— if indeed he was happy while he reigned. And felicity is preferable to a kingdom. For no one doubts that a man may easily be found who fears to be made a king; but no one is found who is unwilling to be happy. The gods themselves, then, if they are thought to be able to be consulted by auguries or in any manner whatsoever, should be consulted on this matter — whether they would be willing to yield place to Felicity, if perchance the place had already been occupied by the temples or altars of others, where a larger and loftier temple might be built for Felicity. Even Jupiter himself would yield, so that Felicity might rather hold the very summit of the Capitoline hill. For no one would resist Felicity, except — what cannot be — one who wished to be unhappy.
In no way at all, if he were consulted, would Jupiter do what three gods did to him — Mars, Terminus, and Juventas — who in no way wished to yield place to their greater one and king. For, as their writings have it, when King Tarquin wished to construct the Capitol, and saw that the place which seemed to him more worthy and fitting was preoccupied by other gods, not daring to do anything against their judgement, and believing that they would by their own will yield to so great a divinity and their prince — because there were many of them in that place where the Capitol was established — he inquired by augury whether they were willing to concede the place to Jupiter; and they all wished to withdraw from it except those whom I mentioned, Mars, Terminus, and Juventas;
and therefore the Capitol was so constructed that even these three were within it, with signs so obscure that scarcely the most learned men knew this. In no way, then, would Jupiter himself despise Felicity, just as he was despised by Terminus, Mars, and Juventas. But these very gods who had not yielded to Jupiter would assuredly yield to Felicity, who had made Jupiter king for them. Or if they would not yield, they would do so not out of contempt for her, but because they would rather be obscure in the house of Felicity than, without her, be eminent in their own places.
Thus, with the goddess Felicity established in the most spacious and lofty place, the citizens would learn whence the help of every good wish must be sought; and so, at nature's own prompting, with the superfluous multitude of the other gods abandoned, Felicity alone would be worshipped, to her alone would supplication be made, her temple alone would be thronged by those citizens who wished to be happy — and there would be none who did not wish it — and thus she herself would be sought from herself, she who was sought by all. For who would wish to receive anything from any god except happiness, or what he judges to pertain to happiness? Accordingly, if Felicity has it in her power with what man she may dwell — and she has it, if she is a goddess — then what folly at last is it to seek her from some other god, whom you might obtain from herself?
This goddess, then, they ought to have honoured above the other gods even by the dignity of her place. For, as is read among them, the ancient Romans worshipped some Summanus or other, to whom they ascribed nocturnal lightnings, more than Jupiter, to whom the daytime lightnings were held to belong. But after a notable and lofty temple had been built for Jupiter, on account of the dignity of the shrine the multitude so flocked to him that scarcely one can be found who remembers that he has at least read the name of Summanus, which he can no longer hear spoken. But if Felicity is not a goddess — since, as is true, she is a gift of God —
then let that God be sought who is able to bestow her, and let the noxious multitude of false gods be forsaken, which the empty multitude of foolish men pursues, making for themselves gods out of the gifts of God, and offending by the stubbornness of a proud will the very One whose gifts these are. For he can no more be free of unhappiness who worships happiness as though a goddess and forsakes God the giver of happiness, than he can be free of hunger who licks a painted loaf and asks nothing of the man who has real bread. CHAPTER XXIV. By what reasoning the pagans defend their worshipping the divine gifts themselves among the gods. But it is worth while to consider their arguments. Is it really to be believed, they say, that our forefathers were so foolish as not to know that these were divine gifts, not gods?
But because they knew that such things are granted to no one save by the bounty of some god, since they could not find the names of those gods, they called the gods by the names of those very things which they perceived to be given by them, inflecting certain words from them: thus from war (bellum) they named her Bellona, not Bellum; thus from cradles (cunae) Cunina, not Cuna; thus from crops (segetes) Segetia, not Seges; from fruits (poma) Pomona, not Pomum; thus from oxen (boves) Bubona, not Bos; or else with no inflection of the word at all, just as the things themselves are named — as Pecunia (Money) was called a goddess who gives money, yet money itself was by no means thought to be the goddess; so Virtus, who gives virtue; Honor, who gives honour; Concordia, who gives concord; Victoria, who gives victory.
Thus, they say, when Felicity is called a goddess, it is not she herself who is given that is regarded, but that divine power by whom felicity is given. CHAPTER XXV. Of worshipping the one and only God, who, though unknown by name, is yet perceived to be the giver of felicity. Now that this account has been rendered to us, we shall perhaps far more easily persuade those whose heart has not grown overly hardened of what we wish. For if human weakness has already perceived that felicity cannot be given save by some god, and this men perceived who worshipped so many gods — among whom was their very king Jupiter —
because they were ignorant of the name of him by whom felicity was given, they therefore chose to call him by the name of the very thing which they believed to be given by him. They sufficiently indicated, then, that felicity could not be given even by Jupiter himself, whom they were already worshipping, but rather by that one whom they judged ought to be worshipped under the name of felicity itself. I affirm beyond all doubt that they believed felicity to be given by a certain god whom they knew not: let him therefore be sought, let him be worshipped, and that suffices. Let the din of innumerable demons be repudiated; let this god not suffice for the man for whom his gift does not suffice. Let God the giver of felicity not suffice for worship, I say, for the man for whom felicity itself does not suffice for receiving.
But for the man to whom it does suffice — for a man has nothing more that he ought to desire — let him serve the one God, the giver of felicity. He is not the one whom they name Jupiter. For if they recognized him as the giver of felicity, they would surely not seek out some other god or goddess, by whom felicity is given, under the name of felicity itself; nor would they think Jupiter himself should be worshipped amid such great outrages. He is called an adulterer of others' wives; he is called the shameless lover and ravisher of a beautiful boy. CHAPTER XXVI. Of the stage-plays which the gods exacted from their worshippers to be performed for them. But — 'Homer was inventing these things,' says Tully, 'and was transferring human qualities to the gods: I would rather he had transferred divine qualities to us.' Rightly did the poet, the fabricator of divine crimes, displease that grave man.
Why then are stage-plays, in which these things are repeatedly recited, chanted, and acted out, presented in honour of the gods, and recorded among sacred matters by the most learned men? Here let Cicero cry out, not against the fictions of the poets, but against the institutions of the forefathers. Or would they too cry out: What have we done! The gods themselves demanded these things to be presented in their honour; they savagely commanded them; they foretold disaster unless it were done; because something was neglected, they avenged it most severely; because that which had been neglected was performed, they showed themselves appeased. Among their virtues and marvellous deeds is recounted what I shall now relate.
To Titus Latinius, a Roman peasant and head of a household, it was said in a dream that he should announce to the senate that the Roman games be renewed, because on the first day of those games a grievous spectacle had displeased the deities — who, it seems, sought merriment from the games — when a certain criminal, condemned to be led to execution while the people looked on, had been put to death. So when the man who had been warned by the dream did not dare to carry out the orders on the following day, on the second night the very same thing was commanded again, more sternly: he lost his son, because he did not do it. On the third night it was told the man that a greater penalty hung over him if he did not act. When even thus he did not dare, he fell into a sharp and horrible disease.
Then indeed, on the advice of his friends, he brought the matter before the magistrates and was carried into the senate in a litter; and when he had related his dream, immediately recovering his health, he departed sound on his own feet. The senate, astounded by so great a miracle, decreed that the games be renewed with fourfold expenditure. Who that is of sound mind would not see that men, made subject to malignant demons — from whose domination none sets free save the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord — were driven by force to present to such gods what could by right counsel be judged base? In those games, certainly, the poetic crimes of the deities are frequently rehearsed, those games which, at the demons' compulsion, were by decree of the senate renewed.
In those games the most filthy actors used to sing, act, and win applause portraying Jupiter the corrupter of chastity. If that was being feigned, he ought to have been angry; but if he delighted even in his crimes, though fictitious, then in worshipping him, what was being done but serving the devil? Could such a one found, extend, and preserve the Roman empire — he, more abject than any Roman to whom such things were displeasing? Could he give felicity, who was so unhappily worshipped, and who, unless he were so worshipped, was the more unhappily wrathful? CHAPTER XXVII. Of the three kinds of gods on which the pontiff Scaevola disputed. It is recorded in writings that the most learned pontiff Scaevola disputed that three kinds of gods had been handed down: one by the poets, another by the philosophers, the third by the leading men of the state.
The first kind, he says, is trifling, because many unworthy things are invented about the gods; the second is not suited to states, because it contains some things superfluous, and some things even that it is harmful for the people to know. Concerning the superfluous there is no great problem; for it is a common saying even among jurists: Superfluous things do no harm. But what are those things which, when brought before the multitude, do harm? 'These,' he says: 'that Hercules, Aesculapius, Castor, and Pollux are not gods; for it is reported by the learned that they were men and met their end under the human condition.' What else? 'That states do not have true images of those who are gods, because the true God has neither sex, nor age, nor defined bodily members.' These things the pontiff does not wish the people to know; for he does not think them false.
He thinks it expedient, therefore, that states be deceived in religion. This Varro himself does not hesitate to say even in his books on divine matters. A splendid religion indeed, to which the weak man may flee to be set free, and which, when he seeks the truth by which he may be liberated, holds it expedient that he be deceived! Why Scaevola rejects the poetic kind of gods is not passed over in silence in those same writings: namely because, forsooth, they so disfigure the gods that they cannot be compared even to good men, since they make one of them steal, another commit adultery, and likewise make them say and do something else in a base and absurd manner; that three goddesses contended among themselves for the prize of beauty, and the two who were beaten by Venus overthrew Troy; that Jupiter himself was changed into a bull or a swan, so as to lie with some woman; that a goddess married a man;
that Saturn devoured his own children: in short, that no marvel or vice whatever can be feigned which is not found there and is not far removed from the nature of gods. O Scaevola, chief pontiff, abolish the games, if you can; instruct the peoples not to render such honours to the immortal gods, where it is pleasing to admire the crimes of the gods and gratifying to imitate what can be imitated. But if the people should answer you: It is you pontiffs who brought these things in upon us — then ask the very gods, at whose instigation you ordained these things, not to command such things to be exhibited for themselves. For if these things are evil, and therefore by no means to be believed of the majesty of the gods, the greater is the wrong done to the gods, about whom such things are feigned with impunity. But they do not hear you — they are demons; they teach depravity, they rejoice in base things:
not only do they not count it an injury if such things are feigned about them, but they rather cannot bear the injury, if these things be not performed at their solemn rites. Now indeed, if against them you should appeal to Jupiter — chiefly for this reason, that the greater number of his crimes are acted out in the stage-plays — then, even though you call Jupiter God, by whom this whole world is ruled and administered, is not the greatest injury done to him by you, in that you think he should be worshipped together with these, and assert that he is their king? CHAPTER XXVIII. Whether the worship of the gods profited the Romans toward obtaining and extending their realm.
In no way, therefore, could such gods — who are appeased, or rather accused, by such honours, so that the crime by which they are delighted in falsehoods is greater than if true things were told of them — have been able to increase and preserve the Roman empire. For if they could do this, they would rather have conferred so great a gift upon the Greeks, who worshipped them more honourably and worthily in matters of this divine sort, that is, in stage-plays — seeing that they did not withdraw themselves even from the bites of the poets, by whom they saw the gods torn to pieces, granting them licence to maltreat whatever men they pleased; and they did not judge the actors themselves base, but held them worthy even of distinguished honours.
But just as the Romans were able to have golden money, although they did not worship the god Aurinus, so too they were able to have silver and bronze money, even if they worshipped neither Argentinus nor his father Aesculanus — and so all the things which it is tedious to recount. Thus, therefore, the kingdom itself they could in no way have, the true God being unwilling; but if those false and many gods were either unknown or despised, and the one true God known and worshipped with sincere faith and right conduct, they would both have a better kingdom here, however great it might be, and afterwards would receive one everlasting — whether here they had a kingdom or did not have one. CHAPTER XXIX. Of the falsity of the augury by which the strength and stability of the Roman realm seemed to be signified.
For what kind of thing is that which they said was a most beautiful augury, which I recalled a little earlier — that Mars and Terminus and Youth (Iuventas) were unwilling to yield their place even to Jupiter, the king of the gods? For thus, they say, it was signified that the Martial nation, that is the Roman, would yield to no one the place which it held; that the Roman boundaries too, on account of the god Terminus, no one would dislodge; and that the Roman youth also, on account of the goddess Youth, would yield to no one. Let them see, then, in what manner they hold this king of their gods and giver of their realm, if those auguries set him forth as an adversary, to whom it was deemed glorious not to yield.
Yet even if these things are true, they have nothing whatever to fear. For they will not confess that the gods yielded to Christ, who were unwilling to yield to Jupiter; for, the boundaries of the empire remaining intact, they could yield to Christ, both from the seats of their places and especially from the hearts of believers.
But before Christ had come in the flesh, before, in short, those things were written which we cite from their books — yet after that augury was made under King Tarquin — several times the Roman army was routed, that is, turned to flight, and proved the augury false, by which that Youth had not yielded to Jupiter; the Martial nation was crushed in the City itself by the Gauls who overcame and broke in; and the boundaries of the empire, with many states falling away to Hannibal, had been hemmed into a narrow space. Thus the beauty of the auguries was emptied out, and there remained against Jupiter the defiance, not of gods, but of demons. For it is one thing not to have yielded, another to have returned to the place from which you had yielded.
And yet afterwards too, in the eastern regions, by the will of Hadrian the boundaries of the Roman empire were changed. For he ceded three noble provinces — Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria — to the empire of the Persians, so that that god Terminus, who according to these men guarded the Roman boundaries and through that most beautiful augury had not yielded his place to Jupiter, would seem to have feared Hadrian, the king of men, more than the king of the gods. And when those provinces had been recovered at another time, within almost our own memory Terminus retreated backward, when Julian, given over to the oracles of those gods, with immoderate audacity ordered the ships to be burned in which provisions were carried;
and the army, deprived of supplies by this, when soon he himself too was slain by an enemy's wound, was reduced to such want that no one could have escaped thence, with the enemy assailing on every side a soldiery thrown into confusion by the emperor's death, unless by an agreement of peace the boundaries of the empire had been fixed in that very place where they persist even today — not indeed with so great a loss as Hadrian had conceded, but fastened, nonetheless, by a compromise midway. By an empty augury, therefore, the god Terminus did not yield to Jupiter, who yielded to the will of Hadrian, yielded also to the rashness of Julian and to the necessity of Jovian. The more intelligent and weighty Romans saw these things;
but against the custom of the state, which had been bound to demonic rites, they availed too little, because they themselves, even if they perceived those things to be empty, nevertheless thought that the religious worship which is due to God ought to be rendered to the nature of things established under the rule and command of the one true God — serving, as the apostle says, the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. There was need of the help of this true God, by whom holy and truly pious men might be sent, who would die for the true religion, so that false religions might be taken away from the living. CHAPTER XXX. What things even the worshippers of the gentile gods confess they feel about them.
Cicero the augur mocks auguries, and mocks men who govern the counsels of life by the voices of the raven and the little crow. But that Academic, who contends that all things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these matters. There disputes in his work Quintus Lucilius Balbus, in the second book on the nature of the gods; and although he himself inserts superstitions drawn, as it were physical and philosophical, from the nature of things, he is nonetheless indignant at the institution of images and at fabulous opinions, speaking thus: 'Do you see, then, how from things well and usefully discovered by natural philosophy reasoning has been dragged off to fabricated and fictitious gods? This thing has begotten false opinions, turbulent errors, and superstitions almost old-womanish.
For both the forms of the gods are known to us, and their ages, and their clothing and adornment; their lineages besides, their marriages, their kinships, and all things transferred to the likeness of human weakness. For they are even introduced with troubled minds; for we have received accounts of the gods' lusts, sicknesses, and angers. Nor indeed, as the fables relate, were the gods free of wars and battles; nor only, as in Homer, when different gods defended two opposing armies from different sides, but they even waged their own private wars (as with the Titans or with the Giants). These things are both told and believed most foolishly, and are full of vanity and the utmost frivolity.' Behold, meanwhile, what they confess who defend the gods of the nations.
Then, when he says that these things pertain to superstition, but that as for religion — which he himself seems to teach according to the Stoics — he says: 'For not only the philosophers, but our forefathers too, separated superstition from religion; for those who prayed and offered sacrifice whole days long, that their own children might survive them (superstites), were called superstitious.' Who would not understand that he, while fearing the custom of the state, is trying to praise the religion of the forefathers and to wish to sever it from superstition, but does not find how he can do this?
For if those were called superstitious by the forefathers who prayed and sacrificed whole days long, were not those too superstitious who instituted (what this man censures) images of the gods distinguished by different age and dress, and the gods' lineages, marriages, kinships? Surely, since these things are blamed as superstitious, that blame implicates the forefathers who instituted and worshipped such images; it implicates this man himself too, who — however much by his eloquence he might strive to extricate himself into liberty — was bound to venerate these things; nor would he, who in this disputation sounds forth so eloquently, dare to mutter a word in a public assembly of the people.
Let us therefore as Christians give thanks to the Lord our God — not to heaven and earth, as this man disputes, but to him who made heaven and earth — who, through the most lofty humility of Christ, through the preaching of the apostles, through the faith of martyrs dying for the truth and living with the truth, has overthrown these superstitions, which this Balbus, as though stammering (balbutiens), scarcely censures, by the free service of his own people, not only in religious hearts but even in superstitious shrines. CHAPTER XXXI. Of the opinions of Varro, who, having repudiated the popular persuasion, although he did not arrive at the knowledge of the true God, nevertheless judged that one God ought to be worshipped.
What of Varro himself — whom we grieve to have placed stage-plays among divine matters, although not by his own judgment — does he not, while in many places he exhorts, as though religiously, to the worship of the gods, confess thus: that he does not himself follow by his own judgment those things which he records the Roman state to have instituted; so that, if he were establishing that state anew, he does not hesitate to confess that he would rather have dedicated the gods and their names according to the rule of nature? But now, since he found himself among an old people, he says he must hold to the history of names and surnames received from the ancients, just as it was handed down, and writes and investigates those things to this end: that the common folk should rather be willing to worship them than to despise them.
By which words the most acute man sufficiently indicates that he does not disclose everything which would be objects of contempt not only to himself, but would seem deserving of scorn even to the common folk themselves, unless they were kept silent. I might have been thought to be conjecturing these things, had he not evidently said in another place, speaking of religions, that there are many things true which it is not only unprofitable for the common folk to know, but also — even though they are false — it is expedient that the people should think otherwise; and that for this reason the Greeks shut up their initiations and mysteries in silence and within walls. Here certainly he betrayed the whole design of those, as it were wise men, through whom states and peoples were to be governed.
By this deceit, nevertheless, the malignant demons take delight in wondrous ways — they who possess alike both the deceivers and the deceived, and from whose domination none sets free save the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The same most acute and most learned author says also that those alone seem to him to have noticed what God is,
who believed him to be a soul (anima) governing the world by movement and reason; and through this, although he did not yet hold what the truth holds (for the true God is not a soul, but is the maker and founder even of the soul), nevertheless, if he could have been free against the prejudgments of custom, he would confess and urge that one God ought to be worshipped, governing the world by movement and reason — so that this question alone would remain with him concerning the matter, namely that he called him a soul, and not rather also the creator of the soul. He says also that the ancient Romans for more than a hundred and seventy years worshipped the gods without an image. 'And if this had continued,' he says, 'the gods would be more chastely observed.' To this opinion of his he adduces as a witness, among others, even the Jewish nation;
nor does he hesitate so to conclude that passage as to say that those who first set up images of the gods for the peoples both took away fear from their states and added error, wisely judging that the gods could easily be despised in the stupidity of images. But in that he does not say 'they handed down error,' but 'they added' it, he surely wishes it to be understood that error already existed even without images. Wherefore, since he says that those alone noticed what God is who believed him to be a soul governing the world, and judges that religion is more chastely observed without images, who does not see how near he came to the truth?
For if anything could have prevailed against the antiquity of so great an error, surely he would have judged that the one God, by whom he believed the world to be governed, ought to be worshipped even without an image; and, being found so near, he might perhaps easily have been admonished concerning the mutability of the soul, so as to perceive that the true God is rather an unchangeable nature, which had founded the soul itself. Since these things are so, whatever such men set down in their writings about the mockeries of the many gods, they were compelled to confess them rather by the hidden will of God than to persuade men of them.
If, therefore, any testimonies are brought forward by us from that source, they are brought forward to refute those who refuse to consider from how great and how malignant a power of demons we are set free by the singular sacrifice of so holy a blood poured out and by the gift of the Spirit imparted. CHAPTER XXXII. For what semblance of usefulness the princes of the nations willed that false religions should remain among the peoples subject to them. He says also that, regarding the generations of the gods, the peoples were more inclined toward the poets than toward the natural philosophers; and that for this reason their forefathers, that is, the ancient Romans, believed in both the sex and the generations of the gods, and established their marriages.
This certainly seems to have been done for no other cause than that it was the business of men supposedly prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion, and in that very thing not only to worship but even to imitate the demons, whose greatest desire is to deceive. For just as the demons cannot possess any save those whom they have deceived by deception, so too men who are princes — not indeed righteous, but like the demons — persuaded the peoples, under the name of religion, that those things which they knew to be vain were as though true, in this way binding them more aptly, as it were, to civil society, that they might possess them likewise as their subjects. But who, being weak and unlearned, would escape at once both the deceitful princes of the state and the demons? CHAPTER XXXIII.
That the times of all kings and kingdoms are ordained by the judgment and power of the true God. That God, therefore, the author and giver of felicity — because he alone is the true God — himself gives earthly kingdoms both to the good and to the evil; and this not rashly and as it were by chance, because he is God, not Fortune, but according to the order of things and of times that is hidden from us, most well known to himself. To this order of times, however, he is not subject as a servant, but himself rules it as Lord and disposes it as governor; but felicity he gives only to the good. For this men can both lack and possess while serving, can both lack and possess while reigning; yet it will be full in that life where no one will any longer serve.