'These fables and errors we both learn from our unskilled parents and—what is more grievous—we elaborate by our very studies and disciplines, especially by the songs of the poets, who have done very great harm to truth itself by their authority. And Plato therefore nobly cast out that renowned Homer—praised and crowned—from the commonwealth which he was establishing in his discourse. For this poet above all, in the Trojan War, though he made sport, nevertheless mingled your gods in the affairs and actions of men; he composed their combats, wounded Venus, bound, wounded, and put Mars to flight.
He tells that Jupiter was set free by Briareus, lest he be bound by the other gods; and that, since he could not snatch his son Sarpedon from death, he wept tears of bloody showers; and that, more inflamed by the girdle of Venus than he is wont to be toward adulteresses, he lay with his wife Juno. Elsewhere Hercules carts out dung, and Apollo pastures Admetus's flock. For Laomedon Neptune built the walls, and the luckless builder received no wages for his work. There the thunderbolt of Jupiter, together with the arms of Aeneas, is forged on the anvil—when heaven and thunderbolts and lightnings existed long before Jupiter was born in Crete, and the flames of a true thunderbolt neither could the Cyclops imitate, nor could Jupiter himself fail to fear.
Why should I speak of the adultery of Mars and Venus, caught in the act, and of Jupiter's lust toward Ganymede, consecrated in heaven? All of which were put forth for this purpose, that some authority might be procured for the vices of men. 'By these and suchlike inventions and sweeter lies the minds of boys are corrupted, and with these same fables clinging to them they grow up even to the strength of the highest age, and in these same opinions the wretched grow old—though the truth is at hand, but only for those who seek it. 'Yet that very superstition gave to the Romans, increased, and established their empire, since they prevailed not so much by valor as by religion and piety. Doubtless the distinguished and noble justice of the Romans was inaugurated from the very cradle of the rising empire!
Was it not by crime that, in their very origin, they were gathered together and fortified, and grew strong through the terror of their own savagery? For the first populace was assembled at a place of asylum: there flocked together the desperate, the criminal, the unchaste, the assassins, the traitors; and that Romulus himself, their commander and ruler, might surpass his own people in wickedness, he committed fratricide. Such are the first auspices of this 'religious' state! Soon, contrary to all custom, he seized, violated, and mocked maidens belonging to others, already betrothed, already promised, and even some poor wives torn from their marriages; and with their parents, that is, with his own fathers-in-law, he embroiled himself in war, and shed kindred blood. What could be more irreligious, what more audacious, what more secure in its very confidence in crime?
Then to drive their neighbours from their land, to overthrow the nearest cities together with their temples and altars, to herd the captives away, to grow great by others' losses and their own crimes—this was the common practice, shared with Romulus by the other kings and by their later leaders. Thus whatever the Romans hold, cultivate, and possess is the plunder of audacity: all their temples are built from spoils of war, that is, from the ruins of cities, from the despoiling of gods, from the slaughter of priests. To serve conquered religions is to insult and mock them; to adore captive deities after victories is to deride them. For to adore what you have seized by force is to consecrate sacrilege, not divinities. As often, therefore, as the Romans triumphed, so often did they commit impiety: they took as many spoils from the gods as from the nations, and as many trophies.
Therefore the Romans were so great not because they were religious, but because they were sacrilegious with impunity. For they could not have had as helpers, in those very wars, the gods against whom they took up arms; rather, they began to worship, as 'triumphed-over,' those whom they had laid low. But what can these gods do for the Romans, who availed nothing for their own people against Roman arms? For we know the Romans' homegrown gods: Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, Consus, Pilumnus, and Volumnus are gods; Tatius both discovered and worshipped Cloacina; Hostilius worshipped Fear and Pallor; soon Fever was dedicated by I know not whom—such is the superstition fostered by this city, the gods of diseases and ill health! Indeed Acca Larentia and Flora too, shameless harlots, must be reckoned among the Romans' diseases and gods.
It was surely these gods, no doubt, who extended the Roman empire over all the other peoples whom the nations worshipped! For these did not aid their own against their own kinsmen—neither Thracian Mars, nor Cretan Jupiter, nor Juno (now Argive, now Samian, now Punic), nor Tauric Diana, nor the Idaean Mother, nor that Egyptian thing—not divinities, but monsters. Unless, perchance, among them there was greater chastity in the virgins or holier piety in the priests—when, in the case of nearly all the virgins (those, that is, who too rashly consorted with men, while Vesta, of course, knew nothing of it), incest was punished, yet in the rest impunity was granted not by safer chastity but by more fortunate shamelessness.
But where more than among the priests, between altars and shrines, are fornications arranged, panderings carried on, adulteries plotted? In short, more often in the cells of temple-keepers than in the very brothels does burning lust spend itself. And yet, before these gods, by God's dispensation, the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, the Greeks too, and the Egyptians long held empire, though they had no Pontiffs, Arval Brethren, Salii, Vestals, or Augurs, nor chickens shut up in a cage, by whose feeding or finickiness the highest affairs of state might be governed. For now I come to those Roman auspices and auguries which you testified were gathered with the greatest labour—and were both ruefully neglected and happily observed.
Clodius, of course, and Flaminius and Junius lost their armies because they thought there was no need to wait for the chickens' most propitious 'tripudium.' What of Regulus? Did he not observe the auguries, and yet was taken captive? Mancinus kept to religion, and yet was sent under the yoke and surrendered. Paulus too had greedy chickens, yet at Cannae he was laid low along with the greater part of the commonwealth. Gaius Caesar, when the auguries and auspices resisted his sailing ships to Africa before the winter solstice, scorned them—and so all the more easily both sailed and conquered. But what and how much shall I recount about oracles? After his death Amphiaraus answered things to come, who had not known that he himself was to be betrayed by his wife for a necklace. The blind Tiresias saw things future, who did not see things present.
About Pyrrhus, Ennius fabricated responses of Pythian Apollo, although by then Apollo had ceased making verses; that wary and ambiguous oracle of his then failed, when men began to be both more refined and less credulous. And Demosthenes, because he knew the responses were feigned, complained that the Pythia 'Philippized.' Yet now and then the auspices or oracles did touch upon the truth—though, amid so many lies, chance might seem to have imitated diligence. Still, I will attack the very fount of error and depravity, whence all this darkness has flowed, and dig it up more deeply and lay it open more plainly. There are spirits insincere and wandering, who, from heavenly vigour, have been weighed down by earthly stains and lusts.
These spirits, then, after they had—weighed down and immersed in vices—lost the simplicity of their own substance, do not, for the consolation of their own calamity, cease, now lost themselves, to bring others to ruin, and, depraved, to pour out the error of their depravity, and, estranged from God, to lead men by depraved religions away from God. That these spirits are demons, the poets know, the philosophers discuss; Socrates knew it, who, at the nod and will of the demon sitting beside him, either declined affairs or sought them. The Magi too not only know demons, but whatever marvel they perform, they perform it through demons: by their inspiration and infusion they put forth illusions, making either things that are not to be seen, or things that are not to be seen.
Of these Magi the first, both in eloquence and in practice, was Hostanes, who both with due majesty pays homage to the true God, and knows that angels—that is, ministers and messengers—guard the throne of God and stand by for His veneration, so that, terrified at the very nod and countenance of the Lord, they tremble. The same man also revealed that demons are earthly, wandering, enemies of mankind. And what of Plato, who held it a hard task to find God? Does he not narrate angels too, without difficulty, and demons? And in his Symposium does he not strive to express the nature of demons?
For he holds that there is a substance midway between mortal and immortal, that is, between body and spirit, compacted by a mixture of earthly weight and heavenly lightness; from which he warns that even love is formed in us, glides into human breasts, stirs the senses, fashions affections, and pours in the ardour of desire. These impure spirits, then, the demons—as has been shown by the Magi and the philosophers—lie hidden beneath consecrated statues and images, and by their breath obtain the authority of a seemingly present deity, while meanwhile they inspire seers, while they linger in shrines, while sometimes they animate the fibres of entrails, govern the flight of birds, rule the lots, produce oracles—all wrapped up in many falsehoods.
For they are both deceived and they deceive, as being ignorant of the pure truth, and not confessing, to their own destruction, the truth which they do know. Thus they drag men down from heaven and call them away from the true God to material things; they disturb life, they trouble sleep; creeping secretly even into bodies, as subtle spirits, they feign diseases, terrify minds, distort limbs, in order to compel men to their worship—so that, fattened on the reek of altars or on sacrificial beasts, by releasing the ailments they had bound, they may seem to have cured them. From this source come those frenzied persons whom you see rushing about in public—soothsayers themselves, even apart from any temple; thus they rave, thus they revel like Bacchants, thus they whirl about: equal in them is the demon's incitement, but the manifestation of their frenzy is unlike.
Of these same demons too are those things which were told you a little before: that Jupiter demanded the games again from a dream, that the Castors were seen with their horses, that a little boat followed a matron's girdle. Most of you know that the demons themselves confess these things about themselves, as often as they are driven out of bodies by us through the torments of our words and the fires of our prayer. Saturn himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship, overcome by pain, speak out what they are; nor do they lie to their own disgrace—especially with not a few of you standing by. Believe them, then, when, being themselves the witnesses, they confess the truth about themselves, that they are demons:
for, adjured by the true and only God, unwilling and wretched, they shudder in the bodies, and either leap out at once or vanish gradually, according as the faith of the sufferer aids or the grace of the healer inspires. Thus they flee Christians at close quarters, those very Christians whom from afar, through you, they harassed in their assemblies. And so, insinuated into the minds of the ignorant, they secretly sow hatred of us through fear; for it is natural both to hate one whom you fear, and to assail one whom you have dreaded, if you can. Thus they seize hold of souls and block up hearts, so that men begin to hate us before they know us, lest, once known, they should be able either to imitate us, or be unable to condemn us. But how unjust it is to judge of things unknown and unexamined—as you do—believe us, who ourselves once did the same.
For we too were once the same, and once, still blind and dull, we felt the same as you—as though Christians worshipped monsters, devoured infants, mingled in incestuous banquets; nor did we understand that these tales were always being bandied about by these demons, and never either investigated or proved; nor that in so long a time anyone had come forward who would betray it—and would have obtained not only pardon for the deed, but even a reward for the information. The thing, moreover, was so far from being an evil that the accused Christian neither blushed nor feared, and repented of one thing only: that he had not been a Christian sooner.
We, however, when we undertook to defend and protect certain sacrilegious and incestuous men, even parricides, yet thought that these Christians ought not even to be given a hearing at all; rather we tortured them, confessors though they were, to make them deny—so that, forsooth, they should not perish—plying upon them a perverse inquisition, not one that would dig out the truth, but one that would force a lie. And if any, weaker, when pressed and overcome by the torment, denied that he was a Christian, we favoured him, as though by abjuring the Name he had now, by that denial, purged away all his deeds. Do you recognize that we felt and acted in the very same way as you feel and act?
whereas, if reason—not a demon's incitement—were judging, they ought rather to have been pressed not to disavow that they were Christians, but to confess to incestuous fornications, to impious rites, to immolated infants. For with these and suchlike tales the same demons have crammed the ears of the ignorant to a horror of execration against us. Nor is it any wonder—since the report of everyone, which is always nourished by scattered lies, is consumed once the truth is shown—that this too is the demons' business; for from them the false rumour is both sown and fostered. Hence it is that you say you have heard that an ass's head is a sacred thing to us. Who is so foolish as to worship this? Who more foolish, as to believe that this is worshipped?
unless, that is, you who consecrate whole asses in your stables together with your Epona—or theirs—and adorn those same asses religiously along with Isis; you who likewise both immolate and worship the heads of oxen and the heads of wethers; who dedicate gods compounded of goat and man, gods with the faces of lions and dogs. Do you not also, along with the Egyptians, adore and feed the bull Apis? Nor do you condemn their rites established for serpents, crocodiles, the other beasts, birds, and fishes, any of which if anyone kills as a god, he is even punished with death. These same Egyptians, along with very many of you, fear Isis no more than the sharpness of onions, and dread Serapis no less than the noises forced out through the shameful parts of the body.
Likewise that man who fabricates against us the tale of the worshipped priest's genitals tries to fasten upon us what is his own. For these things are perhaps the rites of their own shamelessness, among whom every sex prostitutes itself with every member, among whom all shamelessness is called urbanity, who envy the licence of harlots, who lick the loins of men, who cling with lustful mouth to the groin—men of foul tongue even if they were silent—men whom their own shamelessness wearies before it shames them. O abomination! they admit into themselves that evil deed which neither the softer age can endure nor the harsher servitude be forced to bear. Such infamies and the like it is not lawful for us even to hear, and for very many it is shameful even to defend them.
For you invent about the chaste and modest those things which we would not believe could be done, did you not prove them from your own selves. As for the fact that you ascribe to our religion a man punished as a criminal, and his cross, you stray far from the neighbourhood of truth, you who suppose that a god could be believed to have either deserved to be a criminal, or been able to be earthly. Wretched indeed is he whose whole hope rests upon a mortal man: for all his help is at an end when the man is dead! The Egyptians, to be sure, choose a man for themselves to worship: him alone they propitiate, him they consult about all things, to him they slay victims. Yet he who is a god to the rest is certainly, willing or unwilling, a man to himself: for he does not deceive his own conscience, even if he beguiles another's.
To princes and kings, too, false flattery basely fawns, not as upon great and chosen men, as is right, but as upon gods—although honour is more truly rendered to an illustrious man, and love more sweetly to the best of men. Thus they call their godhead 'numen,' they supplicate before their images, they implore their Genius, that is, a demon; and it is safer for them to perjure themselves by the Genius of Jupiter than of the king. Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor desire. You, plainly, who consecrate wooden gods, perhaps adore wooden crosses as parts of your gods. For the very standards, banners, and ensigns of your camps—what else are they but gilded and adorned crosses? Your victorious trophies imitate not only the figure of a simple cross, but even that of a man affixed to it.
The sign of the cross, to be sure, we naturally behold in a ship, when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides with oars spread out like palms; and when the yard-arm is raised, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man venerates God with hands outstretched and with a pure mind. Thus the sign of the cross either rests upon natural reasoning, or your own religion is shaped by it. Now I should like to confront that man who says, or believes, that we are initiated by the slaughter of an infant and its blood. Do you think it can be done that so soft, so tiny a body should receive the doom of wounds? that anyone should slay, pour out, drain that fresh blood of an infant scarcely yet a man? No one can believe this except one who can dare it. For you, I see, now expose your begotten sons to wild beasts and birds, now crush them, strangled, by a wretched kind of death:
there are women who, by drinking drugs in their very entrails, extinguish the beginning of the future man and commit parricide before they give birth. And these things, of course, descend from the discipline of your gods: for Saturn did not expose his sons, but devoured them. Rightly, then, in some parts of Africa, were infants immolated to him by their parents, who stifled the wailing with caresses and a kiss, lest a tearful victim be sacrificed.
To the Tauric Pontians too, and to Egyptian Busiris, it was a rite to immolate strangers; and to Mercury among the Gauls to slay human—or rather inhuman—victims; the Romans buried alive a Greek man and woman, a Gaul man and woman, as living sacrifices; and to this very day Latian Jupiter is worshipped among them by homicide, and—as befits a son of Saturn—is fattened with the blood of a vile and guilty man. He himself, I believe, taught Catiline to conspire by a covenant of blood, and Bellona to imbue her own rites with a draught of human gore, and to cure the falling sickness with the blood of a man, that is, with a graver disease. Not unlike are those who in the arena devour wild beasts smeared and stained with gore, or fattened on the limbs and entrails of a man.
For us it is not lawful even to see or to hear of homicide, and we so guard ourselves from human blood that we do not even know the blood of edible animals in our food. And about the incestuous banquet a great tale against us was lied into being by the conspiracy of demons, that they might stain the glory of chastity with the besmirching of hideous infamy, that, before the truth was examined, they might turn men away from us by the terror of an unspeakable notion. Thus, concerning this, your Fronto too did not bear witness as one who could affirm, but, like an orator, sprinkled abuse; for these things rather sprang from your own peoples. Among the Persians it is lawful to mingle with mothers; among the Egyptians and at Athens, lawful marriages with sisters; your records and your tragedies glory in incests, which you gladly both read and hear;
so too you worship incestuous gods, joined with mother, with daughter, with sister. Rightly, therefore, is incest often detected among you, and always tolerated. Even unknowing, wretched ones, you may rush into the forbidden: while you scatter Venus promiscuously, while everywhere you sow children, while you frequently even expose those born at home to another's mercy, it is inevitable that you should run back into your own kin and stray into your own children. Thus you weave the tale of incest even when you have no consciousness of it. But we maintain modesty not in face but in mind: we gladly cling to the bond of a single marriage; in the desire of procreating we know either one wife or none. Our banquets we keep not only chaste but also sober:
for we neither indulge in feasting nor prolong the banquet with wine, but temper our cheerfulness with gravity, with chaste speech; and with a still chaster body very many enjoy, rather than boast of, the perpetual virginity of an inviolate body. In short, so far is the desire of incest absent, that to some even a chaste union is a thing of shame. Nor do we straightway take our stand among the lowest of the populace, if we refuse your honours and purples; nor are we factious, if we all relish one good, gathered in the same tranquillity in which we are as individuals; nor are we chatterers in corners, if you either blush or fear to hear us in public. And as for the fact that our number increases by the day, this is no charge of error, but a testimony of praise; for in a fair manner of living, one's own folk persevere and the stranger is added.
Thus, in short, we are easily recognized not by some bodily mark, as you suppose, but by the sign of innocence and modesty: thus we love one another with a mutual love—which grieves you—because we do not know how to hate; thus we call one another brethren—which you envy—as men of one God our Father, as partners of one faith, as co-heirs of one hope. For you neither recognize one another, and you rage in mutual hatreds, nor do you recognize one another as brothers except, indeed, for parricide. Do you suppose, moreover, that we hide what we worship, if we have no shrines and altars? For what image shall I fashion for God, since, if you judge rightly, man himself is the image of God? What temple shall I build for Him, since this whole world, fashioned by His work, cannot contain Him?
And though I, a man, dwell more widely, shall I shut up the power of so great a majesty within one little shrine? Is He not better dedicated in our mind? Is He not to be consecrated in our inmost breast? Shall I offer to God sacrificial beasts and victims, which He has brought forth for my use, so as to throw back to Him His own gift? It is thankless—since the acceptable sacrifice is a good disposition, a pure mind, and a sincere conviction. Therefore he who cultivates innocence supplicates God; he who cultivates justice makes a libation to God; he who abstains from frauds propitiates God; he who snatches a man from danger slays the best victim. These are our sacrifices, these are the holy things of God: thus among us the more righteous man is the more religious. But, you say, this God whom we worship we neither show nor see.
On the contrary, it is from this very fact that we believe Him to be God—because we can perceive Him, but cannot see Him. For in His works and in all the motions of the world we behold His power, ever present, when it thunders, lightens, hurls bolts, and when it clears the sky. Nor should you wonder if you do not see God: by wind and gusts all things are driven, shaken, agitated, and yet wind and gust do not come beneath our eyes. Indeed we cannot even look upon the sun, which is the cause of seeing for all things: by its rays our keenness of sight is repelled, the gaze of the beholder is dulled, and if you look longer, all vision is extinguished. What then? Could you endure that very Maker of the sun, that fountain of light, when you turn away from its dazzlings, when you hide from its bolts?
You wish to see God with carnal eyes, when you can neither behold nor grasp your own soul, by which you are made alive and by which you speak? But, you say, God is ignorant of man's action, and, set in heaven, cannot either survey all or know individuals. You err, O man, and are deceived: for how is God far away, when all things heavenly and earthly, and those which are beyond this province of the world, are full of God? Everywhere He is not only near to us, but poured into us. Look again, indeed, upon the sun: fixed in the sky, yet scattered over all lands; equally present everywhere, He is in their midst and mingled with all, nor anywhere is His brightness violated.
How much more, then, does God, the author of all and the watcher of all, from whom no secret can be hidden, dwell amid the darkness, dwell amid our thoughts as amid another darkness! Not only do we act under Him, but we live, so to speak, with Him. Nor let us flatter ourselves about our multitude: we seem many to ourselves, but to God we are very few indeed. We distinguish peoples and nations: to God this whole world is one household. Kings, indeed, know all the affairs of their kingdom through the offices of their ministers; God has no need of informers: not only in His eyes, but in His very bosom, do we live. But, you say, it profited the Jews nothing that they too worshipped one and the same God with altars and temples and the greatest superstition.
You slip into error if, forgetful or ignorant of the former things, you recall only the latter. For they too forsook our God—for the God of all is the same—as long as they worshipped Him chastely, harmlessly, and religiously, as long as they obeyed His wholesome precepts: from few they became countless, from needy rich, from servants kings; being few they overwhelmed many, being unarmed the armed, and as they fled they overwhelmed their pursuers, at God's command and with the elements striving on their side. Read again their writings; or, to pass over the ancients, consult Flavius Josephus; or, if you delight rather in Romans, consult Antonius Julianus on the Jews: you will then know that by their own wickedness they earned this fortune, and that nothing befell them which had not, if they persevered in obstinacy, been foretold beforehand.
Thus you will understand that they first deserted Him before they were deserted; and that they were not, as you impiously say, taken captive together with their God, but rather given over by God as deserters from His discipline. As for the conflagration of the world—to disbelieve that an unforeseen fire may fall or moisture fail is the error of the vulgar. For what wise man doubts, who is ignorant, that all things which have arisen perish, all things which have been made come to an end—the heaven too, with all that the heaven contains, even as it began, so will cease? Indeed it is the settled opinion of the Stoics that the whole world, should the sweet water of springs and the sea-water cease to nourish the sun, moon, and the rest of the stars, will pass into the force of fire, because, the moisture consumed, this whole world will catch fire.
And with the Epicureans there is this very same opinion concerning the conflagration of the elements and the ruin of the world. Plato declares that parts of the globe are now flooded, now in alternating turns set ablaze; and although he said that the world itself was fashioned everlasting and indissoluble, he yet adds that, to its own Maker, God alone, it is both dissoluble and mortal. Thus it is no wonder if that mass should be destroyed by Him by whom it was built. You observe that the philosophers dispute the very things we say—not because we have followed in their footsteps, but because they, from the divine proclamations of the prophets, imitated the shadow of a truth they adulterated.
Thus too the more renowned of the wise—Pythagoras first, and chiefly Plato—handed down the condition of rebirth with a corrupted and halved faith: for, the bodies being dissolved, they would have the souls alone both abide forever and pass over, again and again, into other new bodies. They add to these even that other tenet, to twist the truth aside: that the souls of men return into cattle, birds, and beasts. Such an opinion deserves, surely, not a philosopher's earnestness, but a mime's abuse. But for our purpose it is enough that even in this your wise men in some measure agree with us. For the rest, who is so foolish or so brutish as to dare to gainsay that man, who could first be fashioned by God, can so be re-formed anew? that there is nothing after death, and that before birth there was nothing?