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;
for the reason that the region of the East, from which light is given to mortals, seems superior, while that of the West seems inferior. Thus they veiled the truth with falsehood, that the truth itself might detract nothing from the popular belief. As for Neptune's lot, it is manifest: we say his kingdom was such as was that boundless command of Marcus Antonius, to whom the Senate had decreed power over the whole sea-coast, that he might pursue the pirates and pacify the whole sea. Thus to Neptune fell all maritime regions together with the islands. How can this be proved? Doubtless the ancient histories teach it.
The ancient author Euhemerus, who was from the city of Messene, collected the deeds of Jupiter and of the others who are reckoned gods, and wove together a history from the sacred titles and inscriptions which were kept in the most ancient temples, and especially in the shrine of Jupiter Triphylius—where a title showed that a golden column had been set up by Jupiter himself, on which column he had inscribed his deeds, that there might be a monument of his doings for posterity. This history Ennius both translated and followed; whose words are these: «Where Jupiter gives to Neptune the rule of the sea, that he might reign over all the islands and the places that lay along the sea.» True, then, are the things the poets speak, but veiled under some pretext and appearance.
Mount Olympus too may have furnished the poets with a figure, so that they said Jupiter had obtained by lot the kingdom of heaven; for Olympus is an ambiguous name, both of the mountain and of heaven. And that Jupiter dwelt on Olympus, the same history teaches, which says: «At that time Jupiter spent the greatest part of his life on Mount Olympus, and men came to him there for judgment, if there were any matters in dispute. Likewise, if anyone had invented something new that was useful for human life, he came there and showed it to Jupiter.» Many things in this manner the poets transfer, not that they may lie against those whom they worship, but that they may add charm and grace to their songs with variegated figures.
But those who do not understand how or why each thing is figuratively represented attack the poets as liars and sacrilegious. Deceived by this error, even the philosophers, because the things told of Jupiter seemed by no means to befit God, made two Jupiters, one natural, the other fabulous. In part they saw what was true, namely that the one of whom the poets speak was a man; but in that natural Jupiter, led astray by the common custom of religion, they erred, because they transferred the name of a man to God—who (as we have said above), because He alone exists, needs no name. But that Jupiter is the one who was born of Ops and Saturn cannot be denied. Vain, therefore, is the persuasion of those who attribute the name of Jupiter to the supreme God.
For certain men are wont to defend their errors with this excuse: when, being convicted concerning the one God, they cannot deny it, they affirm that it is Him whom they worship, but that it pleases them that He be named Jupiter. Than which what could be more absurd? For Jupiter is not wont to be worshiped without the consortship of a wife and a daughter. From which it is plain what he is: nor is it lawful to transfer that name to where there is neither any Minerva nor any Juno. What further? The very meaning of this name expresses not a divine power but a human one. For Cicero interprets that Jupiter and Juno were so called from 'helping' (iuvare). And Jupiter is named as it were 'Helping Father' (Iuvans pater)—a name which by no means suits God; because to help is the act of a man bestowing some aid upon another who is a stranger to him, and a slight benefit.
No one prays to God that He may help him, but that He may save him, that He may grant life and salvation: which is far more and greater than to help. And since we are speaking of a father, no father is said to help his children when he begets or rears them. For that is too slight a thing for the greatness of a father's benefit to be expressed by such a word. How much more unsuitable is this for God, who is the true Father; through whom we are, and whose we are wholly, by whom we are fashioned, animated, enlightened; who imparts to us life, grants us salvation, and supplies us with manifold sustenance. He does not understand the divine benefits, who thinks himself only to be helped by God. Therefore not only unskilled but also impious is he who, by the name of Jupiter, diminishes the power of the supreme might.
Wherefore, if from his deeds and his character we have detected that Jupiter was a man, and reigned on earth, it remains for us to investigate his death also. Ennius in the Sacred History, after describing all that he did in his life, says at the last thus: Then Jupiter, after he had gone round the lands five times, and had divided his dominions among all his friends and kinsmen, and had left laws to men, established morals and provided grain, and done many other good things, being endowed with immortal glory and remembrance, left everlasting monuments to his own people: his life being spent with age, he changed his life in Crete, and departed to the gods, and the Curetes his sons cared for him and adorned him;
and his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Cnossus, and Vesta is said to have founded this city; and on his tomb is inscribed in ancient Greek letters ZAN KRONOU, that is, in Latin, 'Jupiter, son of Saturn.' This assuredly is delivered not by poets but by writers of ancient matters: which things are so true that they are confirmed by Sibylline verses, which are such: «Demons without souls, images of the dead departed, whose tombs ill-fated Crete makes her boast.» Cicero in his work On the Nature of the Gods, when he said that three Jupiters were enumerated by the theologians, declared that the third was a Cretan, son of Saturn, whose tomb is shown on that island.
How then can a god be alive in one place and dead in another, have a temple in one place and a tomb in another? Let the Romans, therefore, know that their Capitol—that is, the very head of the public religions—is nothing else than an empty monument. Let us now come to his father, who reigned before him, and who perhaps had in himself something more, since he is said to have been begotten from the union of such great elements. Let us see what there was in him worthy of a god: in the first place, that he is said to have had a golden age; that justice was on earth under him. I grant something in this, which was not in his son. For what is so befitting a god as a just government and a holy age?
But when I consider that he was born by the same process, I cannot suppose him to be the supreme God, when I see that there is something more ancient than he, namely heaven and earth. But I seek a God beyond whom there is nothing at all, who is the fount and origin of things. This must be He who founded heaven itself and established the earth. But if Saturn was born of these (as is supposed), how can he be the principal God, who owes his origin to others? or who presided over the world before Saturn was begotten? But this is a poetic fiction (as I said a little before). For it could not happen that elements without sensation, and separated by so great an interval, should come together into one and beget a son:
or that he who was born should not turn out most like his begetters, but should bear that form which his parents did not have. Let us seek, then, what truth lies hidden beneath this figure. Minucius Felix, in the book which is entitled Octavius, argued thus: «Saturn, when he had been put to flight by his son and had come into Italy, was called the son of Coelus (Heaven), because we are wont to say of those whose virtue we admire, or who have arrived suddenly, that they have fallen from heaven; and the son of Earth, because we name those born of unknown parents the sons of earth.» These things are indeed like the truth, yet not true: because it is established that even then, when he reigned, he was so regarded. He might also have argued thus:
that Saturn, when he was a most powerful king, in order to preserve the memory of his parents, gave their names to heaven and earth, which had before been called by other names; in the same way that we know names were imposed on mountains and rivers. For when the poets speak of the offspring of Atlas, or of the river Inachus, they do not chiefly mean this, that men could be generated from things lacking sensation; but they certainly signify those who were born from those men who, whether living or dead, gave their names to mountains or rivers. For this was usual among the ancients, and especially the Greeks. Thus we have received that seas drew their names from those who had fallen into them, as the Aegean, the Icarian, the Hellespontic:
and in Latium Aventinus gave his name to the mountain on which he was buried; Tiberinus or Tiberis to the river in which he was drowned. It is not to be wondered at, then, if the names of those who had begotten most powerful kings were assigned to heaven and earth. It appears, therefore, that he was not born of heaven—which cannot happen—but of that man whose name was Uranus. That this is true, Trismegistus is our authority: who, when he said that very few had existed in whom there was perfect learning, named among these Uranus, Saturn, and Mercury, his own kinsmen. Because Minucius did not know these things, he diverted the history elsewhere; and I have shown how he was able to argue. Now I will say how, where, and by whom this was done; for Saturn did not do this, but Jupiter.
In the Sacred History Ennius thus relates: «Then Pan leads him up onto the mountain which is called the Pillar of Heaven. After he had ascended there, he gazed far over the lands, and there on that mountain he builds an altar to Heaven; and Jupiter first sacrificed on that altar: in that place he looked up to the sky, which we now call by that name, and to that which was above the world, which was called aether; and from the name of his grandfather he gave to the sky the name 'Coelus' (Heaven): and Jupiter, praying to that which is called aether, first named it 'sky' (coelum); and that victim which he there consecrated, he burned whole.» Nor is Jupiter found to have sacrificed here only.
Caesar too in his Aratus reports that Aglaosthenes says that when Jupiter was setting out from the island of Naxos against the Titans, and was making a sacrifice on the shore, an eagle flew to him as an omen; which, accepted by the victor as a good sign, he subjected to his own protection. But the Sacred History (that of Ennius, of course) testifies that even before, an eagle had settled upon his head, and had portended to him the kingdom. To whom, then, could Jupiter have sacrificed, except to his grandfather Heaven?—whom Euhemerus says died in Oceania, and was buried in the town of Aulacia. CHAPTER XII. Since we have revealed the mysteries of the poets, and have found Saturn's parents, let us return to his virtues and deeds. He was just in his reign. First, from this very fact he is already not a god, that he once existed:
Next, because he was not even just; but impious, not only toward the sons whom he slew, but also toward his father, whose genitals he is said to have cut off; which perhaps truly happened. But men, out of regard for the element which is called Heaven, hiss the whole tale off the stage as most ineptly invented: which nevertheless the Stoics (as is their wont) try to convert to a physical explanation; whose opinion Cicero, discussing in his work On the Nature of the Gods, set forth thus: «They held,» he says, «that the celestial, highest, and ethereal nature, that is, the fiery, which by itself generated all things, was free from that part of the body which needed the conjunction of another for procreation: which reasoning could have applied to Vesta, if she had been said to be male.
For they think Vesta a virgin on this account, that fire is an inviolable element, and nothing can be born from it, inasmuch as it consumes all things that it has seized.» Ovid in the Fasti: «Nor understand Vesta to be anything other than living flame; and you see no bodies born from flame. Rightly, then, is she a virgin who sends forth no seeds, nor receives any, and loves the companions of virginity.» This too might have been ascribed to Vulcan, who indeed is thought to be fire; and yet the poets did not castrate him. It might also have been ascribed to the Sun, in which is the nature and cause of things that beget; for without the fiery heat of the Sun nothing can either be born or grow:
so that no other element has more need of genitals than heat, by whose fostering all things are conceived, are born, are sustained. Lastly, even if it be so (as they will have it), why should we rather suppose Heaven to have been castrated, than to have been born altogether without genitals? For if it generates of itself, it certainly had no need of genitals, since it begot Saturn himself. But if it had them, and they were cut off by the son, the origin of things and all nature would have perished. What of the fact that they take away from Saturn himself not only a divine sense, but a human one too, when they affirm that he is the Saturn who contains the course and revolution of spaces and times; and that in Greek he has this very name? For he is called Kronos, which is the same as 'chronou,' that is, an interval of time.
But he was called Saturn, because he is sated (saturetur) with years. These are the words of Cicero, expounding the opinion of the Stoics: «How vain this is, it is most easy for anyone to understand. For if Saturn is the son of Heaven, how could either time be begotten by Heaven, or Heaven be castrated by time, or time afterward be despoiled of its sovereignty by its son Jupiter? Or how was Jupiter born from time? Or by what years could eternity be sated, to which there is no end?» CHAPTER XIII. If, therefore, these reasonings of the philosophers are vain, what remains, except that we believe the thing truly happened, that is, that a man was castrated by a man?—unless perhaps someone supposes him to have been a god, who feared a co-heir:
whereas, if he had had any divinity, he ought not to have amputated his father's genitals, but his own, lest Jupiter should be born, who deprived him of the possession of the kingdom. The same Saturn, when he had his sister Rhea—whom in Latin we call Ops—as his wife, is said to have been forbidden by an oracle to rear male children; because it would come to pass that he should be driven out by a son: fearing which thing, he did not indeed devour the sons born to him (as the fables relate), but slew them; although it is written in the Sacred History (that of Ennius, of course) that Saturn and Ops and the rest of mankind at that time were accustomed to eat human flesh: but that Jupiter first, when establishing laws and morals for men, prohibited by edict that it should be lawful to feed on that food. And if this is true, what justice could there have been in him?
But let us suppose it to be a mere fiction that Saturn devoured his sons—provided it be for some reason: was it not for this, that (as the common people say) he ate his own sons, who buried them and committed them to the grave? But Ops, when she had given birth to Jupiter, withdrew the infant and secretly sent him to be reared in Crete. Again I must necessarily reproach his lack of foresight. For why did he rather receive the oracle's response from another? Why, set in heaven, did he not see what was being done on earth? Why did the Corybantes deceive him with cymbals? Lastly, why did some greater force arise, which overcame his power? Doubtless the old man was easily conquered by the young one, and despoiled of his command. He fled, therefore, and came to Italy by ship, after he had wandered long;
as Ovid, when banished, relates in his books of the Fasti (in the first book): «There remains the matter of the ship. The scythe-bearing god came by ship to the Tuscan river, after he had wandered over the world.» This wandering and destitute one Janus received. The proofs of this thing are old coins, on which is Janus with a double face, and on the other side a ship; as the same poet (in the same place) subjoined: «But the good posterity formed a ship's stern on the bronze, attesting the arrival of the divine guest.» All therefore, not only the poets, but also the writers of histories and of ancient affairs, agree that he was a man, who handed down to memory his deeds done in Italy: among the Greeks, Diodorus and Thallus; among the Latins, Nepos and Cassius and Varro.
