Thus, with the goddess Felicity established in the amplest and loftiest place, the citizens would learn whence must be sought the help for every good wish; and so, at nature's own prompting, the superfluous multitude of other gods being abandoned, Felicity alone would be worshipped, to her alone supplication would be made, her temple alone would be frequented by citizens who wished to be happy — of whom there would be none who did not wish it — and thus she herself would be sought from herself, who was being sought from all. For who would wish to receive anything from any god except felicity, or what he thinks pertains to felicity? Accordingly, if felicity has in its power with what man it dwells (and it has, if it is a goddess), what folly, pray, is it to seek her from some god, when you could obtain her from herself?
This goddess, therefore, they ought to have honored above the other gods even by the dignity of her place. For, as is read in their own writings, the ancient Romans worshipped some Summanus, to whom they attributed nocturnal thunderbolts, more than Jupiter, to whom the daytime thunderbolts belonged. But after a distinguished and lofty temple was built for Jupiter, on account of the dignity of the shrine the multitude so flocked to him that scarcely anyone is found who remembers that he has at least read the name of Summanus, which now he cannot even hear. But if felicity is not a goddess, since — what is true — it is a gift of God:
let that God be sought who is able to give it, and let the harmful multitude of false gods be abandoned, which the vain multitude of foolish men pursues, making for themselves gods out of God's gifts, and offending by the obstinacy of a proud will Him whose gifts these are. For thus one cannot be free from unhappiness who worships felicity as though a goddess and forsakes God the giver of felicity, just as one cannot be free from hunger who licks a painted loaf and does not ask it from the man who has the real one. [XXIV] But it is worth considering their reasonings. Are we, they ask, to believe that our ancestors were so unwise as not to know that these things were divine gifts, not gods?
But since they knew that such things are granted to no one except by the bounty of some god, when they could not find the names of the gods, they called the gods by the names of those things which they perceived to be given by them, inflecting some words therefrom: as from bellum (war) they named Bellona, not Bellum; as from cunae (cradles) Cunina, not Cuna; as from segetes (crops) Segetia, not Seges; as from poma (fruits) Pomona, not Pomum; as from boves (oxen) Bubona, not Bos: or else, with no inflection of the word, just as the things themselves are named, as Pecunia was called a goddess who gives money (pecunia), yet money itself was by no means thought to be the goddess; so Virtue, who gives virtue; Honor, who gives honor; Concord, who gives concord; Victory, who gives victory.
Thus, they say, when Felicity is called a goddess, it is not that felicity itself which is given that is meant, but that divine power by which felicity is given. [XXV] This explanation being rendered to us, we shall perhaps much more easily persuade of what we wish those whose heart has not grown too hard. For if human weakness has already perceived that felicity cannot be given except by some god, and men perceived this who worshipped so many gods, among whom was even their own king Jupiter:
since they were ignorant of the name of Him by whom felicity was given, they therefore chose to call Him by the name of the very thing which they believed was given by Him; they sufficiently indicated, then, that felicity could not be given even by Jupiter himself, whom they were already worshipping, but assuredly by that one whom they judged ought to be worshipped under the name of felicity itself. I affirm outright that they believed felicity to be given by some god whom they did not know: let Him, therefore, be sought, let Him be worshipped, and that suffices. Let the din of innumerable demons be repudiated; let this God not suffice for the man for whom His gift does not suffice. For him, I say, let not God the giver of felicity suffice for worship, for whom felicity itself does not suffice to receive.
But the man for whom it does suffice (for a man has nothing more that he ought to desire), let him serve the one God, the giver of felicity. He is not the one whom they call Jupiter. For if they acknowledged him as the giver of felicity, they would surely not seek some other god or goddess, from whom felicity might be given, under the name of felicity itself, nor would they think that Jupiter himself must be worshipped with such great outrages. This one is said to be the adulterer of others' wives; this one, the shameless lover and ravisher of a beautiful boy. [XXVI] But "Homer," says Tully, "was inventing these things and transferring human things to the gods: I would rather he had transferred divine things to us." Rightly did the poet, the fabricator of divine crimes, displease so grave a man.
Why then are the stage-plays, in which these things are constantly recited, sung, and acted, presented in honor of the gods, and reckoned among divine matters by the most learned men? Here let Cicero cry out, not against the fictions of the poets, but against the institutions of the ancestors! Or would they also cry out: What have we done? The gods themselves demanded that these things be presented in their honor, commanded it fiercely, foretold disaster unless it were done, most severely avenged whenever anything was neglected, and showed themselves appeased when what had been neglected was performed? Among their virtues and marvelous deeds is recounted what I shall relate.
It was said in a dream to Titus Latinius, a Roman countryman and head of a household, that he should announce to the senate that the Roman games ought to be repeated, because on the first day of them a grievous command had displeased the divinities — who, forsooth, were seeking mirth from the games — in that a certain criminal, who had been ordered to be led to punishment while the people watched, had been so led. When, therefore, the man who had been admonished by the dream did not dare on the following day to do what was commanded, on the second night this same thing was more severely commanded: he lost his son, because he did not do it. On the third night it was said to the man that a greater penalty threatened him if he did not do it. When even so he did not dare, he fell into a sharp and horrible disease.
Then indeed, on the advice of his friends, he reported the matter to the magistrates and was carried on a litter into the senate; and when the dream had been recounted, his health being immediately restored, he departed sound on his own feet. The senate, stupefied by so great a miracle, decreed that the games be repeated with fourfold the money. Who that is sound of mind would not see that men, subjected to malignant demons — from whose domination none delivers except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord — were compelled by force to present to such gods things that by right counsel could be judged base? In those games, at least, they defamed Jupiter the corrupter of chastity — those games which, at the compulsion of the divinities, were repeated by decree of the senate.
In those games most base actors used to sing, act, and please with the theme of Jupiter the corrupter of chastity. If that was being feigned, he would be angry; but if he delighted even in his own crimes, though feigned, when could he be worshipped, unless the devil were served? Would this one found, extend, and preserve the Roman empire — he who was more abject than any Roman man to whom such things were displeasing? Would this one give felicity, who was so unhappily worshipped, and, unless he were thus worshipped, grew more unhappily angry? [XXVII] It is recorded in writing that the most learned pontiff Scaevola argued that three kinds of gods have been handed down: one by the poets, another by the philosophers, a third by the leaders of the state. The first kind he says is trifling, because many unworthy things are invented about the gods;
the second is not suited to states, because it contains some things that are superfluous, and some things too which it is harmful for peoples to know. Concerning the superfluous there is no great matter; for it is even wont to be said by jurists: Superfluous things do no harm. But what are those things which, brought forth among the multitude, do harm? "These," he says, "that Hercules, Aesculapius, Castor, and Pollux are not gods; for it is disclosed by the learned that they were men and passed away by the human condition." What else? "That the states do not have true images of those who are gods, because the true God has neither sex nor age nor defined bodily members." These things the pontiff does not wish the peoples to know; for he does not think them false. He judges it expedient, therefore, that states be deceived in religion.
This Varro himself does not hesitate to say even in his books on divine matters. Splendid religion, to which the weak man should flee to be set free, and when he seeks the truth by which he may be freed, it is believed to be expedient for him that he be deceived! Why Scaevola rejects the poetic kind of gods is not passed over in silence in these same writings: namely, because they so deform the gods that they cannot be compared even with good men, since they make one steal, another commit adultery, and likewise say and do something else basely and ineptly; that three goddesses contended among themselves for the prize of beauty, and the two defeated by Venus overthrew Troy; that Jupiter himself is turned into an ox or a swan, that he may lie with some woman; that a goddess marries a man; that Saturn devours his children:
in short, that nothing at all of marvels and vices can be fabricated which is not found there and is far removed from the nature of the gods. O Scaevola, chief pontiff, abolish the games, if you can; enjoin the peoples not to render such honors to the immortal gods, where it is a delight to marvel at the crimes of the gods and a pleasure to imitate what can be done. But if the people should answer you: You pontiffs brought these things upon us — then beg the gods themselves, at whose instigation you commanded these things, that they not command such things to be presented to them. And if these are evil, and on that account by no means to be believed of the majesty of the gods, greater is the injury to the gods, about whom they are fabricated with impunity. But they do not hear you: they are demons, they teach depravities, they rejoice in base things:
not only do they not count it an injury if such things are fabricated about them, but they rather cannot endure that injury, if these are not performed in their solemnities. But now if against them you should appeal to Jupiter, chiefly for this reason, that more of his crimes are enacted in the stage-plays: even though you call Jupiter the god by whom this whole world is ruled and administered, is not the greatest injury done to him by you in this very thing — that you think he must be worshipped along with those, and declare him to be their king? [XXVIII] By no means, therefore, could such gods — who are appeased, or rather accused, by such honors, so that it is a greater crime that they are delighted by false charges than if true things were told about them — have been able to augment and preserve the Roman empire.
For if they could do this, they would rather have conferred so great a gift upon the Greeks, who worshipped them more honorably and worthily in matters of this divine kind, that is, in stage-plays; since they neither withdrew themselves from the bites of the poets, by whom they saw the gods torn to pieces, granting them license to maltreat any men they pleased, nor judged the actors themselves base, but held them worthy even of illustrious honors. But just as the Romans could have golden money, although they did not worship the god Aurinus: so too they could have silver and bronze money, if they worshipped neither Argentinus nor his father Aesculanus, and so all the things which it is irksome to rehearse. So then also they could by no means have had a kingdom against the will of the true God;
but if these false and many gods were unknown or despised, and that one alone were known and worshipped with sincere faith and morals, they would both have a better kingdom here, however great it might be, and after this would receive an everlasting one, whether here they had one or not. [XXIX] For what sort of thing is that which they said was a most beautiful augury, which I mentioned a little before — that Mars and Terminus and Juventas were unwilling to yield place even to Jupiter the king of the gods? For thus, they say, it was signified that the Martian race, that is, the Roman, would give the place it held to no one; that no one, on account of the god Terminus, would move the Roman boundaries; and that the Roman youth, on account of the goddess Juventas, would yield to no one.
Let them consider, then, how they can regard this king of their gods and giver of their kingdom, when they set up these auguries as against an adversary, to whom it was a fine thing not to yield. Although if these things are true, they have nothing at all to fear. For they will not be going to confess that the gods yielded to Christ, who were unwilling to yield to Jupiter; for while the boundaries of the empire remained safe, they were able to yield to Christ both from the seats of their places and, above all, from the hearts of believers.
But before Christ had come in the flesh, before, in short, these things were written which we produce from their books, yet after that augury was made under King Tarquin, several times the Roman army was routed, that is, turned to flight, and showed false that augury by which that Juventas had not yielded to Jupiter; and the Martian race was crushed by the Gauls overcoming and bursting into the very City; and the boundaries of the empire, with many states defecting to Hannibal, had been confined into a narrow space. Thus the beauty of the auguries was emptied out, and there remained against Jupiter the contumacy, not of gods, but of demons. For it is one thing not to have yielded, another to have returned to a place from which you had withdrawn.
Although even afterwards, in the eastern regions, by Hadrian's will the boundaries of the Roman empire were changed. For he conceded to the empire of the Persians those three noble provinces, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, so that that god Terminus, who according to these people guarded the Roman boundaries and by that most beautiful augury had not yielded place to Jupiter, would seem to have feared Hadrian the king of men more than the king of the gods. When those provinces mentioned had also been recovered at another time, within almost our own memory Terminus retreated backward, when Julian, given over to the oracles of those gods, with immoderate daring ordered the ships to be burned in which provisions were carried;
by which the army being left destitute, and presently he himself being extinguished by an enemy's wound, it was reduced to such want that no one could escape thence — the enemy assailing on every side the soldiery thrown into confusion by the emperor's death — unless by a compact of peace the boundaries of the empire were there established, where to this day they persist, not indeed with so great a loss as Hadrian had conceded, but nevertheless fixed by a middling settlement. By a vain augury, therefore, the god Terminus did not yield to Jupiter, who yielded to Hadrian's will, yielded also to Julian's rashness and to Jovian's necessity. The more intelligent and graver Romans saw these things;
but against the custom of the state, which had been bound by demonic rites, they availed little, because they themselves, even if they perceived those things to be vain, nevertheless thought that religious worship — which is owed to God — must be rendered to the nature of things constituted under the governance and command of the one true God, serving, as the Apostle says, the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. There was need of the help of this true God, from whom holy and truly pious men might be sent, who would die for the true religion, that the false religions might be taken away from the living. [XXX] Cicero the augur mocks auguries and mocks men who regulate the counsels of life by the voices of the crow and the little crow.
But this Academic, who contends that all things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these matters. Quintus Lucilius Balbus disputes in his presence in the second book On the Nature of the Gods, and although he himself inserts superstitions drawn as it were physically and philosophically from the nature of things, nevertheless he is indignant at the setting up of images and at fabulous opinions, speaking thus: "Do you see, then, how reasoning has been drawn from natural things, well and usefully discovered, to contrived and fictitious gods? Which thing has begotten false opinions and turbulent errors and superstitions almost old-womanish.
For the forms of the gods, and their ages, clothing and adornment, are known to us; their kinds moreover, their marriages, their kinships, and all things transferred to the likeness of human weakness. For they are introduced even with disturbed minds; for we have received accounts of the gods' desires, sicknesses, and fits of anger. Nor indeed, as the fables report, were the gods free from wars and battles; and not only, as in Homer, when other gods defended two opposing armies from one side or another, but they even waged their own proper wars (as against the Titans or against the Giants). These things are both told and believed most foolishly and are full of vanity and of the utmost frivolity." Behold, meanwhile, what those confess who defend the gods of the nations.
Then, since he says these things pertain to superstition, but to religion — which he himself seems to teach according to the Stoics: "For not only the philosophers," he says, "but also our ancestors separated superstition from religion; for those who prayed the whole day long and offered sacrifices, that their own children might survive them (superstites), were called superstitious." Who would not understand that he, while fearing the custom of the state, is trying to praise the religion of the ancestors and wishing to separate it from superstition, but does not find how he can do so?
For if by the ancestors those were called superstitious who prayed and sacrificed the whole day long, were not also those who instituted (what this man reproves) the images of the gods, distinguished by diverse age and dress, the kinds, marriages, and kinships of the gods? Since indeed these things are blamed as superstitious, this blame implicates the ancestors, the institutors and worshippers of such images; it implicates also the man himself, who, however much by his eloquence he strives to work himself out into liberty, yet was compelled to venerate these things; nor would he dare to mutter in a public assembly of the people what he sounds forth so eloquently in this disputation.
Let us Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our God — not to heaven and earth, as this man argues, but to Him who made heaven and earth — who has, through the most exalted humility of Christ, through the preaching of the apostles, through the faith of the martyrs dying for the truth and living with the truth, overthrown these superstitions, which this Balbus, stammering as it were, scarcely reproves, by the free servitude of His own — not only in religious hearts, but even in superstitious shrines.
[XXXI] As for Varro himself, whom we grieve to have placed the stage-plays among divine matters — though not by his own judgment — since in many places he exhorts, as though religious, to the worship of the gods, does he not thus confess that he does not follow by his own judgment those things which he records that the Roman state instituted, so that, if he were founding that state anew, he does not hesitate to confess that he would rather have dedicated the gods and their names according to the formula of nature? But since he was now among an old people, he says he ought to hold the history of names and surnames received from the ancients, as it was handed down, and to write and investigate those matters to this end: that the common people might wish rather to worship the gods than to despise them.
By these words this most acute man sufficiently indicates that he does not disclose everything, which would be objects of contempt not only to himself, but would seem despicable even to the common people themselves, unless they were kept silent. I ought to be thought to be conjecturing these things, were it not that elsewhere he himself says plainly, speaking of religions, that there are many things which are true, which it is not only not useful for the common people to know, but also, even though they are false, it is expedient that the people should think otherwise; and that for this reason the Greeks enclosed their initiations and mysteries in silence and within walls. Here indeed he betrayed the whole design of the wise, as it were, by whom states and peoples were governed.
Yet by this deceit the malignant demons are delighted in wondrous ways, who possess alike both the deceivers and the deceived, from whose domination none delivers except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This same most acute and most learned author also says that those alone seem to him to have discerned what God is, who believed Him to be a soul governing the world by motion and reason; and by this, although he did not yet hold what the truth holds (for the true God is not a soul, but is also the maker and founder of the soul), nevertheless, if against the prejudices of custom he could be free, he would confess and urge that one God be worshipped, who governs the world by motion and reason — so that this question about Him would remain with him, that he called Him a soul, and not rather also the creator of the soul. He also says that the ancient Romans for more than a hundred and seventy years worshipped the gods without an image.
'But if,' he says, 'it had remained thus, the gods would have been observed more chastely.' To confirm this opinion of his he brings forward, among other witnesses, the Jewish nation as well; and he does not hesitate to conclude that passage by saying that those who first set up images of the gods for the peoples both took away fear from their cities and added error, wisely judging that the gods could easily be despised in the dullness of their images. But since he does not say they 'handed down error' but 'added' it, he means us to understand that error existed even before there were images. Wherefore, when he says that those alone perceived what God is who believed Him to be the soul governing the world, and when he judges that religion is more chastely observed without images, who does not see how nearly he approached the truth?
For if anything could have prevailed against the antiquity of so great an error, he would surely have judged that the one God, by whom he believed the world to be governed, ought also to be worshipped without an image; and, found in a position so near the truth, he might perhaps easily have been admonished concerning the mutability of the soul, so as to perceive that the true God is rather the immutable nature which had created the soul itself. Since these things are so, whatever mockeries of the many gods such men set down in their writings, they were compelled by the hidden will of God to confess them rather than seeking to persuade men of them.
If, therefore, any testimonies are brought forward by us from that source, they are brought forward to refute those who refuse to consider from how great and how malignant a power of the demons we are set free by that one sacrifice of so holy a blood poured out and by the gift of the Spirit imparted. [XXXII] He says also, concerning the generations of the gods, that the peoples were inclined more toward the poets than toward the natural philosophers, and that for this reason their forefathers—that is, the ancient Romans—believed the gods to have sex and generations, and established marriages for them.
This assuredly seems to have been done for no other reason than that it was the business of men who were, as it were, prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion, and in that very thing not only to worship but even to imitate the demons, whose greatest desire is to deceive. For just as the demons cannot possess any but those whom they have beguiled by deceiving, so also the ruling men—not indeed just, but like the demons—persuaded the peoples, under the name of religion, of things which they knew to be empty, as though they were true, binding them in this way, as it were, more fitly to civil society, so that they might likewise possess them as subjects. But what weak and unlearned man could escape at once both the deceitful rulers of the city and the demons?
[XXXIII] Therefore that God, the author and giver of felicity, because He alone is the true God, Himself gives earthly kingdoms both to the good and to the evil; and this not rashly and as it were by chance, because He is God, not Fortune, but according to the order of things and times, hidden from us but most fully known to Himself. Yet He is not subject to this order of the times as a servant, but Himself rules it as its Lord and arranges it as its governor. Felicity, however, He gives only to the good. For this both servants may have and not have, both rulers may have and not have; yet it will be full only in that life where no one shall any longer be a servant.
And for this reason earthly kingdoms are given by Him both to the good and to the evil, lest His worshippers, still as little children in the advancement of the soul, should covet these gifts from Him as though they were some great thing. And this is the sacrament of the Old Testament, in which the New was hidden: that there the promises and gifts are earthly—though even then there were spiritual men who understood, although they did not yet preach in open manifestation both what eternity was signified by those temporal things, and in what gifts of God true felicity consisted.
[XXXIV] And so, that it might be known that even those earthly goods—for which alone they gape who cannot think of anything better—are placed in the power of the one only God, and not of the many false gods whom the Romans had formerly believed ought to be worshipped, He multiplied His people in Egypt from a very few, and from thence delivered them by wondrous signs. Nor did those women invoke Lucina when their offspring, that they might be multiplied in marvellous ways and that nation grow incredibly, He Himself preserved from the hands of the Egyptians who persecuted them and wished to slay all their male children.
Without the goddess Rumina they suckled, without Cunina they lay in the cradle, without Educa and Potina they took food and drink, without so many gods of childhood they were reared, without the marriage gods they were joined in wedlock, without the worship of Priapus they had intercourse with their spouses; without the invocation of Neptune the sea, divided, lay open to them as they crossed, and overwhelmed their pursuing enemies as the waves returned upon them. Nor did they consecrate any goddess Mannia when they took manna from heaven; nor, when the smitten rock poured forth water for them as they thirsted, did they worship the Nymphs and Lymphae. Without the frenzied rites of Mars and Bellona they waged wars, and though indeed they did not conquer without victory, yet they held it not as a goddess but as the gift of their God.
Without Segetia they had crops, without Bubona cattle, honey without Mellona, fruit without Pomona, and in short all those things for which the Romans thought supplication must be made to so great a throng of false gods, they received far more happily from the one true God. And if they had not sinned against Him, drawn away by impious curiosity as though by magic arts to strange gods and idols, and at last by slaying Christ, they would have remained in the same kingdom—even if not more spacious, yet more happy.
And that now they are scattered through almost all lands and nations is the providence of that one true God, so that from the fact that the images, altars, groves, and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown and their sacrifices forbidden, it may be proved from their own books how long beforehand this was prophesied—lest perchance, when it should be read in our writings, it should be thought to have been invented by us. What follows must be considered in the following volume, and here a limit must be set to the length of this one.