chap 1 of the limits which must be put to the necessity of replying to an adversary if the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence of truth but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines as to a health giving medicine until it obtained from god by its faith and piety the grace needed to heal it they who have just ideas and express them in suitable language would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture but this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and hurtful than ever to such an extent that even after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable fancies either on account of their great blindness which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them or on account of their opinionative obstinacy which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see there therefore frequently arises a necessity of speaking more fully on those points which are already clear that we may as it were present them not to the eye but even to the touch so that they may be felt even by those who close their eyes against them and yet to what end shall we ever bring our discussions or what bounds can be set to our discourse if we proceed on the principle that we must always reply to those who reply to us for those who are either unable to understand our arguments or are so hardened by the habit of contradiction that though they understand they cannot yield to them reply to us and as it is written speak hard things 1 and are incorrigibly vain now if we were to propose to confute their objections as often as they with brazen face chose to disregard our arguments and so often as they could by any means contradict our statements you see how endless and fruitless and painful a task we should be undertaking and therefore i do not wish my writings to be judged even by you my son marcellinus nor by any of those others at whose service this work of mine is freely and in all christian charity put if at least you intend always to require a reply to every exception which you hear taken to what you read in it for so you would become like those silly women of whom the apostle says that they are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth 2 chap 2 recapitulation of the contents of the first book in the foregoing book having begun to speak of the city of god to which i have resolved heaven helping me to consecrate the whole of this work it was my first endeavor to reply to those who attribute the wars by which the world is being devastated and especially the recent sack of rome by the barbarians to the religion of christ which prohibits the offering of abominable sacrifices to devils i have shown that they ought rather to attribute it to christ that for his names sake the barbarians in contravention of all custom and law of war threw open as sanctuaries the largest churches and in many instances showed such reverence to christ that not only his genuine servants but even those who in their terror feigned themselves to be so were exempted from all those hardships which by the custom of war may lawfully be inflicted then out of this there arose the question why wicked and ungrateful men were permitted to share in these benefits and why too the hardships and calamities of war were inflicted on the godly as well as on the ungodly and in giving a suitably full answer to this large question i occupied some considerable space partly that i might relieve the anxieties which disturb many when they observe that the blessings of god and the common and daily human casualties fall to the lot of bad men and good without distinction but mainly that i might minister some consolation to those holy and chaste women who were outraged by the enemy in such a way as to shock their modesty though not to sully their purity and that i might preserve them from being ashamed of life though they have no guilt to be ashamed of and then i briefly spoke against those who with a most shameless wantonness insult over those poor christians who were subjected to those calamities and especially over those broken hearted and humiliated though chaste and holy women these fellows themselves being most depraved and unmanly profligates quite degenerate from the genuine romans whose famous deeds are abundantly recorded in history and everywhere celebrated but who have found in their descendants the greatest enemies of their glory in truth rome which was founded and increased by the labors of these ancient heroes was more shamefully ruined by their descendants while its walls were still standing than it is now by the razing of them for in this ruin there fell stones and timbers but in the ruin those profligates effected there fell not the mural but the moral bulwarks and ornaments of the city and their hearts burned with passions more destructive than the flames which consumed their houses thus i brought my first book to a close and now i go on to speak of those calamities which that city itself or its subject provinces have suffered since its foundation all of which they would equally have attributed to the christian religion if at that early period the doctrine of the gospel against their false and deceiving gods had been as largely and freely proclaimed as now chap 3 that we need only to read history in order to see what calamities the romans suffered before the religion of christ began to compete with the worship of the gods but remember that in recounting these things i have still to address myself to ignorant men so ignorant indeed as to give birth to the common saying drought and christianity go hand in hand 1 there are indeed some among them who are thoroughly well educated men and have a taste for history in which the things i speak of are open to their observation but in order to irritate the uneducated masses against us they feign ignorance of these events and do what they can to make the vulgar believe that those disasters which in certain places and at certain times uniformly befall mankind are the result of christianity which is being everywhere diffused and is possessed of a renown and brilliancy which quite eclipse their own gods 2 let them then along with us call to mind with what various and repeated disasters the prosperity of rome was blighted before ever christ had come in the flesh and before his name had been blazoned among the nations with that glory which they vainly grudge let them if they can defend their gods in this article since they maintain that they worship them in order to be preserved from these disasters which they now impute to us if they suffer in the least degree for why did these gods permit the disasters i am to speak of to fall on their worshippers before the preaching of christs name offended them and put an end to their sacrifices chap 4 that the worshippers of the gods never received from them any healthy moral precepts and that in celebrating their worship all sorts of impurities were practiced first of all we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the morals of their worshippers that the true god should neglect those who did not seek his help that was but justice but why did those gods from whose worship ungrateful men are now complaining that they are prohibited issue no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous life surely it was but just that such care as men showed to the worship of the gods the gods on their part should have to the conduct of men but it is replied it is by his own will a man goes astray who denies it but none the less was it incumbent on these gods who were mens guardians to publish in plain terms the laws of a good life and not to conceal them from their worshippers it was their part to send prophets to reach and convict such as broke these laws and publicly to proclaim the punishments which await evil doers and the rewards which may be looked for by those that do well did ever the walls of any of their temples echo to any such warning voice i myself when i was a young man used sometimes to go to the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles i saw the priests raving in religious excitement and heard the choristers i took pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honor of gods and goddesses of the virgin clestis 1 and berecynthia 2 the mother of all the gods and on the holy day consecrated to her purification there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and filthy for the eari do not say of the mother of the gods but of the mother of any senator or honest mannay so impure that not even the mother of the foul mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience for natural reverence for parents is a bond which the most abandoned cannot ignore and accordingly the lewd actions and filthy words with which these players honored the mother of the gods in presence of a vast assemblage and audience of both sexes they could not for very shame have rehearsed at home in presence of their own mothers and the crowds that were gathered from all quarters by curiosity offended modesty must i should suppose have scattered in the confusion of shame if these are sacred rites what is sacrilege if this is purification what is pollution this festivity was called the tables 3 as if a banquet were being given at which unclean devils might find suitable refreshment for it is not difficult to see what kind of spirits they must be who are delighted with such obscenities unless indeed a man be blinded by these evil spirits passing themselves off under the name of gods and either disbelieves in their existence or leads such a life as prompts him rather to propitiate and fear them than the true god chap 5 of the obscenities practiced in honor of the mother of the gods in this matter i would prefer to have as my assessors in judgment not those men who rather take pleasure in these infamous customs than take pains to put an end to them but that same scipio nasica who was chosen by the senate as the citizen most worthy to receive in his hands the image of that demon cybele and convey it into the city he would tell us whether he would be proud to see his own mother so highly esteemed by the state as to have divine honors adjudged to her as the greeks and romans and other nations have decreed divine honors to men who had been of material service to them and have believed that their mortal benefactors were thus made immortal and enrolled among the gods 4 surely he would desire that his mother should enjoy such felicity were it possible but if we proceeded to ask him whether among the honors paid to her he would wish such shameful rites as these to be celebrated would he not at once exclaim that he would rather his mother lay stonedead than survive as a goddess to lend her ear to these obscenities is it possible that he who was of so severe a morality that he used his influence as a roman senator to prevent the building of a theatre in that city dedicated to the manly virtues would wish his mother to be propitiated as a goddess with words which would have brought the blush to her cheek when a roman matron could he possibly believe that the modesty of an estimable woman would be so transformed by her promotion to divinity that she would suffer herself to be invoked and celebrated in terms so gross and immodest that if she had heard the like while alive upon earth and had listened without stopping her ears and hurrying from the spot her relatives her husband and her children would have blushed for her therefore the mother of the gods being such a character as the most profligate man would be ashamed to have for his mother and meaning to enthral the minds of the romans demanded for her service their best citizen not to ripen him still more in virtue by her helpful counsel but to entangle him by her deceit like her of whom it is written the adulteress will hunt for the precious soul 5 her intent was to puff up this high souled man by an apparently divine testimony to his excellence in order that he might rely upon his own eminence in virtue and make no further efforts after true piety and religion without which natural genius however brilliant vapors into pride and comes to nothing for what but a guileful purpose could that goddess demand the best man seeing that in her own sacred festivals she requires such obscenities as the best men would be covered with shame to hear at their own tables chap 6 that the gods of the pagans never inculcated holiness of life this is the reason why those divinities quite neglected the lives and morals of the cities and nations who worshipped them and threw no dreadful prohibition in their way to hinder them from becoming utterly corrupt and to preserve them from those terrible and detestable evils which visit not harvests and vintages not house and possessions not the body which is subject to the soul but the soul itself the spirit that rules the whole man if there was any such prohibition let it be produced let it be proved they will tell us that purity and probity were inculcated upon those who were initiated in the mysteries of religion and that secret incitements to virtue were whispered in the ear of the lite but this is an idle boast let them show or name to us the places which were at any time consecrated to assemblages in which instead of the obscene songs and licentious acting of players instead of the celebration of those most filthy and shameless fugalia1 the people were commanded in the name of the gods to restrain avarice bridle impurity and conquer ambition where in short they might learn in that school which persius vehemently lashes them to when he says be taught ye abandoned creatures and ascertain the causes of things what we are and for what end we are born what is the law of our success in life and by what art we may turn the goal without making shipwreck what limit we should put to our wealth what we may lawfully desire and what uses filthy lucre serves how much we should bestow upon our country and our family learn in short what god meant thee to be and what place he has ordered you to fill 2 let them name to us the places where such instructions were won t to be communicated from the gods and where the people who worshipped them were accustomed to resort to hear them as we can point to our churches built for this purpose in every land where the christian religion is received chap 7 that the suggestions of philosophers are precluded from having any moral effect because they have not the authority which belongs to divine instruction and because mans natural bias to evil induces him rather to follow the examples of the gods than to obey the precepts of men but will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the philosophers and their disputations in the first place these belong not to rome but to greece and even if we yield to them that they are now roman because greece itself has become a roman province still the teachings of the philosophers are not the commandments of the gods but the discoveries of men who at the prompting of their own speculative ability made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature and the right and wrong in ethics and in dialectic what was consequent according to the rules of logic and what was inconsequent and erroneous and some of them by gods help made great discoveries but when left to themselves they were betrayed by human infirmity and fell into mistakes and this was ordered by divine providence that their pride might be restrained and that by their example it might be pointed out that it is humility which has access to the highest regions but of this we shall have more to say if the lord god of truth permit in its own place 3 however if the philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness would it not have been greater justice to vote divine honors to them were it not more accordant with every virtuous sentiment to read platos writings in a temple of plato than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the priests of cybele4 mutilating themselves the effeminate being consecrated the raving fanatics cutting themselves and whatever other cruel or shameful or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these were it not a more suitable education and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue if they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods instead of the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors certainly all the worshippers of the roman gods when once they are possessed by what persius calls the burning poison of lust 1 prefer to witness the deeds of jupiter rather than to hear what plato taught or cato censured hence the young profligate in terence when he sees on the wall a fresco representing the fabled descent of jupiter into the lap of dana in the form of a golden shower accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own licentiousness and boasts that he is an imitator of god and what god he says he who with his thunder shakes the loftiest temples and was i a poor creature compared to him to make bones of it no i did it and with all my heart 2 chap 8 that the theatrical exhibitions publishing the shameful actions of the gods propitiated rather than offended them but some one will interpose these are the fables of poets not the deliverances of the gods themselves well i have no mind to arbitrate between the lewdness of theatrical entertainments and of mystic rites only this i say and history bears me out in making the assertion that those same entertainments in which the fictions of poets are the main attraction were not introduced in the festivals of the gods by the ignorant devotion of the romans but that the gods themselves gave the most urgent commands to this effect and indeed extorted from the romans these solemnities and celebrations in their honor i touched on this in the preceding book and mentioned that dramatic entertainments were first inaugurated at rome on occasion of a pestilence and by authority of the pontiff and what man is there who is not more likely to adopt for the regulation of his own life the examples that are represented in plays which have a divine sanction rather than the precepts written and promulgated with no more than human authority if the poets gave a false representation of jove in describing him as adulterous then it were to be expected that the chaste gods should in anger avenge so wicked a fiction in place of encouraging the games which circulated it of these plays the most inoffensive are comedies and tragedies that is to say the dramas which poets write for the stage and which though they often handle impure subjects yet do so without the filthiness of language which characterizes many other performances and it is these dramas which boys are obliged by their seniors to read and learn as a part of what is called a liberal and gentlemanly education 3 chap 9 that the poetical license which the greeks in obedience to their gods allowed was restrained by the ancient romans the opinion of the ancient romans on this matter is attested by cicero in his work de republica in which scipio one of the interlocutors says the lewdness of comedy could never have been suffered by audiences unless the customs of society had previously sanctioned the same lewdness and in the earlier days the greeks preserved a certain reasonableness in their license and made it a law that whatever comedy wished to say of any one it must say it of him by name and so in the same work of ciceros scipio says whom has it not aspersed nay whom has it not worried whom has it spared allow that it may assail demagogues and factions men injurious to the commonwealtha cleon a cleophon a hyperbolus that is tolerable though it had been more seemly for the public censor to brand such men than for a poet to lampoon them but to blacken the fame of pericles with scurrilous verse after he had with the utmost dignity presided over their state alike in war and in peace was as unworthy of a poet as if our own plautus or nvius were to bring publius and cneius scipio on the comic stage or as if ccilius were to caricature cato and then a little after he goes on though our twelve tables attached the penalty of death only to a very few offences yet among these few this was one if any man should have sung a pasquinade or have composed a satire calculated to bring infamy or disgrace on another person wisely decreed for it is by the decisions of magistrates and by a well informed justice that our lives ought to be judged and not by the flighty fancies of poets neither ought we to be exposed to hear calumnies save where we have the liberty of replying and defending ourselves before an adequate tribunal this much i have judged it advisable to quote from the fourth book of ciceros de republica and i have made the quotation word for word with the exception of some words omitted and some slightly transposed for the sake of giving the sense more readily and certainly the extract is pertinent to the matter i am endeavoring to explain cicero makes some further remarks and concludes the passage by showing that the ancient romans did not permit any living man to be either praised or blamed on the stage but the greeks as i said though not so moral were more logical in allowing this license which the romans forbade for they saw that their gods approved and enjoyed the scurrilous language of low comedy when directed not only against men but even against themselves and this whether the infamous actions imputed to them were the fictions of poets or were their actual iniquities commemorated and acted in the theatres and would that the spectators had judged them worthy only of laughter and not of imitation manifestly it had been a stretch of pride to spare the good name of the leading men and the common citizens when the very deities did not grudge that their own reputation should be blemished chap 10 that the devils in suffering either false or true crimes to be laid to their charge meant to do men a mischief it is alleged in excuse of this practice that the stories told of the gods are not true but false and mere inventions but this only makes matters worse if we form our estimate by the morality our religion teaches and if we consider the malice of the devils what more wily and astute artifice could they practise upon men when a slander is uttered against a leading statesman of upright and useful life is it not reprehensible in proportion to its untruth and groundlessness what punishment then shall be sufficient when the gods are the objects of so wicked and outrageous an injustice but the devils whom these men repute gods are content that even iniquities they are guiltless of should be ascribed to them so long as they may entangle mens minds in the meshes of these opinions and draw them on along with themselves to their predestinated punishment whether such things were actually committed by the men whom these devils delighting in human infatuation cause to be worshipped as gods and in whose stead they by a thousand malign and deceitful artifices substitute themselves and so receive worship or whether though they were really the crimes of men these wicked spirits gladly allowed them to be attributed to higher beings that there might seem to be conveyed from heaven itself a sufficient sanction for the perpetration of shameful wickedness the greeks therefore seeing the character of the gods they served thought that the poets should certainly not refrain from showing up human vices on the stage either because they desired to be like their gods in this or because they were afraid that if they required for themselves a more unblemished reputation than they asserted for the gods they might provoke them to anger chap 11 that the greeks admitted players to offices of state on the ground that men who pleased the gods should not be contemptuously treated by their fellows it was a part of this same reasonableness of the greeks which induced them to bestow upon the actors of these same plays no inconsiderable civic honors in the abovementioned book of the de republica it is mentioned that schines a very eloquent athenian who had been a tragic actor in his youth became a statesman and that the athenians again and again sent another tragedian aristodemus as their plenipotentiary to philip for they judged it unbecoming to condemn and treat as infamous persons those who were the chief actors in the scenic entertainments which they saw to be so pleasing to the gods no doubt this was immoral of the greeks but there can be as little doubt they acted in conformity with the character of their gods for how could they have presumed to protect the conduct of the citizens from being cut to pieces by the tongues of poets and players who were allowed and even enjoined by the gods to tear their divine reputation to tatters and how could they hold in contempt the men who acted in the theatres those dramas which as they had ascertained gave pleasure to the gods whom they worshipped nay how could they but grant to them the highest civic honors on what plea could they honor the priests who offered for them acceptable sacrifices to the gods if they branded with infamy the actors who in behalf of the people gave to the gods that pleasure or honour which they demanded and which according to the account of the priests they were angry at not receiving labeo 1 whose learning makes him an authority on such points is of opinion that the distinction between good and evil deities should find expression in a difference of worship that the evil should be propitiated by bloody sacrifices and doleful rites but the good with a joyful and pleasant observance as e g with plays festivals and banquets 1 all this we shall with gods help hereafter discuss at present and speaking to the subject on hand whether all kinds of offerings are made indiscriminately to all the gods as if all were good or whether as labeo thinks a distinction is made between the offerings presented to the different gods the greeks are equally justified in honoring alike the priests by whom the sacrifices are offered and the players by whom the dramas are acted that they may not be open to the charge of doing an injury to all their gods if the plays are pleasing to all of them or to their good gods if the plays are relished only by them chap 12 that the romans by refusing to the poets the same license in respect of men which they allowed them in the case of the gods showed a more delicate sensitiveness regarding themselves than regarding the gods the romans however as scipio boasts in that same discussion declined having their conduct and good name subjected to the assaults and slanders of the poets and went so far as to make it a capital crime if any one should dare to compose such verses this was a very honorable course to pursue so far as they themselves were concerned but in respect of the gods it was proud and irreligious for they knew that the gods not only tolerated but relished being lashed by the injurious expressions of the poets and yet they themselves would not suffer this same handling and what their ritual prescribed as acceptable to the gods their law prohibited as injurious to themselves how then scipio do you praise the romans for refusing this license to the poets so that no citizen could be calumniated while you know that the gods were not included under this protection do you count your senate house worthy of so much higher a regard than the capitol is the one city of rome more valuable in your eyes than the whole heaven of gods that you prohibit your poets from uttering any injurious words against a citizen though they may with impunity cast what imputations they please upon the gods without the interference of senator censor prince or pontiff it was forsooth intolerable that plautus or nvius should attack publius and cneius scipio insufferable that ccilius should lampoon cato but quite proper that your terence should encourage youthful lust by the wicked example of supreme jove chap 13 that the romans should have understood that gods who desired to be worshipped in licentious entertainments were unworthy of divine honor but scipio were he alive would possibly reply how could we attach a penalty to that which the gods themselves have consecrated for the theatrical entertainments in which such things are said and acted and performed were introduced into roman society by the gods who ordered that they should be dedicated and exhibited in their honor but was not this then the plainest proof that they were no true gods nor in any respect worthy of receiving divine honours from the republic suppose they had required that in their honor the citizens of rome should be held up to ridicule every roman would have resented the hateful proposal how then i would ask can they be esteemed worthy of worship when they propose that their own crimes be used as material for celebrating their praises does not this artifice expose them and prove that they are detestable devils thus the romans though they were superstitious enough to serve as gods those who made no secret of their desire to be worshipped in licentious plays yet had sufficient regard to their hereditary dignity and virtue to prompt them to refuse to players any such rewards as the greeks accorded them on this point we have this testimony of scipio recorded in cicero they considered comedy and all theatrical performances as disgraceful and therefore not only debarred players from offices and honors open to ordinary citizens but also decreed that their names should be branded by the censor and erased from the roll of their tribe an excellent decree and another testimony to the sagacity of rome but i could wish their prudence had been more thorough going and consistent for when i hear that if any roman citizen chose the stage as his profession he not only closed to himself every laudable career but even became an outcast from his own tribe i cannot but exclaim this is the true roman spirit this is worthy of a state jealous of its reputation but then some one interrupts my rapture by inquiring with what consistency players are debarred from all honors while plays are counted among the honors due to the gods for a long while the virtue of rome was uncontaminated by theatrical exhibitions 1 and if they had been adopted for the sake of gratifying the taste of the citizens they would have been introduced hand in hand with the relaxation of manners but the fact is that it was the gods who demanded that they should be exhibited to gratify them with what justice then is the player excommunicated by whom god is worshipped on what pretext can you at once adore him who exacts and brand him who acts these plays this then is the controversy in which the greeks and romans are engaged the greeks think they justly honor players because they worship the gods who demand plays the romans on the other hand do not suffer an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe far less the senatorial order and the whole of this discussion may be summed up in the following syllogism the greeks give us the major premise if such gods are to be worshipped then certainly such men may be honored the romans add the minor but such men must by no means be honoured the christians draw the conclusion therefore such gods must by no means be worshipped chap 14 that plato who excluded poets from a well ordered city was better than these gods who desire to be honoured by theatrical plays we have still to inquire why the poets who write the plays and who by the law of the twelve tables are prohibited from injuring the good name of the citizens are reckoned more estimable than the actors though they so shamefully asperse the character of the gods is it right that the actors of these poetical and god dishonoring effusions be branded while their authors are honored must we not here award the palm to a greek plato who in framing his ideal republic 2 conceived that poets should be banished from the city as enemies of the state he could not brook that the gods be brought into disrepute nor that the minds of the citizens be depraved and besotted by the fictions of the poets compare now human nature as you see it in plato expelling poets from the city that the citizens be uninjured with the divine nature as you see it in these gods exacting plays in their own honor plato strove though unsuccessfully to persuade the light minded and lascivious greeks to abstain from so much as writing such plays the gods used their authority to extort the acting of the same from the dignified and sober minded romans and not content with having them acted they had them dedicated to themselves consecrated to themselves solemnly celebrated in their own honor to which then would it be more becoming in a state to decree divine honors to plato who prohibited these wicked and licentious plays or to the demons who delighted in blinding men to the truth of what plato unsuccessfully sought to inculcate this philosopher plato has been elevated by labeo to the rank of a demigod and set thus upon a level with such as hercules and romulus labeo ranks demigods higher than heroes but both he counts among the deities but i have no doubt that he thinks this man whom he reckons a demigod worthy of greater respect not only than the heroes but also than the gods themselves the laws of the romans and the speculations of plato have this resemblance that the latter pronounce a wholesale condemnation of poetical fictions while the former restrain the license of satire at least so far as men are the objects of it plato will not suffer poets even to dwell in his city the laws of rome prohibit actors from being enrolled as citizens and if they had not feared to offend the gods who had asked the services of the players they would in all likelihood have banished them altogether it is obvious therefore that the romans could not receive nor reasonably expect to receive laws for the regulation of their conduct from their gods since the laws they themselves enacted far surpassed and put to shame the morality of the gods the gods demand stage plays in their own honor the romans exclude the players from all civic honors 3 the former commanded that they should be celebrated by the scenic representation of their own disgrace the latter commanded that no poet should dare to blemish the reputation of any citizen but that demigod plato resisted the lust of such gods as these and showed the romans what their genius had left incomplete for he absolutely excluded poets from his ideal state whether they composed fictions with no regard to truth or set the worst possible examples before wretched men under the guise of divine actions we for our part indeed reckon plato neither a god nor a demigod we would not even compare him to any of gods holy angels nor to the truth speaking prophets nor to any of the apostles or martyrs of christ nay not to any faithful christian man the reason of this opinion of ours we will god prospering us render in its own place nevertheless since they wish him to be considered a demigod we think he certainly is more entitled to that rank and is every way superior if not to hercules and romulus yet certainly to priapus or a cynocephalus 1 or the fever 2 divinities whom the romans have partly received from foreigners and partly consecrated by home grown rites how then could gods such as these be expected to promulgate good and wholesome laws either for the prevention of moral and social evils or for their eradication where they had already sprung up gods who used their influence even to sow and cherish profligacy by appointing that deeds truly or falsely ascribed to them should be published to the people by means of theatrical exhibitions and by thus gratuitously fanning the flame of human lust with the breath of a seemingly divine approbation in vain does cicero speaking of poets exclaim against this state of things in these words when the plaudits and acclamation of the people who sit as infallible judges are won by the poets what darkness benights the mind what fears invade what passions inflame it 3 chap 15 that it was vanity not reason which created some of the roman gods but is it not manifest that vanity rather than reason regulated the choice of some of their false gods this plato whom they reckon a demigod and who used all his eloquence to preserve men from the most dangerous spiritual calamities has yet not been counted worthy even of a little shrine but romulus because they can call him their own they have esteemed more highly than many gods though their secret doctrine can allow him the rank only of a demigod to him they allotted a flamen that is to say a priest of a class so highly esteemed in their religion that for only three of their gods were flamens appointed the flamen dialis for jupiter martialis for mars and quirinalis for romulus and thus by this honor romulus has been preferred to neptune and pluto jupiters brothers and to saturn himself their father they have assigned the same priesthood to serve him as to serve jove and in giving mars the same honor is this not rather for romulus sake than to honor mars chap 16 that if the gods had really possfssed any regard for righteousness the romans should have received good laws from them instead of having to borrow them from other nations moreover if the romans had been able to receive a rule of life from their gods they would not have borrowed solons laws from the athenians as they did some years after rome was founded and yet they did not keep them as they received them but endeavored to improve and amend them 4 although lycurgus pretended that he was authorized by apollo to give laws to the lacedemonians the sensible romans did not choose to believe this and were not induced to borrow laws from sparta numa pompilius who succeeded romulus in the kingdom is said to have framed some laws which however were not sufficient for the regulation of civic affairs among these regulations were many pertaining to religious observances and yet he is not reported to have received even these from the gods with respect then to moral evils evils of life and conduct evils which are so mighty that according to the wisest pagans 5 by them states are ruined while their cities stand uninjured their gods made not the smallest provision for preserving their worshippers from these evils but on the contrary took special pains to increase them as we have previously endeavored to prove chap 17 of the rape of the sabine women and other iniquities perpetrated in romes palmiest days but possibly we are to find the reason for this neglect of the romans by their gods in the saying of sallust that equity and virtue prevailed among the romans not more by force of laws than of nature 1 i presume it is to this inborn equity and goodness of disposition we are to ascribe the rape of the sabine women what indeed could be more equitable and virtuous than to carry off by force as each man was fit and without their parents consent girls who were strangers and guests and who had been decoyed and entrapped by the pretence of a spectacle if the sabines were wrong to deny their daughters when the romans asked for them was it not a greater wrong in the romans to carry them off after that denial the romans might more justly have waged war against the neighboring nation for having refused their daughters in marriage when they first sought them than for having demanded them back when they had stolen them war should have been proclaimed at first it was then that mars should have helped his warlike son that he might by force of arms avenge the injury done him by the refusal of marriage and might also thus win the women he desired there might have been some appearance of right of war in a victor carrying off in virtue of this right the virgins who had been without any show of right denied him whereas there was no right of peace entitling him to carry off those who were not given to him and to wage an unjust war with their justly enraged parents one happy circumstance was indeed connected with this act of violence viz that though it was commemorated by the games of the circus yet even this did not constitute it a precedent in the city or realm of rome if one would find fault with the results of this act it must rather be on the ground that the romans made romulus a god in spite of his perpetrating this iniquity for one cannot reproach them with making this deed any kind of precedent for the rape of women again i presume it was due to this natural equity and virtue that after the expulsion of king tarquin whose son had violated lucretia junius brutus the consul forced lucius tarquinius collatinus lucretias husband and his own colleague a good and innocent man to resign his office and go into banishment on the one sole charge that he was of the name and blood of the tarquins this injustice was perpetrated with the approval or at least connivance of the people who had themselves raised to the consular office both collatinus and brutus another instance of this equity and virtue is found in their treatment of marcus camillus this eminent man after he had rapidly conquered the veians at that time the most formidable of romes enemies and who had maintained a ten years war in which the roman army had suffered the usual calamities attendant on bad generalship after he had restored security to rome which had begun to tremble for its safety and after he had taken the wealthiest city of the enemy had charges brought against him by the malice of those that envied his success and by the insolence of the tribunes of the people and seeing that the city bore him no gratitude for preserving it and that he would certainly be condemned he went into exile and even in his absence was fined 10 000 asses shortly after however his ungrateful country had again to seek his protection from the gauls but i cannot now mention all the shameful and iniquitous acts with which rome was agitated when the aristocracy attempted to subject the people and the people resented their encroachments and the advocates of either party were actuated rather by the love of victory than by any equitable or virtuous consideration chap 18 what the history of sallust reveals regarding the life of the romans either when straitened by anxiety or relaxed in security i will therefore pause and adduce the testimony of sallust himself whose words in praise of the romans have given occasion to this discussion he was referring to that period immediately after the expulsion of the kings in which the city became great in an incredibly short space of time and yet this same writer acknowledges in the first book of his history in the very exordium of his work that even at that time when a very brief interval had elapsed after the government had passed from kings to consuls the more powerful men began to act unjustly and occasioned the defection of the people from the patricians and other disorders in the city for after sallust had stated that the romans enjoyed greater harmony and a purer state of society between the second and third punic wars than at any other time and that the cause of this was not their love of good order but their fear lest the peace they had with carthage might be broken he then goes on to say yet after the destruction of carthage discord avarice ambition and the other vices which are commonly generated by prosperity more than ever increased if they increased and that more than ever then already they had appeared and had been increasing and so sallust adds this reason for what he said for he says the oppressive measures of the powerful and the consequent secessions of the plebs from the patricians and other civil dissensions had existed from the first and affairs were administered with equity and well tempered justice for no longer a period than the short time after the expulsion of the kings while the city was occupied with the serious tuscan war and tarquins vengeance you see how even in that brief period after the expulsion of the kings fear he acknowledges was the cause of the interval of equity and good order they were afraid in fact of the war which tarquin waged against them after he had been driven from the throne and the city and had allied himself with the tuscans but observe what he adds after that the patricians treated the people as their slaves ordering them to be scourged or beheaded just as the kings had done driving them from their holdings and harshly tyrannizing over those who had no property to lose the people overwhelmed by these oppressive measures and most of all by exorbitant usury and obliged to contribute both money and personal service to the constant wars at length took arms and seceded to mount aventine and mount sacer and thus obtained for themselves tribunes and protective laws but it was only the second punic war that put an end on both sides to discord and strife you see what kind of men the romans were even so early as a few years after the expulsion of the kings and it is of these men he says that equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of law than of nature now if these were the days in which the roman republic shows fairest and best what are we to say or think of the succeeding age when to use the words of the same historian changing little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was it became utterly wicked and dissolute this was as he mentions after the destruction of carthage sallusts brief sum and sketch of this period may be read in his own history in which he shows how the profligate manners which were propagated by prosperity resulted at last even in civil wars he says and from this time the primitive manners instead of undergoing an insensible alteration as hitherto they had done were swept away as by a torrent the young men were so depraved by luxury and avarice that it may justly be said that no father had a son who could either preserve his own patrimony or keep his hands off other mens sallust adds a number of particulars about the vices of sylla and the debased condition of the republic in general and other writers make similar observations though in much less striking language however i suppose you now see or at least any one who gives his attention has the means of seeing in what a sink of iniquity that city was plunged before the advent of our heavenly king for these things happened not only before christ had begun to teach but before he was even born of the virgin if then they dare not impute to their gods the grievous evils of those former times more tolerable before the destruction of carthage but intolerable and dreadful after it although it was the gods who by their malign craft instilled into the minds of men the conceptions from which such dreadful vices branched out on all sides why do they impute these present calamities to christ who teaches life giving truth and forbids us to worship false and deceitful gods and who abominating and condemning with his divine authority those wicked and hurtful lusts of men gradually withdraws his own people from a world that is corrupted by these vices and is falling into ruins to make of them an eternal city whose glory rests not on the acclamations of vanity but on the judgment of truth chap 19 of the corruption which had grown upon the roman republic before christ abolished the worship of the gods here then is this roman republic which has changed little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was and has become utterly wicked and dissolute it is not i who am the first to say this but their own authors from whom we learned it for a fee and who wrote it long before the coming of christ you see how before the coming of christ and after the destruction of carthage the primitive manners instead of undergoing insensible alteration as hitherto they had done were swept away as by a torrent and how depraved by luxury and avarice the youth were let them now on their part read to us any laws given by their gods to the roman people and directed against luxury and avarice and would that they had only been silent on the subjects of chastity and modesty and had not demanded from the people indecent and shameful practices to which they lent a pernicious patronage by their so called divinity let them read our commandments in the prophets gospels acts of the apostles or epistles let them peruse the large number of precepts against avarice and luxury which are everywhere read to the congregations that meet for this purpose and which strike the ear not with the uncertain sound of a philosophical discussion but with the thunder of gods own oracle pealing from the clouds and yet they do not impute to their gods the luxury and avarice the cruel and dissolute manners that had rendered the republic utterly wicked and corrupt even before the coming of christ but whatever affliction their pride and effeminacy have exposed them to in these latter days they furiously impute to our religion if the kings of the earth and all their subjects if all princes and judges of the earth if young men and maidens old and young every age and both sexes if they whom the baptist addressed the publicans and the soldiers were all together to hearken to and observe the precepts of the christian religion regarding a just and virtuous life then should the republic adorn the whole earth with its own felicity and attain in life everlasting to the pinnacle of kingly glory but because this man listens and that man scoffs and most are enamored of the blandishments of vice rather than the wholesome severity of virtue the people of christ whatever be their conditionwhether they be kings princes judges soldiers or provincials rich or poor bond or free male or femaleare enjoined to endure this earthly republic wicked and dissolute as it is that so they may by this endurance win for themselves an eminent place in that most holy and august assembly of angels and republic of heaven in which the will of god is the law chap 20 of the kind of happiness and life truly delighted in by those who inveigh against the christian religion but the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities and are nowise concerned that the republic be less depraved and licentious only let it remain undefeated they say only let it flourish and abound in resources let it be glorious by its victories or still better secure in peace and what matters it to us this is our concern that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes let the poor court the rich for a living and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependants to minister to their pride let the people applaud not those who protect their interests but those who provide them with pleasure let no severe duty be commanded no impurity forbidden let kings estimate their prosperity not by the righteousness but by the servility of their subjects let the provinces stand loyal to the kings not as moral guides but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures not with a hearty reverence but a crooked and servile fear let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another mans property than of that done to ones own person if a man be a nuisance to his neighbor or injure his property family or person let him be actionable but in his own affairs let every one with impunity do what he will in company with his own family and with those who willingly join him let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every one who wishes to use them but specially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description in these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets where every one who pleases may by day or night play drink vomit 1 dissipate let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers the loud immodest laughter of the theatre let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement if such happiness is distasteful to any let him be branded as a public enemy and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it let him be silenced banished put an end to let these be reckoned the true gods who procure for the people this condition of things and preserve it when once possessed let them be worshipped as they wish let them demand whatever games they please from or with their own worshippers only let them secure that such felicity be not imperilled by foe plague or disaster of any kind what sane man would compare a republic such as this i will not say to the roman empire but to the palace of sardanapalus the ancient king who was so abandoned to pleasures that he caused it to be inscribed on his tomb that now that he was dead he possessed only those things which he had swallowed and consumed by his appetites while alive if these men had such a king as this who while self indulgent should lay no severe restraint on them they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient romans did to romulus chap 21 ciceros opinion of the roman republic but if our adversaries do not care how foully and disgracefully the roman republic be stained by corrupt practices so long only as it holds together and continues in being and if they therefore pooh pooh the testimony of sallust to its utterly wicked and profligate condition what will they make of ciceros statement that even in his time it had become entirely extinct and that there remained extant no roman republic at all he introduces scipio discussing the republic at a time when already there were presentiments of its speedy ruin by that corruption which sallust describes in fact at the time when the discussion took place one of the gracchi who according to sallust was the first great instigator of seditions had already been put to death his death indeed is mentioned in the same book now scipio at the end of the second book says as among the different sounds which proceed from lyres flutes and the human voice there must be maintained a certain harmony which a cultivated ear cannot endure to hear disturbed or jarring but which may be elicited in full and absolute concord by the modulation even of voices very unlike one another so where reason is allowed to modulate the diverse elements of the state there is obtained a perfect concord from the upper lower and middle classes as from various sounds and what musicians call harmony in singing is concord in matters of state which is the strictest bond and best security of any republic and which by no ingenuity can be retained where justice has become extinct then when he had expatiated somewhat more fully and had more copiously illustrated the benefits of its presence and the ruinous effects of its absence upon a state pilus one of the company present at the discussion struck in and demanded that the question should be more thoroughly sifted and that the subject of justice should be freely discussed for the sake of ascertaining what truth there was in the maxim which was then becoming daily more current that the republic cannot be governed without injustice scipio expressed his willingness to have this maxim discussed and sifted and gave it as his opinion that it was baseless and that no progress could be made in discussing the republic unless it was established not only that this maxim that the republic cannot be governed without injustice was false but also that the truth is that it cannot be governed without the most absolute justice and the discussion of this question being deferred till the next day is carried on in the third book with great animation for pilus himself undertook to defend the position that the republic cannot be governed without injustice at the same time being at special pains to clear himself of any real participation in that opinion he advocated with great keenness the cause of injustice against justice and endeavored by plausible reasons and examples to demonstrate that the former is beneficial the latter useless to the republic then at the request of the company llius attempted to defend justice and strained every nerve to prove that nothing is so hurtful to a state as injustice and that without justice a republic can neither be governed nor even continue to exist when this question has been handled to the satisfaction of the company scipio reverts to the original thread of discourse and repeats with commendation his own brief definition of a republic that it is the weal of the people the people he defines as being not every assemblage or mob but an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law and by a community of interests then he shows the use of definition in debate and from these definitions of his own he gathers that a republic or weal of the people then exists only when it is well and justly governed whether by a monarch or an aristocracy or by the whole people but when the monarch is unjust or as the greeks say a tyrant or the aristocrats are unjust and form a faction or the people themselves are unjust and become as scipio for want of a better name calls them themselves the tyrant then the republic is not only blemished but by legitimate deduction from those definitions it altogether ceases to be for it could not be the peoples weal when a tyrant factiously lorded it over the state neither would the people be any longer a people if it were unjust since it would no longer answer the definition of a peoplean assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law and by a community of interests when therefore the roman republic was such as sallust described it it was not utterly wicked and profligate as he says but had altogether ceased to exist if we are to admit the reasoning of that debate maintained on the subject of the republic by its best representatives tully himself too speaking not in the person of scipio or any one else but uttering his own sentiments uses the following language in the beginning of the fifth book after quoting a line from the poet ennius in which he said romes severe morality and her citizens are her safeguard this verse says cicero seems to me to have all the sententious truthfulness of an oracle for neither would the citizens have availed without the morality of the community nor would the morality of the commons without outstanding men have availed either to establish or so long to maintain in vigor so grand a republic with so wide and just an empire accordingly before our day the hereditary usages formed our foremost men and they on their part retained the usages and institutions of their fathers but our age receiving the republic as a chef duvre of another age which has already begun to grow old has not merely neglected to restore the colors of the original but has not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general outline and most outstanding features for what survives of that primitive morality which the poet called romes safeguard it is so obsolete and forgotten that far from practising it one does not even know it and of the citizens what shall i say morality has perished through poverty of great men a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime for it is through our vices and not by any mishap that we retain only the name of a republic and have long since lost the reality this is the confession of cicero long indeed after the death of africanus whom he introduced as an interlocutor in his work de republica but still before the coming of christ yet if the disasters he bewails had been lamented after the christian religion had been diffused and had begun to prevall is there a man of our adversaries who would not have thought that they were to be imputed to the christians why then did their gods not take steps then to prevent the decay and extinction of that republic over the loss of which cicero long before christ had come in the flesh sings so lugubrious a dirge its admirers have need to inquire whether even in the days of primitive men and morals true justice flourished in it or was it not perhaps even then to use the casual expression of cicero rather a colored painting than the living reality but if god will we shall consider this elsewhere for i mean in its own place to show thataccording to the definitions in which cicero himself using scipio as his mouthpiece briefly propounded what a republic is and what a people is and according to many testimonies both of his own lips and of those who took part in that same debaterome never was a republic because true justice had never a place in it but accepting the more feasible definitions of a republic i grant there was a republic of a certain kind and certainly much better administered by the more ancient romans than by their modern representatives but the fact is true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is christ if at least any choose to call this a republic and indeed we cannot deny that it is the peoples weal but if perchance this name which has become familiar in other connections be considered alien to our common parlance we may at all events say that in this city is true justice the city of which holy scripture says glorious things are said of thee o city of god chap 22 that the roman gods never took any steps to prevent the republic from being ruined by immorality but what is relevant to the present question is this that however admirable our adversaries say the republic was or is it is certain that by the testimony of their own most learned writers it had become long before the coming of christ utterly wicked and dissolute and indeed had no existence but had been destroyed by profligacy to prevent this surely these guardian gods ought to have given precepts of morals and a rule of life to the people by whom they were worshipped in so many temples with so great a variety of priests and sacrifices with such numberless and diverse rites so many festal solemnities so many celebrations of magnificent games but in all this the demons only looked after their own interest and cared not at all how their worshippers lived or rather were at pains to induce them to lead an abandoned life so long as they paid these tributes to their honor and regarded them with fear if any one denies this let him produce let him point to let him read the laws which the gods had given against sedition and which the gracchi transgressed when they threw everything into confusion or those marius and cinna and carbo broke when they involved their country in civil wars most iniquitous and unjustifiable in their causes cruelly conducted and yet more cruelly terminated or those which sylla scorned whose life character and deeds as described by sallust and other historians are the abhorrence of all mankind who will deny that at that time the republic had become extinct possibly they will be bold enough to suggest in defence of the gods that they abandoned the city on account of the profligacy of the citizens according to the lines of virgil gone from each fane each sacred shrine are those who made this realm divine 1 but firstly if it be so then they cannot complain against the christian religion as if it were that which gave offence to the gods and caused them to abandon rome since the roman immorality had long ago driven from the altars of the city a cloud of little gods like as many flies and yet where was this host of divinities when long before the corruption of the primitive morality rome was taken and burnt by the gauls perhaps they were present but asleep for at that time the whole city fell into the hands of the enemy with the single exception of the capitoline hill and this too would have been taken had notthe watchful geese aroused the sleeping gods and this gave occasion to the festival of the goose in which rome sank nearly to the superstition of the egyptians who worship beasts and birds but of these adventitious evils which are inflicted by hostile armies or by some disaster and which attach rather to the body than the soul i am not meanwhile disputing at present i speak of the decay of morality which at first almost imperceptibly lost its brilliant hue but afterwards was wholly obliterated was swept away as by a torrent and involved the republic in such disastrous ruin that though the houses and walls remained standing the leading writers do not scruple to say that the republic was destroyed now the departure of the gods from each fane each sacred shrine and their abandonment of the city to destruction was an act of justice if their laws inculcating justice and a moral life had been held in contempt by that city but what kind of gods were these pray who declined to live with a people who worshipped them and whose corrupt life they had done nothing to reform chap 23 that the vicissitudes of this life are dependent not on the favor or hostility of demons but on the will of the true god but further is it not obvious that the gods have abetted the fulfilment of mens desires instead of authoritatively bridling them for marius a low born and self made man who ruthlessly provoked and conducted civil wars was so effectually aided by them that he was seven times consul and died full of years in his seventh consulship escaping the hands of sylla who immediately afterwards came into power why then did they not also aid him so as to restrain him from so many enormities for if it is said that the gods had no hand in his success this is no trivial admission that a man can attain the dearly coveted felicity of this life even though his own gods be not propitious that men can be loaded with the gifts of fortune as marius was can enjoy health power wealth honours dignity length of days though the gods be hostile to him and that on the other hand men can be tormented as regulus was with captivity bondage destitution watchings pain and cruel death though the gods be his friends to concede this is to make a compendious confession that the gods are useless and their worship superfluous if the gods have taught the people rather what goes clean counter to the virtues of the soul and that integrity of life which meets a reward after death if even in respect of temporal and transitory blessings they neither hurt those whom they hate nor profit whom they love why are they worshipped why are they invoked with such eager homage why do men murmur in difficult and sad emergencies as if the gods had retired in anger and why on their account is the christian religion injured by the most unworthy calumnies if in temporal matters they have power either for good or for evil why did they stand by marius the worst of romes citizens and abandon regulus the best does this not prove themselves to be most unjust and wicked and even if it be supposed that for this very reason they are the rather to be feared and worshipped this is a mistake for we do not read that regulus worshipped them less assiduously than marius neither is it apparent that a wicked life is to be chosen on the ground that the gods are supposed to have favored marius more than regulus for metellus the most highly esteemed of all the romans who had five sons in the consulship was prosperous even in this life and catiline the worst of men reduced to poverty and defeated in the war his own guilt had aroused lived and perished miserably real and secure felicity is the peculiar possession of those who worship that god by whom alone it can be conferred it is thus apparent that when the republic was being destroyed by profligate manners its gods did nothing to hinder its destruction by the direction or correction of its manners but rather accelerated its destruction by increasing the demoralization and corruption that already existed they need not pretend that their goodness was shocked by the iniquity of the city and that they withdrew in anger for they were there sure enough they are detected convicted they were equally unable to break silence so as to guide others and to keep silence so as to conceal themselves i do not dwell on the fact that the inhabitants of minturn took pity on marius and commended him to the goddess marica in her grove that she might give him success in all things and that from the abyss of despair in which he then lay he forthwith returned unhurt to rome and entered the city the ruthless leader of a ruthless army and they who wish to know how bloody was his victory how unlike a citizen and how much more relentlessly than any foreign foe he acted let them read the histories but this as i said i do not dwell upon nor do i attribute the bloody bliss of marius to i know not what minturnian goddess but rather to the secret providence of god that the mouths of our adversaries might be shut and that they who are not led by passion but by prudent consideration of events might be delivered from error and even if the demons have any power in these matters they have only that power which the secret decree of the almighty allots to them in order that we may not set too great store by earthly prosperity seeing it is oftentimes vouchsafed even to wicked men like marius and that we may not on the other hand regard it as an evil since we see that many good and pious worshippers of the one true god are in spite of the demons pre eminently successful and finally that we may not suppose that these unclean spirits are either to be propitiated or feared for the sake of earthly blessings or calamities for as wicked men on earth cannot do all they would so neither can these demons but only in so far as they are permitted by the decree of him whose judgments are fully comprehensible justly reprehensible by none chap 24 of the deeds of sylla in which the demons boasted that he had their help it is certain that syllawhose rule was so cruel that in comparison with it the preceding state of things which he came to avenge was regrettedwhen first he advanced towards rome to give battle to marius found the auspices so favourable when he sacrificed that according to livys account the augur postumius expressed his willingness to lose his head if sylla did not with the help of the gods accomplish what he designed the gods you see had not departed from every fane and sacred shrine since they were still predicting the issue of these affairs and yet were taking no steps to correct sylla himself their presages promised him great prosperity but no threatenings of theirs subdued his evil passions and then when he was in asia conducting the war against mithridates a message from jupiter was delivered to him by lucius titius to the effect that he would conquer mithridates and so it came to pass and afterwards when he was meditating a return to rome for the purpose of avenging in the blood of the citizens injuries done to himself and his friends a second message from jupiter was delivered to him by a soldier of the sixth legion to the effect that it was he who had predicted the victory over mithridates and that now he promised to give him power to recover the republic from his enemies though with great bloodshed sylla at once inquired of the soldier what form had appeared to him and on his reply recognized that it was the same as jupiter had formerly employed to convey to him the assurance regarding the victory over mithridates how then can the gods be justified in this matter for the care they took to predict these shadowy successes and for their negligence in correcting sylla and restraining him from stirring up a civil war so lamentable and atrocious that it not merely disfigured but extinguished the republic the truth is as i have often said and as scripture informs us and as the facts themselves sufficiently indicate the demons are found to look after their own ends only that they may be regarded and worshipped as gods and that men may be induced to offer to them a worship which associates them with their crimes and involves them in one common wickedness and judgment of god afterwards when sylla had come to tarentum and had sacrificed there he saw on the head of the victims liver the likeness of a golden crown thereupon the same soothsayer postumius interpreted this to signify a signal victory and ordered that he only should eat of the entrails a little afterwards the slave of a certain lucius pontius cried out i am bellonas messenger the victory is yours sylla then he added that the capitol should be burned as soon as he had uttered this prediction he left the camp but returned the following day more excited than ever and shouted the capitol is fired and fired indeed it was this it was easy for a demon both to foresee and quickly to announce but observe as relevant to our subject what kind of gods they are under whom these men desire to live who blaspheme the saviour that delivers the wills of the faithful from the dominion of devils the man cried out in prophetic rapture the victory is yours sylla and to certify that he spoke by a divine spirit he predicted also an event which was shortly to happen and which indeed did fall out in a place from which he in whom this spirit was speaking was far distant but he never cried forbear thy villanies sylla the villanies which were committed at rome by that victor to whom a golden crown on the calfs liver had been shown as the divine evidence of his victory if such signs as this were customarily sent by just gods and not by wicked demons then certainly the entrails he consulted should rather have given sylla intimation of the cruel disasters that were to befall the city and himself for that victory was not so conducive to his exaltation to power as it was fatal to his ambition for by it he became so insatiable in his desires and was rendered so arrogant and reckless by prosperity that he may be said rather to have inflicted a moral destruction on himself than corporal destruction on his enemies but these truely woeful and deplorable calamities the gods gave him no previous hint of neither by entrails augury dream nor prediction for they feared his amendment more than his defeat yea they took good care that this glorious conqueror of his own fellow citizens should be conquered and led captive by his own infamous vices and should thus be the more submissive slave of the demons themselves chap 25 how powerfully the evil spirits incite men to wicked actions by giving them the quasi divine authority of their example now who does not hereby comprehend unless he has preferred to imitate such gods rather than by divine grace to withdraw himself from their fellowship who does not see how eagerly these evil spirits strive by their example to lend as it were divine authority to crime is not this proved by the fact that they were seen in a wide plain in campania rehearsing among themselves the battle which shortly after took place there with great bloodshed between the armies of rome for at first there were heard loud crashing noises and afterwards many reported that they had seen for some days together two armies engaged and when this battle ceased they found the ground all indented with just such footprints of men and horses as a great conflict would leave if then the deities were veritably fighting with one another the civil wars of men are sufficiently justified yet by the way let it be observed that such pugnacious gods must be very wicked or very wretched if however it was but a shamfight what did they intend by this but that the civil wars of the romans should seem no wickedness but an imitation of the gods for already the civil wars had begun and before this some lamentable battles and execrable massacres had occurred already many had been moved by the story of the soldier who on stripping the spoils of his slain foe recognized in the stripped corpse his own brother and with deep curses on civil wars slew himself there and then on his brothers body to disguise the bitterness of such tragedies and kindle increasing ardor in this monstrous warfare these malign demons who were reputed and worshipped as gods fell upon this plan of revealing themselves in a state of civil war that no compunction for fellow citizens might cause the romans to shrink from such battles but that the human criminality might be justified by the divine example by a like craft too did these evil spirits command that scenic entertainments of which i have already spoken should be instituted and dedicated to them and in these entertainments the poetical compositions and actions of the drama ascribed such iniquities to the gods that every one might safely imitate them whether he believed the gods had actually done such things or not believing this yet perceived that they most eagerly desired to be represented as having done them and that no one might suppose that in representing the gods as fighting with one another the poets had slandered them and imputed to them unworthy actions the gods themselves to complete the deception confirmed the compositions of the poets by exhibiting their own battles to the eyes of men not only through actions in the theatres but in their own persons on the actual field we have been forced to bring forward these facts because their authors have not scrupled to say and to write that the roman republic had already been ruined by the depraved moral habits of the citizens and had ceased to exist before the advent of our lord jesus christ now this ruin they do not impute to their own gods though they impute to our christ the evils of this life which cannot ruin good men be they alive or dead and this they do though our christ has issued so many precepts inculcating virtue and restraining vice while their own gods have done nothing whatever to preserve that republic that served them and to restrain it from ruin by such precepts but have rather hastened its destruction by corrupting its morality through their pestilent example no one i fancy will now be bold enough to say that the republic was then ruined because of the departure of the gods from each fane each sacred shrine as if they were the friends of virtue and were offended by the vices of men no there are too many presages from entrails auguries soothsayings whereby they boastingly proclaimed themselves prescient of future events and controllers of the fortune of war all which prove them to have been present and had they been indeed absent the romans would never in these civil wars have been so far transported by their own passions as they were by the instigations of these gods chap 26 that the demons gave in secret certain obscure instructions in morals while in public their own solemnities inculcated all wickedness seeing that this is so seeing that the filthy and cruel deeds the disgraceful and criminal actions of the gods whether real or feigned were at their own request published and were consecrated and dedicated in their honor as sacred and stated solemnities seeing they vowed vengeance on those who refused to exhibit them to the eyes of all that they might be proposed as deeds worthy of imitation why is it that these same demons who by taking pleasure in such obscenities acknowledge themselves to be unclean spirits and by delighting in their own villanies and iniquities real or imaginary and by requesting from the immodest and extorting from the modest the celebration of these licentious acts proclaim themselves instigators to a criminal and lewd life why i ask are they represented as giving some good moral precepts to a few of their own elect initiated in the secrecy of their shrines if it be so this very thing only serves further to demonstrate the malicious craft of these pestilent spirits for so great is the influence of probity and chastity that all men or almost all men are moved by the praise of these virtues nor is any man so depraved by vice but he hath some feeling of honor left in him so that unless the devil sometimes transformed himself as scripture says into an angel of light 1 he could not compass his deceitful purpose accordingly in public a bold impurity fills the ear of the people with noisy clamor in private a feigned chastity speaks in scarce audible whispers to a few an open stage is provided for shameful things but on the praiseworthy the curtain falls grace hides disgrace flaunts a wicked deed draws an overflowing house a virtuous speech finds scarce a hearer as though purity were to be blushed at impurity boasted of where else can such confusion reign but in devils temples where but in the haunts of deceit for the secret precepts are given as a sop to the virtuous who are few in number the wicked examples are exhibited to encourage the vicious who are countless where and when those initiated in the mysteries of clestis received any good instructions we know not what we do know is that before her shrine in which her image is set and amidst a vast crowd gathering from all quarters and standing closely packed together we were intensely interested spectators of the games which were going on and saw as we pleased to turn the eye on this side a grand display of harlots on the other the virgin goddess we saw this virgin worshipped with prayer and with obscene rites there we saw no shame faced mimes no actress overburdened with modesty all that the obscene rites demanded was fully complied with we were plainly shown what was pleasing to the virgin deity and the matron who witnessed the spectacle returned home from the temple a wiser woman some indeed of the more prudent women turned their faces from the immodest movements of the players and learned the art of wickedness by a furtive regard for they were restrained by the modest demeanor due to men from looking boldly at the immodest gestures but much more were they restrained from condemning with chaste heart the sacred rites of her whom they adored and yet this licentiousnesswhich if practised in ones home could only be done there in secretwas practised as a public lesson in the temple and if any modesty remained in men it was occupied in marvelling that wickedness which men could not unrestrainedly commit should be part of the religious teaching of the gods and that to omit its exhibition should incur the anger of the gods what spirit can that be which by a hidden inspiration stirs mens corruption and goads them to adultery and feeds on the full fledged iniquity unless it be the same that finds pleasure in such religious ceremonies sets in the temples images of devils and loves to see in play the images of vices that whispers in secret some righteous sayings to deceive the few who are good and scatters in public invitations to profligacy to gain possession of the millions who are wicked chap 27 that the obscenities of those plays which the romans consecrated in order to propitiate their gods contributed largely to the overthrow of public order cicero a weighty man and a philosopher in his way when about to be made edile wished the citizens to understand1 that among the other duties of his magistracy he must propitiate flora by the celebration of games and these games are reckoned devout in proportion to their lewdness in another place 2 and when he was now consul and the state in great peril he says that games had been celebrated for ten days together and that nothing had been omitted which could pacify the gods as if it had not been more satisfactory to irritate the gods by temperance than to pacify them by debauchery and to provoke their hate by honest living than soothe it by such unseemly grossness for no matter how cruel was the ferocity of those men who were threatening the state and on whose account the gods were being propitiated it could not have been more hurtful than the alliance of gods who were won with the foulest vices to avert the danger which threatened mens bodies the gods were conciliated in a fashion that drove virtue from their spirits and the gods did not enrol themselves as defenders of the battlements against the besiegers until they had first stormed and sacked the morality of the citizens this propitiation of such divinities a propitiation so wanton so impure so immodest so wicked so filthy whose actors the innate and praiseworthy virtue of the romans disabled from civic honors erased from their tribe recognized as polluted and made infamous this propitiation i say so foul so detestable and alien from every religious feeling these fabulous and ensnaring accounts of the criminal actions of the gods these scandalous actions which they either shamefully and wickedly committed or more shamefully and wickedly feigned all this the whole city learned in public both by the words and gestures of the actors they saw that the gods delighted in the commission of these things and therefore believed that they wished them not only to be exhibited to them but to be imitated by themselves but as for that good and honest instruction which they speak of it was given in such secrecy and to so few that they seemed rather to fear it might be divulged than that it might not be practised chap 28 that the christian religion is health giving they then are but abandoned and ungrateful wretches in deep and fast bondage to that malign spirit who complain and murmur that men are rescued by the name of christ from the hellish thraldom of these unclean spirits and from a participation in their punishment and are brought out of the night of pestilential ungodliness into the light of most healthful piety only such men could murmur that the masses flock to the churches and their chaste acts of worship where a seemly separation of the sexes is observed where they learn how they may so spend this earthly life as to merit a blessed eternity hereafter where holy scripture and instruction in righteousness are proclaimed from a raised platform in presence of all that both they who do the word may hear to their salvation and they who do it not may hear to judgment and though some enter who scoff at such precepts all their petulance is either quenched by a sudden change or is restrained through fear or shame for no filthy and wicked action is there set forth to be gazed at or to be imitated but either the precepts of the true god are recommended his miracles narrated his gifts praised or his benefits implored chap 29 an exhortation to the romans to renounce paganism this rather is the religion worthy of your desires o admirable roman race the progeny of your scvolas and scipios of regulus and of fabricius this rather covet this distinguish from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils if there is in your nature any eminent virtue only by true piety is it purged and perfected while by impiety it is wrecked and punished choose now what you will pursue that your praise may be not in yourself but in the true god in whom is no error for of popular glory you have had your share but by the secret providence of god the true religion was not offered to your choice awake it is now day as you have already awaked in the persons of some in whose perfect virtue and sufferings for the true faith we glory for they contending on all sides with hostile powers and conquering them all by bravely dying have purchased for us this country of ours with their blood to which country we invite you and exhort you to add yourselves to the number of the citizens of this city which also has a sanctuary3 of its own in the true remission of sins do not listen to those degenerate sons of thine who slander christ and christians and impute to them these disastrous times though they desire times in which they may enjoy rather impunity for their wickedness than a peaceful life such has never been romes ambition even in regard to her earthly country lay hold now on the celestial country which is easily won and in which you will reign truly and for ever for there shalt thou find no vestal fire no capitoline stone but the one true god no date no goal will here ordain but grant an endless boundless reign 1 no longer then follow after false and deceitful gods abjure them rather and despise them bursting forth into true liberty gods they are not but malignant spirits to whom your eternal happiness will be a sore punishment juno from whom you deduce your origin according to the flesh did not so bitterly grudge romes citadels to the trojans as these devils whom yet ye repute gods grudge an everlasting seat to the race of mankind and thou thyself hast in no wavering voice passed judgment on them when thou didst pacify them with games and yet didst account as infamous the men by whom the plays were acted suffer us then to assert thy freedom against the unclean spirits who had imposed on thy neck the yoke of celebrating their own shame and filthiness the actors of these divine crimes thou hast removed from offices of honor supplicate the true god that he may remove from thee those gods who delight in their crimes a most disgraceful thing if the crimes are really theirs and a most malicious invention if the crimes are feigned well done in that thou hast spontaneously banished from the number of your citizens all actors and players awake more fully the majesty of god cannot be propitiated by that which defiles the dignity of man how then can you believe that gods who take pleasure in such lewd plays belong to the number of the holy powers of heaven when the men by whom these plays are acted are by yourselves refused admission into the number of roman citizens even of the lowest grade incomparably more glorious than rome is that heavenly city in which for victory you have truth for dignity holiness for peace felicity for life eternity much less does it admit into its society such gods if thou dost blush to admit into thine such men wherefore if thou wouldst attain to the blessed city shun the society of devils they who are propitiated by deeds of shame are unworthy of the worship of right hearted men let these then be obliterated from your worship by the cleansing of the christian religion as those men were blotted from your citizenship by the censors mark but so far as regards carnal benefits which are the only blessings the wicked desire to enjoy and carnal miseries which alone they shrink from enduring we will show in the following book that the demons have not the power they are supposed to have and although they had it we ought rather on that account to despise these blessings than for the sake of them to worship those gods and by worshipping them to miss the attainment of these blessings they grudge us but that they have not even this power which is ascribed to them by those who worship them for the sake of temporal advantages this i say i will prove in the following book so let us here close the present argument 