For when life in Italy was lived in a somewhat rustic fashion, «He brought together a race untaught and scattered over the high mountains; and he gave laws, and preferred that it be called Latium, since in these shores he had lain hidden in safety.» Does anyone judge him to be a god, who was driven out, who fled, who lay hidden? No one is so foolish. For he who flees or hides must needs fear both violence and death. Orpheus, who was later than his times, openly records that Saturn reigned on earth and among men: «First he ruled over earth-dwelling men; and from Kronos himself was begotten lord, the great, wide-seeing Zeus.» Likewise our own Maro: «Golden Saturn led this life on earth»; and in another place:
«And golden (as they tell) were the ages under that king: so peacefully did he rule the peoples in calm peace.» He neither said above that he led his life in heaven, nor below that he ruled the gods above in peace: from which it appears that he was an earthly king; which elsewhere he declares more openly: «He shall found golden ages; he who once over the fields of Latium ruled by Saturn.» Ennius indeed in his Euhemerus says that not Saturn first reigned, but his father Uranus. «In the beginning,» he says, «the first to hold the supreme power on earth was Coelus; he set up and prepared that kingdom together with his brothers.» There is no great disagreement, since even among the greatest authors there is doubt about the son and the father. Yet both could have happened:
so that Uranus first began to be eminent above the rest in power, and to hold a primacy, not a kingdom; and afterward Saturn acquired greater resources for himself, and assumed the royal title. CHAPTER XIV. Now, since the Sacred History differs somewhat from the things we have related, let us disclose those things which are contained in the true records, lest we seem to follow and approve the follies of the poets in accusing the religions. These are Ennius's words: «Thereupon Saturn took Ops to wife. Titan, who was the elder by birth, demands that he himself should reign. There Vesta their mother, and their sisters Ceres and Ops, urge Saturn not to yield the kingdom to his brother.»
«There Titan, who was uglier in face than Saturn, on that account and because he saw that his mother and sisters were taking pains that Saturn should reign, conceded to him that he should reign. So he made a compact with Saturn, that if any free-born child of the male sex should be born to him, he should not rear it. He did this for this reason, that the kingdom might return to his own sons. Then they slew the first son who was born to Saturn. Afterward twins were born, Jupiter and Juno. Then they presented Juno to Saturn's sight, but secretly hid Jupiter away, and gave him to Vesta to be reared, concealing him from Saturn. Likewise Ops bears Neptune secretly from Saturn, and hides him away by stealth. In the same manner at a third birth Ops bears twins, Pluto and Glauca.»
«Pluto in Latin is Dispater: others call him Orcus. There they show Glauca, the daughter, to Saturn, but conceal and hide away the son Pluto. Then little Glauca dies.» This (as it is written) is the stock of Jupiter and his brothers, and their kinship, handed down to us in this manner from the sacred writing. Likewise a little after he adds this: «Then Titan, after he learned that sons had been begotten and reared secretly by Saturn, takes aside with him his own sons who are called Titans, and seizes his brother Saturn and Ops, and encloses them within a wall, and sets a guard over them.» How true this history is, the Erythraean Sibyl teaches, saying almost the same things; except that she differs in a few matters which do not pertain to the subject.
Jupiter, then, is freed from the charge of the greatest crime, in that he is reported to have bound his father in fetters: for it was Titan, his uncle, who did this, because Saturn, contrary to the compact and his oath, had reared his male children. The rest of the history is woven together thus: that Jupiter, grown up, when he had heard that his father and mother were surrounded by guards and cast into chains, came with a great multitude of Cretans, and overcame Titan and his sons in battle, freed his parents from their bonds, restored the kingdom to his father, and thus returned to Crete. After this, then, a lot was given to Saturn, that he should beware lest a son drive him from the kingdom: he, for the sake of warding off the lot and escaping the danger, lay in wait for Jupiter, that he might slay him:
that Jupiter, on learning of the plot, claimed the kingdom for himself once again, and put Saturn to flight; who, when he had been tossed through all lands, with armed men pursuing—whom Jupiter had sent to seize or kill him—scarcely found in Italy a place in which to hide. CHAPTER XV. From these matters, since it is established that they were men, it is not obscure by what reasoning they began to be named gods. For if there were no kings before Saturn or Uranus, on account of the scarcity of men, who lived a rustic life without any ruler: