Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 8/87

For at that earlier time many fled from there, and many at least, though taken captive, lived on in slavery; but Fimbria first issued an edict that no one should be spared, and burned the whole city and all the men in it with fire. This Ilium deserved, not from the Greeks whom it had provoked by its own iniquity, but from the Romans whom it had propagated by its own calamity—while those gods, common to both, gave no help whatever to ward off these things, or, what is the truth, had no power to do so. Did not even then 'all the gods, leaving the shrines and altars deserted, depart'—the gods by whom that town had stood, restored after the ancient fires and ruins of the Greeks? But if they had departed, I seek the reason; and the more I find the cause of the townsmen better, the more I find that of the gods worse.

For they had shut their gates against Fimbria, in order to keep the city intact for Sulla; whereupon, enraged, he burned them, or rather utterly destroyed them. Now up to that point Sulla was the leader of the better side in the civil strife; up to that point he was striving by arms to recover the commonwealth; he had not yet had the evil outcomes of these good beginnings. What better thing, then, could the citizens of that city have done, what more honourable, what more faithful, what more worthy of their Roman kinship, than to keep their city for the better cause of the Romans and to shut their gates against the parricide of the Roman commonwealth? Yet let the defenders of the gods mark to how great a destruction this turned for them. Suppose the gods abandoned the adulterers and left Ilium to the flames of the Greeks, so that from its ashes a chaster Rome might be born:

why did they afterward also abandon that same city, kin to the Romans—a noble daughter not rebelling against Rome, but keeping the most constant and most dutiful loyalty to the juster side of Rome—and leave it to be destroyed, not by valiant Greek men, but by a most filthy man of the Romans? Or if the cause of the Sullan party was displeasing to the gods, the party for which those wretches had shut their gates in keeping the city, why did they promise and foretell such great goods to that same Sulla? Or are they here recognized as flatterers of the fortunate rather than as defenders of the unfortunate? Therefore Ilium was not overthrown even then, when it was abandoned by them. For the demons, ever most vigilant for deceiving, did what they could.

For when, along with the town, all the images had been overthrown and burned, only that of Minerva, beneath the great ruin of her temple, is reported—as Livy writes—to have stood unharmed; not so that it might be said, to the gods' praise, 'The fatherland's gods, beneath whose divine power Troy ever stands,' but rather so that it might not be said, in their defence, 'All the gods departed, leaving the shrines and altars deserted.' For they were permitted to do that much, not whereby they might be proved powerful, but whereby they might be convicted of being present. CHAPTER VIII. Whether Rome ought to have been entrusted to the gods of Ilium. With what prudence, then, after the very lesson of Troy itself, was Rome entrusted to be guarded to the gods of Ilium? Someone may say that they were already accustomed to dwell at Rome when Ilium fell to the assault of Fimbria. Whence, then, did the image of Minerva stand?

Furthermore, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Ilium, perhaps they were at Ilium when Rome herself was captured and burned by the Gauls; but since they are most keen of hearing and most swift of movement, at the cry of the goose they quickly returned, so as at least to guard the Capitoline hill, which had remained; yet to defend the other parts they were warned to return too late. CHAPTER IX. Whether it should be believed that the gods bestowed that peace which existed under the reign of Numa. These same gods are also believed to have aided Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, so that throughout the whole time of his reign he might have peace and might close the gates of Janus, which are wont to lie open in wartime—by this merit, namely, that he established many sacred rites for the Romans.

That man was indeed to be congratulated on so great a leisure, if only he had known how to spend it on wholesome pursuits, and, having put aside his most pernicious curiosity, to seek out the true God with true piety. But as it was, the gods did not confer that leisure upon him; rather, they would perhaps have deceived him less, had they found him by no means at leisure. For the less occupied they found him, the more they themselves occupied him. For what he contrived, and by what arts he was able to associate such gods with himself or with that city, Varro relates—a matter which, if it please the Lord, shall be discussed more carefully in its own place. For now, since the question concerns their benefits:

peace is a great benefit, but it is a benefit of the true God, like the sun, like the rain and other supports of life, which He bestows for the most part even upon the ungrateful and the worthless. But if those gods conferred this so great good upon Rome or upon Pompilius, why did they never afterward grant it to the Roman empire throughout those praiseworthy times? Were the sacred rites more useful when they were being instituted than when, once instituted, they were being celebrated? But at that time they did not yet exist, but were being added in order that they might exist; afterward, however, they already existed, and were being preserved in order that they might profit.

What, then, is the explanation that those forty-three years—or, as others would have it, thirty-nine—were passed in such long peace while Numa reigned, and yet afterward, when the sacred rites had been instituted and the gods themselves, who had been invited by those very rites, were already presiding and acting as guardians, scarcely after so many years, from the founding of the City down to Augustus, is one single year commemorated as a great miracle—after the first Punic war—in which the Romans were able to close the gates of war? CHAPTER X. Whether it ought to have been desired that the Roman empire should be enlarged amid so great a madness of wars, when, with the zeal employed under Numa, it might have been both quiet and safe.

Do they reply that, unless by continual wars succeeding one another without break, the Roman empire could not have been enlarged so far and wide and spread abroad with such immense glory? A fitting cause indeed! In order that the empire might be great, why ought it to have been restless? Is it not better, in the bodies of men, to have a moderate stature with health than to attain to some gigantic bulk through perpetual afflictions, and, when you have attained it, not to find rest, but, the larger the limbs, to be troubled by the greater the evils? What evil, indeed—nay rather, what abundance of good—would there have been, had those times endured which Sallust touched upon when he says:

'Therefore in the beginning the kings (for upon earth this was the first name of dominion) were diverse: some exercised the mind, others the body; even then the life of men was passed without covetousness, and each was sufficiently content with his own.' Was it, then, in order that the empire might be enlarged so greatly, that what Virgil detests should come to pass, when he says: 'Until little by little an age worse and degenerate, and the madness of war, and the love of having, succeeded'? But surely, for so many wars undertaken and waged, the just defence of the Romans is this: that not the greed of acquiring human praise, but the necessity of protecting their safety and liberty, compelled them to resist enemies importunately rushing upon them. So be it, plainly.

For after their affairs, as Sallust himself writes, had been increased by laws, by morals, and by lands, and seemed sufficiently prosperous and sufficiently powerful—as most things of mortals are held—envy arose out of their wealth. 'Therefore neighbouring kings and peoples made trial of them in war; few of their friends were of help, for the rest, smitten with fear, kept away from the dangers. But the Romans, intent at home and in the field, hastened, made ready, exhorted one another, went out to meet the enemy, and protected with arms their liberty, their fatherland, and their parents. Afterward, when by valour they had repelled the dangers, they bore aid to their allies and friends, and procured friendships rather by giving than by receiving benefits.' By such arts Rome fittingly grew.

But while Numa reigned, in order that there might be such long peace, did wicked men rush in and make trial by war, or did none of these things happen, so that that peace could persist? For if even then Rome was being harassed by wars and arms were not borne to meet arms, then by whatever means it was brought about that the enemies, overcome by no battle, terrified by no warlike onset, were quieted—by those same means it might always have been brought about, and Rome might always have reigned in peace with the gates of Janus shut. But if this was not within their power, then Rome did not have peace so long as their gods, but so long as the neighbouring men round about, willed it—men who provoked her by no war; unless perhaps such gods would even dare to sell to one man that which another man either willed or did not will.

It does indeed concern us, by reason of their own vice, to ask to what extent these demons are permitted either to terrify or to stir up evil minds; but if they could always do this, and nothing were often done otherwise, against their endeavour, by a more secret and higher power, they would always have in their power both peaces and warlike victories, which nearly always come about through the movements of human minds—victories which, nevertheless, are for the most part brought about against their will, as not only the fables, lying much and scarcely either indicating or signifying anything true, but Roman history itself confesses. CHAPTER XI. On the image of the Cumaean Apollo, whose weeping was believed to have indicated the disaster of the Greeks, whom he was not able to help.

For from no other source was that Cumaean Apollo reported, when war was being waged against the Achaeans and King Aristonicus, to have wept for four days; at which prodigy the soothsayers were terrified, and when they had supposed that the image ought to be cast into the sea, the elders of Cumae intervened and recounted that such a prodigy had appeared in the same figure both in the war of Antiochus and of Perses, and that, because it had turned out favourably for the Romans, gifts had been sent by decree of the senate to their Apollo—so they testified. Then soothsayers, summoned as though more skilled, replied that the weeping of the image of Apollo was therefore prosperous for the Romans, because the Cumaean colony was Greek, and that Apollo, by weeping, had signified mourning and disaster to his own lands, whence he had been summoned—that is, to Greece itself.

Then soon afterward it was announced that King Aristonicus had been conquered and captured—he whom Apollo by all means did not wish to be conquered, and grieved over, and indicated this even by the tears of his own stone. Hence not at all incongruously, in verses that, though fabulous, are nevertheless like the truth, the characters of the demons are described by the poems of the poets. For in Virgil Diana grieved for Camilla, and Hercules wept for Pallas, who was about to die.

Hence perhaps Numa Pompilius too, abounding in peace—but not knowing by whose gift, nor inquiring—when in his leisure he pondered to what gods he might commit the safeguarding of the Roman welfare and the kingdom, and did not suppose that the true and almighty most high God cared for these earthly things, and recalled that the Trojan gods, whom Aeneas had brought over, had been able to preserve for long neither the Trojan kingdom nor the Lavinian kingdom founded by Aeneas himself—he judged that other gods must be provided for, whom he might set, over those earlier ones (who either had already passed over with Romulus to Rome, or were destined at some time to pass over when Alba was overthrown), as guardians, as it were, over fugitives, or as helpers over the feeble. CHAPTER XII.

How many gods, beyond Numa's institution, the Romans added to themselves, whose multitude profited them nothing. Yet not even with these rites was Rome content to remain satisfied, the many rites which Pompilius had there instituted. For it did not yet have the chief temple of Jupiter himself; King Tarquinius, indeed, built the Capitol there; Aesculapius, moreover, journeyed round from Epidaurus to Rome, that, as a most skilled physician, he might more gloriously ply his art in a most noble city; the Mother of the gods, too, I know not whence, from Pessinus. For it was unworthy that, while her son was already presiding over the Capitoline hill, she herself should still lie hidden in an ignoble place.

Yet she, if she is the mother of all the gods, not only followed certain of her sons to Rome, but even preceded others who were also to follow. I marvel indeed, if she gave birth to Cynocephalus, who came long afterward out of Egypt. Whether the goddess Fever too was born of her, let Aesculapius, her great-grandson, see to it; but from whatever source she was born, they will not, I think, dare to call her an ignoble goddess—those foreign gods—she who is a Roman citizen.

Under the protection of so many gods (who can count them, native and foreign, of the heavens, of the earth, of the underworld, of the sea, of springs, of rivers, and, as Varro says, certain and uncertain, and in all the kinds of gods, as among animals, males and females?)—under this protection, then, of so many gods, Rome, once constituted, ought not to have been agitated and afflicted with such great and horrible disasters, of which out of many I shall recall a few. For it had assembled all too many gods for its protection, with its mighty smoke as though a signal given; toward whom, by instituting and furnishing temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, it gave offence to the supreme true God, to whom alone these rites duly performed are owed.

And indeed it lived more happily with fewer gods; but the greater it became, the more it thought ought to be brought in—just as a ship thinks it needs more sailors. I believe it despaired of those fewer gods, under whom it had lived better in comparison with its worse life, as not sufficing to aid its greatness. For first, under the kings themselves—except for Numa Pompilius, of whom I have already spoken above—how great an evil of discordant strife there was, which compelled the brother of Romulus to be slain! CHAPTER XIII. By what right, by what covenant the Romans obtained their first marriages.

