of Hercules, when — at the warning of Apollo — supplication was made to father Dis and to Saturn with human heads, did you not likewise change this custom by a crafty little fraud and an ambiguity of names? Since, therefore, you yourselves have followed now those manners, now other laws, and many things have been repudiated and scorned by you, whether because errors were recognized or because better things were noticed — what has been done by us against common sense and common judgment, if we have chosen greater and more certain things and have not suffered ourselves to be held fast by the religions of false gods?
'But our name is new, and the religion we follow was born but a few days ago.' — Granting for the moment that what is charged against us is not a false assertion — what is there, indeed, in human affairs, whether wrought by the labor of the body and the hands or held only by the discipline and knowledge of the mind, that did not begin at some time and pass into the use and experience of mortals? Medicine, philosophy, music, and all the other arts by which the common life is built up and refined — were they born together with men, and not rather begun to be practiced, understood, and celebrated recently, nay almost a little while ago? Before Tages the Etruscan touched the shores of light,
did any of men know, or take care that it should be known and learned, whether anything was signified by the falls of thunderbolts or in the veins of the entrails? When did the movements of the stars, or the science of nativities, begin to be known? Was it not after Theuth the Egyptian, or after Atlas — as some report, that bearer, carrier, piper, and prop of heaven? But why do I speak of these small things? Did not the immortal gods themselves, whose temples you now approach and whose divinities you suppliantly adore, begin — as is handed down in your own writings and opinions — to be, and to be known, from certain times, and to be called by imposed appellations of names?
For if it is true that Jupiter with his brothers was begotten from Saturn and his wife, then before the marriage and childbearing of Ops, Jupiter existed nowhere — Jupiter the supreme as well as the Stygian — nowhere the lord of the sea, nowhere Juno; nay, no other, save the two parents excepted, dwelt in the seats of heaven, but from their union they were conceived and born and drew the breath of life. From a certain time, therefore, Jupiter began to be a god, from a certain time to merit worship and sacrifices, from a certain time to be set above his brothers in powers.
Again, if Liber, Venus, Diana, Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, the Muses, the Tyndarid Castors, and fire-wielding Vulcan were brought forth with Jupiter as father and begotten of the Saturnian sire, then before Memory, before Alcmena, Maia, Juno, Latona, Leda, Dione — and then Semele — were made pregnant by the embraces of Diespiter, these too existed nowhere among the nations nor in any part of nature, but from Jupiter's coming together they were seeded and born and began to have some awareness of themselves. Therefore these too began to be at a certain time, and to be invoked at ceremonies among the number of the sacred divinities — and the same may likewise be said, transferred to Minerva.
For if, as you assert, she leaped forth from the brain of Jupiter without the casting of any seed, then before Diespiter was begotten and received in the womb of his mother the corporeal form of definite shape, it is certainly sure that Minerva did not exist, nor was she reckoned among the number of things or in any substance, but she was born from the head of Jupiter and began to be some thing established in essence. She has, therefore, an original beginning, and from a certain time began to be called a goddess, to be set up in sacred temples, and to be sanctioned by inviolable religion.
Since this is so, when you speak of the novelty of our religions, your own do not come into your mind, nor do you care to examine when your gods arose, what origins they have, what causes, or from what roots they burst forth and flashed out. But of what modesty is it — nay, of what shamelessness — to reprove another for that which you see yourself doing, to lay to the account of reproach and crime those things which may be turned back against you in reciprocal exchange? 'But what we do is new, whereas what you do is ancient and of extreme antiquity': — and how does that either help you or sadden our cause and our reasoning? The thing we practice is new; some day it too will become old:
what you practice is old, but at the time when it began it was new and sudden. The authority of a religion, however, is to be estimated not by time but by the divine power; and it is fitting to consider not on what day you began to worship, but what you have begun to worship. 'Three hundred years ago,' he says, 'your religion did not exist.' — And your gods did not exist two thousand years ago. 'By what reasonings can this be gathered, or by what calculations?' — By none difficult, none obscure, but such as anyone who wishes may see and, as the saying goes, handle with his hands. 'Who begot Jupiter with his brothers?' — Saturn, joined to the marriage-bed of Ops, as you relate, begotten of Caelus and Hecate. 'Who begot Picus, father of Faunus and grandfather of Latinus?'
