How much better and more honourable it would be that in the temple of Plato his books should be read, than that in the temples of demons the Galli should mutilate themselves, the effeminate be consecrated, the mad gash themselves, and whatever else, cruel or shameful, basely cruel or cruelly base, is wont to be celebrated in the rites of such gods! How much more fitting it would have been, for the instruction of youth in justice, that the laws of the gods should be publicly recited, rather than that the laws and institutions of the forefathers should be vainly praised! For all the worshippers of such gods, as soon as lust drives them on—'steeped in seething venom,' as Persius says—look rather to what Jupiter did than to what Plato taught or Cato judged.
Hence in Terence the licentious young man gazes upon a certain picture painted on a wall, in which was this scene: how Jupiter, they say, once sent down a shower of gold into the lap of Danaë; and from so great an authority he draws a patronage for his own foulness, boasting that in it he imitates a god. 'And what a god!' he says; 'one who shakes the temples of heaven with his loftiest thunder. Should I, a mere manikin, not do the like? I have indeed done it, and gladly.' CHAPTER VIII. On the theatrical games, in which the gods are not offended by the display of their own shameful deeds, but are appeased. But, it is said, these things are not delivered in the rites of the gods, but in the fables of the poets. I will not say that those mystical things are fouler than these theatrical ones;
this I do say—and history convicts those who deny it—that those very games, in which the figments of the poets hold sway, were brought in by the Romans not through some ignorant deference to the rites of their gods, but the gods themselves, by harshly commanding and in a manner extorting it, brought it about that these games should be solemnly performed for them and consecrated to their honour; a thing which I touched upon briefly in passing in the first book. For when a pestilence was growing severe, theatrical games were first established at Rome by the authority of the pontiffs. Who then, in the conduct of his life, would not rather judge those things worthy to be pursued which are repeatedly enacted in games established by divine authority, than those things which are repeatedly written down in laws promulgated by human counsel?
If the poets falsely represented Jupiter as an adulterer, the gods, being surely chaste, ought to have been angry and to have taken vengeance because so great a wickedness was fabricated about them through human plays—not because it was neglected. And these are the more tolerable of the theatrical games, namely comedies and tragedies—that is, the fables of the poets to be acted in the public shows—composed with much foulness of subject-matter, yet at least, unlike many other plays, with no obscenity of words; which boys are even compelled by their elders to read and learn among those studies that are called honourable and liberal. CHAPTER IX. What the ancient Romans thought concerning the restraining of poetic license, which the Greeks, following the judgment of their gods, wished to be unrestricted.
But what the ancient Romans thought of this, Cicero bears witness in the books which he wrote On the Republic, where Scipio, in his discourse, says: 'Comedies could never have won approval for their disgraceful matter in the theatres, had not the custom of life permitted it.' And the older Greeks indeed preserved a certain consistency with their faulty opinion, since among them it was even granted by law that comedy might say whatever it pleased, of whom it pleased, by name. And so, as Africanus speaks in the same books: 'Whom did it not touch? or rather, whom did it not harass? whom did it spare? Granted, it injured mischievous men of the people, men seditious in the commonwealth—Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus.'
'Let us endure this,' he says, 'although it were better for such citizens to be censured by a censor than by a poet. But that Pericles—when with the greatest authority he had for very many years presided over his city, both in peace and in war, at home and abroad—should be assailed in verses, and that these should be acted on the stage, was no more fitting than if our Plautus,' he says, 'or Naevius had wished to revile Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius Marcus Cato.' Then a little later: 'Our Twelve Tables,' he says, 'on the contrary, though they sanctioned with death only very few matters, yet thought that this also ought to be among them so sanctioned: if anyone had chanted, or composed a song, that brought infamy or disgrace upon another. Excellently!'
'For we ought to have our manner of life subject to the judgments of magistrates and to lawful inquiries, not to the wit of poets; nor to hear any reproach except under such a law that it be permitted to answer and to defend oneself in court.' These passages I have thought it right to excerpt word for word from the fourth book of Cicero's On the Republic, with some things either omitted or slightly altered for the sake of easier understanding. For it bears greatly upon the matter which I am labouring to explain, if I can. He then says other things, and so concludes this passage, that he may show how it displeased the ancient Romans that any living man should either be praised on the stage or reviled.
But, as I have said, the Greeks, though more shamelessly, yet more consistently, wished this to be permitted, since they saw that reproaches were acceptable and pleasing to their gods—not only those against men, but those against the very gods themselves—in the theatrical fables, whether those things were fabricated by the poets, or their true disgraceful deeds were recounted and acted in the theatres, and were deemed by their worshippers worthy—would that of mere laughter, and not also of imitation! For it was too proud a thing to spare the reputation of the leading men of the state and of its citizens, when the deities were unwilling that their own reputation should be spared. CHAPTER X. By what art of doing harm the demons wish either false or true crimes to be told concerning themselves.
For as to what is alleged in defence—that those things are not told truly about the gods, but are false and fabricated—this very thing is more wicked, if you consider the piety of religion; but if you consider the malice of the demons, what is craftier and more cunning for deceiving? For when a reproach is cast upon a good and useful ruler of one's country, is it not the more unworthy the further it is removed from the truth and the more alien it is to his life? What punishments, then, are sufficient, when an injury so impious, so signal, is done to a god?
But the malignant spirits, whom these men think to be gods, wish even disgraceful deeds which they did not commit to be told concerning themselves—provided only that they may entangle human minds with these opinions as if with nets, and drag them down with themselves to their predestined punishment: whether men actually committed these deeds—men whom they rejoice to have held as gods (they who rejoice in human errors), and on whose behalf they thrust themselves forward to be worshipped by a thousand arts of harming and deceiving; or even though those crimes be not true of any men, which nevertheless the most deceitful spirits gladly accept as feigned about the deities, so that an authority might seem sufficient, as though brought down from heaven itself to earth, for perpetrating wicked and shameful things.
Since therefore the Greeks felt themselves to be the slaves of such deities, they thought by no means that they themselves should be spared by the poets amid so many and so great theatrical reproaches of those gods—either desiring to be made like their gods even in this, or fearing lest, by seeking for themselves a more honourable reputation and by thus preferring themselves to the gods, they should provoke them to anger. CHAPTER XI. On the stage-players received among the Greeks into the administration of the commonwealth, because it was unjust that the appeasers of the gods should be despised by men.
To this consistency it belongs, that they judged even the stage-actors of these same fables worthy of no small honour from the city—since indeed, as is recorded in that same book On the Republic, Aeschines the Athenian, a most eloquent man, after he had as a young man repeatedly acted tragedies, took up public affairs; and the Athenians often sent Aristodemus, likewise a tragic actor, as an envoy to Philip on the greatest matters of peace and war. For it was not thought consistent, when they saw these same arts and these same theatrical games to be acceptable even to their gods, to reckon those through whom they were performed in the place and number of the infamous.
These things the Greeks did indeed disgracefully, but assuredly in full conformity with their gods; for they did not dare to withdraw the life of their citizens from being torn by the tongues of poets and players, by whom they saw the life of the gods being carped at, with those very gods willing and well pleased; and they thought that the very men through whom these things were enacted in the theatres—things which they had learned to be pleasing to the deities to whom they were subject—were not only by no means to be despised in the city, but even to be most highly honoured. For what cause could they find why they should honour the priests, because through them they offered victims acceptable to the gods, and yet hold the stage-players disgraceful, through whom they had learned, by the very admonition of the gods, that that pleasure or honour was rendered to the gods who demanded it and were angered if it were not done?
Especially since Labeo, whom they proclaim to be most skilled in matters of this kind, distinguishes good deities from evil deities even by this diversity of worship: he asserts that the evil gods are to be propitiated by slaughters and mournful supplications, but the good ones by glad and joyful observances, such as are—as he himself says—games, banquets, and the spreading of couches for the gods. Of what sort all this is, we shall, if God help us, discuss more carefully hereafter.
Now, as concerns the present matter: whether all things be assigned to all the gods indiscriminately, as though they were good (for it is not fitting that there be evil gods, since rather these beings, because they are unclean spirits, are all evil), or whether, by a definite distinction, as it seemed to Labeo, those observances be allotted to these and these to those—most consistently do the Greeks hold both in honour, both the priests through whom the victims are administered, and the stage-players through whom the games are exhibited; lest they be convicted of doing injury either to all their gods, if the games are pleasing to all, or—what is more unworthy—to those whom they think good, if the games are loved by them alone. CHAPTER XII.
That the Romans, in taking away from the poets the liberty against men which they granted them against the gods, thought better of themselves than of their gods. But the Romans, as Scipio boasts in that discussion On the Republic, were unwilling to have their life and reputation subject to the reproaches and injuries of the poets, sanctioning even with death if anyone should dare to compose such a song. As regards themselves indeed they ordained this honourably enough, but towards their gods proudly and irreligiously; for though they knew them not only patiently but even gladly to be torn by the reproaches and revilings of the poets, they judged themselves rather than the gods unworthy of injuries of this kind, and fortified themselves against the poets even by law, while they mingled these very reproaches against the gods in their sacred solemnities.
So then, Scipio, do you praise this license being denied to the Roman poets, that they might fasten reproach upon any of the Romans, when you see that they spared none of your gods? Is the esteem of your senate-house to be held by you of more value than the Capitol—nay, of Rome alone more than of all heaven—so that the poets were forbidden even by law to exercise their reviling tongue against your fellow-citizens, yet against your gods they hurled such great insults in security, with no senator, no censor, no leading man, no pontiff forbidding it? It was, forsooth, unworthy that Plautus or Naevius should revile Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius Marcus Cato; but it was worthy that your own Terence should kindle the wantonness of young men by the disgraceful deed of Jupiter the Best and Greatest? CHAPTER XIII.
That the Romans ought to have understood that their gods, who demanded to be worshipped with disgraceful games, were unworthy of divine honour. But he would perhaps answer me, if he were alive: How could we wish those things to go unpunished which the gods themselves willed to be sacred, since they both introduced into Roman customs the theatrical games, where such things are celebrated, repeatedly spoken, and repeatedly acted, and commanded them to be dedicated and exhibited in their own honour? Why, then, were not the gods themselves rather understood from this not to be true gods, nor at all worthy that that commonwealth should render divine honours to them?
For those whom it would be by no means fitting nor proper to worship, if they demanded games to be performed with revilings of the Romans—how, I ask, were they thought worthy to be worshipped? How were they not understood to be spirits to be detested, who, out of a lust for deceiving, demanded that their own crimes be celebrated amid their own honours?
And likewise the Romans, although they were already weighed down by a noxious superstition, so that they worshipped those gods whom they saw to have wished theatrical foulnesses consecrated to themselves, were nevertheless mindful of their own dignity and modesty, and by no means honoured the actors of such fables after the manner of the Greeks; but, as the same Scipio says in Cicero, 'since they reckoned the art of acting and the whole stage to be a matter of disgrace, they willed that this class of men should not only lack the honour of the other citizens, but should even be removed from their tribe by the censor's mark.' A truly splendid prudence, and to be reckoned among the praises of the Romans; but I could wish that it had followed itself and imitated itself.
For behold how rightly: whoever among the Roman citizens chose to be a stage-player was not only given no place for honour, but was even by the censor's mark in no way permitted to retain his own tribe. O spirit of the city, eager for praise and truly Roman! But let answer be made to me: by what consistent reasoning are stage-players driven from all honour, and yet the stage-games are mingled with the honours of the gods? Roman virtue did not for a long time know those theatrical arts, which, had they been sought for the delight of human pleasure, would have crept in through a fault of human morals. The gods demanded that they be exhibited to themselves. How, then, is the stage-player cast out, through whom a god is worshipped? And with what face is the actor branded for that theatrical foulness, if the exactor of it is adored?
In this controversy let the Greeks and Romans contend. The Greeks think they rightly honour stage-players, because they worship the gods who demand the stage-games; but the Romans suffer not stage-players to disgrace even the plebeian tribe, much less the senatorial curia. In this dispute, reasoning of this kind resolves the whole question. The Greeks propose: If such gods are to be worshipped, then assuredly such men also are to be honoured. The Romans assume: But by no means are such men to be honoured. The Christians conclude: Therefore by no means are such gods to be worshipped. CHAPTER XIV. That Plato, who gave no place to poets in a well-ordered city, was better than these gods, who wished to be honoured with stage-games.
Next we ask: the poets themselves, the composers of such fables, who are forbidden by the law of the Twelve Tables to injure the reputation of citizens, yet hurl such disgraceful insults against the gods—why are they not, like the stage-players, held to be dishonourable? By what reasoning is it right that the actors of poetic figments and of inglorious gods should be made infamous, while their authors are honoured? Or is the palm perhaps rather to be given to the Greek Plato, who, when by reason he was forming what kind of city a state ought to be, judged that the poets, as adversaries of the truth, should be expelled from the city? He indeed both bore with indignation the injuries done to the gods, and was unwilling that the minds of citizens should be falsely coloured and corrupted by figments.
Now compare Plato's humanity, expelling the poets from the city lest they deceive the citizens, with the divinity of the gods, demanding stage-games for their own honour. Plato, that such things might not even be written, although he did not persuade by his disputing, nevertheless gave counsel to the levity and wantonness of the Greeks; these gods, that such things might even be acted, extorted them by command from the gravity and modesty of the Romans. Nor did they wish only that these things be acted, but that they be dedicated to themselves, consecrated to themselves, solemnly exhibited to themselves. To whom, after all, would a state more honourably decree divine honours? to Plato, who forbade these foul and impious things, or to the demons who rejoiced in this deception of men, to whom Plato could not persuade the truth?
This Plato, Labeo thought ought to be commemorated among the demigods, like Hercules, like Romulus. Now he sets demigods above heroes; but he places both among the deities. Yet I do not doubt that this man, whom he calls a demigod, is to be preferred not only to heroes, but even to the gods themselves. Moreover, the laws of the Romans approach the disputations of Plato, since he condemns all poetic figments, while they at least take from the poets the license of reviling men; he removes the poets from the very habitation of the city, they at least remove the actors of poetic fables from the society of the state; and if they had dared anything against the gods, the demanders of stage-games, perhaps they would have removed them from everywhere.
By no means, therefore, could the Romans receive or hope for, from their own gods, laws for establishing good morals or correcting bad ones—gods whom they surpass and convict by their own laws. For those gods demand stage-games for their own honour, but these Romans drive stage-players from all honours; those gods command that the disgraces of the gods be celebrated for them by poetic figments, but these Romans deter the shamelessness of the poets from the reproaches of men. But that demigod Plato both withstood the lust of such gods, and showed, from the natural disposition of the Romans, what ought to be brought to perfection: he willed that the poets themselves—whether lying at their own pleasure, or setting before wretched men, as if for imitation, the basest deeds of the gods—should by no means dwell within a well-ordered city.
We indeed declare Plato to be neither a god nor a demigod, nor do we compare him to any holy angel of the Most High God, nor to any truthful prophet, nor to any apostle, nor to any martyr of Christ, nor to any Christian man whatsoever; the reason of which our opinion shall, with God's favour, be set forth in its own place. But him nevertheless—since they themselves are willing that he was a demigod—we judge to be preferred, if not to Romulus and Hercules (although no historian or poet has ever said or feigned that this man killed his brother or perpetrated any disgraceful deed), at any rate to Priapus, or to some Cynocephalus, or finally to Fever, deities whom the Romans partly received from foreign sources, partly consecrated as their own.
How, then, could such gods, by good precepts and laws, either forbid those great evils of mind and morals when they threatened, or take care that those implanted should be rooted out—gods who took care even to sow and to increase disgraceful deeds, desiring that such deeds, whether their own or as if their own, should become known to the peoples through theatrical celebrations, so that, as though by divine authority, the most wicked human lust might of its own accord be kindled—while Cicero cried out in vain against this, who, when he was treating of the poets, said: 'When to these there is added the shout and approbation of the people, as of some great and wise master, what darkness do they spread, what fears do they bring in, what desires do they inflame!' CHAPTER XV. That the Romans set up certain gods for themselves not by reason, but by flattery.
But what reason—and not rather flattery—is there in the choosing there even of their own false gods? when they thought this Plato, whom they would have to be a demigod, labouring with such great disputations lest human morals be corrupted by the evils of the mind, which above all are to be guarded against, worthy of no sacred shrine, and preferred their own Romulus to many gods—although their more secret doctrine commends him too as a demigod rather than a god. For they even appointed a flamen for him, which kind of priesthood so excelled in the Roman rites, as the apex bears witness, that they had only three flamens appointed to three deities: the Dialis to Jupiter, the Martialis to Mars, the Quirinalis to Romulus.
For through the goodwill of the citizens, Romulus, as if received into heaven, was afterwards named Quirinus. And by this very thing Romulus was preferred in this honour even to Neptune and Pluto, the brothers of Jupiter, and to Saturn himself, their father; so that the priesthood which they had assigned to Jupiter, as a great thing, they assigned this also to him, and to Mars, as if to his father, perhaps for his own sake. CHAPTER XVI. That, if the gods had any care for justice, the Romans ought to have received precepts of living from them, rather than to have borrowed laws from other men.
But if the Romans had been able to receive laws of living from their own gods, they would not, some years after the founding of Rome, have borrowed the laws of Solon from the Athenians—which, nevertheless, they did not keep as they received them, but strove to make better and more amended; although Lycurgus falsely pretended that he had established laws for the Lacedaemonians by the authority of Apollo, a thing which the Romans prudently were unwilling to believe, and therefore did not receive their laws thence. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingship, is reported to have composed certain laws which by no means sufficed for governing the state, and who established for them many sacred rites as well; yet he is not said to have received those same laws from the deities.
The evils of mind, therefore, the evils of life, the evils of morals—which are so great that their own most learned men affirm that commonwealths perish by them even while the cities stand—their gods took no care at all should not befall their own worshippers (nay rather, as was argued above, they took care in every way that they should be increased). CHAPTER XVII. On the rape of the Sabine women and other iniquities which flourished in the Roman state even in times that are praised. Or was it perhaps for this reason that laws were not appointed for the Roman people by the deities, because, as Sallust says, 'right and good prevailed among them not more by laws than by nature'? From this right and good, I suppose, the Sabine women were seized.
For what is more just and better than that other men's daughters, lured by the deceit of a public show, should not be received from their parents, but carried off by force, as each man was able? For if the Sabines did wrongly in refusing them when sought, how much more wrong was it to seize them when not given? A juster war could have been waged with that people which had refused its daughters in marriage when sought by its neighbours and borderers, than with that which sought back the women carried away. Rather, then, should the former have happened; there Mars would have helped his son in the fight, that he might avenge by arms the injury of the marriages denied, and by that means reach the women he had desired. For perhaps by some right of war the victor might justly carry off those unjustly denied;
but by no right of peace did he seize those not given, and waged an unjust war with their parents, who were justly incensed. This, indeed, turned out more profitably and happily, that, although for a memorial of that deceit the spectacle of the circus games remained, nevertheless the example of the deed found no favour in that city and empire; and the Romans more readily erred in this, that after that iniquity they consecrated Romulus as a god for themselves, than that they permitted, by any law or custom, his deed in seizing women to be imitated. From this right and good, after King Tarquin was expelled along with his children—whose son had violently oppressed Lucretia with rape—Junius Brutus the consul.
compelled Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of that same Lucretia, his own colleague, a good and innocent man, on account of his name and his kinship with the Tarquins, to abdicate his magistracy, nor did he permit him to live in the city. This crime he committed with the people favouring or permitting it—the people from whom that same Collatinus, just as Brutus himself, had received the consulship. From this right and good, Marcus.
Camillus, an outstanding man of that age, who had most easily overcome the Veientines, the gravest enemies of the Roman people, after a ten years' war in which the Roman army, by so often fighting badly, had been grievously afflicted—Rome itself now doubting and trembling for its safety—and had taken their most opulent city, was made a defendant through the envy of the disparagers of his virtue and the insolence of the tribunes of the plebs; and he found that city which he had freed as ungrateful as he had freed it, so that, most certain of his own condemnation, he departed of his own accord into exile, and was even, in his absence, condemned to a fine of ten thousand asses—soon to be again the avenger of his ungrateful country against the Gauls.
It now wearies me to recall the many foul and unjust things by which that city was agitated, when the powerful strove to subject the plebs to themselves and the plebs refused to be subjected to them, and the defenders of either party acted more from partisan zeal and the love of conquering than took thought for anything fair and good. CHAPTER XVIII. What things concerning the morals of the Romans, whether restrained by fear or loosed by security, the history of Sallust sets forth. And so I will keep within measure, and rather call Sallust himself as witness, who, when he had said in praise of the Romans (whence this discourse of ours arose):
'Right and good prevailed among them not so much by laws as by nature' — and while he proclaims that age in which, once the kings had been expelled, the state grew incredibly much in a short span of time, the same Sallust nonetheless confesses, in the first book of his history and at its very opening, that even then, when the commonwealth had been transferred from kings to consuls, after a brief interval there occurred the injustices of the more powerful, and on account of them the withdrawal of the common people from the senators, and other dissensions in the City.
For when he had recorded that the Roman people, between the second and the last Punic war, had conducted itself with the best morals and the greatest concord, and had said that the cause of this good was not the love of justice but, while Carthage stood, the fear of an untrustworthy peace (whence also that famous Nasica, in order to restrain wickedness and to preserve these excellent morals — so that vices might be curbed by fear — was unwilling that Carthage be destroyed): immediately the same Sallust added and said: 'But discord and avarice and ambition and the other evils wont to arise in prosperity were chiefly increased after the destruction of Carthage' — so that we might understand that even before they were accustomed to arise and to grow. And then, attaching the reason why he said this:
'For the injustices,' he says, 'of the more powerful, and on account of them the secession of the common people from the senators, and other dissensions at home, existed from the very beginning; nor was the state administered with fair and moderate justice for any longer than while the kings had been driven out, so long as the fear of Tarquin and the grievous war with Etruria weighed upon them.' You see in what manner, even in that brief time after the kings had been driven out — that is, cast out — things were conducted with some measure of fair and moderate justice; he said that fear was the cause, since the war was feared which King Tarquin, expelled from his kingdom and the City and allied with the Etruscans, was waging against the Romans. Attend, therefore, to what he weaves on next:
'Thereafter,' he says, 'the senators treated the common people with servile rule, decided over their life and back in the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, while the rest were excluded, held power in their own hands alone. Oppressed by these cruelties, and chiefly by usury, when the common people endured at once tribute and military service amid continual wars, they armed themselves and occupied the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and then procured for themselves tribunes of the plebs and other rights. The end of the discords and of the struggle on both sides was the Second Punic War.' You discern from what time — that is, a short interval after the kings were driven out — what sort of men the Romans were, of whom he says: