駁異教徒 第 4 章 第 1/3 段

It pleases me to question you — and above all the Romans themselves, the lords and princes of the world — whether you consider that Piety, Concord, Health, Honor, Virtue, Felicity, and the other names of this kind, for which we see altars built by you together with magnificent shrines, possess divine power and dwell in the regions of heaven; or whether, as is customary, merely for form's sake, from the fact that we desire and wish that these good things should befall us, you have entered them upon the census of the gods above. For if,

considering these to be empty names of no substance, you nevertheless consecrated them to divine regions, then you will have to see whether this is a childish game, or something aiming at the mockery of your own deities, to whom you equate and add the fabrications of empty words. But if, from a more settled conviction of mind, you have deemed them to be gods and have loaded them with temples and sacred couches, we beg you to instruct our ignorance: Victory, Peace, Equity, and the rest that were mentioned above — by what reasoning, by what path, can they be understood to be gods and to belong to the council of the gods above?

For we — unless perhaps you strip and snatch from us our common sense — perceive and discern that none of these has the power of a deity, nor is contained in any form of its own kind, but that virtue belongs to the virtuous man, health to the healthy, honor to the honored, victory to the victor, concord to the concordant, piety to the pious, memory to him who remembers, and felicity to him who lives happily and without any misfortunes. That this is most truly said by us is easy to recognize from the opposing contraries: from unhappiness, discord, forgetfulness, iniquity, impiety, cowardice of heart, and a less favorable condition of body.

For as these things happen and are situated in the actions of men and in chance affections, so that which is their opposite, being named from the more benign qualities, must necessarily inhere in others, from whom, when they are thus formed, that fashioning of names was conceived. For as to your bringing in for us other troops of marked-out gods, we cannot judge whether you do this seriously and from the trust of an ascertained matter, or whether, sporting with fictions, you run riot in an empty flux of your wits. 'Because a she-wolf, though not gentle, spared the exposed infants, she — he says — is called the goddess Luperca, on the authority of Varro.'

From the outcome of events, then, and not from the power of nature, is that goddess brought forth; and after the monstrous beast restrained its savage bites, she both began to exist and drew the meaning of her very name. Or, if she was already a goddess long before Romulus and his brother were born, declare of what name and appellation she then was. She was called Praestana, as you report, because Quirinus surpassed the strength of all in the casting of the javelin; and because it was granted to Titus Tatius to open and lay bare a road so that he might seize the Capitoline hill, the goddess was called Panda or Pantica.

Before these deeds, then, these too had never been deities; and unless Romulus had held the Palatine by the casting of a spear, and unless the Sabine king had been able to take the Tarpeian rock, would there be no Pantica, no Praestana? If you say that these too existed before the occasion of their surname — a point which was asked in the previous chapter — indicate by what name these also were then called. 'Pellonia is the goddess powerful for driving off enemies.' Whose enemies, if it is not too troublesome, declare. The sides clash and decide the issue between themselves hand to hand by a joining of arms, and this is the enemy side to that one, and that is hostile to this: whom, then, will Pellonia drive off, when the fighting is on this side and on that; or to which of them will she grant favor, when she ought to furnish the strength and service of her name to each side?

But if she does this in any case — that is, if she lends her favor and support to both sides — she will lose the power of her name, which was formed for the driving off of one side. Unless perhaps you will say: 'This goddess belongs to the Romans alone, and, siding with the Quirites only, is always at hand with gracious assistance.' That this is so we, who favor the name, would wish; but the matter holds no small question. For what? Do the Romans possess private gods of their own, who do not belong to other nations? And how will they be able to be gods, if they will not display the impartiality of their name to all the nations that exist everywhere?

And where, I ask, was this Pellonia all that while, when at the Caudine Forks the public honor was brought under the yoke, when at Lake Trasimene bloody torrents ran, when the plains of Diomedes were heaped with Roman corpses, when a thousand other wounds of battles were received in countless disasters? Was she sleeping, snoring? Or, as base creatures are wont to do, had she fled off into the enemy's camp? 'The left-hand gods, from the left, are presiders over the left-hand regions only, and enemies of the right-hand parts.' By what reasoning this is said, or in what sense of mind, neither do we ourselves grasp, nor do we trust that it can be brought by you into any light of common understanding.

For in the first place, the world itself, in and of itself, has neither right nor left regions, neither upper nor lower, neither front nor back. For whatever is round and enclosed on every side by the convexity of a solid roundness has no beginning and no end: and where there is no end and no beginning, there can be no portion bearing a name of its own. And so, when we say 'this region is on the right and that on the left,' we do not say it with respect to the nature of the world, which is wholly most like itself, but we refer it to our own position and situation, we who are so formed that some things are said to be on our right, others on our left:

yet these very things which we call left and right have nothing perpetual, nothing fixed, but according as chance and the occurrence of the moment has placed us, so they take their configurations from our sides. If I look toward the rising sun, the pole of cold and the north becomes my left; and if I turn my face toward that, the sunset will be on my left, which will be reckoned as behind me with respect to the sun. Again, if I cast my eyes toward the western quarter, the south wind and the midday pass into the designation of 'left'; and if the necessary reckoning of the moment turns me round in that direction, it comes about that the east is called 'left' through the changed turning of my body.

From which it can most easily be recognized that neither right nor left is anything by nature, but a matter of position and time, and according as the situation of our body has placed itself in relation to the surrounding circumstances of things. Since this is so, by what reasoning, in what manner, will there be gods of the left-hand parts, when it has been established that the same directions become now right, now left? Or what have the right-hand parts deserved of the immortal gods, that they should pass their existence without any presiders — those parts which they have declared to be always favorable and attended with prosperous omens? 'Lateranus, as you say, is the god of hearths, a genius given this name because that kind of furnace is built from unbaked bricks by men.' What then? If they be made of earthenware, or of any

other material whatsoever they be fashioned of, will the hearths not have genii, and will this Lateranus, whoever he is, withdraw from the duty of guardianship, because the possession of his realm was not constructed of clay forms? And for what purpose, I ask, has this god obtained the presidency over hearths? Does he run through the kitchens of the human race, inspecting and investigating with what kinds of wood the fire is kindled in the little hearths; does he impart durability to earthenware vessels, lest, overcome by the force of the flames, they burst apart; does he take care that the flavors of uncorrupted foods come to the sense of the palate with their delights; and does he discharge and exercise the office of a foretaster, judging whether the dishes have been duly seasoned?

Is this then not base — nay rather, to speak more truly, is it not insulting, is it not impious — to bring in, for this sole purpose, I know not what fictions of gods, not such as you would attend with worthy honors, but such as you would set over shameful things and infamous action? Does a military Venus even preside over the debaucheries of the camp and the defilements of boys? Is Perfica too one of the people of the deities, who brings those obscene and filthy pleasures to their completion, so that they proceed with unhindered sweetness? Is Pertunda too a goddess, who is at hand in the bedchambers for husbands digging out the virginal furrow? Is Tutunus too a god, upon whose monstrous private parts and bristling phallus you deem it both auspicious and desirable that your matrons should ride?

But if the things themselves do not in the least move you to an understanding of the truth, can you not even from the very names recognize that these are the figments of the emptiest superstition and the imaginings of false gods? 'Puta, you say, is at hand for the pruning of trees, Peta for the seeking of things; Nemestrinus is the god of groves; Patellana is a deity, and Patella, of whom one is appointed for things opened up, the other for things to be opened up. Nodutis is called the god who brings the sown crops up to their nodes, and Noduterensis presides over the threshing of the grain; the goddess Vibilia frees from the wanderings of the roads; under the protection of Orbona are parents bereaved of their children, and under that of Nenia are those whose last hours have come.

For she who hardens and makes solid the bones for little infants is herself called Ossipago; Mellonia is a goddess strong and powerful over bees, caring for and guarding the sweetness of honey.' Tell me, I pray — so may Peta, Puta, and Patella be favorable and propitious to you — if there were no bees at all upon the earth, or if the human race were born boneless, like certain little worms, would the goddess Mellonia not exist, or would Ossipago the hardener of bones not have a name of her own? For indeed I ask and inquire: do the gods seem to you to be the more ancient in nature, in time, in antiquity — or men, or bees, crops, shrubs, and the rest? No man will doubt that you say the gods precede by countless ages and eras all things whatsoever that exist.

But if this is so, how can it come about through the nature of things that those who are prior in time should receive their names from things afterward brought into being, or that gods should obtain the guardianships of things which had not yet been generated and assigned to the use of mortals? Or was it perhaps that 'the gods were for a long while without names, and after things began to be born and to be present upon the earth, they were then deemed worthy by you to be named with these signs and appellations'? And whence were you able to know what names to bestow upon each, when you were altogether ignorant that they existed, or that fixed powers resided in them, since it was likewise unknown to you which of them could do what, and over what thing each ought to be set according to the power of his divinity?

'What then?' you say, 'do you judge that these gods exist nowhere among the nations, and are established by false opinions?' Not we alone say this, but truth itself, and reason, and that common sense which is in all mortals. For who is there who would believe that there are gods of Gain, and that they preside over the acquisition of profits, since profits very often come from base causes and always consist of the losses of others? Who would believe that Libentina, that Burnus, survive as guardians of the lusts which wisdom bids us flee, and which shameless obscenity pursues and practices through a thousand forms?

Who would believe that Limentinus, that Lima, keep guard over thresholds and sustain the offices of doorkeepers, when we daily see the thresholds both of shrines and of private houses torn down and undermined, and see that not without these there are shameful comings and goings to the brothels? Who would believe in the Limi, curators of slantings; in Saturn, presider over sowing; in Montinus over the mountains; in Murcida over the slothful? Who, finally, would believe that Money is a goddess, whom your writings point out, as though the greatest deity, to bestow golden rings, the foremost seats at games and spectacles, the highest platforms of honors, the greatness of magistracy, and — what the slothful most love — secure leisure amid riches? But if bones, honey, thresholds, and all the other things have their own proper presiders in their seats,

— things which we have either touched on cursorily or, out of weariness at their excess, have not treated — then it is possible by a like reasoning to bring in a thousand other gods, who ought to furnish their care and guardianship to countless things. For why should a god preside over honey alone, and not preside over gourds, turnips, savory, cress, vetches, beets, cabbages? Why should the bones alone have deserved a guardian, and not the nails, the hairs, and the other parts placed in obscure and more modest regions? For these too are subject to very many accidents and require the more the care and diligence of the gods. Or, if you say that these parts too carry on under their tutelary deities, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things:

nor will the reasoning be explained why divine cares do not preside over all things, if you say that there are certain things over which the deities preside and provide. What do you say, O fathers of new religions, of new powers? Do you cry out and complain that these gods are violated and neglected by us with sacrilegious contempt — Lateranus the genius of hearths, Limentinus the presider over thresholds, Pertunda, Perfica, Noduterensis? And because we do not fall down as suppliants before Mutunus and Tutunus, do you say that things have slipped into ruin and that the world itself has changed its laws and its ordinances?

But look, consider carefully, lest, while you fashion and contrive such monstrous things, you offend the most certain gods — if indeed there are any who deserve to bear and to hold the eminence of that name — and lest for no other cause those evils of which you speak boil up and grow insolent with daily increases. 'Why then,' someone of you will perhaps say, 'do you say that those gods are false? For both when invoked by the soothsayers they obey, and when summoned by their own names they come and give faithful answers to those who inquire.'

We can maintain that what is said is false, either because the whole matter is most full of suspicions, or because we see that many of the predictions daily either turn out otherwise or, with expectation frustrated, are twisted into contrary outcomes. But grant that they are true, as you assert: whence, nevertheless, will you produce proof that Mellonia, for instance, or Limentinus, inserts herself into the entrails and adapts herself to the significations of the things you seek? Have you ever seen their mouth, their bearing, their face, or can these same things be discerned in the lungs or the little livers? Is it not possible for it to happen and come about — however you may disguise it with cunning — that one comes in place of another, deceiving, playing, cheating, and presenting the appearance of the one invoked?

If the magi, the brothers of the soothsayers, relate that in their summonings counter-gods very often creep in place of those summoned, and that these are certain spirits of coarser substance who feign themselves to be gods and mock the ignorant with lies and pretenses — why should we not, by a not dissimilar reasoning, believe that here too others substitute themselves in place of those who do not exist, both to confirm your opinions and to rejoice that victims are slain for them under names not their own? Or, if you refuse to accept these things on account of the matter's novelty, whence is it possible for you to know whether there is some one being who takes the place of all whom you invoke, and who, putting himself under all the parts of places and divisions, presents to you the appearance of many gods and powers?

'Who then is that one being?' he will perhaps ask. We could tell, instructed by true authorities; but, lest you be unwilling to believe us, question the Egyptians, the Persians, the Indians, the Chaldaeans, the Armenians, and all those others who have seen and come to know these things by their more inward arts: then indeed you will learn who the one god is, or, under him, who are the many that feign themselves gods and make sport of the imprudence of the human race. For a long while now we have been ashamed to come to that point at which not only little boys and the impudent, but even serious men, hardened in the harshness of grim manhood, cannot restrain their laughter.

For although we have all received and been taught by our instructors that in the declensions of the gods there are no plural numbers, because the gods are single, and the proper meaning of each one's name could not go commonly through many — yet you, having become forgetful, and with the recollection of your childhood lessons laid aside, have both made the same gods several under the words assigned to them, and, although you are elsewhere rather restricted in their number, have again made them multiple by an association of surnames: a point which men of keen judgment and penetrating intellect long ago expounded, as much in the Italian tongue as in the Greek.

And this matter could have afforded us a shortcut, had we not both seen that some are without knowledge of these writings, and had not the discourse we have undertaken compelled us also to bring forth something about these things — though borrowed and reported from them. Your theologians, then, and the founders of hidden antiquity, say that there are three Jupiters in the nature of things, of whom one was begotten of Aether as his father, another of Caelus, and the third of Saturn, and upon the island of Crete was both delivered to burial and brought forth.

There are, they say, five Suns and five Mercuries, of whom, as they report, the first Sun is said to be the son of Jupiter and is held to be the grandson of Aether; the second, likewise begotten of Jupiter and brought forth of Hyperion as his mother; the third the son of Vulcan — not the Lemnian, but the one who was the son of the Nile; the fourth the father of Ialysus, whom Acantho bore at Rhodes in the heroic times; the fifth is held to be the son of a Scythian king and of Circe the shape-shifter.

For the first Mercury, who is said to have neighed at Proserpina with his genitals erect, is the offspring of highest Caelus; the second is beneath the earth, he who is vaunted to be Trophonius; the third was begotten of Maia as his mother and of Jupiter — but the third Jupiter; the fourth is the child of the Nile, whose name the Egyptian people dread and shrink from uttering; the fifth is the slayer of Argus, a fugitive and an exile, and in Egypt the revealer of letters.

'But of Minervas too,' they say, 'just as there are five Suns and Mercuries, there are five: of whom the first is not a virgin, but the procreatrix of Apollo by Vulcan; the second is the offspring of the Nile, and is said to be Egyptian; the third is the stock of Saturn, and it was she who devised the use of arms; the fourth is the offspring of Jupiter, whom the Messenians call Coryphasia; and the fifth is she who slew Pallas her father, a seeker after incest.' And — lest it seem long and excessive to wish to go in detail through the individual headings — the same theologians say that there are four Vulcans and three Dianas, as many Aesculapiuses and five Dionysuses, three times two Herculeses and four Venuses, three

kinds of Castors and as many kinds of the Muses, three teams of winged Cupids and four teams of the Apolline names — whose fathers likewise, whose mothers likewise, and the places in which they were born, they indicate, and they demonstrate the origin of each together with their lineages. But if this is true and certain, and is demonstrated by the affirmation of an ascertained matter, then either they are not all gods, since there cannot be several under the same name, as we have received, or, if some one of them is a god, he will be unknown and not known, because he is blinded by the confusion of like names. And thus, through your own selves, however unwilling you may be for it to happen, it comes about that religion, thrown into confusion, hesitates, and has no certain goal toward which it can direct itself, undeceived by any errors of ambiguity.

Imagine, then, that we — moved either by authority or by the violence of your terror — have brought our minds to the point of wishing to worship Minerva, for example, with your solemn rites and by the common ceremony: if, when we are preparing to approach the divine observances and to render upon the flaming altars the things appointed to her, all the Minervas fly up and, contending over the possession of that name, each one demands that that apparatus of the sacred rites be rendered to herself — what shall we do in the midst, we a slight creature, or to which of the parties shall we rather transfer the services of our pious offering? For perhaps that first one, of whom we spoke, will say: 'Mine is the name of Minerva, mine the divinity — I who gave birth to Apollo, who gave birth to Diana, and by the offspring of my womb increased heaven with deities and multiplied the number of the gods.'

'Nay,' the fifth Minerva will say, 'is it you, you yourself? you who as a wife and as one who has given birth have so many times had the sanctity of your pure chastity diminished? Do you not see that in all the Capitols the Minervas are of virginal appearance, and that they are given by all the artisans the forms of unwedded maidens? Cease, therefore, to claim for yourself a title that is not yours by right. For that I am Minerva, begotten of my father Pallas, the whole chorus of poets is witness, who call me Pallas from a surname derived from my father.'

'What do you say,' the second, hearing this, will retort, 'shall you then bear the name of Minerva, you wanton parricide, defiled by the pollution of incestuous love, who, while you adorn yourself with paints and harlots' arts, even stirred up in yourself your father's mind, filled with frenzied lusts? Go your way then, seek another emblem for yourself; for that possession is mine, whom the Nile, greatest of rivers, generated from its liquid waters and brought into a maiden's form by the congealing of the dew. But if you demand proof of the fact, I too will offer the Egyptians as witnesses, in whose tongue I am Neith, as Plato testifies in the Timaeus.' What, then, do we suppose will happen next?

Will that one too cease to call herself Minerva, she who bears the name Coryphasia, either from the emblem of her mother Coryphe, or because she flashed forth from the very top of Jupiter's head bearing a shield and girt with the terrors of arms? Or will the one who is third patiently yield her name? Will she not, by such words, take account of herself and refute the arrogance of the first two: 'Do you then dare to usurp for yourself the majesty of my name, if the truth be told, you who were brought forth and curdled together out of mire and out of muddy whirlpools? Or do you take to yourself a goddess's dignity that belongs to another, you who lie that you were begotten from Jupiter's head and persuade the most foolish of mortals that you are Reason? Does Jupiter beget sons conceived in his head? And so that the arms you carry might be forged and fashioned, was there in the hollow of his very head a smith's workshop, anvils, hammers, furnaces, bellows, coals and tongs?'

'But if what you assert is true, that you are Reason, cease to lay claim for yourself to that name which is mine: for what you call Reason is not a fixed form of divinity but the understanding of obscure causes.' If therefore, as we have said, five Minervas should be present as we approach our religious duties, and each, quarrelling over the ownership of this name, should desire for herself that either the fumes of incense be offered up or wine be poured out as libations from golden bowls, by what arbiter, by what judge shall we settle such great disputes?

Or who shall be the examiner, who the arbiter for such weighty personages, who would attempt to award just claims among figures of this kind, or to pronounce sacred oaths that are not just? Will he not rather go home and, abstaining from such affairs, judge it safer to touch none of these things, lest either by giving to one what belongs to all he make the rest her enemies, or incur the charge of folly, if he should assign to all what ought to have belonged to one? We can bring forward these same considerations about the Mercuries, the Suns, indeed about all the others whose numbers you stretch out and multiply.

But it is enough to know from one instance that the reasoning is the same in the rest; and lest by chance our prolixity should breed weariness in our hearers, we shall forbear to go through each one, lest, while we accuse you of excess, we too take upon ourselves the fault of immoderate loquacity. What do you say, O you who invite us to the worship of the gods with the mangling of our limbs and compel us to undertake the worship of your deities? We can be not difficult, if only something be shown to us worthy of the reputation of so great a name. Show us Mercury, but one; give us Liber, but one; one Venus and likewise one Diana.

For you will never make us believe that there are four Apollos or three Jupiters, not even if you should cite Jupiter himself as witness or set up the Pythian as your authority. But from the opposite side someone or other says: 'How do we know whether the theologians wrote what was explored and ascertained, or brought it forth by a lustful invention, as it seemed good and pleased them?' That is nothing to the point, nor is the reasoning of this discourse established upon whether things are so as the writings of the theologians indicate, or are otherwise and separated by a far different distinction; for it is enough for us to speak concerning matters that have been made public, and not to inquire what is in truth, but to refute and to convict that which lies open in the midst and which human opinion has conceived.

'But if those men are liars, do you set forth what the truth is and lay open the irrefutable secret.' And how can this be done, once the teachings of letters have been removed? For what is there that can be said about the immortal gods that has not come to human notice from the writings of men? Or can you yourselves relate anything about their rites and ceremonies that has not been set down in writing and made public in the commentaries of authors? Or, if you judge these to be of no weight, let all the books be abolished which you have composed about the gods, by theologians, by pontiffs, and even by some devoted to philosophy; nay rather, let us suppose that from the beginning of the world no mortal ever knew anything at all about the gods:

we wish to test and desire to know whether you can even mutter, whether you can open your mouth at the mention of the gods, whether you can conceive in your mind those beings whom no notion of any writing has informed within your souls. But since it is agreed that you have learned their names and powers from the books that supplied them to you, it is unjust to withdraw credit from those writings whose testimony and authority confirm the very things you say. 'Unless perhaps these are false, and the things said by you shall be true.' By what argument, by what sign?

For since the men were of both parties who devised these things and those, and since the matters were disputed by both sides concerning uncertain things, it is the mark of an arrogant man to say that what pleases you is true, but to charge with wantonness and falsehood whatever wounds your mind. By the rights of the human race and by the fellowship of mortality itself, when you hear and read 'from that father and from that mother such-and-such a god was brought forth,' does not the sense of your mind perceive that something human is being said, and something proceeding from the lowliness of an earthly kind?