Divine Institutes & On the Deaths of the Persecutors 1 part 4/6

there is no doubt that in those times men began to extol the king himself and the whole race with the highest praises and with novel honors, so that they even called them gods—whether on account of the marvel of their virtue (this they truly thought, being as yet rude and simple), or (as is wont to happen) in flattery of present power, or on account of the benefits by which they had been molded toward humanity. Then the kings themselves, since they had been dear to those whose life they had ordered, left a great longing for themselves when they died. And so men fashioned their images, that they might have some consolation from the contemplation of the likenesses; and proceeding farther through love of the desert, they began to worship the memory of the deceased;

so that they might both seem to render thanks to the well-deserving, and might allure their successors to a desire for governing well. This Cicero teaches in his work On the Nature of the Gods, saying: «But the life and common custom of men has taken it up, that men excelling in benefits should be raised to heaven by fame and goodwill. Hence Hercules, hence Castor, hence Pollux, hence Aesculapius, hence Liber.» And in another place: «And in most states it can be understood that, for the sake of sharpening virtue, or that each best man of the brave might more willingly face danger for the commonwealth's sake, the memory was consecrated by the honor of the immortal gods.» By this reasoning, of course, the Romans consecrated their Caesars, and the Moors their kings.

Thus little by little religions began to exist, while those first men who had known them imbued their own children and grandchildren, then all their descendants, with that rite. And yet these supreme kings, on account of the celebrity of their name, were worshiped in all the provinces. But privately the several peoples worshiped with the highest veneration the founders of their own nation or city, whether they were men distinguished for bravery or women wonderful for chastity; as the Egyptians worshiped Isis, the Moors Juba, the Macedonians Cabirus, the Carthaginians Uranus, the Latins Faunus, the Sabines Sancus, the Romans Quirinus. In the same way, certainly, Athens worshiped Minerva, Samos Juno, Paphos Venus, Lemnos Vulcan, Naxos Liber, Delphi Apollo.

Thus through peoples and regions various sacred rites were taken up, while grateful men desire to be thankful toward their princes, and because they cannot find other honors which they may confer upon those bereft of life. Moreover, the piety of those who had succeeded contributed very much to the error; who (that they might seem born of a divine stock) conferred divine honors on their parents, and ordered that they be conferred. Can anyone doubt how the religions of the gods were instituted, when in Maro he reads the words of Aeneas commanding his companions: «Now pour libations of bowls to Jupiter, and call with prayers upon Anchises my father»? To whom he attributed not only immortality, but even power over the winds:

«Let us ask for winds, and may he be willing that I bring these sacred rites to him each year in a city when it is established, in temples dedicated to him.» The same thing, of course, Liber and Pan and Mercury and Apollo did concerning Jupiter; and afterward their successors did concerning these very ones. The poets too were added, and with songs composed for pleasure raised them to heaven: just as those do who flatter kings, even bad ones, with lying panegyrics. This evil arose from the Greeks: whose levity, equipped with a faculty and abundance of speaking, it is incredible what clouds of lies it stirred up. And so, admiring them, they both first took up their sacred rites, and handed them on to all nations. On account of this vanity the Sibyl thus rebukes them: [Greek words]. M.

Tullius, who was not only a perfect orator but also a philosopher—since he alone proved to be the imitator of Plato—in that book in which he consoled himself over the death of his daughter, did not hesitate to say that the gods who were publicly worshiped had been men. And his testimony ought to be judged the weightier on this account, that he held the priesthood of augur, and testifies that he himself worships and venerates these same gods. And so within a few short lines he gave us two things. For while he professed that he would consecrate the image of his daughter in the same way as those were consecrated by the ancients, he both taught that they were dead, and showed the origin of the vain superstition.

«Since indeed,» he says, «we see that many human beings, both men and women, are reckoned among the number of the gods, and we venerate their most august shrines in cities and fields, let us assent to the wisdom of those by whose talents and discoveries we possess our whole life refined and ordered by laws and institutions. But if any living being was ever worthy to be consecrated, surely it was this one. If the offspring of Cadmus, or of Amphitryon, or of Tyndareus deserved to be exalted to heaven by fame, the same honor must certainly be assigned to her. And this indeed I shall do, and with the immortal gods themselves approving, I shall consecrate you, the best and most learned of all, set in their company, to the esteem of all mortals.»

