City of God, Book 2

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, those who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language, would not need a 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 their own unreasonable fancies to be the very truth, either on account of their great blindness, which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on account of their opinionated obstinacy, which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see. So it is often necessary to speak more fully on those points which are already clear, so 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 how shall we ever bring our discussions to an end, 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 even though they understand, they cannot yield to them, reply to us, and, as it is written, “speak hard things,” and are incorrigibly vain. Now, if we were to set out to refute their objections as often as they brazenly chose to disregard our arguments, and as often as they could by any means contradict our statements, you see how endless, and fruitless, and painful a task we would 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 to whose service this work of mine is freely given in all Christian love, if, that is, you intend always to require a reply to every objection you hear raised against what you read in it; for so you would become like those gullible women of whom the apostle says that they are “always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 2 Timothy 3:7

In the previous book, having begun to speak of the city of God, to which I have resolved, with Heaven's help, to devote the whole of this work, my first aim was 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 name's sake the barbarians, contrary to every 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 pretended to be so, were exempted from all those hardships which by the custom of war may lawfully be inflicted. This then raised the question of 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 took up considerable space, partly so that I might relieve the anxieties which disturb many when they observe that the blessings of God, and the common and daily human misfortunes fall to bad and good men without distinction; but mainly so that I might offer 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 so that I might keep them from being ashamed of life, though they have no guilt to be ashamed of. And then I briefly spoke against those who with the most shameless wantonness insult those poor Christians who were subjected to those calamities, and especially those broken-hearted and humiliated, though chaste and holy women; while they themselves are thoroughly depraved and unmanly profligates, who have fallen far 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 stones and timbers fell; but in the ruin those profligates brought about, it was not the mural but the moral bulwarks and ornaments of the city that fell, 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 widely and freely proclaimed as it is now.

But remember that, in recounting these things, I still have to address ignorant men; so ignorant, indeed, as to give birth to the common saying, “Drought and Christianity go hand in hand.” 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 stir up the uneducated masses against us, they feign ignorance of these events, and do what they can to make the common people believe that those disasters, which in certain places and at certain times invariably happen to mankind, are the result of Christianity, which is being everywhere diffused, and has a renown and brilliance that quite eclipse their own gods. Let them then, along with us, recall the various and repeated disasters with which the prosperity of Rome was blighted, before Christ had ever come in the flesh, and before His name had been proclaimed among the nations with that glory which they vainly grudge. Let them, if they can, defend their gods on this point, 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 slightest degree. For why did these gods permit the disasters I am about to speak of to fall on their worshippers before the preaching of Christ's name offended them, and put an end to their sacrifices?

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 was only just; 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 only just that the gods, for their part, should show the same care for the conduct of men as men showed for the worship of the gods. But, it is replied, it is by his own will that a man goes astray. Who denies it? But it was nonetheless incumbent on these gods, who were men's guardians, to publish in plain terms the laws of a good life, and not to conceal them from their worshippers. It was their role to send prophets to reach and convict those who broke these laws, and publicly to proclaim the punishments which await evil-doers, and the rewards which may be looked for by those who do well. Did the walls of any of their temples ever echo with 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 Cœlestis, and Berecynthia, the mother of all the gods. And on the holy day consecrated to her purification, pieces were sung before her couch so obscene and filthy to the ear — I do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honorable man — indeed, so impure, that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves could have sat in the audience. For natural reverence for parents is a bond which the most abandoned cannot ignore. And, accordingly, these players could not, out of sheer shame, have rehearsed at home in the presence of their own mothers the lewd actions and filthy words with which they honored the mother of the gods in the presence of a vast assembly and audience of both sexes. And as for the crowds gathered from all quarters by curiosity, offended modesty must, I suppose, have scattered them 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, 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 is blinded by these evil spirits passing themselves off under the name of gods, and either disbelieves in their existence, or leads a life that prompts him to propitiate and fear them rather than the true God.

In this matter I would prefer to have as my assessors in judgment, not those men who take pleasure in these infamous customs rather 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. Surely he would want his mother to enjoy such happiness if it were 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 lie stone-dead than survive as a goddess to lend her ear to these obscenities? Is it possible that he who was of such severe morality that he used his influence as a Roman senator to prevent the building of a theater in that city dedicated to the manly virtues, would wish his mother to be propitiated as a goddess with words which would have brought a blush to her cheek when she was 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 allow herself to be invoked and celebrated in terms so gross and immodest, that if she had heard the like while alive on 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 intending to enthrall 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 the woman of whom it is written, “The adulteress will hunt for the precious soul.” Proverbs 6:26 Her intent was to puff up this high-souled man by an apparently divine testimony to his excellence, so that he might rely on his own eminence in virtue, and make no further effort toward true piety and religion, without which natural genius, however brilliant, vapors into pride and comes to nothing. For what purpose but a deceitful one could that goddess have had in demanding the best man, since in her own sacred festivals she requires such obscenities as the best men would be covered with shame to hear at their own tables?

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 strike, 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 instilled in those who were initiated in the mysteries of religion, and that secret incitements to virtue were whispered in the ear of the élite; but this is an idle boast. Let them show or name to us the places that were ever consecrated to gatherings in which, instead of the obscene songs and licentious acting of players, instead of the celebration of those most filthy and shameless Fugalia (well called Fugalia, since they banish modesty and right feeling), 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 to which Persius vehemently lashes them, when he says: “Be taught, you abandoned creatures, and learn 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 round the turning post without being shipwrecked; what limit we should put to our wealth, what we may lawfully desire, and what uses filthy lucre serves; how much we should give to our country and our family; learn, in short, what God meant you to be, and what place He has ordered you to fill.” Let them name to us the places where such instructions used to be delivered by the gods, and where the people who worshipped them regularly gathered to hear them, as we can point to our churches built for this purpose in every land where the Christian religion is received.

But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the philosophers, and their disputations? In the first place, these do not belong to Rome, but to Greece; and even if we grant 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 God's 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, so 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 permits, in its own place. However, if the philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been more just to vote divine honors to them? Would it not be more in keeping with every virtuous feeling to read Plato's writings in a “Temple of Plato,” than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the priests of Cybele 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 prescribed by the ritual of such gods as these? Would it not be 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 praise 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,” prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to hear what Plato taught or Cato censured. So the young profligate in Terence, when he sees on the wall a fresco representing the fabled descent of Jupiter into the lap of Danaë 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 shakes the loftiest temples with His thunder. And was I, a poor creature compared to Him, to have scruples about it? No; I did it, and with all my heart.”

But, someone will object, these are the fables of poets, not the pronouncements of the gods themselves. Well, I have no wish to judge between the lewdness of theatrical entertainments and of mystic rites; I say only this, 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 the occasion of a plague, and by authority of the pontiff. And what man 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 one would expect the chaste gods to avenge in anger so wicked a fiction, instead 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, 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.

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 tolerated 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 anyone, it must say it of him by name. And so in the same work of Cicero's, Scipio says, “Whom has it not slandered? Indeed, whom has it not harassed? Whom has it spared? Grant that it may attack demagogues and factions, men injurious to the commonwealth — a Cleon, a Cleophon, a Hyperbolus. That is tolerable, though it would have been more fitting for the public censor to brand such men, than for a poet to lampoon them; but to blacken the reputation 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 Nævius were to bring Publius and Cneius Scipio on the comic stage, or as if Cæcilius 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 offenses, among these few this was one: if any man sang a lampoon or 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; nor should we be exposed to slander, except where we are free to reply and defend ourselves before an adequate tribunal.” I have judged it advisable to quote this much from the fourth book of Cicero's 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 trying 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 theaters. And if only the spectators had judged them worthy only of laughter, and not of imitation! Clearly it would have been a stretch of pride to spare the good name of the leading men and the common citizens, when the very deities did not mind their own reputation being blemished.

It is alleged, to excuse 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 judge by the morality our religion teaches; and if we consider the malice of the devils, what more wily and astute artifice could they use on 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, will be sufficient when the gods are the objects of so wicked and outrageous an injustice? But the devils, whom these men consider gods, are content that even iniquities they are guiltless of should be ascribed to them, as long as they may entangle men's minds in the meshes of these opinions, and draw them 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 place 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, so 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.

It was part of this same reasonableness that led the Greeks to grant the actors of these same plays considerable civic honors. In the above-mentioned book of the De Republica, it is mentioned that Aeschines, 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 ambassador to Philip. For they judged it improper to condemn and treat as infamous persons those who were the chief actors in the stage 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 theaters those dramas which, as they had ascertained, gave pleasure to the gods whom they worshipped? Indeed, how could they not grant to them the highest civic honors? On what grounds could they honor the priests who offered for them acceptable sacrifices to the gods, if they branded with infamy the actors who on behalf of the people gave to the gods that pleasure or honor which they demanded, and which, according to the account of the priests, they were angry at not receiving. Labeo, whose learning makes him an authority on such points, is of the 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. (as he says himself), with plays, festivals, and banquets. All this we shall discuss later, with God's help. At present, and speaking to the subject at hand, whether all kinds of offerings are made indiscriminately to all the gods, as if all were good (and it is an improper thing to conceive that there are evil gods; but these gods of the pagans are all evil, because they are not gods, but evil spirits), 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, so 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 (which would be still worse) to their good gods, if the plays are relished only by them.

The Romans, however, as Scipio boasts in that same discussion, refused to have 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 anyone dared to compose such verses. This was a very honorable course to pursue, so far as they themselves were concerned, but with respect to 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 allow 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 slandered, while you know that the gods were not included under this protection? Do you count your senate-house worthy of so much higher 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 whatever imputations they please on the gods, without the interference of senator, censor, prince, or pontiff? It was, of course, intolerable that Plautus or Nævus should attack Publius and Cneius Scipio, insufferable that Cæcilius should lampoon Cato; but quite proper that your Terence should encourage youthful lust by the wicked example of supreme Jove.

But Scipio, if he were alive, might reply: “How could we attach a penalty to what 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 this not, then, the plainest proof that they were no true gods, nor in any respect worthy of receiving divine honors 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 considered worthy of worship, when they propose that their own crimes should be used as material for celebrating their praises? Does this artifice not 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, still had enough regard for their hereditary dignity and virtue to refuse players any such rewards as the Greeks granted them. On this point we have this testimony of Scipio, recorded in Cicero: “They [the Romans] considered comedy and all theatrical performances as disgraceful, and therefore not only barred 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 wish their prudence had been more thorough 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 help exclaiming: This is the true Roman spirit, this is worthy of a state jealous of its reputation. But then someone interrupts my rapture by asking with what consistency players are barred 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; 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 through whom God is worshipped excommunicated? On what pretext can you at once adore the one who exacts these plays and brand the one who acts them? 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 allow an actor to disgrace his own plebeian tribe by his name, 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 honored. The Christians draw the conclusion: Therefore such gods must by no means be worshipped.

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 slander the character of the gods? Is it right that the actors of these poetical and God-dishonoring effusions should be branded, while their authors are honored? Must we not award the palm here to a Greek, Plato, who, in framing his ideal republic, conceived that poets should be banished from the city as enemies of the state? He could not tolerate the gods being brought into disrepute, or the minds of the citizens being depraved and stupefied, by the fictions of the poets. Compare now human nature as you see it in Plato, expelling poets from the city so that the citizens might remain unharmed, 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 them 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 fitting for 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 thus set on a level with figures such as Hercules and Romulus. Labeo ranks demigods higher than heroes, but he counts both 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 allow poets even to live 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 stageplays in their own honor; the Romans exclude the players from all civic honors; 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. For our part, indeed, we consider Plato neither a god nor a demigod; we would not even compare him to any of God's holy angels; nor to the truth-speaking prophets, nor to any of the apostles or martyrs of Christ, indeed, not to any faithful Christian man. With God's help, we will give the reason for this opinion of ours in its proper place. Nevertheless, since they wish him to be considered a demigod, we think he certainly is more entitled to that rank, and is superior in every way, if not to Hercules and Romulus (though no historian could ever record of him, nor any poet sing, that he had killed his brother, or committed any crime), yet certainly to Priapus, or a Cynocephalus, or the Fever, — 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 decreeing 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. Cicero, speaking of poets, protests in vain 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!”

But is it not obvious 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 still not been counted worthy of even a little shrine; but because they can call Romulus their own, they have esteemed him more highly than many gods, though their secret doctrine can allow him the rank only of a demigod. They allotted him a flamen, that is to say, a priest of a class so highly esteemed in their religion (distinguished, too, by their conical miters), that flamens were appointed for only three of their gods — the Flamen Dialis for Jupiter, Martialis for Mars, and Quirinalis for Romulus (for when the ardor of his fellow citizens had given Romulus a seat among the gods, they gave him this new name Quirinus). And thus by this honor Romulus has been preferred to Neptune and Pluto, Jupiter's 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 reputed father of Romulus) the same honor, is this not rather for Romulus' sake than to honor Mars?

Moreover, if the Romans had been able to receive a rule of life from their gods, they would not have borrowed Solon's 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 tried to improve and amend them. 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 so mighty that, according to the wisest pagans, they ruin states while their cities stand uninjured — their gods did not make the smallest provision for preserving their worshippers from these evils, but, on the contrary, took special pains to increase them, as we have previously tried to prove.

But perhaps the reason for this neglect of the Romans by their gods is to be found in the saying of Sallust, that “equity and virtue prevailed among the Romans not more by force of laws than of nature.” I presume it is to this inborn equity and goodness of disposition that we must ascribe the rape of the Sabine women. What, indeed, could be more equitable and virtuous, than to carry off by force, as each man could, and without their parents' consent, girls who were strangers and guests, and who had been decoyed and entrapped by the pretense of a spectacle! If the Sabines were wrong to deny their daughters when the Romans asked for them, was it not a greater wrong for 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, so that he might by force of arms avenge the injury done to him by the refusal of marriage, and in this way also win the women he desired. There might have been some appearance of “right of war” in a victor carrying off, by virtue of this right, the virgins who had been denied him without any show of right; 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, namely, that though it was commemorated by the games of the circus, even this did not make it a precedent in the city or realm of Rome. If anyone wants to find fault with the results of this act, it must rather be on the grounds that the Romans made Romulus a god in spite of his perpetrating this iniquity; for one cannot reproach them for 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, Lucretia's husband and his own colleague, a good and innocent man, to resign his office and go into exile, on the single charge that he bore 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 Rome's enemies, and who had kept up a ten-year war, in which the Roman army had suffered the usual calamities that come with 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 who envied his success, and by the insolence of the tribunes of the people; and since 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 to seek his protection again from the Gauls. But I cannot now mention all the shameful and iniquitous acts that agitated Rome, when the aristocracy attempted to subject the people, and the people resented their encroachments, and the advocates of each party were driven by the love of victory rather than by any consideration of equity or virtue.

I will therefore pause and cite the testimony of Sallust himself, whose words in praise of the Romans (that “equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of laws than of nature”) prompted 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 opening of his work, that even at that time, only a very short time after the government had passed from kings to consuls, the more powerful men began to act unjustly, and caused the people to break away 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 that the peace they had with Carthage might be broken (as we mentioned, Nasica also had this in view when he opposed the destruction of Carthage, for he supposed that fear would tend to repress wickedness, and to preserve wholesome ways of living), 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 “more than ever” at that, then they had already 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 than the short time after the expulsion of the kings, while the city was occupied with the serious Tuscan war and Tarquin's 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 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, eventually took up 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, as early as a few years after the expulsion of the kings; and it is of these men that he says “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 appears at its 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. Sallust's brief sum and sketch of this period may be read in his own history, in which he shows how the profligate morals that prosperity spread resulted at last even in civil wars. He says: “And from this time the ancient morals, instead of changing imperceptibly as they had until now, 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 men's.” 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 anyone who pays attention has the means of seeing, into what a sink of iniquity that city had 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 do not dare to 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?

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 ancient morals, instead of changing imperceptibly, as they had until now, 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 if only they had merely 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 look at 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 God's 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 made 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 those whom the Baptist addressed, the publicans and the soldiers, were all together to listen to and observe the precepts of the Christian religion regarding a just and virtuous life, then the republic would adorn the whole earth with its own felicity, and attain in everlasting life 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 their condition — whether they are kings, princes, judges, soldiers, or provincials, rich or poor, bond or free, male or female — are enjoined to endure this earthly republic, wicked and dissolute as it is, so that by this endurance they may 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.

But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are not at all concerned whether the republic is 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 does it matter to us? This is our concern, that every man can 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, so that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquility; and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependents, to serve 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 heartfelt reverence, but with a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take notice of injury done to another man's property rather than of injury done to one's own person. If a man is a nuisance to his neighbor, or injure his property, family, or person, let him be actionable; but in his own affairs let everyone do whatever he likes with impunity in company with his own family, and with those who willingly join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for everyone who wishes to use them, but especially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use. Let houses of the largest and most ornate kind be built: in them let the most sumptuous banquets be provided, where anyone who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit, dissipate. Let the rustling of dancers and the loud, immodest laughter of the theater be heard everywhere; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to anyone, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if anyone attempts to modify it or put an end to it, let him be silenced, banished, done away with. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who secure this state of affairs for the people and preserve it once it is gained. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let them demand whatever games they please, from or with their own worshippers; only let them ensure that such felicity is not imperiled by enemy, 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 had it inscribed on his tomb that, now 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, would place no severe restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus.

But if our adversaries do not care how foully and disgracefully the Roman republic is stained by corrupt practices, as long as it simply holds together and continues in being, and if they therefore brush aside the testimony of Sallust to its “utterly wicked and profligate” condition, what will they make of Cicero's statement, that even in his time it had become entirely extinct, and that no Roman republic remained in existence at all? He introduces Scipio (the Scipio who had destroyed Carthage) discussing the republic, at a time when there were already 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, a certain harmony must be maintained which a cultivated ear cannot bear 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, a perfect concord is obtained 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 spoken at somewhat greater length, and had more copiously illustrated the benefits of its presence and the ruinous effects of its absence on a state, Pilus, one of the company present at the discussion, broke in and demanded that the question be examined more thoroughly, and that the subject of justice should be freely discussed to ascertain 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 examined, and gave 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 in truth it cannot be governed without the most absolute justice. And the discussion of this question, being deferred until 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, while at the same time taking special pains to clear himself of any real participation in that opinion. He argued the cause of injustice against justice with great keenness, and tried to demonstrate by plausible reasons and examples that the former is beneficial, the latter useless, to the republic. Then, at the request of the company, Lælius attempted to defend justice, and strained every nerve to prove that nothing is so harmful 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 returns to the original thread of the discussion, and repeats with approval his own brief definition of a republic, that it is the good of the people. He defines “the people” not as every assemblage or mob, but as 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 concludes that a republic, or “good of the people,” 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 lack of a better name calls them, themselves the tyrant, then the republic is not only blemished (as had been proved the day before), but by legitimate deduction from those definitions, it altogether ceases to be. For it could not be the people's good 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 fit the definition of a people — “an 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 accept 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 anyone else, but uttering his own sentiments, uses the following language at the beginning of the fifth book, after quoting a line from the poet Ennius, in which he said, “Rome's 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 the citizens without the morality of the community, nor the morality of the commons without outstanding men, could have either established or maintained in vigor for so long so grand a republic with so wide and just an empire. Accordingly, before our day, the hereditary usages formed our foremost men, and they in turn retained the usages and institutions of their fathers. But our age, receiving the republic as a chef-d'oeuvre 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 taken the trouble to preserve so much as the general outline and most outstanding features. For what survives of that primitive morality which the poet called Rome's safeguard? It is so obsolete and forgotten, that, far from practicing it, one does not even know it. And what shall I say of the citizens? Morality has perished through poverty of great men; a poverty for which we must not only give a reason, but for whose guilt 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 spread and begun to prevail, is there one of our adversaries who would not have thought they should be blamed on 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 such a mournful dirge? Its admirers need to inquire whether, even in the days of primitive men and morals, true justice flourished in it; or whether, even then, it was perhaps, to use the casual expression of Cicero, rather a colored painting than the living reality? But, God willing, we shall consider this elsewhere. For I intend to show in its proper place that — according to the definitions in which Cicero himself, using Scipio as his mouthpiece, briefly set out what a republic is, and what a people is, and according to many testimonies, both from his own lips and of those who took part in that same debate — Rome never was a republic, because true justice never had 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 except in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, at least if anyone chooses to call this a republic; and indeed we cannot deny that it is the people's good. But if perhaps this name, which has become familiar in other connections, is considered alien to our common parlance, we may at any rate say that true justice is in this city; the city of which Holy Scripture says, “Glorious things are said of you, O city of God.”

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 moral precepts and a rule of life to the people who worshipped them in so many temples, with such a great variety of priests and sacrifices, with such numberless and diverse rites, so many solemn festivals, so many celebrations of magnificent games. But in all this the demons only looked after their own interest, and did not care at all how their worshippers lived, or rather took pains to induce them to lead an abandoned life, as long as they paid these tributes to their honor, and regarded them with fear. If anyone 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 abhorred by all mankind. Who will deny that at that time the republic had become extinct? Possibly they will be bold enough to suggest in defense 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. But, firstly, if this is so, then they cannot complain against the Christian religion, as if it were what gave offense 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 so 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 if — the watchful geese had not aroused the sleeping gods! And this gave rise to the festival of the goose, in which Rome sank nearly to the superstition of the Egyptians, who worship beasts and birds. But I am not for the moment disputing about these adventitious evils, which are inflicted by hostile armies or by some disaster, and which attach to the body rather than the soul. At present I speak of the decay of morality, which at first almost imperceptibly lost its brilliant hue, but afterward 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 hesitate 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, I ask, were these who declined to live with a people who worshipped them, and whose corrupt life they had done nothing to reform?

But, further, is it not obvious that the gods have abetted the fulfillment of men's desires, instead of authoritatively bridling them? For Marius, a low-born and self-made man, who ruthlessly provoked and conducted civil wars, was so effectively 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 afterward 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 are not propitious; that men can be loaded with the gifts of fortune as Marius was, can enjoy health, power, wealth, honors, dignity, length of days, though the gods are hostile to him; and that, on the other hand, men can be tormented as Regulus was, with captivity, bondage, destitution, sleepless nights, pain, and cruel death, though the gods are his friends. To concede this is to confess, in short, that the gods are useless, and their worship superfluous. If the gods have instead taught the people what runs directly 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 benefit those 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 Rome's citizens, and abandon Regulus, the best? Does this not prove them to be most unjust and wicked? And even if it is supposed that for this very reason they are all the more 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 special 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 morals, its gods did nothing to hinder its destruction by the direction or correction of its morals, 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 Minturnæ took pity on Marius, and commended him to the goddess Marica in her grove, so that she might give him success in all things, and that from the abyss of despair in which he then lay he immediately returned unhurt to Rome, and entered the city the ruthless leader of a ruthless army; and those who wish to know how bloody his victory was, how unlike a citizen, and how much more relentlessly than any foreign enemy he acted, let them read the histories. But, as I said, I do not dwell on this; nor do I attribute the bloody bliss of Marius to some Minturnian goddess or other [Marica], but rather to the secret providence of God, so that the mouths of our adversaries might be shut, and that those 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 much store by earthly prosperity, since it is often granted 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 want, so neither can these demons, but only insofar as they are permitted by the decree of Him whose judgments are fully comprehensible, justly reprehensible by none.

It is certain that Sylla — whose rule was so cruel that, in comparison with it, the preceding state of things which he came to avenge was regretted — when he first advanced toward Rome to give battle to Marius, found the auspices so favorable when he sacrificed, that, according to Livy's 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 omens promised him great prosperity, but no threats 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 happened. And afterward, when he was contemplating 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 hearing his reply, recognized that it was the same form Jupiter had previously used 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, so 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. Afterward, when Sylla had come to Taranto, and had sacrificed there, he saw on the head of the victim's liver the likeness of a golden crown. Then the same soothsayer Postumius interpreted this to signify a signal victory, and ordered that he alone should eat the entrails. A little afterward, the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius cried out, “I am Bellona's messenger; the victory is yours, Sylla!” Then he added that the Capitol would 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 on fire!” And indeed it was on fire. It was easy for a demon both to foresee this 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 Savior 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 happen, in a place from which he in whom this spirit was speaking was far away. But he never cried, “Stop your villainies, Sylla!” — the villainies which were committed at Rome by that victor to whom a golden crown on the calf's 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 happen to 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 bodily destruction on his enemies. But the gods gave him no previous hint of these truly woeful and deplorable calamities, neither by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction. For they feared his reform more than his defeat. Indeed, 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.

Who, then, does not understand from this — unless he has preferred to imitate such gods rather than to withdraw from their fellowship by divine grace — who does not see how eagerly these evil spirits strive by their example to lend, as it were, divine authority to crime? Is this not proved by the fact that they were seen in a wide plain in Campania rehearsing among themselves the battle that took place there shortly afterward with great bloodshed between the armies of Rome? At first loud crashing noises were heard, and afterward many reported that they had seen two armies engaged for several days on end. 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 really fighting with one another, the civil wars of men are sufficiently justified; yet, incidentally, it should be noted that such pugnacious gods must be very wicked or very wretched. If, however, it was only a mock battle, what did they intend by this, except that the civil wars of the Romans should seem not wickedness but an imitation of the gods? The civil wars had already 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 enemy, recognized in the stripped corpse his own brother, and, with deep curses on civil wars, killed himself there and then on his brother's 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, hit upon this plan of revealing themselves in a state of civil war, so that no compunction for fellow citizens might cause the Romans to shrink from such battles, but so that human criminality might be justified by the divine example. With a similar craft, too, these evil spirits commanded 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 everyone could safely imitate them, whether he believed the gods had actually done such things, or, not believing this, still perceived that they most eagerly desired to be represented as having done them. And so 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 theaters, but in their own persons on the actual field. We have been forced to bring forward these facts, because their authors have not hesitated 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. They do not blame this ruin on their own gods, though they blame our Christ for the evils of this life, which cannot ruin good men, whether they are 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 imagine, 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, by which they boastfully proclaimed themselves foreknowers of future events and controllers of the fortune of war — all of which prove them to have been present. And if they had really been absent, the Romans would never have been carried so far by their own passions in these civil wars as they were by the instigations of these gods.

Since this is so — since the filthy and cruel deeds, the disgraceful and criminal actions of the gods, whether real or feigned, were published at their own request, and were consecrated, and dedicated in their honor as sacred and fixed solemnities; since they vowed vengeance on those who refused to exhibit them to the eyes of all, so that they might be held up 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 villainies 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 this is 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, that he has no feeling of honor left in him. So that, unless the devil sometimes transformed himself, as Scripture says, into an angel of light, 2 Corinthians 11:14 he could not achieve 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 barely 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 hardly a hearer, as though purity were to be blushed at, impurity boasted of. Where else can such confusion reign, except in devils' temples? Where, except 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 Cœlestis received any good instructions, we do not know. What we do know is that before her shrine, in which her image is set, and amid 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 chose to turn our eyes, on one 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 bashful 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 furtive glances. For they were restrained, by the modest demeanor due to men, from looking boldly at the immodest gestures; but they were much more restrained from condemning with chaste heart the sacred rites of her whom they adored. And yet this licentiousness — which, if practiced in one's home, could only be done there in secret — was practiced as a public lesson in the temple; and if any modesty remained in men, it was occupied in marveling 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 men's corruption, and goads them to adultery, and feeds on the full-fledged iniquity, unless it is the same one that finds pleasure in such religious ceremonies, sets images of devils in the temples, and loves to see the images of vices in plays; 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?

Cicero, a weighty man, and a philosopher in his way, when he was about to be made edile, wished the citizens to understand 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, and when he was now consul, and the state was in great peril, he says that games had been celebrated for ten days on end, and that nothing had been omitted which could pacify the gods: as if it would not have been more satisfactory to irritate the gods by temperance, than to pacify them by debauchery; and to provoke their hate by honest living, than to soothe it by such improper grossness. No matter how cruel the ferocity of those men was 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 men's bodies, the gods were conciliated in a fashion that drove virtue from their spirits; and the gods did not enroll 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 to 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 (if indeed given at all), that they seemed to fear more that it might be divulged than that it might not be practiced.

They, then, are nothing 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 slavery 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 fitting separation of the sexes is observed; where they learn how to spend this earthly life so as to merit a blessed eternity hereafter; where Holy Scripture and instruction in righteousness are proclaimed from a raised platform in the presence of all, so that both those who do the word may hear to their salvation, and those who do not do it 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. No filthy and wicked action is set forth there 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.

This, rather, is the religion worthy of your desires, admirable Roman race — the progeny of your Scævolas and Scipios, of Regulus, and of Fabricius. Covet this rather; distinguish this from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils. If there is any eminent virtue in your nature, it is purged and perfected only by true piety, while by impiety it is wrecked and punished. Choose now what you will pursue, so that your praise may be not in yourself, but in the true God, in whom there is no error. For you have had your share of popular glory; 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 awakened 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; and we invite you to this country, and urge you to add yourselves to the number of the citizens of this city, which also has a sanctuary of its own in the true remission of sins. Do not listen to those degenerate sons of yours who slander Christ and Christians, and blame them for these disastrous times, when in fact they want times in which they may enjoy impunity for their wickedness rather than a peaceful life. That has never been Rome's ambition, even for her earthly country. Take hold now of the celestial country, which is easily won, and in which you will reign truly and forever. For there you will 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. No longer, then, follow false and deceitful gods; rather renounce them, and despise them, bursting forth into true liberty. They are not gods, but malignant spirits, to whom your eternal happiness will be a grievous punishment. Juno, from whom you trace your origin according to the flesh, did not grudge Rome's citadels to the Trojans as bitterly as these devils, whom you still consider gods, grudge an everlasting seat to the race of mankind. And you yourself have passed judgment on them in no wavering voice, when you pacified them with games, and yet regarded as infamous the men by whom the plays were acted. Allow us, then, to assert your freedom against the unclean spirits who had imposed on your neck the yoke of celebrating their own shame and filthiness. You have removed the actors of these divine crimes from offices of honor; pray to the true God, so that He may remove from you 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. You did well to banish all actors and players from the number of your citizens of your own accord. Awake more fully: the majesty of God cannot be propitiated by what 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 you yourselves refuse the men by whom these plays are acted admission into the number of Roman citizens even of the lowest grade? That heavenly city is incomparably more glorious than Rome: in it you have truth for victory, holiness for dignity, happiness for peace, eternity for life. If you blush to admit such men into your society, much less does it admit such gods into its own. Therefore, if you want to reach the blessed city, shun the society of devils. Those 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 censor's 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 do not have the power they are supposed to have; and even if they had it, we ought on that account to despise these blessings rather than worship those gods for their sake, and by worshiping them fail to attain these blessings they grudge us. But I will prove in the following book that they do not have even this power, which is ascribed to them by those who worship them for the sake of temporal advantages; so let us here close the present argument.