[I] If the weak sense of human custom dared not resist the reason of manifest truth, but subjected its own languor to wholesome teaching as to a medicine, until, by the divine aid obtained through the faith of piety, it were healed, there would be no need of much discourse to convince of any error of vain opinion those who think rightly and set forth their thoughts in adequate words.
But now, since there is that greater and more hideous disease of foolish minds—by which men defend their irrational impulses, even after reason has been fully rendered, as much as one man owes another, whether through an excessive blindness by which not even open things are discerned, or through a most obstinate stubbornness by which even the things that are discerned are not accepted, as though they were defending reason and truth itself—it becomes necessary to speak more copiously, and for the most part to offer clear matters as things to be, in a manner, not gazed upon by beholders, but touched by those who grope and close their eyes. And yet what end of disputing will there be, and what limit of speaking, if we always suppose that answer must be made to those who answer back?
For those who either cannot understand what is said, or are so hardened by hostility of mind that, even if they have understood, they do not yield, they answer, as it is written, and utter iniquity, and are tirelessly vain. If we were willing to refute their contrary sayings as often as they resolve with obstinate brow not to consider what they say, provided that they in some way contradict our discussions, you see how endless and wretched and fruitless it would be.
Wherefore, my son Marcellinus, I would not have you yourself, nor others whom this labor of ours usefully and generously serves in the love of Christ, become such judges of my writings as always to demand a reply whenever they have heard something contradicted in what they read, lest they become like those little women whom the Apostle mentions, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.
And so in the preceding book, when I had set out to speak of the City of God—from which this whole work, with His aid, was taken in hand—it occurred to me that I must first resist those who ascribe these wars, by which this world is worn down, and especially the recent devastation of the city of Rome by the barbarians, to the Christian religion, by which they are forbidden to serve demons with abominable sacrifices; whereas they ought rather to ascribe this to Christ, that for the sake of His name the barbarians, contrary to the custom and usage of wars, offered them free of harm the religious and most spacious places to which they might flee; and that in many cases they so honored servitude devoted to Christ—not only true, but even feigned out of fear—that what would have been lawful to do against them by the right of war, they judged unlawful for themselves.
Thence arose the question: why have these divine benefits reached even the impious and ungrateful, and why likewise have those hard things, done in hostile fashion, afflicted the pious together with the impious? To resolve this question—which, being spread over many matters (for in all daily events, whether God's gifts or men's disasters, both of which often befall the good and the wicked mingled and without distinction, it is wont to disturb many)—according to the necessity of the work I had undertaken, I lingered somewhat, chiefly to console holy and piously chaste women, in whom something was perpetrated by the enemy that brought grief to their modesty, though it did not take away the firmness of their chastity; that they might not repent of their life, they who have no ground whereby they can repent of wickedness.
Then I said a few things against those who harass the Christians afflicted by those adversities—and especially the modesty of the humbled women, chaste and holy though they were—with most shameless insolence; men who are utterly worthless and irreverent, far degenerate from those very Romans whose many illustrious deeds are praised and celebrated in the memory of letters, indeed most vehemently opposed to their glory. For Rome, brought forth and increased by the labors of the ancients, they had made fouler while it stood than when it fell; since in her ruin stones and timbers fell, but in the life of these men there fell all the defenses and ornaments not of walls but of morals, while their hearts burned with more deadly desires than the fires with which the roofs of that city burned.
Having said these things, I first ended the book. And so next I set out to tell what evils that city has suffered from its origin, whether in itself or in the provinces now subject to it—all of which they would ascribe to the Christian religion, if even then the evangelical teaching had sounded forth against their false and deceitful gods with most free testimony. But remember that in recounting these things I am still contending against the unskilled, from whose lack of skill there also arose that vulgar proverb: 'Rain fails, the cause is the Christians.' For those of them who, trained in liberal studies, love history, know these things most easily;
but in order to render the crowds of the unlearned most hostile to us, they pretend not to know it, and strive to confirm among the common people that the disasters, by which the human race must be afflicted at fixed intervals of place and time, occur because of the name of Christ, which is spread through all things with immense renown and most illustrious celebrity against their gods. Let them therefore recall with us, before Christ had come in the flesh, before His name had become known to the peoples with that glory which they vainly envy, by what calamities the Roman state was in manifold and various ways worn down; and in these let them defend their gods, if they can—if the gods are worshiped for this reason, that their worshipers may not suffer these evils;
and if now they have suffered any of these, they contend that it is to be imputed to us. Why then did the gods permit these things which I am about to relate to befall their worshipers, before the revealed name of Christ offended them and forbade their sacrifices? First, as to their very morals, that they might not be most base—why were their gods unwilling to take care? For the true God rightly neglected those by whom He was not worshiped; but those gods, from whose worship most ungrateful men complain that they are forbidden, why did they help their worshipers by no laws toward living well? Surely it was fitting that, just as these men cared for their sacred rites, so those gods should care for their deeds. But it is answered that each man is wicked by his own will. Who would deny this?
