To my distinguished lord, deservedly honorable and to be welcomed son Firmus, Augustine sends greetings in the Lord.

1. The books of The City of God that you so eagerly demanded of me I have sent, reread by me as I had promised; and that this should be done my son, your own brother Cyprian, with God's help indeed truly pressed me, just as I wanted to be pressed. There are twenty-two quires, which it is a great deal to gather into a single volume. If you wish two codices to be made, they are to be divided so that one has ten books and the other twelve. For in those ten the vanities of the impious are refuted, while in the rest our religion is set forth and defended—although this was also done in the former where it was more fitting, and the other in the latter.

But if you prefer the volumes to be more than two, then you ought to make five codices. The first would contain the first five books, in which the argument is made against those who contend that the worship not exactly of the gods but of the demons is advantageous for the happiness of this life; the second the next five, which hold that gods—whether such as those or however many—are to be worshiped through sacred rites and sacrifices for the sake of the life to come after death. The other three codices that follow ought to have four books each. For we have divided that part in such a way that four show the rise of that city, as many its progress—or, as we preferred to say, its course—and the last four its appointed ends.

If you are as diligent in reading these books as you were in obtaining them, you will learn how much they help more by your own experience than by my promise. Yet since our brothers there at Carthage do not yet have the ones belonging to this work, which is The City of God, I ask that you graciously and gladly grant them to those who ask, to be copied. For you will not give them to many but scarcely to one or two, and they will then give them to the rest. As for your friends—whether among the Christian people they desire to be instructed, or are held by some superstition from which through this labor of ours they will seem able to be freed by the grace of God—you yourself will see how to share them.

For my part, if the Lord wills, I will take care to inquire often through my writings how far you have advanced in reading. It does not escape you, as a learned man, how much the repetition of a reading helps toward understanding what is read. For there is either no difficulty, or certainly very little, in understanding where there is ease in reading, which grows the greater the more it is repeated, so that by perseverance what had been unripe through negligence may ripen.

My distinguished lord, deservedly honorable and to be welcomed son Firmus, as for those books that I composed On the Academics at the time of my recent conversion, since you showed in your earlier letter to me that they had come to your notice, I ask you to write back how you came by them. And the short summary I have sent will indicate how much the composition of the twenty-two books has gathered together.

The most glorious city of God—whether in this course of the times, while it journeys as a pilgrim among the impious, living by faith (Hab 2:4), or in that stability of the eternal seat, which it now awaits through patience (See Rom 8:25), until righteousness is turned into judgment (Ps 94:15 (93:15)), and thereafter shall attain by excellence the final victory and perfect peace—I have undertaken to defend in this work, begun (See Augustine, Letters 136.3; 138.4, 20: NBA 22) and owed by my promise to you, against those who prefer their own gods to its founder, dearest son Marcellinus. A great and arduous work, but God is our helper (Ps 62:8 (61:9)).

For I know what strength is needed to persuade the proud how great is the power of humility, by which it comes about that one transcends all earthly heights, swaying with their temporal instability, by a loftiness that is not usurped by human pride but bestowed by divine grace. For the King and founder of this city, of which we have set out to speak, has opened to his people in their Scripture the verdict of the divine law, where it is said: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5; Prov 3:34). But this, which belongs to God, the puffed-up spirit of the proud soul also aspires to, and loves to have said of itself in its praises: to spare the conquered and to subdue the proud (Virgil, Aeneid 6.853).

And so concerning the earthly city as well—which, when it strives for mastery, though peoples serve it, is itself mastered by its own lust for mastery—we must not pass over in silence whatever the plan of the work we have undertaken requires us to say, if the means is granted.

1. For from this city arise the enemies against whom the city of God must be defended—though many of them, correcting the error of their impiety, become quite worthy citizens within it; but many burn against it with such fires of hatred and are so ungrateful for the manifest benefits of its Redeemer that today they would not move their tongues against it had they not, fleeing the enemy's sword, found in its consecrated places the life of which they are proud. Are not even those Romans hostile to the name of Christ whom the barbarians spared for Christ's sake?

The shrines of the martyrs and the basilicas of the apostles bear witness to this, for in that devastation of the City they received both their own and strangers who fled to them Paulus Orosius, History 7.39.1.. Up to this point the bloodthirsty enemy raged; there the fury of the slayer met its limit; thither were led by pitying foes those whom they had spared even outside those places, lest they fall upon men who did not have a like mercy.

Yet these same men, who elsewhere raged fiercely and in the manner of enemies, once they came to those places where what would have been permitted elsewhere by the law of war had been forbidden, restrained the whole monstrousness of their striking, and their lust for taking captives was broken.

So escaped many who now disparage Christian times and lay to Christ's charge the evils that city endured; but the good things done to them, that they might live, for the honor of Christ, they lay not to the charge of our Christ but to their own fate—when rather, if they had any sound sense, they ought to attribute the harsh and hard things they suffered at the enemy's hands to divine providence, which is wont to amend and grind down the corrupt morals of men by wars, and likewise to exercise by such afflictions a just and praiseworthy human life, and either, when it is proved, to transfer it to better things, or to keep it still on this earth for other purposes;

but as for that mercy by which the fierce barbarians, contrary to the custom of wars, spared them, whether anywhere for the name of Christ or in places most dedicated to the name of Christ and most spacious, chosen for a more generous mercy to hold the multitude—this they ought to attribute to Christian times, for this to give thanks to God, for this to run truly to his name in order to escape the punishments of eternal fire, the name that many of them falsely took up in order to escape the punishments of present destruction.

For of those whom you see wantonly and insolently insulting the servants of Christ, there are very many among them who would not have escaped that destruction and slaughter had they not pretended to be servants of Christ. And now with ungrateful pride and most impious madness they resist his name with a perverse heart, so that they may be punished with everlasting darkness, the name to which they fled with a lip even cunning, that they might enjoy the temporal light.

2. So many wars have been waged and recorded, whether before Rome was founded or from its rise and rule: let them read and bring forward instances either that some city was so taken by foreigners that the enemies who had taken it spared those whom they had found to have fled to the temples of their gods, or that some barbarian leader commanded that, when a town was stormed, no one should be struck who had been found in this or that temple.

Did not Aeneas see Priam defiling with his blood the fires that he himself had consecrated upon the altars (Virgil, Aeneid 2.501-2)?

Did not Diomedes and Ulysses, having slain the guards of the citadel's height, seize the sacred image and dare with bloody hands to touch the virgin fillets of the goddess?

And yet what follows is not true: from that moment the hopes of the Greeks ebbed away and, slipping back, were carried backward (Virgil, Aeneid 2.166-70).

For afterward they conquered, afterward they destroyed Troy with sword and fire, afterward they cut down Priam as he fled to the altars (See Virgil, Aeneid 2.663).

Nor did Troy perish because it lost Minerva. For what had Minerva herself first lost, that she should perish? Her own guards, perhaps? This indeed is true; for when they were slain, she could be carried off. For it was not the men who were guarded by the image, but the image that was guarded by the men. How then was she worshiped, that she might guard the fatherland and its citizens, when she could not guard her own guards?

3. Behold the kind of gods to whom the Romans rejoiced that they had entrusted their city to be guarded! O error all too pitiable! And they are angry with us when we say such things about their gods; yet they are not angry with their own authors, whom they paid a fee to learn, and besides held the teachers themselves most worthy of a public salary and of honors. Indeed in Virgil—whom for this very reason little children read, namely that the great poet, the most illustrious and best of all, drunk in by tender minds, may not easily be blotted out by forgetfulness, according to that line of Horace: the jar will long keep the odor with which once when new it was steeped (Horace, Epistles 1.2.69-70)—in this Virgil, then, Juno is brought in, hostile to the Trojans, saying to Aeolus the king of the winds, to stir him up against them: a race hateful to me sails the Tyrrhenian sea, carrying Ilium into Italy and its conquered household gods (Virgil, Aeneid 1.71-72).

Was it then to these conquered household gods that they ought prudently to have entrusted Rome, that it might not be conquered? But Juno was saying these things like an angry woman, not knowing what she was speaking. What of Aeneas himself, so often called pious? Does he not relate thus: Panthus, son of Othrys, priest of the citadel and of Phoebus, himself drags along in his hand the sacred things and the conquered gods and his little grandson, and frantic makes for the threshold at a run (Virgil, Aeneid 2.319-21)? Does he not present the very gods, whom he does not hesitate to call conquered, as entrusted to him rather than himself to them, when it is said to him: To you Troy commends her sacred things and her household gods (Virgil, Aeneid 2.293)?

If, therefore, Virgil calls such gods both conquered and entrusted to a man so that, even though conquered, they might somehow escape, what madness is it to suppose that Rome was wisely committed to these guardians, and that it could not have been laid waste unless it had lost them? Indeed, to worship conquered gods as protectors and defenders—what is this but to hold not good divinities, but bad names?

For how much more wisely is it believed, not that Rome would not have come to that disaster unless they had first perished, but rather that they would long ago have perished unless Rome had preserved them as far as it could! For who, when he considers it, does not see with what great vanity it was presumed that Rome could not be conquered under conquered defenders, and that it perished because it lost its guardian gods—when in fact the one possible cause of its perishing might have been its wanting to have guardians who themselves would perish? And so, when those things about conquered gods were being written and sung, it was not that the poets took pleasure in lying, but that the truth compelled men of sense to confess it.

But these matters are to be treated carefully and at length in another place more suitable to them. For now I will, as best I can, briefly deal with what I had set out to say about ungrateful men, who blasphemously lay to Christ's charge the evils they deservedly suffer for the perversity of their own morals; while the fact that even such men are spared for Christ's sake they do not deign to notice, and they exercise against his name, in the madness of a sacrilegious perversity, the very tongues with which they falsely took up that name in order to live, or which in his consecrated places they restrained out of fear, so that, safe and protected there, where for his sake they had been unharmed by the enemy, they might from that very place leap out against him with the curses of enemies.

4. Troy itself, as I said, the mother of the Roman people, in the consecrated places of its own gods could not protect its citizens from the fires and the sword of the Greeks, who worshiped those very same gods. On the contrary, in the sanctuary of Juno chosen guards, Phoenix and dread Ulysses, kept watch over the plunder; here from all sides the treasure of Troy, snatched from the burning shrines, and the tables of the gods, and bowls of solid gold, and captured raiment were heaped up. Boys and trembling mothers in a long line stood round about (Virgil, Aeneid 2.761-67).

A place consecrated to so great a goddess was chosen, you see, not as one from which it was not permitted to lead out captives, but as one in which it was permitted to shut captives in. Compare now that sanctuary—not of any common god or one from the crowd of the rabble, but of Jupiter's own sister and wife and the queen of all the gods—with the memorial shrines of our apostles. To the one were carried the spoils snatched from the burning temples and gods, not to be given to the conquered but to be divided among the conquerors; to the other, even what was found to belong elsewhere to such places was carried back with honor and most reverent observance.

There liberty was lost, here preserved; there captivity was enclosed, here forbidden; there men were pressed to be possessed by mastering enemies, here they were led to be set free by pitying ones. In short, that temple of Juno had been chosen by the avarice and pride of frivolous little Greeks; these basilicas of Christ by the mercy and humility even of monstrous barbarians.

Unless perhaps the Greeks, in that victory of theirs, did indeed spare the temples of the gods they held in common, and did not dare to strike down or take captive the wretched and conquered Trojans who fled there, and Virgil, in the manner of poets, lied about these things. On the contrary, he described the custom of enemies who overthrow cities.

5. This custom even Cato, as Sallust writes, a historian of noble truthfulness, does not fail to mention in the opinion he delivered in the senate concerning the conspirators: maidens and boys are seized, children are torn from their parents' embrace, mothers of households suffer whatever has pleased the victors, temples and homes are despoiled, slaughter and burnings are carried out; in short, everything is filled with arms, corpses, blood, and grief (Sallust, Catiline 51.9).

Here, if he had been silent about the temples, we would suppose that enemies were accustomed to spare the seats of the gods. And these things the Roman temples feared not from foreign enemies but from Catiline and his associates, most noble senators and Roman citizens. But these, of course, were ruined men and parricides of their fatherland.

6. Why, then, should our discourse range through the many nations that have waged wars among themselves and nowhere spared the conquered in the seats of their gods? Let us look at the Romans themselves; the Romans themselves, I say, let us recall and consider, of whose chief praise it was said: to spare the conquered and to subdue the proud (Virgil, Aeneid 6.853), and that when a wrong had been received they preferred to forgive rather than to pursue it (Sallust, Catiline 9.5): when they stormed and captured and overthrew so many and so great cities in order to extend their dominion far and wide, let us be shown what temples they were accustomed to exempt, so that whoever fled to them was set free. Or did they do this, and the writers of those very deeds kept silent about it? In that case, men who especially sought out things to praise would have passed over these most illustrious tokens of piety according to their own standard?

The distinguished bearer of the Roman name, Marcus Marcellus, who took the most beautifully adorned city of Syracuse, is reported first to have wept for it as it was about to fall, and to have shed his own tears for it before its blood. He also took care that chastity should be preserved even in the enemy. For before the victor ordered the town to be invaded, he established by edict that no one should violate a free person See Livy, From the Founding of the City 25.24.11; 25.25.7; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 5.1.4.. Yet the city was overthrown after the manner of wars, and nowhere is it read that this so chaste and merciful commander gave an order that whoever fled to this or that temple should be held unharmed (See Livy, From the Founding of the City 25.25; 27). This would surely have in no way been passed over, since neither his weeping nor what he had decreed for the inviolability of chastity could be left unmentioned. Fabius, the overthrower of the city of Tarentum, is praised for having abstained from the plundering of images. For when his secretary suggested to him what he wished done about the statues of the gods, of which many had been captured, he seasoned his self-restraint even with a joke. For he asked of what kind they were, and when it was reported to him that not only were there many great ones, but even some armed, he said, let us leave the Tarentines their angry gods (See Livy, From the Founding of the City 27.16.8). Since, then, the writers of Roman deeds could not be silent either about the one's weeping or the other's laughter, neither about the one's chaste mercy nor the other's witty restraint, how could it have been passed over, had they spared any men in honor of some one of their gods so as to forbid slaughter or captivity in any temple?

7. Whatever, then, of devastation, slaughter, plundering, burning, and affliction was committed in that most recent Roman disaster, this the custom of wars brought about. But what was done in a new way—that, with an unaccustomed appearance of things, the barbarian monstrousness showed itself so mild that the most spacious basilicas were chosen and decreed to be filled with the people who were to be spared, where no one was struck, from where no one was seized, to where many were led to be set free by pitying enemies, from where none who were to be taken captive were led away even by cruel enemies—this is to be attributed to the name of Christ, this to Christian times. Whoever does not see this is blind; whoever sees it and does not praise it is ungrateful; whoever resists the one who praises it is mad. Far be it that any prudent person should lay this to the ferocity of the barbarians. The most savage and ferocious minds he terrified, he reined in, he wondrously tempered, who through the prophet said so long before: I will visit their iniquities with the rod and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter from them (Ps 89:32-33 (88:33-34)).

8. Someone will say: "Why, then, did this divine mercy reach even the impious and the ungrateful?" Why do we think, except because it was extended by him who daily makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45)? For although some of them, thinking on these things, correct themselves from their impiety by repenting, while others, as the Apostle says, despising the riches of God's goodness and forbearance, according to their hardness of heart and impenitent heart store up for themselves wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works (Rom 2:4-6): nevertheless the patience of God invites the wicked to repentance, just as the scourge of God instructs the good in patience; and likewise the mercy of God embraces the good to cherish them, just as the severity of God corrects the wicked to punish them.

For it pleased divine providence to prepare for the just goods in the world to come that the unjust will not enjoy, and for the impious evils with which the good will not be tormented. But these temporal goods and evils it willed to be common to both, so that the goods might not be too eagerly sought, which the wicked too are seen to have, nor the evils basely avoided, with which the good as well are often afflicted.

But it matters very greatly what use is made either of those things called prosperous or of those called adverse. For the good man is neither lifted up by temporal goods nor broken by evils; the wicked man, however, is punished by this kind of unhappiness for the very reason that he is corrupted by happiness.

Yet God often shows his working more evidently even in the distribution of these things. For if every sin were now struck with manifest punishment, it would be thought that nothing was reserved for the last judgment; on the other hand, if the divinity now punished no sin openly, it would be believed that there was no divine providence. Likewise in favorable things: if God did not grant them to certain people who ask, with the most evident generosity, we would say that these things did not pertain to him; and likewise, if he gave them to all who ask, we would suppose that he was to be served only for the sake of such rewards, and such service would make us not pious but rather greedy and covetous.

Since these things are so, whoever, good and wicked alike, were afflicted together, they are not therefore themselves undistinguished because what both suffered was undistinguished. For the unlikeness of those who suffer remains even in the likeness of their sufferings, and though under the same torment, virtue and vice are not the same.

For just as under one fire gold gleams red and chaff smokes, and under the same threshing sledge the stalks are crushed and the grain is cleansed, nor are the dregs mixed with the oil because they are pressed out by the same weight of the press: so one and the same force, bearing down, proves, purifies, and refines the good; condemns, lays waste, and destroys the wicked. Hence in the same affliction the wicked detest and blaspheme God, while the good pray and praise him. So much does it matter, not what things one suffers, but what sort of person suffers. For stirred up by the same motion, filth gives off a horrible stench, and ointment a sweet fragrance.

9. What, then, did Christians suffer in that devastation of things that would not rather have availed for their advancement, if they considered it faithfully? First, that humbly reflecting on the very sins on account of which God, in his indignation, filled the world with such great calamities—though they are far from the criminal, the shameful, and the impious—they nevertheless do not reckon themselves so free from offenses as to judge themselves unworthy of suffering temporal evils for them.

For setting aside the fact that everyone, however praiseworthily he lives, yields in certain matters to carnal desire—if not to the monstrousness of crimes and the whirlpool of shameful deeds and the abomination of impiety, yet to some sins, either rare or, the smaller they are, the more frequent: setting this aside, then, who, after all, is easily found who holds those very people, on account of whose horrible pride and luxury and avarice and execrable iniquities and impieties God, as he foretold in his threats, grinds down the lands (See Isa 24), as they ought to be held? who lives with them as one ought to live with such people?

For very often we wrongly look the other way from teaching and admonishing them, sometimes even from rebuking and correcting them, whether because the labor is irksome, or because we are ashamed to offend their face, or because we shun enmities, lest they hinder and harm us in those temporal things which either our desire still strives to obtain or our weakness dreads to lose; so that, although the life of the wicked displeases the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that condemnation which is prepared after this life for such people,

nevertheless, because they spare the damnable sins of the wicked—while they fear them in their own, though light and venial—they are justly scourged with them in temporal matters, although they are not punished with them for eternity; justly do they feel this life bitter, when they are afflicted by God along with them, the sweetness of which life, by loving it, they were unwilling to make bitter to those who were sinning.

For if someone refrains from rebuking and correcting those who do wrong because he is looking for a more suitable time, or fears for those very people, lest they be made worse by it, or lest they hinder others, weak ones who are to be instructed in a good and pious life, and press them down and turn them away from the faith: this does not seem to be an occasion of desire, but a counsel of love.

What is blameworthy is this: that those who live differently and shrink from the deeds of the wicked nevertheless spare the sins of others, which they ought to unteach or rebuke, while they avoid giving offense to them, lest they harm themselves in those things which the good lawfully and innocently use, but more greedily than was fitting for those who are pilgrims in this world and bear before themselves the hope of the heavenly fatherland.

For not only do the weaker, who lead the married life, who have children or seek to have them, who possess homes and households—whom the Apostle addresses in the churches, teaching and admonishing how they ought to live, both wives with husbands and husbands with wives, and children with parents and parents with children, and slaves with masters and masters with slaves (Col 3:18-22)—gladly obtain many temporal, many earthly things, and lose them with distress, on account of which they do not dare to offend men whose most contaminated and most wicked life displeases them; but even those who hold a higher grade of life, and are not ensnared by the bonds of marriage, and make use of little food and clothing, very often, while they fear the snares and assaults of the wicked against their own reputation and safety, refrain from reproving them.

And although they do not fear them so much as to yield to any of their terrors and wickednesses so as to commit similar deeds, yet those very things which they do not commit with them they often refuse to correct, when perhaps by correcting they might set some right; lest, if they could not, their own safety and reputation should come into danger and ruin. And this they do not by that consideration in which they see their reputation and safety to be necessary for the benefit of the men to be instructed, but rather by that weakness in which the flattering tongue and the human day (See 1 Cor 4:3) give pleasure, and the judgment of the crowd and the torture or destruction of the flesh are dreaded; that is, on account of certain bonds of desire, not on account of the duties of love.

It does not therefore seem to me a small reason why the good too are scourged along with the wicked, when it pleases God to punish ruined morals even by the affliction of temporal penalties. For they are scourged together, not because they lead an evil life together, but because they love the temporal life together—not indeed equally, yet together—which the good ought to despise, so that the others, corrected and set right, might attain the eternal life; and if they should be unwilling to be companions in attaining it, they should be borne with and loved as enemies, since, as long as they live, it is always uncertain whether they will change their will for the better.

In this matter, those certainly do not have an equal but a far graver cause to whom it is said through the prophet: he indeed will die in his own sin, but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand (Ezek 33:6). For watchmen—that is, the overseers of the peoples—have been appointed in the churches for this very purpose: that they should not spare sins by reproving them.

Nor yet is anyone wholly free from this kind of fault who, though he be not an overseer, nevertheless knows in those with whom the necessity of this life joins him many things to be admonished or reproved, and neglects them, avoiding their offense on account of those things which in this life he uses not undeservedly, but takes more delight in than he ought.

Then the good have another cause why they are afflicted by temporal evils, such as Job had: that the human mind itself may be proved and known to itself, with how great a strength of piety it loves God freely.

10. These things rightly considered and discerned, consider whether anything evil befell the faithful and pious that was not turned to their good—unless perhaps that apostolic sentence is to be thought void, where he says: we know that for those who love God all things work together for good Rom 8:28; see Expositions of the Psalms 51.13; 54.8; 139.4: NBA 26, 28; Sermons 17.3; 88.18; 164.7: NBA 29, 30/2, 31/2.. They lost all that they had. Surely not faith? Surely not piety? Surely not the goods of the inner man, who is rich before God (See 1 Pet 3:4)? These are the riches of Christians, in which the Apostle, abounding, said: there is great gain in godliness with contentment. For we brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything out of it. But having food and clothing, with these let us be content. For those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains (1 Tim 6:6-10).

Those, then, whose earthly riches perished in that devastation, if they held them in the way they had heard from that man poor outwardly, rich inwardly—that is, if they used the world as though not using it (See 1 Cor 7:31)—were able to say what that man said who was grievously tempted and not at all overcome: naked I came forth from my mother's womb, naked shall I return to the earth. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it been done; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21); so that the good servant might hold his Lord's very will as his great wealth, and, attending it in mind, grow rich, and not be saddened at being left, while living, without those things which, dying, he would soon have left behind.

But those weaker ones who, though they did not prefer these earthly goods to Christ, nevertheless clung to them with some little desire, felt by losing them how much they had sinned in loving them. For they grieved as much as they had pierced themselves with pains, as I recalled above that the Apostle said. For it was needful that the discipline of experience be added to them as well, the discipline of words having been so long neglected by them.

For when the Apostle said, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, and the rest, he certainly reproved desire in riches, not the possession; for elsewhere he gave a command, saying: charge the rich of this world not to be haughty, nor to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on the living God, who furnishes us with everything richly to enjoy: let them do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share, and store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the true life (1 Tim 6:17-19). Those who did these things with their riches were consoled for light losses by great gains, and rejoiced more in those things which by readily giving they more safely kept, than they grieved over those which by timidly retaining they the more easily lost.

For what could perish on earth was what it irked them to transfer from there. For those who received the counsel of their Lord, who says: do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where no thief approaches nor moth corrupts; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Mt 6:19-21), proved in the time of tribulation how rightly they had been wise in not despising the most truthful teacher and the most faithful and invincible guardian of their treasure. For if many rejoiced that they had their riches there where it chanced that the enemy did not come, how much more surely and securely could those rejoice who at the warning of their God migrated to that place where he could not come at all!

Hence our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who from a most opulent rich man became by his own will most poor and most abundantly holy, when the barbarians laid waste Nola itself and he was held by them, prayed thus in his heart, as we afterward learned from him: Lord, let me not be tortured for gold and silver; for where all my goods are, you know. For he had all his goods there where he who had foretold that these evils would come upon the world had shown him to store and treasure them up.

And through this, those who had obeyed their Lord admonishing them where and how they ought to treasure up did not lose even their earthly riches when the barbarians attacked. But those who repented of not having obeyed learned what should be done with such things—if not by foregoing wisdom, then certainly by subsequent experience.

But, it is said, certain good Christians too were tortured to make them give up their goods to the enemy. Yet they could neither give up nor lose the good by which they themselves were good. But if they preferred to be tortured rather than to give up the mammon of iniquity, they were not good.

But those who suffered so much for gold ought to have been admonished how much was to be endured for Christ, so that they might rather learn to love him who enriches with eternal happiness those who suffer for him, not gold and silver, for which to suffer was most wretched, whether it was hidden by lying or given up by telling the truth. For amid the torments no one lost Christ by confessing him, no one kept gold except by denying it. Wherefore the torments which taught that an incorruptible good was to be loved were perhaps more useful than those goods which, without any useful fruit, tortured their owners by love of them.

But some, even though they had nothing to give up, were tortured because it was not believed. And these perhaps desired to have it and were not poor by a holy will; to whom it had to be shown that not their possessions but their very desires were worthy of such tortures. But if, by their resolve of a better life, they did not have gold and silver stored away, I do not indeed know whether it happened to any such person that he was tortured because he was believed to have it; yet even if it did happen, surely the one who amid those torments confessed his holy poverty confessed Christ. Wherefore, even if he did not deserve to be believed by the enemy, the confessor of holy poverty nevertheless could not be tortured without a heavenly reward.

Many Christians too, they say, a long-lasting famine laid waste. This also the good faithful turned to their own use by piously enduring it. For those whom the famine killed it snatched away from the evils of this life, as bodily sickness does; but those whom it did not kill it taught to live more sparingly, taught to fast more lengthily.

11. But indeed many Christians too were killed, many consumed by the foul variety of many kinds of death. If this is to be borne with grief, it is certainly common to all who have been brought forth into this life. This I know: that no one has died who was not at some time going to die. But the end of life makes a life as long as it does a short one to be one and the same thing. For there is not one thing better and another worse, or one greater and another shorter, of a thing that now equally is not. And what does it matter by what kind of death this life is ended, when he to whom it is ended is not compelled to die again? But since, under the daily chances of this life, innumerable deaths in a manner threaten every mortal, as long as it is uncertain which of them is going to come, I ask whether it is better to suffer one by dying or to fear them all by living. Nor am I unaware how much more readily one would choose to live long under the fear of so many deaths than, by dying once, thereafter to dread none. But it is one thing that the weakly fearful sense of the flesh shrinks from, and another that the reason of the mind, carefully sifted out, establishes.

That death is not to be thought evil which a good life has preceded. For nothing makes death evil except what follows death. They, therefore, who must necessarily die need not be much concerned by what chance it comes about that they die, but whither dying they are compelled to go. Since, then, Christians know that the death of the religious poor man amid the tongues of licking dogs was far better than that of the impious rich man in his purple and fine linen (See Lk 16:19-31), how did those dreadful kinds of death harm the dead who had lived well?

12. But, it is said, in so great a heap of corpses they could not even be buried See Augustine, The Care to Be Taken for the Dead 2.. But pious faith does not too greatly dread this, holding it foretold that not even devouring beasts will harm bodies that are to rise again, of which not a hair of the head will perish (Lk 21:18; see Acts 27:34). The Truth would in no way say, do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul (Mt 10:28), if whatever enemies wished to do with the bodies of the slain could harm the life to come.

Unless perhaps someone is so absurd as to contend that those who kill the body are not to be feared before death, lest they kill the body, and are to be feared after death, lest they not allow the slain body to be buried. False, then, is what Christ says: those who kill the body and afterward have nothing they can do (Lk 12:4), if they have so many things they can do with the corpses. Far be it that what the Truth said should be false. For it was said that they do something when they kill, because there is sensation in the body in the killing; but afterward they have nothing they can do, because there is no sensation in the slain body.

And so the earth did not cover many bodies of Christians; but no one separated any of them from heaven and earth, all of which the presence of him fills who knows whence to raise up again what he created. It is indeed said in the psalm: they have set the dead bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven, the flesh of your saints for the beasts of the earth; they have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them (Ps 79:2-3 (78:2-3)), but rather to magnify the cruelty of those who did these things, not the unhappiness of those who suffered them. For although these things seem hard and dire in the sight of men, yet precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Ps 116:15 (115:15)).

Accordingly, all these things—that is, the care of the funeral, the manner of burial, the pomp of the obsequies—are more the consolations of the living than helps for the dead See Augustine, The Care to Be Taken for the Dead 2.4; Expositions of the Psalms 33.2.25: NBA 25.. If a costly burial does any good to the impious, a cheap one or none will harm the pious. Distinguished obsequies in the sight of men were furnished to that purple-clad rich man by a crowd of servants; but far more distinguished ones in the sight of the Lord were rendered to that ulcerous poor man by the ministry of angels, who did not carry him out to a marble tomb but bore him up into Abraham's bosom (See Lk 16:22, 31).

These things they laugh at, against whom we have undertaken to defend the city of God. Yet even their own philosophers despised the care of burial (See Plato, Apology 40c-d; Phaedo 70c; Cratylus 400c; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.43). And often whole armies, while they died for their earthly fatherland, took no care where they would afterward lie or for what beasts they would become food, and it was permitted to the poets to say plausibly on this matter: he who has no urn is covered by the sky (Lucan, Pharsalia 7.819). How much less ought they to insult Christians over unburied bodies, to whom it is promised that the very reformation of the flesh and of all its members will be restored and made whole, not only from the earth but even from the most secret recess of the other elements, into which the dissolved corpses have departed, in a moment of time (See 1 Cor 15:52).

13. Nevertheless, the bodies of the dead are not therefore to be despised and cast away, and most of all of the just and faithful, of which the Spirit holily made use as instruments and vessels for all good works. For if a father's garment and ring, and anything of this kind, is the dearer to descendants the greater their affection toward their parents, then in no way are the bodies themselves to be spurned, which surely we wear far more intimately and closely joined than any garments. For these belong not to ornament or aid that is applied from without, but to the very nature of man. Hence the funerals of the just men of old were tended with dutiful piety, the obsequies celebrated, and burial provided, and they themselves, while they lived, gave commands to their sons about burying or even transferring their bodies See Augustine, The Care to Be Taken for the Dead 3; Gen 49:29-31; 50:2, 24.; and Tobit is commended, by the testimony of the angel, for having merited God's favor by burying the dead (See Tob 2:9; 12:12). The Lord himself too, who was to rise on the third day, proclaims the good work of the religious woman and commends it to be proclaimed, that she poured precious ointment over his members and did this for his burial (See Mt 26:6-13). And those are commemorated with praise in the Gospel who took his body down from the cross and took care that it should be carefully and honorably wrapped and buried (Mt 27:57; Mk 15:42; Lk 23:52; Jn 19:38).

But these authorities do not admonish us of this, that there is any sensation in corpses, but signify that the bodies of the dead too pertain to the providence of God, to whom even such offices of piety are pleasing, for the sake of establishing the faith of the resurrection. Here too that is wholesomely learned: how great can be the recompense for the alms which we render to the living and sentient, if not even this perishes before God, that is paid out in office and care to the lifeless members of men. There are indeed other things which the holy patriarchs wished to be understood as said in a prophetic spirit about the embalming or transferring of their bodies (See Gen 49:29; 50:25); but this is not the place to treat them at length, since what we have said suffices.

But if those things which are necessary for sustaining the living—such as food and clothing—do not, even when they are lacking with grievous affliction, break in the good the virtue of bearing and enduring, nor uproot piety from the soul, but make it more fruitful by exercise: how much more do the things which are wont to be applied to the care of funerals and the embalming of the bodies of the dead, when they are lacking, not make wretched those already at rest in the hidden dwellings of the pious! And through this, however much these things were lacking to the corpses of Christians in that devastation of the great city or even of other towns, it is neither the fault of the living, who could not furnish them, nor a punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them.

14. But many, they say, Christians too, were led away captive. This indeed is most wretched, if they could be led anywhere where they did not find their God. There are in the holy Scriptures great consolations even for this disaster. There were in captivity the three young men, there was Daniel, there were other prophets (See Dan 1:6); nor was God lacking as a consoler. So, then, he did not desert his faithful under the dominion of a nation, barbarous indeed yet human, who did not desert the prophet even in the belly of the beast (Jon 2:1). These things too those with whom we are dealing prefer to mock rather than to believe—though they believe in their own writings that Arion of Methymna, the most noble lyre-player, when he had been cast from a ship, was taken up on a dolphin's back and carried to land (See Ovid, Fasti 2.79-117; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 16.19). But that account of ours about the prophet Jonah is more incredible. Plainly more incredible because more wondrous, and more wondrous because it shows greater power.

15. These people have, however, even concerning captivity to be voluntarily endured for the sake of religion, a most noble example among their own illustrious men. Marcus Regulus, a commander of the Roman people, was a captive among the Carthaginians (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 6.4; Appian, The Punic Wars 4, and others). When they preferred to have their own men returned to them by the Romans rather than to keep the Romans' captives, they sent this very Regulus in particular, with their envoys, to Rome to obtain this, first binding him by an oath to return to Carthage if he should not accomplish what they wished. He went, and in the senate persuaded the opposite, since he did not judge it useful to the Roman commonwealth to exchange captives.

Nor after this persuasion was he compelled by his own people to return to the enemy; but because he had sworn, he fulfilled it of his own accord. And they killed him with contrived and horrible tortures. For they shut him up in a narrow box, where he was forced to stand, fixed all around with very sharp nails, so that he could lean on no part of it without the most atrocious pains, and put him to death even by keeping him awake.

They rightly, certainly, praise a virtue greater than so great a misfortune (Sempronius Tuditanus, fr. 5; Aelius Tubero, fr. 9; Florus, Epitome 1.18.24; Paulus Orosius, History 4.10.1). And he had sworn by the gods, by the prohibition of whose worship these people suppose that these disasters are inflicted on the human race.

Those gods, then, who were worshiped for this purpose, that they might make this life prosperous—if they either willed or permitted these penalties to be imposed on one who swore truly, what worse could they in their anger do to a perjurer?

But why should I not rather bring my reasoning to a conclusion on both sides? He certainly worshiped the gods in such a way that, for the sake of fidelity to his oath, he would neither remain in his fatherland nor go from there anywhere else, but did not in the least hesitate to return to his most bitter enemies. If he thought this useful for this life, of which he merited so horrible an end, he was beyond doubt deceived. For by his own example he taught that the gods are of no avail to their worshipers for this temporal happiness, since indeed that man, devoted to their worship, was both conquered and led away captive, and, because he was unwilling to act otherwise than as he had sworn through them, was killed, tortured by a new and previously unheard-of and exceedingly horrible kind of punishment.

But if the worship of the gods renders happiness as a reward after this life, why do they slander Christian times, saying that that calamity befell the City because it ceased to worship its gods, when even one who worshiped them most diligently could become as unhappy as that Regulus was? Unless perhaps, against the clearest truth, someone strives with so great a madness of wondrous blindness as to dare to contend that a whole city worshiping the gods cannot be unhappy, but one man can—because, namely, the power of their gods is fit to preserve many rather than individuals, when the multitude is composed of individuals.

But if they say that Marcus Regulus, even in that captivity and those tortures of the body, could be blessed by virtue of soul, then let rather the true virtue be sought by which a city too can be blessed. For a city is not blessed from one source and a man from another, since a city is nothing other than a harmonious multitude of men. Wherefore for now I do not yet dispute what sort of virtue there was in Regulus; it suffices now that by this most noble example they are compelled to confess that the gods are not to be worshiped for the sake of bodily goods or of those things which befall a man from without, since indeed that man preferred to lack all these rather than to offend the gods by whom he had sworn.

But what shall we do with men who boast that they had such a citizen as they fear to have a city? And if they do not fear it, let them confess, then, that something such as befell Regulus could befall even a city worshiping the gods as diligently as he did, and let them not slander Christian times. But since the question arose about those Christians who were also taken captive, let those look at this and be silent who from this matter shamelessly and imprudently mock the most wholesome religion. For if it was no disgrace to their gods that their most attentive worshiper, while he kept fidelity to his oath toward them, lacked a fatherland, since he had no other, and as a captive among enemies was killed by a long death with the punishment of a new cruelty, much less is the Christian name to be charged because of the captivity of its consecrated ones, who, awaiting the heavenly fatherland with truthful faith, knew themselves to be pilgrims even in their own dwellings (1 Pet 2:11).

16. They think, indeed, that they bring a great charge against Christians when, exaggerating their captivity, they add even the rapes committed, not only on other men's wives and on virgins about to marry, but even on certain consecrated women. Here, in truth, it is not faith, not piety, not the very virtue called chastity, but rather our discussion that is hemmed in within certain straits between modesty and reason.

Nor do we here care so much to give an answer to others as to give consolation to our own people. Let it therefore first of all be laid down and established that the virtue by which one lives rightly commands from its seat in the soul the members of the body, and that the body is made holy by the use of a holy will, and that, while this remains unshaken and steadfast, whatever anyone else does with the body or in the body which cannot be avoided without one's own sin is beyond the fault of the one who suffers it.

But because not only what pertains to pain but also what pertains to lust can be perpetrated on another's body: whatever such thing has been done, even if it does not shake out the chastity retained with a most steadfast soul, nevertheless inflicts shame, lest it be believed that what perhaps could not be done without some pleasure of the flesh was done with the will of the mind as well.

17. And through this, even those who killed themselves lest they suffer anything of this kind—what human feeling would not wish them to be pardoned? And those who were unwilling to kill themselves, lest they avoid another's shameful deed by their own crime—whoever lays this to their charge will not himself avoid the charge of folly.

For surely if it is not permitted by private authority to kill a man, even a guilty one, whom no law grants license to kill, then assuredly one who kills himself too is a murderer, and he becomes the more guilty in killing himself the more innocent he was in the cause for which he thought he ought to be killed. For if we deservedly detest the deed of Judas, and the Truth judges that, when he hanged himself with a noose, he increased rather than expiated the guilt of that wicked betrayal (See Mt 27:3-5)—since, repenting unto destruction by despairing of God's mercy, he left himself no room for wholesome repentance: how much more ought he to abstain from his own slaying who has nothing in himself to punish by such a penalty! For Judas, when he killed himself, killed a wicked man, and yet he ended this life guilty not only of Christ's death but also of his own, since, though killed for his own crime, he was killed by another crime of his own. Why, then, should a man who has done no evil do evil to himself, and by killing himself kill an innocent man, lest he suffer another guilty man, and perpetrate in himself his own sin, lest another's sin be perpetrated in him?

18. But it is feared that another's lust may defile us. It will not defile, if it is another's; but if it defiles, it will not be another's. But since chastity is a virtue of the soul and has fortitude as its companion, by which it resolves to endure any evils rather than consent to evil, and since no high-souled and chaste person has it in his power what is done with his flesh, but only what he assents to or refuses with his mind: who, with that same sound mind, would think that he loses his chastity if perchance a lust not his own is exercised and sated upon his seized and oppressed flesh? For if chastity perishes in this way, then surely chastity will not be a virtue of the soul, nor will it belong to those goods by which one lives well, but will be numbered among the goods of the body, such as strength, beauty, sound health, and anything of this kind; which goods, even if they are diminished, do not at all diminish a good and just life. But if chastity is something of this kind, why is there labor for it, lest it be lost, even at the peril of the body? But if it is a good of the soul, it is not lost even when the body is oppressed. Indeed, the good of holy continence, when it does not yield to the uncleanness of carnal desires, sanctifies the body itself; and therefore, when it persists with unshaken intention in not yielding to them, the holiness does not perish even from the body itself, because the will to use it holily perseveres, and, so far as is in it, even the capacity.

For the body is not holy because its members are intact, or because they are touched by no contact, since by various accidents they can, even when wounded, suffer violence, and physicians, sometimes aiding health, do things there which the sight shrinks from. A midwife, examining as it were with her hand the integrity of a certain virgin—whether through malice, ignorance, or accident—destroyed it while inspecting it. I do not suppose that anyone is so foolishly wise as to think that anything was thereby lost even of the holiness of the body itself, although the integrity of that member was now lost. Wherefore, while the resolve of the soul remains—through which the body too merited to be sanctified—the violence of another's lust does not take away holiness even from the body itself, which the perseverance of one's own continence preserves.

Or rather, if some woman, corrupted in mind and having violated the resolve that she had vowed to God, goes off to be defiled by her seducer—do we call her, as she goes off to this, holy even in body, that holiness of soul through which the body was being sanctified having been lost and destroyed? Far be this error, and from it let us rather be admonished that the holiness of the body is not lost while the holiness of the soul remains, even when the body is oppressed, just as the holiness of the body too is lost when the holiness of the soul is violated, even when the body is untouched.

Wherefore a woman violently oppressed without any consent of her own and crushed by another's sin has nothing in herself to punish by a voluntary death; how much less before this is done! lest a certain murder be committed when the shameful deed itself, though another's, still hangs uncertain.

19. But will those perhaps dare to contradict this clear reasoning—by which we say that when the body is oppressed, the resolve of chastity in no way changed by any consent to evil, the shameful deed is only his who oppressing has lain with her, not hers who, oppressed, has by no will consented to him who lay with her—against whom we defend not only the minds but also the bodies of Christian women oppressed in captivity as holy? Lucretia, certainly, a noble Roman matron of old, they extol with great praises of chastity. When the son of King Tarquin had lustfully gained possession of her body by violently oppressing it, she disclosed the crime of that most wicked youth to her husband Collatinus and her kinsman Brutus, men most illustrious and brave, and bound them to vengeance. Then, sick at and impatient of the foul deed committed against her, she put herself to death (See Ovid, Fasti 2.825-32; Cicero, On the Republic 2.25.47).

What shall we say? Is she to be judged an adulteress or chaste? Who would think there was any need to labor over this question? Excellently and truly someone declaiming on this says: wondrous to say, there were two, and one committed adultery (Author unknown). Splendidly and most truly. For looking in the union of two bodies at the most defiled desire of the one and the most chaste will of the other, and attending not to what was done by the joining of members but to what was done by the diversity of souls, he says, there were two, and one committed adultery.

But what is this, that vengeance is taken more severely on her who did not commit adultery? For he was driven with his father from the fatherland, while she was slain with the supreme penalty. If that is not unchastity by which one is oppressed unwilling, this is not justice by which the chaste one is punished. I call upon you, laws and judges of Rome. Surely, after crimes have been committed, you did not wish even any wicked man to be killed uncondemned and with impunity. If, therefore, anyone brought this charge before your judgment and it were proved to you that a woman not only uncondemned but even chaste and innocent had been killed, would you not punish the one who had done it with fitting severity?

This is what that Lucretia did; that, that Lucretia so celebrated, killed besides the innocent, chaste Lucretia who had suffered violence. Pronounce sentence. But if you cannot do so for this reason, that she is not present whom you might punish, why do you praise with such celebration the killer of an innocent and chaste woman?

Whom certainly before the judges of the underworld—even such as are sung in the songs of your poets—you defend by no reasoning, placed as she is, namely, among those who, guiltless, dealt themselves death by their own hand, and, loathing the light, cast away their souls; for whom, desiring to return to the world above, the divine law stands in the way, and the sad marsh of the unlovely water binds them fast (Virgil, Aeneid 6.434-39).

Or is she perhaps not there because she killed herself not guiltless, but ill conscious of guilt? For what if (which she alone could know) she consented to the youth violently rushing upon her, enticed even by her own lust, and, punishing this in herself, so grieved that she thought it had to be expiated by death? Although not even so ought she to have killed herself, if she could have done fruitful repentance before the false gods.

But nevertheless, if it is perhaps so, and that saying is false, that there were two, and one committed adultery, but rather both committed adultery, the one by manifest assault, the other by hidden consent: then she did not kill herself guiltless, and therefore it can be said by her learned defenders that she is not among those in the underworld who, guiltless, dealt themselves death by their own hand. But thus this case is hemmed in on both sides, so that, if the murder is extenuated, the adultery is confirmed; if the adultery is cleared, the murder is heaped up; nor is any way out found at all, where it is said: "if she was an adulteress, why praised? if chaste, why killed?"

For us, however, in this so noble example of this woman, for refuting those who insult Christian women crushed in captivity, being strangers to every thought of holiness, it suffices what was said in her illustrious praises: there were two, and one committed adultery. For such a Lucretia was rather believed by them, one who could not stain herself by any adulterous consent. That she killed herself, then, not being an adulteress, because she had endured an adulterer, is not the love of chastity but the weakness of shame.

For she was ashamed of another's baseness committed upon her, even if not with her, and, a Roman woman too greedy for praise, she feared lest it be thought that what she had suffered by violence while living she had willingly suffered if she lived. Hence she thought she ought to apply that penalty before the eyes of men as a witness of her mind, to whom she could not demonstrate her conscience. For she blushed to be believed an associate in the deed if she bore patiently what another had basely done in her.

This Christian women did not do, who, having suffered similar things, nevertheless live and did not avenge another's crime upon themselves, lest they add their own to the crimes of others, if, because enemies in lusting had committed rapes on them, they should out of shame commit murders on themselves. For they have within the glory of chastity, the testimony of conscience; and they have it before the eyes of their God, and they seek nothing further, where they have nothing further to do rightly, lest they swerve from the authority of the divine law while they wrongly avoid the offense of human suspicion.

20. For it is not in vain that nowhere in the holy canonical books can it be found divinely commanded or permitted to us that we should inflict death upon ourselves, whether for the sake of attaining immortality itself or of avoiding or being rid of any evil. For we are to understand that we are forbidden this also where the law says: you shall not kill, especially since it did not add "your neighbor," as when forbidding false testimony it said: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Exod 20:13, 16). Nor yet, if anyone bears false witness against himself, should he therefore think himself free from this charge, since the one who loves received the rule of loving his neighbor from himself, since indeed it is written: you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39).

Furthermore, if one who confesses falsely about himself is no less guilty of false testimony than if he did this against his neighbor—since in that commandment by which false testimony is forbidden, it is forbidden against one's neighbor, and it might seem to those not understanding rightly that it is not forbidden that anyone stand as a false witness against himself: how much more is it to be understood that it is not permitted for a man to kill himself, since in what is written, you shall not kill, nothing being added thereafter, no one—not even, surely, the very one to whom it is commanded—is understood to be excepted!

Hence some try to extend this commandment even to beasts and cattle, so that from this it would not be permitted to kill any of them either See Augustine, Heresies 41.1; Epiphanius, Panarion 66.28.. Why then not also herbs and whatever is nourished and fixed by roots in the soil? For this kind of thing too, though it does not sense, is said to live, and through this it can also die, and accordingly, when force is applied, be killed. Hence the Apostle too, when he spoke of seeds of this kind, says: what you sow is not brought to life unless it dies (1 Cor 15:36); and in the psalm it is written: he killed their vines with hail (Ps 78:47 (77:47)). Are we, then, on this account, when we hear you shall not kill, to count it wrong to pull up a shrub, and most insanely acquiesce in the error of the Manichees?

These ravings, then, set aside, when we read you shall not kill, if we do not take this to have been said of shrubs, because there is no sensation in them, nor of irrational living things—flying, swimming, walking, creeping—because they are joined to us by no reason, which it has not been given them to have in common with us (whence by the most just ordering of the Creator both their life and their death are subjected to our uses): it remains that we understand of man what was said, you shall not kill—therefore neither another nor yourself. For one who kills himself kills nothing other than a man.

21. But certain exceptions that same divine authority itself has made, so that a man may not be killed.

But with these excepted whom God commands to be killed, whether by a law given or by a command expressed for the occasion to a particular person—(but he himself does not kill who owes service to the one commanding, as a sword is an aid to the one using it;

and therefore those in no way acted against this commandment by which it was said, you shall not kill, who with God as author waged wars, or, bearing the person of public authority, punished the wicked with death according to his laws, that is, by the rule of the most just reason;

and Abraham was not only not blamed for the crime of cruelty, but even praised for the name of piety, because he was willing to kill his son not at all wickedly, but obediently (See Gen 22:1-19); and it is rightly asked whether it is to be held as done by God's command that Jephthah killed his daughter, who met her father, when he had vowed to sacrifice to God whatever first met him as he returned victorious from the battle (See Judg 11:29-39); nor is Samson otherwise excused for crushing himself along with his enemies by the ruin of the house (See Judg 16:30), except that the Spirit, who through him worked miracles, had secretly commanded this.

With these excepted, then, whom either a just law generally or God himself, the very fount of justice, specially commands to be killed, whoever kills a man—whether himself or any other—is bound by the charge of murder.

22. And whoever have perpetrated this upon themselves are perhaps to be wondered at for greatness of soul, but not to be praised for soundness of wisdom. Although, if you consult reason more carefully, not even greatness of soul will rightly be the name for it, where anyone, not being strong enough to endure either hardships or the sins of others, has killed himself. For a mind is rather caught out as weak which cannot bear either the harsh servitude of its own body or the foolish opinion of the crowd; and that soul is deservedly to be called greater which can bear a wretched life rather than flee it, and which can despise, before the light and purity of conscience, the human judgment—and most of all the common judgment, which is for the most part wrapped in the fog of error.

Wherefore, if it is to be thought that it is done with greatness of soul when a man brings death upon himself, that Theombrotus (See Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.34.84; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 3.18.9) is rather found to have this greatness of soul, who, they say, after reading Plato's book where he discussed the immortality of the soul, threw himself headlong from a wall and so departed from this life to that which he believed to be better. For no calamity or charge, true or false, pressed upon him such that, being unable to bear it, he should take himself off; but greatness of soul alone was present to seize death and to break the sweet bonds of this life. Yet that this was done greatly rather than well, Plato himself, whom he had read, could be a witness for him (See Plato, Phaedo 61d; 66b ff), who surely would have done this above all and most of all, or even commanded it, had he not judged, by that mind with which he saw the immortality of the soul, that it was by no means to be done, but rather to be forbidden.

But many, it is said, killed themselves lest they fall into the hands of enemies. We do not now ask whether it was done, but whether it ought to have been done. For sound reason is to be set even before examples, with which indeed examples too accord—but those which are the worthier of imitation the more they excel in piety. The patriarchs did not do it, nor the prophets, nor the apostles, since the Lord Christ himself, when he admonished them, if they should suffer persecution, to flee from city to city (See Mt 10:23), could have admonished them to lay hands on themselves lest they fall into the hands of their persecutors. Further, if he did not command or advise this—that they should in this way depart from this life, for whom departing he promised that he would prepare eternal dwellings (See Jn 14:2)—whatever examples the nations that do not know God may set forth, it is manifest that this is not permitted to those who worship the one true God.

23. But nevertheless even they, besides Lucretia, about whom we have said enough above as it seemed, do not easily find anyone on whose authority they may take their stand, except that Cato who killed himself at Utica (See Seneca, Letters 24.6-8; 67.7; On Tranquility of Mind 16); not because he alone did it, but because he was held to be a learned and upright man, so that it may deservedly be thought that what he did could have been or could be done rightly.

What shall I say above all about his deed, except that his friends, even certain learned men, who more prudently dissuaded this from being done, judged it the deed of a weaker rather than a braver soul, by which was shown not an honorableness guarding against base things, but a weakness not sustaining adversities?

Cato himself judged this in his own dearest son. For if it was base to live under Caesar's victory, why was he the author of this baseness to his son, whom he charged to hope for everything from Caesar's kindness (See Livy, Periochae 114; Appian, The Civil Wars 2.98-99)? Why did he not force him too to die with him? For if Torquatus killed even his victorious son who had fought against an enemy contrary to orders, and was praised for it (See Livy, From the Founding of the City 8.7.20-21), why did the conquered Cato spare his conquered son, who did not spare himself? Was it baser to be a victor against orders than to be a victor against honor?

In no way, then, did Cato judge it base to live under the victor Caesar; otherwise he would have freed his son from this baseness by his paternal sword. What then, except that, as much as he loved his son, for whom he both hoped and wished that he be spared by Caesar, so much did he envy Caesar the glory of sparing him too, as Caesar himself is said to have said (See Plutarch, Cato the Younger 72; Appian, The Civil Wars 2.99)—or, to say something milder, "he blushed at it"?

24. But those against whom we are arguing do not wish us to prefer to Cato the holy man Job, who chose to suffer such horrible evils in his flesh rather than, by inflicting death on himself, to be rid of all torments, or other holy men from our writings, most lofty in supreme authority and most worthy of faith, who chose to bear the captivity and dominion of enemies rather than to inflict death on themselves; but from their own writings I will prefer to that Marcus Cato Marcus Regulus.

For Cato had never conquered Caesar, to whom, when conquered, he disdained to be subjected, and, lest he be subjected, chose to be killed by himself: but Regulus had already conquered the Carthaginians, and as a Roman commander had brought back to the Roman dominion a victory not to be mourned over fellow citizens but to be praised over enemies; yet, afterward conquered by them, he preferred to bear them by serving rather than to be rid of them by dying.

Accordingly he preserved both patience under the dominion of the Carthaginians and constancy in his love of the Romans, taking neither his conquered body away from the enemy nor his unconquered soul away from his fellow citizens. Nor was it from love of this life that he was unwilling to kill himself. This he proved when, for the sake of his promise and oath, he returned without any hesitation to those same enemies whom he had offended more grievously in the senate with words than in war with arms. So great a despiser of this life, then, since he chose, with the enemies raging, to end it through any penalties rather than to destroy himself, beyond doubt judged it a great crime for a man to destroy himself.

Among all their praiseworthy men, illustrious for the marks of virtue, the Romans bring forward none better, whom neither prosperity corrupted—for in so great a victory he remained most poor (See Livy, Periochae 18; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 4.4)—nor misfortune broke, for he returned undaunted to such destruction.

Further, if the bravest and most illustrious men, defenders of an earthly fatherland and worshipers of gods—false indeed, yet not false but most truthful worshipers, even in their swearing—who could strike enemies conquered by the custom and law of war, these, when conquered by enemies, were unwilling to strike themselves, and, though they did not in the least dread death, nevertheless preferred to bear their conquering masters rather than to inflict it on themselves: how much more will Christians, worshiping the true God and longing for the heavenly fatherland, refrain from this deed, if the divine arrangement should for a time subject them, to be proved or amended, to enemies—those whom he who came so humbly for their sake, the Most High, does not desert in that humility—especially those whom the rights of no military power or such service bind to strike even a conquered enemy.

What error so evil, then, creeps in, that a man should kill himself, either because an enemy has sinned against him, or lest the enemy sin against him, when he would not dare to kill that very enemy who has sinned or is about to sin?

25. But it is to be feared and guarded against, it is said, lest the body, subjected to lust, by a most enticing pleasure allure the soul to consent to sin. Accordingly, they say, not now on account of another's but on account of one's own sin, before anyone commits this, he ought to kill himself. In no way indeed will the soul do this—consent to the lust of its own flesh aroused by another's lust—which is subject rather to God and his wisdom than to the body and its desire. But nevertheless, if it is a detestable deed and a damnable crime to kill even oneself, as the manifest truth proclaims, who would be so foolish as to say: "let us now sin, lest afterward perhaps we sin; let us now perpetrate murder, lest afterward perhaps we fall into adultery"? Surely, if iniquity so dominates that not innocence but rather sins are chosen, is it not better to have an adultery uncertain about the future than a murder certain in the present? Is it not better to commit a shameful deed which may be healed by repentance than such a deed where no room for wholesome repentance is left?

I have said these things on account of those men or women who think that violence by which they may die ought to be inflicted on themselves, not for the sake of avoiding another's sin, but their own, lest, aroused under another's lust, they perhaps consent to their own. But far be it from the Christian mind, which trusts in its God and, with hope placed in him, relies on his help—far be it, I say, that such a mind should yield to any pleasures of the flesh to consent to baseness. But if that disobedience of desire, which still dwells in our dying members, is moved, contrary to the law of our will, as it were by its own law, how much more is it without fault in the body of one not consenting, if it is without fault in the body of one sleeping!

26. But certain holy women, it is said, in the time of persecution, in order to escape those who pursued their chastity, threw themselves into a river that would seize and kill them, and in that way died, and their martyrdoms are celebrated with most frequent veneration in the Catholic Church. About these I dare to judge nothing rashly. For whether the divine authority persuaded the Church by certain trustworthy testimonies (See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 8.12) to honor their memory thus, I do not know; and it may be that it is so. For what if they did this, not deceived in a human way but commanded by God, not erring but obeying? As about Samson it is not lawful for us to believe otherwise. But when God commands and intimates without any ambiguities that he commands, who would call obedience a crime? Who would accuse the compliance of piety?

But not on that account does whoever has resolved to sacrifice his son to God act without crime, because Abraham did this even with praise. For when a soldier too, obeying the authority under which he is lawfully placed, kills a man, by no law of his city is he guilty of murder; on the contrary, unless he did it, he is guilty of deserting and despising the command; but if he had done it of his own accord and on his own authority, he would have fallen into the crime of shed human blood. And so the thing for which he is punished if he did it uncommanded is the thing for which he will be punished unless he does it when commanded.

But if it is so when a commander commands, how much more when the Creator commands! Whoever, then, hears that he is not permitted to kill himself, let him do it if he has been commanded by one whose commands it is not permitted to despise; only let him see whether the divine command wavers with no uncertainty.

We reach the conscience through the ear; we do not usurp for ourselves the judgment of hidden things. No one knows what is going on in a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him (1 Cor 2:11). This we say, this we assert, this in every way we approve: that no one ought to inflict a voluntary death on himself, as if by fleeing temporal troubles, lest he fall into perpetual ones; no one on account of another's sins, lest by this very act he begin to have a most grievous one of his own, whom another's did not defile; no one on account of his own past sins, on account of which this life is the more needed, that they may be able to be healed by repentance; no one as if from a desire for the better life which is hoped for after death, because the better life after death does not receive those guilty of their own death.

27. There remains one cause, about which I had begun to speak, on account of which it is thought useful that anyone should kill himself, namely, lest he rush into sin either by flattering pleasure or by raging pain. If we are willing to admit this cause, it will go so far as to bring it about that men are to be urged rather to kill themselves then, when, washed by the laver of holy regeneration, they have received the remission of all their sins. For that is the time for guarding against all future sins, when all past ones have been blotted out. But if a voluntary death is rightly done, why is it not done then most of all? Why does each baptized person spare himself? Why does he again insert his freed head into so many perils of this life, when it is of the easiest power, by inflicting death on himself, to avoid them all—and it is written: he who loves danger will fall into it (Sir 3:27)?

Why, then, are so many and so great perils loved—or, certainly, even if they are not loved, undertaken—when one remains in this life, from which it is permitted to depart? Or does so insipid a perversity overturn the heart and turn it away from the consideration of truth, that, if anyone ought to kill himself lest by the dominion of one captor he fall into sin, he should think he must live so as to endure the world itself, full through all its hours of temptations—both such as is feared under one master and innumerable others, without which this life is not led? What cause is there, then, why we should consume our time in those exhortations by which, addressing the baptized, we strive to kindle them either to virginal integrity or to the continence of widowhood or to the very fidelity of the marriage bed See Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 45.13; 57.19; 60.5; 136.9; 143.5: NBA 25, 26, 28; Sermons 192.2; 223.1: NBA 32/1., when we have better and, from all perils of sinning, more removed shortcuts—so that, whomever we could persuade, after the most recent remission of sins, to seize and inflict death on themselves, we might send them to the Lord sounder and purer?

Further, if whoever thinks this is to be attempted and urged is—I do not say foolish, but mad: with what face, after all, does he say to a man, "kill yourself, lest to your small sins you add a graver one while you live under a master of barbarous and shameless morals," who can only say most wickedly, "kill yourself, all your sins being absolved, lest you again commit such or even worse, while you live in a world enticing with so many impure pleasures, raging with so many unspeakable cruelties, hostile with so many errors and terrors"? Because it is wrong to say this, it is surely wrong to kill oneself.

For if any just cause could exist for doing this of one's own accord, beyond doubt there would be none more just than this. But since not even this is just, therefore there is none.

28. Let not your life, then, O faithful of Christ, be a weariness to you, if your chastity was made a mockery by enemies. You have a great and true consolation, if you retain a faithful conscience that you did not consent to the sins of those who were permitted to sin against you. But if perhaps you ask why they were permitted, the providence of the Creator and Ruler of the world is indeed deep, and his judgments are unsearchable and his ways inscrutable (Rom 11:33);

but nevertheless question your souls faithfully, lest perhaps you have lifted yourselves up too inflatedly over this good of integrity and continence or chastity, and, delighted with human praises, have even envied others in this. I do not accuse what I do not know, nor do I hear what your hearts, questioned, answer you. Yet if they answer that it is so, do not wonder that you have lost that from which you were eager to please men, and that there has remained to you that which cannot be shown to men. If you did not consent to those sinning, divine help came to the divine grace, that it might not be lost; human reproach succeeded to human glory, that it might not be loved. Be consoled in both, faint-hearted ones—on the one side proved, on the other chastised; on the one side justified, on the other amended.

But those whose hearts, questioned, answer that they never prided themselves on the good of virginity or widowhood or marital chastity, but, consenting with the humble, exulted with trembling over the gift of God (Ps 2:11), and did not envy anyone an equal excellence of holiness and chastity, but, setting human praise (which is wont to be paid the greater the rarer the good that demands praise) below, wished rather that their number should be larger than that they themselves should stand out more in fewness: let not these, who are such, even if barbarian lust crushed some of them too, complain that this was permitted, nor on that account believe that God neglects such things because he permits what no one commits with impunity. For certain weights, as it were, of evil desires are both relaxed by a present hidden divine judgment and reserved for a manifest final one.

But perhaps those who are well conscious to themselves that they did not lift up an inflated heart over this good of chastity, and yet suffered the enemy's violence in the flesh, had something of hidden weakness which could have been lifted up into the haughtiness of pride, had they escaped this humiliation in that devastation. As, then, some were snatched away by death, lest malice change their understanding (Wis 4:11), so something was snatched from these by force, lest prosperity change their modesty.

For both, then—those who were already proud over their flesh, that it had suffered the foul contact of no one, or perhaps could have become proud had it not been touched by the violence of enemies—chastity was not taken away, but humility was persuaded; the swelling of the one was relieved as it stood within, the swelling of the other was met as it threatened.

Although that too is not to be left unsaid, that to some who suffered these things the good of continence could seem to be reckoned among bodily goods and to remain only if the body were touched by no one's lust; and not to be placed in the divinely aided strength of the will alone, so that both body and spirit may be holy; nor to be such a good as cannot be taken away against the will of the soul; which error was perhaps taken from them. For when they consider with what conscience they served God, and with unshaken faith do not think of him that he could in any way desert those serving him thus and calling upon him, and cannot doubt how much chastity pleases him, they see it follows that he would in no way have permitted these things to befall his holy ones, if in that way the holiness could perish which he conferred on them and loves in them.

29. And so the whole household of the supreme and true God has its own consolation, not a deceptive one nor placed in the hope of wavering or slipping things, and a temporal life itself in no way to be regretted, in which it is schooled for the eternal one, and uses earthly goods as a pilgrim and is not captivated by them, while by evils it is either proved or amended. But those who insult its uprightness and say to it, when perchance it has come into some temporal evils, where is your God? (Ps 42:3 (41:4))—let them themselves say where their gods are, when they suffer such things as those for whose avoidance they either worship them or contend that they are to be worshiped.

For it answers thus: my God is present everywhere, everywhere whole, enclosed nowhere, who can be present in secret, be absent without being moved; he, when he stirs me up with adverse things, either examines my merits or chastises my sins, and reserves for me an eternal reward for temporal evils piously endured; but who are you, with whom it is worthwhile even to speak about your gods, much less about my God, who is terrible above all gods, since all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens (Ps 96:4-5 (95:4-5))?

30. If that Scipio Nasica of yours, once your pontiff, whom, under the terror of the Punic War, when the best man was being sought to receive the Phrygian sacred rites, the whole senate chose (See Livy, From the Founding of the City 29.14.6-9; Velleius Paterculus, History 2.31)—whose face perhaps you would not dare to look upon—were alive, he himself would restrain you from this shamelessness. For why, when afflicted by adverse things, do you complain about Christian times, except because you desire to have your luxury secure and, with all the harshness of troubles removed, to dissolve in the most ruined morals? For you do not desire to have peace and to abound in every kind of resources in order to use these goods honorably—that is, modestly, soberly, temperately, piously—but in order that an infinite variety of pleasures may be sought out in mad extravagances, and that from prosperity may arise those evils in morals which are worse than raging enemies.

But that Scipio, your supreme pontiff, that man whom by the judgment of the whole senate was judged best, fearing this calamity for you, did not wish Carthage, then the rival of the Roman empire, to be destroyed, and contradicted Cato when he was deciding that it should be destroyed (See Livy, Periochae 49; Florus, Epitome 1.31.4-5; Appian, The Punic Wars 69), fearing security for weak souls as an enemy, and seeing that terror was a necessary and suitable guardian for the citizens as if for wards.

Nor did his opinion deceive him: by the event itself it was proved how truly he spoke. For when Carthage was destroyed—a great terror of the Roman commonwealth being thus driven away and extinguished—so many evils arising from prosperous things immediately followed, that, with concord corrupted and broken, first by savage and bloody seditions, then soon by a chain of evil causes even by civil wars, such great slaughters were produced, so much blood was shed, monstrousness raged with such great desire for proscriptions and plunderings, that those Romans who, in a more upright life, feared evils from enemies, with the integrity of life lost, suffered crueler ones from fellow citizens; and that very lust for mastery, which among the other vices of the human race was present in a less diluted form in the whole Roman people, after it had conquered in a few more powerful men, oppressed the rest, worn down and wearied, even with the yoke of slavery.

31. For when would that lust rest in most proud minds, until by continuous honors it arrived at royal power? But the means of continuing honors would not exist unless ambition prevailed. And ambition would in no way prevail unless in a people corrupted by avarice and luxury.

But a greedy and luxurious people was produced by prosperous things, which that Nasica most providently judged were to be guarded against, when he was unwilling that the greatest, strongest, and most opulent city of the enemy be taken away, so that lust might be pressed down by fear, and lust pressed down might not run riot, and luxury checked, so that avarice too might not run rampant; and, with these vices barred out, virtue useful to the city might flourish and grow, and a liberty fitting to that virtue might remain to it.

Hence too it was, and from this most provident love of the fatherland it came, that this same supreme pontiff of yours, chosen (which must often be said) without any disagreement of opinions by the senate of that time as the best man, restrained the senate, when it was striving to construct an enclosure for a theater, from this plan and desire, and persuaded it by a most weighty speech not to allow Greek luxury to creep in upon the manly morals of the fatherland and not to consent to a foreign wickedness for the weakening and enervating of Roman virtue; and he prevailed so much by his authority that, the senatorial providence being moved by his words, it thereafter forbade even the benches, heaped up for the hour, which the city had already begun to use at the spectacle of the games, to be set in place See Livy, Periochae 48; Appian, The Civil Wars 1.28; Orosius, History 4.21.4; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 2.4.2..

With how great zeal would this man have removed from the city of Rome the very stage-shows themselves, if he had dared to resist the authority of those whom he thought to be gods, whom he did not understand to be harmful demons—or, if he understood it, thought rather that they too were to be placated than despised! For the heavenly teaching had not yet been declared to the nations, which, cleansing the heart by faith, would change human affection by humble piety toward laying hold of heavenly or supercelestial things and free it from the dominion of proud demons.

32. But nevertheless know, you who are ignorant of these things, and take note, you who pretend not to know them; you who murmur against the liberator from such masters, attend: stage-shows, spectacles of baseness and the license of vanities, were instituted at Rome not by the vices of men but by the commands of your gods. More tolerably would you offer divine honors to that Scipio than worship gods of this kind. For those gods were not better than their own pontiff. Behold, attend, if a mind so long drunk with quaffed errors permits you to think anything sound! The gods commanded stage-shows to be exhibited to them for the quelling of a pestilence of bodies (See Livy, From the Founding of the City 7.2.1-3; Varro, Antiquities, fr. 167); but the pontiff, for the guarding against a pestilence of souls, forbade the very stage to be set up. If by any light of mind you set the soul before the body, choose whom you will worship!

For not even did that pestilence of bodies subside because the delicate madness of stage-shows crept in upon a warlike people, before accustomed only to the games of the circus; but the cunning of unspeakable spirits, foreseeing that the pestilence would now cease at its due end, took care, from this occasion, to send in another far graver one, in which it greatly rejoices—not upon bodies but upon morals—which so blinded the souls of the wretched with such great darkness, and so defiled them with such great deformity, that even now (which will perhaps be incredible if it is heard by our descendants), with the city of Rome laid waste, those whom this pestilence possessed and who, fleeing from there, were able to reach Carthage, raged in the theaters daily, vying in their madness for the actors.

33. O senseless minds! What is this so great—not error, but frenzy—that, while the eastern peoples bewailed your ruin, as we have heard, and the greatest cities in the most remote lands kept public mourning and grief, you should seek out theaters, enter them, fill them, and do things far more insane than they had been before? This blight and pestilence of souls, this overthrow of uprightness and honor, that Scipio feared for you when he forbade theaters to be constructed, when he discerned that you could easily be corrupted and overthrown by prosperous things, when he was unwilling that you be secure from the enemy's terror. For he did not judge that commonwealth happy whose walls stood while its morals fell. But in you what the impious demons seduced prevailed more than what provident men guarded against.

Hence it is that you do not wish the evils which you do to be imputed to you, but the evils which you suffer you impute to Christian times. For in your security you seek not a peaceful commonwealth but an unpunished luxury, you who, depraved by prosperous things, could not be corrected even by adverse ones. That Scipio wished you to be terrified by the enemy, lest you flow into luxury; but, not even crushed by the enemy, you did not repress your luxury, you lost the usefulness of calamity, and you became most wretched and remained most wicked.

34. And yet that you live is God's doing, who, by sparing you, admonishes that you be corrected by repenting; who granted even to you ungrateful ones that you might escape the hostile hands, whether under the name of his servants or in the places of his martyrs. Romulus and Remus are said to have established a sanctuary, where whoever fled should be free from all liability, seeking to increase the multitude of the city to be founded. A wondrous example preceded, in honor of Christ. The overthrowers of the city established what its founders had established before. But what is great if they did this so that the number of their citizens might be filled up, which these did so that the multitude of their enemies might be preserved?

35. These things, and others if it can more abundantly and fittingly, let the redeemed household of the Lord Christ and the pilgrim city of King Christ answer to its enemies. Let it indeed remember that among those very enemies are hidden future citizens, lest it think it fruitless that, until it reaches those who confess, it bears those who are hostile; just as, from their number too, the city of God has joined to it, as long as it is a pilgrim in the world, by the communion of the sacraments, those who will not be with it in the eternal lot of the saints—who are partly in secret, partly in the open, who do not hesitate to murmur even with those very enemies against God, whose sacrament they bear, now filling the theaters with them, now the churches with us.

But concerning the correction of certain even of such people, there is much less to be despaired of, if among the most open adversaries predestined friends lie hidden, still unknown even to themselves.

For these two cities are entangled in this age and mutually mingled, until they are separated at the last judgment; concerning whose rise and course and appointed ends I will set forth what I think must be said, as far as I shall be divinely aided, for the sake of the glory of the city of God, which, with the contrary things compared by way of contrast, will stand out the more clearly.

36. But there are still certain things I must say against those who lay the disasters of the Roman commonwealth to the charge of our religion, by which they are forbidden to sacrifice to their gods. For there must be recalled the evils, and how great, that could occur to mind, or will seem enough, which that city suffered, or the provinces belonging to its empire, before their sacrifices had been forbidden; all of which they would beyond doubt attribute to us, if our religion had then either been clear to them, or had thus forbidden them the sacrilegious rites.

Then it must be shown what morals of theirs, and for what cause, the true God, in whose power are all kingdoms, deigned to aid for the increase of their empire, and how those whom they think gods aided them in nothing, and rather how much they harmed them by deceiving and deluding.

Finally it will be said against those who, refuted and convicted by the most manifest proofs, try to assert that the gods are to be worshiped not for the sake of the usefulness of the present life, but for the sake of that which will come after death. This question, unless I am mistaken, will be much more laborious and worthy of a subtler discussion, so that in it the matter may be argued even against the philosophers—not just any, but those who among them are renowned with the most excellent glory and agree with us on many points, both about the immortality of the soul and that the true God founded the world and about his providence, by which he rules the universe that he founded.

But since they too must be refuted in those things in which they think against us, we ought not to fail in this office, so that, the impious contradictions having been refuted to the best of our strength, which God will impart, we may assert the city of God and true piety and the worship of God, in which alone everlasting blessedness is truly promised. Let this, then, be the limit of this volume, so that next we may take up the matters arranged from another beginning.

1. If the weak sense of human custom did not dare to resist the clear reason of truth, but submitted its languor to wholesome teaching as to a medicine, until it were healed by divine help with the faith of piety obtaining it, there would be no need of much discourse to refute the error of any empty opinion in those who think rightly and explain their thoughts in sufficient words. But now, since that is the greater and fouler sickness of foolish minds, by which they defend their irrational impulses—even after reason has been fully rendered, as much as is owed by man to man—as if it were reason and truth itself, whether through excessive blindness, by which not even open things are discerned, or through the most obstinate stubbornness, by which even the things that are discerned are not endured, there arises a necessity of speaking more copiously, for the most part, on clear matters, presenting them as it were not to be looked upon by those gazing, but in a certain way to be touched by those groping and shutting their eyes.

And yet what end of disputing and measure of speaking will there be, if we should think we must always reply to those who reply? For those who either cannot understand what is said, or are so hard with adversity of mind that, even if they have understood, they do not obey, reply, as it is written, and speak iniquity (Ps 94:4 (93:4)), and are untiringly vain. If we should wish to refute their contrary sayings as often as they have determined, with an obstinate brow, not to consider what they say, while in some way or other they contradict our disputations, you see how endless and toilsome and fruitless it would be. Wherefore I would not wish either you yourself, my son Marcellinus, or others whom this labor of ours usefully and freely serves in the love of Christ, to be such judges of my writings as always to desire a reply when they have heard something contradicted in what is read, lest they become like those little women whom the Apostle mentions, always learning and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3:7).

2. In the preceding book, then, when I had set out to speak about the city of God, from which this whole work, with his help, was taken in hand, it occurred to me that I must first resist those who attribute to the Christian religion these wars by which this world is worn down, and especially the recent devastation of the city of Rome by the barbarians,

by which they are forbidden to serve demons with unspeakable sacrifices—when rather they ought to attribute this to Christ: that for the sake of his name, contrary to the established practice and custom of wars, the barbarians offered them free, as places to which they might flee, the religious and most spacious places; and in many things they so honored the service rendered to Christ—not only true service, but even that feigned out of fear—that what it would have been permitted to do against them by the law of war they judged to be unlawful for themselves.

Thence arose the question, why these divine benefits reached even the impious and ungrateful, and why likewise those hard things which were done in a hostile manner afflicted the pious together with the impious?

This question, spread over many points (for in all the daily gifts of God or disasters of men, both of which often befall those who live well and those who live ill mingled and without distinction, it is wont to move many), I dwelt on for a while, in order to resolve it according to the necessity of the work undertaken: most of all to console the holy and piously chaste women, against whom something was perpetrated by the enemy that brought the pain of shame, even if it did not take away the firmness of chastity, lest they should regret their life, who have no ground on which they can regret any wickedness.

Then I said a few things against those who, with most shameless effrontery, harass the Christians afflicted by those adverse things, and especially the modesty of the women who were humbled, though chaste and holy—men who are most worthless and most irreverent, far degenerate from those very Romans whose many illustrious deeds are praised and celebrated in the memory of literature, indeed strongly opposed to the glory of those men.

For they had made Rome—begotten and increased by the labors of the ancients—fouler while it stood than when it fell, since indeed in its ruin stones and timbers fell, but in the life of these men there fell all the defenses and ornaments not of walls but of morals, when their hearts burned with more deadly desires than the roofs of that city did with fires.

With these things said, I first brought the book to an end. Next, then, I set out to say what evils that city suffered from its origin, whether within itself or in the provinces already subject to it, all of which they would attribute to the Christian religion, if even then the gospel teaching had resounded most freely with its testimony against their false and deceitful gods.

3. But remember that, in recalling these things, I am still dealing with the unskilled, from whose lack of skill that common proverb too arose: "rain is lacking, the Christians are the cause." (Tertullian, Apology 40.2) For those of them who, trained in liberal studies, love history, know these things most easily; but, in order to make the crowds of the uneducated most hostile to us, they pretend not to know, and strive to confirm this among the crowd: that the disasters by which the human race must be afflicted at fixed intervals of places and times happen by reason of the Christian name, which against their gods is spread through all the world with immense fame and most illustrious renown.

Let them, then, recall with us, before Christ had come in the flesh, before his name became known to the peoples with that glory which they envy in vain, by what calamities Roman affairs were worn down in manifold and various ways, and in these let them defend their gods, if they can, if they are worshiped for this purpose, that their worshipers may not suffer these evils; of which, if they now suffer any, they contend that it is to be imputed to us. For why did they allow those things which I am about to relate to befall their worshipers, before the proclaimed name of Christ offended them and forbade their sacrifices?

4. First, why were their gods unwilling to take care that they should not have the worst morals? For the true God deservedly neglected those by whom he was not worshiped; but why did those gods, from whose worship the most ungrateful men complain that they are forbidden, aid their worshipers by no laws to live well? Surely it was fitting that, just as these took care of those gods' rites, so those should take care of these men's deeds.

But it is answered that everyone is wicked by his own will. Who would deny this? Nevertheless it pertained to the gods, as counselors, not to hide from their peoples and worshipers the precepts of a good life, but to offer them by clear proclamation, even to confront and reprove sinners through seers, openly to threaten penalties to evildoers, to promise rewards to those who live rightly. What such thing ever rang out with a ready and prominent voice in the temples of those gods?

We too once came, as young men, to the spectacles and mockeries of the sacrileges; we watched the possessed, we listened to the musicians, we were delighted by the most shameful games which were exhibited to the gods and goddesses, to the virgin Caelestis and to Berecynthia, the mother of all Ovid, Fasti 4.355; Virgil, Aeneid 6.784; 9.82; Apuleius, Metamorphoses 6.4; 11.5; Ammianus Marcellinus, Histories 22.13.3; Arnobius, Against the Nations 5.13; Tertullian, To the Nations 2.8.5; Apology 24.7; Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 62.7; 98.14: NBA 26, 27/1; Sermons 105.9: NBA 30/2; Herodian, Roman History 5.15; Greek Anthology 6.217-18; Minucius Felix, Octavius 7.3., before whose litter, on the solemn day of her washing, such things were sung in public by the most worthless stage-players as it would befit—I do not say the mother of the gods, but the mother of any senators whatever or of any honorable men, indeed such things as it would not befit even the mother of the stage-players themselves to hear. For human modesty has something toward parents which not even wickedness itself can take away. That baseness of obscene words and deeds, then, the stage-players themselves would be ashamed to perform at home, for the sake of rehearsal, before their own mothers, which they performed in public before the mother of the gods, with a most crowded multitude of both sexes watching and listening. If she could be present there, drawn by enticing curiosity and surrounded by the crowd, she ought at least to have gone away confounded, her chastity offended.

What are sacrileges, if those are sacred rites? Or what is defilement, if that is a washing? And these were called courses, as if a banquet were being celebrated, at which the unclean demons might be fed as it were with their own feasts. For who would not perceive what kind of spirits are delighted by such obscenities—unless he either does not know whether there are any unclean spirits at all deceiving under the name of gods, or leads such a life in which he both wishes these rather than the true God to be propitious and dreads them when angry?

5. I would by no means wish to have as a judge in this matter those who study to be delighted by the vices of a most shameful custom rather than to struggle against them, but that very Nasica Scipio, who was chosen by the senate as the best man, by whose hands the image of that same demon was received and carried into the City (Livy, From the Founding of the City 29.14.5-14; Diodorus Siculus, Library 34.33.2). He would tell us whether he would wish his own mother to deserve so well of the commonwealth that divine honors should be decreed to her; just as it is established that both Greeks and Romans and other nations decreed such things to certain mortals whose benefits toward themselves they had highly esteemed, and believed them to have been made immortal and received into the number of the gods See Servius, On Virgil's Aeneid 8.275; Ennius, Euhemerus, fr. 10 (see Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11.44); Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.42.119; 2.24; Diodorus Siculus, Library 6.2.4; Minucius Felix, Octavius 20.1.. Surely he would wish so great a happiness for his mother, if it could be done.

Further, if we then asked him whether he would wish those base things to be celebrated among her divine honors: would he not cry out that he preferred his mother to lie dead without any sensation rather than to live as a goddess for this, that she should gladly hear those things? Far be it that a senator of the Roman people, endowed with that mind by which he forbade a theater to be built in the city of brave men, should so wish his mother to be worshiped that she should be propitiated by such rites as a matron would be offended by such words. Nor would he in any way believe that the modesty of a praiseworthy woman could be so changed into its contrary by divinity that her worshipers should invoke her with such honors as the insults which, if hurled at anyone while she lived among men, unless she closed her ears and withdrew herself, both her kinsmen and her husband and her children would blush for her.

Accordingly such a mother of the gods—such as it would shame even the worst man to have as a mother—when she was about to occupy the minds of the Romans, sought the best man, not one whom she might make so by admonishing and helping, but one whom she might delude by deceiving, like her of whom it is written: but a woman hunts the precious souls of men (Prov 6:26), so that that soul of great natural gifts, exalted as it were by this divine testimony and truly thinking itself best, should not seek true piety and religion, without which every talent, however praiseworthy, fades and falls through pride. How, then, did that goddess seek the best man except treacherously, when she seeks in her own rites such things as the best men abhor to apply to their banquets?

6. Hence it is that they did not take care about the life and morals of the cities and peoples by whom those divinities were worshiped, so that they permitted them to be filled with such horrible and detestable evils, and to become most wicked, without any terrible prohibition of theirs—not in the field and the vines, not in the house and money, not, finally, in the body itself, which is subject to the mind, but in the very mind, in the very soul that rules the flesh.

Or if they did forbid it, let this rather be shown, let this be proved. And let them not boast to us of some whispers or other, breathed into the ears of a very few and handed down as if by a secret religion, by which uprightness and chastity of life are learned (Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions 19-23);

but let there be pointed out or recalled places at some time consecrated to such assemblies—not where games were performed with the obscene voices and motions of actors, nor where the Fugalia were celebrated with all license of baseness poured out (and truly Fugalia, but of modesty and honor);

but where the peoples might hear what the gods commanded about restraining avarice, breaking ambition, reining in luxury, where the wretched might learn what Persius rebukes them for needing to learn, saying: learn, O wretched ones, and know the causes of things: what we are and for what end we are born to live, what order has been given, and where and from what point the turn around the goal is gentle, what limit there is to wealth, what it is lawful to wish for, what use harsh coin has, how much it is fitting to bestow on one's fatherland and dear kinsmen, what God has commanded you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed (Persius, Satires 3.66-72).

Let it be told in what places the precepts of these gods who teach such things were wont to be recited and frequently heard by their worshiping peoples, just as we have shown that churches were instituted for this purpose wherever the Christian religion is spread.

7. Or will they perhaps remind us of the schools and disputations of the philosophers? First, these are not Roman but Greek; or if they are now Roman for this reason, that Greece too became a Roman province, they are not the precepts of gods but the inventions of men, who, endowed with the keenest minds, tried as best they could, by reasoning, to track down what lay hidden in the nature of things, what in morals was to be sought and what shunned, what in the very rules of reasoning was drawn by a fixed connection, or what was not consequent or even contradictory. And some of them found certain great things, insofar as they were divinely aided; but insofar as they were hindered in a human way, they erred—most of all when divine providence justly resisted their pride, so that it might show, even by comparison with these men, the way of piety rising from humility to things above; whence there will later be a place for us, in the will of God the true Lord, to inquire and discuss.

But nevertheless, if the philosophers found anything that could be enough for leading a good life and attaining a blessed one: how much more justly would divine honors be decreed to such men!

how much better and more honorably would his books be read in a temple of Plato than, in the temples of demons, the Galli be castrated, the effeminate consecrated, the madmen gashed, and whatever else either cruel or base, either basely cruel or cruelly base, is wont to be celebrated in the rites of such gods!

how much more satisfactory it was, for instructing the youth in justice, that the laws of the gods be publicly recited than that the laws and institutions of the ancestors be vainly praised!

For all the worshipers of such gods, as soon as lust has driven them, steeped, as Persius says, in burning poison (Persius, Satires 3.37), look more to what Jupiter did than to what Plato taught or Cato judged.

Hence in Terence a shameful youth looks at a certain picture painted on a wall, where this picture was: how Jupiter, they say, once sent a golden shower into Danae's lap (Terence, The Eunuch 584-85), and from this so great an authority he furnishes a defense for his own baseness, when he boasts that in it he imitates a god. But what a god! he says; one who shakes the temples of heaven with his topmost thunder. Should I, a mere little man, not do that? I did indeed do it, and gladly Terence, The Eunuch 590-91; see Augustine, Confessions 1.16.26: NBA 1; and below, ch. 12..

8. But, it is said, these things are not handed down in the rites of the gods, but in the fables of the poets. I do not wish to say that those mystical things are baser than these theatrical ones; this I say, which history convicts those who deny it: that those very games, in which the fictions of the poets reign, the Romans introduced into the rites of their gods not through unskilled compliance, but the gods themselves brought it about, by harshly commanding and in a certain way extorting, that they be solemnly performed for them and consecrated to their honor; which in the first book I touched on with a brief mention (Varro, Antiquities, fr. 168; see 1.32).

For when a pestilence was growing worse, stage-shows were first instituted at Rome by the authority of the pontiffs (Varro, Antiquities, fr. 167; Livy, From the Founding of the City 7.2.1-3). Who, then, in leading his life, would not think that those things are rather to be followed by him which are acted in games instituted by divine authority, than those which are written in laws promulgated by human counsel? If the poets falsely reported Jupiter an adulterer, surely the chaste gods ought to have been angry and to have taken vengeance because so great a wickedness was fabricated through human games—not because it was neglected.

And these are the more tolerable of the stage-shows, namely comedies and tragedies—that is, the fables of the poets to be acted in the spectacles—composed with much baseness of matter, but at least with no obscenity of words, as many other things are; which boys are even compelled by old men to read and learn among the studies that are called honorable and liberal.

9. But what the ancient Romans thought about this, Cicero testifies in the books which he wrote On the Republic, where Scipio, disputing, says: comedies could never have proven their shameful deeds acceptable in the theaters, unless the custom of life allowed it (Cicero, On the Republic 4.10.11). And the more ancient Greeks indeed preserved a certain consistency with their faulty opinion, among whom it was even permitted by law that comedy might say whatever it wished, about whomever it wished, by name.

And so, as Africanus speaks in those same books, whom did it not touch—or rather, whom did it not harass? whom did it spare? Granted, it injured base popular men, seditious in the commonwealth, Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus. Let us bear with it, he says, although it is better for such citizens to be branded by a censor than by a poet. But that Pericles, when with the greatest authority he had for very many years governed his city at home and in war, should be assailed in verses and that these be acted on the stage, was no more fitting than if our Plautus, he says, or Naevius had wished to speak ill of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius of Marcus Cato.

Then a little after: our Twelve Tables, he says, on the contrary, though they had made very few things punishable by death, thought this also was to be made so among them: if anyone had chanted or composed a song which brought infamy or disgrace upon another. Excellently. For our life ought to be exposed to the judgments of magistrates and to lawful disputes, not to the talents of poets, nor ought we to hear reproach except on the condition that it be permitted to reply and to defend ourselves in a trial (Cicero, On the Republic 4.10.11-12; see Twelve Tables 8.1a).

These things I have thought ought to be excerpted word for word from Cicero's fourth book On the Republic, some things being either omitted or slightly changed for the sake of easier understanding. For it pertains much to the matter which I am endeavoring to explain, if I shall be able. He then says other things and so concludes this passage, in order to show that it displeased the ancient Romans either that any living man should be praised on the stage or that he should be reviled.

But, as I said, the Greeks wished this to be permitted—more shamelessly indeed, yet more consistently—since they saw that reproaches were acceptable and pleasing to their gods, not only those of men but even of the gods themselves, in the stage-fables, whether those things were fabricated by the poets or their real shameful deeds were recalled and acted in the theaters; and would that these had seemed to their worshipers worthy only of laughter, and not also of imitation. For it would have been too proud to spare the reputation of the leaders of the city and of the citizens, where the divinities were unwilling that their own reputation be spared.

10. For as for what is brought forward in defense—that those things are not said truly against the gods, but falsely and fictitiously—that very thing is more wicked, if you consult the piety of religion; but if you consider the malice of the demons, what is more cunning for deceiving, what more crafty? For when a reproach is hurled at a good and useful leader of the fatherland, is it not the more unworthy the more remote it is from the truth and the more foreign to his life? What punishments, then, suffice, when so unspeakable, so signal an injury is done to God?

But the malign spirits, whom these people think gods, wish even the shameful deeds which they did not commit to be told of themselves, provided that they enmesh human minds in these opinions as in nets and drag them with themselves to the predestined punishment,

whether men committed those things whom they rejoice to have held as gods—men who rejoice in human errors, on whose behalf they even interpose themselves to be worshiped by a thousand arts of harming and deceiving (Virgil, Aeneid 7.338); or whether those crimes are not even the true crimes of any men, which nevertheless the most deceitful spirits gladly accept to be invented about the divinities,

so that an authority sufficiently suited, as it were brought down from heaven itself to the earth, may seem to exist for perpetrating wicked and base deeds.

Since, therefore, the Greeks felt themselves to be the servants of such divinities, they thought that in no way ought they to be spared by the poets amid so many and so great theatrical reproaches of them,

either desiring to be made even thus similar to their gods, or fearing lest, by seeking a more honorable reputation for themselves and in this way preferring themselves to them, they should provoke them to wrath.

11. To this consistency it pertains that they judged even the stage-actors of those same fables worthy of no small honor of the city, since indeed—which is also recalled in that book On the Republic—Aeschines the Athenian, a most eloquent man, when as a young man he had acted tragedies, took up public affairs, and the Athenians often sent Aristodemus, likewise a tragic actor, as an envoy to Philip on the greatest matters of peace and war (Cicero, On the Republic 4.11.13). For it was not thought consistent, when they saw the same arts and the same stage-games acceptable even to their gods, to reckon those through whom they were performed in the place and number of the infamous.

These things the Greeks did basely indeed, but certainly altogether in keeping with their gods, since they did not dare to withdraw the life of citizens from being torn by the tongues of poets and actors, by whom they saw the life of the gods carped at, with those very gods willing and glad; and the very men through whom those things were performed in the theaters—things which they had come to know were pleasing to the divinities to whom they were subject—they thought ought not only not to be despised in the city, but even to be most highly honored. For what cause could they find why they should honor priests, because through them they offered victims acceptable to the gods, and hold the stage-players reproachful, through whom they had learned, by the gods' own admonition, that that pleasure or honor was exhibited to the gods who demanded it and who, if it were not done, grew angry?

Especially since Labeo, whom they proclaim most skilled in matters of this kind (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.18.21), distinguishes good divinities from evil divinities even by this diversity of worship, asserting that the evil gods are propitiated by slaughters and mournful supplications, but the good ones by glad and pleasant observances, such as are, as he himself says, games, banquets, lectisternia. What sort of thing all this is, we will later, if God help, discuss more carefully (See 2.29; 3.17). Now, as far as concerns the present matter, whether all things are attributed to all of them as good in a mixed way (for it is not fitting that there be evil gods, since rather these, because they are unclean spirits, are all evil), or whether, by a fixed distinction, as it seemed to Labeo, those observances are distributed to the one kind and these to the other, the Greeks most fittingly hold both in honor—both the priests, through whom the victims are administered, and the stage-players, through whom the games are exhibited—lest they be convicted of doing an injury either to all their gods, if the games too are pleasing to all, or, what is more unworthy, to those whom they think good, if the games are loved by them alone.

12. But the Romans, as Scipio boasts in that disputation On the Republic, were unwilling to have their life and reputation subjected to the reproaches and injuries of the poets, even sanctioning it with death if anyone dared to compose such a song. This indeed they established honorably enough as regards themselves, but as regards their gods proudly and irreligiously; for though they knew that they were torn not only patiently but even gladly by the reproaches and curses of the poets, they judged themselves rather than them to be unworthy of injuries of this kind, and protected themselves from them even by law, but mingled those things into the very solemn rites of the gods.

Do you then, after all, Scipio, praise that this license was denied to the Roman poets, that they might not inflict a reproach on any of the Romans, when you see that they spared none of your gods? Did the estimation of your senate-house seem to you to be held of more worth than the Capitol—indeed, of Rome alone than of the whole heaven—so that poets were forbidden even by law to exercise a slanderous tongue against your citizens, and against your gods they might hurl such great insults in safety, with no senator, no censor, no leader, no pontiff forbidding it? It was unworthy, you see, that Plautus or Naevius should speak ill of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius of Marcus Cato, and it was worthy that your Terence should incite the wickedness of young men by the shameful deed of Jupiter best and greatest?

13. But he would perhaps answer me, if he were alive: "How could we wish those things to be unpunished which the gods themselves wished to be sacred, since they both brought stage-shows—where such things are celebrated, recited, and acted—into Roman customs, and commanded them to be dedicated and exhibited for their own honors?" Why, then, were they not rather from this understood to be not true gods, nor at all worthy that that commonwealth should offer them divine honors?

For those whom it would in no way befit and in no way be fitting to worship, if they demanded games to be performed with insults to the Romans, how, I ask, were they thought worthy of worship—how were they not understood to be detestable spirits—who, from a desire of deceiving, demanded that their own crimes be celebrated among their honors?

And likewise the Romans, although they were now pressed by a harmful superstition, so as to worship those gods whom they saw had wished stage-basenesses to be consecrated to them, nevertheless, mindful of their own dignity and modesty, by no means honored the actors of such fables after the manner of the Greeks, but, as the same Scipio speaks in Cicero: since they held the art of acting and the whole stage in reproach, they wished that kind of men not only to lack the honor of the rest of the citizens, but even to be removed from their tribe by the censor's mark (Cicero, On the Republic 4.10.10). A prudence indeed illustrious and to be numbered among Roman praises; but I would wish that it followed itself, that it imitated itself. For behold, rightly, whoever of the Roman citizens had chosen to be a stage-player, not only was no place given him for honor, but he was even by the censor's mark not at all allowed to keep his own tribe.

O spirit of a city greedy for praise and genuinely Roman! But let it be answered to me: by what consistent reasoning are stage-men repelled from all honor, and stage-games mingled with the honors of the gods? Roman virtue had long not known those theatrical arts, which, if they were sought for the gratification of human pleasure, crept in by the vice of human morals.

The gods demanded that they be exhibited to them: how, then, is the stage-player cast out, through whom a god is worshiped? And with what face is the actor of that theatrical baseness branded, if the exactor of it is adored?

In this controversy let the Greeks and Romans contend. The Greeks think they rightly honor stage-men, because they worship gods who demand stage-games; but the Romans do not allow even the plebeian tribe—how much less the senatorial chamber—to be dishonored by stage-men. In this dispute a reasoning of this kind resolves the sum of the question. The Greeks propose: if such gods are to be worshiped, surely such men too are to be honored. The Romans assume: but in no way are such men to be honored. The Christians conclude: in no way, then, are such gods to be worshiped.

14. Then we ask, the poets themselves, the composers of such fables, who are forbidden by the law of the Twelve Tables to harm the reputation of citizens, why, hurling such reproachful insults at the gods, they are not held dishonorable like the stage-players. By what reasoning is it right that the actors of the poetic fictions and of ignominious gods be made infamous, while the authors are honored? Or is the palm perhaps rather to be given to the Greek Plato, who, when by reason he was forming what a city ought to be, judged that the poets, as adversaries of truth, ought to be driven from the city? He indeed both took ill the injuries of the gods and was unwilling that the minds of citizens be tinted and corrupted by fictions (Plato, Republic 377b-383c, 606e-608b; see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.11.27).

Compare now the humanity of Plato, driving the poets from the city to keep the citizens from being deceived, with the divinity of the gods, demanding stage-games for their honor.

He, that such things might not even be written, though he did not persuade by disputing, yet counseled the levity and lasciviousness of the Greeks; these, that such things might even be acted, extorted by commanding from the gravity and modesty of the Romans. And they wished not only that these things be acted, but that they be dedicated to themselves, consecrated to themselves, solemnly exhibited to themselves.

To which, after all, would a city more honorably decree divine honors? To Plato, forbidding these base and unspeakable things, or to the demons rejoicing in this deception of men, whom he could not persuade of the truth?

This Plato Labeo thought ought to be reckoned among the demigods, like Hercules, like Romulus. But he sets demigods before heroes; yet he places both among the divinities. Nevertheless, I do not doubt that this man, whom he calls a demigod, ought to be preferred not only to heroes but even to the gods themselves.

But the laws of the Romans come close to the disputations of Plato, since he condemns all poetic fictions, while these take from the poets at least the license of speaking ill of men; he removes the poets from the dwelling of the city itself, these remove at least the actors of poetic fables from the society of the city; and if they dared anything against the gods who demand stage-games, perhaps they would remove them entirely. In no way, then, could the Romans receive or hope to receive from their gods laws for instituting good morals or correcting evil ones, gods whom they overcome and convict by their own laws.

For those gods demand stage-games for their honor; these men repel stage-men from all honors. Those command the reproaches of the gods to be celebrated for themselves by poetic fictions; these deter the shamelessness of the poets from the reproaches of men. But that demigod Plato both resisted the lust of such gods, and showed, from the disposition of the Romans, what ought to be accomplished, who was altogether unwilling that the poets themselves—either lying at their own pleasure or setting before wretched men the worst deeds of the gods as things to be imitated—should live in a well-ordered city.

We indeed proclaim Plato neither a god nor a demigod, nor do we compare him to any holy angel of the supreme God, nor to a truthful prophet, nor to any apostle, nor to any martyr of Christ, nor to any Christian man; the reason of this opinion of ours will be explained, God prospering it, in its place (See 8.4). But nevertheless we judge that he—since they themselves wish him to have been a demigod—ought to be preferred, if not to Romulus and Hercules (although no historian or poet has said or invented that this man either killed his brother or perpetrated any shameful deed), at least certainly to Priapus, or to some Dog-headed one, or finally to Fever, divinities which the Romans received partly as foreign, partly consecrated as their own.

How, then, could such gods forbid, by good precepts and laws, the great evils of soul and morals as they threatened, or take care to root them out when implanted—gods who even took care that shameful deeds be sown and increased, desiring that such deeds, either their own or as if their own, become known to the peoples through theatrical celebrations, so that, as if by divine authority, the most worthless human lust might of its own accord be kindled, Cicero crying out against this in vain, who, when he treated of the poets, says: when the shout and approval of the people, as of some great and wise master, has come to them, what darkness do they spread, what fears do they bring in, what desires do they inflame! (Cicero, On the Republic 4.9.9)

15. But what reasoning—or rather, what flattery—is there in the choosing even of those false gods themselves? When that Plato, whom they wish to be a demigod, laboring with such great disputations lest human morals be corrupted by the evils of the soul, which are above all to be guarded against, they thought worthy of no sacred shrine, and preferred their own Romulus to many gods, although their more secret doctrine too commends him as a demigod rather than a god Ennius, Annals, fr. 59; Cicero, On the Republic 2.10.20; Tusculan Disputations 1.12.28; On the Nature of the Gods 2.24.62; Pliny, Natural History 28.4; Plutarch, Roman Questions 62..

For they even instituted a flamen for him, which kind of priesthood so excelled among Roman rites, as the apex testifies, that they had only three flamens instituted for three divinities (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.20.2): the Dial flamen for Jupiter, the Martial for Mars, the Quirinal for Romulus. For by the goodwill of the citizens, Romulus, as if received into heaven, was afterward named Quirinus.

And through this Romulus was preferred in this honor even to Neptune and Pluto, Jupiter's brothers, and to Saturn himself, their father, so that, as something great, the priesthood which they had assigned to Jupiter they assigned also to him, and to Mars as if his father, perhaps on his own account.

16. But if the Romans could have received laws of living from their gods, they would not, some years after Rome was founded, have borrowed from the Athenians the laws of Solon (Livy, From the Founding of the City 3.31.8), which, however, they did not keep as they received them, but tried to make better and more correct—although Lycurgus pretended that he had instituted laws for the Lacedaemonians by the authority of Apollo (Cicero, On Divination 1.43.96), which the Romans prudently were unwilling to believe, and therefore did not receive them from there. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingship, is said to have established certain laws which indeed would in no way suffice for governing a city (Cicero, On the Laws 2.8-10), and who established for them many sacred rites as well; yet he is not reported to have received those same laws from the divinities.

The evils of soul, then, the evils of life, the evils of morals, which are so great that by these their most learned men affirm that commonwealths perish even while their cities stand, their gods took no care that they should not befall their worshipers; on the contrary, that they might be increased, as was disputed above, they took care in every way.

17. Or were laws perhaps not established by the divinities for the Roman people for this reason, that, as Sallust says, right and good among them prevailed not by laws more than by nature (Sallust, Catiline 9.1)? From this right and good, I suppose, the Sabine women were carried off. For what is more just and better than that the daughters of others, drawn in by the trick of a spectacle, should not be received from their parents, but carried off by force, as each was able?

For if the Sabines acted unjustly in refusing them when asked, how much more unjust it was to seize them when not given! But more justly could a war be waged with that nation which had refused its daughters to its neighbors and borderers when sought in marriage, than with that which sought back those carried off. The former, then, should rather have been done; there Mars would aid his son in fighting, that he might avenge by arms the injury of the marriages refused, and in that way arrive at the women he had wished for.

For by some right of war, perhaps, the victor might justly carry off those unjustly refused; but by no right of peace did he seize those not given, and he waged an unjust war with their parents who were justly angry.

This indeed turned out more usefully and happily, that, although for the memory of that trick the spectacle of the circus games remained, yet the example of the deed did not please in that city and empire, and the Romans more easily erred in this—in consecrating Romulus as a god to themselves after that injustice—than in permitting, by any law or custom, his deed in carrying off the women to be imitated.

From this right and good, after King Tarquin had been expelled with his children—whose son had violently oppressed Lucretia by rape—the consul Junius Brutus compelled Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of that same Lucretia, his own colleague, a good and innocent man, on account of the name and kinship of the Tarquins, to resign his magistracy, nor did he permit him to live in the city. This crime he committed with the people favoring or allowing it—the people from whom that same Collatinus, like Brutus himself, had received the consulship.

From this right and good, Marcus Camillus, a distinguished man of that time, who most easily overcame the Veientes, the gravest enemies of the Roman people, after a ten-year war in which the Roman army, so often fighting badly, was gravely afflicted, when Rome itself was now doubting and trembling about its safety, and took their most opulent city, was made a defendant by the envy of those who disparaged his virtue and by the insolence of the tribunes of the plebs, and felt the city which he had freed to be so ungrateful that, most certain of his condemnation, he departed of his own accord into exile and, though absent, was even fined ten thousand asses—soon afterward to be again the avenger of his ungrateful fatherland against the Gauls.

It now irks me to recall many foul and unjust things by which that city was agitated, when the powerful tried to subject the plebs to themselves and the plebs refused to be subjected to them, and the defenders of each party acted more from partisan zeal in the love of conquering than thought of anything fair and good.

18. And so I will keep a measure, and will rather bring forward Sallust himself as a witness, who, when he had said in praise of the Romans—whence this discourse of ours arose—right and good among them prevailed not by laws more than by nature (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 13), proclaiming that time in which, with the kings expelled, the city incredibly grew very much in a short span of time, nevertheless himself in the first book of his history, and in its very beginning, confesses that even then, when the commonwealth had been transferred from kings to consuls, after a small interval there were injuries of the stronger and, on account of them, a secession of the plebs from the fathers and other dissensions in the City.

For when he had recalled that the Roman people acted with the best morals and the greatest concord between the second and the last Carthaginian war, and had said that the cause of this good was not the love of justice but, while Carthage stood, the fear of an unreliable peace (whence that Nasica too, to repress wickedness and preserve those best morals, that vices might be checked by fear, was unwilling that Carthage be overthrown):

immediately the same Sallust subjoined and said: but discord and avarice and ambition and the other evils wont to arise in prosperity were most of all increased after the destruction of Carthage (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 10), so that we might understand that even before they were wont to arise and increase.

Hence, adding why he said this: for the injuries, he says, of the stronger and, on account of them, the secession of the plebs from the fathers and other dissensions at home existed from the very beginning, nor was it governed by fair and moderate right any longer than while the kings were expelled, until the fear of Tarquin and the grave war with Etruria was laid aside (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 11). You see how, even in that short time, that after the kings were expelled—that is, cast out—things were governed for a while by somewhat fair and moderate right, he said the cause was fear, since the war was feared which King Tarquin, expelled from his kingdom and city and allied with the Etruscans, was waging against the Romans.

Attend, then, to what he next weaves in: then, he says, the fathers exercised the plebs with servile command, decided about their life and back in the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, with the rest dispossessed, held power over the soil alone. Oppressed by these cruelties and most of all by usury, the plebs, while in continual wars it endured tribute and military service at once, took up arms and occupied the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and then procured for itself tribunes of the plebs and other rights. The end of discords and of the struggle on both sides was the second Punic War.

You discern from what time—that is, a short interval after the kings were expelled—what sort the Romans were, of whom he says: right and good among them prevailed not by laws more than by nature (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 12).

Further, if those times are found to be such, in which the Roman commonwealth is proclaimed to have been most beautiful and best, what now must we judge ought to be said or thought about the following age, when, gradually changed, to use the same historian's words, from most beautiful and best it became most wicked and most shameful (Sallust, Catiline 5.9)—after the destruction of Carthage, namely, as he recalled? How Sallust himself briefly recalls and describes those times can be read in his Histories; with what great evils of morals, which arose from prosperity, he shows that things came even to civil wars. From which time, as he says, the morals of the ancestors were precipitated not gradually as before, but in the manner of a torrent, the youth being so corrupted by luxury and avarice that it may deservedly be said that men were born who could neither themselves keep family estates nor allow others to keep them (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 16). Sallust then says more about the vices of Sulla and the rest of the foulness of the commonwealth, and other writers agree on these things, although with eloquence much inferior.

You discern, however, as I suppose—and whoever takes note perceives most easily—into what filth of the worst morals that city slid before the coming of our heavenly King. For these things were done not only before Christ, present in the flesh, had begun to teach, but even before he was born of the Virgin.

Since, then, they do not dare to impute to their gods so many and so great evils of those times—either the more tolerable ones above, or, after Carthage was overthrown, the intolerable and horrible ones—when malign cunning was inserting into human minds the opinions from which such vices grew wild:

why do they impute present evils to Christ, who by his most wholesome teaching both forbids the worship of false and deceitful gods, and, detesting and condemning by divine authority these harmful and shameful desires of men, everywhere gradually withdraws his household from a world wasting and slipping with these evils, that he may found from it an eternal city, most glorious not by the applause of vanity but by the judgment of truth?

19. Behold, the Roman commonwealth (which I am not the first to say, but their own authors, from whom we learned these things for a fee, said so long ago, before the coming of Christ) gradually changed from most beautiful and best to most wicked and most shameful. Behold, before the coming of Christ, after Carthage was destroyed, the morals of the ancestors were precipitated not gradually, as before, but in the manner of a torrent, the youth being so corrupted by luxury and avarice (Sallust, Catiline 5.9; Histories 1, fr. 16).

Let them read to us the precepts of their gods given to the Roman people against luxury and avarice; would that these had only kept silent about chaste and modest things to it, and not also demanded from it reproachful and ignominious things, by which, through a false divinity, they procured a pernicious authority. Let them read our writings—through the prophets, and through the holy Gospel, and through the Acts of the Apostles, and through the Epistles—so many things against avarice and luxury everywhere, how excellently, how divinely they resound to the peoples gathered for this, not as from the contests of philosophers, but as if thundering from oracles and the clouds of God.

And yet they do not impute to their gods that the commonwealth was made most wicked and most shameful by luxury and avarice and savage and base morals before the coming of Christ; but whatever affliction of it their pride and pleasures have suffered in this time, they reproach to the Christian religion. If together the kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men with younger (Ps 148:11-12)—every age capable of it and both sexes, and those whom John the Baptist addresses, the tax collectors themselves and the soldiers (Lk 3:12-14)—heard and heeded its precepts about just and upright morals: then both the commonwealth would adorn the lands of the present life with its own happiness, and, about to reign most blessedly, would mount to the summit of eternal life. But because one hears, another despises, and more are friendlier to the vices that wickedly flatter than to the useful harshness of the virtues, the servants of Christ are commanded to tolerate—whether they be kings or princes or judges, whether soldiers or provincials, whether rich or poor, whether free or slave, of either sex—even a most wicked and most shameful commonwealth, if it is so necessary, and by this very toleration to procure for themselves a most illustrious place in that most holy and most august court of the angels and the heavenly commonwealth, where the will of God is law.

20. But such worshipers and lovers of those gods, whose imitators in crimes and shameful deeds they rejoice to be, in no way care that the commonwealth be most wicked and most shameful.

"Only let it stand," they say, "only let it flourish, packed with resources, glorious with victories, or—what is happier—let it be secure in peace. And what is that to us? Indeed, this rather pertains to us, that each man always increase his riches, which may supply daily extravagances, by which each more powerful man may also subject the weaker to himself. Let the poor serve the rich for the sake of being filled, and that under their patronage they may enjoy a quiet idleness; let the rich abuse the poor for clienteles and for the service of their own arrogance.

Let the peoples applaud not the counselors of their own interests, but the bestowers of pleasures. Let no hard things be commanded, let no impure things be forbidden. Let kings care not how good but how submissive a people they reign over. Let the provinces serve their kings not as rulers of morals, but as masters of their affairs and providers of their pleasures, and let them honor them not sincerely, but fear them wickedly and slavishly. Let the laws attend to what harm anyone does to another's vineyard rather than to his own life. Let no one be brought to the judges except one who has been troublesome or harmful to another's property, house, safety, or to anyone against his will; but as for his own, let each do what he pleases with his own, or with his own people, or with any who are willing. Let public harlots abound, either for the sake of all who please to enjoy them, or especially for the sake of those who cannot have private ones. Let most spacious and most adorned houses be built, let sumptuous banquets be frequented, where, when and as each pleases and is able, day and night let there be playing, drinking, vomiting, dissipation. Let dances resound everywhere, let the theaters seethe with the voices of dishonorable mirth and with every kind of pleasure, whether most cruel or most base."

"Let him be a public enemy to whom this happiness displeases; whoever shall attempt to change or take it away, let the free multitude turn him away from their ears, overthrow him from his seat, take him away from the living. Let those be held the true gods who have procured this for the peoples to attain and have preserved it when attained. Let them be worshiped as they wish, let them demand such games as they wish, which they may have with their worshipers or from their worshipers: only let them bring it about that nothing be feared, against such happiness, from an enemy, from a pestilence, from any disaster."

What sane man would compare this commonwealth—I will not say to the Roman empire, but to the house of Sardanapalus? That king was once so given over to pleasures that he had it written on his tomb that he had, dead, only those things which his lust, even while he lived, had consumed by draining (Aristotle, fr. 90; see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.35.101; On Ends 2.32.106; Greek Anthology 7.325). If these people had this king indulging them in such things and opposing no one in them with any severity, they would more gladly consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus.

21. But if he is despised who called the Roman commonwealth most wicked and most shameful, and these people do not care with how great a blight and disgrace of the worst and most shameful morals it is filled, but only that it subsist and remain: let them hear that it was made not, as Sallust narrates, most wicked and most shameful, but, as Cicero argues, that even then it had utterly perished and no commonwealth at all remained. For he brings in Scipio—that very man who had extinguished Carthage—disputing about the commonwealth, when it was foreseen that, by that corruption which Sallust describes, it was now on the very point of perishing. For the disputation takes place at that time when one of the Gracchi had already been killed, from whom Sallust writes that grave seditions began (Sallust, Histories 1.16). For mention is made of his death in those same books.

But when Scipio had said at the end of the second book: as in lyres or flutes and in singing itself and in voices a certain harmony must be maintained out of distinct sounds, which, if altered or discordant, trained ears cannot bear, and that harmony, out of the regulation of most dissimilar voices, is nevertheless made concordant and congruous: so out of the highest and lowest and middle interposed orders, as out of sounds, by a measured reasoning, a city sounds in harmony by the consent of the most dissimilar, and that which is called harmony by musicians in song, that in a city is concord, the tightest and best bond of safety in every commonwealth, and that this can in no way exist without justice (Cicero, On the Republic 2.42.69),

and then, when he had discussed somewhat more broadly and abundantly how much justice profited a city and how much it harmed it if it were absent, Philus, one of those present at the disputation, took up the discussion and demanded that this very question be treated more carefully and more be said about justice, on account of what was now commonly reported, that a commonwealth could not be governed without injustice. Scipio assented that this question ought accordingly to be discussed and disentangled, and replied that there was nothing yet said about the commonwealth, as he thought, by which they could go further, unless it were established not only that that saying was false—that it cannot be without injustice—but that this was most true: that a commonwealth cannot be governed without the highest justice (Cicero, On the Republic 2.43.70-44.71).

When the unfolding of this question had been deferred to the following day, in the third book the matter was carried on with great conflict. For Philus himself took up the disputation of those who held that a commonwealth could not be conducted without injustice, especially clearing himself, lest he be believed to hold this, and argued diligently for injustice against justice, trying as it were to show, by verisimilar reasonings and examples, that this was useful to the commonwealth, but that justice was useless. Then Laelius, at the request of all, undertook to defend justice, and asserted as much as he could that nothing was so hostile to a city as injustice, and that a commonwealth could not at all be conducted or stand except by great justice (Cicero, On the Republic 3.5.8 ff.; On Friendship 4).

When this question had been treated as much as seemed enough, Scipio returns to the interrupted matters, and recalls and commends his own brief definition of the commonwealth, by which he had said that it was the affair of a people (Cicero, On the Republic 1.25.39). But he determines that a people is not every gathering of a multitude, but a gathering allied by the consent of right and by a community of interest. He then teaches how great is the usefulness of a definition in disputing, and from those definitions of his he gathers that there is then a commonwealth—that is, an affair of a people—when it is conducted well and justly, whether by one king or by a few aristocrats or by the whole people.

But when the king is unjust, whom he called a tyrant in the Greek manner, or the aristocrats unjust, whose consent he said was a faction, or the people itself unjust, for which he found no usual name, except that he called it too a tyrant: then the commonwealth is not now faulty, as had been argued the day before, but, as the reasoning connected from those definitions had taught, is altogether none, since it would not be the affair of a people, when a tyrant seized it by faction, nor would the people itself be now a people, if it were unjust, since it would not be a multitude allied by the consent of right and by a community of interest, as a people had been defined (Cicero, On the Republic 3.31.43).

When, therefore, the Roman commonwealth was such as Sallust describes it, it was now not most wicked and most shameful, as he himself says, but altogether none, according to that reasoning which the disputation about the commonwealth, held among its great leaders of that time, laid open.

As also Cicero himself, speaking not in the words of Scipio nor of any other, but in his own, at the beginning of the fifth book, having first recalled that verse of the poet Ennius, in which he had said: on ancient morals and men the Roman state stands. That verse indeed, he says, seems to me, either by its brevity or its truth, to have been uttered as if from some oracle. For neither would the men, unless the city had been so charactered, nor the morals, unless these men had presided, have been able either to found or so long to hold so great a commonwealth, ruling so vastly far and wide. And so before our memory both the ancestral custom itself supplied outstanding men, and excellent men retained the old custom and the institutions of the ancestors.

But our age, when it had received the commonwealth like a distinguished painting, but fading with age, not only neglected to renew it with the same colors it had had, but did not even take care to preserve at least its form and, as it were, its outermost lineaments. For what remains of the ancient morals, on which he said the Roman state stands, which we see so obsolete by oblivion that they are not only not cultivated, but now not even known? For what shall I say about the men? For the morals themselves have perished through a dearth of men, of which so great an evil not only is an account to be rendered by us, but the case is, as it were, to be pleaded by us as defendants on a capital charge. For by our vices, not by any chance, we retain the commonwealth in word, but in fact have long since lost it.

These things Cicero confessed—long indeed after the death of Africanus, whom he made to dispute in his books On the Republic, yet still before the coming of Christ; and if these things were thought and said with the Christian religion spread abroad and prevailing, which of these people would not judge that they ought to be imputed to the Christians? Wherefore why did their gods not take care that that commonwealth should not then perish and be lost, which Cicero, long before Christ had come in the flesh, so mournfully laments as lost?

Let its praisers see what sort it was even with those ancient men and morals—whether true justice flourished in it, or whether perhaps not even then was it alive in its morals, but painted in colors; which Cicero himself, unknowingly, when he set it forth, expressed.

But at another time, if God will, we will see this (See 19.21, 24). For I will strive in its place to show, according to Cicero's own definitions, by which, with Scipio speaking, he briefly set down what a commonwealth is and what a people is (with many opinions also attesting, whether his own or of those whom he made to speak in the same disputation), that it never was a commonwealth, because there never was in it true justice. But according to more probable definitions it was, in a manner of its own, a commonwealth, and was better administered by the more ancient Romans than by the later ones; but true justice is not except in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ, if it pleases to call it too a commonwealth, since we cannot deny that it is the affair of a people. But if this name, which is elsewhere and otherwise spread abroad, is perhaps too remote from the use of our speech, certainly in that city there is true justice, of which the holy Scripture says: glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God (Ps 87:3 (86:3)).

22. But as for what pertains to the present question, however praiseworthy they say that commonwealth was or is, according to their own most learned authors it had already, long before the coming of Christ, been made "most wicked and most shameful"; indeed it was none and had altogether perished by its most ruined morals. That it might not perish, then, its guardian gods ought above all to have given precepts of life and morals to their worshiping people, by whom they were worshiped with so many temples, so many priests and kinds of sacrifices, with rites so manifold and various, so many festal solemnities, the celebrations of so many and so great games—where the demons did nothing but their own business, not caring how those people lived, indeed caring that they might even live ruinously, provided only that, subjected by fear, they ministered all those things to their honor.

Or if they did give them, let it be brought forward, shown, read—what laws of the gods, given to that city, the Gracchi despised, so as to throw everything into confusion by seditions,

what laws Marius and Cinna and Carbo despised, so as to proceed even to civil wars, undertaken from the most unjust causes and waged cruelly and ended more cruelly (Livy, Periochae 79; Florus, Epitome 2.9; Appian, The Civil Wars 1.55, 69 ff.; Eutropius, Breviary 5.7, 9),

what laws, finally, Sulla himself (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 158; Appian, The Civil Wars 1.81 ff.; see Cicero, On Ends 3.22.75), at whose life, morals, and deeds, as Sallust and other writers of history describe them, who would not shudder?

Who would not confess that that commonwealth then perished?

Or will they perhaps dare, on account of morals of citizens of this kind, to set up in defense of their gods that Virgilian sentence, as they are wont: all the gods, by whom this empire had stood, departed, the shrines and altars left behind (Virgil, Aeneid 2.351-52)? First, if it is so, they have no reason to complain about the Christian religion, that their gods, offended by it, deserted them, since indeed their ancestors long ago, by their own morals, drove so many petty gods, like flies, from the altars of the City. But yet where was this crowd of divinities, when long before the ancient morals were corrupted, Rome was taken and burned by the Gauls? Were they present, perhaps, but asleep? For then, with the whole City reduced to the power of the enemy, the Capitoline hill alone remained, which would itself too have been taken, had not at least the geese kept watch while the gods slept (Livy, From the Founding of the City 5.41.4 ff). Whence Rome had almost fallen into the superstition of the Egyptians, who worship beasts and birds, when they celebrated solemn rites for the goose.

But about these adventitious evils, of the body rather than of the soul, which happen either from enemies or from another disaster, I do not yet for the present dispute: now I treat of the blight of morals, by which—first gradually discolored, then precipitated in the manner of a torrent—so great a ruin of the commonwealth was made, though the roofs and walls were intact, that their great authors do not hesitate to say it was then lost.

But rightly had all the gods departed, the shrines and altars left behind, that it might be lost, if the city had despised their precepts about a good life and justice. But now what sort of gods, I ask, were they, if they were unwilling to live with their worshiping people, whom, living ill, they had not taught to live well?

23. What of the fact that they even seem to have been present for the fulfilling of their desires, and are shown not to have presided over the reining in of them—they who aided Marius, a new and ignoble man, the most bloody author and conductor of civil wars, to become consul seven times, and that he might die in his seventh consulship, an old man, lest he fall into the hands of Sulla, soon to be victor (Livy, Periochae 67-68)?

For if their gods did not aid him to these things, it is no small matter that they confess that even without their gods being propitious, that great temporal happiness which they love too much can befall a man, and that men, as Marius was, can be heaped with and enjoy safety, strength, wealth, honors, dignity, long life, with the gods angry; that men too, as Regulus was, can be tortured by captivity, slavery, want, sleeplessness, pains, and die, with the gods friendly.

But if they grant that it is so, they confess in brief that the gods profit them nothing and are worshiped superfluously. For if they have rather pressed the people to learn things contrary to the virtues of the soul and to uprightness of life, whose rewards are to be hoped for after death; if even in these transient and temporal goods they neither harm those whom they hate nor profit those whom they love, why are they worshiped, why are they sought with such great zeal to be worshiped? Why, in laborious and sad times, is it murmured that they have departed as if offended, and on their account is the Christian religion injured with most unworthy insults?

But if they have in these matters the power either of benefit or of harm, why were they present in them for the worst man, Marius, and absent for the best man, Regulus? Or are they from this very fact understood to be most unjust and most evil?

But if for this reason they are thought the more to be feared and worshiped: let not even this be thought; for Regulus is found to have worshiped them no less than Marius.

Nor does a most wicked life therefore seem to be chosen, because the gods are thought to have favored Marius more than Regulus. For Metellus, the most praised of the Romans, who had five consular sons, was also happy in temporal things, and the most wicked Catiline, oppressed by want and laid low in the war of his own crime, was unhappy; and good men worshiping God are preeminent in the truest and most certain happiness, which can be conferred by him alone.

When, therefore, that commonwealth was perishing by evil morals, their gods did nothing for directing or correcting the morals, that it might not perish; on the contrary, they added to the depraving and corrupting of the morals, that it might perish. Nor let them feign themselves good, in that they departed as if offended by the iniquity of the citizens. They were entirely there; they are betrayed, they are convicted; they could neither come to aid by teaching nor lie hidden by keeping silent.

I pass over that Marius was commended by the pitying people of Minturnae to the goddess Marica in her grove, that she might prosper all things for him (Plutarch, Lives, Marius 39; Cicero, In Defense of Sestius 22.50), and that, returning unharmed from the depths of despair into the City, the cruel man led a cruel army; where how bloody, how uncivil and more monstrous than an enemy's his victory was, let those who wish read those who wrote it.

But this, as I said, I pass over, nor do I attribute Marius's bloody happiness to some Marica or other, but rather to the hidden providence of God, for closing the mouths of these people and freeing from error those who attend to these things prudently, not from partisan zeal; because, even if the demons can do something in these matters, they can do only as much as is permitted by the secret judgment of the Almighty—lest we make much of earthly happiness, which, as to Marius, is for the most part granted even to the wicked, nor again think it as if evil, when we see that many even pious and good worshipers of the one true God have been preeminent in it with the demons unwilling, nor think that those most unclean spirits are to be propitiated or feared even on account of these earthly goods or evils; because, just as the wicked men themselves on earth, so also those spirits cannot do all the things they wish, except so far as is allowed by the ordering of him whose judgments no one fully comprehends, no one justly reproves.

24. Sulla himself, certainly, whose times were such that the earlier ones, of which he seemed to be the avenger, were longed for in comparison with his—when he had first moved his camp toward the City against Marius, the entrails were so favorable to him as he sacrificed, Livy writes (Livy, Periochae 77; Cicero, On Divination 1.33.72), that Postumius the soothsayer wished to be kept under guard, ready to undergo capital punishment, unless Sulla, with the gods aiding, accomplished what he had in mind. Behold, the gods had not departed, the shrines and altars left behind, when they foretold the outcome of events and cared nothing about Sulla's own correction. By foretelling they promised great happiness, and did not break his evil desire by threatening.

Then, when he was in Asia waging the Mithridatic war, it was sent to him by Jupiter, through Lucius Titius, that he would overcome Mithridates, and it was done. And afterward, when he was striving to return to the City and avenge his own and his friends' injuries with civil blood, it was again sent to him by the same Jupiter, through a certain soldier of the sixth legion, that he had first foretold victory over Mithridates, and now promised that he would give him the power by which he might recover the commonwealth from his enemies, not without much blood. Then Sulla, having asked what the form was that had appeared to the soldier, when the man had described it, recognized it as the one he had earlier heard of from him who had brought the messages sent by the same Jupiter about the Mithridatic victory.

What can be answered here, as to why the gods took care to announce these as it were happy things, and none of them took care to correct Sulla by admonishing him, about to do such great evils with wicked civil arms—such as would not foul but altogether take away the commonwealth?

Surely the demons are understood—as I have often said, and as is known to us in the sacred writings, and as the facts themselves sufficiently indicate—to be doing their own business: that they may be held for gods and worshiped, that those things may be exhibited to them by which those who exhibit them, allied with them, may have one most wicked cause with them in the judgment of God.

Then, when Sulla had come to Tarentum and had sacrificed there, he saw on the top of the calf's liver the likeness of a golden crown. Then that soothsayer Postumius answered that it signified an illustrious victory for him, and bade that he alone eat of those entrails.

Afterward, a short interval later, the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius, prophesying, cried out: I come as a messenger from Bellona; the victory is yours, Sulla. Then he added that the Capitol would burn. When he had said this, immediately going out from the camp, the next day he returned more agitated and cried out that the Capitol had burned. And in fact the Capitol had burned. Which indeed was both easy for a demon to foresee and most swift to announce.

But attend, certainly, to this, which pertains most to the matter: under what sort of gods those wish to be who blaspheme the Savior, who frees the wills of the faithful from the dominion of demons. The man cried out, prophesying, the victory is yours, Sulla, and, that it might be believed that he cried it by a divine spirit, he announced also something both near at hand and soon to come, from which the one through whom that spirit spoke was far away; yet he did not cry out, spare yourself from crimes, Sulla, the so horrible crimes which Sulla there, as victor, committed—he to whom the golden crown, the most illustrious sign of that very victory, appeared in the calf's liver,

such signs as, if just gods were wont to give and not impious demons, surely they would have shown by those entrails the wicked evils to come, gravely harmful to Sulla himself. For that victory did not so much profit his dignity as it harmed his desire; by which it came about that, gaping after immoderate things and lifted up and cast headlong by prosperity, he himself perished more in his morals than he destroyed his enemies in their bodies.

These truly sad and truly lamentable things those gods did not foretell to him, not by entrails, not by auguries, not by anyone's dream or prophecy. For they were more afraid that he would be corrected than that he would be conquered. Indeed they took pains that the victor over his fellow citizens, glorious, conquered and captive to unspeakable vices, should through these be subjected much more closely even to the demons themselves.

25. But from this, who would not understand, who would not see—except one who has chosen rather to imitate such gods than to be separated by divine grace from their society—how much these malign spirits strive, by their own example, to lend as it were a divine authority to crimes? Which they did even on a certain broad plain of Campania, where not long after the civil battle lines clashed in a wicked conflict; there they themselves were first seen to fight among themselves. For there great crashes were first heard, and soon many announced that they had seen, for several days, two battle lines fighting. When this battle ceased, they found also footprints, as it were of men and horses, as many as could be impressed from that conflict (Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 57).

If, then, the divinities truly fought among themselves, then human civil wars are excused; yet let it be considered what is the malice or the misery of such gods: but if they feigned that they fought, what else did they do but bring it about that the Romans, in waging civil war, should seem to commit no wickedness, as if by the example of the gods?

For the civil wars had already begun, and the execrable slaughter of several wicked battles had preceded. Already it had moved many that a certain soldier, while he was stripping the spoils from a slain man, recognized his brother by the stripped corpse, and, detesting civil wars, killing himself there, joined himself to his brother's body (Livy, Periochae 79).

So that there might be no weariness of this so great evil, but rather that the ardor of wicked arms might grow more and more, the harmful demons, whom those people, thinking them gods, judged to be worshiped and venerated, wished to appear to men fighting among themselves, lest civic affection should tremble to imitate such battles, but rather that human crime should be excused by the divine example.

By this cunning the malign spirits commanded that even stage-shows, of which I have already said much, be dedicated and consecrated to them, where so great shameful deeds of the gods, celebrated by theatrical songs and the acting of fables, both whoever believed that they had done them, and whoever did not believe it but yet saw that they most gladly had such things exhibited to them, might securely imitate.

Lest, therefore, anyone should think that the poets had written insults against the gods rather than something worthy of them, wherever the poets recalled that they fought among themselves, the gods themselves, to deceive men, confirmed the songs of the poets, exhibiting their battles to human eyes, namely, not only through the stage-players in the theater, but even through themselves on the field.

We have been compelled to say these things, since their own authors did not at all hesitate to say and write that the Roman commonwealth had already before been ruined by the worst morals of the citizens, and that none remained, before the coming of Christ Jesus our Lord. This ruin they do not impute to their gods, who impute to our Christ the transitory evils by which the good, whether they live or die, cannot perish: although our Christ frequents so many precepts for the best morals against ruined morals; but their gods did nothing by any such precepts with their worshiping people for that commonwealth, that it might not perish; on the contrary, by corrupting those very morals as if by their own examples, with a harmful authority, they rather brought it about that it should perish.

No one, I think, will now dare to say that it then perished because all the gods departed, the shrines and altars left behind, as if friends of the virtues, when they were offended by the vices of men; since by so many signs of entrails, auguries, prophecies—by which they were eager to boast of and commend themselves as foreknowers of the future and helpers in battles—they are convicted of having been present; and if they had truly departed, the Romans would have flared up into civil wars more mildly by their own desires than by their instigations.

26. Since these things are so—since openly and plainly basenesses mingled with cruelties, the reproaches and crimes of the divinities, whether disclosed or fabricated, at their own demand and with them growing angry unless it were done, have shone forth as consecrated and dedicated to them even by fixed and appointed solemnities, and have come forth to the eyes of all to be set before them as things to be imitated: what is it, then, that those same demons, who by pleasures of this kind confess themselves to be unclean spirits, who by their own shameful deeds and crimes—whether disclosed or feigned—and by the celebration of them demanded for themselves, sought from the shameless, extorted from the modest, testify that they are authors of a wicked and unclean life, are nevertheless reported, in their sanctuaries and secret inner chambers, to give certain good precepts about morals to certain of their, as it were, chosen consecrated ones (Firmicus Maternus, On the Error of Profane Religions 19-23; see 2.6)? But if it is so, by this very fact the more crafty malice of the harmful spirits is to be noticed and convicted.

For so great is the force of uprightness and chastity that all, or nearly all, human nature is moved by the praise of it, and is not so far vicious in baseness as to have lost the whole sense of honor. Accordingly the malignity of the demons, unless somewhere it transfigures itself into an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14), as we know is written in our writings, does not accomplish the business of deception.

And so outside, among the peoples, impure impiety resounds round about with most crowded uproar, and within, to a few, feigned chastity scarcely sounds; the open spaces are offered to shameful things and the secret places to praiseworthy ones; honor lies hidden and dishonor lies open; the evil that is done calls together all spectators, the good that is spoken scarcely finds any hearers, as if honorable things were to be blushed at and dishonorable ones to be gloried in.

But where is this, except in the temples of the demons? Where, except in the lodgings of falsehood? For the one is done that the more honorable, who are few, may be captured; but the other, lest the more, who are most base, be corrected.

Where and when the consecrated of Caelestis heard the precepts of chastity, we do not know; yet before her very shrine, where we beheld that image set up, we, all flowing together from everywhere and standing where each could, most attentively watched the games that were being performed, gazing with alternating view, on the one side at the harlot procession, on the other at the virgin goddess; we saw her adored suppliantly, and before her base things celebrated; we saw there no bashful mimes, no more modest actress; all the offices of obscenity were performed.

It was known what pleased the virginal divinity, and there was exhibited what the more learned matron might carry home from the temple. Some of the more modest turned their faces away from the impure motions of the stage-players and learned the art of shame by a furtive attention. For they were ashamed before men to dare to look upon shameless gestures with a free face; but much less did they dare to condemn with a chaste heart the rites of her whom they venerated.

This, nevertheless, was offered openly to be learned in the temple, which to perpetrate at least secrecy was sought at home—the modesty of mortals, if there was any there, wondering exceedingly that men did not freely commit the human shameful deeds which among the gods they even religiously learned, intending to have them angry unless they took care also to exhibit them.

For what other spirit, by a hidden instinct stirring up the most worthless minds, both urges adulteries to be committed and is fed by them when done, except the one who is also delighted by such rites—setting up in the temples the images of demons, loving in the games the images of vices, whispering in secret the words of justice to deceive even the few good, frequenting in the open the enticements of wickedness to possess the innumerable wicked?

27. A grave man and a would-be philosopher, Tullius, about to be aedile, cries out in the ears of the city that, among the other duties of his magistracy, the mother Flora must be placated by him with the celebration of games (Cicero, Against Verres, second action, 5.14); which games are wont to be celebrated the more devoutly the more basely.

He says in another place, now as consul, in the extreme perils of the city, that games were held for ten days, and that nothing which pertained to placating the gods was omitted (Cicero, Against Catiline 3.8.20); as if it were not better to provoke such gods by temperance than to placate them by luxury, and to call them even to enmity by honor rather than to soothe them by such great deformity.

For the men on whose account they were placated would not have been about to harm them, by however most cruel a monstrousness, more gravely than the gods themselves harmed, when they were placated by the foulest viciousness. Since indeed, that what was feared from the enemy in bodies might be averted, the gods were conciliated in such a way that virtue might be subdued in minds—gods who would not be set as defenders against the assailants of the walls, unless they first became stormers of good morals.

This most petulant, most impure, most shameless, most worthless, most unclean placation of such divinities, whose actors the praiseworthy disposition of Roman virtue deprived of honor, removed from the tribe, marked, made base, declared infamous—this, I say, shameful placation of such divinities, to be turned from and detested by true religion: the fables about the gods, enticing and criminal, these ignominious deeds of the gods, either wickedly and basely done or more wickedly and basely fabricated, the whole city learned with public eyes and ears; it saw these committed things to please the divinities, and therefore believed that they were not only to be exhibited to them, but also to be imitated by itself—not that something, I know not what, as if good and honorable, which was said to so few and so secretly (if indeed it was said), so that it was feared rather lest it become known than lest it not be done (See 2.6, 26).

28. That men are rescued through the name of Christ from the tartarean yoke and penal society of these most unclean powers, and transferred into the light of most wholesome piety from that night of most pernicious impiety, the unjust and ungrateful, and those more deeply and closely possessed by that wicked spirit, complain and murmur—because the peoples flow together to the Church in chaste assembly, with an honorable separation of both sexes, where they hear how well they ought to live here for a time, so that after this life they may deserve to live blessedly and forever, where holy Scripture and the teaching of justice resound from a higher place in the sight of all, and both those who do it hear it unto reward, and those who do not do it hear it unto judgment. To which place, even if certain mockers of such precepts come, all their petulance is either laid aside by a sudden change, or repressed by fear or shame. For nothing base and shameful is set before them to be watched and imitated, where either the precepts of the true God are instilled, or his miracles narrated, or his gifts praised, or his benefits sought.

29. Desire these things rather, O praiseworthy Roman disposition, O offspring of the Reguli, the Scaevolae, the Scipios, the Fabricii; desire these things rather, distinguish these from that most base vanity and most deceitful malignity of the demons. If anything praiseworthy stands out in you naturally, it is purified and perfected only by true piety, but by impiety it is destroyed and punished. Now then choose what you will follow, that you may be praised, not in yourself, but in the true God without any error. For then popular glory was present to you, but by the hidden judgment of divine providence the true religion which you might choose was lacking. Awake, it is day, as you have awakened in certain men, in whose perfect virtue and for the true faith even in their sufferings we glory, who, everywhere fighting against the most hostile powers and conquering them bravely by dying, begot for us this fatherland with their blood (Virgil, Aeneid 11.24-25).

To which fatherland we invite and exhort you, that you may be added to the number of its citizens, of which in a certain way the sanctuary is the true remission of sins. Do not listen to your degenerate ones disparaging Christ and Christians and accusing the times as if evil, when they seek times in which there may be not a quiet life, but rather a secure wickedness. These things never pleased you, not even for the earthly fatherland. Now then seize the heavenly one, for which you will labor very little, and in it you will reign truly and forever. For there you will have neither a Vestal hearth nor the Capitoline stone (Cicero, To His Friends 7.12; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 1.21; Apuleius, On the God of Socrates 5), but the one and true God sets neither bounds nor times to things, he will give empire without end (Virgil, Aeneid 1.278-79).

Do not seek the false and deceitful gods; cast them off rather and despise them, flashing out into true liberty. They are not gods; they are malign spirits, to whom your eternal happiness is a punishment. Not so much does Juno seem to have envied the Romans' citadels to the Trojans, from whom you draw your carnal origin, as these demons, whom you still think gods, envy to every kind of men the everlasting seats.

And you yourself, in no small part, have judged about such spirits, when you placated them by games, and willed that those men through whom you held those same games should be infamous. Suffer your liberty to be asserted against the unclean spirits, who had imposed on your neck their own ignominy to be consecrated and celebrated for them. You removed the actors of the divine crimes from your honors: pray to the true God that he remove from you those gods who are delighted by their own crimes, whether true—which is most ignominious—or false—which is most malicious.

It is well that of your own accord you were unwilling that the society of the city be open to actors and stage-players; awake more fully! In no way is the divine majesty placated by those arts by which human dignity is defiled. By what reasoning, then, do you think that gods who are delighted by such observances are held in the number of the holy heavenly powers, when you have not thought that men, through whom those same observances are performed, should be held in the number of even any kind of Roman citizens? Incomparably more illustrious is the heavenly city, where the victory is truth, where the dignity is holiness, where the peace is happiness, where the life is eternity. Much less does it have such gods in its society, if you blushed to have such men in yours. Accordingly, if you desire to arrive at the blessed city, shun the society of demons. Unworthily are those worshiped by the honorable who are placated by the base. So let these be removed from your piety by Christian purification, as those were removed from your dignity by the censorial mark.

But about carnal goods, which alone the wicked wish to enjoy, and about carnal evils, which alone they refuse to suffer—that these demons do not have in these things even the power they are thought to have (although, if they did have it, we ought rather to despise even these things than to worship them on their account, and, by worshiping them, to be unable to arrive at those things which they envy us)—nevertheless that they do not avail even in these things as much as those think who contend that they ought to be worshiped on their account, we will see next, so that here may be the limit of this volume.

1. I think enough has now been said about the evils of morals and of souls, which are above all to be guarded against—that the false gods took no care to come to the aid of their worshiping people, that it might not be pressed down by the heap of those evils, but rather acted that it might be pressed down most of all.

Now I see that I must speak about those evils which alone these people refuse to suffer, such as are famine, disease, war, despoiling, captivity, slaughter, and any like things we have already recalled in the first book. For the wicked count as evils only those which do not make men wicked; nor do they blush, among the goods which they praise, to be themselves wicked who praise them, and they are more vexed if they have a bad farm than if they have a bad life, as if this were the greatest good of a man, to have all things good except himself.

But not even such evils, which alone these people dread, did their gods, when they were freely worshiped by them, stand in the way of, that they might not befall them. For when, at various times in various places before the coming of our Redeemer, the human race was worn down by innumerable and some even incredible disasters, what other gods than these did the world worship, except one Hebrew people and certain men outside that people, wherever they were worthy of divine grace by the most hidden and most just judgment of God? But, not to make it too long, I will be silent about the most grievous evils of other nations everywhere: as far as pertains to Rome and the Roman empire, I will speak only of this—that is, of the city itself properly, and whatever lands were joined to it either by alliance or subjected by condition—what they suffered before the coming of Christ, when they already pertained to its body, as it were, of the commonwealth.

2. First, Troy itself, or Ilium, whence is the origin of the Roman people (for it must not be passed over or dissembled, which I touched on in the first book also (See 1.3-4)), having and worshiping these same gods, why was it conquered, captured, and destroyed by the Greeks?

To Priam, they say, were repaid the paternal perjuries of Laomedon (See Virgil, Aeneid 4.542; Georgics 1.502). Is it then true that Apollo and Neptune served that same Laomedon in hired labors? For he is said to have promised them a wage and to have sworn falsely (See Homer, Iliad 21.441-57; Horace, Odes 3.3.21; Arnobius, Against the Nations 4.25). I wonder that Apollo, named a diviner, labored in so great a work not knowing that Laomedon was going to deny what was promised. Although it did not befit even Neptune himself, his uncle, the brother of Jupiter, the king of the sea, to be ignorant of the future.

For Homer brings him in divining something great about the stock of Aeneas, from whose posterity Rome is—since the same poet is said to have lived before that city was founded (Homer, Iliad 20.302 ff)—whom he also snatched away in a cloud, as he says, lest he be killed by Achilles, though he desired to overturn from the bottom (which in Virgil he confesses) the walls of perjured Troy, built by his own hands (Virgil, Aeneid 5.810-11). Not knowing, then, that Laomedon was going to deny them the wage, so great gods, Neptune and Apollo, were builders of the Trojan walls without thanks and to the ungrateful.

Let them see whether it is not graver to believe such gods than to swear falsely by such gods. For Homer himself did not easily believe this, who makes Neptune indeed fight against the Trojans, but Apollo for the Trojans, although the fable narrates that both were offended by that perjury. If, then, they believe the fables, let them blush to worship such divinities; if they do not believe the fables, let them not put forward the Trojan perjuries, or let them wonder that the gods punished the Trojan perjuries and loved the Roman ones.

For whence did the conspiracy of Catiline, in so great and so corrupt a city, have even a great supply of those whom their hand and tongue fed by perjury or by civil blood (Sallust, Catiline 14.1-3)? For what else did senators, so often corrupted in trials, so often the people in their votes or in whatever causes were conducted before them in assemblies, do, except sin even by swearing falsely? For with the most corrupt morals the ancient custom of swearing was preserved to this end, not that they might be kept from crimes by the fear of religion, but that perjuries too might be added to the rest of their crimes.

3. There is therefore no reason why the gods, by whom, as they say, that empire had stood (Virgil, Aeneid 2.352), since they are proved to have been conquered by the prevailing Greeks, should be imagined to have been angry at the perjuring Trojans.

Nor were they incensed at the adultery of Paris, so as to desert Troy, as again they are defended by some. For they are wont to be authors and teachers of sins, not avengers. The city of Rome, says Sallust, as I have received it, the Trojans founded and held at the beginning, who, fugitives under the leadership of Aeneas, wandered with uncertain dwellings (Sallust, Catiline 6.1). If, then, the divinities judged that the adultery of Paris was to be avenged, it had to be punished either more in the Romans, or at any rate even in the Romans, because the mother of Aeneas did this. But how did they hate that shameful deed in him, who did not hate (to omit other things) in their own ally Venus what she had committed with Anchises, from whom she had borne Aeneas? Or was it because the one was done with Menelaus indignant, but the other with Vulcan consenting? For the gods, I suppose, are not jealous of their wives, so far that they even deign to have them in common with men.

Perhaps I am thought to mock the fables and not to treat seriously a cause of such weight. Let us not, then, believe, if you please, that Aeneas is the son of Venus: behold, I grant it, if not also that Romulus is the son of Mars. But if the latter, why not the former too?

Or is it lawful for gods to be mingled with human females, but wrong for male humans to be mingled with goddesses? A hard, or rather an unbelievable condition, that what was permitted to Mars in intercourse by the right of Venus should not be permitted to Venus herself in her own right.

But both are confirmed by Roman authority. For the more recent Caesar believed Venus his grandmother (Julius Caesar, Eulogy of His Aunt Julia, fr. 7, in Suetonius, Lives, Julius 6) no less than the more ancient Romulus believed Mars his father.

4. Someone will say: "Do you then believe these things?" I indeed do not believe them.

For their most learned man Varro too almost confesses—though not boldly nor confidently—that these things are false. But he says that it is useful to cities that brave men should believe themselves, even if it be false, to have been begotten of the gods, so that in this way the human soul, bearing as it were the confidence of a divine stock, may more boldly presume to attempt great things, act more vehemently, and on this account, by this very security, accomplish them more happily (Varro, Appendix to the Historical Works, fr. 134 (only in Augustine)).

You see how broad a place this opinion of Varro, expressed as best I could in my own words, opens to falsehood, so that we understand from it that more sacred and as it were religious things could be fabricated, where even lies about the gods themselves were thought to profit the citizens.

5. But whether Venus could bear Aeneas from intercourse with Anchises, or Mars beget Romulus from intercourse with Numitor's daughter, let us leave in the middle. For almost such a question arises even from our Scriptures, in which it is asked whether the transgressing angels lay with the daughters of men, from which, when giants were born—that is, exceedingly great and strong men—the earth was then filled (Gen 6:2-4; see below, 15.23).

Accordingly, let our discussion for now be referred to both. For if those things are true which are read among them about the mother of Aeneas and the father of Romulus, how can the adulteries of men displease the gods, which they bear concordantly in themselves? But if they are false, not even thus can those be angry at true human adulteries who are delighted even by their own false ones.

To this is added that, if the story about Mars is not believed, so that this about Venus too is not believed, then by no pretext of divine intercourse is the cause of Romulus's mother defended.

But she was a Vestal priestess, and therefore the gods ought rather to have avenged that sacrilegious shameful deed upon the Romans than the adultery of Paris upon the Trojans.

For the ancient Romans themselves even buried alive the priestesses of Vesta detected in unchastity, but adulterous women they punished, though with some condemnation, yet with no death: so much more gravely did they avenge what they thought the divine sanctuaries than human bedchambers.

6. I add another thing: that, if the sins of men displeased those divinities, so that, offended by the deed of Paris, they gave deserted Troy over to sword and fires, the brother of Romulus killed ought to move them more against the Romans than the Greek husband mocked against the Trojans; the parricide of the nascent city ought to provoke them more than the adultery of the reigning one. Nor does it matter to the cause we are now pleading whether Romulus ordered this to be done or Romulus did it, which many through shamelessness deny, many through shame doubt, many through grief dissemble.

Nor, then, let us delay in inquiring into that matter more diligently through the weighed testimonies of many writers: it is openly established that the brother of Romulus was killed, not by enemies, not by strangers. If Romulus either perpetrated or commanded this, he himself was more the head of the Romans than Paris was of the Trojans; why, then, did that ravisher of another's wife provoke the wrath of the gods against the Trojans, and this slayer of his own brother invite the protection of those same gods for the Romans?

But if that crime is foreign to the deed and command of Romulus: since it certainly ought to have been avenged, the whole city did this, in that the whole despised it, and killed not now a brother but a father, which is worse. For each was a founder, where one, removed by crime, was not permitted to be a ruler.

There is no reason, as I judge, why it should be said what evil Troy merited, that the gods should desert it so that it could be extinguished, and what good Rome merited, that the gods should inhabit it so that it could be increased; except that, conquered, they fled from there and betook themselves to these people, whom they might equally deceive;

indeed they both remained there to deceive, in their own manner, those who would again inhabit those same lands, and here, by exercising the same arts of their deceit even more, gloried in greater honors.

7. For certainly, when civil wars were already teeming, what wretched thing had Ilium committed, that it should be overthrown by Fimbria, a most wicked man of the Marian party, far more fiercely and cruelly than once by the Greeks? For then both many fled from there and many, taken captive, at least lived in slavery; but Fimbria first set forth an edict that no one should be spared, and burned the whole city and all the men in it with fire.

This Ilium merited, not from the Greeks whom it had provoked by its own iniquity, but from the Romans whom it had propagated by its own calamity—those gods held in common availing nothing to repel these things, or, what is true, having no power. Did all the gods then too depart, the shrines and altars left behind (Virgil, Aeneid 2.351-52), by whom that town had stood, restored after the ancient fires and ruins of the Greeks?

But if they had departed, I ask the cause, and the better I find that of the townsmen, the worse I find that of the gods. For they had closed their gates against Fimbria, to keep the city whole for Sulla; hence he, angry, burned them, or rather utterly extinguished them. But Sulla was still the leader of the better civil party, still striving by arms to recover the commonwealth: of these good beginnings he had not yet the evil outcomes. What better, then, could the citizens of that town do, what more honorable, what more faithful, what more worthy of their Roman kinship, than to keep the city for the better cause of the Romans and to close their gates against the parricide of the Roman commonwealth?

But to how great a destruction this turned for them, let the defenders of the gods attend. The gods deserted the adulterers and left Ilium to the flames of the Greeks, that from its ashes a chaster Rome might be born: why did they afterward also desert that same city, kinsman to the Romans, not rebelling against Rome its noble daughter, but keeping a most constant and most pious fidelity to its more just party, and leave it to be destroyed not by the brave men of the Greeks, but by the foulest man of the Romans?

Or if the cause of the Sullan party, for which the wretched men, keeping the city, had closed their gates, displeased the gods: why did they promise and foretell to that same Sulla such great goods? Or are they here too recognized as flatterers of the fortunate rather than defenders of the unfortunate?

Not, then, was Ilium even then overthrown when it was deserted by them. For the demons, always most vigilant for deceiving, did what they could. For when all the images had been overthrown and burned along with the town, the image of Minerva alone, under so great a ruin of that temple, as Livy writes (Livy, From the Founding of the City, fr. 20; Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 56b), is reported to have stood whole—not that it might be said, O ancestral gods, under whose divinity Troy ever is (Virgil, Aeneid 1.702-3), to their praise, but that it might not be said, all the gods departed, the shrines and altars left behind, to their defense. For they were permitted to be able to do that, not so that they might be proved powerful, but so that they might be convicted of being present.

8. To the gods of Ilium, then, after the lesson of Troy itself, by what prudence, after all, was Rome committed to be guarded? Someone might say that they were already accustomed to dwell at Rome, when Ilium fell as Fimbria stormed it. Whence, then, did the image of Minerva stand? Then, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Ilium, perhaps they were at Ilium when Rome itself was taken and burned by the Gauls; but, as they are most acute of hearing and most swift of movement, at the voice of the goose they quickly returned, that they might at least guard the Capitoline hill, which had remained; but to defend the other things they were warned to return too late.

9. These gods too are believed to have aided Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, so that throughout the whole time of his reign he had peace and closed the gates of Janus, which are wont to stand open in wars—by this merit, namely, that he established many rites for the Romans (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.20; Cicero, On the Republic 2.14.26). But that man was to be congratulated for so great a leisure, only if he had known to spend it on wholesome matters and, neglecting a most pernicious curiosity, to seek out the true God with true piety.

But now the gods did not confer that leisure on him; but they would perhaps have deceived him less, if they had not found him at leisure. For the less occupied they found him, the more they themselves occupied him. For what he contrived, and by what arts he could ally such gods to himself or to that city, Varro discloses (Varro, Antiquities, fr. 178 (only in Augustine)); which, if it please the Lord, will be discussed more diligently in its place (See 7.34). But now, because the question is about their benefits:

peace is a great benefit, but it is the benefit of the true God, for the most part bestowed even, like the sun, like the rain, and the other supports of life, upon the ungrateful and worthless. But if those gods conferred this so great good on Rome or on Pompilius, why did they never afterward grant it to the Roman empire through its very praiseworthy times? Or were the rites more useful when they were being instituted than when, instituted, they were being celebrated?

And yet then they did not yet exist, but were being added that they might exist; but afterward they already existed, and were being preserved that they might profit. What is it, then, that those forty-three—or, as others will have it, thirty-nine—years were passed in so long a peace with Numa reigning (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.21.6; Eutropius, Breviary 1.3; Cicero, On the Republic 2.14.27), and afterward, with the rites instituted and the gods themselves, who had been invited by those same rites, now as protectors and guardians, scarcely, after so many years from the founding of the city down to Augustus, is one year recalled, after the first Punic War, as a great miracle, in which the Romans could close the gates of war?

10. Or do they answer that, except by continual wars succeeding one another without break, the Roman empire could not be so far and wide increased and made famous with such great glory? A fit cause indeed! that, in order for the empire to be great, it should have to be restless? Is it not, in the bodies of men, more satisfactory to have a modest stature with health than to arrive at some giant bulk by perpetual afflictions, nor, when you have arrived, to rest, but to be agitated by evils the greater the greater the limbs? But what evil would there be—or rather, not very much good—if those times endured which Sallust touched on, where he says: therefore at the beginning kings (for that was the first name of rule on earth) were divided: some exercised their mind, others their body; even then the life of men was conducted without desire, his own things were sufficiently pleasing to each (Sallust, Catiline 2.1)? Or, that the empire might be so greatly increased, ought that to have happened which Virgil detests, saying: until gradually a worse and discolored age and the madness of war and the love of having succeeded (Virgil, Aeneid 8.326-27)?

But plainly, for so many wars undertaken and waged, there is a just defense of the Romans: that not greed for attaining human praise, but the necessity of guarding their safety and liberty, compelled them to resist enemies rushing upon them inopportunely. Be it so, plainly. For after their affairs, as Sallust himself writes, increased in laws, morals, lands, seemed prosperous enough and powerful enough, as most things of mortals are held, envy arose from opulence. Therefore neighboring kings and peoples tried them by war; a few of their friends were a help, for the rest, struck with fear, kept away from dangers. But the Romans, intent at home and in the field, hastened, prepared, exhorted one another, went to meet the enemy, covered with arms their liberty, fatherland, and parents. Afterward, when by valor they had repelled the dangers, they bore aid to their allies and friends, and procured friendships more by giving than by receiving benefits (Sallust, Catiline 6.3-5). Fittingly Rome grew by these arts.

But with Numa reigning, that there might be so long a peace, did the wicked rush in and try them by war, or did none of these things happen, so that that peace could persist? For if even then Rome was assailed by wars, and arms were not borne to meet arms: by whatever means it was brought about that the enemies, overcome by no battle, terrified by no martial onset, were quieted, by these means it would always be brought about, and Rome, with the gates of Janus closed, would always reign in peace.

But if this was not in their power, then Rome had peace not as long as their gods, but as long as its neighboring men round about willed, who provoked it by no war; unless perhaps such gods will dare to sell even to a man what another man either willed or did not will.

It matters indeed—now by their own fault—how far evil minds these demons are permitted either to terrify or to incite; but if they could always do this, and nothing else were often done otherwise against their effort by a more secret and higher power, they would always have in their power peaces and warlike victories, which almost always happen through the motions of human souls; which, however, are for the most part brought about against their will, as not only the fables that lie much and scarcely indicate or signify anything of the truth confess, but even Roman history itself.

11. For not from any other source was that Apollo of Cumae, when war was being waged against the Achaeans and King Aristonicus, announced to have wept for four days (Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 28; Cicero, On Divination 1.43.98); by which prodigy the soothsayers, terrified, when they thought that the image ought to be thrown into the sea, the elders of Cumae interposed and related that such a prodigy had appeared in the same figure in the war both of Antiochus and of Perseus, and, because it had turned out happily for the Romans, they testified that by decree of the senate gifts had been sent to that same Apollo of theirs. Then the soothsayers, summoned as more skilled, answered that the weeping of the image of Apollo was therefore prosperous for the Romans, since the Cumaean colony was Greek, and Apollo, weeping, had signified grief and disaster to his own lands, from which he had been summoned—that is, to Greece itself. Then soon it was announced that King Aristonicus was conquered and captured, whom Apollo certainly did not wish to be conquered, and grieved, and indicated this even by the tears of his stone.

Whence, not altogether incongruously, the morals of the demons are described in the songs of the poets—fabulous, indeed, yet similar to the truth. For Diana grieved for Camilla in Virgil, and Hercules wept for Pallas who was about to die (Virgil, Aeneid 11.836-49; 10.464-65).

Hence perhaps Numa Pompilius too, abounding in peace, but not knowing nor inquiring by whose giving, when at leisure he was considering to what gods he might commit the safety and kingdom of Rome to be guarded, and did not think that that true and almighty supreme God cared about these earthly things, and recalled that the Trojan gods, whom Aeneas had brought, had been able to preserve long neither the Trojan nor the Lavinian kingdom founded by Aeneas himself: thought that others should be provided, whom he might apply to those former gods—who had either already passed over to Rome with Romulus, or were at some time to pass over when Alba was overthrown—either as guards to fugitives, as it were, or as helpers to the weak.

12. Nor yet did Rome deign to be content with these rites, which Pompilius had there established so many. For it did not yet have the supreme temple of Jupiter himself; for King Tarquin built the Capitol there (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.55.1); but Aesculapius journeyed about from Epidaurus to Rome (Livy, From the Founding of the City 10.47.7; Periochae 11), that as a most skilled physician he might more gloriously exercise his art in the most noble city; the mother of the gods too, I know not whence, from Pessinus (Livy, From the Founding of the City 29.10.5-11.7); for it was unworthy that, while her son already presided over the Capitoline hill, she herself should still lie hidden in an ignoble place.

But if she is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed certain of her sons to Rome, but even preceded others who were also to follow. I wonder indeed whether she bore Cynocephalus, who came long afterward from Egypt. Whether the goddess Fever too was born of her, let Aesculapius, her great-grandson, see; but from wherever she was born, the foreign gods will not, I suppose, dare to call her, a Roman citizen goddess, ignoble.

Under the protection of so many gods (who can number them, native and foreign, of heaven and earth, of the underworld and the sea, of springs and rivers, and, as Varro says, certain and uncertain, and in all the kinds of gods, as in animals, males and females Varro, Antiquities, frr. 185, 194; see Tertullian, To the Nations 2.9.3; 2.12.2; Arnobius, Against the Nations 7.19-20.?)—under the protection, then, of so many gods established, Rome ought not to have been agitated and afflicted by such great and horrible disasters, of which I will recall a few out of many. For it had gathered too many gods by its great smoke, as if by a given signal, for its protection; and by instituting and providing for them temples, altars, sacrifices, priests, it offended the supreme true God, to whom alone these things rightly done are owed.

And indeed it lived happier with fewer; but the greater it became, like a ship its sailors, the more it thought ought to be applied; believing, I suppose, that those fewer gods, under whom it had lived better in comparison with a worse life, did not suffice to assist its greatness.

For first, under the kings themselves, except Numa Pompilius, of whom I have already spoken above, how great an evil of discordant strife it was that compelled the brother of Romulus to be killed!

13. How could neither Juno, who with her Jupiter already cherished the Romans, lords of the world and the toga-clad nation (Virgil, Aeneid 1.281-82), nor Venus herself help her descendants of Aeneas, so that they might obtain marriages by a good and equitable custom, and so great a disaster of this lack rushed upon them, that they seized the women by guile and soon were compelled to fight with their fathers-in-law, so that the wretched women, not yet reconciled to their husbands after the wrong, were already dowered with the blood of their parents (Virgil, Aeneid 7.317-18; Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.8-9)? But, it is said, in this conflict the Romans conquered their neighbors. With how many and how great wounds and deaths on both sides, of kinsmen so near and borderers, did these victories stand! On account of one Caesar, a father-in-law, and one son-in-law of his, Pompey, when Caesar's daughter, Pompey's wife, was already dead, with how great and how just an instinct of grief does Lucan cry out: wars more than civil over the Emathian plains, and right given to crime, we sing (Lucan, Pharsalia 1.1-2).

The Romans conquered, then, that with bloody hands they might wrest from the daughters of their fathers-in-law, amid the slaughter of those fathers, their wretched embraces; nor did those women dare to weep for their slain fathers, lest they offend their victorious husbands, for whom—while these were still fighting—they did not know on whose behalf to make their vows. To such marriages not Venus but Bellona made the Roman people a gift; or perhaps that infernal fury Alecto, with Juno now favoring them, had more license against them than when she had been stirred up at her prayers against Aeneas (Virgil, Aeneid 7.323-26).

Andromache was more happily taken captive than those Roman marriages were wed. Slavish though they were, yet after her embraces Pyrrhus killed none of the Trojans; but the Romans killed their fathers-in-law in battles, whose daughters they were already embracing in their bridal chambers. She, subjected to the victor, could only grieve, not fear, the death of her own (Virgil, Aeneid 3.303-13); these, allied to combatants, feared the deaths of their parents as their husbands went forth, grieved them as they returned, and had neither their fear free nor their grief.

For at the destruction of their kindred—brothers, parents—they were either piously tormented or cruelly gladdened at the victories of their husbands. To this was added that, as the chances of wars are alternate, some lost their husbands by the sword of their parents, some by the sword of both their parents and their husbands.

For not even among the Romans were those crises small, since indeed it came even to the siege of the city, and with the gates closed they defended themselves; and when these had been opened by guile and the enemies admitted within the walls, in the very forum a wicked and too atrocious battle was joined between sons-in-law and fathers-in-law, and those ravishers too were being overcome, and, often fleeing among their own houses, more grievously befouled their former victories, though these too were shameful and to be lamented.

Here, however, Romulus, now despairing of the valor of his men, prayed Jupiter that they might stand, and from this occasion Jupiter found the name "Stayer" (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.12.6; Florus, Epitome 1.1.13); nor would there have been an end of so great an evil, had not those ravished women darted forth with torn hair, and, prostrating themselves before their parents, soothed their most just wrath, not by victorious arms, but by suppliant piety (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.13.1-3).

Then Romulus was compelled to bear Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as a partner in the kingdom, he who was impatient of a sharer who was his own twin: but when would he long tolerate this man too, who did not endure his brother and twin? Hence, this man too being killed, that he might be the greater god, he obtained the kingdom alone.

What are these rights of marriage, these incitements of wars, these covenants of brotherhood, of kinship, of society, of divinity? What, finally, is the life of the city under so many guardian gods? You see how much could be said here, and how many things, did not the attention to what remains of our work claim us, and our discourse hasten to other matters.

14. What then after Numa, under the other kings? With how great an evil—not only their own, but also the Romans'—were the Albans provoked into war, because, namely, the so long peace of Numa had grown cheap! how frequent were the slaughters of the Roman and Alban armies, and the diminishing of both cities! For that Alba, which Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, founded—a mother of Rome nearer than Troy itself—provoked by King Tullus Hostilius, clashed, and in clashing was both afflicted and afflicted, until there was weariness, on both sides equally exhausted, of the contests.

Then it pleased them to try the outcome of the war by triplet brothers on each side: from the Romans the three Horatii came forth, from the Albans the three Curiatii; by the three Curiatii two of the Horatii, but by the one Horatius the three Curiatii were overcome and slain. So Rome stood forth victorious by that slaughter, even in the final contest, so that of six one returned home.

To whom was the loss on both sides, to whom the grief, except to the stock of Aeneas, to the posterity of Ascanius, to the offspring of Venus, to the grandsons of Jupiter? For this too was a war more than civil, when a daughter city fought with its mother city.

Another atrocious and horrible evil was added to this last battle of the triplets. For as the two peoples had previously been friends (neighbors indeed and kindred), the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii; she, after she beheld the spoils of her betrothed on her victorious brother, was killed by that same brother because she wept. The feeling of this one woman seems to me to have been more human than that of the whole Roman people. For she whom she still held by a plighted faith as her future husband, or perhaps even grieving for her brother himself who had killed the man to whom he had promised his sister (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.23-26; Florus, Epitome 1.1.3.5), did not, I think, weep blamably.

For whence in Virgil does "pious" Aeneas grieve praiseworthily for an enemy slain even by his own hand (Virgil, Aeneid 10.821-26)? Whence did Marcellus, recalling the city of Syracuse, considering the common condition—that its height and glory had a little before suddenly fallen beneath his hands—pity it by weeping (Livy, From the Founding of the City 25.24.11; see 1.6)? I ask that we obtain from human feeling that a woman wept without blame for her betrothed slain by her brother, if men wept even with praise for enemies conquered by themselves. Therefore, when that woman wept for the death brought upon her betrothed by her brother, then Rome rejoiced that it had warred against its mother city with such great slaughter and conquered with such great shedding of kindred blood on both sides.

Why is the name of "praise" and the name of "victory" set before me? Let the obstacles of insane opinion be removed, let the deeds be seen naked, weighed naked, judged naked. Let the cause of Alba be stated, as the adultery of Troy was stated. None such, none similar is found; only that Tullus might rouse to arms idle men and columns now unused to triumphs. By that vice, then, was perpetrated so great a crime of social and kindred war, which vice Sallust touches on in passing as great.

For when, praising, he had briefly recalled the more ancient times, when the life of men was conducted without desire and his own things were sufficiently pleasing to each: but afterward, he says, when in Asia Cyrus, in Greece the Lacedaemonians and Athenians began to subdue cities and nations, to hold the lust of dominating as a cause of war, to think the greatest glory in the greatest empire, and the rest which he had set out to say. For me let it suffice up to this point to have set down his words. That lust of dominating agitates and wears down the human race with great evils. By this lust Rome, then conquered, triumphed that it had conquered Alba, and named the praise of its own crime "glory": since the sinner is praised, says our Scripture, in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquitous things is blessed (Ps 10:3 (9:24)).

Let the deceitful coverings, then, and the deceptive whitewashings be taken away from things, that they may be inspected by a sincere examination. Let no one say to me: that man and that man were great, because they fought with this man and that man and conquered. Gladiators too fight, and they themselves conquer, and that cruelty too has the rewards of praise; but I think it more satisfactory to pay the penalties of any sloth than to seek the glory of those arms. And yet if gladiators should come forth into the arena to fight among themselves, of whom one were a son, the other a father, who would bear such a spectacle? Who would not take it away? How, then, could the contest of arms between a city that was the mother of one and the daughter of the other be glorious? Or was it different on this account, that there was no arena, and broader fields were filled not with two gladiators but with the many deaths of two peoples, nor were those contests girt by an amphitheater, but an impious spectacle was offered to the whole world, and then to the living and to posterity, as far as that fame extends?

Yet those gods, the protectors of the Roman empire, suffered violence to their zeal and were as it were theatrical spectators of such contests, until the sister of the Horatii, on account of the three slain Curiatii, herself too as a third, from the other side, was added by her brother's sword to the two brothers, lest Rome, which had conquered, have fewer deaths even than the other. Then for the fruit of the victory Alba was overthrown, where, after Ilium, which the Greeks overthrew, and after Lavinium, where Aeneas had set up a foreign and fugitive kingdom, in the third place those Trojan divinities had dwelt. But in their manner they had perhaps already migrated even from there, and therefore it was destroyed. They had departed, you see—all the gods, the shrines and altars left behind, by whom that empire had stood.

They had departed, certainly—behold, now for the third time—so that a fourth, Rome, might most providently be entrusted to them. For Alba too had displeased them, where Amulius reigned with his brother expelled, and Rome had pleased them, where Romulus reigned with his brother killed.

But before Alba was destroyed, its people, they say, was poured over into Rome, that from each one city might be made. Be it so, let it have been done thus; yet that city, the kingdom of Ascanius and the third dwelling of the Trojan gods, was overthrown by its daughter city, the mother by the daughter; but that the remnants of war from two peoples might make one, much blood of both, poured out beforehand, was the wretched coagulation.

Why should I now say one by one, under the other kings, how often the same wars were renewed, which seemed ended by victories, and again and again completed with such great slaughters, again and again, after a treaty and peace, repeated between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law and their stock and posterity? No small indication of this calamity was that none of them closed the gates of war. None of them, then, under so many guardian gods, reigned in peace.

15. But what were the ends of the kings themselves? About Romulus let the fabulous flattery see, by which he is said to have been received into heaven; let certain of their writers see, who said that he was torn apart by the senate on account of his ferocity, and that one Julius Proculus or other was suborned, who would say that he had appeared to him and had through him commanded the Roman people that he be worshiped among the divinities (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.16.5-7; Cicero, On the Republic 2.10.20; On the Laws 1.1.3), and that in this way the people, which had begun to swell against the senate, was repressed and quieted. For an eclipse of the sun too had happened, which the unskilled multitude, in its ignorance, attributed to the merits of Romulus, though it was brought about by the fixed reckoning of its own course.

As though, indeed, if that had been a mourning of the sun, he ought not rather on that account to have been believed killed, and the very crime indicated also by the turning away of the daily light; as in fact happened when the Lord was crucified by the cruelty and impiety of the Jews (Matt 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44-45). That this obscuration of the sun did not happen from the canonical course of the stars is sufficiently shown by the fact that it was then the Passover of the Jews; for that is solemnly held at the full moon, but a regular eclipse of the sun happens only at the end of the moon.

Cicero too sufficiently signifies that that reception of Romulus among the gods was thought rather than done, when, even praising him in the books On the Republic and in the speech of Scipio, he says: he attained so much that, when, the sun being suddenly obscured, he did not appear, he was thought to have been placed in the number of the gods—an opinion which no mortal could ever attain without an exceptional glory of virtue (Cicero, On the Republic 2.10.17; see also Fenestella, Annals, fr. 6 (in Seneca, Letters 108.31)). (But by his saying that he suddenly did not appear, surely there is understood either the violence of a storm or the concealment of a slaying and a crime; for other writers of theirs add to the eclipse of the sun also a sudden storm, which surely either offered occasion for the crime or itself consumed Romulus (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.16.1; Florus, Epitome 1.1.17; Eutropius, Breviary 1.2.2)).

For about Tullus Hostilius too, who was the third king from Romulus, who himself also was consumed by a thunderbolt, the same Cicero says in those same books (Cicero, On the Republic 2.17.32) that this man too was not believed received among the gods by such a death, because perhaps the Romans were unwilling to make common—that is, to make cheap—what had been proved (that is, persuaded) in the case of Romulus, if this were easily attributed to another also.

He says also openly in his invectives: him who founded this city, Romulus, we have raised by goodwill and report to the immortal gods (Cicero, Against Catiline 3.1.2), so that he might show it was not truly done, but, on account of the merits of his virtue, benevolently bruited about and spread abroad. But in the dialogue Hortensius, when he was speaking about the canonical eclipses of the sun: so as to bring about, he says, the same darkness which it brought about at the death of Romulus, which happened at the obscuration of the sun (Cicero, Hortensius, fr. 66). Here certainly he did not at all fear to say the death of a man, because he was a disputant rather than a praiser.

But the other kings of the Roman people, except Numa Pompilius and Ancus Marcius, who died by disease, what horrible ends they had! Tullus Hostilius, as I said, the conqueror and overthrower of Alba, was burned up with his whole house by a thunderbolt. Priscus Tarquinius was slain by the sons of his predecessor. Servius Tullius was killed by the wicked crime of his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him in the kingdom. Nor did the gods depart, the shrines and altars left behind, when so great a parricide was perpetrated against the best king of that people—gods who, they say, were moved by the adultery of Paris to do this to wretched Troy and to leave it to the Greeks to be destroyed and burned; but, on top of that, Tarquinius himself succeeded, having killed his father-in-law.

This wicked parricide, reigning by the killing of his father-in-law, and moreover glorying in many wars and victories and building the Capitol from the spoils, those gods saw not departing, but present and remaining, and they suffered their king Jupiter to preside and reign for them in that loftiest temple—that is, in the work of a parricide. For he did not build the Capitol while still innocent and afterward, for his evil deserts, was driven from the city, but he arrived at the very kingdom in which he might build the Capitol by the perpetration of a most monstrous crime.

But that the Romans afterward drove him from the kingdom and shut him out from the walls of the city was not his own sin about the rape of Lucretia, but his son's, committed not only without his knowledge, but even in his absence. He was then besieging the city of Ardea, waging war for the Roman people; we do not know what he would have done, if his son's shameful deed had been brought to his knowledge; and yet, his judgment unexplored and untried, the people took the command from him, and, the army having been received—by which he had been ordered to be deserted—then, with the gates closed, did not allow him to enter as he returned.

But he, after most grievous wars, by which he wore down those same Romans with the neighbors stirred up, after, deserted by those on whose help he relied, he was unable to recover the kingdom, in the town of Tusculum, near Rome, for fourteen years, as it is said, held a private life at rest and grew old with his wife, with an end perhaps more to be wished for than his father-in-law, who was killed by the crime of his son-in-law, with his daughter, as it is reported, not unaware of it.

And yet the Romans did not call this Tarquinius cruel or wicked, but proud—perhaps not bearing his royal arrogance out of another pride.

For the crime of the best king, his father-in-law, killed by him, they so far despised that they made him their king; where I wonder if they did not, by a graver crime, repay so great a reward to so great a crime. Nor did the gods depart, the shrines and altars left behind. Unless perhaps someone so defends these gods as to say that they remained at Rome for this reason, that they might rather punish the Romans with punishments than help them with benefits, seducing them with empty victories and wearing them down with most grievous wars.

This was the life of the Romans under the kings, in the praiseworthy time of that commonwealth, down to the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, for about two hundred and forty-three years, when all those victories, bought with so much blood and such great calamities, scarcely extended that empire within twenty miles from the City; a space so far from being now compared even to the territory of some Gaetulian city.

16. To this time let us add also that time up to which Sallust says it was conducted by fair and moderate right, while the fear of Tarquin and the grave war with Etruria lasted (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 11; see 2.18). For as long as the Etruscans aided Tarquin, trying to return to the kingdom, Rome was shaken by a grave war. Therefore he says the commonwealth was conducted by fair and moderate right with fear pressing, not justice persuading.

In which most brief time how deadly was that year in which the first consuls were created, the royal power having been expelled! For they did not complete their year. For Junius Brutus dishonored and cast out from the City his colleague Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus (Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.2); then soon he himself fell in war, with mutual wounds with the enemy, having first killed his own sons and his wife's brothers, because he had learned that they had conspired for the restoring of Tarquin (Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.5-6). After Virgil had praiseworthily recalled this deed, he immediately shuddered at it with clemency. For when he had said: and the father will call his sons, stirring up new wars, to punishment for the sake of fair liberty, soon thereafter he exclaimed and said: unhappy, however posterity shall bear those deeds. However, he says, posterity may bear those deeds—that is, prefer and extol them—he who killed his sons is unhappy. And as if to console the unhappy man he subjoined: the love of the fatherland conquers, and the immense desire of praises (Virgil, Aeneid 6.820-23).

Is not, in this Brutus—who both killed his sons and, struck by the son of Tarquin whom he himself had struck, could not survive him, but rather Tarquin himself survived him—the innocence of his colleague Collatinus seen to be avenged, who, a good citizen, suffered, when this Tarquin was expelled, what the tyrant Tarquin himself suffered? For that same Brutus too is reported to have been a kinsman of Tarquin (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.56.7; Eutropius, Breviary 1.9.2); but Collatinus, you see, the likeness of name pressed down, because he too was called Tarquinius. He would, then, be compelled to change his name, not his fatherland; finally, in his name this word would be less, he would be called only L. Collatinus. But he did not lose what he could have lost without any loss, so that he was ordered to lack both honor, as first consul, and citizenship, as a good citizen.

Is even this glory—the detestable iniquity of Junius Brutus, and in no way useful to the commonwealth? Did even to perpetrate this the love of the fatherland conquer, and the immense desire of praises? With the tyrant Tarquin now certainly expelled, Lucretia's husband L. Tarquinius Collatinus was created consul with Brutus. How justly the people attended to morals in a citizen, not to a name! How impiously Brutus deprived of both fatherland and honor a colleague in that first and new power, whom, if he was offended by this, he could have deprived only of his name! These are the evils done, these the adversities that befell, when in that commonwealth it was conducted by fair and moderate right.

Lucretius too, who had been substituted in Brutus's place, was consumed by disease before that same year ended. So Publius Valerius, who had succeeded Collatinus, and Marcus Horatius, who had been substituted for the deceased Lucretius, completed that funereal and tartarean year, which had five consuls (Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.8.4-5); in which year the Roman commonwealth inaugurated the new honor and power of the consulship itself.

17. Then, with fear now a little diminished—not because the wars had quieted, but because they did not press with so grave a weight, the time being ended, namely, in which it was conducted by fair and moderate right—there followed the things which the same Sallust briefly sets forth: then the fathers exercised the plebs with servile command, decided about their life and back in the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, with the rest dispossessed, held power over the soil alone. Oppressed by these cruelties and most of all by usury, the plebs, while in continual wars it endured tribute and military service at once, took up arms and occupied the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and then procured for itself tribunes of the plebs and other rights. The end of discords and of the struggle on both sides was the second Punic War (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 11; see 2.18).

Why, then, should I, in writing, endure such great delays, or bring them to those who will read? How wretched that commonwealth was, throughout so long an age, through so many years, down to the second Punic War, with wars from without not ceasing to disturb it and with discords and civil seditions within, has been briefly intimated by Sallust. Accordingly those victories were not the solid joys of the blessed, but the empty consolations of the wretched, and enticing incitements, to men by no means at rest, for undergoing other and other barren evils.

And let not the good and prudent Romans be angry with us because we say this: although on this matter they are neither to be entreated nor admonished, since it is most certain that they will not at all be angry. For we say nothing graver, or graver things, than their own authors, to whom we are far inferior both in style and in leisure; which authors, however, they themselves both labored to learn by heart and compel their sons to labor at.

But those who are angry—how would they bear me, if I said what Sallust says? Very many disturbances, seditions, and at last civil wars arose, while a few powerful men, into whose favor most had yielded, under the honorable name of fathers or of plebs, aimed at dominations; and citizens were called good and bad, not for their merits toward the commonwealth, all being equally corrupted, but as each was wealthiest and stronger in doing wrong, because he defended present things, he was reckoned good (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 12).

Further, if those writers of history judged it to pertain to honorable liberty not to be silent about the evils of their own city, which in many places they were compelled to praise with great heralding, since they had no other, truer one, in which the citizens are to be chosen as eternal: what does it befit us to do, whose hope, the better and more certain it is in God, the greater ought our liberty to be, when they impute present evils to our Christ, that the weaker and more unskilled minds may be alienated from that city in which alone one must live perpetually and happily?

Nor do we say more horrible things against their gods than their own authors, again and again, whom they read and proclaim, since indeed both we received from them the things we would say, and we are in no way able to say either such things or all of them.

Where, then, were those gods who are thought to be worshiped for the scant and deceitful happiness of this world, when the Romans, to whom by a most lying cunning they peddled themselves to be worshiped, were vexed with such great calamities? Where were they, when the consul Valerius was killed defending the Capitol, set on fire by exiles and slaves, and he himself could more easily help the temple of Jupiter than that crowd of so many divinities, with their greatest and best king, whose temple he had freed, could come to his aid?

Where were they, when the city, wearied by the densest evils of seditions, while it awaited a little while at rest the envoys sent to Athens to borrow laws, was laid waste by a grave famine and pestilence? Where were they, when again the people, when it labored under famine, first created a prefect of the grain supply, and, that famine growing strong, Spurius Maelius, because he gave grain freely to the hungry multitude, incurred the charge of aiming at kingship, and, at the insistence of that same prefect, was killed by the dictator L. Quintius, decrepit in age, through Quintus Servilius the master of horse, with the greatest and most dangerous tumult of the city? Where were they, when a very great pestilence having arisen, the people, long and much wearied with useless gods, thought that new lectisternia, which it had never done before, should be exhibited? But couches were spread in honor of the gods, whence this rite, or rather sacrilege, received its name.

Where were they, when, through ten continuous years, by fighting badly, the Roman army had received frequent and great disasters at Veii, until at last it was aided through Furius Camillus, whom the ungrateful city afterward condemned? Where were they, when the Gauls took Rome, despoiled it, burned it, and filled it with slaughter?

Where were they when that notable plague brought on so vast a slaughter—the plague in which the famous Furius Camillus perished, who had earlier defended the ungrateful republic against the Veientes and afterward avenged it upon the Gauls? In this plague the theatrical games introduced another new pestilence, not into the bodies of the Romans but, what is far more ruinous, into their morals.

Where were they when another grievous plague was thought to have arisen from the poisons of the matrons, whose morals—those of many noble women, beyond belief—were found to be more grievous than any plague?

Or when both consuls, besieged with their army by the Samnites at the Caudine Forks, were forced to make a shameful treaty with them, so that, six hundred Roman knights being given as hostages, the rest, having lost their arms and being stripped and deprived of their other coverings, were sent under the enemy's yoke clothed in a single garment apiece?

Or when, amid a grievous plague that afflicted the rest, many in the army as well perished struck by lightning?

Or when, by yet another intolerable plague, Rome was driven to summon Aesculapius from Epidaurus and to call him in as a god of medicine—since Jove, the king of all, who had long been seated on the Capitol, had not had the leisure, on account of the many seductions in which he had indulged as a young man, to learn medicine?

Or when, with the enemy conspiring all at one time—Lucanians, Bruttians, Samnites, Etruscans, and Senonian Gauls—first the Roman envoys were slain by them, and then an army was overwhelmed together with its praetor, seven tribunes perishing along with him and thirteen thousand of the soldiers?

Or when, after long and grievous seditions at Rome—in which at last the common people had withdrawn to the Janiculum in a hostile secession—the calamity of this evil was so dreadful that, for this cause, as was customary in the gravest perils, Hortensius was created dictator, who, after recalling the people, expired while still in that same office—a thing that had befallen no dictator before, and which, now that Aesculapius was present, was a graver charge against those gods?

Then indeed so many wars broke out everywhere and so frequently that, owing to a shortage of soldiers, those proletarians—who had received this name because, being unfit for military service through poverty, they were left free to beget offspring (proles)—were enrolled for war. Pyrrhus too, king of Greece, then celebrated for his immense glory, was summoned by the Tarentines and made an enemy of the Romans. To him indeed, when he consulted it about the future outcome of events, Apollo gave so ambiguous an oracle, quite cleverly, that whichever of the two things came to pass, he himself would be held divine. For he said: I say that you, Pyrrhus, can conquer the Romans. And so, whether Pyrrhus were conquered by the Romans or the Romans by Pyrrhus, the soothsayer could await either outcome with security. What dreadful and horrible slaughter there was then on both sides! Yet in it Pyrrhus came off the better, so that he might already have been able to proclaim Apollo divine according to his own understanding, had not the Romans soon come off the better in another battle.

And amid so great a slaughter of wars there arose also a grievous plague among the women. For before they could bring their pregnancies to term, the pregnant women were dying. Here, I suppose, Aesculapius excused himself, on the ground that he professed himself a chief physician, not a midwife. The cattle too were likewise perishing, so that it was believed the whole race of animals would fail.

What of that memorable winter, raging with such incredible savagery that, with the snows lying to a fearful depth even in the forum for forty days, the Tiber too was frozen hard with ice? Had it happened in our times, what things, and how great, these men would have said!

What of that equally vast plague—how long it raged, how many it carried off! And when it stretched into another year much more grievously, with Aesculapius present in vain, recourse was had to the Sibylline books. In this class of oracles, as Cicero recounts in his books On Divination, it is customary to put more trust in the interpreters as they guess at doubtful matters as they can or as they will. Then, therefore, it was declared that this was the cause of the plague: that many men were keeping a great many sacred buildings in private possession. Thus for the time being Aesculapius was acquitted of a grave charge of incompetence or negligence.

But why had those buildings been occupied by many, with no one forbidding it, except that for so long that great throng of deities had been supplicated in vain, and so little by little the places were deserted by their worshippers, so that, as if empty, they could without offense to anyone be claimed at least for human uses? For if those buildings were then carefully sought out again and restored as if to allay the plague, but afterward, neglected and usurped in the same way, lay hidden, then surely it would not be credited to Varro's great learning that, in writing of the sacred buildings, he records so many that were unknown. But for the time being an elegant excusing of the gods was provided—not an averting of the plague.

18. But now, in the Punic wars, when victory hung long doubtful and uncertain between the two empires, and two most powerful peoples were driving the most valiant and wealthy assaults against each other, how many smaller kingdoms were crushed! What ample and noble cities were destroyed, how many states afflicted, how many ruined! How far and wide were so many regions and lands laid waste! How often were the conquerors on this side or that conquered! What a multitude of men was consumed, whether of fighting soldiers or of peoples free from arms! What a great force of ships was overwhelmed in naval battles as well, and sunk by the variety of diverse storms! Were we to attempt to relate or recount it, we should be nothing other than writers of history ourselves (Eutropius, Breviary 2.21-28).

Then the Roman state, thrown into great panic, ran to vain and laughable remedies. By the authority of the Sibylline books the Secular Games were restored, the celebration of which had been instituted at intervals of a hundred years but, in happier times, had been lost through forgetfulness. The pontiffs also renewed the sacred games for the gods of the underworld, games that had themselves been abolished in the better years gone by. No wonder—for when they were renewed, the gods of the underworld, enriched by so great an abundance of the dying, were pleased even to take their sport, while the wretched men were waging those rabid wars themselves, with their bloody animosities and deadly victories on this side and that, as great games for the demons and a rich banquet for the powers below.

Nothing more pitiable, to be sure, befell in the First Punic War than that the Romans were so defeated that even the famous Regulus was captured, of whom we made mention in the first and second books—plainly a great man, who had earlier conquered and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would even have brought that First Punic War itself to an end, had he not, through an excessive greed for praise and glory, imposed on the exhausted Carthaginians harsher terms than they could bear. If that man's most unexpected captivity and most unworthy slavery, his most faithful keeping of his oath and his most cruel death do not force those gods to blush, then it is true that they are made of air and have no blood.

Nor were there lacking, at that time, most grievous evils within the walls. For when the river Tiber overflowed beyond its wont, nearly all the low-lying parts of the city were laid waste, some places driven down by the force of what was like a torrent, others soaked and undermined as if by a long-standing pool. Then a still more ruinous fire followed upon this calamity, which, having caught hold of all the loftier buildings around the forum, did not spare even the temple of Vesta, its closest familiar, where the virgins, not so much honored as condemned, had been wont to grant it, as it were, perpetual life by most diligently replacing the wood. There, indeed, the fire not only lived but even raged. Terrified by its onslaught, the virgins, since they could not free those fateful sacred objects—which had already burdened three cities in which they had been kept—from that conflagration, Metellus the pontiff, forgetting in a manner his own safety, rushed in and, half-burned, snatched them away.

For the fire did not recognize even him, nor in truth was there any divinity there which, had it been there, would not also have fled. A man, then, was able to be of more use to Vesta's sacred things than they to a man. But if they could not repel the fire from themselves, what could they avail against those waters and flames to help the city, whose safety they were thought to guard? As indeed the event itself made plain, they could avail nothing at all.

These things we would by no means cast in their teeth, if they said that those sacred rites were instituted not to guard these temporal goods but to signify eternal ones, and that therefore, when it happened that they perished—since they were corporeal and visible—nothing was thereby diminished in the things for whose sake they had been instituted, and that they could be restored anew for the same uses.

But as it is, with marvelous blindness they suppose that, by sacred rites which could perish, it could come to pass that the earthly safety and temporal felicity of the city could not perish. Accordingly, when it is shown that, even while those sacred rites remained, either the destruction of their safety or unhappiness rushed upon them, they blush to change the opinion which they cannot defend.

19. In the Second Punic War, moreover, it would be too long to recount the disasters of two peoples fighting between themselves so far and wide, so that—by the admission even of those who set out not so much to narrate the Roman wars as to praise the Roman empire—the one who conquered was more like a conquered man (Florus, Epitome 2.6 (22).1). For when Hannibal arose from Spain, crossed the Pyrenees mountains, ran through Gaul, broke through the Alps, and—after so long a circuit, his forces increased—rushed like a torrent upon the throat of Italy, laying all waste or subduing it: what bloody battles were fought, how often were the Romans defeated! How many towns went over to the enemy, how many were captured and crushed! What dreadful battles, and how often glorious to Hannibal through Roman disaster!

But of the marvelously horrible evil at Cannae, what shall I say—where Hannibal, cruel as he was, is yet reported to have ordered that, sated with so great a slaughter of his most savage foes, his men should be spared? From there he sent to Carthage three pecks of gold rings, that they might understand how great a portion of the Roman nobility had fallen in that battle, so that it could more easily be reckoned by measure than by number (Eutropius, Breviary 3.11.2); and hence the slaughter of the rest of the throng—so much more numerous as it was lowlier, lying without rings—was thought to be left to conjecture rather than reported.

Finally, so great a shortage of soldiers followed that the Romans gathered men guilty of crimes, with impunity offered, and bestowed liberty on slaves, and with these their army was not so much filled up as newly formed, to their shame. Arms, then, were lacking for these slaves—or rather, that we may do them no injustice, freedmen now—who were to fight for the Roman republic. They were stripped from the temples, as though the Romans were saying to their gods: "Lay down what you have so long held to no purpose, lest perhaps our chattels may be able to make something useful of it, since our divinities could not."

Then too, when the treasury had failed for paying the soldiers, private wealth came into public use, each man contributing what he had, so far that, except for their individual rings and individual bullas—pitiable insignia of rank—the senate itself, and how much more the other orders and tribes, left themselves no gold (Florus, Epitome 2.6 (22).23-24). Who would endure these men if in our times they were driven to such poverty—when even now we scarcely endure them, since for superfluous pleasure more is bestowed on actors than was then contributed to the legions for the last hope of safety?

20. But among all these evils of the Second Punic War, nothing was more pitiable, or more worthy of pitiable complaint, than the destruction of the Saguntines. For this city of Spain, most friendly to the Roman people, was overthrown while it was keeping faith with that same people. For it was here that Hannibal, having broken the treaty, sought occasions by which to provoke the Romans to war. He was therefore fiercely besieging Saguntum; and when this was heard at Rome, envoys were sent to Hannibal to make him withdraw from his siege. Slighted, they proceeded to Carthage and lodged their complaint of the broken treaty, and, the business accomplished nothing, returned to Rome. While these delays were going on, that wretched and most wealthy city, most dear to its own republic and to Rome, was destroyed by the Carthaginians in the eighth or ninth month. To read of its ruin, much more to write of it, is a thing of horror. Yet I will recount it briefly, for it bears much on the matter at hand.

First it wasted away with famine; for it is even reported to have been fed by some on the corpses of their own. Then, weary of all things, lest it should at least come captive into the hands of Hannibal, it publicly built a huge pyre, into which, as it blazed, they cast both themselves and their own, even slaughtering them with the sword. Here let those gods—those gluttons and good-for-nothings, gaping after the fat of sacrifices and deceiving men with the fog of lying divinations—do something;

here let them do something, let them come to the aid of a city most friendly to the Roman people, let them not allow it, perishing through the keeping of faith, to perish.

They themselves, surely, had presided as mediators when it was bound to the Roman republic by the treaty interposed. Therefore, while faithfully guarding what it had joined by the pact agreed under those very protectors, had bound by faith, had made fast by oath, it was besieged, overwhelmed, and consumed by a treacherous foe.

If those same gods afterward terrified Hannibal with storm and lightning when he was close to the Roman walls, and drove him far off, then let them have done some such thing first. For I dare to say that they could more honorably have raged with a storm on behalf of friends of the Romans who were thus endangered precisely so as not to break faith with the Romans, and who then had no help, than on behalf of the Romans themselves, who were fighting for themselves and were wealthy in resources against Hannibal.

If, then, they were the guardians of Roman felicity and glory, they would have averted from it so grave a charge as the disaster of Saguntum. But as it is, how foolishly it is believed that Rome did not perish, with Hannibal victorious, through the protection of those gods—gods who could not come to the aid of the city of Saguntum, that it might not perish for the sake of friendship with Rome!

If the people of Saguntum had been Christian and had suffered something of this kind for the faith of the Gospel—though it would not have destroyed itself with sword or fire, yet if it had suffered destruction for the faith of the Gospel—it would have suffered in that hope by which it had believed in Christ, not for a reward of the briefest time, but of an endless eternity.

But on behalf of these gods, who are said to be worshipped, and are sought out to be worshipped, precisely so that the felicity of these falling and passing things may be secure—what will their defenders and excusers answer us about the perishing Saguntines, except what they answered about the slain Regulus? The difference is only this: that he was one man, this a whole city; yet the cause of the destruction of each was the keeping of faith. For it was on this account that the one was willing to return to the enemy, and the other unwilling to go over to it.

Does faith kept, then, provoke the wrath of the gods? Or can not only individual men, but even whole cities perish, with the gods favorable? Let them choose which they will. For if those gods are angered by faith kept, let them look for the treacherous to worship them; but if even with them favorable men and cities can be afflicted with many grievous torments and perish, then they are worshipped with no fruit of this felicity.

Let them cease, then, to be angry—those who think that, because the sacred rites of their gods have been lost, they have been made unhappy. For they could, with those rites not only remaining but even favoring them, not merely murmur about misery as they do now, but, like Regulus and the Saguntines then, be horribly tortured and even utterly perish.

21. Furthermore, between the second and the last Carthaginian war—when Sallust said that the Romans conducted themselves with the best morals and the greatest concord (Sallust, Histories 1, fr. 11) (for I pass over much, mindful of the limits of the work undertaken)—

at that very same time, then, of the best morals and the greatest concord, that famous Scipio, liberator of Rome and Italy and the renowned and admirable finisher of that Second Punic War—so horrible, so destructive, so perilous—the conqueror of Hannibal and subduer of Carthage,

whose life from youth is described (Livy, From the Founding of the City 38.51.5-11) as devoted to the gods and nurtured in the temples, yielded to the accusations of his enemies, and, lacking the homeland which he had by his own valor rendered safe and free, spent and completed the rest of his life in the town of Liternum—captured, after his notable triumph, by no longing for that city, so that he is reported to have ordered that not even his funeral be held in his ungrateful homeland when he was dead (Livy, From the Founding of the City 38.53.8).

Then, for the first time, through the proconsul Gnaeus Manlius, who triumphed over the Galatians of Asia, Asiatic luxury crept into Rome, worse than any enemy. For then for the first time, it is reported, bronze couches and costly coverlets were seen (Livy, From the Founding of the City 39.6.7-8); then lyre-girls were brought into banquets, and other licentious depravity.

But now I have set out to speak of those evils which men suffer intolerably, not of those which they do willingly. For which reason that point I noted about Scipio—that, yielding to his enemies, he died outside the homeland which he had freed—pertains more to the present discussion: that the Roman divinities, from whose temples he turned away Hannibal, did not repay him in kind, gods who are worshipped only for the sake of that felicity. But because Sallust said that at that time the morals there were the best, I thought I should recount this about Asian luxury, so that it may be understood that even that statement was made by Sallust by comparison with other times—times in which, in their gravest discords, the morals were certainly worse.

For then—that is, between the second and the last Carthaginian war—that Voconian law too was passed, that no one should make a woman his heir, not even an only daughter (Cicero, Against Verres, second pleading 1.41.106; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 6.13). What could be said or thought more unjust than this law, I do not know.

Yet throughout that whole interval between the two Punic wars the unhappiness was more bearable. The army was worn down only by wars abroad, but was consoled by victories; while at home no discords, as at other times, were raging. But in the last Punic war, by a single assault of the other Scipio—who for this very reason himself acquired the surname Africanus—the rival of the Roman empire was destroyed root and branch; and thereafter the Roman republic was overwhelmed by such heaps of evils that, by the prosperity and security of affairs from which those evils were heaped up upon morals too greatly corrupted, Carthage is shown to have done more harm by being so quickly overthrown than it had earlier done by being so long hostile.

Throughout all this whole time, down to Caesar Augustus—who seems to have wrested from the Romans, by every means, a liberty no longer glorious even in their own opinion, but contentious and destructive and now plainly enervated and languid, and to have recalled all things to his royal authority, and to have restored and, as it were, renewed the republic, which had collapsed as if from a diseased old age—

throughout all this time, then, I pass over the disasters of war, arising again and again from one cause or another, and the Numantine treaty, stained with a horrible disgrace; for the chickens had flown from their cage and, as they say, had made a bad augury for the consul Mancinus Livy, Summaries 55; Cicero, On Duties 3.30.109; On the Republic 3.18.28; Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 24; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 1.6.7; Januarius Nepotianus, Epitome of Valerius Maximus 7.8.—as though, through so many years in which that tiny city, having beset a Roman army, had afflicted it and had already begun to be a terror to the Roman republic itself, others had advanced against it under a different augury.

22. But these things, I say, I pass over, although I would by no means have kept silent about this: that Mithridates, king of Asia, ordered the Roman citizens traveling everywhere in Asia, and intent on their business in numberless multitude, to be killed in a single day; and it was done (Livy, Summaries 78; Appian, The Mithridatic Wars 22-23).

How pitiable was the face of things—that each man, wherever he was found, in the field, on the road, in a town, in a house, in a village, in the forum, in a temple, in bed, at a banquet, was unexpectedly and impiously butchered! What groans of the dying, what tears of the onlookers—perhaps even of those who struck the blows! How harsh the necessity laid on hosts not only of witnessing those abominable slaughters in their own homes, but even of perpetrating them, their faces suddenly changed from that gracious courtesy of hospitality to the carrying out of a hostile deed in time of peace—wounds, I should say, altogether mutual, since the one struck was wounded in his body and the one who struck in his soul!

Had all these men despised the auguries? Had they no gods, household and public, to consult when they set out from their own homes for that journey of no return? If this is so, these men have no reason to complain in this matter of our times; long ago the Romans despised these vain things. But if they did consult them, let it be answered what these gods availed, when, by human laws at least, with no one forbidding, such things were permitted.

23. But let us now briefly recount, as far as we can, those evils which, the more inward they were, the more wretched they proved: the civil—or rather uncivil—discords, no longer mere seditions, but now actual wars within the city, where so much blood was poured out, where the partisanship of factions raged no longer in the disputes of assemblies and varied outcries against one another, but now plainly with sword and arms; the wars of the allies, the wars of the slaves, the civil wars—how much Roman blood they shed, what devastation and desolation of Italy they wrought!

For before allied Latium roused itself against Rome, all the animals subjected to human use—dogs, horses, asses, oxen, and whatever other beasts had been under the dominion of men—suddenly grew wild and, forgetful of their domestic gentleness, abandoned their stalls and wandered free, and shunned the approach not only of others but even of their own masters, not without death or peril to anyone who ventured, if he pressed upon them from close at hand (Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 54; Orosius, History 5.18.9). Of how great an evil was it a sign, if it was a sign—seeing how great an evil it was, even if it was not a sign! Had this happened in our times, we should have to endure these men as more rabid than their animals were.

24. Now the beginning of the civil evils was the seditions of the Gracchi, stirred up by the agrarian laws. For they wished to divide among the people the lands which the nobility wrongly possessed. But to dare to uproot an iniquity now grown old was most perilous—indeed, as the event itself taught, most ruinous. What deaths were wrought when the elder Gracchus was slain! And what again, when his other brother was slain not long after! For it was not by laws and the order of the magistracies, but by mobs and the clashes of arms, that noble and ignoble alike were killed.

After the killing of the other Gracchus, the consul Lucius Opimius, who had taken up arms against him within the City and, after he and his allies were crushed and destroyed, had made an immense slaughter of citizens, is reported—when he held an inquiry, pursuing the rest now by judicial investigation—to have put three thousand men to death (Appian, The Civil Wars 1.26; Sallust, The War with Jugurtha 42.4). From this one can understand how great a multitude of deaths the turbid clash of arms could have produced, when so great a number resulted from the inquiry of the courts, as it were duly weighed.

The man who struck down Gracchus himself sold his head to the consul for as great a weight of gold as it weighed; for this bargain had preceded the slaughter. In it Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank, was also killed together with his children.

25. By an elegant decree of the senate, indeed, on the very spot where that deadly tumult was joined, where so many citizens of every order fell, a temple of Concord was built, so that a witness to the punishment of the Gracchi might strike the eyes of those who harangued the assembly and prick their memory. But what else was this than a mockery of the gods—to build a temple to that goddess who, if she were in the city, would not have collapsed, torn apart by such great dissensions?

Unless perhaps Concord, guilty of this crime because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, deserved to be shut up in that temple as in a prison. For why, if they wished to suit the deed done, did they not rather build there a temple of Discord? Or is any reason given why Concord should be a goddess and Discord not a goddess—so that, according to Labeo's distinction, the one is good and the other bad? Nor does he himself seem to have followed anything else than that he noticed that at Rome a temple was set up to Fever as well as to Health. By that reasoning, then, a temple ought to have been set up not only to Concord but also to Discord.

Perilously, then, did the Romans wish to live with so evil a goddess angry, nor did they recall that the destruction of Troy took its origin from her offense. For she, because she had not been invited among the gods, contrived the quarrel of three goddesses by the placing of the golden apple; whence the brawl of the deities, and Venus the victor, and Helen carried off, and Troy destroyed.

Wherefore, if perchance, indignant that she had not deserved to have any temple in the City among the gods, she was for that reason now disturbing the state with such great tumults, how much more atrociously could she have been provoked, when in the place of that slaughter—that is, in the place of her own handiwork—she saw a temple set up to her adversary!

At these vain things we laugh, while those learned and wise men grow angry; and yet, worshippers of good gods and bad, they do not escape from this question of Concord and Discord—whether they have passed over the worship of these goddesses and preferred to them Fever and Bellona, to whom they made temples of old, or whether they have worshipped these as well, since Concord thus departing, raging Discord led them on even to the civil wars.

26. A splendid obstacle to sedition, indeed, they thought to set before those who harangued the assembly: the temple of Concord, witness to the slaughter and punishment of the Gracchi. How much they profited from this, the worse things that followed indicate.

For thereafter the haranguers labored not to avoid the example of the Gracchi, but to surpass their purpose—Lucius Saturninus, tribune of the people, and Gaius Servilius the praetor, and much later Marcus Drusus—by whose seditions slaughters, already most grievous then, first blazed up, and then the wars of the allies, by which Italy was vehemently afflicted and brought to a marvelous devastation and desolation. Then the slave war followed, and the civil wars.

What battles were joined, what blood poured out, so that almost all the peoples of Italy, over whom the Roman empire chiefly prevailed, were subdued as though they were a savage barbarian people! From the very fewest gladiators—that is, fewer than seventy—in what way the slave war was set in motion, to how great a number and how keen and fierce a force it reached, what commanders of the Roman people that number overcame, what cities and regions, and in what manner, it laid waste—scarcely could those who wrote the history sufficiently set forth Florus, Epitome 2.8 (3.20); Eutropius, Breviary 6.7; Sallust, Histories 3, fr. 84; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 38.21; Appian, The Civil Wars 1.116-20.. Nor was this the only slave war: the slaves had earlier ravaged the province of Macedonia, and then Sicily and the seacoast. And how great and how horrible were the things they committed—first robberies, then powerful wars of the pirates—who could tell in proportion to the magnitude of the matters?

But when Marius, already bloodied with civil blood, after many of the party opposed to him had been slain, had been defeated and had fled the City, and the state was scarcely catching its breath for a little while—to use Cicero's words: afterward Cinna together with Marius prevailed. Then indeed, the most illustrious men being slain, the lights of the state were extinguished. Sulla afterward avenged the cruelty of this victory—with what diminution of citizens and what calamity to the republic there is no need even to say (Cicero, Against Catiline 3.10.24). For of this vengeance, which was more ruinous than if the crimes that were being punished had been left unpunished, Lucan too says: the cure exceeded measure and followed too far where the diseases had led its hand. The guilty perished; but by then only the guilty could survive (Lucan, Pharsalia 2.142-46).

In that Marian and Sullan war—apart from those who fell abroad in the line of battle—in the City itself too the streets, squares, forums, theaters, and temples were filled with corpses, so that it was hard to judge when the victors had wrought more deaths: whether before, in order that they might conquer, or afterward, because they had conquered;

when first, in the Marian victory—when Marius restored himself from exile—apart from slaughters committed indiscriminately on every side, the head of the consul Octavius was set on the rostra, the Caesars were butchered by Fimbria in their own homes, the two Crassi, father and son, were slaughtered in each other's sight, Baebius and Numitorius perished dragged by the hook, their entrails strewn about, Catulus withdrew himself from the hands of his enemies by drinking poison, and Merula, the priest of Jupiter, with his veins cut open, made offering to his own Jupiter even with his own blood. But before the very eyes of Marius himself, those were struck down at once to whom, when they saluted him, he had refused to extend his right hand.

28. But the Sullan victory that followed—the avenger, that is, of this cruelty—after so much blood of citizens by whose shedding it had been won, the war now ended and enmities living on, stalked more cruelly in peace. For now, after the former and most recent slaughters of the elder Marius, others more grievous had been added by the younger Marius and Carbo, of those same Marian factions, who, with Sulla pressing upon them and despairing not only of victory but even of their own safety, filled all things with further slaughters of their own.

For besides the slaughter spread far and wide through diverse places, the senate too was besieged, and men were led forth from the senate house itself, as if from a prison, to the sword. Mucius Scaevola the pontiff—since among the Romans nothing was held more sacred than the temple of Vesta—was killed while embracing the altar itself, and almost extinguished with his own blood that fire which, by the perpetual care of the virgins, always burned.

Then Sulla entered the City as victor, who in the Public Villa—no longer with war, but with peace itself raging—had laid low seven thousand men who had surrendered (and hence were certainly unarmed) not by fighting but by command.

But throughout the whole City each Sullan partisan struck down whomever he pleased, so that the deaths could not be counted at all, until it was suggested to Sulla that some ought to be allowed to live, so that there might be men over whom those who had conquered could rule. Then at last, the license of slaughter that was being carried furiously here and there everywhere being checked, that list was posted, with great rejoicing, which contained two thousand men of either splendid order—the equestrian, that is, and the senatorial—to be killed and proscribed. The number saddened, but the limit consoled; nor was there as much grief because so many were falling as there was gladness because the rest had nothing to fear.

But in the case of certain of those who had been ordered to die, the very security of the rest—cruel though it was—groaned at the refined kinds of death. For one man the hands of those who mangled him tore apart without any iron, men rending a living man more savagely than beasts are wont to tear a cast-off corpse. Another, with his eyes gouged out and his limbs cut off piece by piece, was forced to live long—or rather to die long—amid such great torments. Certain noble cities too were put up for auction, like farms; and one, just as a single defendant might be ordered to be led off, was thus ordered, whole, to be butchered.

These things were done in peace after war—not that victory might be hastened in the gaining, but that, once gained, it might not be despised. Peace contended with war in cruelty, and won. For war laid low the armed, but peace the unarmed. War was such that he who was struck might, if he could, strike back; but peace was such, not that he who had escaped might live, but that the dying man might not resist.

29. What rage of foreign nations, what savagery of barbarians can be compared to this victory of citizens over citizens? What more deadly, more foul, more bitter thing did Rome see—the incursion of the Gauls long ago and of the Goths a little while back, or the ferocity of Marius and Sulla and the other most illustrious men of their parties, like her own lights turned against her own members?

The Gauls, indeed, butchered the senate—whatever of it they could find in the whole City except the Capitoline citadel, which alone was somehow defended; but to those established on that hill they at least sold their lives for gold, lives which, though they could not seize them by the sword, they might yet consume by siege. The Goths, however, spared so many senators that it is more to be wondered at that they killed any.

But Sulla, while Marius was still alive, as victor occupied the Capitol itself—which had been safe from the Gauls—to decree slaughters; and when Marius had slipped away in flight, only to return more ferocious and more bloody, Sulla on the Capitol, by a decree of the senate as well, deprived many of life and property. As for the Marian party, with Sulla absent, what was sacred that they would spare, when they did not spare the wretched Mucius—a citizen, a senator, a pontiff—as he clung in embrace to the very altar where, as they say, the destinies of Rome resided? And that final Sullan list, to pass over countless other deaths, slaughtered more senators than the Goths were even able to plunder.

30. With what face, then, with what heart, with what shamelessness, with what folly—or rather madness—do they not charge those evils to their own gods, and charge these to our Christ? The cruel civil wars, more bitter than all wars against foreign enemies—as even their own authors admit—by which that republic was judged not merely afflicted but utterly ruined, arose long before the coming of Christ, and by a chain of wicked causes from the Marian and Sullan war to the wars of Sertorius and Catiline (of whom the one had been proscribed by Sulla, the other nurtured), thence to the war of Lepidus and Catulus (of whom the one desired to rescind, the other to defend, the Sullan deeds), thence to that of Pompey and Caesar (of whom Pompey had been a follower of Sulla and had either equaled or even already surpassed his power; while Caesar would not endure Pompey's power, but because he did not have it—which, however, once Pompey was conquered and slain, he transcended), and from here they reached the other Caesar, who was afterward called Augustus, in whose reign Christ was born.

For Augustus himself too waged civil wars with many, and in them too many most illustrious men perished, among them Cicero, that eloquent master of governing the republic. For Pompey's conqueror Gaius Caesar, who exercised his civil victory with clemency and granted life and dignity to his adversaries, a conspiracy of certain noble senators butchered in the senate house itself, as though for the liberty of the republic, on the charge that he aspired to kingship. His power Antony then seemed to be reaching after—a man very different in morals and stained and corrupted with every vice—against whom Cicero vehemently resisted, on behalf of that same liberty, as it were, of the homeland.

There had then emerged that other Caesar, a young man of marvelous disposition, the adopted son of that Gaius Caesar, who, as I said, was afterward called Augustus. To this young Caesar, that his power against Antony might be fostered, Cicero showed favor, hoping that, once Antony's domination was repelled and crushed, he would restore the liberty of the republic—so blind and unforeseeing of the future that the very young man whose dignity and power he was nurturing both allowed Cicero himself to be killed by Antony, by a kind of pact of concord, and subjected to his own sway that very liberty of the republic for which Cicero had cried out so much.

31. Let those who are ungrateful to our Christ for such great goods accuse their own gods for such great evils. Certainly, when those evils were taking place, the altars of the deities were warm, fragrant with Sabaean incense and fresh garlands (Virgil, Aeneid 1.416-17), the priesthoods were resplendent, the shrines gleamed, sacrifice and games and frenzy were carried on in the temples, while everywhere so much citizens' blood was being shed by citizens, not only in other places but even among the very altars of the gods.

Cicero did not choose a temple to which to flee, because Mucius had chosen one in vain. But these men, who much more unworthily insult the Christian times, either fled to places most dedicated to Christ, or the barbarians themselves led them there that they might live.

This I know, and anyone who judges me without partisan zeal most readily acknowledges it (to pass over the other things, the many I have recounted and the many more besides which I thought it long to recount): if the human race had received the Christian teaching before the Punic wars, and there had followed so great a devastation of affairs as ground down Europe and Africa in those wars, none of such men as we now suffer would have ascribed those evils to anything but the Christian religion. And much less, so far as the Romans are concerned, would their voices be endured, if upon the reception and spread of the Christian religion there had followed either that incursion of the Gauls, or that ravaging of the river Tiber and of the fires, or—what precedes all evils—those civil wars.

There were also other evils that befell so incredibly that they were counted among portents—if they had befallen in Christian times, to whom would they have cast them up as crimes, except to Christian men? For I pass over those things that were more marvelous than harmful: oxen that spoke, infants not yet born that cried out certain words from their mothers' wombs, serpents that flew, women and hens and men that were changed into the male sex, and other things of this kind, which in their books—not fabulous but historical Livy, From the Founding of the City 3.10.6; 22.1.13; 24.10.10; 27.11.4; 31.12.6; Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 15, 24, 26, 27, 27a, 41, 43, 53, 58; Orosius, History 5.4.8., whether they are true or false, bring upon men not ruin but astonishment.

But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones (not in the sense in which hail is usually called by this name, but stones outright) Livy, From the Founding of the City 27.37.1, 4; Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 44, 51, 54; Orosius, History 5.18.5., these things assuredly could even do grievous harm. We read in them that, when the fires of Etna ran down from the very summit of the mountain to the nearest shore, the sea so boiled that the rocks were burned, that the pitch of the ships was melted (Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 29; Orosius, History 5.6.2). This was certainly no slight harm, however incredibly marvelous. By the same heat of fires again, they wrote that Sicily was filled with so great a force of ash that it overwhelmed and crushed and brought down the roofs of the city of Catina; moved by which calamity, the Romans mercifully remitted to it that year's tribute (Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 32; Orosius, History 5.13.3). They also recorded in their writings that there was in Africa a multitude of locusts like a portent, when it was already a province of the Roman people; for, the crops and the leaves of the trees being consumed, they say it was cast into the sea in an immense and incalculable cloud; and when this had died and been returned to the shores, and the air thereby corrupted, so great a plague arose that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone eight hundred thousand men are reported to have perished, and many more in the lands nearest the shores (Julius Obsequens, On Prodigies 30; Orosius, History 5.11). Then at Utica, they affirm, out of thirty thousand of the younger men who were there, ten thousand remained.

Such vanity, then, as we endure and are compelled to answer—which of these things would it not ascribe to the Christian religion, if it saw them in Christian times? And yet they do not ascribe these things to their gods, whose worship they seek out for this very reason, that they may not suffer such things, or even lesser ones—when they suffered greater ones from those by whom they were formerly worshipped.

1. Having undertaken to speak of the City of God, I thought I should first answer its enemies, who, pursuing earthly joys and gaping after fleeting things, blame the Christian religion—which alone is the wholesome and true religion—for whatever sorrow they suffer in them, sorrow that comes rather from God's mercy admonishing them than from his severity punishing them.

And since, there being among them also the uninstructed common crowd, they are more grievously stirred up to hatred of us as if by the authority of the learned—the ignorant supposing that the things which befell unusually in their own times were not wont to befall in other times gone by, and the learned, who know this opinion to be false, confirming it by a feigned dissimulation of their own knowledge, so that they may seem to have just grounds for murmuring against us:

it was necessary to demonstrate, from the books which their own authors committed to memory for the knowledge of the history of past times, that the matter is far otherwise than they suppose; and at the same time to teach that the false gods, whom they worshipped openly or still worship in secret, are most unclean spirits and most malignant and most deceitful demons—so much so that they take delight in their own crimes, whether real or even fictitious, which they wished to have celebrated for themselves through their festivals,

so that human weakness cannot be called back from perpetrating damnable deeds, while authority is offered, as though divine, for imitating these things.

These things we proved not from our own conjecture, but partly from recent memory, because we ourselves saw such things performed, and to such deities, and partly from the writings of those who left these things recorded for posterity not as though in reproach, but as though in honor of their own gods,

so that Varro, a most learned man among them and of the gravest authority, when he made his books on human and divine matters distinct—distributing some to human matters, others to divine, according to the dignity of each subject—placed the theatrical games not even among human matters but among divine matters Varro, Antiquities, fr. 170 (only in Augustine); see Livy, From the Founding of the City 7.2.1-3; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.3.; whereas surely, if only good and honorable men were in the city, the theatrical games ought not to have existed even among human matters. This indeed he did not on his own authority, but because, born and reared at Rome, he found them among divine matters.

And since at the end of the first book we briefly set down what was to be said thereafter, and have said some of these things in the two following books, we recognize that what remains must be rendered to the expectation of our readers.

2. We had promised, then, that we would say certain things against those who refer the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion, and that we would recount whatever and however great evils could have occurred to us, or seemed sufficient, which that city, or the provinces belonging to its empire, endured before their sacrifices had been forbidden—all of which they would without doubt ascribe to us, if by then either our religion shone forth to them or so forbade them their sacrilegious rites.

These things we have, I think, sufficiently completed in the second and third books—treating in the second of the evils of morals, which are to be reckoned the only, or the greatest, evils, and in the third of those evils which fools alone shudder to endure, namely those of the body and of external things, which for the most part good men too suffer; but those evils by which they themselves become bad, they hold not, I do not say patiently, but gladly.

And how little I have said of that one city alone and its empire! And not even all of that down to Caesar Augustus. What if I had wished to recount and pile up those evils which men do not do to one another—such as the devastations and overthrows of those who wage war—but which befall earthly things from the very elements of the world itself

(which Apuleius touches on briefly in one place, in that little book he wrote On the World, saying that all earthly things have their changes, reversals, and destructions; for, to use his words, by immoderate tremors of the earth the ground has split apart and cities together with their peoples have been swallowed up; whole regions too have been washed away by bursting rains; lands that had before been continents have been turned into islands by foreign and alien floods, and others made passable to travelers on foot by the withdrawal of the sea; cities have been overthrown by winds and storms; fires have flashed out of the clouds, by which the regions of the East were consumed and perished, and in the regions of the West certain gushing springs and floods have wrought the same destruction; so once, when the craters poured forth from the peaks of Etna, rivers of flame ran down the slopes like a torrent by a divine fire) (Apuleius, On the World 34).

If I had wished to gather these things and the like, which history contains, from wherever I could, when should I have finished? These are the things that befell in those times, before the name of Christ suppressed any of those vanities of theirs that are ruinous to true salvation.

I had also promised that I would show what their morals were, and for what cause the true God, in whose power all kingdoms are, deigned to help them in enlarging their empire, and how those whom they think gods helped them in nothing, but rather how much they harmed them by deceiving and beguiling them. Whence I see that I must now speak, and rather of the growth of the Roman empire. For about the harmful deceit of the demons, whom they worshipped as gods, and how much evil it brought upon their morals, not a little has already been said, especially in the second book. But throughout all three completed books, where it seemed opportune, we have shown how much consolation God, through the name of Christ—to whom the barbarians paid so much honor, contrary to the custom of wars—conferred upon good and bad alike even amid the evils of war, in the way of him who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45).

3. Now, then, let us see what sort of thing it is that they dare to ascribe so great a breadth and long duration of the Roman empire to those gods, whom they contend they worshipped honorably even through the obsequies of base games and the ministries of base men.

And yet I would first inquire a little what reason, what prudence there is, when you cannot show the felicity of men—men always engaged in the disasters of war and in blood, whether of citizens or of enemies, but human nonetheless, men living amid dark fear and bloody desire—so that a glassy gladness is acquired, brittle in its brilliance, for which there is the more horrible fear lest it suddenly be shattered, to wish to glory in the breadth and greatness of empire.

That this may be more easily judged, let us not be carried away with empty windiness, nor blunt the keenness of our attention with high-sounding names of things, when we hear "peoples," "kingdoms," "provinces"; but let us set up two men (for each single man, just as a single letter in speech, is, as it were, the element of a city and a kingdom, however widely spread over its occupation of lands), and of these two men let us think of one as poor, or rather of middling means, and the other as exceedingly rich;

but the rich man anxious with fears, wasting away with griefs, burning with desire, never secure, always restless, panting with the perpetual contentions of enmities, augmenting indeed by these miseries his patrimony to an immense degree, but heaping up with those increases the most bitter cares as well;

while that man of middling means is sufficient to himself with a small and modest estate, most dear to his own, rejoicing in the sweetest peace with kinsmen, neighbors, and friends, devout in piety, kindly in mind, sound in body, frugal in life, chaste in morals, secure in conscience. I do not know whether anyone is so foolish as to dare to doubt which of the two he would prefer. As, then, in these two men, so in two households, so in two peoples, so in two kingdoms, the rule of fairness follows; and if our attention is corrected by it, vigilantly applied, we shall most easily see where vanity dwells and where felicity.

Wherefore, if the true God is worshipped and is served with true rites and good morals, it is useful that the good should reign far and wide and long; nor is this so useful to themselves as to those over whom they reign. For as far as concerns themselves, their piety and probity—which are great gifts of God—suffice for their true felicity, by which both this life is well lived and afterward eternal life is received. On this earth, then, the reign of the good is bestowed not so much on themselves as on human affairs; but the reign of the bad harms more the rulers themselves, who devastate their own souls with a greater license for crimes; while to those who, by serving them, are made subject, it does no harm except their own iniquity. For whatever of evils is inflicted on the just by unjust masters is not the punishment of crime, but the testing of virtue. Accordingly the good man, even if he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave—and not of one man, but, what is graver, of as many masters as he has vices. Of these vices, when Holy Scripture treated, it said: for by whatever a man is overcome, to this he is also given over as a slave (2 Pet 2:19).

4. Therefore, with justice removed, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? For what are bands of robbers but little kingdoms? A band too is a company of men, ruled by the command of a prince, bound together by a compact of fellowship, and the booty divided by the law agreed upon. If this evil grows, by the accession of abandoned men, to such a point that it holds places, establishes seats, occupies cities, and subdues peoples, it more openly assumes the name of a kingdom—a name now conferred on it openly not by the removal of greed, but by the addition of impunity. For elegantly and truly did a captured pirate answer that famous Alexander the Great. When the king asked the man what he meant by infesting the sea, he replied with free defiance: the same as you mean by infesting the whole world; but because I do it with a small vessel, I am called a robber; because you do it with a great fleet, an emperor (See Cicero, On the Republic 3.14.24).

5. Accordingly I forbear to ask what sort of men Romulus gathered together, since much provision was made for them, so that, the fellowship of the city being given them, they might cease, after that former life, to ponder the penalties due—the fear of which was driving them on to greater crimes—so that thenceforth they might be more peaceable members of human society.

This I say: that the Roman empire itself, already great with many nations subdued and terrible to the rest, felt bitterly, feared grievously, and crushed with no small effort, to avoid an immense disaster, the moment when a very few gladiators, fleeing from a training school in Campania, raised a great army, had three leaders, and most widely and most cruelly laid waste Italy See Florus, Epitome 2.8 (3.20); Sallust, Histories 3, fr. 84; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 38.21; Appian, The Civil Wars 1.116-20.. Let them say what God helped these men, so that from a small and contemptible band of robbers they came to a kingdom that was by then to be feared even by so great Roman forces and citadels.

Or because they did not last long, will they on that account be denied to have been helped by the gods? As though the life of any man whatever were long-lasting. On this principle, then, the gods help no one to reign, since each one dies quickly; nor is it to be reckoned a benefit which, in a short time, in each man—and through this, individually, in all alike—vanishes away like vapor. For what does it matter to those who worshipped the gods under Romulus and died long ago, that after their death the Roman empire grew so great, when they are pleading their own causes among the dead? Whether good or bad, that does not pertain to the present matter.

But this is to be understood of all who, through that empire (although, as mortals die off and others succeed, it is stretched over long periods), have passed swiftly and hurriedly through the few days of their own life, bearing the burdens of their own deeds.

But if even the benefits of the briefest time are to be ascribed to the help of the gods, those gladiators were helped not a little: they broke the chains of their servile condition, fled, escaped, gathered a great and very brave army, and—obeying the counsels and commands of their kings—were much to be feared by Roman loftiness, were unconquerable to several Roman commanders, captured many things, won very many victories, used what pleasures they wished, did what lust suggested, and at last, until they were conquered (which was done with the greatest difficulty), lived exalted and reigning. But let us come to greater matters.

6. Justin, who, following Trogus Pompeius—a Greek, or rather a foreign, historian—wrote history not only in Latin, as Trogus did, but also briefly, begins the work of his books thus: In the beginning of the affairs of peoples and nations, dominion lay with kings, whom not popular ambition but moderation approved among good men advanced to the summit of this majesty. The peoples were held by no laws; it was the custom to guard the bounds of empire rather than to extend them; each man's kingdom was confined within his own homeland.

First of all, Ninus, king of the Assyrians, changed by a new lust for empire the old and as it were ancestral custom of the nations. He first made war on his neighbors and, subduing peoples as yet untrained to resist, brought them under his yoke as far as the bounds of Libya. And a little after, he says: Ninus made firm the greatness of the dominion he had sought by continuous possession. So, the nearest peoples being subdued, when with the accession of forces he passed, stronger, to others, and each nearest victory was the instrument of the next, he subjugated the peoples of the whole East (Pompeius Trogus and Justin, Philippic Histories 1.1.1-5, 8).

But with whatever fidelity to fact either Justin or Trogus may have written (for that they lied in certain things, other more trustworthy writings show), it is nevertheless agreed even among other writers that the kingdom of the Assyrians was extended far and wide by King Ninus (See Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 2.12; Lucius Ampelius, Memorandum Book 11.2). And it endured so long that the Roman empire is not yet of its age. For, as those who have pursued chronological history write, this kingdom lasted twelve hundred and forty years from the first year in which Ninus began to reign, until it was transferred to the Medes (Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome, Chronicle 2; Orosius, History 7.2.15). But to make war on one's neighbors, and to proceed thence against the rest, and to grind down and subdue peoples who give no trouble, out of mere lust for empire—what else is this to be called than great robbery?

7. If, then, this kingdom was so great and so long-lasting with no help of the gods, why is the Roman kingdom, ample in places and long-lasting in time, ascribed to the Roman gods? For whatever the cause of the one is, the same is also the cause of the other. But if they contend that the former too is to be ascribed to the help of the gods, I ask, of which gods? For the other nations, which Ninus subdued and subjugated, did not at that time worship other gods. Or if the Assyrians had their own gods, as more skilled craftsmen, so to speak, for constructing and preserving an empire—did they then die, when these too lost their empire,

or, their pay not being rendered to them, or a greater one being promised, did they prefer to cross over to the Medes, and thence again to the Persians, at the invitation of Cyrus and the promise of something more advantageous? Which nation, after the kingdom of Alexander of Macedon—great in places but very brief in time—endures still even now in its own kingdom, within no narrow bounds of the East.

If this is so, then either the gods are unfaithful, who desert their own and go over to the enemy (which not even the man Camillus did, when, the victor and stormer of a most hostile city, he found Rome, for which he had conquered, ungrateful—Rome which nevertheless, afterward forgetting the injury and mindful of his homeland, he again freed from the Gauls),

or they are not so strong as it befits gods to be strong, since they can be conquered by human counsels or forces; or, if, when they war among themselves, the gods are conquered not by men but by other gods—the gods, that is, proper to particular cities—then they too have enmities among themselves, which each takes up on behalf of his own side. A city, then, ought not to have worshipped its own gods rather than others, by whom its own gods might be helped.

Finally, in whatever way this crossing over, or flight, or migration, or failing in battle of the gods is to be understood, the name of Christ had not yet been preached in those times and in those parts of the world, when those kingdoms were lost and transferred through immense disasters of war.

For if, after twelve hundred years and more, when the kingdom was taken from the Assyrians, the Christian religion had there been preaching another, eternal kingdom and forbidding the sacrilegious worship of false gods, what else would the vain men of that nation say but that the kingdom, which had been preserved so long, could have perished for no other cause than that its own religions were abandoned and that one received? In which voice of vanity, such as it could have been, let these men look upon their own mirror, and, if there is any shame in them, let them blush to complain of like things.

Although the Roman empire was afflicted rather than changed—which befell it at other times too, before the name of Christ, and from which affliction it recovered—a thing not to be despaired of in these times either. For who knows the will of God concerning this matter?

8. Next let us ask, if it please, out of so great a throng of gods which the Romans worshipped, which one above all, or which gods, they believe enlarged and preserved that empire. For surely they do not dare to assign any part in this so glorious a work, full of so great dignity, to the goddess Cloacina, or to Volupia, who is named from pleasure (voluptas), or to Lubentina, whose name is from lust (libido), or to Vaticanus, who presides over the wailing of infants, or to Cunina, who looks after their cradles. But how can all the names of gods and goddesses be recounted in one place of this book, which they could scarcely include in great volumes, distributing to single things the proper offices of the deities? They did not even think the charge of the fields was to be committed to some one god, but set the goddess Rusina over the countryside, the god Iugatinus over the mountain ridges; over the hills they put the goddess Collatina, over the valleys Vallonia.

Nor could they even find a single Segetia of such a kind, to whom they might once for all commend the standing crops, but they wished the sown grain, as long as it was under the earth, to have the goddess Seia set over it; but when it was now above ground and forming a crop, the goddess Segetia; and the grain, once gathered and stored, that it might be safely kept, they set the goddess Tutilina over. To whom would that Segetia not seem to suffice, so long as the crop passed from its first grassy beginnings to the dry ears? Yet it was not enough for men who love a multitude of gods, that the wretched soul should be prostituted to a throng of demons, having disdained the chaste embrace of the one true God.

They set, then, Proserpina over the sprouting grain, the god Nodutus over the knots and joints of the stalks, the goddess Volutina over the wrappings of the husks; when the husks open, that the ear may come forth, the goddess Patelana; when the crops are made even with new ears—because the ancients called "to make even" hostire—the goddess Hostilina; over the flowering grain the goddess Flora, over the milky grain the god Lacturnus, over the ripening grain the goddess Matuta; when they are weeded, that is, taken from the earth, the goddess Runcina See Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 16.17; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.20; Tertullian, On the Soul 37; Arnobius, Against the Nations 3.23; 4.7; Varro, Antiquities 14; On Farming 1.1.6; On the Latin Language 5.74, 163, 164..

Nor do I recount them all, because it irks me to mention what does not shame them. But these very few things I have said for this reason, that it might be understood that they in no way dare to say that these deities established, enlarged, and preserved the Roman empire—deities who were each so assigned to their own offices that nothing as a whole was entrusted to any one of them. When, then, would Segetia have cared for the empire, who was not allowed to take care of crops and trees at the same time? When would Cunina have thought about arms, whose charge was not permitted to go beyond the cradles of little ones? When would Nodutus help in war, who pertained not even to the husk of the ear, but only to the knot of the joint?

Each man sets a single doorkeeper for his house, and, because he is a man, that is entirely enough; but these men set three gods: Forculus for the doors, Cardea for the hinge, Limentinus for the threshold (Tertullian, To the Nations 2.15.5). So Forculus could not at the same time guard the hinge and the threshold.

9. Leaving aside, then, this throng of petty gods, or setting it aside for a while, we must inquire into the office of the greater gods, by which Rome was made so great that it ruled so many nations for so long. No doubt, then, this is the work of Jove. For they would have him the king of all gods and goddesses: this his scepter indicates, this the Capitol on the high hill. Of this god they cite, most fittingly, a saying of the poet: all things are full of Jove (Virgil, Eclogues 3.60). Varro believes that he is worshipped even by those who worship one God alone without an image, but called by another name (Varro, On the Latin Language 5.66; 7.85 (?)). If this is so, why was he so badly treated at Rome—as indeed among the other nations too—that an image was made for him? This displeases Varro himself so much that, though pressed by the perverse custom of so great a city, he yet did not at all hesitate to say and to write that those who set up images for peoples have both taken away fear and added error Varro, On the Life of the Roman People, fr. 15 (in Nonius, Compendious Doctrine 162.14); Antiquities, fr. 117 (in Arnobius, Against the Nations 7.1 [?])..

10. Why is the wife Juno also joined to him, who is called sister and consort The natural philosophers, in Plato, Cratylus 404c; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.26.66; Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.13.4; see Servius, On the Aeneid 1.4.? Because, they say, we take Jove to be in the ether, Juno in the air, and these two elements are joined, the one higher, the other lower. He, then, of whom it was said all things are full of Jove, is not the one who fills all things, if Juno too fills some part. Or does each fill both, and are both these consorts present, both in these two elements and in each one at once? Why, then, is the ether given to Jove, the air to Juno? Finally, these two themselves would be enough: how is it that the sea is assigned to Neptune, the earth to Pluto? And lest these too should remain without consorts, Salacia is added to Neptune, Proserpina to Pluto. For just as Juno holds the lower part of the sky, that is, the air, as they say Homeric Hymn to Poseidon; Hesiod, Works and Days 667-68; Theogony 15, 969-73; Plato, Gorgias 523a; Cratylus 402d-403a; Varro, On the Latin Language 5.67, 72; the Stoics, in Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.26.66., so Salacia holds the lower part of the sea and Proserpina the lower part of the earth.

They seek how to patch up their fables, and do not find it. For if these things were so, their ancients would have declared that there are three elements of the world rather than four (Empedocles, in Diels, Fragments of the Presocratics 31, fr. 6, from Aetius, Opinions 1.3.20), so that the several marriages of the gods might be divided among the several elements. But as it is, they have in every way affirmed that the ether is one thing, the air another. But water, whether higher or lower, is certainly water; suppose it is unlike: is it so unlike as not to be water? And what else can the lower earth be than earth, distinguished by however great a difference?

Then, behold, the corporeal world is now wholly completed in these four, or three, elements: where will Minerva be? What will she hold? What will she fill? For she is established together with these in the Capitol, though she is not the daughter of both. Or if they say that Minerva holds the higher part of the ether, and that on this occasion the poets feign that she was born from the head of Jove Homeric Hymn to Athena; Hesiod, Theogony 923-25; Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 8; see also Plato, Cratylus 407ab.: why, then, is she not rather reckoned the queen of the gods, since she is higher than Jove? Or because it was unworthy to set a daughter above her father?

Why was that justice not preserved on the part of Jove himself toward Saturn? Or because he was conquered? Did they fight, then? Far be it, they say Ennius, Euhemerus, in Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11.33; Cleanthes and Chrysippus, in Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.24.63-64; Minucius Felix, Octavius 23.9-13.; that is the chatter of fables. Behold, let the fables not be believed, and let better things be thought of the gods: why, then, was there not given to the father of Jove a seat of honor, if not higher, then at least equal? Because Saturn, they say Plato, Cratylus 402ab; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.25.64; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.8.5-7; Arnobius, Against the Nations 3.21., is length of time.

Time, then, do they worship who worship Saturn, and Jove, the king of the gods, is insinuated to have been born of time. For what unworthy thing is said, when Jove and Juno are said to be born of time, if he is heaven and she earth, since heaven and earth were certainly made? For their learned and wise men have this too in their books (Varro, On the Latin Language 5.65).

And it was not from poetic figments, but from the books of the philosophers, that Virgil said:
then the almighty father, the ether, descends in fruitful showers into the lap of his joyful consort (Virgil, Georgics 2.325-26)—that is, into the lap of the ground or the earth; for here too they wish there to be certain differences, and within the earth itself they think one thing Terra, another Tellus, another Tellumo, and they hold all these as gods called by their own names, distinguished by their own offices, venerated with their own altars and rites Varro, On Farming 1.1.5; On the Latin Language 5.62, 67; Cicero, To His Brother Quintus 3.1.4.14; On the Response of the Haruspices 10.20; Horace, Epistles 2.1.143; Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.41.11; 8.9.8; 10.28.13.. The same Earth they also call the mother of the gods (See Homeric Hymn to Earth the Mother; Hesiod, Theogony 125-53; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.599-658), so that the poets now feign more tolerable things, if, according to their books not of poets but of sacred rites, Juno is not only the sister and consort, but even the mother of Jove. The same Earth they would have to be Ceres, and the same to be Vesta Varro, On Farming 3.1.5; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.20.52; Ovid, Fasti 6.267, 299; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2., though they more often declare Vesta to be nothing but the fire belonging to the hearths, without which a city cannot exist, and that for this reason virgins are wont to serve her, because, as nothing is born from a virgin, so nothing is born from fire. All which vanity it certainly behooved to be abolished and extinguished by him who was born of a virgin.

For who could bear it, that, when they have ascribed so much honor and, as it were, chastity to fire, they sometimes do not blush even to call Vesta Venus, so that the honored virginity vanishes in her handmaids? For if Vesta is Venus, how have virgins rightly served her by abstaining from the works of Venus? Or are there two Venuses, one a virgin, the other a woman? Or rather three, one of virgins, who is also Vesta, another of the married, another of harlots? To whom the Phoenicians too used to give a gift from the prostitution of their daughters, before they joined them to husbands. Which of these is the matron of Vulcan? Not the virgin, surely, since she has a husband. But far be it that she should be the harlot, lest we seem to do injury to the son of Juno and the fellow worker of Minerva. She is understood, then, to pertain to the married women; but we do not wish them to imitate her in what she did with Mars.

"Again," they say, "you return to the fables." What sort of justice is this—to be angry with us because we say such things about their gods, and not to be angry with themselves, who most gladly watch in the theaters these crimes of their own gods? And (what would be incredible, were it not most attestedly proved) these very theatrical crimes of the gods were instituted in honor of those same gods.

11. Whatever, then, they may assert by physical reasonings and disputations The Stoics, in Diogenes Laertius 7.148; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.15.39-41; 3.24.63; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.12.17.: now let Jove be the soul of this corporeal world, who fills and moves that whole mass constructed and compacted of four elements—or of however many they please—now let him yield his own parts from it to his sister and brothers; now let him be the ether, so that from above he embraces Juno, the air, spread beneath him; now let him be the whole sky together with the air, and let him impregnate the earth—as his consort and likewise his mother (because this is not base among the gods)—with fruitful showers and seeds;

and now (lest it be necessary to run through all of them) let him be the one god, of whom many think the most noble poet said:
for God goes through all lands and the tracts of the sea and the deep heaven (Virgil, Georgics 4.221-22); let him be Jove in the ether, the same Juno in the air, the same Neptune in the sea, the same Salacia in the lower parts of the sea too, Pluto in the earth, Proserpina in the lower earth, Vesta in the domestic hearths, Vulcan in the smiths' furnace, the sun and the moon and the stars among the heavenly bodies, Apollo among diviners, Mercury in merchandise, Janus the beginner, Terminus the ender, Saturn in time, Mars and Bellona in wars, Liber in the vineyards, Ceres in the grain, Diana in the woods, Minerva in talents (The Stoics, in Diogenes Laertius 7.147; Varro, On the Latin Language 5.67-73);

let him be, finally, even in that throng of, as it were, plebeian gods; let him preside, under the name of Liber, over the seeds of males, and under the name of Libera over those of females; let him be Diespater, who brings the offspring forth to the day; let him be the goddess Mena, whom they set over the menstrual flows of women; let him be Lucina, who is invoked by women in labor;

let him bring help to those being born by receiving them in the lap of the earth, and be called Ops; let him open the mouth in wailing and be called the god Vaticanus; let him lift from the earth and be called the goddess Levana; let him guard the cradles and be called the goddess Cunina; let no other, but he himself, be in those goddesses who sing the fates to the newborn and are called the Carmentes;

let him preside over chance events and be called Fortune; in the goddess Rumina let him give the breast to the little one—because the ancients called the breast ruma—in the goddess Potina let him minister drink, in the goddess Educa offer food; from the fright of infants let him be named Paventia, from hope that comes, Venilia, from pleasure, Volupia, from action, Agenoria;

from the goads by which a man is driven to excessive action let him be named the goddess Stimula; let him be the goddess Strenia by making men vigorous, Numeria who teaches counting, Camena who teaches singing; let him be both the god Consus by furnishing counsel and the goddess Sentia by inspiring opinions;

let him be the goddess Iuventas, who receives the beginnings of the youthful age after the boy's toga; let him be also bearded Fortune, who clothes the grown men with a beard (whom they were unwilling to honor so far as at least to name this deity, such as it is, a male god, calling it either Barbatus from the beard, as Nodutus from the knots, or at any rate not Fortuna but, because it has beards, Fortunius);

let him in the god Iugatinus join consorts, and when the girdle is loosed for the virgin wife, let him be invoked and be called the goddess Virginensis; let him be Mutunus, or Tutunus, who among the Greeks is Priapus (Varro, Antiquities of Divine Matters 15; On the Latin Language 5.57, 64, 72, 74):

if it does not shame them, let all these things that I have said, and whatever I have not said (for I have not thought everything ought to be said), all these gods and goddesses be the one Jove—whether, as some would have it (The Stoics, in Diogenes Laertius 7.137-38; Aetius, Opinions 1.7.17; Cicero, Lucullus 37.119; 41.126), all these are his parts, or his powers, as it seems to those to whom it is pleasing that he should be the soul of the world (Plato, Cratylus 396ab; Philebus 30d)—which opinion is, as it were, that of great and very learned men.

If these things are so (and what sort of thing this may be I do not yet for the moment inquire), what would they lose if they worshipped one God by a more prudent shortcut? For what part of him would be despised, when he himself were worshipped? But if it had to be feared lest his parts, passed over or neglected, should grow angry, then this is not, as they will have it, the whole single life of one living being which contains all the gods as its own powers or members or parts; but each part has its own life separate from the rest, if one part can grow angry apart from another, and one be appeased, another stirred up.

But if it is said that all together—that is, the whole of Jove himself—could have been offended, if his parts were not also worshipped one by one and bit by bit, it is foolishly said. For none of them would be passed over, when he himself, the one who has all things, were worshipped. For, to omit other things, which are countless, when they say that all the stars are parts of Jove, and that all live and have rational souls, and are therefore without controversy gods Varro, On the Latin Language 5.68, 74; On Farming 1.1.5; Plato, Epinomis 984d; the Stoics, in Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.5.11., they do not see how many they do not worship, to how many they build no temples, set up no altars—which they nevertheless thought should be set up for very few of the stars, and that to these sacrifice should be made one by one.

If, then, those grow angry who are not worshipped one by one, do they not fear, with a few appeased, to live with the whole heaven angry? But if they worship all the stars for the reason that they are in Jove, whom they worship, by this shortcut they could supplicate them all in that one (for thus no one would grow angry, since in that one no one would be despised), rather than that, certain ones being worshipped, a just cause of anger be furnished to those who were passed over, who are far more numerous—especially when, before those gleaming from the lofty seat, Priapus, distended in shameful nakedness, would be set.

12. What? Ought not this to move sharp men—or men of any sort whatever (for excellence of talent is not needed for this)—that, laying aside the zeal for contention, they should attend, if the soul of the world is God and the world is to that soul as a body, so that there is one living being consisting of soul and body, and this God contains all things in himself in a certain bosom of nature, so that from his own soul, by which this whole mass is given life, the lives and souls of all living things are taken according to each one's lot of being born, then nothing at all remains that is not a part of God? But if this is so, who does not see how great an impiety and irreligion follows—that whatever anyone treads on, he treads on a part of God, and in killing every living thing a part of God is slaughtered? I do not wish to say all the things that can occur to those who ponder, but they cannot be said without shame.

13. But if they contend that only rational living beings, such as men are, are parts of God, I do not indeed see, if the whole world is God, how they separate the beasts from his parts; but what need is there to wrangle? Of the rational living being itself, that is, man, what more unhappy thing can be believed than that a part of God is thrashed, when a boy is thrashed? And then who could bear that parts of God should become wanton, unjust, impious, and altogether damnable, unless one who is utterly insane? Finally, why is he angry with those by whom he is not worshipped, when he is not worshipped by his own parts?

It remains, then, for them to say that all the gods have their own lives, that each lives for himself, that none of them is a part of any other, but that all are to be worshipped who can be known and worshipped—since they are so many that all cannot be.

Of whom, because Jove presides as king, I believe they think that he himself established or enlarged the Roman kingdom. For if he himself did not do this, what other god could they believe was able to undertake so great a work, since all are occupied with their own offices and works, nor does one break in upon another's? By the king of the gods, then, the kingdom of men could be propagated and enlarged.

14. Here first I ask, why is not the kingdom itself also some god? For why should it not be so, if Victory is a goddess? Or what need is there of Jove himself in this matter, if Victory favors and is propitious and always goes to those whom she wishes to be victors? With this goddess favoring and propitious, even with Jove at leisure or doing something else, what nations would remain unsubdued? What kingdoms would not yield?

Or does it perhaps displease good men to fight with most iniquitous wickedness, and to provoke quiet neighbors who do no injury to a war undertaken of one's own accord, in order to extend the kingdom? Plainly, if they feel thus, I approve and praise it.

15. Let them see, then, whether perhaps it does not pertain to good men to rejoice over the breadth of the kingdom. For the iniquity of those with whom just wars were waged helped the kingdom to grow,

which would certainly be small if the quiet and justice of the neighbors provoked, by no injury, no war to be waged against them; and thus, with human affairs happier, all kingdoms would be small, rejoicing in concordant neighborliness, and there would be very many kingdoms of nations in the world, as there are very many houses of citizens in a city.

Accordingly, to wage war and, with nations subdued, to extend the kingdom seems felicity to the bad, necessity to the good. But because it would be worse for the injurious to lord it over the more just, therefore this too is not unfittingly called felicity. But without doubt the greater felicity is to have a good neighbor at peace than to subjugate a bad neighbor by war. They are evil wishes, to wish to have one whom you may hate or fear, so that there may be one whom you can conquer.

If, then, by waging just wars—not impious, not iniquitous—the Romans were able to acquire so great an empire, is even the iniquity of others to be worshipped by them as a kind of goddess? For we see that it cooperated much toward this breadth of empire, the iniquity which made men injurious, so that there might be those with whom just wars could be waged and the empire enlarged. But why should not iniquity, even of foreign nations, be a goddess, if Fear and Pallor and Fever deserved to be Roman gods? By these two, then—that is, by the iniquity of others and the goddess Victory—while iniquity stirs up the causes of wars and the same Victory brings those wars to a happy end, the empire grew, even with Jove on holiday.

For what part would Jove have here, when the things that could be thought his benefits are held to be gods, are called gods, are worshipped as gods, and are themselves invoked for their own parts?

But he too would have some part here, if he himself were also called Kingdom, just as that goddess is called Victory. Or if the kingdom is the gift of Jove, why is not victory too held to be his gift? Which assuredly would be so held, if not a stone in the Capitol, but the true King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 19:16) were acknowledged and worshipped.

16. I wonder most of all that, when they assigned single gods to single things and almost to single movements—calling the goddess Agenoria, who roused to action; the goddess Stimula, who goaded to action beyond measure; the goddess Murcia, who would not move a man beyond measure and would make him, as Pomponius says (Pomponius, Atellan Farces, fr. 145 (only in Augustine); Arnobius, Against the Nations 4.9), murcidus, that is, too slothful and inactive; the goddess Strenia, who would make a man vigorous—they undertook to perform public rites for all these gods and goddesses, but "Quiet," who would make a man quiet, although she had a temple outside the Colline gate (Livy, From the Founding of the City 4.41.8), they were unwilling to receive publicly. Was this an indication of an unquiet mind, or was it rather thus signified that whoever should persist in worshipping that throng—plainly not of gods but of demons—could not have quiet? To which the true Physician calls, saying: learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matt 11:29).

17. Or do they perhaps say that Jove sends the goddess Victory, and that she, obeying him as the king of the gods, comes to those to whom he commands and takes her seat on their side? This is truly said, not of that Jove whom they feign, in their own opinion, to be the king of the gods, but of that true King of the ages: that he sends not Victory, who is no substance, but his angel, and makes whom he will to conquer—whose counsel can be hidden, but cannot be iniquitous.

For if Victory is a goddess, why is not Triumph also a god, and joined to Victory either as husband or brother or son? For these men held such opinions about the gods as, if the poets had feigned them and we had attacked them, they would answer were laughable figments of the poets, not to be attributed to true deities; and yet they did not laugh at themselves, when they read such ravings not in the poets but worshipped them in the temples. Let them, then, ask Jove for all things, supplicate him alone. For Victory, if she is a goddess and is under that king, could not, wherever he had sent her, dare to resist him and rather do her own will.

18. What of the fact that Felicity too is a goddess? She received a temple, deserved an altar, and fitting rites were paid her. She, then, alone should be worshipped. For where she herself was, what good would not be there? But what does it mean, that Fortune too is thought a goddess and worshipped? Is felicity one thing, fortune another? Because fortune can also be bad; but felicity, if it were bad, would not be felicity. Certainly we ought to esteem all the gods of either sex (if they even have a sex) to be none but good. This Plato says Plato, Phaedrus 246d, 247a, 253ac; Epicurus, in Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.17.45-46; Plotinus, Enneads 3.2.4., this other philosophers, this the excellent rulers of the republic and of peoples.

How, then, is the goddess Fortune sometimes good, sometimes bad? Or is it perhaps that, when she is bad, she is not a goddess, but is suddenly turned into a malignant demon? How many, then, are these goddesses? Assuredly as many as there are fortunate men, that is, men of good fortune. For since there are also very many others at the same time—that is, at one time—of bad fortune, would she, if she were the one goddess, be at the same time both good and bad, this to these, that to those? Or is that one who is a goddess always good? She, then, is Felicity herself: why are different names applied?

But this is to be borne; for one thing is wont to be called by two names. What of the different temples, the different altars, the different rites? There is a reason, they say (Seneca, Letters 91.4-7; Plutarch, Roman Questions 74): because felicity is that which the good have through preceding merits; but fortune, which is called good, befalls men, both good and bad, by chance, without any weighing of merits—whence it is even named Fortune. How, then, is that good which comes to both the good and the bad without any judgment?

But to what end is she worshipped who is so blind, running everywhere upon whomever she meets, that for the most part she passes over her own worshippers and clings to her despisers? Or if her worshippers profit anything, so that they are seen and loved by her, then she follows merits and does not come by chance. Where is that definition of Fortune? Where is the fact that she received her very name from chance events? For it does no good to worship her, if she is fortune. But if she discerns her own worshippers, so as to profit them, she is not fortune.

Or does Jove send her too wherever he wishes? Let him, then, alone be worshipped; for Fortune cannot resist him when he commands and sends her wherever he wishes. Or at any rate let the bad worship her, who do not wish to have the merits by which the goddess Felicity could be invited.

19. So much, indeed, do they ascribe to this thing they call Fortune, as if to a deity, that they committed to memory that her image—which was dedicated by the matrons and called Womanly Fortune—even spoke, and said not once but twice, that the matrons had duly dedicated her (See Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.40.12; Arnobius, Against the Nations 2.67). If indeed this is true, we ought not to wonder. For it is not so hard even thus for malignant demons to deceive,

whose arts and cunning they ought rather to have noticed from this: that she spoke who is a goddess that befalls by chance, not she who comes by merits. For Fortune was talkative and Felicity mute—to what end, except that men should not care to live rightly, having won over to themselves Fortune, who would make them fortunate without any good merits?

And certainly, if Fortune speaks, let her speak not at least as a woman but rather as a man, so that the very women who dedicated the image might not be thought to have feigned so great a miracle by womanly talkativeness.

20. Virtue too they made a goddess; and indeed, if she were a goddess, she would have had to be preferred to many. And now, because she is not a goddess but a gift of God, let her be obtained from him by whom alone she can be given, and the whole throng of false gods will vanish.

But why was Faith too believed a goddess and herself also given a temple and an altar? Whoever prudently acknowledges her makes himself her dwelling place. But how do they know what faith is, whose first and greatest office is that the true God be believed in? But why was Virtue not enough? Is not Faith there too? Since indeed they saw that virtue is to be distributed into four kinds—prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance (See Plato, Republic 427e-434c; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.7; 3.9); and since these single kinds too have their own parts, faith is among the parts of justice and holds the greatest place with us, whoever we are who know what it is that the just man lives by faith (Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38).

But I wonder at those seekers of a multitude of gods, why, if Faith is a goddess, they did injury to so many other goddesses by passing them over—goddesses to whom they could likewise have dedicated temples and altars. Why did temperance not deserve to be a goddess, when by her name some Roman princes acquired no small glory? Why, finally, is fortitude not a goddess, who was present with Mucius when he held out his right hand into the flames; who was present with Curtius when he hurled himself headlong for his homeland into the broken earth; who was present with Decius the father and Decius the son when they vowed themselves for the army? If indeed true fortitude was in all these (Lucius Ampelius, Memorandum Book 20; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 3.3 (1); 5.6 (2, 5, 6))—of which there is now no question. Why did prudence, why did wisdom deserve no places among the deities?

Or is it because they are all worshipped under the general name of virtue itself? In that way, then, one God could also be worshipped, of whom the rest of the gods are thought to be parts. But in that one virtue there are both faith and chastity, which nevertheless deserved altars outside, in their own temples.

21. These goddesses are made not by truth but by vanity; for these are the gifts of the true God, not themselves goddesses. Yet where there are virtue and felicity, what else is sought? What is enough for him for whom virtue and felicity are not enough? For virtue embraces all that is to be done, felicity all that is to be wished. If Jove was worshipped in order to give these—because, if the breadth and long duration of a kingdom is anything good, it pertains to that same felicity—why was it not understood that these are gifts of God, not goddesses?

But if they were thought goddesses, at least so great a throng of other gods would not be sought. For when the offices of all the gods and goddesses have been considered, which they feigned as they pleased according to their own opinion, let them find, if they can, anything that could be furnished by any god to a man who has virtue and has felicity. What learning would have to be sought either from Mercury or from Minerva, when virtue had all things with itself? For the art itself of living well and rightly was defined by the ancients as virtue (The Stoics, in Stobaeus, Anthology 2.66.19; see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.18.43). Whence they thought that from that which in Greek is called ἀρετή, "virtue," the Latins derived the word "art" (ars) (See Isidore, Etymologies 1.1.2; Terence, The Girl from Andros 32). But if virtue could come only to the talented, what need was there of the god Catius the father, who would make men cati, that is, sharp, when felicity could confer this?

For to be born talented belongs to felicity; whence, even though the goddess Felicity could not be worshipped by one not yet born, so as to grant him this when won over, she would confer this upon his parents, her worshippers, so that talented children might be born to them.

What need was there for women in labor to invoke Lucina, when, if Felicity were present, they would not only bear well, but bear good children? What necessity was there to commend the newborn to the goddess Ops, the wailing to the god Vaticanus, those lying down to the goddess Cunina, those sucking to the goddess Rumina, those standing to the god Statilinus, those approaching to the goddess Adeona, those departing to Abeona;

to the goddess Mind, that they might have a good mind; to the god Volumnus and the goddess Volumna, that they might will good things; to the nuptial gods, that they might be well married; to the rural gods, that they might take most abundant fruits, and especially to the goddess Fructesea herself; to Mars and Bellona, that they might war well; to the goddess Victory, that they might conquer; to the god Honor, that they might be honored; to the goddess Money, that they might be moneyed; to the god Aesculanus and his son Argentinus, that they might have bronze and silver money?

For they made Aesculanus the father of Argentinus for this reason: because bronze money first came into use, afterward silver. But I wonder that Argentinus did not beget Aurinus, since gold money too followed. If these men had such a god, then, as they set Jove above Saturn, so they would set Aurinus above his father Argentinus and his grandfather Aesculanus.

