Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 11/87

it was necessary to demonstrate, from the very books which their own authors have committed to memory for the knowledge of the history of past ages, that the matter stands far otherwise than they suppose; and at the same time to teach that the false gods, whom they either worshipped openly or still worship in secret, are most unclean spirits and most malignant and most deceitful demons—so much so that they take delight in crimes, whether true or even feigned, but at any rate their own, which they have willed to be celebrated in their festivals, in order that human weakness might not be recalled from the perpetrating of damnable deeds, while a supposedly divine authority is set forth for the imitating of such things.

These things we have proved not from our own conjecture, but partly from recent memory, since we ourselves also have seen such things presented to such deities, and partly from the writings of those who left these matters recorded for posterity not as a reproach but as an honour to their gods—so much so that Varro, a most learned man among them and of the gravest authority, when he composed his books dividing human matters and divine matters, distributing some to human things and some to divine according to the dignity proper to each, placed the scenic games not even among human things but among divine things; whereas surely, if only good and honourable men were in the city, the scenic games ought not to have been even among human things. This indeed he did not on his own authority, but because, born and bred at Rome, he found them among the divine things.

And since at the end of the first book we briefly set down what should be said next, and have said some of these things in the two following books, we recognize that what remains must be rendered to the expectation of our readers. CHAPTER II. Of those things which are contained in the second and third books. We had therefore promised that we would say certain things against those who refer the disasters of the Roman commonwealth to our religion, and that we would recall whatsoever and however great evils could have occurred, or might seem to suffice, which that city endured, or the provinces belonging to its empire, before their sacrifices had been prohibited;

all of which they would without doubt have attributed to us, if at that time our religion had already shone forth among them, or had thus prohibited them from sacrilegious rites. These things, as far as I judge, we have sufficiently dealt with in the second and third books, treating in the second of the evils of morals, which evils are to be reckoned the only ones, or the greatest; but in the third of those evils which fools alone shudder to suffer, namely of the body and of external things, which for the most part even good men endure; whereas those evils by which men themselves become wicked they hold not patiently but gladly. And how few things I have said about that one city alone and its empire! nor even therein everything down to Caesar Augustus.

What if I had wished to recall and amplify those evils which men do not inflict upon one another in turn—such as the devastations and overthrows of warring peoples—but which befall earthly things from the very elements of the world, which Apuleius briefly touches in one place in that little book he wrote about the world, saying that all earthly things have changes, transformations, and destructions? For (to use his own words) by immoderate tremblings of the earth, he says, the ground has gaped open and cities with their peoples have been engulfed; by sudden downpours whole regions have been washed away; lands too, which had formerly been continents, have been turned into islands by visiting and foreign floods, while others, by the receding of the sea, have been made passable to travel on foot;

that by winds and storms cities have been overthrown; that fires have flashed forth from the clouds, by which the regions of the East have been consumed and perished, while in the tracts of the West certain gushings and overflowings have wrought the same destruction; that thus from the summits of Etna, when its craters once poured forth, rivers of flame ran down the slopes by a divine conflagration, after the manner of a torrent. If I had wished to gather these and suchlike things which history records, from wherever I could, when should I have made an end of those things which befell in those times, before the name of Christ should restrain any of those vanities of theirs that are ruinous to true salvation?

I had also promised that I would demonstrate what their morals were, and for what cause the true God, in whose power are all kingdoms, deigned to help in increasing their empire; and how those whom they reckon gods helped them nothing at all, but rather how greatly they harmed them by deceiving and beguiling. Whence now I see that I must speak, and rather concerning the growth of the Roman empire. For concerning the noxious deceit of the demons whom they worshipped as gods, how much evil it brought into their morals, not a little has already been said, especially in the second book.

But throughout all three completed books, wherever it seemed opportune, we have commended how, even in the very evils of war, God has bestowed upon good and bad alike so much of consolation through the name of Christ—to whom the barbarians showed so much honour, contrary to the custom of wars—in the manner of Him who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust. CHAPTER III. Whether the breadth of empire, which is acquired only by wars, is to be reckoned among the goods either of the wise or of the happy. Now therefore let us see what manner of thing it is that they dare to attribute to those gods so great a breadth and long duration of the Roman empire—gods whom they contend they have honourably worshipped even by the services of base games and by the ministry of base men.

Although I should wish first to inquire a little what reason, what prudence there is in this: that, since you cannot show the felicity of men who are ever engaged amid the disasters of war and amid civil or hostile bloodshed—yet human bloodshed—with gloomy fear and bloody greed, so that a glassy joy is gained, brittle in its splendour, for which it is feared more horribly lest it suddenly be shattered—nevertheless you should wish to glory in the breadth and greatness of empire. That this may be more easily judged, let us not melt away, tossed by empty windiness, nor blunt the keen edge of our attention with the high-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples, kingdoms, provinces;

but let us set up two men (for each single man, as in speech a single letter, so is, as it were, an element of a city and a kingdom, however wide it may be by the occupation of lands), of which two men let us conceive the one to be poor, or rather of middling means, the other exceedingly rich; but the rich man anxious with fears, wasting away with sorrows, burning with greed, never secure, always restless, gasping with the perpetual contentions of enmities, increasing indeed by these miseries his patrimony to an immense degree, but by those increases heaping up also the most bitter cares;

but the other, of middling and modest household means, sufficient unto himself, most dear to his own, rejoicing in sweetest peace with kinsmen, neighbours, and friends, religious in piety, kind in mind, sound in body, frugal in life, chaste in morals, secure in conscience. I know not whether anyone is so out of his senses as to dare to doubt which he would prefer. As therefore in these two men, so in two families, so in two peoples, so in two kingdoms, the rule of equity follows; and if, this being vigilantly applied, our attention be corrected, we shall most easily see where vanity dwells and where felicity. Wherefore, if the true God be worshipped and served with true rites and good morals, it is profitable that good men should reign far and wide and long;

and this is profitable not so much to themselves as to those over whom they reign. For as far as concerns themselves, their piety and probity, which are great gifts of God, suffice them for true felicity, by which both this life is well lived and afterwards the eternal life is attained. In this earthly life, therefore, the reign of good men is bestowed not so much upon themselves as upon human affairs; but the reign of the wicked harms rather the reigning ones themselves, who lay waste their own souls by a greater licence of crimes; while to those who, by serving them, are made subject, it does no harm except their own iniquity. For to the just, whatever of evils is inflicted by unjust masters is not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Accordingly the good man, even though he serve, is free;

but the wicked man, even though he reign, is a slave—and not of one man, but, what is more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices. Concerning which vices the divine Scripture, when it treated of them, says: For by whom anyone is overcome, to him also is he assigned as a slave. CHAPTER IV. How like to robberies kingdoms are without justice. Justice therefore being removed, what are kingdoms but great robberies? for what are robberies themselves but little kingdoms? It too is a band of men, ruled by the command of a chief, bound together by a compact of fellowship, and the booty is divided according to the law of the agreement.

If this evil grows to such a degree by the accession of abandoned men, that it holds places, establishes seats, occupies cities, and subdues peoples, it more openly assumes the name of a kingdom—a name which manifestly confers upon it now, not the removing of greed, but the adding of impunity. For elegantly and truly did a certain captured pirate answer that Alexander the Great. For when the same king asked the man what it seemed to him, that he should infest the sea, he answered with free defiance: 'The same as it seems to you, that you should infest the whole earth; but because I do it with a small ship, I am called a robber; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor.' CHAPTER V. Of the runaway gladiators, whose power was like to royal dignity.

Accordingly I forbear to inquire what sort of men Romulus gathered together, since much consideration was given them, that, by the fellowship of citizenship granted to them out of that former life, they might cease to ponder the penalties due, the fear of which was driving them into greater crimes, so that thereafter they might be more peaceable toward human affairs. This I say: that the Roman empire itself, already great, with many nations subjugated and terrible to the rest, bitterly felt, gravely feared, and with no small effort suppressed in the avoiding of an enormous disaster, when very few gladiators, fleeing from a training-school in Campania, mustered a great army, had three leaders, and laid waste Italy most widely and most cruelly.

Let them say what god helped these men, that from a small and contemptible band of robbers they should arrive at a kingdom to be feared by Roman might and strongholds already so great. Or because they did not last long, shall they on that account be denied to have been divinely helped? As if indeed the very life of any man at all is long-lasting. By this reckoning, then, the gods help no one to reign, since each man dies quickly, nor is that to be counted a benefit which, in each single man—and through him singly, that is to say, in all alike—vanishes in a short time after the manner of vapour. For what does it matter to those who worshipped the gods under Romulus and died long ago, that after their death the Roman empire grew so great, since they plead their own causes among the dead below?

whether good causes or bad, this does not pertain to the matter in hand. But this is to be understood concerning all those who, through that very empire (although it is extended over long stretches of time by the dying and succeeding of mortals), passed swiftly and hastily through the few days of their own life, bearing the burdens of their own deeds. But if even the benefits of a very brief time are to be attributed to the help of the gods, then those gladiators were not a little helped:

they broke the bonds of their servile condition, fled, escaped, gathered a great and most valiant army, and—obedient to the counsels and commands of their kings—being much to be feared by Roman loftiness and unconquerable to several Roman commanders, they took many things, gained very many victories, enjoyed whatever pleasures they wished, did what lust suggested, and at last—until they were conquered, which was done with the greatest difficulty—they lived exalted and reigning. But let us come to greater matters. CHAPTER VI. Of the greed of King Ninus, who, that he might rule more widely, first brought wars upon his neighbours.

Justinus, who, following Trogus Pompeius—a writer in Greek, or rather in a foreign manner—wrote history not only in Latin, as Trogus did, but also briefly, thus begins the work of his books: 'In the beginning of the affairs of races and nations, dominion was in the hands of kings, whom not popular ambition but proven moderation among good men advanced to the height of this majesty. The peoples were bound by no laws [the decisions of princes served as laws]; it was the custom to guard the boundaries of empire rather than to extend them; each man's kingdom was bounded within his own native land. Ninus, king of the Assyrians, was the first of all to change the ancient and, as it were, ancestral custom of the nations by a new greed of empire.

He first brought wars upon his neighbours, and subdued peoples as yet untrained to resist, even to the borders of Libya.' And a little after: 'Ninus,' he says, 'strengthened the greatness of the dominion he had sought by continual possession. The nearest peoples therefore being subdued, when, with the accession of strength, he passed stronger to others, and each victory next at hand was the instrument of the one following, he subjugated the peoples of the whole East.' But with whatever fidelity to facts either this writer or Trogus may have written (for that they have lied in certain things other more trustworthy records show), yet it is established even among other writers that the kingdom of the Assyrians was extended far and wide by King Ninus. And it endured so long that the Roman empire is not yet of its age.

For as those write who have pursued chronological history, this kingdom lasted one thousand two hundred and forty years from the first year in which Ninus began to reign, until it was transferred to the Medes. But to bring wars upon one's neighbours, and to proceed thence against the rest, and to crush and subdue peoples who are not troublesome, by the mere greed of empire—what else is this to be named but grand robbery? CHAPTER VII. Whether earthly kingdoms, amid their advances and declines, are helped or deserted by the aid of the gods. If this kingdom was so great and so prolonged by no aid of the gods, why is the Roman kingdom, ample in places and long-lasting in time, attributed to the Roman gods? For whatever is the cause of the one, the same is also the cause of the other.

But if they contend that this also is to be attributed to the aid of the gods, I ask, of which gods? For the other nations whom Ninus subdued and subjugated did not at that time worship other gods. Or if the Assyrians had their own proper gods, as it were more skilful craftsmen for constructing and preserving empire, did they then die, when they too lost their empire? or, because their wage was not paid them or because a greater was promised, did they prefer to pass over to the Medes, and thence again to the Persians, at the invitation of Cyrus, who promised something more advantageous? Which nation, not within the narrow bounds of the East after the kingdom of Alexander of Macedon—great in places, but very brief in time—still endures even to this day in its own kingdom.

If this is so, then either the gods are unfaithful, who desert their own and pass over to their enemies (which not even the man Camillus did, when, as victor and stormer of a most hostile city, he found Rome, for which he had conquered, ungrateful, yet afterward, forgetting the injury and mindful of his fatherland, freed her again from the Gauls); or they are not so strong as it befits gods to be strong, who can be conquered by human counsels or forces; or, if when they war among themselves it be not the gods who are conquered by men, but the gods who chance to be conquered by other gods—those who are each the proper gods of their several cities—then they too have enmities among themselves, which each takes up on his own part's behalf. A city ought therefore not to have worshipped its own gods more than those others, by whom its own might be helped.

Finally, in whatever way this passing-over of the gods, or flight, or migration, or failing in battle be understood, not yet in those times and in those parts of the earth had the name of Christ been preached, when those kingdoms were lost and transferred through enormous warlike disasters. For after one thousand two hundred and some odd years, when the kingdom was taken from the Assyrians, if the Christian religion had already there preached another eternal kingdom and forbidden the sacrilegious worship of false gods, what else would the vain men of that nation have said, but that the kingdom which had been preserved so long could have perished from no other cause than that their religions were forsaken and that other received?

In which utterance of vanity, such as it might have been, let these men attend to their own mirror, and blush to complain of like things, if there is any shame in them. And yet the Roman empire has been afflicted rather than changed—which happened to it at other times also, before the name of Christ, and from that affliction it was restored, nor is this to be despaired of in these times. For who knows the will of God concerning this matter? CHAPTER VIII. By the protection of which gods the Romans suppose their empire was increased and preserved, since they believed that to single deities was scarcely to be entrusted the guardianship of single things. Then let us inquire, if it please, out of so great a throng of gods which the Romans worshipped, which one especially, or which gods, they believe to have enlarged and preserved that empire.

For surely in this so illustrious a work, and one most full of dignity, they do not dare to assign any parts to the goddess Cloacina, or to Volupia, who is named from pleasure, or to Lubentina, whose name is from lust, or to Vaticanus, who presides over the wailings of infants, or to Cunina, who administers their cradles. But when can all the names of the gods and goddesses be recorded in one place of this book, which they themselves could scarcely comprehend in huge volumes, distributing to single things the proper offices of the deities? Nor did they think the charge of the fields should be committed to any one god, but they set the goddess Rusina over the country districts, the god Iugatinus over the ridges of mountains; over the hills they placed the goddess Collatina, over the valleys Vallonia.

Nor could they even find a single Segetia of such a kind, to whom they might once for all commend the crops; but the sown grain, as long as it was under the earth, they willed to have the goddess Seia set over it; when now it was above the earth and forming the standing corn, the goddess Segetia; but the grain once gathered and stored away, that it might be kept safe, they set over it the goddess Tutilina. To whom would not that Segetia have seemed to suffice, as long as the standing crop should come from its grassy beginnings even to the dry ears of corn? Yet it was not enough for men who loved a multitude of gods, that the wretched soul should be prostituted to a throng of demons, having disdained the chaste embrace of the one true God.

They therefore set Proserpina over the germinating grain, the god Nodutus over the knots and joints of the stalks, the goddess Volutina over the wrappings of the husks; when the husks open, that the ear may come forth, the goddess Patelana; when the crops are made even with their new ears (since to make the old ones even they called 'hostire'), the goddess Hostilina; over the flowering grain the goddess Flora, over that which is becoming milky the god Lacturnus, over that which is ripening the goddess Matuta; when they are weeded, that is, taken away from the earth, the goddess Runcina. Nor do I recount them all, for it wearies me with what does not shame them.

But these very few things I have said for this reason, that it might be understood that they could in no way dare to say that those deities established, increased, and preserved the Roman empire, who were thus each applied to their own offices, so that nothing universal was entrusted to any single one. When therefore could Segetia have charge of the empire, who was not permitted to have charge of both the crops and the trees at once? When could Cunina have thought of arms, whose office was not allowed to exceed the cradles of little ones? When could Nodutus have helped in war, who pertained not even to the husk of the ear, but only to the knot of the joint? Each man sets one doorkeeper over his house, and, because he is a man, he wholly suffices: these men set up three gods—Forculus over the doors, Cardea over the hinge, Limentinus over the threshold.

Thus Forculus could not at the same time guard both the hinge and the threshold. CHAPTER IX. Whether the magnitude and long duration of the Roman empire was to be ascribed to Jupiter, whom his worshippers suppose to be the supreme god. Setting aside therefore, or for a while suspending, that throng of petty gods, we ought to inquire into the office of the greater gods, by which Rome was made so great as to rule so long over so many nations. Doubtless then this is the work of Jupiter. For they wish him to be the king of all the gods and goddesses: this his sceptre indicates, this the Capitol on the high hill. Concerning this god they cite, most fittingly, what was said by a poet: 'All things are full of Jove.' Him Varro believes to be worshipped even by those who worship one God alone without an image, but called by another name.

But if this is so, why was he so ill-treated at Rome, as indeed among the rest of the nations also, that an image should be made for him? This displeases even Varro himself so much that, although he was pressed by the perverse custom of so great a city, he nevertheless in no wise hesitated to say and write that those who set up images for the peoples both removed fear and added error. CHAPTER X. What opinions they followed who set various gods over various parts of the world. Why also is Juno joined to him as a wife, who is called 'sister and consort'? Because, they say, we receive Jupiter in the ether, Juno in the air, and these two elements are joined together, the one higher, the other lower.

Then he of whom it was said 'All things are full of Jove' is not the one, if Juno too fills some part. Or does each fill both, and are both these consorts present in both these elements, and in each at once? Why then is the ether given to Jupiter, the air to Juno? Finally, these two themselves would be enough: what is the reason that the sea is attributed to Neptune, the earth to Pluto? And lest these too should remain without consorts, Salacia is added to Neptune, Proserpina to Pluto. For as Juno holds the lower part of heaven, that is, the air (they say), so Salacia holds the lower part of the sea, and Proserpina the lower part of the earth. They seek how they may patch up their fables, and find it not.

For if these things were so, their ancients would rather have brought forth that there are three elements of the world, not four, so that single marriages of the gods might be divided among single elements. But now they have in every way affirmed that the ether is one thing, the air another. But water, whether higher or lower, is at any rate water; suppose it be dissimilar: is it on that account so far different as not to be water? And the lower earth, what else can it be than earth, distinguished by however great a diversity? Next, behold, now the corporeal world is completed entire in these four, or three, elements: where will Minerva be? what will she hold? what will she fill? For she is set up together with these in the Capitol, though she is not the daughter of both.

Or if they say that Minerva holds the higher part of the ether, and that on this occasion the poets feign that she was born from the head of Jupiter: why then is she not rather reckoned queen of the gods, since she is higher than Jupiter? Or is it because it was unworthy to set a daughter before her father? Why then was that justice not preserved on Jupiter's own part toward Saturn? Was it because he was conquered? Did they then fight? 'Away with it,' they say; 'that is the chatter of fables.' Lo, let the fables not be believed, and let better things be thought concerning the gods: why then was there not given to Jupiter's father a seat of honour, if not loftier, at least equal? Because Saturn (they say) is the length of time. Time therefore they worship who worship Saturn, and Jupiter the king of the gods is insinuated to have been born from time.

For what unworthy thing is said, when Jupiter and Juno are said to be born of time, if he is heaven and she earth, since heaven and earth at any rate were made? for this too their learned and wise men have in their books. And it was said by Virgil not of poetic fictions, but out of the books of the philosophers: 'Then the almighty father, the ether, with fruitful showers descended into the lap of his joyful consort'—that is, into the lap of the soil or the earth; since here too they wish there to be certain differences, and in the earth itself they suppose one thing to be Terra, another Tellus, another Tellumo, and they hold all these to be gods called by their own names, distinguished by their own offices, venerated with their own altars and rites.

The same earth they also call the mother of the gods, so that the poets now feign more tolerable things, if according to these men's books—not poetic, but sacred—Juno is not only 'sister and consort,' but also the mother of Jupiter. The same earth they would have to be Ceres, the same also Vesta; though more often they affirm Vesta to be nothing but fire pertaining to the hearths, without which a city cannot exist, and that therefore virgins are wont to serve her, because, just as nothing is born from a virgin, so nothing is born from fire. Which whole vanity it certainly behoved to be abolished and extinguished by Him who was born of a Virgin.

For who could endure that, although they have attributed so much honour and, as it were, chastity to fire, they sometimes do not blush even to call Vesta also Venus, so that the venerated virginity should vanish in her handmaids? For if Vesta is Venus, how have virgins rightly served her by abstaining from the works of Venus? Are there two Venuses, one a virgin, the other a woman? Or rather three—one of virgins, who is also Vesta, another of the married, another of harlots? To whom also the Phoenicians used to give a gift from the prostitution of their daughters, before they joined them to husbands. Which of these is the wife of Vulcan? Not the virgin, surely, since she has a husband. But far be it that she be the harlot, lest we seem to do injury to the son of Juno and the fellow-worker of Minerva.

Therefore she is understood to pertain to the married women: but we would not have them imitate her in that which she did with Mars. 'Again,' they say, 'you return to fables.' What justice is this, to be angry with us because we say such things about their gods, and yet not to be angry with themselves, who most willingly behold in the theatres these very crimes of their gods? And—what would be incredible were it not proved by the most attested testimony—these very theatrical crimes of the gods were instituted in honour of those same gods. CHAPTER XI. Of the many gods whom the more learned of the pagans defend to be one and the same Jupiter. Therefore, by however many physical reasonings and disputations they may maintain it: