駁異教徒 第 4 章

It pleases me to question you — and above all the Romans themselves, the lords and princes of the world — whether you consider that Piety, Concord, Health, Honor, Virtue, Felicity, and the other names of this kind, for which we see altars built by you together with magnificent shrines, possess divine power and dwell in the regions of heaven; or whether, as is customary, merely for form's sake, from the fact that we desire and wish that these good things should befall us, you have entered them upon the census of the gods above. For if,

considering these to be empty names of no substance, you nevertheless consecrated them to divine regions, then you will have to see whether this is a childish game, or something aiming at the mockery of your own deities, to whom you equate and add the fabrications of empty words. But if, from a more settled conviction of mind, you have deemed them to be gods and have loaded them with temples and sacred couches, we beg you to instruct our ignorance: Victory, Peace, Equity, and the rest that were mentioned above — by what reasoning, by what path, can they be understood to be gods and to belong to the council of the gods above?

For we — unless perhaps you strip and snatch from us our common sense — perceive and discern that none of these has the power of a deity, nor is contained in any form of its own kind, but that virtue belongs to the virtuous man, health to the healthy, honor to the honored, victory to the victor, concord to the concordant, piety to the pious, memory to him who remembers, and felicity to him who lives happily and without any misfortunes. That this is most truly said by us is easy to recognize from the opposing contraries: from unhappiness, discord, forgetfulness, iniquity, impiety, cowardice of heart, and a less favorable condition of body.

For as these things happen and are situated in the actions of men and in chance affections, so that which is their opposite, being named from the more benign qualities, must necessarily inhere in others, from whom, when they are thus formed, that fashioning of names was conceived. For as to your bringing in for us other troops of marked-out gods, we cannot judge whether you do this seriously and from the trust of an ascertained matter, or whether, sporting with fictions, you run riot in an empty flux of your wits. 'Because a she-wolf, though not gentle, spared the exposed infants, she — he says — is called the goddess Luperca, on the authority of Varro.'

From the outcome of events, then, and not from the power of nature, is that goddess brought forth; and after the monstrous beast restrained its savage bites, she both began to exist and drew the meaning of her very name. Or, if she was already a goddess long before Romulus and his brother were born, declare of what name and appellation she then was. She was called Praestana, as you report, because Quirinus surpassed the strength of all in the casting of the javelin; and because it was granted to Titus Tatius to open and lay bare a road so that he might seize the Capitoline hill, the goddess was called Panda or Pantica.

Before these deeds, then, these too had never been deities; and unless Romulus had held the Palatine by the casting of a spear, and unless the Sabine king had been able to take the Tarpeian rock, would there be no Pantica, no Praestana? If you say that these too existed before the occasion of their surname — a point which was asked in the previous chapter — indicate by what name these also were then called. 'Pellonia is the goddess powerful for driving off enemies.' Whose enemies, if it is not too troublesome, declare. The sides clash and decide the issue between themselves hand to hand by a joining of arms, and this is the enemy side to that one, and that is hostile to this: whom, then, will Pellonia drive off, when the fighting is on this side and on that; or to which of them will she grant favor, when she ought to furnish the strength and service of her name to each side?

But if she does this in any case — that is, if she lends her favor and support to both sides — she will lose the power of her name, which was formed for the driving off of one side. Unless perhaps you will say: 'This goddess belongs to the Romans alone, and, siding with the Quirites only, is always at hand with gracious assistance.' That this is so we, who favor the name, would wish; but the matter holds no small question. For what? Do the Romans possess private gods of their own, who do not belong to other nations? And how will they be able to be gods, if they will not display the impartiality of their name to all the nations that exist everywhere?

And where, I ask, was this Pellonia all that while, when at the Caudine Forks the public honor was brought under the yoke, when at Lake Trasimene bloody torrents ran, when the plains of Diomedes were heaped with Roman corpses, when a thousand other wounds of battles were received in countless disasters? Was she sleeping, snoring? Or, as base creatures are wont to do, had she fled off into the enemy's camp? 'The left-hand gods, from the left, are presiders over the left-hand regions only, and enemies of the right-hand parts.' By what reasoning this is said, or in what sense of mind, neither do we ourselves grasp, nor do we trust that it can be brought by you into any light of common understanding.

For in the first place, the world itself, in and of itself, has neither right nor left regions, neither upper nor lower, neither front nor back. For whatever is round and enclosed on every side by the convexity of a solid roundness has no beginning and no end: and where there is no end and no beginning, there can be no portion bearing a name of its own. And so, when we say 'this region is on the right and that on the left,' we do not say it with respect to the nature of the world, which is wholly most like itself, but we refer it to our own position and situation, we who are so formed that some things are said to be on our right, others on our left:

yet these very things which we call left and right have nothing perpetual, nothing fixed, but according as chance and the occurrence of the moment has placed us, so they take their configurations from our sides. If I look toward the rising sun, the pole of cold and the north becomes my left; and if I turn my face toward that, the sunset will be on my left, which will be reckoned as behind me with respect to the sun. Again, if I cast my eyes toward the western quarter, the south wind and the midday pass into the designation of 'left'; and if the necessary reckoning of the moment turns me round in that direction, it comes about that the east is called 'left' through the changed turning of my body.

From which it can most easily be recognized that neither right nor left is anything by nature, but a matter of position and time, and according as the situation of our body has placed itself in relation to the surrounding circumstances of things. Since this is so, by what reasoning, in what manner, will there be gods of the left-hand parts, when it has been established that the same directions become now right, now left? Or what have the right-hand parts deserved of the immortal gods, that they should pass their existence without any presiders — those parts which they have declared to be always favorable and attended with prosperous omens? 'Lateranus, as you say, is the god of hearths, a genius given this name because that kind of furnace is built from unbaked bricks by men.' What then? If they be made of earthenware, or of any

other material whatsoever they be fashioned of, will the hearths not have genii, and will this Lateranus, whoever he is, withdraw from the duty of guardianship, because the possession of his realm was not constructed of clay forms? And for what purpose, I ask, has this god obtained the presidency over hearths? Does he run through the kitchens of the human race, inspecting and investigating with what kinds of wood the fire is kindled in the little hearths; does he impart durability to earthenware vessels, lest, overcome by the force of the flames, they burst apart; does he take care that the flavors of uncorrupted foods come to the sense of the palate with their delights; and does he discharge and exercise the office of a foretaster, judging whether the dishes have been duly seasoned?

