[Preface] Since it is established that the fullness of all desirable things is felicity—which is not a goddess but a gift of God—and that therefore no god ought to be worshipped by men except Him who can make them happy (so that, were felicity herself a goddess, she alone would rightly be said to be worthy of worship): let us now consequently see for what cause God, who can also give those goods which even the not-good, and thereby the not-happy, are able to have, willed the Roman empire to be so great and so long-lasting. For that this was not done by that multitude of false gods whom they worshipped, we have already said much, and shall say more where it seems opportune.
[I] The cause, then, of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither fortuitous nor fatal according to the judgment or opinion of those who call those things fortuitous which either have no causes, or causes that do not proceed from any rational order, and those things fatal which, apart from the will of God and men, come to pass by the necessity of a certain order. Human kingdoms are altogether established by divine providence. And if anyone attributes this to fate because he calls the very will or power of God by the name of fate, let him hold his opinion but correct his language. For why does he not first say what he is afterwards going to say, when someone asks him what he meant by fate?
For when men hear this word, by the usual custom of speaking they understand nothing but the force of the position of the stars, such as it is when someone is born or conceived; which force some sever from the will of God, while others affirm that even this depends on His will. But those who suppose that the stars, without the will of God, determine what we shall do or what goods we shall have or what evils we shall suffer, are to be repelled from the ears of all—not only of those who hold the true religion, but even of those who wish to be worshippers of gods of whatever sort, however false. For what else does this opinion effect than that no God at all be worshipped or entreated?
Against these, however, our disputation is not now instituted, but against those who, in defence of those whom they think to be gods, oppose the Christian religion. But those who suspend the position of the stars—which in some manner determine what each person shall be, and what good shall befall him or what evil happen to him—upon the will of God, if they think that these same stars have received this power, delivered to them from the supreme power of God, so that they determine these things by their own will: they do great injury to heaven, in whose most illustrious senate, as it were, and most splendid court they suppose that crimes are decreed to be committed—crimes such as, had any earthly city decreed them, it would have deserved to be overthrown by the decree of the human race.
What judgment, then, is left to God concerning the deeds of men, upon whom a heavenly necessity is imposed, when He is Lord both of the stars and of men? Or if they do not say that the stars, having indeed received power from the most high God, determine these things by their own choice, but that in imposing such necessities they wholly fulfil His commands: is such a thing then to be thought concerning God Himself as seemed most unworthy to be thought concerning the will of the stars? But if the stars are said rather to signify these things than to cause them, so that that position is, as it were, a kind of speech foretelling the future, not effecting it (for this was the opinion of men by no means poorly learned)—yet the astrologers are not accustomed so to speak, as, for example, to say:
'Mars posited thus signifies a murderer,' but: 'makes a murderer'; nevertheless, granting that they do not speak as they ought, and that they should receive from the philosophers the rule of speech for foretelling those things which they think they find in the position of the stars: how comes it that they have never been able to say anything as to why, in the life of twins—in their actions, in their outcomes, in their professions, arts, honours, and other matters pertaining to human life, and in death itself—there is often so great a diversity that, as regards these things, many strangers are more like them than the twins are like each other, though separated in birth by the tiniest interval of time, yet sown in conception by a single act of intercourse and in one and the same moment?
[II] Cicero says that Hippocrates, the most noble physician, left it in writing that, when certain brothers had begun to sicken at the same time and their disease grew worse and abated at the same time, he suspected them to be twins; whom Posidonius the Stoic, much given to astrology, used to assert to have been born and conceived under the same constitution of the stars. Thus what the physician believed pertained to a most similar temperament of health, this the philosopher-astrologer ascribed to the force and constitution of the stars which existed at the time when they were conceived and born.
In this matter the medical conjecture is much more acceptable and, at close hand, more credible; since the parents, being affected in body as they were while they lay together, could so affect the beginnings of the conceived that, with the earlier increments derived from the mother's body, they were born with an equal state of health; and then, nourished in one house with the same food—where medicine testifies that the air, the situation of the place, and the force of the waters have very much to do with a body's being well or ill disposed—and accustomed also to the same exercises, they came to bear bodies so similar that they were even moved to fall sick at one time and from the same causes alike.
But to wish to draw the constitution of the heaven and stars, which existed when they were conceived or born, to this similarity of sickening—when so many things of the most diverse kind, with the most diverse effects and outcomes, could be conceived and born at the same time in the land of one region subject to the same heaven—is a mark of I know not what impudence. But we ourselves know twins who have not only diverse pursuits and travels, but also suffer disparate illnesses. Of this matter Hippocrates, as it seems to me, would render a most easy account: that through diverse foods and exercises—which come not from the body's temperament but from the soul's will—dissimilar states of health could befall them.
Moreover, it would be a marvel if Posidonius, or any other asserter of the fatal stars, could here find anything to say, unless he wished to trifle with the minds of the unskilled in matters which they do not understand. For what they attempt to accomplish from the tiny interval of time which the twins had between them as they were being born—on account of that particle of the heaven where the marking of the hour is placed, which they call the horoscope—either avails not so much as is the diversity found in the wills, acts, characters, and fortunes of twins, or avails even more than does the lowliness of birth, the same in twins, or the same nobility, of which they place the greatest diversity in nothing but the hour at which each is born.
And through this, if one is born so quickly after the other that the same part of the horoscope remains, I demand all things equal—which can be found in no twins; but if the slowness of the one following changes the horoscope, I demand different parents—which twins cannot have. [III] In vain, therefore, is that celebrated invention of the potter's wheel brought forward, which they report Nigidius, troubled by this question, to have given in reply—whence also he was called Figulus. For when he had spun the potter's wheel with all the force he could, while it was running he struck it twice in rapid succession with ink, as though at one point of it, with the utmost speed; then, when the motion had ceased, the marks he had made were found to be at no small interval apart on the rim of that wheel.
'Thus,' he said, 'in so great a swiftness of the heaven, even if one is born after the other with as great a speed as that with which I struck the wheel twice, in the space of the heaven it is a very great distance: hence,' he said, 'come whatever most dissimilar things are reported in the characters and fortunes of twins.' This figment is more fragile than the vessels which are fashioned by that spinning. For if there is so great a distance in the heaven—which cannot be comprehended by the constellations—that to one of the twins an inheritance falls and to the other it does not fall: how do they dare to pronounce, concerning others who are not twins, when they have inspected their constellations, such things as pertain to that secret which no one can comprehend and note in the moments of those being born?
But if for this reason they say such things in the nativities of others—because these pertain to more extended spaces of time; while those moments of minute parts, which twins being born can have between themselves, are assigned to the smallest matters, about which the astrologers are not wont to be consulted (for who would consult when he should sit, when he should walk about, when or what he should dine on?): do we speak of such things when in the characters, works, and fortunes of twins we show very many and very greatly diverse things? [IV] Two twins were born, in the ancient memory of the fathers (to speak of illustrious ones), one after the other in such a way that the latter held the heel of the former.
So great were the diversities in their life and characters, so great the disparity in their acts, so great the dissimilarity in the love of their parents, that the very distance between them made them even enemies to each other. Is it said that this was because while one walked the other sat, and while one slept the other watched, and while one spoke the other was silent—things which pertain to those minute particulars which cannot be comprehended by those who write down the constitution of the stars under which each is born, whence the astrologers are consulted? One underwent hired servitude, the other did not serve; one was loved by his mother, the other was not loved; one lost the honour which was held great among them, the other obtained it.
What of their wives, what of their children, what of their possessions—how great the diversity! If, then, these things pertain to those minute portions of time which twins have between themselves, and are not ascribed to the constellations: why, when the constellations of others have been inspected, are these things pronounced? But if they are pronounced for this reason—because they pertain not to incomprehensible minutiae but to spaces of time which can be observed and noted—what is that potter's wheel doing here, except that men having hearts of clay may be sent spinning in a circle, lest the empty babblings of the astrologers be convicted?
[V] What of those very men whose disease, because it appeared graver and lighter in both at the same time, Hippocrates, inspecting medically, suspected them to be twins—do they not sufficiently refute those who wish to give to the stars what came from the similar temperament of their bodies? For why did they sicken alike and at the same time, not one earlier and the other later, as they had been born, since assuredly both could not be born at the same time? Or if it brought no moment of difference that they were born at diverse times, so that they should sicken at diverse times: why do they contend that the diverse time in being born avails for the diversities of other things?
Why could they travel at diverse times, take wives at diverse times, beget children at diverse times, and many other things, for this reason—because they were born at diverse times—and yet could not, from the same cause, also sicken at diverse times? For if the disparate delay of being born changed the horoscope and introduced disparity into other matters: why did that remain in their illnesses which the conception had in the equality of time? Or if the fates of health are in conception, while those of other matters are said to be in birth, they ought not, when the constellations of the nativities have been inspected, to say anything concerning health, since the hour of conception is not given them to inspect.
But if they foretell illnesses without having inspected the horoscope of conception, because the moments of birth indicate them: how would they tell either one of these twins, from the hour of nativity, when he was going to sicken, since the other, who did not have the same hour of nativity, would necessarily sicken equally? Then I ask: if there is so great a distance of time in the nativity of twins that on account of it their constellations must be made diverse—because of the diverse horoscope and hence the diverse cardinal points, in which so great a force is placed that from this even their fates are diverse—whence could this happen, since their conception cannot have a diverse time?
Or if the fates for being born could be disparate for two conceived at one moment of time, why could not also the fates for living and dying be disparate for two born at one moment of time? For if the one moment in which both were conceived did not prevent one being born earlier and the other later: why, if two are born at one moment, does anything prevent one dying earlier and the other later? If a conception of one moment permits twins in the womb to have diverse fortunes, why should not a nativity of one moment also permit any two persons on earth to have diverse fortunes—and thus all the fabrications of this art, or rather this vanity, be done away?
