Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 3

[I] If the weak sense of human custom dared not resist the reason of manifest truth, but subjected its own languor to wholesome teaching as to a medicine, until, by the divine aid obtained through the faith of piety, it were healed, there would be no need of much discourse to convince of any error of vain opinion those who think rightly and set forth their thoughts in adequate words.

But now, since there is that greater and more hideous disease of foolish minds—by which men defend their irrational impulses, even after reason has been fully rendered, as much as one man owes another, whether through an excessive blindness by which not even open things are discerned, or through a most obstinate stubbornness by which even the things that are discerned are not accepted, as though they were defending reason and truth itself—it becomes necessary to speak more copiously, and for the most part to offer clear matters as things to be, in a manner, not gazed upon by beholders, but touched by those who grope and close their eyes. And yet what end of disputing will there be, and what limit of speaking, if we always suppose that answer must be made to those who answer back?

For those who either cannot understand what is said, or are so hardened by hostility of mind that, even if they have understood, they do not yield, they answer, as it is written, and utter iniquity, and are tirelessly vain. If we were willing to refute their contrary sayings as often as they resolve with obstinate brow not to consider what they say, provided that they in some way contradict our discussions, you see how endless and wretched and fruitless it would be.

Wherefore, my son Marcellinus, I would not have you yourself, nor others whom this labor of ours usefully and generously serves in the love of Christ, become such judges of my writings as always to demand a reply whenever they have heard something contradicted in what they read, lest they become like those little women whom the Apostle mentions, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

And so in the preceding book, when I had set out to speak of the City of God—from which this whole work, with His aid, was taken in hand—it occurred to me that I must first resist those who ascribe these wars, by which this world is worn down, and especially the recent devastation of the city of Rome by the barbarians, to the Christian religion, by which they are forbidden to serve demons with abominable sacrifices; whereas they ought rather to ascribe this to Christ, that for the sake of His name the barbarians, contrary to the custom and usage of wars, offered them free of harm the religious and most spacious places to which they might flee; and that in many cases they so honored servitude devoted to Christ—not only true, but even feigned out of fear—that what would have been lawful to do against them by the right of war, they judged unlawful for themselves.

Thence arose the question: why have these divine benefits reached even the impious and ungrateful, and why likewise have those hard things, done in hostile fashion, afflicted the pious together with the impious? To resolve this question—which, being spread over many matters (for in all daily events, whether God's gifts or men's disasters, both of which often befall the good and the wicked mingled and without distinction, it is wont to disturb many)—according to the necessity of the work I had undertaken, I lingered somewhat, chiefly to console holy and piously chaste women, in whom something was perpetrated by the enemy that brought grief to their modesty, though it did not take away the firmness of their chastity; that they might not repent of their life, they who have no ground whereby they can repent of wickedness.

Then I said a few things against those who harass the Christians afflicted by those adversities—and especially the modesty of the humbled women, chaste and holy though they were—with most shameless insolence; men who are utterly worthless and irreverent, far degenerate from those very Romans whose many illustrious deeds are praised and celebrated in the memory of letters, indeed most vehemently opposed to their glory. For Rome, brought forth and increased by the labors of the ancients, they had made fouler while it stood than when it fell; since in her ruin stones and timbers fell, but in the life of these men there fell all the defenses and ornaments not of walls but of morals, while their hearts burned with more deadly desires than the fires with which the roofs of that city burned.

Having said these things, I first ended the book. And so next I set out to tell what evils that city has suffered from its origin, whether in itself or in the provinces now subject to it—all of which they would ascribe to the Christian religion, if even then the evangelical teaching had sounded forth against their false and deceitful gods with most free testimony. But remember that in recounting these things I am still contending against the unskilled, from whose lack of skill there also arose that vulgar proverb: 'Rain fails, the cause is the Christians.' For those of them who, trained in liberal studies, love history, know these things most easily;

but in order to render the crowds of the unlearned most hostile to us, they pretend not to know it, and strive to confirm among the common people that the disasters, by which the human race must be afflicted at fixed intervals of place and time, occur because of the name of Christ, which is spread through all things with immense renown and most illustrious celebrity against their gods. Let them therefore recall with us, before Christ had come in the flesh, before His name had become known to the peoples with that glory which they vainly envy, by what calamities the Roman state was in manifold and various ways worn down; and in these let them defend their gods, if they can—if the gods are worshiped for this reason, that their worshipers may not suffer these evils;

and if now they have suffered any of these, they contend that it is to be imputed to us. Why then did the gods permit these things which I am about to relate to befall their worshipers, before the revealed name of Christ offended them and forbade their sacrifices? First, as to their very morals, that they might not be most base—why were their gods unwilling to take care? For the true God rightly neglected those by whom He was not worshiped; but those gods, from whose worship most ungrateful men complain that they are forbidden, why did they help their worshipers by no laws toward living well? Surely it was fitting that, just as these men cared for their sacred rites, so those gods should care for their deeds. But it is answered that each man is wicked by his own will. Who would deny this?

Yet nevertheless it pertained to the gods, as counselors, not to hide the precepts of a good life from their worshiping peoples, but to offer them by clear proclamation; to convene sinners also through seers and rebuke them, to threaten punishments openly to evildoers, to promise rewards to those who live rightly. When did anything of the sort ever resound with ready and lofty voice in the temples of those gods?

We too, when we were young men, used at times to come to the spectacles and mockeries of sacrilegious rites; we watched the frenzied, we heard the musicians, we took delight in the most shameful games which were performed for the gods and goddesses—for the Heavenly Virgin and for Berecynthia, the mother of all, before whose litter, on the solemn day of her washing, such things were publicly chanted by the most worthless actors as it would not befit—I do not say the mother of the gods, but the mother of any senators whatever, or of any honorable men whatever—nay rather, such things as it would not befit even the mother of those very actors to hear. For human modesty toward parents has something which not even wickedness itself can take away.

Accordingly, that filthiness of obscene words and deeds, the actors themselves would be ashamed to perform at home before their own mothers by way of rehearsal—the very thing they performed in public before the mother of the gods, with a most crowded multitude of both sexes looking on and listening. If she could be present, drawn round by enticed curiosity, at least, her chastity offended, she ought to have departed in confusion. What are sacrileges, if those are sacred rites? or what is defilement, if that is a washing? And these were called 'courses,' as though a banquet were being celebrated at which the unclean demons might feed, as it were, on their own repasts.

For who would not perceive what sort of spirits take delight in such obscenities—unless either being ignorant whether there exist any unclean spirits at all who deceive under the name of gods, or leading such a life in which he would rather wish these spirits propitious and dread them angry than the true God? I would by no means wish those men to be judge of this matter who are eager rather to take delight in the vices of a most disgraceful custom than to struggle against them; but that very Nasica Scipio, who was chosen by the senate as the best man, by whose hands the image of that same demon was received and conveyed into the City. Let him tell us whether he would wish his own mother to deserve so well of the republic that divine honors should be decreed to her;

just as it is agreed that the Greeks and Romans and other nations decreed such honors to certain mortals whose benefits toward them they had greatly esteemed, and had believed them to have been made immortal and received into the number of the gods. Assuredly he would wish so great a felicity for his mother, if it could be done. But further, if we then asked him whether he would wish those base things to be celebrated among her divine honors: would he not cry out that he would rather his mother should lie dead without any sensation whatever, than that she should live as a goddess for this, that she might gladly hear such things?

Far be it that a senator of the Roman people, endowed with that mind by which he forbade a theater to be built in the city of brave men, should wish his mother to be so worshiped that she, a goddess, might be propitiated by such rites as would offend her as a matron. Nor would he in any way believe that the modesty of a praiseworthy woman could be so changed into its contrary by divinity, that her worshipers would invoke her with such honors as would be insults hurled against anyone, which, while she lived among men, unless she stopped her ears and withdrew herself, both her kinsmen and her husband and her children would blush for her sake.

Accordingly such a mother of the gods, such as any man, even the worst, would be ashamed to have as a mother, in order to occupy Roman minds sought out the best man—not one whom she might make so by admonishing and helping, but one whom she might deceive by beguiling—like her of whom it is written: 'But the woman ensnares the precious souls of men'; that this soul of great endowment, exalted as it were by this divine testimony and truly esteeming himself the best, might not seek true piety and religion, without which every talent, however praiseworthy, vanishes and falls through pride. How then, except by insidious means, did that goddess seek out the best man, when she seeks in her sacred rites such things as the best men shudder to bring to their banquets?

Hence it is that they took no care for the life and morals of the cities and peoples by whom those deities were worshiped—so that, with no terrible prohibition of their own, they permitted them to be filled with such horrible and detestable evils and to become most wicked, not in the field and the vines, not in house and possessions, not finally in the body itself, which is subject to the mind, but in the very mind, in the very ruler of the flesh, the soul. Or if they did prohibit it, let this rather be shown, let this be proved. And let them not fling at us some whisperings or other, breathed into the ears of a very few and handed down as it were by a secret religion, by which uprightness and chastity of life may be learned;

but let there be pointed out or recalled places at some time consecrated to such assemblies—not where games were performed with the obscene voices and gestures of actors, nor where the Fugalia were celebrated with all license of baseness poured forth (and truly 'Fugalia,' but of modesty and honor put to flight)—but where the peoples might hear what the gods enjoined concerning the restraining of avarice, the breaking of ambition, the curbing of luxury; where the wretched might learn what Persius reproaches must be learned, saying:

'Learn, O wretched ones, and know the causes of things: what we are, and for what purpose we are begotten to live; what order is assigned us, or where and whence the turn is gently rounded at the goal; what limit there is of money; what it is right to wish for; what use hard coin has; how much it befits to bestow on one's country and dear kinsmen; whom God has bidden you to be, and in what part of human affairs you are placed.' Let it be told in what places these precepts of teaching gods were wont to be recited and frequently heard by their worshiping peoples, just as we have shown that churches are established for this, wherever the Christian religion is spread abroad. Or perhaps they will bring to our notice the schools and disputations of the philosophers? First, these are not Roman, but Greek;

or if for this reason now Roman, because Greece too has been made a Roman province, they are not the precepts of the gods, but the inventions of men, who, endowed with most acute talents, endeavored somehow by reasoning to trace out what lay hidden in the nature of things, what was to be sought and shunned in morals, what in the very rules of reasoning was drawn out by a fixed connection, or what was not consequent or even repugnant. And some of them found certain great things, in so far as they were divinely aided; but in so far as they were humanly hindered, they erred, especially since divine providence justly resisted their pride, that it might show, even by comparison with these men, the way of piety rising from humility into the heights;

whence afterward we shall have, in the will of God our true Lord, a place for inquiring and discoursing. Yet nevertheless, if the philosophers found something which might suffice for leading a good life and attaining a blessed one: how much more justly would divine honors be decreed to such men! How much better and more honorably would his books be read in the temple of Plato, than in the temples of demons the Galli were castrated, the effeminate consecrated, the insane gashed, and whatever else, cruel or base, or basely cruel or cruelly base, is wont to be celebrated in the sacred rites of such gods! How much more fitting it would be that the laws of the gods should be publicly recited for the instruction of youth in justice, than that the laws and institutions of the ancestors should be vainly praised!

For all the worshipers of such gods, as soon as lust has driven them on, 'steeped in seething poison,' as Persius says, look rather at what Jupiter did than at what Plato taught or Cato judged. Hence in Terence the disgraceful young man gazes at a certain picture painted on the wall, where there was this painting: how they say Jupiter once sent a golden shower into the lap of Danae; and from this so great authority he draws a patronage for his own baseness, when he boasts that in it he imitates a god. 'But what a god!' he says; 'one who shakes the temples of heaven with his mighty thunder. Should I, a poor little man, not do it? Nay, I did it, and gladly.' But indeed these things are not handed down in the sacred rites of the gods, but in the fables of the poets.

I will not say that those mystical things are more base than these theatrical ones; this I say, which history convicts those who deny it: that those very games, in which the fictions of the poets reign, the Romans did not introduce among the sacred rites of their gods through unskilled compliance, but that the gods themselves brought it about that they should be solemnly performed and consecrated to their honor, by harshly commanding and in a manner extorting it—a thing I touched upon with a brief mention in the first book. For when a pestilence grew heavy, scenic games were first instituted at Rome by the authority of the pontiffs. Who therefore, in leading his life, would not think that he ought rather to pursue those things which are enacted in games instituted by divine authority, than those which are written in laws promulgated by human counsel?

If the poets falsely gave out Jupiter as an adulterer, the gods, surely chaste, ought to have been angry and to have taken vengeance because so great a wickedness was fabricated through human games, rather than to have neglected it. And these are the more tolerable of the scenic games—comedies, namely, and tragedies, that is, the fables of the poets to be performed in the spectacles, composed with much baseness of matter, but at least, unlike many other things, with no obscenity of words; which boys are even compelled by their elders to read and learn among the studies that are called honorable and liberal. But what the ancient Romans felt about this, Cicero attests in the books which he wrote On the Republic, where Scipio, disputing, says:

'Never could comedies, unless the custom of life allowed it, have made their disgraceful matters approved in the theaters. And the more ancient Greeks indeed preserved a certain consistency of their faulty opinion, among whom it was even allowed by law that comedy might say by name whatever it wished, of whomever it wished. And so, as Africanus says in those same books, whom did it not touch, or rather whom did it not harry? whom did it spare? Granted, it injured the demagogues, wicked men, seditious in the republic—Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus. Let us bear it,' he says, 'although it is better that citizens of that sort be branded by a censor than by a poet.'

'But that Pericles, when he had already for very many years presided over his own state at home and in war with the greatest authority, should be assailed in verses and these acted on the stage, was no more fitting than if our Plautus,' he says, 'or Naevius had wished to speak ill of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius of Marcus Cato.' Then a little after: 'Our Twelve Tables, on the contrary,' he says, 'though they made very few matters capital, thought this also should be made so among them: if anyone should have sung or composed a song which brought infamy or disgrace upon another. Excellently. For our life ought to be liable to the judgments of magistrates and to lawful adjudications, not to the talents of poets; nor ought we to hear reproach except on this condition, that it be lawful to answer and defend oneself in court.'

These things from Cicero's fourth book On the Republic I have thought fit to excerpt word for word, some things being either omitted or slightly altered for the sake of easier understanding. For it much pertains to the matter which I am laboring to explain, if I can. He then says other things and so concludes this passage, in order to show that it was displeasing to the ancient Romans either that any living man should be praised on the stage, or reviled.

But, as I said, this the Greeks, though more shamelessly, yet more consistently, chose to be permitted, since they saw that reproaches were accepted and welcome to their gods—not only those of men, but even of the gods themselves—in the scenic fables, whether those things were fabricated by the poets, or their real disgraces were recounted and acted in the theaters, and by their worshipers—would that they had seemed worthy only of laughter, and not also of imitation! For it was too proud to spare the reputation of the leading men of the state and of the citizens, where the deities were unwilling that their own reputation be spared. For as to what is brought forward in defense—that those things were not spoken truly against the gods, but falsely and fictitiously—this very thing is more wicked, if you consult the piety of religion;

but if you consider the malice of the demons, what is more cunning for deceiving, and more crafty? For when a reproach is cast at a good and useful leader of the fatherland, is it not the more unworthy, the more remote from the truth and the more alien from his life? What punishments then suffice, when so nefarious, so signal an injury is done to a god? But the malignant spirits, whom these men suppose to be gods, wish even disgraceful things which they have not committed to be said of themselves, provided only that they may entangle human minds in these opinions as in nets, and drag them along with themselves to their predestined punishment—whether men committed those things, whom they rejoice to be held as gods, they who rejoice in human errors, on whose behalf they interpose themselves to be worshiped by a thousand arts of harming and deceiving;

or whether those crimes are not the true crimes of any men, which nevertheless the most deceitful spirits gladly accept to be feigned of the deities, so that authority sufficiently suitable might seem to be conveyed, as it were from heaven itself down to the earth, for perpetrating wicked and base deeds. Since therefore the Greeks felt themselves to be the slaves of such deities, they thought it in no way right to be spared by the poets amid so many and so great theatrical reproaches of them, either desiring to be likened even thus to their gods, or fearing lest, by seeking a more honorable reputation for themselves and preferring themselves in this manner to the gods, they should provoke them to anger.

To this consistency it pertains that they even judged the scenic actors of those same fables to be worthy of no small honor from the state; since, as is recorded in that same book On the Republic, both Aeschines the Athenian, a most eloquent man, when as a youth he had acted tragedies, took up public affairs, and Aristodemus, likewise a tragic actor, the Athenians often sent as ambassador to Philip on the greatest matters of peace and war. For it was not thought consistent that, when they saw the same arts and the same scenic games accepted even by their gods, they should reckon those through whom these were performed in the place and number of the infamous.

These things the Greeks did basely indeed, but assuredly quite in agreement with their gods; who did not dare to withdraw the life of the citizens from being torn by the tongues of poets and actors, by whom they perceived the life of the gods to be carped at with the very gods willing and glad; and the very men, through whom these things were enacted in the theaters, which they had learned to be pleasing to the deities to whom they were subject, they thought should not only in no way be despised in the state, but even most highly honored.

For what cause could they find why they should honor the priests, because through them they offered victims acceptable to the gods, and yet hold the actors as disgraceful, through whom they had learned by the gods' own admonition that this pleasure or honor was rendered to the gods who demanded it, and who were angry unless it were done? Especially since Labeo, whom they proclaim most skilled in matters of this sort, distinguishes the good deities from the evil deities even by this diversity of worship, so as to assert that the evil gods are to be propitiated by slaughters and by mournful supplications, but the good ones by joyful and pleasant observances, such as are (as he himself says) games, banquets, and lectisternia. What all this may be, we shall afterward, if God shall help, discuss more carefully.

Now, as pertains to the present matter, whether all things be assigned to all the gods alike, as though to good ones (for it is not fitting that there be evil gods, since rather these, because they are unclean spirits, are all evil), or whether, by a fixed distinction, as it seemed to Labeo, these observances be distributed to those, and those to these, the Greeks most fittingly reckon both to honor—both the priests, through whom the victims are ministered, and the actors, through whom the games are exhibited—lest they be convicted of doing injury either to all their gods, if the games too are pleasing to all, or (what is more unworthy) to those whom they think good, if the games are loved by these alone.

But the Romans, as Scipio boasts in that disputation On the Republic, were unwilling to have their life and reputation subject to the reproaches and injuries of the poets, even sanctioning it with a capital penalty, if anyone should dare to compose such a song. This indeed they established honorably enough with regard to themselves, but proudly and irreligiously with regard to their gods; whom, though they knew them to be torn not only patiently but even gladly by the reproaches and revilings of the poets, they thought themselves rather than the gods to be unworthy of injuries of this sort, and even fortified themselves against these by law, while they mingled such things even with the sacred solemnities of the gods.

So then, Scipio, do you at last praise this license as having been denied to the Roman poets—that they might inflict reproach on any of the Romans—when you see that they spared none of your gods? Was the esteem of your senate house thought by you to be of more account than of the Capitol, nay of Rome alone than of the whole heaven, so that poets should even by law be forbidden to exercise a slanderous tongue against your citizens, and yet against your gods should freely hurl such great insults, with no senator, no censor, no princeps, no pontiff forbidding it? It was unworthy, forsooth, that Plautus or Naevius should speak ill of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius of Marcus Cato; but it was worthy that your Terentius should inflame the wantonness of youths by the disgrace of Jupiter, best and greatest?

But perhaps, if he were alive, he would answer me: 'How could we be unwilling that these things go unpunished, which the gods themselves willed to be sacred, since they both introduced into Roman customs the scenic games, where such things are celebrated, recited, acted, and commanded them to be dedicated and exhibited to their own honors?' Why then were they not rather from this understood to be no true gods, nor at all worthy that that republic should confer divine honors upon them? For those whom it would least befit and least behoove to be worshiped, if they demanded games to be performed with reproaches of the Romans—how, I ask, were they thought fit to be worshiped, how were they not understood to be detestable spirits, who out of a desire to deceive demanded that their own crimes be celebrated amid their own honors?

And likewise the Romans, although already pressed by a noxious superstition, so that they worshiped those gods whom they saw to have willed the scenic obscenities to be consecrated to themselves, yet mindful of their own dignity and modesty, by no means honored the actors of such fables after the manner of the Greeks; but, as the same Scipio says in Cicero, 'since they held the histrionic art and the whole stage to be disgraceful, they willed that this class of men should not only lack the honor of the rest of the citizens, but even be removed from their tribe by the censor's mark of disgrace.' An excellent prudence, indeed, and to be reckoned among Roman praises; but I could wish it had followed itself, and imitated itself.

For behold, rightly: whoever of the Roman citizens had chosen to be an actor, not only was no place given him for honor, but he was even by no means permitted, by the censor's mark, to keep his own tribe. O mind of a state greedy for praise and genuinely Roman! But let it be answered me: by what consistent reasoning are scenic men repelled from all honor, and scenic games mingled with the honors of the gods? Roman valor had long not known those theatrical arts, which, if they were sought for the delight of human pleasure, crept in by the vice of human morals. The gods demanded that these be exhibited to themselves: how then is the actor cast off, through whom the god is worshiped? and with what face is the actor of that theatrical baseness branded, if the exactor of it is adored?

In this controversy let the Greeks and the Romans contend. The Greeks think they rightly honor the scenic men, because they worship the gods who demand the scenic games; but the Romans do not allow scenic men to dishonor even a plebeian tribe, much less the senatorial curia. In this dispute a reasoning of this sort settles the sum of the question. The Greeks propose: If such gods are to be worshiped, then assuredly such men also are to be honored. The Romans assume: But by no means are such men to be honored. The Christians conclude: By no means, therefore, are such gods to be worshiped.

[XIV] Next we ask: those very poets, the composers of such fables, who by the law of the Twelve Tables are forbidden to injure the reputation of citizens, why, when they hurl such shameful abuse against the gods, are they not accounted as disreputable as stage-actors? By what reasoning is it right that the performers of these poetic fictions about the ignominious gods should be branded with infamy, while the authors are honoured? Or is the palm rather to be given to the Greek Plato, who, when he was framing by reason what sort a commonwealth ought to be, judged that the poets should be driven from the city as enemies of the truth? He indeed both took ill the insults done to the gods, and would not have the minds of the citizens counterfeited and corrupted by such fictions.

Now compare Plato's humanity, which banishes the poets from the city lest they deceive the citizens, with the divinity of the gods, which demanded stage-plays in its own honour. Plato, though he did not persuade by argument that such things should not even be written, yet counselled it against the levity and wantonness of the Greeks; but these gods, that such things should even be acted, wrung it by command from the gravity and modesty of the Romans. Nor did they merely wish these things to be performed, but to be dedicated to themselves, consecrated to themselves, solemnly displayed to themselves. To whom, then, might the city more honourably decree divine honours? To Plato, who forbade these base and unspeakable things, or to the demons who delight in this deception of men, whom Plato could not persuade of the truth?

This Plato Labeo thought worthy to be reckoned among the demigods, like Hercules, like Romulus. Now he sets demigods above heroes, but places both among the divine powers. Yet for my part I do not doubt that this man, whom he calls a demigod, should be preferred not only to the heroes but even to the gods themselves. Moreover the laws of the Romans come near to Plato's discourses, since he condemns all poetic fictions outright, while they at least take from the poets the licence of speaking evil against men; he removes the poets from dwelling in the city itself, they at least remove the actors of poetic fables from the fellowship of the state; and if they had dared anything against the gods who demand stage-plays, they would perhaps have removed them from every quarter.

By no means, therefore, could the Romans receive or hope from their gods laws for establishing good morals or correcting bad ones—those gods whom by their own laws they surpass and convict. For the gods demand stage-plays in their own honour, while the Romans repel stage-players from all honours; the gods command the disgraces of the gods to be celebrated for them in poetic fictions, while the Romans restrain the shamelessness of the poets from the disgraces of men. But that demigod Plato both withstood the lust of such gods, and showed what ought to be brought to perfection out of the disposition of the Romans, for he refused altogether that the poets—who either lie at their own whim or set before wretched men the basest deeds of the gods as though to be imitated—should live in a well-ordered city.

We indeed hold Plato to be neither a god nor a demigod, nor do we compare him to any holy angel of the most high God, nor to any truthful prophet, nor to any apostle, nor to any martyr of Christ, nor to any Christian man; and the reasoning of this our judgment shall be set forth in its own place, God prospering us. Yet since they themselves are willing that he was a demigod, we judge that he ought to be preferred—if not to Romulus and Hercules (although no historian or poet has said or feigned that Plato slew a brother or committed any crime), then certainly to Priapus, or to some Dog-headed god, or lastly to Fever, whom the Romans partly received as foreign deities, partly consecrated as their own.

How, then, could such gods, by good precepts and laws, either forbid so great evils of soul and morals when threatening, or care to root out those that were implanted—gods who even took care to sow and increase disgraceful deeds, desiring that such things, whether their own or as though their own, should be made known to the peoples through theatrical festivities, so that human lust, most wicked, might of its own accord be kindled as though by divine authority—Cicero crying out against this in vain, who, when he was treating of the poets, said:

"When to these," he says, "there is added the shout and approval of the people as of some great and wise master, what darkness do they spread abroad, what fears do they bring in, what lusts do they inflame!" [XV] But what reasoning—or rather, what flattery—is there in the choosing of the gods to be honoured, even of those false ones themselves? For this Plato, whom they wish to be a demigod, labouring with such great disputations lest human morals be corrupted by the evils of the soul, which are chiefly to be guarded against, they thought worthy of no little sacred shrine, and preferred their own Romulus to many gods, although their more secret doctrine commends even him as a demigod rather than a god.

For they even appointed a flamen for him, which kind of priesthood so excelled in Roman religion—as the apex on the cap bears witness—that they had only three flamens appointed for three deities: the Dial flamen for Jupiter, the Martial for Mars, the Quirinal for Romulus. For by the goodwill of the citizens Romulus, as though received into heaven, was afterwards named Quirinus. And by this honour Romulus was preferred to Neptune and Pluto, the brothers of Jupiter, and to Saturn himself, their father, so that they assigned to him also this priesthood which they had bestowed on Jupiter as something great, and to Mars as though his father, perhaps on his account.

[XVI] But if the Romans could have received laws of living from their gods, they would not, some years after the founding of Rome, have borrowed from the Athenians the laws of Solon—which nevertheless they did not keep as they received them, but tried to make better and more amended; although Lycurgus pretended that he had established laws for the Lacedaemonians on the authority of Apollo, a thing which the Romans prudently refused to believe, and therefore did not receive their laws from that source. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingdom, is said to have framed certain laws, which indeed were by no means sufficient for governing the state, and he also established for them many religious rites; yet he is not reported to have received those laws from the divine powers.

Therefore the evils of the soul, the evils of life, the evils of morals, which are so great that even while cities stand their most learned men affirm that the commonwealths perish by them—these their gods took no care at all to prevent from befalling their worshippers; nay rather, as was argued above, they took every care that they should be increased. [XVII] Or was it perhaps that laws were not established for the Roman people by the divine powers because, as Sallust says, "right and goodness prevailed among them not more by laws than by nature"? From this right and goodness, I suppose, the Sabine women were carried off. For what is more just and better than that other men's daughters, lured by the fraud of a spectacle, should not be received from their parents, but be seized by force, as each man was able?

For if the Sabines did wrong in refusing their daughters when asked, how much more wrong was it to seize them when not given! A juster war could have been waged against that people who had refused their daughters, when sought in marriage by their neighbours and borderers, than against those who demanded back the women that had been carried off. That war, therefore, ought rather to have been fought; there let Mars have helped his son as he fought, so that by arms he might avenge the wrong of the refused marriages, and thus attain to the women he had desired. For by some right of war, perhaps, the victor might justly have carried off those unjustly refused; but by no right of peace did he seize those not given, and he waged an unjust war against their parents, who were justly angry.

This, to be sure, turned out more usefully and happily, in that, although the spectacle of the circus games remained as a memorial of that fraud, yet the example of the crime found no favour in that city and empire; and the Romans erred more readily in this—that after that iniquity they consecrated Romulus as a god for themselves—than that they should have permitted, by any law or custom, that his deed in carrying off the women be imitated.

From this right and goodness, after King Tarquinius had been expelled with his children—whose son had violently oppressed Lucretia with rape—the consul Junius Brutus compelled Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of that same Lucretia, his own colleague, a good and innocent man, to resign his magistracy on account of his name and kinship with the Tarquinii, and did not permit him to live in the city. This crime he committed with the people favouring or suffering it—that people from whom this same Collatinus, like Brutus himself, had received the consulship.

From this right and goodness, Marcus Camillus, an outstanding man of that age, who most easily overcame the Veientes, the most grievous enemies of the Roman people, after a ten years' war in which the Roman army, so often fighting badly, was gravely afflicted, when Rome itself was now doubting and trembling for its safety, and captured their most opulent city—by the envy of the detractors of his valour and the insolence of the tribunes of the plebs was made a defendant, and found the city as ungrateful as he had delivered it, so that, most certain of his own condemnation, he departed of his own accord into exile, and was even condemned in his absence to ten thousand asses—soon to be again the avenger of his ungrateful fatherland against the Gauls.

It now wearies me to recount the many foul and unjust things by which that city was agitated, when the powerful strove to subject the plebs to themselves and the plebs refused to be subjected to them, and the defenders of each party acted more from partisanship, out of a love of winning, than they took thought for anything equitable and good. [XVIII] And so I will keep a limit, and rather bring forward Sallust himself as a witness, who, when in praise of the Romans he had said—whence this discourse of ours arose—"Right and goodness prevailed among them not by laws..."

"...more than by nature prevailed," proclaiming that time in which, the kings being expelled, the city grew incredibly much in a short span of years—yet that same Sallust, in the first book of his history and in its very opening, confesses that even then, when the commonwealth had been transferred from the kings to the consuls, after a short interval there were injuries by the more powerful, and on account of them a secession of the plebs from the fathers, and other dissensions in the City.

For when he had recorded that the Roman people acted with the best morals and the greatest concord between the second and the last Punic war, and had said that the cause of this good was not the love of justice but, while Carthage still stood, the fear of an unfaithful peace—whence that famous Nasica did not wish Carthage to be overthrown, in order to repress wickedness and to preserve those best morals, so that by fear the vices might be checked—that same Sallust immediately subjoined and said: "But discord and avarice and ambition and the other evils wont to arise in prosperity were most of all increased after the destruction of Carthage," so that we might understand that even before they were both wont to arise and to be increased.

Whence, adding why he had said this, he says: "For the injuries of the more powerful, and on account of them the secession of the plebs from the fathers, and other dissensions, had existed at home even from the very beginning; nor was affairs conducted with equitable and moderate right any longer than while, the kings being driven out, the fear from Tarquinius and the grievous war with Etruria lasted." You see in what manner even in that brief time, when the kings had been driven out—that is, cast forth—matters were conducted for a while with somewhat equitable and moderate right; he said fear was the cause, since war was feared, which King Tarquinius, driven from his kingdom and city and allied with the Etruscans, was waging against the Romans. Mark therefore what he weaves in next:

"Thereafter," he says, "the fathers began to treat the plebs with servile domination, to decide over their life and back after the manner of kings, to drive them from their land, and, all others being excluded, to hold sway alone in government. The plebs, oppressed by these cruelties and above all by usury, when amid continual wars it endured at once tribute and military service, took up arms and occupied the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and then procured for themselves the tribunes of the plebs and other rights. The end of the discords and struggle on both sides was the Second Punic War." You discern from what time—that is, a short interval after the kings were driven out—what sort of men the Romans were, of whom he says:

"Right and goodness prevailed among them not more by laws than by nature." Further, if those times are found to be such—times in which the Roman commonwealth is proclaimed to have been most beautiful and best—what, then, are we to think or judge must be said of the succeeding age, when, "gradually changed," to use the words of the same historian, "from most beautiful and best it became worst and most disgraceful," namely after the destruction of Carthage, as he recorded? How Sallust himself briefly recalls and describes those times may be read in his history;

how great were the evils of morals which arose in prosperity, and how he shows that they came at last even to the civil wars. "From which time," as he says, "the morals of the ancestors were hurled down headlong, not gradually as before, but like a torrent; to such a degree was the youth corrupted by luxury and avarice, that it might rightly be said that men had been born who could neither keep their own family estates nor suffer others to keep theirs." Sallust then says more about the vices of Sulla and the rest of the foulness of the commonwealth, and other writers agree in these things, though with far inferior eloquence. Yet you discern, I suppose, and whoever attends to it most easily perceives, into what a sink of the worst morals that city had sunk before the coming of our heavenly King.

For these things were done not only before Christ, present in the flesh, had begun to teach, but even before he was born of the Virgin. Since, then, they do not dare to impute to their gods the so many and so great evils of those times—the more tolerable ones above, and, after Carthage was overthrown, the intolerable and horrible ones—those gods who by malignant cunning inserted into human minds the opinions from which such vices grew rank:

why do they impute present evils to Christ, who by his most wholesome teaching forbids the false and deceitful gods to be worshipped, and, detesting and condemning by divine authority these harmful and disgraceful lusts of men, everywhere gradually withdraws his own household from a world wasting and slipping away with these evils, that he may found an everlasting City, most glorious not by the applause of vanity but by the judgment of truth? [XIX] Behold, the Roman commonwealth—which I am not the first to say, but their own authors, from whom we learned these things at a price, said so long before, before the coming of Christ—"gradually changed from most beautiful and best into worst and most disgraceful."

Behold, before the coming of Christ, after Carthage had been destroyed, "the morals of the ancestors were hurled down headlong, not gradually as before, but like a torrent; to such a degree was the youth corrupted by luxury and avarice." Let them read to us the precepts of their gods given to the Roman people against luxury and avarice; would that they had only kept silent about things chaste and modest, and had not also demanded from that people things shameful and ignominious, by which, through a false divinity, they procured a pernicious authority.

Let them read our writings—both through the prophets, and through the holy Gospel, and through the acts of the apostles, and through the epistles—so many things against avarice and luxury, everywhere proclaimed to the peoples gathered for this purpose: how excellently, how divinely, not clamouring as from the contentions of philosophers, but thundering as from oracles and from the clouds of God! And yet the commonwealth, made worst and most disgraceful by luxury and avarice and by savage and shameful morals before the coming of Christ, they do not impute to their gods; but its affliction, whatever their pride and delights have suffered in this present time, they blame upon the Christian religion.

If the kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, young men and virgins, old men with the young, every age capable and both sexes, and those whom John the Baptist addresses—the very tax-collectors and soldiers—would together hear and heed his precepts concerning just and upright morals, then the commonwealth would adorn the lands of the present life with its own felicity, and would most blessedly ascend the summit of eternal life, there to reign. But because one hears while another despises, and more are friendlier to vices that basely flatter than to the useful austerity of the virtues:

the servants of Christ are commanded to tolerate—whether they be kings or princes or judges, whether soldiers or provincials, whether rich or poor, whether free or slaves, of either sex—even a most wicked and most disgraceful commonwealth, if it be so necessary, and by this very toleration to procure for themselves a most illustrious place in that most holy and most august court of the angels and in the heavenly commonwealth, where the will of God is law. [XX] But such worshippers and lovers of those gods, whose imitators too in crimes and disgraceful deeds they rejoice to be, in no way care that the commonwealth be not most wicked and most disgraceful.

"Only let it stand," they say, "only let it flourish, packed with riches, glorious in victories, or—what is happier—let it be secure in peace. And what is that to us? Nay, this rather concerns us: that each man increase his riches ever more, to supply for his daily lavishments, whereby the more powerful may subject to himself even the weaker. Let the poor obey the rich for the sake of their bellies and to enjoy, under their patronage, a quiet idleness; let the rich abuse the poor for their retinues and for the service of their pride. Let the peoples applaud not those who counsel their interests, but those who bestow pleasures. Let no hard things be commanded, no impure things forbidden. Let kings care not how good, but how submissive, are those they rule.

Let the provinces serve their kings not as guardians of morals, but as lords of their possessions and providers of their delights; and let them honour them not sincerely, but wickedly and slavishly fear them. Let the laws attend to what harm each man does to another's vineyard rather than to his own life. Let no one be brought before a judge except him who has been troublesome or harmful to another's property, house, safety, or to any unwilling person; but for the rest, let each man do what he pleases with his own, or with his own people, or with any who are willing. Let public harlots abound, either for all who wish to enjoy them, or especially for those who cannot keep private ones.

Let most spacious and most ornate houses be built, let sumptuous banquets be frequented, where, as each man pleases and is able, let there be gaming day and night, drinking, vomiting, dissipation. Let dances resound everywhere, let the theatres seethe with the shouts of shameful merriment and with every kind of pleasure, whether most cruel or most base. Let him be reckoned a public enemy who is displeased by this felicity; whoever tries to change or take it away, let the free multitude turn him away from their ears, overturn him from his seat, take him away from the living. Let those be held true gods who have procured this felicity for the peoples to attain, and having attained it have preserved it. Let them be worshipped as they will, let them demand what games they will, which they may hold with their worshippers or from among them:

only let them bring it about that no threat be feared from enemy, from plague, or from any calamity to such felicity." Who in his right mind would compare this commonwealth, I will not say to the Roman empire, but to the house of Sardanapalus?—who once was a king so given over to pleasures that he had it inscribed on his tomb that he possessed in death only those things which his lust, even while he lived, had consumed by devouring. If these men had such a king, indulgent to them in such things and opposing no one in them with any severity, they would more gladly consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the old Romans did to Romulus.

[XXI] But if he is despised who called the Roman commonwealth worst and most disgraceful, and these men care not with how great a stain and dishonour of the worst and most disgraceful morals it is filled, but only that it stand and endure: let them hear that it became, not, as Sallust relates, worst and most disgraceful, but, as Cicero argues, that even then it had utterly perished and that no commonwealth at all remained. For he brings in Scipio—that very man who had extinguished Carthage—disputing about the commonwealth, at a time when there was a foreboding that, through the corruption which Sallust describes, it was on the very point of perishing. Indeed the discussion is held at that time when one of the Gracchi had already been slain, from whom Sallust writes that grave seditions began.

For mention of his death is made in those same books. Now when Scipio, at the end of the second book, had said, "as in stringed instruments or flutes, and in the very singing and voices, a certain harmony must be maintained out of distinct sounds, which harmony, if changed or discordant, trained ears cannot bear, and this harmony, out of the modulation of most dissimilar voices, is nevertheless rendered concordant and fitting:

so, out of the highest and lowest and middle orders set between, as out of sounds, the city sounds together in tune by a moderated proportion through the consent of the most dissimilar elements; and what is called harmony by musicians in singing, that in the city is concord, the tightest and best bond of safety in every commonwealth, and by no means can it exist without justice"—and then, when he had discoursed somewhat more broadly and richly on how much justice profited a city and how much it harmed it if it were absent, Philus, one of those who were present at the discussion, took it up and demanded that this very question be treated more diligently and that more be said about justice, on account of that which was already commonly said, that the commonwealth cannot be governed without injustice.

Scipio agreed that this question should accordingly be discussed and unravelled, and answered that he thought nothing had yet been said about the commonwealth by which they could proceed further, unless it were established not only that it was false that a commonwealth cannot exist without injustice, but that it was most true that a commonwealth cannot be governed without the highest justice. And since the unfolding of this question was deferred to the following day, in the third book the matter was carried on with great conflict.

For Philus himself took up the argument of those who held that the commonwealth cannot be conducted without injustice, chiefly clearing himself lest he be believed to hold this himself, and diligently pleaded for injustice against justice, trying, as it were, to show by plausible reasonings and examples that the former was useful to the commonwealth, the latter useless. Then Laelius, at the request of all, undertook to defend justice, and asserted, as much as he could, that nothing was so hostile as injustice to a city, and that a commonwealth could by no means be conducted or stand except by great justice.

This question having been treated as far as seemed sufficient, Scipio returns to the matters he had interrupted, and recalls and commends his own brief definition of the commonwealth, whereby he had said that it is the concern of the people. But he determines that the people is not every gathering of a multitude, but a gathering associated by a common agreement as to right and by a community of interest. He then teaches how great is the usefulness of a definition in disputing, and from those definitions of his gathers that there is then a commonwealth—that is, the concern of the people—when it is conducted well and justly, whether by one king, or by a few nobles, or by the whole people.

But when the king is unjust, whom he called a tyrant after the Greek manner, or the nobles are unjust, whose agreement he said to be a faction, or the people itself is unjust, for which he found no customary name unless he should call it too a tyrant: then the commonwealth is not merely vicious, as had been argued the day before, but, as the reasoning connected from those definitions had taught, it is no commonwealth at all, since it would not be the concern of the people, when a tyrant or a faction seized it; nor would the people itself any longer be a people, if it were unjust, since it would not be a multitude associated by a common agreement as to right and by a community of interest, as the people had been defined.

When, therefore, the Roman commonwealth was such as Sallust describes it, no longer worst and most disgraceful, as he himself says, but, according to this reasoning, no commonwealth at all, as the discussion about the commonwealth held among its great leaders of that time made plain. So too Tullius himself, speaking not in the words of Scipio nor of any other but in his own, at the beginning of the fifth book, having first recalled the verse of the poet Ennius, in which he had said, "On ancient morals and men the Roman state stands firm." Which verse, indeed, he says, whether for its brevity or its truth, seems to me to have been uttered as though from some oracle.

For neither could the men, unless the city had been so charactered, nor the morals, unless these men had presided, have either founded or so long maintained a commonwealth so great and ruling so vastly far and wide. And so, before our own memory, the ancestral custom itself supplied outstanding men, and excellent men retained the ancient custom and the institutions of their forefathers. But our age, having received the commonwealth like an excellent picture, though fading with age, not only neglected to renew it with the same colours it had had, but did not even take care to preserve at least its form and, as it were, its outermost lineaments.

For what remains of those ancient morals by which that man said the Roman state stood firm? We see them so worn away by oblivion that not only are they not practised, but they are by now unknown. And what shall I say of the men themselves? For those very morals perished through a scarcity of men, and for so great an evil we must not only render an account, but, as though we were defendants on a capital charge, we must in a manner plead our cause. For it is by our own vices, and not by any chance, that we retain the commonwealth in word only, while in very fact we have long since lost it. These things Cicero confessed, indeed long after the death of Africanus, whom in his books he represented as debating concerning the commonwealth, yet still before the coming of Christ;

and if these things had been felt and spoken when the Christian religion was being defamed and gaining strength, who among these men would not have judged that they ought to be laid to the charge of the Christians? Wherefore, why did their gods not take care that the commonwealth should not then perish and be lost—that commonwealth which Cicero, long before Christ had come in the flesh, so mournfully laments as already lost? Let its praisers see, even in respect of those ancient men and morals, what its character was: whether true justice flourished in it, or whether even then it was not alive in its morals but only painted in colours—which Cicero himself, unknowingly, expressed even while he preferred it. But we shall look into this elsewhere, if God shall so will.

For I shall strive in its proper place to show, according to the very definitions of Cicero—by which, through the mouth of Scipio, he briefly set down what a commonwealth is and what a people is (with many statements bearing witness, whether his own or those of the men whom he made to speak in the same debate)—that it never was a commonwealth, because true justice never existed in it. According to more probable definitions, however, it was in a certain way of its own a commonwealth, and it was better administered by the earlier Romans than by the later ones; but true justice exists only in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ—if indeed it be pleasing to call that too a commonwealth, since we cannot deny that it is the affair of a people.

But if this name, which elsewhere and in another sense is in common use, is perhaps too remote from the usage of our own speech, at all events in that city there is true justice, of which the holy Scripture says: Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. But as concerns the present question, however praiseworthy they may say that commonwealth to have been or to be, according to their own most learned authors it had long before the coming of Christ become most wicked and most disgraceful; nay rather, it was no commonwealth at all and had utterly perished through most abandoned morals.

In order, then, that it might not perish, its guardian gods ought above all to have given to their worshipping people precepts of life and morals—that people by which they were worshipped with so many temples, so many priests and kinds of sacrifices, with rites so manifold and various, with so many festal solemnities, with so many celebrations of games so great. But there the demons did nothing except their own business, not caring how those men lived—nay, taking care that they should live even in utter ruin—provided only that all those things were rendered to their honour by men subdued through fear.

Or if they did give such precepts, let it be produced, shown, and read—what laws of the gods, given to that city, the Gracchi despised, so as to throw everything into confusion by sedition; what laws Marius and Cinna and Carbo despised, so as to proceed even into civil wars undertaken on the most unjust grounds and waged cruelly and ended more cruelly still; what laws, finally, Sulla himself despised—whose life, morals, and deeds, as described by Sallust and other writers of history, who would not shudder at? Who would not confess that the commonwealth had then perished? Or will they perhaps dare, as they are wont, to bring forward against us, in defence of their gods, that Virgilian saying on account of such morals of the citizens: 'All the gods departed, forsaking their shrines and altars—the gods by whom this empire had stood'?

First, if it is so, they have no reason to complain of the Christian religion, as though, offended by it, their gods had deserted them; for their ancestors had long ago, by their own morals, driven so many petty gods, like flies, from the altars of the City. But yet, where was that throng of deities when, long before the ancient morals were corrupted, Rome was captured and burned by the Gauls? Were they perhaps present but asleep? For then, when the whole City had been reduced into the enemy's power, only the Capitoline hill remained, and even that would have been taken, had not the geese at least kept watch while the gods slept. Whence Rome had almost fallen into the superstition of the Egyptians who worship beasts and birds, when they celebrated solemnities in honour of a goose.

But of these external evils, evils rather of the body than of the mind, which befall either from enemies or from some other calamity, I do not yet for the present dispute: now I treat of the ruin of morals, by which—first gradually discoloured, then hurled headlong like a torrent—so great a downfall of the commonwealth was brought about, that (though roofs and walls remained intact) their great authors do not hesitate to say it was then lost. And rightly had all the gods departed, forsaking their shrines and altars, so that it might be lost, if the city had despised their precepts concerning a good life and justice. But now, I ask, what sort of gods were these, if they were unwilling to live with their worshipping people, whom, when they lived wickedly, they had not taught to live well?

Nay, why is it that they even appear to have been present to help fulfil their lusts, and are shown not to have presided over restraining them? For they aided Marius—a new man and of ignoble birth, a most bloody author and conductor of civil wars—so that he became consul seven times, and that he died in his seventh consulship as an old man, that he might not fall into the hands of Sulla, who would soon be victor. For if their gods did not help him to these ends, it is no small thing that they confess it can happen even without their gods being propitious that a man should attain that temporal happiness, so exceedingly great, which they overmuch love; and that men, such as Marius was, can be heaped up with and enjoy safety, strength, riches, honours, dignity, and length of days even when the gods are angry;

and that men, such as Regulus was, can, even when the gods are friendly, be tortured and die through captivity, slavery, want, wakeful nights, and pains. But if they grant that it is so, they confess in short that the gods profit nothing and are worshipped to no purpose. For if they insisted upon teaching the people rather the things contrary to the virtues of the soul and to uprightness of life, whose rewards are to be hoped for after death; if in these passing and temporal goods they neither harm those whom they hate nor profit those whom they love—why are they worshipped, why with such zeal are they sought to be worshipped? Why, in toilsome and gloomy times, is there murmuring, as though they had departed offended, and on their account is the Christian religion wounded with most unworthy revilings?