Divine Institutes & On the Deaths of the Persecutors 1 part 5/6

Following this pretext, the poet in the Fasti narrated that she was no ignoble nymph, who was called Chloris, and that she, married to Zephyr, received this as a gift from her husband, as it were in place of a dowry, that she should have power over all flowers. These things, indeed, are spoken honorably; but they are believed dishonorably and basely. Nor ought such veils to deceive us, when the truth is being sought. Those games, then, are celebrated with every wantonness, fittingly to the memory of a harlot. For besides the license of words, by which all obscenity is poured forth, the harlots, at the demand of the populace, are also stripped of their garments—they who then perform the office of mime-actresses—and in the sight of the people they are held back, with shameful movements, even to the satiety of unchaste eyes.

The image of Cloacina, found in the Great Sewer, Tatius consecrated; and because he did not know whose likeness it was, he imposed a name on it from the place. Tullus Hostilius fashioned and worshiped Fear (Pavor) and Pallor. What shall I say of this, except that he deserved always to have his gods present with him (as one is wont to wish)? From this differs, in the dignity of the names, that consecration of Honor and Virtue by Marcus Marcellus, but it agrees in substance. With the same vanity the senate also placed Mind (Mens) among the gods; which, surely, if it had possessed, it would never have undertaken rites of this sort. Cicero says that Greece undertook a great and bold plan, in that it consecrated images of the Cupids and Loves in its gymnasiums;

he was flattering Atticus, of course, and mocking his familiar friend. For that was not a great, nor by any means to be called a plan, but the lost and deplorable wickedness of unchaste men, who prostituted their own children—whom they ought to have trained toward honorable things—to the lust of the young; by whom they wished gods of disgrace to be worshiped, and that too in those very places where the naked bodies of the corrupters lie open to the eyes, and at that very age which, simple and improvident, can sooner be ensnared and fall into the snares than be on its guard. What wonder if from this nation all manner of disgraces have flowed?—among whom the very vices are religious, and these are not only not avoided, but even worshiped. And therefore to this opinion, as though he were surpassing the Greeks in prudence, he added:

«For it is virtues, not vices, that ought to be consecrated. But if you admit this, O Marcus Tullius, do you not see that the result will be that vices burst in along with the virtues, because evils cleave to goods and are the more powerful in the minds of men? And if you forbid these to be consecrated, that same Greece will answer you that it worships some gods that they may profit, and others that they may not harm.» For this is always the excuse of those who hold their own evils as gods, as the Romans hold Mildew (Rubigo) and Fever (Febris). If, then, vices are not to be consecrated—in which I agree with you—neither are the virtues.

For they neither have wisdom nor perception of themselves, nor are they to be placed within walls or in little shrines made of mud, but within the breast, and to be grasped inwardly—lest they be false, if they have been placed outside the man. And so I laugh at that splendid law of yours, which you lay down in these words: «But as for those things through which ascent into heaven is granted to man—Mind, Virtue, Piety, Faith—let there be shrines of these praises.» And yet these cannot be separated from man. For if they are to be worshiped, they must necessarily be within the man himself. But if they are outside the man, what need is there to worship those things which you lack? For virtue is to be worshiped, not the image of virtue:

and it is to be worshiped not by any sacrifice, or incense, or solemn prayer, but by the will alone and by purpose. For what else is it to worship virtue, than to grasp it with the mind and to hold it fast?—which each man attains as soon as he begins to will it. This alone is the worship of virtue; for religion and veneration must be held toward none other than the one God. What need is there, then, O most wise man, to occupy with superfluous structures places which could be given over to human uses? Why establish priests to tend things vain and insensible? Why immolate victims? Why expend such great costs in either fashioning or worshiping images? Firmer and more incorruptible is the temple of the human breast:

let this rather be adorned, let this be filled with those true names. From these false consecrations, then, follows what must necessarily follow. For those who thus worship the virtues—that is, who pursue the shadows and images of the virtues—cannot hold fast those very things which are true. And so there is no virtue in anyone, with vices everywhere dominating; no faith, since each man seizes everything for himself; no piety, since avarice spares neither kindred nor parents, and lust rushes into poison and into the sword; no peace, no concord, since publicly wars rage, and privately enmities run mad even to bloodshed; no chastity, since unbridled lusts defile every sex and every part of the body:

and yet they do not cease to worship those very things which they flee and hate. For with incense and the tips of their fingers they worship those things which they ought to have shuddered at in their inmost senses: which whole error descends from ignorance of that principal and supreme Good. When the City was occupied by the Gauls and the Romans were besieged on the Capitol, having made torsion-engines from the hair of their women, they consecrated a temple to Bald Venus (Venus Calva). They do not understand, then, how vain their religions are—even from this very fact, that they mock them with these absurdities. They had learned, perhaps, from the Lacedaemonians to fashion gods for themselves out of events; for when these were besieging the Messenians, and the Messenians, having stealthily deceived the besiegers and gone out, ran to plunder Lacedaemon, they were routed and put to flight by the Spartan women.

But when the enemy's wiles were discovered, the Lacedaemonians pursued. The women, armed, went out a good distance to meet them; and when they saw their own husbands preparing themselves for battle—because they supposed them to be Messenians—they bared their bodies. But the men, recognizing their wives, and excited to lust by the sight, armed as they were, mingled with them indiscriminately at once; for there was no leisure to discriminate. Thus the young men, sent away by these same women beforehand, mingled with the maidens, from whom the Partheniae were born; and because of the memory of this deed they set up a temple and an image to Armed Venus (Venus Armata): which, although it came from a base cause, yet seems more honorable to have consecrated an Armed Venus than a Bald one.

At the same time an altar was also set up to Jupiter Pistor (the Baker), because he had warned them in their sleep to make bread out of all the grain they had and to throw it into the enemy camp; and once this was done, the siege was lifted, since the Gauls despaired of being able to subdue the Romans by famine. What a mockery of religion is this! If I were a defender of these cults, what could I complain of more bitterly than that the name of the gods has fallen into such contempt that it is held up to ridicule under the most disgraceful titles? Who would not laugh at the goddess Fornax (Oven), or rather at learned men busying themselves with celebrating the Fornacalia? Who, on hearing of the goddess Muta (the Mute), could keep from laughing? They say that she is the one from whom the Lares were born, and they call her Lara, or Larunda.

What can she who cannot speak bestow on her worshipper? They also worship Caca, who gave Hercules information about the theft of his oxen and so attained divinity because she betrayed her brother; and Cunina, who watches over infants in their cradles and wards off the evil eye; and Stercutus, who first introduced the practice of manuring fields; and Tutinus, in whose obscene lap brides are made to sit, so that the god may seem to have been the first to take the first taste of their chastity; and a thousand other monstrosities, so that we may now call those who undertook to worship such things even more foolish than the Egyptians, who venerate certain monstrous and ridiculous images. Yet these at least have some semblance of a figure. But what of those who worship a shapeless and rough stone, whose name is Terminus?

This is the one whom Saturn is said to have devoured in place of Jupiter; and not without reason is honour paid to him. For when Tarquin wished to build the Capitol, and on that site there were shrines of many gods, he consulted them through auguries as to whether they would yield to Jupiter; and while all the others yielded, Terminus alone remained. Hence the poet calls him 'the immovable rock of the Capitol.' Now from this very fact we may see how great Jupiter is found to be, to whom a stone did not yield—perhaps out of the confidence that Saturn had delivered him from his father's jaws. And so, when the Capitol was built, an opening was left in the roof above Terminus himself, so that, since he had not yielded, he might enjoy the open sky—which not even those enjoyed who supposed that the stone enjoyed it.

