And therefore earthly kingdoms are given by him both to the good and to the evil, lest his worshippers, while still little children in the advancement of the soul, should covet these as though they were some great thing among his gifts. And this is the mystery of the Old Testament, where the New lay hidden: that there the promises and gifts are earthly — even to those who, then too, were spiritual, although not yet preaching in open manifestation both what eternity was signified by those temporal things, and in what gifts of God was the true felicity. CHAPTER XXXIV. Of the kingdom of the Jews, which was instituted and preserved by the one and true God, as long as they remained in the true religion.
And so, that it might be known that even those earthly goods — for which alone they gape who cannot think of better things — are placed within the power of that one God, and not of the many false ones whom the Romans formerly believed should be worshipped, he multiplied his own people in Egypt from a very few, and thence delivered them by wondrous signs. Nor did those women invoke Lucina when, that their offspring might be multiplied in wondrous ways and that nation grow incredibly, he himself preserved them from the hands of the Egyptians who pursued them and wished to slay all the infants.
Without the goddess Rumina they suckled; without Cunina they lay in their cradles; without Educa and Potina they took food and drink; without all those childhood gods they were reared; without the conjugal gods they were wedded; without the worship of Priapus they were joined to their spouses; without invocation of Neptune the sea, divided, lay open to them as they crossed, and overwhelmed their pursuing enemies as the waves returned upon them. Nor did they consecrate any goddess Mannia when they took manna from heaven; nor, when the smitten rock poured forth water for the thirsting, did they worship Nymphs and Lymphs. Without the insane rites of Mars and Bellona they waged wars; and without Victory indeed they did not conquer, yet they held her not as a goddess, but as a gift of their God.
Without Segetia they received their crops, without Bubona their cattle, honey without Mellona, fruits without Pomona; and in short, all those things for which the Romans thought so great a throng of false gods had to be supplicated, they received far more happily from the one true God. And had they not sinned against Him by being seduced through impious curiosity, as though by magic arts, slipping away to strange gods and to idols, and finally by killing Christ, they would have remained in the same kingdom—if not a more spacious one, yet a happier one.
And now, that they have been scattered through almost all lands and nations, this is the providence of that one true God; so that, when the images, altars, sacred groves, and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown and their sacrifices forbidden, it may be proved from the Jews' own books how long beforehand this had been prophesied—lest perchance, when it were read in our books, it should be thought by us to have been invented. What follows must be considered in the next volume, and here a limit must be set to this length. PREFACE. Since it is certain that the fullness of all things to be desired is happiness, which is not a goddess but a gift of God, and that therefore no god is to be worshipped by men except Him who can make them happy (whence, if happiness were a goddess, she alone would deservedly be said worthy of worship):
Let us now consequently see for what cause God—who is able to bestow even those goods which even those who are not good, and therefore not happy, can possess—willed the Roman empire to be so great and so long-enduring. For that the multitude of false gods which they worshipped did not bring this about, we have already said much, and where it shall seem opportune we shall say more. CHAPTER I. That the cause of the Roman empire and of all kingdoms is neither fortuitous nor consists in the position of the stars.
The cause therefore of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither fortuitous nor fatal according to the view or opinion of those who call those things fortuitous which either have no causes, or causes not proceeding from any rational order, and those things fatal which happen, apart from the will of God and of men, by a necessity of a certain order. Without doubt human kingdoms are established by divine providence. And if anyone on that account ascribes this to fate, because he calls the very will or power of God by the name of fate, let him hold his opinion but correct his tongue. For why does he not say first what he is afterward going to say, when anyone asks him what he meant by 'fate'? For when men hear that word,
according to the customary usage of speech, understand nothing but the force of the position of the stars, such as it is when one is born or conceived; which some sever from the will of God, while others affirm that this too depends upon it. But those who hold the opinion that, without the will of God, the stars determine what we shall do or what goods we shall have or what evils we shall suffer, are to be repelled from the ears of all—not only of those who hold the true religion, but of those who wish to be worshippers of gods of any sort, even false ones. For what else does this opinion effect, but that no god at all should be worshipped or entreated? It is not against these that our disputation is now framed, but against those who, in defence of those whom they think to be gods, oppose the Christian religion.
But those who suspend the position of the stars—which in a certain manner determine what each person is, and what good befalls him or what evil happens to him—from the will of God, if they suppose that those same stars have this power delivered to them by that supreme Power, so that of their own will they decree these things, do a great injury to heaven; in whose senate, as it were most illustrious, and most splendid council-chamber, they imagine that crimes are decreed to be committed—such crimes that, if any earthly city had decreed them, it would have been overthrown by the decree of the human race. What judgment, then, concerning the deeds of men is left to God, to whom a heavenly necessity is applied, since He is Lord both of the stars and of men? Or if they do not say that the stars, having indeed received power from
the supreme God, decree these things by their own judgment, but in imposing such necessities entirely fulfil His commands: is it then to be supposed of God Himself what was judged most unworthy to be supposed of the will of the stars? But if it is said that the stars rather signify these things than cause them, so that that position is, as it were, a kind of speech foretelling things to come, not effecting them (for this was the opinion of men by no means moderately learned): the astrologers are not indeed wont to speak so, as to say, for example, 'Mars thus placed signifies a murderer,' but 'makes a murderer';
nevertheless, granting that they do not speak as they ought, and that they should receive from the philosophers the rule of discourse for foretelling those things which they think they find in the position of the stars: how comes it that they have never been able to say anything as to why, in the life of twins, in their actions, in their outcomes, in their professions, arts, honours, and other things pertaining to human life, and in their very death, there is for the most part so great a diversity, that, as far as these matters are concerned, many strangers are more like them than the twins themselves are like each other—twins separated in birth by a very tiny interval of time, yet sown in conception by a single act of intercourse, in one and the same moment? CHAPTER II. On the similar and dissimilar health of twins.
Cicero says that Hippocrates, the most renowned physician, left it in writing that, when certain brothers had begun to fall ill together, and their disease grew worse at the same time and was relieved at the same time, he suspected them to be twins; whom Posidonius the Stoic, much given to astrology, used to assert had been born under the same constitution of the stars and conceived under the same. Thus what the physician believed pertained to a most similar temperament of health, this the philosopher-astrologer ascribed to the force and constitution of the stars under which they had been conceived and born.
In this matter the medical conjecture is far more acceptable and more credible at first hand, since, as the parents were affected in body when they lay together, so the beginnings of the conceived offspring could be affected, so that, with the prior increments following from the maternal body, they were born of equal health; then, nourished in one house by the same foods—where medicine testifies that the air and the position of the place and the force of the waters have very great power for the body's being well or ill received—and accustomed also to the same exercises, they bore bodies so alike that they were moved to falling ill at one time and from the same causes alike.
But to wish to drag the constitution of the heaven and the stars, which existed when they were conceived or born, to this likeness of falling sick—when so many things of most diverse kind, with most diverse effects and outcomes, could be conceived and born at the same time in the land of one region subject to the same sky—I know not of what presumption this is. We, moreover, have known twins who not only have diverse pursuits and travels, but also undergo unequal illnesses. Of this matter Hippocrates would, as it seems to me, give a most easy account: that by diverse foods and exercises—which come not from the temperament of the body, but from the will of the mind—dissimilar states of health could have befallen them.
Moreover, it would be a wonder if Posidonius, or any other asserter of fatal stars, could here find anything to say, unless he wished to mock the minds of the unskilled in matters they do not know. For what they attempt to bring about from that scanty interval of time which the twins had between them while being born—on account of that little portion of the heaven where the marking of the hour is placed, which they call the horoscope—either is not of such force as the diversity that is found in the wills, acts, manners, and chances of twins, or else is of even greater force than the very lowliness or nobility of birth of the twins, the greatest diversity of which they place in nothing but the hour in which each is born.
And on this account, if one twin is born so swiftly after the other that the same part of the horoscope remains, I demand that all things be equal—which can be found in no twins; but if the slowness of the later-born changes the horoscope, I demand diverse parents—which twins cannot have. CHAPTER III. On the argument which Nigidius the astrologer took from the potter's wheel in the question of twins. In vain, therefore, is that famous device about the potter's wheel brought forward, which Nigidius is said to have given in reply, being perplexed by this question—whence also he was called Figulus ('the Potter'). For while he whirled a potter's wheel with all the force he could, he struck it twice in number with ink, as though in one place of it, with the utmost swiftness while it ran;
then, when the motion ceased, the marks which he had made were found to be at no small interval apart on the rim of that wheel. 'Thus,' he said, 'in so great a rapidity of the heaven, even though one be born after another with such swiftness as I struck the wheel twice, in the space of the heaven it is very much: hence,' he said, 'come whatever things are reported as most dissimilar in the manners and chances of twins.' This figment is more fragile than the vessels which are fashioned by that whirling. For if there is so much difference in the heaven—which cannot be comprehended by the constellations—that to one of the twins an inheritance should fall, and to the other it should not fall:
why do they dare, with respect to others who are not twins, when they have inspected their constellations, to pronounce such things as pertain to that secret which no one can comprehend and note down in the moments of those being born? But if they say such things in the nativities of others because these things pertain to more extended spaces of time, whereas those moments of minute portions, which twins being born can have between them, are assigned to the smallest matters, about which astrologers are not wont to be consulted (for who consults when he is to sit, when to walk, when or what he is to lunch upon?): do we then speak of such things, when we point out in the manners, works, and chances of twins very many and very greatly diverse matters? CHAPTER IV.
On Esau and Jacob, twins very unlike each other in the quality of their manners and actions. Two twins were born in the ancient memory of the fathers (to speak of notable instances), one after the other in such wise that the later held the heel of the prior. So great were the diversities in their life and manners, so great the disparity in their deeds, so great the dissimilarity in their parents' love, that this very distance even made them enemies to each other. Is this said because, while one walked, the other sat, and while one slept, the other kept watch, and while one spoke, the other was silent—which things pertain to those minute matters that cannot be comprehended by those who write down the constitution of the stars under which each is born, whence the astrologers are consulted?
One bore a hireling's servitude, the other served not; one was loved by his mother, the other was not loved; one lost the honour which was held great among them, the other obtained it. What of their wives, what of their children, what of their possessions—how great the diversity! If, then, these things pertain to those minute portions of time which twins have between themselves, and are not ascribed to the constellations: why, when the constellations of others are inspected, are these things said? But if they are said for this reason, that they pertain not to incomprehensible minute moments, but to spaces of time which can be observed and noted: what is that potter's wheel doing here, except that men with hearts of clay may be set spinning in a circle, lest the empty babblings of the astrologers be refuted? CHAPTER V.
By what ways the astrologers are convicted of professing a vain science. What of these very men themselves, whose illness—because it appeared at the same time more grave and more mild in both—Hippocrates, inspecting it medically, suspected to be twins: do they not sufficiently refute those who wish to give to the stars what came from the similar temperament of the bodies? For why did they fall sick at the same time and in like manner—not one before, the other after, as they had been born, since assuredly both could not be born at the same time? Or if it brought no moment of difference, that they should fall sick at diverse times, that they were born at diverse times: why do they contend that the diverse time of birth has force for the diversities of other matters?
Why could they travel at diverse times, take wives at diverse times, beget children at diverse times, and do many other things, for the reason that they were born at diverse times, and yet could not, for the same cause, also fall sick at diverse times? For if the unequal delay of birth changed the horoscope and introduced disparity into the other matters: why did that remain in their illnesses which they had from the equality of the time of conception? Or if the fates of health lie in the conception, but those of other matters are said to lie in the birth, they ought not, after inspecting the constellations of nativity, to say anything about health, since the hour of conception is not given to them to be inspected.
But if they foretell illnesses without the horoscope of conception being inspected, because the moments of birth indicate them: how would they tell either of those twins, from the hour of nativity, when he was going to fall ill, since the other also—who did not have the same hour of nativity—would of necessity fall ill in like manner? Then I ask: if there is so great a distance of time in the nativity of twins that on account of it diverse constellations must be made for them, on account of the diverse horoscope, and on this account all the diverse cardinal points, in which so great force is placed that hence even their fates are diverse: whence could this come to pass, since their conception cannot have a diverse time?
Or if the fates for being born could be unequal for two conceived in one moment of time, why could not the fates for living and dying also be unequal for two born in one moment of time? For if the one moment in which both were conceived did not hinder that one should be born first, the other later: why, if two be born in one moment, does anything hinder that one should die first, the other later? If the conception of one moment permits the twins to have diverse fortunes in the womb, why does the nativity of one moment not also permit any two persons on earth to have diverse fortunes, and thus the inventions of this art—or rather of this vanity—be all done away with? What is this, that those conceived at one time, in one moment,
under one and the same position of the heaven, have diverse fates which bring them to the nativity of diverse hours; and yet two who are born equally of two mothers in one moment of time, under one and the same position of the heaven, cannot have diverse fates which bring them to a diverse necessity of living or dying? Or do those conceived not yet have fates, which they cannot have unless they be born? What then is it that they say, that if the hour of conception be found, many things can be said by them more divinely? Whence also this is reported by some, that a certain wise man chose an hour in which to lie with his wife, that he might beget a wonderful son.
Whence, lastly, this also is what Posidonius—a great astrologer and likewise a philosopher—used to answer concerning those twins who fell ill alike: that it came about because they had been born at the same time and conceived at the same time. For surely he added the conception on this account, lest it should be said to him that those whom it was certain had been conceived altogether at the same time could not without question have been born at the same time; so that, as for their being sick alike and together, he might not derive it from their proximate equal temperament of body, but might bind that very parity of health also to starry connections. If, therefore, there is so great a force in conception toward the equality of fates, the same fates ought not to have been changed in being born.
Or if the fates of twins are changed for this reason, that they are born at diverse times, why do we not rather understand that they had already been changed, so that they should be born at diverse times? Does not, then, the will of the living change the fates of nativity, since the order of those being born changes the fates of conception? CHAPTER VI. On twins of unlike sex. And yet, even in the very conceptions of twins, where assuredly the moments of time are the same for both, how comes it that, under the same fatal constellation, one is conceived male and the other female? We have known twins of diverse sex; both are still living, both still flourish in age;
and although the appearances of their bodies are mutually similar, as far as is possible in a diverse sex, yet in the disposition and purpose of life they are so unlike, that—besides the acts in which feminine ones must of necessity differ from manly ones (for he serves in the office of a count and is almost always travelling away from his own home, while she does not depart from her native soil and her own countryside)—moreover (which is more incredible, if astral fates be believed; but not to be wondered at, if the wills of men and the gifts of God be considered) he is married, she is a consecrated virgin; he has begotten numerous offspring, she has not even married. 'But the force of the horoscope avails very much.' How utterly worthless this is, I have already sufficiently discoursed. But whatever it may be, they say it avails at birth; does it also avail in conception?
For here it is manifest both that there was a single act of intercourse, and that so great is the force of nature that, when a woman has conceived, she cannot thereafter conceive another at all; whence it is necessary that the moments of conception be the same in twins. Or was it perhaps because they were born under a diverse horoscope, that either he, while they were being born, was changed into a male, or she into a female? Whereas, then, it could not be said altogether absurdly that certain starry influences avail only as to the differences of bodies—just as in the approaches and recedings of the sun we see even the seasons of the year itself varied, and by the waxings and wanings of the moon certain kinds of things are increased and diminished, such as sea-urchins and shellfish and the wondrous tides of the ocean;
but that the wills of the mind are not subjected to the positions of the stars: now these men, when they try to bind even our acts thereto, admonish us to inquire whence the reasoning cannot hold good for them even in the very bodies. For what is so pertinent to the body as the body's sex? And yet, under the same position of the stars, twins of diverse sex could be conceived. Whence, what can be said or believed more foolishly than that the position of the stars, which was the same for both at the hour of conception, could not bring it about that he should not have a sex diverse from his brother, with whom he had the same constellation; and that the position of the stars, which existed at the hour of their birth, could bring it about that she should differ from him so greatly in virginal sanctity? CHAPTER VII.
On the choice of the day on which a wife is taken, or on which something is planted or sown in a field. Now who could endure this, that in choosing days men contrive certain new fates for their own acts? That man was not, forsooth, so born that he should have an admirable son, but rather so, that he should beget a contemptible one; and therefore the learned man chose an hour in which to be united with his wife. He therefore made a fate which he did not have, and from his own deed there began to be fated that which had not been in his nativity. O singular folly! A day is chosen that a wife may be taken; I believe for this reason, that one may, unless it be chosen, fall upon a day that is not good, and marry unhappily. Where, then, is that which the stars already decreed to him at his birth?
Or can a man change by the choice of a day that which has already been appointed for him, while that which he himself has appointed in choosing a day cannot be changed by another power? Then, if only men, and not all things which are under heaven, are subject to the constellations, why do they choose some days suited for setting vines or trees or crops, and other days for cattle—whether for taming them or for admitting the males by which the herds of mares or oxen are bred—and other such things? But if chosen days avail for these matters because the position of the stars dominates over all earthly bodies or living things according to the diversities of temporal moments:
let them consider how innumerable are the things which under one point of time are either born, or rise, or are begun, and yet have outcomes so diverse, that they may persuade any boy that these observations are to be laughed at. For who is so witless as to dare to say that all trees, all herbs, all beasts, serpents, birds, fishes, and little worms have severally diverse moments of birth? Yet men are wont, in order to test the skill of the astrologers, to bring to them the constellations of dumb animals, whose births, for the sake of this exploration, they diligently observe at their own homes; and they prefer those astrologers above the rest who, having inspected the constellations, say that it was not a man that was born, but a beast.
They dare even to say what kind of beast—whether fit for wool-bearing, or for carrying, or for the plough, or for guarding the house. For they are tested as to the fates of dogs too, and answer these things amid the great shouts of those who admire them. Thus men play the fool, so as to suppose that, when a man is born, the other births of things are so inhibited that not even a fly is born with him under the same tract of the sky. For if they admit this, the reasoning advances which, by gradual and modest steps of progress, may lead them from flies to camels and elephants.
Nor do they wish to advert to this, that, when a day has been chosen for sowing a field, so many grains come into the earth together, germinate together, and—when the crop has sprung up—together grow into blade, mature, and turn golden; and yet, of the ears coeval with the rest and (so to speak) co-germinal, some are destroyed by blight, some are ravaged by birds, some are plucked up by men. How will they say that these had diverse constellations, which they behold having such diverse outcomes? Or will it repent them to choose days for these matters, and will they deny that these pertain to the heavenly decree, and subject to the stars only men—the only ones on earth to whom God has given free wills?
All these things being considered, it is not without reason believed that, when the astrologers answer many true things wonderfully, this comes about by the hidden instigation of spirits that are not good, whose care it is to insinuate and confirm in human minds these false and noxious opinions about astral fates—not by any art of the horoscope being marked and inspected, which art is none at all. CHAPTER VIII. On those who call by the name of fate, not the position of the stars, but the connection of causes depending on the will of God. But those who call by the name of fate, not the constitution of the stars, such as it is when anything is conceived or born or begun, but the connection and series of all causes, by which comes about everything that comes about:
there is no need to labour much and contend with them about a controversy of the word, since indeed they attribute the very order and a certain connection of causes to the will and power of the most high God, who is most rightly and most truly believed both to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordered; from whom are all powers, although from Him are not all wills. That it is therefore especially the will of the most high God—whose power is invincibly extended through all things—that they call by the name of fate, is thus proved. These verses are, unless I am mistaken, by Annaeus Seneca: 'Lead me, O supreme Father and Ruler of the lofty pole, wherever it has pleased Thee; there is no delay in obeying. I am present, unwearied: suppose me unwilling, I shall follow groaning, and as a wicked man I shall suffer what I might have done as a good one.'
'The fates lead the willing, the unwilling they drag.' Surely in this last verse he most evidently called by the name of fate that which above he had called the will of the supreme Father; to whom he says he is prepared to obey, that he may be led willing, lest he be dragged unwilling; since, namely, 'The fates lead the unwilling, the unwilling they drag.' Those Homeric verses also favour this opinion, which Cicero turned into Latin: 'Such are the minds of men, as is the day which Father Jupiter himself has brought over the lands with his light.' Nor would a poetic sentiment have authority in this question:
but since he says that the Stoics, in asserting the force of fate, are wont to make use of these verses from Homer, it is not the opinion of that poet, but of those philosophers, that is being treated; since, by these verses which they apply to the disputation they hold concerning fate, it is most openly declared what they hold fate to be, since they call it Jupiter, whom they think to be the supreme god, on whom they say the connection of fates depends. CHAPTER IX. On God's foreknowledge and man's free will, against Cicero's definition. These men Cicero strives to refute in such wise that he supposes he can avail nothing against them unless he abolishes divination.