文集（天主之城·論三位一體等） 第 19 章

[I] Of the two cities—of which one is God's, the other of this world, in which, so far as pertains to the race of men, even this City of God is a sojourner—I promised that I would write concerning their rise and course and due ends, after I had first refuted, so far as His grace should aid me, the enemies of the City of God, who prefer their own gods to Christ its Founder and, with a most pernicious envy to themselves, cruelly envy the Christians; which I did in the first ten volumes.

But of this threefold promise of mine which I have just now recalled, the rise of both cities was set forth in the four books following the tenth; then their course from the first man down to the flood in one book, which is the fifteenth of this work; and thence again down to Abraham both ran on together, as in the times, so also in our pages. But from Abraham the father down to the times of the kings of Israel, where we concluded the sixteenth volume, and thence down to the coming of the Saviour Himself in the flesh, whither the seventeenth book extends, the City of God alone seems to have run on in my pen;

although in this world it did not run on alone, but assuredly both ran on together in the human race, as from the beginning, and by their joint course varied the ages. But I did this for this reason: that first, from the time when the promises of God began to be more open, down to His birth from the Virgin—in which the things that were first promised were to be fulfilled—this city, which is God's, running on without interruption from the opposition of the other city, might appear the more distinctly; although until the revelation of the New Testament it ran on not in light, but in shadow. Now therefore I see that I must do what I had deferred, namely, that from the times of Abraham I may touch, so far as seems sufficient, upon how that other city too ran on, so that both may be compared with each other by the consideration of readers.

[II] The society, then, of mortals everywhere spread abroad throughout the earth, and, amid however great diversities of places, bound together by a certain community of one and the same nature, while each pursues its own advantages and desires—since that which is sought either suffices for none or not for all, because it is not that very good itself—is for the most part divided against itself, and the part which prevails oppresses the other part. For the conquered yields to the conqueror, preferring any sort of peace and safety to domination, or even to liberty; so that those have been to great men objects of wonder who chose rather to perish than to serve.

For in almost all nations the voice of nature has in a certain way resounded thus, that they who happened to be conquered should prefer to be subjugated to the victors rather than to be destroyed by all-manner warlike devastation. Hence it came to pass—not without the providence of God, in whose power it is that each should be either subjugated or subjugate in war—that some were endowed with kingdoms, others made subject to those who reign. But among the very many kingdoms of the earth, into which the society of earthly advantage or desire is divided (which we call by the universal name the city of this world), we discern two kingdoms far more illustrious than the rest, first that of the Assyrians, then that of the Romans, ordered and distinguished between themselves as in times, so also in places. For as the former was earlier, this latter later:

in like manner the one arose in the East, the other in the West; and finally, at the end of the former was straightway the beginning of the latter. The other kingdoms and the other kings I would call, as it were, appendages of these. Ninus, then, was already the second king of the Assyrians, who had succeeded his father Belus, the first king of that kingdom, when in the land of the Chaldeans Abraham was born. There was also at that time the kingdom of the Sicyonians, exceedingly small, with which that most learned man in every respect, Marcus Varro, writing of the nation of the Roman people, began as with an ancient time. For from these kings of the Sicyonians he came down to the Athenians, from these to the Latins, and thence to the Romans. But before the founding of Rome, these things are recorded as very slight in comparison with the kingdom of the Assyrians;

although the Athenians shone forth most in Greece, as even Sallust, the Roman historian, admits—yet more by fame than by the thing itself. For speaking of them he says: 'The deeds of the Athenians, as I judge, were sufficiently great and magnificent; but yet somewhat less than they are borne up by report. But because there arose there great talents of writers, throughout the whole world the deeds of the Athenians are celebrated as the greatest. So the valour of those who did them is reckoned as great as illustrious talents were able to exalt it by words.' There accrues to this city no small glory also from letters and philosophers, because there above all such studies flourished.

For as regards empire, none in the earliest times was greater than that of the Assyrians, nor so far and wide diffused; seeing that King Ninus, son of Belus, is reported to have subdued all Asia—which is said to be a third of the whole world by the number of its parts, but is found to be a half in magnitude—as far as the borders of Libya. Only the Indians in the parts of the East he did not rule; whom, however, after his death, his wife Semiramis attacked by making war. Thus it came to pass that whatever peoples or kings there were in those lands obeyed the kingdom and dominion of the Assyrians and carried out whatever was commanded. Abraham, therefore, was born in that kingdom, among the Chaldeans, in the times of Ninus.

But since Greek affairs are much better known to us than Assyrian, and those who have searched into the nation of the Roman people in the antiquity of its origin have drawn down the series of the times through the Greeks to the Latins and thence to the Romans—who themselves also are Latins—on this account we ought, where it is needful, to name the Assyrian kings, that it may appear in what way Babylon, as it were a first Rome, ran on together with the pilgrim City of God in this world; but the events which, for the sake of comparing the two cities, namely the earthly and the heavenly, it behoves us to insert into this work, we ought rather to draw from the Greeks and Latins, where Rome itself is, as it were, a second Babylon.

When, therefore, Abraham was born, the second kings among the Assyrians were Ninus, and among the Sicyonians Europs; but the first there were Belus, and here Aegialeus. But when, after Abraham had gone out of Babylon, God promised him that from him a great nation should come, and in his seed the blessing of all nations, the Assyrians had a fourth king, the Sicyonians a fifth; for among them reigned the son of Ninus after his mother Semiramis, who is reported to have been slain by him, she having dared to defile her son by incestuous union. Some think that she founded Babylon, which indeed she could have rebuilt. But when or in what way it was founded, we have said in the sixteenth book.

Further, the son of Ninus and Semiramis, who succeeded his mother in the kingdom, some call also himself Ninus, but some, by a name derived from his father, call him Ninyas. But the kingdom of the Sicyonians was then held by Telxion. In whose reign there were times there so mild and glad that, when he died, they worshipped him as a god by sacrificing and by celebrating games, which they say were first instituted for him. [III] In his times also Isaac was born, by the promise of God, a son to Abraham a hundred years old, of Sarah his wife, who, being barren and now an old woman, had lost the hope of offspring. Then too among the Assyrians the fifth king was Arrius.

But to Isaac himself, when he was sixty years old, were born twins, Esau and Jacob, whom Rebecca his wife bore to him, their grandfather Abraham being still alive and passing his hundred and sixtieth year of age, who, when he had completed a hundred and seventy-five, died, when there reigned among the Assyrians that elder Xerxes, who was also called Baleus, and among the Sicyonians Thuriacus, whom some write Thurimachus—the seventh kings. But the kingdom of the Argives arose together with the grandchildren of Abraham, where Inachus first reigned. Indeed, what ought not to have been passed over, Varro relates that the Sicyonians were wont to sacrifice even at the tomb of Thuriacus, their seventh king.

Further, when the eighth kings were reigning—Armamitres of the Assyrians, Leucippus of the Sicyonians, and the first of the Argives, Inachus—God spoke to Isaac and promised to him also those same two things which He had promised to his father, namely, to his seed the land of Canaan and in his seed the blessing of all nations. These same things were promised also to his son, the grandson of Abraham, who was called first Jacob, afterwards Israel, when now Belochus reigned as the ninth king of Assyria, and Phoroneus, son of Inachus, reigned as the second over the Argives, Leucippus still remaining among the Sicyonians. In these times Greece, under Phoroneus the Argive king, was made somewhat more famous by certain institutions of laws and courts of judgement.

Yet when Phegous, the younger brother of this Phoroneus, had died, a temple was set up at his tomb, in which he was worshipped as a god and oxen were sacrificed to him. I believe they thought him worthy of so great an honour for this reason, that in his portion of the kingdom (for their father had distributed to both the regions in which, while he lived, they should reign) he had established shrines for the worship of gods, and had taught men to observe the seasons by months and years, and how far to measure and reckon each of them. Men still rude, wondering at these new things in him, when he had died either supposed or wished that he had become a god. For Io also is said to have been the daughter of Inachus, who afterwards, called Isis, was worshipped as a great goddess in Egypt;

although others write that she came as a queen from Ethiopia into Egypt, and that, because she ruled widely and justly and established for them many advantages and letters, this divine honour was paid to her after she had died there, and so great an honour that anyone would be held guilty of a capital crime if he said that she had been a human being. [IV] When there reigned among the Assyrians the tenth king Baleus, and among the Sicyonians the ninth Messapus, who by some is also handed down as Cephisos (if indeed one man had two names, and they did not rather suppose that one man had been another in place of the other, who set down in their writings the other name), and when the third king of the Argives was Apis, Isaac died at a hundred and eighty years, and left his twins at a hundred and twenty years;

of whom the younger, Jacob, pertaining to the City of God about which we write—the elder being of course rejected—had twelve sons, one of whom, who was called Joseph, his brothers had sold to merchants passing over into Egypt, while their grandfather Isaac was still living. But Joseph stood before Pharaoh when, out of the lowliness which he had endured, he was exalted, being thirty years old;

since, having divinely interpreted the king's dreams, he foretold that seven years of plenty were to come, whose surpassing abundance seven other barren years following were to consume; and on this account the king set him over Egypt, having freed him from the prison into which the integrity of chastity had cast him—that chastity which, valiantly keeping, when he would not consent to defilement with a mistress who loved wickedly and a master who was wickedly credulous of her lie, he even left his garment behind in the hands of her who dragged him, and fled away.

But in the second year of the seven barren years Jacob came into Egypt to his son with all his people, being a hundred and thirty years old, as he himself answered the king when questioned, while Joseph was thirty-nine—namely, to the thirty which he was completing when he was honoured by the king, being added the seven of plenty and the two of famine. [V] In these times Apis, king of the Argives, having been conveyed by ships into Egypt, when he had died there, was made Serapis, the greatest god of all the Egyptians. But of this name, why he was called not Apis even after death, but Serapis, Varro gave a very easy account.

For because the chest in which the dead man is placed—which all now call a sarcophagus—is called soros in Greek, and they had begun to venerate him there, buried, before his temple was built: from soros and Apis he was called first Sorapis, then, one letter being changed as is wont to happen, Serapis. And it was also decreed concerning him that whosoever said that he had been a man should pay a capital penalty. And since in almost all temples where Isis and Serapis were worshipped there was also an image which, with a finger pressed to its lips, seemed to admonish that silence should be kept: this, Varro thinks, signified that it should be kept silent that they had been men.

But that ox which Egypt, deceived by wonderful vanity, nourished with abundant delicacies in his honour, since they venerated it alive, without a sarcophagus, was called Apis, not Serapis. When this ox had died, since a calf of the same colour was sought and found—that is, marked in like manner with certain white spots—they believed that something marvellous and divinely procured for them had come to pass. For it was no great matter for the demons, in order to deceive them, to display the phantasm of such a bull, which the cow alone should behold, to a cow conceiving and pregnant, whence the mother's desire might draw off that which should already appear bodily in her offspring; just as Jacob, by means of the variegated rods, brought it about that party-coloured sheep and goats were born.

For what men can do with true colours and bodies, this the demons can most easily exhibit to conceiving animals by feigned figures. [VI] Apis therefore, king not of the Egyptians but of the Argives, died in Egypt. His son Argus succeeded him in the kingdom, from whose name both Argos and, from this, the Argives were called; but under the former kings neither the place nor the nation yet had this name. While he reigned among the Argives, and among the Sicyonians Erato reigned, but among the Assyrians Baleus still remaining, Jacob died in Egypt at a hundred and forty-seven years, when, about to die, he had blessed his sons and his grandsons by Joseph, and had most openly prophesied Christ, saying in the blessing of Judah:

The prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until there come the things which are laid up for him; and He Himself shall be the expectation of the nations. While Argus reigned, Greece began to use its own crops and to have harvests in agriculture, seeds having been brought from elsewhere. Argus too, after his death, began to be held a god, honoured with a temple and sacrifices. Which honour, in his reign, was conferred before him upon a certain Homogyrus, a private man struck by lightning, because he was the first to yoke oxen to the plough. [VII] While there reigned among the Assyrians the twelfth, Mamythus, and among the Sicyonians the eleventh, Plemmeus, and Argus still remaining among the Argives, Joseph died at a hundred and ten years.

After whose death the people of God, wonderfully increasing, remained in Egypt a hundred and forty-five years, at first tranquilly, until those died to whom Joseph had been known; then, because its increase was envied and its numbers were suspected, until it should be delivered thence, it was oppressed with persecutions (amid which, however, being divinely made fruitful, it grew by multiplication) and with the labours of an intolerable servitude. But in Assyria and Greece, throughout the same time, the same kingdoms continued.

[VIII] When, therefore, there reigned over the Assyrians the fourteenth, Saphrus, and over the Sicyonians the twelfth, Orthopolis, and Criasus the fifth over the Argives, there was born in Egypt Moses, by whom the people of God was delivered from Egyptian servitude, in which it was fitting that it should be so exercised as to long for the help of its Creator. In the reign of the aforesaid kings, Prometheus is believed by some to have lived, whom they therefore say to have formed men out of clay, because he is reported to have been the best teacher of wisdom; nor yet is it shown who were the wise men in his times. His brother Atlas is said to have been a great astrologer; whence the fable found occasion to feign that he bore the heavens;

although a mountain is called by his name, by whose height rather the bearing of heaven seems to have come into the opinion of the common people. Many other fabulous things also began to be feigned in those times in Greece; but down to Cecrops, king of the Athenians—in whose reign that same city also received such a name, and in whose reign God through Moses led His people out of Egypt—several dead men were referred to the number of the gods by the blind and vain custom and superstition of the Greeks. Among whom were Melantomice, wife of King Criasus, and Phorbas their son, who was the sixth king of the Argives after his father, and Iasus, son of the seventh king Triopas, and the ninth king Sthenelas, or Stheneleus, or Sthenelus—for variously it is found in different authors.

In these times also Mercury is reported to have lived, grandson of Atlas by his daughter Maia, as even the more common writings proclaim. He shone forth as skilled in many arts, which he also handed down to men; for which merit they wished, or even believed, him to be a god after death. Hercules is said to have been later, yet pertaining to those times of the Argives; although some prefer him to Mercury in time, whom I judge to be mistaken. But at whatever time they were born, it is agreed among grave historians who committed these ancient things to writing that both were men, and that, because they conferred many benefits on mortals for leading this life more conveniently, they merited divine honours from them. Minerva, however, was far more ancient than these;

for in the times of Ogyges she is reported to have appeared at the lake which is called Triton's, in maiden age, whence she was also named Tritonia; being indeed the inventress of many works, and the more readily believed a goddess, the less her origin was known. For that she is sung to have been born from the head of Jupiter is to be applied to poets and fables, not to history and things done. Although as to when Ogyges himself lived—in whose times also there occurred a great flood, not that greatest one in which no men escaped save those who could be in the ark, which neither Greek nor Latin history has known, but nevertheless one greater than that which was afterwards in the time of Deucalion—among the writers of history there is no agreement.

For Varro began the book I mentioned above from this point, and he sets before himself nothing more ancient, as a starting point from which he might arrive at Roman affairs, than the flood of Ogyges, that is, the flood that occurred in the time of Ogyges. But our own writers who have composed chronicles, first Eusebius and afterward Jerome — who indeed followed certain earlier historians in this opinion — record that the flood of Ogyges took place more than three hundred years later, when Phoroneus was already reigning as the second king of the Argives. Yet at whatever time it occurred, Minerva was by then being worshipped as a goddess, while Cecrops was reigning over the Athenians; and under that king they say the city itself was either restored or founded.

For Varro indicates this reason why the city came to be called Athens — a name that certainly derives from Minerva, who in Greek is called Athena. When an olive tree had suddenly appeared there and in another place water had gushed forth, these portents disturbed the king, and he sent to Delphic Apollo to inquire what was to be understood by them and what was to be done. The god replied that the olive signified Minerva and the water Neptune, and that it lay within the power of the citizens to decide from which of these two gods, whose signs these were, the city should rather take its name. Having received this oracle, Cecrops summoned together all the citizens of both sexes to cast their vote — for the custom at that time in those regions was that women too should take part in public deliberations.

When therefore the multitude was consulted, the men cast their votes for Neptune, the women for Minerva; and because the women were found to number one more, Minerva prevailed. Then Neptune in his wrath, with the sea-waves surging up, laid waste the lands of the Athenians; for it is no hard thing for demons to scatter waters of any kind more widely. And to appease his anger, the same author says that the women were afflicted by the Athenians with a threefold punishment: that they should never again cast a vote, that none of the children born should receive the mother's name, and that no one should call them Athenians.

So that city, the mother or nurse of the liberal arts and of so many and such great philosophers — than which Greece had nothing more renowned and more noble — through the mockery of the demons over a dispute between its gods, a male and a female, and through a victory of a female by the votes of females, received the name Athens; and, harmed by the vanquished, it was compelled to punish the very victory of the victorious goddess, dreading the waters of Neptune more than the arms of Minerva. For in the women who were thus punished, even Minerva, who had conquered, was herself conquered; nor did she stand by her own supporters, so that at least — after their power of voting was thereafter lost and their sons alienated from their mothers' names — they might be permitted to be called Athenians and to merit the appellation of that goddess whom, by casting their vote, they had made victor over the men's god.

What great things, and how many, might be said on this point, if my discourse were not hastening on to other matters! And yet Marcus Varro is unwilling to give credence to fabulous fictions against the gods, lest he should think anything unworthy of the dignity of their majesty. And therefore he refuses to believe that the Areopagus — where the apostle Paul disputed with the Athenians, and from which place the councillors of that same city were called Areopagites — took its name from the fact that Mars, who in Greek is called Ares, when he was made a defendant on a charge of homicide, was acquitted by six votes among the twelve gods sitting in judgment on that hill (for where the votes were of equal number, acquittal was customarily preferred to condemnation).

But against this opinion, which is far more widely current, he tries to construct another explanation of this name, drawn from the knowledge of obscure writings, lest the Athenians be believed to have named the Areopagus after the name of Mars and of a hill, as it were 'the hill of Mars' — that is, to the injury of the deities, from whom he judges quarrels and lawsuits to be alien; asserting that what is said of Mars is no less false than what is said of the three goddesses — namely Juno, Minerva, and Venus — who are related to have contended over the excellence of their beauty before the judge Paris in order to obtain the golden apple, and who, to appease with games the gods that delight in these crimes of theirs, whether true or false, are sung and danced amid the applause of the theatre.

These things Varro does not believe, lest he should credit the nature or morals of the gods with anything unbecoming; and yet, while giving an account of the name of Athens that is not fabulous but historical, he inserts into his own writings so great a dispute between Neptune and Minerva over whose name the city should rather bear — a dispute in which, as they contended by the display of portents, not even Apollo when consulted dared to judge between them, but sent their quarrel to be settled, just as Jupiter sent the quarrel of the three goddesses I mentioned to Paris, so this one sent it to men, where Minerva conquered by the votes yet was conquered in the punishment of her own supporters; she who was able to obtain Athens over her adversaries the men, yet was not able to keep her friends the women as Athenians.

In these times — as Varro writes, while Cranaus, the successor of Cecrops, was reigning over the Athenians, but as our own writers Eusebius and Jerome have it, while the same Cecrops still remained on the throne — there occurred the flood which was called the flood of Deucalion, so named because he was reigning in those parts of the earth where it chiefly took place. This flood, however, in no way reached Egypt and its neighboring regions. Now Moses led the people of God out of Egypt in the last years of Cecrops, king of the Athenians, when Ascatades was reigning among the Assyrians, Marathus among the Sicyonians, and Triopas among the Argives.

And when the people had been led out, on Mount Sinai Moses handed down the law divinely received, which is called the Old Testament, because it holds earthly promises; and through Jesus Christ who was to come there was to be the New Testament, in which the kingdom of heaven would be promised. For it was fitting that this order be observed, just as in each individual man who advances toward God, that comes to pass which the apostle says: that the spiritual is not first, but the animal, and afterward the spiritual; since, as he also says and it is true, the first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.

Moses ruled the people forty years in the wilderness and died at the age of one hundred and twenty, having himself also prophesied of Christ through the figures of carnal observances — in the tabernacle and the priesthood and the sacrifices and other mystical and very many commandments. To Moses succeeded Joshua son of Nun, and he settled the people, brought into the land of promise, by divine authority, when the nations by whom those same places were held had been vanquished in war. When he had ruled the people twenty-seven years after the death of Moses, he too died, while among the Assyrians the eighteenth king Amyntas was reigning, among the Sicyonians the sixteenth Corax, among the Argives the tenth Danaus, and among the Athenians the fourth Erichthonius.

During these times — that is, from the departure of Israel out of Egypt down to the death of Joshua son of Nun, through whom that same people received the land of promise — sacred rites were instituted to false gods by the kings of Greece, rites which by a solemn celebration recalled the memory of the flood and of the deliverance of men from it, and of the life then wretched of those who migrated now to the heights, now to the plains. For they interpret even the ascent and descent of the Luperci along the Sacred Way in such a way as to say that by these are signified the men who, on account of the inundation of the waters, sought the tops of the mountains and again, when the same waters had subsided, returned to the low places. In these times they say that Dionysus, who was also called Father Liber and after his death was held to be a god, showed the vine in the land of Attica to his host.

Then musical games were instituted for Delphic Apollo, that his anger might be appeased — the anger by which they supposed the regions of Greece to have been afflicted with barrenness, because they had not defended his temple, which king Danaus, when he had invaded those same lands in war, had burned. And they were admonished by his oracle to institute these games. But in Attica king Erichthonius first instituted games for him, and not for him alone but also for Minerva, in which oil was set as the prize for the victors, since they hold that Minerva was the discoverer of that fruit, just as Liber was of wine.

In those years Europa is reported to have been carried off by Xanthus, king of the Cretans (whose name we find given differently by other authors), and from him were begotten Rhadamanthus, Sarpedon, and Minos, who by the more common report are said to have been sons of Jupiter by that same woman. But the worshippers of such gods reckon what we have said of the king of the Cretans as historical truth, while what the poets sing of Jupiter — which the theatres resound with, the peoples celebrate — they reckon among the vanities of fables, so that there might be an occasion for holding games to appease the deities even by these false crimes of theirs. In these times Hercules was held famous in Syria; but doubtless another, not the one of whom we spoke above. For by a more secret history there are said to have been several both Father Libers and Herculeses.

This Hercules indeed, whose twelve mighty deeds they number — among which they do not include the slaying of Antaeus the African, because that matter pertains to another Hercules — they record in their own writings to have burned himself upon Mount Oeta, since with the very strength by which he had subdued so many things, he yet could not endure the disease with which he languished. At that time Busiris, either king or rather tyrant, used to sacrifice his own guests to his own gods; they say he was the son of Neptune by his mother Libya, daughter of Epaphus. But let it not be believed that Neptune committed this outrage, lest the gods be accused; rather let these things be ascribed to the poets and the theatres, that there may be a means of appeasing them.

Of Erichthonius, king of the Athenians, in whose last years Joshua son of Nun is found to have died, Vulcan and Minerva are said to have been the parents. But since they will have it that Minerva was a virgin, they say that in a struggle between the two, Vulcan, being aroused, poured out his seed upon the earth, and from the man thereby born, for that reason, such a name was given him. For in the Greek language 'eris' is strife, 'thon' is earth, and from these two the word Erichthonius is compounded.

But — as must be admitted — the more learned refute and repel these tales from their gods, saying that this fabulous opinion arose from the fact that in the temple of Vulcan and Minerva, which the two had as one at Athens, an exposed child was found wrapped in a serpent, which signified that he would be great; and, on account of the common temple, since his parents were unknown, he was said to be the son of Vulcan and Minerva. Yet the origin of his name is designated rather by that fable than by this history. But what is that to us? Let the one instruct religious men in truthful books; let the other delight impure demons in deceitful games — demons whom nevertheless those religious men worship as gods.

For those religious men worship these demons as gods, and although they deny these things about them, they cannot cleanse them from every crime, since at their demand they present games in which base things are enacted — the very things that are, as it were, wisely denied — and by these false and base things the gods are appeased; where, even if the fable sings a false crime of the deities, yet to be delighted by a false crime is a true crime. After the death of Joshua son of Nun, the people of God had judges, in whose times there alternated among them both the humiliations of hardships on account of their sins, and the prosperities of consolations on account of God's mercy. In these times fables were invented about Triptolemus — that, at Ceres' bidding, borne by winged serpents, he brought grain by flying to lands in need of it;

about the Minotaur — that it was a beast shut up in the Labyrinth, into which when men had entered they could not, by reason of the inextricable maze, find their way out; about the Centaurs — that in them the nature of horses and of men was joined; about Cerberus — that he was the three-headed dog of the lower world; about Phrixus and his sister Helle — that they flew borne by a ram; about the Gorgon — that she was maned with serpents and turned those who looked upon her into stones; about Bellerophon — that he was borne by a horse flying with wings, which horse was called Pegasus; about Amphion — that by the sweetness of his lyre he softened stones and drew them to himself; about the craftsman Daedalus and his son Icarus — that they flew with wings fitted to themselves;

about Oedipus — that he compelled a certain monster, which was called the Sphinx, four-footed with a human face, to perish by its own headlong fall when the seemingly insoluble riddle that it used to propose was solved by him; about Antaeus, whom Hercules slew — that he was a son of the earth, for which reason, when he fell to the ground, he was wont to rise up stronger; and any others that I may perchance have passed over. These fables, down to the Trojan war — where Marcus Varro ended his second book on the race of the Roman people — were, taking their occasion from histories which contain things truly done, so fashioned by the ingenuity of men that they were not fastened upon the deities as reproaches.

Furthermore, whoever invented that the most beautiful boy Ganymede was carried off by Jupiter for defilement — a crime which king Tantalus committed and the fable ascribed to Jupiter — or that he sought intercourse with Danae through a golden shower, where it is understood that the woman's chastity was corrupted by gold: whether these things which were done or feigned in those times were done by others and feigned of Jupiter, it cannot be told how great an evil they presumed upon the hearts of men, in that men could patiently endure such lies, which they nevertheless even gladly embraced. And surely the more devoutly they worshipped Jupiter, the more severely they ought to have punished those who dared to say such things of him.

But now, not only were they not angry with those who invented these things, but they feared rather to have the gods themselves angry unless they should perform such fictions even in the theatres. In these times Latona bore Apollo — not the one whose oracles we were speaking above of being wont to be consulted, but the one who served Admetus along with Hercules; who nevertheless was so believed to be a god that most, and almost all, suppose that there was one and the same Apollo. Then also Father Liber made war in India; he had many women in his army, who were called Bacchae, noble not so much for valor as for frenzy. Some indeed even write that this Liber was both conquered and bound; and some that he was even slain in battle by Perseus, nor are they silent about where he was buried.

And yet under his name, as though he were a god, through unclean demons Bacchanalian rites — or rather sacrileges — were instituted, of whose raving foulness the senate, after so many years, was so ashamed that it forbade them to exist in the city of Rome. In those times Perseus and his wife Andromeda, after they had died, were believed to have been so received into heaven that men were not ashamed, nor afraid, to designate their images with stars and to call them by their names.

During the same interval of time there arose poets who were also called theologians, because they composed songs about the gods — but about such gods as, although great men, were nevertheless men, or are elements of this world which the true God made, or were ordained among the principalities and powers according to the will of the Creator and their own merits; and if they sang anything about the one true God amid much that was worthless and false, yet by worshipping others along with him — others that are not gods — and by rendering to them the service that is owed to God alone, they did not truly serve him rightly, nor could they themselves refrain from the fabulous disgrace of their own gods: Orpheus, Musaeus, Linus. But these theologians worshipped the gods; they were not themselves worshipped as gods.

although the city of the impious is somehow wont to set Orpheus over the infernal rites — or rather sacrileges. But the wife of king Athamas, who was called Ino, and her son Melicertes perished by a voluntary plunge into the sea, and by the opinion of men were reckoned among the gods, just as other men of those times, Castor and Pollux. That mother of Melicertes the Greeks called Leucothea, the Latins Matuta, both nevertheless supposing her a goddess. In those times the kingdom of the Argives came to an end, being transferred to Mycenae, whence came Agamemnon; and the kingdom of the Laurentes arose, where Picus, son of Saturn, first received the kingdom, while among the Hebrews a woman, Deborah, was judging — but through her the Spirit of God was doing this;

for she was even a prophetess, whose prophecy is less clear than that we could show, without a lengthy exposition, that it was uttered concerning Christ. Now then the Laurentes were already reigning, indeed in Italy, from whom, after the Greeks, the more evident origin of Rome is derived; and yet the Assyrian kingdom still remained, where there was the twenty-third king Lampares, when Picus had begun to be the first of the Laurentes. As for Saturn, the father of this Picus, let the worshippers of such gods see what they think of him, who deny that he was a man — of whom others also have written that he reigned in Italy before his son Picus, and Virgil says in his well-known verses:

'He it was who gathered together a race untamed and scattered over the high mountains, and gave them laws, and chose that it be called Latium, since in these shores he had lain hidden in safety. The golden ages which they tell of were under that king.' But let them suppose these to be poetic fictions, and let them rather assert that the father of Picus was Sterces, by whom, a most skilled farmer, it is said the practice was discovered of making fields fruitful with the dung of animals, which from his name was called stercus (dung); some report that he was called Stercutius. Yet for whatever reason they chose to call him Saturn, certainly they made this Sterces or Stercutius a god deservedly for agriculture. Picus likewise, his son, they received into the number of such gods, whom they assert to have been a distinguished augur and warrior.

Picus begot Faunus, the second king of the Laurentes; he too is, or was, a god to them. These men, before the Trojan war, they conferred divine honors upon, though they were dead men. But when Troy was overthrown by that destruction sung of everywhere and most well known to boys — which both by its own magnitude and by the excellent tongues of writers has been notably spread abroad and made common, and was accomplished when Latinus son of Faunus was already reigning, from whom the kingdom began to be called that of the Latins and that of the Laurentes ceased — the victorious Greeks, leaving Troy destroyed and returning to their own homes, were torn apart and crushed by various and horrible disasters; and yet even from among these they increased the number of their gods.

For they made even Diomedes a god, whom they report never returned to his own people because of a punishment divinely inflicted; and they confirm — not by a fabulous and poetic lie, but by historical attestation — that his companions were turned into birds; whom, as they suppose, he could not, even after being made a god, recall to human nature, either himself, or at least obtain it as a new-comer among the celestials from Jupiter his king. Nay more, they say that there is a temple of his on the island of Diomedea, not far from Mount Garganus, which is in Apulia, and that these birds fly about this temple and dwell there with so wonderful an obeisance that they fill their beaks with water and sprinkle it; and if Greeks come there, or those sprung from Greek stock, they are not only quiet but even, besides, fawn upon them;

but if they see foreigners, they fly up at their heads and wound them with such heavy blows that they even kill them. For with hard and large beaks they are said to be sufficiently armed for these combats. Varro, to establish this, mentions other things no less incredible about that most notorious sorceress Circe, who also changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians who, chosen by lot, would swim across a certain pool and there be turned into wolves and live with similar wild beasts through the deserts of that region. But if they did not feed on human flesh, then after nine years, by swimming back across the same pool, they were reformed into men.

Finally he even expressed by name a certain Demaenetus, who tasted of the sacrifice which the Arcadians were wont to make to their god Lycaeus by immolating a boy, and was changed into a wolf, and in the tenth year was restored to his own shape, practised boxing, and won in the Olympic contest. Nor does the same historian think that such a name was attached in Arcadia to Pan Lycaeus and Jupiter Lycaeus for any other reason than on account of this transformation of men into wolves, since they thought it could not happen except by divine power. For 'wolf' in Greek is called lykos, whence the name Lycaeus appears to be derived by inflection. He says that the Roman Luperci also arose from a kind of seed, as it were, of those mysteries.

But as to this so great mockery of the demons, perhaps those who shall read these things await what we may say. And what shall we say, except that we must flee out of the midst of Babylon? This prophetic precept is understood spiritually in this way: that by the steps of faith, which works through love, we should flee toward the living God by advancing away from the city of this world, which is assuredly a society of impious angels and men. For the greater we see the power of demons to be in these lowest things, the more tenaciously must we cling to the Mediator, through whom we ascend from the lowest to the highest. For if we should say that these things are not to be believed, there are not lacking even now those who assert that they have heard, or even themselves experienced, certain things of this kind as most certain.

For we too, when we were in Italy, used to hear such things about a certain region of those parts, where they said that women who kept inns, steeped in these evil arts, were wont to give something in cheese to travellers whom they wished, or were able, so to affect, whereby they were straightway turned into beasts of burden and carried whatever necessary loads, and after the tasks were done returned again to themselves; nor yet was their mind made bestial in them, but a rational and human mind was preserved — just as Apuleius, in the books which he entitled 'The Golden Ass,' either related or feigned to have happened to himself, that upon taking poison, while his human mind remained, he became an ass. These things are either false, or so unusual that they are with reason not believed.

Yet it is to be most firmly believed that Almighty God can do all things that He wills, whether in punishing or in bestowing; and that the demons work nothing according to the power of their own nature (for that nature too is an angelic creature, although by its own fault it is malignant) except what He shall have permitted, whose judgments are many hidden, none unjust. Nor indeed do the demons create natures, if they do any such thing as those deeds are about which this question turns; but only in appearance do they alter what has been created by the true God, so that things may seem to be what they are not.

I would therefore in no way believe that not only the mind, but not even the body, can by any means, by the art or power of the demons, be truly changed into the limbs and features of a beast; but that the phantasm of a man — which even in thinking or dreaming is varied through innumerable kinds of things and, though it is not a body, yet takes on shapes resembling bodies with wonderful swiftness — can, when the bodily senses of the man are lulled or oppressed, be brought forth, in a bodily form, to the perception of others by some ineffable manner I know not; so that the very bodies of the men lie somewhere, living indeed, but with their senses locked far more heavily and violently than in sleep;

while that phantasm, as it were made corporeal in the likeness of some animal, appears to the senses of others, and the man may even seem such to himself, just as one might seem such to oneself in dreams, and may carry loads — which loads, if they are true bodies, are carried by the demons, that men may be mocked, seeing in part the true bodies of the loads, in part the false bodies of the beasts of burden. For a certain man by the name of Praestantius reported that this had befallen his own father: that he took that poison in cheese in his own house and lay on his bed as though sleeping, who nevertheless could by no means be roused.

But after some days he said that his father had, as it were, awakened and had, as it were, narrated as dreams the things he had suffered: namely that he had been made a horse and, among other beasts of burden, had carried grain-provisions for the soldiers, provisions which are called Rhaetic, because they are transported to Rhaetia. And it was ascertained that this had happened just as he related; which nevertheless seemed to him to be his own dreams. Another also reported that at his own house, during the night, before he went to rest, he had seen a certain philosopher, very well known to him, coming to him and expounding to him some points of Plato which, when previously asked, he had refused to expound. And when it was asked of this same philosopher why he had done in the other's house what he had refused when asked in his own house:

'I did not do it,' he said, 'but I dreamed that I did it.' And by this, there was exhibited to one man, waking, through a phantasmal image, what the other saw in dreams. These things came to us not from any chance persons, such as we should think it unworthy to believe, but reported by those whom we would not suppose to have lied to us. Accordingly, as to what men are said — and it has been committed to writing — to be wont to be turned into wolves by the gods, or rather demons, of the Arcadians, and that by her incantations Circe changed the companions of Ulysses, it seems to me that it could have been done after that manner which I have described, if indeed it was done at all.

But as for the Diomedean birds, since indeed their species is said to endure through the succession of offspring, I believe that they were not made from changed men, but were substituted when the men had been secretly withdrawn — just as a hind was substituted for Iphigenia, the daughter of king Agamemnon. Nor indeed could tricks of this kind have been difficult for the demons when permitted by the judgment of God; but because that maiden was afterward found alive, it was easily recognized that a hind had been substituted for her. But the companions of Diomedes, because they nowhere suddenly appeared and afterward appeared in no place — the evil avenging angels destroying them — are believed to have been turned into those birds which were secretly substituted for them, brought from other places where this kind of bird exists, to those places, and suddenly put in their stead.

But that they bring water in their beaks to the temple of Diomedes and sprinkle it, and that they fawn upon those of Greek birth and persecute foreigners, it is not to be wondered at that this is done by the instigation of the demons, whose interest it is to persuade men that Diomedes has been made a god, in order to deceive men, so that they may worship many false gods to the injury of the true God, and may render service — with temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, all of which, when they are right, are owed to none but the one living and true God — to dead men who, even while they lived, did not truly live.

At that time, after Troy had been captured and destroyed, Aeneas came into Italy with twenty ships, in which were carried the remnants of the Trojans, while Latinus was reigning there, and among the Athenians Menestheus, among the Sicyonians Polyphides, among the Assyrians Tautanes, but among the Hebrews Labdon was judge. And when Latinus had died, Aeneas reigned three years, the same kings remaining in the above-said places, except that among the Sicyonians it was now Pelasgus, and the judge of the Hebrews was Samson; who, since he was marvellously strong, was thought to be Hercules. But because Aeneas, when he died, did not appear, the Latins made him a god for themselves. The Sabines also enrolled among the gods their first king Sancus, or, as some call him, Sanctus.

Around this same time Codrus, king of the Athenians, exposed himself unrecognized to the Peloponnesians, the enemies of that same city, to be killed; and so it came about. In this way they proclaim that he liberated his fatherland. For the Peloponnesians had received an oracle that they would prevail only then, if they had not slain the king of the Athenians. He therefore deceived them by appearing in the garb of a poor man and by provoking his own death through a quarrel. Whence Virgil says: 'And the brawls of Codrus.' And this man the Athenians honored, as though a god, with the tribute of sacrifices.

In the reign of Silvius, the fourth king of the Latins—the son of Aeneas, not by Creusa, from whom came Ascanius who reigned there as the third king, but by Lavinia the daughter of Latinus, whom Aeneas is said to have had as a posthumous son—and in the twenty-ninth reign of the Assyrians under Oneus, and the sixteenth of the Athenians under Melanthus, and while Eli the priest was judge of the Hebrews, the kingdom of the Sicyonians came to an end, which is reported to have been extended over nine hundred and fifty-nine years. [XX] Soon, while these same kings were reigning over the places mentioned, the kingdom of the Israelites, the time of the judges being ended, took its beginning from king Saul, in whose time Samuel was prophet. From that time, then, these kings of the Latins began to be, whom they surnamed the Silvii;

for from him who was called the first Silvius, the son of Aeneas, to the rest who followed, both their own proper names were bestowed and this surname was not lacking; just as long afterward those who succeeded Caesar Augustus were surnamed Caesars. But Saul being rejected, so that none of his stock should reign, and he being dead, David succeeded to the kingdom forty years after the beginning of Saul's rule. Then the Athenians, after the death of Codrus, ceased thereafter to have kings and began to have magistrates for administering the commonwealth. After David, who himself also reigned forty years, his son Solomon was king of the Israelites, who built that most renowned temple of God at Jerusalem.

In his time Alba was founded among the Latins, from which thenceforth the kings began to be called not kings of the Latins but of the Albans, though still within the same Latium. To Solomon succeeded his son Rehoboam, under whom that people was divided into two kingdoms, and each part began to have its own several kings. [XXI] After Aeneas, whom they made a god, Latium had eleven kings, of whom none was made a god. But Aventinus, who follows Aeneas in the twelfth place, when he had been laid low in war and buried on that hill which even now is called by his name, was added to the number of such gods as they made for themselves. Yet others were unwilling to record that he was slain in battle, but said that he had disappeared;

and that the hill was named not from his name, but called Aventine from the coming of the birds (aves). After him no god was made in Latium except Romulus the founder of Rome. But between this one and that one two kings are found, of whom the first is—to speak of him in Virgil's verse—'Next comes that Procas, the glory of the Trojan race.' In his time, because Rome was now in a manner being brought to birth, that greatest of all kingdoms, the Assyrian, received the end of so great a duration. For it was transferred to the Medes after nearly one thousand three hundred and five years, if we reckon also the times of Belus, who begot Ninus and was there the first king, content with a small dominion. But Procas reigned before Amulius.

Now Amulius had made Rhea by name—also called Ilia—the daughter of his brother Numitor and the mother of Romulus, a Vestal virgin. They will have it that she conceived twins by Mars, in this way honoring or excusing her defilement, and adducing as proof that a she-wolf suckled the exposed infants. For they suppose this kind of beast to pertain to Mars, so that, forsooth, the she-wolf is believed to have offered her teats to the little ones because she recognized the sons of her lord Mars;

although there are those who say that, when the exposed infants lay wailing, they were first gathered up by some harlot and sucked her breasts first (for they used to call harlots she-wolves—lupae—whence even now their shameful places are called lupanaria, brothels), and that afterward they came to the shepherd Faustulus and were reared by his wife Acca. Yet if, to convict a man—a king—who had cruelly ordered them to be cast into the water, God willed to succor those infants (through whom so great a city was to be founded), when they had been divinely delivered from the water by means of a suckling beast, what wonder is there? To Amulius succeeded in the Latin kingdom his brother Numitor, the grandfather of Romulus; and in the first year of this Numitor Rome was founded;

and thus he reigned thenceforth together with his grandson, that is, Romulus. [XXII] Not to delay long, the city of Rome was founded as a kind of second Babylon and, as it were, the daughter of the former Babylon, through which it pleased God to subdue the whole world and, having brought it into one fellowship of commonwealth and laws, to pacify it far and wide. For there were now peoples strong and mighty, nations trained in arms, who would not easily yield, and who had to be overcome with immense perils and no small devastation on both sides and dreadful toil.

For when the kingdom of the Assyrians subjugated almost all Asia, although it was accomplished by warfare, yet it could not be done by very harsh and difficult wars, because the nations were as yet untrained to resist, nor so many or so great, seeing that after that greatest and universal flood, when only eight men escaped in Noah's ark, not much more than a thousand years had passed when Ninus subjugated all Asia except India. But Rome did not subdue with such speed and ease so many nations, both of the East and of the West, which we behold made subject to the Roman empire, since, growing gradually, it found them, whithersoever it spread, robust and warlike.

At the time, therefore, when Rome was founded, the people of Israel had been in the land of promise seven hundred and eighteen years. Of these, twenty-seven pertain to Joshua the son of Nun, then three hundred and twenty-nine to the time of the judges. And from the time when kings began to be there, the years were three hundred and sixty-two. And there was then king in Judah, whose name was Ahaz—or, as others reckon, Hezekiah who succeeded him, who indeed is agreed to have reigned in the times of Romulus as a most excellent and most pious king. But in that part of the Hebrew people which was called Israel, Hoshea had begun to reign. [XXIII] At the same time some report that the Erythraean Sibyl prophesied. But Varro records that there were several Sibyls, not one.

This Erythraean Sibyl certainly wrote down certain manifest things concerning Christ; which we too formerly read in the Latin tongue in verses that were poor Latin and did not scan, through the unskillfulness of some translator or other, as we afterward learned. For that most distinguished man Flaccianus, who was also proconsul, a man of most ready eloquence and much learning, when we were conversing about Christ, brought out to us a Greek codex, saying that they were the verses of the Erythraean Sibyl, where he showed that in a certain passage the initial letters of the verses had this order of letters, so that these words might be read therein: 'Iesous Chreistos Theou Yios Soter,' which is in Latin 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.'

But these verses, whose first letters yield that meaning which we have stated, as a certain person rendered them into Latin verses that both scan, contain this: 'A sign of judgment: the earth shall grow moist with sweat. From heaven shall come the King who is to be through the ages, present, that is, to judge the world in the flesh. Whereupon both unbelieving and faithful shall behold God the Most High with His saints at the very end of the age. So shall souls be present with their flesh, whom He Himself judges, when the world lies unkempt amid dense thickets. Men shall cast away their idols and all their treasure too. Fire shall burn up the lands and search out the sea and sky, and shatter the gates of foul Avernus. But to all the flesh of the saints free light shall be given, while the eternal flame shall consume the guilty.'

'Uncovering hidden deeds, then shall each one tell his secrets, and God shall lay bare hearts to the light. Then shall there be mourning too; all shall gnash with their teeth. The sun's radiance is snatched away and the chorus of the stars perishes. Heaven shall be rolled up, the moon's splendor shall depart; He shall cast down the hills, He shall raise up the valleys from the depths. There shall be nothing lofty or high in the affairs of men. The mountains are now made level with the plains and the blue expanses of the sea; all things shall cease; the shattered earth shall perish. So likewise the springs and rivers shall be scorched by fire. But then the trumpet shall send down a mournful sound from the height of heaven, lamenting the wretched crime and the manifold toils, and the earth yawning open shall reveal the chaos of Tartarus. And here before the Lord shall the kings be set together, one and all. There shall fall from heaven a river of fire and of brimstone.'

In these Latin verses translated somehow from the Greek, that meaning could not there be preserved which arises when the letters at their beginnings are connected, in the place where the letter Y is set in the Greek; because Latin words could not be found which began with the same letter and fitted the sense. Now these are three verses: the fifth, the eighteenth, and the nineteenth. Finally, if in connecting the letters at the beginnings of all the verses we do not read those which are written in these three, but in their stead recall the letter Y, as though it were set in the same places, it is expressed in five words: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior'; but when this is said in Greek, not in Latin.

And there are twenty-seven verses, which number yields the solid square of three. For three multiplied three times becomes nine; and that nine, if multiplied thrice, so that the figure may rise from breadth into height, arrives at twenty-seven. But of these five Greek words, which are 'Iesous Chreistos Theou Yios Soter'—which is in Latin 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior'—if you join the first letters, it will be 'ichthys,' that is, 'fish,' in which name Christ is mystically understood, because in the abyss of this mortality, as it were in the depth of the waters, He was able to be alive, that is, without sin.

But this Sibyl, whether the Erythraean or, as some rather believe, the Cumaean, has nothing in her whole poem—of which this small portion is a part—that pertains to the worship of false or man-made gods; nay rather she so speaks against them and against their worshipers, that she seems to be reckoned in the number of those who belong to the City of God. Lactantius too inserts into his own work certain prophecies of the Sibyl concerning Christ, though he does not express whose. But the things which he set down piecemeal I have thought should be set together, as though it were one continuous passage, which he mentioned as many and brief. 'Into wicked hands,' she says, 'He shall afterward come, of unbelievers;

and they shall give God buffets with unclean hands and with impure mouth shall spit out venomous spittle; but He shall simply give His holy back to the scourges. And receiving blows He shall be silent, lest anyone recognize what the Word is, or whence it comes, so that it may speak to those in the world below, and He shall be crowned with a crown of thorns. And for food they gave gall, and for His thirst vinegar; this table of inhospitality shall they display. For you yourself, foolish one, did not understand your God, mocking the minds of mortals, but you crowned Him with thorns and mingled the dread gall. But the veil of the temple shall be rent; and at midday there shall be night, exceedingly dark, for three hours. And He shall die by death, having taken on sleep for three days;

and then, returning from the world below, He shall come to the light, the first, in the beginning of the resurrection, having shown the way to those recalled.' These Sibylline testimonies Lactantius adduced piecemeal, at intervals of his own discussion, as the matters seemed to require which he was endeavoring to prove; but we, interposing nothing, but setting them down connected in one series, have taken care to mark them off by their beginnings only—if only the copyists thereafter do not neglect to preserve them. Some indeed have written that the Erythraean Sibyl was not in the time of Romulus, but in the time of the Trojan war.