Octavius 1 part 2/4

That this comes about is very well known, through the easy compliance of hearers, who, while they are drawn away from attention to the substance by the allurement of words, assent without discrimination to all that is said, nor separate the false from the right, not knowing that there is both an incredible truth and a plausible falsehood. And so, the more often they believe in mere assertions, the more frequently are they refuted by those more skilled: thus, constantly deceived by their own rashness, they transfer the blame from the judge to a complaint of uncertainty, so that, all things being condemned, they would rather hold everything in suspense than judge concerning deceptive matters. Therefore we must take care lest we labor under a like hatred of all discourses, so that very many of the simpler sort are carried away into execration and hatred of men. For the incautiously credulous are circumvented by those whom they had thought good;

Soon, through a similar error, all men become suspect, and they fear as wicked even those whom they could have perceived to be the best. 'I, therefore, being anxious—since the matter is debated on both sides with every effort, and on the one side the truth is for the most part obscure, while on the other side there is a remarkable subtlety that sometimes, by its abundance of speech, mimics the credibility of a confessed proof—let us carefully weigh each point as far as possible, so that we may praise the cleverness indeed, but choose, approve, and take up those things that are right.' 'You are departing,' said Caecilius, 'from the duty of a scrupulous judge:

for it is most unjust that you should weaken the force of my argument by the interposition of a most weighty discussion, when Octavius has each point whole and untouched to refute, if he can.' 'What you charge me with,' I said, 'I have, unless I am mistaken, brought forward for our common advantage, so that by scrupulous examination we may weigh our verdict not by the swelling of eloquence, but by the solidity of the facts themselves. Nor should our attention be diverted any longer, as you complain, since in complete silence we may now hear the response of our Januarius, who is already eager.' And Octavius said: 'I will indeed speak, as best I can according to my strength, and you must strive together with me, so that with a flood of truthful words we may wash away the most bitter stain of these revilings.

And I will not conceal at the outset that the opinion of my friend Natalis wavered so erringly, vaguely, and slipperily, that we are left in doubt whether your learning has been thrown into confusion, or whether it faltered through error. For he varied between believing the gods at one moment and deliberating at another, so that, by the uncertainty of his proposition, the aim of our response might be founded all the more uncertainly. But in my friend Natalis I do not wish to suppose cunning, nor do I believe it: subtle sophistication is far from his simplicity. What then? Just as one who does not know the right road, when, as happens, it splits into several, because he does not know the way, hesitates anxiously and dares neither to choose any single one nor to approve them all: so he who has no stable judgment of the truth, as treacherous suspicion is scattered abroad, so his doubtful opinion is dispersed.

It is therefore no wonder if Caecilius is again and again tossed about, seethes, and wavers among contrary and conflicting things. That this may no longer happen, I will refute and convict whatever has been said, however divergent, confirming and proving it by one single truth: so that henceforth he need neither doubt nor wander. 'And since my brother burst out, taking it ill, growing indignant, vexed, and grieved that the unlettered, the poor, and the unskilled should dispute about heavenly matters, let him know that all men, without distinction of age, sex, or rank, are begotten capable and apt for reason and understanding, and that they have not obtained wisdom by chance, but have it implanted by nature:

indeed even the philosophers themselves, or any others who have passed into memory as inventors of the arts, before they brought forth fame for their name by the skill of their mind, were reckoned as common, unlearned, and half-naked: so true is it that the rich, bound fast to their possessions, have been accustomed to gaze up at gold rather than at heaven, while our poor men both devised wisdom and handed down instruction to the rest. Whence it appears that talent is not given by means, nor procured by study, but is engendered together with the very forming of the mind. Therefore there is nothing to be indignant or grieved at, if anyone whosoever inquires, perceives, and declares concerning divine things, since it is not the authority of the disputant that is required, but the truth of the disputation itself.

And indeed, the more unskilled the speech, the more illustrious is the reasoning, since it is not painted over with the pomp of eloquence and charm, but is sustained, as it is, by the rule of rightness. 'Nor do I refuse what Caecilius strove to assert among his chief points: that a man ought to know himself and to consider what he is, whence he is, and why he is—whether compounded of the elements or assembled from atoms, or rather made, formed, and animated by God.

This very thing we cannot explore and dig out without an inquiry into the universe, since they are so cohering, connected, and chained together, that unless you diligently sift out the principle of divinity, you cannot know that of humanity; nor can you conduct civic affairs well, unless you have come to know this commonwealth common to the whole world—especially since in this we differ from wild beasts, that they, bent downward and inclining toward the earth, are born to look out for nothing but their fodder, whereas we, to whom an upright countenance is given, to whom a gaze toward heaven, speech, and reason are granted, through which we recognize, perceive, and imitate God—it is neither right nor lawful for us to be ignorant of the heavenly brightness that thrusts itself upon our eyes and senses:

for it is the very image of sacrilege to seek down upon the ground what you ought to find on high. 'All the more, therefore, do those seem to me to lack mind, sense, and even their very eyes, who hold that this entire ornament of the world was not perfected by divine reason, but heaped together out of certain fragments cohering at random. For what can be so open, so manifest, and so plain—when you have lifted your eyes to heaven and surveyed the things below and around—as that there is some divine power of a most excellent mind, by which all nature is inspired, moved, nourished, and governed? 'Behold heaven itself: how widely it is stretched out, how swiftly it revolves, whether it is distinguished by stars into night, or illumined by the sun into day:

now you will know how wondrous and divine is in it the balancing of the supreme Governor. Behold also the year, how the circuit of the sun completes it; and behold the month, how the moon carries it round by waxing, waning, and labor. What shall I say of the recurring alternations of darkness and light, that there might be for us an alternate renewal of work and rest? Let a more extended discourse about the stars be left to the astrologers—whether they govern the course of sailing, or bring on the season for plowing and reaping. Each of these things not only required the supreme Craftsman and a perfect reason in order to be created, made, and arranged, but also cannot be felt, perceived, and understood without the highest skill and reason. 'What then?

When the order of the seasons and of the crops is marked out with a fixed variety, does it not bear witness to its author and parent—spring alike with its flowers, and summer with its harvests, and the welcome ripeness of autumn, and the necessary olive-gathering of winter? This order would easily be thrown into disorder, did it not stand fast by supreme reason. And then, how great is the providence, lest winter alone should sear with frost or summer alone should scorch with heat, to insert the moderating mean of autumn and spring, so that through their own footsteps the unseen and harmless passages of the returning year may glide by! 'Look upon the sea: it is bound by the law of the shore. Whatever there is of trees, behold how it is animated from the bowels of the earth! Look upon the ocean: it flows back with reciprocal tides. Behold the springs: they flow with perennial veins. Gaze upon the rivers:

they ever go with practiced glidings. 'Why should I speak of the rightly disposed ridges of mountains, the curves of hills, the spread-out plains? Or why should I speak of the manifold protection of living creatures against one another?—some armed with horns, others hedged with teeth and grounded upon hoofs and spiked with stings, or set free by swiftness of foot or by the lifting of wings? 'The very beauty of our own form above all confesses God as its artificer: our upright posture, our erect countenance, our eyes set at the top as if on a watchtower, and all the other senses arranged as if in a citadel. 'It would take long to go through each part. There is nothing among the limbs in a man that is not both for the sake of necessity and for adornment; and, what is more wonderful, the same figure belongs to all, yet certain lineaments are bent differently for each one:

thus we all appear similar, and yet among ourselves we are found, each one, dissimilar. 'What of the manner of being born? What? Was not the desire of begetting given by God, and that the breasts should turn to milk as the birth ripens, and that the tender offspring should grow up by the abundance of the milky dew? 'Nor does God take thought for the universe only, but also for its parts. Britain is wanting in sunshine, but is restored by the warmth of the surrounding sea; the river Nile is wont to temper the dryness of Egypt; the Euphrates compensates Mesopotamia in place of rains; the river Indus is said both to sow the East and to water it. 'But if, on entering some house, you had seen everything cultivated, arranged, and adorned, you would surely believe that a master presided over it, and that he was far better than all those good things:

so in this house of the world, when in heaven and earth you discern providence, order, and law, believe that there is a Lord and Parent of the universe, more beautiful than the very stars and than all the parts of the whole world. 'Unless perhaps, since there is no doubt about providence, you think it must be inquired whether the heavenly kingdom is governed by the command of one or by the will of many—a thing which is of no great labor to make plain to one who considers earthly empires, for which the examples surely come from heaven. When did a partnership in royal power ever either begin with good faith or part without bloodshed? I pass over the Persians, who divined their sovereignty from the neighing of horses, and I leave aside the pair of Thebans, a dead fable. Concerning the kingdom of shepherds and a hut, the memory of the twins is most well known.

The wars of son-in-law and father-in-law were spread over the whole world, and fortune did not contain two of so great an empire. 'Look at the rest: there is one king for the bees, one leader in the flocks, one ruler in the herds. Would you believe that in heaven the supreme power is divided, and that the whole majesty of that true and divine rule is split apart—when it is manifest that God, the parent of all, has neither beginning nor end; who grants nativity to all, perpetuity to himself; who existed before the world, himself instead of a world to himself; who commands all things, whatsoever they are, by his word, dispenses them by his reason, and brings them to perfection by his power. 'This One cannot be seen: he is brighter than sight; nor grasped: he is purer than touch; nor estimated: he is greater than the senses, infinite, immeasurable, and known in his full greatness only to himself.

But for us the breast is too narrow for understanding, and therefore we worthily estimate him in this way, when we call him inestimable. I will declare just as I feel: whoever thinks he knows the greatness of God diminishes it; whoever does not wish to diminish it, does not know it. 'Nor should you seek a name for God: God is the name. There is need of designations when a multitude must be distinguished through individuals by the proper marks of appellations: for God, who alone is, the word 'God' is the whole. If I should call him Father, you would suppose him carnal; if King, you would imagine him earthly; if Lord, you would certainly understand him as mortal. Take away the additions of names and you will perceive his brightness. 'What of the fact that I have the consent of all about this? I hear the common people:

when they stretch their hands to heaven, they say nothing other than 'God,' and 'God is great,' and 'God is true,' and 'if God should grant it.' Is this the natural speech of the common crowd, or the prayer of a confessing Christian? And those who would have Jupiter to be the chief are deceived in the name, but they agree about one power. 'I hear the poets too proclaiming 'one father of gods and men,' and that the mind of mortals is such as the parent of all has made the day to be. What? Did not the Mantuan Maro more openly, more nearly, more truly say that 'in the beginning' a 'spirit within nourishes the heaven and the earth' and the other members of the world, and 'an infused mind sets them in motion, thence the race of men and of cattle' and whatever else of living things there is? The same poet in another place names that very mind and spirit 'God.' For these are his words:

that God indeed goes through all lands and the tracts of the sea and the deep heaven, whence the race of men and the cattle, whence rain and fires. 'What else, even by us, is God proclaimed to be than Mind and Reason and Spirit? 'Let us review, if you please, the teaching of the philosophers: you will discover that they, though in varied discourses, yet in the very facts come together and conspire into this one opinion. I pass over those rude and ancient men who earned the title of wise by their own sayings. Let Thales of Miletus be the first of all, who was the first of all to discuss heavenly matters. This Milesian Thales said that the beginning of things was water, but that God was that Mind which formed all things out of water.

Granted that the reasoning about water and spirit is too lofty and too sublime to have been found out by man, and was handed down by God: you see that the opinion of this foremost philosopher resounds in deep accord with ours. Anaximenes next, and afterward Diogenes of Apollonia, set down air as God, infinite and immeasurable: of these too there is a similar consensus about divinity. The description of Anaxagoras, indeed, and the motion of an infinite mind, is called God; and the God of Pythagoras is a soul passing through and intent upon the whole nature of things, from which even the life of all living creatures is plucked. It is well known that Xenophanes hands down the whole infinite together with a mind as God; and that Antisthenes held there to be many popular gods, but one natural and supreme; and that Speusippus knew God to be an animating force by which all things are governed. What then?

Democritus, although the first inventor of atoms, does he not for the most part speak of nature, which pours forth images, and of intelligence, as God? Strato too, he himself speaks of nature. Even that Epicurus, who fashions the gods either as idle or as nonexistent, sets nature above all. Aristotle varies, yet assigns one power: for at one time he calls mind, at another the world, God; at another he sets God over the world. Theophrastus too varies, attributing primacy now to the world, now to the divine mind. Heraclides Ponticus also, though in varied ways, ascribes a divine mind to the world. Zeno and Chrysippus and Cleanthes are themselves likewise multiform, but all of them revolve back to the unity of providence.

For Cleanthes discourses of God now as the mind of nature and as soul, now as the ether, and most often as reason. Zeno, his teacher, will have it that natural and divine law, and at one moment the ether, at another reason, is the beginning of all things; and the same man, by interpreting Juno to be air, Jupiter to be heaven, Neptune the sea, fire to be Vulcan, and the other popular gods likewise to be elements, gravely arraigns and refutes the public error. Chrysippus holds nearly the same: he believes the divine rational power, nature and the world, and at times fatal necessity, to be God; and he imitates Zeno by a physiological interpretation in the songs of Hesiod, Homer, and Orpheus.

To the Babylonian Diogenes too belongs the system of expounding and discoursing that the birth of Jupiter and the origin of Minerva and other things of this kind are names of things, not of gods. For the Socratic Xenophon denies that the form of the true God can be seen, and therefore that it ought not to be inquired into; Ariston the Stoic holds that it cannot be comprehended at all: both perceived the majesty of God through despair of understanding him. To Plato the discourse about God, both about the things themselves and about the names, is more open, and would be wholly heavenly, did it not sometimes become soiled by an admixture of civic persuasion.

Thus to Plato in the Timaeus God is, by his very name, the parent of the world, the artificer of the soul, the fabricator of things heavenly and earthly, whom—he premises—it is difficult to find because of his exceeding and incredible power, and, when you have found him, impossible to declare in public. 'These things of ours are almost the same: for we both know God and call him the parent of all, yet we never proclaim him in public except when asked. 'I have set forth the opinions of nearly all the philosophers whose glory is more illustrious, who have designated the one God, though by many names, so that anyone might judge either that the Christians of today are philosophers, or that the philosophers of that time were already Christians.

'But if the world is ruled by providence and governed by the nod of one God, then the antiquity of unskilled men, delighted or captivated by their own little fables, ought not to drag us into error by their mutual consent, since it is refuted by the opinions of their own philosophers, on whose side stand the authority of both reason and antiquity. For our forefathers had such ready faith in falsehoods that they rashly believed even other monstrous things, mere wonders: the manifold Scylla, the multiform Chimaera, and the Hydra reborn through its fruitful wounds, and Centaurs—horses interwoven with their men—and whatever fame is permitted to invent, it was their pleasure to hear. What of those old wives' tales, of birds and beasts made from men, and of trees and flowers made from men?

If these things had been done, they would still be happening: because they cannot happen, therefore neither have they been done. In like manner our forefathers erred also concerning the gods: improvident and credulous, they believed with rude simplicity. While they religiously worshiped their kings, while they longed to see the departed in their images, while they were eager to detain their memories in statues, the consolations that had been adopted became sacred rites. Finally, both before the world lay open to commerce and before the nations mingled their rites and customs, each nation venerated its own founder, or a renowned leader, or a chaste queen braver than her sex, or the discoverer of some service or art, as a citizen of good memory: thus both a reward was given to the dead and an example to those to come.

'Read the writings of the historians or the writings of the wise: you will recognize the same things along with me. 'Euhemerus relates that, on account of the merits of their virtue or service, certain men were held to be gods, and he enumerates their birthdays, their native lands, and their tombs, and points them out throughout the provinces—of Dictaean Jupiter, of Delphic Apollo, of Pharian Isis, and of Eleusinian Ceres. Prodicus says that those were taken up among the gods who, in their wandering, by newly discovered crops were of profit to the welfare of men.

Persaeus philosophizes to the same effect, and he links the discovered crops and the discoverers of those very crops by the same names, as the comic saying goes, 'Venus grows cold without Liber and Ceres.' Alexander that Great Macedonian, in a remarkable volume to his mother, wrote that, through fear of his power, the secret about the gods being men had been betrayed to him by a priest: there he makes Vulcan the chief of all, and afterward the family of Jupiter. For all the writers of antiquity, both Greek and Roman, have handed down that Saturn—the chief of this race and swarm—was a man. Nepos knows this, and Cassius in his history, and Thallus and Diodorus say this.

This Saturn, then, a fugitive from Crete, had come to Italy through fear of his savage son, and, received with the hospitality of Janus, taught those rude and rustic men many things, as one Greek-bred and polished: to imprint letters, to stamp coins, to fashion tools. And so he preferred his hiding place, because he had lain hidden there safely, to be called Latium, and a city Saturnia from his own name; and the Janiculum—both of them left these to the memory of posterity. A man, therefore, who surely fled; a man who surely lay hidden; both the father of a man and born from a man: for he was reported to be the son of Earth or of Heaven, because among the Italians he was of unknown parents—just as to this day we call those unexpectedly seen 'sent from heaven,' and the obscure and unknown we call 'sons of the earth.'

His son Jupiter, having shut out his parent, reigned in Crete, died there, and there had sons: even now the cave of Jupiter is visited and his tomb is shown, and he is convicted of his humanity by his very sacred rites. 'It is idle to go through them one by one and to unfold the whole series of that race, since the mortality proved in the first parents has flowed down upon the rest by the very order of succession. Unless perhaps you fashion gods after death, and Romulus is a god through the perjury of Proculus, and Juba is a god by the will of the Moors, and the rest of the deified kings are gods—who are consecrated not for any belief in their divinity, but for the honor of a power well discharged. Indeed this title is ascribed to them against their will: they choose to persist as men; they fear to be made gods, even though, being now old, they have no wish for it.

'Therefore there are no gods made out of the dead, since God cannot die; nor out of those born, since everything that is born dies: but that is divine which has neither beginning nor setting. For why, if they were born, are they not also born today? Unless perhaps Jupiter has now grown old, and childbearing has failed in Juno, and Minerva has gone grey before she gave birth. Or has that generation ceased for this reason, that no assent is granted to fables of this kind? 'But if the gods could create, they could not perish, and we should have more gods than all men together, so that now neither heaven could contain them, nor air hold them, nor earth bear them. Whence it is manifest that those were men, whom we read to have been born and know to have died.

'Who then doubts that the common people pray to the consecrated images of these men and worship them publicly, while the opinion and mind of the unskilled is deceived by the neat workmanship of art, dazzled by the gleam of gold, and dulled by the brightness of silver and the whiteness of ivory? But if anyone should bring to mind by what tortures and by what machinery every idol is formed, he will blush to fear a material that has been mocked by the craftsman, so as to make a god. For a wooden god—a portion perhaps of a funeral pyre or of some unlucky log—is hung up, hewn, planed, smoothed with a plane; and a bronze or silver god is melted down out of some filthy little vessel, as has often been done by an Egyptian king, beaten with hammers, and shaped on the anvil;

and a stone god is hewn, carved, and polished by some filthy man, nor does it feel the injury of its birth, just as afterward it feels nothing of your veneration or worship. 'Unless perhaps it is not yet a god while it is stone or wood or silver. When, then, is it born? Behold, it is melted, fabricated, sculpted: it is not yet a god; behold, it is leaded, constructed, set up: nor is it yet a god; behold, it is adorned, consecrated, prayed to; then at last it is a god, when a man has willed it so and dedicated it. 'How much more truly do the dumb animals naturally judge concerning your gods! Mice, swallows, and kites know that they do not perceive: they gnaw them, tread on them, sit on them, and unless you drive them off, they nest in the very mouth of your god;

and spiders, indeed, weave over its face and hang their threads from its very head. You wipe them, clean them, scrape them, and you both protect and fear those whom you yourselves make—while not one of you considers that he ought first to know God before worshiping him; while they inconsiderately are eager to obey their parents; while they prefer to become an accession to another's error rather than to trust themselves; while they know nothing of those things which they fear. So in gold and silver avarice has been consecrated, so the form of empty statues has been sealed, so Roman superstition was born. 'And if you should review their rites, how many things are laughable, how many even pitiable! Naked men run about in the raw winter, others march wearing felt caps, carry old shields around, beat hides, and lead the gods from street to street begging:

some shrines they permit to be approached once a year, some it is wholly forbidden to visit: there is a place where a man is not allowed, and some sacred rites are without women; even for a slave to be present at certain ceremonies is an expiable offense: some rites a woman of one husband crowns, others a woman of many husbands, and with great religious zeal she is sought out who can count the more adulteries. What? He who pours a libation with his own blood and supplicates with his own wounds—would it not be better to be profane than thus religious? And the man whose obscene parts are reaped with a potsherd, how does he violate the god whom he placates in this way—when, if God wished for eunuchs, he could beget them, and not have them made? 'Who would not understand that men diseased in mind, and of a vain and ruined spirit, dote in these things, and that the very crowd of those who err lends mutual patronage to one another?

Here the common defense of madness is a raging multitude. 'Consider, finally, the sacred rites themselves and the very mysteries: you will find mournful ends, fates and funerals and lamentations and wailings of wretched gods. Isis mourns, beats her breast, and seeks her lost son, together with her Cynocephalus and her bald-headed priests; and the wretched followers of Isis beat their breasts and imitate the grief of that most unhappy mother; soon, when the little one is found, Isis rejoices, the priests exult, Cynocephalus the finder glories, and they do not cease, year after year, either to lose what they find or to find what they lose. Is it not ridiculous either to mourn what you worship or to worship what you mourn?

Yet these rites, once Egyptian, are now Roman as well, so that you should rave over Isis's swallow and sistrum, and the empty tomb of your Serapis or Osiris with its scattered limbs. 'Ceres, with kindled torches and girt about by a serpent, anxious and troubled, tracks the footsteps of Libera, stolen away and ravished by deceit: these are the Eleusinia. And what are the sacred rites of Jupiter? A she-goat is his nurse, and the infant is snatched away from his greedy father, lest he be devoured, and by the cymbals of the Corybantes, lest the father hear the wailings, a clashing is struck up. As for the Dindyma of Cybele, one is ashamed to tell how she, since she could not entice her lover—unhappily pleasing to her—to debauchery (for she herself was deformed and old, being, as it were, the mother of many gods), castrated him, so as to make a eunuch a god, forsooth.

On account of this fable the Galli worship her with the punishment of their own half-male bodies. These now are not sacred rites, but tortures. 'What? Do not the very forms and aspects convict the mockeries and disgraces of your gods? Vulcan a lame and crippled god; Apollo smooth-cheeked through so many ages; Aesculapius well-bearded, even though he is the son of the ever-youthful Apollo; Neptune with sea-green eyes, Minerva with grey-blue, Juno with ox-like eyes, Mercury with winged feet, Pan with hoofed feet, Saturn with fettered ones. Janus, indeed, bears two faces, as if he walked also backward; Diana at one time is a huntress girt high, and the Ephesian one is built up with many breasts and udders, and Trivia is horrific with three heads and many hands. What?

Jupiter himself, your own, is now set up beardless, now placed bearded; and when he is called Hammon, he has horns; and when Capitoline, then he wields thunderbolts; and when Latiaris, he is drenched with gore; and when Feretrius, he is wreathed with a crown. And, not to go about among many Jupiters too long, the monstrous shapes of Jupiter are as many as his names. Erigone is hanged from a noose, that she might become the Virgin set ablaze among the stars; the Castores die by turns that they may live; Aesculapius is struck by a thunderbolt that he may rise into a god; Hercules is consumed in the fires of Oeta that he may put off the man.