Is this then not base — nay rather, to speak more truly, is it not insulting, is it not impious — to bring in, for this sole purpose, I know not what fictions of gods, not such as you would attend with worthy honors, but such as you would set over shameful things and infamous action? Does a military Venus even preside over the debaucheries of the camp and the defilements of boys? Is Perfica too one of the people of the deities, who brings those obscene and filthy pleasures to their completion, so that they proceed with unhindered sweetness? Is Pertunda too a goddess, who is at hand in the bedchambers for husbands digging out the virginal furrow? Is Tutunus too a god, upon whose monstrous private parts and bristling phallus you deem it both auspicious and desirable that your matrons should ride?

But if the things themselves do not in the least move you to an understanding of the truth, can you not even from the very names recognize that these are the figments of the emptiest superstition and the imaginings of false gods? 'Puta, you say, is at hand for the pruning of trees, Peta for the seeking of things; Nemestrinus is the god of groves; Patellana is a deity, and Patella, of whom one is appointed for things opened up, the other for things to be opened up. Nodutis is called the god who brings the sown crops up to their nodes, and Noduterensis presides over the threshing of the grain; the goddess Vibilia frees from the wanderings of the roads; under the protection of Orbona are parents bereaved of their children, and under that of Nenia are those whose last hours have come.

For she who hardens and makes solid the bones for little infants is herself called Ossipago; Mellonia is a goddess strong and powerful over bees, caring for and guarding the sweetness of honey.' Tell me, I pray — so may Peta, Puta, and Patella be favorable and propitious to you — if there were no bees at all upon the earth, or if the human race were born boneless, like certain little worms, would the goddess Mellonia not exist, or would Ossipago the hardener of bones not have a name of her own? For indeed I ask and inquire: do the gods seem to you to be the more ancient in nature, in time, in antiquity — or men, or bees, crops, shrubs, and the rest? No man will doubt that you say the gods precede by countless ages and eras all things whatsoever that exist.

But if this is so, how can it come about through the nature of things that those who are prior in time should receive their names from things afterward brought into being, or that gods should obtain the guardianships of things which had not yet been generated and assigned to the use of mortals? Or was it perhaps that 'the gods were for a long while without names, and after things began to be born and to be present upon the earth, they were then deemed worthy by you to be named with these signs and appellations'? And whence were you able to know what names to bestow upon each, when you were altogether ignorant that they existed, or that fixed powers resided in them, since it was likewise unknown to you which of them could do what, and over what thing each ought to be set according to the power of his divinity?

'What then?' you say, 'do you judge that these gods exist nowhere among the nations, and are established by false opinions?' Not we alone say this, but truth itself, and reason, and that common sense which is in all mortals. For who is there who would believe that there are gods of Gain, and that they preside over the acquisition of profits, since profits very often come from base causes and always consist of the losses of others? Who would believe that Libentina, that Burnus, survive as guardians of the lusts which wisdom bids us flee, and which shameless obscenity pursues and practices through a thousand forms?

Who would believe that Limentinus, that Lima, keep guard over thresholds and sustain the offices of doorkeepers, when we daily see the thresholds both of shrines and of private houses torn down and undermined, and see that not without these there are shameful comings and goings to the brothels? Who would believe in the Limi, curators of slantings; in Saturn, presider over sowing; in Montinus over the mountains; in Murcida over the slothful? Who, finally, would believe that Money is a goddess, whom your writings point out, as though the greatest deity, to bestow golden rings, the foremost seats at games and spectacles, the highest platforms of honors, the greatness of magistracy, and — what the slothful most love — secure leisure amid riches? But if bones, honey, thresholds, and all the other things have their own proper presiders in their seats,

— things which we have either touched on cursorily or, out of weariness at their excess, have not treated — then it is possible by a like reasoning to bring in a thousand other gods, who ought to furnish their care and guardianship to countless things. For why should a god preside over honey alone, and not preside over gourds, turnips, savory, cress, vetches, beets, cabbages? Why should the bones alone have deserved a guardian, and not the nails, the hairs, and the other parts placed in obscure and more modest regions? For these too are subject to very many accidents and require the more the care and diligence of the gods. Or, if you say that these parts too carry on under their tutelary deities, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things:

nor will the reasoning be explained why divine cares do not preside over all things, if you say that there are certain things over which the deities preside and provide. What do you say, O fathers of new religions, of new powers? Do you cry out and complain that these gods are violated and neglected by us with sacrilegious contempt — Lateranus the genius of hearths, Limentinus the presider over thresholds, Pertunda, Perfica, Noduterensis? And because we do not fall down as suppliants before Mutunus and Tutunus, do you say that things have slipped into ruin and that the world itself has changed its laws and its ordinances?

But look, consider carefully, lest, while you fashion and contrive such monstrous things, you offend the most certain gods — if indeed there are any who deserve to bear and to hold the eminence of that name — and lest for no other cause those evils of which you speak boil up and grow insolent with daily increases. 'Why then,' someone of you will perhaps say, 'do you say that those gods are false? For both when invoked by the soothsayers they obey, and when summoned by their own names they come and give faithful answers to those who inquire.'

We can maintain that what is said is false, either because the whole matter is most full of suspicions, or because we see that many of the predictions daily either turn out otherwise or, with expectation frustrated, are twisted into contrary outcomes. But grant that they are true, as you assert: whence, nevertheless, will you produce proof that Mellonia, for instance, or Limentinus, inserts herself into the entrails and adapts herself to the significations of the things you seek? Have you ever seen their mouth, their bearing, their face, or can these same things be discerned in the lungs or the little livers? Is it not possible for it to happen and come about — however you may disguise it with cunning — that one comes in place of another, deceiving, playing, cheating, and presenting the appearance of the one invoked?