What is this—why do two conceived at one time, at one moment, under one and the same position of the heaven, have diverse fates which lead them to a nativity at diverse hours; and yet two born at one moment of time, under one and the same position of the heaven, from two mothers, cannot have diverse fates which lead them to a diverse necessity of living or dying? Or do the conceived not yet have fates, which they cannot have unless they be born? What, then, is it that they say—that if the hour of conception be found, many things can be said by these men more divinely? Whence also this is proclaimed by some: that a certain wise man chose the hour in which he should lie with his wife, that he might beget a marvellous son.
Whence, finally, comes also this: that concerning those twins sickening alike, Posidonius, the great astrologer and likewise philosopher, used to reply that it came about because they had been born at the same time and conceived at the same time. For he certainly added conception for this reason, lest it should be said to him that they could not clearly have been born at the same time, whom it was agreed had been altogether conceived at the same time; so that this fact, that they sickened alike and together, he might not attribute to a proximate equal temperament of the body, but might bind this equality of health too to sidereal connections. If, then, there is so great a force in conception toward the equality of fates, they ought not, by being born, to have had those same fates changed.
Or if the fates of twins are changed because they are born at diverse times, why do we not rather understand that they had already been changed, so that they should be born at diverse times? Does not, then, the will of the living change the fates of nativity, since the order of those being born changes the fates of conception? [VI] And yet, even in the very conceptions of twins, where certainly the moments of time are the same for both, whence comes it that under the same fatal constellation one is conceived male, the other female? We know twins of different sex; both are still alive, both still flourish in age;
and although their bodily forms are similar to each other, as much as is possible in a diverse sex, yet in the plan and purpose of life they are so unlike that—besides the acts which must necessarily distinguish the feminine from the masculine (in that the one serves in the office of a count and is almost always travelling away from his home, while the other does not depart from her native soil and her own estate)—moreover (which is the more incredible, if astral fates be believed, but not at all wonderful, if the wills of men and the gifts of God be considered) the one is married, the other is a consecrated virgin; the one begot numerous offspring, the other did not even marry. But indeed, they say, the force of the horoscope avails very much. How null this is, I have already sufficiently discoursed. But whatever it be, they say it avails at birth; does it also avail at conception?
—where it is manifest that there was but a single act of intercourse, and so great is the force of nature that, when a woman has conceived, she cannot afterward conceive another at all; whence it is necessary that the moments of conception be the same in twins. Or is it perchance that, because they were born under a diverse horoscope, either he was changed into a male, or she into a female, while they were being born? Since, then, it could be said not altogether absurdly that certain sidereal influences avail for differences of bodies alone—just as we see, in the sun's approaches and recessions, even the seasons of the year itself to be varied, and by the increases and decreases of the moon certain kinds of things to be augmented and diminished, such as sea-urchins and shellfish and the marvellous tides of the ocean;
but that the wills of the soul are not subjected to the positions of the stars: now these men, when they try to bind even our acts thereto, admonish us to inquire whence this reasoning of theirs cannot hold good even in bodies themselves. For what is so pertinent to the body as the body's sex? And yet, under the same position of the stars, twins of diverse sex could be conceived. Whence what more foolish thing can be said or believed than that the position of the stars, which was the same for both at the hour of conception, could not bring it about that the one with whom it had the same constellation should not have a sex diverse from his brother; and yet the position of the stars, which was at the hour of their being born, could bring it about that he should differ from her by so great a distance of virginal sanctity?
[VII] Now who could bear this—that in choosing days they contrive certain new fates for their own acts? That man, forsooth, was not born so as to have an admirable son, but rather so as to beget a contemptible one, and therefore the learned man chose the hour in which he should have intercourse with his wife. He made, then, a fate which he did not have, and from his own deed there began to be fatal what had not been in his nativity. O singular folly! A day is chosen that a wife may be married; I believe for this reason—because one may fall upon a day that is not good, unless it be chosen, and marry unhappily. Where, then, is what the stars had already decreed for one being born?
Or can a man, by the choice of a day, change what has already been appointed for him, while what he himself has appointed in choosing the day cannot be changed by some other power? Then, if only men, and not all things that are under heaven, are subject to the constellations, why do they choose one set of days as suitable for planting vines or trees or crops, and other days for cattle—either for taming them or for admitting the males, by which the herds of mares or of oxen may be impregnated—and other things of this kind? But if chosen days avail for these matters because, according to the diversities of temporal moments, the position of the stars rules over all earthly bodies whether animate or inanimate:
let them consider how innumerable are the things which, under one point of time, are either born or arise or begin, and yet have such diverse outcomes, that they may persuade any boy that these observations are to be laughed at. For who is so senseless as to dare to say that all trees, all herbs, all beasts, serpents, birds, fishes, and little worms have severally diverse moments of coming to birth? Yet men are wont, in order to test the skill of astrologers, to bring to them the constellations of dumb animals, whose birth, for the sake of this exploration, they diligently observe at home; and they prefer those astrologers to the rest who, having inspected the constellations, say that it was not a man who was born, but a beast.
They even dare to say what kind of beast—whether fit for wool, or for carrying loads, or for the plough, or for guarding the house. For they are tested even as to the fates of dogs, and with great acclamations of admirers they give such answers. So foolish are men as to imagine that, when a man is born, the other births of things are so restrained that, under the same tract of heaven, not even a fly is born along with him. For if they admit the fly, the reasoning proceeds which, by moderate approaches step by step, would lead them from flies to camels and elephants.
Nor do they wish to observe this: that when a day has been chosen for sowing a field, so many grains come into the earth at the same time, sprout at the same time, and, when the crop has come up, grow green, mature, and turn golden together; and yet of the ears coeval with the rest and, so to speak, congerminal, some the blight destroys, some the birds ravage, some men pluck up. How will they say that these had different constellations, which they behold to have such diverse outcomes? Or will they be ashamed to choose days for these matters, and deny that they pertain to a heavenly decree, and subject to the stars men alone, to whom alone on earth God has given free wills?
When all these things are considered, it is not without reason believed that, when astrologers give many wonderfully true answers, this comes to pass by the hidden prompting of spirits that are not good, whose concern it is to insert and to fix in human minds these false and harmful opinions about the fates set by the stars, and not by any art of noting and inspecting the horoscope, which is no art at all. But as for those who call by the name of fate, not the position of the stars as it is when anything is conceived or born or begun, but the whole connection and sequence of causes by which everything happens that does happen:
with such men there is no need to labor and contend much over a controversy about a word, since they attribute this very order and connection of causes to the will and power of the most high God, who is most rightly and most truly believed both to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordered; from whom are all powers, although the wills of all are not from him. That it is chiefly this very will of the most high God, whose power extends invincibly through all things, that they call fate, is thus proved. These verses are Annaeus Seneca's, unless I am mistaken: 'Lead me, O highest Father and ruler of the lofty heaven, wherever it has pleased you; there shall be no delay in obeying. Here I am, unwearied. Suppose I refuse: I shall follow groaning, and though evil I shall suffer what I might have done as a good man.'
'The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.' Assuredly, in this last verse most evidently he called that 'fate' which above he had called the will of the most high Father; to which he says he is ready to obey, so that he may be led as one willing, lest he be dragged as one unwilling; since, namely, 'The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.' Those Homeric verses too support this sentiment, which Cicero translated into Latin: 'Such are the minds of men, as the father Jupiter himself has illumined the fruit-bearing lands with his light.' Nor in this question would a poet's opinion carry authority;
but since he says that the Stoics, in asserting the power of fate, were accustomed to make use of these verses from Homer, the discussion concerns not the opinion of that poet, but that of these philosophers, since through these verses, which they bring to bear on the disputation they hold concerning fate, it is most openly declared what they think fate to be, since they call it Jupiter, whom they suppose to be the highest god, from whom they say the connection of the fates depends. Cicero strives to refute these men in such a way that he thinks he can prevail nothing against them unless he does away with divination. This he attempts to abolish by denying that there is any knowledge of future things, and by contending with all his might that there is absolutely none, whether in man or in God, and no prediction of things at all.
Thus he both denies God's foreknowledge and attempts to overthrow all prophecy, clearer than light, by empty argumentations, and by setting up against himself certain oracles which can easily be refuted; yet these too he does not convincingly overcome. But in refuting the conjectures of these astrologers his eloquence reigns supreme, because they are truly of such a kind that they destroy and refute themselves. Yet far more tolerable are those who establish the fates set by the stars than this man who takes away the foreknowledge of future things. For to confess that God exists and to deny that he foreknows future things is the most open insanity. Since he himself saw this, he even attempted that which is written: 'The fool has said in his heart: There is no God'; but not in his own person.
For he saw how odious and offensive it would be, and therefore in his books On the Nature of the Gods he made Cotta dispute about this matter against the Stoics, and he preferred to pronounce judgment in favor of Lucilius Balbus, to whom he had assigned the defense of the Stoics' side, rather than in favor of Cotta, who contended that there is no divine nature. But in his books On Divination he in his own person most openly attacks the foreknowledge of future things. And he seems to do all this lest he should consent that fate exists and should lose free will. For he supposes that, if knowledge of future things be granted, fate follows so necessarily that it can in no way be denied.