Perhaps someone may say that Cicero, in his excessive grief, had lost his reason. And yet that whole discourse, perfected in doctrine, in examples, and in the very manner of speaking, was not the work of a sick mind but of a steady mind and judgment; and this very sentiment displays no sign of sorrow. For I do not think he could have written so variously, so copiously, so elegantly, unless his grief had been softened by reason itself, by the consolation of friends, and by length of time. What of the fact that he says the same thing in his books On the Republic? The same in his On Glory? For in his On the Laws—a work in which, following Plato, he wished to lay down laws by which he judged a state to be just and wise in its practice—he decreed concerning religion thus: «Let them worship the gods, and those who have always been held to be heavenly;

and those whom their merits have placed in heaven: Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius, Pollux, Castor, Quirinus.» Likewise in the Tusculan Disputations, when he said that almost the whole heaven was filled with the human race: «But if,» he says, «I should try to search out ancient things, and to dig out from them those which the writers of Greece have handed down, even those very gods who are held to be of the higher races will be found to have set out from here to heaven. Inquire whose tombs are pointed out in Greece; recall, since you have been initiated, what is handed down in the mysteries: then at last you will understand how widely this extends.» He clearly bore witness, by appeal to Atticus's own knowledge, that from the very mysteries it can be understood that all those who are worshiped were once human beings:

and while he confessed without hesitation concerning Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, he was afraid to confess openly concerning Apollo and Jupiter their fathers, and likewise concerning Neptune, Vulcan, Mars, Mercury, whom he called gods of the higher races. And therefore he says that this extends widely, so that we may understand the same concerning Jupiter and the other more ancient gods, whose memory, if the ancients consecrated it by the same reasoning by which he says he will consecrate the image and name of his daughter, can be forgiven in the mourning, but not in those who believe. For who is so insane as to suppose that heaven is opened to the dead by the consent and decree of countless fools? Or that anyone can give to another what he himself does not possess?

Among the Romans, Julius is a god, because this pleased that wicked man Antony; Quirinus is a god, because this seemed good to shepherds—though the one had murdered his twin brother, and the other was a parricide of his country. But if Antony had not been consul, Gaius Caesar, for all his services to the commonwealth, would have lacked even the honor of a dead man, and that too by the counsel of his father-in-law Piso and of his kinsman Lucius Caesar, who forbade the funeral to take place, and of the consul Dolabella, who overthrew the column in the forum—that is, his tomb—and purified the forum. For that Romulus was missed by his own people Ennius declares, in whose verses the people, grieving for their lost king, speak thus: «O Romulus, Romulus, say, O, what a guardian of the fatherland did the gods beget in you! You brought us forth into the regions of light.

O father, O begetter, O blood sprung from the gods!» Because of this longing, the more readily was credence given to the lying Julius Proculus, who was suborned by the senators to announce to the common people that he had seen the king in a form more majestic than human, and that he had charged them through him that a shrine be made for him, that he was a god, and was to be called Quirinus. By this act he both persuaded the people that Romulus had departed to the gods, and freed the senate from suspicion of the king's murder. [1,16] CHAPTER XVI. I might have been content with what I have related; but there still remain many things necessary to the work I have undertaken.

For although, the very head of these religions being demolished, I have overthrown the whole, yet I am pleased nonetheless to pursue the rest, and to refute more fully this inveterate conviction, so that at last men may be ashamed of and repent of their errors. This is a great work, and worthy of a man. «I proceed to loose men's souls from the knots of religions,» as Lucretius says—who indeed could not accomplish this, because he brought forward nothing true. This is our office, who both assert the true God and refute the false ones. Therefore those who suppose that the poets invented fables about the gods, and yet both believe that there are female goddesses and worship them, fall back unwittingly into that which they had denied—namely, that those gods couple and beget. For it cannot be otherwise than that two sexes were established for the sake of generation.

But once the diversity of the sexes is admitted, they do not understand that it follows that they conceive—which cannot apply to God. But let it be as those men suppose; for they even say that there are sons of Jupiter and of the other gods. New gods are therefore born, and indeed daily, for they are not surpassed by men in fertility. Therefore all things are full of innumerable gods, since of course none of them dies. For since the multitude of men is incredible and their number beyond estimation, yet just as they are born, so they must die; what, then, are we to suppose of the gods, who have been born throughout so many ages and have remained immortal? Why, then, are so few worshiped? Unless perhaps we judge that the gods have two sexes not for the sake of generation, but only for the taking of pleasure;

and to practice those things which little men are ashamed both to do and to suffer. But since some gods are said to have been born from others, it follows that they are always being born—if indeed they were once born; or, if they have at some time ceased to be born, it behooves us to know why or when they ceased. Not without wit does Seneca say in his books of Moral Philosophy: «What then,» he says, «is the reason that among the poets the lecherous Jupiter has ceased to beget children? Has he turned sixty, and has the Papian law clamped a buckle on him? Or has he obtained the right of three children? Or has it at last come into his mind:

"Expect from another what you have done to another"—and does he fear lest someone do to him what he himself did to Saturn?» But let those who maintain the existence of the gods see how they will answer this argument which we shall bring forward: If there are two sexes of the gods, intercourse follows; and if they couple, they must necessarily have homes as well, for they do not lack virtue and modesty so far as to do this promiscuously or in the open, as we see dumb animals do. If they have homes, it follows that they also have cities; and indeed on the authority of Naso, who says: «The common folk dwell in scattered places; here on this front the powerful and illustrious heaven-dwellers have set up their household gods.» If they have cities, they will therefore have fields too. Now, who would not see what follows? That they plow and till—which indeed is done for the sake of sustenance.

Therefore they are mortal. This argument, turned the other way, holds equally good. For if they do not have fields, neither do they have cities; if they do not have cities, neither do they have homes; if they lack homes, then they also lack intercourse; if intercourse is absent from them, then the female sex too is absent. But among the gods we see that there are also females; therefore they are not gods. Let anyone dissolve this argument who can. For thus one thing follows another, so that this last conclusion must necessarily be confessed. But neither will anyone dissolve this: Of the two sexes, one is stronger, the other weaker. For the males are more robust, the females feebler. But feebleness does not befall a god; therefore neither does the female sex.

To this is added that final conclusion of the foregoing argument, that there are no gods, since among the gods there are also females. [1,17] CHAPTER XVII. For these reasons the Stoics interpret the gods in another way; and because they do not perceive what lies in the truth, they attempt to connect the gods with the system of natural things. Cicero, following them, delivered this judgment concerning the gods and their religions: «Do you see, then, how a system, derived from things well and usefully discovered in physics, has been drawn over to fabricated and fictitious gods? This is what gave birth to false opinions and turbulent errors and almost old-womanish superstitions. For both the forms of the gods are known to us, and their ages, and their dress and adornment;»

«moreover their lineages, marriages, all their kinships, and everything carried over to the likeness of human weakness.» What could be said more plainly, what more truly? The chief of Roman philosophy, and endowed with the most ample priesthood, convicts the fabricated and fictitious gods; he testifies that their worship consists of almost old-womanish superstitions; he complains that men are entangled in false opinions and turbulent errors. For the whole third book On the Nature of the Gods utterly overturns and destroys all religions. What more, then, is expected of us? Can we surpass Cicero in eloquence? By no means indeed; but confidence was lacking to him who was ignorant of the truth, as he himself simply confesses in the same work.

For he says that he can more easily declare what is not than what is—that is, that he understands the false but does not know the true. It is clear, then, that those who are thought to be gods were once human beings, and that their memory was consecrated after death. Therefore too their ages are different, and the images of each are fixed, because their likenesses were fashioned in that very dress and age in which death overtook each of them. Let us consider, if you please, the calamities of the wretched gods. Isis lost her son; Ceres her daughter; Latona, driven out and tossed about over the whole world, scarcely found a small island (Delos) in which to give birth. The Mother of the gods both loved a beautiful youth, and, having caught him with a concubine, rendered him a half-man by cutting off his virility;

and therefore now her rites are celebrated by the Gallic priests. Juno most fiercely persecuted her rivals, because she herself could not bear a child by her brother. Varro writes that the island of Samos was formerly named Parthenia, because there Juno grew up, and there too she married Jupiter. And so her most noble and most ancient temple is at Samos, and her image is fashioned in the dress of a bride, and her rites are celebrated yearly with a wedding ceremony. If, then, she grew up, if she was first a virgin and afterward a woman, whoever does not understand that she was a human being confesses himself a beast. Why should I speak of the obscenity of Venus, prostituted to the lusts of all—not only of the gods but also of men? For she bore Harmonia from her notorious adultery with Mars;

from Mercury, Hermaphroditus, who was born androgynous; from Jupiter, Cupid; from Anchises, Aeneas; from Butes, Eryx; from Adonis indeed she could have none, since while still a boy he was struck by a boar and slain. She, as is contained in the Sacred History, was the first to establish the art of harlotry, and was the instigator to the women in Cyprus that they should make gain by prostituting their bodies; and she commanded this for the purpose that she alone might not appear unchaste and desirous of men beyond the other women. Has she then any divinity—she whose adulteries are reckoned more numerous than her offspring? But not even those virgin goddesses were able to preserve unspotted chastity. For from what are we to suppose that Erichthonius was born? From the earth, as the poets would have it seem? But the very matter cries out otherwise.

For when Vulcan had made arms for the gods, and Jupiter had given him the choice of asking whatever reward he wished, and had sworn, as was his custom, by the infernal swamp that he would deny him nothing, then the lame smith demanded marriage with Minerva. Here Jupiter, Best and Greatest, bound by so great a religious oath, could not refuse; yet he warned Minerva to resist and to defend her chastity. Then in that struggle, they say, Vulcan spilled his seed upon the earth, from which Erichthonius was born; and that name was imposed upon him from g-apo g-tehs g-eridos, g-kai g-chtonos—that is, «from strife and earth.» Why, then, did the virgin entrust that boy, shut up and sealed with a dragon, to the three Cecropian maidens?

It is, as I think, evident incest, which can in no way be glossed over. Another goddess, when she had almost lost her lover, who was torn apart by frenzied horses, summoned the most excellent physician Asclepius to heal the youth; and when he was healed, «the kindly one hides him away in secret abodes, and consigns him to the nymph Egeria and to her grove: where alone, unknown, in the Italian woods he might pass his life, and where, with his name changed, he might be Virbius.» What does this so diligent, so anxious cure mean for itself? What the secret abodes? What the banishment, whether so far off, or to a woman, or into solitude? What then the changing of his name? Finally, what the so persistent abhorrence of horses? What do all these things signify, if not the consciousness of defilement, and a love by no means virginal?

There was plainly good reason why she should undertake so great a labor on behalf of so faithful a youth, who had utterly refused compliance to his amorous stepmother. [1,18] CHAPTER XVIII. At this point those too must be refuted who not only confess that the gods were made out of men, but even boast of it so as to praise them—whether for the sake of valor, like Hercules; or of benefits, like Ceres and Liber; or of arts discovered, like Aesculapius and Minerva. But how foolish these things are, and how unworthy that for their sake men should defile themselves with inexpiable wickedness and become enemies of the true God—whom, despised, they undertake the rites of the dead—I shall show from each instance one by one. They say that virtue is that which lifts a man to heaven: not that virtue of which the philosophers discourse, which is situated in the goods of the soul;

but this bodily virtue, which is called strength: which, because it was preeminent in Hercules, he is believed to have merited immortality. Who is so foolishly absurd as to judge bodily strength to be a divine, or even a human, good?—since it is attributed in greater measure to cattle, and is often broken by a single disease, or diminished and collapses through old age itself. And so that same Hercules, when he saw his muscles disfigured by ulcers, neither wished to be healed nor to grow old, lest at some time he should appear less or more deformed than himself. They supposed that from the pyre, on which he himself had burned himself alive, he ascended into heaven:

and those very things which they most foolishly admired, expressed and consecrated in statues and images, they set up, so that the monuments of their vanity might stand forever—those who believed that gods are made through the slaughter of beasts. But this perhaps may be the fault of the Greeks, who always held the most trifling things to be the greatest. What of our own people—are they any wiser? They despise athletic prowess, indeed, because it harms nothing; but royal power, because it is wont to do harm far and wide, they so admire that they suppose brave and warlike commanders to be placed in the company of the gods; and they think there is no other way to immortality than to lead armies, to lay waste others' lands, to destroy cities, to overthrow towns, to slaughter free peoples or subject them to servitude:

namely, the more men they have afflicted, despoiled, and slain, the more noble and illustrious they think themselves, and, captivated by the appearance of empty glory, they impose the name of virtue upon their crimes. Now I would rather they fashioned gods for themselves out of the slaughter of wild beasts, than that they should approve so bloody an immortality. If anyone has cut the throat of a single man, he is held to be polluted and abominable, nor do they think it lawful for him to be admitted even to this earthly dwelling of the gods. But he who has butchered countless thousands of men, has flooded the fields with gore, has stained the rivers, is admitted not only into a temple, but even into heaven. In Ennius, Africanus speaks thus: «If it is right for anyone to ascend into the regions of the heaven-dwellers, for me alone the mightiest gate of heaven stands open.»

Doubtless because he wiped out and destroyed a great part of the human race! O in what great darkness, Africanus, were you involved! Or rather, O poet, who supposed that the ascent into heaven lay open to men through slaughter and blood! To this vanity Cicero too assented: «It is indeed so, Africanus,» he says; «for this same gate stood open for Hercules also.» As though he himself had plainly been the doorkeeper in heaven when that took place! For my part I cannot determine whether I should think it more a matter for grief or for laughter, when I see grave and learned men, and, as they seem to themselves, wise men, tumbling about in such pitiable surges of error. If this is the virtue that makes us immortal, I would rather die than be the destruction of very many.

If immortality cannot be procured otherwise than through blood, what will happen if all should agree together in concord? This surely could come to pass, if, casting away pernicious and impious madness, they should be willing to be innocent and just. Will no one then be worthy of heaven? Will virtue perish, because it will not be granted to men to rage against men? But those who count the destruction of cities and peoples as the highest glory will not endure public tranquility; they will plunder, they will rage, and by injuries insolently inflicted they will break the covenant of human society, that they may be able to have an enemy whom they may destroy more criminally than they had provoked. Now let us proceed to the rest. The handing down of benefits gave the name of gods to Ceres and Liber.

I can teach from the divine writings that wine and grain were in use among men before the offspring of Coelus and Saturn; but let us grant, for argument's sake, that these were discovered by them. Can it seem greater or more important to have gathered grain, and, when it was ground, to have taught how to make bread, or to have pressed grapes plucked from the vines and made wine, than to have generated the grain itself, or the vines, and to have brought them forth from the earth? Let God indeed have left these things to be discovered by human talents: yet it cannot be otherwise than that all things belong to Him who both granted wisdom to man, so that he might discover, and granted those very things which could be discovered. Arts too are said to have begotten immortality for their discoverers—as medicine for Aesculapius, smithcraft for Vulcan.

Let us then worship also those who taught the fuller's and the cobbler's trade! But why is no honor given to the inventor of the potter's craft? Is it because those rich men despise Samian ware? There are also other arts whose inventors have greatly profited human life. Why have temples not been assigned to them too? But, forsooth, it is Minerva who discovered them all; and therefore those craftsmen make supplication to her. So then, from these base trades Minerva ascended into heaven! Is there indeed any reason why anyone should forsake Him who began the earth with its living creatures, the heaven with its stars and lights, in order to venerate her who taught how to set up a loom? What of him who taught how to heal wounds in bodies?

Can he be more excellent than He who formed the very bodies, and gave the faculty of perceiving and of living? Who finally devised and brought forth the very herbs and the other things of which the art of healing consists? [1,19] CHAPTER XIX. But indeed someone will say that veneration is to be rendered both to this supreme One who made all things, and to those who in part have been of service. First, it has never come about that one who worshiped these also worshiped God; nor can it come about, since, if the same honor is given to others, He is not worshiped at all whose religion is to believe that He is the one and only God.

The supreme poet cries out that all those «who refined life by the arts they discovered» are among the shades below, and that that very discoverer of such medicine and art was thrust down to the Stygian waters by a thunderbolt: that we may understand how great is the power of the omnipotent Father, who extinguishes even gods with His thunderbolts. But ingenious men perhaps reasoned thus with themselves: since God cannot be smitten by a thunderbolt, it is plain that the thing was not done; nay rather, since it was done, it is plain that he was a man, not a god. For the falsehood of the poets lies not in the deed, but in the name. For they feared evil for themselves if, against the public conviction, they should confess what was true.

But if this is agreed among them—that gods were made out of men—why then do they not believe the poets, when they sometimes describe the flights of those gods, and their wounds, and deaths, and wars, and adulteries? From which things it is given to understand that they could in no way have become gods: because they were not even upright men, and in their lives they did those things which beget everlasting death. [1,20] CHAPTER XX. I come now to the proper religions of the Romans, since I have spoken of the common ones. The she-wolf, nurse of Romulus, was endowed with divine honors. And I would bear it, if the animal itself had existed whose figure she bears. Livy is the authority that there is an image of Larentina—and that not of body, but of mind and character.

For she was the wife of Faustulus, and because of the cheapness of her prostituted body she was called «she-wolf» (lupa) among the shepherds—that is, a harlot; whence too a brothel is called lupanar. The Romans, of course, followed the example of the Athenians in fashioning her likeness; among whom a certain harlot by the name of Leaena, when she had slain a tyrant, since it was unlawful to set up the likeness of a harlot in a temple, they placed the figure of the animal whose name she bore. And so, as the Athenians made a monument from her name, so the Romans made one from her profession. To this woman's name even a festival day was dedicated, and the Larentinalia instituted. Nor do the Romans worship this harlot alone, but Faula too, whom Verrius writes to have been the mistress of Hercules.

Now how great is that immortality to be reckoned, which even harlots attain? Flora, when she had gained great wealth by the art of harlotry, wrote the people her heir, and left a fixed sum of money, from the yearly interest of which her birthday might be celebrated by the exhibition of games, which they call the Floralia. And because this seemed shameful to the senate, it was resolved that an explanation be drawn from the very name, so that a certain dignity might be added to a disgraceful affair. They feigned her to be a goddess who presides over flowers, and that she ought to be placated, so that the crops, along with the trees and vines, might blossom well and prosperously.