If the magi, the brothers of the soothsayers, relate that in their summonings counter-gods very often creep in place of those summoned, and that these are certain spirits of coarser substance who feign themselves to be gods and mock the ignorant with lies and pretenses — why should we not, by a not dissimilar reasoning, believe that here too others substitute themselves in place of those who do not exist, both to confirm your opinions and to rejoice that victims are slain for them under names not their own? Or, if you refuse to accept these things on account of the matter's novelty, whence is it possible for you to know whether there is some one being who takes the place of all whom you invoke, and who, putting himself under all the parts of places and divisions, presents to you the appearance of many gods and powers?

'Who then is that one being?' he will perhaps ask. We could tell, instructed by true authorities; but, lest you be unwilling to believe us, question the Egyptians, the Persians, the Indians, the Chaldaeans, the Armenians, and all those others who have seen and come to know these things by their more inward arts: then indeed you will learn who the one god is, or, under him, who are the many that feign themselves gods and make sport of the imprudence of the human race. For a long while now we have been ashamed to come to that point at which not only little boys and the impudent, but even serious men, hardened in the harshness of grim manhood, cannot restrain their laughter.

For although we have all received and been taught by our instructors that in the declensions of the gods there are no plural numbers, because the gods are single, and the proper meaning of each one's name could not go commonly through many — yet you, having become forgetful, and with the recollection of your childhood lessons laid aside, have both made the same gods several under the words assigned to them, and, although you are elsewhere rather restricted in their number, have again made them multiple by an association of surnames: a point which men of keen judgment and penetrating intellect long ago expounded, as much in the Italian tongue as in the Greek.

And this matter could have afforded us a shortcut, had we not both seen that some are without knowledge of these writings, and had not the discourse we have undertaken compelled us also to bring forth something about these things — though borrowed and reported from them. Your theologians, then, and the founders of hidden antiquity, say that there are three Jupiters in the nature of things, of whom one was begotten of Aether as his father, another of Caelus, and the third of Saturn, and upon the island of Crete was both delivered to burial and brought forth.

There are, they say, five Suns and five Mercuries, of whom, as they report, the first Sun is said to be the son of Jupiter and is held to be the grandson of Aether; the second, likewise begotten of Jupiter and brought forth of Hyperion as his mother; the third the son of Vulcan — not the Lemnian, but the one who was the son of the Nile; the fourth the father of Ialysus, whom Acantho bore at Rhodes in the heroic times; the fifth is held to be the son of a Scythian king and of Circe the shape-shifter.

For the first Mercury, who is said to have neighed at Proserpina with his genitals erect, is the offspring of highest Caelus; the second is beneath the earth, he who is vaunted to be Trophonius; the third was begotten of Maia as his mother and of Jupiter — but the third Jupiter; the fourth is the child of the Nile, whose name the Egyptian people dread and shrink from uttering; the fifth is the slayer of Argus, a fugitive and an exile, and in Egypt the revealer of letters.

'But of Minervas too,' they say, 'just as there are five Suns and Mercuries, there are five: of whom the first is not a virgin, but the procreatrix of Apollo by Vulcan; the second is the offspring of the Nile, and is said to be Egyptian; the third is the stock of Saturn, and it was she who devised the use of arms; the fourth is the offspring of Jupiter, whom the Messenians call Coryphasia; and the fifth is she who slew Pallas her father, a seeker after incest.' And — lest it seem long and excessive to wish to go in detail through the individual headings — the same theologians say that there are four Vulcans and three Dianas, as many Aesculapiuses and five Dionysuses, three times two Herculeses and four Venuses, three

kinds of Castors and as many kinds of the Muses, three teams of winged Cupids and four teams of the Apolline names — whose fathers likewise, whose mothers likewise, and the places in which they were born, they indicate, and they demonstrate the origin of each together with their lineages. But if this is true and certain, and is demonstrated by the affirmation of an ascertained matter, then either they are not all gods, since there cannot be several under the same name, as we have received, or, if some one of them is a god, he will be unknown and not known, because he is blinded by the confusion of like names. And thus, through your own selves, however unwilling you may be for it to happen, it comes about that religion, thrown into confusion, hesitates, and has no certain goal toward which it can direct itself, undeceived by any errors of ambiguity.

Imagine, then, that we — moved either by authority or by the violence of your terror — have brought our minds to the point of wishing to worship Minerva, for example, with your solemn rites and by the common ceremony: if, when we are preparing to approach the divine observances and to render upon the flaming altars the things appointed to her, all the Minervas fly up and, contending over the possession of that name, each one demands that that apparatus of the sacred rites be rendered to herself — what shall we do in the midst, we a slight creature, or to which of the parties shall we rather transfer the services of our pious offering? For perhaps that first one, of whom we spoke, will say: 'Mine is the name of Minerva, mine the divinity — I who gave birth to Apollo, who gave birth to Diana, and by the offspring of my womb increased heaven with deities and multiplied the number of the gods.'

'Nay,' the fifth Minerva will say, 'is it you, you yourself? you who as a wife and as one who has given birth have so many times had the sanctity of your pure chastity diminished? Do you not see that in all the Capitols the Minervas are of virginal appearance, and that they are given by all the artisans the forms of unwedded maidens? Cease, therefore, to claim for yourself a title that is not yours by right. For that I am Minerva, begotten of my father Pallas, the whole chorus of poets is witness, who call me Pallas from a surname derived from my father.'

'What do you say,' the second, hearing this, will retort, 'shall you then bear the name of Minerva, you wanton parricide, defiled by the pollution of incestuous love, who, while you adorn yourself with paints and harlots' arts, even stirred up in yourself your father's mind, filled with frenzied lusts? Go your way then, seek another emblem for yourself; for that possession is mine, whom the Nile, greatest of rivers, generated from its liquid waters and brought into a maiden's form by the congealing of the dew. But if you demand proof of the fact, I too will offer the Egyptians as witnesses, in whose tongue I am Neith, as Plato testifies in the Timaeus.' What, then, do we suppose will happen next?

