first, because among you custom prevails, which holds no reason, rather than the nature of things inspected and weighed by the examination of truth. For what has a god to do with wine, or in the material of this thing what force is there, of what sort or how great, that when it has been poured out, his sublimity should increase and his authority be deemed honored? What, I say, has a god to do with wine - a thing next of kin to the works of Venus, weakening the sinews of all the virtues, an enemy of modesty, of shame, and of chastity, which has more often hurled roused minds into madnesses and frenzies, and has driven those very gods by outrageous railings to be cashiered by the demented?
Is not this then an impiety and a crime full of sacrilege, to give as an honor that which, if you should take it too greedily, you would not know what to do, would not know what to say, and in the end, as a drunkard, a debauchee, and a lost man, would earn reproach and infamy? It is worth while also to bring out the very words which it is customary to use and to supplicate with when wine is given: "Be thou honored with this inferior wine." "'Inferior,'" says Trebatius, "is a word added for this cause and uttered for this reason, lest all the wine whatever that is stored in cellars and storerooms - from which that which is poured out is taken - should begin to be sacred and be snatched from human uses.
Therefore, with this word added, that alone will be sacred which is offered, and the rest will not be bound by religious obligation." - What sort of honor then is this, in which a kind of law is imposed upon the god, that he should not seek more than has been given? Or of what greed is that god himself, who, unless he be held off by the prescription of a word, would stretch his covetousness further and rob his suppliant of his storerooms? "Be thou honored with this inferior wine": this is an injury, not an honor. For what if the god should want more than this and not be content with what has been brought in? Must he not be said to be signally wronged, who will be forced to receive an honor upon a condition?
For if, no exception being added, every single portion of wine that is in the cellars must of necessity become sacred, it is manifest both that an affront is done to the god, for whom a limit is fixed against his will, and that you yourselves violate the duties of ceremony in a sacred matter, since you do not grant to the wine so much as you see the god wishes to be furnished to himself. Consider the formula, 'Be thou honoured with this offered wine.' What is this but to say: 'Be honoured only so far as I wish, be magnified only so much as I command, take unto thyself only so much honour as I decree thee to have and define by the restriction of words'?
O most mighty sublimity of the gods, which you are bound to venerate and to worship with all ceremonial observances, upon which its worshipper imposes a law, which he adores with bargains and set formulas, which by the dread of a single word is held back from immoderate cravings for wine! But let there be, as you will, honour in wine, honour in incense; let the wraths and offences of the deities be appeased by sacrifice and by the slaughter of victims. Are the gods, moreover, moved by garlands, wreaths, and flowers? moreover by the tinklings of bronze and the clashings of cymbals? moreover by drums? moreover by concerts of music? What? Do the rattlings of the castanets bring it to pass that, when the deities have heard them, they reckon that honourable dealing has been shown them, and lay aside their seething tempers of anger in forgetfulness?
Or is it perchance that, just as tiny babes are frightened out of their foolish wailings when they hear rattles, in the same manner the almighty deities are soothed by the shrilling of flutes, and, their indignation softened, grow limp to the beat of cymbals? What do those rousings mean which you sing at dawn, joining your voices to the flute? For the gods above fall asleep, that they must be recalled to their vigils. What of those lullings to sleep by which you bid them, with an auspicious salutation, to rest well? For they are released by the repose of sleep, and, that they may be able to be seized by it, gentle dirges must be given them to hear. 'The washing of the Mother of the gods,' one says, 'is today.' For the deities grow dirty, and to wash off the filth there is need of cleansing waters and, joined to them, the ancient rubbing with ashes.
'The banquet of Jove is tomorrow.' For Jupiter dines and must be filled with mighty feasts, this long while craving for hunger and fasting from the yearly interval. 'The vintage of Aesculapius is being conducted and celebrated.' For the gods tend vineyards, and, having engaged grape-pickers, press out wine for their own uses. 'The couch-spreading of Ceres will be at the next Ides.' For the gods have couches, and, that they may recline upon softer coverlets, the padding of the cushions is heaped up and puffed out. 'It is the birthday of Tellus.' For the gods issue forth from wombs, and have joyful days on which it is appointed for them to draw the vital breath.
Now the games which you hold—those called the Floralia and the Megalensia, and all the rest which you have willed to be sacred and to be reckoned among the duties of religion—what reason have they, what cause? that they ought to have been instituted and founded and marked with the name of a deity? 'By these,' one says, 'the gods are honoured; and if they retain any memory of offences brought against them by men, they cast it off, shut it out, and, their familiarity restored, render themselves our favourers.' And what, again, is the reason that they should be made tranquil, peaceful, and mild, if silly things are done and are played by idle men with a multitude looking on?
Does Jupiter lay aside his wrath if the 'Amphitryon' of Plautus is acted and recited, or if Europa, or Leda, or Ganymede, or Danaë is danced? does he curb the impulse of his angers? Is the Great Mother made more tranquil and gentle if she has beheld the ancient tale of Attis rubbed up afresh by the actors? Will Venus obliterate her offence if she has seen mimes in the guise of Adonis performing gestures in dancing movements? Does the indignation of Alcides grow faint if the tragedy of Sophocles named the Trachiniae, or the Hercules of Euripides, is acted out? Or does Flora think herself honourably treated if in her own games she has beheld shameful things enacted and a migration from brothels into the theatres?
Is not this, then, to diminish the dignity of the gods—to dedicate and consecrate to them the basest things, which a censorious mind rejects, and whose performers your law has judged to be dishonourable and to be reckoned by infamy among the loss of civic standing? Doubtless the gods rejoice in mimes, and that surpassing power, comprehended by no natures of men, most gladly lends its ears to hearing those in whose numerous embracings it knows itself to be mingled as matter for derision: they are delighted, so the case stands, by the shaved heads of the fools, by the sound and applause of the slapping, by base deeds and words, by the blush at monstrous obscenities.
But now, if they have seen men enervating themselves into womanish softnesses, some bawling in vain and without cause, others running to and fro, others—the pledge of friendship kept intact—battering one another and mutilating themselves with raw gauntlets, these straining their breath, puffing out their cheeks with wind, and clashing together with monstrous exertions: they raise their hands to heaven, moved by the marvellous doings they leap up, they cry aloud, they return to favour with men. If these things bring forgetfulness of grudges to the immortal gods, if from comedies, Atellan farces, and mimes they derive the most joyous pleasures, why do you delay, why do you tarry, but that you should say the gods themselves also play, are wanton, dance, put together obscene songs, and undulate with wriggling buttocks?
For what difference is there, or what does it matter, whether they do these things themselves, or reckon them among their loves and delights when done by others? 'Whence, then, has this depravity of opinions flowed, or from what causes has it sprung up?'
Chiefly, forsooth, from this: that men, being unable to know what a god is, what his power is, his nature, substance, and quality, whether he has a form or is bounded by no circumscription of body, whether he does anything or does nothing, whether he watches perpetually or is at times loosed into sleep, whether he runs, sits, walks, or is free from motions of this kind and from cessation—being unable, as I have said, to know all these things or to see them clearly by any reasoning, have slipped into these imaginings, so that they fashioned gods out of themselves, and gave to them just such a nature of actions, affairs, and wills as their own nature is.
But if they discerned that as living creatures they are of no worth, and that there is not the greatest difference between themselves and an ant, assuredly they would cease to imagine that they have anything in common with the gods above, and would keep the modesty of their lowliness within its own bounds. But now, because they perceive that they bear faces, eyes, heads, cheeks, ears, noses, and the other portions of limbs and inward parts, they suppose that the gods also are formed by the same rule and keep their bodily frame together in a corporeal structure; and because they perceive that they rejoice at a glad matter and are made mournful by sadder causes, they judge that the deities too rejoice at more cheerful things and are led into contraction of soul by things less glad.
They are affected by games, so they think the minds of the heavenly ones too are soothed by the delight of games; and because it is a pleasure to them to warm themselves anew with the heats of the baths, they suppose that the cleanliness of washings is pleasing to the gods above too. We men make vintage—and they think and believe that the gods too conduct and carry on their own vintages. We have birthdays—and they aver that the heavenly powers too have days of birth. And if they could ascribe illnesses, sicknesses, and bodily diseases to the gods, they would not hesitate to call them spleen-ridden, blear-eyed, and ruptured, for the reason that they themselves too are often made spleen-ridden and blear-eyed, and grow heavy with the burden of vast swellings.
Come now, in summary—since the discourse has been brought forth and led on to these regions—let us compare by the contrasts of the several parts, whether you feel better concerning matters of the gods above, or rather whether we hold a far more honourable and more correct opinion, and one that grants and attributes to divine things their proper dignity. And first, you profess that the gods, whom you either suppose or believe to be in the nature of things, and whose images and forms you have set up in all your temples, were born, and were begotten by the seeds of males and females by the law of unions. But we, on the contrary, if only there are gods for certain
and possess the authority, power, and dignity of this name—we hold either that they are unbegotten (for this it is religious to believe), or, if they have a beginning of birth, it belongs to the Most High God to know by what means He made them, or how great are the ages since He assigned to them to begin the perpetuity of their divine being. You judge that the gods have sexes, and that some of them are of the male, others of the female kind: we deny that the heavenly powers are distinguished by sexes, since a distinction of this kind was given to earthly living creatures, which the Author of things willed to couple and to generate, that offspring might be substituted through desire. You suppose that they bear the likeness of men, and are formed with the countenances of mortals:
we think that likenesses are far removed from them, since form belongs to a mortal body; and if perchance there is any, we swear with undoubting affirmation that no one can comprehend it. By you the several gods are alleged to possess crafts after the manner of workmen: we laugh when we hear these things, since we reckon the arts to be things needful only, and it is agreed and clear that they were devised as an aid to poverty. Some of these gods you say sow discords, others inflict pestilences, others loves, others frenzies, and others again preside over wars and rejoice in the shedding of blood:
but we, on the contrary, judge that things of this kind are disjoined from the characters of the deities; or, if there are any who inflict and subject these evils upon most wretched mortals, we contend that they are far from the nature of gods and are not to be placed under the proclamation of this name. You judge that the deities grow angry and are disturbed, and are made bondsmen and subject to the other affections of the soul: we suppose that motions of this kind are alien to them; for they are functions of fierce kinds and of things that undergo mortality. You feign that they rejoice in the blood of cattle, in the slaughters and immolations of victims, and are glad, and return into favour with men when their offences are lulled to rest:
we hold that there is no love of blood in the heavenly ones, nor that they are so hard as to cast off their wraths only when glutted with the slaughter of wretched living things. You suppose that by pure wine, by incense, honour is added to the gods and their dignities are increased: we judge it a portent and a prodigy that any man believes either that a god is made more august by smoke, or that by the scanty drops of wine one wins for oneself the god's favour, entreated holily and honourably enough. You are persuaded that by the tinklings of bronze and the sounds of flutes, by the races of horses and theatrical games, the gods are both delighted and moved, and that the wraths they have sometimes conceived are softened by satisfaction rendered to them:
we deem it unfitting, nay rather we judge it incredible, that those who by a thousand steps have passed through every kind of the perfection of virtues should place among their highest pleasures, and count among their delights, those very things which a wise man would laugh at, and which seem to contain something of charm to none but infant babes and to those trivially and vulgarly reared. Since these things are so, and since there is so great a diversity of opinions, ours and yours, where are we the impious, or you the pious, when the reckoning of piety and impiety ought to be weighed from the sentiments of the parties?
For he who fashions for himself some image which he may venerate in place of a god, or who slaughters an innocent beast and burns it upon the sacred altars, is not to be held as devoted to divine things. It is opinion that makes religion, and a right mind concerning the gods, so that you suppose them to seek nothing contrary to the honour of their own sublimity. For since we see that all things which are given to them are here consumed before our eyes, what else must be said by us to reach them, save opinions worthy of the gods and most befitting their name? These are the surest gifts, these the true sacrifices; for meal-cakes, incense with flesh, are the food of ravening fires and most closely bound up with the funeral rites of the dead.
'But if the immortal gods,' one says, 'cannot grow angry, nor is their nature shaken and shattered by any affections of the soul, what do the histories mean, what the annals, in whose records we read that the gods, moved by certain offences, brought pestilences, barrennesses, failures of crops, and other calamities upon states and nations, and that they in turn, appeased by the satisfaction of sacrifices, laid aside the heat of their indignation, and changed the state of the sky and of the weather into a more cheerful condition?
What of the rumblings of the earth, what of the quakings, which we have received to have come to pass because games had been performed carelessly and not tended according to their proper form and condition, and yet, when these were restored and repeated with scrupulous observance, the terrors of the gods above grew still and were recalled to care and familiarity toward men? How often, after a sacred rite had been performed at the bidding of seers and the responses of soothsayers, and certain gods had been summoned from nations across the sea, and shrines had been made for them, and upon loftier columns certain statues and images had been set up, were the fears of impending dangers turned aside, and the most grievous enemies routed, and the commonwealth enlarged, and that too with the frequent joys of victories and with the possession of many provinces?
This assuredly would not happen if the gods spurned sacrifices, games, and the other forms of worship, and did not reckon that they were honoured by the performance of these things. If, therefore, when these are given, all the heat of the deities and their indignation grow cold and are turned into prosperity—those very things which seemed to bring terrors—it is manifest that all these things do not come to pass without the will of the heavenly ones, and that we are blamed emptily and with utter ignorance because we render these to them.'
We have come, then, while we speak, to the very joint of the matter, come to the hinge of the case, come to the true and most closely-knit question, into which it is fitting that we ought to look—fear of superstition being removed, and the wish to gratify laid aside—whether these are gods, whom you assert to rage when offended and to be rendered mild by sacrifices, or whether they are something far other, and ought to be set apart both from the force of this name and of this power. For we do not deny that in the writings of the annals all these things are contained which have been brought forward by you in opposition:
for we ourselves too, according to the measure and grasp of our understanding, both read them and know that they stand set down—that once, at those very games of the circus which were being held for Jupiter the greatest, before the affairs began to be conducted, a certain head of a household led a slave, most ill-deserving, through the very middle of the circus's arena, beaten with rods, and afterwards punished him in the customary manner with the penalty of the gibbet.
Then, the games being ended and the races finished, no long space of time after, the state began to be ravaged by pestilence; and when day added an evil heavier than the evil, and the people perished in droves, Jupiter is said to have spoken through a dream to a certain little rustic, obscure by the lowliness of his lot, that he should go to the consuls, and show that the master of ceremonies had displeased him, and that it might go better for the state, if their proper reverence were restored to the games and they proceeded once more, whole and with scrupulous observance.
But when the man had by no means cared to do this—either because he suspected the dream to be empty and to be about to have no credit among those who should hear it, or because, mindful of his inborn lowliness, he shunned and dreaded the approach to so great a power—Jupiter, rendered hostile to the delayer, inflicted the death of his sons upon him as a penalty. Presently, when Jupiter threatened him too with his own destruction, unless he should proceed as messenger of the disapproved master of ceremonies, terrified by the dread of dying, when now he himself also, touched by the pestilence, was ablaze with its fire, he was carried by the counsel of his kinsfolk to the senate-house of the Fathers; and the vision of his dream being set forth, the flames of the contagion flew away: then, the renewal of the games being decreed, grave care was applied to the spectacles, and the former health was restored to the people.
But neither shall we equally deny that we know that, in times once hard for the state and the commonwealth—whether from a hostile plague that with continual contagion was wasting the people and wearing it away, or from enemies strong and now near to the peril of stripping away liberty by the prosperity of their battles—by the biddings and warnings of seers certain gods were summoned from nations across the sea, and, honoured with magnificent temples, they both stilled the burning of the plague and, the strength of the enemies being broken, triumph was most frequently celebrated, and the bounds of empire were enlarged, and countless provinces fell under the laws of your dominion.
But neither does it escape our knowledge that it is recorded and set down that, when the Capitol had been struck by a thunderbolt, and among many other things there also the image of Jupiter, which stood upon the lofty summit, had been rolled down from its seat. A response was then issued by the soothsayers, that things ill-boding and most sorrowful were portended—by fires, by slaughters, by the ruin of the laws and the fall of justice, but most of all by domestic enemies and by the impious band of conspirators. But these things could be bent aside, nay rather, the wicked designs could not otherwise be made public, unless Jupiter were once more fixed upon a loftier summit, turned toward the eastern quarter and set facing the rays of the sun. Credit was lent to the saying:
for, the summit being raised up and the statue turned toward the sun, hidden things lay open, and vengeance was taken on the wickednesses laid bare. All these things which have been told have indeed the appearance of a miracle—nay rather, are believed to have it—if, presented just as they are, they come to human hearing; nor do we deny that there is something in them which, set as it were in the forefront, can, as the saying goes, graze the ears and beguile by a semblance of truth. But if you are willing to look deeply into the deeds done, the persons and the wills of the persons, you will find nothing worthy of gods, and—what has now been said often—nothing that refers to the appearance and dignity of this name.
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Quisestenimprimumquideumillumfuissecredat, quicurrentibusfrustradelectaretur | f. 155b | eculeisavocariquesegenerehocludicriiucundissimumduceret?
因為首先，誰會相信他曾是神——那個以徒然奔跑的劣馬為樂、把被這類玩樂消遣視為最愜意之事的傢伙？
For who, in the first place, would believe that he had been a god, who took delight in nags running to no purpose, and reckoned it a most pleasant thing to be diverted by this kind of sport?
Nay, who is there that would assent that he was Jupiter, whom you call the chief god and the founder of whatsoever things exist, who should set out from heaven to watch geldings contending in speed, wheeling their seven turns, and, though he himself had willed them to be unequal in the mobility of their bodies, would yet rejoice that these should overtake and be overtaken, should tumble headlong and stooping forward, be overturned along with their chariots and thrown backward, that others should be dragged by their legs and go lame with fractures, and would count among his highest pleasures follies mixed with trifles and cruelties, which any refined man, not instructed in the pursuit of full gravity and weight, would reckon childish and would spurn as playthings?
Who is there, I say—that we may harp continually upon this word—who would believe that he was of the divine race, who, because in the games conducted through the circus's space he was about to render the penalties and punishments of deserts, was so exasperated with anger that he blazed up and girded himself for the turns of vengeance? For if the slave was guilty and was to be punished with that chastisement, why ought Jupiter to have been stirred by any indignation, when nothing was done unjustly, nay, when a guilty head was smitten with fitting penalties? But if he was free from crime and liable to no charge, he himself was the cause of the guilty master of ceremonies, whom, though he could have succoured him, he did not, nay rather himself sought both to suffer what he disapproved and to exact from others penalties for his own permitting of it.
And why, then, did he complain that he had been wronged by that man, and pronounce sentence against the master of ceremonies, because to the punishments of the cross one had been led through the middle of the circus, torn with rods and scourges? And what stain or foulness could flow out of this deed, so as to make the circus less pure or Jupiter defiled, when through so few brief moments, through so many points of time, he beheld thousands of men perish upon the globe in various kinds of death and in diverse torments? 'He was led out,' one says, 'before the games began to be performed.' If it was with sacrilegious breast and contempt of religion, then we must pardon Jupiter for being indignant that he was scorned, and that no more anxious care was applied to his own circus-games.
But if by error or by chance that hidden fault was not noticed and recognized, would it not have been right and befitting Jupiter to pardon human slips and to grant to the blindness of imprudence a pardon of indulgence? 'But the matter had to be avenged.' And after these things, will anyone believe that he was a god, who avenged the carelessness of a childish sport and pursued a state with destruction—or that he had any firmness of gravity, weight, or of any constancy, who, that pleasures might be run through afresh for his joys, turned the draught of the air into a poison unto ruin, and by the disease of pestilence proclaimed a slaughter of mortality?
If the magistrate who exhibited the games cared too little to learn thoroughly who it was that was led through the middle of the circus on that day, and this fault was contracted thereby, what had the unhappy people deserved, that it should discharge with its own head another's misdeeds and be cruelly driven from life by pestilent contagions? Nay, what had the female sex deserved, whom the condition of their frailty exempts from public affairs; what the grown maidens, what the little boys did; what, finally, those still tiny ones placed under the nourishment of their nurses, that upon them an equal and single savagery should be sent, and that they should perceive the bitterness of death before any sweetness of the light?
If Jupiter sought that the games should be more scrupulously performed and restored for himself, if he faithfully sought to render its health to the people and that the evil he had wrought should not be prolonged further and increased, would it not have been more correct that the consul should come to himself, or to one of the public priests, to the pontifex maximus or to his own flamen Dialis, and that he should through a dream disclose to him both the fault of the master of ceremonies and the cause of the deadly season? What reason was there that he should choose as messenger of his will and author of the demanded satisfaction a man accustomed to the countryside, unknown by the obscurity of his name, ignorant of urban affairs, perhaps not knowing what a master of ceremonies is?
But if he assuredly knew—if only he was divine—that the man would be a shirker in obedience, would it not have been readier and more befitting a god to turn the man's mind and to subject his will to obeying, than to attempt harsher ways and, after the manner of brigandage, to rage everywhere without any reason at all? For if the elderly rustic, unready in the discharging of affairs, was delaying in the thing commanded, held back by the higher causes, what had his unhappy children deserved, that anger and indignation should be turned upon them, and that they should pay for the offences of another by the despoiling of their own light? And is there any man who would believe that he was a god so unjust, so impious, and not keeping even the ordinances of mortals,
among whom it would be reckoned a great impiety that one should be punished in place of another, and that another's misdeeds should be avenged upon the necks of others? 'But he caused even the man himself to be seized by the savagery of pestilence.' Was it not, then, more excellent—nay rather, more just—if this seemed proper to be done, that the terror of chastisement should begin from the father himself, in whom lay the cause of so great a commotion and the disobedient delay? than to work violence to his grief upon the children and to burn up and abolish innocent persons? What savagery, what cruelty was that, so great, that, the offspring being extinguished, it should afterwards terrify the father with domestic perils? For if he had long ago—that is, in the first place—willed to do this, neither would the innocent kinship have been destroyed, nor would the will of the deity have been known to be offended.
'But when the office of announcement was fulfilled, the disease at once vanished and the man was straightway restored to health.' And what wonder does this matter hold, if he beat back the evil he had breathed in and flung himself into another display? But if you weigh the matter deeply, that was cruelty rather than a benefit of salvation, since he preserved the wretched man—one who even longed to perish after his sons—not for the joys of life, but that he might learn his own solitude and feel the torments of bereavement.