[I] Having set out to speak concerning the City of God, I thought that answer must first be made to its enemies, who, pursuing earthly joys and gaping after fleeting things, blame the Christian religion—which alone is wholesome and true—for whatever sad thing they suffer in these matters, brought on rather by the mercy of God who admonishes than by the severity of God who punishes. And since among them there is also an unlearned crowd, which is stirred to a graver hatred of us as if by the authority of the learned—the ignorant supposing that the things which happened unusually in their own times were not wont to happen in other times gone by, while those who know this opinion to be false yet confirm it, that they may seem to have just grounds of complaint against us, by dissembling their own knowledge:
it was necessary to demonstrate, from the books which their own authors committed to memory for the knowing of the history of past times, that the matter stands far otherwise than they suppose; and at the same time to teach that the false gods, whom they either openly worshiped or secretly worship even now, are most unclean spirits and most malignant and most deceitful demons—so much so that they take delight in their own crimes, whether real or even fictitious, which they wished to be celebrated for them through their festivals, so that human weakness might not be able to be called back from perpetrating damnable deeds, while for imitating these an authority as it were divine is held forth.
These things we proved not from our own conjecture, but partly from recent memory, because we ourselves also saw such things offered to such deities, and partly from the writings of those who left these things recorded for posterity not as a reproach but rather as an honor to their gods—so much so that Varro, a man most learned among them and of the weightiest authority, when he made his books distributing human and divine matters, assigning some to human, some to divine affairs according to the dignity of each, placed the scenic games not even among human but among divine things; whereas surely, if there were only good and honorable men in the city, scenic games ought not to have existed even among human affairs.
This he certainly did not do on his own authority, but because, born and bred at Rome, he found those games among divine matters. And since at the end of the first book we briefly stated what things were to be said thereafter, and of these have spoken some in the two following books, we recognize that what remains must be rendered to the expectation of readers. [II] We had promised, then, that we would say certain things against those who refer the disasters of the Roman commonwealth to our religion, and that we would recount whatever and however great evils could occur to us, or seemed sufficient, which that city or the provinces belonging to its empire endured before their sacrifices had been prohibited;
all of which they would without doubt attribute to us, if our religion were already shining upon them, or thus prohibited them from those sacrilegious rites. These things in the second and third books we have, as I judge, sufficiently disposed of—in the second treating of the evils of morals, which alone or above all are to be reckoned as evils; in the third of those evils which fools alone shudder to endure, namely those of the body and of external things, which even good men for the most part suffer; but those evils by which the wicked themselves become wicked they hold not, I say, patiently, but gladly. And how few things I have said about that one city alone and its empire! nor from thence all things down to Caesar Augustus.
What if I had wished to recount and amplify those evils which men do not inflict upon one another—such as the devastations and overthrows of warring peoples—but which befall earthly affairs from the very elements of the world itself (which in one place Apuleius briefly touches upon in that little book he wrote On the World, saying that all earthly things have their changes, revolutions, and destructions; for by immoderate tremblings of the earth, to use his own words, he says that the ground has split apart and cities with their peoples have been swallowed up; that by sudden downpours whole regions have been washed away; that those lands too which had before been continents have been made islands by strange and foreign floods, and others by the withdrawal of the sea have been made passable by foot;
that cities have been overthrown by winds and storms; that fires have flashed out from the clouds, by which the regions of the East were consumed and perished, and in the tracts of the West certain gushing springs and inundations wrought the same destruction; that thus, when craters were once poured forth from the summits of Aetna, rivers of flame ran down the slopes by a divine conflagration in the manner of a torrent)—if I had wished to gather these and things of this kind, which history holds, from wherever I might, when should I have made an end? For these things happened in those times, before the name of Christ had suppressed any of those vain things of theirs that are ruinous to true salvation.
I had also promised that I would demonstrate what character of theirs, and for what cause, the true God—in whose power are all kingdoms—deigned to help toward the enlarging of their empire, and how those whom they think gods helped them not at all, but rather how greatly they harmed them by deceiving and beguiling; whence now I see that I must speak, and especially of the increases of the Roman empire. For concerning the noxious deceit of the demons, whom they worshiped as gods—how great a store of evils it brought into their morals—not a few things have already been said, chiefly in the second book.
Throughout all the three completed books, moreover, where it seemed opportune, we have commended how great a store of consolations God bestowed, even amid the evils of war, upon good and bad alike, through the name of Christ—to which the barbarians paid so much honor beyond the custom of wars—according as He makes His sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust. [III] Now, therefore, let us see of what sort is this thing—that they dare to attribute so great a breadth and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom they contend they honorably worshiped even through the service of base games and through the ministry of base men.
And yet I should like first to inquire a little what reason, what prudence there is—when you cannot show the felicity of men who are ever engaged in the disasters of war and in civil or hostile bloodshed, yet human bloodshed, amid dark fear and cruel greed, so that a glassy gladness is procured, splendid in its fragility, for which it is feared, all the more horribly, lest it be suddenly shattered—to wish to glory in the breadth and greatness of empire. That this may be more easily judged, let us not evaporate, tossed about by empty windiness, nor blunt the edge of our attention with high-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples, kingdoms, provinces;
but let us set before ourselves two men (for each single man, as in speech a single letter, is likewise a kind of element of a city and a kingdom, however vast in its occupation of lands); of these two men let us think of the one as poor, or rather of moderate means, the other as exceedingly rich; but the rich man anxious with fears, wasting away with sorrows, burning with greed, never secure, always restless, panting with perpetual contentions of enmities, augmenting indeed his patrimony to an immense degree by these miseries, but by those augmentations heaping up also the most bitter cares;
but that man of moderate means, content with a small and modest household estate, most dear to his own, rejoicing in the sweetest peace with kinsmen, neighbors, and friends, religious in piety, kindly in mind, sound in body, frugal in life, chaste in morals, secure in conscience. I know not whether anyone would be so foolish as to dare to doubt which he would prefer. As, then, in these two men, so in two families, so in two peoples, so in two kingdoms, the rule of equity is followed; and when this is vigilantly applied, if our intention be corrected, we shall most easily see where vanity dwells and where felicity. Wherefore, if the true God be worshiped, and served with true rites and good morals, it is useful that the good should reign far and wide and long;
nor is this so useful to the good rulers themselves as to those over whom they reign. For, as far as concerns themselves, their piety and probity—which are great gifts of God—suffice them for true felicity, whereby both this life may be well spent and afterward eternal life be received. In this earth, therefore, the reign of the good is not so much bestowed upon them as upon human affairs; but the reign of the wicked harms more the rulers themselves, who lay waste their own souls by the greater license of crimes; while to those who, by serving them, are made subject, it does no harm save their own iniquity. For whatever of evils is inflicted by unjust masters upon the just, is not the penalty of crime but the testing of virtue. And so the good man, even if he serve, is free;
but the wicked man, even if he reign, is a slave—and not of one man, but, what is more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices. Concerning which vices the divine Scripture, when it treated of them, says: For by what a man is overcome, to that also is he consigned as a slave. [IV] Justice therefore being removed, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? For what are bands of robbers themselves but little kingdoms? The band itself is a company of men, ruled by the command of a prince, bound by the pact of fellowship, and the booty divided by the law of what has been agreed. If this evil grows to such a degree, by the accession of abandoned men, that it holds places, establishes seats, occupies cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes more openly the name of a kingdom—which is now conferred upon it in the open not by the removal of greed but by the addition of impunity.
For elegantly and truthfully did a certain captured pirate answer that great Alexander. For when the same king asked the man what it seemed to him he meant by keeping the sea hostile, he with free defiance replied: The same as you mean by keeping the whole world hostile; but because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor. [V] Accordingly I forbear to inquire what sort of men Romulus gathered together, since much provision was made for them, that, from that manner of life, when the fellowship of the city had been granted them, they should cease to think of the punishments due to them—fear of which had been driving them to greater crimes—so that thereafter they might be more peaceable in human affairs.
This I say, that the Roman empire itself, already great, with many nations subdued and terrible to the rest, felt bitterly, feared gravely, and with no small effort put down—so as to avoid a huge disaster—when very few gladiators, fleeing from a training-school in Campania, mustered a great army, had three leaders, and most widely and most cruelly laid Italy waste. Let them say what god helped these men, that from a small and contemptible band of robbers they should arrive at a kingdom to be feared even by the now so great forces and citadels of Rome. Or because they did not last long, shall they for that reason be denied to have been divinely helped? As if indeed the life of any man whatsoever were long-lasting.
On this reckoning, then, the gods help no one to reign, since each and every man quickly dies, nor is that to be reckoned a benefit which, in each single man—and thereby, taken one by one, in all men—vanishes in the manner of a vapor in a brief time. For what does it matter to those who worshiped the gods under Romulus and long ago died, that after their death the Roman empire grew so great, since they are pleading their own causes among the dead? whether good causes or bad has no bearing on the present question. But this is to be understood of all who, through that empire (although, with mortals departing and succeeding, it be extended over long spaces), in the few days of their own lives passed swiftly and hurriedly through it, bearing the burdens of their own deeds.
But if even the benefits of the very briefest time are to be attributed to the aid of the gods, then those gladiators were not a little helped: they broke the bonds of their servile condition, they fled, they escaped, they collected a great and most valiant army, obedient to the counsels and commands of their own leaders, greatly to be feared by the loftiness of Rome and insuperable to several Roman commanders; they took many things, obtained very many victories, enjoyed what pleasures they wished, did what lust suggested, and at last—until it was conquered, which was done with the greatest difficulty—lived in exaltation and reigning. But let us come to greater matters.
[VI] Justinus, who, following Trogus Pompeius—a Greek, or rather a foreign writer—wrote his history not only in Latin, as the other did, but also briefly, thus begins the work of his books: "In the beginning of the affairs of races and nations, the government lay with kings, whom to the height of this majesty not popular ambition but a moderation proven among good men advanced. Peoples were held by no laws; it was the custom to guard the boundaries of empire rather than to extend them; each man's kingdom was confined within his own fatherland. First of all, Ninus, king of the Assyrians, changed the ancient and, as it were, ancestral custom of the nations by a new lust for empire.
He first waged wars upon his neighbors, and subdued peoples as yet untrained to resist, as far as the borders of Libya." And a little later: "Ninus," he says, "consolidated the greatness of the dominion he had sought by continuous possession. Having therefore subdued those nearest, when with the accession of forces he passed on stronger to others, and each nearest victory was the instrument of the following one, he subjugated the peoples of the whole East." But with whatever faithfulness to facts either this writer or Trogus wrote (for other more trustworthy writings show that they lied about certain things), yet it is agreed even among other writers that the kingdom of the Assyrians was extended far and wide from king Ninus. And so long did it endure, that the Roman empire is not yet of its age.
For, as those write who have pursued chronological history, this kingdom endured one thousand two hundred and forty years from the first year in which Ninus began to reign, until it was transferred to the Medes. But to wage wars upon one's neighbors, and from thence to proceed against the rest, and to crush and subdue peoples who give no trouble, from the mere lust of dominion—what else is this to be named but a grand robbery? [VII] If, then, with no aid of the gods this kingdom was so great and so long-lasting, why is the Roman kingdom, ample in place and long-enduring in time, attributed to the Roman gods? For whatever the cause is in the one case, the same is in the other. But if they contend that the former too must be attributed to the aid of the gods, I ask, of which gods?
For the other nations, which Ninus tamed and subdued, did not at that time worship other gods. Or if the Assyrians had their own proper gods, as more skilled craftsmen, so to speak, for constructing and preserving an empire, did those gods perhaps die when the Assyrians too lost their empire? or, their wage not being paid them, or a greater one promised elsewhere, did they prefer to cross over to the Medes, and from thence again to the Persians, at Cyrus's invitation and his promise of something more advantageous? Which nation, after the reign of Alexander of Macedon, great in its territories but very brief in time, still endures in a kingdom of its own even to this day, within no narrow bounds of the East.
If this is so, either the gods are faithless who desert their own and cross over to the enemy (which not even the man Camillus did, when, victor and stormer of a most hostile city, he perceived Rome—for which he had conquered—to be ungrateful to him, yet afterward, forgetting the injury and mindful of his fatherland, he freed her once more from the Gauls); or they are not so strong as it befits gods to be strong, who can be conquered by human counsels or forces; or, if, when they war among themselves, it is not gods that are conquered by men but gods by other gods who are strong—the gods proper to the several cities—then they too have among themselves enmities, which each undertakes on his own side's behalf. A city, therefore, ought not to worship its own gods more than others, by whom its own people might be aided.
Finally, in whatever manner this transit, or flight, or migration, or defection in battle of the gods may stand, the name of Christ had not yet been preached in those times and in those parts of the earth, when those kingdoms were lost and transferred through immense disasters of war. For if, after one thousand two hundred and more years, when the kingdom was taken from the Assyrians—if the Christian religion had there been preaching another, eternal kingdom, and forbidding the sacrilegious worship of false gods: what else would the vain men of that nation say, but that the kingdom, which had been preserved for so long, could have perished for no other cause than that its own religions had been deserted and that other one received?
In which voice of vanity, such as it might be, let these men behold their own mirror, and, if there is any shame in them, blush to complain of the like. Although the Roman empire has been afflicted rather than changed—which befell it also in other times before the name of Christ, and it was restored from that affliction, which even in these times is not to be despaired of. For who knows in this matter the will of God? [VIII] Next let us inquire, if it please, out of so great a throng of gods as the Romans worshiped, which god above all, or which gods, they believe to have enlarged and preserved that empire.
For in this so illustrious a work, and one so full of great dignity, they do not dare to assign any part to the goddess Cluacina, or to Volupia, who is named from pleasure, or to Lubentina, whose name is from lust, or to Vaticanus, who presides over the wailings of infants, or to Cunina, who administers their cradles. But when can all the names of gods and goddesses be recounted in one passage of this book—names which they could scarcely comprehend in their great volumes, distributing the proper offices of the deities to individual things? They did not think that the charge of the fields should be committed to any one god alone, but they set the goddess Rusina over the countryside, the god Jugatinus over the ridges of mountains; over the hills they set the goddess Collatina, over the valleys Vallonia.
Nor could they even find one such Segetia, to whom they might once for all commend the crops; but they wished the sown grains, so long as they were beneath the earth, to have as their appointed goddess Seia; but when they were now above the earth and were forming a standing crop, the goddess Segetia; but the grain once gathered and stored away, that it might be safely kept, they set over it the goddess Tutilina. To whom would that Segetia not seem to suffice, so long as the standing crop should come from its grassy beginnings all the way to the dry ears of corn? Yet it was not enough for men who love a multitude of gods, that the wretched soul should be prostituted to a throng of demons, having disdained the chaste embrace of the one true God.
They therefore set Proserpina over the sprouting grains, over the knots and joints of the stalks the god Nodutus, over the sheaths of the husks the goddess Volutina; when the husks open that the ear may come forth, the goddess Patelana; when the crops are level with new ears—because to make the old level they said hostire—the goddess Hostilina; over the flowering grains the goddess Flora, over those forming milk the god Lacturnus, over those ripening the goddess Matuta; when they are weeded, that is, taken from the earth, the goddess Runcina. Nor do I recount them all, because it wearies me, though it shames them not.
But these very few things I have said for this reason: that it might be understood that they can in no way dare to say that these deities established, enlarged, and preserved the Roman empire, which were each so assigned to their several offices that nothing universal was entrusted to any one of them. When, then, would Segetia have care of the empire, to whom it was not permitted to bear care at once both of the crops and of the trees? When would Cunina think about arms, whose charge was not permitted to go beyond the cradles of little ones? When would Nodutus give aid in war, who pertained not even to the sheath of the ear, but only to the knot of the joint? Each man sets one doorkeeper over his house, and, because he is a man, it wholly suffices; but these people set three gods: Forculus over the doors, Cardea over the hinge, Limentinus over the threshold.
Thus Forculus could not guard both the door-panel and the hinge and the threshold at once. [IX] Setting aside, then, this crowd of petty gods, or leaving it awhile, we ought to inquire into the office of the greater gods, by which Rome was made so great that she ruled for so long over so many nations. Doubtless, then, this is the work of Jupiter. For they hold him to be king of all the gods and goddesses: this his sceptre signifies, this the Capitol on its high hill. Concerning this god they cite, though spoken by a poet, a most fitting saying: 'All things are full of Jove.' Varro believes that he is worshipped even by those who worship one God alone without any image, but is called by another name. But if this is so, why has he been so ill-treated at Rome — as indeed among the other nations too — that an image was made for him?
This too so displeases Varro himself that, although he was hard pressed by the perverse custom of so great a city, he nonetheless in no way hesitated to say and write that those who set up images for the peoples both took away fear and added error. [X] Why also is Juno joined to him as wife, who is called 'sister and consort'? Because, they say, we understand Jupiter to be in the aether, Juno in the air, and these two elements are conjoined, the one higher, the other lower. He, then, is not the one of whom it was said 'All things are full of Jove,' if Juno too fills some part. Or does each fill both, and are both these spouses present in both these elements, and in each singly at once? Why then is the aether assigned to Jupiter, the air to Juno?
Finally, these two by themselves would suffice: why is the sea attributed to Neptune, the earth to Pluto? And, lest these too remain without consorts, Salacia is added to Neptune, Proserpina to Pluto. For just as Juno holds the lower part of the heaven, that is, the air (they say), so Salacia holds the lower part of the sea, and Proserpina the lower part of the earth. They seek how to patch up their fables, and they do not find it. For if these things were so, their ancient authorities would have set forth that there are three elements of the world rather than four, so that the several marriages of the gods might be divided among the several elements. But as it is, they have affirmed in every way that the aether is one thing, the air another. Yet water, whether upper or lower, is certainly water; suppose it is dissimilar:
is it so different as no longer to be water? And the lower earth — what else can it be but earth, however distinguished by any diversity? Next, behold, the corporeal world is now wholly complete in these four, or three, elements: where then will Minerva be? What will she hold? What will she fill? For she is set up together with these in the Capitol, though she is not the daughter of both. Or if they say that Minerva holds the upper part of the aether, and that on this occasion the poets feigned that she was born from Jupiter's head: why then is she not rather reckoned queen of the gods, since she would be higher than Jupiter? Or is it because it was unworthy to set a daughter before her father? Why was not that justice observed by Jupiter himself toward Saturn? Or is it because he was conquered? Did they then fight? Far be it, they say;
that is the chatter of fables. See then that the fables are not believed and better things are thought concerning the gods: why then was not given to the father of Jupiter, if not a loftier, at least an equal seat of honour? Because, they say, Saturn is length of time. Those, then, who worship Saturn, worship Time, and Jupiter, king of the gods, is insinuated to have been born of time. For what unworthy thing is said, when Jupiter and Juno are said to have been born of time, if he is heaven and she is earth, since heaven and earth were certainly made? For this too their learned and wise men have in their books. And it was not from poetic fictions, but from the books of the philosophers, that Virgil said:
'Then the almighty father, the aether, descended in fertilizing showers into the lap of his glad consort' — that is, into the lap of the ground or earth; for here too they want there to be certain distinctions, and in the earth itself they hold one thing to be Terra, another Tellus, another Tellumo, and they hold all these to be gods called by their own names, distinguished by their own offices, venerated with their own altars and rites. The same earth they also call the Mother of the gods, so that the poets now feign more tolerable things, if — according to these men's not poetic but sacred books — Juno is not only 'sister and consort' but also mother of Jupiter.
The same earth they hold to be Ceres, the same also to be Vesta, though more often they declare Vesta to be nothing but the fire pertaining to hearths, without which a city cannot exist; and therefore virgins are wont to serve her, because just as nothing is born from a virgin, so nothing is born from fire. And this whole vanity ought surely to have been abolished and extinguished by Him who was born of a Virgin. For who could endure that, though they attributed so much honour and, as it were, chastity to fire, they yet sometimes do not blush to call Vesta also Venus, so that the honoured virginity in her handmaids might vanish? For if Vesta is Venus, how did the virgins duly serve her by abstaining from the works of Venus? Or are there two Venuses, one a virgin, the other a married woman?
Or rather three: one of virgins, who is also Vesta; another of married women; another of harlots? To this last the Phoenicians used to give the gift from the prostitution of their daughters, before they joined them to husbands. Which of these is the matron of Vulcan? Certainly not the virgin, since she has a husband. But far be it that she should be the harlot, lest we seem to do injury to the son of Juno and the co-worker of Minerva. Therefore she is understood to belong to the married women: but we would not have them imitate her in what she did with Mars. Again, they say, you return to the fables. What sort of justice is this, to be angry with us because we say such things about their gods, and not to be angry with themselves, who most gladly watch in the theatres these crimes of their gods?
And — a thing that would be incredible were it not proved by the most abundant testimony — these very theatrical crimes of the gods were instituted in honour of those same gods. [XI] Let them therefore assert whatever they please by physical reasonings and disputations: now let Jupiter be the soul of this corporeal world, who fills and moves that whole mass constructed and compacted of four elements, or however many they please; now let him cede his parts to his sister and brothers; now let him be the aether, so as to embrace from above Juno the air spread out beneath; now let him together with the air be the whole heaven itself, and let him fertilize the earth as his consort — and at the same time his mother (for this is not shameful in divine matters) — with fruitful showers and seeds;