Will that one too cease to call herself Minerva, she who bears the name Coryphasia, either from the emblem of her mother Coryphe, or because she flashed forth from the very top of Jupiter's head bearing a shield and girt with the terrors of arms? Or will the one who is third patiently yield her name? Will she not, by such words, take account of herself and refute the arrogance of the first two: 'Do you then dare to usurp for yourself the majesty of my name, if the truth be told, you who were brought forth and curdled together out of mire and out of muddy whirlpools? Or do you take to yourself a goddess's dignity that belongs to another, you who lie that you were begotten from Jupiter's head and persuade the most foolish of mortals that you are Reason? Does Jupiter beget sons conceived in his head? And so that the arms you carry might be forged and fashioned, was there in the hollow of his very head a smith's workshop, anvils, hammers, furnaces, bellows, coals and tongs?'

'But if what you assert is true, that you are Reason, cease to lay claim for yourself to that name which is mine: for what you call Reason is not a fixed form of divinity but the understanding of obscure causes.' If therefore, as we have said, five Minervas should be present as we approach our religious duties, and each, quarrelling over the ownership of this name, should desire for herself that either the fumes of incense be offered up or wine be poured out as libations from golden bowls, by what arbiter, by what judge shall we settle such great disputes?

Or who shall be the examiner, who the arbiter for such weighty personages, who would attempt to award just claims among figures of this kind, or to pronounce sacred oaths that are not just? Will he not rather go home and, abstaining from such affairs, judge it safer to touch none of these things, lest either by giving to one what belongs to all he make the rest her enemies, or incur the charge of folly, if he should assign to all what ought to have belonged to one? We can bring forward these same considerations about the Mercuries, the Suns, indeed about all the others whose numbers you stretch out and multiply.

But it is enough to know from one instance that the reasoning is the same in the rest; and lest by chance our prolixity should breed weariness in our hearers, we shall forbear to go through each one, lest, while we accuse you of excess, we too take upon ourselves the fault of immoderate loquacity. What do you say, O you who invite us to the worship of the gods with the mangling of our limbs and compel us to undertake the worship of your deities? We can be not difficult, if only something be shown to us worthy of the reputation of so great a name. Show us Mercury, but one; give us Liber, but one; one Venus and likewise one Diana.

For you will never make us believe that there are four Apollos or three Jupiters, not even if you should cite Jupiter himself as witness or set up the Pythian as your authority. But from the opposite side someone or other says: 'How do we know whether the theologians wrote what was explored and ascertained, or brought it forth by a lustful invention, as it seemed good and pleased them?' That is nothing to the point, nor is the reasoning of this discourse established upon whether things are so as the writings of the theologians indicate, or are otherwise and separated by a far different distinction; for it is enough for us to speak concerning matters that have been made public, and not to inquire what is in truth, but to refute and to convict that which lies open in the midst and which human opinion has conceived.

'But if those men are liars, do you set forth what the truth is and lay open the irrefutable secret.' And how can this be done, once the teachings of letters have been removed? For what is there that can be said about the immortal gods that has not come to human notice from the writings of men? Or can you yourselves relate anything about their rites and ceremonies that has not been set down in writing and made public in the commentaries of authors? Or, if you judge these to be of no weight, let all the books be abolished which you have composed about the gods, by theologians, by pontiffs, and even by some devoted to philosophy; nay rather, let us suppose that from the beginning of the world no mortal ever knew anything at all about the gods:

we wish to test and desire to know whether you can even mutter, whether you can open your mouth at the mention of the gods, whether you can conceive in your mind those beings whom no notion of any writing has informed within your souls. But since it is agreed that you have learned their names and powers from the books that supplied them to you, it is unjust to withdraw credit from those writings whose testimony and authority confirm the very things you say. 'Unless perhaps these are false, and the things said by you shall be true.' By what argument, by what sign?

For since the men were of both parties who devised these things and those, and since the matters were disputed by both sides concerning uncertain things, it is the mark of an arrogant man to say that what pleases you is true, but to charge with wantonness and falsehood whatever wounds your mind. By the rights of the human race and by the fellowship of mortality itself, when you hear and read 'from that father and from that mother such-and-such a god was brought forth,' does not the sense of your mind perceive that something human is being said, and something proceeding from the lowliness of an earthly kind?

Or when you believe it to be thus, do you conceive no anxiety lest you incur some offence with those gods themselves, whoever they may be, because you believe that they came into the light—unknown to themselves—out of a base union and out of the casting of seed, by the services of obscenity? For we—lest anyone perchance suppose that we are ignorant, that we do not know what befits the dignity of that name—either hold that the gods ought to be without birth, or, if they have any beginnings, we deem and reckon them sent forth by the Lord and Prince of all things, by reasons which He Himself knows, He Himself: immaculate, most chaste, pure, not knowing what this foulness of coupling is, and, at those very ones, coming to an end with the primary generation.

But you, on the contrary, forgetful of their majesty and of such great sublimity, attach to them those births and ascribe to them those origins which men of nobler dispositions hold in execration and horror. 'From the mother Ops,' you say, 'and from the father Saturn, Diespiter was born together with his brothers.' Do the gods then have wives and come into conjugal bonds on terms arranged beforehand? Do they, by use, by confarreation, by coemption, contract the solemn pledges of the marriage-couch? Do they have women hoped for, women bespoken, women betrothed with interposed stipulations?

And why do we speak of these unions, when you dare to say that certain of them celebrated weddings and held festive gatherings, and that goddesses sported at them, and that, because they were not partakers of the Fescennine songs, they threw all things into confusion with discords and sowed for the human race for the future the crises of its ruins? 'But in the others perhaps the foulness of this baseness is less.' Was then that ruler of heaven, the father of gods and men, who with the nod of his brow moves and makes tremble the whole sky—was he compounded of a male and a female, and, unless both sexes had dissolved themselves in shameful pleasures with bodies joined together, would that Jupiter greatest of all not exist, and even to this day would the deities not have a king, and would heaven stand without a lord?

And why do we wonder that you keep saying Jupiter was poured forth from a woman's womb, when your own authorities write that he even had a nurse and preserved his life from the nourishment of another's breast? What do you say, O men? So then—I will say it again—did he who thunders, flashes, and hurls lightning, and gathers the terrible clouds, suck the streams of the breasts, utter wailing, crawl, and, so as to display in the most foolish way the tears he shed, fall silent at the sound of rattles, and was he lulled to sleep, lying in the softest cradle and soothed with broken little voices? O religious defence of the gods! O you who show and instil the venerable dignity of a majesty to be feared!

Is it thus, I ask, that among you the eminence of the supernal powers is born? Is it by these generations that your gods come into the light—the very generations by which asses, pigs, dogs, and all this unclean overflow of earthly beasts is conceived and brought forth? And not content to have attributed these gatherings to Saturnian gravity, you proclaim that the very king of the world begot children more scandalously than he himself was born and brought forth. 'From the mother Hyperion,' you say, 'and from Jupiter the hurler of the thunderbolt was born the golden and most blazing Sun; from Latona and the same, the Delian archer and Diana the ranger of the woods; from Leda and the same, the brothers whose Greek name is Dioscuri;'

'from Alcmene and the same, that Theban Hercules, whom club and hide protected; from Semele and himself, Liber, who is called Bromius and was born a second time from his father's thigh; from himself again and Maia, Mercury eloquent of speech and bearer of the affable serpents.' Can any graver insult be inflicted on your Jupiter, or is there anything else that could shake or destroy the authority of the prince of the gods, than that you believe him to have been at times overcome by lustful pleasures and to have grown hot with the fervour of an inflamed breast into womanish appetites? And what business had the Saturnian king with marriages with strangers?

Was Juno not enough for him, and could she not calm the impulse of his desires in the queen of the deities, though so great a nobility commended her—her face, her countenance, her dignity, and the snowy, marble-white radiance of her arms? Or, not content with one wife, did he, delighting in concubines, mistresses, and paramours, scatter his incontinence far and wide, as pampered young men are wont, this lecherous god, and, hoary as he was, did he from countless bodies of flaccid pleasures restore his ardour? What do you say, O impious ones, or what foulnesses of opinion do you fabricate about your Jupiter? Do you thus not notice, not see, of what disgrace you brand him? of what crime you make him the author? or what stains of scandalous deeds, how great infamies, you heap upon him?

Men, prone to lust and inclined by the weakness of their nature to the allurements of pleasures, nevertheless avenge adulteries by their laws and afflict with capital punishments those whom they have caught to have cast themselves into others' compacts by the storming of the marriage-couch. Of what turpitude, of what mark of infamy the character of a lier-in-wait and adulterer was, the greatest of all who ever reigned did not know; and that watcher, as report has it, of the well-deserving and the worst, did not, with his mind's reasoning lost, discern what it befitted him to wish. And perhaps this ill-treatment might be borne, if at least you had joined him with equal personages, and if by you an adulterer had been set up for the immortal goddesses.

But in human bodies, I ask, what was there of beauty, what of comeliness, that could excite, that could turn Jupiter's eyes upon itself? Skin, flesh, phlegm, and all that overflow of the intestines set beneath their coverings, which not only that Lynceus with his penetrating gaze might shudder at, but even any other might avoid by the mere thought of it. O splendid reward of guilt! O worthy and precious sweetness, for the sake of which Jupiter greatest of all became a swan and a bull and the begetter of white eggs!

If you are willing to open the eyes of the mind and to gaze upon the very truth without any private favouring, you will find that the causes of all the miseries by which, as you say, the human race has long been afflicted, flow from opinions of this kind which you hold of old about your gods, and which, though the truth is set before your eyes, you refuse to reform for the better. For what have we ever either felt that was unbecoming about them, or published in unseemly writings, that the labours of the human race and the conveniences by which life is sustained should be diminished and cast into odium against us? Is it said by us that certain gods were begotten from eggs, like storks, like wood-pigeons?

Was it we who said that the whiteness of Cytherean Venus was compacted and curdled together from the foam of the sea and from the severed genitals of Caelus? that Saturn was bound because of parricide and, on fixed days, is washed and relieved of the weights of his fetters? that Jupiter was saved from destruction by the kindness of the Curetes? that he drove his father from the kingdom and held by violence and fraud a dominion that was another's by right? that the old man, driven out by us, hid himself within the borders of the Italians, and, because he had been safe from his son, gave the name Latium to the region as a gift? Do we say that Jupiter himself contracted an incestuous marriage with his sister, or that, invited to the right of the table, he dined unwittingly on the flesh of the boy Lycaon's offspring instead of pork?

Was it we who said that Vulcan, lame in one foot, plied the smith's works on the island of Lemnos? that, out of desire and greed, as the Boeotian Pindar sings, Aesculapius was transfixed by the weapon of the thunderbolt? that Apollo, made rich by those very kings whose treasures and gifts had enriched him, deceived them by the ambiguity of his oracle? Was it we who published Mercury as a thief? that we are Laverna, and that together with him she presides over stealthy frauds? Is it from us that Myrtilus is the authority, who declares that the Muses were the little serving-maids of Megaclo, daughter of Macar? Was it dictated by us that from the Cyprian king, whose name is Cinyras, the little harlot Venus was consecrated among the number of the divine?

Who handed down that the Palladium was fashioned from the remains of Pelops? Was it not you? Who that Mars was a Spartan? Was it not Epicharmus, your own authority? Who that he was born within the borders of Thrace? Was it not Sophocles the Attic, with all the theatres consenting? Who that he was bound in Arcadia for thirteen months? Was it not the son of the river Mela? Who that dogs are sacrificed to him by the Carians, that asses by the Scythians? Was it not Apollodorus principally, together with the rest? Who that, while he insulted another's marriage-bed, he stuck fast, entangled in the snares? Was it not your commentaries? Was it not the stage?

Was it ever anywhere written down by us that the gods served in hireling servitude—as that Hercules served at Sardis for the sake of love and wantonness, as Delian Apollo served Admetus, as the brother of Jupiter served Trojan Laomedon, as the Pythian served the same but along with his uncle, as Minerva was the ministress of light and player of the lamps for those who were mingling in conjugal secrets? Is it not that bard of yours who made Mars and Venus wounded by the hands of mortals? Is not Panyassis one of you, who records that Father Dis and Queen Juno were wounded by Hercules? Do not the writings of your own Polemon indicate that a heroine was cut down, bloodied, and mangled by Ornytus?

Does not Sosibius report that Hercules himself was tortured by the sons of Hippocoon, both by the wound inflicted and by the pain? Is it handed down and published by us that Jupiter was consigned to burial on the island of Crete? Do we say that the brothers, reared together in cradles, were buried within the Spartan and Lacedaemonian borders? Is it our authority who is indicated in the titles of the writings as Patrocles of Thurii, who records that the tombs and Saturnian remains are contained in the Sicilian earth? Are Hieronymus and Plutarch proved to be of our party, who related that Hercules, on the peaks of Oeta, after the ravages of epileptic diseases, was dissolved into ashes?

For what shall I say about those loves with which the holy celestials are recorded in your writings and by your authors to have grown hot toward women? Is it indeed charged by us that the king of the sea, through the ardour of frenzied desire, deprived Amphitrite, Hippothoe, Amymone, Menalippe, Alcyone of the chastity of their virginity? Is it charged that Latonian Apollo, that immaculate one, most chaste and pure, lusted after Arsinoe, Aethusa, Hypsipyle, Marpessa, Zeuxippe and Prothoe, Daphne and Sterope, with the fervours of an ill-advised breast?

Is old Saturn, long since overspread with white hairs and already cold with the age of his years, pointed out by our songs to have been caught in adultery by his wife and to have put on the form of a beast, and, under the guise of a brute, to have galloped away with neighings cast forth? Jupiter himself, king of the world—is he not made infamous by you as having gone through countless forms and cloaked the flame of wanton love with servile deceits? Was it ever anywhere written down by us that, in order to accomplish his lustful thefts, he was now turned into gold, now into a sportive satyr, into a serpent, into a bird, into a bull, and—to pass over all kinds of insults—into a tiny little ant, namely so that he might beget, among the Thessalians, the daughter of Clitor as mother of Myrmidon?

Who made him keep watch over Alcmene for nine continuous nights? Was it not you? Who made him lie idle in his loves, having deserted his station in heaven? Was it not you? And indeed you add benefits not small, since for you the god Hercules was born, who in matters of this kind should surpass and outdo his father's powers. That one could scarcely, in nine nights, hammer out, contrive, and put together one single offspring; but Hercules the holy god, in one night, thoroughly taught the fifty daughters of Thestius to lay aside the name of virginity and to bear the burdens of mothers. And what of this—that, not content to have attributed to the gods cares for the female kind, you also join to them males beloved of them?

Someone or other loves Hylas, another is taken up with Hyacinthus, that one burns with desire for Pelops, this one sighs more ardently after Chrysippus; Catamitus is snatched away to be the keeper of the delights and of the cups, and, so that he may be called Jupiter's darling, on his soft parts Fabius is inflamed and marked on his hinder parts. But do only males love among you, and is her own sanctity preserved for the female sex? Is it not laid down in your writings that Tithonus was beloved by Aurora, that the Moon burned for Endymion, the Nereid for Aeacus, Thetis for the father of Achilles, Proserpina for Adonis?

and his mother Ceres for one Iasion, some rustic or other; and, after Vulcan and Phaethon, that Mars burned in the marriage of Anchises for that very Venus herself, the mother of the Aeneadae and the author of Roman dominion? Since therefore you hurl such disgraces and scandalous monstrosities not against some one god by name, but equally against the whole race of the gods above—which you remember to exist—without any exception, do you dare, with your modesty intact, to say that either we are impious or you are pious, when the gods bear far greater offences from you out of all the reproaches which you bring together into slanders against them, than grandeurs and honours from the rite and duty of worship?

For either all those things are false which are brought forth about individual gods, wounding their reputation and majesty—and then the matter is altogether worthy for which the gods ought to abolish utterly the whole race of mortals—or, if they are explored and true and grasped without any doubts, the matter is led to this sum: that, however unwilling you may be, we must believe them to have been not of the celestial kind but of the human.

For where there are weddings, marriages, childbirths, nurses, crafts, disabilities, where there is the status of legal standing and the condition of servitude, where there are wounds, slaughters, blood, where there are loves, desires, pleasures, where there is every affection of the mind coming from restless perturbations—there it must needs be that nothing divine is present, nor can that which is proper to a perishable kind and to earthly frailty adhere to a more excellent nature.

For who is there who would believe—if only he recognises and perceives what the force of that power is—either that a god had generative parts and was deprived of them by a most foul cutting-off, or that he once intercepted offspring born from himself and was constrained by the punishments of chains, or that he in a manner waged civil wars with his father and abstained from the royal right, or that, terrified by fear of a lesser one, he was overcome and turned his back and, like a fugitive and an exile, hid himself in remote retreats?

Who is there, I say, who would believe that a god reclined at human tables, was slain for the sake of greed, deceived his suppliants with the ambiguity of an oracle, excelled in the tricks of thieveries, committed adultery, served, was wounded and fell in love, and through all the forms of lusts drove round the wiles of unchaste desires? And yet you assert that all these things both were and are present in your gods, and you pass over no kind of viciousness, of maleficence, of lapse, which you do not, with the wantonness of your opinions, apply to the reviling of the deities.

Either, therefore, you must seek other gods for yourselves upon whom all these things do not fall—for those upon whom these things fall are of the human and earthly kind—or, if these are the only ones whose names and characters you have made public, you destroy them by your own opinions. For whatever you narrate is mortal.

And we can indeed at this point show that all those beings whom you introduce and call gods to us were men—whether by unrolling Euhemerus of Agrigentum, whose little books Ennius, that it might become known to all, translated into the Italian tongue; or Nicagoras of Cyprus, or Leon of Pella, or Theodorus of Cyrene, or Hippo and Diagoras of Melos, or a thousand other authors, who with the care of scrupulous diligence brought into the light, with frank liberty, things that were hidden.

We can, I say, if it please, also set forth the exploits of Jupiter and the wars of Minerva—of the virgin, that is, and of Diana; by what tricks Liber aimed at the kingdom of the Indians; of what condition Venus was, of what occupation, of what gain; whose marriage the Great Mother held; what of hope, what of pleasure she conceived from the comely Attis; whence Egyptian Serapis, whence Isis, or from what causes the very appellation of their names was contrived. But we have not undertaken in this discourse which we are making either the little task or the intention of showing and publishing who all these were.

This is our proposal: since you call us impious and irreligious, and you on the contrary contend that you are worshippers of the gods, to demonstrate and set forth in the midst that by no men are they treated more ignominiously than by you. But if it is manifest from your very maledictions that it is so, it follows that it ought to be understood that you stir up in the gods above the goads of frenzied indignations—you who yourselves compose about them fables so foul, whether heard or believed, and so ignominious. For it is not he who anxiously performs the rites and slays spotless victims, who gives heaps of incense to be burned up in fire, who is to be judged to worship the deities or alone to fulfil the duties of religion.

True worship is in the breast, and an opinion worthy of the gods; nor does the offering of blood and gore profit anything, if you believe about them those things which are not only far removed and distant from their nature, but even fasten upon their majesty and dignity something of stain and turpitude. For I would ask you and call you to answer a brief discourse: whether you judge it graver to slay no victims to them—because you suppose that so great a nature neither wills nor desires these things—or to conceive, in the foulness of your opinions, such reproaches about them as could rouse anyone's mind to the frenzy of vengeance?

If the weights of things be pondered, you would find no judge so envious as would not reckon it more criminal that anyone's reputation be torn by notorious slanders than that it be passed over by any one in silence. For this latter perhaps can be esteemed and believed a matter of reason; but the former is the mark of a sacrilegious mind and of a blindness despairing in its fictions. If in your ceremonies and divine affairs there is a place for propitiatory rites, and if guilt is said to have been contracted...

A fault: if through some slip of thoughtlessness a man goes wrong either in a word or with the sacrificial ladle, or if again some error is committed in the solemn games and the sacred processions, you all at once cry aloud that the holy rites have been profaned; if a dancer has come to a halt, or a flute-player has suddenly fallen silent, or if that boy who is called 'patrimus' has through ignorance let slip the strap or has failed to keep his hold upon the ground — do you then dare to deny that in offenses so grave the gods are forever being outraged by you, when in matters far lighter you yourselves repeatedly confess that they take offense, and that to the ruin of the state? 'But,' they say, 'all these things are the inventions of the poets and playful fictions composed for men's pleasure.'

It is indeed not credible that men who were far from dull, and searchers into the most remote antiquity, either did not weave into their songs those tales which already survived in the common notions of mankind and were lodged in men's ears, or that they wished to claim for themselves alone so unbridled a license as to fabricate through folly things which were not far removed from madness and which might procure for themselves fear and peril at the hands of the gods and of men. But let us grant, as you say, that the poets are the framers and inventors of such monstrous deformities: even so you are not free from the ill-treatment of the gods, you who either fail to punish such misdeeds, or, by laws passed and by severity ...

... of penalties have you set yourselves against so great a rashness, nor has it been established by you that henceforth no man should speak that which is next to shameful or unworthy of the majesty of the gods. For whoever suffers a sinner to sin supplies strength to his boldness; and it is a greater outrage to brand and mark a man with false accusations than to charge and cast up against him true offenses. For to be called what you are, and what you feel yourself to be, has a lighter sting, blunted by the testimony of a silent self-acknowledgment; but that wounds most bitterly which brands the innocent and defames the honor of one's name and reputation.

Your gods are described as feasting in celestial banqueting-halls and in golden chambers, drinking, and at last being soothed by the lyre and the melody of voices. You lend them your most patient ears, and you do not judge it unworthy that there should be attributed to the gods those pleasures by which earthly bodies are sustained, and which ears crave when softened by the dissolute enervation of a feeble heart. From among these gods, again, some are brought in as lovers, adulterers against chastity, and joining in shameful and disgraceful couplings not only with women but even with men. You take no care what is said concerning matters so great, nor do you check, by even the least fear of chastisement, the boldness of these wanton writings.

Others, through madness and frenzy, bereave themselves of their children, and, as though with an enemy's blood, so stain themselves with the murder of their own kin: these sacrileges you admire when they are loftily set forth, and what deserved to be chastised with every penalty — so that boldness might rise up the more spiritedly — you exalt with the incitement of praise. Others are made to bewail the wounds of bereavement and, with unseemly wailings, to arraign the cruel fates: you stand amazed at the powers of eloquence, and what ought utterly to have been removed from the fellowship of the human race, you peruse, you learn by heart, and you take care that it perish by no forgetfulness. They are recorded to be wounded, harassed, and to wage wars among themselves in the frenzied heat of their conflicts:

to you that description is a delight, and, in order to defend the writers' so great boldness, you falsely allege that those tales are allegories and doctrines of natural science. But why do I complain of the unregarded outrages done to the other deities? That very Jupiter, whose name it was fitting for you to utter not without dread and a shuddering of the whole body, is described, when caught in a love-affair by his wife, as confessing his own faults, and — like a man crazed and witless, hardened in shamelessness — as publishing openly which mistresses, which concubines he had preferred to his consort, to his wife:

But you, who exalt such portents — proclaiming the poets who devised them to be chiefs and kings endowed with divine genius, and most sacred personages — have so far flown away from the duty of the religion which you profess, that with you words by which the sublimity of the heavenly ones is violated carry the greater weight. Would it not then have been fitting — if only there were among you any fear of the gods, or if you believed with the confidence of the surest conviction that they exist anywhere — to intervene, forbid, and sanction, by bills, by plebiscites, and by the awful authority of the senate's decrees, that no one should presume to speak of the gods at random, save what was full of reverence?

Have they not deserved from you at least this much honor — that by those same laws by which you ward off wrongs from yourselves, you should ward off wrongs from them too? Men are guilty of treason among you if they have murmured anything unfavorable against your kings. To reduce a magistrate to the ranks, or to assail a senator with abuse, you have decreed to be a most perilous thing, to be visited with penalties. To compose a wicked song, whereby another's good name and life are defiled, you have not been willing should go unpunished under the ordinances of the decemvirs; and, lest anyone should strike your ears with too insolent an abuse, you have established formulas of action concerning outrageous injuries.

The gods above alone, with you, are left unhonored, contemptible, and cheap — against whom the right has been granted by you for each to say whatever he pleases, and to fling whatever forms of shameful things lust has feigned and contrived. And are you not ashamed to charge us with neglect of deities so infamous, when it is far more right not to believe that gods exist than to believe them to be such, and to hold them in such an estimation? But was it only to the poets that you wished it permitted to fabricate unworthy tales and disgraceful mockeries about the gods? What of your pantomimes, what of your actors, what of that crowd of mimes and of the debauched sort? Do they not, for the purposes of their own gain, abuse your gods, and draw the enticements of pleasure out of injuries and outrages done to the divine?

There sit, in the public spectacles, the colleges of all the priests and magistrates, the chief pontiffs and the chief curiones; there sit the laurel-crowned quindecimvirs and the flamines Diales with their pointed caps; there sit the augurs, interpreters of the divine mind and will, and likewise the chaste virgins, perpetual nurses and keepers of the fire; there sits the whole people and the senate, the fathers who have held the consulship, and the kings, nearest to the gods and most august: and — a thing unspeakable even to hear — Venus, the mother of that Martial race, the loving progenitress of a ruler and of a people, is danced out and, through every passion of harlot-baseness, is shamelessly represented as reveling in wanton imitation.

The Great Mother too is danced out, adorned with sacred fillets; and, against the dignity of her age, that Dindymene of Pessinus is disgracefully feigned to thrill with lustful longing in the embrace of a single herdsman; and likewise that offspring of Jupiter, Hercules, in the Trachiniae of Sophocles, entangled in the net of the deadly garment, is brought on uttering pitiable wailings, broken by the violence of his pain, and consumed to the utmost wasting by the melting-away of his flowing entrails. Nay, that greatest ruler of the pole himself is, in the plays, brought in — without any dread of his name and majesty — to play the parts of adulterers, and, that he may deceive the chastity of the wives of other households, to change his deceiving face and to slip into the likeness of their husbands ...

... and to steal in by the counterfeit of a substituted body. Nor is this fault enough. Even in mimes and buffoonish farces the persons of the most holy gods are brought in, and, that laughter and merriment may be roused in the idle spectators, the deities are smitten with jesting mockeries: the theaters shout and rise up, all the tiers resound with crashes and applause, and — a thing that can be atoned for by no satisfactions — gifts and rewards are appointed for the debauched mockers of the gods: leisure from public duties, exemption and immunity, together with crowns.

And after all this do you dare to wonder whence arise these evils by which mortal kind is, without any respite, flooded and oppressed — when you both daily rehearse and daily learn by heart all those matters in which are wrapped up the disgraces of the gods and the records of their reviling; and when, if ever you wish your idle mind to be occupied with vacant fantasies, you demand that days be granted you and that these be exhibited without any intermissions? But if any indignation on behalf of your religions possessed you, it was rather these writings, these books, that you ought long ago to have burned, these that you ought to have destroyed — rather these theaters that you ought to have pulled down, in which the infamies of the gods are daily published in disgraceful plays.

For our writings, indeed — why have they deserved to be given to the flames? why should our meeting-places be savagely torn down? — in which the supreme God is prayed to, in which peace and pardon are sought for all: for magistrates, armies, kings, for friends and enemies, for those still passing their life and for those released from the bondage of the body; in which nothing else is heard save what makes men gentle, modest, chaste, pure, sharers of their goods with kinsmen, and bound together with all whom it unites in the tie of brotherhood. But the truth of the matter is this: that, because you prevail most by the sword and by the power of the steel, you judge that you also surpass in the knowledge of truth, and that you are pious toward gods whose powers you have been the first to befoul with the obscenity of your opinions.

At this point, if your fierceness permits and your fury allows, we beg you to answer us this: whether you consider that fits of anger fall upon the nature of the gods, or that the divine blessedness is far removed and severed from such passions? For if they conceive these flames and are provoked by the stirrings of wrath — as your opinions maintain (for you often say that, on account of games too carelessly performed, on account of presiding officials not approved, on account of certain little plots of ground profaned, and on account of ceremonies not duly completed, they have made the earth roar with quakings and have corrupted the airs of the seasons with the contagion of pestilence, together with a mournful devastation of the people) — it follows that it must be understood that they harbor no small angers arising from the aforesaid causes.

But if this be granted, then this too follows of necessity: that all these miseries with which the human race has long been heaped up flow from fictions of this kind. But if the indignation of the deities proceeds from these causes, then you are the authors of miseries so great, you who cease not to offend the minds of the heavenly ones and to goad them to the frenzy of vengeance. If, on the other hand, the race of the gods is immune from furies of this kind, and they know not at all what it is to be angry, then they are said to be angry with us also without any reason — they who are ignorant of what anger is and are free from its adornment and admixture. For it cannot come to pass, through the nature of things, that what is one should become two, and that a unity, divided by its inborn simplicity, should pass off into diverse things.