But in whatever way these most tortuous wranglings and disputations of the philosophers may stand, we, just as we confess the most high and true God, so also we confess his will and his supreme power and his foreknowledge; nor do we fear that we do not by will what we do by will, because he, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived, foreknew that we would do it. This is what Cicero feared, so as to attack foreknowledge; and the Stoics feared it, so as to deny that all things come to pass by necessity, although they contended that all things come to pass by fate. What, then, is it that Cicero feared in the foreknowledge of future things, so that he strove to undermine it by a detestable disputation? Namely, that if all future things are foreknown, they will come in that order in which they were foreknown to be about to come;
and if they will come in this order, the order of things is certain to the foreknowing God; and if the order of things is certain, the order of causes is certain, for nothing can happen unless some efficient cause has preceded it; but if the order of causes is certain, by which everything happens that does happen, then, he says, all things that happen come to pass by fate. And if this is so, nothing is in our power and there is no choice of the will; and if we grant this, he says, all human life is overthrown, laws are given in vain, in vain are reproaches and praises, blame and exhortations applied, and no justice has established rewards for the good and punishments for the wicked.
Therefore, lest these unworthy, absurd, and pernicious consequences should follow for human affairs, he refuses to have foreknowledge of future things; and he confines the religious mind within these straits, so that it must choose one of two things: either that there is something in our will, or that there is foreknowledge of future things; since he judges that both cannot be, but that if one is affirmed, the other is taken away; if we choose foreknowledge of future things, the choice of the will is taken away; if we choose the choice of the will, foreknowledge of future things is taken away. And so he, being a great and learned man, and one who consulted most fully and most skillfully for human life, chose out of these two the free choice of the will;
and in order to confirm this, he denied the foreknowledge of future things; and thus, while he wishes to make men free, he made them sacrilegious. But the religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and by the faith of piety confirms both. How so? he says; for if there is foreknowledge of future things, all those things will follow which are linked together, until we arrive at the point where nothing is in our will. Further, if there is something in our will, by the same steps retraced we arrive at the point where there is no foreknowledge of future things. For through all those steps the argument runs back thus: if there is choice of the will, not all things come to pass by fate; if not all things come to pass by fate, there is not a certain order of all causes;
if there is no certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things to the foreknowing God, since things cannot happen except through preceding and efficient causes; if the order of things is not certain to the foreknowing God, not all things come to pass as he foreknew they would come; further, if not all things come to pass as they were foreknown by him to come, there is not, he says, in God foreknowledge of all future things. But we, against these sacrilegious and impious presumptions, say both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by will whatever we feel and know is done by us only when we are willing. Yet we do not say that all things come to pass by fate; nay, we say that nothing comes to pass by fate;
since we show that the name of fate, where it is usually placed by those who speak of it, that is, in the position of the stars when anyone is conceived or born, avails nothing, because the thing itself is asserted vainly. But the order of causes, in which the will of God has the greatest power, we neither deny, nor do we designate by the name of fate—unless perhaps we understand 'fatum' (fate) as derived from 'fari' (to speak), that is, from speaking. For we cannot deny that it is written in the holy Scriptures: 'God has spoken once; these two things have I heard: that power belongs to God, and to you, O Lord, belongs mercy; for you render to each one according to his works.' For what is said,
'He has spoken once,' is understood as 'immovably,' that is, unchangeably 'he speaks,' just as he knows unchangeably all things that are to be and that he himself is going to do. In this sense, then, we might call fate 'from speaking,' were it not that this name is already accustomed to be understood in another matter, toward which we do not wish the hearts of men to be inclined. But it does not follow that, if to God the order of all causes is certain, therefore nothing is in the choice of our will. For our very wills are themselves in the order of causes, which is certain to God and contained in his foreknowledge, since human wills too are causes of human works;
and thus he who foreknew all the causes of things could surely not, among those causes, be ignorant of our wills, which he foreknew to be the causes of our works. For even that which Cicero himself concedes, that nothing happens unless an efficient cause precedes, suffices to refute him in this question. For what does it help him that he says that nothing indeed happens without a cause, but that not every cause is fatal, because there is a fortuitous cause, there is a natural one, there is a voluntary one? It is enough that he confesses that everything which happens can happen only when a cause precedes.
For as to those causes which are called fortuitous, whence also fortune has received its name, we do not say that they are nothing, but that they are hidden; and we attribute them to the will either of the true God or of some spirits whatsoever; and the natural causes themselves we by no means sever from the will of him who is the author and founder of all nature. But the voluntary causes are either of God, or of angels, or of men, or of any animals whatsoever—if indeed those motions of souls devoid of reason, by which they do certain things according to their nature, when they either desire or avoid something, are to be called wills. And by the wills of angels I mean both of good ones, whom we call the angels of God, and of evil ones, whom we call the angels of the devil, or even demons:
so also the wills of men, both of the good, that is, and of the evil. And by this it is gathered that there are no efficient causes of all things which happen except voluntary ones, namely of that nature which is the spirit of life. For this air too, or wind, is called 'spirit'; but since it is a body, it is not the spirit of life. The Spirit of life, therefore, which quickens all things and is the creator of every body and of every created spirit, is himself God, a Spirit indeed uncreated. In his will is the supreme power, which aids the good wills of created spirits, judges the evil ones, orders all, and grants power to some, to others does not grant it. For just as he is the creator of all natures, so he is the giver of all powers, but not of wills.
For evil wills are not from him, since they are contrary to nature, which is from him. Bodies, therefore, are more subject to wills—some to our wills, that is, to those of all mortal living beings, and more to men's than to beasts'; but some to the wills of angels; yet all are most of all subject to the will of God, to whom all wills too are subjected, since they have no power except what he grants. The cause of things, therefore, which makes and is not made, is God; but the other causes both make and are made, such as are all created spirits, especially the rational ones. But corporeal causes, which are made rather than make, are not to be numbered among efficient causes, since they can do only what the wills of spirits do out of them.
In what way, then, does the order of causes, which is certain to the foreknowing God, bring it about that nothing is in our will, when our wills have a great place in that very order of causes? Let Cicero, then, contend with those who call this order of causes fatal, or rather who designate it by the name of fate—which we especially abhor on account of the word, which is not wont to be understood in the true sense. But as for the fact that he denies that the order of all causes is most certain and most fully known to the foreknowledge of God, we detest him more than the Stoics do. For either he denies that God exists—which indeed he attempted to do in the books On the Nature of the Gods under the introduced person of another;
or if he confesses that God exists, whom yet he denies to foreknow future things, even so he says nothing else than what that fool said in his heart: 'There is no God.' For he who is not foreknowing of all future things is assuredly not God. Wherefore our wills too have as much power as God willed and foreknew them to have; and therefore whatever power they have, they have most certainly, and what they are going to do, they themselves will altogether do, because he foreknew that they would have power and would do it, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived.
Wherefore, if it pleased me to apply the name of fate to anything, I would rather say that fate belongs to the weaker, being the will of the stronger who has him in his power, than that by that order of causes—which the Stoics call fate not in the customary sense, but in their own—the choice of our will is taken away. Whence neither is that necessity to be dreaded, in dreading which the Stoics labored to distinguish the causes of things so that they might withdraw some from necessity and subject others to it, and among those which they did not wish to be under necessity they placed our wills too, lest, forsooth, they should not be free if they were subjected to necessity.
For if that is to be called our necessity which is not in our power, but which accomplishes what it can even though we be unwilling—such as is the necessity of death—it is manifest that our wills, by which we live rightly or wrongly, are not under such a necessity. For we do many things which, if we were unwilling, we would certainly not do. To this belongs, first of all, the very act of willing; for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is not; for we would not will if we were unwilling. But if that be defined as necessity, according to which we say that it is necessary that something be so or come to pass so, I know not why we should fear it, lest it take away from us the liberty of the will.
For we do not place either the life of God or the foreknowledge of God under necessity, if we say that it is necessary for God always to live and to foreknow all things; just as neither is his power diminished when it is said that he cannot die or be deceived. For this he cannot do in such a way that, if he could, he would surely be of less power. For he is rightly called almighty, who nevertheless cannot die and cannot be deceived. For he is called almighty by doing what he wills, not by suffering what he does not will; which, if it happened to him, he would by no means be almighty. Hence, for this very reason, he cannot do certain things, because he is almighty. So likewise, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by free choice:
we both say what is without doubt true, and yet we do not on that account subject free choice itself to a necessity which takes away liberty. Our wills, therefore, exist, and they themselves accomplish whatever we do by willing, which would not come to pass if we were unwilling. But whatever anyone suffers unwillingly by the will of other men, even so the will avails—if not that man's will, yet a man's will; but the power is God's. (For if there were only a will and it could not do what it willed, it would be hindered by a more powerful will;
yet even so a will would not be anything but a will, nor another's, but the will of him who willed, even though he could not fulfill what he willed.) Whence whatever a man suffers contrary to his own will, he ought not to attribute to the wills of men or of angels or of any created spirit whatsoever, but rather to his who gives power to those who will. It is not, therefore, for this reason that there is nothing in our will, because God foreknew what was to be in our will. For he who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing. Further, if he who foreknew what was to be in our will foreknew, not indeed nothing, but something: assuredly, even with him foreknowing, there is something in our will.
Wherefore we are in no way compelled either, while retaining the foreknowledge of God, to take away the choice of the will, or, while retaining the choice of the will, to deny (which is impious) that God is foreknowing of future things; but we embrace both, we faithfully and truly confess both—the one, that we may believe well; the other, that we may live well. But one lives ill if one does not believe well concerning God. Wherefore far be it from us to deny his foreknowledge in order that we may will freely, by whose aid we are or shall be free.
Accordingly, laws, reproaches, exhortations, praises, and blames are not in vain, since he foreknew that these too would be; and they avail very greatly, as much as he foreknew that they would avail; and prayers avail to obtain those things which he foreknew that he would grant to those who pray; and justly have rewards been established for good deeds and punishments for sins. For a man does not sin because God foreknew that he would sin; nay rather, it is not doubted that the man himself sins when he sins, precisely because he, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived, foreknew that not fate, not fortune, not anything else, but that man himself would sin. And if he is unwilling, he assuredly does not sin; but if he shall have been unwilling to sin, this too God foreknew.
God, therefore, the most high and true, together with his Word and the Holy Spirit—which three are one—the one almighty God, creator and maker of every soul and of every body; by participation in whom are happy all who are happy by truth and not by vanity; who made man a rational animal of soul and body; who, when man sinned, neither permitted him to go unpunished nor abandoned him without mercy; who gave to the good and to the evil being even in common with stones, seminal life in common with trees, sensitive life in common with beasts, intellectual life in common with angels alone; from whom is every mode, every species, every order; from whom is measure, number, weight;
from whom is whatever exists naturally, of whatever kind it is, of whatever value it is; from whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the motions of seeds and of forms; who gave to the flesh also origin, beauty, health, fruitfulness of propagation, arrangement of members, the welfare of concord; who gave to the irrational soul too memory, sense, appetite, but to the rational soul in addition mind, intelligence, will; who left not only heaven and earth, not only angel and man, but not even the entrails of a tiny and contemptible living creature, nor the little feather of a bird, nor the little flower of a plant, nor the little leaf of a tree, without a harmony of their parts and a certain, as it were, peace:
in no way is he to be believed to have willed that the kingdoms of men, and their dominions and servitudes, should be foreign to the laws of his providence. Accordingly, let us see what were the morals of the Romans, and for what cause the true God—in whose power are earthly kingdoms too—deigned to aid them in enlarging their empire.
And that we might be able to discuss this more fully, we composed the preceding book too, as pertaining to this matter—namely, that in this affair there is no power belonging to those gods whom they thought should be worshiped even for trifling things—and also the earlier portions of the present volume, which we have brought thus far, concerning the removal of the question of fate, lest anyone to whom it had already been persuaded that the Roman empire was not spread and preserved by the worship of those gods should attribute it rather to some fate or other than to the most powerful will of the most high God.
The ancient and earliest Romans, therefore, as far as their history teaches and commends, although like other nations—except the one people of the Hebrews—they worshiped false gods and sacrificed victims not to God but to demons, nevertheless were 'greedy of praise, generous with money; they desired vast glory and honorable riches'; this they most ardently loved, for this they wished to live, for this they did not hesitate to die; all other desires they suppressed by this one immense desire. In short, their own fatherland, since to serve seemed inglorious but to rule and command glorious, they first with all zeal longed to be free, and then to be mistress.
由此便有這樣的情形：他們不堪王權的統治，「就為自己設立每年一任的職權和成對的統帥，這些人因『商議』（consulendo）而被稱為執政官（consules），而非因『稱王作主』（regnando atque dominando）而被稱為王或主」；儘管王（reges）其實似乎更宜於因「治理」（regendo）而得名，以致「王國」（regnum）出於「諸王」（reges），而諸王如前所述則出於「治理」（regendo）；然而王者的傲慢，被視為並非治理者的規範，也非商議者的仁慈，而是稱王作主者的驕橫。於是，塔奎尼烏斯王被逐、執政官設立之後，便隨之發生同一位作者在稱讚羅馬人時所記下的事，即「難以置信地可述說：國家一旦贏得自由，在短時間內成長了何等之多；
Hence it is that, not enduring kingly domination, 'they made for themselves annual commands and pairs of commanders, who were called consuls from consulting (consulendo), not kings or lords from reigning and lording it (regnando atque dominando)'; although kings too indeed seem better named from ruling (regendo), so that 'regnum' (kingdom) comes from 'reges' (kings), but kings, as has been said, from ruling (regendo); yet kingly pride was reckoned not the discipline of one ruling or the benevolence of one consulting, but the arrogance of one lording it. And so, with king Tarquin expelled and consuls established, there followed what the same author set down among the praises of the Romans, that 'it is incredible to relate how much the state, once liberty had been won, grew in a short time;
so great a desire of glory had come upon them.' This eagerness for praise, therefore, and desire of glory accomplished those many things to be marveled at—praiseworthy, that is, and glorious according to the estimation of men. The same Sallust praises great and illustrious men of his own times, Marcus Cato and Gaius Caesar, saying that for a long time that republic had no one great in virtue, but within his memory there had been those two men of immense virtue, though of differing characters. But among the praises of Caesar he set down that he longed for himself a great command, an army, a new war, where his virtue might shine forth. Thus it came to pass that in the prayers of men great in virtue it was wished that Bellona should rouse wretched nations to war and lash them with her bloody scourge, so that there might be a place where their virtue could shine forth.
This assuredly was what that eagerness for praise and desire of glory brought about. And so, first by love of liberty, and afterward also of domination and by desire of praise and glory, they did many great things. Their own distinguished poet renders testimony to both of these things; for thence he says: 'And Porsenna too was bidding them receive the ejected Tarquin, and was pressing the city with a mighty siege; the sons of Aeneas were rushing upon the sword for liberty.' Then, accordingly, it was a great thing for them either to die bravely or to live free. But when liberty had been won, so great a desire of glory had come upon them that liberty alone was too little unless domination too were sought, since it was held a great thing which, as if Jupiter were speaking, the same poet says:
'Nay, harsh Juno, who now wearies sea and lands and heaven with fear, shall change her counsels for the better, and together with me shall cherish the Romans, lords of the world and the toga-clad nation. So it is decreed. There shall come an age, as the lustra glide by, when the house of Assaracus shall crush Phthia and famous Mycenae in servitude, and shall rule over conquered Argos.' These things indeed Virgil, bringing in Jupiter as foretelling as it were future events, was himself already recalling as accomplished and beholding as present; but I wished to mention them for this reason—to show that the Romans so held domination after liberty that it was placed among their great praises.
Hence too comes that saying of the same poet, who, when he set the Romans' own proper arts of reigning and commanding and subjugating and warring down peoples above the arts of other nations, said: 'Others shall hammer out the breathing bronze more delicately—I grant it indeed—shall draw living countenances from the marble, shall plead causes better, and shall describe with the rod the courses of the sky and tell the rising stars: but you, O Roman, remember to rule the peoples with your sway (these shall be your arts), and to impose the custom of peace, to spare the subjected and to war down the proud.'
These arts they exercised the more skillfully in proportion as they gave themselves the less to pleasures and to the enervation of mind and body in coveting and increasing riches, and through riches to the corruption of morals, by plundering wretched citizens and lavishing upon base stage-players. Hence those who by now surpassed and abounded in the taint of such morals, when Sallust was writing these things and Virgil was singing them, sought after honors and glory not by those arts, but by tricks and deceptions. Whence the same author says: 'But at first ambition rather than avarice exercised the minds of men, which vice nevertheless was nearer to virtue. For the good man and the sluggard alike long for glory, honor, and command for themselves;
but the former,' he says, 'strives by the true way; the latter, because good arts are lacking to him, contends by tricks and deceptions.' These are those good arts—namely, to arrive at honor and glory and command through virtue, not through deceitful ambition; which nevertheless the good man and the sluggard alike long for themselves; but the former, that is, the good man, strives by the true way. Virtue is the way by which he strives, as toward the end of possession, that is, toward glory, honor, command. That the Romans had this implanted in them, even the temples of their gods indicate, which they established most closely joined together—of Virtue and of Honor—holding as gods the things that are given by God. Whence it can be understood what end they wished virtue to have, and to what those who were good referred it—namely, to honor;
for the wicked did not have it, although they desired to have the honor which they tried to obtain by evil arts, that is, by tricks and deceptions. Better praised was Cato. For of him he says: 'The less he sought glory, the more it followed him.' Since indeed glory, with desire of which those men were aflame, is the judgment of men thinking well of men; and therefore better is the virtue which is content with no human testimony except that of its own conscience. Whence the Apostle says: 'For our glory is this: the testimony of our conscience'; and in another place: 'But let each one prove his own work, and then he shall have glory in himself alone and not in another.'
Glory, therefore, and honor and command, which they longed for themselves and to which the good strove to attain by good arts, virtue ought not to follow, but virtue itself ought to be followed. For there is no true virtue except that which tends toward that end where is the good of man, than which there is none better. Whence even the honors which Cato sought he ought not to have sought, but the state, on account of his virtue, ought to have given them to him unsought. But since in that memory there were two Romans great in virtue, Caesar and Cato, the virtue of Cato seems to have been by far nearer to the truth than that of Caesar. Accordingly, of what sort the state then was, and of what sort it had formerly been, let us see in the very sentiment of Cato: 'Do not,' he says, 'suppose that our ancestors made the republic great from small by arms.
If it were so, we should possess it as far more beautiful. For indeed we have a greater abundance of allies and citizens, and moreover of arms and horses, than they had. But there were other things that made them great, which we have none of: at home industry, abroad a just rule, a mind free in deliberating, enslaved neither to wrongdoing nor to lust. In place of these we have luxury and greed, poverty in public and opulence in private; we praise riches, we pursue idleness; between the good and the bad there is no distinction; ambition seizes all the rewards of virtue. Nor is this to be wondered at:
for when each of you takes counsel separately for himself, when at home you are slaves to pleasures, and here to money or to favour, the result is that an assault is made upon a commonwealth left defenceless." Whoever hears these words of Cato, or of Sallust, supposes that all, or the greater part, of the ancient Romans who are praised were then such as these. It is not so; otherwise those things would not be true which the same writer himself likewise records, which I mentioned in the second book of this work, where he says that from the very beginning the injustices of the more powerful, and on account of them the secession of the plebs from the fathers, and other dissensions at home, existed, and that things were carried on with equitable and moderate right no longer than while, after the kings had been expelled and so long as there was fear of Tarquin, a grievous war which had been undertaken against Etruria on his account was being brought to an end;
but afterwards the fathers ruled over the plebs with a servile domination, flogged them after the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, to the exclusion of all the rest, held sole power in the state; and that of these discords—while the one party wished to dominate and the other refused to serve—the end came in the Second Punic War, because once more a grievous fear began to press upon them and to restrain their restless spirits from those disturbances by another and greater care, and to recall them to civil concord. But great things were administered by means of a certain few who were good after their own measure; and, those evils being tolerated and tempered, that state grew great through the providence of a few good men;
just as the same historian says that, as he read and heard of the many glorious deeds which the Roman people had done at home and in war, by sea and by land, it pleased him to consider what above all had sustained such great enterprises; since he knew that the Romans had often contended with small bands against great legions of the enemy, and had learned that wars had been waged with slender forces against wealthy kings; and, as he turned many things over in his mind, he said it was clear to him that the outstanding virtue of a few citizens had accomplished everything, and that thereby it came about that poverty overcame riches, and fewness the multitude.
"But after the state had been corrupted by luxury and idleness," he says, "the commonwealth in turn upheld by its own greatness the vices of its generals and magistrates." Therefore the virtue of the few who strove by the true way, that is, by virtue itself, towards glory, honour, and dominion, was praised even by Cato. Hence came that industry at home which Cato mentioned, whereby the public treasury was rich while private means were slender. Whence, when morals were corrupted, he set the opposite vice: poverty in public, opulence in private.
[XIII] For this reason, when the kingdoms of the East had long been illustrious, God willed that a Western kingdom should also arise, which, though later in time, should be more illustrious by the breadth and greatness of its empire; and this He granted especially to such men as these, for the subduing of the grievous evils of many nations—men who for the sake of honour, praise, and glory took thought for their fatherland, in which they sought that very glory, and did not hesitate to prefer its safety to their own, suppressing, for the sake of this one vice—that is, the love of praise—their greed for money and many other vices. For he sees more soundly who recognizes that even the love of praise is a vice, which did not escape the poet Horace, who says: 'You swell with love of praise: there are sure remedies which, read through three times purely, could restore you by their little book.'
And the same poet, in a lyric song, thus sang to check the lust for domination: 'You would reign more widely by taming a greedy spirit than if you should join Libya to distant Gades and both the Carthaginians should serve one master.' Yet nevertheless those who do not restrain their baser lusts by the faith of piety, through the Holy Spirit obtained and by the love of intelligible beauty, are at least less base—though not indeed already holy—by the desire of human praise and glory. Even Cicero could not dissemble on this point in those same books which he wrote concerning the commonwealth, where he speaks of forming the prince of the state, whom he says must be nourished by glory; and consequently he records that his forefathers had done many marvellous and illustrious things out of desire for glory.
To this vice, therefore, they not only offered no resistance, but even judged that it ought to be stirred up and kindled, thinking this to be useful to the commonwealth. Yet not even in his very books of philosophy does Cicero dissemble about this plague, where he confesses it more clearly than the light. For when he was speaking of such pursuits as ought surely to be followed with the aim of the true good, not for the windiness of human praise, he introduced this universal and general maxim: "Honour nourishes the arts, and all are kindled to their studies by glory; and those things always lie neglected which are disapproved by each and every one." [XIV] To this desire, therefore, it is without doubt better to offer resistance than to yield. For each one is the more like to God, the more he is cleansed from this uncleanness.
Although in this life it is not utterly rooted out of the heart, because it does not cease to tempt even souls that are making good progress: yet let the desire of glory at least be overcome by the love of righteousness, so that, if anywhere those things lie neglected which are disapproved by each and every one—if they are good, if they are right—then even the very love of human praise may blush and yield to the love of truth. For so hostile is this vice to godly faith, if there be in the heart a greater desire of glory than the fear or love of God, that the Lord said: 'How can you believe, who expect glory from one another, and do not seek the glory which is from God alone?' Likewise, concerning certain men who had believed in Him yet were afraid to confess Him openly, the evangelist says: 'They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.'
This the holy apostles did not do; for when they preached the name of Christ in those places where it was not only disapproved (as he says: 'And those things always lie neglected which are disapproved by each and every one'), but even held in the utmost detestation, holding fast to what they had heard from the good Master and Physician of minds—'If anyone shall deny Me before men, I will deny him before My Father who is in heaven, or before the angels of God'—amid curses and reproaches, amid the gravest persecutions and cruel punishments, they were not deterred from the preaching of human salvation by so great a clamour of human offence.
And when, by doing and saying divine things and living divinely, they had in a manner subdued hard hearts and brought in the peace of righteousness, a mighty glory attended them in the Church of Christ: yet they did not rest in it as in the end of their own virtue, but, referring even that very glory to the glory of God, by whose grace they were such, they used it also as a kindling to inflame those for whom they took thought towards the love of Him by whom they too were made such. For, lest they should be good for the sake of human glory, their Master had taught them, saying: 'Beware of doing your righteousness before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you shall have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.'
But again, lest, understanding this perversely, they should fear to please men and, by hiding that they are good, should profit them less, He showed for what end they ought to become known: 'Let your works,' He says, 'shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven.' Not therefore 'to be seen by them,' that is, with this intention, that you should wish them to be turned towards you, because through yourselves you are nothing; but 'that they may glorify your Father who is in heaven,' being turned towards whom they may become what you are. These the martyrs followed, who surpassed the Scaevolas and Curtii and Decii, not by inflicting punishments upon themselves, but by enduring those inflicted upon them, and that by true virtue, since by true piety, and by their innumerable multitude.
But since those men were in the earthly city, before whom the end of all their offices on its behalf was set as its safety and its kingdom, not in heaven but on earth; not in eternal life, but in the departure of the dying and the succession of those about to die—what else should they love but glory, by which they wished even after death to live, as it were, in the mouths of those who praised them? [XV] To those, therefore, to whom God was not going to give eternal life with His holy angels in His heavenly city—to whose fellowship true piety leads, which renders the service of religion, which the Greeks call latreia, to none but the one true God—if He were to grant them not even this earthly glory of a most excellent empire:
then no reward would be rendered for their good arts, that is, for the virtues by which they strove to attain to so great a glory. For concerning such men, who seem to do some good for this end, that they may be glorified by men, the Lord Himself says: 'Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.' So these men too despised their private possessions for the sake of the common thing, that is, the commonwealth, and for the sake of its treasury; they resisted greed, they took counsel for their fatherland with free counsel, being subject neither to wrongdoing according to their own laws nor to lust; by all these arts, as by a true way, they strove towards honours, dominion, and glory;
they have been honoured among almost all nations, they have imposed the laws of their empire upon many nations, and to this day they are glorious in letters and history among almost all peoples: there is no reason for them to complain of the justice of the most high and true God; they have received their reward. [XVI] But the reward of the saints is far other, of those who even here endure reproaches for the truth of God, which is hateful to the lovers of this world. That city is everlasting; there no one is born, because no one dies; there is true and full felicity, not a goddess, but a gift of God; thence we have received a pledge of faith, so long as, on pilgrimage, we sigh after its beauty; there the sun does not rise upon the good and the evil, but the Sun of righteousness shields the good alone;
there it will not require great industry to enrich a public treasury with slender private means, where the common treasure is truth. Accordingly, it was not only that such a reward might be rendered to such men that the Roman empire was extended for human glory; but also that the citizens of that eternal city, so long as they are here on pilgrimage, might carefully and soberly consider those examples, and see how great a love is owed to the heavenly fatherland for the sake of eternal life, if so great a love was given to the earthly one by its own citizens for the sake of the glory of men. [XVII] For as regards this mortal life, which is led and finished in a few days, what does it matter under whose rule a man who is to die may live, provided that those who rule do not compel him to impious and unjust deeds?
Or did the Romans really do any harm to the nations whom they subdued and upon whom they imposed their laws, except that this was accomplished with an enormous slaughter of wars? For if it had been done by concord, the very same thing would have been done with better success; but there would have been no glory for the triumphant. For the Romans too did not fail to live under their own laws, which they imposed on the rest. If this had been done without Mars and Bellona, so that Victory too should have no place—no one conquering where no one had fought—would not the condition of the Romans and of the other nations be one and the same?
especially if that had been done at once which was afterwards done most graciously and humanely, namely, that all who belonged to the Roman empire should receive the fellowship of citizenship and be Roman citizens, and thus that should be common to all which was before the possession of a few; provided only that the plebs which had no lands of its own should live at the public expense, whose sustenance would be more graciously provided by good administrators of the commonwealth through concord than extorted from the conquered. For as to safety and good morals, or even the very dignities of men, I do not at all see what difference it makes that some have conquered and others have been conquered, beyond that most empty pomp of human glory, in which those have received their reward who burned with an enormous desire for it and waged burning wars.
For do not their fields pay tribute? Is it permitted to them to learn what is not permitted to others? Are there not many senators in other lands who do not even know Rome by sight? Take away boasting, and what are all men but men? But if the perversity of the age were to allow that the better should be more honoured: even so, human honour ought not to be reckoned a great thing, because it is smoke of no weight. But let us use, even in these matters, the benefit of the Lord our God;
let us consider how much those men despised, what they endured, what desires they subdued for the sake of human glory, who deserved to receive it as the reward of such virtues; and let this too avail for us to crush our pride, so that, since that city in which it is promised that we shall reign is as far distant from this one as heaven is distant from earth—eternal life from temporal joy, solid glory from empty praises, the fellowship of angels from the fellowship of mortals, the light of Him who made the sun and moon from the light of the sun and moon—the citizens of so great a fatherland may seem to themselves to have done nothing great, if for the attaining of it they have done some good work or endured some evils, since those men did so great things, endured so great things, for this earthly fatherland already attained; especially because the remission of sins, which gathers citizens to the eternal fatherland, has something to which, through a certain shadow, that Romulean asylum was like, in which the impunity of offences of every kind gathered together the multitude by which that city was to be founded.
[XVIII] What great thing, then, is it to despise, for the sake of that eternal and heavenly fatherland, all the allurements of this world, however pleasant, if for the sake of this temporal and earthly one Brutus could even kill his sons—a thing which that heavenly one compels no man to do? But surely it is more difficult to slay one's sons than to do what must be done for this heavenly fatherland: namely, either to give to the poor those things which seemed to be gathered and kept for one's sons, or, if a temptation arise which compels this to be done for the sake of faith and righteousness, to lose them. For it is not earthly riches that make either us or our sons happy—riches which must either be lost while we live, or, when we are dead, be possessed by those we know not, or perhaps by those we would not have possess them;
but God makes them happy, who is the true opulence of minds. As for Brutus, because he killed his sons, even the poet who praises him bears witness to his unhappiness. For he says: 'And the father shall call his sons, who stir up new wars, to punishment for the sake of fair liberty—unhappy man, however later generations shall relate those deeds.' But in the following verse he consoled the unhappy one: 'The love of fatherland prevails, and the boundless desire for praises.' These are those two things, liberty and the desire of human praise, which drove the Romans to wondrous deeds. If, then, for the liberty of men who were to die, and for the desire of praises which are sought from mortals, sons could be slain by a father:
what great thing is it, if for the sake of true liberty, which makes us free from the dominion of iniquity and of death and of the devil—and not out of desire for human praises, but out of love for the men to be set free, not from King Tarquin, but from the demons and the prince of demons—not sons are slain, but Christ's poor are numbered among sons? If another Roman leader too, surnamed Torquatus, slew his son—not because he had fought against his fatherland, but even for his fatherland, yet because against his own command, that is, against what his father the commander had commanded, having been challenged by the enemy and having fought out of youthful ardour, though he had won—lest there be more evil in the example of a command despised than good in the glory of an enemy slain:
why should those boast, who, for the laws of the immortal fatherland, despise earthly goods which are loved far less than sons? If Furius Camillus freed even an ungrateful fatherland—from whose neck he had thrust off the yoke of its most bitter enemies, the Veientes, and by whom he had been condemned by his rivals—freed it again from the Gauls, because he had none better where he might live more gloriously:
why should he be extolled, as if he had done some great thing, who perhaps, having in the Church suffered from carnal enemies the gravest injury of dishonour, did not go over to her enemies the heretics, nor himself found some heresy against her, but rather defended her, as much as he could, from the most pernicious depravity of the heretics—since there is no other Church, not where one may live in the glory of men, but where eternal life may be acquired?
If Mucius, that peace might be made with King Porsenna, who was pressing the Romans with a most grievous war, because he could not kill Porsenna himself and, being deceived, killed another in his stead, stretched out his right hand over a burning altar before that king's eyes, saying that many such men as he saw before him had sworn together for his destruction—so that the king, shuddering at his fortitude and at the conspiracy of such men, without any hesitation withdrew himself from that war, peace being made: who shall reckon to the kingdom of heaven his own merits, if for its sake, not one hand, and not doing this to himself of his own accord, but suffering it while some persecutor pursues him, he shall spend his whole body in the flames?
If Curtius, armed and on a spurring horse, cast himself headlong into a yawning chasm of the earth, serving the oracles of his gods, because they had commanded that there should be sent thither whatever the Romans had best, and they could understand nothing else than that they excelled in men and arms—whence, forsooth, it followed that, at the gods' bidding, an armed man should be hurled to that destruction: what great thing shall he say he has done for the eternal fatherland, who, having suffered some enemy of his faith, not casting himself of his own accord into such a death, but sent by that enemy, shall have perished; since indeed from his Lord, who is likewise the King of his fatherland, he has received a surer oracle: 'Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul'?
If the Decii, in a manner consecrating themselves to be slain by certain solemn words, devoted themselves, so that by their falling and appeasing the wrath of the gods with their own blood the Roman army might be freed: in no way shall the holy martyrs be proud, as though they had done anything worthy for a share in that fatherland, where felicity is eternal and true, if, even to the shedding of their own blood, they have striven—loving, not only their brethren for whom it was shed, but even those very enemies by whom it was shed, as it was commanded them—with the faith of love and the love of faith?
If Marcus Pulvillus, while dedicating the temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, when the death of his son was falsely reported to him by the envious—so that, disturbed by that report, he might withdraw and thus his colleague might obtain the glory of the dedication—so despised it that he even ordered his son to be cast out unburied (so had the desire of glory conquered the grief of bereavement in his heart): what great thing shall he say he has done for the preaching of the holy Gospel, by which the citizens of the heavenly fatherland are freed and gathered from diverse errors, to whom the Lord, when he was anxious about the burial of his father, said: 'Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead'? If Marcus
Regulus, that he might not deceive his most cruel enemies by his oath, returned to them from Rome itself, because—as he is reported to have answered the Romans who wished to keep him—after he had been in slavery to the Africans, he could not hold there the dignity of an honourable citizen; and the Carthaginians, because he had acted against them in the Roman senate, put him to death with the gravest tortures: are not these torments to be despised for the faith of that fatherland to whose blessedness faith itself leads? Or what shall be rendered to the Lord for all the things which He has rendered, if a man shall have suffered such things for the faith which is owed to Him, as Regulus suffered for the faith which he owed to his most pernicious enemies?
How shall a Christian dare to exalt himself over voluntary poverty, that in the pilgrimage of this life he may walk the more unencumbered on the way which leads to the fatherland, where the true riches are God Himself, when he hears or reads that Lucius Valerius, who died in his consulship, was so poor that his burial was provided for by money contributed by the people? Let him hear or read that Quintius Cincinnatus, when he possessed four iugera of land and tilled them with his own hands, was brought from the plough to be made dictator—an honour surely greater than that of consul—and, having conquered the enemy and won immense glory, remained in the same poverty?
Or what great thing shall he proclaim himself to have done, who has been seduced by no reward of this world from the fellowship of that eternal fatherland, when he has learned that Fabricius could not be torn away, by the great gifts of Pyrrhus, king of the Epirotes, nor even by the promised fourth part of his kingdom, from the Roman city, and preferred to remain there in his poverty as a private man? For as to that fact, that although they possessed a commonwealth—that is, the thing of the people, the thing of the fatherland, the common thing—most opulent and most wealthy, they were themselves so poor in their own homes that one of them, who had already been consul twice, was expelled from that senate of poor men by a censorial mark, because he was found to have ten pounds of silver in vessels;
so those same men were poor, by whose triumphs the public treasury was enriched: do not all Christians, who with a more excellent purpose make their riches common, according to what is written in the Acts of the Apostles, that distribution should be made to each one as each has need, and that no one should call anything his own, but that all things should be common to them—do they not understand that they ought on this account to be puffed up with no boasting, doing this for the obtaining of the fellowship of angels, when those men did something almost like it for the preserving of the glory of the Romans?
These and other such things, if any of this kind are found in their writings, when would they have become so known, when would they have been proclaimed with such great fame, unless the Roman empire, extended far and wide, had been increased by magnificent successes? Accordingly, through that empire, so wide and so long-lasting, illustrious and glorious by the virtues of such great men, both the reward which they sought was rendered to their intention, and to us are set forth examples of a necessary admonition, so that, if we have not held, for the most glorious city of God, those virtues to which these—which they held for the glory of the earthly city—are in some way similar, we may be pricked with shame;
but if we have held them, we should not be lifted up with pride; since, as the apostle says, 'the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us.' But for human glory and for the present time, the life of those men was deemed sufficiently worthy.
Whence also the Jews, who slew Christ, since the New Testament reveals what was veiled in the Old—namely, that the one true God should be worshipped, not for earthly and temporal benefits, which divine providence grants indiscriminately to good and bad, but for eternal life and perpetual gifts and the fellowship of that same heavenly city—were most justly given over to the glory of these men, so that those who by whatever virtues sought and acquired earthly glory should overcome those who by great vices slew and rejected the Giver of true glory and of the eternal city. [XIX] There is indeed a difference between the desire of human glory and the desire of domination.
For although it is an easy slope, that he who is too much delighted by human glory should also ardently affect to dominate, yet those who covet even the true glory of human praises give heed not to displease those who judge well. For there are many good things in morals, of which many judge well, although many do not possess them; through those good things of morals men strive after glory and empire or domination, of which Sallust says: "But he strives by the true way." But whoever, without the desire of glory, by which a man fears to displease those who judge well, desires to dominate and to command, most often seeks to obtain what he loves even through the most open crimes.
Accordingly, he who covets glory either strives by the true way, or certainly "contends by wiles and deceits," wishing to seem to be good, which he is not. And therefore for one who possesses the virtues it is a great virtue to despise glory, because contempt of it is in the sight of God, but is not laid open to human judgment. For whatever he shall do before the eyes of men, whereby he may appear a despiser of glory, if it be believed that he does it for greater praise—that is, for greater glory—there is no way by which he can show to the senses of those who suspect that it is otherwise than they suspect.
But he who despises the judgments of those who praise, despises also the rashness of those who suspect, whose salvation nevertheless, if he is truly good, he does not despise; since he is of so great righteousness—he who has his virtues from the Spirit of God—that he loves even his very enemies, and so loves them that he wishes those who hate or disparage him to be corrected and to become his consorts, not in the earthly fatherland, but in the heavenly one; while as for those who praise him, although he thinks little of the fact that they praise him, yet he does not think little of the fact that they love him, nor does he wish to deceive those who praise, lest he beguile those who love; and therefore he urges ardently that rather He should be praised from whom a man has whatever in him is justly praised.
But he who, being a despiser of glory, is greedy for domination, surpasses the beasts, whether in the vices of cruelty or of luxury. Certain Romans were such. For, having lost care for their reputation, they did not lack the desire of domination. History discloses that many were such; but the summit and, as it were, a certain citadel of this vice was first attained by Nero Caesar, whose luxury was so great that nothing manly was thought to be feared from him; whose cruelty was so great that nothing soft was believed to be in him, had it not been known. Yet even to such men the power of domination is not given except by the providence of the most high God, when He judges human affairs worthy of such masters. The divine utterance concerning this matter is plain, the Wisdom of God speaking: 'Through me kings reign, and tyrants through me hold the earth.'
But lest tyrants be thought to be, not the worst and wicked kings, but rather men called brave by the ancient meaning of the word (whence Virgil says: 'It shall be part of my peace to have touched the tyrant's right hand'), it is said most plainly in another place concerning God: 'Because He makes a hypocrite to reign on account of the perversity of the people.' Wherefore, although I have set forth as best I could why the one true and just God helped the Romans, who were good according to a certain standard of the earthly city, to attain the glory of so great an empire:
there may nevertheless be another and more hidden cause, arising from the diverse merits of the human race, better known to God than to us. Meanwhile this is agreed among all the truly pious: that no one can have true virtue without true piety, that is, without the true worship of the true God; nor is that virtue true when it is enslaved to human glory. Yet those who are not citizens of the eternal city, which in our sacred writings is called the City of God, are more useful to the earthly city when they possess even such virtue as this than if they lacked even this. But those who, endowed with true piety, live good lives, if they have the knowledge of ruling peoples, then nothing is more fortunate for human affairs than that they should, by God's mercy, hold power.
Such men, moreover, attribute whatever virtues they can possess in this life to nothing but the grace of God, who has given them to those who willed, believed, and asked; and at the same time they understand how far they fall short of that perfection of righteousness which exists in the fellowship of those holy angels, to which they strive to conform themselves. However much virtue may be praised and proclaimed that, without true piety, is enslaved to the glory of men, it is in no way to be compared with the small beginnings of the saints, whose hope is placed in the grace and mercy of the true God.
[XX] Philosophers who place the goal of human good in virtue itself are accustomed, in order to shame certain other philosophers who indeed approve of the virtues but measure them by the standard of bodily pleasure and think that pleasure is to be sought for its own sake, but the virtues for the sake of pleasure — such philosophers are accustomed to paint a certain picture in words, in which Pleasure sits like some dainty queen upon a royal throne, and the virtues are set beneath her as her handmaids, watching her nod, so as to do whatever she commands: she bids Prudence make vigilant inquiry how Pleasure may reign and be kept safe;
she bids Justice bestow whatever benefits she can toward securing the friendships necessary for bodily advantages, and do injury to none, lest, by offending the laws, pleasure be unable to live secure; she bids Fortitude, if pain befall the body which does not drive it to death, hold fast her mistress, that is, pleasure, bravely in the thought of the mind, so that by recollection of former delights she may soothe the stings of present pain; she bids Temperance take only so much food, and whatever else delights, that health be not disturbed by any harm through excess, and that pleasure — which the Epicureans place at its greatest even in bodily health — be not gravely offended.
Thus the virtues, with all the dignity of their glory, will serve Pleasure as though she were some imperious and dishonourable strumpet. They say there is nothing more ignominious and deformed than this picture, and nothing the sight of good men can less endure; and they say truly. But I do not think the picture would be of sufficient becoming dignity even if it were painted in such a way that the virtues serve human glory. For although glory herself is not a dainty woman, she is puffed up and has much emptiness. Whence it is not worthy of her that a certain solidity and firmness of the virtues should serve her, so that Prudence should foresee nothing, Justice distribute nothing, Fortitude endure nothing, Temperance moderate nothing, except with a view to pleasing men and serving windy glory.
Nor can those defend themselves from this foulness who, while despising the judgments of others as though they were despisers of glory, seem wise to themselves and please themselves. For their virtue, if indeed there is any, is in some other way subjected to human praise; for he who pleases himself is himself no less a man. But he who, with true piety toward God, whom he loves, believes and hopes in Him, fixes his attention more upon those things in which he displeases himself than upon those things — if any such are in him — which please not so much himself as the truth; nor does he attribute that whereby he can now please to anything but the mercy of Him whom he fears to displease, giving thanks for the things already healed, and pouring out prayers for those still to be healed.
[XXI] Since these things are so, let us attribute the power of granting kingdom and empire to none but the true God, who gives felicity in the kingdom of heaven only to the pious, but earthly kingdom both to the pious and the impious, as it pleases Him, to whom nothing pleases unjustly. For although we have said something which He willed to be open to us, nevertheless it is a great matter and far exceeds our human powers to sift the hidden things and by clear examination to judge the merits of kingdoms. Therefore that one true God, who neither in judgment nor in aid deserts the human race, gave a kingdom to the Romans when He willed and as much as He willed;
He who gave it to the Assyrians, or even to the Persians, by whom — as their own writings maintain — only two gods are worshipped, one good and one evil (to say nothing of the Hebrew people, of whom I have already said as much as seemed sufficient, who worshipped none but the one God even when they reigned). He therefore who gave to the Persians harvests without the worship of the goddess Segetia, who gave other gifts of the earth without the worship of all those gods whom these men set, one over each single thing, or even several over single things — it was He who gave them their kingdom also, without the worship of those by whose worship these men believed they had reigned. So too with individual men: He who gave to Marius gave also to Gaius Caesar; He who gave to Augustus gave also to Nero; He who gave to the Vespasians, father and son, the most gracious of emperors, gave also to the most cruel Domitian;
and — so that it be not necessary to go through them one by one — He who gave to Constantine the Christian, gave also to the apostate Julian, whose excellent natural gifts a sacrilegious and detestable curiosity, born of the love of ruling, deceived; for he was given over to vain oracles when, trusting in the security of victory, he burned the ships that carried the necessary supplies; then, pressing on hotly with immoderate rashness, and soon slain in enemy territory as the just reward of his temerity, he left the army in want, so that it could not otherwise escape thence unless, against that omen of the god Terminus of whom we spoke in the previous book, the boundaries of the Roman empire were moved. For the god Terminus, who had not yielded to Jupiter, yielded to necessity. Plainly the one true God rules and governs these things as He pleases;
and if by hidden causes, are they therefore unjust? [XXII] So too the very times of wars, just as it lies in His judgment and just decree and mercy either to afflict or to console the human race, so that some end sooner, others later. The war against the pirates was finished by Pompey, the third Punic war by Scipio, with incredible speed and shortness of time. The war of the fugitive gladiators too, although many Roman generals and two consuls were defeated and Italy horribly worn down and laid waste, was nevertheless in the third year, after much had been consumed, itself consumed.
The Picentes, Marsi, and Peligni — nations not foreign but Italian — after a long and most devoted servitude beneath the Roman yoke, attempted to raise their heads to liberty, when already many nations had been subjugated to the Roman empire and Carthage destroyed; in which Italian war, though the Romans were very often defeated, and two consuls and other most noble senators perished, this evil was nevertheless not drawn out over a long time; for the fifth year brought it to an end. But the second Punic war, with the greatest losses and calamity to the republic, wore down and almost consumed the Roman strength through eighteen years; in two battles nearly seventy thousand Romans fell. The first Punic war was carried through over twenty-three years;
the Mithridatic war forty. And lest anyone suppose that the early Romans were stronger for waging wars more swiftly, the Samnite war — in earlier times, much praised for every kind of virtue — was drawn out for nearly fifty years; in which war the Romans were so defeated that they were even sent under the yoke. But because they did not love glory for the sake of justice, but seemed rather to love justice for the sake of glory, they broke the peace that had been made and the treaty.
I recall these things for this reason: because many, ignorant of past events, and some even dissemblers of their own knowledge, if they see some war in Christian times drawn out a little longer, immediately leap most insolently upon our religion, exclaiming that, if it did not exist and the divinities were worshipped in the old rite, then by that Roman valour which, with the help of Mars and Bellona, brought so many wars to a swift conclusion, this one too would be finished most quickly.
Let those, then, who have read recall how long-lasting wars, with how varied outcomes and how mournful disasters, were waged by the ancient Romans — as the whole world is wont, like a most storm-tossed sea, to be flung about by the varied tempest of such evils — and let them at some time confess what they are unwilling to confess, and not destroy themselves and deceive the ignorant with tongues raging against God. [XXIII] Yet what God, in our own memory in most recent time, did marvellously and mercifully, they do not commemorate with thanksgiving, but rather strive, as far as in them lies, to bury it, if it could be done, in the oblivion of all men; which, if it be passed over in silence by us, we shall likewise be ungrateful.
When Radagaisus, king of the Goths, with a huge and monstrous host, already stationed in the vicinity of the City, was threatening the Roman throats, in a single day he was so swiftly conquered that, without so much as one Roman being — I will not say killed — but even wounded, far more than a hundred thousand of his army was laid low, and he himself, soon captured, was put to death by the punishment he deserved. For if that most impious man, with such great and such impious forces, had entered Rome, whom would he have spared? To what places of the martyrs would he have shown honour? In what person would he have feared God? Whose blood would he not have wished to be shed, whose chastity would he have wished left inviolate?
And what cries would these men have raised on behalf of their gods, with what insolence would they have boasted, that he had therefore conquered, therefore had been able to do such great things, because by daily sacrifices he placated and invited the gods — which the Christian religion did not allow the Romans to do? For as he was already drawing near to these regions, where by the nod of the supreme Majesty he was crushed, when his fame was spreading everywhere, it was said among us at Carthage that the pagans believed, spread abroad, and boasted this: that he, protected and aided by friendly gods, to whom he was reported to sacrifice daily, could in no way be conquered by those who neither offered such sacrifices to the Roman gods nor permitted them to be offered by anyone.
And these wretched men do not give thanks for so great a mercy of God, who — when He had determined to chastise the morals of men, deserving to suffer graver things by a barbarian irruption — tempered His indignation with such great gentleness that He first caused that man to be marvellously conquered, lest glory be given to the demons, to whom it was established he offered supplication, for the overthrow of weak souls; and then that Rome should be taken by those barbarians who, contrary to all the custom of wars waged before, out of reverence for the Christian religion protected those fleeing to the holy places, and so opposed, in the Christian name, the very demons and the rites of impious sacrifices in which that man had presumed, that they seemed to wage a far more atrocious war with them than with men;
thus the true Lord and governor of things both scourged the Romans with mercy, and by the incredible conquest of those who supplicated demons, showed that such sacrifices are not even necessary for the safety of present things, so that by those who do not obstinately contend but prudently attend, the true religion may not be forsaken on account of present necessities, but rather be held with the most faithful expectation of eternal life. [XXIV] For we do not call certain Christian emperors happy for this reason: because they reigned longer, or because, while reigning, they left their sons to succeed them by a peaceful death, or because they subdued the enemies of the republic, or because they were able both to guard against and to crush hostile citizens rising up against them.
These and other rewards or solaces of this toilsome life even certain worshippers of demons have deserved to receive, who do not belong to the kingdom of God, to which these emperors belong; and this too was done by His mercy, lest those who believed in Him should desire these things as though they were the highest goods. But we call them happy if they rule justly; if, amid the tongues of those who exalt them on high and the obsequies of those who salute them too humbly, they are not lifted up, but remember that they are men; if they make their power the handmaid of God's majesty, to extend His worship as widely as possible; if they fear, love, and worship God; if they love more that kingdom where they need not fear to have consorts; if they are slower to punish, readier to pardon;
if they exercise that same punishment for the necessity of ruling and protecting the republic, and not for the sating of the hatreds of enmity; if they grant that same pardon not for the impunity of iniquity, but for the hope of correction; if, when they are compelled for the most part to decree harsh measures, they compensate with the gentleness of mercy and the generosity of benefactions; if their luxury is the more restrained the freer it could have been; if they prefer to rule over depraved desires rather than over any peoples whatever; and if they do all these things not for the ardour of empty glory, but for the love of eternal felicity; if they do not neglect to offer to their true God, for their sins, the sacrifice of humility and compassion and prayer.
Such Christian emperors we call happy: for the present in hope, hereafter in reality itself, when that which we await shall have come. [XXV] For the good God, lest men who believed that He must be worshipped for the sake of eternal life should suppose that no one could attain these lofty heights and earthly kingdoms unless he supplicated demons — because these spirits have great power in such matters — filled the emperor Constantine, who did not supplicate demons but worshipped the true God Himself, with such great earthly gifts as no one would dare to wish for; to whom He also granted to found a city, an ally to the Roman empire, as it were a daughter of Rome herself, but without any temple or image of the demons.
He reigned long, and as sole Augustus held and defended the whole Roman world; in administering and waging wars he was most victorious, in crushing tyrants he prospered in all things, and, full of years, he died of sickness and old age, leaving his sons reigning. But again, lest any emperor should be a Christian in order to deserve the felicity of Constantine — since everyone ought to be a Christian for the sake of eternal life — He took away Jovian far more quickly than Julian; He permitted Gratian to be slain by a tyrant's sword, far more gently indeed than the great Pompey, who worshipped, as it were, the Roman gods. For Pompey could not be avenged by Cato, whom he had left, in a manner of speaking, heir of the civil war;
but the latter, although pious souls do not require such solaces, was avenged by Theodosius, whom he had made a partner in the kingdom, though he had a little brother, being more eager for faithful fellowship than for excessive power. [XXVI] Whence Theodosius not only kept toward him, while living, the faith he owed, but even after his death, when his little brother Valentinian had been driven out by his slayer Maximus, received the orphan into his own share of the empire as a Christian, guarded him with a father's affection — one whom, destitute of all resources, he could have removed with no trouble, if he had burned more with the desire of ruling more widely than with the love of doing good; whence rather, preserving his imperial dignity, he received and consoled him with very humanity and grace.
Then, when that success made Maximus terrible, Theodosius, in the straits of his cares, did not lapse into sacrilegious and unlawful inquiries, but sent to John, established in the desert of Egypt — whom, as fame increasingly spread, he had learned to be a servant of God endowed with the spirit of prophecy — and from him received the most certain announcement of victory.
Soon, having destroyed the tyrant Maximus, he restored the boy Valentinian, with most merciful reverence, to those parts of his empire from which he had been driven; and when Valentinian was shortly afterward destroyed, whether by treachery or by some other means or mishap, Theodosius — having again received a prophetic response and being certain in faith — overthrew another tyrant, Eugenius, who had been unlawfully substituted in place of that emperor, fighting against his most robust army more by praying than by striking.
Soldiers who were present reported to us that whatever they hurled was wrenched from their hands, when a vehement wind went from the side of Theodosius against the adversaries and not only most violently snatched away whatever was thrown at them, but even turned their own weapons back upon their bodies. Whence the poet Claudian too, although a stranger to the name of Christ, said in his praises: 'O too beloved of God, for whom the heaven wages war, and the winds, sworn in league, come at the trumpet-call!'
But the victor, just as he had believed and foretold, cast down the images of Jupiter which had been, as it were, consecrated against him by I know not what rites and set up in the Alps; and their thunderbolts, because they were of gold, he cheerfully and kindly bestowed upon the couriers who jested (as that joy permitted) and said they wished to be struck by them. The sons of his enemies, whom the onslaught of war — not by his own command — had carried off, though not yet Christians, when they fled to the church, he willed to become Christians on this occasion, and loved them with Christian charity, nor deprived them of their goods, but increased their honours. In no one after victory did he allow private enmities to prevail.
Civil wars he did not, like Cinna and Marius and Sulla and others such, wish to end even when they were ended, but rather grieved that they had arisen than wished, once they were ended, to harm anyone. Amid all these things, from the very beginning of his reign, he did not cease to come to the aid, with most just and merciful laws, of the Church laboring against the impious, which Valens the heretic, favoring the Arians, had grievously afflicted; he rejoiced to be a member of that Church more than to reign on earth. He commanded the images of the heathen to be everywhere overthrown, well understanding that earthly gifts too lie not in the power of demons, but of the true God.
But what was more admirable than his religious humility, when, in the case of the most grievous crime of the Thessalonians — for which, at the intercession of the bishops, he had already promised pardon — he was compelled by the tumult of certain men who clung to him to take vengeance, and, restrained by ecclesiastical discipline, did penance in such a way that the people, praying for him, wept more to see the imperial highness prostrate than they had feared it, wrathful, when they sinned? These and any similar good works, which it would be long to recount, that man bore away out of this temporal vapor of any lofty summit and human eminence; of which works the reward is eternal felicity, whose giver is God to the truly pious alone.
But the other summits or supports of this life — like the very world, light, air, lands, waters, fruits, and man's own soul, body, senses, mind, life — He lavishes upon both good and evil; among which is also any greatness of empire whatever, which He dispenses for the governance of the times. Accordingly I now see that answer must also be made to those who, refuted and convicted by the most manifest proofs — by which it is shown that the multitude of false gods is of no profit for those temporal things which alone the foolish long to possess — attempt to assert that the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of the utility of this present life, but for the sake of that which is to be after death.
For to those who, for the sake of the friendships of this world, wish to worship vain things, and complain that they are not permitted their childish notions, I think a sufficient answer has been made in these five books. Three of the earlier of which, when I had published them and they had begun to be in the hands of many, I heard that certain men were preparing to write some sort of reply against them. Then it was brought to me that they had already written, but were seeking a time when they could publish without danger. Whom I admonish not to wish for what is not expedient for them. For it is easy for anyone to seem to have replied, who has been unwilling to keep silent. Or what is more loquacious than vanity? which, though it cannot do what truth can, yet, if it wishes, can even shout more than truth.
But let them consider all things diligently, and if perchance, judging without party bias, they perceive that such things are of a kind that can rather be stirred up than shaken loose by most shameless garrulity and by a levity that is, as it were, satyric or mimic, let them restrain their trifles and choose rather to be corrected by the prudent than praised by the shameless. For if they await a time not for the liberty of speaking truth, but for the license of speaking evil, God forbid that there befall them what Tullius says of a certain man who was called happy by the license of sinning: 'O wretched man, to whom it was permitted to sin!'
Whence whoever he is who thinks himself happy by the license of speaking evil, will be much happier if this be not at all permitted to him; since, laying aside the emptiness of boastfulness, even at this time he could, as though from a zeal for giving counsel, contradict whatever he wished, and, as far as they are able, hear from those whom he consults, in friendly discussion, what he ought to hear — honourably, gravely, freely.