that was to defraud them of their wages, built the walls of Troy for
nothing but thanks and thankless people.[120] There may be some doubt
whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons to be gods,
than to cheat such gods. Even Homer himself did not give full credence
to the story; for while he represents Neptune, indeed, as hostile to
the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though the story
implies that both were offended by that fraud. If, therefore, they
believe their fables, let them blush to worship such gods; if they
discredit the fables, let no more be said of the "Trojan perjury;" or
let them explain how the gods hated Trojan, but loved Roman perjury.
For how did the conspiracy of Catiline, even in so large and corrupt a
city, find so abundant a supply of men whose hands and tongues found
them a living by perjury and civic broils? What else but perjury
corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the senators? What
else corrupted the people's votes and decisions of all causes tried
before them? For it seems that the ancient practice of taking oaths has
been preserved even in the midst of the greatest corruption, not for
the sake of restraining wickedness by religious fear, but to complete
the tale of crimes by adding that of perjury.
3. _That the gods could not be offended by the adultery of Paris,
this crime being so common among themselves._
There is no ground, then, for representing the gods (by whom, as they
say, that empire stood, though they are proved to have been conquered
by the Greeks) as being enraged at the Trojan perjury. Neither,
as others again plead in their defence, was it indignation at the
adultery of Paris that caused them to withdraw their protection from
Troy. For their habit is to be instigators and instructors in vice,
not its avengers. "The city of Rome," says Sallust, "was first built
and inhabited, as I have heard, by the Trojans, who, flying their
country, under the conduct of Æneas, wandered about without making
any settlement."[121] If, then, the gods were of opinion that the
adultery of Paris should be punished, it was chiefly the Romans, or
at least the Romans also, who should have suffered; for the adultery
was brought about by Æneas' mother. But how could they hate in Paris
a crime which they made no objection to in their own sister Venus,
who (not to mention any other instance) committed adultery with
Anchises, and so became the mother of Æneas? Is it because in the
one case Menelaus[122] was aggrieved, while in the other Vulcan[123]
connived at the crime? For the gods, I fancy, are so little jealous
of their wives, that they make no scruple of sharing them with men.
But perhaps I may be suspected of turning the myths into ridicule,
and not handling so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well,
then, let us say that Æneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing
to I admit it; but is Romulus any more the son of Mars? For why
not the one as well as the other? Or is it lawful for gods to have
intercourse with women, unlawful for men to have intercourse with
goddesses? A hard, or rather an incredible condition, that what
was allowed to Mars by the law of Venus, should not be allowed to
Venus herself by her own law. However, both cases have the authority
of Rome; for Cæsar in modern times believed no less that he was
descended from Venus,[124] than the ancient Romulus believed himself
the son of Mars.
4. _Of Varro's opinion, that it is useful for men to feign
themselves the offspring of the gods._
Some one will say, But do you believe all this? Not I indeed. For
even Varro, a very learned heathen, all but admits that these stories
are false, though he does not boldly and confidently say so. But he
maintains it is useful for states that brave men believe, though
falsely, that they are descended from the gods; for that thus the
human spirit, cherishing the belief of its divine descent, will both
more boldly venture into great enterprises, and will carry them
out more energetically, and will therefore by its very confidence
secure more abundant success. You see how wide a field is opened to
falsehood by this opinion of Varro's, which I have expressed as well
as I could in my own words; and how comprehensible it is, that many
of the religions and sacred legends should be feigned in a community
in which it was judged profitable for the citizens that lies should
be told even about the gods themselves.
5. _That it is not credible that the gods should have punished the
adultery of Paris, seeing they showed no indignation at the
adultery of the mother of Romulus._
But whether Venus could bear Æneas to a human father Anchises, or
Mars beget Romulus of the daughter of Numitor, we leave as unsettled
questions. For our own Scriptures suggest the very similar question,
whether the fallen angels had sexual intercourse with the daughters
of men, by which the earth was at that time filled with giants,
that is, with enormously large and strong men. At present, then, I
will limit my discussion to this dilemma: If that which their books
relate about the mother of Æneas and the father of Romulus be true,
how can the gods be displeased with men for adulteries which, when
committed by themselves, excite no displeasure? If it is false,
not even in this case can the gods be angry that men should really
commit adulteries, which, even when falsely attributed to the gods,
they delight in. Moreover, if the adultery of Mars be discredited,
that Venus also may be freed from the imputation, then the mother
of Romulus is left unshielded by the pretext of a divine seduction.
For Sylvia was a vestal priestess, and the gods ought to avenge this
sacrilege on the Romans with greater severity than Paris' adultery
on the Trojans. For even the Romans themselves in primitive times
used to go so far as to bury alive any vestal who was detected in
adultery, while women unconsecrated, though they were punished,
were never punished with death for that crime; and thus they more
earnestly vindicated the purity of shrines they esteemed divine, than
of the human bed.
6. _That the gods exacted no penalty for the fratricidal act of
Romulus._
I add another instance: If the sins of men so greatly incensed those
divinities, that they abandoned Troy to fire and sword to punish
the crime of Paris, the murder of Romulus' brother ought to have
incensed them more against the Romans than the cajoling of a Greek
husband moved them against the Trojans: fratricide in a newly-born
city should have provoked them more than adultery in a city already
flourishing. It makes no difference to the question we now discuss,
whether Romulus ordered his brother to be slain, or slew him with
his own hand; a crime this latter which many shamelessly deny, many
through shame doubt, many in grief disguise. And we shall not pause
to examine and weigh the testimonies of historical writers on the
subject. All agree that the brother of Romulus was slain, not by
enemies, not by strangers. If it was Romulus who either commanded or
perpetrated this crime; Romulus was more truly the head of the Romans
than Paris of the Trojans; why then did he who carried off another
man's wife bring down the anger of the gods on the Trojans, while he
who took his brother's life obtained the guardianship of those same
gods? If, on the other hand, that crime was not wrought either by the
hand or will of Romulus, then the whole city is chargeable with it,
because it did not see to its punishment, and thus committed, not
fratricide, but parricide, which is worse. For both brothers were
the founders of that city, of which the one was by villany prevented
from being a ruler. So far as I see, then, no evil can be ascribed
to Troy which warranted the gods in abandoning it to destruction,
nor any good to Rome which accounts for the gods visiting it with
prosperity; unless the truth be, that they fled from Troy because
they were vanquished, and betook themselves to Rome to practise their
characteristic deceptions there. Nevertheless they kept a footing for
themselves in Troy, that they might deceive future inhabitants who
repeopled these lands; while at Rome, by a wider exercise of their
malignant arts, they exulted in more abundant honours.
7. _Of the destruction of Ilium by Fimbria, a lieutenant of Marius._
And surely we may ask what wrong poor Ilium had done, that, in the
first heat of the civil wars of Rome, it should suffer at the hand of
Fimbria, the veriest villain among Marius' partisans, a more fierce
and cruel destruction than the Grecian sack.[125] For when the Greeks
took it many escaped, and many who did not escape were suffered to
live, though in captivity. But Fimbria from the first gave orders
that not a life should be spared, and burnt up together the city and
all its inhabitants. Thus was Ilium requited, not by the Greeks, whom
she had provoked by wrong-doing; but by the Romans, who had been
built out of her ruins; while the gods, adored alike of both sides,
did simply nothing, or, to speak more correctly, could do nothing.
Is it then true, that at this time also, after Troy had repaired
the damage done by the Grecian fire, all the gods by whose help the
kingdom stood, "forsook each fane, each sacred shrine?"
But if so, I ask the reason; for in my judgment, the conduct of
the gods was as much to be reprobated as that of the townsmen to
be applauded. For these closed their gates against Fimbria, that
they might preserve the city for Sylla, and were therefore burnt
and consumed by the enraged general. Now, up to this time, Sylla's
cause was the more worthy of the two; for till now he used arms to
restore the republic, and as yet his good intentions had met with no
reverses. What better thing, then, could the Trojans have done? What
more honourable, what more faithful to Rome, or more worthy of her
relationship, than to preserve their city for the better part of the
Romans, and to shut their gates against a parricide of his country?
It is for the defenders of the gods to consider the ruin which this
conduct brought on Troy. The gods deserted an adulterous people, and
abandoned Troy to the fires of the Greeks, that out of her ashes a
chaster Rome might arise. But why did they a second time abandon this
same town, allied now to Rome, and not making war upon her noble
daughter, but preserving a most stedfast and pious fidelity to Rome's
most justifiable faction? Why did they give her up to be destroyed, not
by the Greek heroes, but by the basest of the Romans? Or, if the gods
did not favour Sylla's cause, for which the unhappy Trojans maintained
their city, why did they themselves predict and promise Sylla such
successes? Must we call them flatterers of the fortunate, rather than
helpers of the wretched? Troy was not destroyed, then, because the gods
deserted it. For the demons, always watchful to deceive, did what they
could. For, when all the statues were overthrown and burnt together
with the town, Livy tells us that only the image of Minerva is said to
have been found standing uninjured amidst the ruins of her temple; not
that it might be said in their praise, "The gods who made this realm
divine," but that it might not be said in their defence, They are "gone
from each fane, each sacred shrine:" for that marvel was permitted to
them, not that they might be proved to be powerful, but that they might
be convicted of being present.
8. _Whether Rome ought to have been entrusted to the Trojan gods?_
Where, then, was the wisdom of entrusting Rome to the Trojan
gods, who had demonstrated their weakness in the loss of Troy?
Will some one say that, when Fimbria stormed Troy, the gods were
already resident in Rome? How, then, did the image of Minerva remain
standing? Besides, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Troy,
perhaps they were at Troy when Rome itself was taken and set on fire
by the Gauls. But as they are very acute in hearing, and very swift
in their movements, they came quickly at the cackling of the goose to
defend at least the Capitol, though to defend the rest of the city
they were too long in being warned.
9. _Whether it is credible that the peace during the reign of Numa
was brought about by the gods._
It is also believed that it was by the help of the gods that the
successor of Romulus, Numa Pompilius, enjoyed peace during his entire
reign, and shut the gates of Janus, which are customarily kept
open[126] during war. And it is supposed he was thus requited for
appointing many religious observances among the Romans. Certainly that
king would have commanded our congratulations for so rare a leisure,
had he been wise enough to spend it on wholesome pursuits, and,
subduing a pernicious curiosity, had sought out the true God with true
piety. But as it was, the gods were not the authors of his leisure; but
possibly they would have deceived him less had they found him busier.
For the more disengaged they found him, the more they themselves
occupied his attention. Varro informs us of all his efforts, and of the
arts he employed to associate these gods with himself and the city;
and in its own place, if God will, I shall discuss these matters.
Meanwhile, as we are speaking of the benefits conferred by the gods,
I readily admit that peace is a great benefit; but it is a benefit of
the true God, which, like the sun, the rain, and other supports of
life, is frequently conferred on the ungrateful and wicked. But if this
great boon was conferred on Rome and Pompilius by their gods, why did
they never afterwards grant it to the Roman empire during even more
meritorious periods? Were the sacred rites more efficient at their
first institution than during their subsequent celebration? But they
had no existence in Numa's time, until he added them to the ritual;
whereas afterwards they had already been celebrated and preserved, that
benefit might arise from them. How, then, is it that those forty-three,
or as others prefer it, thirty-nine years of Numa's reign, were passed
in unbroken peace, and yet that afterwards, when the worship was
established, and the gods themselves, who were invoked by it, were the
recognised guardians and patrons of the city, we can with difficulty
find during the whole period, from the building of the city to the
reign of Augustus, one year--that, viz., which followed the close of
the first Punic war--in which, for a marvel, the Romans were able to
shut the gates of war?[127]
10. _Whether it was desirable that the Roman empire should be
increased by such a furious succession of wars, when it might
have been quiet and safe by following in the peaceful ways of
Numa._
Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have been so widely
extended, nor so glorious, save by constant and unintermitting wars?
A fit argument, truly! Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to
be great? In this little world of man's body, is it not better to
have a moderate stature, and health with it, than to attain the huge
dimensions of a giant by unnatural torments, and when you attain it
to find no rest, but to be pained the more in proportion to the size
of your members? What evil would have resulted, or rather what good
would not have resulted, had those times continued which Sallust
sketched, when he says, "At first the kings (for that was the first
title of empire in the world) were divided in their sentiments: part
cultivated the mind, others the body: at that time the life of men
was led without covetousness; every one was sufficiently satisfied
with his own!"[128] Was it requisite, then, for Rome's prosperity,
that the state of things which Virgil reprobates should succeed:
"At length stole on a baser age,
And war's indomitable rage,
And greedy lust of gain?"[129]
But obviously the Romans have a plausible defence for undertaking
and carrying on such disastrous wars,--to wit, that the pressure of
their enemies forced them to resist, so that they were compelled
to fight, not by any greed of human applause, but by the necessity
of protecting life and liberty. Well, let that pass. Here is
Sallust's account of the matter: "For when their state, enriched
with laws, institutions, territory, seemed abundantly prosperous and
sufficiently powerful, according to the ordinary law of human nature,
opulence gave birth to envy. Accordingly, the neighbouring kings and
states took arms and assaulted them. A few allies lent assistance;
the rest, struck with fear, kept aloof from dangers. But the Romans,
watchful at home and in war, were active, made preparations,
encouraged one another, marched to meet their enemies,--protected
by arms their liberty, country, parents. Afterwards, when they had
repelled the dangers by their bravery, they carried help to their
allies and friends, and procured alliances more by conferring than
by receiving favours."[130] This was to build up Rome's greatness by
honourable means. But, in Numa's reign, I would know whether the long
peace was maintained in spite of the incursions of wicked neighbours,
or if these incursions were discontinued that the peace might be
maintained? For if even then Rome was harassed by wars, and yet did
not meet force with force, the same means she then used to quiet her
enemies without conquering them in war, or terrifying them with the
onset of battle, she might have used always, and have reigned in
peace with the gates of Janus shut. And if this was not in her power,
then Rome enjoyed peace not at the will of her gods, but at the will
of her neighbours round about, and only so long as they cared to
provoke her with no war, unless perhaps these pitiful gods will dare
to sell to one man as their favour what lies not in their power to
bestow, but in the will of another man. These demons, indeed, in so
far as they are permitted, can terrify or incite the minds of wicked
men by their own peculiar wickedness. But if they always had this
power, and if no action were taken against their efforts by a more
secret and higher power, they would be supreme to give peace or the
victories of war, which almost always fall out through some human
emotion, and frequently in opposition to the will of the gods, as is
proved not only by lying legends, which scarcely hint or signify any
grain of truth, but even by Roman history itself.
11. _Of the statue of Apollo at Cumæ, whose tears are supposed to
have portended disaster to the Greeks, whom the god was unable
to succour._
And it is still this weakness of the gods which is confessed in the
story of the Cuman Apollo, who is said to have wept for four days
during the war with the Achæans and King Aristonicus. And when the
augurs were alarmed at the portent, and had determined to cast the
statue into the sea, the old men of Cumæ interposed, and related
that a similar prodigy had occurred to the same image during the
wars against Antiochus and against Perseus, and that by a decree of
the senate gifts had been presented to Apollo, because the event had
proved favourable to the Romans. Then soothsayers were summoned who
were supposed to have greater professional skill, and they pronounced
that the weeping of Apollo's image was propitious to the Romans,
because Cumæ was a Greek colony, and that Apollo was bewailing (and
thereby presaging) the grief and calamity that was about to light
upon his own land of Greece, from which he had been brought. Shortly
afterwards it was reported that King Aristonicus was defeated and
made prisoner,--a defeat certainly opposed to the will of Apollo;
and this he indicated by even shedding tears from his marble image.
And this shows us that, though the verses of the poets are mythical,
they are not altogether devoid of truth, but describe the manners of
the demons in a sufficiently fit style. For in Virgil Diana mourned
for Camilla,[131] and Hercules wept for Pallas doomed to die.[132]
This is perhaps the reason why Numa Pompilius, too, when, enjoying
prolonged peace, but without knowing or inquiring from whom he
received it, he began in his leisure to consider to what gods he
should entrust the safe keeping and conduct of Rome, and not dreaming
that the true, almighty, and most high God cares for earthly affairs,
but recollecting only that the Trojan gods which Æneas had brought
to Italy had been able to preserve neither the Trojan nor Lavinian
kingdom founded by Æneas himself, concluded that he must provide
other gods as guardians of fugitives and helpers of the weak, and add
them to those earlier divinities who had either come over to Rome
with Romulus, or when Alba was destroyed.
12. _That the Romans added a vast number of gods to those introduced
by Numa, and that their numbers helped them not at all._
But though Pompilius introduced so ample a ritual, yet did not Rome
see fit to be content with it. For as yet Jupiter himself had not
his chief temple,--it being King Tarquin who built the Capitol.
And Æsculapius left Epidaurus for Rome, that in this foremost city
he might have a finer field for the exercise of his great medical
skill.[133] The mother of the gods, too, came I know not whence from
Pessinuns; it being unseemly that, while her son presided on the
Capitoline hill, she herself should lie hid in obscurity. But if she
is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed some of her
children to Rome, but left others to follow her. I wonder, indeed,
if she were the mother of Cynocephalus, who a long while afterwards
came from Egypt. Whether also the goddess Fever was her offspring,
is a matter for her grandson Æsculapius[134] to decide. But of
whatever breed she be, the foreign gods will not presume, I trust, to
call a goddess base-born who is a Roman citizen. Who can number the
deities to whom the guardianship of Rome was entrusted? Indigenous
and imported, both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers;
and, as Varro says, gods certain and uncertain, male and female:
for, as among animals, so among all kinds of gods are there these
distinctions. Rome, then, enjoying the protection of such a cloud of
deities, might surely have been preserved from some of those great
and horrible calamities, of which I can mention but a few. For by
the great smoke of her altars she summoned to her protection, as by
a beacon-fire, a host of gods, for whom she appointed and maintained
temples, altars, sacrifices, priests, and thus offended the true and
most high God, to whom alone all this ceremonial is lawfully due.
And, indeed, she was more prosperous when she had fewer gods; but
the greater she became, the more gods she thought she should have, as
the larger ship needs to be manned by a larger crew. I suppose she
despaired of the smaller number, under whose protection she had spent
comparatively happy days, being able to defend her greatness. For
even under the kings (with the exception of Numa Pompilius, of whom I
have already spoken), how wicked a contentiousness must have existed
to occasion the death of Romulus' brother!
13. _By what right or agreement the Romans obtained their first
wives._
How is it that neither Juno, who with her husband Jupiter even then
cherished
"Rome's sons, the nation of the gown,"[135]
nor Venus herself, could assist the children of the loved Æneas to find
wives by some right and equitable means? For the lack of this entailed
upon the Romans the lamentable necessity of stealing their wives, and
then waging war with their fathers-in-law; so that the wretched women,
before they had recovered from the wrong done them by their husbands,
were dowried with the blood of their fathers. "But the Romans conquered
their neighbours." Yes; but with what wounds on both sides, and with
what sad slaughter of relatives and neighbours! The war of Cæsar and
Pompey was the contest of only one father-in-law with one son-in-law;
and before it began, the daughter of Cæsar, Pompey's wife, was already
dead. But with how keen and just an accent of grief does Lucan[136]
exclaim: "I sing that worse than civil war waged in the plains of
Emathia, and in which the crime was justified by the victory!"
The Romans, then, conquered that they might, with hands stained in the
blood of their fathers-in-law, wrench the miserable girls from their
embrace,--girls who dared not weep for their slain parents, for fear
of offending their victorious husbands; and while yet the battle was
raging, stood with their prayers on their lips, and knew not for whom
to utter them. Such nuptials were certainly prepared for the Roman
people not by Venus, but Bellona; or possibly that infernal fury
Alecto had more liberty to injure them now that Juno was aiding them,
than when the prayers of that goddess had excited her against Æneas.
Andromache in captivity was happier than these Roman brides. For though
she was a slave, yet, after she had become the wife of Pyrrhus, no
more Trojans fell by his hand; but the Romans slew in battle the very
fathers of the brides they fondled. Andromache, the victor's captive,
could only mourn, not fear, the death of her people. The Sabine women,
related to men still combatants, feared the death of their fathers
when their husbands went out to battle, and mourned their death as
they returned, while neither their grief nor their fear could be
freely expressed. For the victories of their husbands, involving the
destruction of fellow-townsmen, relatives, brothers, fathers, caused
either pious agony or cruel exultation. Moreover, as the fortune of
war is capricious, some of them lost their husbands by the sword of
their parents, while others lost husband and father together in mutual
destruction. For the Romans by no means escaped with impunity, but they
were driven back within their walls, and defended themselves behind
closed gates; and when the gates were opened by guile, and the enemy
admitted into the town, the Forum itself was the field of a hateful
and fierce engagement of fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. The ravishers
were indeed quite defeated, and, flying on all sides to their houses,
sullied with new shame their original shameful and lamentable triumph.
It was at this juncture that Romulus, hoping no more from the valour
of his citizens, prayed Jupiter that they might stand their ground;
and from this occasion the god gained the name of Stator. But not even
thus would the mischief have been finished, had not the ravished women
themselves flashed out with dishevelled hair, and cast themselves
before their parents, and thus disarmed their just rage, not with
the arms of victory, but with the supplications of filial affection.
Then Romulus, who could not brook his own brother as a colleague, was
compelled to accept Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as his partner
on the throne. But how long would he who misliked the fellowship of his
own twin-brother endure a stranger? So, Tatius being slain, Romulus
remained sole king, that he might be the greater god. See what rights
of marriage these were that fomented unnatural wars. These were the
Roman leagues of kindred, relationship, alliance, religion. This was
the life of the city so abundantly protected by the gods. You see how
many severe things might be said on this theme; but our purpose carries
us past them, and requires our discourse for other matters.
14. _Of the wickedness of the war waged by the Romans against
the Albans, and of the victories won by the lust of power._
But what happened after Numa's reign, and under the other kings,
when the Albans were provoked into war, with sad results not to
themselves alone, but also to the Romans? The long peace of Numa had
become tedious; and with what endless slaughter and detriment of both
states did the Roman and Alban armies bring it to an end! For Alba,
which had been founded by Ascanius, son of Æneas, and which was more
properly the mother of Rome than Troy herself, was provoked to battle
by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, and in the conflict both inflicted
and received such damage, that at length both parties wearied of the
struggle. It was then devised that the war should be decided by the
combat of three twin-brothers from each army: from the Romans the
three Horatii stood forward, from the Albans the three Curiatii. Two
of the Horatii were overcome and disposed of by the Curiatii; but
by the remaining Horatius the three Curiatii were slain. Thus Rome
remained victorious, but with such a sacrifice that only one survivor
returned to his home. Whose was the loss on both sides? Whose the
grief, but of the offspring of Æneas, the descendants of Ascanius,
the progeny of Venus, the grandsons of Jupiter? For this, too, was
a "worse than civil" war, in which the belligerent states were
mother and daughter. And to this combat of the three twin-brothers
there was added another atrocious and horrible catastrophe. For
as the two nations had formerly been friendly (being related and
neighbours), the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of
the Curiatii; and she, when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of
her betrothed, burst into tears, and was slain by her own brother in
his anger. To me, this one girl seems to have been more humane than
the whole Roman people. I cannot think her to blame for lamenting
the man to whom already she had plighted her troth, or, as perhaps
she was doing, for grieving that her brother should have slain him
to whom he had promised his sister. For why do we praise the grief
of Æneas (in Virgil[137]) over the enemy cut down even by his own
hand? Why did Marcellus shed tears over the city of Syracuse, when he
recollected, just before he destroyed, its magnificence and meridian
glory, and thought upon the common lot of all things? I demand, in
the name of humanity, that if men are praised for tears shed over
enemies conquered by themselves, a weak girl should not be counted
criminal for bewailing her lover slaughtered by the hand of her
brother. While, then, that maiden was weeping for the death of her
betrothed inflicted by her brother's hand, Rome was rejoicing that
such devastation had been wrought on her mother state, and that she
had purchased a victory with such an expenditure of the common blood
of herself and the Albans.
Why allege to me the mere names and words of "glory" and "victory?"
Tear off the disguise of wild delusion, and look at the naked deeds:
weigh them naked, judge them naked. Let the charge be brought against
Alba, as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge,
none like it found: the war was kindled only in order that there
"Might sound in languid ears the cry
Of Tullus and of victory."[138]
This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that social and
parricidal war,--a vice which Sallust brands in passing; for when
he has spoken with brief but hearty commendation of those primitive
times in which life was spent without covetousness, and every one
was sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on: "But after
Cyrus in Asia, and the Lacedemonians and Athenians in Greece, began
to subdue cities and nations, and to account the lust of sovereignty
a sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory
consisted in the greatest empire;"[139] and so on, as I need not
now quote. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human
race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she
triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory.
For, as our Scriptures say, "the wicked boasteth of his heart's
desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth."[140]
Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes,
that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell
me that this and the other was a "great" man, because he fought
and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this
barbarism has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take
the consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such
arms. And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being
father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? who
would not be revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war
which a daughter-state waged against its mother? Or did it constitute
a difference, that the battlefield was not an arena, and that the
wide plains were filled with the carcases not of two gladiators, but
of many of the flower of two nations; and that those contests were
viewed not by the amphitheatre, but by the whole world, and furnished
a profane spectacle both to those alive at the time, and to their
posterity, so long as the fame of it is handed down?
Yet those gods, guardians of the Roman empire, and, as it were,
theatric spectators of such contests as these, were not satisfied until
the sister of the Horatii was added by her brother's sword as a third
victim from the Roman side, so that Rome herself, though she won the
day, should have as many deaths to mourn. Afterwards, as a fruit of the
victory, Alba was destroyed, though it was there the Trojan gods had
formed a third asylum after Ilium had been sacked by the Greeks, and
after they had left Lavinium, where Æneas had founded a kingdom in a
land of banishment. But probably Alba was destroyed because from it too
the gods had migrated, in their usual fashion, as Virgil says:
"Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine,
Are those who made this realm divine."[141]
Gone, indeed, and from now their third asylum, that Rome might
seem all the wiser in committing herself to them after they had
deserted three other cities. Alba, whose king Amulius had banished
his brother, displeased them; Rome, whose king Romulus had slain his
brother, pleased them. But before Alba was destroyed, its population,
they say, was amalgamated with the inhabitants of Rome, so that
the two cities were one. Well, admitting it was so, yet the fact
remains that the city of Ascanius, the third retreat of the Trojan
gods, was destroyed by the daughter-city. Besides, to effect this
pitiful conglomerate of the war's leavings, much blood was spilt on
both sides. And how shall I speak in detail of the same wars, so
often renewed in subsequent reigns, though they seemed to have been
finished by great victories; and of wars that time after time were
brought to an end by great slaughters, and which yet time after time
were renewed by the posterity of those who had made peace and struck
treaties? Of this calamitous history we have no small proof, in the
fact that no subsequent king closed the gates of war; and therefore,
with all their tutelar gods, no one of them reigned in peace.
15. _What manner of life and death the Roman kings had._
And what was the end of the kings themselves? Of Romulus, a flattering
legend tells us that he was assumed into heaven. But certain Roman
historians relate that he was torn in pieces by the senate for his
ferocity, and that a man, Julius Proculus, was suborned to give out
that Romulus had appeared to him, and through him commanded the Roman
people to worship him as a god; and that in this way the people, who
were beginning to resent the action of the senate, were quieted and
pacified. For an eclipse of the sun had also happened; and this was
attributed to the divine power of Romulus by the ignorant multitude,
who did not know that it was brought about by the fixed laws of the
sun's course: though this grief of the sun might rather have been
considered proof that Romulus had been slain, and that the crime
was indicated by this deprivation of the sun's light; as, in truth,
was the case when the Lord was crucified through the cruelty and
impiety of the Jews. For it is sufficiently demonstrated that this
latter obscuration of the sun did not occur by the natural laws of
the heavenly bodies, because it was then the Jewish passover, which
is held only at full moon, whereas natural eclipses of the sun happen
only at the last quarter of the moon. Cicero, too, shows plainly enough
that the apotheosis of Romulus was imaginary rather than real, when,
even while he is praising him in one of Scipio's remarks in the _De
Republica_, he says: "Such a reputation had he acquired, that when he
suddenly disappeared during an eclipse of the sun, he was supposed to
have been assumed into the number of the gods, which could be supposed
of no mortal who had not the highest reputation for virtue."[142] By
these words, "he suddenly disappeared," we are to understand that he
was mysteriously made away with by the violence either of the tempest
or of a murderous assault. For their other writers speak not only of an
eclipse, but of a sudden storm also, which certainly either afforded
opportunity for the crime, or itself made an end of Romulus. And of
Tullus Hostilius, who was the third king of Rome, and who was himself
destroyed by lightning, Cicero in the same book says, that "he was
not supposed to have been deified by this death, possibly because the
Romans were unwilling to vulgarize the promotion they were assured or
persuaded of in the case of Romulus, lest they should bring it into
contempt by gratuitously assigning it to all and sundry." In one of his
invectives,[143] too, he says, in round terms, "The founder of this
city, Romulus, we have raised to immortality and divinity by kindly
celebrating his services;" implying that his deification was not real,
but reputed, and called so by courtesy on account of his virtues. In
the dialogue _Hortensius_, too, while speaking of the regular eclipses
of the sun, he says that they "produce the same darkness as covered the
death of Romulus, which happened during an eclipse of the sun." Here
you see he does not at all shrink from speaking of his "death," for
Cicero was more of a reasoner than an eulogist.
The other kings of Rome, too, with the exception of Numa Pompilius and
Ancus Marcius, who died natural deaths, what horrible ends they had!
Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and destroyer of Alba, was, as I said,
himself and all his house consumed by lightning. Priscus Tarquinius was
slain by his predecessor's sons. Servius Tullius was foully murdered by
his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him on the throne.
Nor did so flagrant a parricide committed against Rome's best king
drive from their altars and shrines those gods who were said to have
been moved by Paris' adultery to treat poor Troy in this style, and
abandon it to the fire and sword of the Greeks. Nay, the very Tarquin
who had murdered, was allowed to succeed his father-in-law. And this
infamous parricide, during the reign he had secured by murder, was
allowed to triumph in many victorious wars, and to build the Capitol
from their spoils; the gods meanwhile not departing, but abiding, and
abetting, and suffering their king Jupiter to preside and reign over
them in that very splendid Capitol, the work of a parricide. For he did
not build the Capitol in the days of his innocence, and then suffer
banishment for subsequent crimes; but to that reign during which he
built the Capitol, he won his way by unnatural crime. And when he was
afterwards banished by the Romans, and forbidden the city, it was not
for his own but his son's wickedness in the affair of Lucretia,--a
crime perpetrated not only without his cognizance, but in his absence.
For at that time he was besieging Ardea, and fighting Rome's battles;
and we cannot say what he would have done had he been aware of his
son's crime. Notwithstanding, though his opinion was neither inquired
into nor ascertained, the people stripped him of royalty; and when he
returned to Rome with his army, it was admitted, but he was excluded,
abandoned by his troops, and the gates shut in his face. And yet, after
he had appealed to the neighbouring states, and tormented the Romans
with calamitous but unsuccessful wars, and when he was deserted by the
ally on whom he most depended, despairing of regaining the kingdom, he
lived a retired and quiet life for fourteen years, as it is reported,
in Tusculum, a Roman town; where he grew old in his wife's company,
and at last terminated his days in a much more desirable fashion than
his father-in-law, who had perished by the hand of his son-in-law;
his own daughter abetting, if report be true. And this Tarquin the
Romans called, not the Cruel, nor the Infamous, but the Proud; their
own pride perhaps resenting his tyrannical airs. So little did they
make of his murdering their best king, his own father-in-law, that
they elected him their own king. I wonder if it was not even more
criminal in them to reward so bountifully so great a criminal. And yet
there was no word of the gods abandoning the altars; unless, perhaps,
some one will say in defence of the gods, that they remained at Rome
for the purpose of punishing the Romans, rather than of aiding and
profiting them, seducing them by empty victories, and wearing them out
by severe wars. Such was the life of the Romans under the kings during
the much-praised epoch of the state which extends to the expulsion of
Tarquinius Superbus in the 243d year, during which all those victories,
which were bought with so much blood and such disasters, hardly pushed
Rome's dominion twenty miles from the city; a territory which would by
no means bear comparison with that of any petty Gætulian state.
16. _Of the first Roman consuls, the one of whom drove the other
from the country, and shortly after perished at Rome by the
hand of a wounded enemy, and so ended a career of unnatural
murders._
To this epoch let us add also that of which Sallust says, that it was
ordered with justice and moderation, while the fear of Tarquin and
of a war with Etruria was impending. For so long as the Etrurians
aided the efforts of Tarquin to regain the throne, Rome was convulsed
with distressing war. And therefore he says that the state was
ordered with justice and moderation, through the pressure of fear,
not through the influence of equity. And in this very brief period,
how calamitous a year was that in which consuls were first created,
when the kingly power was abolished! They did not fulfil their term
of office. For Junius Brutus deprived his colleague Lucius Tarquinius
Collatinus, and banished him from the city; and shortly after he
himself fell in battle, at once slaying and slain, having formerly
put to death his own sons and his brothers-in-law, because he had
discovered that they were conspiring to restore Tarquin. It is this
deed that Virgil shudders to record, even while he seems to praise
it; for when he says,
"And call his own rebellious seed
For menaced liberty to bleed,"
he immediately exclaims,
"Unhappy father! howsoe'er
The deed be judged by after days;"
that is to say, let posterity judge the deed as they please, let them
praise and extol the father who slew his sons, he is unhappy. And
then he adds, as if to console so unhappy a man:
"His country's love shall all o'erbear,
And unextinguished thirst of praise."[144]
In the tragic end of Brutus, who slew his own sons, and though he
slew his enemy, Tarquin's son, yet could not survive him, but was
survived by Tarquin the elder, does not the innocence of his colleague
Collatinus seem to be vindicated, who, though a good citizen, suffered
the same punishment as Tarquin himself, when that tyrant was banished?
For Brutus himself is said to have been a relative[145] of Tarquin.
But Collatinus had the misfortune to bear not only the blood, but the
name of Tarquin. To change his name, then, not his country, would have
been his fit penalty: to abridge his name by this word, and be called
simply L. Collatinus. But he was not compelled to lose what he could
lose without detriment, but was stripped of the honour of the first
consulship, and was banished from the land he loved. Is this, then, the
glory of Brutus--this injustice, alike detestable and profitless to
the republic? Was it to this he was driven by "his country's love, and
unextinguished thirst of praise?"
When Tarquin the tyrant was expelled, L. Tarquinius Collatinus,
the husband of Lucretia, was created consul along with Brutus. How
justly the people acted, in looking more to the character than the
name of a citizen! How unjustly Brutus acted, in depriving of honour
and country his colleague in that new office, whom he might have
deprived of his name, if it were so offensive to him! Such were the
ills, such the disasters, which fell out when the government was
"ordered with justice and moderation." Lucretius, too, who succeeded
Brutus, was carried off by disease before the end of that same year.
So P. Valerius, who succeeded Collatinus, and M. Horatius, who
filled the vacancy occasioned by the death of Lucretius, completed
that disastrous and funereal year, which had five consuls. Such was
the year in which the Roman republic inaugurated the new honour and
office of the consulship.
17. _Of the disasters which vexed the Roman republic after the
inauguration of the consulship, and of the non-intervention of
the gods of Rome._
After this, when their fears were gradually diminished,--not because
the wars ceased, but because they were not so furious,--that period in
which things were "ordered with justice and moderation" drew to an end,
and there followed that state of matters which Sallust thus briefly
sketches: "Then began the patricians to oppress the people as slaves,
to condemn them to death or scourging, as the kings had done, to drive
them from their holdings, and to tyrannize over those who had no
property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive measures,
and most of all by usury, and obliged to contribute both money and
personal service to the constant wars, at length took arms and seceded
to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus secured for themselves
tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the second Punic war that
put an end on both sides to discord and strife."[146] But why should I
spend time in writing such things, or make others spend it in reading
them? Let the terse summary of Sallust suffice to intimate the misery
of the republic through all that long period till the second Punic
war,--how it was distracted from without by unceasing wars, and torn
with civil broils and dissensions. So that those victories they boast
were not the substantial joys of the happy, but the empty comforts of
wretched men, and seductive incitements to turbulent men to concoct
disasters upon disasters. And let not the good and prudent Romans be
angry at our saying this; and indeed we need neither deprecate nor
denounce their anger, for we know they will harbour none. For we speak
no more severely than their own authors, and much less elaborately and
strikingly; yet they diligently read these authors, and compel their
children to learn them. But they who are angry, what would they do to
me were I to say what Sallust says? "Frequent mobs, seditions, and at
last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the
masses were dependent, affected supreme power under the seemly pretence
of seeking the good of senate and people; citizens were judged good
or bad, without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all
were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were
esteemed good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of
things." Now, if those historians judged that an honourable freedom of
speech required that they should not be silent regarding the blemishes
of their own state, which they have in many places loudly applauded in
their ignorance of that other and true city in which citizenship is an
everlasting dignity; what does it become us to do, whose liberty ought
to be so much greater, as our hope in God is better and more assured,
when they impute to our Christ the calamities of this age, in order
that men of the less instructed and weaker sort may be alienated from
that city in which alone eternal and blessed life can be enjoyed? Nor
do we utter against their gods anything more horrible than their own
authors do, whom they read and circulate. For, indeed, all that we have
said we have derived from them, and there is much more to say of a
worse kind which we are unable to say.
Where, then, were those gods who are supposed to be justly worshipped
for the slender and delusive prosperity of this world, when the
Romans, who were seduced to their service by lying wiles, were
harassed by such calamities? Where were they when Valerius the consul
was killed while defending the Capitol, that had been fired by
exiles and slaves? He was himself better able to defend the temple
of Jupiter, than that crowd of divinities with their most high and
mighty king, whose temple he came to the rescue of, were able to
defend him. Where were they when the city, worn out with unceasing
seditions, was waiting in some kind of calm for the return of the
ambassadors who had been sent to Athens to borrow laws, and was
desolated by dreadful famine and pestilence? Where were they when the
people, again distressed with famine, created for the first time a
prefect of the market; and when Spurius Melius, who, as the famine
increased, distributed corn to the famishing masses, was accused
of aspiring to royalty, and at the instance of this same prefect,
and on the authority of the superannuated dictator L. Quintius, was
put to death by Quintus Servilius, master of the horse,--an event
which occasioned a serious and dangerous riot? Where were they
when that very severe pestilence visited Rome, on account of which
the people, after long and wearisome and useless supplications of
the helpless gods, conceived the idea of celebrating Lectisternia,
which had never been done before; that is to say, they set couches
in honour of the gods, which accounts for the name of this sacred
rite, or rather sacrilege?[147] Where were they when, during ten
successive years of reverses, the Roman army suffered frequent and
great losses among the Veians, and would have been destroyed but
for the succour of Furius Camillus, who was afterwards banished by
an ungrateful country? Where were they when the Gauls took, sacked,
burned, and desolated Rome? Where were they when that memorable
pestilence wrought such destruction, in which Furius Camillus too
perished, who first defended the ungrateful republic from the Veians,
and afterwards saved it from the Gauls? Nay, during this plague they
introduced a new pestilence of scenic entertainments, which spread
its more fatal contagion, not to the bodies, but the morals of the
Romans? Where were they when another frightful pestilence visited
the city--I mean the poisonings imputed to an incredible number of
noble Roman matrons, whose characters were infected with a disease
more fatal than any plague? Or when both consuls at the head of the
army were beset by the Samnites in the Caudine Forks, and forced to
strike a shameful treaty, 600 Roman knights being kept as hostages;
while the troops, having laid down their arms, and being stripped of
everything, were made to pass under the yoke with one garment each?
Or when, in the midst of a serious pestilence, lightning struck the
Roman camp and killed many? Or when Rome was driven, by the violence
of another intolerable plague, to send to Epidaurus for Æsculapius
as a god of medicine; since the frequent adulteries of Jupiter in
his youth had not perhaps left this king of all who so long reigned
in the Capitol, any leisure for the study of medicine? Or when, at
one time, the Lucanians, Brutians, Samnites, Tuscans, and Senonian
Gauls conspired against Rome, and first slew her ambassadors, then
overthrew an army under the prætor, putting to the sword 13,000
men, besides the commander and seven tribunes? Or when the people,
after the serious and long-continued disturbances at Rome, at last
plundered the city and withdrew to Janiculus; a danger so grave,
that Hortensius was created dictator,--an office which they had
recourse to only in extreme emergencies; and he, having brought back
the people, died while yet he retained his office,--an event without
precedent in the case of any dictator, and which was a shame to those
gods who had now Æsculapius among them?
At that time, indeed, so many wars were everywhere engaged in, that
through scarcity of soldiers they enrolled for military service the
_proletarii_, who received this name, because, being too poor to
equip for military service, they had leisure to beget offspring.[148]
Pyrrhus, king of Greece, and at that time of wide-spread renown, was
invited by the Tarentines to enlist himself against Rome. It was to
him that Apollo, when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise,
uttered with some pleasantry so ambiguous an oracle, that whichever
alternative happened, the god himself should be counted divine. For he
so worded the oracle,[149] that whether Pyrrhus was conquered by the
Romans, or the Romans by Pyrrhus, the soothsaying god would securely
await the issue. And then what frightful massacres of both armies
ensued! Yet Pyrrhus remained conqueror, and would have been able now
to proclaim Apollo a true diviner, as he understood the oracle, had
not the Romans been the conquerors in the next engagement. And while
such disastrous wars were being waged, a terrible disease broke out
among the women. For the pregnant women died before delivery. And
Æsculapius, I fancy, excused himself in this matter on the ground that
he professed to be arch-physician, not midwife. Cattle, too, similarly
perished; so that it was believed that the whole race of animals was
destined to become extinct. Then what shall I say of that memorable
winter in which the weather was so incredibly severe, that in the
Forum frightfully deep snow lay for forty days together, and the Tiber
was frozen? Had such things happened in our time, what accusations we
should have heard from our enemies! And that other great pestilence,
which raged so long and carried off so many; what shall I say of it?
Spite of all the drugs of Æsculapius, it only grew worse in its second
year, till at last recourse was had to the Sibylline books,--a kind of
oracle which, as Cicero says in his _De Divinatione_, owes significance
to its interpreters, who make doubtful conjectures as they can or as
they wish. In this instance, the cause of the plague was said to be
that so many temples had been used as private residences. And thus
Æsculapius for the present escaped the charge of either ignominious
negligence or want of skill. But why were so many allowed to occupy
sacred tenements without interference, unless because supplication had
long been addressed in vain to such a crowd of gods, and so by degrees
the sacred places were deserted of worshippers, and being thus vacant,
could without offence be put at least to some human uses? And the
temples, which were at that time laboriously recognised and restored
that the plague might be stayed, fell afterwards into disuse, and were
again devoted to the same human uses. Had they not thus lapsed into
obscurity, it could not have been pointed to as proof of Varro's great
erudition, that in his work on sacred places he cites so many that were
unknown. Meanwhile, the restoration of the temples procured no cure of
the plague, but only a fine excuse for the gods.
18. _The disasters suffered by the Romans in the Punic wars, which
were not mitigated by the protection of the gods._
In the Punic wars, again, when victory hung so long in the balance
between the two kingdoms, when two powerful nations were straining
every nerve and using all their resources against one another, how
many smaller kingdoms were crushed, how many large and flourishing
cities were demolished, how many states were overwhelmed and ruined,
how many districts and lands far and near were desolated! How often
were the victors on either side vanquished! What multitudes of
men, both of those actually in arms and of others, were destroyed!
What huge navies, too, were crippled in engagements, or were sunk
by every kind of marine disaster! Were we to attempt to recount
or mention these calamities, we should become writers of history.
At that period Rome was mightily perturbed, and resorted to vain
and ludicrous expedients. On the authority of the Sibylline books,
the secular games were re-appointed, which had been inaugurated a
century before, but had faded into oblivion in happier times. The
games consecrated to the infernal gods were also renewed by the
pontiffs; for they, too, had sunk into disuse in the better times.
And no wonder; for when they were renewed, the great abundance of
dying men made all hell rejoice at its riches, and give itself up to
sport: for certainly the ferocious wars, and disastrous quarrels, and
bloody victories--now on one side, and now on the other--though most
calamitous to men, afforded great sport and a rich banquet to the
devils. But in the first Punic war there was no more disastrous event
than the Roman defeat in which Regulus was taken. We made mention of
him in the two former books as an incontestably great man, who had
before conquered and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would have
put an end to the first Punic war, had not an inordinate appetite for
praise and glory prompted him to impose on the worn-out Carthaginians
harder conditions than they could bear. If the unlooked-for captivity
and unseemly bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath, and his
surpassingly cruel death, do not bring a blush to the face of the
gods, it is true that they are brazen and bloodless.
Nor were there wanting at that time very heavy disasters within the
city itself. For the Tiber was extraordinarily flooded, and destroyed
almost all the lower parts of the city; some buildings being carried
away by the violence of the torrent, while others were soaked to
rottenness by the water that stood round them even after the flood
was gone. This visitation was followed by a fire which was still
more destructive, for it consumed some of the loftier buildings
round the Forum, and spared not even its own proper temple, that of
Vesta, in which virgins chosen for this honour, or rather for this
punishment, had been employed in conferring, as it were, everlasting
life on fire, by ceaselessly feeding it with fresh fuel. But at the
time we speak of, the fire in the temple was not content with being
kept alive: it raged. And when the virgins, scared by its vehemence,
were unable to save those fatal images which had already brought
destruction on three cities[150] in which they had been received,
Metellus the priest, forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and
rescued the sacred things, though he was half roasted in doing so.
For either the fire did not recognise even him, or else the goddess
of fire was there,--a goddess who would not have fled from the fire
supposing she had been there. But here you see how a man could be of
greater service to Vesta than she could be to him. Now if these gods
could not avert the fire from themselves, what help against flames or
flood could they bring to the state of which they were the reputed
guardians? Facts have shown that they were useless. These objections
of ours would be idle if our adversaries maintained that their idols
are consecrated rather as symbols of things eternal, than to secure
the blessings of time; and that thus, though the symbols, like all
material and visible things, might perish, no damage thereby resulted
to the things for the sake of which they had been consecrated,
while, as for the images themselves, they could be renewed again
for the same purposes they had formerly served. But with lamentable
blindness, they suppose that, through the intervention of perishable
gods, the earthly well-being and temporal prosperity of the state can
be preserved from perishing. And so, when they are reminded that even
when the gods remained among them this well-being and prosperity were
blighted, they blush to change the opinion they are unable to defend.
19. _Of the calamity of the second Punic war, which consumed the
strength of both parties._
As to the second Punic war, it were tedious to recount the disasters
it brought on both the nations engaged in so protracted and shifting
a war, that (by the acknowledgment even of those writers who have
made it their object not so much to narrate the wars as to eulogize
the dominion of Rome) the people who remained victorious were less
like conquerors than conquered. For, when Hannibal poured out of
Spain over the Pyrenees, and overran Gaul, and burst through the
Alps, and during his whole course gathered strength by plundering and
subduing as he went, and inundated Italy like a torrent, how bloody
were the wars, and how continuous the engagements, that were fought!
How often were the Romans vanquished! How many towns went over to
the enemy, and how many were taken and subdued! What fearful battles
there were, and how often did the defeat of the Romans shed lustre
on the arms of Hannibal! And what shall I say of the wonderfully
crushing defeat at Cannæ, where even Hannibal, cruel as he was, was
yet sated with the blood of his bitterest enemies, and gave orders
that they be spared? From this field of battle he sent to Carthage
three bushels of gold rings, signifying that so much of the rank
of Rome had that day fallen, that it was easier to give an idea of
it by measure than by numbers; and that the frightful slaughter of
the common rank and file whose bodies lay undistinguished by the
ring, and who were numerous in proportion to their meanness, was
rather to be conjectured than accurately reported. In fact, such
was the scarcity of soldiers after this, that the Romans impressed
their criminals on the promise of impunity, and their slaves by
the bribe of liberty, and out of these infamous classes did not so
much recruit as create an army. But these slaves, or, to give them
all their titles, these freedmen who were enlisted to do battle for
the republic of Rome, lacked arms. And so they took arms from the
temples, as if the Romans were saying to their gods: Lay down those
arms you have held so long in vain, if by chance our slaves may be
able to use to purpose what you, our gods, have been impotent to
use. At that time, too, the public treasury was too low to pay the
soldiers, and private resources were used for public purposes; and
so generously did individuals contribute of their property, that,
saving the gold ring and bulla which each wore, the pitiful mark
of his rank, no senator, and much less any of the other orders and
tribes, reserved any gold for his own use. But if in our day they
were reduced to this poverty, who would be able to endure their
reproaches, barely endurable as they are now, when more money is
spent on actors for the sake of a superfluous gratification, than was
then disbursed to the legions?
20. _Of the destruction of the Saguntines, who received no help
from the Roman gods, though perishing on account of their
fidelity to Rome._
But among all the disasters of the second Punic war, there occurred
none more lamentable, or calculated to excite deeper complaint, than
the fate of the Saguntines. This city of Spain, eminently friendly
to Rome, was destroyed by its fidelity to the Roman people. For when
Hannibal had broken treaty with the Romans, he sought occasion for
provoking them to war, and accordingly made a fierce assault upon
Saguntum. When this was reported at Rome, ambassadors were sent to
Hannibal, urging him to raise the siege; and when this remonstrance
was neglected, they proceeded to Carthage, lodged complaint against
the breaking of the treaty, and returned to Rome without accomplishing
their object. Meanwhile the siege went on; and in the eighth or ninth
month, this opulent but ill-fated city, dear as it was to its own
state and to Rome, was taken, and subjected to treatment which one
cannot read, much less narrate, without horror. And yet, because it
bears directly on the matter in hand, I will briefly touch upon it.
First, then, famine wasted the Saguntines, so that even human corpses
were eaten by some: so at least it is recorded. Subsequently, when
thoroughly worn out, that they might at least escape the ignominy
of falling into the hands of Hannibal, they publicly erected a huge
funeral pile, and cast themselves into its flames, while at the same
time they slew their children and themselves with the sword. Could
these gods, these debauchees and gourmands, whose mouths water for
fat sacrifices, and whose lips utter lying divinations,--could they
not do anything in a case like this? Could they not interfere for the
preservation of a city closely allied to the Roman people, or prevent
it perishing for its fidelity to that alliance of which they themselves
had been the mediators? Saguntum, faithfully keeping the treaty it had
entered into before these gods, and to which it had firmly bound itself
by an oath, was besieged, taken, and destroyed by a perjured person.
If afterwards, when Hannibal was close to the walls of Rome, it was
the gods who terrified him with lightning and tempest, and drove him
to a distance, why, I ask, did they not thus interfere before? For I
make bold to say, that this demonstration with the tempest would have
been more honourably made in defence of the allies of Rome--who were in
danger on account of their reluctance to break faith with the Romans,
and had no resources of their own--than in defence of the Romans
themselves, who were fighting in their own cause, and had abundant
resources to oppose Hannibal. If, then, they had been the guardians of
Roman prosperity and glory, they would have preserved that glory from
the stain of this Saguntine disaster; and how silly it is to believe
that Rome was preserved from destruction at the hands of Hannibal by
the guardian care of those gods who were unable to rescue the city of
Saguntum from perishing through its fidelity to the alliance of Rome.
If the population of Saguntum had been Christian, and had suffered as
it did for the Christian faith (though, of course, Christians would
not have used fire and sword against their own persons), they would
have suffered with that hope which springs from faith in Christ--the
hope not of a brief temporal reward, but of unending and eternal bliss.
What, then, will the advocates and apologists of these gods say in
their defence, when charged with the blood of these Saguntines; for
they are professedly worshipped and invoked for this very purpose of
securing prosperity in this fleeting and transitory life? Can anything
be said but what was alleged in the case of Regulus' death? For
though there is a difference between the two cases, the one being an
individual, the other a whole community, yet the cause of destruction
was in both cases the keeping of their plighted troth. For it was this
which made Regulus willing to return to his enemies, and this which
made the Saguntines unwilling to revolt to their enemies. Does, then,
the keeping of faith provoke the gods to anger? Or is it possible
that not only individuals, but even entire communities, perish while
the gods are propitious to them? Let our adversaries choose which
alternative they will. If, on the one hand, those gods are enraged
at the keeping of faith, let them enlist perjured persons as their
worshippers. If, on the other hand, men and states can suffer great and
terrible calamities, and at last perish while favoured by the gods,
then does their worship not produce happiness as its fruit. Let those,
therefore, who suppose that they have fallen into distress because
their religious worship has been abolished, lay aside their anger; for
it were quite possible that did the gods not only remain with them, but
regard them with favour, they might yet be left to mourn an unhappy
lot, or might, even like Regulus and the Saguntines, be horribly
tormented, and at last perish miserably.
21. _Of the ingratitude of Rome to Scipio, its deliverer, and of
its manners during the period which Sallust describes as the best._
Omitting many things, that I may not exceed the limits of the work
I have proposed to myself, I come to the epoch between the second
and last Punic wars, during which, according to Sallust, the Romans
lived with the greatest virtue and concord. Now, in this period of
virtue and harmony, the great Scipio, the liberator of Rome and
Italy, who had with surprising ability brought to a close the second
Punic war--that horrible, destructive, dangerous contest--who had
defeated Hannibal and subdued Carthage, and whose whole life is
said to have been dedicated to the gods, and cherished in their
temples,--this Scipio, after such a triumph, was obliged to yield to
the accusations of his enemies, and to leave his country, which his
valour had saved and liberated, to spend the remainder of his days in
the town of Liternum, so indifferent to a recall from exile, that he
is said to have given orders that not even his remains should lie in
his ungrateful country. It was at that time also that the proconsul
Cn. Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome the
luxury of Asia, more destructive than all hostile armies. It was then
that iron bedsteads and expensive carpets were first used; then, too,
that female singers were admitted at banquets, and other licentious
abominations were introduced. But at present I meant to speak, not
of the evils men voluntarily practise, but of those they suffer in
spite of themselves. So that the case of Scipio, who succumbed to
his enemies, and died in exile from the country he had rescued, was
mentioned by me as being pertinent to the present discussion; for
this was the reward he received from those Roman gods whose temples
he saved from Hannibal, and who are worshipped only for the sake of
securing temporal happiness. But since Sallust, as we have seen,
declares that the manners of Rome were never better than at that
time, I therefore judged it right to mention the Asiatic luxury then
introduced, that it might be seen that what he says is true, only
when that period is compared with the others, during which the morals
were certainly worse, and the factions more violent. For at that
time--I mean between the second and third Punic war--that notorious
Lex Voconia was passed, which prohibited a man from making a woman,
even an only daughter, his heir; than which law I am at a loss to
conceive what could be more unjust. It is true that in the interval
between these two Punic wars the misery of Rome was somewhat less.
Abroad, indeed, their forces were consumed by wars, yet also consoled
by victories; while at home there were not such disturbances as at
other times. But when the last Punic war had terminated in the utter
destruction of Rome's rival, which quickly succumbed to the other
Scipio, who thus earned for himself the surname of Africanus, then
the Roman republic was overwhelmed with such a host of ills, which
sprang from the corrupt manners induced by prosperity and security,
that the sudden overthrow of Carthage is seen to have injured
Rome more seriously than her long-continued hostility. During the
whole subsequent period down to the time of Cæsar Augustus, who
seems to have entirely deprived the Romans of liberty,--a liberty,
indeed, which in their own judgment was no longer glorious, but
full of broils and dangers, and which now was quite enervated and
languishing,--and who submitted all things again to the will of a
monarch, and infused as it were a new life into the sickly old age of
the republic, and inaugurated a fresh _régime_;--during this whole
period, I say, many military disasters were sustained on a variety
of occasions, all of which I here pass by. There was specially the
treaty of Numantia, blotted as it was with extreme disgrace; for the
sacred chickens, they say, flew out of the coop, and thus augured
disaster to Mancinus the consul; just as if, during all these years
in which that little city of Numantia had withstood the besieging
army of Rome, and had become a terror to the republic, the other
generals had all marched against it under unfavourable auspices.
22. _Of the edict of Mithridates, commanding that all Roman
citizens found in Asia should be slain._
These things, I say, I pass in silence; but I can by no means be
silent regarding the order given by Mithridates, king of Asia, that
on one day all Roman citizens residing anywhere in Asia (where great
numbers of them were following their private business) should be put
to death: and this order was executed. How miserable a spectacle
was then presented, when each man was suddenly and treacherously
murdered wherever he happened to be, in the field or on the road, in
the town, in his own home, or in the street, in market or temple, in
bed or at table! Think of the groans of the dying, the tears of the
spectators, and even of the executioners themselves. For how cruel a
necessity was it that compelled the hosts of these victims, not only
to see these abominable butcheries in their own houses, but even to
perpetrate them: to change their countenance suddenly from the bland
kindliness of friendship, and in the midst of peace set about the
business of war; and, shall I say, give and receive wounds, the slain
being pierced in body, the slayer in spirit! Had all these murdered
persons, then, despised auguries? Had they neither public nor
household gods to consult when they left their homes and set out on
that fatal journey? If they had not, our adversaries have no reason
to complain of these Christian times in this particular, since long
ago the Romans despised auguries as idle. If, on the other hand, they
did consult omens, let them tell us what good they got thereby, even
when such things were not prohibited, but authorized, by human, if
not by divine law.
23. _Of the internal disasters which vexed the Roman republic, and
followed a portentous madness which seized all the domestic
animals._
But let us now mention, as succinctly as possible, those disasters
which were still more vexing, because nearer home; I mean those
discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil
interests. The seditions had now become urban wars, in which blood
was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another,
not with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force
and arms. What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and
devastations were occasioned in Italy by wars social, wars servile,
wars civil! Before the Latins began the social war against Rome, all
the animals used in the service of man--dogs, horses, asses, oxen,
and all the rest that are subject to man--suddenly grew wild, and
forgot their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and wandered
at large, and could not be closely approached either by strangers or
their own masters without danger. If this was a portent, how serious
a calamity must have been portended by a plague which, whether
portent or no, was in itself a serious calamity! Had it happened in
our day, the heathen would have been more rabid against us than their
animals were against them.
24. _Of the civil dissension occasioned by the sedition of
the Gracchi._
The civil wars originated in the seditions which the Gracchi excited
regarding the agrarian laws; for they were minded to divide among the
people the lands which were wrongfully possessed by the nobility.
But to reform an abuse of so long standing was an enterprise full
of peril, or rather, as the event proved, of destruction. For what
disasters accompanied the death of the elder Gracchus! what slaughter
ensued when, shortly after, the younger brother met the same fate! For
noble and ignoble were indiscriminately massacred; and this not by
legal authority and procedure, but by mobs and armed rioters. After
the death of the younger Gracchus, the consul Lucius Opimius, who had
given battle to him within the city, and had defeated and put to the
sword both himself and his confederates, and had massacred many of the
citizens, instituted a judicial examination of others, and is reported
to have put to death as many as 3000 men. From this it may be gathered
how many fell in the riotous encounters, when the result even of a
judicial investigation was so bloody. The assassin of Gracchus himself
sold his head to the consul for its weight in gold, such being the
previous agreement. In this massacre, too, Marcus Fulvius, a man of
consular rank, with all his children, was put to death.
25. _Of the temple of Concord, which was erected by a decree of
the senate on the scene of these seditions and massacres._
A pretty decree of the senate it was, truly, by which the temple of
Concord was built on the spot where that disastrous rising had taken
place, and where so many citizens of every rank had fallen.[151] I
suppose it was that the monument of the Gracchi's punishment might
strike the eye and affect the memory of the pleaders. But what was
this but to deride the gods, by building a temple to that goddess who,
had she been in the city, would not have suffered herself to be torn
by such dissensions? Or was it that Concord was chargeable with that
bloodshed because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, and was
therefore incarcerated in that temple? For if they had any regard to
consistency, why did they not rather erect on that site a temple of
Discord? Or is there a reason for Concord being a goddess while Discord
is none? Does the distinction of Labeo hold here, who would have made
the one a good, the other an evil deity?--a distinction which seems to
have been suggested to him by the mere fact of his observing at Rome
a temple to Fever as well as one to Health. But, on the same ground,
Discord as well as Concord ought to be deified. A hazardous venture the
Romans made in provoking so wicked a goddess, and in forgetting that
the destruction of Troy had been occasioned by her taking offence. For,
being indignant that she was not invited with the other gods [to the
nuptials of Peleus and Thetis], she created dissension among the three
goddesses by sending in the golden apple, which occasioned strife in
heaven, victory to Venus, the rape of Helen, and the destruction of
Troy. Wherefore, if she was perhaps offended that the Romans had not
thought her worthy of a temple among the other gods in their city, and
therefore disturbed the state with such tumults, to how much fiercer
passion would she be roused when she saw the temple of her adversary
erected on the scene of that massacre, or, in other words, on the scene
of her own handiwork! Those wise and learned men are enraged at our
laughing at these follies; and yet, being worshippers of good and bad
divinities alike, they cannot escape this dilemma about Concord and
Discord: either they have neglected the worship of these goddesses, and
preferred Fever and War, to whom there are shrines erected of great
antiquity, or they have worshipped them, and after all Concord has
abandoned them, and Discord has tempestuously hurled them into civil
wars.
26. _Of the various kinds of wars which followed the building of
the temple of Concord._
But they supposed that, in erecting the temple of Concord within the
view of the orators, as a memorial of the punishment and death of
the Gracchi, they were raising an effectual obstacle to sedition.
How much effect it had, is indicated by the still more deplorable
wars that followed. For after this the orators endeavoured not to
avoid the example of the Gracchi, but to surpass their projects; as
did Lucius Saturninus, a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius
the prætor, and some time after Marcus Drusus, all of whom stirred
seditions which first of all occasioned bloodshed, and then the
social wars by which Italy was grievously injured, and reduced to a
piteously desolate and wasted condition. Then followed the servile
war and the civil wars; and in them what battles were fought, and
what blood was shed, so that almost all the peoples of Italy, which
formed the main strength of the Roman empire, were conquered as
if they were barbarians! Then even historians themselves find it
difficult to explain how the servile war was begun by a very few,
certainly less than seventy gladiators, what numbers of fierce
and cruel men attached themselves to these, how many of the Roman
generals this band defeated, and how it laid waste many districts
and cities. And that was not the only servile war: the province of
Macedonia, and subsequently Sicily and the sea-coast, were also
depopulated by bands of slaves. And who can adequately describe
either the horrible atrocities which the pirates first committed, or
the wars they afterwards maintained against Rome?
27. _Of the civil war between Marius and Sylla._
But when Marius, stained with the blood of his fellow-citizens, whom
the rage of party had sacrificed, was in his turn vanquished and
driven from the city, it had scarcely time to breathe freely, when,
to use the words of Cicero, "Cinna and Marius together returned and
took possession of it. Then, indeed, the foremost men in the state
were put to death, its lights quenched. Sylla afterwards avenged
this cruel victory; but we need not say with what loss of life, and
with what ruin to the republic."[152] For of this vengeance, which
was more destructive than if the crimes which it punished had been
committed with impunity, Lucan says: "The cure was excessive, and too
closely resembled the disease. The guilty perished, but when none but
the guilty survived: and then private hatred and anger, unbridled
by law, were allowed free indulgence."[153] In that war between
Marius and Sylla, besides those who fell in the field of battle, the
city, too, was filled with corpses in its streets, squares, markets,
theatres, and temples; so that it is not easy to reckon whether the
victors slew more before or after victory, that they might be, or
because they were, victors. As soon as Marius triumphed, and returned
from exile, besides the butcheries everywhere perpetrated, the head
of the consul Octavius was exposed on the rostrum; Cæsar and Fimbria
were assassinated in their own houses; the two Crassi, father and
son, were murdered in one another's sight; Bebius and Numitorius were
disembowelled by being dragged with hooks; Catulus escaped the hands
of his enemies by drinking poison; Merula, the flamen of Jupiter, cut
his veins and made a libation of his own blood to his god. Moreover,
every one whose salutation Marius did not answer by giving his hand,
was at once cut down before his face.
28. _Of the victory of Sylla, the avenger of the cruelties of
Marius._
Then followed the victory of Sylla, the so-called avenger of the
cruelties of Marius. But not only was his victory purchased with
great bloodshed; but when hostilities were finished, hostility
survived, and the subsequent peace was bloody as the war. To the
former and still recent massacres of the elder Marius, the younger
Marius and Carbo, who belonged to the same party, added greater
atrocities. For when Sylla approached, and they despaired not only
of victory, but of life itself, they made a promiscuous massacre
of friends and foes. And, not satisfied with staining every corner
of Rome with blood, they besieged the senate, and led forth the
senators to death from the curia as from a prison. Mucius Scævola
the pontiff was slain at the altar of Vesta, which he had clung to
because no spot in Rome was more sacred than her temple; and his
blood well-nigh extinguished the fire which was kept alive by the
constant care of the virgins. Then Sylla entered the city victorious,
after having slaughtered in the Villa Publica, not by combat, but by
an order, 7000 men who had surrendered, and were therefore unarmed;
so fierce was the rage of peace itself, even after the rage of war
was extinct. Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of
Sylla slew whom he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond
computation, till it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow some
to survive, that the victors might not be destitute of subjects. Then
this furious and promiscuous licence to murder was checked, and much
relief was expressed at the publication of the prescription list,
containing though it did the death-warrant of two thousand men of
the highest ranks, the senatorial and equestrian. The large number
was indeed saddening, but it was consolatory that a limit was fixed;
nor was the grief at the numbers slain so great as the joy that the
rest were secure. But this very security, hard-hearted as it was,
could not but bemoan the exquisite torture applied to some of those
who had been doomed to die. For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed
hands of the executioners; men treating a living man more savagely
than wild beasts are used to tear an abandoned corpse. Another had
his eyes dug out, and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced
to live a long while, or rather to die a long while, in such torture.
Some celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms; and one
was collectively condemned to slaughter, just as an individual
criminal would be condemned to death. These things were done in
peace when the war was over, not that victory might be more speedily
obtained, but that, after being obtained, it might not be thought
lightly of. Peace vied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it: for
while war overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless. War gave
liberty to him who was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted
to the survivors not life, but an unresisting death.
29. _A comparison of the disasters which Rome experienced during
the Gothic and Gallic invasions, with those occasioned by the
authors of the civil wars._
What fury of foreign nations, what barbarian ferocity, can compare
with this victory of citizens over citizens? Which was more
disastrous, more hideous, more bitter to Rome: the recent Gothic and
the old Gallic invasion, or the cruelty displayed by Marius and Sylla
and their partisans against men who were members of the same body as
themselves? The Gauls, indeed, massacred all the senators they found
in any part of the city except the Capitol, which alone was defended;
but they at least sold life to those who were in the Capitol, though
they might have starved them out if they could not have stormed
it. The Goths, again, spared so many senators, that it is the more
surprising that they killed any. But Sylla, while Marius was still
living, established himself as conqueror in the Capitol, which the
Gauls had not violated, and thence issued his death-warrants; and
when Marius had escaped by flight, though destined to return more
fierce and bloodthirsty than ever, Sylla issued from the Capitol
even decrees of the senate for the slaughter and confiscation of
the property of many citizens. Then, when Sylla left, what did the
Marian faction hold sacred or spare, when they gave no quarter even
to Mucius, a citizen, a senator, a pontiff, and though clasping
in piteous embrace the very altar in which, they say, reside the
destinies of Rome? And that final proscription list of Sylla's, not
to mention countless other massacres, despatched more senators than
the Goths could even plunder.
30. _Of the connection of the wars which with great severity and
frequency followed one another before the advent of Christ._
With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence,
with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these
disasters to their own gods, and impute the present to our Christ!
These bloody civil wars, more distressing, by the avowal of their own
historians, than any foreign wars, and which were pronounced to be
not merely calamitous, but absolutely ruinous to the republic, began
long before the coming of Christ, and gave birth to one another; so
that a concatenation of unjustifiable causes led from the wars of
Marius and Sylla to those of Sertorius and Catiline, of whom the
one was proscribed, the other brought up by Sylla; from this to the
war of Lepidus and Catulus, of whom the one wished to rescind, the
other to defend the acts of Sylla; from this to the war of Pompey
and Cæsar, of whom Pompey had been a partisan of Sylla, whose power
he equalled or even surpassed, while Cæsar condemned Pompey's power
because it was not his own, and yet exceeded it when Pompey was
defeated and slain. From him the chain of civil wars extended to the
second Cæsar, afterwards called Augustus, and in whose reign Christ
was born. For even Augustus himself waged many civil wars; and in
these wars many of the foremost men perished, among them that skilful
manipulator of the republic, Cicero. Caius [Julius] Cæsar, when he
had conquered Pompey, though he used his victory with clemency, and
granted to men of the opposite faction both life and honours, was
suspected of aiming at royalty, and was assassinated in the curia by
a party of noble senators, who had conspired to defend the liberty
of the republic. His power was then coveted by Antony, a man of very
different character, polluted and debased by every kind of vice, who
was strenuously resisted by Cicero on the same plea of defending
the liberty of the republic. At this juncture that other Cæsar,
the adopted son of Caius, and afterwards, as I said, known by the
name of Augustus, had made his _début_ as a young man of remarkable
genius. This youthful Cæsar was favoured by Cicero, in order that his
influence might counteract that of Antony; for he hoped that Cæsar
would overthrow and blast the power of Antony, and establish a free
state,--so blind and unaware of the future was he: for that very
young man, whose advancement and influence he was fostering, allowed
Cicero to be killed as the seal of an alliance with Antony, and
subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the republic in defence
of which he had made so many orations.
31. _That it is effrontery to impute the present troubles to Christ
and the prohibition of polytheistic worship, since even when
the gods were worshipped such calamities befell the people._
Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits,
blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly
when these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and
there rose the mingled fragrance of "Sabæan incense and fresh
garlands;"[154] the priests were clothed with honour, the shrines
were maintained in splendour; sacrifices, games, sacred ecstasies,
were common in the temples; while the blood of the citizens was
being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the
very altars of the gods. Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary
in a temple, because Mucius had sought it there in vain. But they
who most unpardonably calumniate this Christian era, are the very
men who either themselves fled for asylum to the places specially
dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians that they
might be safe. In short, not to recapitulate the many instances I
have cited, and not to add to their number others which it were
tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am persuaded of, and this
every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge, that if the human
race had received Christianity before the Punic wars, and if the
same desolating calamities which these wars brought upon Europe and
Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, there is no one
of those who now accuse us who would not have attributed them to our
religion. How intolerable would their accusations have been, at least
so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had
been received and diffused prior to the invasion of the Gauls, or to
the ruinous floods and fires which desolated Rome, or to those most
calamitous of all events, the civil wars! And those other disasters,
which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies,
had they happened since the Christian era, to whom but to the
Christians would they have imputed these as crimes? I do not speak
of those things which were rather surprising than hurtful,--oxen
speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mothers'
wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other
sex; and other similar prodigies which, whether true or false, are
recorded not in their imaginative, but in their historical works,
and which do not injure, but only astonish men. But when it rained
earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones--not hailstones,
but real stones--this certainly was calculated to do serious damage.
We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from
the top of the mountain to the neighbouring shore, caused the sea to
boil, so that rocks were burnt up, and the pitch of ships began to
run,--a phenomenon incredibly surprising, but at the same time no
less hurtful. By the same violent heat, they relate that on another
occasion Sicily was filled with cinders, so that the houses of the
city Catina were destroyed and buried under them,--a calamity which
moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their tribute for that
year. One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a
province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts,
which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were
driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when
they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was polluted, and
so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Masinissa
alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a much greater
number in the neighbouring districts. At Utica they assure us that,
of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived only ten. Yet
which of these disasters, suppose they happened now, would not be
attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly
accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own
gods they attribute none of these things, though they worship them
for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do
not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were not preserved
from these serious disasters.
FOOTNOTES:
[115] Compare Aug. _Epist. ad Deogratias_, 102, 13; and _De Præd.
Sanct._ 19.
[116] Ch. iv.
[117] Virg. _Georg._ i. 502, 'Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ.'
[118] _Iliad_, xx. 293 et seqq.
[119] _Æneid_, v. 810, 811.
[120] Gratis et ingratis.
[121] _De Conj. Cat._ vi.
[122] Helen's husband.
[123] Venus' husband.
[124] Suetonius, in his _Life of Julius Cæsar_ (c. 6), relates that,
in pronouncing a funeral oration in praise of his aunt Julia, Cæsar
claimed for the Julian gens to which his family belonged a descent
from Venus, through Iulus, son of Eneas.
[125] Livy, 83, one of the lost books; and Appian, _in Mithridat_.
[126] The gates of Janus were not the gates of a temple, but the
gates of a passage called Janus, which was used only for military
purposes; shut therefore in peace, open in war.
[127] The year of the Consuls T. Manlius and C. Atilius, A. U. C. 519.
[128] Sall. _Conj. Cat._ ii.
[129] _Æneid_, viii. 326-7.
[130] Sall. _Cat. Conj._ vi.
[131] _Æneid_, xi. 532.
[132] _Ibid._ x. 464.
[133] Livy, x. 47.
[134] Being son of Apollo.
[135] Virgil, _Æn._ i. 286.
[136] _Pharsal._ v. 1.
[137] _Æneid_, x. 821, of Lausus:
"But when Anchises' son surveyed
The fair, fair face so ghastly made,
He groaned, by tenderness unmanned,
And stretched the sympathizing hand," etc.
[138] Virgil, _Æneid_, vi. 813.
[139] Sallust, _Cat. Conj._ ii.
[140] Ps. x. 3.
[141] _Æneid_, ii. 351-2.
[142] Cicero, _De Rep._ ii. 10.
[143] _Contra Cat._ iii. 2.
[144] _Æneid_, vi. 820, etc.
[145] His nephew.
[146] _Hist._ i.
[147] Lectisternia, from _lectus_, a couch, and _sterno_, I spread.
[148] _Proletarius_, from _proles_, offspring.
[149] The oracle ran: "Dico te, Pyrrhe, vincere posse Romanos."
[150] Troy, Lavinia, Alba.
[151] Under the inscription on the temple some person wrote the line,
"Vecordiæ opus ædem facit Concordiæ"--The work of discord makes the
temple of Concord.
[152] Cicero, _in Catilin._ iii. _sub. fin._
[153] Lucan, _Pharsal._ ii. 142-146.
[154] Virgil, _Æneid_, i. 417.
BOOK FOURTH.[155]
ARGUMENT.
IN THIS BOOK IT IS PROVED THAT THE EXTENT AND LONG DURATION OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE IS TO BE ASCRIBED, NOT TO JOVE OR THE GODS OF THE
HEATHEN, TO WHOM INDIVIDUALLY SCARCE EVEN SINGLE THINGS AND THE
VERY BASEST FUNCTIONS WERE BELIEVED TO BE ENTRUSTED, BUT TO
THE ONE TRUE GOD, THE AUTHOR OF FELICITY, BY WHOSE POWER AND
JUDGMENT EARTHLY KINGDOMS ARE FOUNDED AND MAINTAINED.
1. _Of the things which have been discussed in the first book._
Having begun to speak of the city of God, I have thought it necessary
first of all to reply to its enemies, who, eagerly pursuing earthly
joys, and gaping after transitory things, throw the blame of all the
sorrow they suffer in them--rather through the compassion of God
in admonishing, than His severity in punishing--on the Christian
religion, which is the one salutary and true religion. And since
there is among them also an unlearned rabble, they are stirred up as
by the authority of the learned to hate us more bitterly, thinking
in their inexperience that things which have happened unwontedly
in their days were not wont to happen in other times gone by; and
whereas this opinion of theirs is confirmed even by those who know
that it is false, and yet dissemble their knowledge in order that
they may seem to have just cause for murmuring against us, it was
necessary, from books in which their authors recorded and published
the history of bygone times that it might be known, to demonstrate
that it is far otherwise than they think; and at the same time to
teach that the false gods, whom they openly worshipped, or still
worship in secret, are most unclean spirits, and most malignant and
deceitful demons, even to such a pitch that they take delight in
crimes which, whether real or only fictitious, are yet their own,
which it has been their will to have celebrated in honour of them at
their own festivals; so that human infirmity cannot be called back
from the perpetration of damnable deeds, so long as authority is
furnished for imitating them that seems even divine. These things we
have proved, not from our own conjectures, but partly from recent
memory, because we ourselves have seen such things celebrated, and
to such deities, partly from the writings of those who have left
these things on record to posterity, not as if in reproach, but as
in honour of their own gods. Thus Varro, a most learned man among
them, and of the weightiest authority, when he made separate books
concerning things human and things divine, distributing some among
the human, others among the divine, according to the special dignity
of each, placed the scenic plays not at all among things human, but
among things divine; though, certainly, if only there were good and
honest men in the state, the scenic plays ought not to be allowed
even among things human. And this he did not on his own authority,
but because, being born and educated at Rome, he found them among the
divine things. Now as we briefly stated in the end of the first book
what we intended afterwards to discuss, and as we have disposed of
a part of this in the next two books, we see what our readers will
expect us now to take up.
2. _Of those things which are contained in Books Second and Third._
We had promised, then, that we would say something against those who
attribute the calamities of the Roman republic to our religion, and
that we would recount the evils, as many and great as we could remember
or might deem sufficient, which that city, or the provinces belonging
to its empire, had suffered before their sacrifices were prohibited,
all of which would beyond doubt have been attributed to us, if our
religion had either already shone on them, or had thus prohibited
their sacrilegious rites. These things we have, as we think, fully
disposed of in the second and third books, treating in the second of
evils in morals, which alone or chiefly are to be accounted evils;
and in the third, of those which only fools dread to undergo--namely,
those of the body or of outward things--which for the most part the
good also suffer. But those evils by which they themselves become
evil, they take, I do not say patiently, but with pleasure. And how
few evils have I related concerning that one city and its empire! Not
even all down to the time of Cæsar Augustus. What if I had chosen to
recount and enlarge on those evils, not which men have inflicted on
each other, such as the devastations and destructions of war, but which
happen in earthly things, from the elements of the world itself? Of
such evils Apuleius speaks briefly in one passage of that book which
he wrote, _De Mundo_, saying that all earthly things are subject to
change, overthrow, and destruction.[156] For, to use his own words, by
excessive earthquakes the ground has burst asunder, and cities with
their inhabitants have been clean destroyed: by sudden rains whole
regions have been washed away; those also which formerly had been
continents, have been insulated by strange and new-come waves, and
others, by the subsiding of the sea, have been made passable by the
foot of man: by winds and storms cities have been overthrown; fires
have flashed forth from the clouds, by which regions in the East being
burnt up have perished; and on the western coasts the like destructions
have been caused by the bursting forth of waters and floods. So,
formerly, from the lofty craters of Etna, rivers of fire kindled by God
have flowed like a torrent down the steeps. If I had wished to collect
from history wherever I could, these and similar instances, where
should I have finished what happened even in those times before the
name of Christ had put down those of their idols, so vain and hurtful
to true salvation? I promised that I should also point out which of
their customs, and for what cause, the true God, in whose power all
kingdoms are, had deigned to favour to the enlargement of their empire;
and how those whom they think gods can have profited them nothing, but
much rather hurt them by deceiving and beguiling them; so that it seems
to me I must now speak of these things, and chiefly of the increase of
the Roman empire. For I have already said not a little, especially in
the second book, about the many evils introduced into their manners by
the hurtful deceits of the demons whom they worshipped as gods. But
throughout all the three books already completed, where it appeared
suitable, we have set forth how much succour God, through the name of
Christ, to whom the barbarians beyond the custom of war paid so much
honour, has bestowed on the good and bad, according as it is written,
"Who maketh His sun to rise on the good and the evil, and giveth rain
to the just and the unjust."[157]
3. _Whether the great extent of the empire, which has been
acquired only by wars, is to be reckoned among the good things
either of the wise or the happy._
Now, therefore, let us see how it is that they dare to ascribe the very
great extent and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom they
contend that they worship honourably, even by the obsequies of vile
games and the ministry of vile men: although I should like first to
inquire for a little what reason, what prudence, there is in wishing
to glory in the greatness and extent of the empire, when you cannot
point out the happiness of men who are always rolling, with dark fear
and cruel lust, in warlike slaughters and in blood, which, whether
shed in civil or foreign war, is still human blood; so that their
joy may be compared to glass in its fragile splendour, of which one
is horribly afraid lest it should be suddenly broken in pieces. That
this may be more easily discerned, let us not come to nought by being
carried away with empty boasting, or blunt the edge of our attention
by loud-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples, kingdoms,
provinces. But let us suppose a case of two men; for each individual
man, like one letter in a language, is as it were the element of a city
or kingdom, however far-spreading in its occupation of the earth. Of
these two men let us suppose that one is poor, or rather of middling
circumstances; the other very rich. But the rich man is anxious with
fears, pining with discontent, burning with covetousness, never secure,
always uneasy, panting from the perpetual strife of his enemies, adding
to his patrimony indeed by these miseries to an immense degree, and by
these additions also heaping up most bitter cares. But that other man
of moderate wealth is contented with a small and compact estate, most
dear to his own family, enjoying the sweetest peace with his kindred
neighbours and friends, in piety religious, benignant in mind, healthy
in body, in life frugal, in manners chaste, in conscience secure. I
know not whether any one can be such a fool, that he dare hesitate
which to prefer. As, therefore, in the case of these two men, so in two
families, in two nations, in two kingdoms, this test of tranquillity
holds good; and if we apply it vigilantly and without prejudice, we
shall quite easily see where the mere show of happiness dwells, and
where real felicity. Wherefore if the true God is worshipped, and if He
is served with genuine rites and true virtue, it is advantageous that
good men should long reign both far and wide. Nor is this advantageous
so much to themselves, as to those over whom they reign. For, so far
as concerns themselves, their piety and probity, which are great gifts
of God, suffice to give them true felicity, enabling them to live well
the life that now is, and afterwards to receive that which is eternal.
In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not
so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad
men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their
own souls by greater licence in wickedness; while those who are put
under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For
to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the
punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man,
although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is
a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as
many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture
treats, it says, "For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is
also the bond-slave."[158]
4. _How like kingdoms without justice are to robberies._
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great
robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?
The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority
of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy;
the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance
of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it
holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues
peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because
the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of
covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an
apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate
who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he
meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold
pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I
do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost
it with a great fleet art styled emperor."[159]
5. _Of the runaway gladiators whose power became like that of
royal dignity._
I shall not therefore stay to inquire what sort of men Romulus
gathered together, seeing he deliberated much about them,--how,
being assumed out of that life they led into the fellowship of his
city, they might cease to think of the punishment they deserved,
the fear of which had driven them to greater villanies; so that
henceforth they might be made more peaceable members of society. But
this I say, that the Roman empire, which by subduing many nations
had already grown great and an object of universal dread, was itself
greatly alarmed, and only with much difficulty avoided a disastrous
overthrow, because a mere handful of gladiators in Campania, escaping
from the games, had recruited a great army, appointed three generals,
and most widely and cruelly devastated Italy. Let them say what
god aided these men, so that from a small and contemptible band of
robbers they attained to a kingdom, feared even by the Romans, who
had such great forces and fortresses. Or will they deny that they
were divinely aided because they did not last long?[160] As if,
indeed, the life of any man whatever lasted long. In that case, too,
the gods aid no one to reign, since all individuals quickly die; nor
is sovereign power to be reckoned a benefit, because in a little time
in every man, and thus in all of them one by one, it vanishes like
a vapour. For what does it matter to those who worshipped the gods
under Romulus, and are long since dead, that after their death the
Roman empire has grown so great, while they plead their causes before
the powers beneath? Whether those causes are good or bad, it matters
not to the question before us. And this is to be understood of all
those who carry with them the heavy burden of their actions, having
in the few days of their life swiftly and hurriedly passed over the
stage of the imperial office, although the office itself has lasted
through long spaces of time, being filled by a constant succession
of dying men. If, however, even those benefits which last only for
the shortest time are to be ascribed to the aid of the gods, these
gladiators were not a little aided, who broke the bonds of their
servile condition, fled, escaped, raised a great and most powerful
army, obedient to the will and orders of their chiefs and much feared
by the Roman majesty, and remaining unsubdued by several Roman
generals, seized many places, and, having won very many victories,
enjoyed whatever pleasures they wished, and did what their lust
suggested, and, until at last they were conquered, which was done
with the utmost difficulty, lived sublime and dominant. But let us
come to greater matters.
6. _Concerning the covetousness of Ninus, who was the first who
made war on his neighbours, that he might rule more widely._
Justinus, who wrote Greek or rather foreign history in Latin, and
briefly, like Trogus Pompeius whom he followed, begins his work
thus: "In the beginning of the affairs of peoples and nations the
government was in the hands of kings, who were raised to the height
of this majesty not by courting the people, but by the knowledge
good men had of their moderation. The people were held bound by no
laws; the decisions of the princes were instead of laws. It was
the custom to guard rather than to extend the boundaries of the
empire; and kingdoms were kept within the bounds of each ruler's
native land. Ninus king of the Assyrians first of all, through new
lust of empire, changed the old and, as it were, ancestral custom
of nations. He first made war on his neighbours, and wholly subdued
as far as to the frontiers of Libya the nations as yet untrained to
resist." And a little after he says: "Ninus established by constant
possession the greatness of the authority he had gained. Having
mastered his nearest neighbours, he went on to others, strengthened
by the accession of forces, and by making each fresh victory the
instrument of that which followed, subdued the nations of the whole
East." Now, with whatever fidelity to fact either he or Trogus may
in general have written--for that they sometimes told lies is shown
by other more trustworthy writers--yet it is agreed among other
authors, that the kingdom of the Assyrians was extended far and wide
by King Ninus. And it lasted so long, that the Roman empire has not
yet attained the same age; for, as those write who have treated of
chronological history, this kingdom endured for twelve hundred and
forty years from the first year in which Ninus began to reign, until
it was transferred to the Medes. But to make war on your neighbours,
and thence to proceed to others, and through mere lust of dominion to
crush and subdue people who do you no harm, what else is this to be
called than great robbery?
7. _Whether earthly kingdoms in their rise and fall have been
either aided or deserted by the help of the gods._
If this kingdom was so great and lasting without the aid of the
gods, why is the ample territory and long duration of the Roman
empire to be ascribed to the Roman gods? For whatever is the cause
in it, the same is in the other also. But if they contend that the
prosperity of the other also is to be attributed to the aid of the
gods, I ask of which? For the other nations whom Ninus overcame, did
not then worship other gods. Or if the Assyrians had gods of their
own, who, so to speak, were more skilful workmen in the construction
and preservation of the empire, whether are they dead, since they
themselves have also lost the empire; or, having been defrauded of
their pay, or promised a greater, have they chosen rather to go over
to the Medes, and from them again to the Persians, because Cyrus
invited them, and promised them something still more advantageous?
This nation, indeed, since the time of the kingdom of Alexander
the Macedonian, which was as brief in duration as it was great in
extent, has preserved its own empire, and at this day occupies no
small territories in the East. If this is so, then either the gods
are unfaithful, who desert their own and go over to their enemies,
which Camillus, who was but a man, did not do, when, being victor
and subduer of a most hostile state, although he had felt that
Rome, for whom he had done so much, was ungrateful, yet afterwards,
forgetting the injury and remembering his native land, he freed her
again from the Gauls; or they are not so strong as gods ought to be,
since they can be overcome by human skill or strength. Or if, when
they carry on war among themselves, the gods are not overcome by
men, but some gods who are peculiar to certain cities are perchance
overcome by other gods, it follows that they have quarrels among
themselves which they uphold, each for his own part. Therefore a
city ought not to worship its own gods, but rather others who aid
their own worshippers. Finally, whatever may have been the case as
to this change of sides, or flight, or migration, or failure in
battle on the part of the gods, the name of Christ had not yet been
proclaimed in those parts of the earth when these kingdoms were lost
and transferred through great destructions in war. For if, after more
than twelve hundred years, when the kingdom was taken away from the
Assyrians, the Christian religion had there already preached another
eternal kingdom, and put a stop to the sacrilegious worship of false
gods, what else would the foolish men of that nation have said, but
that the kingdom which had been so long preserved, could be lost for
no other cause than the desertion of their own religions and the
reception of Christianity? In which foolish speech that might have
been uttered, let those we speak of observe their own likeness, and
blush, if there is any sense of shame in them, because they have
uttered similar complaints; although the Roman empire is afflicted
rather than changed,--a thing which has befallen it in other times
also, before the name of Christ was heard, and it has been restored
after such affliction,--a thing which even in these times is not to
be despaired of. For who knows the will of God concerning this matter?
8. _Which of the gods can the Romans suppose presided over the
increase and preservation of their empire, when they have
believed that even the care of single things could scarcely be
committed to single gods?_
Next let us ask, if they please, out of so great a crowd of gods
which the Romans worship, whom in especial, or what gods they
believe to have extended and preserved that empire. Now, surely of
this work, which is so excellent and so very full of the highest
dignity, they dare not ascribe any part to the goddess Cloacina;[161]
or to Volupia, who has her appellation from voluptuousness; or to
Libentina, who has her name from lust; or to Vaticanus, who presides
over the screaming of infants; or to Cunina, who rules over their
cradles. But how is it possible to recount in one part of this
book all the names of gods or goddesses, which they could scarcely
comprise in great volumes, distributing among these divinities their
peculiar offices about single things? They have not even thought
that the charge of their lands should be committed to any one god:
but they have entrusted their farms to Rusina; the ridges of the
mountains to Jugatinus; over the downs they have set the goddess
Collatina; over the valleys, Vallonia. Nor could they even find one
Segetia so competent, that they could commend to her care all their
corn crops at once; but so long as their seed-corn was still under
the ground, they would have the goddess Seia set over it; then,
whenever it was above ground and formed straw, they set over it
the goddess Segetia; and when the grain was collected and stored,
they set over it the goddess Tutilina, that it might be kept safe.
Who would not have thought that goddess Segetia sufficient to take
care of the standing corn until it had passed from the first green
blades to the dry ears? Yet she was not enough for men, who loved
a multitude of gods, that the miserable soul, despising the chaste
embrace of the one true God, should be prostituted to a crowd of
demons. Therefore they set Proserpina over the germinating seeds;
over the joints and knots of the stems, the god Nodotus; over
the sheaths enfolding the ears, the goddess Volutina; when the
sheaths opened that the spike might shoot forth, it was ascribed
to the goddess Patelana; when the stems stood all equal with new
ears, because the ancients described this equalizing by the term
_hostire_, it was ascribed to the goddess Hostilina; when the grain
was in flower, it was dedicated to the goddess Flora; when full of
milk, to the god Lacturnus; when maturing, to the goddess Matuta;
when the crop was runcated,--that is, removed from the soil,--to the
goddess Runcina. Nor do I yet recount them all, for I am sick of all
this, though it gives them no shame. Only, I have said these very few
things, in order that it may be understood they dare by no means say
that the Roman empire has been established, increased, and preserved
by their deities, who had all their own functions assigned to them
in such a way, that no general oversight was entrusted to any one of
them. When, therefore, could Segetia take care of the empire, who was
not allowed to take care of the corn and the trees? When could Cunina
take thought about war, whose oversight was not allowed to go beyond
the cradles of the babies? When could Nodotus give help in battle,
who had nothing to do even with the sheath of the ear, but only with
the knots of the joints? Every one sets a porter at the door of his
house, and because he is a man, he is quite sufficient; but these
people have set three gods, Forculus to the doors, Cardea to the
hinge, Limentinus to the threshold.[162] Thus Forculus could not at
the same time take care also of the hinge and the threshold.
9. _Whether the great extent and long duration of the Roman empire
should be ascribed to Jove, whom his worshippers believe to be
the chief god._