And so to this one too public supplications are offered, as to a god who guards boundaries—a god who is not only a stone but sometimes even a wooden stake. What shall I say of those who worship such things, except that they themselves are most of all stones and stakes? CHAPTER 21. We have spoken of the gods themselves who are worshipped; now a few things must be said about their sacred rites and mysteries. Among the Cyprians, Teucer sacrificed a human victim to Jupiter, and he handed down that sacrifice to posterity—a custom that was only recently abolished in the reign of Hadrian. Among the Tauri, an inhuman and savage people, there was a law that strangers should be sacrificed to Diana; and that sacrifice was carried out for many ages. The Gauls used to appease Hesus and Teutates with human blood.

Nor indeed were the Latins free of this barbarity, since the Latian Jupiter is even now worshipped with human blood. What good do those pray for from the gods who sacrifice in such a way? Or what can such gods bestow on men, when they are propitiated by punishments? But as for barbarians, it is not so much to be wondered at, since their religion agrees with their character. But our own people, who have always claimed for themselves the glory of gentleness and humanity—are they not found to be more savage than these sacrilegious rites? For these men are rather to be reckoned wicked who, though they are polished by the study of the liberal disciplines, fall away from humanity, than those who, being rough and untaught, slip into evil deeds through ignorance of what is good.

Yet it is plain that this rite of sacrificing human beings is ancient, since Saturn was worshipped in Latium with the same kind of sacrifice—not indeed that a man was slaughtered at the altar, but that he was cast into the Tiber from the Milvian bridge. Varro is the authority that this used to be done in accordance with a certain oracle, the last verse of which runs thus: 'And send heads to Hades, and a man to the father.' Because this seems ambiguous, both a torch and a man used to be thrown to him. But that kind of sacrifice is said to have been abolished by Hercules when he was returning from Spain, the rite nevertheless remaining, so that instead of real men effigies of rushes were thrown; as Ovid teaches in the Fasti:

'Until the Tirynthian (Hercules) came to these fields, every year the gloomy rites were performed after the Leucadian manner. He bade the Quirites cast straw figures into the water: after the example of Hercules, throw counterfeit bodies.' These rites the Vestal virgins perform, as the same poet says: 'Then too the maiden is wont to throw from the oaken bridge the rush-made effigies of the men of old.' But of the infants who were sacrificed to that same Saturn because of his hatred of Jupiter, what to say I cannot find—that men should have been so barbarous, so savage, as to call their parricide, that is, a deed foul and accursed to the human race, a sacrifice:

when, without any regard for natural affection, they extinguished tender and innocent souls—an age that is most sweet to parents—and in their cruelty surpassed the savagery of all the beasts, which nevertheless love their own offspring! O incurable madness! What more could those gods do to them, if they were most enraged, than they do when propitious? when they defile their own worshippers with parricides, butcher them by bereavements, and strip them of human feeling? What can be sacred to these men? Or what will they do in unhallowed places, who commit the greatest crimes among the altars of the gods? Pescennius Festus relates in his books of Histories, in satirical form, that the Carthaginians were accustomed to sacrifice human victims to Saturn:

and that, when they had been defeated by Agathocles, king of the Sicilians, they supposed the god was angry with them; and so, in order to atone more diligently, they sacrificed two hundred sons of the nobility. 'So much evil could religion prompt!' which has often given birth to wicked and impious deeds. To whom, then, did these utterly mad men make supplication by that sacrifice? when they slew so great a part of the citizenry as perhaps not even Agathocles the victor had slain. Of no less insanity than that kind of rites are those public ceremonies to be judged: of which some belong to the Mother of the gods, in which men make offering of their own manhood; for, having cut off their sex, they make themselves neither men nor women:

others belong to Virtus, whom they also call Bellona, in which the priests themselves sacrifice not with another's blood but with their own. For with their shoulders gashed, and brandishing drawn swords in either hand, they run about, are carried away in frenzy, and rave. Most aptly, then, did Quintilian say in his 'Fanatic': 'If a god compels this, he is angry.' Are even these things sacred? Is it not better to live after the manner of beasts than to worship gods so impious, so profane, so bloodthirsty? But whence these errors and such great enormities have flowed, we shall discuss in its proper place: meanwhile let us look at the rest also, those that are free of crime, lest in our zeal to attack we should seem to be picking out the worst. The rites of Isis are Egyptian, in so far as she either lost or found her little son.

For first her priests, their bodies shaven, beat their breasts and lament, just as she herself had done when she lost him. Then a boy is brought forth as though found, and that mourning is turned into joy: hence Lucan says, 'and Osiris never sufficiently sought.' For they are always losing and always finding him. There is presented therefore in the rites an image of a thing that really happened, which, if we have any sense, plainly declares that she was a mortal woman, and all but bereaved, had she not found her only child. This did not escape that very poet, in whose work Pompey the younger, on hearing of his father's death, speaks thus: 'I will now drag forth from the tomb Isis as a deity for the nations, and scatter Osiris, sheltered in his wooden coffin, among the common people.'

This is Osiris, whom the common folk call Serapis or Serapides. For it is customary to change the names of the dead who have been deified—I suppose, lest anyone should think they had been men. For Romulus too after his death was made Quirinus; and Leda became Nemesis; and Circe, Marica; and Ino, after she hurled herself down, became Leucothea and Mother Matuta; and Melicertes her son became Palaemon and Portumnus. But the rites of Ceres of Eleusis are not unlike these. For just as there the boy Osiris is sought with his mother's lamentation, so here Proserpina, carried off to an incestuous marriage with her uncle: and because Ceres is said to have sought her in Sicily with torches kindled from the peak of Aetna, therefore her rites are celebrated with the brandishing of burning torches.

Among the people of Lampsacus the victim acceptable to Priapus is a little ass: the reason for which sacrifice is given thus in the Fasti. When all the gods had assembled at the festival of the Great Mother, and, sated with feasting, were passing the night in games, Vesta rested on the ground and fell asleep: there Priapus lay in wait against her sleep and her chastity; but she, roused by the untimely braying of the ass on which Silenus rode, the lust of the would-be assailant was foiled; for this reason the people of Lampsacus were wont to slaughter an ass to Priapus, as it were by way of vengeance; but among the Romans the same animal is crowned with loaves at the rites of Vesta, in honour of the chastity that was preserved. What is more shameful? what more disgraceful? than that Vesta is a virgin by the good office of an ass? But the poet invented the fable.

Is then that other account truer, which those report who wrote the 'Phaenomena,' when they speak of the two stars of Cancer, which the Greeks call 'the asses'? that they were the little asses which carried Father Liber across when he could not cross a river; to one of which he gave this reward, that it should speak with a human voice: and so a contest arose between it and Priapus over the size of the obscene member; and Priapus, defeated and angry, slew the victor. But this is far more absurd; yet poets are allowed whatever they please: I do not shake out so unseemly a mystery, nor do I lay Priapus bare, lest anything ridiculous should appear. These things, to be sure, the poets invented; but it must be that they were feigned to cover up some greater shamefulness. Let us therefore inquire what that may be.

But that is surely plain. For just as a bull is slaughtered to the Moon, because it likewise has horns, and 'the Persian appeases Hyperion (the Sun), girt with rays, with a horse, lest a slow victim be offered to the swift god'—so in this case, because the size of the male member is enormous, no victim more fitting could be found for that monstrous figure than one that could imitate the very thing to which it is sacrificed. At Lindus, which is a town of Rhodes, there are rites of Hercules whose ritual is far different from all others: for they are celebrated not with 'fair speech' (as the Greeks call it), but with curses and execration; and they reckon it a desecration if at any time, in the midst of the solemn rites, a good word should escape even some careless person. The reason given for this is as follows, if any reason can exist in matters so utterly empty:

Hercules, when he had been brought there and was suffering hunger, saw a certain ploughman at work, and began to ask him to sell him a single ox. But the man said it could not be done, because all his hope of tilling the land rested on those two bullocks. Hercules, using his accustomed violence, since he could not get one, carried off both. But that unhappy man, when he saw his oxen being slaughtered, avenged his injury with curses. This was most agreeable to a man of refinement and wit. For while he was preparing a feast for his companions, and while he was devouring another man's oxen, he listened with laughter and loud guffaws to the man reviling him most bitterly.

But after it was decided that divine honours should be paid to Hercules out of admiration for his prowess, an altar was set up to him by the citizens, which from the deed he named 'bouzygon' (ox-yoke), at which two yoked oxen were to be sacrificed, like those he had carried off from the ploughman; and he appointed that very man his priest, and ordered that he should always use the same curses in celebrating the sacrifices, because he declared he had never feasted more pleasantly. These are now not sacred rites but sacrileges, in which that is called holy which in other contexts, if it be done, is punished even most severely. But the rites of Cretan Jupiter himself—what else do they show but how he was either taken away from his father or reared? There is the she-goat of the nymph Amalthea, who nourished the infant with her udders;

concerning which Germanicus Caesar in his poem on Aratus speaks thus: 'She is thought to be the nurse of Jupiter; if indeed the infant Jupiter sucked the udders of the most faithful Cretan she-goat, who by a bright star bears witness to her grateful nursling.' Musaeus is the authority that Jupiter, fighting against the Titans, used the hide of this she-goat as a shield: whence by the poets he is called 'aegis-bearing' (aegiochos). Thus whatever was done in the hiding of the boy is itself enacted in image in the rites. But the mystery of his mother too contains the same thing, which Ovid expounds (in the Fasti, book IV, v. 207): 'Long since does steep Ida resound with tinklings, that the boy might wail safely with infant lips. Some beat shields with stakes, some empty helmets: this is the task of the Curetes, this of the Corybantes.

The matter was kept hidden, and to this day the imitations of the ancient deed remain; the goddess's attendants strike bronze and rasping hides, and beat cymbals instead of helmets, drums instead of shields: the flute gives Phrygian strains, as it gave before.' This whole opinion, as feigned by the poets, Sallust rejects, and wished ingeniously to interpret why the Curetes are said to have been the foster-fathers of Jupiter; and thus he says: Because they were the chief men of divine understanding, antiquity—as in other matters magnifying things—celebrated them as the foster-fathers of Jupiter. How greatly the learned man erred, the very fact now declares. For if Jupiter is the chief, both of the gods and of religions; if before him no gods were worshipped by the common people, because those who are worshipped had not yet been born;

it appears, on the contrary, that the Curetes were the foremost in a divine ignorance, through whom every error was introduced and the memory of the true God was abolished. From the very mysteries and ceremonies, therefore, they ought to have understood that they were making supplication to dead men. I do not, then, require anyone to believe the fictions of the poets. Whoever thinks that these men lie, let him consider the writings of the pontiffs themselves, and let him turn over whatever literature pertains to the sacred rites: he will perhaps find more than we bring forward, from which he may understand that all the things held to be holy are empty, foolish, and fabricated. But if anyone, having received wisdom, lays aside his error, he will surely laugh at the follies of men who are all but mad;

I mean those who either dance with shameful capering, or who run about naked, anointed, garlanded, masked, or smeared with mud. What shall I say of the shields already rotten with age? which, when they carry them, they suppose they are bearing the very gods on their own shoulders. For Furius Bibaculus is reckoned among the foremost examples of piety, who, though he was praetor, nevertheless, with lictors going before him, carried the sacred shield (ancile), although by the privilege of his office he had exemption from that duty. Not Furius then, but plainly frenzied (furiosus), was he who thought he was adorning the praetorship by this service. Rightly therefore, when these things are done by men not unskilled or rough, Lucretius exclaims: 'O foolish minds of men, O blind hearts!

In what darkness of life and in how great dangers is passed this span of years, whatever it is!' Who would not laugh at these mockeries, who has any sanity? when he sees men, as though mad, doing in earnest things which, if anyone were to do them in play, would seem too wanton and foolish. CHAPTER 22. The author and founder of these vanities among the Romans was that Sabine king (Numa), who above all entangled the rude and untaught minds of men in new superstitions: and that he might do this with some authority, he pretended that he had nightly meetings with the goddess Egeria. There was a certain very dark cave in the grove of Aricia, whence a brook flowed from a perennial spring;

hither, with witnesses removed, he was wont to betake himself, so that he might pretend, at the prompting of the goddess his consort, to deliver to the people those rites which were most acceptable to the gods: doubtless he wished to imitate the cunning of Minos, who used to hide himself in the cave of Jupiter, and there, lingering long, would bring forth laws as though delivered to him by Jupiter, in order to bind men to obedience not only by command but also by religion. Nor indeed was it difficult to persuade shepherds. And so he created pontiffs, flamens, Salii, augurs, and assigned the gods among the families. Thus he softened the fierce spirits of the new people and called them away from warlike pursuits to the pursuits of peace. But while he deceived others, yet he did not deceive himself;

for after very many years, in the consulship of Cornelius and Baebius, in the field of the scribe Petilius, beneath the Janiculum, two stone chests were discovered by diggers, in one of which was the body of Numa, in the other seven Latin books on pontifical law, and as many Greek ones written on the discipline of wisdom, by which he abolished the religions—not only those which he himself had instituted, but all the others besides. When this matter was reported to the Senate, it was decreed that these books should be destroyed: and so Q. Petilius, the city praetor, burned them in an assembly of the people—unwisely indeed. For what did it profit that the books were burned? when this very fact, that they were burned because they detracted from the religions, has been handed down to memory? No one then in the Senate was anything but most foolish.

For the books might have been destroyed, and yet the matter not pass into memory. Thus, while they wish to prove even to posterity with how great piety they defended the religions, by bearing witness they diminished the authority of the religions themselves. But as Pompilius (Numa) was among the Romans the institutor of foolish religions, so before Pompilius, Faunus in Latium established wicked rites—indeed to his grandfather Saturn—and honoured his father Picus among the gods, and consecrated his own sister Fatua Fauna, who was also his wife; whom Gabius Bassus reports to have been named Fatua because she was accustomed to chant fates to women, as Faunus did to men. The same woman Varro writes was of such great modesty that, as long as she lived, no male except her own husband saw her, nor heard her name.

For this reason women sacrifice to her in secret, and call her the Good Goddess (Bona Dea). And Sextus Clodius, in the book which he wrote in Greek, relates that she was the wife of Faunus, who, because contrary to custom and royal dignity she had secretly drunk off a jar of wine and become drunk, was beaten to death with myrtle rods by her husband. But afterwards, when he repented of his deed and could not bear his longing for her, he conferred divine honour upon her; and for this reason in her rites a wine-jar wrapped in cloth is set out. Faunus too, therefore, left to posterity no small amount of error, which nevertheless all the prudent see through. For Lucilius mocks the folly of those who think that images are gods, in these verses:

'The earth-dwelling Lamiae, which the Fauni and the Numa Pompilii established—at these he trembles; on these he stakes everything. As little children believe that all bronze statues live and are men: so these men think all fictions are true; they believe there is a heart in bronze statues. A painter's booth; nothing real: all is fiction.' The poet indeed compared foolish men to infants. But I say they are far more imprudent. For those think images are men, these think them gods. Their age makes the former suppose what is not so; folly makes the latter. The former soon cease to be deceived; the vanity of the latter both endures and ever grows.

The rites of Father Liber, Orpheus first introduced into Greece, and first celebrated them on a mountain of Boeotia near Thebes, where Liber was born; which, because it resounded frequently with the music of the lyre, was called Cithaeron. These rites are even now called Orphic, in which he himself was afterwards torn apart and rent in pieces; and he lived in about the same times as Faunus. But which preceded the other in age may be doubted: since during the same years Latinus and Priam reigned; likewise their fathers Faunus and Laomedon, during whose reign Orpheus, with the Argonauts, reached the shore of the Trojans. Let us therefore proceed further, and inquire who was altogether the first author of worshipping the gods.