Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 7/87

by which it came about that, gaping after immoderate things and lifted up and cast down by prosperity, he himself perished more in his character than he destroyed his enemies in their bodies. These things, truly sad and truly to be lamented, those gods foretold to him neither by entrails, nor by auguries, nor by anyone's dream or prophecy. For they feared more lest he be corrected than lest he be conquered. Nay, they took sufficient pains that, as a glorious conqueror of his fellow citizens, he should himself be conquered and made captive by abominable vices, and through these be subjected far more tightly to the very demons themselves. CHAPTER XXV. How greatly the malign spirits incite men to crimes, when in the committing of wickedness they interpose, as it were, the divine authority of their own example.

From this, indeed, who would not understand, who would not see—except one who has chosen rather to imitate such gods than to be separated from their fellowship by divine grace—how greatly these malign spirits strive to lend, by their own example, a kind of divine authority to crimes? This was so even on a certain broad plain of Campania, where not long afterward civil battle-lines clashed in unspeakable combat: there they themselves were first seen fighting among themselves. For there at first vast crashes were heard, and presently many reported that they had seen two battle-lines fighting for several days. And when that combat ceased, they found also traces, as it were, of men and horses, as great as could be impressed by such a struggle.

If, then, the divinities truly fought among themselves, civil wars among men are thereby excused; yet let it be considered what the malice or the misery of such gods may be. But if they only pretended to fight, what else did they accomplish but that the Romans, by waging war among fellow citizens, might seem to commit no crime, as though following the example of the gods? For civil wars had already begun, and the execrable slaughter of several unspeakable battles had preceded. It had already moved many that a certain soldier, while stripping the spoils from a man he had slain, recognized his brother in the stripped corpse, and, cursing civil wars, slew himself there and joined himself to his brother's body.

Therefore, lest there should be the least weariness at so great an evil, but rather lest the ardor for criminal arms should grow more and more, the noxious demons—whom those men, thinking them gods, judged worthy to be worshiped and venerated—willed to appear to men fighting among themselves, so that the civic affection might not tremble to imitate such battles, but rather human wickedness might be excused by a divine example. By this cunning the malign spirits also commanded scenic shows—about which I have already said much—to be dedicated and consecrated to themselves, where such great enormities of the gods, celebrated in theatrical songs and in the performances of fables, would be imitated without scruple, both by whoever believed they had done them and by whoever did not believe it, yet saw that they themselves most gladly had such things displayed to them.

And so, lest anyone should suppose that the poets had written things insulting to the gods rather than worthy of them, wherever the poets recorded that they had fought among themselves, the gods themselves, to deceive men, confirmed the poets' songs, displaying their battles to human eyes not only through stage-players in the theater, but even by themselves in the field. We have been compelled to say these things, because the authors of those men have by no means hesitated to say and write that the Roman commonwealth had already before been ruined by the most wicked morals of its citizens, and that nothing of it had remained before the coming of Christ Jesus our Lord. This ruin they do not impute to their own gods, who impute to our Christ the transitory evils by which the good cannot perish, whether they live or die:

whereas our Christ continually inculcates so many precepts for the best morals against corrupt ones; but their own gods did nothing with such precepts for the people that worshiped them, on behalf of that commonwealth, that it might not perish; nay rather, by corrupting those very morals as it were by their own examples with noxious authority, they brought it about rather that it should perish. That it did not perish then for this reason—because, as I think, no one will now dare to say it, that 'all the gods departed, leaving their shrines and altars,' as though friends of virtues, offended by the vices of men—is shown by the fact that by so many signs of entrails, auguries, prophecies, by which they were eager to boast and commend themselves as foreknowers of the future and helpers in battles, they are convicted of having been present;

and had they truly departed, the Romans would have been kindled to civil wars more mildly by their own desires than by the instigations of those gods. CHAPTER XXVI. Concerning the secret admonitions of demons that pertained to good morals, while in their sacred rites all wickedness was openly taught. Since these things are so—since openly and plainly basenesses mingled with cruelties, the disgraces and crimes of the deities, whether published or fabricated, were, at their own demand and with their anger if it were not done, consecrated and dedicated to them at fixed and appointed solemnities, and were set before the eyes of all to be imitated, and brought forth to be watched—

what is it that these same demons, who by pleasures of this kind confess themselves to be unclean spirits, who by their own enormities and crimes—whether revealed or feigned—and by the celebration of them, sought from the shameless and extorted from the modest, attest themselves to be authors of a wicked and unclean life, are nevertheless reported to give, in their shrines and secret inner sanctuaries, certain good precepts concerning morals to certain, as it were, chosen ones consecrated to them? If this is so, by this very thing the malice of these noxious spirits must be detected and convicted as the more cunning.

