I think enough has now been said concerning the evils of character and of soul, which are above all to be guarded against, showing that the false gods took no care to succour their worshipping people so that it might not be crushed beneath the mounting heap of such evils, but rather acted so that it should 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 and disease, war and pillage, captivity and slaughter, and the like, which we have already mentioned in the first book. For these alone the wicked reckon evils, since they do not make men wicked; nor do they blush, amid the goods which they praise, to be themselves wicked who praise them, and they fret more if they have a bad country house than a bad life, as though this were man's greatest good — to possess all good things except his own self.
But not even such evils as these — the only ones these people dread — did their gods, when they were freely worshipped by them, prevent from befalling them. For when, in various times and various places before the coming of our Redeemer, the human race was ground down by innumerable and even sometimes incredible calamities, what other gods than these did the world worship, save for the one Hebrew people and certain men outside that people, wherever any were, by the most hidden and most just judgment of God, found worthy of divine grace? But that I may not draw it out too long, I shall pass over in silence the most grievous evils of all the other nations everywhere.
As far as concerns Rome and the Roman empire, I shall speak only of that — that is, of the city itself in the proper sense and of whatever lands are joined to it by alliance or made subject to it by condition — as to what things they suffered before the coming of Christ, when they already belonged, as it were, to the body of that commonwealth. First, Troy itself, or Ilium, whence is the origin of the Roman people (for this too must not be passed over or dissembled, as I touched upon in the first book) — why, though it had and worshipped the same gods, was it conquered, taken, 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 at hired labour?
For they are reported to have promised him a wage, and he to have sworn falsely. I marvel that Apollo, named the diviner, laboured in so great a work not knowing that Laomedon would deny what had been promised. Yet neither did it befit Neptune himself, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, to be ignorant of things to come. For Homer represents him as divining something great concerning the line of Aeneas, from whose descendants Rome is sprung — since the same poet is said to have lived before that city was founded — and he even snatched Aeneas away in a cloud, as Homer tells, lest he be slain by Achilles, though Neptune desired to overturn from its foundations that which in Virgil he confesses: 'the walls of perjured Troy, built by his own hands.'
Not knowing, therefore, that Laomedon would deny them their wage, these great gods, Neptune and Apollo, were builders of the Trojan walls for nothing and without thanks. Let them consider whether it be not a graver matter to believe in such gods than to swear falsely by such gods. For not even Homer himself readily believed this, since he makes Neptune fight against the Trojans and Apollo fight for the Trojans, though the fable relates that both were offended by that perjury. If, then, they believe the fables, let them blush to worship such divinities;
if they do not believe the fables, let them not hold up the Trojan perjuries, nor claim that the gods deserved to punish the Trojan perjuries and to love the Roman ones. For whence, in a city so great and so corrupt, did the conspiracy of Catiline draw so great a supply of men whose hand and tongue were fed by perjury or by the blood of citizens? What else did senators, so often corrupted in judgments, and the people, so often corrupted in their votes or in whatever causes were debated among them in the assemblies — what else did they do but sin also by swearing falsely? For amid the most corrupt morals the ancient custom of oath-taking was preserved for this reason: not that men should be restrained from crimes by fear of religion, but that perjuries too might be added to their other crimes.
There is therefore no reason why the gods, by whom, as they say, that empire stood, should be feigned to be angry at the perjuring Trojans, when they are proved to have been conquered by the prevailing Greeks. Nor were they incensed at the adultery of Paris — as they are again defended by some — so that they abandoned Troy. For gods are wont to be the authors and teachers of sins, not their avengers. 'The city of Rome,' says Sallust, 'as I have received the account, was founded and held at the beginning by the Trojans, who, wandering with uncertain abodes as fugitives under the leadership of Aeneas.' If, then, the divinities judged that the adultery of Paris must be avenged, it ought rather to have been punished in the Romans, or certainly in the Romans as well, since the mother of Aeneas did this very thing.
But how could they hate that disgrace in him whom they did not hate in Venus, their own associate — to say nothing of the rest — for what she had committed with Anchises, from whom she had borne Aeneas? Or is it because the one was done while Menelaus was indignant, but the other while Vulcan consented? For the gods, I suppose, are not jealous of their wives — so far indeed that they deign to have them in common even with men. Perhaps I am thought to be mocking the fables and not treating a cause of such weight with due gravity. Let us therefore not believe, if you please, that Aeneas is the son of Venus: lo, I concede it, if you likewise grant that Romulus is not the son of Mars. But if the one, why not also the other? Or is it lawful for gods to unite with human females, but unlawful for male men to unite with goddesses?
A hard, or rather an incredible, condition — that what was permitted to Mars in intercourse by the law of Venus should not be permitted to Venus herself under her own law. Yet both were confirmed by Roman authority. For the later Caesar believed no less that Venus was his ancestress than the earlier Romulus believed that Mars was his father. Someone will say: Do you then believe these things? I indeed do not believe them. For even Varro, their most learned man, almost confesses these things to be false — though not boldly nor confidently.
But he says it is useful to states that brave men should believe themselves begotten of the gods, even if it be false, so that in this way the human mind, bearing the confidence as of divine stock, may more boldly presume to undertake great enterprises, may act more vigorously, and on this account may accomplish them the more happily through that very sense of security. This opinion of Varro, expressed as best I could in my own words, you see how wide a scope it opens to falsehood, so that from it we may understand that many more sacred and, as it were, religious things could have been fabricated, where lies were thought to profit the citizens even concerning the gods themselves. But whether Venus could bear Aeneas from intercourse with Anchises, or Mars beget Romulus from intercourse with the daughter of Numitor, let us leave undecided.
For almost a like question arises even from our own Scriptures, wherein it is asked whether the transgressing angels lay with the daughters of men, from whom, when giants — that is, exceedingly great and mighty men — were born, the earth was at that time filled. Accordingly, let our discussion for the present be referred to both cases alike. For if the things read among them concerning the mother of Aeneas and the father of Romulus are true, how can adulteries of men displease the gods, which they harmoniously bear in themselves? But if they are false, then not even so can they be angry at true human adulteries, seeing that they delight even in their own false ones.
To this is added that, if the story about Mars is not believed, so that neither is the one about Venus believed, then by no pretence of divine intercourse is the mother of Romulus's cause defended. But she was that Vestal priestess; and therefore the gods ought rather to have avenged that sacrilegious disgrace upon the Romans than the adultery of Paris upon the Trojans. For the ancient Romans themselves used to bury alive even the priestesses of Vesta caught in fornication, whereas adulterous women, though with some condemnation, they yet punished with no death: so far more grievously did they avenge what they thought divine sanctuaries than human beds.
I add another point: that if the sins of men displeased those divinities, so that, offended at the deed of Paris, they gave up abandoned Troy to sword and flames, the murder of Romulus's brother ought to have moved them more against the Romans than the mocked Greek husband against the Trojans; the parricide of a city just being born ought to have provoked them more than the adultery of one already reigning. Nor does it matter, for the cause we are now pleading, whether Romulus ordered this to be done or Romulus did it — a thing which many deny out of shamelessness, many doubt out of shame, many dissemble out of grief. Nor let us therefore delay in inquiring into that matter more diligently through the weighed testimonies of many writers: it is openly agreed that Romulus's brother was slain — not by enemies, not by strangers.
If Romulus either perpetrated or ordered this, he was more truly the head of the Romans than Paris was of the Trojans; why then did that ravisher of another's wife provoke the wrath of the gods upon the Trojans, while this slayer of his own brother invited the protection of those same gods upon the Romans? But if that crime is foreign to the deed and command of Romulus: since it certainly ought to have been avenged, the whole city did this, which the whole city held in contempt; and it slew, no longer a brother, but — what is worse — a father. For both were founders, where the one, taken away by crime, was not permitted to be a ruler.
There is no reason, as I judge, why it should be asked 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 inhabit it so that it might be increased — unless it be that, conquered, they fled thence and betook themselves to these Romans, whom they might likewise deceive; nay rather, they both remained there to deceive after their manner those who should again inhabit those same lands, and here, by practising even more the art of their deceit, they gloried in greater honours. For surely, when civil wars were already teeming, what misery had Ilium committed, that it should be overthrown by Fimbria, a most wicked man of the Marian party, far more ferociously and cruelly than of old by the Greeks?
For then indeed many fled thence, and many, taken captive, at least survived in slavery; but Fimbria first issued an edict that no one should be spared, and then burned the whole city and all the men in it in a conflagration. This Ilium deserved — not from the Greeks whom it had provoked by its own iniquity, but from the Romans whom it had propagated by its own disaster — while those common gods gave no help toward repelling these calamities, or, what is the truth, had no power to do so. Did then also at that time 'depart all the gods, forsaking their shrines and altars,' by whom that town had stood, after being rebuilt from the ancient fires and ruins wrought by the Greeks? But if they had departed, I seek the cause; and the better I find the cause of the townsmen, the worse I find that of the gods.
For they had shut their gates against Fimbria, in order to keep the city intact for Sulla; whereupon he, in anger, burned them, or rather utterly destroyed them. Yet Sulla was still the leader of the better party in the civil war, still striving to recover the commonwealth by arms; of these good beginnings he had not yet had the evil outcomes. What then could the citizens of that city have done better, what more honourable, what more faithful, what more worthy of their Roman kinship, than to keep their city for the better cause of the Romans and to shut their gates against a parricide of the Roman commonwealth? But to what destruction this turned for them, let the defenders of the gods take heed. The gods may have abandoned the adulterers and left Ilium to the flames of the Greeks, that from its ashes a chaster Rome might be born:
why then did they afterwards likewise abandon that same city, kindred to the Romans — not rebelling against Rome her noble daughter, but keeping most constant and most dutiful faith with the juster party of Rome — and leave it to be destroyed, not by the brave men of the Greeks, but by a most filthy man of the Romans? Or if the cause of the Sullan party displeased the gods, for whose sake the wretched citizens had shut their gates in keeping the city: why did they promise and foretell such great goods to that same Sulla? Or is it here too recognized that they are flatterers of the fortunate rather than defenders of the unfortunate? Not even then, therefore, was Ilium overthrown by their abandoning it. For the demons, ever most vigilant to deceive, did what they could.
For when all things had been overthrown and burned along with the town and its images, the statue of Minerva alone, beneath so great a ruin of that temple, is reported — as Livy writes — to have stood intact: not that it might be said, to their praise, 'gods of our fathers, beneath whose divinity Troy ever stands,' but that it might not be said, in their defence, 'departed are all the gods, forsaking their shrines and altars.' For this they were permitted to do — not whereby they might be proved powerful, but whereby they might be convicted of being present. To the gods of Ilium, therefore, after the very lesson of Troy, with what prudence, pray, was Rome committed to be guarded? Someone may say that they were already accustomed to dwell at Rome when, as Fimbria stormed it, Ilium fell. Whence then stood the statue of Minerva?
Then, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Ilium, perhaps they were at Ilium when Rome herself was taken and burned by the Gauls; but, as they are most keen of hearing and most swift of movement, at the voice of the goose they quickly returned, to guard at least the Capitoline hill, which remained; but for defending the rest they were warned to return too late. These same gods are also believed to have aided Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, so that throughout the whole time of his reign he might have peace and might close the gates of Janus, which are wont to stand open in wars — by that merit, forsooth, because he established many sacred rites for the Romans.
But that man ought to have been congratulated on so great a leisure, if only he had known how to spend it on wholesome things, and, neglecting his most pernicious curiosity, to seek out the true God with true piety. But as it was, the gods did not confer that leisure upon him; rather, they would perhaps have deceived him less, had they found him not at leisure. For the less occupied they found him, the more they themselves occupied him. For what he contrived, and by what arts he was able to associate such gods with himself or with that city, Varro relates — which, if it please the Lord, shall be more diligently discussed in its own place. But for now, since the question is about their benefits:
peace is a great benefit, but it is a benefit of the true God, given, like the sun and the rain and other supports of life, for the most part even upon the ungrateful and the wicked. But if the gods conferred this so great a good upon Rome or upon Pompilius, why did they never afterwards bestow it upon the Roman empire throughout those ages worthy of praise? Or were the sacred rites more useful while they were being instituted than when, once instituted, they were being celebrated? But at that former time they did not yet exist, but were being added in order to exist; whereas afterwards they already existed, and were being preserved that they might profit.
What is it, then, that those forty-three years — or, as others will have it, thirty-nine — were passed in so long a peace while Numa reigned, and afterwards, once the sacred rites were instituted and the very gods, who had been invited by those same rites, were now presiding and protecting, hardly, after so many years from the founding of the City down to Augustus, is one single year recorded as a great miracle, after the first Punic War, in which the Romans were able to close the gates of war? Or do they answer that, unless by continual wars ever succeeding one another, the Roman empire could not have been so far and wide enlarged and spread abroad with such great glory? A fitting cause indeed! That the empire might be great, why ought it to be restless?
Is it not, in the bodies of men, better to have a moderate stature with health than to attain to some gigantic mass by perpetual afflictions, and, when you have attained it, not to rest, but, the larger the limbs, to be harassed by the greater evils? But what evil would there have been — nay, rather, how much good — if those times had endured which Sallust briefly described, where he says: 'Therefore in the beginning kings (for on earth this was the first name of power), differing among themselves, some exercised the mind, others the body; even then the life of men was passed without covetousness; each was well content with his own.' Or, that the empire might be so greatly enlarged, ought that to have come to pass which Virgil detested, saying:
'until, little by little, a worse and discoloured age succeeded, and the madness of war and the love of possessing'? But plainly, for so many wars undertaken and waged, there is a just defence of the Romans: that it was not the greed of acquiring human praise, but the necessity of protecting their safety and liberty, that compelled them to resist enemies violently rushing upon them at an inopportune time. So let it plainly be. For 'after their affairs,' as Sallust himself writes, 'increased in laws, in morals, in lands, seemed prosperous enough and powerful enough, then, as most things of mortals are held, envy arose out of their opulence. Therefore neighbouring kings and peoples assailed them in war; a few of their friends were of help, for the rest, struck with fear, held aloof from the dangers.'
'But the Romans, intent at home and in war, hastened to make ready, exhorted one another, went out to meet the enemy, defended with arms their liberty, their country, and their parents. Afterward, when they had by valour driven off the dangers, they carried aid to their allies and friends, and procured friendships more by giving than by receiving benefits.' Becomingly did Rome grow by these arts. But while Numa reigned, so that there was so long a peace, did wicked men rush upon her and assail her in war, or did none of these things happen, so that that peace could persist? For if even then Rome was harassed by wars, and arms were not borne against arms:
by whatever means it was brought about that the enemies, subdued by no battle, terrified by no martial onset, were quieted — by those same means it might always have been brought about, and Rome might always have reigned in peace with the gates of Janus closed. But if this was not in their power, then Rome had peace not so long as her gods, but so long as her neighbouring men, all around, willed it — men who provoked her by no war; unless perchance such gods will even dare to sell to a man that which another man willed or did not will. It matters indeed — now by their own vice — to what extent these demons are permitted either to terrify or to stir up evil minds;
but if they could always do this, and nothing else were often done otherwise, against their endeavour, by a more secret and higher power, they would always have in their power peaces and warlike victories, which almost always come about through the motions of human minds; yet that these for the most part happen against their will is confessed not only by the fables, which lie in many things and scarcely either indicate or signify anything of the truth, but even by Roman history itself. For it was from no other cause that Apollo of Cumae, when war was being waged against the Achaeans and King Aristonicus, was reported to have wept for four days;
and when the soothsayers, terrified by this portent, had thought that that statue must be cast into the sea, the elders of Cumae intervened and related that such a portent had appeared in the same image in the war of Antiochus and of Perses too, and that, because it had turned out fortunately for the Romans, by decree of the senate gifts had been sent to that same Apollo of theirs — so they testified. Then soothsayers reckoned more skilled were summoned, and answered that the weeping of the statue of Apollo was for this reason prosperous for the Romans: because the colony of Cumae was a Greek one, and Apollo, by his weeping, signified mourning and disaster to his own lands, whence he had been summoned — that is, to Greece herself.
Then soon afterward it was announced that King Aristonicus had been conquered and captured — whom Apollo certainly did not wish to be conquered, and grieved over it, and by the very tears of his stone he indicated this. Whence it is not everywhere unfitting that the manners of the demons should be described in the songs of the poets, fabulous indeed, yet resembling the truth. For Diana grieved for Camilla in Virgil, and Hercules wept for Pallas about to die.
Hence perhaps also Numa Pompilius, abounding in peace but not knowing by whose gift, nor inquiring, when at leisure he pondered to what gods he should commit the guarding of the Roman safety and kingdom — since he did not suppose that the true and almighty most high God cared for these earthly things, and recollected that the Trojan gods, whom Aeneas had brought, had been able to preserve for long neither the Trojan realm nor the Lavinian realm founded by Aeneas himself — thought that others must be provided, whom he might set over those former ones (which had either already crossed with Romulus to Rome, or were at some time to cross when Alba was overthrown), either as guards over fugitives, as it were, or as helpers over the feeble.
Nor yet did Rome deign to be content with these sacred rites, which Pompilius had there established in such numbers. For it did not yet have the chief temple of Jupiter himself; it was King Tarquinius who built the Capitol there. Aesculapius, moreover, came round from Epidaurus to Rome, that as a most skilled physician he might practise his art more gloriously in a most noble city; the mother of the gods too, from I know not where, from Pessinus — for it was unworthy that, while her son already presided over the Capitoline hill, she herself should still lie hidden in an ignoble place. But if she is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed to Rome certain of her sons, but even preceded others who were also to follow. I truly marvel if she herself bore Cynocephalus, who came from Egypt far later.
Whether the goddess Fever too was born of her, let Aesculapius, her great-grandson, look to it; but from wherever she was born, they will not, I think, dare to call her ignoble — she a Roman citizen goddess, when the foreign gods do not. Under the protection of so many gods (whom can anyone number — native and foreign, celestial and terrestrial, infernal and marine, of springs and of rivers, and, as Varro says, certain and uncertain, and, in all kinds of gods, as among animals, males and females?) — under the protection, then, of so many gods, Rome, so established, ought not to have been driven and afflicted by such great and horrible disasters, of which out of many I shall recall a few.
For it had, by its great smoke as by a given signal, gathered too many gods for its protection, whom, by instituting temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, and by furnishing these, it offended the supreme true God, to whom alone these things duly performed are owed. And happier indeed it lived with fewer of them; but the greater it became — like a ship its sailors — the more gods it thought must be employed; believing, I suppose, that those fewer ones, under whom it had lived better in comparison with a worse life, did not suffice to succour its greatness, and despairing of them. For at first, under the very kings — except Numa Pompilius, of whom I have already spoken above — how great an evil of discordant strife there was, which compelled the brother of Romulus to be slain!
How was it that neither Juno, who with her Jupiter was already cherishing the Romans as lords of the world and the toga-wearing nation, nor Venus herself, could aid her own Aeneadae, so that by a good and equitable custom they might obtain marriages? And so great a calamity of this lack rushed in, that they seized the women by guile and were soon compelled to fight with their fathers-in-law, so that the wretched women, not yet reconciled to their husbands after the wrong, were already dowered with their parents' blood. But indeed the Romans conquered their neighbours in this conflict. At the cost of how many and how great wounds and deaths on both sides — of kinsmen and neighbours — did these victories stand!
On account of one father-in-law, Caesar, and one son-in-law of his, Pompey — Caesar's daughter, Pompey's wife, being now dead — with how great and how just a prompting of grief does Lucan cry out: 'Wars more than civil across the Emathian plains, and right conceded to crime, we sing.' The Romans conquered, therefore, so that from the slaughter of the fathers-in-law, with hands bloodied, they wrung wretched embraces from their daughters; nor did those women dare to weep for their slain fathers, lest they offend their victorious husbands — women who, while these men were still fighting, did not know for which of them to make their vows. To such nuptials it was not Venus but Bellona that gave the Roman people; or perhaps Allecto, that infernal Fury, with Juno now favouring them, had more licence against them than when she had been roused by Juno's prayers against Aeneas.
Andromache was more happily taken captive than those Roman brides were wedded. Slavish though it was, yet after her embraces Pyrrhus slew none of the Trojans; but the Romans slew their fathers-in-law in battle, whose daughters they were already embracing in the bridal chamber. She, subjected to the victor, could only grieve the death of her own, not fear it; those women, joined to combatants, feared their parents' deaths as their husbands went forth, grieved them as they returned, having neither their fear nor their grief free. For, on account of the destruction of citizens who were their kin, their brothers, their parents, they were either piously tormented, or cruelly gladdened by the victories of their husbands.
To this was added that, as the fortunes of war are alternate, some women lost their husbands by their parents' sword, some lost both parents and husbands by the sword of both. For neither among the Romans were those crises small, seeing that they came even to the siege of the city, and, the gates being shut, they defended themselves; when, the gates being opened by guile and the enemy admitted within the walls, in the very forum a wicked and all too atrocious battle was joined between sons-in-law and fathers-in-law, and those ravishers were even being overcome, and, often fleeing among their own houses, they more grievously defiled their former victories — though these too were shameful and to be lamented. Here, however, Romulus, now despairing of the valour of his own men, prayed Jupiter that they might stand; and he, on this occasion, found the name of Stator.
Nor would there have been any end to so great an evil, had not those ravished women, with disheveled hair, rushed out and, throwing themselves at their parents' feet, calmed their most just anger not by victorious arms but by suppliant devotion. Then Romulus was compelled to accept as partner in his kingdom Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, though he was impatient of a colleague who was his own kin. But how long could he have tolerated even this man, he who did not endure his own twin brother? And so, when this one too was slain, that he might be the greater god, he obtained the kingdom alone. What sort of marriage rites are these, which are but provocations to wars? What covenants of brotherhood, of kinship, of fellowship, of divinity? What, in the end, was the life of the city under so many guardian gods?
You see how much could be said on this theme, and how many things, were it not that our attention must attend to what remains and our discourse hastens on to other matters. What then came after Numa, under the other kings? With how great an evil—not only to themselves but also to the Romans—were the Albans provoked into war, merely because Numa's peace, being so prolonged, had grown cheap in their eyes! How frequent were the slaughters of the Roman and Alban armies, and the crippling of both cities! For that Alba, which Ascanius, son of Aeneas, founded—herself a nearer mother to Rome than Troy—being challenged by King Tullus Hostilius, joined battle; and in the fighting she was both stricken and gave stroke for stroke, until, in equal exhaustion, both sides grew weary of so many struggles. Then it pleased them to try the outcome of the war by means of triplet brothers on either side: