Against the Pagans 1 part 1/4

Since I have learned that certain men — who in their own conceits believe themselves to be exceedingly wise — rave and rage and, as if uttering something ready-made from an oracle, declare: that ever since the Christian people began to be in the world, the circle of the earth has perished, the human race has been afflicted with manifold evils, and even the heaven-dwellers themselves, abandoning the solemn cares with which they were once wont to attend to our affairs, have been banished from the regions of the earth —

I have resolved, according to my capacity and the modesty of my powers of speech, to oppose this malice and to dissolve these slanderous accusations, lest either they should seem to themselves, while they put forth popular catchwords, to be saying something great, or, if we hold ourselves back from such disputes, they should suppose they have won their case — a case in truth conquered by its own defect, not abandoned merely by the silence of its defenders. For neither would I deny that this accusation is most valid and that we are deserving of hostile hatred, if it were established that among us lie the causes by which the world has strayed from its laws, the gods have been driven far away, and such vast swarms of mortal sorrows have been brought upon the ages.

Let us therefore examine the mind of this opinion, and of what sort this thing is that is said; and, all zeal for wrangling being set aside — by which the contemplation of things is wont to be obscured and overlaid — let us weigh, by an examination of equal weights, whether what is said is true. For it will assuredly be brought about, by the linking together of consequent reasonings, that not we rather, but they themselves are found guilty of this very crime, they who profess to be worshippers of the divinities and devoted to inveterate religions. And first, of these we inquire in friendly and calm discourse:

after the name of the Christian religion began to be on earth, what unusual thing, what unknown thing, what thing contrary to the principally established laws did that very thing which is called and named 'nature' either feel or suffer? Were those first elements, out of which all things are agreed to be compounded, changed into contrary qualities? Was the construction of this machine and mass, by which we all, enclosed, are covered and contained, in any part loosened or dissolved? Did this whirling of the world, exceeding the governance of its primeval motion, begin either to creep more slowly or to be swept along in headlong revolution?

Did the stars begin to raise themselves from the western quarters, and did the setting of the constellations begin to turn into risings? Did the sun itself, prince of the heavenly bodies, by whose light all things are clothed and by whose warmth they are quickened, blaze up, cool down, and corrupt into contrary states the temperings of its accustomed governance? Did the moon cease to renew herself and to carry herself over into her old shapes by the ever-recurring restoration of new ones? Did the colds, the heats, the middle warmths perish in confusions of unequal seasons? Did winter begin to have long days, and did the summer night begin to call back the slowest daylights?

Did the winds breathe out their souls, and, their blasts being dead, is the sky not gathered into clouds, nor do the fields succeed in being moistened by rains? Does the earth refuse to receive the seeds entrusted to it, or do the trees refuse to put forth leaves? Has the savor been changed for the edible grains and for the liquors of the vine? Is foul gore squeezed from the sprigs of the olives, so that nothing is supplied for the extinguished lamp? Do the animals accustomed to the land and those living in the waters not mate, not conceive, nor guard the offspring conceived in their wombs according to their own habits and their own law? Do men themselves, finally, whom their first and beginning birth has scattered along the habitable coasts of the earth, not join marriages by the just solemnities of weddings? Do they not procreate the sweetest offspring of children?

Do they not conduct public business, private and household affairs? Do they not, as it has pleased each man, direct their talents through the various methods of arts and disciplines, and reap the returns of diligent activity? Do they not reign, do they not command, those to whom the lot of such matters has been assigned? Do they not daily grow greater in dignities and powers, preside over the pleadings of the courts, interpret the laws and the statutes? Do not all men, each among their own peoples, celebrate all the other things by which human life is girded and held together, according to the institutions of their ancestral customs?

Since, therefore, these things are so, and no novelty has burst in that, by breaking their continuity, has torn apart the perpetual course of things, what is this that is said — that ruin has been brought upon the earth after the Christian religion introduced itself to the world and laid open the sacred mysteries of hidden truth? 'But,' they say, 'pestilences and droughts, wars, dearth of crops, locusts, mice, and hail, and other harmful things by which human affairs are assailed — these the gods bring upon us, exasperated by your injuries and offenses.'

If, in matters that are plain and require no defense, it were not a mark of dullness to linger too long, I would surely show, by unrolling the earlier ages, that these evils of which you speak are not unknown, and that these calamities did not burst in suddenly and only after our nation earned to be endowed with the felicity of this name, nor only then begin to infest mortal affairs with a variety of dangers. For if we are the cause, and these plagues have been devised to requite our crime, whence did antiquity know these names of miseries? Whence did it assign a term to wars? By what reasoning could it name pestilences and hailstorms, or take them up among the very words by which speech was unfolded?

For if these evils are new and draw their causes from recent offenses, how could it have come to pass that antiquity framed words for those things which it neither knew itself to have experienced nor had learned to have been done repeatedly in any times of the forefathers? 'The dearth,' he says, 'of crops and the straits of the grain-supply press us more sorely.' Were then the ancient and most venerable ages at any time free of this hardship? Do not the very names by which these evils are reckoned bear witness and cry aloud that no mortal ever went free of them? But if the matter were hard to believe, we could proceed by the testimonies of authors — how great, how often, and what peoples felt dreadful famine and perished in heaped-up desolation.

'Most frequent cases of hail occur and grind everything to pieces.' But do we not see it recorded and set down in ancient writings that even stony rains often shattered whole regions? 'Excessive rains make the crops die and bring barrenness upon the lands.' But was antiquity free from these evils, when we know that even mighty rivers grew hideous with dried-up slime? 'Pestilences and contagions consume the human race.' Run through the writings of the annals, set down in the diversities of tongues: you will learn that all nations were very often desolated and widowed of their inhabitants. 'By locusts and by mice every kind of crop is cut down and gnawed away.'

Go through your own histories, and you will be instructed by them how often the earlier age was afflicted and came to the miseries of poverty. 'Cities, shaken by the most violent earthquakes, totter even to the point of peril.' What? Did not earlier ages see cities swallowed up by vast chasms together with their peoples, or did they hold their fortunes secure from misfortunes of this kind? When was the human race destroyed by floods of waters? — Was it not before us? When was the world set ablaze and dissolved into embers and ashes? — Not before us? When were the most ample cities covered over by the waves of the sea? — Not before us? When were wars waged with wild beasts and battles fought with lions? — Not before us?

When was destruction dealt to peoples by venomous serpents? — Not before us? For as to the fact that you are accustomed to cast in our teeth the causes of frequent wars, the devastations of cities, the German and Scythian incursions — with your leave and by your good grace let me say it — you do not see, in your appetite for slander, what sort of thing this is that is being said. That, ten thousand years ago, from the island called Neptune's Atlantis (as Plato demonstrates [Tim. 25b]) a great force of men should have burst forth and utterly destroyed and blotted out innumerable nations — were we the cause?

That between the Assyrians and the Bactrians, under Ninus once and Zoroaster as their leaders, there was contention not only with iron and with force, but even with magic and with the recondite disciplines of the Chaldeans — was this the fruit of ill-will toward us? That Helen, carried off with the gods themselves as guides and instigators, proved a dread doom both to her own people and to the ages to come — was this charged to the crime of our religion? That that monstrous Xerxes let the sea in upon the lands and crossed the seas on foot — was this the effect of wrath against our name? That one young man, arisen from the borders of Macedonia, subjugated the kingdoms and peoples of the East to captivity and servitude — did we make and stir up the causes?

That the Romans, of late, like some torrential river, submerged and overwhelmed all nations — was it we, forsooth, who cast the deities headlong into frenzy? But if there is no man who would dare to charge our own times with the things done long ago, how can we be the cause of present miseries, since nothing new comes to pass, but all things are ancient and unheard-of by no antiquity? And yet it is not difficult to prove that those very wars which you say are stirred up out of ill-will toward our religion have, since Christ was heard in the world, not only not been increased but even, for the greater part, diminished by the repression of the furies.

For since we have received from His teachings and laws that so great a body of men ought not to repay evil with evil, that it is more excellent to endure a wrong than to inflict one, and to shed one's own blood rather than to stain one's hands and conscience with another's — the ungrateful world has long had a benefit from Christ, through whom the madness of savagery has been softened and hostile hands have begun to hold themselves back from the blood of a kindred living being.

But if absolutely all who understand themselves to be men, not by the outward form of their bodies but by the power of reason, were willing to lend their ear a little while to His saving and peaceable decrees, and, not puffed up with haughtiness and disdain, would trust their own senses less than His admonitions, then long ago the whole world, having converted its practices to gentler works, would pass its life in the softest tranquility of the sword and would come together into saving concord by the unbroken sanctions of its covenants. 'But if through you,' they say, 'nothing is made troublesome to human affairs, whence come these evils by which pitiable mortality has long been urged and pressed?' — You demand of me a verdict in no way necessary to this case.

For the disputation now present and placed in my hands has not been undertaken by me in order that I might show or prove by what causes and reasons each thing comes to pass, but in order that I might show that the reproaches of so great a crime are far from us. And if I furnish this — if by fact and by weighty arguments the truth of the matter is unfolded — I do not care whence these evils are, or from what fountains and first principles they flow. And yet, that I may not seem, when questioned, to bring forth nothing at all of what I think about matters of this kind, I can say: what if the first matter, which has been distributed into the four elements of things, holds the causes of all miseries wrapped up within its own workings?

What if the movements of the stars, by fixed signs, portions, seasons, and lines, give birth to these evils and bring upon the things beneath them the necessities of various dangers? What if at fixed seasons the vicissitudes of things come about, and, as in the tides of the sea prosperity now flows in and now again ebbs away with alternating evils, so it is with the world? What if this dregs of matter, which we tread beneath our steps, has this law laid upon it, that it exhales the most noxious vapors, by which this air, corrupted, both brings ruin upon bodies and weakens human affairs?

What if — which is nearest to the truth — whatever seems adverse to us is not an evil to the world itself, and we, judging all that happens by our own conveniences, blame by wicked opinions the outcomes of nature? Plato, that sublime summit and pinnacle of the philosophers, has handed down in his writings that those savage floods and conflagrations are a purgation of the earth; nor did the prudent man shrink from calling the overthrow, disaster, ruins, destructions, and deaths of the human race an innovation of things, and from holding that a certain youthfulness is procured for them when their strength is renewed. 'The heaven does not rain,' he says, 'and we suffer from some dearth of grain or other.'

For why do you demand that the elements be subservient to your necessities, and that, so that you may be able to live more softly and delicately, the compliances of the seasons ought to yield themselves to your conveniences? For what if, on this same principle, a man most eager for sailing should complain that for a long time there have been no winds and that the breezes of the sky have grown still? Is it therefore to be said that that tranquility of the world is ruinous, because it hinders the wishes of the voyagers? What if someone accustomed to scorch himself in the sun and to gain dryness for his body should, by like reasoning, complain that the pleasantness of clear weather has been taken from him by the most frequent clouds?

Are the clouds therefore to be called hostile, hanging with their overcast covering, because it is not permitted to his lust to glow idly with sun-flames and to prepare occasions for his drinking? All these outcomes, which come about and befall beneath this mass of the world, are to be weighed not by our petty conveniences but by its own reasons and the orders of nature. Nor, if something happens which has cherished ourselves or our affairs with less than joyful success, is it straightway an evil and to be reckoned as a ruinous thing. The world rains, or it does not rain: it rains, or does not rain, for its own sake; and — what perhaps you may not know — either it boils away excessive moisture by the heat of drought, or it tempers the aridity of a very long stretch of time by the outpourings of rains.

It brings on pestilences, diseases, famines, and other ruinous forms of evils: how are you to know but that it thus removes what runs to excess, so that by these very losses it may set a limit to things growing riotous? Do you dare to say: this and that is an evil in the world, though you can neither explain nor resolve its origin and cause, and, because perhaps it hinders the pleasures of your delights and lusts, do you call it ruinous and harsh? What then? Because cold is adverse to your limbs and is wont to freeze and constrict the fervor of your blood, ought there therefore to be no winter in the world? And because you cannot endure and bear the most blazing suns, ought summer to be taken away from the year, and ought nature again to be ordered otherwise by other laws?

Hellebore is poison to men: ought it therefore, on this account, not to have come into being? The wolf lies in ambush for the sheepfolds: is nature at fault because it has produced a most troublesome beast for the wool-bearing flocks? The serpent by its bite takes away life: shall I therefore curse the first beginnings of things, because they have added such savage portents to breathing creatures at their birth? It is an exceedingly arrogant thing that, when you yourself do not belong to yourself and are, moreover, engaged upon another's property, you should wish to lay down terms to the more powerful — that what you desire should come to pass, and not what you have found established in things by their ancient constitutions.

Wherefore, if you men wish your complaints to have any standing, you must first teach us whence or who you are, whether the world was born and fashioned for you, or whether you came into it as lodgers from foreign regions. And since it is not for you to say this, nor can you explain for the sake of what thing you dwell beneath this vault of heaven, cease to suppose that anything pertains to you, since the things that happen do not happen for a part, but return and are referred to the sum-total of the whole. 'Because of the Christians,' they say, 'the gods sow all evils, and destruction is contrived for the crops by those above.' I ask: when you say these things, do you not perceive that you calumniate wickedly amid open and manifest lies?

It is nearly three hundred years, a little more or less, since we began to be Christians and to be numbered in the circle of the earth: were there in all these years continuous wars, continuous barren seasons, no peace on earth, was there straightway no cheapness or abundance of goods? For this is what must first be established by the one who accuses us: that these calamities were perpetual and unbroken, that mortal affairs never once caught their breath again, and, without any respite (as the saying is), endured the forms of manifold dangers. But we see that, in the very midst of these years and of these times, innumerable victories were carried off from vanquished enemies, that the boundaries of the empire were extended, and that nations of unheard-of name were reduced under its power:

that very often there were the greatest yields of the years, and such cheapness and abundance of goods that all commerce stood astonished, the authority of prices being laid low. For how could business have been carried on, and how could the mortal race have endured up to this present time, if the fertility of things did not supply all that the use of life required? But there were, at times, certain seasons of scarcity: and they were again relaxed by abundances; certain wars were waged against our will: and were afterward set right by victories and successes. What then? Shall we say that the gods are now mindful of our injuries, and now again unmindful of them?

If at whatever time there is famine they are said to be angry, it follows that in a time of abundance they are not angry and harsh; and so the matter is brought to this pass, that by laughable alternations they both lay down and take up their wrath again, and, the recollection of their offenses being dropped, always restore themselves to their whole former state. And yet, what sort of thing this is that is said cannot be grasped by any comprehensible understanding. If they willed the Alamanni, the Persians, the Scythians to be vanquished on this account, because Christians dwelt and lived among their peoples, how did they grant victory to the Romans, when Christians dwelt and lived among their peoples too? If in Asia and Syria they willed the mice and locusts

to swarm up prodigiously, because by like reasoning Christians dwelt among their peoples — then in Spain and Gaul, why at the same time was none of these things produced, when innumerable Christians were living in these provinces too? If among the Gaetuli and the people of Tingis they sent drought and barrenness upon the crops for the sake of this same cause, why in that very year did they grant the most ample harvests to the Moors and Numidians, when a like religion was practiced in these regions too? If in some one city they caused very many to die of famine out of aversion to our name, why in that same place, amid the dearth of the grain-supply, did they render not only bodies that were not ours, but even the Christians themselves, richer and most abundantly wealthy?

Either, then, all peoples ought to have had nothing joyful, if we are the cause of evils — for we exist among all nations — or else, since you see prosperity mingled with misfortunes, cease to ascribe to us that which harms your affairs, since we obstruct nothing that is joyful and prosperous. 6. For if I act so that things go badly, why do I not likewise stand in the way so that they may go well? If my name is the cause that scarcity should be great, why do I not hinder there being the utmost fertility? If, when a wound is received in war, I am said to bring the mischance, why, when enemies perish, am I not a favorable omen, and why do I not in adversity turn good hopes to ruin by the foulness of an ill-boding sign?

And yet, O great worshippers and high priests of the divine powers, why do you assert that those most august gods are angry with Christian peoples? Do you thus not perceive, not see, what base passions, what unseemly frenzies you attribute to the divine powers? 2. For what else is it to be angry than to be insane, than to rave, than to be carried away into a lust for vengeance and, with the estrangement of a savage breast, to run riot upon the tortures of another's pain? 3. This, then, do the great gods know, endure, and feel — the very thing which wild beasts possess, which brutes possess, which the deadly water-snakes hold in their venomous fang. 4. That which in a man is a mark of levity, that which in an earthly living creature is blameworthy, you assert that that surpassing nature, standing firm in the steadfastness of perpetual virtue, knows: 5.

— and what then necessarily follows, except that from their eyes fiery sparks flash out, the panting breast seethes, foam is cast from the mouth, and from the burning words the dryness of the lips whitens? 18.1. But if this is true, and it is ascertained and known, that the gods boil over with anger and are tossed about by such an agitation and disturbance, then they are not immortal and everlasting, nor to be reckoned in the estimation of any divinity. 2. For where, as it seems to the wise, there is any passion, there of necessity there is suffering; where suffering is placed, it is consistent that disturbance should follow; where there is disturbance, there is grief and sickness; where there is grief and sickness, there is already room for diminution and corruption;

and if these two afflict, then destruction is near at hand, death that ends all things and takes life away from all who have feeling. 19.1. What of this — that in this way you introduce them not only as fickle and hot-tempered, but also (which it befits to be far removed from the gods) as unjust and iniquitous, and as holding no account whatever even of moderate equity? 2. For what is so unjust as to be angry with some and to injure others, to complain of men and to tear apart the harmless grain-crops, to hate the Christian name and to ruin their own worshippers with every loss? 20.1. But do they on that account also rage against you, so that, roused by these inward wounds, you may rise up to avenge them?

— Do the gods, then, seek human patronage, and, unless they are protected by your championing, are they themselves not competent to ward off and defend their own affronts? 2. Nay rather, if it is true that they burn with anger, grant to them the power over themselves — let them defend themselves and, in avenging their offended majesty, let them put forth and try their inner powers. 3. They can, if they will, destroy us by heat, by most harmful cold, by pestilential winds, by the most obscure causes of diseases; they can consume us and utterly banish us from all mortal fellowship. 4. Or, if it is an evil plan to attack us by force, let them send forth some sign of their judgment, by which it may be made clear to all that we dwell beneath heaven wholly against their will.

21.1. Let them grant to you favorable states of health, but to us adverse and the worst. Let them water your fields with timely showers, and drive away from our little plots whatever dews of rain there are. Let them take care that your flocks be multiplied with numerous young, and bring an ill-omened barrenness upon our herds. 2. Let them make your fields yield a full autumn harvest from your olives and vineyards, but forbid that from ours even a single drop of the vine-shoot be pressed out. 3. Lastly and finally, let them command that in your mouth the crops keep their own nature, but in ours that the honey become bitter, that the streams of olive-oil grow rancid, and that under the very drinking, at the lips, the wine be suddenly changed into the treachery of sourness. 22.1. But since the very facts testify that this by no means happens,

and it is established that no evil overflows to us any more than the greatest good overflows to you from the life-giving benefits, what is this so great lust to contend that the gods are the foes and enemies of Christians — men whom in the saddest and in the most joyful of circumstances you may see to differ in no respect by any reasoning from yourself? 2. If you allow the truth to be told you, and without any flatteries, these are but words, mere words — indeed matters believed through slanders, not proved by the testimony of any real knowledge. 23.1. For the rest, the true gods, and those who are worthy to hold and bear the authority of this name, neither grow angry nor become indignant nor devise, by insidious contrivances, that which may harm another. 2.

Indeed, in truth it is impious and surpasses all sacrilege to believe that that wise and most blessed nature reckons it any great matter if someone submits himself to it with fawning humility, and, if this has not been done, believes itself despised and fallen from the height of its supreme summit. 3. It is childish, petty, and paltry, scarcely befitting even those whom the experience of learned men has long since called wandering demons, not to know heavenly things and to be engaged, in this coarser matter, with the lot of their own condition. 24.1. These notions are yours, yours — irreligiously conceived and still more irreligiously believed. 2.

Nay rather, to speak more truly, it is the soothsayers, the interpreters of omens, the diviners, the prophets, and the ever-empty fanatics who have concocted these fables — men who, lest their arts perish and lest they fail to shake out even the meager fees from consultants now grown rare, whenever they have learned that you wish some matter to fall into disrepute, 3. cry out: 'The gods are neglected, and in the temples there is now the utmost scarcity; the ancient ceremonies lie in derision, and the once most venerable rites of the sacred things have perished before the superstitions of new religions; and deservedly is the human race pressed by the straits of so many miseries, tormented by the hardships of so many toils.' 4.

And men — a brutish race, and one which, being placed beneath the light, is unable, through inborn blindness, to see — dare, in their frenzy, to assert what you, in your soundness of mind, do not blush to believe. 25.1. But lest anyone should think that we, through distrust of our reply, endow the gods with the gifts of tranquillity, feigning for them minds that are harmless and removed from every disturbance, let us grant, as it has pleased you, that they direct their wrath against us, that they thirst for our blood, and that they have long desired to remove us mortals from the world. 2.

But if it is not troublesome, not burdensome, if it is a matter of common duty, to weigh the points of this dispute not out of favor but out of truth, we beg to hear from you what this reasoning is, what the cause is on account of which the gods above rage against us alone, and men, provoked, blaze up. 3. 'You practice,' they say, 'impious religions and unheard-of cults throughout the world of lands.' — What is it, O you who share in reason, that you dare to declare of men, what to blurt out, what by the desperation of a rash voice do you attempt to bring forth? 4.