For so great is the power of probity and chastity, that all, or nearly all, of human nature is moved by their praise, nor is it so far depraved by baseness as to have lost all sense of honor. Accordingly, the malignity of the demons, unless somewhere—as we know it is written in our Scriptures—it transforms itself into angels of light, does not accomplish its business of deception. And so abroad among the peoples, with most crowded uproar, impure impiety resounds all around, while within, to a few, a feigned chastity scarcely makes a sound; what should be hidden is laid open, and what should be praised is kept secret; honor lies hidden and dishonor lies exposed; the evil that is done summons all spectators, the good that is spoken scarcely finds any hearers, as though honorable things were to be blushed at and dishonorable things to be gloried in.

But where does this happen except in the temples of demons? where except in the lodging-houses of deceit? For the one is done that the more honorable, who are few, may be ensnared; the other, lest the many, who are most base, should be corrected. Where and when those consecrated to Caelestis heard precepts of chastity, we do not know; yet before that very shrine, where we beheld that idol placed, we, all flowing together from every side and standing wherever each could, watched with the keenest attention the games that were performed, gazing with alternating glances on this side at the harlot's parade, on that at the virgin goddess: that one adored with supplication, before that one shameful things celebrated; there we saw no bashful mimes, no more modest stage-woman; all the offices of obscenity were being fulfilled.

It was known what pleased the virginal deity, and what was displayed was such as the more learned matron might carry home from the temple to her house. Some more modest women turned their faces away from the impure motions of the players, and yet learned the art of debauchery by a furtive attention. For they were ashamed before men, lest they should dare to behold the lewd gestures with an open face; but far less did they dare, with chaste heart, to condemn the sacred rites of her whom they venerated. Yet this was offered to be learned openly in the temple, while at least secrecy was sought in the home for its perpetration—the shame of mortals being exceedingly astonished, if any was there at all, that men did not freely commit the human enormities which they were even learning religiously in the presence of the gods, who, they were sure, would be angry unless they took care also to perform them.

For what other spirit is it that, stirring the basest minds by a hidden instinct, both urges to the committing of adulteries and feeds upon the deeds done, except the one who also delights in such sacred rites—setting up in the temples images of demons, loving in the games images of vices, whispering in secret words of justice to deceive even the few who are good, frequenting in the open the enticements to wickedness to possess the innumerable wicked? CHAPTER XXVII. With how great an overthrow of public discipline the Romans consecrated the obscene things of the games to appease their gods. That grave man and would-be philosopher Tully, when about to be aedile, proclaims in the ears of the city that, among the other duties of his magistracy, Flora the mother is to be appeased by him through the celebration of games;

and these games are wont to be celebrated all the more devoutly, the more basely. He says in another place, now as consul, in the extreme dangers of the city, that games were held for ten days, and that no measure pertaining to the appeasing of the gods was omitted; as though it were not better to provoke such gods by temperance than to appease them by luxury, and to call them to enmity by honorable conduct rather than to soothe them by so great a deformity. For the men on whose account they were being appeased could not have done harm, by however cruel a savagery, more grievously than they themselves did harm, when they were being appeased by the foulest viciousness.

Since indeed, in order that what was feared from the enemy might be averted from men's bodies, the gods were reconciled in such a way that virtue might be vanquished in men's minds—gods who would not be set as defenders against the assailants of the walls, unless they were first made stormers of good morals.

This appeasement of such deities—most wanton, most impure, most shameless, most wicked, most unclean, whose performers the praiseworthy temper of Roman virtue deprived of honor, expelled from the tribe, recognized as base, and made infamous—this appeasement, I say, shameful and to be shunned and detested by true religion, these fables alluring and criminal against the gods, these ignominious deeds of the gods, whether wickedly and basely done or yet more wickedly and basely fabricated, the whole city learned with public eyes and ears, and perceived that these things committed were pleasing to the deities, and therefore believed that they were not only to be displayed to them, but also to be imitated by itself—not that I-know-not-what supposed good and honorable thing, which was spoken to so few and so secretly (if indeed it was spoken at all), so that it was feared rather lest it become known than lest it not be done.

CHAPTER XXVIII. On the wholesomeness of the Christian religion.

That men are rescued through the name of Christ from the hellish yoke and penal fellowship of those most unclean powers, and are transferred into the light of most wholesome piety from that night of most pernicious impiety—the wicked and ungrateful complain and murmur at this, those more deeply and tightly possessed by that abominable spirit, because the peoples flow together to the church in chaste assembly, with honorable distinction of both sexes, where they may hear how well they ought to live here for a time, that after this life they may be worthy to live blessedly and forever; where the holy Scripture and the doctrine of righteousness resound from a higher place in the sight of all, and both those who do it hear it unto reward, and those who do not do it hear it unto judgment.

And though some scoffers at such precepts do come there, all their wantonness is either laid aside by a sudden change, or restrained by fear or shame. For nothing base and disgraceful is set before them to be watched and imitated, where the precepts of the true God are imparted, or his miracles narrated, or his gifts praised, or his benefits sought. CHAPTER XXIX. An exhortation to the Romans to cast off the worship of the gods. Desire rather these things, O praiseworthy Roman temper, O offspring of the Reguli, the Scaevolae, the Scipios, the Fabricii; desire rather these things, distinguish these from that most base vanity and most deceitful malignity of demons.

If anything praiseworthy stands out in you naturally, it is purified and perfected only by true piety, but by impiety it is utterly ruined and punished. Now then choose what you will follow, that you may be praised not in yourself, but in the true God, without any error. For then popular glory attended you, but by the hidden judgment of divine providence the true religion which you might choose was lacking to you. Awake, it is day, as you have awakened in certain ones of whose perfected virtue, and for the true faith even by their sufferings, we glory—who, contending everywhere against the most hostile powers and conquering them by bravely dying, have brought forth this fatherland for us by their own blood.

To this fatherland we invite and exhort you, that you may be added to the number of its citizens, whose asylum, in a certain manner, is the true remission of sins. Do not listen to your own degenerate sons who disparage Christ and Christians and accuse, as it were, the times as evil, when they are seeking times in which life may not be peaceful, but rather wickedness may be secure. These things have never pleased you, not even for your earthly fatherland. Now then lay hold of the heavenly one, for which you shall labor very little, and in it you shall truly and forever reign. For there it is not the Vestal hearth, not the Capitoline stone, but the one and true God who sets neither bounds to things nor times—'He will give empire without end.' Do not seek false and deceitful gods; rather cast them off and despise them, leaping forth into true liberty.

They are not gods; they are malign spirits, to whom your eternal felicity is a torment. Not so much does Juno seem to have begrudged the Roman citadels to the Trojans, from whom you draw your carnal origin, as do these demons—whom you still think gods—begrudge everlasting abodes to the whole race of men. And you yourself have, in no small part, passed judgment on such spirits, when you appeased them with games, and through the men by whom you held those same games, you willed that they should be infamous. Suffer your liberty to be asserted against the unclean spirits, who had laid upon your necks their own disgrace, to be consecrated and celebrated to them. You removed the performers of divine crimes from your honors:

now supplicate the true God, that he may remove from you those gods who delight in their own crimes, whether true (which is most ignominious) or false (which is most malicious). It is well that of your own accord you were unwilling to open the fellowship of the city to actors and stage-players; awaken more fully! In no way is the divine majesty appeased by those arts by which human dignity is defiled. By what compact, then, do you suppose that gods who delight in such services are to be held in the number of the holy heavenly powers, when you have judged that men, through whom those same services are performed, are not to be held in the number of citizens of Rome of any kind whatsoever? Incomparably more glorious is the city on high, where the victory is truth, where dignity is holiness, where peace is felicity, where life is eternity.

Much less does it have such gods in its fellowship, if you have blushed to have such men in yours. Accordingly, if you desire to attain to the blessed city, shun the fellowship of demons. Unworthily are they worshiped by the honorable, who are appeased by the base. So let these be removed from your piety by Christian purification, in the same way as those were removed from your dignity by the censorial mark.

But concerning carnal goods, which alone the wicked wish to enjoy, and concerning carnal evils, which alone they refuse to endure, that these demons do not have even in these the power which they are thought to have (although, even if they had it, we ought rather to despise these very things than to worship them for the sake of these things, and by worshiping them to be unable to attain to those things which they begrudge us)—yet that not even in these things they prevail to this extent which those think, who contend that they ought to be worshiped on account of these, we shall see in what follows, so that this may be the limit of this volume. CHAPTER I. On the adversities, which alone the wicked fear, and which the world has always suffered, while it worshiped the gods.

I think enough has now been said about the evils of morals and of minds, which are chiefly to be guarded against—that the false gods took no care to come to the aid of their worshiping people, that they might be less crushed under the heap of those evils, but rather acted that they might be crushed all the more. Now I see that I must speak of those evils which alone these men refuse to endure, such as famine, disease, war, plunder, captivity, slaughter, and any like things which we have already mentioned in the first book. For these alone the wicked reckon as evils, which do not make men evil; nor do they blush, amid the goods they praise, themselves to be evil who praise them, and they are more vexed if they have a bad farm than if they have a bad life—as though this were a man's greatest good, to have all goods except his own self.

But not even such evils, which these men alone dread, did their gods, when they were freely worshiped by them, hinder from befalling them. For while at various times throughout diverse regions, before the coming of our Redeemer, the human race was being ground down by innumerable and some even incredible disasters, what other gods did the world worship than these, except for the one Hebrew people and certain individuals outside that people, wherever any were worthy of divine grace by the most hidden and most just judgment of God? But, lest I make it too lengthy, I will be silent about the most grievous evils of other nations everywhere:

as far as it pertains to Rome and the Roman empire, I will speak only of this much—that is, of the city itself properly, and of whatever lands were joined to it either by alliance or subjected by condition—what things they endured before the coming of Christ, when they already belonged, as it were, to the body of that commonwealth. CHAPTER II. Whether the gods, who were similarly worshiped by both Romans and Greeks, had reasons for which they suffered Ilium to be destroyed. First, Troy itself, or Ilium, whence is the origin of the Roman people (for it must not be passed over or dissembled, which I touched upon in the first book), having and worshiping the same gods—why was it conquered, captured, and destroyed by the Greeks? 'To Priam,' they say, 'were repaid the ancestral perjuries of Laomedon.'

Is it then true that Apollo and Neptune served that same Laomedon by hired labors? For they are said to have promised him a wage and to have falsely sworn it. I marvel that Apollo, named a diviner, labored in so great a work, not knowing that Laomedon would deny what had been promised. Although neither did it befit Neptune himself, his uncle, the brother of Jove, the king of the sea, to be ignorant of the future.

For Homer represents him—from the stock of Aeneas, from whose posterity Rome was founded, since the same poet is said to have lived before that city was founded—as divining something great; whom also he snatched away in a cloud, as he says, lest he be slain by Achilles, though he desired to overturn from their foundation, as he confesses in Virgil, 'the walls of perjured Troy built by his own hands.' Ignorant therefore, those great gods, Neptune and Apollo, that Laomedon would deny them their wage, were builders of the Trojan walls for nothing and unthanked. Let them see whether it be not graver to believe in such gods than to perjure oneself to such gods.

For not even Homer himself easily believed this, who makes Neptune indeed fight against the Trojans, but Apollo fight for the Trojans, although the fable narrates that both were offended by that perjury. If, then, they believe the fables, let them blush to worship such deities; if they do not believe the fables, let them not put forward the Trojan perjuries, or let them marvel that the gods punished Trojan perjuries but loved the Roman ones. For whence, in so great and so corrupt a city, did the conspiracy of Catiline have so great an abundance of those whose hand and tongue were fed by perjury or by civil bloodshed? For what else were the senators, so often corrupted in judgments, the people so often corrupted in their votes or in whatever causes were transacted before them in assemblies, doing, but also sinning by perjury?

For amid the most corrupt morals, the ancient custom of swearing was preserved to this end—not that men might be deterred from crimes by the fear of religion, but that perjuries too might be added to their other crimes. CHAPTER III. That the gods could not have been offended by the adultery of Paris, which is reported to have been a frequent practice among themselves. There is therefore no reason why the gods, on whom, as they say, that empire rested, when they are proved to have been conquered by the prevailing Greeks, should be feigned to be angry at the perjuring Trojans. Nor were they incensed at the adultery of Paris—as they are again defended by some—so as to desert Troy. For they are wont to be the authors and teachers of sins, not the avengers.

'The city of Rome,' says Sallust, 'as I have received it, the Trojans founded and held at the beginning, who, with Aeneas as their leader, wandered as fugitives in uncertain dwellings.' If, then, the deities judged that the adultery of Paris was to be avenged, it should have been punished either more so in the Romans, or at least also in the Romans, because Aeneas's mother did this very thing. But how did they hate that enormity in him, who did not hate—to omit other things—in their own associate Venus, what she had committed with Anchises, by whom she had borne Aeneas? Was it because the one was done with Menelaus indignant, but the other with Vulcan consenting? For the gods, I suppose, are not jealous of their wives to such a degree as to deign even to share them with men.

Perhaps I am thought to be deriding the fables, and not to be treating a cause of so great weight gravely. Let us then, if it please, not believe that Aeneas is the son of Venus: behold, I concede it, if also Romulus is not the son of Mars. But if the one, why not also the other? Or is it lawful for gods to mingle with human women, but wicked for male humans to mingle with goddesses? A harsh, or rather an incredible, condition, that what by the right of Venus was permitted to Mars in intercourse, this should not be permitted to Venus herself in her own right. But both have been confirmed by Roman authority. For the later Caesar believed Venus to be his grandmother no less than the more ancient Romulus believed Mars to be his father. CHAPTER IV. On the opinion of Varro, by which he said it was useful for men to feign themselves born of the gods. Someone may say: Do you then believe these things?

I, for my part, do not believe these things. For even their most learned man, Varro, almost confesses—though not boldly nor confidently—that these things are false. But he says it is useful for cities that brave men should believe themselves, even if it be false, to be born of the gods, so that in that way the human mind, bearing as it were the confidence of a divine stock, may more boldly presume to undertake great enterprises, may act more vigorously, and on this account may, by that very security, accomplish them more happily. This opinion of Varro, expressed as I could in my own words, you perceive how wide a place it opens to falsehood, where we understand that many things now sacred and as it were religious could have been invented, where lies were thought to profit citizens even concerning the gods themselves. CHAPTER V.

That it cannot be approved that the gods punished the adultery of Paris, which they did not avenge in the mother of Romulus. But whether Venus could from intercourse with Anchises bear Aeneas, or Mars from intercourse with the daughter of Numitor beget Romulus, let us leave undecided. For nearly such a question arises also from our own Scriptures, in which it is asked whether the transgressing angels lay with the daughters of men, from whom, when giants were born—that is, exceedingly great and strong men—the earth was then filled. Accordingly, let our discussion for the present be referred to both cases. For if those things are true which are read among them concerning the mother of Aeneas and the father of Romulus, how can the adulteries of men displease the gods, which they bear in concord among themselves?

But if they are false, neither so can they be angry at true human adulteries, who delight even in their own false ones. To this is added that, since—if that concerning Mars is not believed, so that this concerning Venus also is not believed—then, with no pretext of divine intercourse, the cause of Romulus's mother is left undefended. Now she was a Vestal priestess, and therefore the gods ought rather to have avenged that sacrilegious enormity in the Romans than the adultery of Paris in the Trojans. For the ancient Romans themselves used even to bury alive the priestesses of Vesta caught in defilement, but adulterous women, though with some condemnation, they punished with no death at all—to such a degree did they avenge more grievously what they thought to be divine sanctuaries than human bedchambers. CHAPTER VI.

On the murder of Romulus' brother, which the gods did not avenge. I add a further point. If the sins of men were displeasing to those deities, so that, offended by the deed of Paris, they handed over abandoned Troy to sword and fire, then the slaying of Romulus' brother ought to have moved them against the Romans far more than the mockery inflicted upon a Greek husband moved them against the Trojans; the parricide of a city at its birth ought to have provoked them more than the adultery of a city at the height of its reign. And it does not matter, for the case we are now pleading, whether Romulus ordered this to be done or did it himself, which many deny out of shamelessness, many doubt out of modesty, and many gloss over out of grief. Let us therefore not delay over investigating that matter too carefully through the weighed testimonies of many writers.

It is openly established that Romulus' brother was slain, not by enemies, not by strangers. If Romulus either perpetrated or commanded this, he himself was more the head of the Romans than Paris was of the Trojans. Why then did that ravisher of another man's wife provoke the wrath of the gods against the Trojans, while this destroyer of his own brother invited the protection of those same gods upon the Romans? But if that crime was foreign to the deed and command of Romulus, then since it surely ought to have been avenged, that whole city committed it, in that the whole city overlooked it; and so it slew not now a brother, but a father, which is worse. For each was a founder, since the one, carried off by crime, was not permitted to be a ruler.

There is no reason, I think, to ask what evil Troy deserved that the gods should abandon it so that it might be destroyed, and what good Rome deserved that the gods should dwell in it so that it might be enlarged—unless it be that, conquered, they fled from there and betook themselves to these people, whom they would deceive in like manner; nay rather, they remained there too, to deceive after their custom those who would again inhabit those same lands, while here they gloried in greater honours by plying the same arts of their deceit even more vigorously. CHAPTER VII. On the destruction of Ilium, which Fimbria, the general of Marius, overthrew. For surely, when the civil wars were already raging, what wretched offence had Ilium committed, that it should be overthrown by Fimbria, a most wicked man of the Marian faction, far more savagely and cruelly than once by the Greeks?