Yet nevertheless it pertained to the gods, as counselors, not to hide the precepts of a good life from their worshiping peoples, but to offer them by clear proclamation; to convene sinners also through seers and rebuke them, to threaten punishments openly to evildoers, to promise rewards to those who live rightly. When did anything of the sort ever resound with ready and lofty voice in the temples of those gods?
We too, when we were young men, used at times to come to the spectacles and mockeries of sacrilegious rites; we watched the frenzied, we heard the musicians, we took delight in the most shameful games which were performed for the gods and goddesses—for the Heavenly Virgin and for Berecynthia, the mother of all, before whose litter, on the solemn day of her washing, such things were publicly chanted by the most worthless actors as it would not befit—I do not say the mother of the gods, but the mother of any senators whatever, or of any honorable men whatever—nay rather, such things as it would not befit even the mother of those very actors to hear. For human modesty toward parents has something which not even wickedness itself can take away.
Accordingly, that filthiness of obscene words and deeds, the actors themselves would be ashamed to perform at home before their own mothers by way of rehearsal—the very thing they performed in public before the mother of the gods, with a most crowded multitude of both sexes looking on and listening. If she could be present, drawn round by enticed curiosity, at least, her chastity offended, she ought to have departed in confusion. What are sacrileges, if those are sacred rites? or what is defilement, if that is a washing? And these were called 'courses,' as though a banquet were being celebrated at which the unclean demons might feed, as it were, on their own repasts.
For who would not perceive what sort of spirits take delight in such obscenities—unless either being ignorant whether there exist any unclean spirits at all who deceive under the name of gods, or leading such a life in which he would rather wish these spirits propitious and dread them angry than the true God? I would by no means wish those men to be judge of this matter who are eager rather to take delight in the vices of a most disgraceful custom than to struggle against them; but that very Nasica Scipio, who was chosen by the senate as the best man, by whose hands the image of that same demon was received and conveyed into the City. Let him tell us whether he would wish his own mother to deserve so well of the republic that divine honors should be decreed to her;
just as it is agreed that the Greeks and Romans and other nations decreed such honors to certain mortals whose benefits toward them they had greatly esteemed, and had believed them to have been made immortal and received into the number of the gods. Assuredly he would wish so great a felicity for his mother, if it could be done. But further, if we then asked him whether he would wish those base things to be celebrated among her divine honors: would he not cry out that he would rather his mother should lie dead without any sensation whatever, than that she should live as a goddess for this, that she might gladly hear such things?
Far be it that a senator of the Roman people, endowed with that mind by which he forbade a theater to be built in the city of brave men, should wish his mother to be so worshiped that she, a goddess, might be propitiated by such rites as would offend her as a matron. Nor would he in any way believe that the modesty of a praiseworthy woman could be so changed into its contrary by divinity, that her worshipers would invoke her with such honors as would be insults hurled against anyone, which, while she lived among men, unless she stopped her ears and withdrew herself, both her kinsmen and her husband and her children would blush for her sake.
Accordingly such a mother of the gods, such as any man, even the worst, would be ashamed to have as a mother, in order to occupy Roman minds sought out the best man—not one whom she might make so by admonishing and helping, but one whom she might deceive by beguiling—like her of whom it is written: 'But the woman ensnares the precious souls of men'; that this soul of great endowment, exalted as it were by this divine testimony and truly esteeming himself the best, might not seek true piety and religion, without which every talent, however praiseworthy, vanishes and falls through pride. How then, except by insidious means, did that goddess seek out the best man, when she seeks in her sacred rites such things as the best men shudder to bring to their banquets?
