Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 10/87

But as for these gods who, it is alleged, are worshipped for this reason and required to be worshipped for this reason — that the felicity of these passing and transitory things may be secure — what answer will their defenders and apologists give us concerning the men of Saguntum who perished, except what they gave concerning Regulus who was put to death? This indeed is the difference: that he was one man, while this was a whole city; yet in both cases the cause of destruction was the keeping of faith. For on account of this Regulus willed to return to the enemy, and Saguntum was unwilling to go over to them. Does faith, then, when kept, provoke the anger of the gods? Or can not only individual men but whole cities perish even when the gods are favourable? Let them choose whichever they will. For if those gods are angry at the keeping of faith, let them look for treacherous men by whom they may be worshipped;

but if, even when they are favourable, men and cities can be afflicted with many grievous torments and perish, then they are worshipped to no profit of this felicity. Let those, therefore, cease to be indignant who think themselves made wretched because the sacred rites of their gods have been lost. For even with those gods remaining, indeed even favouring them, they might not merely murmur about misery as they now do, but, like Regulus and the Saguntines of old, be horribly tortured and even utterly perish. CHAPTER XXI. How ungrateful the Roman state was to Scipio its deliverer, and amid what manners it conducted itself at the very time when Sallust describes it as having been most excellent.

Now, between the second and the last Carthaginian war — when Sallust said that the Romans conducted themselves with the best morals and the greatest concord (for I pass over much, keeping in mind the limits of the work I have undertaken) — in that very period of the best morals and greatest concord, that Scipio, the liberator of Rome and Italy, the illustrious and admirable finisher of that second Punic war which was so dreadful, so destructive, so perilous, the conqueror of Hannibal and subduer of Carthage, whose life from boyhood is described as devoted to the gods and nurtured in the temples — he yielded to the accusations of his enemies, and, deprived of the fatherland which by his own valour he had restored safe and free, lived out and completed the remainder of his life in the town of Liternum; after his distinguished triumph he was seized by no longing for that city, so that he is reported to have given orders that not even after his death should his funeral be held in his ungrateful fatherland.

Then, for the first time, during the proconsulship of Gnaeus Manlius who triumphed over the Gallo-Greeks, Asiatic luxury — worse than any enemy — crept into Rome. For then, it is reported, bronze couches and costly coverlets were first seen; then harp-girls and other licentious wantonness were brought into banquets. But I have undertaken to speak here of those evils which men suffer intolerably, not of those which they do willingly. Hence that point which I recalled about Scipio — that yielding to his enemies he died outside the fatherland which he had freed — pertains more to the present argument: namely, that the Roman deities, from whose temples he turned Hannibal away, gave him no return — those deities who are worshipped solely for the sake of this felicity.

But because Sallust said that at that time morals there were the best, for this reason I thought it worth recalling this matter of Asiatic luxury, so that it may be understood that even that statement was made by Sallust by comparison with other times — times in which, amid the most grievous discords, morals were assuredly worse. For then, that is, between the second and last Carthaginian war, that Voconian law also was passed, that no one should make a woman his heir, not even an only daughter. What law more unjust than this could be spoken or conceived, I do not know. Yet throughout that whole interval of the two Punic wars the unhappiness was more bearable. The army was worn down only by wars abroad, but was consoled by victories;

and at home no discords raged, as at other times. But in the last Punic war, by a single onset of the other Scipio — who on this account himself also gained the surname Africanus — the rival of the Roman empire was destroyed from its root; and thereafter the Roman commonwealth was overwhelmed with such mounds of evils that, through that prosperity and security of affairs by which, with morals exceedingly corrupted, those evils were heaped up, Carthage so quickly overthrown is shown to have done more harm than it had previously done, so long adverse.

During this whole time, down to Caesar Augustus — who is seen to have wrested from the Romans in every way that liberty which, even in their own opinion, was no longer glorious but contentious and ruinous and plainly already enervated and languishing, and to have recalled all things to royal authority, and as it were to have restored and renewed the commonwealth which had collapsed as though from a diseased old age — throughout that whole time, then, I pass over the military disasters arising from one cause after another, and the Numantine treaty stained with horrible disgrace; for the chicks had flown out of the cage and, as they say, had made an evil augury for the consul Mancinus;

as though, throughout so many years in which that tiny city had beset and afflicted the Roman army and had now begun to be a terror to the Roman commonwealth itself, others had advanced against it under another augury. CHAPTER XXII. Concerning the edict of Mithridates, by which he ordered all Roman citizens found within Asia to be slain. But these things, I say, I pass over, although I would by no means be silent about this — that Mithridates, king of Asia, ordered the Roman citizens sojourning everywhere throughout Asia, intent on their own business in an innumerable multitude, to be killed in a single day; and it was done.

How pitiable a sight of things that was — that each man, wherever he was found, in the field, on the road, in the town, in his home, in the village, in the forum, in the temple, in his bed, at a banquet, should be unexpectedly and impiously butchered! What groans of the dying, what tears of the onlookers — perhaps even of those who struck — there were! How harsh the necessity laid upon hosts, not only of seeing those abominable slaughters in their own homes, but even of perpetrating them, their countenances suddenly changed from that gentle courtesy of human kindness to the carrying out of a hostile business in time of peace — wounds, I may well say, that were mutual, since the one struck was wounded in body and the striker in soul! Had all these too despised the auguries?

Did they not have household and public gods to consult, when they set out from their own dwellings for that journey from which there was no return? If this is so, they have no ground for complaining in this matter about our times; the Romans of old despise these vain things. But if they did consult them, let it be answered: what did those gods avail, when by human laws alone, with none forbidding, such things were permitted? CHAPTER XXIII. Concerning the inner evils by which the Roman commonwealth was harassed, preceded by a portent which consisted in the raving of all the animals that serve men. But now let us briefly, so far as we can, recall those evils which, by how much more inward, by so much more wretched they proved to be:

civil — or rather uncivil — discords; and now no longer mere seditions, but the very wars within the city, where so much blood was shed, where party zeal raged against one another no longer in the disputes of assemblies and various clamours, but plainly now with sword and arms; the social wars, the servile wars, the civil wars — how much Roman blood did they pour forth, how great a devastation and desolation of Italy did they bring about!

For before the Latin allies stirred themselves against Rome, all the animals subjected to human uses — dogs, horses, asses, oxen, and whatever other cattle were under the dominion of men — suddenly grew savage and, forgetting their domestic tameness, abandoned their stalls and wandered free, shunning the approach not only of others but even of their own masters, not without destruction or peril to anyone who dared, if anyone pressed upon them from nearby. Of how great an evil was this a sign, if it was a sign — that it was so great an evil; or even if it was not a sign at all! If this had happened in our times, we should suffer those men to be more rabid than their own animals were. CHAPTER XXIV. Concerning the civil discord which the Gracchan seditions stirred up.

Now the beginning of the civil evils was the seditions of the Gracchi, stirred up by the agrarian laws. For they wished to divide among the people the lands which the nobility wrongfully possessed. But to dare to uproot an inveterate iniquity was most perilous — indeed, as the event itself taught, most destructive. What funerals took place when the elder Gracchus was slain! And what others too, when his brother, after no long interval! For not by laws and by the order of the magistracies, but by mobs and the clashes of arms were the noble and the obscure slain alike. After the killing of the other Gracchus, Lucius

Opimius the consul, who had taken up arms against him within the City, and who, after this man and his associates had been crushed and slain, had made an enormous slaughter of citizens — when he held an inquiry, pursuing the rest by judicial investigation, is reported to have put to death three thousand men. From this it can be understood how great a multitude of deaths the turbulent clash of arms could have produced, when even the sifted process of trials produced so great a number. The slayer of Gracchus himself sold the latter's head to the consul for as much weight in gold as it weighed; for this bargain had preceded the slaughter. In this same affair was also slain, together with his children, Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank. CHAPTER XXV. Concerning the temple of Concord, built by a decree of the senate in the place of seditions and slaughters.

By a truly elegant decree of the senate, in that very place where that deadly tumult had been committed, where so many citizens of every order had fallen, a temple of Concord was built, so that, as a witness of the Gracchi's punishment, it might strike the eyes of those who harangued and prick their memory. But what else was this than a mockery of the gods — to build a temple to that goddess who, if she were truly in the city, would not have it crumble, torn apart by such great dissensions? Unless perhaps Concord, guilty of this crime because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, deserved to be shut up in that temple as in a prison. For why, if they wished to make it agree with what had been done, did they not rather build there a temple of Discord?

Or is any reason given why Concord should be a goddess and Discord not be a goddess, so that, according to Labeo's distinction, the one is good and the other evil? Nor does he himself seem to have followed anything else than that he noticed that at Rome a temple had been established to Fever as well as to Health. In that way, then, a temple ought to have been established not only to Concord but also to Discord. Perilously, therefore, did the Romans wish to live with so evil a goddess angered, nor did they recall that the destruction of Troy had taken its origin from her offence. For she, because she had not been invited among the gods, contrived the strife of the three goddesses by laying down the golden apple; whence came the quarrel of the deities, and Venus the victor, and Helen carried off, and Troy destroyed.

Wherefore, if perhaps she was indignant because she had merited no temple among the gods in the City, and on that account was now disturbing the city with such great tumults — how much more fiercely could she have been provoked, when in the place of that slaughter, that is, in the place of her own work, she saw a temple set up to her adversary! At these vain things, which we deride, those learned and wise men grow vexed; and yet, worshippers of good and evil deities though they are, they do not get free of this question concerning Concord and Discord: either they have passed over the worship of these goddesses and preferred to them Fever and Bellona, to whom they have built ancient shrines, or they have also worshipped these very ones, since thus, with Concord departing, raging Discord has led them even into civil wars. CHAPTER XXVI.

Concerning the diverse kinds of war which followed after the building of the temple of Concord. As a splendid barrier against sedition, indeed, they thought the temple of Concord — a witness of the slaughter and punishment of the Gracchi — should be set before the haranguers. How much they profited from this, the worse things that followed make plain. For thereafter the demagogues laboured not to avoid the example of the Gracchi, but to surpass their design: Lucius Saturninus, tribune of the plebs, and Gaius Servilius the praetor, and much later Marcus Drusus — by the seditions of all of whom there blazed up, first slaughters already then most grievous, then the social wars, by which Italy was violently afflicted and brought to a wondrous devastation and desolation. Then a servile war succeeded, and civil wars.

What battles were fought, what blood was shed, so that nearly all the Italian peoples, over whom the Roman empire chiefly prevailed, were subdued as though they were a savage barbarism! Now, from the very fewest — that is, fewer than seventy — gladiators, how the servile war was set in motion, to how great a number and to what fierce and savage strength it attained, what commanders of the Roman people that number overcame, what cities and regions, and in what manner, it laid waste — scarcely could even those who have written history sufficiently explain. Nor was that the only servile war, but slaves first ravaged the province of Macedonia, and afterwards Sicily and the seacoast.

How great and how dreadful were the robberies they at first committed, and afterwards the mighty wars of the pirates — who could tell it in a measure equal to the magnitude of these things? CHAPTER XXVII. Concerning the civil war of Marius and Sulla. But when Marius, already stained with civil blood, after many of the opposing party had been slain, was conquered and had fled from the City, and the state had scarcely caught its breath a little — to use the words of Tully — 'afterwards Cinna with Marius prevailed. Then indeed, with the most illustrious men slain, the lights of the state were extinguished.' Sulla afterwards avenged the cruelty of this victory — there is no need even to say with how great a diminution of citizens and how great a calamity to the commonwealth.

For concerning this vengeance, which was more destructive than if the crimes that were being punished had been left unpunished, Lucan too says: 'The remedy exceeded its measure and followed too far the path to which the disease had led its hand. The guilty perished; but only when none but the guilty could survive.' In that war of Marius and Sulla, besides those who fell abroad in the line of battle, in the City itself the streets, the squares, the forums, the theatres, the temples were filled with corpses, so that it was hard to judge when the victors produced more deaths — whether at first, that they might conquer, or afterwards, because they had conquered;

for when first the Marian victory came — when Marius restored himself from exile — besides the slaughters committed everywhere on every side, the head of Octavius the consul was set upon the rostra; the Caesars were butchered in their own houses by Fimbria; the two Crassi, father and son, were slain in each other's sight; Baebius and Numitorius were dragged with hooks and perished with their entrails scattered; Catulus withdrew himself from the hands of his enemies by draining poison; Merula, the priest of Jupiter, his veins cut open, made libation to his own Jupiter even with his own blood. And before the very eyes of Marius were struck down those to whom, when they saluted him, he had refused to extend his right hand. CHAPTER XXVIII. What the Sullan victory was like, the avenger of the Marian cruelty.

But the Sullan victory that followed — the avenger, that is, of this cruelty — after so much citizen blood, by the shedding of which it had been procured, when the war was now ended and only enmities yet lived, raged more cruelly in peace. For after the former and most recent slaughters of the elder Marius, others still more grievous had been added by the younger Marius and by Carbo, of the same Marian party, who, with Sulla pressing upon them and despairing not only of victory but even of their very safety, filled all things with slaughters of their own people. For besides the carnage spread far and wide through divers places, even the senate being besieged, men were brought forth from the senate-house itself, as from a prison, to the sword.

Mucius Scaevola the pontiff — since among the Romans nothing was held more sacred than the temple of Vesta — was slain while embracing the very altar, and almost extinguished with his own blood that fire which by the perpetual care of the virgins was ever burning. Then Sulla the victor entered the City, who in the Villa Publica — now not in war but with peace itself raging — had laid low seven thousand men who had surrendered (and were therefore unarmed), not by fighting but by command. And throughout the whole City each follower of Sulla struck down whomever he wished, so that the funerals could not be numbered at all, until it was suggested to Sulla that some ought to be allowed to live, so that there might be those over whom the victors could rule.

Then at last, when that frenzied license of slaughter — which was being carried hither and thither everywhere — was checked, that famous list was posted with great rejoicing, which contained the names of two thousand men of either splendid order, the equestrian and the senatorial namely, who were to be killed and proscribed. The number saddened, but the limit consoled; nor was there so much grief because so many were falling as there was joy because the rest were not afraid. But in the case of some of those who were ordered to die, even that security of the rest — cruel though it was — groaned at the exquisite kinds of death. For one man the hands of those rending him tore to pieces without a sword — men more savagely tearing a living man than beasts are wont to rend an abandoned carcass.

Another, with his eyes gouged out and his limbs cut off piece by piece, was forced to live long — or rather to die long — amid such great torments. Certain noble cities too were put up for sale as though they were country estates; and one indeed was ordered to be slaughtered entire, just as a single defendant might be ordered to execution. These things were done in peace after the war — not that victory might be hastened in the gaining, but lest, once gained, it should be despised. Peace contended with war in cruelty, and conquered. For war laid low the armed, peace the disarmed. War was such that he who was struck might, if he could, strike back; but peace was such, not that he who had escaped might live, but that the dying might not resist. CHAPTER XXIX.

Concerning the comparison of the Gothic irruption with those disasters which the Romans suffered either from the Gauls or from the authors of the civil wars. What frenzy of foreign nations, what savagery of barbarians can be compared to this victory of citizens over citizens? What did Rome see more deadly, more foul, more bitter — whether the irruption of the Gauls of old and of the Goths a little while ago, or the ferocity of Marius and Sulla and other most illustrious men of their parties, as though her own lights, turned against her own members? The Gauls indeed butchered the senate — whatever of it they could find throughout the whole City, except the Capitoline citadel, which alone was somehow defended;

but to those established on that hill they at least sold life for gold, which though they could not seize by the sword, they might yet wear down by siege; whereas the Goths spared so many senators that it is the more to be wondered at that they slew any. But Sulla, while Marius was still alive, as victor occupied for the decreeing of slaughters the very Capitol which had been safe from the Gauls; and when Marius had slipped away in flight, destined to return fiercer and more bloody, that man on the Capitol deprived many of life and goods, even by a decree of the senate. But on the Marian side, when Sulla was absent, what was sacred that they would spare, when they did not spare even Mucius — a citizen, a senator, a pontiff — clinging in piteous embrace to the very altar where, as they say, the fates of Rome resided?

Moreover that last Sullan list — to pass over the other countless deaths — slew more senators than the Goths were even able to despoil. CHAPTER XXX. Concerning the chain of wars, very many and most grievous, which preceded the coming of Christ. With what brow, then, with what heart, with what shamelessness, with what folly — or rather what madness — do they not impute these things to their own gods, and impute these things to our Christ?

The cruel civil wars — more bitter than all wars against enemies, by the confession even of their own authors, wars by which that commonwealth was judged not merely afflicted but utterly ruined — arose long before the coming of Christ, and by a chaining-together of wicked causes proceeded from the war of Marius and Sulla to the wars of Sertorius and Catiline (of whom the one had been proscribed by Sulla, the other reared by him); thence to the war of Lepidus and Catulus (of whom the one desired to rescind, the other to defend, the deeds of Sulla); thence to the war of Pompey and Caesar (of whom Pompey had been a follower of Sulla and had either equalled or now even surpassed his power; while Caesar could not endure Pompey's power, but only because he did not have it himself,

a power which, however, when Pompey was conquered and slain, he surpassed); and from here they came to the other Caesar, who was afterwards called Augustus, under whose rule Christ was born. For Augustus himself too waged civil wars with many, and in them many most illustrious men perished, among whom was also Cicero, that eloquent master of governing the commonwealth. For Gaius Caesar, the conqueror of Pompey, who exercised his civil victory with clemency and granted to his adversaries life and dignity, was butchered in the very senate-house, as though he were an aspirant to kingship, by a conspiracy of certain noble senators, ostensibly for the liberty of the commonwealth.

After this, his power Antony — far different in character and defiled and corrupted by every vice — was seen to be reaching for; and against him, for that same liberty as it were of the fatherland, Cicero vehemently resisted. At that time there had emerged that other Caesar, a youth of wonderful natural gifts, the adopted son of that Gaius Caesar, who, as I said, was afterwards called Augustus.

Cicero favoured this young Caesar, so that his power against Antony might be nurtured, hoping that, with Antony's domination driven off and crushed, he would restore the liberty of the commonwealth — so blind and improvident of the future was Cicero, that this very youth, whose dignity and power he was fostering, both permitted that same Cicero to be killed by Antony, as by a kind of compact of concord, and subjected to his own sway that very liberty of the commonwealth for which Cicero had so loudly cried out. CHAPTER XXXI. How shamelessly they impute present misfortunes to Christ, since they are not permitted to worship the gods, when such great disasters occurred at the very time when those gods were worshipped.

Let those accuse their own gods of so many evils, who are ungrateful to our Christ for so many goods. Certainly, when those evils were happening, the altars of the deities were warm, they smoked with Sabaean incense and were fragrant with fresh garlands, the priesthoods were renowned, the shrines glittered, sacrifice was offered, games were held, frenzies raged in the temples — at the very time when everywhere so much blood of citizens was poured out by citizens, not only in other places, but even amid the very altars of the gods. Tullius did not choose a temple to which to flee, because Mucius had chosen one in vain. But these men, who insult the Christian times far more unworthily, either fled to places most especially dedicated to Christ, or were even led thither by the barbarians themselves that they might live. This I know, and so does anyone with me who judges without party zeal;

he most easily recognizes (to omit the rest, the many things I have recalled and many others far more numerous which I have thought it tedious to recall): if the human race before the Punic wars had received the Christian discipline, and there had followed so great a devastation of things as that which in those wars crushed Europe and Africa, none of such men as we now endure would have failed to attribute those evils to the Christian religion. But much less would their voices be tolerated, so far as concerns the Romans, if upon the reception and spreading abroad of the Christian religion there had followed either the irruption of the Gauls, or that ravaging by the Tiber's flood and by fire, or — that which surpasses all evils — those civil wars.

There were also other evils which happened so incredibly that they were numbered among portents — had they occurred in Christian times, to whom but to Christian men would they have cast them up as crimes? I pass over indeed those things which were more marvellous than harmful: that oxen spoke; that infants not yet born cried out certain words from their mothers' wombs; that serpents flew; that women and hens were changed into the male sex, and other things of this kind — which in their books, not fabulous but historical, whether true or false, bring upon men not destruction but astonishment.

But when earth rained down, when chalk rained down, when it rained stones — not in the way hail is wont to be called by this name, but stones outright — these things assuredly could even gravely injure. We read in their writings that, when the fires of Etna ran down from the very summit of the mountain to the nearest shore, the sea so boiled that rocks were burned, that the pitch of ships was melted. This surely was no light harm, however incredibly marvellous. Again, by the same burning of fires, they wrote that Sicily was so filled with so great a force of ash that the roofs of the city of Catina were buried and crushed and brought down; moved by which calamity, the Romans mercifully remitted to it the tribute of that same year.

They committed to writing that in Africa too a multitude of locusts, similar to a portent, occurred when it was already a province of the Roman people; for, the fruits and the leaves of the trees being consumed, they say that with a vast and inestimable cloud the locusts were cast down into the sea, and, dying and given back to the shores, and the air thereby corrupted, so great a pestilence arose that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone eight hundred thousand men are reported to have perished, and far more in the lands nearest the shores. Then at Utica, out of thirty thousand young men who were there, they affirm that ten thousand remained. Such vanity, then, as we endure and are compelled to answer — which of these things would it not attribute to the Christian religion, if it saw them in Christian times?

And yet they do not attribute these things to their own gods, whose worship they on this account demand — lest they suffer even lesser evils — when they endured those greater evils from the very gods by whom they were formerly worshipped. CHAPTER I. Concerning those things which were discussed in the first volume. Having begun to speak of the City of God, I thought it right first to answer its enemies, who, pursuing earthly joys and gaping after fleeting things, find fault with the Christian religion — which alone is the wholesome and true religion — for whatever sad thing they suffer in those things, by the mercy of an admonishing God rather than the severity of a punishing one.

And since among them there is also an unlearned crowd, who are stirred up to a more grievous hatred of us as though by the authority of learned men—the ignorant supposing that those things which have happened in unusual fashion in their own times were not wont to happen in other ages gone by, and the learned, who know that this opinion is false, confirming it by feigning ignorance of what they know, so that they may seem to have just grounds of complaint against us: