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?