by no means been
silent about an interpretation so holy and so illustrious. The
celebrated philosopher Porphyry has said that Atys signifies the
flowers of spring, which is the most beautiful season, and therefore
was mutilated because the flower falls before the fruit appears. [286]
They have not, then, compared the man himself, or rather that
semblance of a man they called Atys, to the flower, but his male
organs,--these, indeed, fell whilst he was living. Did I say fell?
nay, truly they did not fall, nor were they plucked off, but torn
away. Nor when that flower was lost did any fruit follow, but rather
sterility. What, then, do they say is signified by the castrated Atys
himself, and whatever remained to him after his castration? To what
do they refer that? What interpretation does that give rise to? Do
they, after vain endeavors to discover an interpretation, seek to
persuade men that that is rather to be believed which report has made
public, and which has also been written concerning his having been a
mutilated man? Our Varro has very properly opposed this, and has been
unwilling to state it; for it certainly was not unknown to that most
learned man.
Footnotes
[286] In the book De Ratione Naturali Deorum.
Chapter 26.--Concerning the Abomination of the Sacred Rites of the
Great Mother.
Concerning the effeminates consecrated to the same Great Mother, in
defiance of all the modesty which belongs to men and women, Varro has
not wished to say anything, nor do I remember to have read anywhere
aught concerning them. These effeminates, no later than yesterday,
were going through the streets and places of Carthage with anointed
hair, whitened faces, relaxed bodies, and feminine gait, exacting from
the people the means of maintaining their ignominious lives. Nothing
has been said concerning them. Interpretation failed, reason blushed,
speech was silent. The Great Mother has surpassed all her sons, not
in greatness of deity, but of crime. To this monster not even the
monstrosity of Janus is to be compared. His deformity was only in his
image; hers was the deformity of cruelty in her sacred rites. He has
a redundancy of members in stone images; she inflicts the loss of
members on men. This abomination is not surpassed by the licentious
deeds of Jupiter, so many and so great. He, with all his seductions
of women, only disgraced heaven with one Ganymede; she, with so many
avowed and public effeminates, has both defiled the earth and outraged
heaven. Perhaps we may either compare Saturn to this Magna Mater, or
even set him before her in this kind of abominable cruelty, for he
mutilated his father. But at the festivals of Saturn, men could
rather be slain by the hands of others than mutilated by their own.
He devoured his sons, as the poets say, and the natural theologists
interpret this as they list. History says he slew them. But the
Romans never received, like the Carthaginians, the custom of
sacrificing their sons to him. This Great Mother of the gods,
however, has brought mutilated men into Roman temples, and has
preserved that cruel custom, being believed to promote the strength of
the Romans by emasculating their men. Compared with this evil, what
are the thefts of Mercury, the wantonness of Venus, and the base and
flagitious deeds of the rest of them, which we might bring forward
from books, were it not that they are daily sung and danced in the
theatres? But what are these things to so great an evil,--an evil
whose magnitude was only proportioned to the greatness of the Great
Mother,--especially as these are said to have been invented by the
poets? as if the poets had also invented this that they are acceptable
to the gods. Let it be imputed, then, to the audacity and impudence
of the poets that these things have been sung and written of. But
that they have been incorporated into the body of divine rites and
honors, the deities themselves demanding and extorting that
incorporation, what is that but the crime of the gods? nay more, the
confession of demons and the deception of wretched men? But as to
this that the Great Mother is considered to be worshipped in the
appropriate form when she is worshipped by the consecration of
mutilated men, this is not an invention of the poets, nay, they have
rather shrunk from it with horror than sung of it. Ought any one,
then, to be consecrated to these select gods, that he may live
blessedly after death, consecrated to whom he could not live decently
before death, being subjected to such foul superstitions, and bound
over to unclean demons? But all these things, says Varro, are to be
referred to the world. [287]Let him consider if it be not rather to
the unclean. [288]But why not refer that to the world which is
demonstrated to be in the world? We, however, seek for a mind which,
trusting to true religion, does not adore the world as its god, but
for the sake of God praises the world as a work of God, and, purified
from mundane defilements, comes pure [289] to God Himself who founded
the world. [290]
Footnotes
[287] Mundum.
[288] Immundum.
[289] Mundus.
[290] Mundum.
Chapter 27.--Concerning the Figments of the Physical Theologists, Who
Neither Worship the True Divinity, Nor Perform the Worship Wherewith
the True Divinity Should Be Served.
We see that these select gods have, indeed, become more famous than
the rest; not, however, that their merits may be brought to light, but
that their opprobrious deeds may not be hid. Whence it is more
credible that they were men, as not only poetic but also historical
literature has handed down. For this which Virgil says,
"Then from Olympus' heights came down
Good Saturn, exiled from his throne
By Jove, his mightier heir;" [291]
and what follows with reference to this affair, is fully related by
the historian Euhemerus, and has been translated into Latin by
Ennius. And as they who have written before us in the Greek or in the
Latin tongue against such errors as these have said much concerning
this matter, I have thought it unnecessary to dwell upon it. When I
consider those physical reasons, then, by which learned and acute men
attempt to turn human things into divine things, all I see is that
they have been able to refer these things only to temporal works and
to that which has a corporeal nature, and even though invisible still
mutable; and this is by no means the true God. But if this worship
had been performed as the symbolism of ideas at least congruous with
religion, though it would indeed have been cause of grief that the
true God was not announced and proclaimed by its symbolism,
nevertheless it could have been in some degree borne with, when it did
not occasion and command the performance of such foul and abominable
things. But since it is impiety to worship the body or the soul for
the true God, by whose indwelling alone the soul is happy, how much
more impious is it to worship those things through which neither soul
nor body can obtain either salvation or human honor? Wherefore if
with temple, priest, and sacrifice, which are due to the true God, any
element of the world be worshipped, or any created spirit, even though
not impure and evil, that worship is still evil, not because the
things are evil by which the worship is performed, but because those
things ought only to be used in the worship of Him to whom alone such
worship and service are due. But if any one insist that he worships
the one true God,--that is, the Creator of every soul and of every
body,--with stupid and monstrous idols, with human victims, with
putting a wreath on the male organ, with the wages of unchastity, with
the cutting of limbs, with emasculation, with the consecration of
effeminates, with impure and obscene plays, such a one does not sin
because he worships One who ought not to be worshipped, but because he
worships Him who ought to be worshipped in a way in which He ought not
to be worshipped. But he who worships with such things,--that is,
foul and obscene things,--and that not the true God, namely, the maker
of soul and body, but a creature, even though not a wicked creature,
whether it be soul or body, or soul and body together, twice sins
against God, because he both worships for God what is not God, and
also worships with such things as neither God nor what is not God
ought to be worshipped with. It is, indeed, manifest how these pagans
worship,--that is, how shamefully and criminally they worship; but
what or whom they worship would have been left in obscurity, had not
their history testi fied that those same confessedly base and foul
rites were rendered in obedience to the demands of the gods, who
exacted them with terrible severity. Wherefore it is evident beyond
doubt that this whole civil theology is occupied in inventing means
for attracting wicked and most impure spirits, inviting them to visit
senseless images, and through these to take possession of stupid
hearts.
Footnotes
[291] Virgil, Æneid, viii. 319-20.
Chapter 28.--That the Doctrine of Varro Concerning Theology is in No
Part Consistent with Itself.
To what purpose, then, is it that this most learned and most acute man
Varro attempts, as it were, with subtle disputation, to reduce and
refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He cannot do it. They go
out of his hands like water; they shrink back; they slip down and
fall. For when about to speak of the females, that is, the goddesses,
he says, "Since, as I observed in the first book concerning places,
heaven and earth are the two origins of the gods, on which account
they are called celestials and terrestrials, and as I began in the
former books with heaven, speaking of Janus, whom some have said to be
heaven, and others the earth, so I now commence with Tellus in
speaking concerning the goddesses." I can understand what
embarrassment so great a mind was experiencing. For he is influenced
by the perception of a certain plausible resemblance, when he says
that the heaven is that which does, and the earth that which suffers,
and therefore attributes the masculine principle to the one, and the
feminine to the other, not considering that it is rather He who made
both heaven and earth who is the maker of both activity and
passivity. On this principle he interprets the celebrated mysteries
of the Samothracians, and promises, with an air of great devoutness,
that he will by writing expound these mysteries, which have not been
so much as known to his countrymen, and will send them his
exposition. Then he says that he had from many proofs gathered that,
in those mysteries, among the images one signifies heaven, another the
earth, another the patterns of things, which Plato calls ideas. He
makes Jupiter to signify heaven, Juno the earth, Minerva the ideas.
Heaven, by which anything is made; the earth, from which it is made;
and the pattern, according to which it is made. But, with respect to
the last, I am forgetting to say that Plato attributed so great an
importance to these ideas as to say, not that anything was made by
heaven according to them, but that according to them heaven itself was
made. [292]To return, however,--it is to be observed that Varro
has, in the book on the select gods, lost that theory of these gods,
in whom he has, as it were, embraced all things. For he assigns the
male gods to heaven, the females to earth; among which latter he has
placed Minerva, whom he had before placed above heaven itself. Then
the male god Neptune is in the sea, which pertains rather to earth
than to heaven. Last of all, father Dis, who is called in Greek
Plouton, another male god, brother of both (Jupiter and Neptune), is
also held to be a god of the earth, holding the upper region of the
earth himself, and allotting the nether region to his wife
Proserpine. How, then, do they attempt to refer the gods to heaven,
and the goddesses to earth? What solidity, what consistency, what
sobriety has this disputation? But that Tellus is the origin of the
goddesses,--the great mother, to wit, beside whom there is continually
the noise of the mad and abominable revelry of effeminates and
mutilated men, and men who cut themselves, and indulge in frantic
gesticulations,--how is it, then, that Janus is called the head of the
gods, and Tellus the head of the goddesses? In the one case error
does not make one head, and in the other frenzy does not make a sane
one. Why do they vainly attempt to refer these to the world? Even if
they could do so, no pious person worships the world for the true
God. Nevertheless, plain truth makes it evident that they are not
able even to do this. Let them rather identify them with dead men and
most wicked demons, and no further question will remain.
Footnotes
[292] In the Timæus.
Chapter 29.--That All Things Which the Physical Theologists Have
Referred to the World and Its Parts, They Ought to Have Referred to
the One True God.
For all those things which, according to the account given of those
gods, are referred to the world by so-called physical interpretation,
may, without any religious scruple, be rather assigned to the true
God, who made heaven and earth, and created every soul and every body;
and the following is the manner in which we see that this may be
done. We worship God,--not heaven and earth, of which two parts this
world consists, nor the soul or souls diffused through all living
things,--but God who made heaven and earth, and all things which are
in them; who made every soul, whatever be the nature of its life,
whether it have life without sensation and reason, or life with
sensation, or life with both sensation and reason.
Chapter 30.--How Piety Distinguishes the Creator from the Creatures,
So That, Instead of One God, There are Not Worshipped as Many Gods as
There are Works of the One Author.
And now, to begin to go over those works of the one true God, on
account of which these have made to themselves many and false gods,
whilst they attempt to give an honorable interpretation to their many
most abominable and most infamous mysteries,--we worship that God who
has appointed to the natures created by Him both the beginnings and
the end of their existing and moving; who holds, knows, and disposes
the causes of things; who hath created the virtue of seeds; who hath
given to what creatures He would a rational soul, which is called
mind; who hath bestowed the faculty and use of speech; who hath
imparted the gift of foretelling future things to whatever spirits it
seemed to Him good; who also Himself predicts future things, through
whom He pleases, and through whom He will, removes diseases who, when
the human race is to be corrected and chastised by wars, regulates
also the beginnings, progress, and ends of these wars who hath created
and governs the most vehement and most violent fire of this world, in
due relation and proportion to the other elements of immense nature;
who is the governor of all the waters; who hath made the sun brightest
of all material lights, and hath given him suitable power and motion;
who hath not withdrawn, even from the inhabitants of the nether world,
His dominion and power; who hath appointed to mortal natures their
suitable seed and nourishment, dry or liquid; who establishes and
makes fruitful the earth; who bountifully bestows its fruits on
animals and on men; who knows and ordains, not only principal causes,
but also subsequent causes; who hath determined for the moon her
motion; who affords ways in heaven and on earth for passage from one
place to another; who hath granted also to human minds, which He hath
created, the knowledge of the various arts for the help of life and
nature; who hath appointed the union of male and female for the
propagation of offspring; who hath favored the societies of men with
the gift of terrestrial fire for the simplest and most familiar
purposes, to burn on the hearth and to give light. These are, then,
the things which that most acute and most learned man Varro has
labored to distribute among the select gods, by I know not what
physical interpretation, which he has got from other sources, and also
conjectured for himself. But these things the one true God makes and
does, but as the same God,--that is, as He who is wholly everywhere,
included in no space, bound by no chains, mutable in no part of His
being, filling heaven and earth with omnipresent power, not with a
needy nature. Therefore He governs all things in such a manner as to
allow them to perform and exercise their own proper movements. For
although they can be nothing without Him, they are not what He is. He
does also many things through angels; but only from Himself does He
beatify angels. So also, though He send angels to men for certain
purposes, He does not for all that beatify men by the good inherent in
the angels, but by Himself, as He does the angels themselves.
Chapter 31.--What Benefits God Gives to the Followers of the Truth to
Enjoy Over and Above His General Bounty.
For, besides such benefits as, according to this administration of
nature of which we have made some mention, He lavishes on good and bad
alike, we have from Him a great manifestation of great love, which
belongs only to the good. For although we can never sufficiently give
thanks to Him, that we are, that we live, that we behold heaven and
earth, that we have mind and reason by which to seek after Him who
made all these things, nevertheless, what hearts, what number of
tongues, shall affirm that they are sufficient to render thanks to Him
for this, that He hath not wholly departed from us, laden and
overwhelmed with sins, averse to the contemplation of His light, and
blinded by the love of darkness, that is, of iniquity, but hath sent
to us His own Word, who is His only Son, that by His birth and
suffering for us in the flesh, which He assumed, we might know how
much God valued man, and that by that unique sacrifice we might be
purified from all our sins, and that, love being shed abroad in our
hearts by His Spirit, we might, having surmounted all difficulties,
come into eternal rest, and the ineffable sweetness of the
contemplation of Himself?
Chapter 32.--That at No Time in the Past Was the Mystery of Christ's
Redemption Awanting, But Was at All Times Declared, Though in Various
Forms.
This mystery of eternal life, even from the beginning of the human
race, was, by certain signs and sacraments suitable to the times,
announced through angels to those to whom it was meet. Then the
Hebrew people was congregated into one republic, as it were, to
perform this mystery; and in that republic was foretold, sometimes
through men who understood what they spake, and sometimes through men
who understood not, all that had transpired since the advent of Christ
until now, and all that will transpire. This same nation, too, was
afterwards dispersed through the nations, in order to testify to the
scriptures in which eternal salvation in Christ had been declared.
For not only the prophecies which are contained in words, nor only the
precepts for the right conduct of life, which teach morals and piety,
and are contained in the sacred writings,--not only these, but also
the rites, priesthood, tabernacle or temple, altars, sacrifices,
ceremonies, and whatever else belongs to that service which is due to
God, and which in Greek is properly called latreia,--all these
signified and fore-announced those things which we who believe in
Jesus Christ unto eternal life believe to have been fulfilled, or
behold in process of fulfillment, or confidently believe shall yet be
fulfilled.
Chapter 33.--That Only Through the Christian Religion Could the Deceit
of Malign Spirits, Who Rejoice in the Errors of Men, Have Been
Manifested.
This, the only true religion, has alone been able to manifest that the
gods of the nations are most impure demons, who desire to be thought
gods, availing themselves of the names of certain defunct souls, or
the appearance of mundane creatures, and with proud impurity rejoicing
in things most base and infamous, as though in divine honors, and
envying human souls their conversion to the true God. From whose most
cruel and most impious dominion a man is liberated when he believes on
Him who has afforded an example of humility, following which men may
rise as great as was that pride by which they fell. Hence are not
only those gods, concerning whom we have already spoken much, and many
others belonging to different nations and lands, but also those of
whom we are now treating, who have been selected as it were into the
senate of the gods,--selected, however, on account of the
notoriousness of their crimes, not on account of the dignity of their
virtues,--whose sacred things Varro attempts to refer to certain
natural reasons, seeking to make base things honorable, but cannot
find how to square and agree with these reasons, because these are not
the causes of those rites, which he thinks, or rather wishes to be
thought to be so. For had not only these, but also all others of this
kind, been real causes, even though they had nothing to do with the
true God and eternal life, which is to be sought in religion, they
would, by affording some sort of reason drawn from the nature of
things, have mitigated in some degree that offence which was
occasioned by some turpitude or absurdity in the sacred rites, which
was not understood. This he attempted to do in respect to certain
fables of the theatres, or mysteries of the shrines; but he did not
acquit the theatres of likeness to the shrines, but rather condemned
the shrines for likeness to the theatres. However, he in some way
made the attempt to soothe the feelings shocked by horrible things, by
rendering what he would have to be natural interpretations.
Chapter 34.--Concerning the Books of Numa Pompilius, Which the Senate
Ordered to Be Burned, in Order that the Causes of Sacred Rights
Therein Assigned Should Not Become Known.
But, on the other hand, we find, as the same most learned man has
related, that the causes of the sacred rites which were given from the
books of Numa Pompilius could by no means be tolerated, and were
considered unworthy, not only to become known to the religious by
being read, but even to lie written in the darkness in which they had
been concealed. For now let me say what I promised in the third book
of this work to say in its proper place. For, as we read in the same
Varro's book on the worship of the gods, "A certain one Terentius had
a field at the Janiculum, and once, when his ploughman was passing the
plough near to the tomb of Numa Pompilius, he turned up from the
ground the books of Numa, in which were written the causes of the
sacred institutions; which books he carried to the prætor, who, having
read the beginnings of them, referred to the senate what seemed to be
a matter of so much importance. And when the chief senators had read
certain of the causes why this or that rite was instituted, the senate
assented to the dead Numa, and the conscript fathers, as though
concerned for the interests of religion, ordered the prætor to burn
the books." [293]Let each one believe what he thinks; nay, let
every champion of such impiety say whatever mad contention may
suggest. For my part, let it suffice to suggest that the causes of
those sacred things which were written down by King Numa Pompilius,
the institutor of the Roman rites, ought never to have become known to
people or senate, or even to the priests themselves; and also that
Numa him self attained to these secrets of demons by an illicit
curiosity, in order that he might write them down, so as to be able,
by reading, to be reminded of them. However, though he was king, and
had no cause to be afraid of any one, he neither dared to teach them
to any one, nor to destroy them by obliteration, or any other form of
destruction. Therefore, because he was unwilling that any one should
know them, lest men should be taught infamous things, and because he
was afraid to violate them, lest he should enrage the demons against
himself, he buried them in what he thought a safe place, believing
that a plough could not approach his sepulchre. But the senate,
fearing to condemn the religious solemnities of their ancestors, and
therefore compelled to assent to Numa, were nevertheless so convinced
that those books were pernicious, that they did not order them to be
buried again, knowing that human curiosity would thereby be excited to
seek with far greater eagerness after the matter already divulged, but
ordered the scandalous relics to be destroyed with fire; because, as
they thought it was now a necessity to perform those sacred rites,
they judged that the error arising from ignorance of their causes was
more tolerable than the disturbance which the knowledge of them would
occasion the state.
Footnotes
[293] Plutarch's Numa; Livy, xl. 29.
Chapter 35.--Concerning the Hydromancy Through Which Numa Was Befooled
by Certain Images of Demons Seen in the Water.
For Numa himself also, to whom no prophet of God, no holy angel was
sent, was driven to have recourse to hydromancy, that he might see the
images of the gods in the water (or, rather, appearances whereby the
demons made sport of him), and might learn from them what he ought to
ordain and observe in the sacred rites. This kind of divination, says
Varro, was introduced from the Persians, and was used by Numa himself,
and at an after time by the philosopher Pythagoras. In this
divination, he says, they also inquire at the inhabitants of the
nether world, and make use of blood; and this the Greeks call
nekromanteian. But whether it be called necromancy or hydromancy it
is the same thing, for in either case the dead are supposed to
foretell future things. But by what artifices these things are done,
let themselves consider; for I am unwilling to say that these
artifices were wont to be prohibited by the laws, and to be very
severely punished even in the Gentile states, before the advent of our
Saviour. I am unwilling, I say, to affirm this, for perhaps even such
things were then allowed. However, it was by these arts that
Pompilius learned those sacred rites which he gave forth as facts,
whilst he concealed their causes; for even he himself was afraid of
that which he had learned. The senate also caused the books in which
those causes were recorded to be burned. What is it, then, to me,
that Varro attempts to adduce all sorts of fanciful physical
interpretations, which if these books had contained, they would
certainly not have been burned? For otherwise the conscript fathers
would also have burned those books which Varro published and dedicated
to the high priest Cæsar. [294]Now Numa is said to have married the
nymph Egeria, because (as Varro explains it in the forementioned book)
he carried forth [295] water wherewith to perform his hydromancy.
Thus facts are wont to be converted into fables through false
colorings. It was by that hydromancy, then, that that over-curious
Roman king learned both the sacred rites which were to be written in
the books of the priests, and also the causes of those rites,--which
latter, however, he was unwilling that any one besides himself should
know. Wherefore he made these causes, as it were, to die along with
himself, taking care to have them written by themselves, and removed
from the knowledge of men by being buried in the earth. Wherefore the
things which are written in those books were either abominations of
demons, so foul and noxious as to render that whole civil theology
execrable even in the eyes of such men as those senators, who had
accepted so many shameful things in the sacred rites themselves, or
they were nothing else than the accounts of dead men, whom, through
the lapse of ages, almost all the Gentile nations had come to believe
to be immortal gods; whilst those same demons were delighted even with
such rites, having presented themselves to receive worship under
pretence of being those very dead men whom they had caused to be
thought immortal gods by certain fallacious miracles, performed in
order to establish that belief. But, by the hidden providence of the
true God, these demons were permitted to confess these things to their
friend Numa, having been gained by those arts through which necromancy
could be performed, and yet were not constrained to admonish him
rather at his death to burn than to bury the books in which they were
written. But, in order that these books might be unknown, the demons
could not resist the plough by which they were thrown up, or the pen
of Varro, through which the things which were done in reference to
this matter have come down even to our knowledge. For they are not
able to effect anything which they are not allowed; but they are
permitted to influence those whom God, in His deep and just judgment,
according to their deserts, gives over either to be simply afflicted
by them, or to be also subdued and deceived. But how pernicious these
writings were judged to be, or how alien from the worship of the true
Divinity, may be understood from the fact that the senate preferred to
burn what Pompilius had hid, rather than to fear what he feared, so
that he could not dare to do that. Wherefore let him who does not
desire to live a pious life even now, seek eternal life by means of
such rites. But let him who does not wish to have fellowship with
malign demons have no fear for the noxious superstition wherewith they
are worshipped, but let him recognize the true religion by which they
are unmasked and vanquished.
Footnotes
[294] Comp. Lactantius, Instit. i. 6.
[295] Egesserit.
Also, see links to 600+ other Augustine Manuscripts:
/believe/txv/earlyche.htm
/believe/txv/earlychf.htm
/believe/txv/earlychg.htm
/believe/txv/earlychh.htm
/believe/txv/earlychi.htm
/believe/txv/earlychj.htm
/believe/txv/earlychk.htm
/believe/txv/earlychl.htm
/believe/txv/earlychm.htm
/believe/txv/earlychn.htm
E-mail to: BELIEVE
The main BELIEVE web-page (and the index to subjects) is at:
BELIEVE Religious Information Source - By Alphabet
http://mb-soft.com/believe/indexaz.html