The City of God

" Rome having been stormed and sacked by the Goths

2 under Alaric their king,[1] the worshippers of false

3 gods, or pagans, as we commonly call them, made an attempt

4 to attribute this calamity to the Christian religion, and began

5 to blaspheme the true God with even more than their wonted

6 bitterness and acerbity. It was this which kindled my zeal

7 for the house of God, and prompted me to undertake the

8 defence of the city of God against the charges and misrepresentations

9 of its assailants. This work was in my hands

10 for several years, owing to the interruptions occasioned by

11 many other affairs which had a prior claim on my attention,

12 and which I could not defer. However, this great undertaking

13 was at last completed in twenty-two books. Of these,

14 the first five refute those who fancy that the polytheistic

15 worship is necessary in order to secure worldly prosperity,

16 and that all these overwhelming calamities have befallen us

17 in consequence of its prohibition. In the following five

18 books I address myself to those who admit that such calamities

19 have at all times attended, and will at all times attend,

20 the human race, and that they constantly recur in forms more

21 or less disastrous, varying only in the scenes, occasions, and

22 persons on whom they light, but, while admitting this, maintain

23 that the worship of the gods is advantageous for the life

24 to come. In these ten books, then, I refute these two

25 opinions, which are as groundless as they are antagonistic to

26 the Christian religion.

27 "But that no one might have occasion to say, that though

28 I had refuted the tenets of other men, I had omitted to

29 establish my own, I devote to this object the second part of

30 this work, which comprises twelve books, although I have

31 not scrupled, as occasion offered, either to advance my own

32 opinions in the first ten books, or to demolish the arguments

33 of my opponents in the last twelve. Of these twelve books,

34 the first four contain an account of the origin of these two

35 cities—the city of God, and the city of the world. The

36 second four treat of their history or progress; the third and

37 last four, of their deserved destinies. And so, though all

38 these twenty-two books refer to both cities, yet I have

39 named them after the better city, and called them The City

40 of God."

41 Such is the account given by Augustine himself[2] of the

42 occasion and plan of this his greatest work. But in addition

43 to this explicit information, we learn from the correspondence[3]

44 of Augustine, that it was due to the importunity of his friend

45 Marcellinus that this defence of Christianity extended beyond

46 the limits of a few letters. Shortly before the fall of Rome,

47 Marcellinus had been sent to Africa by the Emperor Honorius

48 to arrange a settlement of the differences between the Donatists

49 and the Catholics. This brought him into contact not

50 only with Augustine, but with Volusian, the proconsul of

51 Africa, and a man of rare intelligence and candour. Finding

52 that Volusian, though as yet a pagan, took an interest in the

53 Christian religion, Marcellinus set his heart on converting

54 him to the true faith. The details of the subsequent significant

55 intercourse between the learned and courtly bishop and

56 the two imperial statesmen, are unfortunately almost entirely

57 lost to us; but the impression conveyed by the extant correspondence

58 is, that Marcellinus was the means of bringing his

59 two friends into communication with one another. The first

60 overture was on Augustine's part, in the shape of a simple

61 and manly request that Volusian would carefully peruse the

62 Scriptures, accompanied by a frank offer to do his best to

63 solve any difficulties that might arise in such a course of

64 inquiry. Volusian accordingly enters into correspondence

65 with Augustine; and in order to illustrate the kind of difficulties

66 experienced by men in his position, he gives some

67 graphic notes of a conversation in which he had recently

68 taken part at a gathering of some of his friends. The difficulty

69 to which most weight is attached in this letter, is the

70 apparent impossibility of believing in the Incarnation. But

71 a letter which Marcellinus immediately despatched to Augustine,

72 urging him to reply to Volusian at large, brought the

73 intelligence that the difficulties and objections to Christianity

74 were thus limited merely out of a courteous regard to the

75 preciousness of the bishop's time, and the vast number of his

76 engagements. This letter, in short, brought out the important

77 fact, that a removal of speculative doubts would not suffice

78 for the conversion of such men as Volusian, whose life was

79 one with the life of the empire. Their difficulties were rather

80 political, historical, and social. They could not see how the

81 reception of the Christian rule of life was compatible with

82 the interests of Rome as the mistress of the world.[4] And

83 thus Augustine was led to take a more distinct and wider

84 view of the whole relation which Christianity bore to the old

85 state of things,—moral, political, philosophical, and religious,—and

86 was gradually drawn on to undertake the elaborate

87 work now presented to the English reader, and which may

88 more appropriately than any other of his writings be called

89 his masterpiece[5] or life-work. It was begun the very year of

90 Marcellinus' death, a.d. 413, and was issued in detached

91 portions from time to time, until its completion in the year

92 426. It thus occupied the maturest years of Augustine's

93 life—from his fifty-ninth to his seventy-second year.[6]

94 From this brief sketch, it will be seen that though the

95 accompanying work is essentially an Apology, the Apologetic

96 of Augustine can be no mere rehabilitation of the somewhat

97 threadbare, if not effete, arguments of Justin and Tertullian.[7]

98 In fact, as Augustine considered what was required of him,—to

99 expound the Christian faith, and justify it to enlightened

100 men; to distinguish it from, and show its superiority to, all

101 those forms of truth, philosophical or popular, which were

102 then striving for the mastery, or at least for standing-room;

103 to set before the world's eye a vision of glory that might win

104 the regard even of men who were dazzled by the fascinating

105 splendour of a world-wide empire,—he recognised that a task

106 was laid before him to which even his powers might prove

107 unequal,—a task certainly which would afford ample scope for

108 his learning, dialectic, philosophical grasp and acumen, eloquence,

109 and faculty of exposition.

110 But it is the occasion of this great Apology which invests

111 it at once with grandeur and vitality. After more than eleven

112 hundred years of steady and triumphant progress, Rome had

113 been taken and sacked. It is difficult for us to appreciate,

114 impossible to overestimate, the shock which was thus communicated

115 from centre to circumference of the whole known

116 world. It was generally believed, not only by the heathen,

117 but also by many of the most liberal-minded of the Christians,

118 that the destruction of Rome would be the prelude to the

119 destruction of the world.[8] Even Jerome, who might have

120 been supposed to be embittered against the proud mistress

121 of the world by her inhospitality to himself, cannot conceal

122 his profound emotion on hearing of her fall. "A terrible

123 rumour," he says, "reaches me from the West, telling of Rome

124 besieged, bought for gold, besieged again, life and property

125 perishing together. My voice falters, sobs stifle the words I

126 dictate; for she is a captive, that city which enthralled the

127 world."[9] Augustine is never so theatrical as Jerome in the

128 expression of his feeling, but he is equally explicit in lamenting

129 the fall of Rome as a great calamity; and while he does

130 not scruple to ascribe her recent disgrace to the profligate

131 manners, the effeminacy, and the pride of her citizens, he is

132 not without hope that, by a return to the simple, hardy, and

133 honourable mode of life which characterized the early Romans,

134 she may still be restored to much of her former prosperity.[10]

135 But as Augustine contemplates the ruins of Rome's greatness,

136 and feels, in common with all the world at this crisis, the

137 instability of the strongest governments, the insufficiency of

138 the most authoritative statesmanship, there hovers over these

139 ruins the splendid vision of the city of God "coming down

140 out of heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband." The old

141 social system is crumbling away on all sides, but in its place

142 he seems to see a pure Christendom arising. He sees that

143 human history and human destiny are not wholly identified

144 with the history of any earthly power—not though it be as

145 cosmopolitan as the empire of Rome.[11] He directs the attention

146 of men to the fact that there is another kingdom on

147 earth,—a city which hath foundations, whose builder and

148 maker is God. He teaches men to take profounder views of

149 history, and shows them how from the first the city of God,

150 or community of God's people, has lived alongside of the

151 kingdoms of this world and their glory, and has been silently

152 increasing, "crescit occulto velut arbor ævo." He demonstrates

153 that the superior morality, the true doctrine, the

154 heavenly origin of this city, ensure its success; and over

155 against this, he depicts the silly or contradictory theorizings

156 of the pagan philosophers, and the unhinged morals of the

157 people, and puts it to all candid men to say, whether in the

158 presence of so manifestly sufficient a cause for Rome's downfall,

159 there is room for imputing it to the spread of Christianity.

160 He traces the antagonism of these two grand communities

161 of rational creatures, back to their first divergence

162 in the fall of the angels, and down to the consummation of all

163 things in the last judgment and eternal destination of the good

164 and evil. In other words, the city of God is "the first real

165 effort to produce a philosophy of history,"[12] to exhibit historical

166 events in connection with their true causes, and in their real

167 sequence. This plan of the work is not only a great conception,

168 but it is accompanied with many practical advantages;

169 the chief of which is, that it admits, and even requires, a full

170 treatment of those doctrines of our faith that are more directly

171 historical,—the doctrines of creation, the fall, the incarnation,

172 the connection between the Old and New Testaments, and the

173 doctrine of "the last things."[13]

174 The effect produced by this great work it is impossible

175 to determine with accuracy. Beugnot, with an absoluteness

176 which we should condemn as presumption in any less competent

177 authority, declares that its effect can only have been

178 very slight.[14] Probably its effect would be silent and slow;

179 telling first upon cultivated minds, and only indirectly upon

180 the people. Certainly its effect must have been weakened

181 by the interrupted manner of its publication. It is an easier

182 task to estimate its intrinsic value. But on this also patristic

183 and literary authorities widely differ. Dupin admits that it

184 is very pleasant reading, owing to the surprising variety of

185 matters which are introduced to illustrate and forward the

186 argument, but censures the author for discussing very useless

187 questions, and for adducing reasons which could satisfy no

188 one who was not already convinced.[15] Huet also speaks of

189 the book as "un amas confus d'excellents materiaux; c'est de

190 l'or en barre et en lingots."[16] L'Abbé Flottes censures these

191 opinions as unjust, and cites with approbation the unqualified

192 eulogy of Pressensé.[17] But probably the popularity of the

193 book is its best justification. This popularity may be

194 measured by the circumstance that, between the year 1467

195 and the end of the fifteenth century, no fewer than twenty

196 editions were called for, that is to say, a fresh edition every

197 eighteen months.[18] And in the interesting series of letters

198 that passed between Ludovicus Vives and Erasmus, who had

199 engaged him to write a commentary on the *City of God* for

200 his edition of Augustine's works, we find Vives pleading for

201 a separate edition of this work, on the plea that, of all the

202 writings of Augustine, it was almost the only one read by

203 patristic students, and might therefore naturally be expected

204 to have a much wider circulation.[19]

205 If it were asked to what this popularity is due, we should

206 be disposed to attribute it mainly to the great variety of ideas,

207 opinions, and facts that are here brought before the reader's

208 mind. Its importance as a contribution to the history of

209 opinion cannot be overrated. We find in it not only indications

210 or explicit enouncement of the author's own views upon

211 almost every important topic which occupied his thoughts,

212 but also a compendious exhibition of the ideas which most

213 powerfully influenced the life of that age. It thus becomes,

214 as Poujoulat says, "comme l'encyclopédie du cinquième siècle."

215 All that is valuable, together with much indeed that is not so,

216 in the religion and philosophy of the classical nations of

217 antiquity, is reviewed. And on some branches of these subjects

218 it has, in the judgment of one well qualified to judge,

219 "preserved more than the whole surviving Latin literature."

220 It is true we are sometimes wearied by the too elaborate

221 refutation of opinions which to a modern mind seem self-evident

222 absurdities; but if these opinions were actually prevalent

223 in the fifth century, the historical inquirer will not

224 quarrel with the form in which his information is conveyed,

225 nor will commit the absurdity of attributing to Augustine the

226 foolishness of these opinions, but rather the credit of exploding

227 them. That Augustine is a well-informed and impartial

228 critic, is evinced by the courteousness and candour which he

229 uniformly displays to his opponents, by the respect he won

230 from the heathen themselves, and by his own early life. The

231 most rigorous criticism has found him at fault regarding

232 matters of fact only in some very rare instances, which can

233 be easily accounted for. His learning would not indeed stand

234 comparison with what is accounted such in our day: his

235 life was too busy, and too devoted to the poor and to the

236 spiritually necessitous, to admit of any extraordinary acquisition.

237 He had access to no literature but the Latin; or at

238 least he had only sufficient Greek to enable him to refer to

239 Greek authors on points of importance, and not enough to

240 enable him to read their writings with ease and pleasure.[20]

241 But he had a profound knowledge of his own time, and a

242 familiar acquaintance not only with the Latin poets, but with

243 many other authors, some of whose writings are now lost to

244 us, save the fragments preserved through his quotations.

245 But the interest attaching to the *City of God* is not merely

246 historical. It is the earnestness and ability with which he

247 developes his own philosophical and theological views which

248 gradually fascinate the reader, and make him see why the

249 world has set this among the few greatest books of all time.

250 The fundamental lines of the Augustinian theology are here

251 laid down in a comprehensive and interesting form. Never

252 was thought so abstract expressed in language so popular.

253 He handles metaphysical problems with the unembarrassed

254 ease of Plato, with all Cicero's accuracy and acuteness, and

255 more than Cicero's profundity. He is never more at home

256 than when exposing the incompetency of Neoplatonism, or

257 demonstrating the harmony of Christian doctrine and true

258 philosophy. And though there are in the *City of God*, as

259 in all ancient books, things that seem to us childish and

260 barren, there are also the most surprising anticipations of

261 modern speculation. There is an earnest grappling with

262 those problems which are continually re-opened because they

263 underlie man's relation to God and the spiritual world,—the

264 problems which are not peculiar to any one century. As we

265 read these animated discussions,

266 "The fourteen centuries fall away

267 Between us and the Afric saint,

268 And at his side we urge, to-day,

269 The immemorial quest and old complaint.

270 No outward sign to us is given,

271 From sea or earth comes no reply;

272 Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven

273 He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky."

274 It is true, the style of the book is not all that could be

275 desired: there are passages which can possess an interest

276 only to the antiquarian; there are others with nothing to

277 redeem them but the glow of their eloquence; there are

278 many repetitions; there is an occasional use of arguments

279 "plus ingenieux que solides," as M. Saisset says. Augustine's

280 great admirer, Erasmus, does not scruple to call him a writer

281 "obscuræ subtilitatis et parum amœnæ prolixitatis;"[21] but

282 "the toil of penetrating the apparent obscurities will be rewarded

283 by finding a real wealth of insight and enlightenment."

284 Some who have read the opening chapters of the *City of God*,

285 may have considered it would be a waste of time to proceed;

286 but no one, we are persuaded, ever regretted reading it all.

287 The book has its faults; but it effectually introduces us to

288 the most influential of theologians, and the greatest popular

289 teacher; to a genius that cannot nod for many lines together;

290 to a reasoner whose dialectic is more formidable, more keen

291 and sifting, than that of Socrates or Aquinas; to a saint whose

292 ardent and genuine devotional feeling bursts up through the

293 severest argumentation; to a man whose kindliness and wit,

294 universal sympathies and breadth of intelligence, lend piquancy

295 and vitality to the most abstract dissertation.

296 The propriety of publishing a translation of so choice a

297 specimen of ancient literature needs no defence. As Poujoulat

298 very sensibly remarks, there are not a great many men

299 now-a-days who will read a work in Latin of twenty-two

300 books. Perhaps there are fewer still who ought to do so.

301 With our busy neighbours in France, this work has been a

302 prime favourite for 400 years. There may be said to be

303 eight independent translations of it into the French tongue,

304 though some of these are *in part* merely revisions. One of

305 these translations has gone through as many as four editions.

306 The most recent is that which forms part of the Nisard series;

307 but the best, so far as we have seen, is that of the accomplished

308 Professor of Philosophy in the College of France, Emile Saisset.

309 This translation is indeed all that can be desired: here and

310 there an omission occurs, and about one or two renderings a

311 difference of opinion may exist; but the exceeding felicity

312 and spirit of the whole show it to have been a labour of

313 love, the fond homage of a disciple proud of his master. The

314 preface of M. Saisset is one of the most valuable contributions

315 ever made to the understanding of Augustine's philosophy.[22]

316 Of English translations there has been an unaccountable

317 poverty. Only one exists,[23] and this so exceptionally bad, so

318 unlike the racy translations of the seventeenth century in

319 general, so inaccurate, and so frequently unintelligible, that

320 it is not impossible it may have done something towards

321 giving the English public a distaste for the book itself. That

322 the present translation also might be improved, we know;

323 that many men were fitter for the task, on the score of

324 scholarship, we are very sensible; but that any one would

325 have executed it with intenser affection and veneration for

326 the author, we are not prepared to admit. A few notes have

327 been added where it appeared to be necessary. Some are

328 original, some from the Benedictine Augustine, and the rest

329 from the elaborate commentary of Vives.[24]

330 The Editor.

331 Glasgow, 1871.

332 THE CITY OF GOD.

BOOK I

4 ARGUMENT.

5 >

6 >

7 >

8 AUGUSTINE CENSURES THE PAGANS, WHO ATTRIBUTED THE CALAMITIES OF THE

9 > WORLD, AND ESPECIALLY THE RECENT SACK OF ROME BY THE GOTHS, TO

10 > THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AND ITS PROHIBITION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE

11 > GODS. HE SPEAKS OF THE BLESSINGS AND ILLS OF LIFE, WHICH THEN, AS

12 > ALWAYS, HAPPENED TO GOOD AND BAD MEN ALIKE. FINALLY, HE REBUKES

13 > THE SHAMELESSNESS OF THOSE WHO CAST UP TO THE CHRISTIANS THAT

14 > THEIR WOMEN HAD BEEN VIOLATED BY THE SOLDIERS.

15 PREFACE, EXPLAINING HIS DESIGN IN UNDERTAKING

16 THIS WORK.

17 The glorious city of God is my theme in this work, which

18 you, my dearest son Marcellinus,[25] suggested, and which

19 is due to you by my promise. I have undertaken its defence

20 against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of

21 this city,—a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it

22 still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns

23 as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell

24 in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with

25 patience waits for, expecting until "righteousness shall return

26 unto judgment,"[26] and it obtain, by virtue of its excellence,

27 final victory and perfect peace. A great work this, and an

28 arduous; but God is my helper. For I am aware what

29 ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the

30 virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human

31 arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities

32 that totter on this shifting scene. For the King and Founder

33 of this city of which we speak, has in Scripture uttered to

34 His people a dictum of the divine law in these words: "God

35 resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."[27] But

36 this, which is God's prerogative, the inflated ambition of a

37 proud spirit also affects, and dearly loves that this be numbered

38 among its attributes, to

39 "Show pity to the humbled soul,

40 And crush the sons of pride."[28]

41 And therefore, as the plan of this work we have undertaken

42 requires, and as occasion offers, we must speak also of the

43 earthly city, which, though it be mistress of the nations, is

44 itself ruled by its lust of rule.

45 1. *Of the adversaries of the name of Christ, whom the barbarians for Christ's

46 sake spared when they stormed the city.*

47 For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom

48 I have to defend the city of God. Many of them, indeed,

49 being reclaimed from their ungodly error, have become sufficiently

50 creditable citizens of this city; but many are so inflamed

51 with hatred against it, and are so ungrateful to its

52 Redeemer for His signal benefits, as to forget that they would

53 now be unable to utter a single word to its prejudice, had they

54 not found in its sacred places, as they fled from the enemy's

55 steel, that life in which they now boast themselves. Are not

56 those very Romans, who were spared by the barbarians through

57 their respect for Christ, become enemies to the name of Christ?

58 The reliquaries of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles

59 bear witness to this; for in the sack of the city they were

60 open sanctuary for all who fled to them, whether Christian

61 or Pagan. To their very threshold the bloodthirsty enemy

62 raged; there his murderous fury owned a limit. Thither did

63 such of the enemy as had any pity convey those to whom

64 they had given quarter, lest any less mercifully disposed

65 might fall upon them. And, indeed, when even those murderers

66 who everywhere else showed themselves pitiless came

67 to these spots where that was forbidden which the licence of

68 war permitted in every other place, their furious rage for

69 slaughter was bridled, and their eagerness to take prisoners

70 was quenched. Thus escaped multitudes who now reproach

71 the Christian religion, and impute to Christ the ills that have

72 befallen their city; but the preservation of their own life—a

73 boon which they owe to the respect entertained for Christ by

74 the barbarians—they attribute not to our Christ, but to their

75 own good luck. They ought rather, had they any right perceptions,

76 to attribute the severities and hardships inflicted by

77 their enemies, to that divine providence which is wont to

78 reform the depraved manners of men by chastisement, and

79 which exercises with similar afflictions the righteous and

80 praiseworthy,—either translating them, when they have passed

81 through the trial, to a better world, or detaining them still on

82 earth for ulterior purposes. And they ought to attribute it

83 to the spirit of these Christian times, that, contrary to the

84 custom of war, these bloodthirsty barbarians spared them, and

85 spared them for Christ's sake, whether this mercy was actually

86 shown in promiscuous places, or in those places specially

87 dedicated to Christ's name, and of which the very largest

88 were selected as sanctuaries, that full scope might thus be

89 given to the expansive compassion which desired that a large

90 multitude might find shelter there. Therefore ought they to

91 give God thanks, and with sincere confession flee for refuge to

92 His name, that so they may escape the punishment of eternal

93 fire—they who with lying lips took upon them this name,

94 that they might escape the punishment of present destruction.

95 For of those whom you see insolently and shamelessly insulting

96 the servants of Christ, there are numbers who would not

97 have escaped that destruction and slaughter had they not pretended

98 that they themselves were Christ's servants. Yet now,

99 in ungrateful pride and most impious madness, and at the

100 risk of being punished in everlasting darkness, they perversely

101 oppose that name under which they fraudulently protected

102 themselves for the sake of enjoying the light of this brief

103 life.

104 2. *That it is quite contrary to the usage of war, that the victors should spare

105 the vanquished for the sake of their gods.*

106 There are histories of numberless wars, both before the

107 building of Rome and since its rise and the extension of its

108 dominion: let these be read, and let one instance be cited in

109 which, when a city had been taken by foreigners, the victors

110 spared those who were found to have fled for sanctuary to the

111 temples of their gods;[29] or one instance in which a barbarian

112 general gave orders that none should be put to the sword who

113 had been found in this or that temple. Did not Æneas see

114 "Dying Priam at the shrine,

115 Staining the hearth he made divine?"[30]

116 Did not Diomede and Ulysses

117 "Drag with red hands, the sentry slain,

118 Her fateful image from your fane,

119 Her chaste locks touch, and stain with gore

120 The virgin coronal she wore?"[31]

121 Neither is that true which follows, that

122 "Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed,

123 And Greece grew weak."[32]

124 For after this they conquered and destroyed Troy with fire and

125 sword; after this they beheaded Priam as he fled to the altars.

126 Neither did Troy perish because it lost Minerva. For what

127 had Minerva herself first lost, that she should perish? Her

128 guards perhaps? No doubt; just her guards. For as soon

129 as they were slain, she could be stolen. It was not, in fact,

130 the men who were preserved by the image, but the image by

131 the men. How, then, was she invoked to defend the city and

132 the citizens, she who could not defend her own defenders?

133 >

134 >

135 >

136 3. *That the Romans did not show their usual sagacity when they trusted

137 > that they would be benefited by the gods who had been unable to defend

138 > Troy.*

139 And these be the gods to whose protecting care the

140 Romans were delighted to entrust their city! O too, too

141 piteous mistake! And they are enraged at us when we

142 speak thus about their gods, though, so far from being enraged

143 at their own writers, they part with money to learn what

144 they say; and, indeed, the very teachers of these authors are

145 reckoned worthy of a salary from the public purse, and of

146 other honours. There is Virgil, who is read by boys, in order

147 that this great poet, this most famous and approved of all

148 poets, may impregnate their virgin minds, and may not readily

149 be forgotten by them, according to that saying of Horace,

150 "The fresh cask long keeps its first tang."[33]

151 Well, in this Virgil, I say, Juno is introduced as hostile to

152 the Trojans, and stirring up Æolus, the king of the winds,

153 against them in the words,

154 "A race I hate now ploughs the sea,

155 Transporting Troy to Italy,

156 And home-gods conquered. "[34]...

157 And ought prudent men to have entrusted the defence of

158 Rome to these conquered gods? But it will be said, this was

159 only the saying of Juno, who, like an angry woman, did not

160 know what she was saying. What, then, says Æneas himself,—Æneas

161 who is so often designated "pious?" Does he not say,

162 "Lo! Panthus, 'scaped from death by flight,

163 Priest of Apollo on the height,

164 His conquered gods with trembling hands

165 He bears, and shelter swift demands?"[35]

166 Is it not clear that the gods (whom he does not scruple to call

167 "conquered") were rather entrusted to Æneas than he to

168 them, when it is said to him,

169 "The gods of her domestic shrines

170 Your country to your care consigns?"[36]

171 If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and

172 were conquered, and that when conquered they could not

173 escape except under the protection of a man, what madness

174 is it to suppose that Rome had been wisely entrusted to these

175 guardians, and could not have been taken unless it had lost

176 them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods as protectors and

177 champions, what is this but to worship, not good divinities,

178 but evil omens?[37] Would it not be wiser to believe, not that

179 Rome would never have fallen into so great a calamity had

180 not they first perished, but rather that they would have

181 perished long since had not Rome preserved them as long as

182 she could? For who does not see, when he thinks of it, what

183 a foolish assumption it is that they could not be vanquished

184 under vanquished defenders, and that they only perished

185 because they had lost their guardian gods, when, indeed, the

186 only cause of their perishing was that they chose for their

187 protectors gods condemned to perish? The poets, therefore,

188 when they composed and sang these things about the conquered

189 gods, had no intention to invent falsehoods, but uttered,

190 as honest men, what the truth extorted from them. This,

191 however, will be carefully and copiously discussed in another

192 and more fitting place. Meanwhile I will briefly, and to the

193 best of my ability, explain what I meant to say about these

194 ungrateful men who blasphemously impute to Christ the calamities

195 which they deservedly suffer in consequence of their

196 own wicked ways, while that which is for Christ's sake spared

197 them in spite of their wickedness they do not even take the

198 trouble to notice; and in their mad and blasphemous insolence,

199 they use against His name those very lips wherewith they

200 falsely claimed that same name that their lives might be

201 spared. In the places consecrated to Christ, where for His

202 sake no enemy would injure them, they restrained their tongues

203 that they might be safe and protected; but no sooner do they

204 emerge from these sanctuaries, than they unbridle these tongues

205 to hurl against Him curses full of hate.

206 >

207 >

208 >

209 4. *Of the asylum of Juno in Troy, which saved no one from the Greeks; and of

210 > the churches of the apostles, which protected from the barbarians all who

211 > fled to them.*

212 Troy itself, the mother of the Roman people, was not able,

213 as I have said, to protect its own citizens in the sacred places

214 of their gods from the fire and sword of the Greeks, though

215 the Greeks worshipped the same gods. Not only so, but

216 "Phœnix and Ulysses fell

217 In the void courts by Juno's cell

218 Were set the spoil to keep;

219 Snatched from the burning shrines away,

220 There Ilium's mighty treasure lay,

221 Rich altars, bowls of massy gold,

222 And captive raiment, rudely rolled

223 In one promiscuous heap;

224 While boys and matrons, wild with fear,

225 In long array were standing near."[38]

226 In other words, the place consecrated to so great a goddess

227 was chosen, not that from it none might be led out a captive,

228 but that in it all the captives might be immured. Compare

229 now this "asylum"—the asylum not of an ordinary god, not

230 of one of the rank and file of gods, but of Jove's own sister

231 and wife, the queen of all the gods—with the churches built

232 in memory of the apostles. Into it were collected the spoils

233 rescued from the blazing temples and snatched from the gods,

234 not that they might be restored to the vanquished, but divided

235 among the victors; while into these was carried back, with the

236 most religious observance and respect, everything which belonged

237 to them, even though found elsewhere. There liberty

238 was lost; here preserved. There bondage was strict; here

239 strictly excluded. Into that temple men were driven to become

240 the chattels of their enemies, now lording it over them;

241 into these churches men were led by their relenting foes, that

242 they might be at liberty. In fine, the gentle[39] Greeks appropriated

243 that temple of Juno to the purposes of their own

244 avarice and pride; while these churches of Christ were chosen

245 even by the savage barbarians as the fit scenes for humility

246 and mercy. But perhaps, after all, the Greeks did in that

247 victory of theirs spare the temples of those gods whom they

248 worshipped in common with the Trojans, and did not dare to

249 put to the sword or make captive the wretched and vanquished

250 Trojans who fled thither; and perhaps Virgil, in the manner

251 of poets, has depicted what never really happened? But there

252 is no question that he depicted the usual custom of an enemy

253 when sacking a city.

254 5. *Cæsar's statement regarding the universal custom of an enemy when

255 sacking a city.*

256 Even Cæsar himself gives us positive testimony regarding

257 this custom; for, in his deliverance in the senate about the

258 conspirators, he says (as Sallust, a historian of distinguished

259 veracity, writes[40]) "that virgins and boys are violated, children

260 torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to

261 whatever should be the pleasure of the conquerors, temples

262 and houses plundered, slaughter and burning rife; in fine, all

263 things filled with arms, corpses, blood, and wailing." If he

264 had not mentioned temples here, we might suppose that

265 enemies were in the habit of sparing the dwellings of the gods.

266 And the Roman temples were in danger of these disasters,

267 not from foreign foes, but from Catiline and his associates,

268 the most noble senators and citizens of Rome. But these,

269 it may be said, were abandoned men, and the parricides of

270 their fatherland.

271 6. *That not even the Romans, when they took cities, spared the conquered

272 in their temples.*

273 Why, then, need our argument take note of the many

274 nations who have waged wars with one another, and have

275 nowhere spared the conquered in the temples of their gods?

276 Let us look at the practice of the Romans themselves: let us,

277 I say, recall and review the Romans, whose chief praise it has

278 been "to spare the vanquished and subdue the proud," and

279 that they preferred "rather to forgive than to revenge an injury;"[41]

280 and among so many and great cities which they have

281 stormed, taken, and overthrown for the extension of their

282 dominion, let us be told what temples they were accustomed

283 to exempt, so that whoever took refuge in them was free. Or

284 have they really done this, and has the fact been suppressed

285 by the historians of these events? Is it to be believed,

286 that men who sought out with the greatest eagerness points

287 they could praise, would omit those which, in their own

288 estimation, are the most signal proofs of piety? Marcus

289 Marcellus, a distinguished Roman, who took Syracuse, a most

290 splendidly adorned city, is reported to have bewailed its

291 coming ruin, and to have shed his own tears over it

292 before he spilt its blood. He took steps also to preserve

293 the chastity even of his enemy. For before he gave orders

294 for the storming of the city, he issued an edict forbidding the

295 violation of any free person. Yet the city was sacked according

296 to the custom of war; nor do we anywhere read, that even

297 by so chaste and gentle a commander orders were given that

298 no one should be injured who had fled to this or that temple.

299 And this certainly would by no means have been omitted,

300 when neither his weeping nor his edict preservative of chastity

301 could be passed in silence. Fabius, the conqueror of the city

302 of Tarentum, is praised for abstaining from making booty of

303 the images. For when his secretary proposed the question to

304 him, what he wished done with the statues of the gods, which

305 had been taken in large numbers, he veiled his moderation

306 under a joke. For he asked of what sort they were; and when

307 they reported to him that there were not only many large

308 images, but some of them armed, "Oh," says he, "let us leave

309 with the Tarentines their angry gods." Seeing, then, that the

310 writers of Roman history could not pass in silence, neither the

311 weeping of the one general nor the laughing of the other,

312 neither the chaste pity of the one nor the facetious moderation

313 of the other, on what occasion would it be omitted, if, for

314 the honour of any of their enemy's gods, they had shown this

315 particular form of leniency, that in any temple slaughter or

316 captivity was prohibited?

317 >

318 >

319 >

320 7. *That the cruelties which occurred in the sack of Rome were in accordance

321 > with the custom of war, whereas the acts of clemency resulted from the

322 > influence of Christ's name.*

323 All the spoiling, then, which Rome was exposed to in the

324 recent calamity—all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and

325 misery—was the result of the custom of war. But what was

326 novel, was that savage barbarians showed themselves in so

327 gentle a guise, that the largest churches were chosen and set

328 apart for the purpose of being filled with the people to whom

329 quarter was given, and that in them none were slain, from

330 them none forcibly dragged; that into them many were led

331 by their relenting enemies to be set at liberty, and that from

332 them none were led into slavery by merciless foes. Whoever

333 does not see that this is to be attributed to the name of Christ,

334 and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this,

335 and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders any one

336 from praising it, is mad. Far be it from any prudent man to

337 impute this clemency to the barbarians. Their fierce and

338 bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvellously tempered

339 by Him who so long before said by His prophet, "I

340 will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities

341 with stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly

342 take from them."[42]

343 8. *Of the advantages and disadvantages which often indiscriminately accrue to

344 good and wicked men.*

345 Will some one say, Why, then, was this divine compassion

346 extended even to the ungodly and ungrateful? Why, but because

347 it was the mercy of Him who daily "maketh His sun to

348 rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just

349 and on the unjust."[43] For though some of these men, taking

350 thought of this, repent of their wickedness and reform, some,

351 as the apostle says, "despising the riches of His goodness and

352 long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure

353 up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and

354 revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render

355 to every man according to his deeds:"[44] nevertheless does the

356 patience of God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as

357 the scourge of God educates the good to patience. And so,

358 too, does the mercy of God embrace the good that it may

359 cherish them, as the severity of God arrests the wicked to

360 punish them. To the divine providence it has seemed good to

361 prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things,

362 which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked

363 evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented. But

364 as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed

365 that these should be common to both; that we might not too

366 eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally

367 to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which

368 even good men often suffer.

369 There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served

370 both by those events which we call adverse and those called

371 prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the

372 good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked

373 man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels

374 himself punished by its unhappiness.[45] Yet often, even in the

375 present distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince

376 His own interference. For if every sin were now visited with

377 manifest punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for

378 the final judgment; on the other hand, if no sin received now

379 a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there

380 is no divine providence at all. And so of the good things of

381 this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer

382 these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should

383 say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if

384 He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that

385 such were the only rewards of His service; and such a service

386 would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous.

387 Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must

388 not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves,

389 because there is no difference in what they both suffer.

390 For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an

391 unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same

392 anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the

393 same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and

394 under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain

395 is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though

396 squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same

397 violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but

398 damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that

399 in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme,

400 while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does

401 it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man

402 suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud

403 exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odour.

404 9. *Of the reasons for administering correction to bad and good together.*

405 What, then, have the Christians suffered in that calamitous

406 period, which would not profit every one who duly and faithfully

407 considered the following circumstances? First of all, they

408 must humbly consider those very sins which have provoked God

409 to fill the world with such terrible disasters; for although they be

410 far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet

411 they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults

412 as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills. For

413 every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points

414 to the lust of the flesh. Though he do not fall into gross enormity

415 of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable

416 profanity, yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so

417 much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account.

418 But not to mention this, where can we readily find a man who

419 holds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of

420 whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities

421 and impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions

422 threatened? Where is the man who lives with them in the

423 style in which it becomes us to live with them? For often

424 we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and

425 admonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding

426 them, either because we shrink from the labour or are

427 ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships,

428 lest this should stand in the way of our advancement,

429 or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous

430 disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from

431 losing. So that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful

432 to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them

433 into that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons,

434 yet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore,

435 even though their own sins be slight and venial, they are

436 justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity

437 they quite escape punishment. Justly, when God afflicts

438 them in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter,

439 through love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to

440 these sinners.

441 If any one forbears to reprove and find fault with those

442 who are doing wrong, because he seeks a more seasonable

443 opportunity, or because he fears they may be made worse by

444 his rebuke, or that other weak persons may be disheartened

445 from endeavouring to lead a good and pious life, and may be

446 driven from the faith; this man's omission seems to be occasioned

447 not by covetousness, but by a charitable consideration.

448 But what is blameworthy is, that they who themselves revolt

449 from the conduct of the wicked, and live in quite another

450 fashion, yet spare those faults in other men which they ought

451 to reprehend and wean them from; and spare them because

452 they fear to give offence, lest they should injure their interests

453 in those things which good men may innocently and legitimately

454 use,—though they use them more greedily than becomes

455 persons who are strangers in this world, and profess the hope

456 of a heavenly country. For not only the weaker brethren,

457 who enjoy married life, and have children (or desire to have

458 them), and own houses and establishments, whom the apostle

459 addresses in the churches, warning and instructing them how

460 they should live, both the wives with their husbands, and the

461 husbands with their wives, the children with their parents,

462 and parents with their children, and servants with their masters,

463 and masters with their servants,—not only do these weaker

464 brethren gladly obtain and grudgingly lose many earthly and

465 temporal things on account of which they dare not offend men

466 whose polluted and wicked life greatly displeases them; but

467 those also who live at a higher level, who are not entangled in

468 the meshes of married life, but use meagre food and raiment,

469 do often take thought of their own safety and good name, and

470 abstain from finding fault with the wicked, because they fear

471 their wiles and violence. And although they do not fear them

472 to such an extent as to be drawn to the commission of like

473 iniquities, nay, not by any threats or violence soever; yet

474 those very deeds which they refuse to share in the commission

475 of, they often decline to find fault with, when possibly they

476 might by finding fault prevent their commission. They abstain

477 from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect,

478 their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed;

479 not because they see that their preservation and good name

480 are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need

481 their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the

482 flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the

483 people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say,

484 their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of

485 love.

486 Accordingly, this seems to me to be one principal reason

487 why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God

488 is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate

489 manners of a community. They are punished together, not

490 because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because

491 the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them,

492 love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that

493 the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example,

494 might lay hold of life eternal. And if they will not be the

495 companions of the good in seeking life everlasting, they should

496 be loved as enemies, and be dealt with patiently. For so long

497 as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may not come

498 to a better mind. These selfish persons have more cause to

499 fear than those to whom it was said through the prophet, "He

500 is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at

501 the watchman's hand."[46] For watchmen or overseers of the

502 people are appointed in churches, that they may unsparingly

503 rebuke sin. Nor is that man guiltless of the sin we speak of,

504 who, though he be not a watchman, yet sees in the conduct of

505 those with whom the relationships of this life bring him into

506 contact, many things that should be blamed, and yet overlooks

507 them, fearing to give offence, and lose such worldly blessings

508 as may legitimately be desired, but which he too eagerly

509 grasps. Then, lastly, there is another reason why the good

510 are afflicted with temporal calamities—the reason which Job's

511 case exemplifies: that the human spirit may be proved, and

512 that it may be manifested with what fortitude of pious trust,

513 and with how unmercenary a love, it cleaves to God.[47]

514 10. *That the saints lose nothing in losing temporal goods.*

515 These are the considerations which one must keep in view,

516 that he may answer the question whether any evil happens to

517 the faithful and godly which cannot be turned to profit. Or

518 shall we say that the question is needless, and that the apostle

519 is vapouring when he says, "We know that all things work

520 together for good to them that love God?"[48]

521 They lost all they had. Their faith? Their godliness?

522 The possessions of the hidden man of the heart, which in the

523 sight of God are of great price?[49] Did they lose these? For

524 these are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle

525 said, "Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought

526 nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing

527 out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.

528 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a

529 snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown

530 men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is

531 the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, they have

532 erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with

533 many sorrows."[50]

534 They, then, who lost their worldly all in the sack of Rome,

535 if they owned their possessions as they had been taught by

536 the apostle, who himself was poor without, but rich within,—that

537 is to say, if they used the world as not using it,—could

538 say in the words of Job, heavily tried, but not overcome:

539 "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I

540 return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;

541 as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the

542 name of the Lord."[51] Like a good servant, Job counted the

543 will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which

544 his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while

545 yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his

546 death. But as to those feebler spirits who, though they

547 cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet

548 cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they

549 have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much

550 they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their

551 own making; in the words of the apostle quoted above,

552 "they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

553 For it was well that they who had so long despised these

554 verbal admonitions should receive the teaching of experience.

555 For when the apostle says, "They that will be rich fall into

556 temptation," and so on, what he blames in riches is not the

557 possession of them, but the desire of them. For elsewhere he

558 says, "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be

559 not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the

560 living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that

561 they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute,

562 willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves

563 a good foundation against the time to come, that they

564 may lay hold on eternal life."[52] They who were making such

565 a use of their property have been consoled for light losses by

566 great gains, and have had more pleasure in those possessions

567 which they have securely laid past, by freely giving them

568 away, than grief in those which they entirely lost by an

569 anxious and selfish hoarding of them. For nothing could

570 perish on earth save what they would be ashamed to carry

571 away from earth. Our Lord's injunction runs, "Lay not up

572 for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth

573 corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay

574 up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor

575 rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor

576 steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be

577 also."[53] And they who have listened to this injunction have

578 proved in the time of tribulation how well they were advised

579 in not despising this most trustworthy teacher, and most

580 faithful and mighty guardian of their treasure. For if many

581 were glad that their treasure was stored in places which the

582 enemy chanced not to light upon, how much better founded

583 was the joy of those who, by the counsel of their God, had

584 fled with their treasure to a citadel which no enemy can possibly

585 reach! Thus our Paulinus, bishop of Nola,[54] who voluntarily

586 abandoned vast wealth and became quite poor, though

587 abundantly rich in holiness, when the barbarians sacked Nola,

588 and took him prisoner, used silently to pray, as he afterwards

589 told me, "O Lord, let me not be troubled for gold and silver,

590 for where all my treasure is Thou knowest." For all his

591 treasure was where he had been taught to hide and store it

592 by Him who had also foretold that these calamities would

593 happen in the world. Consequently those persons who obeyed

594 their Lord when He warned them where and how to lay up

595 treasure, did not lose even their earthly possessions in the

596 invasion of the barbarians; while those who are now repenting

597 that they did not obey Him have learnt the right use of

598 earthly goods, if not by the wisdom which would have prevented

599 their loss, at least by the experience which follows it.

600 But some good and Christian men have been put to the

601 torture, that they might be forced to deliver up their goods to

602 the enemy. They could indeed neither deliver nor lose that

603 good which made themselves good. If, however, they preferred

604 torture to the surrender of the mammon of iniquity,

605 then I say they were not good men. Rather they should

606 have been reminded that, if they suffered so severely for the

607 sake of money, they should endure all torment, if need be, for

608 Christ's sake; that they might be taught to love Him rather

609 who enriches with eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and

610 not silver and gold, for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether

611 they preserved it by telling a lie, or lost it by telling the truth.

612 For under these tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him,

613 no one preserved wealth save by denying its existence. So

614 that possibly the torture which taught them that they should

615 set their affections on a possession they could not lose, was

616 more useful than those possessions which, without any useful

617 fruit at all, disquieted and tormented their anxious owners.

618 But then we are reminded that some were tortured who had

619 no wealth to surrender, but who were not believed when they

620 said so. These too, however, had perhaps some craving for

621 wealth, and were not willingly poor with a holy resignation;

622 and to such it had to be made plain, that not the actual possession

623 alone, but also the desire of wealth, deserved such

624 excruciating pains. And even if they were destitute of any

625 hidden stores of gold and silver, because they were living

626 in hopes of a better life,—I know not indeed if any such

627 person was tortured on the supposition that he had wealth;

628 but if so, then certainly in confessing, when put to the question,

629 a holy poverty, he confessed Christ. And though it was

630 scarcely to be expected that the barbarians should believe

631 him, yet no confessor of a holy poverty could be tortured

632 without receiving a heavenly reward.

633 Again, they say that the long famine laid many a Christian

634 low. But this, too, the faithful turned to good uses by a pious

635 endurance of it. For those whom famine killed outright it

636 rescued from the ills of this life, as a kindly disease would

637 have done; and those who were only hunger-bitten were

638 taught to live more sparingly, and inured to longer fasts.

639 11. *Of the end of this life, whether it is material that it be long delayed.*

640 But, it is added, many Christians were slaughtered, and

641 were put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. Well,

642 if this be hard to bear, it is assuredly the common lot of all

643 who are born into this life. Of this at least I am certain,

644 that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some

645 time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with

646 the shortest. For of two things which have alike ceased to

647 be, the one is not better, the other worse—the one greater, the

648 other less.[55] And of what consequence is it what kind of

649 death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not

650 forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? And as

651 in the daily casualties of life every man is, as it were, threatened

652 with numberless deaths, so long as it remains uncertain

653 which of them is his fate, I would ask whether it is not better

654 to suffer one and die, than to live in fear of all? I am not

655 unaware of the poor-spirited fear which prompts us to choose

656 rather to live long in fear of so many deaths, than to die once

657 and so escape them all; but the weak and cowardly shrinking

658 of the flesh is one thing, and the well-considered and reasonable

659 persuasion of the soul quite another. That death is not

660 to be judged an evil which is the end of a good life; for

661 death becomes evil only by the retribution which follows it.

662 They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to

663 inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death

664 will usher them. And since Christians are well aware that

665 the death of the godly pauper whose sores the dogs licked

666 was far better than of the wicked rich man who lay in purple

667 and fine linen, what harm could these terrific deaths do to

668 the dead who had lived well?

669 12. *Of the burial of the dead: that the denial of it to Christians does them no

670 injury.*[56]

671 Further still, we are reminded that in such a carnage as

672 then occurred, the bodies could not even be buried. But

673 godly confidence is not appalled by so ill-omened a circumstance;

674 for the faithful bear in mind that assurance has been

675 given that not a hair of their head shall perish, and that,

676 therefore, though they even be devoured by beasts, their

677 blessed resurrection will not hereby be hindered. The Truth

678 would nowise have said, "Fear not them which kill the body,

679 but are not able to kill the soul,"[57] if anything whatever that

680 an enemy could do to the body of the slain could be detrimental

681 to the future life. Or will some one perhaps take so

682 absurd a position as to contend that those who kill the body

683 are not to be feared before death, and lest they kill the body,

684 but after death, lest they deprive it of burial? If this be so,

685 then that is false which Christ says, "Be not afraid of them

686 that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can

687 do;"[58] for it seems they can do great injury to the dead body.

688 Far be it from us to suppose that the Truth can be thus false.

689 They who kill the body are said "to do something," because

690 the death-blow is felt, the body still having sensation; but

691 after that, they have no more that they can do, for in the

692 slain body there is no sensation. And so there are indeed

693 many bodies of Christians lying unburied; but no one has

694 separated them from heaven, nor from that earth which is all

695 filled with the presence of Him who knows whence He will

696 raise again what He created. It is said, indeed, in the Psalm:

697 "The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat

698 unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints unto the

699 beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water

700 round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them."[59]

701 But this was said rather to exhibit the cruelty of those who

702 did these things, than the misery of those who suffered them.

703 To the eyes of men this appears a harsh and doleful lot, yet

704 "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."[60]

705 Wherefore all these last offices and ceremonies that concern

706 the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment

707 of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace

708 of the living than the comfort of the dead. If a costly burial

709 does any good to a wicked man, a squalid burial, or none at all,

710 may harm the godly. His crowd of domestics furnished the

711 purple-clad Dives with a funeral gorgeous in the eye of man;

712 but in the sight of God that was a more sumptuous funeral

713 which the ulcerous pauper received at the hands of the angels,

714 who did not carry him out to a marble tomb, but bore him

715 aloft to Abraham's bosom.

716 The men against whom I have undertaken to defend the

717 city of God laugh at all this. But even their own philosophers[61]

718 have despised a careful burial; and often whole

719 armies have fought and fallen for their earthly country without

720 caring to inquire whether they would be left exposed on

721 the field of battle, or become the food of wild beasts. Of this

722 noble disregard of sepulture poetry has well said: "He who

723 has no tomb has the sky for his vault."[62] How much less

724 ought they to insult over the unburied bodies of Christians,

725 to whom it has been promised that the flesh itself shall be

726 restored, and the body formed anew, all the members of it

727 being gathered not only from the earth, but from the most

728 secret recesses of any other of the elements in which the dead

729 bodies of men have lain hid!

730 13. *Reasons for burying the bodies of the saints.*

731 Nevertheless the bodies of the dead are not on this account

732 to be despised and left unburied; least of all the bodies

733 of the righteous and faithful, which have been used by the

734 Holy Ghost as His organs and instruments for all good works.

735 For if the dress of a father, or his ring, or anything he wore,

736 be precious to his children, in proportion to the love they

737 bore him, with how much more reason ought we to care for

738 the bodies of those we love, which they wore far more closely

739 and intimately than any clothing! For the body is not an

740 extraneous ornament or aid, but a part of man's very nature.

741 And therefore to the righteous of ancient times the last offices

742 were piously rendered, and sepulchres provided for them, and

743 obsequies celebrated;[63] and they themselves, while yet alive,

744 gave commandment to their sons about the burial, and, on

745 occasion, even about the removal of their bodies to some

746 favourite place.[64] And Tobit, according to the angel's testimony,

747 is commended, and is said to have pleased God by

748 burying the dead.[65] Our Lord Himself, too, though He was

749 to rise again the third day, applauds, and commends to our

750 applause, the good work of the religious woman who poured

751 precious ointment over His limbs, and did it against His burial.[66]

752 And the Gospel speaks with commendation of those who were

753 careful to take down His body from the cross, and wrap it

754 lovingly in costly cerements, and see to its burial.[67] These

755 instances certainly do not prove that corpses have any feeling;

756 but they show that God's providence extends even to the

757 bodies of the dead, and that such pious offices are pleasing to

758 Him, as cherishing faith in the resurrection. And we may

759 also draw from them this wholesome lesson, that if God does

760 not forget even any kind office which loving care pays to the

761 unconscious dead, much more does He reward the charity we

762 exercise towards the living. Other things, indeed, which the

763 holy patriarchs said of the burial and removal of their bodies,

764 they meant to be taken in a prophetic sense; but of these we

765 need not here speak at large, what we have already said being

766 sufficient. But if the want of those things which are necessary

767 for the support of the living, as food and clothing, though

768 painful and trying, does not break down the fortitude and

769 virtuous endurance of good men, nor eradicate piety from their

770 souls, but rather renders it more fruitful, how much less can

771 the absence of the funeral, and of the other customary attentions

772 paid to the dead, render those wretched who are already

773 reposing in the hidden abodes of the blessed! Consequently,

774 though in the sack of Rome and of other towns the dead

775 bodies of the Christians were deprived of these last offices,

776 this is neither the fault of the living, for they could not render

777 them; nor an infliction to the dead, for they cannot feel the

778 loss.

779 14. *Of the captivity of the saints, and that divine consolation never failed them

780 therein.*

781 But, say they, many Christians were even led away captive.

782 This indeed were a most pitiable fate, if they could be

783 led away to any place where they could not find their God.

784 But for this calamity also sacred Scripture affords great consolation.

785 The three youths[68] were captives; Daniel was a

786 captive; so were other prophets: and God, the comforter, did

787 not fail them. And in like manner He has not failed His

788 own people in the power of a nation which, though barbarous,

789 is yet human,—He who did not abandon the prophet[69] in the

790 belly of a monster. These things, indeed, are turned to ridicule

791 rather than credited by those with whom we are debating;

792 though they believe what they read in their own books,

793 that Arion of Methymna, the famous lyrist,[70] when he was

794 thrown overboard, was received on a dolphin's back and carried

795 to land. But that story of ours about the prophet Jonah is

796 far more incredible,—more incredible because more marvellous,

797 and more marvellous because a greater exhibition of power.

798 >

799 >

800 >

801 15. *Of Regulus, in whom we have an example of the voluntary endurance of

802 > captivity for the sake of religion; which yet did not profit him, though he

803 > was a worshipper of the gods.*

804 But among their own famous men they have a very noble

805 example of the voluntary endurance of captivity in obedience

806 to a religious scruple. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman

807 general, was a prisoner in the hands of the Carthaginians.

808 But they, being more anxious to exchange their prisoners with

809 the Romans than to keep them, sent Regulus as a special

810 envoy with their own ambassadors to negotiate this exchange,

811 but bound him first with an oath, that if he failed to accomplish

812 their wish, he would return to Carthage. He went,

813 and persuaded the senate to the opposite course, because he

814 believed it was not for the advantage of the Roman republic

815 to make an exchange of prisoners. After he had thus exerted

816 his influence, the Romans did not compel him to return to the

817 enemy; but what he had sworn he voluntarily performed.

818 But the Carthaginians put him to death with refined, elaborate,

819 and horrible tortures. They shut him up in a narrow

820 box, in which he was compelled to stand, and in which finely

821 sharpened nails were fixed all round about him, so that he

822 could not lean upon any part of it without intense pain; and

823 so they killed him by depriving him of sleep.[71] With justice,

824 indeed, do they applaud the virtue which rose superior to so

825 frightful a fate. However, the gods he swore by were those

826 who are now supposed to avenge the prohibition of their worship,

827 by inflicting these present calamities on the human race.

828 But if these gods, who were worshipped specially in this

829 behalf, that they might confer happiness in this life, either

830 willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted on one

831 who kept his oath to them, what more cruel punishment

832 could they in their anger have inflicted on a perjured person?

833 But why may I not draw from my reasoning a double inference?

834 Regulus certainly had such reverence for the gods,

835 that for his oath's sake he would neither remain in his own

836 land, nor go elsewhere, but without hesitation returned to his

837 bitterest enemies. If he thought that this course would be

838 advantageous with respect to this present life, he was certainly

839 much deceived, for it brought his life to a frightful termination.

840 By his own example, in fact, he taught that the gods

841 do not secure the temporal happiness of their worshippers;

842 since he himself, who was devoted to their worship, was both

843 conquered in battle and taken prisoner, and then, because he

844 refused to act in violation of the oath he had sworn by them,

845 was tortured and put to death by a new, and hitherto unheard

846 of, and all too horrible kind of punishment. And on the supposition

847 that the worshippers of the gods are rewarded by

848 felicity in the life to come, why, then, do they calumniate

849 the influence of Christianity? why do they assert that this

850 disaster has overtaken the city because it has ceased to worship

851 its gods, since, worship them as assiduously as it may, it

852 may yet be as unfortunate as Regulus was? Or will some

853 one carry so wonderful a blindness to the extent of wildly

854 attempting, in the face of the evident truth, to contend that

855 though one man might be unfortunate, though a worshipper of

856 the gods, yet a whole city could not be so? That is to say,

857 the power of their gods is better adapted to preserve multitudes

858 than individuals,—as if a multitude were not composed

859 of individuals.

860 But if they say that M. Regulus, even while a prisoner

861 and enduring these bodily torments, might yet enjoy the

862 blessedness of a virtuous soul,[72] then let them recognise that

863 true virtue by which a city also may be blessed. For the

864 blessedness of a community and of an individual flow from

865 the same source; for a community is nothing else than a

866 harmonious collection of individuals. So that I am not concerned

867 meantime to discuss what kind of virtue Regulus

868 possessed: enough, that by his very noble example they are

869 forced to own that the gods are to be worshipped not for the

870 sake of bodily comforts or external advantages; for he preferred

871 to lose all such things rather than offend the gods by

872 whom he had sworn. But what can we make of men who

873 glory in having such a citizen, but dread having a city like

874 him? If they do not dread this, then let them acknowledge

875 that some such calamity as befell Regulus may also befall a

876 community, though they be worshipping their gods as diligently

877 as he; and let them no longer throw the blame of

878 their misfortunes on Christianity. But as our present concern

879 is with those Christians who were taken prisoners, let

880 those who take occasion from this calamity to revile our most

881 wholesome religion in a fashion not less imprudent than impudent,

882 consider this and hold their peace; for if it was no

883 reproach to their gods that a most punctilious worshipper of

884 theirs should, for the sake of keeping his oath to them, be

885 deprived of his native land without hope of finding another,

886 and fall into the hands of his enemies, and be put to death

887 by a long-drawn and exquisite torture, much less ought the

888 Christian name to be charged with the captivity of those who

889 believe in its power, since they, in confident expectation of a

890 heavenly country, know that they are pilgrims even in their

891 own homes.

892 >

893 >

894 >

895 16. *Of the violation of the consecrated and other Christian virgins to which they

896 > were subjected in captivity, and to which their own will gave no consent;

897 > and whether this contaminated their souls.*

898 But they fancy they bring a conclusive charge against

899 Christianity, when they aggravate the horror of captivity by

900 adding that not only wives and unmarried maidens, but even

901 consecrated virgins, were violated. But truly, with respect to

902 this, it is not Christian faith, nor piety, nor even the virtue

903 of chastity, which is hemmed into any difficulty: the only

904 difficulty is so to treat the subject as to satisfy at once

905 modesty and reason. And in discussing it we shall not be so

906 careful to reply to our accusers as to comfort our friends.

907 Let this, therefore, in the first place, be laid down as an unassailable

908 position, that the virtue which makes the life good

909 has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of

910 the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the

911 will; and that while the will remains firm and unshaken,

912 nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the

913 body, is any fault of the person who suffers it, so long as he

914 cannot escape it without sin. But as not only pain may be

915 inflicted, but lust gratified on the body of another, whenever

916 anything of this latter kind takes place, shame invades even a

917 thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed,—shame,

918 lest that act which could not be suffered without

919 some sensual pleasure, should be believed to have been committed

920 also with some assent of the will.

921 17. *Of suicide committed through fear of punishment or dishonour.*

922 And consequently, even if some of these virgins killed themselves

923 to avoid such disgrace, who that has any human feeling

924 would refuse to forgive them? And as for those who would

925 not put an end to their lives, lest they might seem to escape

926 the crime of another by a sin of their own, he who lays this

927 to their charge as a great wickedness is himself not guiltless

928 of the fault of folly. For if it is not lawful to take the law

929 into our own hands, and slay even a guilty person, whose

930 death no public sentence has warranted, then certainly he

931 who kills himself is a homicide, and so much the guiltier of

932 his own death, as he was more innocent of that offence for

933 which he doomed himself to die. Do we justly execrate the

934 deed of Judas, and does truth itself pronounce that by hanging

935 himself he rather aggravated than expiated the guilt of

936 that most iniquitous betrayal, since, by despairing of God's

937 mercy in his sorrow that wrought death, he left to himself no

938 place for a healing penitence? How much more ought he to

939 abstain from laying violent hands on himself who has done

940 nothing worthy of such a punishment! For Judas, when he

941 killed himself, killed a wicked man; but he passed from this

942 life chargeable not only with the death of Christ, but with

943 his own: for though he killed himself on account of his crime,

944 his killing himself was another crime. Why, then, should a

945 man who has done no ill do ill to himself, and by killing

946 himself kill the innocent to escape another's guilty act, and

947 perpetrate upon himself a sin of his own, that the sin of

948 another may not be perpetrated on him?

949 18. *Of the violence which may be done to the body by another's lust, while the

950 mind remains inviolate.*

951 But is there a fear that even another's lust may pollute

952 the violated? It will not pollute, if it be another's: if it

953 pollute, it is not another's, but is shared also by the polluted.

954 But since purity is a virtue of the soul, and has for its companion

955 virtue the fortitude which will rather endure all ills

956 than consent to evil; and since no one, however magnanimous

957 and pure, has always the disposal of his own body, but can

958 control only the consent and refusal of his will, what sane

959 man can suppose that, if his body be seized and forcibly made

960 use of to satisfy the lust of another, he thereby loses his

961 purity? For if purity can be thus destroyed, then assuredly

962 purity is no virtue of the soul; nor can it be numbered

963 among those good things by which the life is made good, but

964 among the good things of the body, in the same category as

965 strength, beauty, sound and unbroken health, and, in short, all

966 such good things as may be diminished without at all diminishing

967 the goodness and rectitude of our life. But if purity

968 be nothing better than these, why should the body be perilled

969 that it may be preserved? If, on the other hand, it belongs

970 to the soul, then not even when the body is violated is it

971 lost. Nay more, the virtue of holy continence, when it resists

972 the uncleanness of carnal lust, sanctifies even the body, and

973 therefore when this continence remains unsubdued, even the

974 sanctity of the body is preserved, because the will to use it

975 holily remains, and, so far as lies in the body itself, the power

976 also.

977 For the sanctity of the body does not consist in the integrity

978 of its members, nor in their exemption from all touch;

979 for they are exposed to various accidents which do violence to

980 and wound them, and the surgeons who administer relief often

981 perform operations that sicken the spectator. A midwife,

982 suppose, has (whether maliciously or accidentally, or through

983 unskilfulness) destroyed the virginity of some girl, while

984 endeavouring to ascertain it: I suppose no one is so foolish

985 as to believe that, by this destruction of the integrity of one

986 organ, the virgin has lost anything even of her bodily sanctity.

987 And thus, so long as the soul keeps this firmness of purpose

988 which sanctifies even the body, the violence done by another's

989 lust makes no impression on this bodily sanctity, which is

990 preserved intact by one's own persistent continence. Suppose

991 a virgin violates the oath she has sworn to God, and goes to

992 meet her seducer with the intention of yielding to him, shall

993 we say that as she goes she is possessed even of bodily

994 sanctity, when already she has lost and destroyed that sanctity

995 of soul which sanctifies the body? Far be it from us to so

996 misapply words. Let us rather draw this conclusion, that while

997 the sanctity of the soul remains even when the body is

998 violated, the sanctity of the body is not lost; and that, in like

999 manner, the sanctity of the body is lost when the sanctity of

1000 the soul is violated, though the body itself remain intact.

1001 And therefore a woman who has been violated by the sin of

1002 another, and without any consent of her own, has no cause to

1003 put herself to death; much less has she cause to commit

1004 suicide in order to avoid such violation, for in that case she

1005 commits certain homicide to prevent a crime which is uncertain

1006 as yet, and not her own.

1007 19. *Of Lucretia, who put an end to her life because of the outrage done her.*

1008 This, then, is our position, and it seems sufficiently lucid.

1009 We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul

1010 admits no consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably

1011 chaste, the sin is not hers, but his who violates her. But do

1012 they against whom we have to defend not only the souls, but

1013 the sacred bodies too of these outraged Christian captives,—do

1014 they, perhaps, dare to dispute our position? But all know how

1015 loudly they extol the purity of Lucretia, that noble matron

1016 of ancient Rome. When King Tarquin's son had violated

1017 her body, she made known the wickedness of this young

1018 profligate to her husband Collatinus, and to Brutus her kinsman,

1019 men of high rank and full of courage, and bound them

1020 by an oath to avenge it. Then, heart-sick, and unable to bear

1021 the shame, she put an end to her life. What shall we call

1022 her? An adulteress, or chaste? There is no question which

1023 she was. Not more happily than truly did a declaimer say of

1024 this sad occurrence: "Here was a marvel: there were two,

1025 and only one committed adultery." Most forcibly and truly

1026 spoken. For this declaimer, seeing in the union of the two

1027 bodies the foul lust of the one, and the chaste will of the

1028 other, and giving heed not to the contact of the bodily members,

1029 but to the wide diversity of their souls, says: "There

1030 were two, but the adultery was committed only by one."

1031 But how is it, that she who was no partner to the crime

1032 bears the heavier punishment of the two? For the adulterer

1033 was only banished along with his father; she suffered the

1034 extreme penalty. If that was not impurity by which she

1035 was unwillingly ravished, then this is not justice by which

1036 she, being chaste, is punished. To you I appeal, ye laws

1037 and judges of Rome. Even after the perpetration of great

1038 enormities, you do not suffer the criminal to be slain untried.

1039 If, then, one were to bring to your bar this case, and were to

1040 prove to you that a woman not only untried, but chaste and

1041 innocent, had been killed, would you not visit the murderer

1042 with punishment proportionably severe? This crime was

1043 committed by Lucretia; that Lucretia so celebrated and

1044 lauded slew the innocent, chaste, outraged Lucretia. Pronounce

1045 sentence. But if you cannot, because there does not

1046 compear any one whom you can punish, why do you extol

1047 with such unmeasured laudation her who slew an innocent

1048 and chaste woman? Assuredly you will find it impossible

1049 to defend her before the judges of the realms below, if they be

1050 such as your poets are fond of representing them; for she is

1051 among those

1052 "Who guiltless sent themselves to doom,

1053 And all for loathing of the day,

1054 In madness threw their lives away."

1055 And if she with the others wishes to return,

1056 "Fate bars the way: around their keep

1057 The slow unlovely waters creep,

1058 And bind with ninefold chain."[73]

1059 Or perhaps she is not there, because she slew herself conscious

1060 of guilt, not of innocence? She herself alone knows

1061 her reason; but what if she was betrayed by the pleasure

1062 of the act, and gave some consent to Sextus, though so violently

1063 abusing her, and then was so affected with remorse,

1064 that she thought death alone could expiate her sin? Even

1065 though this were the case, she ought still to have held her

1066 hand from suicide, if she could with her false gods have

1067 accomplished a fruitful repentance. However, if such were

1068 the state of the case, and if it were false that there were two,

1069 but one only committed adultery; if the truth were that both

1070 were involved in it, one by open assault, the other by secret

1071 consent, then she did not kill an innocent woman; and therefore

1072 her erudite defenders may maintain that she is not

1073 among that class of the dwellers below "who guiltless sent

1074 themselves to doom." But this case of Lucretia is in such a

1075 dilemma, that if you extenuate the homicide, you confirm the

1076 adultery: if you acquit her of adultery, you make the charge

1077 of homicide heavier; and there is no way out of the dilemma,

1078 when one asks, If she was adulterous, why praise her? if

1079 chaste, why slay her?

1080 Nevertheless, for our purpose of refuting those who are

1081 unable to comprehend what true sanctity is, and who therefore

1082 insult over our outraged Christian women, it is enough that in

1083 the instance of this noble Roman matron it was said in her

1084 praise, "There were two, but the adultery was the crime

1085 of only one." For Lucretia was confidently believed to be

1086 superior to the contamination of any consenting thought to

1087 the adultery. And accordingly, since she killed herself for

1088 being subjected to an outrage in which she had no guilty

1089 part, it is obvious that this act of hers was prompted not by

1090 the love of purity, but by the overwhelming burden of her

1091 shame. She was ashamed that so foul a crime had been perpetrated

1092 upon her, though without her abetting; and this

1093 matron, with the Roman love of glory in her veins, was

1094 seized with a proud dread that, if she continued to live, it

1095 would be supposed she willingly did not resent the wrong

1096 that had been done her. She could not exhibit to men her

1097 conscience, but she judged that her self-inflicted punishment

1098 would testify her state of mind; and she burned with shame

1099 at the thought that her patient endurance of the foul affront

1100 that another had done her, should be construed into complicity

1101 with him. Not such was the decision of the Christian women

1102 who suffered as she did, and yet survive. They declined to

1103 avenge upon themselves the guilt of others, and so add crimes

1104 of their own to those crimes in which they had no share.

1105 For this they would have done had their shame driven them

1106 to homicide, as the lust of their enemies had driven them

1107 to adultery. Within their own souls, in the witness of

1108 their own conscience, they enjoy the glory of chastity. In

1109 the sight of God, too, they are esteemed pure, and this contents

1110 them; they ask no more: it suffices them to have

1111 opportunity of doing good, and they decline to evade the

1112 distress of human suspicion, lest they thereby deviate from

1113 the divine law.

1114 20. *That Christians have no authority for committing suicide in any

1115 circumstances whatever.*

1116 It is not without significance, that in no passage of the

1117 holy canonical books there can be found either divine precept

1118 or permission to take away our own life, whether for the sake

1119 of entering on the enjoyment of immortality, or of shunning,

1120 or ridding ourselves of anything whatever. Nay, the law,

1121 rightly interpreted, even prohibits suicide, where it says,

1122 "Thou shalt not kill." This is proved specially by the

1123 omission of the words "thy neighbour," which are inserted

1124 when false witness is forbidden: "Thou shalt not bear false

1125 witness against thy neighbour." Nor yet should any one on

1126 this account suppose he has not broken this commandment if

1127 he has borne false witness only against himself. For the love

1128 of our neighbour is regulated by the love of ourselves, as it is

1129 written, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." If, then,

1130 he who makes false statements about himself is not less guilty

1131 of bearing false witness than if he had made them to the injury

1132 of his neighbour; although in the commandment prohibiting

1133 false witness only his neighbour is mentioned, and persons

1134 taking no pains to understand it might suppose that a man

1135 was allowed to be a false witness to his own hurt; how much

1136 greater reason have we to understand that a man may not

1137 kill himself, since in the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill,"

1138 there is no limitation added nor any exception made in favour

1139 of any one, and least of all in favour of him on whom the

1140 command is laid! And so some attempt to extend this command

1141 even to beasts and cattle, as if it forbade us to take life

1142 from any creature. But if so, why not extend it also to the

1143 plants, and all that is rooted in and nourished by the earth?

1144 For though this class of creatures have no sensation, yet they

1145 also are said to live, and consequently they can die; and therefore,

1146 if violence be done them, can be killed. So, too, the

1147 apostle, when speaking of the seeds of such things as these,

1148 says, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it

1149 die;" and in the Psalm it is said, "He killed their vines with

1150 hail." Must we therefore reckon it a breaking of this commandment,

1151 "Thou shalt not kill," to pull a flower? Are we

1152 thus insanely to countenance the foolish error of the Manichæans?

1153 Putting aside, then, these ravings, if, when we say,

1154 Thou shalt not kill, we do not understand this of the plants,

1155 since they have no sensation, nor of the irrational animals

1156 that fly, swim, walk, or creep, since they are dissociated from

1157 us by their want of reason, and are therefore by the just

1158 appointment of the Creator subjected to us to kill or keep

1159 alive for our own uses; if so, then it remains that we understand

1160 that commandment simply of man. The commandment

1161 is, "Thou shalt not kill man;" therefore neither another nor

1162 yourself, for he who kills himself still kills nothing else than

1163 man.

1164 21. *Of the cases in which we may put men to death without incurring the guilt

1165 of murder.*

1166 However, there are some exceptions made by the divine

1167 authority to its own law, that men may not be put to death.

1168 These exceptions are of two kinds, being justified either by a

1169 general law, or by a special commission granted for a time to

1170 some individual. And in this latter case, he to whom authority

1171 is delegated, and who is but the sword in the hand of him

1172 who uses it, is not himself responsible for the death he deals.

1173 And, accordingly, they who have waged war in obedience to

1174 the divine command, or in conformity with His laws have

1175 represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom

1176 of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked

1177 men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment,

1178 "Thou shalt not kill." Abraham indeed was not merely

1179 deemed guiltless of cruelty, but was even applauded for his

1180 piety, because he was ready to slay his son in obedience to

1181 God, not to his own passion. And it is reasonably enough

1182 made a question, whether we are to esteem it to have been in

1183 compliance with a command of God that Jephthah killed his

1184 daughter, because she met him when he had vowed that he

1185 would sacrifice to God whatever first met him as he returned

1186 victorious from battle. Samson, too, who drew down the

1187 house on himself and his foes together, is justified only on

1188 this ground, that the Spirit who wrought wonders by him

1189 had given him secret instructions to do this. With the exception,

1190 then, of these two classes of cases, which are justified

1191 either by a just law that applies generally, or by a special intimation

1192 from God Himself, the fountain of all justice, whoever

1193 kills a man, either himself or another, is implicated in the

1194 guilt of murder.

1195 22. *That suicide can never be prompted by magnanimity.*

1196 But they who have laid violent hands on themselves are

1197 perhaps to be admired for their greatness of soul, though they

1198 cannot be applauded for the soundness of their judgment.

1199 However, if you look at the matter more closely, you will

1200 scarcely call it greatness of soul, which prompts a man to kill

1201 himself rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune,

1202 or sins in which he is not implicated. Is it not rather proof

1203 of a feeble mind, to be unable to bear either the pains of

1204 bodily servitude or the foolish opinion of the vulgar? And

1205 is not that to be pronounced the greater mind, which rather

1206 faces than flees the ills of life, and which, in comparison of

1207 the light and purity of conscience, holds in small esteem the

1208 judgment of men, and specially of the vulgar, which is frequently

1209 involved in a mist of error? And, therefore, if suicide is to be

1210 esteemed a magnanimous act, none can take higher rank for

1211 magnanimity than that Cleombrotus, who (as the story goes),

1212 when he had read Plato's book in which he treats of the

1213 immortality of the soul, threw himself from a wall, and so

1214 passed from this life to that which he believed to be better.

1215 For he was not hard pressed by calamity, nor by any accusation,

1216 false or true, which he could not very well have lived

1217 down: there was, in short, no motive but only magnanimity

1218 urging him to seek death, and break away from the sweet

1219 detention of this life. And yet that this was a magnanimous

1220 rather than a justifiable action, Plato himself, whom he had

1221 read, would have told him; for he would certainly have been

1222 forward to commit, or at least to recommend suicide, had not

1223 the same bright intellect which saw that the soul was immortal,

1224 discerned also that to seek immortality by suicide was

1225 to be prohibited rather than encouraged.

1226 Again, it is said many have killed themselves to prevent

1227 an enemy doing so. But we are not inquiring whether it has

1228 been done, but whether it ought to have been done. Sound

1229 judgment is to be preferred even to examples, and indeed

1230 examples harmonize with the voice of reason; but not all

1231 examples, but those only which are distinguished by their

1232 piety, and are proportionately worthy of imitation. For

1233 suicide we cannot cite the example of patriarchs, prophets, or

1234 apostles; though our Lord Jesus Christ, when He admonished

1235 them to flee from city to city if they were persecuted, might

1236 very well have taken that occasion to advise them to lay

1237 violent hands on themselves, and so escape their persecutors.

1238 But seeing He did not do this, nor proposed this mode of

1239 departing this life, though He were addressing His own

1240 friends for whom He had promised to prepare everlasting

1241 mansions, it is obvious that such examples as are produced

1242 from the "nations that forget God," give no warrant of imitation

1243 to the worshippers of the one true God.

1244 23. *What we are to think of the example of Cato, who slew himself because

1245 unable to endure Cæsar's victory.*

1246 Besides Lucretia, of whom enough has already been said,

1247 our advocates of suicide have some difficulty in finding any

1248 other prescriptive example, unless it be that of Cato, who

1249 killed himself at Utica. His example is appealed to, not

1250 because he was the only man who did so, but because he was

1251 so esteemed as a learned and excellent man, that it could

1252 plausibly be maintained that what he did was and is a good

1253 thing to do. But of this action of his, what can I say but

1254 that his own friends, enlightened men as he, prudently dissuaded

1255 him, and therefore judged his act to be that of a feeble

1256 rather than a strong spirit, and dictated not by honourable

1257 feeling forestalling shame, but by weakness shrinking from

1258 hardships? Indeed, Cato condemns himself by the advice he

1259 gave to his dearly loved son. For if it was a disgrace to live

1260 under Cæsar's rule, why did the father urge the son to this

1261 disgrace, by encouraging him to trust absolutely to Cæsar's

1262 generosity? Why did he not persuade him to die along

1263 with himself? If Torquatus was applauded for putting

1264 his son to death, when contrary to orders he had engaged,

1265 and engaged successfully, with the enemy, why did conquered

1266 Cato spare his conquered son, though he did not spare

1267 himself? Was it more disgraceful to be a victor contrary to

1268 orders, than to submit to a victor contrary to the received

1269 ideas of honour? Cato, then, cannot have deemed it to be

1270 shameful to live under Cæsar's rule, for had he done so, the

1271 father's sword would have delivered his son from this disgrace.

1272 The truth is, that his son, whom he both hoped and desired

1273 would be spared by Cæsar, was not more loved by him than

1274 Cæsar was envied the glory of pardoning him (as indeed

1275 Cæsar himself is reported to have said[74]); or if envy is too

1276 strong a word, let us say he was *ashamed* that this glory should

1277 be his.

1278 24. *That in that virtue in which Regulus excels Cato, Christians are

1279 pre-eminently distinguished.*

1280 Our opponents are offended at our preferring to Cato the

1281 saintly Job, who endured dreadful evils in his body rather

1282 than deliver himself from all torment by self-inflicted death;

1283 or other saints, of whom it is recorded in our authoritative

1284 and trustworthy books that they bore captivity and the oppression

1285 of their enemies rather than commit suicide. But their

1286 own books authorize us to prefer to Marcus Cato, Marcus

1287 Regulus. For Cato had never conquered Cæsar; and when

1288 conquered by him, disdained to submit himself to him, and

1289 that he might escape this submission put himself to death.

1290 Regulus, on the contrary, had formerly conquered the Carthaginians,

1291 and in command of the army of Rome had won for

1292 the Roman republic a victory which no citizen could bewail,

1293 and which the enemy himself was constrained to admire; yet

1294 afterwards, when he in his turn was defeated by them, he preferred

1295 to be their captive rather than to put himself beyond

1296 their reach by suicide. Patient under the domination of the

1297 Carthaginians, and constant in his love of the Romans, he

1298 neither deprived the one of his conquered body, nor the other

1299 of his unconquered spirit. Neither was it love of life that

1300 prevented him from killing himself. This was plainly enough

1301 indicated by his unhesitatingly returning, on account of his

1302 promise and oath, to the same enemies whom he had more

1303 grievously provoked by his words in the senate than even

1304 by his arms in battle. Having such a contempt of life, and

1305 preferring to end it by whatever torments excited enemies

1306 might contrive, rather than terminate it by his own hand,

1307 he could not more distinctly have declared how great a crime

1308 he judged suicide to be. Among all their famous and remarkable

1309 citizens, the Romans have no better man to boast of than

1310 this, who was neither corrupted by prosperity, for he remained

1311 a very poor man after winning such victories; nor broken by

1312 adversity, for he returned intrepidly to the most miserable

1313 end. But if the bravest and most renowned heroes, who had

1314 but an earthly country to defend, and who, though they had

1315 but false gods, yet rendered them a true worship, and carefully

1316 kept their oath to them; if these men, who by the custom

1317 and right of war put conquered enemies to the sword, yet

1318 shrank from putting an end to their own lives even when

1319 conquered by their enemies; if, though they had no fear at

1320 all of death, they would yet rather suffer slavery than commit

1321 suicide, how much rather must Christians, the worshippers of

1322 the true God, the aspirants to a heavenly citizenship, shrink

1323 from this act, if in God's providence they have been for a

1324 season delivered into the hands of their enemies to prove or

1325 to correct them! And, certainly, Christians subjected to this

1326 humiliating condition will not be deserted by the Most High,

1327 who for their sakes humbled Himself. Neither should they

1328 forget that they are bound by no laws of war, nor military

1329 orders, to put even a conquered enemy to the sword; and if

1330 a man may not put to death the enemy who has sinned, or

1331 may yet sin against him, who is so infatuated as to maintain

1332 that he may kill himself because an enemy has sinned, or is

1333 going to sin, against him?

1334 25. *That we should not endeavour by sin to obviate sin.*

1335 But, we are told, there is ground to fear that, when the

1336 body is subjected to the enemy's lust, the insidious pleasure

1337 of sense may entice the soul to consent to the sin, and steps

1338 must be taken to prevent so disastrous a result. And is not

1339 suicide the proper mode of preventing not only the enemy's

1340 sin, but the sin of the Christian so allured? Now, in the

1341 first place, the soul which is led by God and His wisdom,

1342 rather than by bodily concupiscence, will certainly never consent

1343 to the desire aroused in its own flesh by another's lust.

1344 And, at all events, if it be true, as the truth plainly declares,

1345 that suicide is a detestable and damnable wickedness, who is

1346 such a fool as to say, Let us sin now, that we may obviate a

1347 possible future sin; let us now commit murder, lest we perhaps

1348 afterwards should commit adultery? If we are so controlled

1349 by iniquity that innocence is out of the question, and

1350 we can at best but make a choice of sins, is not a future and

1351 uncertain adultery preferable to a present and certain murder?

1352 Is it not better to commit a wickedness which penitence may

1353 heal, than a crime which leaves no place for healing contrition?

1354 I say this for the sake of those men or women who

1355 fear they may be enticed into consenting to their violator's

1356 lust, and think they should lay violent hands on themselves,

1357 and so prevent, not another's sin, but their own. But far be

1358 it from the mind of a Christian confiding in God, and resting

1359 in the hope of His aid; far be it, I say, from such a mind

1360 to yield a shameful consent to pleasures of the flesh, howsoever

1361 presented. And if that lustful disobedience, which

1362 still dwells in our mortal members, follows its own law irrespective

1363 of our will, surely its motions in the body of one

1364 who rebels against them are as blameless as its motions in

1365 the body of one who sleeps.

1366 26. *That in certain peculiar cases the examples of the saints are not to be

1367 followed.*

1368 But, they say, in the time of persecution some holy women

1369 escaped those who menaced them with outrage, by casting

1370 themselves into rivers which they knew would drown them;

1371 and having died in this manner, they are venerated in the

1372 church catholic as martyrs. Of such persons I do not presume

1373 to speak rashly. I cannot tell whether there may not

1374 have been vouchsafed to the church some divine authority,

1375 proved by trustworthy evidences, for so honouring their memory:

1376 it may be that it is so. It may be they were not deceived by

1377 human judgment, but prompted by divine wisdom, to their

1378 act of self-destruction. We know that this was the case

1379 with Samson. And when God enjoins any act, and intimates

1380 by plain evidence that He has enjoined it, who will call

1381 obedience criminal? Who will accuse so religious a submission?

1382 But then every man is not justified in sacrificing his

1383 son to God, because Abraham was commendable in so doing.

1384 The soldier who has slain a man in obedience to the authority

1385 under which he is lawfully commissioned, is not accused

1386 of murder by any law of his state; nay, if he has not slain

1387 him, it is then he is accused of treason to the state, and of

1388 despising the law. But if he has been acting on his own

1389 authority, and at his own impulse, he has in this case

1390 incurred the crime of shedding human blood. And thus

1391 he is punished for doing without orders the very thing he

1392 is punished for neglecting to do when he has been ordered.

1393 If the commands of a general make so great a difference, shall

1394 the commands of God make none? He, then, who knows it

1395 is unlawful to kill himself, may nevertheless do so if he is

1396 ordered by Him whose commands we may not neglect. Only

1397 let him be very sure that the divine command has been

1398 signified. As for us, we can become privy to the secrets

1399 of conscience only in so far as these are disclosed to us, and

1400 so far only do we judge: "No one knoweth the things of a

1401 man, save the spirit of man which is in him."[75] But this we

1402 affirm, this we maintain, this we every way pronounce to be

1403 right, that no man ought to inflict on himself voluntary death,

1404 for this is to escape the ills of time by plunging into those of

1405 eternity; that no man ought to do so on account of another

1406 man's sins, for this were to escape a guilt which could not

1407 pollute him, by incurring great guilt of his own; that no man

1408 ought to do so on account of his own past sins, for he has all

1409 the more need of this life that these sins may be healed by

1410 repentance; that no man should put an end to this life to

1411 obtain that better life we look for after death, for those who

1412 die by their own hand have no better life after death.

1413 27. *Whether voluntary death should be sought in order to avoid sin.*

1414 There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned

1415 before, and which is thought a sound one,—namely, to prevent

1416 one's falling into sin either through the blandishments of

1417 pleasure or the violence of pain. If this reason were a good

1418 one, then we should be impelled to exhort men at once to

1419 destroy themselves, as soon as they have been washed in the

1420 laver of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all

1421 sin. Then is the time to escape all future sin, when all past

1422 sin is blotted out. And if this escape be lawfully secured by

1423 suicide, why not then specially? Why does any baptized person

1424 hold his hand from taking his own life? Why does any

1425 person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose

1426 himself to them, when he has power so easily to rid himself

1427 of them all, and when it is written, "He who loveth danger

1428 shall fall into it?"[76] Why does he love, or at least face, so

1429 many serious dangers, by remaining in this life from which

1430 he may legitimately depart? But is any one so blinded and

1431 twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth,

1432 as to think that, though a man ought to make away with himself

1433 for fear of being led into sin by the oppression of one

1434 man, his master, he ought yet to live, and so expose himself

1435 to the hourly temptations of this world, both to all those

1436 evils which the oppression of one master involves, and to

1437 numberless other miseries in which this life inevitably implicates

1438 us? What reason, then, is there for our consuming time

1439 in those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized,

1440 either to virginal chastity, or vidual continence, or

1441 matrimonial fidelity, when we have so much more simple

1442 and compendious a method of deliverance from sin, by persuading

1443 those who are fresh from baptism to put an end to

1444 their lives, and so pass to their Lord pure and well-conditioned?

1445 If any one thinks that such persuasion should be attempted, I

1446 say not he is foolish, but mad. With what face, then, can he

1447 say to any man, "Kill yourself, lest to your small sins you

1448 add a heinous sin, while you live under an unchaste master,

1449 whose conduct is that of a barbarian?" How can he say this,

1450 if he cannot without wickedness say, "Kill yourself, now that

1451 you are washed from all your sins, lest you fall again into

1452 similar or even aggravated sins, while you live in a world

1453 which has such power to allure by its unclean pleasures, to

1454 torment by its horrible cruelties, to overcome by its errors

1455 and terrors?" It is wicked to say this; it is therefore wicked

1456 to kill oneself. For if there could be any just cause of

1457 suicide, this were so. And since not even this is so, there is

1458 none.

1459 28. *By what judgment of God the enemy was permitted to indulge his lust on the

1460 bodies of continent Christians.*

1461 Let not your life, then, be a burden to you, ye faithful servants

1462 of Christ, though your chastity was made the sport

1463 of your enemies. You have a grand and true consolation, if

1464 you maintain a good conscience, and know that you did not

1465 consent to the sins of those who were permitted to commit

1466 sinful outrage upon you. And if you should ask why this

1467 permission was granted, indeed it is a deep providence of the

1468 Creator and Governor of the world; and "unsearchable are His

1469 judgments, and His ways past finding out."[77] Nevertheless,

1470 faithfully interrogate your own souls, whether ye have not

1471 been unduly puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and

1472 chastity; and whether ye have not been so desirous of the

1473 human praise that is accorded to these virtues, that ye have

1474 envied some who possessed them. I, for my part, do not

1475 know your hearts, and therefore I make no accusation; I do

1476 not even hear what your hearts answer when you question

1477 them. And yet, if they answer that it is as I have supposed

1478 it might be, do not marvel that you have lost that by which

1479 you can win men's praise, and retain that which cannot be

1480 exhibited to men. If you did not consent to sin, it was

1481 because God added His aid to His grace that it might not

1482 be lost, and because shame before men succeeded to human

1483 glory that it might not be loved. But in both respects even

1484 the fainthearted among you have a consolation, approved by

1485 the one experience, chastened by the other; justified by the

1486 one, corrected by the other. As to those whose hearts, when

1487 interrogated, reply that they have never been proud of the

1488 virtue of virginity, widowhood, or matrimonial chastity, but,

1489 condescending to those of low estate, rejoiced with trembling

1490 in these gifts of God, and that they have never envied any

1491 one the like excellences of sanctity and purity, but rose

1492 superior to human applause, which is wont to be abundant in

1493 proportion to the rarity of the virtue applauded, and rather

1494 desired that their own number be increased, than that by the

1495 smallness of their numbers each of them should be conspicuous;—even

1496 such faithful women, I say, must not complain

1497 that permission was given to the barbarians so grossly to

1498 outrage them; nor must they allow themselves to believe that

1499 God overlooked their character when He permitted acts which

1500 no one with impunity commits. For some most flagrant and

1501 wicked desires are allowed free play at present by the secret

1502 judgment of God, and are reserved to the public and final

1503 judgment. Moreover, it is possible that those Christian

1504 women, who are unconscious of any undue pride on account

1505 of their virtuous chastity, whereby they sinlessly suffered the

1506 violence of their captors, had yet some lurking infirmity which

1507 might have betrayed them into a proud and contemptuous

1508 bearing, had they not been subjected to the humiliation that

1509 befell them in the taking of the city. As, therefore, some

1510 men were removed by death, that no wickedness might change

1511 their disposition, so these women were outraged lest prosperity

1512 should corrupt their modesty. Neither those women, then,

1513 who were already puffed up by the circumstance that they

1514 were still virgins, nor those who might have been so puffed

1515 up had they not been exposed to the violence of the enemy,

1516 lost their chastity, but rather gained humility: the former

1517 were saved from pride already cherished, the latter from pride

1518 that would shortly have grown upon them.

1519 We must further notice that some of those sufferers may

1520 have conceived that continence is a bodily good, and abides

1521 so long as the body is inviolate, and did not understand that

1522 the purity both of the body and the soul rests on the stedfastness

1523 of the will strengthened by God's grace, and cannot

1524 be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. From this error

1525 they are probably now delivered. For when they reflect how

1526 conscientiously they served God, and when they settle again

1527 to the firm persuasion that He can in nowise desert those

1528 who so serve Him, and so invoke His aid; and when they

1529 consider, what they cannot doubt, how pleasing to Him is

1530 chastity, they are shut up to the conclusion that He could

1531 never have permitted these disasters to befall His saints, if by

1532 them that saintliness could be destroyed which He Himself

1533 had bestowed upon them, and delights to see in them.

1534 >

1535 >

1536 >

1537 29. *What the servants of Christ should say in reply to the unbelievers who cast in

1538 > their teeth that Christ did not rescue them from the fury of their enemies.*

1539 The whole family of God, most high and most true, has

1540 therefore a consolation of its own,—a consolation which cannot

1541 deceive, and which has in it a surer hope than the tottering

1542 and falling affairs of earth can afford. They will not refuse

1543 the discipline of this temporal life, in which they are schooled

1544 for life eternal; nor will they lament their experience of it,

1545 for the good things of earth they use as pilgrims who are not

1546 detained by them, and its ills either prove or improve them.

1547 As for those who insult over them in their trials, and when

1548 ills befall them say, "Where is thy God?"[78] we may ask them

1549 where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for

1550 the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or maintain

1551 they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is

1552 furnished with its reply: our God is everywhere present,

1553 wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be

1554 present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when

1555 He exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections

1556 or correct our imperfections; and in return for our

1557 patient endurance of the sufferings of time, He reserves for us

1558 an everlasting reward. But who are you, that we should

1559 deign to speak with you even about your own gods, much

1560 less about our God, who is "to be feared above all gods? For

1561 all the gods of the nations are idols; but the Lord made the

1562 heavens."[79]

1563 30. *That those who complain of Christianity really desire to live without

1564 restraint in shameful luxury.*

1565 If the famous Scipio Nasica were now alive, who was once

1566 your pontiff, and was unanimously chosen by the senate,

1567 when, in the panic created by the Punic war, they sought for

1568 the best citizen to entertain the Phrygian goddess, he would

1569 curb this shamelessness of yours, though you would perhaps

1570 scarcely dare to look upon the countenance of such a man.

1571 For why in your calamities do you complain of Christianity,

1572 unless because you desire to enjoy your luxurious licence

1573 unrestrained, and to lead an abandoned and profligate life

1574 without the interruption of any uneasiness or disaster? For

1575 certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is

1576 not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly,

1577 that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and

1578 piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless

1579 variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your

1580 prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousand-fold

1581 more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such

1582 a calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best

1583 man in the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused

1584 to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome's rival;

1585 and opposed Cato, who advised its destruction. He feared

1586 security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a

1587 wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. And

1588 he was not mistaken: the event proved how wisely he had

1589 spoken. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the Roman

1590 republic delivered from its great cause of anxiety, a crowd

1591 of disastrous evils forthwith resulted from the prosperous

1592 condition of things. First concord was weakened, and destroyed

1593 by fierce and bloody seditions; then followed, by a

1594 concatenation of baleful causes, civil wars, which brought in

1595 their train such massacres, such bloodshed, such lawless and

1596 cruel proscription and plunder, that those Romans who, in the

1597 days of their virtue, had expected injury only at the hands of

1598 their enemies, now that their virtue was lost, suffered greater

1599 cruelties at the hands of their fellow-citizens. The lust of

1600 rule, which with other vices existed among the Romans in

1601 more unmitigated intensity than among any other people, after

1602 it had taken possession of the more powerful few, subdued

1603 under its yoke the rest, worn and wearied.

1604 31. *By what steps the passion for governing increased among the Romans.*

1605 For at what stage would that passion rest when once it

1606 has lodged in a proud spirit, until by a succession of advances

1607 it has reached even the throne? And to obtain such advances

1608 nothing avails but unscrupulous ambition. But unscrupulous

1609 ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted

1610 by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes avaricious

1611 and luxurious by prosperity; and it was this which that very

1612 prudent man Nasica was endeavouring to avoid when he

1613 opposed the destruction of the greatest, strongest, wealthiest

1614 city of Rome's enemy. He thought that thus fear would act as

1615 a curb on lust, and that lust being curbed would not run riot

1616 in luxury, and that luxury being prevented avarice would be

1617 at an end; and that these vices being banished, virtue would

1618 flourish and increase, to the great profit of the state; and

1619 liberty, the fit companion of virtue, would abide unfettered.

1620 For similar reasons, and animated by the same considerate

1621 patriotism, that same chief pontiff of yours—I still refer to

1622 him who was adjudged Rome's best man without one dissentient

1623 voice—threw cold water on the proposal of the senate

1624 to build a circle of seats round the theatre, and in a very

1625 weighty speech warned them against allowing the luxurious

1626 manners of Greece to sap the Roman manliness, and persuaded

1627 them not to yield to the enervating and emasculating

1628 influence of foreign licentiousness. So authoritative and

1629 forcible were his words, that the senate was moved to prohibit

1630 the use even of those benches which hitherto had been

1631 customarily brought to the theatre for the temporary use of

1632 the citizens.[80] How eagerly would such a man as this have

1633 banished from Rome the scenic exhibitions themselves, had

1634 he dared to oppose the authority of those whom he supposed

1635 to be gods! For he did not know that they were malicious

1636 devils; or if he did, he supposed they should rather be propitiated

1637 than despised. For there had not yet been revealed to

1638 the Gentiles the heavenly doctrine which should purify their

1639 hearts by faith, and transform their natural disposition by

1640 humble godliness, and turn them from the service of proud

1641 devils to seek the things that are in heaven, or even above

1642 the heavens.

1643 32. *Of the establishment of scenic entertainments.*

1644 Know then, ye who are ignorant of this, and ye who feign

1645 ignorance be reminded, while you murmur against Him who

1646 has freed you from such rulers, that the scenic games, exhibitions

1647 of shameless folly and licence, were established at

1648 Rome, not by men's vicious cravings, but by the appointment

1649 of your gods. Much more pardonably might you have

1650 rendered divine honours to Scipio than to such gods as these.

1651 The gods were not so moral as their pontiff. But give me

1652 now your attention, if your mind, inebriated by its deep potations

1653 of error, can take in any sober truth. The gods enjoined

1654 that games be exhibited in their honour to stay a physical

1655 pestilence; their pontiff prohibited the theatre from being constructed,

1656 to prevent a moral pestilence. If, then, there remains

1657 in you sufficient mental enlightenment to prefer the soul to

1658 the body, choose whom you will worship. Besides, though

1659 the pestilence was stayed, this was not because the voluptuous

1660 madness of stage-plays had taken possession of a warlike

1661 people hitherto accustomed only to the games of the circus;

1662 but these astute and wicked spirits, foreseeing that in due

1663 course the pestilence would shortly cease, took occasion to

1664 infect, not the bodies, but the morals of their worshippers, with

1665 a far more serious disease. And in this pestilence these gods

1666 find great enjoyment, because it benighted the minds of men

1667 with so gross a darkness, and dishonoured them with so foul

1668 a deformity, that even quite recently (will posterity be able to

1669 credit it?) some of those who fled from the sack of Rome and

1670 found refuge in Carthage, were so infected with this disease,

1671 that day after day they seemed to contend with one another

1672 who should most madly run after the actors in the theatres.

1673 33. *That the overthrow of Rome has not corrected the vices of the Romans.*

1674 Oh infatuated men, what is this blindness, or rather madness,

1675 which possesses you? How is it that while, as we hear, even

1676 the eastern nations are bewailing your ruin, and while powerful

1677 states in the most remote parts of the earth are mourning

1678 your fall as a public calamity, ye yourselves should be crowding

1679 to the theatres, should be pouring into them and filling

1680 them; and, in short, be playing a madder part now than ever

1681 before? This was the foul plague-spot, this the wreck of

1682 virtue and honour that Scipio sought to preserve you from

1683 when he prohibited the construction of theatres; this was his

1684 reason for desiring that you might still have an enemy to fear,

1685 seeing as he did how easily prosperity would corrupt and

1686 destroy you. He did not consider that republic flourishing

1687 whose walls stand, but whose morals are in ruins. But the

1688 seductions of evil-minded devils had more influence with you

1689 than the precautions of prudent men. Hence the injuries

1690 you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you; but the

1691 injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Depraved by

1692 good fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire

1693 in the restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the

1694 tranquillity of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your

1695 own vicious luxury. Scipio wished you to be hard pressed

1696 by an enemy, that you might not abandon yourselves to luxurious

1697 manners; but so abandoned are you, that not even

1698 when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed. You

1699 have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made

1700 most wretched, and have remained most profligate.

1701 34. *Of God's clemency in moderating the ruin of the city.*

1702 And that you are yet alive is due to God, who spares you that

1703 you may be admonished to repent and reform your lives.

1704 It is He who has permitted you, ungrateful as you are, to escape

1705 the sword of the enemy, by calling yourselves His servants,

1706 or by finding asylum in the sacred places of the martyrs.

1707 It is said that Romulus and Remus, in order to increase

1708 the population of the city they founded, opened a sanctuary

1709 in which every man might find asylum and absolution of all

1710 crime,—a remarkable foreshadowing of what has recently

1711 occurred in honour of Christ. The destroyers of Rome followed

1712 the example of its founders. But it was not greatly

1713 to their credit that the latter, for the sake of increasing the

1714 number of their citizens, did that which the former have done,

1715 lest the number of their enemies should be diminished.

1716 35. *Of the sons of the church who are hidden among the wicked, and of false

1717 Christians within the church.*

1718 Let these and similar answers (if any fuller and fitter answers

1719 can be found) be given to their enemies by the redeemed family

1720 of the Lord Christ, and by the pilgrim city of King Christ.

1721 But let this city bear in mind, that among her enemies lie hid

1722 those who are destined to be fellow-citizens, that she may

1723 not think it a fruitless labour to bear what they inflict as

1724 enemies until they become confessors of the faith. So, too,

1725 as long as she is a stranger in the world, the city of God has

1726 in her communion, and bound to her by the sacraments, some

1727 who shall not eternally dwell in the lot of the saints. Of

1728 these, some are not now recognised; others declare themselves,

1729 and do not hesitate to make common cause with

1730 our enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental

1731 badge they wear. These men you may to-day see thronging

1732 the churches with us, to-morrow crowding the theatres

1733 with the godless. But we have the less reason to despair of

1734 the reclamation even of such persons, if among our most

1735 declared enemies there are now some, unknown to themselves,

1736 who are destined to become our friends. In truth, these two

1737 cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed

1738 until the last judgment effect their separation. I now proceed

1739 to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise, progress, and end

1740 of these two cities; and what I write, I write for the glory of

1741 the city of God, that, being placed in comparison with the

1742 other, it may shine with a brighter lustre.

1743 36. *What subjects are to be handled in the following discourse.*

1744 But I have still some things to say in confutation of those

1745 who refer the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion,

1746 because it prohibits the offering of sacrifices to the gods. For

1747 this end I must recount all, or as many as may seem sufficient,

1748 of the disasters which befell that city and its subject provinces,

1749 before these sacrifices were prohibited; for all these disasters

1750 they would doubtless have attributed to us, if at that time our

1751 religion had shed its light upon them, and had prohibited their

1752 sacrifices. I must then go on to show what social well-being

1753 the true God, in whose hand are all kingdoms, vouchsafed to

1754 grant to them that their empire might increase. I must show

1755 why He did so, and how their false gods, instead of at all aiding

1756 them, greatly injured them by guile and deceit. And, lastly, I

1757 must meet those who, when on this point convinced and confuted

1758 by irrefragable proofs, endeavour to maintain that they

1759 worship the gods, not hoping for the present advantages of this

1760 life, but for those which are to be enjoyed after death. And

1761 this, if I am not mistaken, will be the most difficult part of my

1762 task, and will be worthy of the loftiest argument; for we must

1763 then enter the lists with the philosophers, not the mere common

1764 herd of philosophers, but the most renowned, who in many points

1765 agree with ourselves, as regarding the immortality of the soul,

1766 and that the true God created the world, and by His providence

1767 rules all He has created. But as they differ from us

1768 on other points, we must not shrink from the task of exposing

1769 their errors, that, having refuted the gainsaying of the wicked

1770 with such ability as God may vouchsafe, we may assert the

1771 city of God, and true piety, and the worship of God, to which

1772 alone the promise of true and everlasting felicity is attached.

1773 Here, then, let us conclude, that we may enter on these subjects

1774 in a fresh book.

BOOK II

7 (Texto do capítulo)

ARGUMENT.

10 >

11 >

12 >

13 IN THIS BOOK AUGUSTINE REVIEWS THOSE CALAMITIES WHICH THE ROMANS SUFFERED

14 > BEFORE THE TIME OF CHRIST, AND WHILE THE WORSHIP OF THE

15 > FALSE GODS WAS UNIVERSALLY PRACTISED; AND DEMONSTRATES THAT, FAR

16 > FROM BEING PRESERVED FROM MISFORTUNE BY THE GODS, THE ROMANS

17 > HAVE BEEN BY THEM OVERWHELMED WITH THE ONLY, OR AT LEAST THE

18 > GREATEST, OF ALL CALAMITIES—THE CORRUPTION OF MANNERS, AND THE

19 > VICES OF THE SOUL.

20 1. *Of the limits which must be put to the necessity of replying to an adversary.*

21 If the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear

22 evidence of truth, but yielded its infirmity to wholesome

23 doctrines, as to a health-giving medicine, until it obtained from

24 God, by its faith and piety, the grace needed to heal it, they

25 who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language,

26 would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of

27 empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more

28 prevalent and hurtful than ever, to such an extent that even

29 after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can

30 prove it to man, they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable

31 fancies, either on account of their great blindness,

32 which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before

33 them, or on account of their opinionative obstinacy, which prevents

34 them from acknowledging the force of what they do see.

35 There therefore frequently arises a necessity of speaking more

36 fully on those points which are already clear, that we may, as

37 it were, present them not to the eye, but even to the touch,

38 so that they may be felt even by those who close their eyes

39 against them. And yet to what end shall we ever bring our

40 discussions, or what bounds can be set to our discourse, if we

41 proceed on the principle that we must always reply to those

42 who reply to us? For those who are either unable to understand

43 our arguments, or are so hardened by the habit of contradiction,

44 that though they understand they cannot yield to

45 them, reply to us, and, as it is written, "speak hard things,"[81]

46 and are incorrigibly vain. Now, if we were to propose to confute

47 their objections as often as they with brazen face chose

48 to disregard our arguments, and as often as they could by any

49 means contradict our statements, you see how endless, and

50 fruitless, and painful a task we should be undertaking. And

51 therefore I do not wish my writings to be judged even by you,

52 my son Marcellinus, nor by any of those others at whose service

53 this work of mine is freely and in all Christian charity

54 put, if at least you intend always to require a reply to every

55 exception which you hear taken to what you read in it; for

56 so you would become like those silly women of whom the

57 apostle says that they are "always learning, and never able

58 to come to the knowledge of the truth."[82]

59 2. *Recapitulation of the contents of the first book.*

60 In the foregoing book, having begun to speak of the city

61 of God, to which I have resolved, Heaven helping me, to consecrate

62 the whole of this work, it was my first endeavour

63 to reply to those who attribute the wars by which the world

64 is being devastated, and specially the recent sack of Rome

65 by the barbarians, to the religion of Christ, which prohibits

66 the offering of abominable sacrifices to devils. I have

67 shown that they ought rather to attribute it to Christ, that

68 for His name's sake the barbarians, in contravention of all

69 custom and law of war, threw open as sanctuaries the largest

70 churches, and in many instances showed such reverence to

71 Christ, that not only His genuine servants, but even those who

72 in their terror feigned themselves to be so, were exempted from

73 all those hardships which by the custom of war may lawfully

74 be inflicted. Then out of this there arose the question, why

75 wicked and ungrateful men were permitted to share in these

76 benefits; and why, too, the hardships and calamities of war

77 were inflicted on the godly as well as on the ungodly. And in

78 giving a suitably full answer to this large question, I occupied

79 some considerable space, partly that I might relieve the

80 anxieties which disturb many when they observe that the

81 blessings of God, and the common and daily human casualties,

82 fall to the lot of bad men and good without distinction; but

83 mainly that I might minister some consolation to those holy

84 and chaste women who were outraged by the enemy, in such

85 a way as to shock their modesty, though not to sully their

86 purity, and that I might preserve them from being ashamed

87 of life, though they have no guilt to be ashamed of. And

88 then I briefly spoke against those who with a most shameless

89 wantonness insult over those poor Christians who were subjected

90 to those calamities, and especially over those broken-hearted

91 and humiliated, though chaste and holy women; these

92 fellows themselves being most depraved and unmanly profligates,

93 quite degenerate from the genuine Romans, whose

94 famous deeds are abundantly recorded in history, and everywhere

95 celebrated, but who have found in their descendants the

96 greatest enemies of their glory. In truth, Rome, which was

97 founded and increased by the labours of these ancient heroes,

98 was more shamefully ruined by their descendants, while its

99 walls were still standing, than it is now by the razing of them.

100 For in this ruin there fell stones and timbers; but in the ruin

101 those profligates effected, there fell, not the mural, but the

102 moral bulwarks and ornaments of the city, and their hearts

103 burned with passions more destructive than the flames which

104 consumed their houses. Thus I brought my first book to a

105 close. And now I go on to speak of those calamities which

106 that city itself, or its subject provinces, have suffered since

107 its foundation; all of which they would equally have attributed

108 to the Christian religion, if at that early period the

109 doctrine of the gospel against their false and deceiving gods

110 had been as largely and freely proclaimed as now.

111 >

112 >

113 >

114 3. *That we need only to read history in order to see what calamities the Romans

115 > suffered before the religion of Christ began to compete with the worship of

116 > the gods.*

117 But remember that, in recounting these things, I have still

118 to address myself to ignorant men; so ignorant, indeed, as to

119 give birth to the common saying, "Drought and Christianity

120 go hand in hand."[83] There are indeed some among them who

121 are thoroughly well educated men, and have a taste for history,

122 in which the things I speak of are open to their observation;

123 but in order to irritate the uneducated masses against us, they

124 feign ignorance of these events, and do what they can to make

125 the vulgar believe that those disasters, which in certain places

126 and at certain times uniformly befall mankind, are the result

127 of Christianity, which is being everywhere diffused, and is

128 possessed of a renown and brilliancy which quite eclipse

129 their own gods.[84] Let them then, along with us, call to mind

130 with what various and repeated disasters the prosperity of

131 Rome was blighted, before ever Christ had come in the flesh,

132 and before His name had been blazoned among the nations

133 with that glory which they vainly grudge. Let them, if they

134 can, defend their gods in this article, since they maintain

135 that they worship them in order to be preserved from these

136 disasters, which they now impute to us if they suffer in the

137 least degree. For why did these gods permit the disasters

138 I am to speak of to fall on their worshippers before the

139 preaching of Christ's name offended them, and put an end to

140 their sacrifices?

141 >

142 >

143 >

144 4. *That the worshippers of the gods never received from them any healthy moral

145 > precepts, and that in celebrating their worship all sorts of impurities were

146 > practised.*

147 First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to

148 improve the morals of their worshippers. That the true God

149 should neglect those who did not seek His help, that was but

150 justice; but why did those gods, from whose worship ungrateful

151 men are now complaining that they are prohibited, issue

152 no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous

153 life? Surely it was but just, that such care as men showed

154 to the worship of the gods, the gods on their part should have

155 to the conduct of men. But, it is replied, it is by his own

156 will a man goes astray. Who denies it? But none the less

157 was it incumbent on these gods, who were men's guardians,

158 to publish in plain terms the laws of a good life, and not to

159 conceal them from their worshippers. It was their part to

160 send prophets to reach and convict such as broke these laws,

161 and publicly to proclaim the punishments which await evildoers,

162 and the rewards which may be looked for by those that

163 do well. Did ever the walls of any of their temples echo to

164 any such warning voice? I myself, when I was a young

165 man, used sometimes to go to the sacrilegious entertainments

166 and spectacles; I saw the priests raving in religious excitement,

167 and heard the choristers; I took pleasure in the shameful

168 games which were celebrated in honour of gods and goddesses,

169 of the virgin Cœlestis,[85] and Berecynthia,[86] the mother of all the

170 gods. And on the holy day consecrated to her purification,

171 there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and

172 filthy for the ear—I do not say of the mother of the gods, but

173 of the mother of any senator or honest man—nay, so impure,

174 that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves

175 could have formed one of the audience. For natural

176 reverence for parents is a bond which the most abandoned

177 cannot ignore. And, accordingly, the lewd actions and filthy

178 words with which these players honoured the mother of the

179 gods, in presence of a vast assemblage and audience of both

180 sexes, they could not for very shame have rehearsed at home

181 in presence of their own mothers. And the crowds that were

182 gathered from all quarters by curiosity, offended modesty

183 must, I should suppose, have scattered in the confusion of

184 shame. If these are sacred rites, what is sacrilege? If this

185 is purification, what is pollution? This festivity was called

186 the Tables,[87] as if a banquet were being given at which unclean

187 devils might find suitable refreshment. For it is not difficult

188 to see what kind of spirits they must be who are delighted

189 with such obscenities, unless, indeed, a man be blinded by

190 these evil spirits passing themselves off under the name of

191 gods, and either disbelieves in their existence, or leads such a

192 life as prompts him rather to propitiate and fear them than the

193 true God.

194 5. *Of the obscenities practised in honour of the mother of the gods.*

195 In this matter I would prefer to have as my assessors in

196 judgment, not those men who rather take pleasure in these

197 infamous customs than take pains to put an end to them, but

198 that same Scipio Nasica who was chosen by the senate as

199 the citizen most worthy to receive in his hands the image of

200 that demon Cybele, and convey it into the city. He would

201 tell us whether he would be proud to see his own mother

202 so highly esteemed by the state as to have divine honours

203 adjudged to her; as the Greeks and Romans and other nations

204 have decreed divine honours to men who had been of material

205 service to them, and have believed that their mortal benefactors

206 were thus made immortal, and enrolled among the

207 gods.[88] Surely he would desire that his mother should enjoy

208 such felicity were it possible. But if we proceeded to ask

209 him whether, among the honours paid to her, he would wish

210 such shameful rites as these to be celebrated, would he not at

211 once exclaim that he would rather his mother lay stone-dead,

212 than survive as a goddess to lend her ear to these obscenities?

213 Is it possible that he who was of so severe a morality, that

214 he used his influence as a Roman senator to prevent the

215 building of a theatre in that city dedicated to the manly

216 virtues, would wish his mother to be propitiated as a goddess

217 with words which would have brought the blush to her cheek

218 when a Roman matron? Could he possibly believe that the

219 modesty of an estimable woman would be so transformed by

220 her promotion to divinity, that she would suffer herself to be

221 invoked and celebrated in terms so gross and immodest, that

222 if she had heard the like while alive upon earth, and had

223 listened without stopping her ears and hurrying from the

224 spot, her relatives, her husband, and her children would have

225 blushed for her? Therefore, the mother of the gods being

226 such a character as the most profligate man would be ashamed

227 to have for his mother, and meaning to enthral the minds of

228 the Romans, demanded for her service their best citizen, not

229 to ripen him still more in virtue by her helpful counsel, but

230 to entangle him by her deceit, like her of whom it is written,

231 "The adulteress will hunt for the precious soul."[89] Her intent

232 was to puff up this high-souled man by an apparently divine

233 testimony to his excellence, in order that he might rely upon

234 his own eminence in virtue, and make no further efforts after

235 true piety and religion, without which natural genius, however

236 brilliant, vapours into pride and comes to nothing. For what

237 but a guileful purpose could that goddess demand the best

238 man, seeing that in her own sacred festivals she requires such

239 obscenities as the best men would be covered with shame to

240 hear at their own tables?

241 6. *That the gods of the pagans never inculcated holiness of life.*

242 This is the reason why those divinities quite neglected the

243 lives and morals of the cities and nations who worshipped

244 them, and threw no dreadful prohibition in their way to

245 hinder them from becoming utterly corrupt, and to preserve

246 them from those terrible and detestable evils which visit not

247 harvests and vintages, not house and possessions, not the body

248 which is subject to the soul, but the soul itself, the spirit that

249 rules the whole man. If there was any such prohibition, let

250 it be produced, let it be proved. They will tell us that purity

251 and probity were inculcated upon those who were initiated in

252 the mysteries of religion, and that secret incitements to virtue

253 were whispered in the ear of the *élite*; but this is an idle

254 boast. Let them show or name to us the places which were

255 at any time consecrated to assemblages in which, instead of

256 the obscene songs and licentious acting of players, instead of

257 the celebration of those most filthy and shameless Fugalia[90]

258 (well called Fugalia, since they banish modesty and right

259 feeling), the people were commanded in the name of the gods

260 to restrain avarice, bridle impurity, and conquer ambition;

261 where, in short, they might learn in that school which Persius

262 vehemently lashes them to, when he says: "Be taught, ye

263 abandoned creatures, and ascertain the causes of things; what

264 we are, and for what end we are born; what is the law of

265 our success in life, and by what art we may turn the goal

266 without making shipwreck; what limit we should put to our

267 wealth, what we may lawfully desire, and what uses filthy

268 lucre serves; how much we should bestow upon our country

269 and our family; learn, in short, what God meant thee to be,

270 and what place He has ordered you to fill."[91] Let them name

271 to us the places where such instructions were wont to be

272 communicated from the gods, and where the people who worshipped

273 them were accustomed to resort to hear them, as we

274 can point to our churches built for this purpose in every land

275 where the Christian religion is received.

276 >

277 >

278 >

279 7. *That the suggestions of philosophers are precluded from having any moral

280 > effect, because they have not the authority which belongs to divine instruction,

281 > and because man's natural bias to evil induces him rather to follow

282 > the examples of the gods than to obey the precepts of men.*

283 But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the

284 philosophers, and their disputations? In the first place, these

285 belong not to Rome, but to Greece; and even if we yield to

286 them that they are now Roman, because Greece itself has

287 become a Roman province, still the teachings of the philosophers

288 are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries

289 of men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative

290 ability, made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature, and

291 the right and wrong in ethics, and in dialectic what was consequent

292 according to the rules of logic, and what was inconsequent

293 and erroneous. And some of them, by God's help,

294 made great discoveries; but when left to themselves they

295 were betrayed by human infirmity, and fell into mistakes. And

296 this was ordered by divine providence, that their pride might

297 be restrained, and that by their example it might be pointed

298 out that it is humility which has access to the highest regions.

299 But of this we shall have more to say, if the Lord God of

300 truth permit, in its own place.[92] However, if the philosophers

301 have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men

302 to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been greater

303 justice to vote divine honours to them? Were it not more

304 accordant with every virtuous sentiment to read Plato's writings

305 in a "Temple of Plato," than to be present in the temples

306 of devils to witness the priests of Cybele[93] mutilating themselves,

307 the effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics

308 cutting themselves, and whatever other cruel or shameful, or

309 shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful, ceremony is enjoined by

310 the ritual of such gods as these? Were it not a more suitable

311 education, and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue, if

312 they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods, instead of

313 the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors?

314 Certainly all the worshippers of the Roman gods, when once

315 they are possessed by what Persius calls "the burning poison

316 of lust,"[94] prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to

317 hear what Plato taught or Cato censured. Hence the young

318 profligate in Terence, when he sees on the wall a fresco representing

319 the fabled descent of Jupiter into the lap of Danaë

320 in the form of a golden shower, accepts this as authoritative

321 precedent for his own licentiousness, and boasts that he is an

322 imitator of God. "And what God?" he says. "He who

323 with His thunder shakes the loftiest temples. And was I, a

324 poor creature compared to Him, to make bones of it? No;

325 I did it, and with all my heart."[95]

326 8. *That the theatrical exhibitions publishing the shameful actions of the gods,

327 propitiated rather than offended them.*

328 But, some one will interpose, these are the fables of poets,

329 not the deliverances of the gods themselves. Well, I have

330 no mind to arbitrate between the lewdness of theatrical entertainments

331 and of mystic rites; only this I say, and history

332 bears me out in making the assertion, that those same entertainments,

333 in which the fictions of poets are the main attraction,

334 were not introduced in the festivals of the gods by the

335 ignorant devotion of the Romans, but that the gods themselves

336 gave the most urgent commands to this effect, and indeed extorted

337 from the Romans these solemnities and celebrations in

338 their honour. I touched on this in the preceding book, and

339 mentioned that dramatic entertainments were first inaugurated

340 at Rome on occasion of a pestilence, and by authority of the

341 pontiff. And what man is there who is not more likely to

342 adopt, for the regulation of his own life, the examples that are

343 represented in plays which have a divine sanction, rather than

344 the precepts written and promulgated with no more than

345 human authority? If the poets gave a false representation

346 of Jove in describing him as adulterous, then it were to be expected

347 that the chaste gods should in anger avenge so wicked

348 a fiction, in place of encouraging the games which circulated

349 it. Of these plays, the most inoffensive are comedies and

350 tragedies, that is to say, the dramas which poets write for

351 the stage, and which, though they often handle impure subjects,

352 yet do so without the filthiness of language which characterizes

353 many other performances; and it is these dramas which

354 boys are obliged by their seniors to read and learn as a part

355 of what is called a liberal and gentlemanly education.[96]

356 9. *That the poetical licence which the Greeks, in obedience to their gods, allowed,

357 was restrained by the ancient Romans.*

358 The opinion of the ancient Romans on this matter is

359 attested by Cicero in his work *De Republica*, in which Scipio,

360 one of the interlocutors, says, "The lewdness of comedy could

361 never have been suffered by audiences, unless the customs of

362 society had previously sanctioned the same lewdness." And

363 in the earlier days the Greeks preserved a certain reasonableness

364 in their licence, and made it a law, that whatever comedy

365 wished to say of any one, it must say it of him by name.

366 And so in the same work of Cicero's, Scipio says, "Whom

367 has it not aspersed? Nay, whom has it not worried? Whom

368 has it spared? Allow that it may assail demagogues and

369 factions, men injurious to the commonwealth—a Cleon, a Cleophon,

370 a Hyperbolus. That is tolerable, though it had been

371 more seemly for the public censor to brand such men, than

372 for a poet to lampoon them; but to blacken the fame of

373 Pericles with scurrilous verse, after he had with the utmost

374 dignity presided over their state alike in war and in peace,

375 was as unworthy of a poet, as if our own Plautus or Nævius

376 were to bring Publius and Cneius Scipio on the comic stage, or

377 as if Cæcilius were to caricature Cato." And then a little after

378 he goes on: "Though our Twelve Tables attached the penalty

379 of death only to a very few offences, yet among these few this

380 was one: if any man should have sung a pasquinade, or have

381 composed a satire calculated to bring infamy or disgrace on

382 another person. Wisely decreed. For it is by the decisions

383 of magistrates, and by a well-informed justice, that our lives

384 ought to be judged, and not by the flighty fancies of poets;

385 neither ought we to be exposed to hear calumnies, save where

386 we have the liberty of replying, and defending ourselves before

387 an adequate tribunal." This much I have judged it advisable

388 to quote from the fourth book of Cicero's *De Republica*; and

389 I have made the quotation word for word, with the exception

390 of some words omitted, and some slightly transposed, for the

391 sake of giving the sense more readily. And certainly the

392 extract is pertinent to the matter I am endeavouring to explain.

393 Cicero makes some further remarks, and concludes

394 the passage by showing that the ancient Romans did not

395 permit any living man to be either praised or blamed on the

396 stage. But the Greeks, as I said, though not so moral, were

397 more logical in allowing this licence which the Romans forbade:

398 for they saw that their gods approved and enjoyed the

399 scurrilous language of low comedy when directed not only

400 against men, but even against themselves; and this, whether

401 the infamous actions imputed to them were the fictions of

402 poets, or were their actual iniquities commemorated and acted

403 in the theatres. And would that the spectators had judged

404 them worthy only of laughter, and not of imitation! Manifestly

405 it had been a stretch of pride to spare the good name

406 of the leading men and the common citizens, when the very

407 deities did not grudge that their own reputation should be

408 blemished.

409 10. *That the devils, in suffering either false or true crimes to be laid to their

410 charge, meant to do men a mischief.*

411 It is alleged, in excuse of this practice, that the stories told

412 of the gods are not true, but false, and mere inventions; but

413 this only makes matters worse, if we form our estimate by

414 the morality our religion teaches; and if we consider the

415 malice of the devils, what more wily and astute artifice could

416 they practise upon men? When a slander is uttered against

417 a leading statesman of upright and useful life, is it not reprehensible

418 in proportion to its untruth and groundlessness?

419 What punishment, then, shall be sufficient when the gods are

420 the objects of so wicked and outrageous an injustice? But

421 the devils, whom these men repute gods, are content that even

422 iniquities they are guiltless of should be ascribed to them, so

423 long as they may entangle men's minds in the meshes of these

424 opinions, and draw them on along with themselves to their

425 predestinated punishment: whether such things were actually

426 committed by the men whom these devils, delighting in

427 human infatuation, cause to be worshipped as gods, and in

428 whose stead they, by a thousand malign and deceitful artifices,

429 substitute themselves, and so receive worship; or whether,

430 though they were really the crimes of men, these wicked

431 spirits gladly allowed them to be attributed to higher beings,

432 that there might seem to be conveyed from heaven itself a

433 sufficient sanction for the perpetration of shameful wickedness.

434 The Greeks, therefore, seeing the character of the gods they

435 served, thought that the poets should certainly not refrain

436 from showing up human vices on the stage, either because

437 they desired to be like their gods in this, or because they were

438 afraid that, if they required for themselves a more unblemished

439 reputation than they asserted for the gods, they might provoke

440 them to anger.

441 >

442 >

443 >

444 11. *That the Greeks admitted players to offices of state, on the ground that men

445 > who pleased the gods should not be contemptuously treated by their fellows*.

446 It was a part of this same reasonableness of the Greeks

447 which induced them to bestow upon the actors of these same

448 plays no inconsiderable civic honours. In the above-mentioned

449 book of the *De Republica*, it is mentioned that Æschines,

450 a very eloquent Athenian, who had been a tragic actor in his

451 youth, became a statesman, and that the Athenians again and

452 again sent another tragedian, Aristodemus, as their plenipotentiary

453 to Philip. For they judged it unbecoming to condemn

454 and treat as infamous persons those who were the chief

455 actors in the scenic entertainments which they saw to be so

456 pleasing to the gods. No doubt this was immoral of the

457 Greeks, but there can be as little doubt they acted in conformity

458 with the character of their gods; for how could they

459 have presumed to protect the conduct of the citizens from

460 being cut to pieces by the tongues of poets and players, who

461 were allowed, and even enjoined by the gods, to tear their

462 divine reputation to tatters? And how could they hold in

463 contempt the men who acted in the theatres those dramas

464 which, as they had ascertained, gave pleasure to the gods

465 whom they worshipped? Nay, how could they but grant to

466 them the highest civic honours? On what plea could they

467 honour the priests who offered for them acceptable sacrifices

468 to the gods, if they branded with infamy the actors who in

469 behalf of the people gave to the gods that pleasure or honour

470 which they demanded, and which, according to the account of

471 the priests, they were angry at not receiving? Labeo,[97] whose

472 learning makes him an authority on such points, is of opinion

473 that the distinction between good and evil deities should find

474 expression in a difference of worship; that the evil should be

475 propitiated by bloody sacrifices and doleful rites, but the good

476 with a joyful and pleasant observance, as, *e.g.* (as he says himself),

477 with plays, festivals, and banquets.[98] All this we shall,

478 with God's help, hereafter discuss. At present, and speaking

479 to the subject on hand, whether all kinds of offerings are made

480 indiscriminately to all the gods, as if all were good (and it is

481 an unseemly thing to conceive that there are evil gods; but

482 these gods of the pagans are all evil, because they are not gods,

483 but evil spirits), or whether, as Labeo thinks, a distinction is

484 made between the offerings presented to the different gods,

485 the Greeks are equally justified in honouring alike the priests

486 by whom the sacrifices are offered, and the players by whom

487 the dramas are acted, that they may not be open to the charge

488 of doing an injury to all their gods, if the plays are pleasing

489 to all of them, or (which were still worse) to their good gods,

490 if the plays are relished only by them.

491 >

492 >

493 >

494 12. *That the Romans, by refusing to the poets the same licence in respect of men

495 > which they allowed them in the case of the gods, showed a more delicate

496 > sensitiveness regarding themselves than regarding the gods.*

497 The Romans, however, as Scipio boasts in that same discussion,

498 declined having their conduct and good name subjected

499 to the assaults and slanders of the poets, and went so far as

500 to make it a capital crime if any one should dare to compose

501 such verses. This was a very honourable course to pursue, so

502 far as they themselves were concerned, but in respect of the

503 gods it was proud and irreligious: for they knew that the

504 gods not only tolerated, but relished, being lashed by the injurious

505 expressions of the poets, and yet they themselves would

506 not suffer this same handling; and what their ritual prescribed

507 as acceptable to the gods, their law prohibited as injurious to

508 themselves. How then, Scipio, do you praise the Romans for

509 refusing this licence to the poets, so that no citizen could be

510 calumniated, while you know that the gods were not included

511 under this protection? Do you count your senate-house

512 worthy of so much higher a regard than the Capitol? Is the

513 one city of Rome more valuable in your eyes than the whole

514 heaven of gods, that you prohibit your poets from uttering

515 any injurious words against a citizen, though they may with

516 impunity cast what imputations they please upon the gods,

517 without the interference of senator, censor, prince, or pontiff?

518 It was, forsooth, intolerable that Plautus or Nævius should

519 attack Publius and Cneius Scipio, insufferable that Cæcilius

520 should lampoon Cato; but quite proper that your Terence

521 should encourage youthful lust by the wicked example of

522 supreme Jove.

523 >

524 >

525 >

526 13. *That the Romans should have understood that gods who desired to be worshipped

527 > in licentious entertainments were unworthy of divine honour.*

528 But Scipio, were he alive, would possibly reply: "How

529 could we attach a penalty to that which the gods themselves

530 have consecrated? For the theatrical entertainments in which

531 such things are said, and acted, and performed, were introduced

532 into Roman society by the gods, who ordered that they

533 should be dedicated and exhibited in their honour." But was

534 not this, then, the plainest proof that they were no true gods,

535 nor in any respect worthy of receiving divine honours from

536 the republic? Suppose they had required that in their

537 honour the citizens of Rome should be held up to ridicule,

538 every Roman would have resented the hateful proposal. How

539 then, I would ask, can they be esteemed worthy of worship,

540 when they propose that their own crimes be used as material

541 for celebrating their praises? Does not this artifice expose

542 them, and prove that they are detestable devils? Thus the

543 Romans, though they were superstitious enough to serve as

544 gods those who made no secret of their desire to be worshipped

545 in licentious plays, yet had sufficient regard to their hereditary

546 dignity and virtue, to prompt them to refuse to players any

547 such rewards as the Greeks accorded them. On this point

548 we have this testimony of Scipio, recorded in Cicero: "They

549 [the Romans] considered comedy and all theatrical performances

550 as disgraceful, and therefore not only debarred players

551 from offices and honours open to ordinary citizens, but also

552 decreed that their names should be branded by the censor, and

553 erased from the roll of their tribe." An excellent decree, and

554 another testimony to the sagacity of Rome; but I could wish

555 their prudence had been more thoroughgoing and consistent.

556 For when I hear that if any Roman citizen chose the stage as

557 his profession, he not only closed to himself every laudable

558 career, but even became an outcast from his own tribe, I cannot

559 but exclaim: This is the true Roman spirit, this is worthy of

560 a state jealous of its reputation. But then some one interrupts

561 my rapture, by inquiring with what consistency players are

562 debarred from all honours, while plays are counted among the

563 honours due to the gods? For a long while the virtue of

564 Rome was uncontaminated by theatrical exhibitions;[99] and if

565 they had been adopted for the sake of gratifying the taste of

566 the citizens, they would have been introduced hand in hand

567 with the relaxation of manners. But the fact is, that it was

568 the gods who demanded that they should be exhibited to

569 gratify them. With what justice, then, is the player excommunicated

570 by whom God is worshipped? On what pretext

571 can you at once adore him who exacts, and brand him who

572 acts these plays? This, then, is the controversy in which the

573 Greeks and Romans are engaged. The Greeks think they

574 justly honour players, because they worship the gods who

575 demand plays: the Romans, on the other hand, do not suffer

576 an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe, far

577 less the senatorial order. And the whole of this discussion

578 may be summed up in the following syllogism. The Greeks

579 give us the major premiss: If such gods are to be worshipped,

580 then certainly such men may be honoured. The Romans add

581 the minor: But such men must by no means be honoured.

582 The Christians draw the conclusion: Therefore such gods must

583 by no means be worshipped.

584 14. *That Plato, who excluded poets from a well-ordered city, was better than

585 these gods who desire to be honoured by theatrical plays.*

586 We have still to inquire why the poets who write the

587 plays, and who by the law of the twelve tables are prohibited

588 from injuring the good name of the citizens, are reckoned more

589 estimable than the actors, though they so shamefully asperse

590 the character of the gods? Is it right that the actors of these

591 poetical and God-dishonouring effusions be branded, while

592 their authors are honoured? Must we not here award the

593 palm to a Greek, Plato, who, in framing his ideal republic,[100]

594 conceived that poets should be banished from the city as

595 enemies of the state? He could not brook that the gods be

596 brought into disrepute, nor that the minds of the citizens be

597 depraved and besotted, by the fictions of the poets. Compare

598 now human nature as you see it in Plato, expelling poets

599 from the city that the citizens be uninjured, with the divine

600 nature as you see it in these gods exacting plays in their

601 own honour. Plato strove, though unsuccessfully, to persuade

602 the light-minded and lascivious Greeks to abstain from so

603 much as writing such plays; the gods used their authority to

604 extort the acting of the same from the dignified and sober-minded

605 Romans. And not content with having them acted,

606 they had them dedicated to themselves, consecrated to themselves,

607 solemnly celebrated in their own honour. To which,

608 then, would it be more becoming in a state to decree divine

609 honours,—to Plato, who prohibited these wicked and licentious

610 plays, or to the demons who delighted in blinding men to the

611 truth of what Plato unsuccessfully sought to inculcate?

612 This philosopher, Plato, has been elevated by Labeo to the

613 rank of a demigod, and set thus upon a level with such as

614 Hercules and Romulus. Labeo ranks demigods higher than

615 heroes, but both he counts among the deities. But I have no

616 doubt that he thinks this man whom he reckons a demigod

617 worthy of greater respect not only than the heroes, but also

618 than the gods themselves. The laws of the Romans and the

619 speculations of Plato have this resemblance, that the latter

620 pronounces a wholesale condemnation of poetical fictions,

621 while the former restrain the licence of satire, at least so far

622 as men are the objects of it. Plato will not suffer poets

623 even to dwell in his city: the laws of Rome prohibit actors

624 from being enrolled as citizens; and if they had not feared to

625 offend the gods who had asked the services of the players, they

626 would in all likelihood have banished them altogether. It is

627 obvious, therefore, that the Romans could not receive, nor

628 reasonably expect to receive, laws for the regulation of their

629 conduct from their gods, since the laws they themselves enacted

630 far surpassed and put to shame the morality of the gods. The

631 gods demand stage-plays in their own honour; the Romans

632 exclude the players from all civic honours:[101] the former

633 commanded that they should be celebrated by the scenic representation

634 of their own disgrace; the latter commanded that

635 no poet should dare to blemish the reputation of any citizen.

636 But that demigod Plato resisted the lust of such gods as

637 these, and showed the Romans what their genius had left

638 incomplete; for he absolutely excluded poets from his ideal

639 state, whether they composed fictions with no regard to truth,

640 or set the worst possible examples before wretched men

641 under the guise of divine actions. We for our part, indeed,

642 reckon Plato neither a god nor a demigod; we would not

643 even compare him to any of God's holy angels, nor to the

644 truth-speaking prophets, nor to any of the apostles or martyrs

645 of Christ, nay, not to any faithful Christian man. The reason

646 of this opinion of ours we will, God prospering us, render in

647 its own place. Nevertheless, since they wish him to be considered

648 a demigod, we think he certainly is more entitled

649 to that rank, and is every way superior, if not to Hercules

650 and Romulus (though no historian could ever narrate nor any

651 poet sing of him that he had killed his brother, or committed

652 any crime), yet certainly to Priapus, or a Cynocephalus,[102] or

653 the Fever,[103]—divinities whom the Romans have partly received

654 from foreigners, and partly consecrated by home-grown rites.

655 How, then, could gods such as these be expected to promulgate

656 good and wholesome laws, either for the prevention of moral

657 and social evils, or for their eradication where they had already

658 sprung up?—gods who used their influence even to sow and

659 cherish profligacy, by appointing that deeds truly or falsely

660 ascribed to them should be published to the people by means

661 of theatrical exhibitions, and by thus gratuitously fanning the

662 flame of human lust with the breath of a seemingly divine

663 approbation. In vain does Cicero, speaking of poets, exclaim

664 against this state of things in these words: "When the

665 plaudits and acclamation of the people, who sit as infallible

666 judges, are won by the poets, what darkness benights the

667 mind, what fears invade, what passions inflame it!"[104]

668 15. *That it was vanity, not reason, which created some of the Roman gods.*

669 But is it not manifest that vanity rather than reason regulated

670 the choice of some of their false gods? This Plato,

671 whom they reckon a demigod, and who used all his eloquence

672 to preserve men from the most dangerous spiritual calamities,

673 has yet not been counted worthy even of a little shrine; but

674 Romulus, because they can call him their own, they have

675 esteemed more highly than many gods, though their secret doctrine

676 can allow him the rank only of a demigod. To him they

677 allotted a flamen, that is to say, a priest of a class so highly

678 esteemed in their religion (distinguished, too, by their conical

679 mitres), that for only three of their gods were flamens appointed—the

680 Flamen Dialis for Jupiter, Martialis for Mars, and Quirinalis

681 for Romulus (for when the ardour of his fellow-citizens

682 had given Romulus a seat among the gods, they gave him this

683 new name Quirinus). And thus by this honour Romulus has

684 been preferred to Neptune and Pluto, Jupiter's brothers, and

685 to Saturn himself, their father. They have assigned the same

686 priesthood to serve him as to serve Jove; and in giving Mars

687 (the reputed father of Romulus) the same honour, is this

688 not rather for Romulus' sake than to honour Mars?

689 >

690 >

691 >

692 16. *That if the gods had really possessed any regard for righteousness, the

693 > Romans should have received good laws from them, instead of having to

694 > borrow them from other nations.*

695 Moreover, if the Romans had been able to receive a rule of

696 life from their gods, they would not have borrowed Solon's

697 laws from the Athenians, as they did some years after Rome

698 was founded; and yet they did not keep them as they

699 received them, but endeavoured to improve and amend them.[105]

700 Although Lycurgus pretended that he was authorized by

701 Apollo to give laws to the Lacedemonians, the sensible

702 Romans did not choose to believe this, and were not induced

703 to borrow laws from Sparta. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded

704 Romulus in the kingdom, is said to have framed some laws,

705 which, however, were not sufficient for the regulation of civic

706 affairs. Among these regulations were many pertaining to

707 religious observances, and yet he is not reported to have

708 received even these from the gods. With respect, then, to

709 moral evils, evils of life and conduct,—evils which are so

710 mighty, that, according to the wisest pagans,[106] by them states

711 are ruined while their cities stand uninjured,—their gods

712 made not the smallest provision for preserving their worshippers

713 from these evils, but, on the contrary, took special pains

714 to increase them, as we have previously endeavoured to prove.

715 17. *Of the rape of the Sabine women, and other iniquities perpetrated in Rome's

716 palmiest days.*

717 But possibly we are to find the reason for this neglect of

718 the Romans by their gods, in the saying of Sallust, that

719 "equity and virtue prevailed among the Romans not more by

720 force of laws than of nature."[107] I presume it is to this inborn

721 equity and goodness of disposition we are to ascribe the rape

722 of the Sabine women. What, indeed, could be more equitable

723 and virtuous, than to carry off by force, as each man was

724 fit, and without their parents' consent, girls who were strangers

725 and guests, and who had been decoyed and entrapped by the

726 pretence of a spectacle! If the Sabines were wrong to deny

727 their daughters when the Romans asked for them, was it not

728 a greater wrong in the Romans to carry them off after that

729 denial? The Romans might more justly have waged war

730 against the neighbouring nation for having refused their

731 daughters in marriage when they first sought them, than for

732 having demanded them back when they had stolen them.

733 War should have been proclaimed at first: it was then that

734 Mars should have helped his warlike son, that he might by

735 force of arms avenge the injury done him by the refusal of

736 marriage, and might also thus win the women he desired.

737 There might have been some appearance of "right of war" in

738 a victor carrying off, in virtue of this right, the virgins who

739 had been without any show of right denied him; whereas

740 there was no "right of peace" entitling him to carry off those

741 who were not given to him, and to wage an unjust war with

742 their justly enraged parents. One happy circumstance was

743 indeed connected with this act of violence, viz., that though

744 it was commemorated by the games of the circus, yet even

745 this did not constitute it a precedent in the city or realm of

746 Rome. If one would find fault with the results of this act, it

747 must rather be on the ground that the Romans made Romulus

748 a god in spite of his perpetrating this iniquity; for one cannot

749 reproach them with making this deed any kind of precedent

750 for the rape of women.

751 Again, I presume it was due to this natural equity and

752 virtue, that after the expulsion of King Tarquin, whose son had

753 violated Lucretia, Junius Brutus the consul forced Lucius

754 Tarquinius Collatinus, Lucretia's husband and his own colleague,

755 a good and innocent man, to resign his office and go

756 into banishment, on the one sole charge that he was of the

757 name and blood of the Tarquins. This injustice was perpetrated

758 with the approval, or at least connivance, of the

759 people, who had themselves raised to the consular office both

760 Collatinus and Brutus. Another instance of this equity and

761 virtue is found in their treatment of Marcus Camillus. This

762 eminent man, after he had rapidly conquered the Veians, at

763 that time the most formidable of Rome's enemies, and who

764 had maintained a ten years' war, in which the Roman army had

765 suffered the usual calamities attendant on bad generalship,

766 after he had restored security to Rome, which had begun to

767 tremble for its safety, and after he had taken the wealthiest

768 city of the enemy, had charges brought against him by the

769 malice of those that envied his success, and by the insolence

770 of the tribunes of the people; and seeing that the city bore

771 him no gratitude for preserving it, and that he would

772 certainly be condemned, he went into exile, and even in his

773 absence was fined 10,000 asses. Shortly after, however, his

774 ungrateful country had again to seek his protection from the

775 Gauls. But I cannot now mention all the shameful and

776 iniquitous acts with which Rome was agitated, when the

777 aristocracy attempted to subject the people, and the people

778 resented their encroachments, and the advocates of either party

779 were actuated rather by the love of victory than by any equitable

780 or virtuous consideration.

781 >

782 >

783 >

784 18. *What the history of Sallust reveals regarding the life of the Romans, either

785 > when straitened by anxiety or relaxed in security.*

786 I will therefore pause, and adduce the testimony of Sallust

787 himself, whose words in praise of the Romans (that "equity

788 and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of laws

789 than of nature") have given occasion to this discussion. He

790 was referring to that period immediately after the expulsion

791 of the kings, in which the city became great in an incredibly

792 short space of time. And yet this same writer acknowledges

793 in the first book of his history, in the very exordium of his

794 work, that even at that time, when a very brief interval

795 had elapsed after the government had passed from kings to

796 consuls, the more powerful men began to act unjustly, and

797 occasioned the defection of the people from the patricians,

798 and other disorders in the city. For after Sallust had stated

799 that the Romans enjoyed greater harmony and a purer state

800 of society between the second and third Punic wars than at

801 any other time, and that the cause of this was not their love

802 of good order, but their fear lest the peace they had with

803 Carthage might be broken (this also, as we mentioned, Nasica

804 contemplated when he opposed the destruction of Carthage,

805 for he supposed that fear would tend to repress wickedness,

806 and to preserve wholesome ways of living), he then goes on to

807 say: "Yet, after the destruction of Carthage, discord, avarice,

808 ambition, and the other vices which are commonly generated

809 by prosperity, more than ever increased." If they "increased,"

810 and that "more than ever," then already they had appeared,

811 and had been increasing. And so Sallust adds this reason for

812 what he said. "For," he says, "the oppressive measures of

813 the powerful, and the consequent secessions of the plebs from

814 the patricians, and other civil dissensions, had existed from

815 the first, and affairs were administered with equity and well-tempered

816 justice for no longer a period than the short time

817 after the expulsion of the kings, while the city was occupied

818 with the serious Tuscan war and Tarquin's vengeance." You

819 see how, even in that brief period after the expulsion of the

820 kings, fear, he acknowledges, was the cause of the interval of

821 equity and good order. They were afraid, in fact, of the war

822 which Tarquin waged against them, after he had been driven

823 from the throne and the city, and had allied himself with the

824 Tuscans. But observe what he adds: "After that, the patricians

825 treated the people as their slaves, ordering them to be

826 scourged or beheaded just as the kings had done, driving

827 them from their holdings, and harshly tyrannizing over those

828 who had no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by

829 these oppressive measures, and most of all by exorbitant

830 usury, and obliged to contribute both money and personal

831 service to the constant wars, at length took arms, and seceded

832 to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus obtained for

833 themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the

834 second Punic war that put an end on both sides to discord

835 and strife." You see what kind of men the Romans were,

836 even so early as a few years after the expulsion of the kings;

837 and it is of these men he says, that "equity and virtue prevailed

838 among them not more by force of law than of nature."

839 Now, if these were the days in which the Roman republic

840 shows fairest and best, what are we to say or think of the

841 succeeding age, when, to use the words of the same historian,

842 "changing little by little from the fair and virtuous city it

843 was, it became utterly wicked and dissolute?" This was, as he

844 mentions, after the destruction of Carthage. Sallust's brief

845 sum and sketch of this period may be read in his own history,

846 in which he shows how the profligate manners which were

847 propagated by prosperity resulted at last even in civil wars.

848 He says: "And from this time the primitive manners, instead

849 of undergoing an insensible alteration as hitherto they had

850 done, were swept away as by a torrent: the young men were

851 so depraved by luxury and avarice, that it may justly be said

852 that no father had a son who could either preserve his own

853 patrimony, or keep his hands off other men's." Sallust

854 adds a number of particulars about the vices of Sylla, and

855 the debased condition of the republic in general; and other

856 writers make similar observations, though in much less striking

857 language.

858 However, I suppose you now see, or at least any one who

859 gives his attention has the means of seeing, in what a sink

860 of iniquity that city was plunged before the advent of our

861 heavenly King. For these things happened not only before

862 Christ had begun to teach, but before He was even born of

863 the Virgin. If, then, they dare not impute to their gods the

864 grievous evils of those former times, more tolerable before the

865 destruction of Carthage, but intolerable and dreadful after it,

866 although it was the gods who by their malign craft instilled

867 into the minds of men the conceptions from which such

868 dreadful vices branched out on all sides, why do they impute

869 these present calamities to Christ, who teaches life-giving truth,

870 and forbids us to worship false and deceitful gods, and who,

871 abominating and condemning with His divine authority those

872 wicked and hurtful lusts of men, gradually withdraws His

873 own people from a world that is corrupted by these vices,

874 and is falling into ruins, to make of them an eternal city,

875 whose glory rests not on the acclamations of vanity, but on

876 the judgment of truth?

877 19. *Of the corruption which had grown upon the Roman republic before Christ

878 abolished the worship of the gods.*

879 Here, then, is this Roman republic, "which has changed

880 little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was, and has

881 become utterly wicked and dissolute." It is not I who am

882 the first to say this, but their own authors, from whom we

883 learned it for a fee, and who wrote it long before the coming

884 of Christ. You see how, before the coming of Christ, and

885 after the destruction of Carthage, "the primitive manners,

886 instead of undergoing insensible alteration, as hitherto they had

887 done, were swept away as by a torrent; and how depraved

888 by luxury and avarice the youth were." Let them now, on

889 their part, read to us any laws given by their gods to the

890 Roman people, and directed against luxury and avarice. And

891 would that they had only been silent on the subjects of

892 chastity and modesty, and had not demanded from the people

893 indecent and shameful practices, to which they lent a pernicious

894 patronage by their so-called divinity. Let them

895 read our commandments in the Prophets, Gospels, Acts of

896 the Apostles, or Epistles; let them peruse the large number

897 of precepts against avarice and luxury which are everywhere

898 read to the congregations that meet for this purpose, and

899 which strike the ear, not with the uncertain sound of a philosophical

900 discussion, but with the thunder of God's own oracle

901 pealing from the clouds. And yet they do not impute to their

902 gods the luxury and avarice, the cruel and dissolute manners,

903 that had rendered the republic utterly wicked and corrupt,

904 even before the coming of Christ; but whatever affliction

905 their pride and effeminacy have exposed them to in these

906 latter days, they furiously impute to our religion. If the

907 kings of the earth and all their subjects, if all princes and

908 judges of the earth, if young men and maidens, old and

909 young, every age, and both sexes; if they whom the Baptist

910 addressed, the publicans and the soldiers, were all together

911 to hearken to and observe the precepts of the Christian

912 religion regarding a just and virtuous life, then should the

913 republic adorn the whole earth with its own felicity, and

914 attain in life everlasting to the pinnacle of kingly glory.

915 But because this man listens, and that man scoffs, and most

916 are enamoured of the blandishments of vice rather than the

917 wholesome severity of virtue, the people of Christ, whatever

918 be their condition—whether they be kings, princes, judges,

919 soldiers, or provincials, rich or poor, bond or free, male or

920 female—are enjoined to endure this earthly republic, wicked

921 and dissolute as it is, that so they may by this endurance

922 win for themselves an eminent place in that most holy and

923 august assembly of angels and republic of heaven, in which

924 the will of God is the law.

925 20. *Of the kind of happiness and life truly delighted in by those who inveigh

926 against the Christian religion.*

927 But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in

928 imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned

929 that the republic be less depraved and licentious.

930 Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish

931 and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or

932 still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us?

933 This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his

934 wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the

935 powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let

936 the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection

937 they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let the

938 rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their

939 pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their

940 interests, but those who provide them with pleasure. Let no

941 severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden. Let kings

942 estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness, but by the

943 servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to

944 the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions

945 and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty

946 reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take

947 cognizance rather of the injury done to another man's property,

948 than of that done to one's own person. If a man be a

949 nuisance to his neighbour, or injure his property, family, or

950 person, let him be actionable; but in his own affairs let every

951 one with impunity do what he will in company with his own

952 family, and with those who willingly join him. Let there be

953 a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every one who

954 wishes to use them, but specially for those who are too poor

955 to keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses

956 of the largest and most ornate description: in these let there

957 be provided the most sumptuous banquets, where every one

958 who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit,[108] dissipate.

959 Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers,

960 the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of

961 the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a

962 perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any,

963 let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to

964 modify or put an end to it, let him be silenced, banished, put

965 an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who procure

966 for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when

967 once possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let

968 them demand whatever games they please, from or with their

969 own worshippers; only let them secure that such felicity be

970 not imperilled by foe, plague, or disaster of any kind. What

971 sane man would compare a republic such as this, I will not

972 say to the Roman empire, but to the palace of Sardanapalus,

973 the ancient king who was so abandoned to pleasures, that he

974 caused it to be inscribed on his tomb, that now that he was

975 dead, he possessed only those things which he had swallowed

976 and consumed by his appetites while alive? If these men

977 had such a king as this, who, while self-indulgent, should lay

978 no severe restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically

979 consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient

980 Romans did to Romulus.

981 21. *Cicero's opinion of the Roman republic.*

982 But if our adversaries do not care how foully and disgracefully

983 the Roman republic be stained by corrupt practices, so

984 long only as it holds together and continues in being, and

985 if they therefore pooh-pooh the testimony of Sallust to its

986 "utterly wicked and profligate" condition, what will they

987 make of Cicero's statement, that even in his time it had

988 become entirely extinct, and that there remained extant no

989 Roman republic at all? He introduces Scipio (the Scipio

990 who had destroyed Carthage) discussing the republic, at a time

991 when already there were presentiments of its speedy ruin by

992 that corruption which Sallust describes. In fact, at the time

993 when the discussion took place, one of the Gracchi, who,

994 according to Sallust, was the first great instigator of seditions,

995 had already been put to death. His death, indeed, is mentioned

996 in the same book. Now Scipio, in the end of the

997 second book, says: "As, among the different sounds which proceed

998 from lyres, flutes, and the human voice, there must be

999 maintained a certain harmony which a cultivated ear cannot

1000 endure to hear disturbed or jarring, but which may be elicited

1001 in full and absolute concord by the modulation even of voices

1002 very unlike one another; so, where reason is allowed to

1003 modulate the diverse elements of the state, there is obtained a

1004 perfect concord from the upper, lower, and middle classes as

1005 from various sounds; and what musicians call harmony in

1006 singing, is concord in matters of state, which is the strictest

1007 bond and best security of any republic, and which by no

1008 ingenuity can be retained where justice has become extinct."

1009 Then, when he had expatiated somewhat more fully, and had

1010 more copiously illustrated the benefits of its presence and the

1011 ruinous effects of its absence upon a state, Pilus, one of the

1012 company present at the discussion, struck in and demanded

1013 that the question should be more thoroughly sifted, and that

1014 the subject of justice should be freely discussed for the sake

1015 of ascertaining what truth there was in the maxim which was

1016 then becoming daily more current, that "the republic cannot

1017 be governed without injustice." Scipio expressed his willingness

1018 to have this maxim discussed and sifted, and gave it as

1019 his opinion that it was baseless, and that no progress could be

1020 made in discussing the republic unless it was established, not

1021 only that this maxim, that "the republic cannot be governed

1022 without injustice," was false, but also that the truth is, that it

1023 cannot be governed without the most absolute justice. And

1024 the discussion of this question, being deferred till the next

1025 day, is carried on in the third book with great animation.

1026 For Pilus himself undertook to defend the position that the

1027 republic cannot be governed without injustice, at the same

1028 time being at special pains to clear himself of any real participation

1029 in that opinion. He advocated with great keenness

1030 the cause of injustice against justice, and endeavoured by

1031 plausible reasons and examples to demonstrate that the former

1032 is beneficial, the latter useless, to the republic. Then, at the

1033 request of the company, Lælius attempted to defend justice,

1034 and strained every nerve to prove that nothing is so hurtful

1035 to a state as injustice; and that without justice a republic

1036 can neither be governed, nor even continue to exist.

1037 When this question has been handled to the satisfaction of

1038 the company, Scipio reverts to the original thread of discourse,

1039 and repeats with commendation his own brief definition of a

1040 republic, that it is the weal of the people. "The people" he

1041 defines as being not every assemblage or mob, but an assemblage

1042 associated by a common acknowledgment of law, and by

1043 a community of interests. Then he shows the use of definition

1044 in debate; and from these definitions of his own he

1045 gathers that a republic, or "weal of the people," then exists

1046 only when it is well and justly governed, whether by a

1047 monarch, or an aristocracy, or by the whole people. But

1048 when the monarch is unjust, or, as the Greeks say, a tyrant;

1049 or the aristocrats are unjust, and form a faction; or the

1050 people themselves are unjust, and become, as Scipio for want

1051 of a better name calls them, themselves the tyrant, then the

1052 republic is not only blemished (as had been proved the day

1053 before), but by legitimate deduction from those definitions, it

1054 altogether ceases to be. For it could not be the people's weal

1055 when a tyrant factiously lorded it over the state; neither

1056 would the people be any longer a people if it were unjust,

1057 since it would no longer answer the definition of a people—"an

1058 assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of

1059 law, and by a community of interests."

1060 When, therefore, the Roman republic was such as Sallust

1061 described it, it was not "utterly wicked and profligate," as

1062 he says, but had altogether ceased to exist, if we are to admit

1063 the reasoning of that debate maintained on the subject of

1064 the republic by its best representatives. Tully himself, too,

1065 speaking not in the person of Scipio or any one else, but

1066 uttering his own sentiments, uses the following language in

1067 the beginning of the fifth book, after quoting a line from the

1068 poet Ennius, in which he said, "Rome's severe morality and

1069 her citizens are her safeguard." "This verse," says Cicero,

1070 "seems to me to have all the sententious truthfulness of an

1071 oracle. For neither would the citizens have availed without

1072 the morality of the community, nor would the morality of the

1073 commons without outstanding men have availed either to

1074 establish or so long to maintain in vigour so grand a republic

1075 with so wide and just an empire. Accordingly, before our

1076 day, the hereditary usages formed our foremost men, and they

1077 on their part retained the usages and institutions of their

1078 fathers. But our age, receiving the republic as a *chef-d'œuvre*

1079 of another age which has already begun to grow old, has not

1080 merely neglected to restore the colours of the original, but has

1081 not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general

1082 outline and most outstanding features. For what survives

1083 of that primitive morality which the poet called Rome's safeguard?

1084 It is so obsolete and forgotten, that, far from practising

1085 it, one does not even know it. And of the citizens what

1086 shall I say? Morality has perished through poverty of great

1087 men; a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason,

1088 but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged

1089 with a capital crime. For it is through our vices, and not by

1090 any mishap, that we retain only the name of a republic, and

1091 have long since lost the reality."

1092 This is the confession of Cicero, long indeed after the death

1093 of Africanus, whom he introduced as an interlocutor in his

1094 work *De Republica*, but still before the coming of Christ. Yet,

1095 if the disasters he bewails had been lamented after the Christian

1096 religion had been diffused, and had begun to prevail, is

1097 there a man of our adversaries who would not have thought

1098 that they were to be imputed to the Christians? Why, then,

1099 did their gods not take steps then to prevent the decay and

1100 extinction of that republic, over the loss of which Cicero, long

1101 before Christ had come in the flesh, sings so lugubrious a

1102 dirge? Its admirers have need to inquire whether, even in

1103 the days of primitive men and morals, true justice flourished

1104 in it; or was it not perhaps even then, to use the casual expression

1105 of Cicero, rather a coloured painting than the living

1106 reality? But, if God will, we shall consider this elsewhere.

1107 For I mean in its own place to show that—according to the

1108 definitions in which Cicero himself, using Scipio as his mouthpiece,

1109 briefly propounded what a republic is, and what a

1110 people is, and according to many testimonies, both of his own

1111 lips and of those who took part in that same debate—Rome

1112 never was a republic, because true justice had never a place

1113 in it. But accepting the more feasible definitions of a republic,

1114 I grant there was a republic of a certain kind, and certainly

1115 much better administered by the more ancient Romans than

1116 by their modern representatives. But the fact is, true justice

1117 has no existence save in that republic whose founder and

1118 ruler is Christ, if at least any choose to call this a republic;

1119 and indeed we cannot deny that it is the people's weal. But

1120 if perchance this name, which has become familiar in other

1121 connections, be considered alien to our common parlance, we

1122 may at all events say that in this city is true justice; the city

1123 of which Holy Scripture says, "Glorious things are said of

1124 thee, O city of God."

1125 22. *That the Roman gods never took any steps to prevent the republic from being

1126 ruined by immorality.*

1127 But what is relevant to the present question is this, that

1128 however admirable our adversaries say the republic was or is,

1129 it is certain that by the testimony of their own most learned

1130 writers it had become, long before the coming of Christ,

1131 utterly wicked and dissolute, and indeed had no existence,

1132 but had been destroyed by profligacy. To prevent this, surely

1133 these guardian gods ought to have given precepts of morals

1134 and a rule of life to the people by whom they were worshipped

1135 in so many temples, with so great a variety of priests

1136 and sacrifices, with such numberless and diverse rites, so

1137 many festal solemnities, so many celebrations of magnificent

1138 games. But in all this the demons only looked after their

1139 own interest, and cared not at all how their worshippers lived,

1140 or rather were at pains to induce them to lead an abandoned

1141 life, so long as they paid these tributes to their honour, and

1142 regarded them with fear. If any one denies this, let him

1143 produce, let him point to, let him read the laws which the

1144 gods had given against sedition, and which the Gracchi transgressed

1145 when they threw everything into confusion; or those

1146 Marius, and Cinna, and Carbo broke when they involved their

1147 country in civil wars, most iniquitous and unjustifiable in their

1148 causes, cruelly conducted, and yet more cruelly terminated; or

1149 those which Sylla scorned, whose life, character, and deeds, as

1150 described by Sallust and other historians, are the abhorrence

1151 of all mankind. Who will deny that at that time the

1152 republic had become extinct?

1153 Possibly they will be bold enough to suggest in defence

1154 of the gods, that they abandoned the city on account of the

1155 profligacy of the citizens, according to the lines of Virgil:

1156 "Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine,

1157 Are those who made this realm divine."[109]

1158 But, firstly, if it be so, then they cannot complain against the

1159 Christian religion, as if it were that which gave offence to

1160 the gods and caused them to abandon Rome, since the Roman

1161 immorality had long ago driven from the altars of the city a

1162 cloud of little gods, like as many flies. And yet where was

1163 this host of divinities, when, long before the corruption of the

1164 primitive morality, Rome was taken and burnt by the Gauls?

1165 Perhaps they were present, but asleep? For at that time the

1166 whole city fell into the hands of the enemy, with the single

1167 exception of the Capitoline hill; and this too would have been

1168 taken, had not—the watchful geese aroused the sleeping gods!

1169 And this gave occasion to the festival of the goose, in which

1170 Rome sank nearly to the superstition of the Egyptians, who

1171 worship beasts and birds. But of these adventitious evils

1172 which are inflicted by hostile armies or by some disaster, and

1173 which attach rather to the body than the soul, I am not

1174 meanwhile disputing. At present I speak of the decay of

1175 morality, which at first almost imperceptibly lost its brilliant

1176 hue, but afterwards was wholly obliterated, was swept away as

1177 by a torrent, and involved the republic in such disastrous

1178 ruin, that though the houses and walls remained standing,

1179 the leading writers do not scruple to say that the republic

1180 was destroyed. Now, the departure of the gods "from each

1181 fane, each sacred shrine," and their abandonment of the city

1182 to destruction, was an act of justice, if their laws inculcating

1183 justice and a moral life had been held in contempt by that

1184 city. But what kind of gods were these, pray, who declined

1185 to live with a people who worshipped them, and whose

1186 corrupt life they had done nothing to reform?

1187 23. *That the vicissitudes of this life are dependent not on the favour or hostility

1188 of demons, but on the will of the true God.*

1189 But, further, is it not obvious that the gods have abetted the

1190 fulfilment of men's desires, instead of authoritatively bridling

1191 them? For Marius, a low-born and self-made man, who ruthlessly

1192 provoked and conducted civil wars, was so effectually

1193 aided by them, that he was seven times consul, and died

1194 full of years in his seventh consulship, escaping the hands of

1195 Sylla, who immediately afterwards came into power. Why,

1196 then, did they not also aid him, so as to restrain him from so

1197 many enormities? For if it is said that the gods had no

1198 hand in his success, this is no trivial admission, that a man

1199 can attain the dearly coveted felicity of this life even though

1200 his own gods be not propitious; that men can be loaded with

1201 the gifts of fortune as Marius was, can enjoy health, power,

1202 wealth, honours, dignity, length of days, though the gods be

1203 hostile to him; and that, on the other hand, men can be tormented

1204 as Regulus was, with captivity, bondage, destitution,

1205 watchings, pain, and cruel death, though the gods be his friends.

1206 To concede this is to make a compendious confession that the

1207 gods are useless, and their worship superfluous. If the gods

1208 have taught the people rather what goes clean counter to the

1209 virtues of the soul, and that integrity of life which meets a

1210 reward after death; if even in respect of temporal and transitory

1211 blessings they neither hurt those whom they hate nor profit

1212 whom they love, why are they worshipped, why are they invoked

1213 with such eager homage? Why do men murmur in difficult

1214 and sad emergencies, as if the gods had retired in anger? and

1215 why, on their account, is the Christian religion injured by the

1216 most unworthy calumnies? If in temporal matters they have

1217 power either for good or for evil, why did they stand by Marius,

1218 the worst of Rome's citizens, and abandon Regulus, the best?

1219 Does this not prove themselves to be most unjust and wicked?

1220 And even if it be supposed that for this very reason they are

1221 the rather to be feared and worshipped, this is a mistake; for

1222 we do not read that Regulus worshipped them less assiduously

1223 than Marius. Neither is it apparent that a wicked life is to

1224 be chosen, on the ground that the gods are supposed to have

1225 favoured Marius more than Regulus. For Metellus, the

1226 most highly esteemed of all the Romans, who had five sons

1227 in the consulship, was prosperous even in this life; and

1228 Catiline, the worst of men, reduced to poverty and defeated

1229 in the war his own guilt had aroused, lived and perished

1230 miserably. Real and secure felicity is the peculiar possession

1231 of those who worship that God by whom alone it can be

1232 conferred.

1233 It is thus apparent, that when the republic was being

1234 destroyed by profligate manners, its gods did nothing to

1235 hinder its destruction by the direction or correction of its

1236 manners, but rather accelerated its destruction by increasing

1237 the demoralization and corruption that already existed. They

1238 need not pretend that their goodness was shocked by the

1239 iniquity of the city, and that they withdrew in anger. For

1240 they were there, sure enough; they are detected, convicted:

1241 they were equally unable to break silence so as to guide

1242 others, and to keep silence so as to conceal themselves. I

1243 do not dwell on the fact that the inhabitants of Minturnæ

1244 took pity on Marius, and commended him to the goddess

1245 Marica in her grove, that she might give him success in

1246 all things, and that from the abyss of despair in which he

1247 then lay he forthwith returned unhurt to Rome, and entered

1248 the city the ruthless leader of a ruthless army; and they

1249 who wish to know how bloody was his victory, how unlike a

1250 citizen, and how much more relentlessly than any foreign foe

1251 he acted, let them read the histories. But this, as I said, I

1252 do not dwell upon; nor do I attribute the bloody bliss of

1253 Marius to, I know not what Minturnian goddess [Marica], but

1254 rather to the secret providence of God, that the mouths of our

1255 adversaries might be shut, and that they who are not led by

1256 passion, but by prudent consideration of events, might be delivered

1257 from error. And even if the demons have any power

1258 in these matters, they have only that power which the secret

1259 decree of the Almighty allots to them, in order that we may

1260 not set too great store by earthly prosperity, seeing it is oftentimes

1261 vouchsafed even to wicked men like Marius; and that

1262 we may not, on the other hand, regard it as an evil, since

1263 we see that many good and pious worshippers of the one true

1264 God are, in spite of the demons, pre-eminently successful;

1265 and, finally, that we may not suppose that these unclean

1266 spirits are either to be propitiated or feared for the sake of

1267 earthly blessings or calamities: for as wicked men on earth

1268 cannot do all they would, so neither can these demons, but

1269 only in so far as they are permitted by the decree of Him

1270 whose judgments are fully comprehensible, justly reprehensible

1271 by none.

1272 24. *Of the deeds of Sylla, in which the demons boasted that he had their help.*

1273 It is certain that Sylla—whose rule was so cruel, that, in

1274 comparison with it, the preceding state of things which he

1275 came to avenge was regretted—when first he advanced towards

1276 Rome to give battle to Marius, found the auspices so favourable

1277 when he sacrificed, that, according to Livy's account, the

1278 augur Postumius expressed his willingness to lose his head if

1279 Sylla did not, with the help of the gods, accomplish what he

1280 designed. The gods, you see, had not departed from "every

1281 fane and sacred shrine," since they were still predicting the

1282 issue of these affairs, and yet were taking no steps to correct

1283 Sylla himself. Their presages promised him great prosperity, but

1284 no threatenings of theirs subdued his evil passions. And then,

1285 when he was in Asia conducting the war against Mithridates,

1286 a message from Jupiter was delivered to him by Lucius Titius,

1287 to the effect that he would conquer Mithridates; and so it came

1288 to pass. And afterwards, when he was meditating a return

1289 to Rome for the purpose of avenging in the blood of the

1290 citizens injuries done to himself and his friends, a second

1291 message from Jupiter was delivered to him by a soldier of

1292 the sixth legion, to the effect that it was he who had predicted

1293 the victory over Mithridates, and that now he promised to give

1294 him power to recover the republic from his enemies, though

1295 with great bloodshed. Sylla at once inquired of the soldier

1296 what form had appeared to him; and, on his reply, recognised

1297 that it was the same as Jupiter had formerly employed to

1298 convey to him the assurance regarding the victory over Mithridates.

1299 How, then, can the gods be justified in this matter

1300 for the care they took to predict these shadowy successes, and

1301 for their negligence in correcting Sylla, and restraining him

1302 from stirring up a civil war so lamentable and atrocious, that it

1303 not merely disfigured, but extinguished, the republic? The

1304 truth is, as I have often said, and as Scripture informs us, and

1305 as the facts themselves sufficiently indicate, the demons are

1306 found to look after their own ends only, that they may be

1307 regarded and worshipped as gods, and that men may be induced

1308 to offer to them a worship which associates them with

1309 their crimes, and involves them in one common wickedness

1310 and judgment of God.

1311 Afterwards, when Sylla had come to Tarentum, and had

1312 sacrificed there, he saw on the head of the victim's liver the

1313 likeness of a golden crown. Thereupon the same soothsayer

1314 Postumius interpreted this to signify a signal victory, and

1315 ordered that he only should eat of the entrails. A little

1316 afterwards, the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius cried out, "I

1317 am Bellona's messenger; the victory is yours, Sylla!" Then

1318 he added that the Capitol should be burned. As soon as he

1319 had uttered this prediction he left the camp, but returned the

1320 following day more excited than ever, and shouted, "The Capitol

1321 is fired!" And fired indeed it was. This it was easy for a

1322 demon both to foresee and quickly to announce. But observe,

1323 as relevant to our subject, what kind of gods they are under

1324 whom these men desire to live, who blaspheme the Saviour

1325 that delivers the wills of the faithful from the dominion of

1326 devils. The man cried out in prophetic rapture, "The victory

1327 is yours, Sylla!" And to certify that he spoke by a divine

1328 spirit, he predicted also an event which was shortly to happen,

1329 and which indeed did fall out, in a place from which he in

1330 whom this spirit was speaking was far distant. But he never

1331 cried, Forbear thy villanies, Sylla!—the villanies which were

1332 committed at Rome by that victor to whom a golden crown

1333 on the calf's liver had been shown as the divine evidence of

1334 his victory. If such signs as this were customarily sent by

1335 just gods, and not by wicked demons, then certainly the entrails

1336 he consulted should rather have given Sylla intimation

1337 of the cruel disasters that were to befall the city and himself.

1338 For that victory was not so conducive to his exaltation to

1339 power, as it was fatal to his ambition; for by it he became

1340 so insatiable in his desires, and was rendered so arrogant and

1341 reckless by prosperity, that he may be said rather to have

1342 inflicted a moral destruction on himself than corporal destruction

1343 on his enemies. But these truly woful and deplorable

1344 calamities the gods gave him no previous hint of, neither

1345 by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction. For they feared

1346 his amendment more than his defeat. Yea, they took good

1347 care that this glorious conqueror of his own fellow-citizens

1348 should be conquered and led captive by his own infamous

1349 vices, and should thus be the more submissive slave of the

1350 demons themselves.

1351 25. *How powerfully the evil spirits incite men to wicked actions, by giving them

1352 the quasi-divine authority of their example.*

1353 Now, who does not hereby comprehend,—unless he has

1354 preferred to imitate such gods rather than by divine grace to

1355 withdraw himself from their fellowship,—who does not see

1356 how eagerly these evil spirits strive by their example to lend,

1357 as it were, divine authority to crime? Is not this proved by

1358 the fact that they were seen in a wide plain in Campania rehearsing

1359 among themselves the battle which shortly after took

1360 place there with great bloodshed between the armies of Rome?

1361 For at first there were heard loud crashing noises, and afterwards

1362 many reported that they had seen for some days together

1363 two armies engaged. And when this battle ceased, they

1364 found the ground all indented with just such footprints of

1365 men and horses as a great conflict would leave. If, then, the

1366 deities were veritably fighting with one another, the civil wars

1367 of men are sufficiently justified; yet, by the way, let it be observed

1368 that such pugnacious gods must be very wicked or very

1369 wretched. If, however, it was but a sham-fight, what did

1370 they intend by this, but that the civil wars of the Romans

1371 should seem no wickedness, but an imitation of the gods?

1372 For already the civil wars had begun; and before this, some

1373 lamentable battles and execrable massacres had occurred.

1374 Already many had been moved by the story of the soldier,

1375 who, on stripping the spoils of his slain foe, recognised in the

1376 stripped corpse his own brother, and, with deep curses on civil

1377 wars, slew himself there and then on his brother's body. To

1378 disguise the bitterness of such tragedies, and kindle increasing

1379 ardour in this monstrous warfare, these malign demons, who

1380 were reputed and worshipped as gods, fell upon this plan of

1381 revealing themselves in a state of civil war, that no compunction

1382 for fellow-citizens might cause the Romans to shrink

1383 from such battles, but that the human criminality might be

1384 justified by the divine example. By a like craft, too, did these

1385 evil spirits command that scenic entertainments, of which I

1386 have already spoken, should be instituted and dedicated to

1387 them. And in these entertainments the poetical compositions

1388 and actions of the drama ascribed such iniquities to the

1389 gods, that every one might safely imitate them, whether he

1390 believed the gods had actually done such things, or, not believing

1391 this, yet perceived that they most eagerly desired to be

1392 represented as having done them. And that no one might

1393 suppose, that in representing the gods as fighting with one

1394 another, the poets had slandered them, and imputed to them

1395 unworthy actions, the gods themselves, to complete the deception,

1396 confirmed the compositions of the poets by exhibiting

1397 their own battles to the eyes of men, not only through actions

1398 in the theatres, but in their own persons on the actual field.

1399 We have been forced to bring forward these facts, because

1400 their authors have not scrupled to say and to write that the

1401 Roman republic had already been ruined by the depraved

1402 moral habits of the citizens, and had ceased to exist before the

1403 advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now this ruin they do not

1404 impute to their own gods, though they impute to our Christ

1405 the evils of this life, which cannot ruin good men, be they

1406 alive or dead. And this they do, though our Christ has

1407 issued so many precepts inculcating virtue and restraining

1408 vice; while their own gods have done nothing whatever to

1409 preserve that republic that served them, and to restrain it

1410 from ruin by such precepts, but have rather hastened its

1411 destruction, by corrupting its morality through their pestilent

1412 example. No one, I fancy, will now be bold enough to say

1413 that the republic was then ruined because of the departure

1414 of the gods "from each fane, each sacred shrine," as if they

1415 were the friends of virtue, and were offended by the vices of

1416 men. No, there are too many presages from entrails, auguries,

1417 soothsayings, whereby they boastingly proclaimed themselves

1418 prescient of future events and controllers of the fortune of

1419 war,—all which prove them to have been present. And had

1420 they been indeed absent, the Romans would never in these

1421 civil wars have been so far transported by their own passions

1422 as they were by the instigations of these gods.

1423 26. *That the demons gave in secret certain obscure instructions in morals, while

1424 in public their own solemnities inculcated all wickedness.*

1425 Seeing that this is so,—seeing that the filthy and cruel

1426 deeds, the disgraceful and criminal actions of the gods, whether

1427 real or feigned, were at their own request published, and were

1428 consecrated, and dedicated in their honour as sacred and

1429 stated solemnities; seeing they vowed vengeance on those who

1430 refused to exhibit them to the eyes of all, that they might be

1431 proposed as deeds worthy of imitation, why is it that these

1432 same demons, who, by taking pleasure in such obscenities, acknowledge

1433 themselves to be unclean spirits, and by delighting

1434 in their own villanies and iniquities, real or imaginary, and by

1435 requesting from the immodest, and extorting from the modest,

1436 the celebration of these licentious acts, proclaim themselves

1437 instigators to a criminal and lewd life;—why, I ask, are they

1438 represented as giving some good moral precepts to a few of

1439 their own elect, initiated in the secrecy of their shrines? If

1440 it be so, this very thing only serves further to demonstrate the

1441 malicious craft of these pestilent spirits. For so great is the

1442 influence of probity and chastity, that all men, or almost all

1443 men, are moved by the praise of these virtues; nor is any

1444 man so depraved by vice, but he hath some feeling of honour

1445 left in him. So that, unless the devil sometimes transformed

1446 himself, as Scripture says, into an angel of light,[110] he could not

1447 compass his deceitful purpose. Accordingly, in public, a bold

1448 impurity fills the ear of the people with noisy clamour; in

1449 private, a feigned chastity speaks in scarce audible whispers to

1450 a few: an open stage is provided for shameful things, but on

1451 the praiseworthy the curtain falls: grace hides, disgrace flaunts:

1452 a wicked deed draws an overflowing house, a virtuous speech

1453 finds scarce a hearer, as though purity were to be blushed at,

1454 impurity boasted of. Where else can such confusion reign,

1455 but in devils' temples? Where, but in the haunts of deceit?

1456 For the secret precepts are given as a sop to the virtuous,

1457 who are few in number; the wicked examples are exhibited

1458 to encourage the vicious, who are countless.

1459 Where and when those initiated in the mysteries of Cœlestis

1460 received any good instructions, we know not. What we do

1461 know is, that before her shrine, in which her image is set, and

1462 amidst a vast crowd gathering from all quarters, and standing

1463 closely packed together, we were intensely interested spectators

1464 of the games which were going on, and saw, as we pleased to

1465 turn the eye, on this side a grand display of harlots, on the

1466 other the virgin goddess: we saw this virgin worshipped with

1467 prayer and with obscene rites. There we saw no shamefaced

1468 mimes, no actress overburdened with modesty: all that the

1469 obscene rites demanded was fully complied with. We were

1470 plainly shown what was pleasing to the virgin deity, and the

1471 matron who witnessed the spectacle returned home from the

1472 temple a wiser woman. Some, indeed, of the more prudent

1473 women turned their faces from the immodest movements of

1474 the players, and learned the art of wickedness by a furtive

1475 regard. For they were restrained, by the modest demeanour

1476 due to men, from looking boldly at the immodest gestures; but

1477 much more were they restrained from condemning with chaste

1478 heart the sacred rites of her whom they adored. And yet

1479 this licentiousness—which, if practised in one's home, could only

1480 be done there in secret—was practised as a public lesson in the

1481 temple; and if any modesty remained in men, it was occupied

1482 in marvelling that wickedness which men could not unrestrainedly

1483 commit should be part of the religious teaching of

1484 the gods, and that to omit its exhibition should incur the

1485 anger of the gods. What spirit can that be, which by a hidden

1486 inspiration stirs men's corruption, and goads them to adultery,

1487 and feeds on the full-fledged iniquity, unless it be the same that

1488 finds pleasure in such religious ceremonies, sets in the temples

1489 images of devils, and loves to see in play the images of vices;

1490 that whispers in secret some righteous sayings to deceive the

1491 few who are good, and scatters in public invitations to profligacy,

1492 to gain possession of the millions who are wicked?

1493 >

1494 >

1495 >

1496 27. *That the obscenities of those plays which the Romans consecrated in order

1497 > to propitiate their gods, contributed largely to the overthrow of public

1498 > order.*

1499 Cicero, a weighty man, and a philosopher in his way, when

1500 about to be made edile, wished the citizens to understand[111]

1501 that, among the other duties of his magistracy, he must propitiate

1502 Flora by the celebration of games. And these games

1503 are reckoned devout in proportion to their lewdness. In

1504 another place,[112] and when he was now consul, and the state in

1505 great peril, he says that games had been celebrated for ten

1506 days together, and that nothing had been omitted which could

1507 pacify the gods: as if it had not been more satisfactory to irritate

1508 the gods by temperance, than to pacify them by debauchery;

1509 and to provoke their hate by honest living, than soothe it by

1510 such unseemly grossness. For no matter how cruel was the

1511 ferocity of those men who were threatening the state, and on

1512 whose account the gods were being propitiated: it could not

1513 have been more hurtful than the alliance of gods who were

1514 won with the foulest vices. To avert the danger which

1515 threatened men's bodies, the gods were conciliated in a fashion

1516 that drove virtue from their spirits; and the gods did not

1517 enrol themselves as defenders of the battlements against the

1518 besiegers, until they had first stormed and sacked the morality

1519 of the citizens. This propitiation of such divinities,—a propitiation

1520 so wanton, so impure, so immodest, so wicked, so filthy,

1521 whose actors the innate and praiseworthy virtue of the Romans

1522 disabled from civic honours, erased from their tribe, recognised

1523 as polluted and made infamous;—this propitiation, I say, so

1524 foul, so detestable, and alien from every religious feeling, these

1525 fabulous and ensnaring accounts of the criminal actions of the

1526 gods, these scandalous actions which they either shamefully

1527 and wickedly committed, or more shamefully and wickedly

1528 feigned, all this the whole city learned in public both by the

1529 words and gestures of the actors. They saw that the gods

1530 delighted in the commission of these things, and therefore

1531 believed that they wished them not only to be exhibited to

1532 them, but to be imitated by themselves. But as for that good

1533 and honest instruction which they speak of, it was given in

1534 such secrecy, and to so few (if indeed given at all), that they

1535 seemed rather to fear it might be divulged, than that it might

1536 not be practised.

1537 28. *That the Christian religion is health-giving.*

1538 They, then, are but abandoned and ungrateful wretches, in

1539 deep and fast bondage to that malign spirit, who complain and

1540 murmur that men are rescued by the name of Christ from the

1541 hellish thraldom of these unclean spirits, and from a participation

1542 in their punishment, and are brought out of the night of

1543 pestilential ungodliness into the light of most healthful piety.

1544 Only such men could murmur that the masses flock to the

1545 churches and their chaste acts of worship, where a seemly

1546 separation of the sexes is observed; where they learn how they

1547 may so spend this earthly life, as to merit a blessed eternity

1548 hereafter; where Holy Scripture and instruction in righteousness

1549 are proclaimed from a raised platform in presence of all,

1550 that both they who do the word may hear to their salvation,

1551 and they who do it not may hear to judgment. And though

1552 some enter who scoff at such precepts, all their petulance is

1553 either quenched by a sudden change, or is restrained through

1554 fear or shame. For no filthy and wicked action is there set

1555 forth to be gazed at or to be imitated; but either the precepts

1556 of the true God are recommended, His miracles narrated, His

1557 gifts praised, or His benefits implored.

1558 29. *An exhortation to the Romans to renounce paganism.*

1559 This, rather, is the religion worthy of your desires, O admirable

1560 Roman race,—the progeny of your Scævolas and Scipios, of

1561 Regulus, and of Fabricius. This rather covet, this distinguish

1562 from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils. If there

1563 is in your nature any eminent virtue, only by true piety is it

1564 purged and perfected, while by impiety it is wrecked and

1565 punished. Choose now what you will pursue, that your praise

1566 may be not in yourself, but in the true God, in whom is no

1567 error. For of popular glory you have had your share; but by

1568 the secret providence of God, the true religion was not offered

1569 to your choice. Awake, it is now day; as you have already

1570 awaked in the persons of some in whose perfect virtue and

1571 sufferings for the true faith we glory: for they, contending

1572 on all sides with hostile powers, and conquering them all by

1573 bravely dying, have purchased for us this country of ours with

1574 their blood; to which country we invite you, and exhort you

1575 to add yourselves to the number of the citizens of this city,

1576 which also has a sanctuary[113] of its own in the true remission of

1577 sins. Do not listen to those degenerate sons of thine who

1578 slander Christ and Christians, and impute to them these disastrous

1579 times, though they desire times in which they may

1580 enjoy rather impunity for their wickedness than a peaceful life.

1581 Such has never been Rome's ambition even in regard to her

1582 earthly country. Lay hold now on the celestial country,

1583 which is easily won, and in which you will reign truly and

1584 for ever. For there shalt thou find no vestal fire, no Capitoline

1585 stone, but the one true God

1586 "No date, no goal will here ordain:

1587 But grant an endless, boundless reign."[114]

1588 No longer, then, follow after false and deceitful gods; abjure

1589 them rather, and despise them, bursting forth into true liberty.

1590 Gods they are not, but malignant spirits, to whom your eternal

1591 happiness will be a sore punishment. Juno, from whom you

1592 deduce your origin according to the flesh, did not so bitterly

1593 grudge Rome's citadels to the Trojans, as these devils whom

1594 yet ye repute gods, grudge an everlasting seat to the race of

1595 mankind. And thou thyself hast in no wavering voice passed

1596 judgment on them, when thou didst pacify them with games,

1597 and yet didst account as infamous the men by whom the plays

1598 were acted. Suffer us, then, to assert thy freedom against the

1599 unclean spirits who had imposed on thy neck the yoke of

1600 celebrating their own shame and filthiness. The actors of

1601 these divine crimes thou hast removed from offices of honour;

1602 supplicate the true God, that He may remove from thee those

1603 gods who delight in their crimes,—a most disgraceful thing if

1604 the crimes are really theirs, and a most malicious invention

1605 if the crimes are feigned. Well done, in that thou hast spontaneously

1606 banished from the number of your citizens all actors

1607 and players. Awake more fully: the majesty of God cannot be

1608 propitiated by that which defiles the dignity of man. How,

1609 then, can you believe that gods who take pleasure in such

1610 lewd plays, belong to the number of the holy powers of heaven,

1611 when the men by whom these plays are acted are by yourselves

1612 refused admission into the number of Roman citizens

1613 even of the lowest grade? Incomparably more glorious than

1614 Rome, is that heavenly city in which for victory you have

1615 truth; for dignity, holiness; for peace, felicity; for life, eternity.

1616 Much less does it admit into its society such gods, if thou dost

1617 blush to admit into thine such men. Wherefore, if thou wouldst

1618 attain to the blessed city, shun the society of devils. They

1619 who are propitiated by deeds of shame, are unworthy of the

1620 worship of right-hearted men. Let these, then, be obliterated

1621 from your worship by the cleansing of the Christian religion,

1622 as those men were blotted from your citizenship by the censor's

1623 mark.

1624 But, so far as regards carnal benefits, which are the only

1625 blessings the wicked desire to enjoy, and carnal miseries, which

1626 alone they shrink from enduring, we will show in the following

1627 book that the demons have not the power they are supposed

1628 to have; and although they had it, we ought rather on that

1629 account to despise these blessings, than for the sake of them

1630 to worship those gods, and by worshipping them to miss the

1631 attainment of these blessings they grudge us. But that they

1632 have not even this power which is ascribed to them by those

1633 who worship them for the sake of temporal advantages, this,

1634 I say, I will prove in the following book; so let us here close

1635 the present argument.

BOOK III

13 (Texto do capítulo)

ARGUMENT.

16 >

17 >

18 >

19 AS IN THE FOREGOING BOOK AUGUSTINE HAS PROVED REGARDING MORAL AND

20 > SPIRITUAL CALAMITIES, SO IN THIS BOOK HE PROVES REGARDING EXTERNAL

21 > AND BODILY DISASTERS, THAT SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY THE

22 > ROMANS HAVE BEEN CONTINUALLY SUBJECT TO THEM; AND THAT EVEN

23 > WHEN THE FALSE GODS WERE WORSHIPPED WITHOUT A RIVAL, BEFORE THE

24 > ADVENT OF CHRIST, THEY AFFORDED NO RELIEF FROM SUCH CALAMITIES.

25 1. *Of the ills which alone the wicked fear, and which the world continually

26 suffered, even when the gods were worshipped.*

27 Of moral and spiritual evils, which are above all others to

28 be deprecated, I think enough has already been said to

29 show that the false gods took no steps to prevent the people

30 who worshipped them from being overwhelmed by such calamities,

31 but rather aggravated the ruin. I see I must now

32 speak of those evils which alone are dreaded by the heathen—famine,

33 pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre, and the

34 like calamities, already enumerated in the first book. For

35 evil men account those things alone evil which do not make

36 men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and

37 yet to remain evil among the good things they praise. It

38 grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if

39 it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself.

40 But not even such evils as were alone dreaded by the

41 heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they were

42 most unrestrictedly worshipped. For in various times and

43 places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was

44 crushed with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities;

45 and at that time what gods but those did the world worship,

46 if you except the one nation of the Hebrews, and, beyond them,

47 such individuals as the most secret and most just judgment

48 of God counted worthy of divine grace?[115] But that I may

49 not be prolix, I will be silent regarding the heavy calamities

50 that have been suffered by any other nations, and will speak

51 only of what happened to Rome and the Roman empire, by

52 which I mean Rome properly so called, and those lands which

53 already, before the coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest

54 become, as it were, members of the body of the state.

55 2. *Whether the gods, whom the Greeks and Romans worshipped in common,

56 were justified in permitting the destruction of Ilium.*

57 First, then, why was Troy or Ilium, the cradle of the

58 Roman people (for I must not overlook nor disguise what I

59 touched upon in the first book[116]), conquered, taken, and destroyed

60 by the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped

61 the same gods as they? Priam, some answer, paid the

62 penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon.[117] Then it is

63 true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen.

64 For the story goes that he promised them wages, and

65 then broke his bargain. I wonder that famous diviner Apollo

66 toiled at so huge a work, and never suspected Laomedon was

67 going to cheat him of his pay. And Neptune too, his uncle,

68 brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it really was not seemly

69 that he should be ignorant of what was to happen. For he

70 is introduced by Homer[118] (who lived and wrote before the

71 building of Rome) as predicting something great of the posterity

72 of Æneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer

73 says, Neptune also rescued Æneas in a cloud from the wrath of

74 Achilles, though (according to Virgil[119])

75 "All his will was to destroy

76 His own creation, perjured Troy."

77 Gods, then, so great as Apollo and Neptune, in ignorance of

78 the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages, built the

79 walls of Troy for nothing but thanks and thankless people.[120]

80 There may be some doubt whether it is not a worse crime to

81 believe such persons to be gods, than to cheat such gods.

82 Even Homer himself did not give full credence to the story;

83 for while he represents Neptune, indeed, as hostile to the

84 Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though the

85 story implies that both were offended by that fraud. If, therefore,

86 they believe their fables, let them blush to worship such

87 gods; if they discredit the fables, let no more be said of the

88 "Trojan perjury;" or let them explain how the gods hated

89 Trojan, but loved Roman perjury. For how did the conspiracy

90 of Catiline, even in so large and corrupt a city, find so abundant

91 a supply of men whose hands and tongues found them a

92 living by perjury and civic broils? What else but perjury

93 corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the senators?

94 What else corrupted the people's votes and decisions

95 of all causes tried before them? For it seems that the

96 ancient practice of taking oaths has been preserved even in

97 the midst of the greatest corruption, not for the sake of restraining

98 wickedness by religious fear, but to complete the tale

99 of crimes by adding that of perjury.

100 3. *That the gods could not be offended by the adultery of Paris, this crime being

101 so common among themselves.*

102 There is no ground, then, for representing the gods (by

103 whom, as they say, that empire stood, though they are proved

104 to have been conquered by the Greeks) as being enraged at the

105 Trojan perjury. Neither, as others again plead in their defence,

106 was it indignation at the adultery of Paris that caused

107 them to withdraw their protection from Troy. For their

108 habit is to be instigators and instructors in vice, not its

109 avengers. "The city of Rome," says Sallust, "was first built

110 and inhabited, as I have heard, by the Trojans, who, flying

111 their country, under the conduct of Æneas, wandered about

112 without making any settlement."[121] If, then, the gods were

113 of opinion that the adultery of Paris should be punished, it

114 was chiefly the Romans, or at least the Romans also, who

115 should have suffered; for the adultery was brought about by

116 Æneas' mother. But how could they hate in Paris a crime

117 which they made no objection to in their own sister Venus,

118 who (not to mention any other instance) committed adultery

119 with Anchises, and so became the mother of Æneas? Is it

120 because in the one case Menelaus[122] was aggrieved, while in

121 the other Vulcan[123] connived at the crime? For the gods, I

122 fancy, are so little jealous of their wives, that they make no

123 scruple of sharing them with men. But perhaps I may be

124 suspected of turning the myths into ridicule, and not handling

125 so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well, then, let

126 us say that Æneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing to

127 I admit it; but is Romulus any more the son of Mars? For

128 why not the one as well as the other? Or is it lawful for

129 gods to have intercourse with women, unlawful for men to

130 have intercourse with goddesses? A hard, or rather an incredible

131 condition, that what was allowed to Mars by the law

132 of Venus, should not be allowed to Venus herself by her own

133 law. However, both cases have the authority of Rome; for

134 Cæsar in modern times believed no less that he was descended

135 from Venus,[124] than the ancient Romulus believed himself the

136 son of Mars.

137 4. *Of Varro's opinion, that it is useful for men to feign themselves the offspring

138 of the gods.*

139 Some one will say, But do you believe all this? Not I

140 indeed. For even Varro, a very learned heathen, all but

141 admits that these stories are false, though he does not boldly

142 and confidently say so. But he maintains it is useful for

143 states that brave men believe, though falsely, that they are

144 descended from the gods; for that thus the human spirit,

145 cherishing the belief of its divine descent, will both more

146 boldly venture into great enterprises, and will carry them out

147 more energetically, and will therefore by its very confidence

148 secure more abundant success. You see how wide a field is

149 opened to falsehood by this opinion of Varro's, which I have

150 expressed as well as I could in my own words; and how

151 comprehensible it is, that many of the religions and sacred

152 legends should be feigned in a community in which it was

153 judged profitable for the citizens that lies should be told even

154 about the gods themselves.

155 >

156 >

157 >

158 5. *That it is not credible that the gods should have punished the adultery of

159 > Paris, seeing they showed no indignation at the adultery of the mother of

160 > Romulus.*

161 But whether Venus could bear Æneas to a human father

162 Anchises, or Mars beget Romulus of the daughter of Numitor,

163 we leave as unsettled questions. For our own Scriptures

164 suggest the very similar question, whether the fallen angels

165 had sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, by which

166 the earth was at that time filled with giants, that is, with enormously

167 large and strong men. At present, then, I will limit

168 my discussion to this dilemma: If that which their books

169 relate about the mother of Æneas and the father of Romulus

170 be true, how can the gods be displeased with men for adulteries

171 which, when committed by themselves, excite no displeasure?

172 If it is false, not even in this case can the gods be angry that

173 men should really commit adulteries, which, even when falsely

174 attributed to the gods, they delight in. Moreover, if the

175 adultery of Mars be discredited, that Venus also may be freed

176 from the imputation, then the mother of Romulus is left unshielded

177 by the pretext of a divine seduction. For Sylvia

178 was a vestal priestess, and the gods ought to avenge this sacrilege

179 on the Romans with greater severity than Paris' adultery

180 on the Trojans. For even the Romans themselves in primitive

181 times used to go so far as to bury alive any vestal who

182 was detected in adultery, while women unconsecrated, though

183 they were punished, were never punished with death for that

184 crime; and thus they more earnestly vindicated the purity of

185 shrines they esteemed divine, than of the human bed.

186 6. *That the gods exacted no penalty for the fratricidal act of Romulus.*

187 I add another instance: If the sins of men so greatly incensed

188 those divinities, that they abandoned Troy to fire and

189 sword to punish the crime of Paris, the murder of Romulus'

190 brother ought to have incensed them more against the Romans

191 than the cajoling of a Greek husband moved them against the

192 Trojans: fratricide in a newly-born city should have provoked

193 them more than adultery in a city already flourishing. It

194 makes no difference to the question we now discuss, whether

195 Romulus ordered his brother to be slain, or slew him with his

196 own hand; a crime this latter which many shamelessly deny,

197 many through shame doubt, many in grief disguise. And we

198 shall not pause to examine and weigh the testimonies of historical

199 writers on the subject. All agree that the brother of

200 Romulus was slain, not by enemies, not by strangers. If it

201 was Romulus who either commanded or perpetrated this crime;

202 Romulus was more truly the head of the Romans than Paris

203 of the Trojans; why then did he who carried off another man's

204 wife bring down the anger of the gods on the Trojans, while he

205 who took his brother's life obtained the guardianship of those

206 same gods? If, on the other hand, that crime was not wrought

207 either by the hand or will of Romulus, then the whole city is

208 chargeable with it, because it did not see to its punishment,

209 and thus committed, not fratricide, but parricide, which is worse.

210 For both brothers were the founders of that city, of which the

211 one was by villany prevented from being a ruler. So far as

212 I see, then, no evil can be ascribed to Troy which warranted

213 the gods in abandoning it to destruction, nor any good to Rome

214 which accounts for the gods visiting it with prosperity; unless

215 the truth be, that they fled from Troy because they were

216 vanquished, and betook themselves to Rome to practise their

217 characteristic deceptions there. Nevertheless they kept a

218 footing for themselves in Troy, that they might deceive future

219 inhabitants who repeopled these lands; while at Rome, by a

220 wider exercise of their malignant arts, they exulted in more

221 abundant honours.

222 7. *Of the destruction of Ilium by Fimbria, a lieutenant of Marius.*

223 And surely we may ask what wrong poor Ilium had done,

224 that, in the first heat of the civil wars of Rome, it should

225 suffer at the hand of Fimbria, the veriest villain among

226 Marius' partisans, a more fierce and cruel destruction than

227 the Grecian sack.[125] For when the Greeks took it many

228 escaped, and many who did not escape were suffered to

229 live, though in captivity. But Fimbria from the first gave

230 orders that not a life should be spared, and burnt up together

231 the city and all its inhabitants. Thus was Ilium requited,

232 not by the Greeks, whom she had provoked by wrong-doing;

233 but by the Romans, who had been built out of her ruins;

234 while the gods, adored alike of both sides, did simply nothing,

235 or, to speak more correctly, could do nothing. Is it then true,

236 that at this time also, after Troy had repaired the damage

237 done by the Grecian fire, all the gods by whose help the kingdom

238 stood, "forsook each fane, each sacred shrine?"

239 But if so, I ask the reason; for in my judgment, the conduct

240 of the gods was as much to be reprobated as that of the

241 townsmen to be applauded. For these closed their gates

242 against Fimbria, that they might preserve the city for Sylla,

243 and were therefore burnt and consumed by the enraged

244 general. Now, up to this time, Sylla's cause was the more

245 worthy of the two; for till now he used arms to restore the

246 republic, and as yet his good intentions had met with no

247 reverses. What better thing, then, could the Trojans have

248 done? What more honourable, what more faithful to Rome, or

249 more worthy of her relationship, than to preserve their city for

250 the better part of the Romans, and to shut their gates against

251 a parricide of his country? It is for the defenders of the

252 gods to consider the ruin which this conduct brought on Troy.

253 The gods deserted an adulterous people, and abandoned Troy

254 to the fires of the Greeks, that out of her ashes a chaster

255 Rome might arise. But why did they a second time abandon

256 this same town, allied now to Rome, and not making

257 war upon her noble daughter, but preserving a most stedfast

258 and pious fidelity to Rome's most justifiable faction? Why did

259 they give her up to be destroyed, not by the Greek heroes,

260 but by the basest of the Romans? Or, if the gods did not

261 favour Sylla's cause, for which the unhappy Trojans maintained

262 their city, why did they themselves predict and promise

263 Sylla such successes? Must we call them flatterers of

264 the fortunate, rather than helpers of the wretched? Troy was

265 not destroyed, then, because the gods deserted it. For the

266 demons, always watchful to deceive, did what they could.

267 For, when all the statues were overthrown and burnt together

268 with the town, Livy tells us that only the image of Minerva

269 is said to have been found standing uninjured amidst the

270 ruins of her temple; not that it might be said in their praise,

271 "The gods who made this realm divine," but that it might not

272 be said in their defence, They are "gone from each fane, each