Against the Pagans 7 part 4/4

By a like reasoning it will be permitted to go through the other histories and to show in these also that a thing far other than what gods ought to be is told of these very beings and indicated in the expositions of them—as in this very one which I shall next set down, one alone or two joined together, lest by immoderation weariness be bred. We do not deny that in the writings of the annals all these things are contained which have been brought forward by you in opposition. For we ourselves too, according to the measure and grasp of our understanding, both read these same things and know that they stand set down; but the sum of the question in this is whether these are gods, whom you assert to rage when offended and to be rendered mild by games and sacrifices, or whether they are something far other, and ought to be set apart both from the force of this name and of this power.

For who is there, in the first place, who would suppose them to be gods, or who would believe that they are gods, who by the movements and dancing of the stage, who when the gelding-horses run to no purpose, are dissolved into the joys of pleasures; who set out from heaven to watch inept and lifeless performances, and grieve that they are affronted and that their honors are slighted, if for a little while a player has stood still or a flute-player, weary, has rested a moment; who declare that the leader of the dance has displeased them, if some guilty man, about to render the penalties and punishments for his deserts, passes through the middle of the circus? If all these things be examined thoroughly and without any partiality, they will be found alien not only to gods, but even to any refined man not schooled to the highest peaks of gravity and weight.

For who is there, in the first place, who would suppose those to be gods, or who would believe that they are gods, who possess natures for harming and raging, and yet lay these aside again, softened by a single cup of blood and by the burning of incense; who spend festal days and pleasures brimming with mirth in the movements of the stage and the dancing of actors; who set out from heaven to watch the gelding-horses running to no purpose and without any reason, and rejoice that some overtake others in these contests, that others are overtaken, that men fall forward and headlong, are overturned along with their chariots and lie on their backs, that others, crippled, are dragged along,

and limp on legs broken to pieces; who declare that the leader of the dance has displeased them if some guilty man, about to render the penalties and punishments for his deserts, passes through the middle of the circus; who grieve that they are affronted and that their honors are slighted, if for a little while a player has stood still, if a weary flute-player has paused, if that boy whose mother is living should chance to fall, having slipped through the unsteadiness of someone? If all these things be weighed thoroughly and without any partiality, they are found to be not only far, far removed from gods, but common to any sentient man, even one not trained by the study of truth in the knowledge of reasons.

"After certain gods were brought over from nations across the sea," you say, "and after temples had been founded for them, and after altars had been heaped with sacrifices, the people, ailing, recovered and grew strong, and the pestilential diseases fled when purity had been brought in." "Which gods, pray, speak out?" "Aesculapius," you say, "from Epidaurus, a god presiding over good health, and established on the Tiberine island." If we had a mind to treat these matters more scrupulously, we should prove against you, on the authority of your own writers, that he was by no means a god, since he was conceived and born from a woman's womb, and by the steps of years had climbed up to that end of life at which the force of the thunderbolt—as is contained in your own literature—drove him out of both life and light.

But we withdraw from this question. Let him be, as you wish, the son of Coronis, of the number of the immortals and endowed with perpetual heavenly sublimity. Yet from Epidaurus what else was brought but a serpent of a great troop? If we follow the faith of the annals and attribute to them a tested truth: nothing else, as it is recorded. What then shall we say?

This Aesculapius whom you proclaim, an outstanding god, a holy god, the giver of health, the repeller, hinderer, and extinguisher of the worst diseases, is a serpent in form and bounded by its outline, creeping over the ground, as is the custom of little worms born in the mire; he scrapes the ground with chin and breast alone, dragging himself along in winding coils, and, that he may be able to go forward at all, he draws up his hindmost part by the efforts of the foremost.

And since he is read to have also used food, by which life lingers in bodies, he has gaping jaws, by which with open mouth he may swallow down the food he has sought; he has the receptacle of a belly, where he may digest the flesh chewed and devoured, so that blood may be given to the body and a renewal of strength be supplied; he has also the outermost passages, through which he unloads the unclean filth by the loathsome foulness of his body.

If at any time he changes places and prepares to pass from some regions into others, he does not, as a god, fly obscurely through the stars of heaven and set himself in a point of time wherever the cause demands, but, like a brute animal, seeks a vehicle by which he may be carried; he avoids the waves of the sea, and, that he may be kept safe and unharmed, boards a ship along with men, and that god of the public health entrusts himself to fragile wood and to the joinings of planks. We do not think you can prevail and maintain that Aesculapius was that serpent, unless you wish to introduce this coloring, so as to say that the god changed himself into a snake, that he might be able to disguise himself, and that men could not perceive who or of what sort he was.

But if this be said by you, how feebly and weakly it is said, the very inconsistency of the matter will show. For if the god shunned being seen by men, he ought not to have wished to be beheld even in the form of a serpent, since in any form whatever it would not be another, but he himself, who was to be. But if, on the other hand, he had intended to give himself to be seen, he ought not to have denied himself to the sight of the eyes; why did he not offer himself to be seen such as he knew himself to be, and such as he knew himself to be contained in the power of his own divinity?

For this would rather have been far more excellent and befitting an august dignity, than to become a beast and to be turned into the likeness of a bristling animal, and to give occasion for ambiguous disputes as to whether he was a true god or some other thing I know not what, far removed from the loftiness above. "But if he was not a god," one says, "why, after he brought himself out of the ship and crept to the Tiberine island, did he not at once appear anywhere and cease to be seen as before?" For can we know whether some obstacle stood in the way, by whose interposition and blocking he protected himself, or some cleft? Do you pronounce, do you say, what that thing was, or to what class of things it ought to be assigned, if the functions of definite persons are certain.

Since this matter is yours, and it is treated concerning your divinity and your religion, it is rather for you to teach, for you to show, what that thing was, than to wish to hear our opinions and to await our decisions. For what else indeed can we say, except what it was and was seen to be, what all the histories have handed down and what was grasped by the senses of the eyes? Yet this we call, forsooth, a snake of most powerful body and immense length, or, if this name is too base, a serpent; we name it a creeping thing, or by whatever other term usage has offered us or the amplification of speech has fashioned.

For if it crept like a snake, not carrying itself on feet nor unfolding its own paths, but pressing forward on belly and breast; if, formed from the material of flesh, it stretched out its length into a slippery shape; if it had a head and a tail; if its back was overgrown with scales; if its hide was mottled with a variety of markings; if its mouth was bristling with teeth and equipped to inflict bites: what else can we say than that it was of earthly kind, however monstrous and huge it was, however it surpassed in length and strength of body that one slain by Regulus's army by force? "But we think otherwise, and we shake and destroy the truth." Therefore it is for you to explain what that thing was, or of what kind, of what name and of what quality.

For how could it be a god, when it had those things which we have mentioned, which gods ought not to have, if they think that they are gods and possess the eminence of this appellation? "After it crept to the Tiberine island, it did not immediately appear anywhere: by this fact it is shown to have been a divinity." For can we know whether there was there some obstacle of some thing, by whose interposition and blocking it protected itself, or some cleft, or in the piled-up masses heaped unevenly some passages and arches, into which it hurriedly bore itself, and the sight of those watching was cut off? For what if it leaped across the river? what if it swam across? what if it gave itself to the thickets of the woods?

The argument is limp, that from this one should suspect that god to have been a serpent, because with all haste and hurry it withdrew itself from the eyes; for by the very same argument it could in turn be shown not to have been a god. "But if that snake was not a god present, why, after its arrival, was the force of the pestilence broken and health restored to the Roman people?" We too reply against this: if from the books of fate and the responses of the seers the god Aesculapius was bidden to be invited to the city, that he might keep it safe and unharmed from the contagion of plague and pestilential diseases, and he came, not disdaining, as you say, to be changed into the form of a snake:

why was the Roman state so many times afflicted with the calamities of this evil, so many times, at various other times, torn and harassed, and diminished by the countless slaughters of thousands of its citizens? For since the god is said to have been summoned for this, that he might avert absolutely all the causes by which pestilence was kindled, it followed that the state ought to have been untouched and always kept immune and unharmed from any noxious blast. And yet we see, as was said above, that many a time it had a deadly course of life from these diseases, and that the powers of the people were shattered and enfeebled by no light losses. Where then was Aesculapius, where was he who had been promised by venerable oracles?

Why, after temples had been founded and shrines built for him, did he so long suffer the plague to afflict the well-deserving state, when he had been summoned for this very purpose, that he might both heal present evils and not allow anything of the kind to be feared to creep in for the future? Unless perhaps someone will say that "the guardianship of such a god was for this reason lacking to the lesser and following ages, because men then lived with impious and unapprovable morals, but that he brought aid to the ancestors, because they were harmless and removed from all contagion of crimes." This indeed could perhaps have been heard and said with some reason, if either in ancient times all to a man were good, or the following times bred all men bad,

and distinguished by no diversity. But since the matter is so, that in great peoples, in nations, indeed also in all states, the human race is mixed in natures, wills, and morals, and the good could exist alongside the bad as much in earlier ages as in newer times, it is foolish enough to say that on account of the wickednesses of posterity mortals did not deserve the aid of the divinities. For if on account of the bad of the following ages the good of the newer times were not protected, then on account of the ancient bad the good ancestors likewise ought not to have deserved the benevolence of the divinities:

but if on account of the good of old the ancient bad also were preserved, then on account of the good of the younger, the following age too ought to have been protected, however unapprovable it was. Either, therefore, when the force of the disease was already broken and diminished, that snake was brought over and assumed the fame of a preserver, though it had brought no advantage at all; or the songs of fate must be said to have wandered far from true presages, since the remedy given by them is found to have been afforded thereafter not to all, but only to a single age. "But the Great Mother also," one says, "summoned from Phrygian Pessinus likewise by the bidding of seers, was salutary to the people and the cause of great rejoicings.

For the enemy, long powerful, was driven from the possession of Italy, and by glorious and illustrious victories the ancient honor of the city was restored, and the bounds of empire were extended far and wide, and from countless nations, states, and peoples the right of liberty was snatched away and the yoke of servitude imposed, and many other things accomplished abroad and at home established the name and majesty of the race with unconquerable firmness."

If the histories speak the truth and insert no falsehoods into their records, nothing else is written to have been brought over from Phrygia, sent by King Attalus, except a certain stone, not large, such as could be carried by a man's hand without any strain, of a swarthy and black color, uneven with little projecting corners, and which we all see today set in the very image in the place of the face, unwrought and rough, presenting by its imitation a face less than fully expressed. What then shall we say? Did a stone drive that Carthaginian Hannibal, a powerful and mighty enemy, under whom the doubtful and uncertain fortune of Rome trembled and her greatness quaked, out of Italy? did a stone break him? did a stone make him fugitive and timid and unlike himself?

And that Rome sprang up again to the summit of empire and to royal supremacy—was nothing accomplished by counsels, nothing by human strength, and did knowledge of warfare or experience of affairs contribute nothing toward the return of her ancient sublimity through so many and so great leaders? Did a stone give strength to some, and weakness of vigor to others; did it cast down these from prosperous fortunes, and raise up the ruined fortunes of others from despair? And who among men will believe that a stone taken from the earth, moved by no sense, of a sooty and black color, of small body, was the mother of the gods, or (for this alone remains) that the power of some divinity, subjected like fire and hidden in the veins of the flint, dwelt in the fragments of the stone?

"And whence came the victory won, if no divinity was in the Pessinuntine stone?" "We can attribute it to the diligence and valor of the fighters, to practice, to timing, to counsel, to reason; we can attribute it even to fate and to the alternating vicissitude of fortune." But if the affair was made better by the aid of the stone and victory happily regained, where then was the Phrygian Mother at that time, when, with so many and such great armies slaughtered, the highest fortune was overthrown and came to the peril of utter ruin? Why did she not offer herself, brave against the menacing foe? why did she not break and repel the mighty assaults of war before those monstrous blows fell, by which all the blood was poured out and, the vital parts almost drained, life itself collapsed?

"For she had not yet been brought over, nor had it come to pass that, being asked, she should lend her favor." So be it: but a good helper never demands to be asked, coming to aid always with spontaneous assistance. "She could not drive off and put the enemy to flight, being still separated from Italy by much sea and land." But to a god, if he is a god, nothing at all is far, for whom the earth is a point and all things are established under his nod. But suppose the divinity was present, as you demand should be believed, in that very stone: is there any of mortals—however credulous he be, and however readily he lends his ears to any fictions whatever—who would judge that she was a goddess at that time, or ought today to be called and named such, who now seeks these things, now demands those, deserts and spurns her own worshippers,

migrates from humbler provinces, and joins herself to more powerful and wealthier peoples? Indeed, she loves the affairs of war, and desires to be amid combats, slaughters, deaths, and gore.

If it is the peculiar property of the gods—provided they are truly gods and such as it befits to be named by the force of that word and the power of the name—to do nothing maliciously, nothing unjustly, and to show themselves to all men with one and equal grace without any partiality, would any of men believe that she was of divine kind or possessed an equity worthy of gods, who, thrusting herself into human discords, broke the power of the greater, offered and showed herself a patroness to some, took liberty from these, raised others to the summit of domination, who, born for the ruin of the human race that a single city might tower above the rest, subjugated the innocent world?