文集（天主之城·論三位一體等） 第 7 章 第 1/3 段

[Preface] In the five preceding books I seem to myself to have disputed sufficiently against those who think that the many false gods — which the Christian truth convicts of being either useless images, or unclean spirits and pernicious demons, or at any rate creatures, not the Creator — are to be venerated and worshipped, for the sake of the utility of this mortal life and of earthly things, with that rite and service which in Greek is called 'latreia' and is owed to the one true God alone. And who does not know that, whether from excessive folly or obstinacy, neither these five books nor any others, however great their number, could suffice? — since it is reckoned the glory of vanity to yield to no forces of truth, to the utter ruin, indeed, of him over whom so monstrous a vice holds sway.

For even against all the industry of the one caring for him, the disease of the incurably sick man — no fault of the physician — has proved unconquerable.

But those who weigh the things they read, understood and considered either without any, or without great and excessive, obstinacy of their old error, will more easily judge that we have discussed, within this fixed number of five volumes, more than the necessity of the question itself demanded, rather than less; and they will be unable to doubt that all the odium which the ignorant attempt to cast upon the Christian religion because of the disasters of this life and the wearing down and change of earthly things — with the learned not only dissembling but even, against their own conscience, favoring it, whom mad impiety has possessed — is altogether empty of right thought and reason, and full of the most frivolous rashness and most pernicious animosity.

[I] Now therefore, since next, as the promised order requires, those also are to be refuted and instructed who contend that the gods of the nations — which the Christian religion destroys — are to be worshipped not for the sake of this life, but for the sake of that which is to be after death: it pleases me to take the beginning of my disputation from the truthful oracle of the holy psalm: 'Blessed is he whose hope is the Lord his God, and who has not regarded vanities and lying follies.'

Yet nevertheless, amid all vanities and lying follies, the philosophers are far more tolerably to be heard — those to whom these opinions and errors of the peoples were displeasing, peoples who set up images to the divinities and either invented, or believed the invented, many false and unworthy things about those whom they call the immortal gods, and mingled the things believed with their worship and the rites of the sacred ceremonies. With these men — who, if not by freely preaching, at least somehow by murmuring in their disputations, testified that they disapproved of such things — this question is not so unfittingly treated:

namely, whether it is fitting to worship, for the sake of the life which is to be after death, not the one God who made every spiritual and corporeal creature, but many gods — whom certain of those same philosophers, more excellent and more noble than the rest, held to have been made by that one God and to have been sublimely placed on high. But who could endure it to be said and contended that those gods — certain of whom I mentioned in the fourth book, to each of whom, one by one, the offices of trifling matters are distributed — should bestow eternal life upon each person?

But those most skilled and most acute men, who boast that they have taught in their writings—as a great benefit—that one might know to which god each prayer should be addressed and what should be sought from each, lest by a most shameful absurdity (such as is wont to occur in jest upon the mime's stage) water be sought from Liber and wine from the Lymphs: will they, I ask, be authorities to any man who prays to the immortal gods, so that, when he has asked wine of the Lymphs and they have answered him, 'We have water; ask this of Liber,' he may rightly say, 'If you have no wine, at least give me eternal life'? What could be more monstrous than this absurdity? Will not those goddesses, bursting into laughter (for they are readily inclined to mirth), if they do not aim to deceive as demons do, reply to their suppliant:

'O man, do you suppose that we have life in our power—we of whom you hear that we have not so much as a vine?' It is therefore the most shameless folly to seek or hope for eternal life from such gods, who are said to watch over only the several particular portions of this most wretched and most brief life, and of whatever pertains to its support and propping up, so that if what lies under the guardianship and power of one be sought from another, it is as unfitting and absurd as to seem most like the buffoonery of the mime. When this is done by mimes who know what they are about, they are deservedly laughed at in the theater; but when it is done by fools who know it not, they are still more deservedly laughed at in the world.

To which god or goddess prayer should be made, and for what—so far as concerns those gods whom the states have established—was ingeniously discovered by the learned and committed to memory: what should be sought from Liber, for instance, what from the Lymphs, what from Vulcan, and so from the rest, some of whom I mentioned in the fourth book and some I thought fit to pass over. Now if it is an error to seek wine from Ceres, bread from Liber, water from Vulcan, or fire from the Lymphs, how much greater a madness must it be understood to be, if one should pray to any of these for eternal life!

Wherefore, if, when we inquired concerning an earthly kingdom—which of those gods or goddesses ought to be believed able to bestow it upon men—after examining all, it was shown to be far removed from the truth to think that any of these many false divinities had determined even to establish earthly kingdoms: is it not the most insane impiety, if it should be believed that eternal life—which without any doubt or comparison is to be preferred to all earthly kingdoms—can be given to anyone by any of them? For such gods seemed unable to give even an earthly kingdom, not because they are great and exalted while this thing is something small and mean which in such loftiness they would not deign to care for;

but rather, however justly anyone, considering human frailty, may despise the fleeting pinnacles of an earthly kingdom, those gods showed themselves such that they seemed most unworthy to have even these things entrusted to their giving and keeping. And by this, if (as the matters treated in the two preceding books have taught) no god out of that throng—whether of the plebeian, as it were, or of the noble gods—is fit to give mortal kingdoms to mortals, how much less can they make immortals out of mortals!

To this is added that, if now we are dealing with those who hold that the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of this life but for the sake of the life that is to come after death, then they are by no means to be worshipped even for the sake of those things which are attributed to the power of such gods as, so to speak, parcelled out and proper to them—not by the reasoning of truth but by the opinion of vanity—as those believe who contend that their worship is necessary for the advantages of this mortal life; against whom I have already argued sufficiently, so far as I could, in the five preceding volumes. This being so, if the very age of those who worshipped the goddess Youth were to flourish more conspicuously, while those who despised her were either to die within the years of youth or to grow cold in it, as with the torpor of old age;

if bearded Fortune were to clothe the cheeks of her worshippers more handsomely and more festively, while those by whom she was spurned we should see beardless or ill-bearded: even so we should most rightly say that these several goddesses are able to do only thus much, being in a manner limited to their own offices, and that therefore eternal life ought not to be sought from Youth, who could not give a beard, nor should any good after this life be hoped for from bearded Fortune, whose power in this life was nothing, since she could not even bestow that age at which a beard is put on.

But as it is, since the worship of these goddesses is not necessary even for the sake of those very things which men suppose subject to them—for many who worshipped the goddess Youth by no means flourished in that age, and many who did not worship her rejoice in the vigor of youth; likewise many suppliants of bearded Fortune could attain to no beard, or an unshapely one, and if any venerate her to obtain a beard, they are laughed at by her bearded despisers—does the human heart so far lose its wits that, whereas it recognizes the worship of those gods to be empty and ridiculous even for the sake of those very temporal and swiftly passing gifts over which they are severally said to preside, it should yet believe it to be fruitful for the sake of eternal life?

That these gods could give eternal life, not even those have dared to assert who, in order that they might be worshipped by foolish peoples, distributed these temporal works among them piecemeal—because they thought them too many, lest any one of them should sit idle. [II] Who has inquired into these matters more curiously than Marcus Varro? Who has discovered them more learnedly? Who has considered them more attentively? Who has distinguished them more acutely? Who has written of them more diligently and more fully? Who, though he is less pleasing in eloquence, is nevertheless so filled with learning and with wise thoughts that, in all that erudition which we call secular but they call liberal, he instructs the student of things as much as Cicero delights the student of words.

Indeed even Tullius himself bears such testimony to this man, that in his Academic books he says he held that discussion which is there conducted with Marcus Varro, 'a man,' he says, 'by far the most acute of all and beyond any doubt the most learned.' He does not say 'the most eloquent' or 'the most fluent,' since in truth in this faculty he is much unequal; but 'by far,' he says, 'the most acute of all,' and in those very books, that is the Academics, where he contends that everything must be doubted, he added 'beyond any doubt the most learned.' Assuredly he was so certain of this matter that he set aside the doubt which he is wont to apply to all things, as though, being about to dispute even about this one thing in accordance with the Academics' doubt, he had forgotten that he himself was an Academic.

But in the first book, while praising the literary works of the same Varro, he says: 'We, wandering and straying like strangers in our own city, were led back, as it were, home by your books, so that we might at length recognize who and where we were. You have laid open the antiquity of our fatherland, the reckonings of the ages, the laws of things sacred and of the priests, our domestic and our public discipline, the situation of regions and places, and the names, kinds, offices, and causes of all things divine and human.' This man, then, of such notable and excellent skill—and, as Terentianus too briefly says of him in a most elegant little verse: 'Varro, in every field the most learned man'—who read so much that we marvel he had any leisure to write anything;

he wrote so much as we can scarcely believe anyone could have read: this man, I say, so great in genius and so great in learning, had he been an assailant and destroyer of those matters he calls, as it were, divine, and had said that they pertain not to religion but to superstition, I know not whether he would have written down in them so many things to be laughed at, despised, and detested.

But since he so worshipped these same gods and judged that they ought to be worshipped, that in that very work of his letters he says he fears lest they perish—not by hostile assault, but by the negligence of the citizens—from which ruin, as it were, he says that by himself they are being delivered and stored up and preserved in the memory of good men through books of this kind, by a more useful care than that whereby Metellus is famed to have rescued the sacred things of Vesta from the fire, and Aeneas the household gods from the destruction of Troy; and yet he hands down to be read by the ages things which by the wise and the foolish alike are deservedly to be cast away and to be judged most hostile to the truth of religion:

what ought we to think but that a man most keen and most skilled, yet not made free by the Holy Spirit, was overwhelmed by the custom and laws of his state, and nevertheless was unwilling to keep silent about those things by which he was moved, under the guise of commending religion. [III] He wrote forty-one books of Antiquities; these he divided into human and divine matters, assigning twenty-five to human matters and sixteen to divine, following in that division this plan: that he should give six books each to four parts of human matters. For he had in view those who act, where they act, when they act, and what they act. So in the first six he wrote of men, in the second six of places, the third six of times, and the fourth and last six he completed concerning things.

Now four times six make twenty-four. But he placed at the head one single book, which should speak in general of them all beforehand. In divine matters likewise the same form of division was kept by him, so far as concerns those things which are to be rendered to the gods. For sacred rites are rendered by men in places and times. These four things, which I have named, he embraced in three books each: for the first three he wrote of men, the following of places, the third of times, the fourth of sacred rites, here too commending by a most subtle distinction who render them, where they render them, when they render them, what they render.

But since it was needful to say—and this above all was expected—to whom they render these things, concerning the gods themselves he wrote three final books, so that five times three should make fifteen. But they are all, as I said, sixteen, because at the outset of these too he prefixed one single book which should speak first of all. When this was completed, following upon it, out of that fivefold distribution he thus subdivided the three preceding books, which pertain to men, that the first should be about pontiffs, the second about augurs, the third about the fifteen men in charge of sacred things; the second three, pertaining to places, thus, that in one of them he should treat of shrines, in another of sacred buildings, in the third of religious places;

and the three that follow these and pertain to times, that is to festal days, thus, that he should make one of them concerning holy days, another concerning the games of the circus, the third concerning the stage games; of the fourth three, pertaining to sacred rites, he gave one to consecrations, another to private rites, the last to public rites. This procession, as it were, of ceremonies the gods themselves follow last, in the three that remain, they for whom all this worship has been expended: in the first the certain gods, in the second the uncertain, in the third and last of all the chief and select gods.

[IV] In this whole series of most beautiful and most subtle distribution and distinction, that eternal life is sought and hoped for in vain, and is most shamelessly even wished for, appears most easily—from what we have already said and from what is to be said hereafter—to any man who, with obstinate heart, has not become his own enemy.

For these institutions are either of men or of demons—not such as they call good demons, but, to speak more plainly, of unclean and without controversy malignant spirits, who with wondrous envy secretly implant harmful opinions in the thoughts of the impious (opinions by which the human soul grows ever more empty and cannot be fitted and made to cleave to the unchangeable and eternal truth), and sometimes openly thrust them upon men's senses, and by whatever deceitful attestation they can, confirm them. This very Varro testifies that for this reason he wrote first of human matters and afterward of divine, because states existed first and then these institutions were established by them.

But true religion was not instituted by any earthly state; rather, it plainly instituted the heavenly state. And the true God, the giver of eternal life, inspires and teaches it to his true worshippers. Varro's reasoning, then—when he confesses that for this reason he wrote first of human matters and afterward of divine, because these divine matters were instituted by men—is this: 'Just as,' he says, 'the painter is prior to the painted panel, the builder prior to the building:

so states are prior to the things instituted by states.' But he says that he would have written first of the gods and afterward of men, if he were writing of the whole nature of the gods—as though here he were writing of some part of it and not of the whole, or as though even some part of the nature of the gods, though not the whole, ought not to be prior to that of men. What of the fact that in those three last books, carefully setting forth the certain and uncertain and select gods, he seems to pass over no nature of the gods? What then does he mean when he says: 'If we were writing of the whole nature of gods and men, we should have finished the divine before we touched the human'? For either he writes of the whole nature of the gods, or of some part, or of none at all.

If of the whole, it is certainly to be placed before human matters; if of some part, why should not that part itself also precede human matters? Or is a part of the gods unworthy to be preferred even to the whole nature of men? But if it is too much that some divine part be preferred to all human matters, at least it is worthy to be preferred to Roman ones. For he wrote the books of human matters not as regards the whole world, but only as regards Rome; yet he said that with good reason he preferred them, in the order of writing, to the books of divine matters—like the painter to the painted panel, like the builder to the building—most openly confessing that these divine matters too, like a painting, like a structure, were instituted by men.

It remains that he be understood to have written of no nature of the gods, and that he was unwilling to say this openly, but left it to the discerning. For when 'not the whole' is said, it is customarily understood as 'some'; but it can also be understood as 'none,' since that which is none is neither the whole nor some. For, as he himself says, if the nature of the gods of which he wrote were the whole, it would in the order of writing have to be placed before human matters; but—as, even with him silent, the truth cries out—it would certainly have to be placed before Roman matters, even if not the whole, but at least some. Rightly, however, it is placed after; therefore it is none. And so he did not wish to set human matters before divine, but he was unwilling to set false things before true.

For in those things which he wrote of human matters, he followed the history of deeds done; but what he wrote of those things which he calls divine, what were they but opinions of vain things? This is doubtless what he wished to show by a subtle intimation—not only by writing of these things later than of those, but also by rendering the reason why he did so. For had he kept silent about it, this deed of his might perhaps have been defended otherwise by others. But in that very reason which he rendered, he left nothing for others to conjecture at their pleasure, and proved sufficiently that he had preferred men to the institutions of men, not the nature of men to the nature of the gods.

Thus he confessed that he wrote his books of divine matters not concerning the truth which pertains to nature, but concerning the falsehood which pertains to error. This he set down more openly elsewhere, as I recalled in the fourth book: that he would have written according to the rule of nature, had he himself been founding a new state; but because he had found an old one already, he could not but follow its custom. [V] Then what sort of thing is this, that he says there are three kinds of theology—that is, of the reasoning which is set forth concerning the gods—and that one of them is called mythical, another physical, the third civil? If usage in Latin allowed it, we should call the kind he set first 'fabular'; but let us call it 'fabulous';

for mythicon is so called from fables, since muthos in Greek means a fable. As for the second, that it be called 'natural,' the custom of speech already allows. The third he himself also expressed in Latin, which is called 'civil.' Then he says: 'They call mythical that which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the philosophers use; civil, that which the peoples use. The first, which I have named,' he says, 'contains many things feigned contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals. For in it there is that one god is born from a head, another from a thigh, another from drops of blood; in it, that gods have thieved, have committed adultery, have served a man;

in short, in this kind all those things are attributed to the gods which can befall not only a man, but even the most despised of men.' Here surely, where he could, where he dared, where he thought it would go unpunished, he expressed without any cloud of ambiguity how great an injury is done to the nature of the gods by the most lying fables. For he was speaking not of natural theology, nor of civil, but of the fabulous, which he thought he might freely censure. Let us see what he says of the other. 'The second kind,' he says, 'is that which I have set forth, concerning which the philosophers have left many books; in which is treated: who the gods are, where, of what kind, of what sort they are: whether the gods have been from a certain time or from everlasting;

whether they are of fire, as Heraclitus believes, or of numbers, as Pythagoras, or of atoms, as Epicurus says. And so with other matters, which ears can more easily bear within walls in the school than outside in the forum.' In this kind he found nothing to blame, which they call physical and which pertains to the philosophers—only that he recorded their controversies among themselves, through whom there came to be a multitude of dissenting sects. Yet he removed this kind from the forum, that is, from the peoples, and shut it up in schools and within walls. But that first kind, most lying and most base, he did not remove from the states. O the religious ears of the peoples, and among them even the Roman! What the philosophers dispute concerning the immortal gods, they cannot bear;

but what the poets sing and the actors perform—things feigned contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals, because they can befall not only a man but even the most despised of men—these they not only bear, but even gladly hear. Nor that only, but they decree that these things please the gods themselves and that by these the gods are to be appeased. Someone may say: Let us distinguish these two kinds, the mythical and the physical—that is, the fabulous and the natural—from this civil kind, which is now under discussion, from which he himself distinguished them, and now let us see how he sets forth the civil itself. I see indeed why the fabulous ought to be distinguished: because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy.

But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil—what else is it than to confess that the civil itself also is faulty? For if that is natural, what has it deserving of reproach, that it should be excluded? But if this which is called civil is not natural, what has it deserving, that it should be admitted? This indeed is that very cause why he wrote first of human matters and afterward of divine, since in divine matters he followed not nature, but the institutions of men. Let us look then also at the civil theology. 'The third kind,' he says, 'is that which in cities the citizens, and chiefly the priests, ought to know and administer. In it is contained which gods each one ought publicly to worship and to what sacred rites and sacrifices he ought to attend.' Let us still attend to what follows.

'The first theology,' he says, 'is chiefly suited to the theater, the second to the world, the third to the city.' Who does not see to which he has given the palm? Assuredly to the second, which above he said was the philosophers'. For he testifies that this pertains to the world, than which these men think there is nothing more excellent among things. But those two theologies, the first and the third—namely of the theater and of the city—did he distinguish them or join them? For we see that what belongs to the city cannot forthwith pertain also to the world, although we see that cities are in the world; for it can happen that in a city, according to false opinions, things be worshipped and believed whose nature exists nowhere in the world or beyond the world: but where is the theater save in the city?

Who instituted the theater but the city? For what purpose did it institute it but for the stage games? Where are the stage games but among the divine matters, concerning which these books are written with such great skill? [VI] O Marcus Varro, since you are a man the most acute of all and beyond any doubt the most learned, yet nevertheless a man, not God, nor lifted up by the Spirit of God to see and announce divine things in truth and freedom, you discern indeed how greatly divine matters are to be separated from human trifles and lies;

but you fear to offend the most vicious opinions and customs of the peoples in the public superstitions, which you both perceive yourself—when you consider them on every side—to be abhorrent to the nature of the gods, or of such beings as the frailty of the human mind surmises to exist in the elements of this world, and which all your literature echoes round about. What does the human genius, however excellent, here avail? What does human learning, though manifold and vast, avail you in these straits? You desire to worship the natural gods; you are compelled to worship the civil. You have found others, the fabulous, upon whom you may more freely vomit forth what you feel, whence you may, willy-nilly, bespatter even these civil ones.

For you say that the fabulous gods are suited to the theater, the natural to the world, the civil to the city, whereas the world is a divine work, but cities and theaters are works of men; nor are other gods laughed at in the theaters than those who are adored in the temples, nor do you exhibit games to others than those to whom you immolate victims. How much more freely and more subtly would you have divided these matters, saying that some gods are natural, others instituted by men; but that concerning the instituted ones, the writings of the poets have one thing, those of the priests another, yet both are so friendly to each other in a partnership of falsehood that both are pleasing to the demons, to whom the doctrine of truth is an enemy!

Setting aside for a little, therefore, the theology which they call natural, of which we must treat afterward, is it at last your pleasure that eternal life be sought or hoped for from the poetic, theatrical, ludicrous, stage-gods? Far be it; nay rather, may the true God avert so monstrous and sacrilegious a madness. What? Is eternal life to be demanded from those gods whom these things please and whom these things appease, when their own crimes are there thronged and repeated? No one, I think, so raves as to reach such a precipice of most furious impiety. Neither by the fabulous, then, nor by the civil theology does anyone attain everlasting life. For the one sows shameful things by feigning them of the gods, the other reaps by favoring them; the one scatters lies, the other gathers them;