— Saturn, as you yourselves hand down in your writings and authors. Therefore, if these things are so, it follows that Picus and Jupiter are bound to each other by the right of brotherhood, inasmuch as they were begotten of one blood and one seed. 'It is agreeable that what is said should be so.' — From Jupiter and Picus, how many generations are there down to Latinus? 'Three, as the sequence indicates.' — Will you have it that Faunus, Latinus, and Picus each lived a hundred and twenty years? 'For beyond that a man's life is denied the power to be prolonged.' — The estimate is just and clear. — There are, then, a full three hundred and sixty years after these? 'It is so, as the reckoning indicates.' — Whose father-in-law was Latinus? 'Aeneas's.' — And Aeneas was father of whom?
— 'Of Ascanius, founder of the town of Alba.' — For how many years was there rule at Alba? 'For four hundred and nearly twice ten.' — Of what age is the city of Rome indicated to be in the annals? 'It counts a thousand and fifty years, or not much less than these.' — Therefore, from Jupiter, who is the brother of Picus and father of the lesser and remaining gods, the years down to these times are nearly two thousand, or full, if we are generous to their age. And since this cannot be refuted, not only is the religion you practice shown to be recently born, but the very gods are shown to be still infants and little ones — to whom you offer bulls and other victims at the risk of corrupting them — who ought still to be nourished at the breast and with dripping milk.
'But your religions precede ours by many years, and are the truer for being fortified by the authority of antiquity.' — And what does it profit them to go before by ever so many years, since they began at a fixed time? Or what span are two thousand years, compared with so many thousands of ages? And yet, lest we seem to betray our cause by too long a dissembling — if it is not troublesome, tell me: does the omnipotent and first God seem to you a new thing, and do those who venerate and worship him set in motion and introduce unheard-of, unknown, sudden religions? Is there anything more ancient than he, or can anything be found which precedes him in reality, in time, in name? Is he not alone unbegotten, alone immortal and everlasting?
Who is the head and fountain of things but he himself? To whom does eternity owe this very thing, that it is called eternity? Is it not to him? That the infinite ages come forth — is it not accomplished from his perpetuity? This is beyond doubt and true. Therefore what we follow is not new; rather, we have only lately learned what we ought to follow and worship, and where it were fitting to fix the hope of salvation and to place the aids of well-being. For not yet had he shone forth who might show the way to those wandering and, to those set in deepest darkness, send in the light of knowledge and scatter the blindness of ignorance. But is a charge of this kind turned against us alone? What of you and the Egyptian divinities, whose name is Serapis and Isis?
Did you not, after the consuls Piso and Gabinius, enroll them in the number of your gods? What of the Phrygian Mother, whose founder is said to be either Midas or Dardanus — did you not, when Hannibal the Carthaginian was ravaging the affairs of Italy and demanding the sovereignty of the lands, begin both to know and recognize her and to sanction her with memorable religion? Were not the rites of Mother Ceres, because they were unknown to you and adopted a little before, styled 'Greek,' the very surname bearing witness to their newness? Is it not contained in the writings of the learned that the name of Apollo was unknown to the Pompilian invocations? From which it appears and is clear that he too was unknown to you, but afterward at some time began to be known.
If, therefore, anyone should ask you why you took up so late the worship of those divinities we have just mentioned, it is certain you will answer: either that we did not lately know them to be in the number of the gods, or that we have now been warned by the seers, or that in the harshest circumstances we were saved by their benefits and aids. But if you will judge that this is rightly said by you, judge also that from our side the answer is given by a like reasoning. Our religion has now been born: for now there has come, sent forth, one who might show it to us, who might lead us into its truth, who might reveal what God is, who might call us away from things merely opined to his worship.
'And what,' he says, 'seemed good to God the King and sovereign, that only a few hours ago, so to speak, Christ the savior should be sent to you from the citadels of heaven?' — We too ask in return: what cause, what reason is there that the seasons are not always rendered to their own months, but that winters come later, later summer and autumn? Why, after the harvests are dried up and the crops destroyed, do rains sometimes fall which ought to have descended while things were unharmed and been ministered at the opportune times of the season? Nay, we inquire rather into this:
why rather, if it was fitting that Hercules should be born, and Aesculapius, Mercury, Liber, and certain others who both were joined to the councils of the gods and brought some benefit to mortals, they were brought forth by Jupiter so late that only posterity knew them, while the antiquity of former men was ignorant of them? You will say there was some reason. There was a reason here too, then, why the savior of our race came not long ago but today. 'What reason, then, is it?' — We do not deny that we do not know. For it is not easy for anyone to see the mind of God; nor can man — a blind animal, ignorant even of himself — attain by any reasonings the ways in which God has ordered his own affairs:
what ought to be done, when, or in what manner, the Father, ruler, and Lord of all things alone knows. Nor, if I shall be unable to set forth to you the causes why something is done in that way or this, does it forthwith follow that the things which have been done become undone, and that a matter loses its credibility which has been shown, by so many kinds of virtues and powers, to be beyond doubt. You may object and reply: 'Why was the savior sent forth so late?' — In infinite, perpetual ages nothing whatever is to be called late. For where there is no end and no beginning, nothing is premature, nothing tardy. For time is known by its limits and extremities, which the series and unbounded continuation of the ages cannot possess.
For what if the very circumstances to which aid was fitting to be brought demanded that opportuneness of time? What if the ancient things were of one condition, and the later ones of another? What if the ancients had to be succored in one way, and the later ones provided for in another? Do you not hear your own writings recording that men were once demigods and heroes, with monstrous and vast bodies? Do you not read that infants at their mothers' breasts, a hundred years old, uttered their wailing, whose bones, dug up in various regions, by their size made their finders believe them to be the remains of human limbs? It can therefore be that God almighty, God alone, sent forth Christ only then, after the race of men had begun to grow more broken and weaker, our nature becoming such.
If what was done today could have been done thousands of years before, the supreme King would have done it; or if, after as many thousands, that which was done today ought to have been accomplished, nothing was compelling God not to await the necessary measures of the times. His affairs are carried out by fixed reasonings, and what has once been decreed to be done can be changed by no innovation. 'Why then,' he says, 'if you serve an omnipotent God and trust that he has care of your salvation and safety — why does he suffer you to endure such great persecutions and to undergo all kinds of penalties and tortures?'
Let us, for our part, inquire in return why you also, though you worship gods so many and so numberless, and set up for them sacred shrines, fashion images out of gold, slaughter herds of living creatures, and heap all your censers of incense upon your altars, why you are not exempt from so many perils and storms, by which the deadly and manifold turns of fortune drive you every day? Why, I ask, do your gods fail to turn away from you so many kinds of diseases and sicknesses, shipwrecks, collapses, fires, plagues, barrenness, the loss of children and the confiscation of goods, discords, wars, and feuds, the capture of cities and, with freeborn status stripped away, slavery? But God likewise gives us no aid at all in misfortunes of this kind.
The reason is ready and plain. For nothing has been promised to us for this present life, nor, while we are set within the little husk of this poor flesh, has any help been pledged or any aid decreed to us; rather we have been taught to count as of little worth and to reckon as nothing all the threats, whatever they be, of fortune, and, if ever some heavier violence should bear down upon us — the sort of end we must needs come to — to ascribe the affliction to ill luck, and neither to fear nor flee it, that so we may the more easily be stripped of the bonds of the body and escape from its shadowy blindness. And so that harshness of persecution of which you speak is our liberation, not a persecution; nor will the torment inflict punishment, but lead us forth to the light of freedom.
Suppose some brutish and stupid fellow should think that he can in no way afflict with grievous and monstrous punishments a man cast into prison to await his release from questioning, unless he vents his rage upon the prison itself — crushing its fabric, burning the roof, laying bare, casting down, and battering the wall, the doors, and the other parts of the structure — not knowing that by this deed he is, to the man he seems to be harming, granting light and snatching away his wicked blindness: even so you too, by flames, exiles, tortures, and wild beasts, with which you mangle and tear our bodies, do not snatch away our life, but relieve us of our little skins.
and unknowingly you relieve us of our hides and skins; and the more you press on and persist in raging against these outward forms and appearances of ours, the more you relieve us of tight and heavy bonds and, by cutting our fetters, enable us to fly forth to the light. Wherefore, O men, refrain from hindering your own hopes with empty questionings; and even if something stands otherwise than you suppose, you ought rather to trust to your own opinions than to a matter so august. The times press, full of perils, and deadly punishments hang over us: let us flee to the saving God, and not demand a reckoning for the gift offered us. When it is a question of the salvation of our souls and of regard for ourselves, something must be done even without a reason, as Arrian testifies that Epictetus said.
Do we hesitate, do we waver, and suspect that what is said is not full of faith? Let us commit ourselves to God, and let our own unbelief not weigh more with us than the greatness of that Name and Power; lest, while we hunt out for ourselves arguments by which what we are unwilling to be true might seem false and what we strive to be true might seem so, the last day steal upon us, and we be found in the very jaws of hostile death.