Hence it is that they took no care for the life and morals of the cities and peoples by whom those deities were worshiped—so that, with no terrible prohibition of their own, they permitted them to be filled with such horrible and detestable evils and to become most wicked, not in the field and the vines, not in house and possessions, not finally in the body itself, which is subject to the mind, but in the very mind, in the very ruler of the flesh, the soul. Or if they did prohibit it, let this rather be shown, let this be proved. And let them not fling at us some whisperings or other, breathed into the ears of a very few and handed down as it were by a secret religion, by which uprightness and chastity of life may be learned;
but let there be pointed out or recalled places at some time consecrated to such assemblies—not where games were performed with the obscene voices and gestures of actors, nor where the Fugalia were celebrated with all license of baseness poured forth (and truly 'Fugalia,' but of modesty and honor put to flight)—but where the peoples might hear what the gods enjoined concerning the restraining of avarice, the breaking of ambition, the curbing of luxury; where the wretched might learn what Persius reproaches must be learned, saying:
'Learn, O wretched ones, and know the causes of things: what we are, and for what purpose we are begotten to live; what order is assigned us, or where and whence the turn is gently rounded at the goal; what limit there is of money; what it is right to wish for; what use hard coin has; how much it befits to bestow on one's country and dear kinsmen; whom God has bidden you to be, and in what part of human affairs you are placed.' Let it be told in what places these precepts of teaching gods were wont to be recited and frequently heard by their worshiping peoples, just as we have shown that churches are established for this, wherever the Christian religion is spread abroad. Or perhaps they will bring to our notice the schools and disputations of the philosophers? First, these are not Roman, but Greek;
or if for this reason now Roman, because Greece too has been made a Roman province, they are not the precepts of the gods, but the inventions of men, who, endowed with most acute talents, endeavored somehow by reasoning to trace out what lay hidden in the nature of things, what was to be sought and shunned in morals, what in the very rules of reasoning was drawn out by a fixed connection, or what was not consequent or even repugnant. And some of them found certain great things, in so far as they were divinely aided; but in so far as they were humanly hindered, they erred, especially since divine providence justly resisted their pride, that it might show, even by comparison with these men, the way of piety rising from humility into the heights;
whence afterward we shall have, in the will of God our true Lord, a place for inquiring and discoursing. Yet nevertheless, if the philosophers found something which might suffice for leading a good life and attaining a blessed one: how much more justly would divine honors be decreed to such men! How much better and more honorably would his books be read in the temple of Plato, than in the temples of demons the Galli were castrated, the effeminate consecrated, the insane gashed, and whatever else, cruel or base, or basely cruel or cruelly base, is wont to be celebrated in the sacred rites of such gods! How much more fitting it would be that the laws of the gods should be publicly recited for the instruction of youth in justice, than that the laws and institutions of the ancestors should be vainly praised!
For all the worshipers of such gods, as soon as lust has driven them on, 'steeped in seething poison,' as Persius says, look rather at what Jupiter did than at what Plato taught or Cato judged. Hence in Terence the disgraceful young man gazes at a certain picture painted on the wall, where there was this painting: how they say Jupiter once sent a golden shower into the lap of Danae; and from this so great authority he draws a patronage for his own baseness, when he boasts that in it he imitates a god. 'But what a god!' he says; 'one who shakes the temples of heaven with his mighty thunder. Should I, a poor little man, not do it? Nay, I did it, and gladly.' But indeed these things are not handed down in the sacred rites of the gods, but in the fables of the poets.
I will not say that those mystical things are more base than these theatrical ones; this I say, which history convicts those who deny it: that those very games, in which the fictions of the poets reign, the Romans did not introduce among the sacred rites of their gods through unskilled compliance, but that the gods themselves brought it about that they should be solemnly performed and consecrated to their honor, by harshly commanding and in a manner extorting it—a thing I touched upon with a brief mention in the first book. For when a pestilence grew heavy, scenic games were first instituted at Rome by the authority of the pontiffs. Who therefore, in leading his life, would not think that he ought rather to pursue those things which are enacted in games instituted by divine authority, than those which are written in laws promulgated by human counsel?
If the poets falsely gave out Jupiter as an adulterer, the gods, surely chaste, ought to have been angry and to have taken vengeance because so great a wickedness was fabricated through human games, rather than to have neglected it. And these are the more tolerable of the scenic games—comedies, namely, and tragedies, that is, the fables of the poets to be performed in the spectacles, composed with much baseness of matter, but at least, unlike many other things, with no obscenity of words; which boys are even compelled by their elders to read and learn among the studies that are called honorable and liberal. But what the ancient Romans felt about this, Cicero attests in the books which he wrote On the Republic, where Scipio, disputing, says:
'Never could comedies, unless the custom of life allowed it, have made their disgraceful matters approved in the theaters. And the more ancient Greeks indeed preserved a certain consistency of their faulty opinion, among whom it was even allowed by law that comedy might say by name whatever it wished, of whomever it wished. And so, as Africanus says in those same books, whom did it not touch, or rather whom did it not harry? whom did it spare? Granted, it injured the demagogues, wicked men, seditious in the republic—Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus. Let us bear it,' he says, 'although it is better that citizens of that sort be branded by a censor than by a poet.'
'But that Pericles, when he had already for very many years presided over his own state at home and in war with the greatest authority, should be assailed in verses and these acted on the stage, was no more fitting than if our Plautus,' he says, 'or Naevius had wished to speak ill of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius of Marcus Cato.' Then a little after: 'Our Twelve Tables, on the contrary,' he says, 'though they made very few matters capital, thought this also should be made so among them: if anyone should have sung or composed a song which brought infamy or disgrace upon another. Excellently. For our life ought to be liable to the judgments of magistrates and to lawful adjudications, not to the talents of poets; nor ought we to hear reproach except on this condition, that it be lawful to answer and defend oneself in court.'
These things from Cicero's fourth book On the Republic I have thought fit to excerpt word for word, some things being either omitted or slightly altered for the sake of easier understanding. For it much pertains to the matter which I am laboring to explain, if I can. He then says other things and so concludes this passage, in order to show that it was displeasing to the ancient Romans either that any living man should be praised on the stage, or reviled.
But, as I said, this the Greeks, though more shamelessly, yet more consistently, chose to be permitted, since they saw that reproaches were accepted and welcome to their gods—not only those of men, but even of the gods themselves—in the scenic fables, whether those things were fabricated by the poets, or their real disgraces were recounted and acted in the theaters, and by their worshipers—would that they had seemed worthy only of laughter, and not also of imitation! For it was too proud to spare the reputation of the leading men of the state and of the citizens, where the deities were unwilling that their own reputation be spared. For as to what is brought forward in defense—that those things were not spoken truly against the gods, but falsely and fictitiously—this very thing is more wicked, if you consult the piety of religion;
but if you consider the malice of the demons, what is more cunning for deceiving, and more crafty? For when a reproach is cast at a good and useful leader of the fatherland, is it not the more unworthy, the more remote from the truth and the more alien from his life? What punishments then suffice, when so nefarious, so signal an injury is done to a god? But the malignant spirits, whom these men suppose to be gods, wish even disgraceful things which they have not committed to be said of themselves, provided only that they may entangle human minds in these opinions as in nets, and drag them along with themselves to their predestined punishment—whether men committed those things, whom they rejoice to be held as gods, they who rejoice in human errors, on whose behalf they interpose themselves to be worshiped by a thousand arts of harming and deceiving;
or whether those crimes are not the true crimes of any men, which nevertheless the most deceitful spirits gladly accept to be feigned of the deities, so that authority sufficiently suitable might seem to be conveyed, as it were from heaven itself down to the earth, for perpetrating wicked and base deeds. Since therefore the Greeks felt themselves to be the slaves of such deities, they thought it in no way right to be spared by the poets amid so many and so great theatrical reproaches of them, either desiring to be likened even thus to their gods, or fearing lest, by seeking a more honorable reputation for themselves and preferring themselves in this manner to the gods, they should provoke them to anger.
To this consistency it pertains that they even judged the scenic actors of those same fables to be worthy of no small honor from the state; since, as is recorded in that same book On the Republic, both Aeschines the Athenian, a most eloquent man, when as a youth he had acted tragedies, took up public affairs, and Aristodemus, likewise a tragic actor, the Athenians often sent as ambassador to Philip on the greatest matters of peace and war. For it was not thought consistent that, when they saw the same arts and the same scenic games accepted even by their gods, they should reckon those through whom these were performed in the place and number of the infamous.
These things the Greeks did basely indeed, but assuredly quite in agreement with their gods; who did not dare to withdraw the life of the citizens from being torn by the tongues of poets and actors, by whom they perceived the life of the gods to be carped at with the very gods willing and glad; and the very men, through whom these things were enacted in the theaters, which they had learned to be pleasing to the deities to whom they were subject, they thought should not only in no way be despised in the state, but even most highly honored.
For what cause could they find why they should honor the priests, because through them they offered victims acceptable to the gods, and yet hold the actors as disgraceful, through whom they had learned by the gods' own admonition that this pleasure or honor was rendered to the gods who demanded it, and who were angry unless it were done? Especially since Labeo, whom they proclaim most skilled in matters of this sort, distinguishes the good deities from the evil deities even by this diversity of worship, so as to assert that the evil gods are to be propitiated by slaughters and by mournful supplications, but the good ones by joyful and pleasant observances, such as are (as he himself says) games, banquets, and lectisternia. What all this may be, we shall afterward, if God shall help, discuss more carefully.
Now, as pertains to the present matter, whether all things be assigned to all the gods alike, as though to good ones (for it is not fitting that there be evil gods, since rather these, because they are unclean spirits, are all evil), or whether, by a fixed distinction, as it seemed to Labeo, these observances be distributed to those, and those to these, the Greeks most fittingly reckon both to honor—both the priests, through whom the victims are ministered, and the actors, through whom the games are exhibited—lest they be convicted of doing injury either to all their gods, if the games too are pleasing to all, or (what is more unworthy) to those whom they think good, if the games are loved by these alone.
But the Romans, as Scipio boasts in that disputation On the Republic, were unwilling to have their life and reputation subject to the reproaches and injuries of the poets, even sanctioning it with a capital penalty, if anyone should dare to compose such a song. This indeed they established honorably enough with regard to themselves, but proudly and irreligiously with regard to their gods; whom, though they knew them to be torn not only patiently but even gladly by the reproaches and revilings of the poets, they thought themselves rather than the gods to be unworthy of injuries of this sort, and even fortified themselves against these by law, while they mingled such things even with the sacred solemnities of the gods.
So then, Scipio, do you at last praise this license as having been denied to the Roman poets—that they might inflict reproach on any of the Romans—when you see that they spared none of your gods? Was the esteem of your senate house thought by you to be of more account than of the Capitol, nay of Rome alone than of the whole heaven, so that poets should even by law be forbidden to exercise a slanderous tongue against your citizens, and yet against your gods should freely hurl such great insults, with no senator, no censor, no princeps, no pontiff forbidding it? It was unworthy, forsooth, that Plautus or Naevius should speak ill of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius of Marcus Cato; but it was worthy that your Terentius should inflame the wantonness of youths by the disgrace of Jupiter, best and greatest?
But perhaps, if he were alive, he would answer me: 'How could we be unwilling that these things go unpunished, which the gods themselves willed to be sacred, since they both introduced into Roman customs the scenic games, where such things are celebrated, recited, acted, and commanded them to be dedicated and exhibited to their own honors?' Why then were they not rather from this understood to be no true gods, nor at all worthy that that republic should confer divine honors upon them? For those whom it would least befit and least behoove to be worshiped, if they demanded games to be performed with reproaches of the Romans—how, I ask, were they thought fit to be worshiped, how were they not understood to be detestable spirits, who out of a desire to deceive demanded that their own crimes be celebrated amid their own honors?
And likewise the Romans, although already pressed by a noxious superstition, so that they worshiped those gods whom they saw to have willed the scenic obscenities to be consecrated to themselves, yet mindful of their own dignity and modesty, by no means honored the actors of such fables after the manner of the Greeks; but, as the same Scipio says in Cicero, 'since they held the histrionic art and the whole stage to be disgraceful, they willed that this class of men should not only lack the honor of the rest of the citizens, but even be removed from their tribe by the censor's mark of disgrace.' An excellent prudence, indeed, and to be reckoned among Roman praises; but I could wish it had followed itself, and imitated itself.
For behold, rightly: whoever of the Roman citizens had chosen to be an actor, not only was no place given him for honor, but he was even by no means permitted, by the censor's mark, to keep his own tribe. O mind of a state greedy for praise and genuinely Roman! But let it be answered me: by what consistent reasoning are scenic men repelled from all honor, and scenic games mingled with the honors of the gods? Roman valor had long not known those theatrical arts, which, if they were sought for the delight of human pleasure, crept in by the vice of human morals. The gods demanded that these be exhibited to themselves: how then is the actor cast off, through whom the god is worshiped? and with what face is the actor of that theatrical baseness branded, if the exactor of it is adored?