How is it that neither Juno, who together with her Jove was already cherishing the Romans, the lords of the world and the toga-clad nation, nor Venus herself was able to aid her own descendants of Aeneas, so that they might obtain marriages by good and equitable custom? Rather, so great a disaster of this want rushed in, that they seized them by guile and were soon compelled to fight with their fathers-in-law, so that the wretched women, not yet reconciled to their husbands after the injury, were already dowered with the blood of their parents. But indeed the Romans conquered their neighbours in this conflict. With how many and how great wounds and deaths, on both sides, of kinsmen so near and of neighbours, did these victories cost them!

Because of a single Caesar, the father-in-law, and a single Pompey, his son-in-law—Caesar's daughter, Pompey's wife, being now dead—with how great and how just a goad of grief does Lucan cry out: 'Wars more than civil over the Emathian plains, and right granted to crime, we sing.' The Romans, then, conquered, so that from the slaughter of fathers-in-law they might wrench, with bloody hands, the pitiable embraces from those men's daughters—nor did those women dare to weep for their slain fathers, lest they offend their victorious husbands; and while these were still fighting, the women did not know for whom to make their vows. Upon such nuptials it was not Venus, but Bellona, who bestowed the Roman people; or perhaps that infernal Fury Allecto, with Juno now favouring them, had more license against them than when, at her prayers, she had been roused against Aeneas.

Andromache was more happily taken captive than those Roman wedlocks were married. Though servile, yet after her embraces Pyrrhus slew none of the Trojans; but the Romans were slaying their fathers-in-law in battle, whose daughters they were already embracing in the bridal chamber. She, subjected to the victor, could only grieve, not fear, the death of her own; but those women, joined to the warriors, feared the deaths of their parents as their husbands went forth, and grieved over them as they returned, having neither a free fear nor a free grief. For on account of the death of citizens, of kinsmen, of brothers, of parents, they were either dutifully tormented, or cruelly rejoiced at the victories of their husbands.

To this was added that, as the fortunes of wars are alternating, some women lost their husbands by their parents' sword, some both their parents and their husbands by the sword of both sides. For not even among the Romans were those crises small, since indeed it came even to the siege of the city, and with the gates shut they defended themselves; and when these had been opened by guile and the enemy admitted within the walls, in the very forum a wicked and all too atrocious battle was joined between sons-in-law and fathers-in-law; and those ravishers were even being overcome, and, frequently fleeing among their own houses, more grievously befouled their former—though even those shameful and lamentable—victories. Yet here Romulus, now despairing of the valour of his own men, prayed Jupiter that they might stand firm; and from this occasion that god found the name of Stator (the Stayer);

nor would there have been an end to so great an evil, had not those ravished women, with torn hair, rushed forth and, falling prostrate before their parents, calmed their most just wrath, not with victorious arms, but with suppliant devotion. Then Romulus was compelled to endure Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as partner in his reign—he who was impatient of a brother sharing his rule. But how could he long tolerate even this man, who did not endure a brother and a twin? Hence, having killed him too, that he might be the greater god, he obtained the kingdom alone. What are these rights of marriage, these incitements of wars, these covenants of brotherhood, of kinship, of fellowship, of divinity? What, finally, was the life of the city under so many guardian gods?

You see how much and how many things could be said about this, were our attention not occupied with what remains, and our discourse not hastening on to other matters. CHAPTER XIV. On the impiety of the war which the Romans waged against the Albans, and on the victory obtained by lust for dominion. What, then, after Numa, under the other kings? With how great an evil, not only their own but also the Romans', were the Albans provoked into war—because, forsooth, the long peace of Numa had grown cheap! How frequent were the slaughters of the Roman and Alban armies, and the diminishing of both cities!

For that Alba, which Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, created—a mother nearer to Rome than Troy itself—being provoked by King Tullus Hostilius, came to blows; and in fighting both afflicted and was afflicted, until both sides grew weary of contests with equal exhaustion. Then it was decided to test the outcome of the war by means of triplet brothers from this side and that; from the Romans three Horatii came forth, from the Albans three Curiatii; by the three Curiatii two Horatii were overcome, but by one Horatius the three Curiatii were vanquished and destroyed. Thus Rome emerged victorious by that slaughter even in the final contest, so that of six men one returned home. To whom was the loss on both sides, to whom the mourning, if not to the stock of Aeneas, to the posterity of Ascanius, to the offspring of Venus, to the grandsons of Jupiter?

For this too was more than a civil war, since a daughter city fought with its mother city. To this last battle of the triplets there was added another atrocious and horrible evil. For as both peoples had previously been friends (being neighbours, indeed, and kinsmen), the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii; and after she beheld the spoils of her betrothed upon her victorious brother, she was slain by that same brother because she wept. More human, it seems to me, was the affection of this single woman than that of the whole Roman people. She, I think, did not weep blameworthily—grieving for the man whom she already held by a pledge of fidelity, or perhaps for that very brother who had killed the man to whom he had promised his sister.

For whence is it that in Virgil the pious Aeneas commendably grieves over an enemy slain even by his own hand? Whence did Marcellus, recalling the city of Syracuse, and considering that its height and glory of a little while before had suddenly fallen beneath his own hands, pity it with weeping, reflecting on the common condition of mankind? I ask that we may obtain from human affection this much: that a woman might without crime weep for her betrothed slain by her brother, if men wept—even with praise—for enemies vanquished by themselves. Therefore, while that woman was weeping for the death inflicted on her betrothed by her brother, then Rome rejoiced that it had warred against its mother city with so great a slaughter, and had conquered with so great an effusion, on this side and that, of kindred blood. What is held out to me—the name of praise and the name of victory?

When the obstacles of insane opinion are removed, let the deeds be discerned naked, weighed naked, judged naked. Let the cause of Alba be stated, just as the adultery of Troy used to be stated. No such, no similar cause is found—only that 'Tullus might rouse to arms men grown idle and ranks now unaccustomed to triumphs.' By that vice, therefore, was so great a crime of a war social and kindred perpetrated—a vice which Sallust touches upon, great as it is, in passing. For when, in brief praise, he had recalled the more ancient times, when the life of men was passed without covetousness and each was sufficiently content with his own:

'(But afterward,' he says, 'when in Asia Cyrus, in Greece the Lacedaemonians and Athenians began to subdue cities and nations, to count the lust of dominion as a cause for war, to reckon the greatest glory to lie in the greatest empire,' and the rest which he had set himself to say. For me, let it suffice to have set down his words this far. That lust of dominion harasses and wears down the human race with great evils. By this lust Rome, then conquered, triumphed that it had conquered Alba, and called the praise and glory of its own crime, since, as our Scripture says, 'the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquitous things is blessed.' Let the deceitful coverings, then, and the deceptive whitewashings be taken away from things, that they may be examined with a sincere scrutiny. Let no one say to me:

'That man is great, and so is that other, because he fought with that other and conquered.' Gladiators also fight, and they too conquer, and that cruelty has the rewards of praise; but I think it better to pay the penalties of any inactivity whatever than to seek the glory of those arms. And yet, if into the arena there should come gladiators about to fight one another, of whom one was the son, the other the father, who would endure such a spectacle? Who would not take it away? How, then, could the combat of arms between two cities, one the mother, the other the daughter, be glorious?

Or was it for this reason different—that there was no arena there, and the broader fields were filled, not with the bodies of two gladiators, but, in two peoples, with the corpses of many; nor were those contests encircled by an amphitheatre, but, to the whole world and both to the living of that time and to posterity, as far as that fame is extended, an impious spectacle was offered? Yet those gods, presidents of the Roman empire, suffered the constraint of their own zeal as spectators of such contests, as in a theatre, until the sister of the Horatii, on account of the three Curiatii slain, was herself also, as a third from the other side, added by a brother's sword to the two brothers, lest even Rome, which had conquered, should have fewer deaths.

Then, as the fruit of victory, Alba was overthrown—where, after Ilium, which the Greeks destroyed, and after Lavinium, where Aeneas had established a foreign and fugitive kingdom, those Trojan deities had dwelt in the third place. But after their custom, perhaps they had by then already migrated thence; therefore it was destroyed. The gods had departed, no doubt, all of them, leaving the shrines and altars deserted—the gods by whom that empire had stood. They had departed, to be sure—behold, now for the third time—so that a fourth Rome might most providently be entrusted to them. For Alba too had become displeasing, where Amulius had reigned after expelling his brother, and Rome had become pleasing, where Romulus had reigned after killing his brother. But before Alba was demolished, its people, they say, was transfused into Rome, so that from the two one city might be made. Be it so; let it have been done thus;

yet that city, the kingdom of Ascanius and the third dwelling of the Trojan gods, was overthrown as a mother by the daughter city; and in order that the remnants of war should make one people out of two, the blood of both, much of it shed beforehand, was a wretched coagulation. Why should I now relate one by one, under the other kings, the same wars so often renewed—wars which seemed ended by victories, yet were waged through with such great slaughters again and again, and again and again, after treaty and peace, repeated between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law and their stock and posterity? Not a small indication of this calamity was the fact that none of those kings closed the gates of war. None of them, therefore, under so many guardian gods, reigned in peace. CHAPTER XV. What sort of life and end the Roman kings had.

But what were the ends of the kings themselves? As for Romulus, let the fabulous flattery see to it, by which he is reported to have been received into heaven; let certain of their own writers see to it, who said that he was torn to pieces by the senate on account of his ferocity, and that a certain Julius Proculus was suborned, who should say that Romulus had appeared to him and had through him commanded the Roman people that he should be worshipped among the deities—and that in this way the people, which had begun to swell against the senate, was repressed and quieted. For an eclipse of the sun had also occurred, which the ignorant multitude, not knowing that it was brought about by the fixed reckoning of its own course, attributed to the merits of Romulus. As though indeed, if that had been a mourning of the sun, he ought not rather for that reason to be believed slain, and the crime itself indicated even by the turning away of the daily light;

just as in very truth it came to pass when the Lord was crucified by the cruelty and impiety of the Jews. That this darkening of the sun did not occur from the canonical course of the heavenly bodies is sufficiently shown by the fact that it was then the Passover of the Jews; for that is solemnly celebrated at the full moon, whereas a regular eclipse of the sun occurs only at the end of the moon. Cicero too sufficiently signifies that the supposed reception of Romulus among the gods was rather imagined than accomplished, when, even in praising him in his books On the Republic, in the discourse of Scipio, he says: 'He attained to such a height that, when he had suddenly not appeared, the sun being darkened, he was thought to be placed in the number of the gods—an opinion which no mortal could ever attain without exceptional glory of virtue.'

(But when he says that he suddenly vanished from sight, what is surely to be understood there is either the violence of a storm or the concealment of a slaying and a crime; for other writers of theirs add to that eclipse of the sun a sudden storm as well, which surely either furnished the occasion for the wickedness or itself consumed Romulus.) Indeed, concerning Tullus Hostilius too, who was the third king after Romulus, since he likewise was destroyed by a thunderbolt, the same Cicero says in those same books that this man was for that reason not believed to have been received among the gods by such a death, because perhaps what had been accepted in the case of Romulus—that is, what had been believed—the Romans were unwilling to make common, that is, to cheapen, if this were also easily granted to another. He says openly, moreover, in his invectives:

'We by goodwill and report have raised Romulus, who founded this city, to the immortal gods'—so as to show that this was not truly done, but out of goodwill spread abroad and proclaimed on account of the merits of his virtue. But in the dialogue Hortensius, when he was speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun, he says: 'so as to produce the same darkness which it produced by the death of Romulus, which came about by an obscuring of the sun.' Here at least he was by no means afraid to call it the death of a man, because he was rather an arguer than a eulogist. But the rest of the kings of the Roman people, except Numa Pompilius and Ancus Marcius, who died of disease, what dreadful ends they had! Tullus Hostilius, as I said, the conqueror and overthrower of Alba, was burned up by a thunderbolt together with his whole household.