What need was there, then, on account of these goods—whether of the mind or of the body or external—to worship and invoke so great a throng of gods (whom I have neither all recounted, nor could they themselves provide petty and single gods for all human goods parceled out bit by bit and one by one), when by a great and easy shortcut the one goddess Felicity could confer all things, and no other be sought, either for gaining goods or even for driving away evils?

For why should the goddess Fessona be invoked on account of the weary, the goddess Pellonia for driving away enemies, a physician—whether Apollo or Aesculapius or both together—on account of the sick, when there was great danger? Nor would the god Spiniensis be asked, to root the thorns out of the fields; nor the goddess Robigo, that she might not come near: with Felicity alone present and protecting, either no evils would arise, or they would be most easily driven away.

Finally, since we are treating of these two goddesses, Virtue and Felicity: if felicity is the reward of virtue, it is not a goddess but a gift of God; but if she is a goddess, why may she not be said to confer virtue too, since indeed to attain virtue is itself a great felicity?

22. What is it, then, that Varro boasts of furnishing his fellow citizens as an immense benefit, namely that he not only recounts the gods whom the Romans ought to worship, but also says what pertains to each one? Since it does no good, he says, to know the name and form of some man, a physician, and to be ignorant that he is a physician: so, he says, it does no good to know that Aesculapius is a god, if you do not know that he aids in health, and so are ignorant why you ought to supplicate him. He affirms this also by another comparison, saying that no one can not only live well, but live at all, if he is ignorant who is a smith, who a baker, who a plasterer, from whom he can seek what utensil, whom he may take as a helper, whom as a guide, whom as a teacher; asserting that in this way it is doubtful to no one that the knowledge of the gods is thus useful, if it is known what power and capacity and authority each god has over each thing. For from this, he says, we shall be able to know what god we ought to call upon and invoke for the sake of each thing, lest we do as the mimes are wont, and ask water from Liber, wine from the Lymphs (Varro, Antiquities, fr. 120 (only in Augustine)).

A great usefulness, to be sure. Who would not give him thanks, if he showed true things, and if he taught men to worship the one true God, from whom all good things come?

23. 1. But (and this is the present question) if their books and rites are true and Felicity is a goddess, why was not she alone appointed to be worshipped, who could confer all things and make a man happy by a shortcut? For who wishes anything for any other reason than that he may become happy? Why, finally, so late, after so many Roman princes, did Lucullus set up a temple to this so great goddess? Why did Romulus himself, desiring to found a happy city, not build a temple to her above all, nor supplicate the other gods for anything, when nothing would be lacking if she were present? For he himself would have been neither king first, nor, as they think, a god afterward, if he had not had this goddess propitious.

To what end, then, did he establish for the Romans the gods Janus, Jove, Mars, Picus, Faunus, Tiberinus, Hercules, and any others? To what end did Titus Tatius add Saturn, Ops, Sol, Luna, Vulcan, Lux, and whatever others he added, among whom even the goddess Cloacina, while Felicity was neglected? To what end did Numa establish so many gods and so many goddesses without her? Or could he perhaps not see her in so great a throng? King Hostilius certainly would not have introduced new gods of his own, Fear and Pallor, to be propitiated, if he had known or worshipped this goddess. For with Felicity present, all fear and pallor would depart, not propitiated, but driven off and put to flight.

23. 2. Then what is this, that the Roman empire was already growing far and wide, and as yet no one worshipped felicity? Was the empire on that account greater than it was happier? For how could there be true felicity there, where there was no true piety? For piety is the truthful worship of the true God, not the worship of false gods, as many as there are demons. But even afterward, when Felicity had now been received into the number of the gods, a great unhappiness of civil wars followed. Or was Felicity perhaps justly indignant that she was invited both so late and not to honor but rather to insult—so that, along with her, Priapus and Cloacina and Fear and Pallor and Fever and the rest were worshipped, not the deities of the worshippers but the crimes of those who worshipped?

23. 3. Finally, if so great a goddess seemed fit to be worshipped along with that most unworthy throng, why was she not at least worshipped more illustriously than the rest? For who could bear that Felicity was placed neither among the Consenting gods, whom they say are taken into the council of Jove (See Varro, On Farming 1.1.4; Arnobius, Against the Nations 3.40; Seneca, Natural Questions 2.41), nor among the gods whom they call the "Select" (Varro, Antiquities 16, throughout (in Augustine, 6.3; 7.2))? Some temple should have been made for her that surpassed the rest both in loftiness of place and in dignity of work. For why not something better than for Jove himself?

For what gave even Jove his kingdom but Felicity? If indeed he was happy while he reigned. And felicity is preferable to a kingdom. For no one doubts that a man can easily be found who would fear to be made a king; but none is found who would not wish to be happy. The gods themselves, then, if men think they can be consulted by auguries or in any way whatever, should be consulted on this matter: whether they would be willing to yield place to Felicity, if perhaps a place had already been occupied by the temples or altars of others where a temple greater and loftier might be built for Felicity; even Jove himself would yield, so that Felicity rather might hold the very summit of the Capitoline hill. For no one would resist Felicity, unless—what cannot be—one who wished to be unhappy.

In no way at all, if he were consulted, would Jove do what three gods did to him—Mars, Terminus, and Iuventas (Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.55.3-4; Florus, Epitome 1.1.7.7-9)—who were in no way willing to yield place to their greater and their king. For, as their writings have it, when King Tarquinius wished the Capitol to be built, and saw that the place which seemed to him more worthy and more fitting was preoccupied by other gods, not daring to do anything against their will, and believing that they would yield by their own will to so great a deity and their own prince,

because there were many of them there where the Capitol was established, he inquired by augury whether they would be willing to concede the place to Jove; and they all wished to yield thence except those whom I mentioned, Mars, Terminus, and Iuventas; and therefore the Capitol was so constructed that these three too were inside, with signs so obscure that scarcely the most learned men knew it.

In no way, then, would Jove himself despise Felicity, as he was despised by Terminus, Mars, and Iuventas. But even those who had not yielded to Jove would surely yield to Felicity, who had made Jove king for them. Or if they did not yield, they would do so not out of contempt for her, but because they would prefer to be obscure in the house of Felicity than to be eminent in their own places without her.

23. 4. Thus, with the goddess Felicity established in the most ample and most lofty place, the citizens would learn whence the help of every good wish was to be sought; and so, nature itself persuading, the superfluous multitude of other gods being abandoned, Felicity alone would be worshipped, she alone supplicated,

her temple alone frequented by the citizens who wished to be happy—of whom there would be no one who would not—and so she herself would be sought from herself, who was sought by all.

For who would wish to receive anything from any god except felicity, or what he judges pertains to felicity? Accordingly, if felicity has in her power with what man she is (and she has, if she is a goddess): what folly, after all, is it to seek her from some god, whom you could obtain from herself?

This goddess, then, they ought to have honored above the other gods even by the dignity of her place. For, as is read among them (Varro, On the Latin Language 5.74; Ovid, Fasti 6.731-32; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.52), the ancient Romans worshipped a certain Summanus, to whom they assigned the nocturnal thunderbolts, more than Jove, to whom the diurnal thunderbolts pertained. But after a notable and lofty temple was built for Jove, the multitude flocked to him on account of the dignity of the temple, so that one can scarcely be found who remembers that he has at least read the name of Summanus, which he can no longer hear.

But if felicity is not a goddess, since—what is true—she is a gift of God: let that God be sought who can give her, and let the harmful multitude of false gods be abandoned, which the vain multitude of foolish men pursues, making for itself gods out of the gifts of God and offending him whose gifts they are by the obstinacy of a proud will. For thus he cannot lack unhappiness who worships felicity as a goddess and abandons God the giver of felicity, just as he cannot lack hunger who licks a painted loaf of bread and does not ask it of a man who has a real one.

24. But it is worthwhile to consider their reasonings. Is it to be believed, they say, that our ancestors were so unwise as not to know that these things were divine gifts, not gods (See Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.16.40; 20.51; Seneca, Letters 65.7, 12)? But since they knew that such things were granted to no one except by the bounty of some god, they called by the names of those things the gods whom they did not find named, gods whom they felt to be the givers of the things they perceived to be given by them,

inflecting some words from them—as from war (bellum) they named Bellona, not Bellum; as from cradles (cunae) Cunina, not Cuna; as from crops (segetes) Segetia, not Seges; as from fruits (poma) Pomona, not Pomum; as from oxen (boves) Bubona, not Bos: or else with no inflection of the word, just as the things themselves are named, as Pecunia (Money) was called a goddess who gives money, money itself not being thought a goddess at all; so Virtue, who gives virtue, Honor, who gives honor, Concord, who gives concord, Victory, who gives victory. So, they say, when felicity is called a goddess, it is not the felicity itself that is given that is meant, but that deity by whom felicity is given.

25. This explanation having been rendered us, we shall perhaps much more easily persuade those whose heart has not become too hardened of what we wish. For if human weakness has now felt that felicity cannot be given except by some god, and if men felt this who worshipped so many gods, among them their very king Jove: because they were ignorant of the name of him by whom felicity was given, they wished to call him by the name of the very thing which they believed was given by him; they sufficiently indicated, then, that felicity could not be given even by Jove himself, whom they were already worshipping, but certainly by him whom they judged ought to be worshipped under the name of felicity itself.

I affirm outright that they believed felicity to be given by a certain god whom they did not know: let him, then, be sought, let him be worshipped, and it is enough. Let the din of innumerable demons be repudiated; let this god not be enough for the man for whom his gift is not enough. Let not God the giver of felicity, I say, be enough to worship for him for whom felicity itself is not enough to receive. But for him for whom she is enough (for a man has nothing more that he ought to wish), let him serve the one God, the giver of felicity. He is not the one whom they name Jove.

For if they acknowledged him as the giver of felicity, they would surely not seek another god or goddess, by whom felicity might be given, under the name of Felicity itself, nor would they think Jove himself ought to be worshipped with so great outrages. For he is called the adulterer of others' wives, the shameless lover and ravisher of a beautiful boy.

26. But Homer feigned these things, says Cicero, and transferred human things to the gods: I would rather he transferred divine things to us (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.26.65; Augustine, Confessions 1.16.25). Deservedly did the poet, the fabricator of divine crimes, displease a serious man. Why, then, are the theatrical games, where these things are recited, sung, and acted, exhibited for the honors of the gods, and written down among divine matters by the most learned men?

Here let Cicero cry out, not against the figments of the poets, but against the institutions of the ancestors—or let those ancestors cry out too: What have we done! The gods themselves demanded that these things be exhibited for their honors, fiercely commanded them, foretold disaster unless it were done, most severely avenged it because something was neglected, and showed that they were appeased because what had been neglected was done.

Among their virtues and marvelous deeds is recounted what I shall now relate. To Titus Latinius, a Roman countryman and father of a family, it was said in his sleep that he should announce to the senate that the Roman games be renewed, because on the first day of them, in a certain criminal who, while the people watched, had been ordered to be led to punishment, the sad command had displeased the deities, who, namely, were seeking merriment from the games.

When, then, that man who had been admonished by the dream did not dare to do what was commanded the next day, on the second night this same thing was commanded again more severely: he lost his son, because he did not do it. On the third night it was said to the man that a greater punishment threatened him if he did not do it. When even thus he did not dare, he fell into a sharp and horrible illness. Then indeed, on the advice of his friends, he laid the matter before the magistrates and was brought into the senate in a litter; and when he had told his dream, his health was immediately restored, and he departed sound on his own feet. Stupefied by so great a miracle, the senate decreed that the games be renewed with quadrupled money Cicero, On Divination 1.26.55; Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.36.2-37.1; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 1.7.4; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.13; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.7.20..

Who that has sound understanding does not see that men subject to malignant demons—from whose domination nothing frees us but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25)—were compelled by force to exhibit to such gods things that could by right counsel be judged base?

In those games, certainly, the poetic crimes of the deities are frequented—those games which, the deities compelling, were renewed by command of the senate. In those games the most base actors sang, acted, and gave pleasure with Jove the corruptor of chastity.

If that was feigned, he would be angry; but if he delighted even in his crimes, fictitious though they were, then how could he be worshipped, unless the devil were served? Would he, then, found, extend, and preserve the Roman empire—a being more abject than any Roman man to whom such things were displeasing? Would he give felicity, who was worshipped so unhappily, and, unless he were so worshipped, grew angry more unhappily still?

27. It has been committed to writing that the most learned pontiff Scaevola disputed that three kinds of gods have been handed down: one by the poets, another by the philosophers, the third by the leaders of the state. The first kind he says is trifling, because many unworthy things are feigned about the gods; the second does not suit cities, because it has some things that are superfluous, some too that it harms the peoples to know. Of the superfluous there is no great concern; for it is also wont to be said by the jurists: superfluous things do no harm (See Code of Justinian 6.23.1.17).

But what are those things which, brought out to the multitude, do harm? That these, he says, are not gods—Hercules, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux; for it is reported by the learned that they were men and ended by the human condition. What else? That the cities do not have true images of those who are gods, because the true God has neither sex nor age nor defined members of a body (Quintus Mucius Scaevola, Civil Law, fr. 71 (only in Augustine)). These things the pontiff does not wish the peoples to know; for he does not think them false. He judges, therefore, that it is expedient for cities to be deceived in religion. This Varro himself too does not hesitate to say in his books On Divine Matters (Varro, Antiquities, fr. 117 (in Arnobius, Against the Nations 7.1)). A splendid religion, to which the weak man should flee to be freed—and when he seeks the truth by which he may be freed, it is believed expedient for him that he be deceived!

Why Scaevola rejects the poetic kind of gods is not passed over in silence in the same writings: namely because they so deform the gods that they are not even comparable to good men,

when they make one steal, another commit adultery, and likewise one say or do something else basely and ineptly; that three goddesses contended among themselves for the prize of beauty, and the two conquered by Venus overthrew Troy; that Jove himself was turned into a bull or a swan, in order to lie with some woman; that a goddess married a man, that Saturn devoured his children: in short, that no monstrous deeds or vices can be feigned that are not found there and that are far removed from the nature of the gods.

O Scaevola, supreme pontiff, abolish the games, if you can; bid the peoples not to offer such honors to the immortal gods, where it is pleasing to admire the crimes of the gods and pleasing to imitate what can be done.

But if the people answer you: "You pontiffs brought these things in upon us": ask the gods themselves, at whose instigation you commanded these things, that they not bid such things to be exhibited to themselves. And if these things are evil and therefore in no way to be believed of the majesty of the gods, the greater is the injury done to the gods, about whom they are feigned with impunity.

But they do not hear you, they are demons, they teach depraved things, they rejoice in base things: not only do they not reckon it an injury if such things are feigned about them, but they rather cannot bear the injury if these things are not enacted at their solemnities. And now, if against them you appeal to Jove—especially for this cause, that more of his crimes are enacted in the theatrical games: even though you call Jove God, by whom this whole world is ruled and administered, is not the greatest injury done him by you in this, that you think he ought to be worshipped along with these, and declare him to be their king?

28. In no way, then, could such gods—who are appeased, or rather accused, by such honors, so that it is a greater crime that they are delighted by false things about them than if true things were said—have enlarged and preserved the Roman empire. For if they could do this, they would rather confer so great a gift on the Greeks, who in divine matters of this kind, that is, theatrical games, worshipped them more honorably and more worthily, since they both did not withdraw themselves from the bites of the poets, by whom they saw the gods torn apart—giving them license to treat badly whatever men they pleased—and did not judge the actors themselves base, but held them worthy even of illustrious honors (Cicero, On the Republic 4.10.10-13; see 2.9.11).

But just as the Romans could have gold money, although they did not worship the god Aurinus: so they could have silver and bronze money too, if they worshipped neither Argentinus nor his father Aesculanus, and likewise all the things which it irks me to recount again. So, then, a kingdom too they could in no way have had with the true God unwilling; but with these false and many gods unknown or despised, and that one God known and worshipped with sincere faith and good morals, they would both have a kingdom here the better, however great a one they had, and afterward receive an everlasting one—whether they had one here or not.

29. For what sort of thing is that which they said was a most beautiful auspice, which I recounted a little before—that Mars and Terminus and Iuventas were unwilling to yield place even to Jove, the king of the gods? For thus, they say, it was signified that the Martian nation, that is, the Roman, would give to no one the place it held; that no one too would move the Roman boundaries, on account of the god Terminus; that the Roman youth too, on account of the goddess Iuventas, would yield to no one. Let them see, then, in what manner they hold this king of their gods and giver of their kingdom, that they set these auspices against him as against an adversary, to whom it would be beautiful not to yield.

And yet, if these things are true, they have nothing at all to fear. For they will not confess that the gods yielded to Christ, who were unwilling to yield to Jove; for, with the bounds of the empire safe, they could yield to Christ both from the seats of their places and especially from the heart of believers.

But before Christ had come in the flesh, before, finally, these things were written which we bring forward from their books, yet after that auspice was made under King Tarquinius, several times the Roman army was routed, that is, turned to flight, and showed the auspice false by which that Iuventas had not yielded to Jove; and the Martian nation was crushed, with the Gauls overcoming and bursting into the very City, and the bounds of the empire, with many states going over to Hannibal, had been confined within a narrow space. Thus the beauty of the auspices was emptied out, and there remained against Jove a defiance, not of gods but of demons. For it is one thing not to have yielded, another to have returned to a place from which you had yielded.

And yet afterward too, in the eastern parts, the bounds of the Roman empire were changed by the will of Hadrian. For he ceded three noble provinces—Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria—to the empire of the Persians (See Eutropius, Breviary 8.6.2), so that that god Terminus, who according to these men guarded the Roman boundaries and through that most beautiful auspice had not yielded place to Jove, seems to have feared Hadrian, the king of men, more than the king of the gods. And when the aforesaid provinces had been recovered at another time, Terminus retreated backward almost within our own memory, when Julian, given over to the oracles of those gods, with immoderate daring ordered the ships to be burned in which provisions were carried; and the army, deprived of these, soon, with Julian himself too slain by an enemy's wound, was reduced to such want that none could have escaped from there—with the enemy attacking on every side a soldiery thrown into confusion by the emperor's death—unless by a pact of peace the bounds of the empire were there established where they persist even today, not indeed at so great a loss as Hadrian had conceded, but yet fixed by a middle settlement.

By a vain augury, then, the god Terminus did not yield to Jove, who yet yielded to the will of Hadrian, yielded too to the rashness of Julian and the necessity of Jovian See Eutropius, Breviary 10.16.2; 17.1; Ammianus Marcellinus, History 24.7.4-7; 27.12.1; Orosius, History 7.30-31.. The more intelligent and more serious Romans saw these things; but against the custom of the city, which had been bound by demonic rites, they availed little, because they themselves too, even if they felt those things to be vain, yet thought that religious worship, which is owed to God, ought to be offered to the nature of things established under the rule and command of the one true God: serving, as the Apostle says, the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom 1:25). The help of this true God was necessary, by whom holy men, truly pious, might be sent, to die for the true religion, so that the false religions might be taken away from the living.

30. Cicero the augur mocks the auguries and mocks men who order the counsels of their life by the voices of the raven and the crow (Cicero, On Divination 2.33-37). But this Academic, who contends that all things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these matters. In his work Quintus Lucilius Balbus disputes in the second book On the Nature of the Gods, and although he himself inserts the superstitions as, so to speak, physical and philosophical, derived from the nature of things, he is nevertheless indignant at the establishment of images and at the fabulous opinions, speaking thus: Do you see, then, how reason has been drawn from physical things, well and usefully discovered, to fictitious and feigned gods? This thing has begotten false opinions and turbulent errors and superstitions almost old-wifely. For the forms of the gods, and their ages, and their clothing and adornment are known to us, their families besides, their marriages, their kinships, and all things translated to the likeness of human weakness.

For they are even introduced with disturbed minds; for we have received accounts of the gods' desires, ailments, and fits of anger. Nor indeed, as the fables relate, did the gods lack wars and battles; and not only, as in Homer, when other gods defended two opposing armies from opposite sides, but they even waged their own proper wars (as with the Titans or with the Giants). These things are both said and believed most foolishly, and are full of vanity and the utmost frivolity (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.28.70; Homer, Iliad 20.67ff). Behold, for the moment, what they confess who defend the gods of the gentiles.

Then, since he says that these things pertain to superstition, but to religion, which he himself seems to teach according to the Stoics: for not only the philosophers, he says, but also our ancestors separated superstition from religion; for those who prayed whole days and made sacrifices that their children might survive them were called superstitious (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.28.71-72). Who does not understand that he is trying, while he fears the custom of the city, to praise the religion of the ancestors and to wish to separate it from superstition, but does not find how he can do it?

For if those were called superstitious by the ancestors who prayed whole days and made sacrifices, then are not those too superstitious who established (what he reproaches) the images of the gods, distinguished by different age and dress, and the families, marriages, and kinships of the gods? When these things are blamed as superstitious, this blame implicates the ancestors who established and worshipped such images; it implicates him too, who, however much by his eloquence he strives to extricate himself into freedom, was obliged to venerate these things; nor would he dare to mutter in the assembly of the people what he loudly proclaims, eloquent, in this disputation.

Let us Christians, then, give thanks to the Lord our God—not to heaven and earth, as this man disputes, but to him who made heaven and earth—who has overthrown these superstitions, which this Balbus, as it were babbling (balbutiens), scarcely reproaches, through the most exalted humility of Christ, through the preaching of the Apostles, through the faith of the martyrs who die for the truth and live with the truth—overthrown them not only in religious hearts but even in superstitious temples, by the free service of his own.

31. 1. What of Varro himself, whom we grieve to have placed the theatrical games among divine matters—though not by his own judgment—when in many places he exhorts to the worship of the gods as though religious? Does he not so confess that he does not follow by his own judgment those things which he recounts the Roman state to have instituted, that he does not hesitate to confess that, if he were founding that state anew, he would have dedicated the gods and their names rather according to the rule of nature? But since he was now among an old people, he says he ought to keep the history of their names and surnames received from the ancients as it was handed down, and to write and search out those things to this end, that the common people should rather wish to worship the gods more than to despise them.

By which words a most acute man sufficiently indicates that he does not disclose everything—things which would be objects of contempt not only to himself, but would seem to the common people themselves things to be despised, unless they were passed over in silence.

I should be thought to be conjecturing these things, were it not that he himself, in another place, speaking of religions, evidently says that there are many true things which it is not useful for the common people to know, and also that, although they are false, it is expedient for the people to think otherwise; and that for this reason the Greeks shut up their rites and mysteries in silence and within walls.

Here certainly he betrayed the whole plan, as it were, of the wise men by whom the cities and peoples were ruled. Yet by this deceit the malignant demons are delighted in marvelous ways, who possess both the deceivers and the deceived alike—from whose domination nothing frees us but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

31. 2. The same most acute and most learned author also says that those alone seem to him to have perceived what God is, who believed him to be a soul governing the world by motion and reason; and through this, although he did not yet hold what the truth holds (for the true God is not a soul, but the maker and founder of the soul too), nevertheless, if he could have been free against the prejudices of custom, he would have confessed and urged that one God ought to be worshipped, governing the world by motion and reason—so that this question about that matter would remain with him: that he called him a soul, rather than also the Creator of the soul.

He also says that the ancient Romans worshipped the gods without an image for more than a hundred and seventy years. And if this had continued, he says, the gods would be observed more chastely (Varro, Antiquities, fr. 114 (only in Augustine)). As a witness to this opinion of his he adduces, among others, the Jewish nation too; nor does he hesitate to conclude that passage by saying that those who first set up images of the gods for the peoples both took away fear from their cities and added error, prudently judging that the gods could easily be despised in the dullness of images.

But because he does not say they handed down error, but they added it: surely he wishes it to be understood that there was error even without images. Wherefore, when he says that those alone perceived what God is who believed him to be a soul governing the world, and judges that religion is more chastely observed without images, who does not see how near he came to the truth?

For if he could have availed anything against the antiquity of so great an error, he would assuredly have judged both that one God, by whom he believed the world to be governed, ought to be worshipped, and that without an image; and, found so near, he might perhaps easily have been admonished of the mutability of the soul, so as to perceive that the true God is rather an immutable nature, which had founded the soul itself as well.

Since these things are so, whatever mockeries of the many gods such men set down in their writings, they were compelled to confess them by the hidden will of God rather than tried to persuade them. If, then, any testimonies are brought forward by us from there, they are brought forward to refute those who refuse to consider from how great and how malignant a power of demons the singular sacrifice of so holy a blood poured out, and the gift of the Spirit imparted, frees us.

32. He says also, concerning the generations of the gods, that the peoples were more inclined to the poets than to the natural philosophers, and that for this reason their ancestors, that is, the ancient Romans, believed in both the sex and the generations of the gods and established their marriages. Which surely seems to have been done for no other cause than that it was the business of men, as though prudent and wise, to deceive the people in religions, and in that very thing not only to worship but even to imitate the demons, whose greatest desire is to deceive. For just as demons cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived by deceiving, so men who are leaders—not indeed just, but like the demons—urged upon the peoples, under the name of religion, the things they knew to be vain, as though they were true, in this way binding them, as it were, the more fittingly to civil society, that they might likewise possess them as subjects. But who, weak and unlearned, could escape both the deceitful leaders of the city and the demons together?

33. That God, then, the author and giver of felicity, because he alone is the true God, himself gives earthly kingdoms both to the good and to the bad—and this not rashly and as if by chance, because he is God, not fortune, but according to the order of things and times, hidden from us but most known to himself; to which order of times, however, he is not made subject and a slave, but he himself rules it as lord and disposes it as governor: but felicity he gives only to the good. For this both slaves can lack and have, and rulers can lack and have; yet it will be full in that life where no one will any longer be a slave.

And therefore earthly kingdoms are given by him both to the good and to the bad, lest his worshippers, still little ones in the advancement of their mind, should covet these gifts from him as though something great.

And this is the mystery of the Old Testament, where the New was hidden—that there the promises and gifts are earthly, even to those who, then too, were spiritual, understanding, although not yet preaching it openly, both the eternity that was signified by those temporal things, and in what gifts of God true felicity lay.

34. And so, that it might be known that even those earthly goods, after which alone they gape who cannot think of better things, are placed in the power of the one God himself, not of the many false gods whom the Romans formerly believed ought to be worshipped, he multiplied his own people in Egypt from the very fewest and thence freed them by marvelous signs. Nor did those women invoke Lucina, when he himself preserved their offspring—that they might be multiplied in marvelous ways and that nation grow incredibly—from the hands of the Egyptians who pursued them and wished to kill all the infants.

Without the goddess Rumina they suckled, without Cunina they lay in cradles, without Educa and Potina they took food and drink, without so many childhood gods they were reared, without the marriage gods they were married, without the worship of Priapus they were joined to their spouses; without the invocation of Neptune the sea, divided, lay open to those crossing it and overwhelmed their pursuing enemies with the waves returning upon themselves. Nor did they consecrate any goddess Mannia, when they took manna from heaven; nor, when for the thirsty the struck rock poured forth water, did they worship the Nymphs and the Lymphs. Without the insane rites of Mars and Bellona they waged wars, and indeed they did not conquer without victory, yet they held it not as a goddess but as the gift of their God. Without Segetia they had crops, without Bubona oxen, honey without Mellona, fruits without Pomona, and absolutely all things for which the Romans thought so great a throng of false gods had to be supplicated, they received far more happily from the one true God.

And if they had not sinned against him—seduced by impious curiosity as though by magic arts, slipping away to strange gods and to idols, and at last by killing Christ—they would have remained in the same kingdom, even if not more spacious, yet happier. And now the fact that they are dispersed through almost all lands and nations is the providence of that one true God, so that, when everywhere the images, altars, groves, and temples of the false gods are overthrown and their sacrifices forbidden, it may be proved from their own books how this was prophesied so long before; lest perhaps, when it was read in ours, it should be thought by us to have been fabricated.

What follows must now be seen in the following volume, and here an end must be set to the length of this one.

Since it is agreed that the fullness of all things to be desired is felicity, which is not a goddess but a gift of God, and that therefore no god ought to be worshipped by men except him who can make them happy (whence, if she were a goddess, she alone would deservedly be said to be worshipped): let us now consequently see for what cause God, who can give also those goods that even the not-good, and through this the not-happy, can have, willed the Roman empire to be so great and so long-lasting. For that this was not done by that multitude of false gods whom they worshipped, we have already said much, and we will say more where it shall seem opportune.

1. The cause of the greatness of the Roman empire, then, is neither fortuitous nor fatal, according to the view or opinion of those who say that those things are fortuitous which either have no causes or causes not coming from any rational order, and those fatal which happen, apart from the will of God and of men, by the necessity of a certain order See Aetius, Opinions 1.27-29; Pseudo-Plutarch, On Fate 8-9; Manilius, Astronomy 3.43-101; Augustine, Miscellany of Eighty-three Questions 24.. Human kingdoms are established outright by divine providence. And if anyone ascribes this to fate for the reason that he calls the very will or power of God by the name of "fate," let him hold his opinion but correct his language. For why does he not first say what he is going to say afterward, when someone asks him what he meant by fate? For when men hear it, by the usual habit of speech they understand nothing but the force of the position of the stars, such as is when one is born or conceived; which some sever from the will of God See Homer, Iliad 21.82; Odyssey 3.226; the Pythagoreans, in Diogenes Laertius 8.27; Heraclitus, in Diogenes Laertius 9.7, and in Aetius, Opinions 1.27.1; Leucippus, in Diels, Fragments of the Presocratics 67, fr. 2; Democritus, in Diels, Fragments of the Presocratics 68, fr. 118; the natural philosophers, in Cicero, On Fate 17.40; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.217-24; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.434; Manilius, Astronomy 4.14-22; Seneca, On Providence 5.8; the Manicheans, in Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 140.10., while others affirm that this too depends on it Plato, Timaeus 41d-e; Republic 617b-d; Aristotle, Physics 195b31ff.; Zeno and the Stoics, in Theodoret, Cure for the Greek Maladies 6.14; Chrysippus, in Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 7.2.3, and in Aetius, Opinions 1.28.3; Posidonius, in Aetius, Opinions 1.28.5; Pseudo-Plutarch, On Fate 4.570b; Plotinus, Enneads 2.3.7-8; 3.1.1; 2.1..

But those who think that the stars decree, without the will of God, what we do or what goods we have or evils we suffer, are to be driven from the ears of all—not only of those who hold the true religion, but also of those who wish to be worshippers of gods of whatever kind, however false. For what else does this opinion do but bring it about that no god at all be worshipped or entreated? It is not against these that our disputation is now set up, but against those who, in defense of those whom they think gods, oppose the Christian religion.

But those who suspend the position of the stars—which in a manner decrees what sort each person is and what good befalls him or what evil happens to him—upon the will of God, if they think those same stars have this power handed down to them by the supreme power of that God, so that they decree these things at their own will, do a great injury to heaven, in whose, as it were, most illustrious senate and most splendid council chamber they imagine that crimes are decreed to be done—such crimes as, had any earthly state decreed them, it would have had to be overthrown by the decree of the human race. What judgment, then, about the deeds of men is left to God, on whom a heavenly necessity is brought to bear, when he is the Lord both of the stars and of men? Or if they do not say that the stars, having received power from the supreme god, decree these things at their own discretion, but in imposing such necessities altogether fulfill his commands: is it thus to be thought of God himself, what seemed most unworthy to think of the will of the stars?

But if the stars are said to signify these things rather than to do them, so that that position is, as it were, a kind of speech foretelling the future, not effecting it (for this was the opinion of men not moderately learned (Plotinus, Enneads 2.3.7.4-7; 3.1.6.18-24)): the astrologers are not indeed wont to speak so, as to say, for example, "Mars positioned thus signifies a murderer," but "makes a murderer" (See Plotinus, Enneads 2.3.6.1-3);

yet, granting that they do not speak as they ought, and that they ought to receive from the philosophers the rule of speech for foretelling those things which they think they find in the position of the stars: how is it that they have never been able to say why, in the life of twins—in their actions, in their fortunes, in their professions, arts, honors, and the other things pertaining to human life, and in death itself—there is for the most part so great a diversity, that, as far as these things are concerned, many strangers are more like them than the twins themselves are like each other, twins separated in being born by a very tiny interval of time, but in conception sown by one act of intercourse and at one and the same moment?

2. Cicero says that Hippocrates, the most noble physician, left it in writing that he suspected certain brothers to be twins, because, when they had begun to be ill at the same time and their illness grew worse at the same time, it was relieved at the same time (Cicero, On Fate 3.5); whom Posidonius the Stoic, much given to astrology, used to assert had been born and conceived under the same constellation of the stars (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2; On Divination 1; On Duties 3). Thus what the physician believed to pertain to a most similar temperament of health, this the astrologer-philosopher ascribed to the force and constellation of the stars which had existed at the time when they were conceived and born. In this case the medical conjecture is much more acceptable and more credible at first hand,

since the parents, as they were affected in body while they were having intercourse, could so affect the first beginnings of the conceived, that, with the earlier increments following from the mother's body, they were born of equal health; then, nourished in one house with the same food—where medicine attests that the air and the position of the place and the force of the waters avail very much for the body's being well or ill disposed—accustomed also to the same exercises, they bore bodies so similar that they were moved similarly even to falling ill at one time and from the same causes.

But to wish to draw the constellation of heaven and the stars, which existed when they were conceived or born, to this parity of falling ill—when so many things of the most diverse kind, with the most diverse effects and outcomes, could be conceived and born at the same time in the land of one region subject to the same heaven—I do not know of what arrogance this is.

But we know of twins who not only have diverse acts and travels, but even suffer disparate illnesses. Of which matter Hippocrates would give a most easy account, as it seems to me: that dissimilar states of health could befall them from diverse foods and exercises, which come not from the body's temperament but from the will of the mind. But Posidonius, or any asserter of the fatal stars, it would be a wonder if he can find here what to say, unless he is willing to play upon the minds of the inexperienced in matters they do not know.

For what they try to make of the small interval of time which twins had between themselves while they were being born, on account of that little part of the heaven where the marking of the hour is placed, which they call the horoscope: either it does not avail as much as the diversity found in the wills, acts, morals, and chances of twins, or it avails even more than the equal lowliness or nobility of birth of the twins, whose greatest diversity they place only in the hour in which each is born (See Manilius, Astronomy 3.537-47; 2.826-35; Plotinus, Enneads 2.3.1). And through this, if one is born so quickly after the other that the same part of the horoscope remains, I ask for all things equal, which can be found in no twins; but if the slowness of the later one changes the horoscope, I ask for diverse parents, whom twins cannot have.

3. In vain, then, is that noble fiction about the potter's wheel brought forward, which they say Nigidius answered, troubled by this question, whence he was even called Figulus. For when he had spun the potter's wheel with as much force as he could (See the scholia on Lucan, Pharsalia 1.639 (later than Augustine?)), while it was running he struck it twice with ink, as though in one place of it, with the utmost speed; then, when the motion ceased, the marks which he had fixed were found to be distant by no small interval on the edge of that wheel. So, he said, in so great a swiftness of the heaven, even if one is born after another with as great a speed as that with which I struck the wheel twice, in the space of the heaven it is a very great deal: hence, he said, come whatever things are reported as most dissimilar in the morals and chances of twins (Fr. 2, in H. Funaioli, Fragments of the Roman Grammarians (Leipzig, 1907)).

This fiction is more fragile than the vessels that are fashioned by that spinning. For if there is so much difference in the heaven—which cannot be comprehended by the constellations—that to one of the twins an inheritance falls and to the other it does not: why do they dare, when they have examined the constellations of others who are not twins, to pronounce such things as pertain to that secret which no one can comprehend and note down in the moments of those being born? But if they say such things in the nativities of others for the reason that these pertain to more extended spaces of time, while those moments of tiny parts, which twins being born can have between themselves, are assigned to the smallest matters, about which astrologers are not wont to be consulted (for who consults them about when he should sit, when walk, when or what he should lunch on?): do we say these things, when we show very many and very diverse things in the morals, works, and chances of twins?

4. Two twins were born in the ancient memory of the fathers (to speak of notable cases) one after the other in such a way that the later held the heel of the earlier (Gen 25:25; Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.22). So diverse were things in their life and morals, so great the disparity in their acts, so great the dissimilarity in their parents' love, that the very distance between them made them even enemies to each other.

Is this said because, while one walked, the other sat, and while one slept, the other was awake, and while one spoke, the other was silent—things which pertain to those minute matters which cannot be comprehended by those who write down the constellation of the stars under which each is born, from which the astrologers are consulted?

One led a hired servitude, the other did not serve; one was loved by his mother, the other was not loved; one lost the honor which was held great among them, the other obtained it. What of their wives, what of their children, what of their possessions—how great a diversity! If, then, these things pertain to those minute portions of time which twins have between themselves, and are not ascribed to the constellations: why, when the constellations of others are examined, are these things said? But if they are said for the reason that they pertain not to incomprehensible minute moments, but to spaces of time which can be observed and noted: what is that potter's wheel doing here, except that men with hearts of clay are sent spinning in a circle, lest the empty talk of the astrologers be refuted?

5. As for those very brothers whose illness—because it appeared at the same time worse and lighter in both—Hippocrates, examining it medically, made him suspect that they were twins: do they not sufficiently refute those who wish to give to the stars what came from a similar temperament of the bodies? For why were they ill similarly and at the same time, not one earlier and one later, as they had been born—since the two certainly could not be born at the same time? Or if it brought no weight, toward their being ill at diverse times, that they were born at diverse times: why do they contend that a diverse time in being born avails toward the diversities of other things? Why could they travel at diverse times, marry wives at diverse times, beget children at diverse times, and do many other things, for the reason that they were born at diverse times, and could not, by the same cause, also be ill at diverse times?

For if the disparate delay in being born changed the horoscope and introduced disparity into the other matters: why did that remain in their illnesses which it had in the equality of the time of conception? Or if the fates of health are in the conception, but those of other matters are said to be in the birth, they ought not, with the natal constellations examined, to say anything about health, when the hour of conception is not given them to examine. But if they foretell illnesses without examining the horoscope of conception, because the moments of those being born indicate them: how would they tell either of those twins, from the hour of his nativity, when he would fall ill, when the other too, who did not have the same hour of nativity, would necessarily fall ill equally?

Then I ask: if there is so great a distance of time in the nativity of twins that, on account of it, diverse constellations must be made for them—because of the diverse horoscope and on this account diverse cardinal points (Cf. Manilio, Astron. 2, 150-787. 788-970; Giovanni Lido, De ostentis, passim), where so great a force is placed that even their fates are diverse from this—how could this come about, when their conception cannot have a diverse time? Or if of two conceived in one moment of time the fates for being born could be disparate, why could not the fates for living and dying also be disparate of two born in one moment of time? For if the one moment in which both were conceived did not hinder the one from being born earlier and the other later: why, if two are born in one moment, does anything hinder the one from dying earlier and the other later? If a conception of one moment allows twins to have diverse fortunes in the womb, why should not a nativity of one moment allow any two persons whatever to have diverse fortunes on earth—and so all the fabrications of this art, or rather of this vanity, be done away with? What is this—why do those conceived at one time, in one moment, under one and the same position of the heaven, have diverse fates which lead them to a nativity at diverse hours, while two born together in one moment of time, under one and the same position of the heaven, from two mothers, cannot have diverse fates which lead them to a diverse necessity of living or dying?

Or do those conceived not yet have fates, which they cannot have unless they are born? What is it, then, that they say—that if the hour of conception is found, many things can be told by them more divinely? Whence this too is proclaimed by some, that a certain wise man chose the hour at which he should lie with his wife, that he might beget a marvelous son.

Whence, finally, comes also this, which Posidonius, the great astrologer and likewise philosopher, used to answer about those twins who were ill alike: that it came about because they had been born at the same time and conceived at the same time. For he certainly added the conception for this reason, lest it be said to him that they could not clearly have been born at the same time, whom it was agreed had altogether been conceived at the same time; so that the fact that they were ill similarly and together he might attribute not to a nearby equal temperament of the body, but might bind that same parity of health also to the bonds of the stars.

If, then, there is so great a force in the conception toward the equality of fates, the same fates ought not to have been changed by being born. Or if the fates of twins are changed for the reason that they are born at diverse times, why should we not rather understand that they had already been changed, so that they were born at diverse times? Does the will of the living, then, not change the fates of nativity, when the order of those being born changes the fates of conception?

6. And yet, even in the very conceptions of twins, where certainly the moments of time of both are the same, how does it come about that under the same fatal constellation the one is conceived male, the other female? We know twins of diverse sex; both still live, both are still vigorous in age; and although there is between them a likeness of bodily appearance, as much as is possible in a diverse sex, yet in the manner and purpose of life they are so disparate that—besides the acts in which feminine ones must necessarily differ from masculine (for the one serves in the office of a count and is almost always traveling away from his home, while the other does not depart from her native soil and her own estate)—moreover (what is more incredible, if astral fates are believed, but not wonderful, if the wills of men and the gifts of God are considered) the one is married, the other a consecrated virgin; the one has begotten numerous offspring, the other has not even married.

But, they say, the force of the horoscope avails very much. How little this is, I have already sufficiently discussed. But whatever it be, they say it avails in the birth; does it also in the conception?

Where it is both manifest that there is one act of intercourse, and the force of nature is so great that, when a woman has conceived, she cannot then conceive another at all; whence the moments of conception must necessarily be the same in twins. Or perhaps, because they were born under a diverse horoscope, either he was changed into a male, or she into a female, while they were being born?

Since, then, it could be said not altogether absurdly that certain breathings of the stars avail only toward the differences of bodies—as in the solar approaches and recessions we see even the seasons of the year itself varied, and by lunar increases and decreases certain kinds of things increased and diminished, such as sea urchins and shellfish and the marvelous tides of the ocean—but that the wills of the mind are not subject to the positions of the stars: now these men, when they try to bind even our acts to them, admonish us to ask whence this account of theirs cannot hold good for them even in bodies themselves. For what is so pertinent to the body as the body's sex? And yet under the same position of the stars twins of diverse sex could be conceived. Whence what more foolish thing can be said or believed than that the position of the stars, which at the hour of conception was the same for both, could not bring it about that he should not have a sex diverse from his sister, with whom he had the same constellation; while the position of the stars, which was at the hour of their birth, could bring it about that she should differ from him so much in virginal sanctity?

7. And who could bear this, that in choosing days they contrive certain new fates for their acts? That man, evidently, was not born so as to have an admirable son, but rather so as to beget a contemptible one, and therefore the learned man chose the hour at which he should be joined to his wife. He made, then, a fate that he did not have, and from his own deed there began to be fated what had not been in his nativity.

O singular folly! A day is chosen that a wife may be married; I believe for this reason, because one can fall upon a day not good, unless it is chosen, and marry unhappily. Where, then, is what the stars already decreed for one being born? Or can a man, by the choice of a day, change what has already been appointed for him, while what he himself has appointed in choosing the day cannot be changed by another power?

Then, if only men, and not all the things that are under heaven, are subject to the constellations, why do they choose some days as suited for setting vines or trees or crops, other days for giving over cattle or for putting the males to them, that the herds of mares or oxen may be impregnated, and other things of this kind? But if chosen days avail for these things, because the position of the stars dominates all earthly bodies or living things according to the diversities of temporal moments: let one consider how innumerable things are born or arise or begin under one point of time, and have such diverse outcomes, that they persuade any boy that these observations are to be laughed at. For who is so witless as to dare to say that all trees, all plants, all beasts, serpents, birds, fishes, little worms have, one by one, diverse moments of being born? Yet men are wont, to test the skill of the astrologers, to bring to them the constellations of dumb animals, whose birth they diligently observe at home for this exploration, and they prefer those astrologers to the rest who, the constellations examined, say that it is not a man that was born, but a beast. They dare even to say what kind of beast—whether fit for wool, or for carrying, or for the plow, or for guarding the house. For they are tested even with the fates of dogs, and answer these things with great cries of those who admire.

Men dote so far as to suppose that, when a man is born, the other births of things are so inhibited that not even a fly is born with him under the same region of the heaven. For if they admit the fly, the reasoning proceeds which, step by step, by modest advances, leads them from flies to camels and elephants. Nor do they wish to notice this: that on a day chosen for sowing a field, so many grains come into the earth at once, sprout at once, and, the crop having come up, grow green at once, ripen, turn yellow; and yet, of the ears that are coeval with the rest and, so to speak, of the same sprouting, some the blight destroys, some the birds ravage, some men pull up.

How will they say that these had diverse constellations, which they behold to have such diverse outcomes? Or will they regret choosing days for these things, and deny that they pertain to a heavenly decree, and subject to the stars only men, to whom alone on earth God gave free wills?

All these things being considered, it is not without reason believed that, when astrologers answer marvelously many true things, it comes about by the hidden instigation of spirits that are not good, whose care it is to insert and confirm these false and harmful opinions about astral fates in human minds—not by any art of the horoscope noted and examined, which is none at all.

8. But those who call by the name of fate not the constitution of the stars, such as it is when anything is conceived or born or begun, but the connection and series of all causes by which everything that comes to be comes to be: with these there is no need to labor and contend much about a controversy of words, since indeed they ascribe the very order and a certain connection of causes to the will and power of the most high God, who is most rightly and most truly believed both to know all things before they come to be and to leave nothing unordered; from whom are all powers, although the wills of all are not from him. That it is the very will, above all, of the most high God—whose power is extended insuperably through all things—that they call fate, is proved thus. These verses are, if I am not mistaken, by Annaeus Seneca: Lead me, supreme father and ruler of the high heaven, wherever it has pleased you; there is no delay in obeying. I am present, unwearied. Make me unwilling, I shall follow groaning, and as a bad man shall suffer what I might have done as a good one. The fates lead the willing, the unwilling they drag (Cleante, trad. in lat., da Seneca, Ep. 107, 11). Surely in this last verse he most evidently called fates what above he had called the will of the supreme father; whom he says he is prepared to obey, that he may be led willing, lest he be dragged unwilling; since, namely, the fates lead the willing, the unwilling they drag.

Those Homeric verses too support this opinion, which Cicero turned into Latin: such are the minds of men as the father himself, Jupiter, has lit up the fruit-bearing lands with his light (Omero, Odyss. 18, 136s. (trad. Cicerone, De fato, fr. 4)). Nor would a poetic opinion have authority in this question; but since he says that the Stoics, asserting the force of fate, are wont to use these verses from Homer, it is treated not of that poet's opinion, but of these philosophers', since through these verses, which they apply to the disputation they hold about fate, what they think fate to be is most openly declared—since they call Jove, whom they think the most high god, him from whom they say the connection of the fates depends.

9. 1. Cicero strives to refute these men in such a way that he thinks he can avail nothing against them unless he does away with divination. This he tries to do away with by denying that there is any knowledge of future things, and contending with all his might that there is none at all, whether in man or in God, and that there is no prediction of things. Thus he both denies God's foreknowledge and tries to overthrow all prophecy, clearer than light, by empty argumentations and by setting against himself certain oracles that can easily be refuted; which, however, he does not even refute. But in refuting these conjectures of the astrologers his discourse reigns, because they are truly such as to destroy and refute themselves.

But those who establish even astral fates are much more tolerable than this man who does away with the foreknowledge of future things. For both to confess that there is a god and to deny that he foreknows the future is the most open insanity.

And when he himself saw this, he attempted even that which is written: the fool said in his heart: there is no God (Ps 14:1 (13:1)); but not in his own person. For he saw how invidious and troublesome it was, and therefore he made Cotta dispute about this matter against the Stoics in the books On the Nature of the Gods, and preferred to give his verdict for Lucilius Balbus, to whom he gave the part of the Stoics to defend, rather than for Cotta, who contended that there is no divine nature (Cicerone, De nat. deor. 1, 6, 15; 2, 67, 168; 3, 1, 1). But in the books On Divination he most openly, in his own person, attacks the foreknowledge of future things (Cicerone, De div. 2, 48-54).

But he seems to do all this lest he should consent that there is fate and lose free will. For he thinks that, with the knowledge of future things granted, fate so follows that it cannot be denied at all.

But however the most tortuous contentions and disputations of the philosophers may stand, we, as we confess the most high and true God, so we confess his will and supreme power and foreknowledge; nor do we fear that on that account we do not by will what we do by will, because he foreknew that we would do it, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived—which Cicero feared, so that he attacked foreknowledge, and the Stoics feared, so as not to say that all things come to be by necessity, although they contended that all things come to be by fate.

9. 2. What is it, then, that Cicero feared in the foreknowledge of future things, so that he strove to undermine it by a detestable disputation? Evidently because, if all future things are foreknown, they will come in the order in which they were foreknown to be going to come; and if they will come in this order, the order of things is certain to the foreknowing God; and if the order of things is certain, the order of causes is certain; for nothing can come to be which some efficient cause has not preceded; but if the order of causes, by which everything that comes to be comes to be, is certain, by fate, he says, all things that come to be come to be. And if this is so, nothing is in our power and there is no free choice of the will;

and if we grant this, he says, all human life is overthrown; in vain are laws given, in vain are reproaches, praises, censures, exhortations applied, nor have any rewards been established by justice for the good and punishments for the bad. Lest, then, these unworthy and absurd things, ruinous to human affairs, should follow, he is unwilling that there be foreknowledge of future things; and he confines the religious mind into these straits, that it should choose one of two—either that there is something in our will, or that there is foreknowledge of future things—since he judges that both cannot be, but that if one is confirmed, the other is taken away; if we choose foreknowledge of future things, free choice of the will is taken away; if we choose free choice of the will, foreknowledge of future things is taken away. He himself, then, as a great and learned man, consulting most and most expertly for human life, chose of these two the free choice of the will; and that this might be confirmed, he denied the foreknowledge of future things—and so, while he wishes to make men free, he made them sacrilegious.

But the religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and by the faith of piety confirms both. How? he says; for if there is foreknowledge of future things, all those things will follow which are connected, until it is reached that nothing is in our will. And further, if there is something in our will, by retracing the same steps it is reached that there is no foreknowledge of future things.

For through all those things it is thus retraced: if there is free choice of the will, not all things come to be by fate; if not all things come to be by fate, there is not a certain order of all causes; if there is not a certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things to the foreknowing God, things which cannot come to be except by preceding and efficient causes; if the order of things is not certain to the foreknowing God, not all things come as he foreknew that they would come; and further, if not all things come as they were foreknown by him to come, there is not, he says, in God the foreknowledge of all future things.

9. 3. We, against these sacrilegious and impious daring deeds, both say that God knows all things before they come to be, and that we do by will whatever we feel and know is done by us only when we are willing. But we do not say that all things come to be by fate; rather, we say that nothing comes to be by fate; since we show that the name of "fate," where it is wont to be placed by those who speak—that is, in the constitution of the stars when each is conceived or born—avails nothing, because the thing itself is asserted in vain.

But the order of causes, where the will of God avails most, we neither deny nor call by the term "fate," unless perhaps we understand "fate" (fatum) as said from fando, that is, from speaking Varrone, De ling. lat. 6, 52; cf. Platone, Politeia 617c; Plotino, Enn. 2, 3, 7, 4-7; 3, 1, 6, 18-24.; for we cannot deny that it is written in the holy Scriptures: God has spoken once, these two things I have heard, that power belongs to God, and to you, O Lord, belongs mercy, for you render to each according to his works (Ps 62:11-12 (61:12-13)). For what is said, He has spoken once, is understood "immovably," that is, unchangeably, "he has spoken," just as he knows unchangeably all things that are to come and that he himself is going to do. For this reason, then, we could call "fate" from speaking, were it not that this name is now wont to be understood of another matter, toward which we do not wish the hearts of men to be inclined.

But it does not follow that, if to God the order of all causes is certain, therefore nothing is in the choice of our will. For our wills themselves are in that order of causes which is certain to God and contained in his foreknowledge, since human wills too are causes of human works; and so he who foreknew all the causes of things certainly could not, among those causes, be ignorant also of our wills, which he foreknew to be the causes of our works.

9. 4. For even that which Cicero himself grants—that nothing comes to be unless an efficient cause precedes—is enough to refute him in this question (Cicerone, De div. 1, 55, 125; De fato 11, 24; 15, 34). For what does it help him that he says nothing indeed comes to be without a cause, but that not every cause is fatal, because there is a fortuitous cause, a natural one, a voluntary one? It suffices that he confesses that everything which comes to be comes to be only by a preceding cause. For we say that those causes which are called fortuitous—whence "fortune" too received its name—are not none, but hidden, and we attribute them to the will either of the true God or of any spirits; and the natural ones themselves we by no means sever from the will of him who is the author and founder of all nature. But the voluntary causes are either of God or of angels or of men or of any animals, if indeed those movements of the souls devoid of reason are to be called wills, by which they do something according to their nature, when they either seek or avoid anything. By the wills of angels I mean either of the good, whom we call the angels of God, or of the bad, whom we call the angels of the devil or even demons: so too of men, both good and bad.

And through this it is gathered that there are no efficient causes of all the things that come to be except voluntary ones—of that nature, namely, which is the spirit of life. For this air too, or wind, is called "spirit"; but since it is a body, it is not the spirit of life. The spirit of life, then, which gives life to all things and is the creator of every body and of every created spirit, is himself God, a spirit certainly not created. In his will is the supreme power, which aids the good wills of created spirits, judges the bad, orders all, and grants powers to some, to others does not grant them. For as he is the creator of all natures, so he is the giver of all powers, not of wills. For the bad wills are not from him, since they are against nature, which is from him.

Bodies, therefore, are more subject to wills—some to ours, that is, of all mortal living things and of men more than of beasts; some to those of angels; but all are above all subject to the will of God, to whom all wills too are subjected, because they have no power except what he grants. The cause of things, then, which makes and is not made, is God; but other causes both make and are made, such as are all created spirits, especially rational ones. But corporeal causes, which are more made than make, are not to be numbered among the efficient causes, since they can only do what the wills of spirits do out of them.

How, then, does the order of causes, which is certain to the foreknowing God, bring it about that nothing is in our will, when our wills have a great place in that very order of causes? Let Cicero, then, contend with those who say that this order of causes is fatal, or rather call it itself by the name of fate—which we shrink from especially on account of the word, which is not wont to be understood in the true matter. But because he denies that the order of all causes is most certain and most known to the foreknowledge of God, we detest him more than the Stoics. For either he denies that there is a God—which indeed, under the person of another introduced in the books On the Nature of the Gods, he attempted to do; or, if he confesses that there is a god whom he denies to be foreknowing of future things, even so he says nothing other than what the fool said in his heart: There is no God (Ps 14:1 (13:1)). For he who is not foreknowing of all future things is certainly not God.

Wherefore our wills too avail just as much as God willed and foreknew that they would avail; and therefore whatever they avail, they avail most certainly, and what they are going to do, they themselves will altogether do, because he foreknew that they would avail and do it, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived. Wherefore, if it pleased me to apply the name of "fate" to anything, I would rather say that the fate of the weaker is the will of the more powerful, who has him in his power, than that the choice of our will is taken away by that order of causes which the Stoics, not by usual custom but by their own, call fate.

10. 1. Whence neither is that necessity to be dreaded, by dreading which the Stoics labored to distinguish the causes of things in such a way as to withdraw some from necessity and subject others to it, and among those which they were unwilling to be under necessity they placed our wills too, lest, namely, they should not be free, if they were subjected to necessity. For if that is to be called our necessity which is not in our power, but which, even if we are unwilling, effects what it can—such as the necessity of death—it is manifest that our wills, by which we live rightly or wrongly, are not under such a necessity. For we do many things which, if we were unwilling, we certainly would not do. To which the very act of willing primarily pertains; for if we will, it is; if we do not will, it is not; for we would not will, if we were unwilling.

But if that is defined to be necessity, according to which we say that it is necessary that something be so or come to be so, I do not know why we should fear it, lest it take from us the freedom of the will. For we do not place either the life of God or the foreknowledge of God under necessity, if we say that it is necessary for God always to live and to foreknow all things; just as his power is not diminished when it is said that he cannot die or be deceived. For he cannot do this in such a way that, rather, if he could, he would certainly be of lesser power. For he is rightly called almighty, who nevertheless cannot die or be deceived. For he is called almighty by doing what he wills, not by suffering what he does not will; and if this should befall him, he would by no means be almighty. Whence for this reason there are certain things he cannot do, because he is almighty.

So too, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by free choice: we both say what is without doubt true, and we do not for that reason subject free choice itself to a necessity that takes away freedom.

Our wills, then, exist, and they themselves do whatever we do by willing, which would not come to be if we were unwilling. But whatever anyone suffers unwilling by the will of other men, even so the will avails—if not his, yet a man's will;

but the power is God's. (For if there were only a will and it could not do what it willed, it would be hindered by a more powerful will; nor even so would the will be anything but a will, and not another's, but his who willed, even if he could not fulfill what he willed.) Whence whatever a man suffers against his own will, he ought to attribute not to the wills of men or angels or of any created spirit, but rather to him who gives power to the willing.

10. 2. It is not, then, on this account nothing in our will, because God foreknew what would be in our will. For he who foreknew this foreknew not nothing. And further, if he who foreknew what would be in our will foreknew not nothing, but something: surely, even with him foreknowing, there is something in our will. Wherefore we are in no way compelled either, retaining the foreknowledge of God, to take away the choice of the will, or, retaining the choice of the will, to deny (which is impious) that God is foreknowing of future things;

but we embrace both, both faithfully and truly confess both: the one, that we may believe well; the other, that we may live well. But one lives badly if one does not believe well about God. Whence far be it from us to deny his foreknowledge, in order that we may will freely—he by whose aid we are or shall be free.

Accordingly laws, reproaches, exhortations, praises, and censures are not in vain, because he foreknew that these too would be, and they avail very much, as much as he foreknew that they would avail; and prayers avail to obtain those things which he foreknew he would grant to those who pray; and rewards have been justly established for good deeds and punishments for sins.

For a man does not sin because God foreknew that he would sin; rather, it is for this reason not doubted that he himself sins when he sins, because he whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived foreknew that not fate, not fortune, not anything else, but that the man himself would sin. And if he is unwilling, he certainly does not sin; but if he is unwilling to sin, this too God foreknew.

11. The most high and true God, then, with his Word and the Holy Spirit—which three are one—the one almighty God, the creator and maker of every soul and every body, by participation in whom all are happy who are happy by truth and not by vanity, who made man a rational animal of soul and body, who, when man sinned, neither permitted him to go unpunished nor abandoned him without mercy; who gave to good and bad alike existence, even with the stones, seminal life, even with the trees, sentient life, even with the beasts, intellectual life, with the angels alone; from whom is every mode, every form, every order; from whom is measure, number, weight; from whom is whatever exists naturally, of whatever kind it is, of whatever value it is; from whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the movements of seeds and of forms; who gave to the flesh too its origin, beauty, health, the fecundity of propagation, the disposition of the members, the well-being of concord; who gave to the irrational soul also memory, sense, appetite, but to the rational soul, besides these, mind, intelligence, will; who did not leave—not only heaven and earth, not only angel and man, but not even the entrails of a tiny and contemptible living thing, nor the little feather of a bird, nor the little flower of a plant, nor the leaf of a tree—without the harmony of its parts and a certain peace, as it were: he is in no way to be believed to have willed the kingdoms of men and their dominions and servitudes to be alien from the laws of his providence.

12. 1. Accordingly let us see what morals of the Romans, and for what cause, the true God—in whose power even earthly kingdoms are—deigned to help toward enlarging the empire. That we might discuss this more completely, we wrote the preceding book, which pertains to this point: that in this matter there is no power of those gods whom they thought ought to be worshipped even with trifling things; and the earlier parts of the present volume, which we have carried thus far, on doing away with the question of fate, lest anyone who had already been persuaded that the Roman empire was not propagated and preserved by the worship of those gods should attribute it rather to some fate than to the most powerful will of the most high God.

The ancient and earliest Romans, then, as far as their history teaches and commends, although—like the other nations, with the one exception of the people of the Hebrews—they worshipped false gods and sacrificed not to God but to demons, were nevertheless greedy of praise, generous with money; they wanted immense glory and honest riches Sallustio, Catil. 7, 6.; this they loved most ardently, for this they wished to live, for this they did not hesitate to die; their other desires they repressed by the immense desire of this one. Their very homeland, finally, because to serve seemed inglorious but to dominate and command glorious, they longed first with all zeal to be free, and then to be mistress.

Hence it is that, not bearing royal domination, they made for themselves annual commands and two commanders Sallustio, Catil. 6, 7., who were called consuls from consulting (consulendo), not kings or lords from reigning and lording Cf. Varrone, De ling. lat. 5, 80; Cicerone, De rep. 1, 26, 42.; although "kings" too certainly seem better named from "ruling" (regendo), as "kingdom" (regnum) from "kings" (reges), and "kings" in turn, as has been said, from "ruling"; but the royal pomp was thought not the discipline of one ruling or the goodwill of one consulting, but the pride of one dominating.

And so, King Tarquinius being expelled and consuls instituted, there followed what the same author set down among the praises of the Romans, that the state, having attained liberty, grew incredibly, so much in a short time; so great a desire of glory had come over them Sallustio, Catil. 7, 3.. This greed of praise, then, and desire of glory did those many wonderful things—praiseworthy, that is, and glorious according to the estimation of men.

12. 2. The same Sallust praises great and renowned men of his own times, Marcus Cato and Gaius Caesar, saying that for a long time that republic had no one great in virtue, but that within his own memory there were those two of immense virtue, though of diverse morals. And among the praises of Caesar he set this down: that he longed for himself a great command, an army, a new war, where his virtue could shine forth. Thus it came about, in the wishes of men great in virtue, that Bellona would stir up wretched nations to war and drive them with her bloody scourge, so that there might be a place where their virtue could shine forth. This, assuredly, that greed of praise and desire of glory did. Therefore, first by love of liberty, and afterward also of domination, and by desire of praise and glory, they did many great things. Their own distinguished poet too renders testimony to them of both; for thence he says: and Porsenna bade them receive the banished Tarquin and pressed the City with a mighty siege; the sons of Aeneas rushed upon the sword for liberty (Virgilio, Aen. 8, 646-648). Then, accordingly, it was a great thing for them either to die bravely or to live free.

But when liberty had been attained, so great a desire of glory had come over them that liberty alone was too little, unless domination too were sought, while it is held a great thing that the same poet says, as though Jove were speaking: nay, harsh Juno, who now wearies sea and lands and heaven with fear, shall change her counsels for the better and shall cherish with me
the Romans, lords of the world and the toga-wearing race. So it is decreed. An age shall come, as the lustra glide by, when the house of Assaracus shall press in servitude Phthia and famed Mycenae and shall lord it over conquered Argos (Virgilio, Aen. 1, 279-285). Which things Virgil, introducing Jove as foretelling them as though future, was himself already recalling as done and beholding as present; but I wished to recount them for this reason, to show that the Romans held domination, after liberty, in such a way that it was set among their great praises. Hence too is that of the same poet, who, when he preferred to the arts of other nations those very arts proper to the Romans, of reigning and commanding and subjugating and warring down peoples, said: others shall hammer out the breathing bronze more softly, I grant it indeed, shall draw living faces from the marble, shall plead causes better, and with the rod shall trace the courses of the heaven and tell the rising stars: you, O Roman, remember to rule the peoples with your sway (these shall be your arts), to impose the custom of peace, to spare the conquered and to war down the proud (Virgilio, Aen. 6, 847-853).

12. 3. These arts they exercised the more expertly the less they gave themselves to pleasures and to the enervation of mind and body in coveting and increasing riches, and, through these, in corrupting their morals—by plundering wretched citizens, by lavishing on base actors.

Whence those who already surpassed and abounded in such a stain of morals, when Sallust wrote these things and Virgil sang, sought after honors and glory not by those arts, but by tricks and deceits. Whence the same author says: but at first ambition rather than avarice exercised the minds of men, which vice, however, was nearer to virtue. For glory, honor, command the good man and the cowardly alike long for themselves; but the one, he says, strives by the true way, while the other, because good arts are lacking to him, contends by tricks and deceits (Sallustio, Catil. 11, 1-2).

These are those "good arts," namely, to come to honor and glory and command through virtue, not through deceitful ambition; which, however, the good man and the cowardly alike long for themselves; but the one, that is, the good man, strives by the true way. The way is virtue, by which he strives as toward the end of his possession, that is, toward glory, honor, command.

That the Romans had this implanted in them even the temples of the gods among them indicate, which they set up most closely joined, of Virtue and Honor (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 27, 25, 7), holding as gods the things that are given by God. Whence it can be understood what end they wished virtue to have, and to what those who were good referred it—to honor, namely; for the bad did not even have it, although they desired to have honor, which they tried to obtain by bad arts, that is, by tricks and deceits.

12. 4. Cato is praised the better. For of him he says: the less he sought glory, the more it followed him (Sallustio, Catil. 54, 5). Since indeed glory, with desire of which they burned, is the judgment of men who think well of men; and therefore virtue is better, which is content with no human testimony but that of its own conscience. Whence the Apostle says: for this is our glory: the testimony of our conscience (2 Cor 1:12); and in another place: but let each one prove his own work, and then he will have glory in himself alone and not in another (Gal 6:4).

Glory, then, and honor and command, which they longed for themselves and to which the good strove to come by "good arts," virtue ought not to follow, but rather they should follow virtue. For there is no true virtue except that which tends toward that end where is the good of man, than which there is no better. Whence too the honors which Cato sought he ought not to have sought, but the state ought to have given them, on account of his virtue, to him who did not seek them.

12. 5. But since within that memory there were two Romans great in virtue, Caesar and Cato, the virtue of Cato seems to have been far nearer to truth than that of Caesar. Accordingly, what sort of state there was at that time, and what sort it had been before, let us see in the very opinion of Cato: Do not think, he says, that our ancestors made the republic great from small by arms. If it were so, we should have it by far the most beautiful. For of allies and citizens, and besides of arms and horses, we have a greater abundance than they had.

But there were other things that made them great, which are none of ours: at home industry, abroad just rule, a mind free in counsel, subject neither to wrongdoing nor to lust. In place of these we have luxury and avarice, public want, private opulence; we praise riches, we follow sloth; between the good and the bad there is no distinction; ambition possesses all the rewards of virtue. Nor is it any wonder: where you each take counsel separately for yourselves, where at home you are slaves to pleasures, here to money or favor, it comes about that an assault is made upon a republic left empty (Catone, in Sallustio, Catil. 52, 19-23).

12. 6. Whoever hears these words of Cato or of Sallust thinks that the ancient Romans who are praised were then all such, or that most were. It is not so; otherwise the things would not be true which the same author likewise writes, the things I recounted in the second book of this work (Cf. sopra 2, 18), where he says that the injuries of the more powerful, and because of them the withdrawal of the common people from the senators, and other dissensions, had existed at home from the very beginning, and that no more equitable and moderate justice was practiced than when the kings had been expelled, so long as there was fear of Tarquin, until the grave war which had been undertaken with Etruria on his account should be finished;

but that afterward the senators exercised the common people with a servile rule, scourged them after the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, with the rest having no share, alone held the command (Sallustio, Hist. 1, fr. 11); and that of these discords—while the one party wished to dominate, the other was unwilling to serve—the end was the Second Punic War, because again a grave fear began to press, and to restrain their restless minds, by another and greater concern, from those disturbances, and to recall them to civil concord.

But great things were administered by certain few men who were good in their own manner; and, those evils being tolerated and tempered, by the providence of a few good men that state grew; as the same historian says that, when he read and heard the many renowned deeds which the Roman people did at home and in war, by sea and land, it pleased him to attend to what thing especially had sustained such great undertakings (Sallustio, Catil. 53, 2-4); since he knew that very often the Romans had contended with a small band against great legions of the enemy, and had learned that wars had been waged with small forces against opulent kings; and, pondering many things, he said it was clear to him that the extraordinary virtue of a few citizens had accomplished everything, and that thereby it came about that poverty surpassed riches, fewness a multitude. But after the state was corrupted by luxury and sloth, he says, again the republic by its own greatness sustained the vices of the commanders and magistrates (Sallustio, Catil. 53, 5).

The virtue, then, of a few who strove toward glory, honor, command by the true way—that is, by virtue itself—was praised even by Cato. Hence came that industry at home which Cato recounted, so that the treasury was opulent, private fortunes slender. Whence, the morals being corrupted, he set the vice on the contrary side: public want, private opulence (Sallustio, Catil. 52, 21).

13. Wherefore, when the kingdoms of the East had long been illustrious, God willed that there be a western one too, later in time but more illustrious in the breadth and greatness of empire; and he granted it especially to such men, for taming the grave evils of many nations—men who for the sake of honor, praise, and glory consulted for their homeland, in which they sought that very glory, and did not hesitate to set its safety before their own safety, repressing, for the sake of this one vice, that is, the love of praise, the desire of money and many other vices. For he sees more soundly who recognizes that even the love of praise is a vice, which did not escape the poet Horace, who says: are you swollen with the love of praise? There are sure expiations that can restore you, the book being read through three times with a pure heart (Orazio, Ep. 1, 1, 36-37). And the same poet, in a lyric song, to repress the lust of domination, sang thus: you would reign more widely by taming a greedy spirit than if you joined Libya to far-off Gades and either Carthaginian served one master (Orazio, Carm. 2, 2, 9-12). Yet those who do not curb their baser lusts by the faith of piety, the Holy Spirit obtained, and by the love of intelligible beauty, are at least better, by the desire of human praise and glory—not indeed now holy, but less base. Cicero too could not dissemble about this in those same books which he wrote On the Republic, where he speaks of forming the leader of the state, whom he says must be nourished by glory, and consequently recounts that his ancestors did many marvelous and renowned things by the desire of glory (Cicerone, De rep. 5, 7, 9 (solo in Agostino)). To this vice, then, they not only did not resist, but even judged that it ought to be stirred up and kindled, thinking this useful to the republic. And yet not even in his books of philosophy does Cicero dissemble about this plague, where he confesses it clearer than light. For when he was speaking of such pursuits, which certainly ought to be followed with the end of the true good, not by the windiness of human praise, he brought in this universal and general opinion: honor nourishes the arts, and all are kindled to pursuits by glory, and those things always lie neglected which are disapproved among any people (Cicerone, Tuscul. 1, 2, 4).

14. This desire, then, is without doubt better resisted than yielded to. For each one is the more like God, the cleaner he is of this uncleanness. And although in this life it is not utterly rooted out of the heart, because it does not cease to tempt even minds that are progressing well: let at least the desire of glory be overcome by the love of justice, so that, if anywhere there lie neglected things that are disapproved among any people—if they are good, if they are right—even the love of human praise itself may blush and yield to the love of truth.

For so much is this vice an enemy of pious faith, if the desire of glory in the heart be greater than the fear or love of God, that the Lord said: how can you believe, who expect glory from one another and do not seek the glory which is from God alone? (Jn 5:44) Likewise of certain men who had believed in him and feared to confess it openly, the evangelist says: they loved the glory of men more than that of God (Jn 12:43).

This the holy apostles did not do; who, when they preached the name of Christ in those places where it was not only disapproved (as he says: and those things always lie neglected which are disapproved among any people), but even held in the utmost detestation, holding what they had heard from the good Teacher and Physician of minds: if anyone denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven, or before the angels of God (Matt 10:33; Luke 12:9)—amid curses and reproaches, amid the gravest persecutions and cruel punishments, were not deterred from the preaching of human salvation by so great a roar of human offense. And because, doing and saying divine things and living divinely, they in a manner warred down hard hearts and introduced the peace of justice, an immense glory followed in the Church of Christ:

they did not rest in it as in the end of their own virtue, but, referring that very thing too to the glory of God, by whose grace they were such, they kindled also by this tinder those for whom they consulted to the love of him by whom they too might be made such. For lest they should be good for the sake of human glory, their Teacher had taught them, saying: beware of doing your justice before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in heaven (Matt 6:1).

But again, lest understanding this perversely they should fear to please men and profit less by hiding the fact that they are good, showing with what end they ought to become known, he says: let your works shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16). Not, then, that you may be seen by them, that is, with this intention, that you should wish them to be turned toward you, since through yourselves you are nothing; but that they may glorify your Father who is in heaven, being turned toward whom they may become what you are.

These the martyrs followed, who surpassed the Scaevolas and Curtiuses and Deciuses—not by inflicting punishments on themselves, but by bearing those inflicted on them—and by true virtue, because by true piety, and by an innumerable multitude.

But since those men were in the earthly city, to whom the end of all their offices on its behalf was set as its safety and a kingdom not in heaven but on earth—not in eternal life but in the passing away of the dying and the succession of those about to die—what else would they love but glory, by which they wished, even after death, to live, as it were, in the mouth of those who praise?

15. To those, then, to whom God was not going to give eternal life with his holy angels in his heavenly city—to whose society true piety leads, which renders the service of religion, which the Greeks call λατρεία, to none but the one true God—if he did not grant them even this earthly glory of a most excellent empire: a reward would not be rendered to their good arts, that is, to the virtues by which they strove to come to so great a glory. For of such men, who seem to do something good for this purpose, that they may be glorified by men, the Lord too says: amen I say to you, they have received their reward (Matt 6:2). So these too despised their own private affairs for the common thing, that is, the republic, and for its treasury; resisted avarice; consulted for their homeland with free counsel; were subject neither to wrongdoing according to their own laws nor to lust; by all these arts they strove, as though by the true way, toward honors, command, glory; they were honored among almost all nations, imposed the laws of their empire on many nations, and to this day are glorious in letters and history among almost all nations: there is no reason for them to complain of the justice of the most high and true God; they have received their reward.

16. But the reward of the saints—who even here endure reproaches for the truth of God, which is hateful to the lovers of this world—is far otherwise. That city is everlasting; there no one is born, because no one dies; there is true and full felicity—not a goddess, but a gift of God; thence we have received the pledge of faith, while, on pilgrimage, we sigh for its beauty; there the sun does not rise upon the good and the bad (Matt 5:45), but the sun of justice protects only the good; there there will be no great industry to enrich the public treasury from straitened private fortunes, where the common treasure is truth.

Accordingly, the Roman empire was extended to human glory not only that such a reward might be rendered to such men, but also that the citizens of that eternal city, while they are here on pilgrimage, might diligently and soberly look upon those examples and see how great a love is owed to the supernal homeland for the sake of eternal life, if so great a love was given to the earthly one by its citizens for the sake of human glory.

17. 1. For as far as concerns this life of mortals, which is led and ended in a few days, what does it matter under whose rule a man who is to die lives, if those who rule do not compel him to impious and unjust things? Or did the Romans really harm the nations whom, once subjugated, they laid their laws upon, except in that this was done by an immense slaughter of wars?

And if this had been done with concord, the same thing would have been done with better success; but there would have been no glory for those who triumphed. For the Romans too did not fail to live under those laws which they imposed on the rest. If this had been done without Mars and Bellona, so that Victory too had no place, none conquering where none had fought: would not the Romans and the other nations be in one and the same condition?

especially if presently that were done which was afterward most gratefully and most humanely done, that all who belonged to the Roman empire received the fellowship of the city and were Roman citizens, and so that became of all which was before of a few;

only that that common people which had no lands of its own would live off the public; and this nourishment of theirs would be furnished more gratefully by men in concord, through good administrators of the republic, than extorted from the conquered.

17. 2. For what it matters to safety and good morals—and certainly to the very dignities of men—that some have conquered and others been conquered, I do not see at all, except for that most empty pomp of human glory, in which those received their reward who burned with an immense desire of it and waged burning wars. For do not their fields pay tribute? Is it permitted them to learn what is not permitted to others? Are there not many senators in other lands who do not know Rome even by sight? Take away boastfulness, and what are all men but men? And if the perversity of the age allowed that the better men should be the more honored: not even thus ought human honor to be held a great thing, since smoke is of no weight.

But let us use, even in these matters, the benefit of the Lord our God; let us consider how great things they despised, what things they endured, what desires they subdued for human glory—those who deserved to receive it as the reward, so to speak, of such virtues; and let even this avail us toward suppressing pride: that, since that city in which it is promised us to reign is as far from this one as heaven is from earth, eternal life from temporal joy, solid glory from empty praises, the society of angels from the society of mortals, the light of him who made the sun and moon from the light of the sun and moon,

the citizens of so great a homeland may seem to themselves to have done nothing great if, to attain it, they have done some good work or endured some evils, when those men, for this earthly one already attained, did such great things, suffered such great things—especially because the remission of sins, which gathers the citizens to the eternal homeland, has something to which, by a certain shadow, that asylum of Romulus was similar, by which the impunity of crimes of every kind gathered the multitude by which that city was to be founded.

18. 1. What great thing is it, then, for the sake of that eternal and heavenly homeland to despise all the allurements of this age, however pleasant, if for this temporal and earthly one Brutus could even kill his sons (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 2, 5; cf. sopra 3, 16)—which that homeland compels no one to do? But surely it is harder to slay one's sons than what must be done for that homeland: either to give to the poor those things which seemed to be gathered and kept for one's sons, or, if a temptation arise which compels it to be done for faith and justice, to lose them.

For it is not earthly riches that make either us or our sons happy—riches to be lost either while we live or, when we are dead, to be possessed by we know not whom, or perhaps by those whom we would not; but God makes us happy, who is the true wealth of minds. But to Brutus, because he killed his sons, even the poet who praises him gives testimony of unhappiness. For he says: and the father, unhappy, will call his sons, who stir up new wars, to punishment for the sake of fair liberty, however posterity shall report those deeds. But in the following verse he consoled the unhappy man: love of country prevails, and the immense desire of praise (Virgilio, Aen. 6, 820-823).

These are those two things, liberty and the desire of human praise, which drove the Romans to wonderful deeds. If, then, for the liberty of men who are to die and the desire of praises which are sought from mortals, sons could be killed by a father: what great thing is it, if, for the sake of true liberty, which makes us free from the dominion of iniquity and death and the devil, and not by desire of human praises but by love of the men to be freed—not from King Tarquin, but from the demons and the prince of demons—not sons are killed, but the poor of Christ are counted among sons?

18. 2. If another Roman leader too, surnamed Torquatus, killed his son—not because he had fought against the homeland, but even for the homeland, yet because he had fought against his command, that is, against what his father the commander had commanded, provoked by an enemy and fighting in youthful ardor, although he had conquered (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 8, 7, 20-21; cf. sopra 1, 23)—lest there be more evil in the example of a command despised than good in the glory of an enemy slain:

why should they boast who, for the laws of an immortal homeland, despise all earthly goods, which are loved much less than sons?

If Furius Camillus freed even an ungrateful homeland—from whose neck he had driven the yoke of its bitterest enemies, the Veientes, and by whose rivals he had been condemned—from the Gauls a second time, because he had no better one where he could live more gloriously (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 5, 7ss. (cf. sopra 2, 17; 3, 17, 2; 4, 7)):

why should he be exalted, as though he had done some great thing, who, having perhaps suffered in the Church from carnal enemies the gravest injury of dishonor, did not transfer himself to her enemies the heretics, or himself found some heresy against her, but rather defended her, as far as he could, from the most ruinous depravity of the heretics—since there is no other, not where one may live in the glory of men, but where eternal life may be acquired?

If Mucius, that peace might be made with King Porsenna, who was pressing the Romans in a most grievous war—because he could not kill Porsenna himself and, deceived, killed another in his place—stretched his right hand into the burning altar before his eyes, saying that many such as the one he saw had conspired for his destruction, and Porsenna, shuddering at his fortitude and the conspiracy of such men, without any hesitation, peace being made, withdrew himself from that war (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 2, 12, 15):

who is going to charge his merits to the kingdom of heaven, if for it he has spent his whole body in the flames—not one hand, and not doing this to himself of his own accord, but enduring it while someone else persecutes him?

If Curtius, armed, with his horse spurred, hurled himself headlong into the broken chasm of the earth, serving the oracles of his gods, since they had commanded that the best thing the Romans had be sent there (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 7, 6, 3-5; Valerio Massimo, Facta et dicta mem. 5, 6, 2 (cf. sopra 4, 20)), and they could understand nothing else than that they excelled in men and arms—whence, namely, it behooved that, at the gods' command, an armed man be cast headlong into that destruction:

what great thing for the eternal homeland will he say he has done, who, having suffered some enemy of his faith—not casting himself of his own accord into such a death, but, sent by that enemy, has died—since indeed from his Lord and the king of his homeland he has received a more certain oracle: do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul (Matt 10:28)?

If the Decii, in a manner consecrating themselves to be killed by certain words, devoted themselves, so that, as they fell and appeased the wrath of the gods with their blood, the Roman army might be freed (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 8, 9; 10, 28 (cf. sopra 4, 20)):

in no way will the holy martyrs be proud, as though they had done something worthy for the sake of sharing in that homeland where there is eternal and true felicity, if, even to the shedding of their own blood, loving not only their brethren, for whom it was shed, but also their very enemies, by whom it was shed, as it was commanded them, they have striven by the faith of love and the love of faith?

If Marcus Pulvillus, dedicating the temple of Jove, Juno, and Minerva, when the death of his son was falsely announced to him by enviers, so that, disturbed by that message, he might withdraw and his colleague thus obtain the glory of the dedication, despised it so far that he ordered the son to be even cast out unburied (so far had the desire of glory conquered the grief of bereavement in his heart) (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 2, 8, 7-8 (è M. Orazio Polvillo)):

what great thing will he say he has done for the preaching of the holy Gospel, by which the citizens of the supernal homeland are freed from various errors and gathered, to whom, when anxious about the burial of his father, the Lord said: follow me, and let the dead bury their dead (Matt 8:22)?

If Marcus Regulus, lest he should deceive his most cruel enemies by his oath, returned to them from Rome itself, because, as he is reported to have answered the Romans who wished to keep him, after he had served the Africans he could not have there the dignity of an honorable citizen—and the Carthaginians, because he had pleaded against them in the Roman senate, killed him with the gravest tortures Livio, Per. 18; Cicerone, De off. 3, 26, 99; Floro, Epit. 1, 18 (2, 2), 23-26; Valerio Massimo, Facta et dicta mem. 1, 11, 14; Sempronio Tudiano, Ann., fr. 5; Elio Tuberone, Hist., fr. 9, in Aulo Gellio, Noct. att. 7, 4, 1-2; Eutropio, Brev. 2, 25; Orosio, Hist. 4, 10, 1 (cf. sopra 1, 15, 1-2. 24.:

what torments are not to be despised for the sake of the faith of that homeland to whose blessedness faith itself leads? Or what shall be rendered to the Lord for all that he has rendered (Ps 116:12 (115:3)), if a man has suffered, for the faith owed to him, such things as Regulus suffered for the faith he owed to his most ruinous enemies?

How will a Christian dare to exalt himself over his voluntary poverty, so that in the pilgrimage of this life he may walk the more unencumbered along the way that leads to the homeland, where the true riches is God himself, when he hears or reads that Lucius Valerius, who died in his consulship, was so poor that his burial was provided for by money collected from the people (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 2, 16, 7; Eutropio, Brev. 1, 11, 4)? Let him hear or read that Quintius Cincinnatus, when he possessed four acres and cultivated them with his own hands, was brought from the plow to be made dictator—an office certainly greater in honor than consul—and, having attained immense glory by conquering the enemy, remained in the same poverty (Livio, Hab Urbe cond. 3, 26, 9; Eutropio, Brev. 1, 17)?

Or what great thing will he proclaim he has done, who has been seduced by no reward of this world from the fellowship of that eternal homeland, when he has learned that Fabricius could not be torn away from the Roman state by the great gifts of Pyrrhus, king of the Epirotes—even a fourth part of the kingdom being promised—and preferred to remain there a private man in his own poverty (Plutarco, Vitae, Pyrrhus 20; Eutropio, Brev. 2, 12; Valerio Massimo, Facta et dicta mem. 4, 3, 6)?

For as to the fact that, while they had the republic—that is, the affair of the people, the affair of the homeland, the common affair—most opulent and most rich, they themselves were so poor in their own houses that one of them, who had already been twice consul, was driven from that senate of poor men by the censorial mark, because he was found to have ten pounds of silver in his vessels Valerio Massimo, Dict et fact. mem. 2, 9, 4; Floro, Epit. 1, 13, 22; Aulo Gellio, Noct. att. 4, 8 (è P. Cornelio Rufino).; thus those very men were poor by whose triumphs the public treasury was enriched:

do not all Christians who, by a more excellent purpose, make their riches common according to what is written in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:44; 4:32)—that distribution be made to each as each has need, and that no one call anything his own, but that all things be common to them—understand that they ought to be puffed up by no boastfulness on this account, doing this to obtain the fellowship of the angels, when those men did almost some such thing to preserve the glory of the Romans?

18. 3. These and other such things, if any of this kind are found in their writings, when would they become so known, when would they be proclaimed with so great a fame, were the Roman empire not extended far and wide and increased by magnificent successes? Accordingly, through that empire, so broad and so long-lasting, renowned and glorious by the virtues of such great men, both the reward which they sought was rendered to their intention, and to us are set examples of a necessary admonition,

so that, if we have not held, for the most glorious city of God, the virtues to which these of theirs—which they held for the glory of the earthly city—are in some way similar, we may be pricked with shame; and if we have held them, we may not be exalted with pride; since, as the Apostle says, the sufferings of this time are not worthy of the future glory which will be revealed in us (Rom 8:18). But for human glory and the present time their life was judged worthy enough.

Whence the Jews too, who killed Christ—the New Testament revealing what in the Old was veiled, namely that the one true God is to be worshipped not for earthly and temporal benefits, which divine providence grants mingled to good and bad, but for eternal life and perpetual gifts and the fellowship of that very supernal city—were most rightly given over to the glory of these men, so that those who by virtues of whatever kind sought and acquired earthly glory should conquer those who by great vices killed and spurned the giver of true glory and of the eternal city.

19. There is indeed a difference between the desire of human glory and the desire of domination. For although it is an easy slope, that he who is too much delighted by human glory should also ardently affect to dominate, yet those who desire true glory—even of human praises—give heed not to displease those who judge well. For there are many good things in morals, of which many judge well, although many do not have them; through these good qualities of morals men strive toward glory and command or domination, of which Sallust says: but the one strives by the true way (Sallustio, Catil. 11, 2). But whoever, without the desire of glory by which a man fears to displease those who judge well, longs to dominate and command, seeks for the most part to obtain what he loves even by the most open crimes. Accordingly, he who desires glory either strives by the true way or certainly contends by tricks and deceits, wishing to seem to be good, which he is not.

And therefore for one who has the virtues it is a great virtue to despise glory, because the contempt of it is in the sight of God, but is not laid open to human judgment. For whatever he does before the eyes of men, that he may appear a despiser of glory, if it is believed that he does it for greater praise—that is, for greater glory—there is no way for him to show those who suspect this that he is otherwise than they suspect.

But he who despises the judgments of those who praise also despises the rashness of those who suspect; whose salvation, however, if he is truly good, he does not despise, since one who has his virtues from the Spirit of God is of such great justice that he loves even his very enemies, and so loves them that he wishes those who hate or disparage him to be corrected and to be his consorts, not in the earthly homeland, but in the supernal one;

but as for those who praise him, although he sets little store by the fact that they praise him, yet he does not set little store by the fact that they love him, nor does he wish to deceive those who praise, lest he beguile those who love; and therefore he ardently insists that rather he be praised from whom a man has whatever in him is rightly praised.

But he who, a despiser of glory, is greedy of domination surpasses the beasts, whether in the vices of cruelty or of luxury. Such were certain Romans. For, losing the care of reputation, they did not lack the desire of domination. That there were many such, history reveals; but the summit, and as it were a certain citadel, of this vice Nero Caesar first attained, whose luxury was so great that nothing manly was thought to be feared from him; whose cruelty was so great that nothing soft would have been believed to be in him, had it not been known (Cf. Tacito, Ann. 14, 8, 4-5; 15, 37, 1-3; Svetonio, Vitae, Nero 34; Dione Cassio, Hist. rom. 62, 14-16).

Yet even to such men the power of dominating is not given except by the providence of the most high God, when he judges human affairs worthy of such masters. The divine voice is open about this matter, the Wisdom of God speaking: through me kings reign, and tyrants through me hold the earth (Prov 8:15). But lest "tyrants" be thought to mean not the worst and wicked kings, but, by the old name, the powerful—whence Virgil says: part of my peace will be to have touched the right hand of the tyrant (Virgilio, Aen. 7, 266)—it is most openly said in another place of God: because he makes a hypocrite to reign on account of the perversity of the people (Job 34:30).

Wherefore, although I have set forth as well as I could for what cause the one true and just God helped the Romans, who were good according to a certain pattern of the earthly city, to attain the glory of so great an empire: there can yet be another, more hidden cause, on account of the diverse merits of the human race, more known to God than to us—while this stands agreed among all the truly pious: that no one without true piety, that is, without the true worship of the true God, can have true virtue, and that it is not true when it serves human glory; yet that those who are not citizens of the eternal city, which in our sacred Writings is called the city of God (Ps 46:4 (45:5); 48:1, 8 (47:2-3, 9)), are more useful to the earthly city when they have virtue even of that kind than if they have not even that.

But those who, endowed with true piety, live well, if they have the knowledge of ruling peoples, nothing is happier for human affairs than that, by God's mercy, they should have the power. But such men attribute their virtues, however great they can have them in this life, to nothing but the grace of God, because he gave them to the willing, the believing, the asking; and at the same time they understand how much is lacking to them for the perfection of justice, such as there is in the society of those holy angels, to which they strive to fit themselves. But however much that virtue be praised and proclaimed which serves the glory of men without true piety, it is by no means to be compared to the tiny beginnings of the saints, whose hope is placed in the grace and mercy of the true God.

20. The philosophers who place the end of the human good in virtue itself are wont, in order to bring shame upon certain philosophers who approve the virtues (Epicuro, Ep. a Menec. 129-130) but measure them by the end of bodily pleasure and think that pleasure is to be sought for its own sake (Gli stoici, in Diogene Laerzio, 7, 87-88), while these others think virtue is to be sought for its own sake, to paint, as it were, a certain picture in words,

where Pleasure sits on a royal throne like some delicate queen, and the virtues are subjected to her as handmaids, watching her nod (Cleante, in Cicerone, De fin. 2, 21, 69), to do what she has commanded: she bids Prudence inquire vigilantly how Pleasure may reign and be safe; she bids Justice furnish what benefits she can, to procure the friendships necessary for bodily comforts, and do injury to no one, lest, the laws being offended, Pleasure cannot live secure; she bids Fortitude, if pain befall the body which does not drive it to death, hold its mistress, that is, Pleasure, bravely in the thought of the mind, so that by the recollection of its former delights it may soothe the stings of present pain; she bids Temperance take only so much of food, and of whatever else delights, lest by excess something harmful disturb the health and Pleasure—which the Epicureans place at its greatest even in bodily health—be gravely offended (Cicerone, De fin. 1, 13-16). Thus the virtues, with all the dignity of their glory, will serve Pleasure as some imperious and dishonorable little woman. Nothing, they say, is more ignominious and more deformed than this picture, and nothing which the gaze of good men can less bear; and they say the truth.

But I do not think there would be a picture of sufficiently due decency, if such a one too were feigned, where the virtues serve human glory. For although Glory herself is not a delicate woman, she is puffed up and has much emptiness. Whence a certain solidity and firmness of the virtues does not worthily serve her, so that Prudence should foresee nothing, Justice distribute nothing, Fortitude endure nothing, Temperance moderate nothing, except for what may please men and serve windy glory.

Nor will those defend themselves from this foulness who, while they spurn the judgments of others as despisers of glory, seem wise to themselves and please themselves. For their virtue, if indeed there is any, is in another way subjected to human praise; for he himself who pleases himself is not other than a man.

But he who by true piety believes and hopes in God, whom he loves, gives more heed to those things in which he displeases himself than to those things, if any are in him, which please not so much himself as Truth; nor does he attribute that for which he can now please anyone to anything but the mercy of him whom he fears to displease—giving thanks for the things healed, pouring out prayers for the things to be healed.

21. Since these things are so, let us attribute the power of giving kingdom and empire to none but the true God, who gives felicity in the kingdom of heaven to the pious alone, but the earthly kingdom both to the pious and the impious, as it pleases him, to whom nothing pleases unjustly. For although we have said something which he willed to be open to us, yet it is too much for us, and greatly surpasses our powers, to discuss the hidden things of men and to judge by a clear examination the merits of kingdoms.

That one true God, then, who neither in judgment nor in aid deserts the human race, when he willed and as much as he willed gave the kingdom to the Romans; who gave it to the Assyrians, or even to the Persians, by whom only two gods are worshipped, one good, the other bad, as their writings contain Ex. Avesta, yasna 44; gli dèi sono Ormuzd o Ahura Mazda (da cui mazdeismo) e Ahriman o Angra Mainyu, nella predicazione di Zoroastro o Zarathustra (VII-VI sec. a.C.), conosciuto anche dagli scrittori greci e latini che gli accreditarono l'origine della magia: cf. Plutarco, Quaest. rom. 26; Pausania, Descr. Gr. 5, 27, 5-6; Plinio il Vecchio, Nat. hist. 30, 2, 3-11.—to say nothing of the Hebrew people, of whom I have already said as much as seemed sufficient (Cf. sopra 4, 34; 5, 18, 3), who worshipped none but the one God even when they reigned.

He, then, who gave the Persians crops without the worship of the goddess Segetia, who gave the other gifts of the earth without the worship of so many gods whom these men set, one over single things, or even several over single things: he gave them their kingdom too without the worship of those by whose worship these men believed they had reigned.

So too with men: he who gave it to Marius gave it to Gaius Caesar; he who gave it to Augustus gave it also to Nero; he who gave it to the Vespasians, father or son, most agreeable emperors, gave it also to the most cruel Domitian;

and—lest it be necessary to go through them one by one—he who gave it to Constantine the Christian gave it also to Julian the apostate,

whose excellent natural gifts a sacrilegious and detestable curiosity, in the love of dominating, deceived—a curiosity to whose vain oracles he was given over, when, relying on the security of victory, he burned the ships in which necessary food was carried;

then, hotly pressing on with immoderate daring deeds, and soon, by the merit of his rashness, slain in hostile territory, he left the army destitute, so that there was no other way to escape thence except that, contrary to that auspice of the god Terminus, of which we spoke in the previous book, the bounds of the Roman empire should be moved (Eutropio, Brev. 10, 16, 2; Ammiano Marcellino, Rer. gest. 24, 7, 4-7; Orosio, Hist. 7, 30; vedi sopra 4, 29). For the god Terminus yielded to necessity, who had not yielded to Jove.

These things plainly the one true God rules and governs, as it pleases him; and if by hidden causes, are they therefore unjust?

22. So too the very times of wars—just as it is in his discretion and just judgment and mercy either to grind down or to console the human race—so that some end more quickly, others more slowly. The war of the pirates was finished by Pompey, the Third Punic War by Scipio, with incredible speed and brevity of time. The war of the fugitive gladiators too, although many Roman generals and two consuls were conquered and Italy horribly ground down and laid waste, was nevertheless, after much was consumed, consumed in the third year. The Picentes, Marsi, and Peligni—nations not foreign but Italian—after a long and most devoted servitude under the Roman yoke, tried to raise their head into liberty, when already many nations had been subjugated to the Roman empire and Carthage destroyed; in which Italian war, the Romans being very often conquered—where both two consuls perished and other most noble senators—this evil was nevertheless not drawn out for a long time; for the fifth year gave it an end.

But the Second Punic War, with the greatest losses and calamity to the republic, for eighteen years weakened and almost consumed the Roman forces; in two battles nearly seventy thousand of the Romans fell. The First Punic War was carried on through twenty-three years; the Mithridatic war for forty years. And lest anyone suppose that the early Romans were stronger for carrying on wars more quickly, the Samnite war, in those earlier times much praised in every virtue, was drawn out for nearly fifty years; in which war the Romans were so conquered that they were even sent under the yoke. But because they did not love glory for the sake of justice, but seemed to love justice for the sake of glory, they broke the peace made and the treaty.

These things I recount for this reason, because many, ignorant of past things—some even dissemblers of their own knowledge—if in Christian times they see some war drawn out a little longer, at once leap most insolently upon our religion, exclaiming that, if it did not exist and the deities were worshipped by the old rite, that war too would now most quickly be finished by that Roman virtue which, with the aid of Mars and Bellona, so quickly finished such great wars.

Let those, then, who have read recall how long-lasting were the wars, with how various outcomes, with how mournful disasters, waged by the ancient Romans—just as the world is wont to be tossed, like a most stormy sea, by the varied tempest of such evils; and let them sometimes confess what they are unwilling to, and not slay themselves with mad tongues against God and deceive the inexperienced.

23. Yet what God did marvelously and mercifully in our own memory, in most recent time, they do not recount with thanksgiving, but, as much as in them lies, they try, if it can be done, to bury in the oblivion of all men; which, if it is passed over in silence by us, we shall likewise be ungrateful. When Radagaisus, king of the Goths, already established in the neighborhood of the City with a huge and savage host, was threatening the necks of the Romans, in one day he was conquered with such speed that, without even one of the Romans—I do not say slain, but even wounded—his army of much more than a hundred thousand was laid low, and he himself, soon captured, was killed with the punishment due.

For if that man, so impious, with such great and so impious forces, had entered Rome, whom would he have spared? To what places of the martyrs would he have shown honor? In what person would he have feared God? Whose blood would he not have wished shed, whose chastity untouched? But what voices would these men have for their gods, with how great insult would they boast, that he had therefore conquered, had therefore been able to do such great things, because by daily sacrifices he appeased and invited the gods, which the Christian religion did not allow the Romans to do?

For when he was now approaching these places, where by the nod of the supreme majesty he was crushed, while his fame everywhere grew frequent, it was said to us at Carthage that the pagans believed, spread, and boasted this: that he, protected and aided by friendly gods, to whom he was reported to sacrifice daily, could in no way be conquered by those who did not make such sacrifices to the Roman gods, nor permit them to be made by anyone. And the wretches do not give thanks to so great a mercy of God, who, when he had determined to chastise by a barbarian incursion the morals of men deserving to suffer graver things, tempered his indignation with such great gentleness,

that he first made that man marvelously conquered, lest glory be given, for overthrowing the minds of the weak, to the demons whom it was agreed he supplicated; and then Rome was taken by these barbarians who, contrary to all the custom of wars waged before, protected, out of reverence for the Christian religion, those who fled to holy places, and so opposed, in the Christian name, the very demons and the rites of impious sacrifices on which that man had presumed, that they seemed to wage a war far more atrocious with them than with men;

thus the true Lord and Governor of affairs both scourged the Romans with mercy and showed, by the supplicators of demons being so incredibly conquered, that those sacrifices are not even necessary to the safety of present things—so that, by those who do not contend obstinately but attend prudently, the true religion may not be deserted on account of present necessities, and may rather be held by a most faithful expectation of eternal life.

24. For we Christians do not call certain emperors happy for this reason, that they reigned longer, or, reigning, left their sons by a peaceful death, or tamed the enemies of the republic, or could both guard against and crush hostile citizens rising up against them. These and other gifts or solaces of this toilsome life even certain worshippers of demons deserved to receive, who do not pertain to the kingdom of God, to which these pertain; and this was done by his very mercy, lest those who believed in him should desire these things from him as the highest goods.

But we call them happy if they rule justly; if, amid the tongues of those who honor them on high and the obsequies of those who salute them too humbly, they are not exalted, and remember that they are men; if they make their power a handmaid to his majesty, for spreading the worship of God as widely as possible; if they fear, love, and worship God; if they love more that kingdom where they do not fear to have consorts; if they avenge more slowly, forgive easily; if they exert that same vengeance for the necessity of ruling and guarding the republic, not to satisfy the hatreds of enmities; if they grant that same pardon not for the impunity of iniquity, but in hope of correction; if what they are for the most part harshly compelled to decree they compensate with the gentleness of mercy and the bounty of benefits; if their luxury is the more chastened the more it could be free; if they prefer to rule over depraved desires rather than over any nations whatever, and if they do all these things not for the ardor of empty glory, but for the love of eternal felicity; if for their sins they do not neglect to offer to their true God the sacrifice of humility and compassion and prayer.

Such Christian emperors we say are happy—for the present in hope, afterward in the very reality—when that which we await shall have come.

25. For the good God, lest men who believed that he was to be worshipped for the sake of eternal life should suppose that no one could attain these high places and earthly kingdoms unless he supplicated the demons, because these spirits availed much in such matters, filled the emperor Constantine—who did not supplicate the demons but worshipped the true God himself—with such great earthly gifts as no one would dare to wish for; to whom he even granted to found a city, an ally of the Roman empire, as it were a daughter of Rome herself, but without any temple or image of demons. He reigned long; alone, as Augustus, he held and defended the whole Roman world; in administering and waging wars he was most victorious; in crushing tyrants he was prospered in all things; he died, full of years, of sickness and old age; he left his sons reigning.

But again, lest any emperor should be a Christian for the purpose of deserving the felicity of Constantine—since everyone ought to be a Christian for the sake of eternal life—he took away Jovian much more quickly than Julian; he permitted Gratian to be slain by a tyrant's sword, far more gently indeed than Magnus Pompey, who worshipped the Roman gods, as it were. For Pompey could not be avenged by Cato, whom he had left, in a manner, the heir of the civil war; but Gratian, although pious souls do not require such solaces, was avenged by Theodosius, whom he had made a partner in the kingdom—when he had a little brother—more eager for faithful fellowship than for excessive power (Eutropio, Brev. 10, 5-8.17-18; Ammiano Marcellino, Rer. gest. 31, 10, 11-18; Orosio, Hist. 7, 28. 31-33. 35).

26. 1. Whence he too not only kept toward him, while alive, the faith he owed, but even after his death received as a ward, like a Christian, into his own part of the empire, Valentinian, his little brother, driven out by his slayer Maximus, and guarded him with a paternal affection—him whom, destitute of all resources, he could have taken away with no trouble, if he had burned more with the desire of reigning more widely than with the love of doing good; whence rather, his imperial dignity preserved, having received him, he consoled him with very humanity and grace. Then, when that success made Maximus terrible, he, in the straits of his cares, did not slip into sacrilegious and unlawful curiosities, but sent to John, established in the desert of Egypt—whom, by a growing fame, he had learned to be a servant of God endowed with the spirit of prophecy—and received from him a most certain message of victory. Soon, the destroyer of the tyrant Maximus, he restored the boy Valentinian, with most merciful veneration, to the parts of his empire whence he had been put to flight,

and when he, whether by treachery or by some other means or chance, had soon after been destroyed, Theodosius, having again received a prophetic response and being certain by faith, crushed another tyrant, Eugenius, who had been illegitimately substituted in that emperor's place—against whose most robust army he fought more by praying than by striking. Soldiers who were present reported to us that whatever they hurled was wrested from their hands, when from Theodosius's side a vehement wind went against the adversaries and not only most violently snatched whatever was thrown at them, but even turned their own weapons back into their bodies. Whence the poet Claudian too, although a stranger to the name of Christ, said in his praises: O too much beloved of God, for whom the ether wars, and the conspiring winds come at the trumpet-call! (Claudiano, De tert. cons. Hon. Aug. 96-98)

And as victor, as he had believed and foretold, he took down the images of Jove, which had been, by I know not what rites, as it were consecrated against him and set up in the Alps; and their thunderbolts, because they were of gold, he cheerfully and kindly bestowed on his couriers, who were joking (which that joy permitted) and saying that they wished to be struck by those thunderbolts.

The sons of his enemies, whom the onslaught of war—not by his command—had carried off, fleeing to the Church even while not yet Christians, he wished to become Christians on this occasion, and loved them with Christian love, and did not deprive them of their goods, but increased them in honors.

He permitted private enmities to avail against no one after victory. The civil wars they were not willing, like Cinna and Marius and Sulla and others such, to finish even when they were finished, but he grieved more that they had arisen than he wished to harm anyone when they were ended.

Amid all these things, from the very beginning of his empire, he did not cease to come, with most just and most merciful laws, to the aid of the Church, laboring against the impious—the Church which the heretic Valens, favoring the Arians, had vehemently afflicted; of which Church he rejoiced to be a member more than to reign on earth. He commanded the images of the gentiles to be everywhere overthrown, understanding well enough that earthly gifts too are placed not in the power of the demons, but of the true God.

But what was more marvelous than his religious humility, when, in the case of the most grievous crime of the Thessalonians—for which, the bishops interceding, he had already promised indulgence—he was compelled, by the tumult of certain men who clung to him, to avenge it, and, restrained by ecclesiastical discipline, so did penance that the people, praying for him, wept more to see the imperial loftiness prostrate than they had feared it angry when they sinned?

These and any like good works, which it is long to recount, that man bore away from this temporal vapor of any human summit and loftiness; of which works the reward is eternal felicity, whose giver is God to the truly pious alone. But the other heights or supports of this life—like the world itself, light, the airs, lands, waters, fruits, and the very man's soul, body, senses, mind, life—he bestows on good and bad alike; among which is also any greatness of empire whatever, which he dispenses for the governance of the times.

26. 2. Accordingly I now see that an answer must be given even to those who, refuted and convicted by the most evident proofs—by which it is shown that toward those temporal things which alone fools desire to have, the numerousness of false gods avails nothing—try to assert that the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of the present life's usefulness, but for the sake of that which will be after death. For to those who, for the sake of the friendships of this world, wish to worship vain things and complain that they are not permitted their childish notions, I think enough has been answered in these five books.

When I had published the three earlier of these and they had begun to be in the hands of many, I heard that some were preparing to write I know not what response against them. Then it was reported to me that they had already written, but were seeking a time when they could publish without danger. These I admonish not to wish for what is not expedient for them. For it is easy for anyone to seem to have answered, who has been unwilling to keep silent. Or what is more talkative than vanity? Which cannot do what truth can, because, if it wishes, it can even cry out more than truth. But let them consider everything diligently, and if perhaps, judging without partisan zeal, they perceive that such things are of a kind that can rather be stirred up than uprooted by a most shameless garrulity and an as it were satiric or mimic levity, let them check their trifles and choose rather to be corrected by the prudent than praised by the shameless.

For if they wait for a time not for the freedom of speaking the truth but for the license of speaking ill, far be it that there should befall them what Cicero says of a certain man who was called happy because of the license of sinning: O wretched man, to whom it was permitted to sin (Cicerone, Tuscul. 5, 19, 55)!

Whence whoever thinks himself happy by the license of speaking ill will be far happier if this is not permitted him at all, since, laying aside the emptiness of boastfulness, he can even at this time, as though out of a zeal for consulting, contradict whatever he wishes, and, as far as they can, hear from those whom he consults, in friendly disputation, honorably, gravely, freely, what he ought to hear.

In the five preceding books I seem to myself to have disputed sufficiently against those who think that the many and false gods—whom the Christian truth convicts of being either useless images, or unclean spirits and ruinous demons, or at any rate creatures, not the Creator—are to be venerated and worshipped, for the sake of the usefulness of this mortal life and of earthly things, with that rite and service which in Greek is called λατρεία and is owed to the one true God.

And who does not know that for excessive folly or obstinacy neither these five nor any other books, of however great a number, can be sufficient? Since that is thought the glory of vanity, to yield to no forces of truth—to the ruin, certainly, of him over whom so monstrous a vice rules.

For even against all the industry of one tending him, it is not the fault of the physician but the incurable disease of the sick man that is unconquered. But those who weigh the things they read, understood and considered either with no, or with no great and excessive, obstinacy of the old error, will more easily judge that we have, in this number of five volumes set as a limit, discussed more than the necessity of the question itself demanded, rather than less; and they will not be able to doubt that all the odium which the inexperienced try to fasten on the Christian religion, on account of the disasters of this life and the grinding down and changing of earthly things—the learned not only dissembling, but, against their own conscience, even favoring it, whom a raving impiety has possessed—is altogether empty of right thought and reason, and full of the most frivolous rashness and most ruinous animosity.

1. 1. Now, then, since next, as the promised order requires, those too must be refuted and taught who contend that the gods of the gentiles, whom the Christian religion destroys, are to be worshipped not for the sake of this life, but for the sake of that which will be after death: it pleases me to take the beginning of my disputation from the truth-telling oracle of the holy psalm: blessed is the man whose hope is the Lord God, and who has not looked upon vanities and lying follies (Ps 40:4 (39:5)).

Yet among all the vanities and lying follies, the philosophers are far more tolerably to be heard, to whom those opinions and errors of the peoples were displeasing—the peoples who set up images for the deities and either feigned, or believed feigned, many false and unworthy things about those whom they call the immortal gods, and mingled the things believed with their worship and the rites of their sacred ceremonies.

With these men, who, even if not by freely proclaiming, yet at least somehow by muttering in disputations, have testified that they disapprove such things, this question is not so inappropriately treated: whether, for the sake of the life which will be after death, not one God, who made every spiritual and corporeal creature, ought to be worshipped, but many gods, whom some of those same philosophers, more excellent and more noble than the rest, judged to have been made by that one God and sublimely placed (Cf. Platone, Timeo. 41 a-d).

1. 2. But who could bear it to be said and contended that those gods, certain of whom I recounted in the fourth book (Cf. sopra 4, 11.21.23), to each of whom single offices over single tiny things are distributed, bestow eternal life on anyone?

Or will those most skilled and most acute men, who boast that they have taught, as a great benefit, things written down so that it might be known why each god ought to be supplicated, what ought to be sought from each—lest, by a most base absurdity, such as is wont to be done jokingly in a mime, water be sought from Liber, wine from the Lymphs (Varrone, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 120 (solo in Agostino); De ling. lat. 5, 71; cf. sopra 4, 22)—will they be authorities to any man supplicating the immortal gods, so that, when he has sought wine from the Lymphs and they have answered him, "We have water, seek this from Liber," he can rightly say, "If you do not have wine, at least give me eternal life"?

What is more monstrous than this absurdity? Will not those Lymphs, laughing aloud (for they are wont to be easily moved to laughter) (Virgilio, Ecl. 3, 9; cf. Varrone, De ling. lat. 7, 87), if they do not aim to deceive as demons do,

answer the suppliant: "O man, do you think we have life in our power, who—as you hear—do not have even the vine (vitem)?"

It is, therefore, of the most shameless folly to seek or hope for eternal life from such gods, who are asserted to guard the single particles of this most toilsome and most brief life and of whatever pertains to supporting and propping it up,

so that, if what is under the guardianship and power of one is sought from another, it is so unfitting and absurd as to seem most like mimic buffoonery. When this is done by knowing mimes, they are deservedly laughed at in the theater; but when by ignorant fools, they are more deservedly laughed at in the world.

To what god or goddess, then, and for what, one should supplicate—as far as concerns those gods whom the cities instituted—was skillfully discovered by the learned and committed to memory: what from Liber, for example, what from the Lymphs, what from Vulcan, and so from the rest, some of whom I recounted in the fourth book, others I thought should be passed over. Further, if it is an error to seek wine from Ceres, bread from Liber, water from Vulcan, fire from the Lymphs: how much greater a madness ought it to be understood to be, if any of these be supplicated for eternal life!

1. 3. Wherefore, if, when we asked about the earthly kingdom—what gods or goddesses it was to be believed could confer it on men—it was shown, all things being discussed, far removed from the truth that any of these many and false deities should be thought to establish even earthly kingdoms (Cf. sopra 4, 8):

is it not of the most insane impiety, if it be believed that eternal life—which is without any doubt or comparison to be preferred to all earthly kingdoms—can be given to anyone by any of these?

For such gods seemed unable to give even an earthly kingdom, not because they are great and lofty and this something small and abject, which they would not deign to care for in so great a sublimity;

but, however much anyone may rightly, in consideration of human frailty, despise the falling summits of an earthly kingdom, those gods appeared such that they seemed most unworthy that even these things should be committed to them, to be given and guarded. And through this, if (as the earlier matters treated in the last two books taught) no god out of that throng, whether of, as it were, plebeian or of, as it were, noble gods, is fit to give mortal kingdoms to mortals, how much less can he make the immortal out of the mortal!

1. 4. To this is added that, if we are now dealing with those who think the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of this life, but for the sake of the life which will be after death, then they are not at all to be worshipped even for the sake of those things which are attributed as though parceled out

and proper to the power of such gods—not by the reason of truth, but by the opinion of vanity—as those believe who contend that their worship is necessary for the conveniences of this mortal life;

against whom I have already, in the five preceding volumes, disputed sufficiently, as far as I could.

Since these things are so, if the very age of those who worshipped the goddess Iuventas flourished more notably, but her despisers either fell within the years of youth or grew cold in it as though in senile torpor;

if bearded Fortune clothed the cheeks of her worshippers more handsomely and festively, but those by whom she was spurned we saw smooth or ill-bearded (Cf. sopra 4, 11):

even so we would most rightly say that these goddesses can avail only thus far, limited in a manner to their own offices, and through this that eternal life ought not to be sought from Iuventas, who would not give a beard, nor any good after this life to be hoped for from bearded Fortune, whose power in this life was none, so that she should furnish at least that very age which is clothed with a beard.

But as it is, since their worship is not necessary even for those very things which they think subject to them—because many who worship the goddess Iuventas have by no means flourished in that age, and many who do not worship her rejoice in the strength of youth,

and likewise many suppliants of bearded Fortune could attain to no beard, or a deformed one, and if any venerate her to obtain a beard, they are mocked by her bearded despisers:

does the human heart so dote that, when it recognizes the worship of those gods to be empty and ludicrous for the sake of those very temporal and quickly passing gifts over which they are said, single gods over single things, to preside, it yet believes it fruitful for the sake of eternal life?

That these gods can give this, not even those have dared to say who, that they might be worshipped by foolish peoples, distributed to them these temporal works parceled out bit by bit—since they thought them too many—lest any of them should sit idle.

2. Who has sought these things more curiously than Marcus Varro? Who has discovered them more learnedly? Who has considered them more attentively? Who has distinguished them more acutely? Who has written them down more diligently and more fully?

Though he is less pleasing in his eloquence, he is nonetheless so packed with learning and with sound judgments that, in the whole range of erudition which we call secular and they call liberal, he instructs the student of things as much as Cicero delights the student of words.

Indeed, Cicero himself bears such witness to him that in his Academica he says that the discussion treated there was one he carried on with Marcus Varro, a man, he says, easily the most acute of all and beyond any doubt the most learned (Cicero, Acad. 3, fr. 22; Lactantius, Div. inst. 1, 6, 6). He does not say "the most eloquent" or "the most fluent," since in that capacity Varro is in truth far inferior; but he says easily the most acute of all, and in those books, that is, the Academica, where he contends that everything must be doubted, he added beyond any doubt the most learned.

On this point he was so certain that he set aside the doubt he was accustomed to bring to everything, as though, when about to argue on this one matter even on behalf of the Academics' doubting, he had forgotten that he was an Academic.

And in the first book, when he was praising the literary works of this same Varro, he says: While we were wandering and straying like strangers in our own city, your books brought us home, as it were, so that we could at last recognize who and where we were. You laid open the age of our homeland, the chronology of its history, the laws of its sacred rites and its priesthoods, its domestic and its public order, the situation of its regions and places, and the names, kinds, functions, and causes of all things divine and human (Cicero, Acad. 1, 3, 9).

This man, then, so notable and of such surpassing skill—and of whom Terentianus too says briefly in a most elegant little verse, Varro, the most learned of men in every field (Terentianus Maurus, De metris 2846)—

who read so much that we wonder he had any time left to write anything, and wrote so much that we can scarcely believe anyone could have read it all—this man, I say, so great in talent and so great in learning, if he had been an assailant and destroyer of the so-called divine matters about which he wrote, and had declared that they belong not to religion but to superstition, I do not know whether he would have set down in them so many things to be laughed at, despised, and detested.

But since he worshiped these same gods and judged that they should be worshiped,

so much so that in that very work of his he says he fears they may perish, not through any onslaught of enemies, but through the negligence of the citizens—

from which ruin, as it were, he says they are rescued by him and stored away and preserved in the memory of good men through books of this kind, by a more useful care than that by which Metellus is said to have rescued the sacred objects of Vesta from the fire,

and Aeneas the household gods from the destruction of Troy (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 119 (in Augustine only));

and yet he hands down to the ages, for reading, things that are rightly judged by the wise and the foolish alike to deserve rejection and to be utterly hostile to the truth of religion—what are we to suppose except that a man of the keenest intelligence and the greatest learning, yet not made free by the Holy Spirit, was held down by the custom and laws of his city, and yet, under the appearance of commending religion, was unwilling to keep silent about the things that troubled him?

3. He wrote forty-one books of Antiquities; these he divided into "human matters" and "divine matters," assigning twenty-five to human matters and sixteen to divine.

In that partition he followed this plan: to give six books each to four divisions of human matters. For he had in view who act, where they act, when they act, and what they do.

And so in the first six he wrote about human beings, in the second six about places, in the third six about times, and in the fourth six—the last—he treated of things done.

Now four times six is twenty-four. But he set at the head a single separate book to speak in a general way about all of them beforehand. In divine matters the same form of division was kept by him, as far as concerns the things that are to be rendered to the gods. For sacred rites are rendered by human beings in places and at times.

These four headings I have named he covered in three books each: for the first three he wrote about human beings, the next about places, the third about times, the fourth about sacred rites,

here too commending with the subtlest distinction who perform them, where they perform them, when they perform them, and what they perform.

But because it was necessary to say—and this above all was awaited—to whom they perform them, he composed three final books about the gods themselves,

so that five times three made fifteen. But there are in all, as we said, sixteen, because at the beginning of these too he placed a single separate book to speak about all of them beforehand.

When this was finished, he then subdivided, out of that fivefold distribution, the three preceding books that pertain to human beings in this way: the first is about the pontiffs, the second about the augurs, the third about the fifteen men in charge of the sacred rites;

the second three, pertaining to places, in this way: in one of them he spoke about shrines, in another about sacred buildings, in the third about religious places; the next three that follow these and pertain to times, that is, to festal days, in this way: he made one of them about holy days, another about the games of the circus, the third about the stage games;

of the fourth three, pertaining to sacred rites, he gave one to consecrations, another to private rites, the last to public rites. After this procession, as it were, of ministrations, the gods themselves bring up the rear in the three books that remain, the gods on whom all this worship is bestowed:

in the first the "certain gods," in the second the "uncertain gods," in the third and very last of all the "principal and select gods."

4. 1. In this whole sequence of a most beautiful and subtle distribution and distinction, that eternal life is sought and hoped for, or even most shamelessly wished for, in vain, will most easily appear—from what we have already said and from what is to be said hereafter—to anyone who is not, with an obstinate heart, his own enemy.

For these institutions are either of human beings or of demons—not such as those people call good demons, but, to speak more plainly, of unclean spirits and, beyond dispute, of malign ones, who with wondrous spite secretly insert into the thoughts of the impious those harmful opinions by which the human soul grows more and more empty and cannot be fitted to and cleave to the unchangeable and eternal truth; and who sometimes openly thrust them upon the senses and confirm them, where they can, by deceitful attestation.

This very Varro testifies that he wrote about human matters first and about divine matters afterward for this reason: that cities existed first, and then these institutions were established by them. But the true religion was not established by any earthly city; rather, it itself established the heavenly city. It is the true God, the giver of eternal life, who inspires and teaches that city to his true worshipers.

4. 2. This, then, is the reason given by Varro when he admits that he wrote about human matters first and about divine matters afterward, because these divine matters were established by human beings: Just as the painter is prior to the painted panel, and the builder prior to the building, so cities are prior to the things that are established by cities (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 109 (in Augustine only)).

But he says that he would have written about the gods first and about human beings afterward, if he were writing about the whole nature of the gods—

as if here he were writing about some part of it and not about the whole, or as if even some part, though not the whole, of the nature of the gods ought not to be prior to that of human beings.

And what of the fact that, in those three last books, carefully setting out the certain and the uncertain and the select gods, he seems to pass over no nature of the gods?

What, then, does he mean when he says: If we were writing about the whole nature of gods and human beings, we would have finished the divine matters before we touched the human?

For he is writing either about the whole nature of the gods, or about some part of it, or about none of it at all.

If about the whole, then it is certainly to be set before human matters; if about some part, then why should not that very part also precede human matters?

Or is some part of the gods unworthy to be set even before the whole nature of human beings? And if it is too much that some divine part be set before all human matters, it is at least worthy to be set before the Roman ones.

For he wrote the books of human matters not as they pertain to the whole world, but only as they pertain to Rome alone, and yet he said that he had rightly preferred them, in the order of writing, to the books of divine matters—just as a painter is preferred to the painted panel and a builder to the building—most openly admitting that these divine matters too, like the painting and the structure, were established by human beings.

It remains that he should be understood to have written about no nature of the gods at all, and to have been unwilling to say this openly, but to have left it to those who understand.

For when "not all" is said, it is indeed usually understood as "some"; but it can also be understood as "none," since what is "none" is neither "all" nor "some."

For, as he himself says, if the nature of the gods about which he was writing were the whole, it would have to be set, in the order of writing, before human matters;

but, as the truth cries out even while he keeps silent, it would certainly have to be set before Roman matters, even if it were not the whole but at least some part. Rightly, however, it is set after them; therefore it is none.

And so he did not wish to set human matters before divine matters, but he was unwilling to set false things before true ones.

For in what he wrote about human matters, he followed the history of things actually done; but what he wrote about the things he calls divine—what was it but the opinions of empty things?

This, no doubt, is what he wished to show by a subtle hint, not only in writing about the latter after the former, but also in giving the reason why he had done so. For had he kept silent about it, others might perhaps have defended this act of his in some other way.

But in the very reason he gave, he left nothing for others to surmise at their own pleasure, and he sufficiently proved that he had set human beings before the institutions of human beings, not the nature of human beings before the nature of the gods.

Thus he confessed that he had written his books of divine matters not about the truth that pertains to nature, but about the falsehood that pertains to error.

This he set down more openly elsewhere, as I recalled in the fourth book: that he would have written according to the pattern of nature, if he were himself founding a new city; but since he had found an old one already in being, he could do nothing but follow its custom.

5. 1. Then, what is to be made of the fact that he says there are three kinds of theology, that is, of the account given of the gods—one called mythical, another physical, and the third civil? If usage allowed it in Latin, we would call the kind he put first "fabulary"; but let us call it "fabulous," for from fables it is called mythical, since in Greek μῦθος means "fable." That the second be called "natural," the habit of speech already allows. The third he himself rendered in Latin too, which is called "civil."

Then he says: The kind they call 'mythical' is the one the poets chiefly use; the 'physical,' the one the philosophers use; the 'civil,' the one the peoples use. The first kind that I named, he says, contains many things invented contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals.

For in it we have one god born from a head, another from a thigh, another from drops of blood; in it the gods have committed thefts, have committed adultery, have served a man; in short, in it everything is attributed to the gods that can befall not only a man, but even the most contemptible man Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 111 (in Augustine only); Q. Mucius Scaevola, Iur. civ., fr. 71; see above, 4, 27..

Here surely, where he could, where he dared, where he thought it would go unpunished, he set forth without any cloud of ambiguity how great an injury was being done to the nature of the gods by most lying fables. For he was speaking not about natural theology, nor about civil, but about the fabulous, which he thought he was free to blame.

5. 2. Let us see what he says about the second kind. The second kind is the one I have set forth, he says, about which the philosophers have left many books; in them is treated who the gods are, where they are, of what kind, of what character: whether the gods have existed from some point of time or from everlasting;

And so with other matters, which ears can bear more easily within the walls of a school than outside in the forum (See Tertullian, Ad nat. 2, 2, 1).

He found no fault with this kind, which they call physical and which pertains to the philosophers, except that he recalled their disputes among themselves, through which there arose a multitude of disagreeing sects.

Yet he removed this kind from the forum, that is, from the peoples, and shut it up in the schools and within walls. But that first kind, most lying and most shameful, he did not remove from the cities.

O religious ears of the peoples, and among them even the Roman ones!

What the philosophers dispute about the immortal gods, they cannot bear; but what the poets sing and the actors perform—things invented against the dignity and nature of the immortals, since they can befall not only a man but even the most contemptible man—these they not only bear but even gladly hear.

And not only that, but they also decree that these things please the gods themselves, and that the gods are to be placated by them.

5. 3. Someone may say: "Let us distinguish these two kinds, the mythical and the physical—that is, the fabulous and the natural—from this civil kind now under discussion, the kind from which he himself also distinguished them, and let us now see how he sets forth the civil kind itself."

I see indeed why the fabulous ought to be set apart: because it is false, because it is shameful, because it is unworthy. But to wish to set the natural apart from the civil—what else is this than to confess that the civil itself is faulty?

For if that kind is natural, what has it deserving of blame, that it should be shut out? And if this kind called civil is not natural, what has it deserving of merit, that it should be admitted?

This, indeed, is the reason why he wrote about human matters first and about divine matters afterward: because in divine matters he followed not nature, but the institutions of human beings.

Let us look, then, at the civil theology as well. The third kind is the one that citizens in the cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and administer. In it is treated which gods are to be worshiped publicly, and what sacred rites and sacrifices it is fitting for each one to perform.

Let us attend further to what follows. The first theology, he says, is best suited to the theater, the second to the world, the third to the city. Who does not see to which he gave the palm? Certainly to the second, which he said above belongs to the philosophers.

For he testifies that this one pertains to the world, than which those men think nothing more excellent exists among things.

But did he distinguish or join those two theologies, the first and the third, namely that of the theater and that of the city?

For we see that what belongs to the city cannot at once also pertain to the world, although we see that cities exist in the world; for it can happen that in a city, according to false opinions, things are worshiped and believed whose nature is nowhere either in the world or outside the world. But where is the theater except in the city?

Who established the theater except the city? For what did it establish it except for the stage games? And where are the stage games except among the divine matters about which these books are composed with such great skill?

6. 1. O Marcus Varro, since you are the most acute of all men and beyond any doubt the most learned, yet still a man, not God, and not lifted up by the Spirit of God into truth and freedom to see and announce divine things, you do indeed discern how greatly divine matters are to be set apart from human trifles and lies;

but you are afraid to give offense to the most corrupt opinions and customs of the peoples in their public superstitions—opinions which you yourself perceive to be abhorrent to the nature of the gods, or even of such beings as the weakness of the human mind suspects to be in the elements of this world, when you consider them on every side, and which the whole of your literature resounds with.

What can the human mind do here, however excellent it may be? What does your human learning, however manifold and vast, avail you in these straits?

You desire to worship the natural gods; you are compelled to worship the civil ones.

You have found others, the fabulous gods, against whom you may more freely vomit out what you feel, and with which feeling you also drench, willy-nilly, those civil gods too.

For you say that the fabulous gods are suited to the theater, the natural to the world, the civil to the city,

whereas the world is a divine work, but cities and theaters are works of men; and the gods who are laughed at in the theaters are no other than those who are adored in the temples, nor do you put on games for any but those to whom you immolate victims.

How much more freely and subtly you would have made these divisions, by saying that some gods are natural, others established by human beings,

but that, concerning the gods established by human beings, the writings of the poets say one thing and those of the priests another,

and that both, nonetheless, are so friendly with each other in their fellowship of falsehood that both are pleasing to the demons, to whom the teaching of the truth is hostile!

6. 2. Setting aside for a little while, then, the theology they call natural, about which we must treat later, is it after all to be approved that eternal life should be sought or hoped for from the gods of the poets, of the theater, of the games, of the stage? God forbid;

rather, may the true God turn away so monstrous and sacrilegious a madness. What? Is eternal life to be demanded from gods who are pleased by these things and are placated by them, when their own crimes are enacted there?

No one, I think, raves to so great a precipice of the most frenzied impiety. Therefore by neither the fabulous nor the civil theology does anyone attain everlasting life.

For the one sows shameful things about the gods by inventing them, the other reaps them by favoring them;

the one scatters lies, the other gathers them;

the one assails divine matters with false charges, the other embraces, among divine matters, the games made of those charges;

the one makes the wicked fictions of men about the gods resound in songs, the other consecrates them in the festivals of the gods themselves;

the misdeeds and disgraces of the divinities the one sings, the other loves;

the one betrays or invents them, while the other either attests to the true ones or takes delight in the false ones as well.

Both are shameful, and both are damnable; but the one that belongs to the theater professes its shamefulness openly, while the one that belongs to the city is adorned with the other's shamefulness.

Is eternal life to be hoped for from that source by which this brief and temporal life is defiled?

Or does the fellowship of wicked men defile our life, if they insinuate themselves into our affections and assents, while the company of demons, who are worshiped by means of their own crimes, does not defile it?

If the crimes are true, how wicked the demons are! If false, how wickedly they are worshiped!

6. 3. When we say these things, it may perhaps seem to someone too ignorant of these matters that the only things celebrated about such gods which are unworthy of the divine majesty and ridiculously detestable are those that are sung in the songs of the poets and acted out in the stage games;

but that those sacred rites which not actors but priests perform are cleansed of and free from all dishonor.

If this were so, no one would ever have judged that the shameful things of the theater should be celebrated in their honor, nor would the gods themselves ever have commanded that they be performed for them.

But the reason there is no shame in doing such things in the theaters as an obedience to the gods is that similar things are done in the temples.

In short, when the aforementioned author tried to distinguish civil theology from the fabulous and the natural as a kind of third sort of its own, he wished it to be understood as blended from both rather than separated from both.

For he says that the things the poets write are too little for the peoples to follow, but the things the philosophers write are too much for it to profit the common crowd to examine.

They are so abhorrent, he says, that nevertheless not a few things from both kinds have been taken up into the civil accounts.

Therefore the things that will be common with what is proper to us we shall write together with the civil matters; in regard to which our fellowship ought to be greater with the philosophers than with the poets (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 118 (in Augustine only)).

So there is, then, no slight fellowship with the poets.

And yet in another place (Varro, De ling. lat. 10, 55) he says that, regarding the generations of the gods, the peoples were more inclined toward the poets than toward the natural philosophers.

For here he said what ought to be done, there what is done. He said that the natural philosophers wrote for the sake of usefulness, the poets for the sake of delight.

And on this account, the things written by the poets which the peoples ought not to follow are crimes of the gods—which nonetheless delight both the peoples and the gods.

For the poets write, as he says, for the sake of delight, not of usefulness; yet they write the very things that the gods seek and the peoples render.

7. 1. The fabulous theology of the theater and the stage, then, full of unworthiness and shamefulness, is brought back to the civil theology, and this whole theology, which is rightly judged to deserve blame and rejection, is a part of the one that is held to deserve worship and observance;

not, indeed, an incongruous part, as I have undertaken to show—one foreign to the whole body and unsuitably attached to it and hung upon it—but altogether consonant and most fittingly joined as a member of the same body.

For what else do those images, forms, ages, sexes, and attire of the gods show? Do the poets have a bearded Jupiter and a beardless Mercury, while the pontiffs do not?

Did the mimes give Priapus monstrous private parts, and not the priests as well? Or does he stand to be adored in the sacred places in a different shape from the one in which he comes forward to be laughed at in the theaters?

Are the old man Saturn and the youthful Apollo masks of the actors in such a way that they are not also statues in the shrines? Why are Forculus, who presides over doors, and Limentinus, who presides over the threshold, male gods, while among them Cardea, who guards the hinge, is female?

Are not these things found in the books of divine matters which serious poets judged unworthy of their songs? Does the theatrical Diana carry weapons, while the civil one is simply a maiden? Is the Apollo of the stage a lyre player, while the Delphic one is free from this art?

But these things are more decent in comparison with viler ones. What did they think about Jupiter himself, who placed his nurse on the Capitol?

Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who wrote, not with fabulous chatter but with historical diligence, that all such gods had been men and mortal?

And those who set "feasting gods," parasites of Jupiter, at his table—what else did they wish but that the sacred rites be like those of the mimes?

For if a mime had said that parasites of Jupiter were brought to his banquet, he would certainly have seemed to be seeking a laugh.

It was Varro who said it! And he said it not when mocking the gods, but when commending them;

the books of divine, not of human, matters testify that he wrote this, and not where he was setting forth the stage games, but where he was laying open the laws of the Capitol.

In short, by such things he is overcome and confesses that, just as they made the gods in human form, so they believed them to be delighted by human pleasures (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 6), fr. 154 (in Augustine only)).

7. 2. For the malign spirits, too, did not fail in their business of confirming these harmful opinions by the mockery of human minds. From this comes also that story of how the keeper of the temple of Hercules, being idle and at leisure, played at dice by himself, alternating with both hands, setting Hercules on one and himself on the other, on this condition: that if he himself won, he would prepare himself a dinner from the temple offerings and hire a girlfriend; but if the victory fell to Hercules, he would furnish this same thing, from his own money, for the pleasure of Hercules;

then, when he had been beaten by himself, as it were by Hercules, he gave to the god Hercules the dinner that was owed and the most renowned harlot Larentina. But she, when she had slept in the temple, saw in her dreams that Hercules had lain with her and had told her that, on departing from there, in the first young man she met she would find the reward which she ought to believe had been paid her by Hercules. And so, as she was leaving, when the very wealthy young man Tarutius first met her and, falling in love with her, kept her with him for a long while, she became his heir at his death. Having acquired a most ample fortune, and lest she seem ungrateful for the divine reward, she too, thinking it most acceptable to the divinities, wrote the Roman people her heir; and when she did not appear, her will was found. By these merits they say that she even earned divine honors.

7. 3. If the poets had invented these things, if the mimes had acted them out, they would without doubt be said to belong to the fabulous theology and would be judged to be separated from the dignity of the civil theology.

But since these disgraces are betrayed by so great a teacher as belonging not to the poets but to the peoples, not to the mimes but to the sacred rites, not to the theaters but to the temples—

that is, not to the fabulous but to the civil theology—

it is not in vain that the actors, by their playful arts, represent so great a shamefulness of the gods, but it is plainly in vain that the priests, by what they call sacred rites, try to represent a decency of the gods which is none at all.

There are sacred rites of Juno, and these were celebrated on her beloved island of Samos, where she was given in marriage to Jupiter;

there are sacred rites of Ceres, in which Proserpina, carried off by Pluto, is sought; there are sacred rites of Venus, in which her beloved Adonis, a most handsome youth slain by the tusk of a boar, is mourned; there are sacred rites of the Mother of the gods, in which Attis, a beautiful young man loved by her and, through womanly jealousy, castrated, is lamented even by the misfortune of the castrated men whom they call Galli.

Since these things are more misshapen than all the foulness of the stage, why is it that they strive to set apart, as it were, the fabulous fictions of the poets about the gods—belonging, of course, to the theater—from the civil theology, which they wish to belong to the city, as though setting unworthy and shameful things apart from honorable and worthy ones? And so it is rather a matter for which thanks should be owed to the actors, who spared the eyes of men and did not lay bare in their spectacles everything that is hidden within the walls of the sacred buildings.

What good is to be thought about their sacred rites that are covered in darkness, when the things brought forth into the light are so detestable? And certainly, what they do in secret by means of the castrated and the effeminate, let them see to it themselves; yet they were utterly unable to conceal those same men, wretchedly and shamefully unmanned and corrupted.

Let them persuade whom they can that they perform anything holy by means of such men, whom they cannot deny to be numbered and to move about among their holy things.

We do not know what they do, but we do know by what sort of men they do it.

But we do know what is done on the stage, where a castrated or an effeminate man has never entered, even into a chorus of harlots; and yet even these things are performed by the base and the infamous—for indeed they ought not to have been performed by honorable persons.

What, then, are those sacred rites for whose performance holiness chose such men as not even the obscenity of the stage admitted into itself?

8. 1. But, they say, these things have certain physiological interpretations, as they call them, that is, interpretations of natural accounts. As though in this discussion we were seeking physiology and not theology, that is, an account not of nature but of God!

For although he who is the true God is God not by opinion but by nature, nevertheless not every nature is god; for the nature of a man and of a beast, of a tree and of a stone, is certainly a nature, and none of these is God. But if the chief point of this interpretation, when the rites of the Mother of the gods are in question, is certainly that the Mother of the gods is the earth, what need is there to seek further, what need to examine the rest (See Hymn. hom. Gea Matr.; Hesiod, Theog. 125-153; Lucretius, De rer. nat. 2, 599ff.; see below, 7, 23-24)?

What more evidently supports those who say that all these gods were men? For thus they are earth-born, thus the earth is their mother. But in the true theology the earth is the work of God, not his mother.

Yet in whatever way they interpret her sacred rites and refer them to the nature of things, for men to suffer what is womanly is not according to nature, but against nature.

This disease, this crime, this disgrace has among those sacred rites an open profession, which among the vicious morals of men scarcely wins confession even under torture. Then, if these sacred rites, which are convicted of being fouler than the shameful things of the stage, are excused and cleansed on the ground that they have their own interpretations by which they are shown to signify the nature of things, why are not the poetic ones likewise excused and cleansed?

For many have interpreted these too in the same manner, to such a degree that what is said by them most monstrously and most unspeakably—that Saturn devoured his own sons—some interpret thus: that the length of time (Hesiod, Theog. 452-462; Plato, Cratylus 402b), which is signified by the name of Saturn, consumes whatever it itself begets; or, as the same Varro thinks, that Saturn pertains to the seeds, which fall back again into the earth from which they spring Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 64; Macrobius, Saturn. 7, 25; 10, 19; Arnobius, Adv. nat. 4, 9; Tertullian, Ad nat. 2, 12, 13; see Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 25, 64; see below, 7, 13.. And likewise others in other ways, and the rest similarly.

8. 2. And yet it is called the fabulous theology, and, together with all its interpretations of this kind, it is rebuked, cast off, and condemned—and not only by the natural theology, which is that of the philosophers, but even by this civil theology we are discussing, which is asserted to belong to the cities and peoples; on the ground that it has falsely fabricated unworthy things about the gods, it is rightly marked off as deserving rejection, and that, no doubt, with this design:

that, since the most acute and most learned men by whom these things were written understood that both ought to be condemned—both that fabulous one and this civil one—but dared to condemn the fabulous and did not dare to condemn the civil;

they set forth the fabulous as deserving blame, and they exhibited the civil for comparison as being like it—

not so that the civil should be chosen to be held in preference to the fabulous,

but so that it should be understood to deserve rejection along with the fabulous, and thus, without danger to those

who were afraid to rebuke the civil theology, both being held in contempt, the one they call natural might find a place among the better minds.

For both the civil and the fabulous are fabulous, and both are civil; both will be found fabulous by anyone who prudently inspects the vanities and obscenities of both, and both civil by anyone who notices the stage games belonging to the fabulous theology in the festivals of the civil gods and in the divine matters of the cities.

How, then, is the power of giving eternal life attributed to any of these gods, whom their own images and sacred rites convict of being most like the fabulous gods—who have been most openly disapproved—in their forms, ages, sex, attire, marriages, generations, and rites? In all of which they are understood either to have been men, and to have had sacred and solemn rites established for them according to the life or death of each, the demons insinuating and confirming this error; or at any rate that, on some occasion or other, the most unclean spirits crept in to deceive human minds.

9. 1. What of this? The very functions of the divinities, so meanly and minutely cut up—on the ground of which they say one must make supplication to them according to the proper office of each, of which we have said, not indeed all (See above, 4, 4. 8. 11. 21; 6, 1. 2),

but we have already said much—do they not accord with the buffoonery of the mimes rather than with the divine dignity? If anyone were to engage two nurses for an infant, of whom one gave nothing but food and the other nothing but drink, just as these men engaged two goddesses for this purpose, Educa and Potina, he would surely seem to be a fool and to be doing in his own house something like a mime.

They hold that Liber is named from "liberation," because by his benefit males in coupling are freed by the emission of their seed; and that Libera does this same thing in females—she whom they also think to be Venus—because they hold that she too emits seed; and that for this reason the male part of the body is placed in the temple for Liber, the female for Libera.

To these things they add women assigned to Liber, and wine for stirring up lust. Thus the Bacchanalia were celebrated in the highest madness (Varro, De ling. lat. 7, 87 [?]); where Varro himself confesses that such things could not have been done by the Bacchantes except with a mind disturbed.

These things, however, afterward displeased a saner senate, and it ordered them to be done away with (See Livy, Ab Urbe cond. 39, 8, 5-8). Here at last, perhaps, they finally perceived what unclean spirits, while they are taken for gods, can do in the minds of men. These things certainly would not be done in the theaters; for there they play, they do not rage—although to have gods who are delighted even by such games is like raving.

9. 2. But what is to be made of the fact that, while he distinguishes the religious man from the superstitious by this difference—that by the superstitious man the gods are feared, but by the religious man only reverenced as parents, not feared as enemies—and says they are all so good that it is easier for them to spare the guilty than to harm any innocent person (Varro, Antiq., fr. 133 (in Augustine only)),

he nevertheless recalls that three guardian gods are engaged for a woman in childbed after the birth, lest the god Silvanus enter by night and harass her; and that, to signify these guardians, three men go around the threshold of the house by night, and first strike the threshold with an axe, then with a pestle, and third sweep it with brooms,

so that by these given signs of cultivation the god Silvanus may be prevented from entering, because trees are neither cut down nor pruned without iron, nor is grain prepared without a pestle, nor are crops heaped up without brooms;

and that from these three things three gods are named: Intercidona from the cutting of the axe, Pilumnus from the pestle, Deverra from the brooms; by which guardian gods the woman in childbed is preserved against the force of the god Silvanus (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 14), fr. 196 (in Augustine only))?

Thus the guardianship of good gods would not avail against the savagery of a harmful god, unless there were several against one, and unless they fought against him—harsh, dreadful, uncouth, woodland as he is—with the signs of cultivation, as though with their opposites.

Is this, then, the innocence of the gods, this their concord? Are these the wholesome divinities of the cities, more to be laughed at than the mockeries of the theaters?

9. 3. When male and female are joined, the god Iugatinus is engaged; let this be borne. But the bride must be led home; the god Domiducus too is engaged; that she may be in the house, the god Domitius is engaged;

that she may remain with her husband, the goddess Manturna is added. What more is sought? Let human modesty be spared;

let the concupiscence of flesh and blood carry out the rest, the secret of modesty being seen to. Why is the bedchamber filled with a crowd of divinities, when even the groomsmen depart from it?

And it is filled for this purpose: not that the thought of their presence may make for greater care of chastity, but that, with these cooperating, the virginity of the woman—weak in her sex, frightened by the newness of it—may be taken away without any difficulty.

For the goddess Virginensis is present, and the father god Subigus, and the mother goddess Prema, and the goddess Pertunda, and Venus, and Priapus. What is this? If the man laboring in that work had to be helped at all by the gods, would not some one god or some one goddess suffice?

Would Venus alone be too little—she who is even said to be so named because without force a woman does not cease to be a virgin (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 14), fr. 195 (in Augustine only))?

If there is any shame in human beings—which there is not in the divinities—when the married couple believe that so many gods of both sexes are present and intent on this work, are they not so affected with shame that he is moved less and she struggles more?

And surely, if the goddess Virginensis is present that the maiden's girdle may be loosed; if the god Subigus is present that she may be brought under the man; if the goddess Prema is present that, once brought under, she may be held down so as not to move—what is the goddess Pertunda doing there?

Let her blush, let her go outside; let the husband too do something. It is most dishonorable that anyone but he should perform what she is named for. But perhaps she is tolerated because she is said to be a goddess, not a god. For if a male were believed in, and were called Pertundus, the husband would ask greater help against him for his wife's chastity than the woman in childbed asks against Silvanus.

But why should I say this, when Priapus too is there, an excessive male, upon whose monstrous and most shameful member the new bride was bidden to sit, after the most honorable and most religious custom of matrons?

9. 4. Let them go on, then, and let them, with whatever subtlety they can, try to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous theology, the cities from the theaters, the temples from the stages, the sacred rites of the pontiffs from the songs of the poets,

as though distinguishing honorable things from shameful, truthful from deceitful, weighty from trivial, serious from playful, things to be sought from things to be rejected.

We understand what they are doing: they know that the theatrical and fabulous theology hangs upon the civil one and is reflected back from it, in the songs of the poets, as from a mirror;

and therefore, having set forth the civil one, which they dare not condemn, they more freely accuse and rebuke that image of it, so that those who recognize what they mean may detest this very face of which the other is the image;

a face which, however, the gods themselves, beholding themselves as it were in the same mirror, so love that who and what they are may be better seen in both.

Hence they have even compelled their worshipers, by terrible commands, to dedicate to themselves the uncleanness of the fabulous theology, to set it in their solemnities, to hold it among their divine matters,

and thus they have both more manifestly taught that they are themselves most unclean spirits, and have made that theatrical theology—abject and reprobate—a member and part of this civil one, as though it were chosen and approved;

so that, since the whole is shameful and deceitful and contains within itself fictitious gods, one part of it is in the writings of the priests, the other in the songs of the poets.

Whether it has also other parts is another question; for now, on account of Varro's division, I have, I think, sufficiently shown that both the civil and the theatrical theology belong to the one civil theology. Hence, since both are of like shamefulness, absurdity, unworthiness, and falsehood, far be it from true religious souls that eternal life should be hoped for from either the one or the other.

9. 5. In short, Varro himself began to recall and enumerate the gods from the conception of a human being, the number of whom he began with Janus, and he carried that series all the way to the death of a decrepit man, and he closed the gods pertaining to the human being himself with the goddess Nenia, who is sung at the funerals of the old;

then he began to set forth other gods, who pertained not to the human being himself, but to the things that are a human being's, such as food and clothing and whatever else is necessary for this life (Varro, Antiq., fr. 190 (in Augustine only)), showing in all of them what is the function of each and why supplication ought to be made to each; in the whole of which diligence he pointed out or named no gods from whom eternal life is to be sought—the one thing for the sake of which we are properly Christians.

Who, then, would be so dull as not to understand that this man, by so diligently setting forth and laying open the civil theology, and by showing it to be like that fabulous, unworthy, and shameful one, and by teaching clearly enough that the fabulous itself is a part of this civil one, is working to make a place in the minds of men only for that natural theology which he says belongs to the philosophers—

with such subtlety that he rebukes the fabulous, but indeed does not dare to rebuke the civil, yet by betraying it shows it to be reprehensible,

and thus, both being condemned in the judgment of those who rightly understand, the natural alone may remain to be chosen? About which, in its own place, with the help of the true God, we must discuss more diligently (See below, 7, 5-6. 9).

10. 1. The freedom, indeed, which this man lacked—so that he did not dare openly to rebuke this civil theology, so very like the theatrical, as he rebuked the latter—was not lacking to Annaeus Seneca, who by certain indications we find to have flourished in the times of our apostles; not lacking wholly, to be sure, but in some part. For it was present to him as he wrote; it was lacking to him as he lived.

For in that book which he composed against the superstitions, he himself rebukes this civil and city theology far more copiously and more vehemently than Varro rebuked the theatrical and fabulous (See Seneca, Dial. de sup., frr. 31-43 (a lost work cited in Tertullian, Apol. 12, 6)).

For when he was treating of the images, he says: They dedicate, in the cheapest and most lifeless material, gods that are sacred, immortal, and inviolable; they clothe them in the shapes of men and beasts and fishes, and some indeed in bodies of mixed sex and of diverse kinds; they call them divinities, which, if they suddenly came to life and met us, would be reckoned monsters.

Then, somewhat later, when, in commending the natural theology, he had set out the opinions of certain philosophers, he put a question to himself and said:

And answering this, he says: What then, after all, do the dreams of Titus Tatius, or of Romulus, or of Tullus Hostilius seem to you truer? Tatius dedicated the goddess Cluacina; Romulus, Picus and Tiberinus; Hostilius, Fear and Pallor, the most loathsome affections of men,

But how freely he wrote about the rites themselves, cruelly shameful as they are! One man, he says, cuts off his own virile parts, another gashes his arms. Where do they fear the gods' wrath, who thus earn their favor?

10. 2. Now those things which he recalls as wont to be done in the Capitol itself, and which he convicts altogether fearlessly—who would believe they are done except by people mocking or raving?

For when he had derided that, in the Egyptian rites, Osiris is mourned as lost and presently celebrated with great joy as found—since both his loss and his finding are feigned, yet that grief and that gladness are truly expressed by those who have lost nothing and found nothing—he says: This frenzy, however, has its fixed time. It is tolerable to be mad once a year.

There are women who dress the hair of Juno and Minerva (standing far from the temple, not only from the image, they move their fingers in the manner of those adorning), there are women who hold a mirror;

And a little later he says: These, however, even if they promise the god a superfluous service, promise no shameful or infamous one. There sit certain women in the Capitol who think themselves loved by Jupiter; they are not frightened even by the regard of Juno, the most wrathful of goddesses, if you are willing to believe the poets.

10. 3. This freedom Varro did not have; he dared only to rebuke the poetic theology, and did not dare to rebuke the civil, which this man cut to pieces. But if we attend to the truth, the temples where these things are done are worse than the theaters where they are feigned.

Hence, regarding these rites of the civil theology, Seneca rather chose these roles for the wise man: that he should not hold them in the religion of his soul, but should feign them in his acts. For he says: All these things the wise man will observe as commanded by laws, not as pleasing to the gods.

And a little later he says: What of the fact that we even join the gods in marriages—and not even piously, of brothers and sisters! We mate Bellona with Mars, Venus with Vulcan, Salacia with Neptune. Yet some we leave unwed, as though a match had failed, especially since some goddesses are widows, such as Populonia, or Fulgora, and the goddess Rumina;

Neither those laws, then, nor custom established in the civil theology anything that was pleasing to the gods or pertained to reality. But this man, whom the philosophers had as it were made free, nevertheless—because he was a senator of the illustrious Roman people—worshiped what he rebuked, performed what he reproved, adored what he blamed; because, no doubt, philosophy had taught him something great, namely, that he should not be superstitious in the world, but that, on account of the laws of the citizens and the customs of men, he should not indeed perform the part of an actor feigning in the theater, but should imitate it in the temple;

all the more damnably because he so performed the things he did falsely that the people supposed he performed them truly; whereas the actor, by playing, would rather delight than deceive by deception.

11. Here, among other superstitions of the civil theology, he also rebukes the sacred observances of the Jews, and especially the Sabbaths, affirming that they act unprofitably, in that, by those single days interposed every seventh, they lose nearly a seventh part of their life in idleness, and are harmed by not doing many things that press for action in the meantime.

Yet the Christians, even then most hateful to the Jews, he did not dare to mention on either side, lest he either praise them against the old custom of his country, or rebuke them perhaps against his own will.

When he was speaking, indeed, of those Jews, he said: Meanwhile the custom of that most wicked nation has so prevailed that it has now been received throughout all lands; the conquered have given laws to the conquerors.

He marveled as he said these things, and, not knowing what was being divinely brought about, he plainly added a sentence by which he showed what he thought of the rationale of their observances. For he said: They, however, know the causes of their rite; the greater part of the people does what it does not know why it does.

But concerning the sacred observances of the Jews—why and how far they were established by divine authority, and afterward, at the time when it was fitting, taken away by the same authority from the people of God, to whom the mystery of eternal life was revealed—we have spoken elsewhere, especially when we were arguing against the Manicheans (See Augustine, C. Faustum, throughout), and in this work it must be said in a more suitable place (See below, 17, 3ff).

12. Now, concerning the three theologies which the Greeks call mythical, physical, and political, and which in Latin can be called fabulous, natural, and civil—since eternal life is to be hoped for neither from the fabulous, which even the worshipers of the many false gods have most freely rebuked, nor from the civil, of which the fabulous is convicted of being a part, and to which the fabulous is found most like, or even worse—

if to anyone what has been said in this volume is not enough, let him add also those things which in the earlier books, and especially in the fourth, were argued at length about God the giver of happiness (See above, 4, 24-26).

For to whom but to happiness alone, for the sake of eternal life, would men have to be consecrated, if happiness were a goddess? But since it is not a goddess but a gift of God, to what God are we to be consecrated but to the giver of happiness, we who, with devout love, love the eternal life in which there is true and full happiness? But that none of these gods—who are worshiped with such great shamefulness, and, unless they are so worshiped, grow angry far more shamefully, and on this account confess themselves to be most unclean spirits—is the giver of happiness, no one, I think, ought to doubt, from the things that have been said. And further, he who does not give happiness, how could he give eternal life?

For we call that life eternal in which there is happiness without end. For if the soul lives in eternal punishments, by which the unclean spirits themselves will also be tormented, that is rather eternal death than life.

For there is no greater or worse death than where death does not die. But since the nature of the soul, in that it was created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life, its highest death is alienation from the life of God in the eternity of punishment.

Eternal life, then—that is, life happy without any end—he alone gives, who gives true happiness.

And since those whom this civil theology worships have been convicted of being unable to give it,

they are not to be worshiped—not only on account of those temporal and earthly things, as we showed in the preceding five books, but much more on account of the eternal life that is to come after death, which in this one book we have treated, with their own help as well.

But since the force of inveterate custom has its roots too deep, if to anyone I seem to have argued too little about this civil theology's deserving to be rejected and shunned, let him turn his mind to another volume, which, with God's help, is to be joined to this one.

As I strive more diligently to root up and extirpate the perverse and ancient opinions, hostile to the truth of piety, which the long-standing error of the human race has fixed more deeply and more tenaciously in darkened minds, and as, according to my small measure, I cooperate with the help of his grace who, as the true God, can do this, the quicker and better minds—for whom the earlier books are amply sufficient for this matter—will have to bear with me patiently and with equanimity, and not think superfluous, on account of others, what they already feel to be unnecessary for themselves.

A great matter is greatly at stake, when the true and truly holy divinity—although it provides us with the supports necessary even for this frailty which we now bear—is nevertheless proclaimed as to be sought and worshiped not on account of the transitory vapor of mortal life, but on account of the blessed life, which is none other than eternal.

1. That this divinity, or, so to speak, this deity (for our writers now do not shrink from using this word too, that they may more expressly translate from the Greek what those people call θεότης)—that this divinity or deity, then, is not in that theology which they call civil, which was set forth by Marcus Varro in sixteen volumes; that is, that one does not arrive at the happiness of eternal life through the worship of such gods as the cities established to be worshiped, and in such manner—whoever has not yet been persuaded of this by the sixth book, which we have just finished, when perhaps he has read this one, will have nothing further to desire toward settling this question.

For it can happen that someone supposes that at least the select and principal gods, whom Varro embraced in his last volume, and about whom we have said too little, are to be worshiped on account of the blessed life, which is none other than eternal.

On this matter I do not say what Tertullian says, perhaps more wittily than truly: If gods are chosen like onions, then surely the rest are judged worthless (Tertullian, Ad nat. 2, 9, 5).

I do not say this; for I see that even from the select some are chosen for something greater and more excellent—just as in military service, when recruits have been chosen, from these too some are chosen for some greater work of arms; and when men are chosen in the Church to be made overseers, the rest are surely not thereby disapproved, since all good believers are rightly called the chosen.

In a building the cornerstones are chosen (Ps 118:22 (117:22)), without the rest being disapproved, which are assigned to other parts of the structure. Grapes are chosen for eating, and the others, which we leave for drinking, are not disapproved.

There is no need to run through many examples, since the matter is plain. For this reason, it is not on the ground that certain gods have been selected from many that either the man who wrote it, or their worshipers, or the gods themselves are to be blamed,

but rather it must be observed who these gods are and for what purpose they seem to have been selected.

2. These select gods, at any rate, Varro commends in the compass of a single book: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sol, Orcus, Father Liber, Tellus, Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus, Vesta; among all of whom, nearly twenty in number, twelve are male and eight are female (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 244 (in Augustine only)).

Are these divinities said to be select on account of greater administrations in the world, or because they became better known to the peoples and a greater worship was rendered to them? If because greater works are administered by them in the world, we ought not to have found them among that, as it were, plebeian multitude of divinities assigned to petty little tasks. For Janus himself first, when a child is conceived—whence all those works take their beginning, distributed minutely among minute divinities—opens the entrance for the reception of the seed. There too is Saturn, on account of the seed itself; there Liber, who frees the male by the emission of seed; there Libera, whom they also will to be Venus, who confers this same benefit on the female, that she too may be freed by the emission of seed (Varro, Antiq., fr. 258; see fr. 192 and above, 4, 11).

All these are among those who are called select. But there too is the goddess Mena, who presides over the menstrual flows, although a daughter of Jupiter, yet ignoble. And this province of the menstrual flows the same author assigns, in the book of the select gods, to Juno herself, who among the select gods is even queen, and here, as Juno Lucina, together with Mena her stepdaughter, presides over the same blood (Varro, Antiq., frr. 267-268). There too are two utterly obscure deities, I know not who, Vitumnus and Sentinus, of whom the one bestows life, the other the senses, on the child being born (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 14), fr. 193; see Tertullian, Ad nat. 2, 11, 4). And no doubt they furnish much more, though they are most ignoble, than all those nobles and select ones. For surely, without life and sense, what is that whole thing borne in a woman's womb but some most abject thing, to be compared with mud and dust?

3. 1. What cause, then, compelled so many select gods to these least tasks, where they are surpassed in the apportioning of this munificence by Vitumnus and Sentinus, whom obscure repute keeps hidden (Virgil, Aen. 5, 302)? For the select Janus furnishes the entrance and, as it were, the gate for the seed; the select Saturn furnishes the seed itself; the select Liber furnishes the emission of this same seed for males; Libera, who is Ceres or Venus, furnishes this same thing for females; the select Juno furnishes—and this not alone, but with Mena, the daughter of Jupiter—the menstrual flows for the increase of what has been conceived:

and the obscure and ignoble Vitumnus furnishes life; the obscure and ignoble Sentinus furnishes sense; which two are so much more excellent than those other things, by as much as they themselves are surpassed by understanding and reason. For just as the things that reason and understand are surely superior to those which, without understanding and reason, live and feel like beasts, so too the things that are endowed with life and sense are rightly preferred to those which neither live nor feel.

And so, among the select gods, Vitumnus the life-giver and Sentinus the sense-giver ought rather to have been reckoned than Janus the admitter of seed, and Saturn the giver or sower of seed, and Liber and Libera the stirrers up or emitters of seeds; which seeds it is unworthy to think about, unless they have arrived at life and sense. These select gifts are given not by the select gods, but by certain unknown ones, neglected in comparison with the dignity of the others.

But if it is answered that Janus has power over all beginnings, and therefore that what is opened for conception is not undeservedly attributed to him; that Saturn has power over all seeds, and therefore the sowing of a human being too cannot be separated from his operation; that Liber and Libera have power over all the seeds to be emitted, and therefore preside over these things too that pertain to the propagation of human beings; that Juno has power over all purgings and bearings, and therefore is not absent from the purgings of women and the births of human beings:

let them seek what they will answer about Vitumnus and Sentinus—whether they wish these too to have power over all things that live and feel.

And if they grant this, let them notice how much more loftily they will have to place them. For to be born from seeds is in the earth and from the earth; but to live and feel they think belongs even to the gods of the stars.

But if they say that to Vitumnus and Sentinus only those things are attributed which come to life in the flesh and are aided by the senses, why does that God who makes all things live and feel not also furnish life and sense to the flesh, granting this gift even to births by his universal work? And what need is there of Vitumnus and Sentinus?

But if, by him who universally presides over life and the senses, these carnal matters have been committed, as the lowest and basest, to these as it were servants,

are those select gods so destitute of a household that they could find none to whom they too might commit these matters, but were compelled, with all their nobility—for which they seemed worthy of being selected—to do the work alongside the ignoble?

Juno, select and queen, both sister and wife of Jupiter Virgil, Aen. 1, 46-47; see Horace, Carm. 3, 3, 64; Silius Italicus, Pun. 693; Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 26, 66; see below, 6. 22. 23.; yet she is Iterduca for children and does the work alongside the most ignoble goddesses Abeona and Adeona.

There too they have placed the goddess Mens, who is to give children a good mind, and she is not placed among the select—as though anything greater could be furnished to a human being; but Juno is placed there, because she is Iterduca and Domiduca,

as though it were of any profit to take a journey and to be led home, if the mind is not good (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 269-271)—the goddess of which gift these selectors did not at all place among the select divinities. She surely ought to have been preferred even to Minerva, to whom, by these petty tasks, they attributed the memory of children.

For who would doubt that it is far better to have a good mind than a memory, however vast? For no one is wicked who has a good mind; but some of the worst men have a marvelous memory, all the worse the less they are able to forget what they think wickedly. And yet Minerva is among the select gods, while the goddess Mens was buried by the cheap crowd.

What shall I say of Virtue? What of Happiness? Of whom we have already said much in the fourth book (See above, 4, 18-24); whom, though they held them to be goddesses, they were unwilling to give any place among the select gods, where they gave a place to Mars and Orcus, the one a maker of deaths, the other a receiver of them.

3. 2. Since, then, in these petty tasks, which have been minutely distributed among many gods, we see even the select ones working, like a senate, on equal terms with the commons, and find that by certain gods who were judged in no way worthy of selection things far greater and better are administered than by those who are called select—it remains to suppose that they were named select and principal not on account of more excellent administrations in the world, but because it came about that they became better known to the peoples.

Hence Varro himself says that to certain father gods and mother goddesses, as to human beings, ignobility had befallen (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 247 (in Augustine only)). If, then, Happiness perhaps ought not to have been among the select gods, on the ground that they arrived at that nobility not by merit but by chance, at least Fortune should have been placed among them, or rather before them—Fortune, whom they call a goddess who confers her gifts on each not by a rational arrangement, but as it has happened by chance.

She ought to have held the topmost place among the select gods, since among them she showed most of all what she could do; for we see them selected not by any outstanding virtue, not by any rational happiness, but, as their worshipers think of her, by the random power of Fortune.

For the most eloquent Sallust too perhaps had the gods themselves in view, when he said: But surely Fortune rules in everything; it is she who makes all things famous or obscure according to caprice rather than according to truth (Sallust, Catil. 8, 1).

For they cannot find a cause why Venus has been made famous and Virtue obscured, when the divinities of both have been consecrated by them, and their merits are not to be compared.

Or if she deserved to be ennobled because more people seek her—for more seek Venus than Virtue—why was the goddess Minerva made famous and the goddess Pecunia obscured?

For in the human race avarice allures more than skill, and even among those who are skilled you will rarely find a man who does not have his art for sale at a money price, and that for the sake of which something is done is always valued more than that which is done for the sake of something else.

If, then, this selection of gods was made by the judgment of the foolish multitude, why was the goddess Pecunia not preferred to Minerva, since on account of money there are many craftsmen? But if this distinction belongs to the few wise, why was Virtue not preferred to Venus, since reason far prefers her?

At least, surely, as I have said, Fortune herself—who, as those think who attribute most to her (See Virgil, Aen. 8, 334), rules in everything and makes all things famous or obscure according to caprice rather than according to truth—if she had such power even over the gods, that by her random judgment she made famous whom she would and obscured whom she would, ought to have held a principal place among the select, she who is of such principal power even over the gods themselves.

Or are we to suppose that, in order that she could not be there, Fortune herself had nothing but adverse fortune? She was, then, adverse to herself, who, while making others noble, was not herself ennobled.

4. But someone covetous of nobility and renown might congratulate these select gods and call them fortunate, if he did not see that they were selected rather for injuries than for honors.

For that lowest crowd was covered by its very ignobility, lest it be overwhelmed with reproaches. We laugh, indeed, when we see them, by the fictions of human opinions, distributed with tasks parceled out among themselves, like petty tax-farmers, or like workmen in the silversmiths' street, where a single little vessel, in order to come out finished, passes through many craftsmen, though it could be finished by one finished craftsman.

But it was thought that there was no other way to provide for the multitude of workers than that each should learn quickly and easily his single part of the craft, lest all be compelled to be slowly and with difficulty finished masters in one craft. Yet hardly anyone is found among the non-select gods who has drawn an infamous reputation by some crime; but hardly any of the select ones who has not received upon himself the mark of some notable disgrace. The former descended to the lowly tasks of the latter; the latter did not come into the lofty crimes of the former. About Janus, indeed, nothing readily occurs to me that pertains to reproach.

And perhaps he was such a one as lived more innocently and more removed from misdeeds and disgraces.

He kindly received the fleeing Saturn; he shared the kingdom with his guest, so that they founded separate cities as well, the one Janiculum, the other Saturnia.

But those people, in the worship of the gods seekers of every disgrace, the one whose life they found less shameful they disfigured with the monstrous deformity of his image, making him now two-faced, now even four-faced, as it were twin. Or did they perhaps wish that, since very many of the select gods had, by perpetrating shameful things, lost their faces, the more innocent this one was, the more faces he should appear to have?

5. But let us rather hear their own physical interpretations, by which they try to color the shamefulness of a most wretched error with the appearance, as it were, of a deeper learning.

First Varro commends these interpretations thus: he says that the ancients invented the images of the gods, and their emblems and adornments, so that those who had approached the mysteries of the doctrine, when they observed them with their eyes, might see with the mind the soul of the world and its parts, that is, the true gods; and that those who made the images in the shape of a man seem to have followed this, namely, that the mortal mind, which is in the human body, is most like the immortal mind;

as if vessels were set up for the sake of marking the gods, and in the temple of Liber a wine jar were placed, which would signify wine, by that which contains signifying that which is contained; so by an image that had a human form the rational soul is signified, because by that as by a vessel this nature is wont to be contained, of which nature they will the god, or the gods, to be (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 115; Zeno of Citium, in Varro De ling. lat. 5, 59; Diogenes Laertius, 7, 157).

These are the mysteries of the doctrine into which this most learned man had penetrated, that he might bring them forth into the light.

But, O most acute man, did you, in these mysteries of doctrine, lose that prudence by which it soberly seemed to you that those who first set up images for the peoples both took away fear from their fellow citizens and added error, and that the ancient Romans worshiped the gods more chastely without images (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 1), fr. 116; see above, 4, 9)?

For these were your authorities, that you should dare to say these things against the later Romans.

For if those most ancient men too had worshiped images, perhaps you would have suppressed in the silence of fear this whole opinion about not setting up images—true, for the moment—

and you would have proclaimed more garrulously and more loftily these mysteries of doctrine amid such pernicious and empty fictions.

Yet your soul, so learned and gifted (wherein we much grieve for you), through these mysteries of doctrine could in no way arrive at its God—that is, at the God by whom it was made, not the one with whom it was made; not the one whose portion it is, but whose creation it is; not the one who is the soul of all things, but who made every soul, by whose enlightening alone the soul becomes blessed, if it is not ungrateful to his grace.

But what these mysteries of doctrine are, and at how much they are to be valued, what follows will show. Meanwhile this most learned man confesses that the soul of the world and its parts are the true gods;

from which it is understood that his whole theology—that very natural one, namely, to which he attributes most—could extend itself as far as the nature of the rational soul. For he says very little by way of preface about the natural theology in this book, which he wrote last, about the select gods; in which we shall see whether, by physiological interpretations, he can refer the civil theology back to this natural one.

And if he can, the whole will be natural; and what need was there to join the civil to it with such great care of distinction? But if it is separated by a correct distinction—since not even that one is true which pleases him as natural (for it reaches only as far as the soul, not as far as the true God who made the soul as well)—how much more abject and more false is this civil one, which is occupied chiefly with the nature of bodies, as its very interpretations, certain of which I must necessarily recall, will show, sought out and worked out by them with so much diligence?

6. The same Varro, then, still speaking by way of preface about the natural theology, says that he judges God to be the soul of the world, which the Greeks call κόσμος, and that this world itself is God; but that, just as a wise man, though he is made of body and mind, is yet called wise from his mind, so the world is called God from its mind, though it is made of mind and body.

Here he seems in some way to confess one God; but, in order to introduce many as well, he adds that the world is divided into two parts, heaven and earth;

and heaven in two ways, into ether and air; and earth into water and land; of which the highest is ether, the second air, the third water, the lowest land;

and that all these four parts are full of souls—in ether and air of immortal souls, in water and land of mortal ones. And that from the highest circuit of heaven to the circle of the moon there are ethereal souls, the stars and the heavenly bodies, and that these heavenly gods are not only understood to be, but even seen;

but that between the orbit of the moon and the tops of the rain clouds and winds there are aerial souls, but that these are seen with the mind, not with the eyes, and are called heroes, lares, and genii Varro, Antiq. (praef. rer. div.), fr. 112; see Ennius, Thyestes, fr. 176, in Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 25, 65; Zeno, Chrysippus, and Cleanthes, in Cicero, De nat. deor. 1, 14, 36. 15, 40; 2, 15. 25-26; Diogenes Laertius, 7, 137-140; Eusebius, Praep. evang. 15, 15.. This, you see, is the natural theology briefly set forth in that preface, which pleased not only this man but many philosophers; about which we must then discuss more diligently, when, with the help of the true God, I have completed what remains concerning the civil theology, as far as the select gods are concerned.

7. Janus, then, from whom he took his start, I ask who he may be. The answer is: He is the world. This answer is plainly brief and open. Why, then, are the beginnings of things said to belong to him, but the ends to another, whom they call Terminus (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 248)?

For on account of beginnings and ends they say that two months are dedicated to these two gods, besides those ten of which March is the head, down to December: January to Janus, February to Terminus.

For this reason they say the Terminalia are celebrated in the same month of February, when the purgatorial rite is performed which they call Februm, from which the month received its name Varro, De ling. lat. 1, 6, 13. 34; Antiq. (rer. hum. 18), fr. 68, in Censorinus, De die nat. 22, 10; Ovid, Fasti 2, 19-36..

Do the beginnings of things, then, belong to the world, which is Janus, and the ends not belong to it, so that another god had to be set over them? Do they not confess that all the things they say come to pass in this world are also terminated in this world? What is this vanity—to give him half power in his work, a double face in his image?

Would they not interpret this two-faced god far more elegantly if they said that the same one is both Janus and Terminus, and gave one face to beginnings, the other to ends?

For one who acts ought to attend to both; for in every motion of his action, he who does not look back to the beginning does not look forward to the end.

Hence the forward-looking intention must necessarily be connected with the backward-looking memory; for one from whom what he has begun has slipped away will not find how to finish it. But if they thought that the blessed life is begun in this world and perfected outside the world, and therefore attributed to Janus, that is, to the world, only the power of beginnings, they would surely set Terminus before him and would not make him a stranger to the select gods.

And yet even now, when in these two gods the beginnings and ends of temporal things are treated, more honor ought to have been given to Terminus.

For greater is the joy when any matter is brought to completion; but things begun are full of anxiety until they are brought to their end,

which end he who begins anything most of all seeks, intends, awaits, and longs for, nor does he exult in a thing begun unless it be terminated.

8. But now let the interpretation of the two-faced image be brought forth. They say he has two faces, before and behind, because the opening of our mouth, when we open it, seems like the world;

whence the Greeks call the palate οὐρανός (See Aristotle, De part. an. 660a 14; 662a 8), and some Latin poets too, he says, have called the palate heaven, from which opening of the mouth there is a passage both outward toward the teeth and inward toward the throat (See Ennius, fr. 20, in Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 18, 49; Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 249).

See to what the world has been brought, on account of the term for our palate, whether Greek or poetic. But what has this to do with the soul, what with eternal life? For the sake of saliva alone is this god worshiped, for the partly swallowing and partly spitting out of which both doors are opened beneath the heaven of the palate.

What, moreover, is more absurd than, in the world itself, not to find two doors set opposite each other, through which it might either admit something inward to itself or send something outward from itself, and to wish to compose from our mouth and throat—of which the world has no likeness—an image of the world in Janus, on account of the palate alone, of which Janus has no likeness?

But when they make him four-faced and call him "twin Janus," they interpret this with reference to the four parts of the world, as though the world looked outward by all its faces, as Janus does.

Then, if Janus is the world and the world consists of four parts, the image of the two-faced Janus is false; or if it is true on the ground that the whole world is wont to be understood even by the name of "East and West," would anyone, when we name the two other parts of North and South, say "twin world," just as they call the four-faced one "twin Janus"?

They have no way at all to interpret four doors, open to those entering and leaving, after the likeness of the world, as, regarding the two-faced one, they at least found something to say in the human mouth,

unless perhaps Neptune comes to the rescue and holds out a fish, which, besides the opening of the mouth and throat, has gills open on the right and the left as well. And yet no soul escapes this vanity by any of so many doors, except one that hears the Truth saying: I am the door (Jn 10:9).

9. 1. But let them explain whom they would have understood by Jupiter, who is also called Juppiter. He is a god, they say, having power over the causes by which something comes to be in the world Heraclitus, in Diels, FVS 22, fr. 67; Xenophanes, in Diels, FVS 21, fr. 23; the Stoics, in Diogenes Laertius, 7, 88. 138-139. 147-148; Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus 1-4; see Plato, Cratylus 396ab; Philebus 30d.. How great this is, that most noble verse of Virgil testifies:

Happy is he who could know the causes of things (Virgil, Georg. 2, 490). But why is Janus set before him? Let that most acute and most learned man answer us this.

Because with Janus, he says, are the first things, with Jupiter the highest. Rightly, then, is Jupiter held to be king of all. For the first things are surpassed by the highest, since, although the first precede in time, the highest surpass in dignity (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 251 (in Augustine only)).

But this would be rightly said if the first and the highest of things done were being distinguished;

as the beginning of an act is to set out, the highest point to arrive; the beginning of an act is the inception of learning, the highest point the grasp of the doctrine;

and so in all things the first are the beginnings and the highest are the ends. But this matter has already been discussed between Janus and Terminus.

But the causes which are given to Jupiter are efficient, not effected; nor can it in any way come to pass that they be anticipated, even in time, by the beginnings of things done, or by the things done.

For always the thing that makes is prior to that which is made. Wherefore, if the beginnings of things done belong to Janus, they are not on that account prior to the efficient causes which they attribute to Jupiter. For just as nothing comes to be, so nothing is begun in order to come to be, which the making cause has not preceded.

This god, indeed, with whom are all the causes of all the natures that have been made and of all natural things, if the peoples call him Jupiter and worship him with such great insults and such wicked accusations, they bind themselves with a fouler sacrilege than if they thought there were no god at all.

Hence it would be better for them to call by the name of Jupiter some other being, worthy of shameful and disgraceful honors,

substituting an empty fiction which they might rather blaspheme (just as a stone is said to have been substituted for Saturn, for him to devour in place of his son) (See Hesiod, Theog. 474-478; Ovid, Fasti 2, 205), than to call this god both a thunderer and an adulterer, both ruling the whole world and flowing apart in so many debaucheries, both holding the highest causes of all natures and natural things and not holding good causes of his own.

9. 2. Next I ask what place among the gods they now assign to this Jupiter, if Janus is the world. For he defined the true gods as the soul of the world and its parts; and on this account, whatever is not this is surely, according to these men, not the true God.

Will they then say that Jupiter is the soul of the world in such a way that Janus is its body, that is, this visible world? If they say this, there will be no way for them to call Janus a god, since the body of the world is not a god even according to themselves, but the soul of the world and its parts.

Hence the same author says most openly that he judges God to be the soul of the world and that this world itself is God; but that, just as a wise man, though he is made of mind and body, is yet called wise from his mind, so the world is called God from its mind, though it is made of mind and body (See above, 6, note (16)).

And so the body of the world alone is not a god, but either its soul alone, or body and mind together, yet in such a way that it is a god not from the body but from the mind.

If, then, Janus is the world and Janus is a god, will they say that Jupiter, in order to be able to be a god, is some part of Janus? For they are rather wont to attribute the universe to Jupiter; whence comes the line: All things are full of Jove (Virgil, Ecl. 3, 60).

Therefore Jupiter too, that he may be a god, and indeed the king of the gods, they can hold to be no other than the world, so that he reigns over the other gods, who, according to these men, are his parts. In this sense the same Varro also expounds certain verses of Valerius Soranus, in that book which he wrote separately from these, about the worship of the gods; which verses are these: Almighty Jupiter, begetter of kings and of things and of the gods, and mother of the gods, one god and all (Valerius Soranus, fr. 4 (in Augustine only)).

They are expounded in the same book thus: since they reckoned that to be male which emits seed, that to be female which receives it, and that Jupiter is the world, and that he emits all seeds from himself and receives them into himself:

With cause, he says, did Soranus write Jupiter "begetter" and "mother," and no less with cause that he is "one and all the same"; for the world is one, and in that one are all things (Varro, Logist. (Curio, or De cultu deor.), fr. 40 (in Augustine only)).

10. Since, then, both Janus is the world and Jupiter is the world, and the world is one, why are Janus and Jupiter two gods?

Why do they have temples apart, altars apart, different rites, dissimilar images? If it is because the force of beginnings is one thing, the force of causes another, and the former has received the name of Janus, the latter that of Jupiter:

is it the case that, if one man has in different matters two powers or two skills, because the force of each is different, he is therefore said to be two judges or two craftsmen?

So then one God too, since he himself has the power over beginnings and himself over causes, must he on that account be thought to be two gods, because beginnings and causes are matters that are his own? But if they think this just, let them say that Jupiter himself is as many gods as the surnames they have given him on account of his many powers, since all the things from which those surnames have been drawn are many and diverse; of which I recall a few.

11. They have called him Victor, Invictus, Opitulus, Impulsor, Stator, Centumpeda, Supinal, Tigillus, Almus, Ruminus, and others which it would be long to pursue (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 238; see Minucius Felix, Octav. 22, 6).

These surnames they imposed on one god on account of diverse causes and powers, yet they did not compel him, on account of so many matters, to be also so many gods:

namely, that he conquered all things, that he was conquered by no one,

that he brought help (ops) to the needy,

that he had the power of impelling, of establishing, of making firm, of laying on its back,

that, like a beam (tigillus), he held together and upheld the world, that he nourished all things, that with the teat (ruma)—that is, the breast—he nourished living creatures.

Among these, as we notice, some are great, some are slight; and yet one and the same god is said to do both.

I think the causes of things and their beginnings—on account of which they wished one world to be two gods, Jupiter and Janus—are more closely related to each other than holding the world together and giving the breast to living creatures;

and yet, on account of these two works, so far apart from each other in force and dignity, they were not compelled to be two gods;

but one Jupiter was called Tigillus on account of the one, Ruminus on account of the other.

I will not say that to furnish the breast to suckling animals might more fittingly have befitted Juno than Jupiter, especially since there was also the goddess Rumina, who might furnish him help or service in this work.

For I reflect that it can be answered that Juno herself is nothing other than Jupiter, according to those verses of Valerius Soranus, where it is said: Almighty Jupiter, begetter of kings and of things and of the gods, and mother of the gods. Why, then, was he also called Ruminus, when perhaps, to those who inquire more diligently, he himself is found to be also that goddess Rumina?

For if it rightly seemed unworthy of the majesty of the gods that, in one ear of grain, one god should attend to the care of the joint, another to that of the husk: how much more unworthy is it that one lowest matter—namely, that animals be nourished at the breast—should be cared for by the power of two gods, of whom one is Jupiter, the very king of all,

and that he should do this not even with his wife, but with some ignoble Rumina—unless he himself is also Rumina herself; Ruminus perhaps for the suckling males, Rumina for the females.

I would indeed say that they were unwilling to impose a feminine name on Jupiter, were it not that in those verses too he is called begetter and mother, and that I read among his other surnames that he was also called Pecunia—a goddess whom we found among those petty divinities and recalled in the fourth book (See above, 4, 8. 10. 11. 21).

But since both males and females have money, why he was not called both Pecunia and Pecunius, as Rumina and Ruminus, let them see to it.

12. But how elegantly they gave the reason for this name! And he is called Pecunia, he says, because all things are his (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 252). O great reason for a divine name! Nay rather, he whose all things are is most basely and insultingly named Pecunia. For in relation to all things that are contained by heaven and earth, what is money, among all the things whatsoever that are possessed by men under the name of money? But no doubt it was avarice that imposed this name on Jupiter, so that whoever loves money might seem to himself to love not just any god, but the very king of all. But it would be far otherwise if he were called Riches.

For riches are one thing, money another. For we call wise, just, good men rich, who have either no money or little; for they are rather rich in virtues, through which, even amid the very necessities of bodily things, what they have is enough for them:

but the avaricious we call poor, always gaping and in want; for they can have ever so great sums of money, but in however great an abundance of it they cannot be without want.

And the true God himself we rightly call rich, yet not in money, but in omnipotence. And so the moneyed are called rich;

but inwardly needy, if they are covetous; likewise those lacking money are called poor, but inwardly rich, if they are wise.

What kind of theology, then, ought this to be for a wise man, where the king of the gods received the name of that thing which no wise man has coveted (Sallust, Catil. 11, 3)? For how much more easily, if anything pertaining to eternal life were wholesomely learned by this teaching, would the God who rules the world be called by them not Pecunia but Wisdom, the love of which cleanses from the filth of avarice, that is, from the love of money!

13. But why say more about this Jupiter, to whom perhaps the rest are to be referred, so that the opinion of very many gods may remain empty, since these are all he himself—whether when they are thought to be his parts or powers, or when the force of the soul, which they think to be diffused through all things, has received, as it were, the names of many gods, from the parts of this mass into which this visible world rises up, and from the manifold administration of nature?

For what too is Saturn? One, he says, of the chief gods, with whom is the dominion over all sowings Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 240; De ling. lat. 5, 64; see Augustine, De cons. evang. 1, 23, 34; see above, 6, 8, 1.. Does not the exposition of those verses of Valerius Soranus run thus, that Jupiter is the world and that he emits all seeds from himself and receives them into himself? He, then, is the one with whom is the dominion over all sowings. What is Genius?

A god, he says, who is set over and has power over all things that are to be begotten. Whom else do they believe to have this power but the world, to whom it was said: Jupiter, begetter and mother?

And when in another place he says that the Genius is the rational mind of each person, and therefore that there are individual genii for individual persons, but that such a mind of the world is God: he certainly brings it back to this same point, that the soul of the world itself be believed to be, as it were, a universal genius (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 237). This, then, is the one they call Jupiter.

For if every genius is a god, and every man's mind is a genius, it follows that every man's mind is a god; and if the very absurdity compels even them to shrink from this, it remains that they call him, singularly and pre-eminently, the god Genius, whom they call the soul of the world, and on this account Jupiter.

14. But Mercury and Mars they did not find how to refer to any parts of the world and works of God which are in the elements, and therefore they at least set them over the works of men, as ministers of speaking and of waging war. Of these, if Mercury holds the power even over the speech of the gods, he is master even of the king of the gods himself, if Jupiter speaks according to his decision, or has received from him the faculty of speaking; which is certainly absurd.

But if the power over human speech only is said to be attributed to him, it is not credible that Jupiter was willing to come down to suckle at the breast not only children but even cattle—whence he was surnamed Ruminus—and yet was unwilling that the care of our speech, by which we excel the cattle, should belong to himself; and on this account Jupiter himself is the same as Mercury.

But if speech itself is said to be Mercury, as the things they interpret about him show (for Mercury is said to be so named as it were "running in the middle" (medius currens), because speech runs in the middle between men;

and therefore Ἑρμῆς in Greek, because speech, or interpretation, which certainly pertains to speech, is called ἑρμηνεία; and therefore he presides over merchandise too, because between sellers and buyers speech is made "in the middle";

that his wings on his head and on his feet signify that speech is borne winged through the air; that he is called the messenger, since by speech all that is thought is announced) (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 239; see Hymn. hom. Herm)—if, then, Mercury is speech itself, then, even by their own confession, he is not a god. But when they make themselves gods of those who are not even demons, by making supplication to unclean spirits they are possessed by those who are not gods but demons.

Likewise, because for Mars too they could find no element or part of the world where he might do any works whatever of nature, they said he was the god of war (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 256; Hymn. hom. min. Ares), which is a work of men, and not the more desirable one. If, then, Happiness gave perpetual peace, Mars would have nothing to do. But if war itself is Mars, as speech is Mercury: would that, as it is manifest that he is not a god, so too there were no war, which might even falsely be called a god.

15. Unless perhaps these gods are those stars which they have called by their names. For one star they call Mercury, another likewise Mars. But there too is the one they call Jupiter, and yet to them the world is Jupiter; there the one they call Saturn, and yet they give him besides no small substance, namely, that of all seeds; there too is that brightest of all, which is called by them Venus, and yet they will the same Venus to be also the Moon (See Firmicus Maternus, Math. 17, 2); although about that most shining star Juno and Venus contend among them as over a golden apple (See Hyginus, Fab. 92; see above, 3, 25). For some say the Morning Star is Venus's, some Juno's; but, as usual, Venus wins. For far more attribute that star to Venus, so that scarcely any of them is found who thinks otherwise (See Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 27, 68; Arnobius, Adv. nat. 3, 31).

But who would not laugh, when they call Jupiter king of all, that his star is surpassed in brightness by the star of Venus by so much? For it ought to have been as much more shining than the rest as he himself is more powerful. They answer that it seems so for this reason: that the one which is thought dimmer is higher and far more remote from the lands.

If, then, a greater dignity deserved the higher place, why is Saturn there higher than Jupiter? Or could the vanity of the fable, which makes Jupiter king, not reach all the way to the stars, and what Saturn could not maintain in his kingdom nor in the Capitol, was he at least permitted to obtain in heaven (See Minucius Felix, Octav. 21, 6; Tertullian, Apol. 10, 8)? But why did Janus receive no star? If because he is the world and all the stars are in him: Jupiter's too is the world, and yet he has one. Or did this one arrange his own case as he could, and, for the one star which he does not have among the stars, receive so many faces on earth?

Then, if it is on account of the stars alone that they think Mercury and Mars parts of the world, that they may be able to hold them gods—since certainly speech and war are not parts of the world but acts of men—why for Aries and Taurus and Cancer and Scorpio and the rest of this kind,

which they count as celestial signs and which consist not of single stars but each of several, and which they hold to be placed above these in the highest heaven (See Manilius, Astron. 2, 150-569; Hyginus, Astron. 2, 20-21. 26; 3, 19), where a more constant motion furnishes the stars an unerring course—why did they make no altars, no rites, no temples for these, nor hold them as gods, I do not say among these select ones, but not even among those, as it were, plebeian ones?

16. Although they would have Apollo to be a diviner and a physician, yet, in order to set him in some part of the world, they said he was also the sun, and Diana his sister likewise the moon and the guardian of roads (whence they also will her to be a virgin, because a road bears nothing), and therefore that both have arrows, because those two heavenly bodies stretch their rays from heaven all the way to the lands (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), frr. 255. 274; see Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 27, 68-69; see above, 7, 3). Vulcan they would have to be the fire of the world, Neptune the waters of the world, Father Dis—that is, Orcus—the earthly and lowest part of the world (Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 66. 72).

Liber and Ceres they set over the seeds—either him over the male seeds, her over the female; or him over the liquid, her over the dryness of the seeds (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 260). And all this is certainly referred to the world, that is, to Jupiter, who was for this reason called begetter and mother, because he emitted all seeds from himself and received them into himself. Since indeed they would have the Great Mother to be the same Ceres, whom they say to be nothing other than the earth, and they hold her to be Juno also, and therefore attribute to her the secondary causes of things (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 266; see Ennius, Epicharmus, fr. 4. 7, in Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 64-65),

although it was to Jupiter that it was said, begetter and mother of the gods, because, according to them, the whole world itself is Jupiter's. Minerva too, because they set her over human arts, and found neither a star where they might place her, they said to be either the highest ether or even the moon (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 275; see Aristotle, in Arnobius, Adv. nat. 3, 31). Vesta too they thought the greatest of goddesses, for this reason: that she is the earth—although they believed that the lighter fire of the world, which pertains to the easy uses of men, not the more violent fire such as Vulcan's, was to be assigned to her Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 15), fr. 229 (in Servius, Ad Georg. 3, 1); (rer. div. 16), fr. 241 (see below, 24); De lingua lat. 5, 7; Cicero, De nat. deor. 2, 27, 67; Ovid, Fasti 6, 367. 399-400..

And on this account they would have all these select gods to be this world—in some the whole, in some its parts; the whole, like Jupiter; its parts, like Genius, like the Great Mother, like the Sun and Moon, or rather Apollo and Diana. And sometimes they make one god several things, sometimes one thing several gods. For one god is several things, like Jupiter himself; for the whole world is held and called Jupiter, and the heaven alone Jupiter, and a star alone Jupiter;

and likewise Juno, mistress of the secondary causes, and Juno the air, and Juno the earth, and, if she should win against Venus, Juno the star. Similarly Minerva the highest ether, and Minerva likewise the moon, which they reckon to be at the lowest limit of the ether. But they make one thing several gods thus: Janus is both the world and Jupiter; so too Juno is both the earth and the Great Mother and Ceres.

17. And as with these things, which I have recalled by way of example, so with the rest: they do not explicate them but rather implicate them; as the impulse of wandering opinion has driven them, so they leap and recoil this way and that, hither and thither, so that Varro himself preferred to doubt about everything rather than to affirm anything.

For of the three last books, when he had finished the first, about the certain gods, in the second, beginning to speak about the uncertain gods, he says: Since in this little book I shall set down doubtful opinions about the gods, I ought not to be rebuked.

For he who thinks judgment ought to and can be passed, when he has heard, will pass it himself. I can more readily be brought to recall into doubt the things I said in the first book, than to bring into some sum total all the things I shall write through in this one (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 15), fr. 226 (in Augustine only)).

Thus he made uncertain not only that book about the uncertain gods, but also that one about the certain.

Further, in this third book, about the select gods, after he had said by way of preface what he thought should be prefaced from the natural theology, when about to enter upon the vanities and lying madnesses of this civil theology—where not only did the truth of things not lead him, but the authority of his elders even pressed upon him—he says:

but, as Xenophanes of Colophon writes, I shall set down what I think, not what I would maintain. For it belongs to man to hold these opinions, to God to know them (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 243 (in Augustine only)).

Trembling, then, he promises a discourse about things not comprehended nor most firmly believed, but merely opined and to be doubted, about to speak of things that were established by human beings.

For just as he knew that there is a world, that there are heaven and earth—the heaven shining with stars, the earth fertile with seeds—and the like, and as he believed with a fixed steadiness of mind that this whole mass and nature is ruled and administered by a certain invisible and most powerful force, so he could not affirm about Janus that he was the world itself, nor find out about Saturn how he was both the father of Jupiter and made subject to the reigning Jupiter, and other such things.

18. About these gods a more credible account is given when they are held to have been men, and to have had, for each of them, rites and solemnities established by those who, in flattering them, wished them to be gods—established according to each one's character, morals, deeds, and fortunes—and when these, gradually creeping in through the souls of men who are like demons and greedy for sportive things, were spread far and wide, the lies of the poets adorning them and deceitful spirits leading men astray toward them.

For it could more easily have come about that an impious youth, either fearing to be killed by an impious father and greedy for the kingdom, drove his father from the kingdom, than that which this man interprets—that Saturn the father was overcome by Jupiter his son, because the cause that pertains to Jupiter is prior to the seed that pertains to Saturn (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 254; see Tertullian, Ad nat. 2, 12, 13-16). For if this were so, Saturn would never have been prior, nor would he be the father of Jupiter. For the cause always precedes the seed, and is never begotten from the seed. But when they try to honor most empty fables, or the deeds of men, with as it were natural interpretations, even the most acute men suffer such straits that we are compelled to grieve over their vanity too.

19. They said, he says, that Saturn was accustomed to devour what was born from him, because the seeds returned thither, whence they were born.

And that a clod was thrown to him to devour in place of Jupiter signifies, he says, that, before the usefulness of plowing was discovered, the fruits sown began to be covered over by human hands (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 254; see Hesiod, Theog. 480-483; Tertullian, Ad nat. 2, 12, 13-16).

The earth itself, then, ought to have been called Saturn, not the seeds; for it, in a certain way, devours what it has begotten, when the seeds born from it return to be received into it again.

And that he is said to have received a clod in place of Jupiter—what does this have to do with the seed's being covered over by a clod by the hands of men?

Is it then, like the rest, not devoured because it is covered over by a clod? For this is so stated as though one who set a clod against it took the seed away, just as they hold that, when the clod was offered to Saturn, Jupiter was taken away,

and not rather that the clod, by covering the seed, made it the more diligently devoured. Then, in this way, Jupiter is the seed, not the cause of the seed, as was said a little before. But what are men to do who, when they interpret foolish things, do not find anything that may be said wisely?

He has a sickle, he says, on account of agriculture. Certainly, while he reigned, there was not yet any agriculture, and therefore his times are held to be earlier, as the same man himself interprets the little fables, because the first men lived on those seeds which the earth begot of its own accord.

Or did he receive the sickle after losing the scepter, so that he who in the first times had been an idle king became, when his son reigned, a toiling laborer?

Then he says that by some, boys were accustomed to be sacrificed to him, as by the Carthaginians, and by some even grown men, as by the Gauls See below, 7, 26; Eusebius, De praep. evang. 4, 16; Tertullian, Apol. 9, 2; Minucius Felix, Octav. 30, 3; Cicero, Pro Fonteio 10, 21; Julius Caesar, De bello g. 6, 16; Lucan, Phars. 1, 404ff.; Lactantius, Div. inst. 1, 21-23., because of all seeds the best kind is the human race. About this most cruel vanity, what need is there to say more? Let us rather notice and hold this: that these interpretations are not referred to the true God, the living, incorporeal, and unchangeable nature, from whom eternally blessed life is to be sought; but that their ends lie in things corporeal, temporal, changeable, and mortal.

That Saturn is said in the fables to have castrated his father Caelum signifies, he says, that the divine seed is with Saturn, not with Caelum (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 254; see above, 4, 10).

This, as far as can be understood, is because nothing is born in heaven from seeds. But behold, if Saturn is the son of Caelum, he is the son of Jupiter. For that Caelum is Jupiter they affirm innumerable times and diligently.

Thus these things, which do not come from the truth, for the most part overturn themselves even with no one pushing them. He says that he was called Chronos, which by the Greek term signifies a space of time, without which, he says, seed cannot be fruitful. These and many other things are said about Saturn, and all are referred to seed.

But at least Saturn, with such great power as this, would suffice for the seeds; why for these are other gods required, especially Liber and Libera—that is, Ceres? About whom again, as far as concerns the seed, he says as much as if he had said nothing about Saturn.

20. But in the rites of Ceres those Eleusinian mysteries are renowned, which among the Athenians were most celebrated. Of these this man interprets nothing except what concerns grain, which Ceres discovered, and Proserpina, whom she lost when Orcus carried her off;

and he says that this very Proserpina signifies the fruitfulness of seeds; and that, when this had failed at a certain time, and the earth mourned with that same barrenness, the opinion arose that the daughter of Ceres—that is, fruitfulness itself, which from "creeping forth" (proserpere) was called Proserpina—Orcus had carried off and detained among those below; and that, when this matter had been observed with public mourning, since that same fruitfulness returned again, gladness arose at Proserpina's restoration, and from this the solemnities were established. He then says that many things are handed down in her mysteries which pertain to nothing but the discovery of crops (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), frr. 264, 241; Ennius, Epicharmus, fr. 8, in Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 68).

21. Now, indeed, the rites of Liber, whom they set over the liquid seeds—and on this account not only over the liquids of fruits, of which wine in a certain way holds the chief place, but also over the seeds of living creatures—to what shamefulness they came, it irks me to tell, on account of the length of the discourse;

but on account of these men's proud dullness it does not irk me. Among the other things which, since they are many, I am compelled to pass over, he says that at the crossroads of Italy certain

rites of Liber were celebrated with such great license of shamefulness that in his honor the male private parts were worshiped, and that not with at least a somewhat more modest secrecy, but in the open, with exulting wickedness.

For this shameful member, during the festal days of Liber, was placed with great honor upon little carts and carried about, first in the countryside at the crossroads, and afterward all the way into the city (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 264; see above, 4, 11; 6, 9; 7, 2). But in the town of Lavinium one whole month was assigned to Liber, during whose days all used the most disgraceful words, until that member had been carried across the forum and came to rest in its own place.

Upon this dishonorable member it was necessary that a most honorable mother of a family publicly place a crown (See Aristophanes, Acharn. 243ff.; Arnobius, Adv. nat. 5, 39).

Thus, you see, the god Liber had to be placated for the outcome of the seeds; thus bewitchment had to be driven away from the fields—so that a matron was compelled to do in public what not even a harlot, if matrons were watching, ought to have been permitted to do in the theater.

On account of these things Saturn alone was not believed able to suffice for the seeds, so that the unclean soul might find occasions for multiplying gods, and, rightly forsaken by the one true God on account of its uncleanness, and prostituted through many false gods by a greed for greater uncleanness, might call these sacrileges sacred rites, and offer itself to be violated and polluted by the crowds of foul demons.

22. Now Neptune already had Salacia for his wife, whom they said to be the lower water of the sea: for what purpose was Venilia also joined to him, except that, without any cause of necessary rites, by the mere lust of a prostituted soul, the invitation of demons might be multiplied? But let the interpretation of this excellent theology be brought forth, which by the account it renders may restrain us from this rebuke.

Venilia, he says, is the wave that comes to the shore; Salacia, the one that returns into the deep (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 242; see fr. 194 (in Servius, Ad Aen. 10, 76); De ling. lat. 5, 72). Why, then, are two goddesses made, when there is one wave that comes and returns?

Surely it is madness itself, the lust boiling over into many divinities. For although the water that goes and returns is not doubled, yet, by the occasion of this vanity, with two demons invited, the soul is the more defiled, which goes and does not return.

I ask you, Varro—or you who have read such writings of such learned men and boast that you have learned something great—interpret this for me; I will not say according to that eternal and unchangeable nature which alone is God, but at least according to the soul of the world and its parts, which you reckon to be the true gods.

That you made for yourselves a god, Neptune, of the part of the soul of the world which pervades the sea, is, somehow or other, an error of a more tolerable kind. Is the wave coming to the shore and returning into the deep, then, two parts of the world, or two parts of the soul of the world?

Who among you is so senseless as to think this wise? Why, then, did they make two goddesses for you, except that it was provided by your wise elders, not that more gods should rule you, but that more demons—which rejoice in these vanities and falsehoods—should possess you?

But why did that Salacia, through this interpretation, lose the lower part of the sea, by which she was subject to her husband? For just now, when you hold her to be the refluent wave, you placed her on the surface. Or, because he took Venilia as a concubine, did she, in anger, shut her husband out from the upper parts of the sea?

23. 1. Surely there is one earth, which we see full indeed of its living creatures, yet itself a great body among the elements and the lowest part of the world. Why do they will it to be a goddess? Is it because it is fruitful?

Why, then, are men not rather gods, who make it more fruitful by cultivating it—but when they plow, not when they adore? But, they say, the part of the soul of the world which pervades it makes it a goddess See Ennius, Epicharmus, fr. 4 (in Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 64-65); Annales 1, fr. 6 (in Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 59); Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 58-60; see above, 4, 10..

As if the soul were not more evident in men, of which there is no question whether it exists; and yet men are not held to be gods, and—what is to be grievously lamented—by a marvelous and pitiable error they are made subject to worshiping and adoring those who are not gods and than whom they themselves are better.

And certainly the same Varro, in the same book about the select gods, affirms that there are three grades of soul in the whole of universal nature: one which passes through all the parts of the body that live, and has no sense, but only the vigor for living;

this force, he says, permeates in our body into the bones, nails, and hair; just as in the world trees are nourished and grow without sense, and live in a manner of their own: the second grade of soul, in which there is sense; this force reaches into the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and touch: the third grade is the highest soul, which is called the mind (animus), in which intelligence is pre-eminent; of this all mortals are devoid except man.

This part of the soul of the world he calls God, but in us he calls it a genius. And he says that in the world the stones and the earth which we see, into which sense does not permeate, are as it were the bones and nails of God; but that the sun, moon, and stars, which we perceive and by which he himself perceives, are his senses; and that the ether is his mind; the force of which, reaching into the stars, makes these too gods; and through them, that which permeates into the earth is the goddess Tellus; but that which permeates from there into the sea and ocean is the god Neptune (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 276).

23. 2. Let him return, then, from this which he thinks the natural theology, into which he had gone out as if for the sake of resting, wearied by these windings and turnings; let him return, I say, let him return to the civil; here I still hold him, for so long I treat of this one.

I do not yet say that, if the earth and the stones are like our bones and nails, they similarly have no intelligence, just as they lack sense; or that, if our bones and nails are said to have intelligence on the ground that they are in a man who has intelligence, then he who calls these things in the world gods is as foolish as the fool who calls bones and nails in us men. But these matters are perhaps to be dealt with among the philosophers; now, however, I still want this man as a political theologian.

For it can happen that, although he seems to have wished to lift his head a little into that, as it were, freedom of the natural theology, yet, still turning over this book and thinking that he was engaged in it, he looked back from there to it too, and said this for this reason: lest his elders, or other cities, be believed to have worshiped Tellus and Neptune in vain.

But this I say: the part of the world's mind which permeates through the earth, since the earth is one, why did it not also make one goddess, whom he says to be Tellus (Varro, De ling. lat. 5, 62. 67; De re rust. 1, 1, 5)? And if it did so, where will Orcus be, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis? Where his consort Proserpina, who, according to another opinion set down in the same books, is held to be not the fruitfulness of the earth, but its lower part?

But if they say that the part of the world's mind, when it permeates the upper part of the earth, makes the god Father Dis; but when it permeates the lower part, the goddess Proserpina Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 257; see Hymn. hom. min. Gea mat.; Hesiod, Theog. 125-153; Lucretius, De rer. nat. 2, 599-668; see above, 4, 10.: what will that Tellus be?

For thus the whole that she was has been divided into these two parts and gods, so that one cannot find what she herself, as a third, is, or where she is; unless someone should say that those gods Orcus and Proserpina together are the one goddess Tellus, and that there are now not three, but either one or two;

and yet they are called three, are held to be three, are worshiped as three, with their own altars, their own shrines, rites, images, and priests, and through these also with their own deceitful demons, who debauch the prostituted soul.

Let it still be answered: what part of the earth does the part of the world's mind permeate, that it may make the god Tellumo? Not so, he says; but one and the same earth has a twofold force, both masculine, in that it produces seeds, and feminine, in that it receives and nourishes them; hence from the force of the female it was called Tellus, from that of the male Tellumo. Why, then, do the pontiffs—as he himself indicates—with two others also added, perform the divine rite to four gods, Tellus, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor? About Tellus and Tellumo it has already been said. Why Altor? Because, he says, all things that are born are nourished from the earth. Why Rusor? Because, he says, all things roll back again (rursus) to the same place.

24. 1. The one earth, then, on account of this fourfold force, ought to have had four surnames, not to have made four gods; just as one Jupiter has so many surnames and one Juno has so many surnames, in all of which a manifold force is said to pertain to one god or one goddess, the multitude of surnames not making also a multitude of gods.

But surely, just as sometimes even the basest women grow weary and repent of the crowds of those whom they have sought out in lust, so the soul, made base and prostituted to unclean spirits, sometimes also grew irked at multiplying gods for itself, by which, to be defiled, it was laid prostrate—as much as it sometimes pleased it, so much did it sometimes irk it. For Varro himself too, as if ashamed of the very crowd, wishes Tellus to be one goddess.

The same one, he says, they call the Great Mother; that she has a tambourine signifies that she is the orb of the earth; that she has towers on her head, the towns;

That they fling themselves about before her teaches, he says, that those who cultivate the earth ought not to sit still; for there is always something to be done. The sound of cymbals signifies the clatter of the iron tools to be wielded and of the hands and of that work which is done in cultivating the field; and that it is of bronze, because the ancients cultivated it with bronze, before iron had been discovered.

They join to her, he says, a lion, unbound and tame, to show that there is no kind of land so remote and exceedingly wild that it is not fitting it be subdued and cultivated (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 263). Then he adds and says that, because they called the mother Tellus by several names and surnames, she was reckoned to be several gods.

They think Tellus to be Ops, he says, because she is made better by work (opus); the Mother, because she bears very many things; the Great one, because she bears food; Proserpina, because the crops creep forth (proserpere) from her; Vesta, because she is clothed (vestiri) with herbs.

Thus, he says, they not absurdly bring other goddesses back to this one (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 241; see De ling. lat. 5, 64). If, then, she is one goddess—who indeed, when the truth is consulted, is not even that—why, in the meantime, is recourse had to many?

Let these many be the divinities of one—not so much many goddesses as names. But the authority of his erring elders presses him down and compels the same Varro, after this opinion, to waver.

For he adds and says: With these the opinion of our elders about these goddesses, that they thought them to be several, does not conflict. How does it not conflict, when it is a very different thing for one goddess to have many names, and for there to be many goddesses?

But it can happen, he says, that the same thing is both one and that in it there are several things (Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 241). I grant that in one man there are several things; are there therefore also several men?

So in one goddess there are several things; are there therefore also several goddesses? But let them, as they will, divide, combine, multiply, fold back, and entangle.

24. 2. These are the renowned mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, in which everything is referred to mortal seeds and the practice of agriculture. Do, then, the tambourine, the towers, the Galli, the insane flinging about of limbs, the clatter of cymbals, the fashioning of lions—referred to these things and having this as their end—promise anyone eternal life? Do the castrated Galli serve this Great goddess for this reason: to signify that those who lack seed ought to follow the earth—as though that very servitude did not rather make them lack seed?

For do they, by following this goddess, when they lack it, acquire seed, or do they rather, by following this goddess, when they have it, lose seed? Is this to interpret, or to detest? Nor is it considered how greatly the malign demons have prevailed, who, although they dared not promise anything great by these rites, were able to exact things so cruel.

If the earth were not a goddess, men would lay hands on it by working, that they might obtain seeds through it, not also by raging against themselves, that they might lose seeds on account of it;

if it were not a goddess, it would become fruitful by the hands of others in such a way that it would not compel a man to become barren by his own hands.

Now, that in the rites of Liber an honorable matron crowned the male private parts while a multitude looked on—where, blushing and sweating, if there is any shame in human beings, the husband too perhaps stood by; and that, in the celebration of weddings, the new bride was bidden to sit upon the shaft of Priapus (See above, 6, 9.3):

these are far more contemptible and trifling in comparison with this most cruel shamefulness, or most shameful cruelty, in which by demoniac rites both sexes are so mocked that neither is killed by its own wound.

There the bewitchment of the fields is feared; here the amputation of the limbs is not feared. There the modesty of the new bride is so dishonored that not even her fruitfulness, let alone her virginity, is taken away; here the virility is so amputated that the man is neither turned into a woman nor left a man.

25. And that Attis was not mentioned, nor was an interpretation of him sought by this man—in memory of the love of whom the Gallus is castrated.

But the learned and wise Greeks by no means kept silent about so holy and renowned an account. For on account of the springtime face of the earth, which is more beautiful than at other seasons, Porphyry, a noble philosopher, held that "Attis" signifies the flowers, and was castrated for this reason: because the flower falls before the fruit.

They compared, then, not the man himself, or as it were the man, who was called Attis, but his virile parts, to the flower (Porphyry, in Eusebius, Praep. evang. 3, 11, 12). For those parts fell while he was living; nay rather, they did not fall, nor were they plucked, but were plainly torn off;

and when that flower was lost, no fruit afterward followed, but rather barrenness. What, then, is signified, they say, by what remained of him, by whatever remained after the castration? To what is it referred? What interpretation is brought forth from it?

Do they, by laboring in vain at this and finding nothing, persuade us that we ought rather to believe what report has spread and what has been committed to writing about the castrated man? Rightly did our Varro turn away from this and was unwilling to say it; for it was not hidden from a most learned man.

26. Likewise, about the effeminates consecrated to this same Great Mother against all the modesty of men and women,

who, down to yesterday, with dripping hair, faces whitened with paint, flowing limbs, and a womanly gait, went through the streets and alleys of Carthage, exacting even from the shopkeepers the means by which they might live shamefully,

Varro was unwilling to say anything, nor do I recall having read it anywhere. The interpretation failed, the account blushed, the discourse fell silent.

The Great Mother surpassed all her sons, the gods, not by the greatness of her divinity, but by that of her crime. Not even the monstrosity of Janus is compared with this monster.

He had in his images mere deformity, she in her rites a deformed cruelty; he had limbs added in stone, she limbs lost in men.

This disgrace not even all the many and so great debaucheries of Jupiter himself surpass. He, amid female seductions, defamed heaven with one Ganymede alone; she, with so many professed and public effeminates, both defiled the earth and did injury to heaven.

Saturn perhaps we could, in this kind of most shameful cruelty, either compare or even prefer to her, who is held to have castrated his father; but in the rites of Saturn men could be killed by the hands of others rather than castrate themselves by their own.

He devoured his sons, as the poets relate, and the natural philosophers interpret from this what they will; but, as history records, he killed them; yet the Romans did not adopt the custom by which the Carthaginians sacrificed their sons to him. But this Great Mother of the gods brought even castrated men into Roman temples and preserved this savagery and custom, being believed to aid the strength of the Romans by the cutting off of the virility of men.

What are, beside this evil, the thefts of Mercury, the wantonness of Venus, the debaucheries and shameful deeds of the rest, which we might bring forth from the books, were they not daily sung and danced in the theaters?

But what are these beside so great an evil, whose magnitude befitted the Great Mother alone? Especially since those things are said by the poets to have been invented, as though the poets had also invented this: that they are pleasing and acceptable to the gods.

That they should be sung or written, then, let it be the audacity or wantonness of the poets; but that they should be added to divine matters and honors, with the very divinities commanding and extorting them—what is this but a crime of the gods, nay rather a confession of the demons and a deception of the wretched?

But that very thing, that the Mother of the gods deserved to be worshiped by the consecration of castrated men, the poets did not invent, but chose rather to shudder at than to sing.

Is anyone, then, to be consecrated to these select gods, that after death he may live blessedly, to whom, having been consecrated, he cannot before death live honorably, subjected to such foul superstitions and bound to unclean demons?

But all these things, he says, are referred to the world. Let him see whether they are not rather referred to the unclean. But what cannot be referred to the world, which is shown to be in the world?

But we seek a mind which, trusting in the true religion, does not adore the world as its god, but praises the world as the work of God for God's sake, and, cleansed from worldly filth, arrives clean at the God who founded the world.

27. 1. These select gods we see, indeed, to have become more clearly known than the rest, yet not so that their merits might be made illustrious, but so that their reproaches might not be hidden; whence it is the more credible that they were men, as not only the writings of the poets but also those of the historians have handed down.

For what Virgil says—First Saturn came from ethereal Olympus, fleeing the arms of Jupiter and an exile from his lost kingdom (Virgil, Aen. 8, 319f)—and what follows pertaining to this matter, the whole history of it Euhemerus lays open, which Ennius turned into Latin speech (Lactantius, Div. inst. 1, 11-13); whence, because those who wrote before us against errors of this kind, whether in Greek or in Latin, set down very many things, I did not see fit to dwell on it.

27. 2. When I consider the very physiologies by which learned and acute men try to turn these human matters into divine ones, I see nothing that could be brought back to anything but temporal and earthly works and a corporeal nature, or, even if invisible, yet a changeable one; which is in no way the true God.

But if this were at least done with significations befitting religiousness, it would indeed be a thing to be lamented that the true God was not announced and proclaimed by these things,

yet in some way to be borne, that such foul and shameful things were not done or commanded;

but as it is, since, in place of the true God, by whose indwelling alone the soul becomes happy See above, 6, 8; Augustine, De agone chr. 10; De anima et eius orig. 1, 4; 3, 3; 4, 2, 2; 12, 17-18; De quant. animae 3, 4; 15, 26; 32, 68; 33; De lib. arb. 3, 20; De civ. Dei 10, 31; 11, 10; Conf. 3, 6; 7, 9; De Gen. ad litt. 10, 4; In Io. ev. tr. 23; Ad Orosium 2; Epp. 18, 2; 140, 3, 7; 190, 1, 4; 202/A, 6ff.; Enarr. in ps. 121, 1; 140, 10., it is wicked to worship either body or soul, how much more wicked is it so to worship these things, that neither the salvation nor the dignity of the worshiper's human body or soul is obtained!

Therefore, if by temple, priest, and sacrifice—which is owed to the true God—some element of the world or some created spirit is worshiped, even one that is not unclean and evil, it is not evil because the things by which it is worshiped are evil, but because such things ought to be offered only to him to whom such worship and service is owed.

But if by the stupidity or monstrousness of idols, by sacrifices of murdered men, by the crowning of the male genitals, by payment for fornication, by the cutting of limbs, by the severing of the genitals, by the consecration of effeminate men, by the festivals of impure and obscene games, anyone should contend that he is worshiping the one true God, that is, the Creator of every soul and body,

he does not sin because the one he worships ought not to be worshiped, but because he worships one who ought to be worshiped in a way in which he ought not to be worshiped.

But he who worships both by such things—that is, base and wicked things—and worships not the true God, that is, the maker of soul and body, but a creature, however free of fault, whether that be soul or body or soul and body together, sins twice against God:

in that he worships in place of him something that is not himself, and worships by such things as he himself ought not to be worshiped by, nor anything that is not himself.

But the manner in which these men worshiped—that is, how basely and wickedly—is plain to see;

what, however, or whom they worshiped would be obscure, were it not that their own history bears witness that those very things which they confess to be foul and base were rendered to the divinities at their terrifying demand;

whence it stands established, with all evasions set aside, that wicked demons and most unclean spirits were invited by this whole civil theology to take up their abode in senseless images, and through these images to take possession of foolish hearts as well.

28. What good is it, then, that the most learned and acute man Varro tries, by what looks like a subtle argument, to reduce and refer all these gods to heaven and earth?

He cannot do it; they slip out of his hands, they spring back, they glide away and fall down. For when he is about to speak of the females, that is, the goddesses, he says: since, as I said in the first book about places, two principles of the gods have been observed, drawn from heaven and earth—from which the gods are called partly heavenly, partly earthly—just as in the earlier books we made our beginning from heaven when we spoke of Janus, whom some have said to be the heaven and others the world, so concerning the females we make the beginning of our writing from Tellus Varro, Antiq. (rer. div. 16), fr. 261 (preserved only in Augustine)..

I sense how great a difficulty such a great mind suffers. For he is led by a kind of verisimilar reasoning, namely that heaven is what acts and earth is what is acted upon,

and so he attributes the masculine power to the one and the feminine to the other, and does not consider that it is rather he who does these things, who made them both.

Hence in the earlier book he interprets in this way the famous mysteries of the Samothracians, and he promises, as though most religiously, that by writing he will set forth, and send to them, things that are not known even to their own initiates.

For he says that there, from many indications, he has gathered that in the images one thing signifies heaven, another earth, and another the patterns of things which Plato calls ideas; he would have heaven understood as Jupiter, earth as Juno, and the ideas as Minerva—heaven as that by which something comes to be, earth as that from which it comes to be, the pattern as that according to which it comes to be.

On this matter I forbear to mention that Plato says these ideas have such power that it is not according to them that heaven made anything, but rather that even heaven itself was made according to them See Plato, Republic 506c-511e; Parmenides 132d-135c; Timaeus 28b-29b..

This I do say: that in this book on the select gods he has lost that account of the three gods by which he had, as it were, embraced all things.

For he assigns the male gods to heaven and the females to earth; and among the females he placed Minerva, whom above he had set higher than heaven itself.

Then the male god Neptune is in the sea, which belongs to the earth rather than to heaven. Finally Dis Pater, who in Greek is called Πλούτων, though he too is male and the brother of both, is said to be an earthly god, holding the upper earth and having Proserpine as his wife in the lower. How, then, do they try to refer the gods to heaven and the goddesses to earth? What that is solid, what that is constant, what that is sober, what that is definite does this argument have?

But Tellus is the beginning of the goddesses, namely the Great Mother, in whose presence the insane vileness of effeminate and castrated men, gashing and throwing themselves about, raises its uproar. What is it, then, that is said—that Janus is the head of the gods and Tellus the head of the goddesses? Error does not make one head in the former case, nor does frenzy make a sound one in the latter.

Why do they strive in vain to refer these things to the world? Even if they could, no devout person worships the world in place of the true God; and yet the open truth proves that they cannot do even this. Let them rather refer these things to dead men and to the worst of demons, and no question will remain.

29. For all the things that are referred by them to the world, by what they call physical reasonings, out of the theology of these gods, might without any scruple of sacrilegious opinion be attributed rather to the true God, who made the world, the founder of every soul and every body. Let us observe this in the following way:

we worship God, not heaven and earth, the two parts of which this world consists; nor a soul or souls diffused through whatever living things, but God, who made heaven and earth and all that is in them; who made every soul, whether living in some way and lacking sense and reason, or also sentient, or also intelligent.

30. And to begin now to run through those works of the one and true God, on account of which these men, while trying as it were to give an honorable interpretation to their most base and most wicked rites, have made for themselves many false gods:

we worship that God who has established for the natures created by him the beginnings and ends of subsisting and of moving; who holds, knows, and orders the causes of things;

who founded the power of seeds; who gave the rational soul, which is called the mind, to whatever living beings he willed;

who bestowed the faculty and use of speech; who imparted the gift of foretelling the future to whatever spirits he pleased, and through whomever he pleases himself foretells the future, and through whomever he pleases drives away ill health;

who governs the beginnings, progress, and ends of wars themselves, when the human race must thus be corrected and chastened; who both created and rules the most violent and vehement fire of this world, in proportion to the temper of its immense nature;

who is the creator and governor of all waters; who made the sun, the brightest of corporeal lights, and gave it fitting power and motion; who does not withdraw his dominion and power even from the regions below; who supplies the seeds and nourishment of mortal creatures, whether dry or liquid, assigning them to their suitable natures; who establishes and makes the earth fruitful; who lavishes its fruits upon animals and human beings; who knows and orders not only the principal causes but also those that follow upon them; who fixed for the moon its own course; who provides the celestial and terrestrial pathways for changes of place; who granted to human minds, which he created, even the knowledge of various arts for the help of life and nature; who instituted the union of male and female as a help for the propagation of offspring; who, for human gatherings, indulged them with the gift of earthly fire for their readiest uses, which they might apply to hearths and lamps.

These are certainly the things which the most acute and learned man Varro labored to distribute among the select gods through I know not what physical interpretations—whether things he received from elsewhere or things he himself conjectured.

But all this the one true God does and performs, yet as God, that is, wholly everywhere, enclosed in no places,

bound by no chains, divisible into no parts, in no part changeable, filling heaven and earth with his present power, not with a needy nature.

And so he administers all the things he created in such a way that he also lets them put forth and carry out their own proper motions. For although they can be nothing without him, they are not what he is.

He does many things also through angels; but he does not make the angels blessed except from himself. So, although for certain causes he sends angels to human beings, he does not make human beings blessed from the angels, but from himself, just as he does the angels. From this one and true God we hope for eternal life.

31. For besides benefits of this kind, which he lavishes upon good and bad alike out of this administration of nature, of which we have said something, we have from him a great token of his great love, proper to the good.

For although for the fact that we are, that we live, that we behold heaven and earth, that we have mind and reason by which to seek out him who founded all these things, we can in no way render sufficient thanks: yet for this—that he did not utterly abandon us, who were burdened and overwhelmed with sins and turned away from the contemplation of his light and blinded by the love of darkness, that is, of iniquity—

and that he sent us his Word, who is his only Son, so that by his being born for us, having taken on flesh, and by his suffering, we might know how highly God valued man, and by that singular sacrifice might be cleansed from all our sins, and, with his Spirit pouring love into our hearts, might overcome all difficulties and come to eternal rest and the ineffable sweetness of contemplating him—what hearts, how many tongues, could claim to be enough to give him thanks?

32. This mystery of eternal life, from the very beginning of the human race, was proclaimed through angels by means of certain signs and sacraments suited to the times, as was fitting.

Then the Hebrew people was gathered into a single commonwealth, as it were, that might enact this sacrament, where, through some who knew and some who did not, it was foretold that what is being done from the coming of Christ until now and henceforth would come to pass; and afterward this same people was scattered among the nations for the sake of the testimony of the Scriptures, in which eternal salvation in Christ was foretold as to come.

For all things—not only the prophecies that are in words, nor only the precepts of life that form character and piety and are contained in those writings, but also the sacred rites, the priesthoods, the tabernacle or temple, the altars, the sacrifices, the ceremonies, the feast days, and whatever else pertains to that service which is owed to God and is in Greek properly called λατρεία—signified and foretold those things which, for the sake of the eternal life of the faithful in Christ, we believe to have been fulfilled, perceive to be in the course of fulfillment, and trust will be fulfilled.

33. Through this one and true religion, then, it could be made plain that the gods of the nations are most unclean demons, who, taking the occasions of departed souls or the appearance of worldly creatures, desire to be thought gods and rejoice with proud impurity in honors that are as it were divine but in fact wicked and base, and who begrudge to human souls their turning toward the true God. From their most monstrous and most impious domination man is set free when he believes in him who set before us, that we might rise up again, an example of as great a humility as that pride by which they fell.

To this class belong not only those of whom we have already said much, and others like them among the rest of the nations and lands, but also these of whom we are now treating, as though chosen into a senate of the gods;

but plainly chosen for the eminence of their crimes, not for the worth of their virtues.

While Varro tries to refer their rites, as it were, to natural reasonings, seeking to make base things honorable, he cannot find how they may fit and accord with these, since the real causes of those rites are not the ones he supposes, or rather wishes to be supposed.

For if not only these very causes, but any others whatever of this kind, were the case—although they would have nothing to do with the true God and eternal life,

which is what must be sought in religion—yet by some account or other rendered concerning the nature of things, they would somewhat soften the offense

which some seeming baseness or absurdity in the rites, when not understood, had caused;

as he tried to do in the case of certain plays of the theaters or mysteries of the shrines, where he did not absolve the theaters by likening them to the shrines, but rather condemned the shrines by likening them to the theaters;

yet he tried, in whatever way he could, that an account rendered, as it were, of natural causes might soothe the sense offended by horrible things.

34. But against this we find, as that most learned man himself has reported, that the causes of the sacred rites set down in the books of Numa Pompilius could in no way be tolerated, nor were they thought worthy either to be read and become known to the religious or even, once written, to be stored away in darkness.

Now I shall say what I had promised, in the third book of this work, that I would say in its proper place. For, as we read in the same Varro, in his book On the Worship of the Gods, a certain Terentius had a farm at the Janiculum, and when his plowman, driving the plow near the tomb of Numa Pompilius, had dug up out of the ground the books of Numa, in which were written the causes of the institution of the sacred rites, he carried them into the City to the praetor. But the praetor, when he had looked over the openings of them, brought so great a matter to the senate.

And there, when the leading men had read certain of the causes why each thing had been instituted in the sacred rites, the senate agreed with the dead Numa, and the conscript fathers, religious men as they were, decreed that the praetor should burn those books. See Varro, Logist. (Curio, or On the Worship of the Gods), fr. 42; Livy, Hist. 40.29; Plutarch, Numa 22; Valerius Maximus 1.1.12; Pliny, Nat. hist. 13.13.84-87.

Let each believe what he thinks; indeed, let any distinguished defender of so great an impiety say whatever frenzied contentiousness may prompt him to say. For me it is enough to point out that the causes of the sacred rites, written down by King Pompilius, the founder of the Roman rites, ought to have become known neither to the people nor to the senate nor even to the priests themselves, and that Numa Pompilius himself, by an illicit curiosity, arrived at those secrets of the demons which he indeed wrote down, that he might have something from which, by reading, he could be reminded;

yet, king though he was and one who feared no one at all, he did not dare either to teach anyone these things or to destroy them by erasing or in any way consuming them. Thus what he wished no one to know, lest he teach men wicked things, yet feared to violate, lest he have the demons angry,

he buried where he thought it safe, not believing that a plow could come near his tomb. But the senate, since it feared to condemn the religious observances of their forefathers and was therefore compelled to agree with Numa, nevertheless judged those books to be so pernicious that it did not order them to be buried again, lest human curiosity seek out far more eagerly a matter now brought to light,

but ordered the nefarious records to be done away with by flames, so that—since they now reckoned it necessary to perform those rites—

men might err more tolerably with the causes of those rites unknown than be thrown into confusion as a city with them known.

35. For Numa himself too, to whom no prophet of God and no holy angel was sent, was driven to practice hydromancy, so that in water he might see images of the gods, or rather the mockeries of demons, from whom he might hear what he ought to establish and observe in the sacred rites. This kind of divination the same Varro says was brought from the Persians, and he records that both Numa himself and afterward the philosopher Pythagoras made use of it; and he reports that, with blood applied, the dead in the lower world are also questioned, and he says it is called in Greek νεκυομαντεία See Varro, Logist. (Curio, or On the Worship of the Gods), fr. 43.,

which—whether it be called hydromancy or necromancy—is the very same thing, where the dead seem to divine.

By what arts these things are done, let those who practice them see to it. For I do not wish to say that these arts were wont, even before the coming of our Savior, to be forbidden in the very cities of the nations by their laws and to be punished with the severest penalty.

I do not wish, I say, to say this; for perhaps such things were then permitted.

Yet it was by these arts that Pompilius learned those sacred rites,

whose performance he made known but whose causes he buried—so much did even he fear what he had learned—and the books that betrayed those causes the senate burned.

Why, then, does Varro interpret for me certain other, I know not what, supposedly natural causes of those rites?

For if those books had contained such things, they would certainly not have been burned; or else the conscript fathers would likewise have burned these books of Varro, written and published to Caesar the pontiff.

Now because Numa Pompilius drew off water, that is, carried it away, from which he might perform hydromancy, he is therefore said to have had the nymph Egeria as his wife, as is set forth in the book of Varro mentioned above (Ibid). For thus are deeds wont to be turned into fables by a sprinkling of falsehoods. In that hydromancy, then, that most curious Roman king learned both the sacred rites, which the pontiffs were to keep in their books, and their causes, which he wished no one but himself to know.

And so he made those causes, written down separately, die in a manner with him, when he took care that they should thus be withdrawn from men's knowledge and buried. Either, therefore, the foul and harmful desires of the demons were there written down, so that from them the whole of that civil theology might appear execrable even to such men as had taken up so many shameful things in those very rites; or else all those whom, by so long an antiquity of time, nearly all the peoples of the nations had believed to be immortal gods were betrayed as nothing other than dead men, while those same demons took delight in such rites—demons who, by certain attestations of deceitful miracles, were substituting themselves to be worshiped in place of the dead men whom they had caused to be thought gods.

But by the hidden providence of the true God it came about that, having been won over to Pompilius his friend by those arts whereby hydromancy could be performed, they were permitted to confess all those things, and yet—that he might, being about to die, burn rather than bury them—they were not permitted to advise him; while, that they might not become known,

they could neither resist the plow by which they were dug up, nor the pen of Varro, by which the things that were done concerning this matter have come down to our remembrance.

For they cannot do what they are not permitted to accomplish; and they are permitted, by the deep and just judgment of the most high God, according to the deserts of those whom it is just that they should either merely afflict, or even subject and deceive.

But how pernicious those writings were judged to be, or how alien to the worship of the true divinity, can be understood from this: that the senate preferred to burn what Pompilius had hidden rather than to fear what he had feared, who could not dare to do this.

He, therefore, who does not wish to have even now a godly life, let him seek the eternal one by such rites; but he who does not wish to have fellowship with the malignant demons, let him not dread the harmful superstition by which they are worshiped, but acknowledge the true religion by which they are exposed and overcome.

1. Now we have need of a far more attentive mind than was required in the solution of the foregoing questions and in the unfolding of the earlier books.

For concerning the theology that they call natural, we must hold our discussion not with any sort of men whatever—for it is not the fabulous or the civil theology, that is, neither the theatrical nor the urban, of which the one parades the crimes of the gods, the other discloses the still more criminal desires of the gods, and on this account those of malignant demons rather than of gods—

but the discussion is to be held with the philosophers, whose very name, if we interpret it in Latin, professes the love of wisdom.

Now if wisdom is God, through whom all things were made, as divine authority and truth have shown, then the true philosopher is a lover of God. But since the reality itself, of which this is the name, is not present in all who glory in this name—for not all who are called philosophers are forthwith lovers of true wisdom—surely from among all those whose opinions we have been able to know through their writings, we must choose those with whom this question may be treated not unworthily.

For in this work I have not undertaken to refute all the empty opinions of all the philosophers, but only those that pertain to theology—by which Greek word we understand to be signified an account or discourse concerning the divinity;

nor those of all who hold it, but only of those who, while they agree that the divinity both exists and cares for human affairs, nevertheless think that the worship of the one unchangeable God does not suffice for attaining a life blessed even after death,

but suppose that many gods, created and established by that one God, are for that reason to be worshiped.

These already surpass even the opinion of Varro by their nearness to the truth; for he was able to extend the whole of natural theology only as far as this world or its soul, whereas these confess, above every nature of the soul, a God who not only made this visible world, which is often called by the name of heaven and earth, but also made every soul whatsoever, and who makes blessed, by participation in his own unchangeable and incorporeal light, the rational and intellectual soul, of which kind is the human soul. That these philosophers were called Platonists, the word being derived from Plato their teacher, no one who has heard of these matters even slightly is ignorant. Concerning this Plato, then, I shall briefly touch on what I judge necessary to the present question, mentioning first those who preceded him in the same kind of letters in time.

2. For as far as concerns Greek letters, whose language is held to be more illustrious than that of the other nations See L. Crassus, in Cicero, De orat. 3.24.93-95; De nat. deorum 1.4.8., two kinds of philosophers are handed down:

the one Italic, from that part of Italy which was once called Magna Graecia; the other Ionic, in those lands which even now are called Greece. The Italic kind had as its founder Pythagoras of Samos, by whom they say the very name "philosophy" arose.

For whereas before, those who seemed to excel others by some manner of praiseworthy life were called "sages" See Plato, Protagoras 343a., he, when asked what he professed, answered that he was a philosopher, that is, a student or lover of wisdom; for to profess oneself a sage seemed most arrogant See Cicero, Tuscul. 5.3.8-9..

The first of the Ionic kind, however, was Thales of Miletus, one of those seven who were called the Sages. But those six were distinguished by their manner of life and by certain precepts suited to living well;

this Thales, however, that he might also propagate successors, examined the nature of things, and committing his disputations to writing, became eminent and most admirable above all because, having grasped the calculations of astronomy, he was able even to predict eclipses of the sun and moon.

Yet he thought that water was the first principle of things, and that from it all the elements of the world, and the world itself, and the things begotten in it, came into being. But he set nothing from the divine mind over this work, which we behold as so wonderful when we consider the world.

To him succeeded Anaximander, his hearer, and he changed his opinion concerning the nature of things. For he thought that things are born not from one thing, as Thales held from moisture, but each from its own proper principles.

These principles of individual things he believed to be infinite, and to beget innumerable worlds and whatever arises in them;

and these worlds he reckoned to be now dissolved, now begotten again, according to the length of time each was able to endure; nor did he himself attribute anything to the divine mind in these works of things.

He left as his disciple and successor Anaximenes, who assigned all the causes of things to infinite air, and neither denied nor passed over the gods in silence; yet he believed that the air was not made by them, but that they themselves arose from the air.

Anaxagoras, however, his hearer, perceived and said that a divine mind was the maker of all these things that we see, out of infinite matter, which consisted of particles, like one another, of all things; and that the individual things were made of their own proper particles, but with a divine mind doing the making.

Diogenes too, another hearer of Anaximenes, said that air was indeed the matter of things, out of which all things were made, but that it was endowed with a divine reason, without which nothing could be made from it. To Anaxagoras succeeded his hearer Archelaus.

He too thought that all things were composed of particles like one another, of which each several thing was made, in such a way that he said there was also present in them a mind which, by joining and separating the eternal bodies—that is, those particles—did all things.

Socrates is said to have been his disciple, the teacher of Plato, on whose account I have briefly reviewed all these things.

3. Socrates, then, is recorded to have been the first to turn the whole of philosophy toward the correcting and ordering of morals, whereas before him all had bestowed their greatest effort on the investigation of physical, that is, natural, things.

It does not seem to me, however, that it can be gathered with clarity whether Socrates did this because, weary of obscure and uncertain matters, he bent his mind to discovering something open and certain that was necessary for the blessed life—for the sake of which alone the industry of all the philosophers seems to have kept watch and labored—or whether, as some more kindly suspect of him, he was unwilling that minds unclean with earthly desires should strain to reach out toward divine things.

For he saw that the causes of things were sought by them which he believed to be first and highest only in the will of the one and highest God;

whence he thought that they could not be grasped except by a purified mind;

and therefore he judged that one must press on to purify one's life by good morals, so that the mind, unburdened of the desires that weigh it down, might raise itself by its natural vigor to eternal things and might behold, by the purity of its understanding, the nature of the incorporeal and unchangeable light, where the causes of all created natures abidingly live See Plato, Phaedo 65a-e, 82d-84b; Phaedrus 246e-254b; Symposium 210a-211c; Republic bks. 4, 8, 9; Augustine, De vera rel. 3.3..

It is agreed, nonetheless, that he assailed and tossed about the folly of the unlearned, who supposed they knew something even in those very moral questions to which he seemed to have bent his whole mind, whether by confessing his own ignorance or by concealing his knowledge, with a wonderful charm of discourse and the keenest urbanity See the dialogues Euthyphro, Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Theaetetus..

Whence, with enmities stirred up, he was condemned by a slanderous accusation and punished with death See Plato, Apology, Crito, Phaedo.. But afterward the city of the Athenians publicly mourned that very thing which it had publicly condemned, the people's indignation turning against his two accusers so far that one of them perished, overwhelmed by the violence of the multitude, while the other escaped a like penalty by voluntary and perpetual exile (See Diogenes Laertius 2.43).

With so illustrious a fame, then, of life and death, Socrates left very many followers of his philosophy, whose eager endeavor it was to busy themselves in the discussion of moral questions, where it is debated what the highest good is, by which a man can be made blessed.

And because in the disputations of Socrates—where, while he moves all things, he asserts and demolishes—this did not plainly appear, each took from there what pleased him, and where it seemed good to each, there he set up the end of good. Now the "end of good" is so called as that to which, when one has come, he is blessed.

But the Socratics held opinions about this end so diverse among themselves that—what is scarcely credible that the followers of one master could have done—some said the highest good was pleasure, as Aristippus did; others virtue, as Antisthenes did (See Aristippus, in Diogenes Laertius 2.86-88; Antisthenes, in ibid., 6.10-13). So one after another held one opinion after another, whom it would be long to recount.

4. But among the disciples of Socrates, not without merit, Plato shone with a glory so surpassing that it altogether eclipsed the rest.

Although he was an Athenian, born among his own people in an honorable station, and far outstripped his fellow disciples by his wonderful talent, yet, thinking himself and the Socratic teaching too little to suffice for perfecting philosophy, he traveled far and wide, wherever the fame of acquiring some renowned knowledge carried him off.

And so in Egypt he learned whatever was there held great and taught See Diogenes Laertius 3.6; Plato, Laws 656c-657b, 819b; Epinomis 987a; Timaeus 21e-25d., and coming thence into those parts of Italy where the fame of the Pythagoreans was celebrated, he very easily grasped whatever of Italic philosophy then flourished, having heard the more eminent teachers in it (See Diogenes Laertius 3.6, 9, 21). And because he singularly loved his master Socrates, making him the speaker in almost all his discourses, he tempered with that man's charm and moral disputations even those things which he had either learned from others or himself seen with whatever understanding he could.

And so, since the pursuit of wisdom is engaged in action and in contemplation, whence one part of it may be called active and the other contemplative—of which the active pertains to the conduct of life, that is, to the establishing of morals, while the contemplative pertains to the beholding of the causes of nature and of the purest truth—

Socrates is recorded to have excelled in the active, while Pythagoras applied himself rather to the contemplative, with such powers of understanding as he could Cicero, Tuscul. 5.4.10.. Plato, accordingly, is praised for having perfected philosophy by joining the two, which he distributed into three parts: one moral, which is engaged chiefly in action; another natural, which is assigned to contemplation; the third rational, by which the true is marked off from the false See the Stoics, in Aetius 1, pref. 2; Diogenes Laertius 7.40; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. 7.17, 40; see also Cicero, Varro (Ac. post.) 1.5.19; Apuleius, De dogm. Plat. 1.3..

Although this rational part is necessary to both, that is, to action and to contemplation, yet it is contemplation most of all that claims for itself the perception of truth. Therefore this threefold division is not contrary to that distinction by which we understand that the whole pursuit of wisdom consists in action and contemplation.

But what Plato thought in these or about each of these parts—that is, where he knew or believed the end of all actions to be, where the cause of all natures, where the light of all reasonings—I judge it both long to explain by discoursing, and not a thing I judge should be rashly affirmed. For since he is bent on keeping the well-known manner of his master Socrates, whom he makes the disputant in his volumes, of dissembling his own knowledge or opinion—because that manner pleased Socrates himself—it has come about that even Plato's own views on great matters cannot easily be discerned.

Nevertheless, of those things which are read in him—whether what he himself said, or what he reported and recorded to have been said by others—such as seemed to be his own views ought to be mentioned by us and inserted into this work, both where he supports the true religion, which our faith embraces and defends, and where he seems to be contrary to it, so far as concerns this question about one God and many gods, on account of the life that is to be after death and truly blessed.

For perhaps those who are praised, with a more celebrated fame, for having more keenly and truly understood and followed Plato—far and rightly set before the other philosophers of the nations—hold some such view of God as that in him is found both the cause of subsisting, and the account of understanding, and the order of living;

of which three, the one is understood to pertain to the natural part, the second to the rational, the third to the moral. For if man was so created that through that which excels in him he may attain to that which excels all things—

that is, the one true and best God, without whom no nature subsists, no teaching instructs, no exercise profits—let him be sought, in whom all things are bound together for us; let him be discerned, in whom all things are certain for us; let him be loved, in whom all things are right for us.

5. If, then, Plato said that the wise man is one who imitates, knows, and loves this God, by participation in whom he is blessed, what need is there to examine the rest?

None have come nearer to us than these. Let there yield to them, therefore, not only that fabulous theology that delights the minds of the impious with the crimes of the gods, nor even only that civil theology, where unclean demons, seducing under the name of gods the peoples given over to earthly joys, wished to have human errors as their own divine honors,

stirring up their worshipers, by most unclean enthusiasms, to watch the plays of their own crimes as though to their worship, and exhibiting to themselves more delightful plays out of the very spectators

(where, if anything as it were honorable is done in the temples, it is befouled by the obscenity of the theaters joined to it, and whatever base things are done in the theaters are praised by comparison with the foulness of the temples joined to them),

and those things which Varro interpreted out of these rites as referring, as it were, to heaven and earth and the seeds and acts of mortal things The interpretation contained in Varro, Antiq. (rer. div.) 16; see also the preceding book. (since not even these things which he tries to insinuate are signified by those rites, and therefore the truth does not follow him in his attempt; and even if they were so signified, yet to the rational soul those things which are set in an order of nature below it ought not to be worshiped as its God, nor ought it to set before itself, as gods, those things to which the true God preferred it),

and those things which Numa Pompilius, since they pertained in very truth to rites of this kind, took care to conceal by burying them with himself, and which, dug up by the plow, the senate ordered to be burned See Varro, Logist. (Curio, or On the Worship of the Gods), frr. 42-43; see above, 7.34-35.. (Of that kind too are those things—that we may suspect something milder of Numa—

which Alexander of Macedon writes to his mother were disclosed to him by a certain Leo, a great high priest of the Egyptian rites See Cyprian, De idolor. vanitate 4; see also below, 27.,

where not Picus and Faunus and Aeneas and Romulus, or even Hercules and Aesculapius and Liber the son of Semele and the Tyndarid brothers and any others whom they hold as gods drawn from mortals, but even the gods of the greater nations themselves, whom Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations seems to touch upon with their names left unspoken See Cicero, Tuscul. 1.13.29.,

Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, Vulcan, Vesta, and very many others, whom Varro tries to transfer to the parts of the world or to the elements, are betrayed to have been men. For that priest too, fearing, and as it were begging that the mysteries he had revealed be kept secret, warns Alexander that, when he has disclosed them in writing to his mother, he should order them to be burned with flames.)

Not only, then, let these things which the two theologies, the fabulous and the civil, contain yield to the Platonist philosophers, who said that the true God is both the author of things, and the illuminator of truth, and the bestower of blessedness;

but also let those other philosophers, who supposed, with minds given over to the body, that the principles of nature were corporeal, yield to these so great men, knowers of so great a God—

such as Thales, who placed it in moisture, Anaximenes in air, the Stoics in fire, Epicurus in atoms, that is, in the most minute little bodies which can neither be divided nor perceived, and whatever others there are, on the enumeration of whom there is no need to linger, who said that bodies—whether simple or compound, whether lacking life or living, but bodies nonetheless—are the cause and principle of things.

For some of them believed that living things could be made from things not living, as the Epicureans did; others, indeed, that both living and nonliving things came from something living, but bodies nonetheless from body See Thales, in Diels 11, fr. 3; Anaximenes, in Diels 13, fr. 3; the Stoics, in Cicero, De nat. deorum 2.9.24-25; Diogenes Laertius 7.156; Epicurus, Ep. ad Herod. 41-45; Lucretius, De rer. nat. 5.419-431.. For the Stoics thought that fire, that is, one body out of these four elements of which this visible world consists, was both living and wise and the fabricator of the world itself and of all things that are in it, and that this fire was altogether God.

These men and the rest like them were able to think only of that which their hearts, bound up with the senses of the flesh, fashioned for them.

For they had within themselves what they did not see, and they imagined within themselves what they had seen outside, even when they were not seeing it but only thinking of it See Aetius, Plac. 4.11-12; Diogenes Laertius 7.42, 46, 54; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. 8.10-11; Cicero, Varro (Ac. post.) 1.40-41..

But this, in the sight of such thinking, is now not a body but the likeness of a body; while that by which this likeness of a body is seen in the mind is neither a body nor the likeness of a body;

and that by which it is seen, and by which it is judged whether it is beautiful or deformed, is surely better than the thing that is judged. This is the mind of man and the nature of the rational soul, which assuredly is not a body, if that very likeness of a body, when it is beheld and judged in the mind of one thinking, is itself not a body. It is, then, neither earth nor water, neither air nor fire, of which four bodies, called the four elements, we see the corporeal world to be compacted. And further, if our mind is not a body, how is God, the creator of the mind, a body?

Let these too, then, as has been said, yield to the Platonists; and let those also yield who were ashamed to say that God is a body, but yet thought that our souls were of the same nature as he is; thus they were not moved by the great mutability of the soul, which it is impious to attribute to the nature of God.

But they say: the nature of the soul is changed by the body, for in itself it is unchangeable. These men might as well say: the flesh is wounded by some body, for in itself it is invulnerable.

In short, what cannot be changed can be changed by nothing; and therefore what can be changed by a body can be changed by something, and so cannot rightly be called unchangeable.

6. These philosophers, then, whom we see set before the rest, not undeservedly, in fame and glory, saw that no body is God, and therefore they transcended all bodies in seeking God.

They saw that whatever is changeable is not the highest God, and therefore they transcended every soul and all changeable spirits in seeking the highest God See Plato, Timaeus 28b-29a; Plutarch, De def. orac. 29.426a; Plotinus, Enn. 1.6.7.. Then they saw that every form in any changeable thing whatever, by which it is whatever it is, in whatever manner and of whatever sort its nature is, can be only from him who truly is, because he is unchangeably.

And accordingly, whether it be the body of the whole world, its figures, qualities, and ordered motion, and the elements arranged from heaven down to earth and whatever bodies are in them, or every form of life—whether that which nourishes and sustains, such as is in trees, or that which has this and also feels, such as is in beasts,

or that which has these and also understands, such as is in men, or that which needs no nourishing support but only sustains, feels, and understands, such as is in angels—none of these can be except from him who simply is;

because for him it is not one thing to be and another to live, as though he could be without living; nor for him is it one thing to live and another to understand, as though he could live without understanding; nor for him is it one thing to understand and another to be blessed, as though he could understand without being blessed; but what it is for him to live, to understand, to be blessed, this it is for him to be.

On account of this unchangeableness and simplicity they understood both that he made all these things, and that he himself could be made by none. For they considered that whatever is, is either a body or a life, and that a life is something better than a body, and that the form of a body is sensible, that of a life intelligible. Accordingly they preferred the intelligible form to the sensible.

We call "sensible" those things that can be perceived by the sight and touch of the body; "intelligible" those that can be understood by the gaze of the mind.

For there is no corporeal beauty, whether in the state of a body, such as a figure, or in motion, such as a melody, about which the mind does not judge.

And this it surely could not do unless this form were better in it, without the bulk of mass, without the noise of a voice, without the extent of place or of time.

But there too, unless it were changeable, one would not judge better than another concerning the sensible form;

the more talented better than the duller, the more skilled better than the unskilled, the more practiced better than the less practiced,

and the same one person, as he advances, judges better afterward than before. But what admits of more and less is without doubt changeable.

Whence talented and learned men, practiced in these matters, easily gathered that the first form is not in those things in which it is shown to be changeable See Plato, Timaeus 27e-28a; Parmenides 130a-131e; Plotinus, Enn. 2.4.8; 3.6.11-12..

Since, therefore, in their view both body and soul were more and less beautiful, and yet, if they could be wholly without form, they would be nothing at all,

they saw that there is something in which the first form is unchangeable and therefore not comparable;

and there, most rightly, they believed to be the principle of things, which was not made and from which all things were made.

Thus what can be known about God he himself showed to them, ever since the creation of the world, when his invisible nature was clearly perceived in the things that have been made; his eternal power and deity also (Rom 1:19-20); by whom too all visible and temporal things were created.

Let this be said concerning that part which they call physical, that is, natural.

7. As for what pertains to doctrine, in which the second part is engaged, which is called by them logical, that is, rational: far be it that there should seem to be comparable to these men those who placed the judgment of truth in the senses of the body and thought that all things which are learned must be measured by their unreliable and deceptive rules,

such as the Epicureans and whatever others of the kind See Epicurus, Princ. Doctr. 23, in Diogenes Laertius 10.31-32; the Cynics, in Plato, Sophist 251b-c; Aristotle, Metaphysics 1043b.23-28., and even the Stoics themselves, who, although they vehemently loved the skill of disputing which they call dialectic, thought that it must be drawn from the senses of the body,

asserting from this that the mind conceives the notions which they call ἔννοιαι, namely of those things which they unfold by defining; and that from this the whole method of learning and teaching is propagated and connected See Diogenes Laertius 7.42, 51, 54; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. 7.253-257; Aetius, Plac. 4.11.. Here I am wont to wonder greatly: since they say that none are beautiful but the wise, with what senses of the body they saw this beauty, with what eyes of the flesh they beheld the form and grace of wisdom.

But these men, whom we deservedly set before the rest, distinguished the things that are beheld by the mind from those that are reached by the senses, neither taking from the senses what they can do, nor granting them beyond what they can do. And they said that the light of minds for learning all things is that same God himself by whom all things were made See Plato, Republic 509d-511e, 532a-535a; Plotinus, Enn. 5.8.12..

8. There remains the moral part, which by the Greek word they call ethics, where the inquiry concerns the highest good, to which we refer all that we do, and which we seek not for the sake of anything else but for its own sake, and which, having attained, we seek nothing further whereby to be blessed. Indeed it is called the end for this reason: that for its sake we will the rest, but it itself only for its own sake.

This beatific good, then, some said belongs to man from the body, some from the mind, some from both From the body: Aristippus, in Diogenes Laertius 2.88; Epicurus, Ep. ad Men. 127-32; Princ. Doctr. 5-6; from the soul: Plato, e.g., Symposium 207a; Gorgias 499e; Republic 532a-535a; Aristotle, e.g., Ethics 1097a15-1098a18; Plotinus, Enn. 1.4.2; 3.6.2; from both: the Stoics, e.g., in Diogenes Laertius 7.85-89, in Cicero, Tuscul. 4.17.37-38..

For they saw that man himself consists of soul and body, and therefore they believed that it could be well with him from one or the other of these two, or from both, by a certain final good whereby they might be blessed, to which they might refer all that they did, and beyond which they should not seek that to which it was to be referred.

Whence those who are said to have added a third kind of goods, which is called external—such as honor, glory, money, and anything of the kind—did not add it so as to be final, that is, to be sought for its own sake, but for the sake of something else; and they held this kind to be good for the good, but evil for the evil See Plato, Republic 580d-583b; the Stoics, in Diogenes Laertius 7.105-106; Epicurus, Princ. Doctr. 7, 10; Cicero, De off. 1.8.25-26; 2.9.31-32..

Thus those who sought the good of man either from the soul or from the body or from both thought it must be sought from nothing other than man; but those who sought it from the body, from the worse part of man; those who sought it from the soul, from the better part; and those who sought it from both, from the whole man.

Whether, then, from any part whatever, or from the whole, it is from nothing other than man. Nor did these differences, because they are three, make only three, but many disagreements and sects of philosophers, because concerning the good of the body, and the good of the soul, and the good of both, different men held different opinions.

Let them all, therefore, yield to those philosophers who said that a man is blessed not in enjoying the body, nor in enjoying the soul, but in enjoying God;

not as the soul enjoys the body or itself, nor as friend enjoys friend, but as the eye enjoys the light—if anything of likeness is to be brought from these to those—what sort of likeness this is will appear, if God himself help, in another place, so far as we can manage it.

For now let it suffice to mention that Plato determined the end of good to be to live according to virtue, and that this can come about only for one who has the knowledge and imitation of God, and that there is no other cause of being blessed;

and therefore he does not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it is surely gathered that the student of wisdom—for that is what a philosopher is—will then be blessed when he has begun to enjoy God.

For although one who enjoys what he loves is not forthwith blessed—for many, by loving things that ought not to be loved, are wretched, and more wretched when they enjoy them—yet no one is blessed who does not enjoy what he loves.

For even those who love things that ought not to be loved think themselves blessed not by loving but by enjoying.

Whoever, then, enjoys what he loves, and loves the true and highest good, who but the most wretched would deny that he is blessed?

But the true and highest good itself Plato says is God, whence he would have the philosopher be a lover of God, so that, since philosophy tends toward the blessed life, he who has loved God may be blessed in enjoying God.

9. Whatever philosophers, therefore, have held these views concerning the highest and true God—that he is both the maker of created things, and the light of things to be known, and the good of things to be done;

that from him we have both the principle of nature, and the truth of doctrine, and the felicity of life—

whether they are more fittingly called Platonists, or impose any other name on their sect;

whether only those of the Ionic kind who were preeminent among them held these views, as did Plato himself and those who well understood him;

or also those of the Italic kind, on account of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans and any others perchance of the same opinion from there;

or whether also of other nations there are found any who were held to be sages or philosophers—Atlantic Libyans, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, Spaniards—who saw and taught this: all these we set before the rest, and we confess them to be nearer to us.

10.1. For although a Christian man, instructed in the ecclesiastical writings only, may perhaps be ignorant of the name of the Platonists, and may not know whether two kinds of philosophers existed in the Greek tongue, the Ionic and the Italic,

he is nevertheless not so deaf in human affairs as not to know that philosophers profess either the pursuit of wisdom or wisdom itself.

Yet he is on guard against those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by whom the world itself was made.

For he is admonished by the apostolic precept and faithfully hears what was said: see to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to the elements of the world (Col 2:8).

Then, lest he think that all are such, he hears the same Apostle say of certain men:

for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made, his eternal power and deity (Rom 1:19-20);

and where, speaking to the Athenians, after he had said a great thing about God, one that can be understood by few—that in him we live and move and have our being—he added and said: as even some of your poets have said (Acts 17:28).

He knows well, indeed, to be on guard against them too in the matters in which they err; for where it was said that through the things that have been made God showed them his invisible attributes to be beheld by the understanding,

there too it was said that they did not rightly worship God himself, because they paid to other things, to which they ought not, the divine honors owed to him alone: for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles (Rom 1:21-23);

where he gave us to understand both the Romans and the Greeks and the Egyptians, who gloried in the name of wisdom. But about this we shall dispute with them by and by. As for that in which they agree with us concerning the one God, the author of this universe, who is not only incorporeal above all bodies, but also incorruptible above all souls, our principle, our light, our good, in this we set them before the rest.

10.2. And if a Christian, ignorant of their writings, does not use in disputation the words he has not learned—calling either "natural" in Latin or "physical" in Greek that part in which the investigation of nature is treated, and "rational" or "logical" that in which it is asked in what way truth can be perceived, and "moral" or "ethical" that in which morals are dealt with, and the ends of good things to be sought and of evil things to be shunned—

he is not therefore ignorant that from the one true and best God we have both the nature by which we were made in his image, and the doctrine by which we know him and ourselves, and the grace by which, in cleaving to him, we are blessed.

This, then, is the reason why we prefer these men to the rest: that, whereas other philosophers wore out their talents and labors in seeking the causes of things, and what might be the method of learning and of living, these, having come to know God, found where there is both the cause of the established universe, and the light by which truth is perceived, and the fountain from which felicity is to be drunk.

Whether, then, these Platonists, or any other philosophers of whatever nations, hold these views concerning God, they hold them with us. But it has pleased us to treat this matter rather with the Platonists, because their writings are better known. For both the Greeks, whose language is preeminent among the nations, celebrated them with great praise, and the Latins, moved by either their excellence or their glory, learned them the more gladly and, by translating them into our own speech, made them nobler and more illustrious.

11. But some who are associated with us in the grace of Christ wonder, when they hear or read that Plato held these views about God, which they recognize to agree greatly with the truth of our religion. Whence some have thought that, when he went on to Egypt, he heard the prophet Jeremiah or read the prophetic Scriptures in that same journey Aristobulus, in Eusebius of Caesarea, Praep. evang. 7.14; 11.6; Justin, Apol. 59.1-2; 60.1-2; Lactantius, Div. inst. 4.2; Theodoret, Graec. aff. cur. 2.32.; and this opinion indeed I set down in certain of my books Augustine, De doctr. Christ. 2.28.43; Retract. 2.4.2.. But the reckoning of times, diligently computed, which is contained in chronological history, shows that Plato was born nearly a hundred years after the time when Jeremiah prophesied; and since Plato lived eighty-one years, from the year of his death down to that time when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, requested from Judea the prophetic Scriptures of the Hebrew nation and saw to their being translated and kept by seventy Hebrew men who also knew the Greek tongue, there are found nearly sixty years. Wherefore in that journey of his Plato could neither see Jeremiah, who had died so long before, nor read those Scriptures, which had not yet been translated into the Greek tongue in which he was strong;