City of God, Book 6

In the five preceding books, I think I have argued sufficiently against those who believe that the many false gods, which the Christian truth shows to be useless images, or unclean spirits and pernicious demons, or certainly creatures, not the Creator, are to be worshipped for the advantage of this mortal life, and of terrestrial affairs, with that rite and service which the Greeks call λατρεία, and which is due to the one true God. And who does not know that, in the face of excessive stupidity and obstinacy, neither these five nor any other number of books could be enough, when vanity counts it a glory to yield to no amount of strength on the side of truth — certainly to the destruction of the man over whom so heinous a vice tyrannizes? For, despite all the diligence of the physician who attempts a cure, the disease remains unconquered, not through any fault of his, but because the sick man is incurable. But those who thoroughly weigh the things which they read, having understood and considered them, with none, or with no great and excessive degree, of that obstinacy which belongs to a long-cherished error, will more readily judge that, in the five books already finished, we have done more than the question strictly demanded, rather than that we have given it less discussion than it required. And they cannot have doubted that all the hatred which the ignorant attempt to bring upon the Christian religion on account of the disasters of this life, and the destruction and change which happen to earthly things, while the learned do not merely conceal what they know, but encourage that hatred, contrary to their own consciences, being possessed by a mad impiety — they cannot have doubted, I say, that this hatred is devoid of sound reflection and reason, and full of the most thoughtless rashness and the most pernicious animosity.

Now, since next (as the promised order demands) I must refute and teach those who contend that the gods of the nations, which the Christian truth destroys, are to be worshipped not on account of this life, but on account of the life that is to come after death, I shall do well to begin my argument with the truthful oracle of the holy psalm, “Blessed is the man whose hope is the Lord God, and who does not regard vanities and lying follies.” Nevertheless, in all vanities and lying follies the philosophers who have repudiated those opinions and errors of the people are to be listened to with far more tolerance; for the people set up images to the deities, and either invented many false and unworthy things about those whom they call immortal gods, or believed them once invented, and, when believed, mixed them up with their worship and sacred rites. With those men who, though not by openly declaring their convictions, still testify that they disapprove of those things by muttering their disapproval during debates on the subject, it may not be far wrong to discuss the following question: Whether for the sake of the life that is to come after death, we ought to worship, not the one God who made all creatures spiritual and corporeal, but those many gods who, as some of these philosophers hold, were made by that one God, and placed by Him in their respective lofty spheres, and are therefore considered more excellent and more noble than all the others? But who will assert that it must be affirmed and contended that those gods, some of whom I mentioned in the fourth book, among whom the care of trivial things is distributed one by one, bestow eternal life? But will those most skilled and most acute men, who glory in having written for the great benefit of men, to teach why each god is to be worshipped, and what is to be sought from each, so that water would not be sought from Liber, with the most disgraceful absurdity, such as a mime puts on for a laugh, wine from the Lymphs, — will those men really tell anyone praying to the immortal gods that, when he has asked wine from the Lymphs and they have answered him, “We have water, seek wine from Liber,” he may rightly say, “If you do not have wine, at least give me eternal life?” What is more monstrous than this absurdity? Will not these Lymphs, — for they are very easily made to laugh, — laughing loudly (if they do not attempt to deceive like demons), answer the suppliant, “Man, do you think that we have life (vitam) in our power, when you hear that we do not even have the vine (vitem)?” It is therefore most impudent folly to seek and hope for eternal life from gods who are said to preside over the separate trivial concerns of this most sorrowful and short life, and over whatever is useful for supporting and propping it up, in such a way that if anything under the care and power of one is sought from another, it is so incongruous and absurd that it looks very much like the buffoonery of a mime — which, when it is done by mimes who know what they are doing, is deservedly laughed at in the theater, but when it is done by foolish persons, who do not know better, is more deservedly ridiculed in the world. Therefore, as for those gods which the states have established, it has been cleverly invented and handed down to memory by learned men, what god or goddess is to be prayed to for each particular thing — what, for instance, is to be sought from Liber, what from the Lymphs, what from Vulcan, and so on for all the rest, some of whom I have mentioned in the fourth book, and some I have thought right to omit. Further, if it is an error to seek wine from Ceres, bread from Liber, water from Vulcan, fire from the Lymphs, how much more absurd ought it to be thought if anyone prays to any one of these for eternal life? Therefore, if, when we were inquiring what gods or goddesses should be believed able to confer earthly kingdoms on men, it was shown, after everything had been discussed, to be very far from the truth to think that even earthly kingdoms are established by any of those many false deities, is it not most insane impiety to believe that eternal life, which is, without any doubt or comparison, to be preferred to all earthly kingdoms, can be given to anyone by any of these gods? For the reason why such gods seemed to us not to be able to give even an earthly kingdom, was not because they are very great and exalted, while an earthly kingdom is something small and lowly, which they, in their great loftiness, would not stoop to care for, but because, however deservedly anyone may, in consideration of human frailty, despise the falling pinnacles of an earthly kingdom, these gods have shown themselves such that they seem most unworthy to be entrusted with granting and preserving even those; and consequently, if (as we have taught in the last two books of our work, where this matter is treated) no god out of all that crowd, whether he belongs, so to speak, to the plebeian or to the noble gods, is fit to give mortal kingdoms to mortals, how much less is he able to make immortals of mortals? And more than this, if, according to the opinion of those with whom we are now arguing, the gods are to be worshipped, not on account of the present life, but on account of the life that is to come after death, then, certainly, they are not to be worshipped on account of those particular things which are distributed and portioned out (not by any law of rational truth, but by mere vain conjecture) to the power of such gods, as is believed by those who contend that their worship is necessary for all the desirable things of this mortal life, against whom I have argued sufficiently, as far as I was able, in the five preceding books. This being so, if the youth of those who worshipped the goddess Juventas were marked by remarkable vigor, while those who despised her either died within the years of youth, or, during that period, grew cold as with the torpor of old age; if bearded Fortuna covered the cheeks of her worshippers more handsomely and more gracefully than all others, while we saw those who despised her either altogether beardless or poorly bearded; even then we would most rightly say that these several gods had power only this far, limited in some way by their functions, and that, consequently, eternal life ought not to be sought from Juventas, who could not give a beard, nor ought any good thing after this life to be expected from Fortuna Barbata, who has no power even in this life to give the age itself at which the beard grows. But as it is, when their worship is not necessary even for those very things which are thought to be subject to their power — for many worshippers of the goddess Juventas have not been at all vigorous at that age, and many who do not worship her rejoice in youthful strength; and also many suppliants of Fortuna Barbata have either not been able to grow any beard at all, or only an ugly one, and those who adore her in order to obtain a beard are ridiculed by the bearded men who despise her — is the human heart really so foolish as to believe that that worship of the gods, which it acknowledges to be vain and ridiculous with respect to those very temporal and swiftly passing gifts, over each of which one of these gods is said to preside, bears fruit with respect to eternal life? And that they are able to give eternal life has not been affirmed even by those who, so that the gods might be worshipped by the foolish populace, divided these temporal occupations among them in minute portions, so that none of them would sit idle; for they had supposed that there were an exceedingly great number of them.

Who has investigated those things more carefully than Marcus Varro? Who has uncovered them more learnedly? Who has considered them more attentively? Who has distinguished them more acutely? Who has written about them more diligently and more fully?— who, though he is less pleasing in his eloquence, is nevertheless so full of instruction and wisdom, that in all the learning which we call secular, but they call liberal, he will teach the student of things as much as Cicero delights the student of words. And even Tully himself gives him such testimony as to say in his Academic books that he had held the debate conducted there with Marcus Varro, “a man,” he adds, “unquestionably the most acute of all men, and, without any doubt, the most learned.” He does not say the most eloquent or the most fluent, for in reality he was very deficient in this ability, but he says, “of all men the most acute.” And in those books — that is, the Academic — where he contends that all things are to be doubted, he adds of him, “without any doubt the most learned.” In truth, he was so certain about this that he laid aside the doubt to which he usually resorts in everything, as if, when about to argue in favor of the doubt of the Academics, he had, with respect to this one thing, forgotten that he was an Academic. But in the first book, when he extols the literary works of the same Varro, he says, “When we were straying and wandering in our own city like strangers, your books, as it were, brought us home, so that at last we might come to know who we were and where we were. You have opened up to us the age of the country, the distribution of seasons, the laws of sacred things, and of the priests; you have opened up to us domestic and public discipline; you have pointed out to us the proper places for religious ceremonies, and have informed us about sacred places. You have shown us the names, kinds, offices, causes of all divine and human things.” This man, then, of such distinguished and excellent learning, and, as Terentian briefly says of him in a most elegant verse, “Varro, a man universally informed,” who read so much that we wonder when he had time to write, wrote so much that we can scarcely believe anyone could have read it all — this man, I say, so great in talent, so great in learning, if he had been an opponent and destroyer of the so-called divine things of which he wrote, and had said that they belonged to superstition rather than to religion, might perhaps, even in that case, not have written so many things which are ridiculous, contemptible, detestable. But when he so worshipped these same gods, and so vindicated their worship, as to say, in that same literary work of his, that he was afraid they would perish, not by an assault by enemies, but by the negligence of the citizens, and that he is delivering them from this disgrace, and that they are being stored up and preserved in the memory of the good by means of such books, with a zeal far more beneficial than that through which Metellus is declared to have rescued the sacred things of Vesta from the flames, and Æneas to have rescued the Penates from the burning of Troy; and when he nevertheless hands down, to be read by later ages, things which the wise and the unwise alike deservedly judge unfit to be read, and to be most hostile to the truth of religion; what ought we to think but that a most acute and learned man — not, however, set free by the Holy Spirit — was overpowered by the custom and laws of his state, and, unable to be silent about the things that troubled him, spoke of them under the pretense of commending religion?

He wrote forty-one books of antiquities. These he divided into human and divine things. Twenty-five he devoted to human things, sixteen to divine things; and in that division he followed this plan: to give six books to each of the four divisions of human things. For he directs his attention to these considerations: who acts, where they act, when they act, what they do. Therefore in the first six books he wrote about men; in the second six, about places; in the third six, about times; in the fourth and last six, about things. Four times six, however, make only twenty-four. But he placed at the head of them one separate work, which spoke of all these things together. In divine things he kept the same order throughout, as far as concerns the things that are performed for the gods. For sacred things are performed by men in places and times. These four things I have mentioned he covered in twelve books, allotting three to each. For he wrote the first three about men, the next three about places, the third three about times, and the fourth three about sacred rites — showing who should perform, where they should perform, when they should perform, what they should perform, with the most subtle distinction. But because it was necessary to say — and that especially was expected — for whom they should perform sacred rites, he wrote the last three books about the gods themselves; and these five times three made fifteen. But in all, as we have said, there are sixteen. For he also put at the beginning of these one separate book, which speaks by way of introduction about all that follows. When that was finished, he went on to subdivide the first three in that fivefold arrangement, the ones about men, making the first about high priests, the second about augurs, the third about the fifteen men presiding over the sacred ceremonies. The second three he made about places, speaking in one of them about their chapels, in the second about their temples, and in the third about religious places. The next three, which follow these and deal with times — that is, with festival days — he arranged so as to make one about holidays, another about the circus games, and the third about stage plays. Of the fourth three, which deal with sacred things, he devoted one to consecrations, another to private, the last to public, sacred rites. In the three which remain, the gods themselves, on whom all this worship has been spent, follow as if at the end of this solemn procession. In the first book are the certain gods, in the second the uncertain, in the third, and last of all, the chief and select gods.

In this whole series of most beautiful and most subtle distributions and distinctions, it will be very easily evident from what we have already said, and from what is still to be said, to anyone who is not, in the obstinacy of his heart, an enemy to himself, that it is vain to seek and to hope for, and even most impudent to wish for eternal life. For these institutions are either the work of men or of demons — not of those whom they call good demons, but, to speak more plainly, of unclean, and, beyond dispute, malign spirits, who with astonishing slyness and secrecy suggest to the thoughts of the impious, and sometimes openly present to their understandings, harmful opinions, by which the human mind grows more and more foolish, and becomes unable to adapt itself to the immutable and eternal truth and remain in it, and who seek to confirm these opinions by every kind of false testimony in their power. This very same Varro testifies that he wrote first about human things, and afterward about divine things, because the states existed first, and afterward these things were instituted by them. But the true religion was not instituted by any earthly state, but itself plainly established the heavenly city. And it is inspired and taught by the true God, the giver of eternal life to His true worshippers. The following is the reason Varro gives when he confesses that he had written first about human things, and afterward about divine things, because these divine things were instituted by men: — “As the painter comes before the painted panel, the mason before the building, so states come before those things which are instituted by states.” But he says that he would have written first about the gods, afterward about men, if he had been writing about the whole nature of the gods — as if he were really writing about some portion of, and not all, the nature of the gods; or as if, indeed, some portion of, though not all, the nature of the gods ought not to be put before that of men. How is it, then, that in those last three books, when he is diligently explaining the certain, uncertain and select gods, he seems to pass over no portion of the nature of the gods? Why, then, does he say, “If we had been writing on the whole nature of the gods, we would first have finished the divine things before we touched the human?” For he writes either about the whole nature of the gods, or about some portion of it, or about no part of it at all. If about all of it, it is certainly to be put before human things; if about some part of it, why should it not, from the very nature of the case, precede human things? Is not even some part of the gods to be preferred to the whole of humanity? But if it is too much to prefer a part of the divine to all human things, that part is certainly worthy to be preferred to the Romans at least. For he writes the books about human things, not with reference to the whole world, but only to Rome; which books he says he had properly placed, in the order of writing, before the books on divine things, like a painter before the painted panel, or a mason before the building, most openly confessing that, like a picture or a building, even these divine things were instituted by men. There remains only the third supposition, that he is to be understood to have written about no divine nature, but that he did not wish to say this openly, but left it to the intelligent to infer; for when one says “ not all,” usage understands that to mean “ some,” but it may be understood as meaning none, because that which is none is neither all nor some. In fact, as he himself says, if he had been writing about the whole nature of the gods, its due place would have been before human things in the order of writing. But, as the truth declares, even though Varro is silent, the divine nature should have taken precedence over Roman things, even if it were not all, but only some. But it is properly put after, therefore it is none. His arrangement, therefore, was due, not to a desire to give human things priority over divine things, but to his unwillingness to prefer false things to true. For in what he wrote on human things, he followed the history of affairs; but in what he wrote about the things they call divine, what else did he follow but mere conjectures about vain things? This, no doubt, is what he subtly wished to signify, not only by writing about divine things after the human, but even giving a reason why he did so; for if he had suppressed this, some, perhaps, would have defended his doing so in one way, and some in another. But in the very reason he has given, he has left nothing for men to conjecture at will, and has sufficiently proved that he preferred men to the institutions of men, not the nature of men to the nature of the gods. Thus he confessed that, in writing the books about divine things, he did not write about the truth which belongs to nature, but about the falseness which belongs to error; which he has elsewhere expressed more openly (as I have mentioned in the fourth book), saying that, if he had been founding a new city himself, he would have written according to the order of nature; but as he had only found an old one, he could only follow its custom.

Now what are we to say of this proposition of his, namely, that there are three kinds of theology, that is, of the account which is given of the gods; and of these, the one is called mythical, the other physical, and the third civil? If Latin usage permitted, we would call the kind which he has placed first in order fabular, but let us call it fabulous, for mythical is derived from the Greek μῦθος, a fable; but that the second should be called natural, current usage now allows; the third he himself has designated in Latin, calling it civil. Then he says, “they call that kind mythical which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the philosophers use; civil, that which the people use. As to the first I have mentioned,” he says, “there are many fictions in it, which are contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals. For we find in it that one god has been born from the head, another from the thigh, another from drops of blood; also, in this we find that gods have stolen, committed adultery, served men; in a word, all kinds of things are attributed to the gods in it, such as may happen not merely to any man, but even to the most contemptible man.” Where he could, where he dared, where he thought he could do it with impunity, he certainly showed, without any haze of ambiguity, how great an injury was done to the nature of the gods by lying fables; for he was speaking, not about natural theology, not about civil, but about fabulous theology, with which he thought he could freely find fault. Let us see, now, what he says about the second kind. “The second kind which I have explained,” he says, “is the one about which philosophers have left many books, in which they treat such questions as these: what gods there are, where they are, of what kind and character they are, since when they have existed, or whether they have existed from eternity; whether they are of fire, as Heraclitus believes; or of number, as Pythagoras; or of atoms, as Epicurus says; and other such things, which men's ears can more easily hear inside the walls of a school than outside in the Forum.” He finds fault with nothing in this kind of theology which they call physical, and which belongs to philosophers, except that he has related their controversies among themselves, through which there has arisen a multitude of dissenting sects. Nevertheless he has removed this kind from the Forum, that is, from the populace, but he has shut it up in schools. But that first kind, most false and most base, he has not removed from the citizens. Oh, the religious ears of the people, and among them even those of the Romans, that cannot bear what the philosophers debate about the gods! But when the poets sing and stage-players act things that insult the dignity and the nature of the immortals, such as may happen not merely to a man, but to the most contemptible man, they not only bear them but willingly listen. Nor is this all, but they even consider that these things please the gods, and that they are propitiated by them. But someone may say, Let us distinguish these two kinds of theology, the mythical and the physical — that is, the fabulous and the natural — from this civil kind about which we are now speaking. Anticipating this, he himself has distinguished them. Let us see now how he explains the civil theology itself. I see, indeed, why the fabulous should be set apart, namely because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil, what else is that but to confess that the civil itself is false? For if the one is natural, what fault does it have that it should be excluded? And if the one called civil is not natural, what merit has it that it should be admitted? This, in truth, is the reason he wrote first about human things, and afterward about divine things; since in divine things he did not follow nature, but the institution of men. Let us look at this civil theology of his. “The third kind,” he says, “is the one which citizens in cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and to administer. From it one learns what god each one may suitably worship, what sacred rites and sacrifices each one may suitably perform.” Let us pay attention to what follows as well. “The first theology,” he says, “is especially adapted to the theater, the second to the world, the third to the city.” Who does not see to which he awards the prize? Certainly to the second, which he said above is that of the philosophers. For he testifies that this belongs to the world, and they think there is nothing better than the world. But those two theologies, the first and the third — namely, those of the theater and of the city — has he distinguished them or united them? For although we see that the city is in the world, we do not see that it follows that everything belonging to the city belongs to the world. For it is possible that such things may be worshipped and believed in the city, according to false opinions, which do not exist either in the world or outside it. But where is the theater if not in the city? Who instituted the theater if not the state? For what purpose did it establish it if not for stage plays? And to what class of things do stage plays belong if not to those divine things about which these books of Varro's are written with so much ability?

Marcus Varro! You are the most acute, and without doubt the most learned of men, but still a man, not God, and not lifted up by the Spirit of God to see and to announce divine things, you see, indeed, that divine things are to be separated from human trifles and lies, but you are afraid of offending those most corrupt opinions of the populace, and their customs in public superstitions, which you yourself, when you consider them from every side, perceive to be repugnant to the nature of the gods, as all your writings loudly declare, even of the kind of gods that the frailty of the human mind supposes to exist in the elements of this world. What can the most excellent human talent do here? What good can human learning, however wide, do you in this perplexity? You desire to worship the natural gods; you are compelled to worship the civil. You have found some of the gods to be fabulous, and on them you pour out very freely what you think, and, whether you wish it or not, you spatter even the civil gods with it. You say, of course, that the fabulous are adapted to the theater, the natural to the world, and the civil to the city; though the world is a divine work, while cities and theaters are the works of men, and though the gods who are laughed at in the theater are no different from those who are adored in the temples; and you put on games in honor of the very same gods to whom you sacrifice victims. How much more freely and more subtly would you have settled these matters if you had said that some gods are natural, others established by men; and that about those who have been so established, the literature of the poets gives one account, and that of the priests another — both of which are, nevertheless, so friendly to each other, through fellowship in falsehood, that they are both pleasing to the demons, to whom the doctrine of the truth is hostile. Setting aside for a moment, then, the theology they call natural, since it is to be discussed later, we ask whether anyone is really content to seek a hope for eternal life from poetic, theatrical, stage gods? Perish the thought! May the true God avert so wild and sacrilegious a madness! What, is eternal life to be asked from those gods whom these things pleased, and whom these things propitiate, in which their own crimes are represented? No one, I think, has reached such a pitch of headlong and furious impiety. So then, neither by the fabulous nor by the civil theology does anyone obtain eternal life. For the one sows shameful things about the gods by inventing them, the other reaps by cherishing them; the one scatters lies, the other gathers them together; the one pursues divine things with false crimes, the other incorporates among divine things the plays which are made up of these crimes; the one broadcasts impious fictions about the gods in human songs, the other consecrates these for the festivities of the gods themselves; the one sings the misdeeds and crimes of the gods, the other loves them; the one reports or invents, the other either attests what is true or delights in what is false. Both are shameful; both are damnable. But the one which is theatrical teaches public abomination, and the one that belongs to the city adorns itself with that abomination. Is eternal life to be hoped for from these, by which this short and temporal life is polluted? Does the society of wicked men pollute our life if they insinuate themselves into our affections, and win our assent? And does the society of demons, who are worshipped with their own crimes, not pollute our life?— if with true crimes, how wicked the demons! If with false, how wicked the worship! When we say these things, it may perhaps seem to someone who is very ignorant of these matters that only those things about the gods which are sung in the songs of the poets and acted on the stage are unworthy of the divine majesty, and ridiculous, and too detestable to be celebrated, while those sacred things which not stage-players but priests perform are pure and free from all indecency. If this had been so, no one would ever have thought that these theatrical abominations should be celebrated in their honor, and the gods themselves would never have ordered them to be performed for them. But men are not at all ashamed to perform these things in the theaters, because similar things are carried on in the temples. In short, when the author just mentioned attempted to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous and natural, as a sort of third and distinct kind, he wished it to be understood as a blend of both rather than separate from either. For he says that those things which the poets write are less than the people ought to follow, while what the philosophers say is more than it is good for the people to pry into. “These,” he says, “differ in such a way that quite a few things from both of them have nevertheless been taken over into the civil theology; therefore we will indicate what the civil theology has in common with that of the poet, though it ought to be more closely connected with the theology of philosophers.” Civil theology is therefore not entirely disconnected from that of the poets. Nevertheless, in another place, on the genealogies of the gods, he says that the people are more inclined toward the poets than toward the physical theologians. For in this place he said what ought to be done; in that other place, what was really done. He said that the latter had written for the sake of utility, but the poets for the sake of amusement. And hence the things from the poets' writings, which the people ought not to follow, are the crimes of the gods; which, nevertheless, amuse both the people and the gods. For the poets, he says, write for the sake of amusement and not for utility; nevertheless they write the kind of things the gods desire, and the people perform.

That theology, therefore, which is fabulous, theatrical, scenic, and full of every kind of shamefulness and indecency, is taken up into the civil theology; and part of that theology, which as a whole is deservedly judged worthy of condemnation and rejection, is pronounced worthy to be cultivated and observed — and not, as I have undertaken to show, an incongruous part, alien to the whole body and unsuitably attached to it and hung from it, but a part entirely in keeping with the rest and most harmoniously fitted to it, as a member of the same body. For what else do those images, forms, ages, sexes, characteristics of the gods show? If the poets have Jupiter with a beard and Mercury beardless, do the priests not have the same? Is the Priapus of the priests less obscene than the Priapus of the players? Does he receive the adoration of worshippers in a different form from that in which he moves about the stage for the amusement of spectators? Is not Saturn old and Apollo young in the shrines where their images stand as well as when represented by actors' masks? Why are Forculus, who presides over doors, and Limentinus, who presides over thresholds and lintels, male gods, and Cardea, who presides over hinges, a female one between them? Are not those things found in books on divine things, which grave poets have deemed unworthy of their verses? Does the Diana of the theater carry arms, while the Diana of the city is simply a virgin? Is the stage Apollo a lyrist, but the Delphic Apollo ignorant of this art? But these things are decent compared with the more shameful things. What was thought of Jupiter himself by those who placed his wet nurse in the Capitol? Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who, not with the chatter of a storyteller, but with the seriousness of a historian who had diligently investigated the matter, wrote that all such gods had been men and mortals? And those who appointed the Epulones as parasites at the table of Jupiter, what else did they want but sacred rites fit for a farce? For if any mime had said that Jupiter kept parasites at his table, he would certainly have seemed to be trying to raise a laugh. Varro said it — and he said it not when he was mocking the gods, but when he was commending them. His books on divine, not on human, things testify that he wrote this — not where he described the stage games, but where he explained the Capitoline laws. In a word, he is conquered, and confesses that, just as they made the gods in human form, so they believed that they are delighted with human pleasures. For the malign spirits did not neglect their own business either, and they confirmed harmful opinions in the minds of men by turning them into sport. From this also comes that story about the sacristan of Hercules, which says that, having nothing to do, he took to playing dice as a pastime, throwing them alternately with the one hand for Hercules, with the other for himself, on this understanding: that if he won, he would prepare himself a supper from the funds of the temple and hire a mistress; but if Hercules won the game, he himself would, at his own expense, provide the same for the pleasure of Hercules. Then, when he had been beaten by himself, as though by Hercules, he gave to the god Hercules the supper he owed him, and also the most renowned prostitute Larentina. But she, having fallen asleep in the temple, dreamed that Hercules had had intercourse with her, and had said to her that she would find her payment from the first young man she met on leaving the temple, and that she was to believe this to be paid to her by Hercules. And so the first young man who met her as she went out was the wealthy Tarutius, who kept her a long time, and when he died left her his heir. Having obtained a very large fortune, and so as not to seem ungrateful for the divine payment, she in turn made the Roman people her heir, which she thought to be most acceptable to the deities; and, after she disappeared, the will was found. They say that she gained divine honors by this meritorious conduct. Now if these things had been invented by the poets and acted by the mimes, they would without any doubt have been said to belong to the fabulous theology, and would have been judged worthy to be separated from the dignity of the civil theology. But when these shameful things — not of the poets, but of the people; not of the mimes, but of the sacred rites; not of the theaters, but of the temples, that is, not of the fabulous, but of the civil theology, — are reported by so great an author, it is not in vain that the actors represent with theatrical art the shamefulness of the gods, which is so great; but it is surely in vain that the priests attempt, by rites called sacred, to represent a nobility of character in them which does not exist. There are sacred rites of Juno; and these are celebrated in her beloved island, Samos, where she was given in marriage to Jupiter. There are sacred rites of Ceres, in which Proserpine is sought for, having been carried off by Pluto. There are sacred rites of Venus, in which, her beloved Adonis, a lovely youth killed by a boar's tusk, is lamented. There are sacred rites of the mother of the gods, in which the beautiful youth Atys, loved by her, and castrated by her through a woman's jealousy, is mourned by men who have suffered the same calamity, whom they call Galli. Since, then, these things are more indecent than every abomination of the stage, why is it that they strive to separate, as it were, the fabulous fictions of the poet concerning the gods, as supposedly belonging to the theater, from the civil theology which they wish to belong to the city, as though they were separating unworthy and shameful things from noble and worthy ones? Therefore there is more reason to thank the stage-actors, who have spared the eyes of men and have not laid bare by theatrical exhibition all the things which are hidden by the walls of the temples. What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when those which are brought forth into the light are so detestable? And certainly they themselves know best what they do in secret through the agency of mutilated and effeminate men. Yet they have not been able to conceal those same men, wretchedly and vilely unmanned and corrupted. Let them persuade whom they can that they do anything holy through such men, who, they cannot deny, are counted among their sacred things and live among them. We do not know what they do, but we know through whom they do it; for we know what things are done on the stage, where a mutilated or effeminate man has never appeared, even in a chorus of prostitutes. And, nevertheless, even these things are acted by vile and infamous characters; for, indeed, they ought not to be acted by men of good character. What, then, are those sacred rites, for whose performance holiness has chosen the kind of men that not even the obscenity of the stage has admitted?

But all these things, they say, have certain physical, that is, natural interpretations, showing their natural meaning; as though in this discussion we were looking for physics and not theology, which is the account, not of nature, but of God. For although He who is the true God is God, not by opinion, but by nature, nevertheless not every nature is God; for there is certainly a nature of man, of a beast, of a tree, of a stone, — none of which is God. For if, when the question is about the mother of the gods, the point from which the whole system of interpretation starts is certainly that the mother of the gods is the earth, why do we inquire further? Why do we carry our investigation through all the rest of it? What can more plainly favor those who say that all those gods were men? For they are earth-born in the sense that the earth is their mother. But in the true theology the earth is the work, not the mother, of God. But in whatever way their sacred rites may be interpreted, and whatever reference they may have to the nature of things, it is not according to nature, but contrary to nature, for men to be made effeminate. This disease, this crime, this abomination, has a recognized place among those sacred things, though even depraved men can scarcely be compelled by torture to confess they are guilty of it. Again, if these sacred rites, which are proved to be fouler than the abominations of the stage, are excused and justified on the ground that they have their own interpretations, by which they are shown to symbolize the nature of things, why are the poets' tales not excused and justified in the same way? For many have interpreted even these in the same fashion, so much so that even the tale they call the most monstrous and most horrible — namely, that Saturn devoured his own children — has been interpreted by some of them to mean that length of time, which is signified by the name of Saturn, consumes whatever it begets; or that, as the same Varro thinks, Saturn has to do with seeds which fall back again into the earth from where they spring. And so one person interprets it one way, and another in another. And the same is to be said of all the rest of this theology. And, nevertheless, it is called the fabulous theology, and is censured, cast off, rejected, together with all such interpretations belonging to it. And not only by the natural theology, which is that of the philosophers, but also by this civil theology of which we are speaking, which is said to belong to cities and peoples, it is judged worthy of repudiation, because it has invented unworthy things about the gods. The secret of this, I know, is that those most acute and learned men who wrote these things understood that both theologies ought to be rejected — namely, both the fabulous and the civil one — but they dared to reject the former and did not dare to reject the latter; the former they set out to be censured, the latter they showed to be very like it; not so that it might be chosen in preference to the other, but so that it might be understood to be worthy of being rejected together with it. And in this way, without danger to those who feared to censure the civil theology, both would be brought into contempt, and the theology they call natural might find a place in better-disposed minds; for the civil and the fabulous are both fabulous and both civil. Whoever wisely examines the vanities and obscenities of both will find that they are both fabulous; and whoever turns his attention to the stage plays that belong to the fabulous theology in the festivals of the civil gods, and in the divine rites of the cities, will find they are both civil. How, then, can the power of giving eternal life be attributed to any of those gods whose own images and sacred rites convict them of being most like the fabulous gods, which are most openly condemned, in forms, ages, sex, characteristics, marriages, offspring, rites; in all of which they are understood either to have been men, and to have had their sacred rites and solemnities instituted in their honor according to the life or death of each of them, with the demons suggesting and confirming this error, or else to have been most foul spirits, who, taking advantage of some occasion or other, have stolen into the minds of men to deceive them?

And as to those very offices of the gods, so pettily and so minutely portioned out that they say each one ought to be prayed to according to his special function — about which we have spoken much already, though not all that there is to say about it — do they not suit the buffoonery of a mime better than divine majesty? If anyone employed two nurses for his infant, one to give nothing but food and the other nothing but drink, as these people employ two goddesses for this purpose, Educa and Potina, he would certainly seem foolish, and seem to be doing in his house something worthy of a mime. They claim that Liber was named from “liberation,” because through him males at the time of copulation are liberated by the emission of the seed. They also say that Libera (the same in their opinion as Venus) performs the same function for women, because they say that they also emit seed; and they also say that on this account the same part of the male and of the female is placed in the temple, the male part to Liber, and the female part to Libera. To these things they add the women assigned to Liber, and the wine for arousing lust. Thus the Bacchanalia are celebrated with the utmost insanity, and Varro himself confesses that the Bacchanals would not do such things unless their minds were highly excited. These things, however, later displeased a saner senate, and it ordered them to be discontinued. Here, at last, they perhaps perceived how much power unclean spirits, when held to be gods, exercise over the minds of men. These things, certainly, were not to be done in the theaters; for there they play, they do not rave, although to have gods who are delighted with such plays is very like raving. But what kind of distinction is this that he makes between the religious and the superstitious man, saying that the gods are feared by the superstitious man, but are reverenced as parents by the religious man, not feared as enemies; and that they are all so good that they will more readily spare those who are impious than hurt anyone who is innocent? And yet he tells us that three gods are assigned as guardians to a woman after she has given birth, so that the god Silvanus may not come in and molest her; and that in order to signify the presence of these protectors, three men go around the house during the night, and first strike the threshold with a hatchet, next with a pestle, and the third time sweep it with a brush, so that, once these symbols of agriculture have been displayed, the god Silvanus may be kept from entering, because trees are not cut down or pruned without a hatchet, grain is not ground without a pestle, and grain is not heaped up without a broom. Now from these three things three gods have been named: Intercidona, from the cut made by the hatchet; Pilumnus, from the pestle; Diverra, from the broom;— and by these guardian gods the woman who has given birth is protected against the power of the god Silvanus. Thus the guardianship of kindly-disposed gods would be of no use against the malice of a harmful god unless they were three to one, and fought against him, an inhabitant of the woods who is rough, horrible, and uncultivated, with the opposing emblems, so to speak, of cultivation. Is this the innocence of the gods? Is this their concord? Are these the health-giving deities of the cities, more ridiculous than the things which are laughed at in the theaters? When a male and a female are united, the god Jugatinus presides. Well, let this be tolerated. But the married woman must be brought home: the god Domiducus is invoked as well. So that she may be in the house, the god Domitius is brought in. So that she may remain with her husband, the goddess Manturnæ is added. What more is required? Let human modesty be spared. Let the lust of flesh and blood go on with the rest, with the privacy that shame requires respected. Why is the bedroom filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen have departed? And, moreover, it is filled in this way not so that, out of regard for their presence, more respect may be paid to chastity, but so that by their help the woman, naturally of the weaker sex, and trembling at the novelty of her situation, may more readily yield her virginity. For there are the goddess Virginiensis, and the god-father Subigus, and the goddess-mother Prema, and the goddess Pertunda, and Venus, and Priapus. What is this? If it was absolutely necessary that a man, laboring at this work, should be helped by the gods, would not some one god or goddess have been enough? Was Venus alone not enough, who is even said to be named from this, that without her power a woman does not cease to be a virgin? If there is any shame in men, which is not in the deities, is it not the case that, when the married couple believe that so many gods of either sex are present, and busy at this work, they are so overcome with shame that the man is less moved, and the woman more reluctant? And certainly, if the goddess Virginiensis is present to loosen the virgin's girdle, if the god Subigus is present so that the virgin may be put under the man, if the goddess Prema is present so that, once she has been put under him, she may be kept down and may not move, what is the goddess Pertunda doing there? Let her blush; let her leave. Let the husband himself do something. It is disgraceful that anyone but himself should do that from which she gets her name. But perhaps she is tolerated because she is said to be a goddess, and not a god. For if she were believed to be a male, and were called Pertundus, the husband would demand more help against him for the chastity of his wife than the woman who has just given birth demands against Silvanus. But why am I saying this, when Priapus, too, is there, a male to excess, on whose immense and most unsightly member the newly married bride is commanded to sit, according to the most honorable and most religious custom of matrons? Let them go on and attempt with all the subtlety they can to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous, the cities from the theaters, the temples from the stages, the sacred things of the priests from the songs of the poets, as honorable things from shameful things, truthful things from deceptive ones, weighty from trivial, serious from ludicrous, desirable things from things to be rejected: we understand what they are doing. They are aware that that theatrical and fabulous theology depends on the civil, and is reflected back on it from the songs of the poets as from a mirror; and so, having exposed to view the theology which they do not dare to condemn, they more freely attack and censure that picture of it, in order that those who perceive what they mean may detest the very face of which it is the picture — which, however, the gods themselves, as though seeing themselves in the same mirror, love so much that who and what they are is better seen in both of them. For this reason, also, they have compelled their worshippers, with terrible commands, to dedicate to them the uncleanness of the fabulous theology, to put it among their solemn rites, and to count it among divine things; and in this way they have both shown themselves more plainly to be most impure spirits, and have made that rejected and condemned theatrical theology a member and a part of this, as it were, chosen and approved theology of the city, so that, though the whole is disgraceful and false, and contains fictitious gods, one part of it is in the literature of the priests, the other in the songs of the poets. Whether it has other parts is another question. For now, I think I have sufficiently shown, following Varro's division, that the theology of the city and that of the theater belong to one civil theology. Therefore, because they are both equally disgraceful, absurd, shameful, false, religious men must never hope for eternal life from either the one or the other. Finally, even Varro himself, in his account and enumeration of the gods, starts from the moment of a man's conception. He begins the series of those gods who take charge of man with Janus, carries it on to the death of the man worn out with age, and ends it with the goddess Nænia, who is sung at the funerals of the aged. After that, he begins to give an account of the other gods, whose province is not man himself, but man's belongings, such as food, clothing, and all that is necessary for this life; and, in the case of all these, he explains what the special function of each is, and for what each ought to be prayed to. But with all this scrupulous and comprehensive diligence, he has neither proved the existence, nor so much as mentioned the name, of any god from whom eternal life is to be sought — the one thing for which we are Christians. Who, then, is so stupid as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth and opening up so diligently the civil theology, and by showing its likeness to that fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful theology, and also by teaching that the fabulous sort is also a part of this other, was working to win a place in the minds of men for the natural theology alone, which he says belongs to philosophers, with such subtlety that he censures the fabulous, and, not daring openly to censure the civil, shows how much it deserves censure simply by displaying it; and so, with both condemned by the judgment of men of sound understanding, the natural alone remains to be chosen? But we must discuss this more carefully in its own place, with the help of the true God.

The freedom which this man lacked, so that he did not dare to censure the theology of the city, which is very similar to the theatrical, as openly as he did the theatrical itself, was possessed, not fully but in part, by Annæus Seneca, who, as we have some evidence to show, flourished in the times of our apostles. He possessed it in part, I say, for he possessed it in his writing, but not in his life. For in that book which he wrote against superstition, he censured the civil and urban theology more fully and vehemently than Varro did the theatrical and fabulous. For, when speaking about images, he says, “They dedicate images of the sacred and inviolable immortals in the most worthless and motionless material. They give them the appearance of man, beasts, and fishes, and some make them of mixed sex, and mismatched bodies. They call them deities, when they are such that if they came to life and suddenly met someone, they would be taken for monsters.” Then, a little later, when in praising the natural theology he had set out the views of certain philosophers, he puts a question to himself, and says, “Here someone says, Am I to believe that the heavens and the earth are gods, and that some are above the moon and some below it? Am I to bring forward either Plato or the peripatetic Strato, one of whom made God to be without a body, the other without a mind?” In answer he says, “And, really, do the dreams of Titus Tatius, or Romulus, or Tullus Hostilius seem any truer to you? Tatius declared the divinity of the goddess Cloacina; Romulus that of Picus and Tiberinus; Tullus Hostilius that of Pavor and Pallor, the most disagreeable emotions of men, the one being the agitation of the mind under fright, the other the agitation of the body, not a disease, indeed, but a change of color.” Would you rather believe that these are deities, and receive them into heaven? But with what freedom he has written about the rites themselves, cruel and shameful! “One,” he says, “castrates himself, another cuts his arms. What room is there to fear the anger of these gods, when people use such means of winning their favor? But gods who wish to be worshipped in this fashion should not be worshipped at all. So great is the frenzy of the mind when it is disturbed and driven from its seat, that the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of the greatest ferocity and cruelty famous in legend vent their rage. Tyrants have lacerated the limbs of some; they never ordered anyone to lacerate his own. To gratify royal lust, some have been castrated; but no one ever, by the command of his lord, laid violent hands on himself to emasculate himself. They kill themselves in the temples. They pray with their wounds and with their blood. If anyone has time to see the things they do and the things they suffer, he will find so many things improper for respectable men, so unworthy of freemen, so unlike the doings of sane men, that no one would doubt that they are mad, if they were mad along with only a few; but as it is, the multitude of the insane is the defense of their sanity.” He next relates the things that are usually done in the Capitol, and with complete fearlessness insists that they are such things as one could only believe to be done by men making sport, or by madmen. For he mocked the fact that in the Egyptian sacred rites Osiris is lamented as lost and then at once, when found, is the occasion of great joy by his reappearance, though both the losing and the finding of him are pretended, and yet the grief and the joy drawn in this way from those who have lost nothing and found nothing are real — and having, I say, spoken of this in that way, he says, “Still there is a fixed time for this frenzy. It is tolerable to go mad once a year. Go into the Capitol. One is suggesting divine commands to a god; another is telling the hours to Jupiter; one is a lictor; another is an anointer, who with the mere movement of his arms imitates someone anointing. There are women who arrange the hair of Juno and Minerva, standing far away not only from her image, but even from her temple. These move their fingers in the manner of hairdressers. There are some women who hold a mirror. There are some who are calling the gods to assist them in court. There are some who are holding up documents to them, and are explaining to them their cases. A learned and distinguished comedian, now old and decrepit, was acting his mime every day in the Capitol, as though the gods would gladly watch what men had stopped caring about. Every kind of craftsman working for the immortal gods is settled there in idleness.” And a little after he says, “Nevertheless these, though they give themselves up to the gods for purposes that are superfluous enough, do not do so for any abominable or infamous purpose. Certain women sit in the Capitol who think they are loved by Jupiter; and they are not frightened even by the look of Juno, who, if you believe the poets, is most prone to anger.” Varro did not enjoy this freedom. He ventured to censure only the poetic theology. The civil, which this man cuts to pieces, he was not bold enough to attack. But if we look to the truth, the temples where these things are performed are far worse than the theaters where they are represented. So, with respect to these sacred rites of the civil theology, Seneca preferred, as the best course to be followed by a wise man, to pretend respect for them in his actions, but to have no real regard for them at heart. “All these things,” he says, “a wise man will observe as being commanded by the laws, but not as being pleasing to the gods.” And a little after he says, “And what of this, that we unite the gods in marriage, and not even naturally at that, for we join brothers and sisters? We marry Bellona to Mars, Venus to Vulcan, Salacia to Neptune. Some of them we leave unmarried, as though there were no match for them, which is surely needless, especially when there are certain unmarried goddesses, such as Populonia, or Fulgora, or the goddess Rumina, and I am not astonished that they have lacked suitors. All this lowborn crowd of gods, which the superstition of ages has amassed, we ought,” he says, “to adore in such a way as to remember all the while that its worship belongs rather to custom than to reality.” Therefore, neither those laws nor customs instituted in the civil theology what was pleasing to the gods, or what belonged to reality. But this man, whom philosophy had made, as it were, free, nevertheless, because he was an illustrious senator of the Roman people, worshipped what he censured, did what he condemned, adored what he reproached, because, of course, philosophy had taught him something great — namely, not to be superstitious in the world, but, on account of the laws of cities and the customs of men, to be an actor, not on the stage, but in the temples, — conduct all the more to be condemned because he performed what he was deceitfully acting in such a way that the people thought he was acting sincerely. But a stage-actor would rather delight people by acting plays than take them in by false pretenses.

Seneca, among the other superstitions of civil theology, also found fault with the sacred things of the Jews, and especially the sabbaths, declaring that they act uselessly in keeping those seventh days, since through idleness they lose about a seventh of their life, and many things that demand immediate attention suffer as well. The Christians, however, who were already most hostile to the Jews, he did not dare to mention, either for praise or blame, for fear that, if he praised them, he would do so against the ancient custom of his country, or, perhaps, if he blamed them, he would do so against his own will. When he was speaking about those Jews, he said, “When, meanwhile, the customs of that most accursed nation have gained such strength that they have now been received in all lands, the conquered have given laws to the conquerors.” By these words he expresses his astonishment; and, not knowing what the providence of God was leading him to say, adds in plain words an opinion by which he showed what he thought about the meaning of those sacred institutions: “For,” he says, “those, however, know the cause of their rites, while the greater part of the people do not know why they perform theirs.” But about the solemn rites of the Jews, why and how far they were instituted by divine authority, and afterward, in due time, taken away by the same authority from the people of God, to whom the mystery of eternal life was revealed, we have both spoken elsewhere, especially when we were writing against the Manichæans, and also intend to speak in this work in a more suitable place.

Now, since there are three theologies, which the Greeks call, respectively, mythical, physical, and political, and which may be called in Latin fabulous, natural, and civil; and since eternal life can be hoped for neither from the fabulous, which even the worshippers of many false gods have themselves most freely censured, nor from the civil, of which the fabulous is proved to be a part, and which is even worse than it — if anyone thinks that what has been said in this book is not enough for him, let him also add to it the many and various discussions of God as the giver of happiness, contained in the earlier books, especially the fourth one. For to what but Felicity should men consecrate themselves, if Felicity were a goddess? But since it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, to what God but the giver of happiness ought we to consecrate ourselves, who piously love eternal life, in which there is true and full happiness? But I think, from what has been said, no one ought to doubt that none of those gods who are worshipped with such shame is the giver of happiness, gods who, if they are not so worshipped, are more shamefully enraged, and thus confess that they are most foul spirits. Moreover, how can he give eternal life who cannot give happiness? For we mean by eternal life that life where there is endless happiness. For if the soul lives in eternal punishments, by which those unclean spirits will also be tormented, that is rather eternal death than eternal life. For there is no greater or worse death than when death never dies. But because the soul from its very nature, being created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life, its utmost death is alienation from the life of God in an eternity of punishment. So, then, only He who gives true happiness gives eternal life, that is, an endlessly happy life. And since those gods whom this civil theology worships have been proved to be unable to give this happiness, they ought not to be worshipped on account of temporal and earthly things, as we showed in the five preceding books, much less on account of eternal life, which is to come after death, as we have sought to show in this one book especially, with the other books also lending it their support. But since the strength of long-standing habit has very deep roots, if anyone thinks that I have not argued sufficiently to show that this civil theology ought to be rejected and shunned, let him turn to another book which, with God's help, is to be joined to this one.