神聖原理與論逼迫者之死 第 1 章

Preface. Men of great and excellent genius, when they had devoted themselves wholly to learning, despising all private and public affairs, applied whatever toil could be expended to the pursuit of investigating the truth; reckoning it far more glorious to search out and to know the principle of things human and divine than to be bound up in heaping up riches or in piling up honours. By such things—since they are frail and earthly and pertain only to the care of the body—no one can be made better, no one more righteous. Those men, indeed, were most worthy of that knowledge of the truth which they so greatly desired to know; and that to such a degree that they set it before all things.

For it is established that some cast away their family possessions and renounced all pleasures, so that, naked and unencumbered, they might follow the sole and naked truth; and so greatly did the name and authority of truth prevail among them that they proclaimed the reward of the highest good to lie in truth itself. Yet they neither attained what they sought, and at the same time wasted their labour and diligence; because truth—that is, the secret of the most high God who made all things—cannot be grasped by one's own genius and senses; otherwise there would be no difference between God and man, if human thought could attain to the counsels and dispositions of that eternal majesty.

Since, then, it could not come to pass that the divine reason should become known to man through himself, God did not suffer man, in his seeking of the light of wisdom, to wander any longer, nor to roam through inextricable darkness without any fruit of his labour; He opened his eyes at last, and made the knowledge of the truth His own gift: that He might both show that human wisdom is nothing, and reveal to the erring and wandering man the way of attaining immortality. But since few make use of this heavenly benefit and gift—because truth, wrapped in obscurity, lies hidden;

and since it is either an object of contempt to the learned, because it lacks suitable advocates, or of hatred to the unlearned, on account of the austerity inherent in it, which the nature of men, prone to vices, cannot endure (for because bitterness is mixed with virtues, but vices are seasoned with pleasure, men, offended by the one and allured by the other, are borne headlong, and, deceived by the appearance of good things, embrace evils for goods)—I have believed that aid must be brought to these errors: that the learned may be directed to true wisdom, and the unlearned to true religion. This profession is to be reckoned far better, more useful, more glorious than that rhetorical one, in which, long engaged, we were training young men not to virtue, but plainly to cunning malice.

For now we shall discourse far more rightly concerning the heavenly precepts, by which we may be able to instruct the minds of men unto the worship of the true majesty; nor does he deserve so well of human affairs who brings the knowledge of speaking well, as he who teaches men to live piously and innocently. For this reason among the Greeks the philosophers were held in greater glory than the orators; for the former were reckoned teachers of right living, which is by far the more excellent—since to speak well pertains to few, but to live well pertains to all. Yet that exercise of fictitious lawsuits has conferred much upon us, so that now with greater abundance and faculty of speech we may plead the cause of truth; which, though it can be defended without eloquence, as it has often been defended by many;

yet it must be illustrated by the clarity and brilliance of discourse, and in some manner argued out, that it may flow more powerfully into men's minds, both armed by its own force and adorned by the light of speech. Chapter One. A disputation, then, is here set on foot for us concerning religion and divine matters. For if certain of the greatest orators, like veterans of their profession, having run through the labours of their pleadings, at last gave themselves over to philosophy, and reckoned it the most just rest of their toils; if they tormented their minds in the inquiry into things that could not be discovered, so that they may seem to have sought for themselves not so much leisure as business, and indeed far more troublesome than that in which they had formerly been engaged:

how much more justly shall I betake myself to that pious, true, and divine wisdom, as to some most safe haven, in which all things are easy to utter, sweet to hear, easy to understand, and honourable to undertake? And if certain prudent men, arbiters of equity, have published compiled Institutes of civil law, by which they might lull to rest the suits and contentions of citizens at variance: how much better and more rightly shall we set forth in writing the divine Institutes, in which we shall speak not of rain-drippings, or of warding off waters, or of joining battle hand to hand, but of hope, of life, of salvation, of immortality, of God, that we may lull to rest deadly superstitions and most shameful errors?

This work we now begin under the auspices of your name, Constantine, Greatest Emperor, who, first of Roman princes, having repudiated errors, both knew and honoured the majesty of the one and true God. For when that most happy day had shone upon the world, on which the most high God raised you to the blessed summit of empire, you inaugurated a rule both salutary to all and to be desired, with a glorious beginning, when, bringing back justice that had been overthrown and removed, you expiated the most foul crime of others: for which deed God will give you felicity, virtue, and length of days: that with the same justice with which you began as a young man, you may, even as an old man, hold the helm of the commonwealth, and hand on to your children, as you yourself received from your father, the guardianship of the Roman name.

For upon the wicked, who still rage against the righteous in other parts of the earth, the same Almighty will exact the wages of their crime—the later, the more vehemently: because, as He is a most indulgent Father toward the pious, so He is a most upright Judge against the impious. Desiring, then, to defend His religion and divine worship, whom should I rather invoke, whom should I address, than Him through whom justice and wisdom have been restored to human affairs? Leaving aside, therefore, the authors of this earthly philosophy who bring nothing certain, let us enter upon the right way: whom indeed, if I thought them sufficiently fit guides for living well, I myself would follow, and would exhort others to follow them.

But since they disagree among themselves with great contention, and for the most part are at variance even with themselves, it is plain that their path is by no means straight: seeing that each one, as it pleased him, has impressed his own ways, and has left great confusion to those who seek the truth. But we, who have received the sacrament of true religion, since the truth has been divinely revealed, since we follow God as the teacher of wisdom and the leader unto truth, call together all men without any distinction either of sex or of age unto the heavenly nourishment. For no food is sweeter to the soul than the knowledge of the truth, to the asserting and illustrating of which we have appointed seven volumes, although that matter is of an almost infinite and immense labour:

so that if anyone should wish to expand and pursue these things most fully, so great an abundance of matter would overflow for him that the discourse would find neither the limit of a book nor an end. But we for this reason shall gather all things briefly: because the things we are about to bring forward are so clear and lucid that it may seem the more wonderful that the truth appears so obscure to men—and especially to those who are commonly accounted wise—or because we shall have only to instruct men, that is, to recall them from the error in which they are entangled to the more correct way. And if we shall have attained this, as I hope, we shall send them to that most rich and full fountain of doctrine itself, by the drawing and drinking of which they may quench the thirst conceived in their inward parts, and extinguish its burning.

And all things will be easy, ready, and manifest for them: provided only that they be not loath to lend the patience of reading or of hearing, in order to grasp the discipline of wisdom. For many, pertinaciously clinging to vain superstitions, harden themselves against manifest truth, deserving well not so much of their own religions, which they wrongly maintain, as deserving ill of themselves: who, though they have the right road, follow winding by-paths; they forsake the level ground, only to slip down through a precipice; they leave the light, only to lie blind and feeble in the darkness. These must be counselled not to fight against themselves, and to be willing at last to be freed from inveterate errors: which assuredly they will do, if at some time they thoroughly perceive for what end they were born. For this is the cause of depravity: ignorance of oneself;

and if anyone, having come to know the truth, has shaken off this ignorance, he will know to what things life is to be referred, and in what manner it is to be spent by him. The sum of this knowledge I briefly circumscribe thus: that neither is any religion to be taken up without wisdom, nor any wisdom to be approved without religion. Chapter Two. Having therefore undertaken the office of illustrating the truth, I did not think it so necessary to take my beginning from that question which seems to be first by nature: whether there is a providence which provides for all things; or whether all things are either made or governed by chance. The author of this opinion is Democritus, its confirmer Epicurus. But also earlier Protagoras, who called the gods into doubt; and afterward Diagoras, who excluded them; and certain others who held that there are no gods;

what else did they accomplish, except that providence was thought to be nothing? Yet these too the other philosophers, and especially the Stoics, most sharply refuted, teaching that the world could neither have come into being without divine reason, nor could subsist, unless it were governed by supreme reason. But also Marcus Tullius, although he was a defender of the Academic school, discoursed both much and often concerning the providence that governs things, confirming the arguments of the Stoics, and himself bringing forward very many new ones: which he does both in all the books of his philosophy, and most especially in those which are 'On the Nature of the Gods.' Nor indeed was it hard to refute the falsehoods of a few men who held wrong opinions, by the testimony of peoples and nations not at variance in this one matter.

For no one is so uncouth, of such savage manners, who, lifting up his eyes to heaven—even though he know not by the providence of what God this whole that is beheld is governed—does not nevertheless understand, from the very greatness, motion, arrangement, constancy, usefulness, beauty, and tempering of things, that there is some providence, and that it cannot come to pass that what stands together by a marvellous reason should not be furnished with some greater design. And for us indeed it is most easy to pursue this part as copiously as we please. But because the matter has been much agitated among the philosophers, and a sufficient answer seems to have been given to those who take away providence by men keen and eloquent, and because it is necessary throughout this whole work which we have undertaken to speak scatteredly of the skill of divine providence;

let us for the present pass over this question, which so coheres with the rest that nothing seems able to be discussed by us without providence being discussed at the same time. Chapter Three. Let the beginning of our work, then, be that consequent and second question: whether the world is governed by the power of one God, or of many. There is no one who is wise and reckons reason within himself, who does not understand that He is one who both founded all things, and by the same power with which He founded them moderates them. For what need is there of many to sustain the governance of the world? unless perhaps we should suppose that, if there be several, each one singly has fewer sinews and powers. Which indeed those do who wish there to be many; because it is necessary that they be feeble:

for indeed, single ones, without the help of the rest, could not sustain the helm of so great a mass. But God, who is eternal Mind, is on every side of perfect and consummate power. And if this is true, He must be one. For power, or virtue, when absolute, retains its own proper firmness. But that is to be reckoned solid from which nothing can be taken away; that perfect, to which nothing can be added. Who would doubt that he is the most powerful king, who has the dominion of the whole world? and not without reason: since all things that are anywhere are His; since to Him alone are all resources gathered together from every quarter.

But if several divide the world among themselves, each singly will assuredly have less of resources, less of powers, since each contains himself within his prescribed portion. In the same manner also the gods, if there be several, will have less might, others having just as much in themselves. But the nature of virtue can be more perfect in that in which the whole is, than in that in which a small part is from the whole. But God, if He is perfect (because He is perfect) as He ought to be, cannot be except one, so that in Him are all things. The virtues, therefore, and powers of the gods must of necessity be weaker: because each one lacks just so much as is in the rest; and so the more numerous they are, the lesser they will be. What of this, that that supreme power of things and divine force cannot be divided even once?

For whatever admits division, must of necessity also admit destruction. But if destruction is far from God, because He is incorruptible and eternal, it follows that the divine power cannot be divided. God, therefore, is one, if there can be nothing else that should grasp just as much of power; and yet those who suppose there to be many say that they have apportioned offices among themselves: concerning all of which we shall dispute in their place. Meanwhile I hold that which pertains to the present passage. If they have apportioned offices among themselves, the matter rolls back to the same point, that any one of them cannot suffice for all things. He will therefore now no longer be perfect, who, when the rest cease, cannot govern all things.

So it comes to pass that for the ruling of the world there is more need of the perfect virtue of one than of the feebleness of many. But he who thinks that this so great magnitude cannot be ruled by one is deceived. For he does not understand how great is the force and power of the divine majesty, if he supposes that the singular God, who was able to make the world, cannot govern the same that He made. But if he should conceive in his mind how great is the immensity of this divine work—since formerly there was nothing, yet by the virtue and counsel of God it was wrought together out of nothing; which work could not be begun and completed except by one—he will now understand that it is far easier for that to be ruled by one, which was established by one.

Someone perhaps may say that so immense a work as the world could not even be fashioned except by several: however many, however great he makes them, whatever of greatness, power, virtue, and majesty he has placed in the many, all of that I gather into one, and I say that it is in one; so that there is in Him as much of those things as can neither be conceived nor uttered. In which matter, since we fail both in sense and in words—because the human breast can grasp neither the light of so great an intelligence, nor the tongue of a mortal the explanation of so great things—we ought to understand and to say this very thing. I see again what may be said on the contrary side: that those many are such as we wish the one to be.

But this can in no wise come to pass, because the power of each one will not be able to advance further, the powers of the rest meeting it. For it is necessary either that each be unable to transgress his own bounds, or, if he shall have transgressed, that he drive the other from his own borders. They who believe the gods to be many do not see that it may come to pass that some should will the contrary; from which thing dispute and contention would arise among them: just as Homer feigned the gods warring among themselves, when some wished Troy to be taken, others resisted. By the will of one, therefore, the world must of necessity be ruled. For unless the power of the several parts be referred to one providence, the sum itself will not be able to stand together, each one caring for nothing more than what properly pertains to him:

just as not even a military affair can stand, unless it have one leader and director. But if in one army there were as many commanders as there are legions, as many as cohorts, as many as wedges, as many as squadrons, in the first place the battle-line could not even be drawn up, each one refusing the danger; nor could it easily be ruled or tempered, since all use their own private counsels, by the diversity of which they would do more harm than good: so in this empire of the nature of things, unless there be one to whom the care of the whole sum is referred, all things will be dissolved and will fall to ruin. But to say that the world is ruled by the will of many is just as if someone should affirm that in one body there are many minds: because the services of the members are many and various;

so that single minds might be believed to rule the single senses of the body, likewise the many affections by which we are wont to be moved—whether to anger, or to desire, or to gladness, or to fear, or to pity—so that in all these just as many minds might be thought to operate: which if anyone should indeed say, he would seem not even to have that one mind which is one. But if in one body one mind possesses the governance of so great things, and is at the same time intent upon all of them, why should anyone suppose that the world cannot be ruled by one, but can be by several? Because these assertors of the gods understand this, they say that the gods so preside over single things and parts, that nevertheless there is one excellent ruler.

Now therefore the rest will not be gods, but attendants and ministers, whom that one greatest and most powerful of all has set over these offices; and they themselves will serve at His command and beck. If all are not equal, then they are not all gods. For this same thing cannot be, that which serves and that which lords it. For if 'God' is the name of supreme power, He ought to be incorruptible, perfect, impassible, subject to nothing. Therefore those are not gods whom necessity compels to obey one greatest God. But because they who think thus are not deceived in vain, we shall a little later open up the cause of this error. Now let us prove by testimonies the unity of the divine power. Chapter Four.

The prophets, who were exceedingly many, proclaim one God, speak of one: inasmuch as, being full of the Spirit of the one God, they foretold the things that were to be with equal and consonant voice. But indeed those void of the truth do not think these are to be believed. For they say that those were not divine but human voices. Forsooth, because they make proclamation concerning one God, they were either madmen or deceivers. Yet we see that their prophecies have been fulfilled and are daily being fulfilled; and the divination, agreeing into one judgment, teaches that they were not frenzied. For who, of a mind unhinged, could not only foretell things to come, but even speak things that cohere? Were they then deceivers, who spoke such things?

What was so far removed from them as a method of deceiving, when they restrained all others from every fraud? For they were sent by God for this purpose, that they might be both heralds of His majesty and correctors of human depravity. Moreover, the will of feigning and lying belongs to those who covet wealth, who desire gains; which thing was far from those holy men. For they discharged the office delegated to them in such a way that, having abandoned all things necessary for the protection of life, they laboured not only for no morrow, but not even for the day, content with the extemporaneous food which God supplied; and these men not only had no gain, but even tortures and death. For the precepts of justice are bitter to the vicious and to those who live evilly.

And so those, whose sins were both reproved and forbidden, put them to death after most cruel tortures. Therefore from those from whom the zeal for gain was absent, the will and cause of deceiving was also absent. What of this, that some of them were princes or even kings, upon whom no suspicion of cupidity and fraud could fall, and yet made proclamation of the one God by the same divination as the rest? Chapter Five. But let us by all means leave aside the testimonies of the prophets, lest the proof should seem less suitable concerning those in whom there is no belief at all. Let us come to the authors; and let us cite as witnesses to the proof of the truth those very ones whom they are wont to use against us—the poets, I say, and the philosophers. Out of these it is necessary that we prove the one God:

not because they had a knowledge of the truth, but because the force of truth itself is so great that no one can be so blind as not to see the divine brightness thrusting itself upon his eyes. The poets, therefore, although they adorned the gods with songs and amplified their deeds with the highest praises, yet very often confess that all things are contained and ruled by one spirit or mind. Orpheus, who is the most ancient of poets, and contemporary with the gods themselves (since he is said to have sailed among the Argonauts with the sons of Tyndareus and with Hercules), calls the true and great God 'prōtogonon,' that is, first-begotten; because before Him nothing was begotten, but from Him all things were generated: him also he names 'phanēta';

because, when as yet there was nothing, He first appeared and came forth out of the infinite. And because he could not conceive in his mind His origin and nature, he said that He was born out of boundless air: 'the radiant son of the First-begotten, over the expanse of air.' For he had nothing further to say. He says that this one is the parent of all the gods, for whose sake He founded the heaven, and provided for His children that they might have a dwelling and a common seat: 'He founded for the immortals an imperishable home.' Led, therefore, by nature and reason, he understood that there is a most excellent power, the founder of heaven and earth. For he could not say that Jupiter was the prince of things, who was begotten of Saturn; nor Saturn himself, who was reported to have been born of Heaven:

but he did not dare to set up Heaven itself as if it were the first God, because he saw it to be an element of the world, which itself stood in need of an author. This reasoning led him to that first-begotten God, to whom he assigns and attributes the primacy. Homer could give us nothing that pertains to the truth, who wrote down human rather than divine things. Hesiod could have, who comprehended the generation of the gods in the work of one book. But yet he gave nothing, taking his beginning not from God the founder, but from Chaos, which is the confused heap of crude and disordered matter: whereas he ought first to have explained whence, when, and how Chaos itself had begun to be, or to subsist. Doubtless, just as all things were arranged, ordered, and effected by some craftsman:

so it is necessary that matter itself was fashioned by someone. Who, then, made this, except God, to whose power all things are subject? But he shrank from this while he shuddered at the truth he did not know. For not by the prompting of the Muses, as he wished to seem, did he pour forth that song on Helicon; but he had come prepared and premeditated. The first of our own, Maro (Virgil), was not far from the truth; whose words concerning the most high God, whom he named Mind and Spirit, are these: 'In the beginning a Spirit within nourishes the heaven and the lands and the liquid plains, the shining globe of the moon, and the Titanian stars;'

'and a Mind, infused throughout the limbs, sets the whole mass in motion, and mingles itself with the great body.' And lest perchance anyone should not know who that Spirit was who had so great power, he declared in another place, saying: 'For God goes through all the lands, the tracts of the sea, and the deep heaven. Hence the flocks, the herds, men, every kind of wild beast—each at its birth draws its slender life from this source.' Ovid too, in the beginning of his illustrious work, without any disguising of the name, confesses that the world was furnished by God, whom he calls the fabricator of the world, the artificer of things. And if either Orpheus, or these our own poets, had perpetually maintained what they perceived under the leading of nature, they would have held, with the truth grasped, the same doctrine which we follow.

But thus far concerning the poets. Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is weightier and judgment more certain; because they are believed to have applied themselves not to fictitious matters, but to investigating the truth. Thales of Miletus, who was one of the number of the seven sages, and who is reported to have been the first of all to inquire concerning natural causes, said that water was that from which all things were born; and that God was the Mind which formed all things out of water. Thus he placed the matter of things in moisture; he set the beginning and cause of generation in God. Pythagoras thus defined what God was: 'A Spirit, passing through and diffused throughout all the parts of the world and all nature; from which all living things that are born take their life.'

Anaxagoras said that God was an infinite Mind, which is moved through itself. Antisthenes said that there were indeed many popular gods, but one natural God, the artificer of the whole sum. Cleanthes and Anaximenes say that the aether is the most high God; to which opinion our poet assented: 'Then the almighty Father, Aether, descends with fruitful showers into the lap of his joyful spouse, and, mingled with her great body, mighty he nourishes all her offspring.' Chrysippus calls God a natural force endowed with divine reason, and sometimes a divine necessity. Likewise Zeno calls Him a divine and natural law. The opinion of all these, however uncertain it be, nevertheless looks to the same point, that they agree there is one providence.

For whether you say nature, or aether, or reason, or mind, or fatal necessity, or divine law, or whatever else—it is the same thing which by us is called God. Nor does the diversity of appellations stand in the way, since by the very signification all things are rolled back to one. Aristotle, although he is at variance with himself, and both says and feels things contrary to himself, nevertheless testifies in sum that one Mind presides over the world. Plato, who is judged the wisest of all, plainly and openly defends monarchy; and names neither aether, nor reason, nor nature, but, as it is, God; and that by Him this world was fashioned perfect and marvellous.

Cicero, who followed and imitated him in very many matters, frequently confesses God, and calls Him supreme in those books which he wrote On the Laws; and he argues that the world is governed by Him when he discusses the Nature of the Gods, in this manner: 'Nothing is more excellent than God; it is therefore necessary that the world be ruled by Him. God is therefore obedient or subject to no nature; He Himself therefore governs all nature.' And what God is, he defines in the Consolation: 'Nor indeed can God Himself, who is understood by us, be understood in any other way than as a certain mind, free and unbound, separated from all mortal admixture, perceiving and moving all things.'

Annaeus Seneca too, who among the Romans was the keenest Stoic, how often he extols the supreme God with deserved praise! For when he was discoursing on untimely death, he says: 'Do you not understand the authority and majesty of your judge, the ruler of the circle of the lands, the God of heaven and of all the gods, upon whom those divine powers, which one by one we adore and worship, are suspended?' Likewise in the Exhortations: 'He, when He was laying the first foundations of this most beautiful mass, and beginning that than which nature knows nothing greater nor better—so that all things might proceed under their own leaders—although He had stretched Himself through the whole body, nevertheless begot gods as ministers of His kingdom.' And how many other things he spoke about God similar to ours:

these I now defer, because they are more fitting in other places. For now it is enough to show that men of the highest genius touched upon the truth and almost grasped it, had not custom, made foolish by depraved opinions, snatched them backward—custom by which they both supposed there were other gods, and believed that the things which God made for the use of man were to be held as gods and worshipped, as if they were endowed with sense. [1,6] CHAPTER VI. Now let us pass on to divine testimonies; but first I will bring forward one thing which is like the divine, both because of its great antiquity, and because he whom I shall name was, from among men, enrolled among the gods.

In Cicero, the pontiff Gaius Cotta, disputing against the Stoics concerning religions and concerning the variety of opinions which are wont to exist about the gods, in order, after the manner of the Academics, to render everything uncertain, says that there were five Mercuries; and having enumerated four in order, he says the fifth was the one by whom Argus was slain, and who for that reason fled into Egypt, and handed over to the Egyptians their laws and letters. Him the Egyptians call Thoyth, from whom among them the first month of their year, that is September, received its name. The same founded a town which even now is called in Greek Hermopolis, and the people of Phenatae worship him devoutly. Although he was a man, yet he was most ancient and most thoroughly instructed in every kind of learning:

so much so that the knowledge of many things and arts earned him the surname Trismegistus. He wrote books, and indeed many, pertaining to the knowledge of divine things, in which he asserts the majesty of the supreme and singular God, and calls Him by the same names that we do, God and Father. And lest anyone should ask His name, he said that He is 'nameless'; because, by reason of His very unity, He has no need of the propriety of a name. These are his very words: 'God is one, but the One needs no name, for the Existent One is nameless.' God therefore has no name, because He is alone; nor is there need of a proper appellation, except when a multitude demands distinction, so that you may designate each person by his own mark and title.

But to God, because He is ever one, the proper name is 'God.' It remains to bring forward testimonies from sacred oracles and verses, which are far more certain. For perhaps those against whom we contend may think the poets are not to be believed, as inventing empty things, nor the philosophers, because they could err, since they too were men. Marcus Varro, than whom no one ever lived more learned, not even among the Greeks, much less among the Latins, in his books On Divine Matters, which he wrote to Gaius Caesar the chief pontiff, when he spoke of the fifteen men, says that the Sibylline books were not of one Sibyl;

but that they are called by the one name 'Sibylline' because all the prophetesses were named 'Sibyls' by the ancients, either from the name of one woman, the Delphic Sibyl, or from the announcing of the counsels of the gods. For in the Aeolic manner of speech they called gods 'sious,' not 'theous,' and counsel not 'boulen' but 'bulen'; and so the Sibyl was so called as if 'siobolen.' Moreover, the Sibyls were ten in number; and he enumerated them all under the authors who had written about each: the first was of the Persians, of whom Nicanor made mention, who wrote the deeds of Alexander of Macedon; the second the Libyan, whom Euripides recalls in the prologue of the Lamia; the third the Delphic, of whom Chrysippus speaks in that book which he composed On Divination:

the fourth the Cimmerian in Italy, whom Naevius names in his books On the Punic War, and Piso in his Annals; the fifth the Erythraean, whom Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms to have been a fellow citizen of his, and to have prophesied to the Greeks as they were making for Ilium both that Troy would perish and that Homer would write falsehoods; the sixth the Samian, of whom Eratosthenes writes that he found it recorded in the ancient annals of the Samians; the seventh the Cumaean, by name Amalthea, who is by others called Demophile or Herophile, and who brought nine books to King Tarquinius Priscus, and demanded for them three hundred Philippic gold pieces, and the king, scorning the greatness of the price, derided the woman's madness:

that she, in the king's sight, burned three of them, and demanded the same price for the rest; that Tarquinius thought the woman much more insane. When she had again burned three others, and still persisted at the same price, the king was moved, and bought the remaining ones for three hundred gold pieces; whose number was afterwards increased, when the Capitol was rebuilt, because verses were gathered and brought to Rome from all the cities, both Italian and Greek, and especially Erythraean, under the name of whatever Sibyl they might be. The eighth was the Hellespontian, born in the Trojan territory, in the village of Marpessus, near the town of Gergithium, whom Heraclides Ponticus writes to have been of the times of Solon and Cyrus; the ninth the Phrygian, who prophesied at Ancyra:

the tenth the Tiburtine, by name Albunea, who is worshipped at Tibur as a goddess, beside the banks of the river Anio, in whose eddies her image is said to have been found, holding a book in its hand, whose oracles the Senate transferred into the Capitol. The songs of all these Sibyls are both circulated and preserved, except for the Cumaean, whose books are concealed by the Romans, and they hold it lawful for them to be inspected by no one except the fifteen men. And there are single books of each one; which, because they are inscribed with the name 'Sibyl,' are believed to be of one; and they are jumbled together, nor can they be distinguished and each assigned to its own author—except those of the Erythraean, who both inserted her own true name into her song, and foretold that she would be named the Erythraean, although she had been born at Babylon:

but we too will say 'the Sibyl' indiscriminately, wherever their testimonies must be employed. All these Sibyls, then, proclaim one God; but most of all the Erythraean, who is held to be more renowned and more noble than the rest: since Fenestella, a most diligent writer, speaking of the fifteen men, says that, the Capitol having been restored, Gaius Curio the consul reported to the Senate that envoys should be sent to Erythrae to seek out and convey to Rome the songs of the Sibyl; and so Publius Gabinius, Marcus Otacilius, and Lucius Valerius were sent, who conveyed to Rome about a thousand verses copied out from private persons. The same thing we have shown above that Varro said. In those verses, therefore, which the envoys brought to Rome, there are these testimonies concerning one God:

'One God who alone is, immensely great, unbegotten.' This is the sole and supreme God, who made the heaven and adorned it with lights. 'But God is one, alone, most exalted, who has made heaven and the sun and the stars and the moon, and the fruit-bearing earth, and the swelling waters of the sea.' And since He alone is the builder of the world and the maker of things, both of those of which it is composed and of those which are in it, she testifies that He alone ought to be worshipped: 'Worship Him who alone exists, the guide of the world, who alone is one for ever and was fashioned out of eternity.' Likewise another Sibyl, whoever she is, when she said that she was conveying to men the voice of God, speaks thus:

'I alone am God, and there is no other God.' I would now go through the testimonies of the rest, were it not both that these suffice, and that I am reserving those for more fitting places. But since we are defending the cause of truth among those who, straying from the truth, are enslaved to false religions, what kind of proof ought we rather to employ against them than to refute them by the testimonies of their own gods? [1,7] CHAPTER VII. For Apollo, whom beyond the rest they reckon divine and most prophetic, responding at Colophon—because he had migrated, I believe, from Delphi, led by the pleasantness of Asia—when someone asked him who or what God altogether was, answered in twenty-one verses, of which this is the beginning:

'Self-generated, untaught, motherless, unshakable, not to be contained by a name nor by speech, dwelling in fire—this is God; and we angels are but a small portion of God.' Surely no one can suspect that this was said of Jupiter, who had both a mother and a name. What of the fact that the thrice-greatest Mercury, of whom I made mention above, calls God not only 'motherless,' as Apollo does, but also 'fatherless'—because His origin is not from anywhere else? For He cannot have been begotten by anyone, who Himself begot all things. I have, as I think, sufficiently both taught by arguments and confirmed by witnesses that which is of itself sufficiently clear: that there is one King of the world, one Father, one God.

But perhaps someone may ask of us that very thing which Hortensius asks in Cicero: If God is one, what blessed solitude could there be? As though we, who say He is one, were saying He is forsaken and solitary; for He has ministers, whom we call messengers. And that is true which I reported above that Seneca said in the Exhortations: that God begot ministers of His kingdom. But these are neither gods, nor do they wish to be called gods, or to be worshipped: inasmuch as they do nothing except the command and will of God. Nor yet are they those who are commonly worshipped, whose number is both small and fixed.

But if the worshippers of the gods think they are worshipping those very ones whom we call ministers of the supreme God, there is no reason why they should make us odious, who say there is one God and deny there are many. If a multitude delights them, we do not say there are twelve, or three hundred and sixty-five (as Orpheus), but we argue that the errors of those who think them so few are innumerable in the opposite direction. Yet let them know by what name they ought to be called, lest they violate the true God, whose name they expose when they assign it to many. Let them believe their own Apollo, who by that same response, as he took away the primacy from Jupiter, so also took the name from the other gods. For the third verse shows that the ministers of God ought to be called not gods, but truly angels.

Concerning himself, indeed, that one lied, who, although he is of the number of demons, joined himself to the angels of God: for in other responses he confessed that he was a demon. For when he was asked how he wished to be supplicated, he answered thus: 'All-wise, all-taught, of shifting turns, hear me, O demon.' Likewise again, when asked to bring forth a prayer to Apollo Smintheus, he began from this verse: 'Harmony of the world, light-bearing and wise demon.' What then remains, except that by his own confession he should lie subject to the stripes of the true God and to everlasting punishment? For in another response he said thus:

'The demons who roam about the earth and about the sea, unwearied, are tamed beneath the scourge of God.' Concerning both kinds we discourse in the second book (namely chapter 15). Meanwhile it is enough for us that, while he wishes to honor himself and to place himself in heaven, he confessed what the truth is—how those are to be named who ever stand before God. Let men therefore draw themselves back from errors and, casting away depraved religions, let them acknowledge their parent and lord: whose virtue cannot be estimated, nor His greatness perceived, nor His beginning comprehended. When the intent and keenness and memory of the human mind has reached as far as Him, as if all roads had been withdrawn and brought to their end, it halts, it sticks fast, it fails;

nor is there anything further to which it can advance. But because it cannot happen that that which exists should not at some time have begun to exist, it follows that, since nothing was before Him, He Himself was procreated out of Himself before all things. And therefore He is named by Apollo 'self-generated,' by the Sibyl 'self-born' and 'unbegotten' and 'unmade.' This Seneca, a shrewd man, saw in the Exhortations: 'We,' he says, 'depend on something else. And so we look back to someone to whom we owe that which is best in us. Another brought us forth; another equipped us: God made Himself.' [1,8] CHAPTER VIII. By so many and so great witnesses, therefore, it is proved that the world is governed by the power and providence of one God;

whose force and majesty Plato in the Timaeus says is so great that no one can either conceive it with the mind or set it forth in words, because of His exceeding and inestimable power. But would anyone doubt whether anything is difficult or impossible for God, who by providence devised, by virtue established, and by reason perfected works so great and so wonderful; and who now sustains them by His spirit, governs them by His power—He who is unimaginable, unspeakable, and sufficiently known to no other than Himself?

Whence, as I more often ponder so great a majesty, those who worship gods sometimes seem to me so blind, so unthinking, so senseless, so little different from dumb animals, who believe that those who were begotten by the intercourse of male and female could have possessed any majesty or divine virtue; when the Erythraean Sibyl says: 'God cannot be born from the limbs of a man and of a mother.' But if this is true, as it is, it is plain that Hercules, Apollo, Liber, Mercury, and Jupiter himself, with the rest, were men; since they were born of two sexes.

But what is so far removed from God as that work which He Himself granted to mortals for the propagating of offspring, and which can have no existence without corporeal substance? If, then, the gods are immortal and eternal, what need is there of another sex, since they have no need of succession, who are always going to exist? For surely among men and the other living creatures, the diversity of sex, and coupling, and generation has no other reason than that all kinds of living things, since they are destined to perish by the condition of mortality, may be preserved by mutual succession. But for God, who is everlasting, neither another sex nor succession is necessary. Someone will say: that He may have either ministers, or those over whom He Himself may rule.

What need, then, is there of a female sex, since God, who is omnipotent, can procreate sons without the use and aid of a female? For if He granted this to certain minute creatures, that they 'gather offspring born from leaves and sweet herbs with their mouths,' why should anyone suppose that God Himself cannot generate except from the mingling of the other sex? Those, then, whom the ignorant and foolish both call gods and adore, no one is so inconsiderate as not to understand that they were mortals. How, then, someone will say, were they believed to be gods? Doubtless because they were the greatest and most powerful kings: on account of the merits of their virtues, or of their gifts, or of the arts they discovered, since they had been dear to those over whom they had ruled, they were consecrated to memory.

And if anyone should doubt this, let him consider their deeds and acts, all of which both the poets and the ancient historians have handed down. [1,9] CHAPTER IX. Hercules, who is most renowned for his prowess and is reckoned among the gods like an African, did he not defile the circle of the earth, which he is recounted to have traversed and cleansed, with debaucheries, lusts, and adulteries? nor is it any wonder, since he was begotten of Alcmena by adultery. What at length could there be of the divine in him, who, himself enslaved to his own vices, afflicted both males and females, against all laws, with infamy, disgrace, and outrage? But not even those deeds which he performed, great and marvelous as they were, are to be judged such as to seem ascribable to divine virtues.

For what is so magnificent if he overcame a lion and a boar, if he brought down birds with arrows, if he cleaned out a royal stable, if he conquered a warrior-woman and stripped off her girdle, if he slew fierce horses together with their master? These are the works of a brave man—of a man, nevertheless. For those things which he conquered were frail and mortal. For there is no such great force (as the Orator says) which cannot be weakened and broken by iron and by strength. But to conquer the mind, to restrain anger, is the part of the bravest man: which he neither ever did, nor was able to do. The man who does these things, I do not compare him with the highest men, but I judge him most like to God. I would he had added concerning lust, luxury, greed, and insolence, that he might fill up the virtue of the one whom he was judging like to God.

For he is not to be thought braver who overcomes a lion than he who overcomes the violent beast enclosed within himself, anger; nor he who brought down most rapacious birds than he who curbs most greedy desires; nor he who conquered the warlike Amazon than he who conquers lust, the conqueror of modesty and good fame; nor he who carried out the dung from the stable than he who has carried out the vices from his own heart—which are the more pernicious because they are domestic and one's own evils, than those which both could be avoided and guarded against. From which it comes about that he alone ought to be judged a brave man who is temperate, moderate, and just. But if anyone should consider what the works of God are, he will now judge all those things, which most foolish men admire, to be ridiculous.

For they measure those things not by divine virtues, which they are ignorant of, but by the weakness of their own powers. For indeed no one will deny this: that Hercules served not only King Eurystheus—which can to some extent seem honorable—but also the unchaste woman Omphale, who used to bid him, clothed in her garments, to sit at her feet doing wool-work: a detestable disgrace! but pleasure was worth so much. 'What,' someone will say, 'do you think the poets are to be believed?' Why should I not think so? For it is not Lucilius who tells these things, or Lucian, who spared neither gods nor men, but those above all who used to sing the praises of the gods. Whom, then, shall we believe, if we put no faith in those who praise?

Let him who thinks these men lie produce other authors whom we may believe, who may teach us who these gods are, in what manner and whence they arose, what their power is, what their number, what their authority, what there is admirable in them, what worthy of worship, what mystery, finally, more certain and more true: he will produce none. Let us therefore believe these men, who spoke not to find fault, but to proclaim. He sailed, then, with the Argonauts, and stormed Troy, being angry at Laomedon on account of the reward refused him for the daughter's rescue: whence it appears at what time he lived. The same, driven by fury and madness, slew his own wife together with her children. Do men think this man a god?

But Philoctetes, his heir, did not think him a god—he who applied the torch to him as he was about to burn, who saw his limbs and sinews consumed by fire and dissolve, who buried his bones and ashes on Mount Oeta, in return for which service he received his arrows. [1,10] CHAPTER X. Aesculapius, himself too born not without disgrace to Apollo, what else did he do worthy of divine honors, except that he healed Hippolytus? He had indeed a more illustrious death, in that he merited to be struck by lightning from a god. Tarquitius, discoursing on illustrious men, says he was born of uncertain parents, exposed, and found by hunters, nourished with dog's milk, handed over to Chiron, and learned medicine; that he was a Messenian, but lived at Epidaurus. Tullius too says he was buried at Cynosurae. What of Apollo his father?

Did he not, on account of the love with which he burned, most shamefully pasture another's flock, and build the walls for Laomedon, hired by Neptune for wages which could be denied him with impunity, and from whom first the treacherous king learned to deny whatever he had bargained with the gods? The same both violated a beautiful boy while he loved him, and killed him while he sported with him. Mars, a homicide, and through favor freed by the Athenians from the charge of slaughter, lest he should seem too savage and monstrous, committed adultery with Venus. Castor and Pollux, while they carried off the betrothed brides of others, ceased to be twins. For Idas, stirred up by the rancor of the injury, ran one of them through with his sword; and the poets relate that these same ones live by turns and die by turns:

so that they are now the most wretched not only of gods, but of all mortals, who are not permitted even once to die. Yet Homer testifies that both these were simply dead (not as the poets are wont to feign). For when he made Helen, sitting beside Priam on the walls, recognize all the leaders of Greece, but seek her brothers alone, he appended to her speech a verse of this kind: 'Thus she spoke, but the life-giving earth already held them down.' Mercury, a thief and a rascal, what did he leave to his own fame except the memory of his frauds? Worthy of heaven, forsooth, because he taught the wrestling-school and first invented the lyre. Father Liber must of necessity be of the highest authority and the first opinion in the senate of the gods;

because, except for Jupiter, he alone of all triumphed, led an army, and conquered the Indians. But that unconquered Indian Commander was most shamefully conquered by the greatest love and lust. For carried to Crete with a half-male retinue, he found an unchaste woman on the shore, and, in the confidence of his Indian victory, wishing to be a man, lest he should seem too soft, he claimed for himself in marriage that betrayer of her father, slayer of her brother, abandoned and repudiated by another, and made her Libera, and together with her ascended into heaven. What did the father of all these, Jupiter, do—he who in solemn prayer is named Best and Greatest? Is he not, from his very early boyhood, caught out as impious and almost a parricide?

when he drove his father from the kingdom and put him to flight, nor waited for the death of the decrepit old man, out of the lust to reign; and when he had seized his father's throne by force, by arms, he was assailed in war by the Titans—which was the beginning of evils for the human race; and these being conquered, and peace established for ever, he consumed the rest of his life in debaucheries and adulteries. I pass over the virgins whom he ruined. For that is wont to be judged tolerable. But I cannot pass over Amphitryon and Tyndareus, whose houses he rendered most full of disgrace and infamy. But that act was of the highest impiety and crime, that he carried off a royal boy for defilement.

For it seemed too little if he were spotted and base in storming the chastity of women, unless he also did injury to his own sex: this is true adultery, which is done against nature. Whether he who did these things was the greatest, we shall see; certainly he is not the best: which name is far from corrupters, from adulterers, from the incestuous; unless perhaps we men err, who call those who do such things wicked and abandoned, and judge them most worthy of all punishments. But foolish was Marcus Tullius, who reproached Gaius Verres with adulteries: for the same things Jupiter, whom he worshipped, committed; who reproached Publius Clodius with incest with his sister: but that Best and Greatest one had the same woman both as sister and as wife. [1,11] CHAPTER XI.

Who, then, is so senseless as to think that this one reigns in heaven, who ought not to have reigned even on earth? Not without wit did a certain poet write of the triumph of Cupid: in which book he makes Cupid not only the most powerful of the gods, but even the victor. For having enumerated the loves of each, by which they had come into the power and dominion of Cupid, he sets up a procession, in which Jupiter, with the other gods, is led chained before the chariot of the triumphant one. Elegantly indeed was this figured by the poet: but yet it is not far from the truth. For he who is devoid of virtue, who is conquered by desire and evil lusts, is subject not to Cupid (as that poet feigned), but to everlasting death. But let us cease to speak of their morals: let us consider the matter itself;

that men may understand in what miserable errors they are involved. The common people think that Jupiter reigns in heaven: this is persuaded to learned and unlearned alike. Which both Religion itself, and prayers, and hymns, and shrines, and images demonstrate. Yet they confess that this same one was begotten of Saturn and Rhea. How can he seem or be believed to be God (as the poet says): 'the discoverer of men and things,' before whose birth there were countless thousands of men? namely of those who lived while Saturn reigned, and who possessed the light earlier than Jupiter. I see that one God was king in the first times, another in those that followed. It can therefore come about that yet another will be in the future. For if the kingdom was changed before:

why should we despair that it can also be changed later? unless perhaps Saturn could beget a stronger son, but Jupiter cannot. And yet either divine rule is always unchangeable; or, if it is changeable—which cannot be—it is at any rate always changeable. Can Jupiter, then, lose his kingdom, as his father lost it? Quite plainly so. For though he had never spared either virgins or married women, yet he abstained from Thetis alone, because it had been answered that whoever should be born of her would be greater than his own father. And first, there was in him imprudence, not of a God: for unless Themis had foretold the future, he himself would not have known it. But if he is not divine, then he is not even a god; whence divinity itself is named, as humanity from man.

Then, by the consciousness of his weakness, he certainly feared a greater one: and whoever does this assuredly knows that he is not the greatest, since something greater can exist. The same one swears most solemnly by the Stygian marsh. 'A vain superstition, rendered to the gods above.' What is this superstition? or by whom rendered? Is there, then, some greatest power which punishes the gods when they perjure themselves? What so great a dread is there of the infernal marsh, if they are immortal? Why do they fear that which they are not going to see, except those who must die? Why, then, do men lift up their eyes to heaven? why do they swear by the gods above, when the gods above themselves are rolled back down to the lower world, and there have something to venerate and adore? But what sort of thing is that?

namely, that there are Fates, which all the gods, and Jupiter himself, obey. If the power of the Parcae is so great that they can do more than all the heavenly ones, and than the ruler and lord himself, why are not they rather said to reign, by whose laws and decrees necessity compels all the gods to obey? Now who can doubt that he who is obedient to some thing is not the greatest? for if he were, he would not receive the Fates, but make them. Now I return to another point which I had omitted. So, in one woman alone he was more continent, when he was desperately in love with her; not by any virtue, but by fear of a successor. Which dread surely is the dread of one who is both mortal, and weak, and worth nothing: inasmuch as he could even then, when he was being born, have been extinguished, just as his brother, born before him, was extinguished:

who, if he had been able to live, would never have yielded the empire to a lesser one. But he himself, saved by stealth and reared by stealth, was called Zeus or Zen; not, as those people suppose, from the heat of the celestial fire, or because he is the giver of life, or because he breathes souls into living creatures—which power belongs to God alone (for how could he breathe in a soul, who himself received it from elsewhere?)—but because he was the first of the male children of Saturn to live. Men, then, could have had another god as ruler, if Saturn had not been deceived by his wife. 'But,' it is objected, 'the poets feigned these things.' Whoever thinks this errs. For they were speaking of men; but in order to adorn those whose memory they celebrated with praises, they said they were gods.

And so the things they spoke as though about gods are rather the fictions, not the things they spoke as though about men. This will become clear by an example that we shall bring forward. About to violate Danaë, he poured a heap of golden coins into her lap; this was the wage of her seduction. But the poets, who spoke as though about a god, lest they undermine the authority of the majesty believed in him, pretended that he himself glided down in a golden shower—using the same figure of speech by which they say 'iron showers' when they describe a multitude of darts and arrows. He is said to have carried off Catamitus by means of an eagle: this is a poetic coloring. But either he carried him off by a legion, whose emblem is the eagle, or the ship on which he was put had as its tutelary figure an eagle, just as it had a bull when he carried off and bore across Europa.

In the same way Io the daughter of Inachus is reported to have been turned into a cow; she, to escape the wrath of Juno, being now covered with bristles and already a cow, is said to have swum across the sea and to have come into Egypt, and there, having recovered her former appearance, to have been made a goddess, who is now called Isis. By what argument, then, can it be proved either that Europa did not sit upon a bull, or that Io was not turned into a cow? By the fact that a fixed day is kept in the calendars on which the sailing of Isis is celebrated—a circumstance which teaches that she did not swim across but sailed. Therefore those who seem wise to themselves, because they understand that a living and earthly body cannot be in heaven, reject the whole tale of Ganymede as false; and they perceive that this thing was done on earth, because the matter and the lust itself are earthly.

The poets, then, did not invent the deeds themselves; for if they did so, they would be utterly worthless: rather, to deeds that were done they added a certain coloring. For they spoke these things not out of disparagement, but from a desire to adorn. Hence men are deceived—chiefly because, while they suppose all these things to have been invented by the poets, they worship what they do not know. For they do not know what is the measure of poetic license, how far one may proceed in inventing: whereas the poet's office consists in this, that he should transmit those things which were truly done, transformed by oblique figures with some grace into other appearances. But to invent the whole of what one relates—that is to be silly, and a liar rather than a poet. But grant that they invented those things which are believed to be fables;

do they also invent those things which are told of the female deities, and of the marriages of the gods? Why then are they thus represented, thus worshiped?—unless perhaps not only the poets, but the painters too and the makers of images, are lying. For if this is Jupiter who is called a god by you, if he is not the one who was born of Saturn and Ops, then the likeness of him alone ought to have been set up in all the temples. What do the effigies of women mean? what means the weaker sex?—into which if this Jupiter fell, then the very stones will confess him to be a man. They say that the poets have lied, and yet they believe them; nay rather, by the very thing they prove that the poets did not lie, for they so fashion the images of the gods that from the very difference of sex it appears that what the poets say is true.

For what other meaning has the image of Catamitus and the figure of the eagle, when they are placed before the feet of Jupiter in the temples and adored together with him, except that the memory of an unspeakable crime and seduction may abide forever? Nothing, then, has been wholly invented by the poets: something perhaps has been transposed and obscured by an oblique figure, that the truth might be covered, wrapped up; as in that matter of the casting of lots for the realms. For they say that heaven fell to Jupiter, the sea to Neptune, the underworld to Pluto. Why did not the earth rather come into the third lot—unless because the affair was carried out on earth? Therefore there is truth in this, that they so divided and allotted the rule of the world that the empire of the East fell to Jupiter, and to Pluto, who had the surname Agesilaus, the portion of the West fell;