 Book 3. CHAPTER ONE THROUGH SIXTEEN OF THE CITY OF GOD. But moral and spiritual evils which are above all others to be deprecated, I think enough has already been said to show that the false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them from being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated the ruin. I see I must now speak of those evils which alone are dreaded by the heathen, famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre, and the like calamities already enumerated in the first book. For evil men account those things alone evil, which do not make men evil. Neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself. But not even such evils as were alone dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they were most unrestrictedly worshipped. For in various times and places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities, and at that time what gods but those did the world worship if you accept the one nation of the Hebrews, and beyond them such individuals as the most secret and most just judgment of God counted worthy of divine grace. But that I may not be proliques, I will be silent regarding the heavy calamities that have been suffered by any other nations, and will speak only of what happened to Rome and the Roman Empire, by which I mean Rome properly so cold, and those lands which already, before the coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest become, as it were, members of the body of the State. CHAPTER II First then, why was Troy, or Ilium, the cradle of the Roman people, for I must not overlook nor disguise what I touched upon in the first book, conquered, taken, and destroyed by the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped the same gods as they? Prim, some answer, paid the penalty of the perjury of his father, Laomiden. Then it is true that Laomiden hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen, for the story goes that he promised them wages and then broke his bargain. I wonder that famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a work and never suspected Laomiden was going to cheat him of his pay. And Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it really was not seemly that he should be ignorant of what was to happen. For he is introduced by Homer, who lived and wrote before the building of Rome, as predicting something great of the posterity of Aeneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer says, Neptune also rescued Aeneas in a cloud from the wrath of Achilles, though, according to Virgil, all his will was to destroy his own creation, perjured Troy. God's then so great as Apollo and Neptune, in ignorance of the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages, built the walls of Troy for nothing but thanks and thankless people. There may be some doubt whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons to be gods than to cheat such gods. Even Homer himself did not give full credence to the story, for while he represents Neptune indeed as hostile to the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as their champion, though the story implies that both were offended by that fraud. If therefore they believed their fables, let them blush to worship such gods. If they discredit the fables, let no more be said of the Trojan perjury, or let them explain how the gods hated Trojan but loved Roman perjury. For how did the conspiracy of Catalan, even in so large and corrupt a city, find so abundant a supply of men whose hands and tongues found them a living by perjury and civic broils? What else but perjury corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the senators? What else corrupted the people's votes and decisions of all causes tried before them? For it seems that the ancient practice of taking oaths has been preserved even in the midst of the greatest corruption, not for the sake of restraining wickedness by religious fear, but to complete the tale of crimes by adding that of perjury. CHAPTER III There is no ground then for representing the gods, by whom as they say that empire stood, though they are proved to have been conquered by the Greeks, as being enraged at the Trojan perjury. Neither, as others again plead in their defence, was it indignation at the adultery of Paris that caused them to withdraw their protection from Troy. For their habit is to be instigators and instructors in vice, not its avengers. The city of Rome, says Salist, was first built and inhabited as I have heard by the Trojans who, flying their country under the conduct of Aeneas, wandered about without making any settlement. If then the gods were of opinion that the adultery of Paris should be punished, it was chiefly the Romans, or at least the Romans also, who should have suffered, for the adultery was brought about by Aeneas's mother. But how could they hate in Paris a crime which they made no objection to in their own sister Venus, who, not to mention any other instance, committed adultery with anchorsies and so became the mother of Aeneas? Is it because, in the one case, Menelaus was aggrieved, while in the other, Vulcan connived to the crime? For the gods, I fancy, are so little jealous of their wives that they make no scruple of sharing them with men. But perhaps I may be suspected of turning the myths into ridicule and not handling so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well then let us say that Aeneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing to admit it, but is Romulus any more the son of Mars? For why not the one as well as the other? Or is it lawful for gods to have intercourse with women, unlawful for men to have intercourse with goddesses? A hard or rather an incredible condition that what was allowed to Mars by the law of Venus should not be allowed to Venus herself by her own law. However, both cases have the authority of Rome, for Caesar in modern times believed no less that he was descended from Venus than the ancient Romulus believed himself the son of Mars. CHAPTER 4 Someone will say, but do you believe all this? Not I, indeed. For even Varro, a very learned heathen, all but admits that these stories are false, though he does not boldly and confidently say so. But he maintains that it is useful for states that brave men believe, though falsely, that they are descended from the gods, for that thus the human spirit cherishing the belief of its divine descent will both more boldly venture into great enterprises and will carry them out more energetically and will therefore by its very confidence secure more abundant success. You see how wide a field is open to falsehood by this opinion of Varro's, which I have expressed as well as I could in my own words, and how comprehensible it is that many of the religions and sacred legends should be feigned in a community in which it was judged profitable for the citizens that lies should be told even about the gods themselves. CHAPTER 5 But whether Venus could bear a neus to a human father's anchorsies or Mars beget Romulus of the daughter of Numitor we leave as unsettled questions. For our own scriptures suggest a very similar question, whether the fallen angels had sexual intercourse with the daughters of men by which the earth was at that time filled with giants, that is, with enormously large and strong men. At present then I will limit my discussion to this dilemma. If that which their books relate about the mother of a neus and the father of Romulus be true, how can the gods be displeased with men for adulteries, which when committed by themselves excite no displeasure. If it is false, not even in this case can the gods be angry that men should really commit adulteries, which even when falsely attributed to the gods, they delight in. Moreover, if the adultery of Mars be discredited, that Venus also may be freed from the imputation, then the mother of Romulus is left unshielded by the pretext of a divine seduction. For Sylvia was a vestal priestess, and the gods ought to avenge this sacrilege on the Romans with greater severity than Paris' adultery and the Trojans. For even the Romans themselves in primitive times used to go so far as to bury alive any vestal who was detected in adultery, while women unconsecrated, though they were punished, were never punished with death for that crime, and thus they more earnestly vindicated the purity of shrines they esteemed divine than of the human bed. CHAPTER VI I add another instance. If the sins of men so greatly incensed those divinities that they abandoned Troy to fire and soar to punish the crime of Paris, the murder of Romulus' brother ought to have incensed them more against the Romans than the cajoling of a Greek husband moved them against the Trojans. Fratricide, in a newly born city, should have provoked them more than adultery in a city already flourishing. It makes no difference to the question we now discuss, whether Romulus ordered his brother to be slain or slew him with his own hand. It is a crime which many shamelessly deny, many through shame doubt, many in grief, disguise. And we shall not pause to examine and weigh the testimonies of historical writers on the subject. All agreed that the brother of Romulus was slain, not by enemies, not by strangers. If it was Romulus who either commanded or perpetrated this crime, Romulus was more truly the head of the Romans than Paris of the Trojans, why then did he who carried off another man's wife bring down the anger of the gods and the Trojans, while he who took his brother's life obtained the guardianship of those same gods? If, on the other hand, that crime was not wrought either by the hand or will of Romulus, then the whole city is chargeable with it because it did not see to its punishment and thus committed not Fratricide but Paraside which is worse. For both brothers were the founders of that city, of which the one was by villainy prevented from being a ruler. So far as I see, then, no evil can be ascribed to Troy which warranted the gods in abandoning it to destruction nor any good to Rome which accounts for the gods visiting it with prosperity, unless the truth be that they fled from Troy because they were vanquished and betook themselves to Rome to practice their characteristic deceptions there. Nevertheless, they kept a footing for themselves in Troy that they might deceive future inhabitants who repealed these lands, while at Rome, by a wider exercise of their malignant arts, they exalted in more abundant honors. CHAPTER VII And surely we may ask what wrong poor Ilium had done that in the first heat of the civil wars of Rome it should suffer at the hand of Fimbria the various villain among Marius's partisans a more fierce and cruel destruction than the Grecian sack. For when the Greeks took it many escaped, and many who did not escape were suffered to live, though in captivity. But Fimbria from the first gave orders that not a life should be spared and burnt up together the city and all its inhabitants. Thus was Ilium requited not by the Greeks whom she had provoked by wrongdoing, but by the Romans who had been built out of her ruins, while the gods, adored alike of both sides, did simply nothing or to speak more correctly, could do nothing. Is it then true that at this time also, after Troy had repaired the damage done by the Grecian fire, all the gods by whose help the kingdom stood for sook each feign each sacred shrine? But if so I ask the reason, for in my judgment the conduct of the gods was as much to be reprobated as that of the townsmen to be applauded. For these closed their gates against Fimbria that they might preserve the city for Silla, and were therefore burnt and consumed by the enraged general. Now up to this time Silla's cause was the more worthy of the two, for till now he used arms to restore the republic, and as yet his good intentions had met with no reverses. What better thing then could the Trojans have done? What more honorable, what more faithful to Rome were more worthy of her relationship than to preserve their city for the better part of the Romans and to shut their gates against a parasite of his country? It is for the defenders of the gods to consider the ruin which this conduct brought on Troy. The gods deserted an adulterous people and abandoned Troy to the fires of the Greeks that out of her ashes a chastre Rome might arise. But why did they a second time abandon the same town, allied now to Rome, and not making war upon her noble daughter, but preserving a most steadfast and pious fidelity to Rome's most justifiable faction? Why did they give her up to be destroyed, not by the Greek heroes, but by the basis of the Romans? Or if the gods did not favor Silla's cause for which the unhappy Trojans maintained their city, why did they themselves predict and promise Silla such successes? Must we call them flatters of the fortunate rather than helpers of the wretched? Troy was not destroyed then because the gods deserted it, for the demons always watchful to deceive did what they could. For when all the statues were overthrown and burnt together with the town, Livy tells us that only the image of Minerva is said to have been found standing uninjured amidst the ruins of her temple. Not that it might be said in their praise, the gods who have made this realm divine, but that it might not be said in their defense, they are gone from each feign, each sacred shrine. For that marvel was permitted to them, not that they might be proved to be powerful, but that they might be convicted of being present. CHAPTER VIII Where then was the wisdom of entrusting Rome to the Trojan gods who had demonstrated their weakness and the loss of Troy? Will someone say that when Fimbria stormed Troy the gods were already resident in Rome? How then did the image of Minerva remain standing? Besides, if they were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Troy, perhaps they were at Troy when Rome itself was taken and set on fire by the Gauls. But as they are very acute in hearing and very swift in their movements, they came quickly at the cackling of the goose to defend at least the capital, though to defend the rest of the city they were too long in being warned. CHAPTER IX It is also believed that it was by the help of the gods that the successor of Romulus, Pneuma Pompilius, enjoyed peace during his entire reign and shut the gates of Janus, which were customarily kept open during war. And it is supposed he was thus required for appointing many religious observances among the Romans. Certainly that king would have commanded our congratulations for so rare a leisure had he been wise enough to spend it on wholesome pursuits and, subduing a pernicious curiosity, had sought out the true god with true piety. But as it was the gods were not the authors of his leisure, but possibly they would have deceived him less had they found him busier. For the more disengaged they found him, the more they themselves occupied his attention. Varo informs us of all his efforts and of the arts he employed to associate these gods with himself and the city. And in its own place, if God will, I shall discuss these matters. Meanwhile, as we are speaking of the benefits conferred by the gods, I readily admit that peace is a great benefit. But it is a benefit of the true god, which, like the sun, the rain, and other supports of life, is frequently conferred on the ungrateful and wicked. But if this great boon was conferred on Rome and Pompilius by their gods, why do they never afterwards grant it to the Roman Empire during even more meritorious periods? Were the sacred rites more efficient at their first institution than during their subsequent celebration? But they had no existence in Numa's time until he added them to the ritual, whereas afterwards they had already been celebrated and preserved that benefit might arise from them. How then is it that those forty-three, or as others prefer it, thirty-nine years of Numa's reign were passed in unbroken peace, and yet that afterwards when the worship was established and the gods themselves who were invoked by it were the recognized guardians and patrons of the city, we can with difficulty find during the whole period from the building of the city to the reign of Augustus, one year, that which followed the close of the First Punic War, in which for a marvel the Romans were able to shut the gates of war. CHAPTER X Do they reply that the Roman Empire could never have been so widely extended, nor so glorious, saved by constant and unintermitting wars? A fit argument, truly. Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to be great? In this little world of man's body is it not better to have a moderate stature and health with it than to attain the huge dimensions of a giant by unnatural torments and when you attain to it to find no rest but to be pained the more in proportion to the size of your lives? What evil would have resulted, or rather what good would not have resulted, had those times continued which salists sketched when he says, at first the kings, for that was the first title of empire in the world, were divided in their sentiments, part cultivated the mind, other as the body, at that time the life of man was led without covetousness, everyone was sufficiently satisfied with his own? Was it requisite then for Rome's prosperity that the state of things which virtual reprobates should succeed, at length stole on a baser age and war's indomitable rage and greedy lust of gain? But obviously the Romans have a plausible defense for undertaking and carrying on such disastrous wars, to which that the pressure of their enemies forced them to resist so that they were compelled to fight not by any greed of human applause but by the necessity of protecting life and liberty? Well, at that pass. Here is Salist's account of the matter. For when their state, enriched with laws, institutions, territory, seemed abundantly prosperous and sufficiently powerful, according to the ordinary law of human nature, opulence gave birth to envy? Accordingly the neighboring kings and states took arms and assaulted them. A few allies lent assistance, the rest struck with fear, kept aloof from dangers. But the Romans, watchful at home and in war, were active, made preparations, encouraged one another, marched to meet their enemies, protected by arms their liberty, country, parents. Afterwards, when they had repelled the dangers by their bravery, they carried help to their allies and friends, and procured alliances more by conferring than by receiving favors. This was to build up Rome's greatness by honorable means. But in Numa's reign, I would know whether the long peace was maintained in spite of the incursions of wicked neighbors or if these incursions were discontinued that the peace might be maintained. For if even then Rome was harassed by wars and yet did not meet force with force, the same means she then used to quiet her enemies without conquering them in war or terrifying them with the onset of battle, she might have used always, and have reigned in peace, with the gates of Janus shut. And if this was not in her power, then Rome enjoyed peace not at the will of her gods, but at the will of her neighbors round about, and only so long as they cared to provoke her with no war, unless perhaps these pitiful gods will dare to sell to one man as their favor what lies not on their power to bestow, but in the will of another man. These demons indeed, insofar as they are permitted, can terrify or incite the minds of wicked men by their own peculiar wickedness. But if they had always had this power, and if no action were taken against their efforts by a more secret and higher power, they would be supreme to give peace or the victories of war which almost always fall out through some human emotion and frequently in opposition to the will of the gods as is proved not only by lying legends which scarcely hint or signify any grain of truth, but even by Roman history itself. CHAPTER XI And it is still this weakness of the gods which is confessed in the story of the Kuman Apollo who is said to have wept for four days during the war with the Achaeans and King Aristonicus. And when the augurs were alarmed at the portent and had determined to cast the statue into the sea, the old men of Kume interposed and related that a similar prodigy had occurred to the same image during the wars against Antiochus and against Perseus, and that by a decree of the senate gifts had been presented to Apollo because the event had proved favorable to the Romans. Then Soothsayers were summoned, who were supposed to have greater professional skill, and they pronounced that the weeping of Apollo's image was propitious to the Romans because Kume was a Greek colony, and that Apollo was bewailing, and thereby presaging, the grief and calamity that was about to lie upon his own land of Greece from which he had been brought. Shortly afterwards it was reported that King Aristonicus was defeated and made prisoner, a defeat certainly opposed to the will of Apollo, and this he indicated by even shedding tears from his marble image. And this shows us that, though the verses of the poets are mythical, they are not altogether devoid of truth, but describe the manners of the demons in a sufficiently fit style. For in Virgil Diana mourned for Camilla, and Hercules wept for Pallas doomed to die. This is perhaps the reason why Pompilius too, when enjoying prolonged peace, but without knowing or inquiring from whom he received it, he began in his leisure to consider to what gods he should entrust the safekeeping and conduct of Rome, and not dreaming that the true, almighty, and most high god cares for earthly affairs, but recollecting only that the Trojan gods which Aeneas had brought to Italy had been able to preserve neither the Trojan nor Livinian kingdom founded by Aeneas himself, concluded that he must provide other gods as guardians of fugitives and helpers of the weak, and add them to those earlier divinities who had either come over to Rome with Romulus or when Alba was destroyed. CHAPTER XII But though Pompilius introduced so ample a ritual, yet did not Rome see fit to be content with it, for as yet Jupiter himself had not his chief temple, it being King Tarquin who built the capital, and Escalepius left Epidaurus for Rome that in this foremost city he might have a finer field for the exercise of his great medical skill. The mother of the gods too came I know not her wence from Poseidon's, it being unseemly that, while her son presided on the capital in Hill, she herself should lie hid in obscurity. But if she is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed some of her children to Rome, but left others to follow her. I wonder indeed if she were the mother of Sinocephalus, who a long while afterwards came from Egypt. Whether also the goddess Fever was her offspring is a matter for her grandson Escalepius to decide. But of whatever breed she be the foreign gods will not presume, I trust, to call the goddess baseborn who is a Roman citizen. Who can number the deities to whom the guardianship of Rome is entrusted? Indigenous and imported both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers, and as Varro says, God's certain and uncertain, male and female, for as among animals, so among all kinds of gods there are these distinctions. Rome then, enjoying the protection of such a cloud of deities, might surely have been preserved from some of those great and horrible calamities, of which I can mention but a few. For by this great smoke of her altar she summoned to her protection as by a beacon-fire a host of gods for whom she appointed and maintained temples, altars, sacrifices, priests, and thus offended the true and most high god to whom alone all this ceremonial is lawfully due. And indeed she was more prosperous when she had fewer gods, but the greater she became the more gods she thought she should have as the larger ship needs to be manned by a larger crew. I suppose she despaired of the smaller number under whose protection she had spent comparatively happy days being able to defend her greatness. For even unto the kings, with the exception of Pneuma Pompilius, of whom I have already spoken, how wicked a contentiousness must have existed to occasion the death of Romulus' brother. CHAPTER XIII How is it that neither Juno, who with her husband Jupiter even then cherished Rome's sons, the nation of the Gaon, or Venus herself, could assist the children of the Lovid Aeneas to find wives by some right and equitable means? For the lack of this entailed upon the Romans the lamentable necessity of stealing their wives and then waging war with their fathers-in-law so that the wretched women, before they had recovered from the wrong done them by their husbands, were dowried with the blood of their fathers. But the Romans conquered their neighbors. Yes, but with what wounds on both sides and with what sad slaughter of relatives and neighbors? The war of Caesar and Pompey was the contest of only one father-in-law with one son-in-law, and before it began the daughter of Caesar Pompey's wife was already dead. But with how keen and just an accent of grief does Lucan exclaim, I sing that worse than civil war waged in the plains of Amethia, and in which the crime was justified by the victory. The Romans then conquered that they might, with handstain in the blood of their fathers-in-law, wrench the miserable girls from their embrace, girls who dared not weep for their slain parents for fear of offending their victorious husbands, and while yet the battle was raging stood with their prayers on their lips and knew not for whom to utter them. Such nuptials were certainly prepared for the Roman people not by Venus but Belona, or possibly that infernal fury Electo had more liberty to injure them now that Juno was aiding them than when the prayers of that goddess had excited her against Aeneas. Andromache and captivity was happier than these Roman brides. For though she was a slave, yet after she had become the wife of Pyrrhus, no more Trojans fell by his hand, but the Romans slew and battled the very fathers of the brides they fondled. Andromache, the victor's captive, could only mourn, not fear the death of her people. The Sabine women, related to men still combatants, feared the death of their fathers when their husbands went out to battle, and mourned their death as they returned, while neither their grief nor their fear could be freely expressed. For the victories of their husbands involving the destruction of fellow townsmen, relatives, brothers, fathers, caused either pious agony or cruel exaltation. Moreover as the fortune of war is capricious, some of them lost their husbands by the sword of their parents, while others lost husband and father together in mutual destruction. For the Romans by no means escaped with impunity, but they were driven back within their walls and defended themselves behind closed gates. And when the gates were opened by Gael and the enemy admitted into the town, the forum itself was the field of a hateful and fierce engagement of fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. The ravishers were indeed quite defeated, and flying on all sides to their houses, sullied with new shame their original shameful and lamentable triumph. It was at this juncture that Romulus, hoping no more from the valor of his citizens, prayed Jupiter that they might stand their ground, and from this occasion the god gained the name of Stator. But not even thus would the mischief have been finished had not the ravished women themselves flashed out with the cheveled hair and cast themselves before their parents, and thus disarmed their just rage, not with the arms of victory, but with the supplications of filial affection. Then Romulus, who could not broke his own brother as a colleague, was compelled to accept Titus Taceus, king of the Sabines, as his partner in the throne. But how long would he who misliked the fellowship of his own twin brother endure a stranger? So, Taceus being slain, Romulus remained sole king that he might be the greater god. See what rites of marriage these were that fomented unnatural wars. These were the Roman leagues of kindred relationship, alliance, religion. This was the life of the city so abundantly protected by the gods. You see how many severe things might be said on this theme, but our purpose carries us past them, and requires our discourse for other matters. CHAPTER XIV But what happened after Numus reigned and of the other kings when the Albans were provoked into war with sad results not to themselves alone, but also to the Romans? The long piece of Numa had become tedious, and with what endless slaughter and detriment of both states to the Roman and Alban armies bring it to an end. For Alba, which had been founded by Ascanius, son of Aeneas, and which was more properly the mother of Rome than Troy herself, was provoked to battle by Tullus Hostileus, king of Rome, and in the conflict both inflicted and received such damage that it lengthed both parties worried of the struggle. It was then devised that the war should be decided by the combat of three twin brothers from each army. From the Romans the three Horatii stood forward, and from the Albans the three Curatii. Two of the Horatii were overcome and disposed of by the Curatii, but that by the remaining Horatius the three Curatii were slain. Thus Rome remained victorious, but was such a sacrifice that only one survivor returned to his home. Whose was the loss on both sides? Whose the grief, but of the offspring of Aeneas, the descendants of Ascanius, the progeny of Venus, the grandsons of Jupiter. For this too was a worse than civil war in which the belligerent states were mother and daughter. And to this combat of the three twin brothers there was added another atrocious and horrible catastrophe. For as the two nations had formerly been friendly, being related and neighbors, the sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curatii, and she, when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of her betroth, burst into tears and was slain by her own brother in his anger. To me this one girl seems to have been more humane than the whole Roman people. I cannot think her to blame for lamenting the man to whom already she had plighted her trough, or as perhaps she was doing for grieving that her brother should have slain him to whom he had promised his sister. For why do we praise the grief of Aeneas and Virgil over the enemy cut down even by his own hand? Why did Marcellus shed tears over the city of Syracuse when he recollected just before he destroyed its magnificence and meridian glory, and thought upon the common lot of all things? I demand in the name of humanity that if men are praised for tears shed over enemies conquered by themselves, a weak girl should not be counted criminal for bewailing her lover slaughtered by the hand of her brother. While then that maiden was weeping for the death of her betroth inflicted by her brother's hand, Rome was rejoicing that such devastation had been wrought on her mother's state, and that she had purchased a victory with such an expenditure of the common blood of herself and the Albans. Why allege to me the mere names and words of glory and victory? Tear off the disguise of wild delusion and look at the naked deeds, weigh them naked, judge them naked, let the charge be brought against Alba as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge, none like it found, the war was kindled only in order that there might sound in languid ears the cry of Tullus and of victory. This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that social and paracidal war, a vice which saliced brands in passing, for when he has spoken with brief but hard accommodation of those primitive times in which life was spent without covetousness and everyone was sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on, but after Cyrus and Asia and the Lacedemonians and Athenians and Greece began to subdue cities and nations and to account the lust of sovereignty a sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory consisted in the greatest empire, and so on, as I need not now quote. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she triumphed over Alba in praising her own crime called it glory, for as our scriptures say, the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire and blesseth the covetous whom the Lord abhoreth. Away then with these deceitful masks these deluding white washes that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized, let no man tell me that this and the other was a great man because he fought and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer and this barbarism has its meat of praise, but I think it were better to take the consequences of any sloth than to seek the glory won by such arms. And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle, who would not be revolted by it? How then could that be a glorious war which a daughter state waged against its mother? Or did it constitute a difference that the battlefield was not an arena and that the wide plains were filled with the carcasses not of two gladiators, but of many of the flower of two nations, and that those contests were viewed not by the amphitheater, but by the whole world and furnished a profane spectacle both to those alive at the time and to their posterity so long as the fame of it is handed down? Yet these gods, guardians of the Roman Empire, and as it were the theatric spectators of such contests as these, were not satisfied until the sister of the Horatiae was added by her brother's sword as a third victim from the Roman side, so that Rome herself, though she won the day, should have as many deaths to mourn. Afterwards, as a fruit of the victory, Alba was destroyed, though it was there the Trojan gods had formed a third asylum after Ilium had been sacked by the Greeks, and after they had left Lavinium, where Aeneas had founded a kingdom in a land of banishment. But probably Alba was destroyed because from it too the gods had migrated in their usual fashion, as Virgil says, gone from each feign, each sacred shrine are those who made this realm divine. Gone indeed, and from now their third asylum, that Rome might seem all the wiser in committing herself to them after they had deserted three other cities. Alba, whose king Amulius had banished his brother, displeased them. Rome, whose king Romulus had slain his brother, pleased them. But before Alba was destroyed, its population, they say, was amalgamated with the inhabitants of Rome, so that the two cities were one. Well, admitting it was so, yet the fact remains that the city of Ascanius, the third retreat of the Trojan gods, was destroyed by the daughter city. Besides, to effect this pitiful glomerate of the war's leavings, much blood was spilt on both sides. And how shall I speak in detail of the same wars, so often renewed in subsequent reigns, though they seem to have been finished by great victories, and of wars that time after time are brought to an end by great slaughters, and which yet time after time were renewed by the posterity of those who had made peace and struck treaties? Of this calamitous history we have no small proof in the fact that no subsequent king closed the gates of war, and therefore, with all their tutelor gods, no one of them reigned in peace. CHAPTER XV And what was the end of the kings themselves? Of Romulus, a flattering legend tells us that he was assumed into heaven. But certain Roman historians relate that he was torn in pieces by the senate for his ferocity, and that a man, Julius Proculus, was suborn to give out that Romulus had appeared to him, and through him commanded the Roman people to worship him as a god, and that in this way the people who were beginning to resent the action of the senate were quieted and pacified. For an eclipse of the sun had also happened, and this was attributed to the divine power of Romulus by the ignorant multitude who did not know that it was brought about by the fixed laws of the sun's course. Though this grief of the sun might rather have been considered proof that Romulus had been slain, and that the crime was indicated by this deprivation of the sun's light, as in truth was the case when the Lord was crucified through the cruelty and impiety of the Jews. For it has sufficiently demonstrated that this latter obscuration of the sun did not occur by the natural laws of the heavenly bodies, because it was then the Jewish Passover which is held only at full moon, whereas natural eclipses of the sun happen only at the last quarter of the moon. Cicero, too, shows plainly enough that the apotheosis of Romulus was imaginary rather than real, when, even while he is praising him in one of Shipio's remarks in the De Repubblica, he says, such a reputation had he acquired that when he suddenly disappeared during an eclipse of the sun he was opposed to have been assumed into the number of the gods, which could be supposed of no mortal who had not the highest reputation for virtue. By these words he suddenly disappeared, where to understand that he was mysteriously made away with by the violence either of the tempest or of a murderous assault. For their other writers speak not only of an eclipse, but of a sudden storm also would certainly either afford an opportunity for the crime or itself made an end of Romulus. And of Tullus Hostilius, who is the third king of Rome and who is himself destroyed by lightning, Cicero in the same book says that he was not supposed to have been deified by this death, possibly because the Romans were unwilling to vulgarize the promotion they were assured or persuaded of in the case of Romulus, lest they shall bring it into contempt by gratuitously assigning it to all in sundry. In one of his invectives, too, he says, in round terms, the founder of this city, Romulus, we have raised immortality and divinity by kindly celebrating his services, implying that his deification was not real but reputed and called so by courtesy on account of his virtues. In the dialogue Quartensius, too, while speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun, he says that they produced the same darkness as covered the death of Romulus, which happened during an eclipse of the sun. Here you see he does not at all shrink from speaking of his death, for Cicero was more of a reasoner than a eulogist. The other kings of Rome, too, with the exception of Pneumapompilius and Ancus Marshes, who died natural deaths, what horrible ends they had. Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and destroyer of Elba, was, as I said, himself and all his house consumed by lightning. Priscus Tarquinius was slain by his predecessors' sons. Cervius Tullius was foully murdered by his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him on the throne. Nor did Soflagrin the Parasite, committed against Rome's best king, drive from their altars and shrines, those gods who were said to have been moved by Paris's adultery, to treat poor Troy in this style and abandon it to the fire and sword of the Greeks. Nay, the very Tarquinius who had murdered was allowed to succeed his father in law. And this infamous Parasite during the reign he had secured by murder was allowed to triumph in many victorious wars and to build a capital from their spoils. The gods, meanwhile, not departing, but abiding and abetting in suffering their king Jupiter to preside and reign over them in that very splendid capital the work of a Parasite. For he did not build the capital in the days of his innocence and then suffer banishment for subsequent crimes, but to that reign during which he built the capital he won his way by unnatural crime. And when he was afterwards banished by the Romans and forbidden the city, it was not for his own but in his son's wickedness in the affair of Lucretia, a crime perpetrated not only without his cognizance but in his absence. For at that time he was besieging Ardea and fighting Rome's battles, and we cannot say what he would have done had he been aware of his son's crime. Notwithstanding, though his opinion was neither inquired into nor ascertained, the people stripped him of royalty, and when he returned to Rome with his army, it was admitted that he was excluded, abandoned by his troops, and the gates shot in his face. And yet after he had appealed to the neighbouring states and tormented the Romans with calamitous but unsuccessful wars, and when he was deserted by the ally in whom he most depended, despairing of regaining the kingdom, he lived a retired and quiet life for fourteen years, as is reported, in Tusculum, a Romantown, where he grew old in his wife's company, and at last terminated his days in a much more desirable fashion than his father-in-law, who had perished by the hand of his son-in-law, his own daughter abetting, if report be true. And this talk when the Romans called not the cruel nor the infamous, but the proud, their own pride perhaps resenting his tyrannical heirs. So little did they make of his murdering their best king, his own father-in-law, that they elected him their own king. I wonder if it was not even more criminal in them to reward so bountifully so great a criminal. And yet there was no word of the gods abandoning the altars, unless perhaps some one will say in defense of the gods that they remained at Rome for the purpose of punishing the Romans rather than of aiding and profiting them, seducing them by empty victories and warring them out by severe wars. Such was the life of the Romans out of the kings during the much-praised epoch of the state which extends to the expulsion of Tarquinius' superbus in the two hundred and forty-third year, during which all those victories which were brought with so much blood and such disasters hardly pushed Rome's dominion twenty miles from the city, a territory which would by no means bear comparison with that of any petty Gaiciulian state. CHAPTER XVI To this epic let us add also that of which Salist says that it was ordered with justice and moderation, while the fear of Tarquini and of a war with Aturio was impending. For so long as the Aturians aided the efforts of Tarquini to regain the throne, Rome was convulsed with this stressing war, and therefore he says that the state was ordered with justice and moderation through the pressure of fear, not through the influence of equity. And in this very brief period how calamitous a year was that in which consuls were first created when the kingly power was abolished. They did not fulfill their term of office. Virginia's Brutus deprived his colleague Lucius Tarquinius' collatinous and banished him from the city, and shortly after he himself fell in battle at once slaying and slain, having formally put to death his own sons and his brothers-in-law because he had discovered that they were conspiring to restore Tarquini. It is this deed that Virgil shutters to record even while he seems to praise it, for when he says, and call his own rebellious seed for menaced liberty to bleed, he immediately exclaims, Unhappy Father, how so ere the deed be judged by after-days. That is to say, let posterity judge the deed as they please, let them praise and extol the father who slew his sons, he is unhappy. And then he adds, as if to console so unhappy a man, his country's love shall all o'erbear an unextinguished thirst of praise. In the tragic end of Brutus who slew his own sons, and though he slew his enemy, Tarquinius' son, yet could not survive him, but was survived by Tarquinius the elder, does not the innocence of his colleague Collatinus seem to be vindicated, who, though a good citizen, suffered the same punishment as Tarquinius himself when that tyrant was banished. For Brutus himself is said to have been a relative of Tarquinius, but Collatinus had the misfortune to bear not only the blood but the name of Tarquinius. To change his name, then, not his country, would have been his fit penalty, to abridge his name by this word and be called simply Lucius Collatinus, but he was not compelled to lose what he could lose without detriment, but was stripped of the honor of the first consulship and was banished from the land he loved. Is this, then, the glory of Brutus, this injustice alike detestable and profitless to the Republic? Was it to this he was driven by his country's love and unextinguished thirst of praise? When Tarquinius the Tyrant was expelled, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of Lucretius, was created consul along with Brutus. How justly the people acted in looking more to the character than the name of a citizen! How unjustly Brutus acted in depriving of honor and country his colleague in that new office, whom he might have deprived of his name if it were so offensive to him! Such were the ills such the disasters which fell out when the government was ordered with justice and moderation. Lucretius, too, who succeeded Brutus, was carried off by disease before the end of that same year. So, P. Valerius, who succeeded Collatinus, and Amheraceus, who filled the vacancy, occasioned by the death of Lucretius, completed that disastrous and funerial year which had five consuls. Such was the year in which the Roman Republic inaugurated the new honor and office of the consul's ship. End of Book 1, Chapters 1-16 Recording by Darren L. Slider, Fort Worth, Texas, www.logoslibrary.org Book 3, Chapters 17-31 of the City of God This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Darren L. Slider, www.logoslibrary.org The City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo, Book 3, Chapter 17 After this, when their fears were gradually diminished, not because the wars ceased, but because they were not so furious, that period in which things were ordered with justice and moderation drew to an end, and there followed that state of matters which Salus thus briefly sketches. Then began the patricians to oppress the people as slaves, to condemn them to death or scourging, as the kings had done, to drive them from their holdings and to tyrannize over those who had no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive measures, and most of all by usury, and obliged to contribute both money and personal service to the constant wars, had length took arms and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus secured for themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the Second Punic War that put an end on both sides to discord and strife. But why should I spend time in writing such things, or make others spend it in reading them? Let the terse summary of Salus suffice to intimate the misery of the Republic through all that long period till the Second Punic War, how it was distracted from without by unceasing wars and torn with civil broils and dissensions, so that those victories they boast were not the substantial joys of the happy, but the empty comforts of wretched men and seductive incitements to turbulent men to concoct disasters upon disasters. And let not the good and prudent Romans be angry at our saying this, and indeed we need neither deprecate nor denounce their anger, for we know that they will harbor none. For we speak no more severely than their own authors, and much less elaborately and strikingly. Yet they diligently read these authors and compel their children to learn them. But they who are angry, what would they do to me were I to say what Salus says? Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars became common, while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent affected supreme power under the seemly pretense of seeking the good of Senate and people. Citizens were judged good or bad without reference to their loyalty to the Republic, for all were equally corrupt, but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens because they maintained the existing state of things. Now if those historians judge that an honorable freedom of speech required that they should not be silent regarding the blemishes of their own state, which they have in many places loudly applauded in their ignorance of that other and true city in which citizenship is an everlasting dignity, what does it become us to do whose liberty ought to be so much greater as our hope in God is better and more assured when they impute to our Christ the calamities of this age in order that men of the less instructed and weaker sort may be alienated from that city in which alone eternal and blessed life can be enjoyed. Nor do we utter against their gods anything more horrible than their own authors do whom they read and circulate, for indeed all that we have said we have derived from them, and there is much more to say of a worse kind which we are unable to say. Where then were those gods who were supposed to be justly worshipped for the slender and delusive prosperity of this world when the Romans who were seduced to their service by lying wiles were harassed by such calamities? Where were they when Valerius the consul was killed while defending the capital that had been fired by exiles and slaves? He was himself better able to defend the temple of Jupiter than that crowded divinities with their most high and mighty king whose temple he came to the rescue of were able to defend him. Where were they when the city, worn out with unceasing seditions, was waiting in some kind of calm for the return of the ambassadors who had been sent to Athens to borrow laws, and was desolated by dreadful famine and pestilence? Where were they when the people, again distressed with famine, created for the first time a prefect of the market, and when Spurius Melius, who, as the famine increased, distributed corn to the famishing masses, was accused of aspiring to royalty, and at the instance of the same prefect among the authority of the superannuated dictator, El Quintius, was put to death by Quintus Servilius, master of the horse, an event which occasioned a serious and dangerous riot? Where were they when that very severe pestilence visited Rome, on account of which the people, after long and worrisome and useless supplications of the helpless gods, conceived the idea of celebrating Lectisternia, which had never been done before? That is to say, they set couches in honor of the which accounts for the name of this sacred riot, or rather sacrilege. Where were they when, during ten successive years of reverses, the Roman army suffered frequent and great losses among the Veians, and would have been destroyed but for the secour of furious Camelus, who was afterwards banished by an ungrateful country? Where were they when the Gauls took, sacked, burned, and desolated Rome? Where were they when that memorable pestilence wrought such destruction, in which furious Camelus too perished, who first defended the ungrateful Republic from the Veians, and afterwards saved it from the Gauls? Nay, during this plague they introduced a new pestilence of scenic entertainments, which spread its more fatal contagion not to the bodies, but the morals of the Romans. Where were they when another frightful pestilence visited the city? I mean, the poisonings imputed to an incredible number of noble Roman matrons, whose characters were infected with a disease more fatal than any plague. Or when both consuls at the head of the army were beset by the Sam knights and the Caudine forks, and forced to strike a shameful treaty, six hundred Roman knights being kept as hostages, while the troops, having laid down their arms and being stripped of everything, were made to pass unto the yoke with one garment each. Or when, in the midst of a serious pestilence, lightning struck the Roman camp and killed many? Or when Rome was driven by the violence of another intolerable plague to send to the Apidaris for Escalepius as a god of medicine, since the frequent adulteries of Jupiter and his youth had not perhaps left this king of all who so long reigned in the capital any leisure for the study of medicine? Or when, at one time, the Lucanians, Bruscians, Sam knights, Tuscans, and Sononian Gauls conspired against Rome, and first slew her ambassadors, then overthrew an army under the Praetor, putting to the sword thirteen thousand men, besides the commander and seven tribunes? Or when the people, after the serious and long-continued disturbances at Rome, at last plundered the city and withdrew to Geniculus, a danger so grave that Hortensius was created dictator, an office which they had recourse to only in extreme emergencies, and he, having brought back the people, died while yet he retained his office, an event without precedent in the case of any dictator, and which was ashamed to those gods who had now Escalepius among them? At that time, indeed, so many wars were everywhere engaged in that through scarcity of soldiers they enrolled for military service the proletarii, who received this name because, being too poor to equip for military service, they had leisure to be get offspring. Pyrrhus, king of Greece, and at that time of widespread renown, was invited by the Tarantines to enlist himself against Rome. It was to him that Apollo, when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise, uttered with some pleasantries so ambiguous an oracle that whichever alternative happened the god himself should be counter- divine. For he so worded the oracle that whether Pyrrhus was conquered by the Romans or the Romans by Pyrrhus the suits saying God would securely await the issue. And then what frightful massacres of both armies ensued. Yet Pyrrhus remained conqueror and would have been now able to proclaim Apollo a true diviner as he understood the oracle had not the Romans been the conquerors in the next engagement. And while such disastrous wars were being waged a terrible disease broke out among the women. For the pregnant women died before delivery. In Escalepius I fancied he excused himself in this matter on the ground that he professed to be arch- physician, not midwife. Cattle, too, similarly perished so that it was believed that the whole race of animals was destined to become extinct. Then what shall I say of that memorable winter in which the weather was so incredibly severe that in the forum frightfully deep snow lay for forty days together and the tiber was frozen? Had such things happened in our time what accusations we should have heard from our enemies? And that other great pestilence which raged so long and carried off so many, what shall I say of it? Despite of all the drugs of Escalepius it only grew worse in its second year till at last recourse was had to the Scebulin books, the kind of oracle which a Cicero says in his De Devidnazione owes significance to its interpreters who make doubtful conjectures as they can or as they wish. In this instance the cause of the plague was said to be that so many temples had been used as private residences, and thus Escalepius for the present escaped the charge of either ignominious negligence or want of skill. But why were so many allowed to occupy sacred tenements without interference unless because supplication had long been addressed in vain to such a crowd of gods, and so by degrees the sacred places were deserted of worshippers, and being thus vacant could without offence be put at least to some human uses. And the temples which were at that time laboriously recognized and restored that the plague might be stayed fell afterwards into disuse and were again devoted to the same human uses. Had they not thus lapsed into obscurity it could not have been pointed to as proof of Varo's great erudition that in his work on sacred places he cite so many that were unknown. Meanwhile the restoration of the temples procured no cure of the plague but only a fine excuse for the gods. CHAPTER XVIII In the Punic Wars again when victory hung so long in the balance between the two kingdoms when two powerful nations were straining every nerve and using all their resources against one another, how many smaller kingdoms were crushed, how many large and flourishing cities were demolished, how many states were overwhelmed and ruined, how many districts and lands far and near were desolated, how often were the victors on either side vanquished, what multitudes of men both of those actually in arms and of others were destroyed, what huge navies too were crippled in engagements or were sunk by every kind of marine disaster. Were we to attempt to recount or mention these calamities which should become writers of history, at that period Rome was mightily perturbed and resorted to vain and ludicrous expedience. On the authority of the sibling books the secular games were reappointed which had been inaugurated a century before but had faded into oblivion and happier times. The games consecrated to the infernal gods were also renewed by the Pontiffs, for they too had sunk into disuse in the better times. And no wonder, for when they were renewed the great abundance of dying men made all hell rejoice at its riches and give itself up to sport, for certainly the ferocious wars and disastrous quarrels and bloody victories now on one side and now on the other, though most calamitous to men, afforded great sport and a rich banquet to the devils. But in the First Punic War there was no more disastrous event than the Roman defeat in which Regulus was taken. We may mention of him in the two former books as an incontestably great man who had before conquered and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would have put an end to the First Punic War had not an inordinate appetite for praise and glory prompted him to impose on the worn-out Carthaginians harder conditions than they could bear. If the unlooked-for captivity and unseemly bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath and his surpassingly cruel death do not bring a blush to the face of the gods, it is true that they are brazen and bloodless. Nor were their wanting at that time very heavy disasters within the city itself, for the Tiber was extraordinarily flooded and destroyed almost all the lower parts of the city, some buildings being carried away by the violence of the torrent, while others were soaked to rottenness by the water that stood round them even after the flood was gone. This visitation was followed by a fire which was still more destructive, for it consumed some of the loftier buildings round the forum, and spared not even its own proper temple that of Vesta, in which Virgins chosen for this honor, or rather for this punishment, had been employed in conferring, as it were, everlasting life on fire by ceaselessly feeding it with fresh fuel. But at the time we speak of the fire in the temple was not content with being kept alive, it raged, and when the Virgins, scared by its vehemence, were unable to save those fatal images which had already brought destruction on three cities in which they had been received, Mantellus the priest, forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and rescued the sacred things, though he was half-roasted in doing so. For out of the fire did not recognize even him, or else the goddess of fire was there, a goddess who would not have fled from the fire supposing she had been there. But here you see how a man could be of greater service to Vesta than she could be to him. Now if these gods could not avert the fire from themselves, what help against flames or flood could they bring to the state of which they were the reputed guardians? Facts have shown that they were useless. These objections of ours would be idle if our adversaries maintained that their idols were consecrated rather as symbols of things eternal than to secure the blessings of time, and that thus though the symbols, like all material and invisible things, might perish, no damage thereby resulted to the things for the sake of which they had been consecrated, while as for the images themselves they could be renewed again for the same purposes they had formally served. But with lamentable blindness they supposed that through the intervention of perishable gods the earthly well-being and temporal prosperity of the state can be preserved from perishing. And so, when they were reminded that even when the gods remained among them this well-being and prosperity were blighted they blushed to change the opinion they were unable to defend. CHAPTER XIX As to the Second Punic War it were tedious to recount the disasters it brought on both the nations engaged and so protracted in shifting a war that by the acknowledgment even of those writers who have made it their object not so much to narrate the wars as to eulogize the dominion of Rome, the people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered. For when Hannibal poured out of Spain over the Pyrenees and overran Gaul and burst through the Alps, and during his whole course gathered strength by plundering and subduing as he went, and inundated Italy like a torrent, how bloody were the wars and how continuous the engagements that were fought, how often were the Romans vanquished, how many towns went over to the enemy and how many were taken and subdued, what fearful battles there were and how often did the defeat of the Romans shed luster on the arms of Hannibal. And what shall I say of the wonderfully crushing defeat at Cannae where even Hannibal, cruel as he was, was yet sated with the blood of his bitterest enemies and gave orders that they be spared? From this field of battle he sent to Carthage three bushels of gold rings signifying that so much of the rank of Rome had that day fallen that it was easier to give an idea of it by measure than by numbers, and that the frightful slaughter of the common rank and file whose bodies lay undistinguished by the ring, and who were numerous in proportion to their meanness, was rather to be conjectured than accurately reported. In fact, such was the scarcity of soldiers after this that the Romans impressed their criminals on the promise of impunity and their slaves by the bribe of liberty, and out of these infamous classes did not so much recruit as create an army. But these slaves, or to give them all their titles, these freedmen, who were enlisted to do battle for the Republic of Rome, lacked arms, and so they took arms from the temples as if the Romans were saying to their gods, lay down those arms you have held so long in vain, if by chance our slaves may be able to use to purpose what you, our gods, have been impotent to use. At that time, too, the public treasury was too low to pay the soldiers, and private resources were used for public purposes. And so generously did individuals contribute to their property that saving the gold ring and bullah which each wore, the pitiful mark of his rank, no senator, and much less any of the other orders and tribes reserved any gold for his own use. But if in our day they were reduced to this poverty, who would be able to endure their reproaches barely indurable as they are now, when more money is spent on actors for the sake of his superfluous gratification than was then disbursed to the legions? CHAPTER XX But among all the disasters of the Second Punic War that occurred none more lamentable or calculated to excite deeper complaint than the fate of the Zaguntines. This city of Spain, eminently friendly to Rome, was destroyed by its fidelity to the Roman people. For when Hannibal had broken treaty with the Romans he sought occasions for broken into war, and accordingly made a fierce assault upon Zaguntum. When this was reported at Rome ambassadors were sent to Hannibal urging him to raise the siege, and when this remonstrance was neglected they proceeded to Carthage lodged complaint against the breaking of the treaty and returned to Rome without accomplishing their object. Meanwhile the siege went on, and in the eighth or ninth month this opulent but ill-fated city, dear as it was to its own state and to Rome, was taken, and subjected to treatment which one cannot read much less narrate without horror. And yet because it bears directly on the manner in hand I will briefly touch upon it. First then famine wasted the Zaguntines, so that even human corpses written by some, so at least it is recorded. Subsequently when thoroughly worn out that they might at least escape the ignominy of falling into the hands of Hannibal they publicly erected a huge funeral pile and cast themselves into its flames while at the same time they slew their children and themselves with a sword. Could these gods, these devoches and gourmands, whose mouths water for fat sacrifices and whose lips utter lying divinations, could they not do anything in a case like this? Could they not interfere for the preservation of a city closely allied to the Roman people or prevent it perishing for its fidelity to that alliance of which they themselves had been the mediators? Zaguntum faithfully keeping the treaty it had entered into before these gods, and to which it had firmly bound itself by an oath, was besieged, taken, and destroyed by a perjured person. If afterwards when Hannibal was close to the walls of Rome it was the gods who terrified him with lightning and tempest and drove him to a distance, why, I ask, did they not thus interfere before? For I make bold to say that this demonstration with the tempest would have been more honourably made in defense of the allies of Rome, who were in danger on account of their reluctance to break faith with the Romans, and had no resources of their own, than in defense of the Romans themselves who were fighting in their own cause and had abundant resources to oppose Hannibal. If then they had been the guardians of Roman prosperity and glory they would have preserved that glory from the stain of this sagantine disaster, and how silly it is to believe that Rome was preserved from the destruction at the hands of Hannibal by the guardian care of those gods who were unable to rescue the city of Zaguntum from perishing through its fidelity to the alliance of Rome. If the population of Zaguntum had been Christian and had suffered as it did for the Christian faith, though of course Christians would not have used fire and sword against their own persons, they would have suffered with that hope which springs from faith in Christ, the hope not of a brief temporal reward, but of unending and eternal bliss. What then will the advocates and apologists of these gods say in their defense when charged with the blood of these saguntines? For they are professedly worshipped and invoked for this very purpose of securing prosperity in this fleeting and transitory life. Can anything be said but what was alleged in the case of Regulus' death? For though there is a difference between the two cases, the one being an individual, the other a whole community, yet the cause of destruction was in both cases the keeping of their plighted troth. For it was this which made Regulus willing to return to his enemies, and this which made the saguntines unwilling to revolt to their enemies. Thus then the keeping of faith provoked the gods to anger, or is it possible that not only individuals but even entire communities perish while the gods are propitious to them? Let our adversaries choose which alternative they will. If on the one hand those gods are enraged at the keeping of faith, let them elicit purged persons as their worshippers. If on the other hand men and states can suffer great and terrible calamities and at last perish while favored by the gods, then does their worship not produce happiness as its fruit. Let those therefore who suppose that they have fallen into distress because their religious worship has been abolished lay aside their anger, for it were quite possible that did the gods not only remain with them, but regard them with favor they might yet be left to mourn an unhappy lot, or might even like Regulus and the saguntines be horribly tormented and at last perish miserably. CHAPTER XXI Omitting many things that I may not exceed the limits of the work I have proposed to myself, I come to the epic between the second and last Punic wars, during which according to Salist the Romans live with the greatest virtue and concord. Now in this period of virtue and harmony the great Scipio, the liberator of Rome and Italy, who had with surprising ability brought to a close the second Punic war, that horrible, destructive, dangerous contest, who had defeated Hannibal in subdued Carthage and whose whole life is said to have been dedicated to the gods and cherished in their temples. This Scipio, after such a triumph, was obliged to yield to the accusations of his enemies and to leave his country which his valor had saved and liberated to spend the remainder of his days in the town of Latternum, so indifferent to a recall from exile that he is said to have given orders that not even his remains should lie in his ungrateful country. It was at that time also that the proconsul Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome the luxury of Asia more destructive than all hostile armies. It was then that iron bedsteads and expensive carpets were first used, then too that female singers were admitted at banquets and other licentious abominations were introduced. But at present I meant to speak none of the evils men voluntarily practice but of those they suffer in spite of themselves, so that the case of Scipio, whose succumb to his enemies and died in exile from the country he had rescued, was mentioned by me as being pertinent to the present discussion, for this was the reward he received from those Roman gods whose temples he saved from Hannibal and who were worshiped only for the sake of securing temporal happiness. But since Salust, as we have seen, declares that the manners of Rome were never better than at that time, I therefore judged it right to mention the Asiatic luxury that introduced, that it might be seen that what he says is true only when that period is compared with the others, during which the morals were certainly worse and the factions more violent. For at that time I mean between the Second and Third Punic War that notorious Lex Volconia was passed which prohibited a man from making a woman even an only daughter, his heir, than which law I am at a loss to conceive what could be more unjust. It is true that in the interval between these two Punic Wars the misery of Rome was somewhat less. Abroad indeed their forces were consumed by wars yet also consoled by victories, while at home there were not such disturbances as at other times. But when the last Punic War had terminated in the utter destruction of Rome's rival which quickly succumbed to the other shipio who thus earned for himself the surname of Africanus, then the Roman Republic was overwhelmed with such a host of ills which sprang from the corrupt manners induced by prosperity and security that the sudden overthrow of Carthage is seen to have injured Rome more seriously than her long continued hostility. During the whole subsequent period down to the time of Caesar Augustus, who seems to have entirely deprived the Romans of liberty, a liberty indeed which in their own judgment was no longer glorious but full of broils and dangers in which now was quite innervated and languishing, and who submitted all things again to the will of a monarch, and infused as it were a new life into the sickly old age of the Republic and inaugurated a fresh regime. During this whole period I say many military disasters were sustained on a variety of occasions, all of which I hear pass by. There was especially the Treaty of New Machia, blotted as it was with extreme disgrace. For the sacred chickens they say flew out of the coop, and thus augured disaster to Manchinus, the consul. Just as if, during all these years in which that little city of New Machia had withstood the besieging army of Rome, and had become a terror to the Republic, the other generals had all marched against it under unfavorable auspices. CHAPTER XXII These things I say I pass in silence, but I can by no means be silent regarding the order given by Mithridati's King of Asia that on one day all Roman citizens were residing anywhere in Asia, where great numbers of them were following their private business, should be put to death, and this order was executed. How miserable a spectacle was then presented, when each man was suddenly intrectorously murdered wherever he happened to be, in the field, or on the road, in the town, in his own home, or in the street, in market, or temple, and bed, or at table. Think of the groans of the dying, the tears of the spectators, and even of the executioners themselves. For how cruel a necessity was it that compelled the hosts of these victims not only to see these abominable butcheries in their own houses, but even to perpetrate them, to change their countenance suddenly from the bland kindness of friendship, and in the midst of peace said about the business of war, and, shall I say, give and receive wounds, the slaying being pierced in body, the slayer in spirit. Had all these murdered persons, then, despised auguries? Had they neither public nor household gods to consult when they left their homes and set out on that fatal journey? If they had not, our adversaries have no reason to complain of these Christian times in this particular, since long ago the Romans despised auguries as idle. If, on the other hand, they did consult omens, let them tell us what good they got thereby, even when such things were not prohibited, but authorized by human, if not by divine law. CHAPTER XXIII But let us now mention as succinctly as possible those disasters which were still more vexing because nearer home. I mean those discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil interests. The seditions had now become urban wars in which blood was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another, not with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force and arms. What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and devastations were occasioned in Italy by war's social, war's servile, war's civil. Before the Latins began the social war against Rome, all the animals used in the service of man—dogs, horses, asses, oxen, and all the rest that are subject to man—suddenly grew wild and forgot their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and wandered at large, and could not be closely approached, either by strangers or their own masters, without danger. If this was important, how serious a calamity must have been portented by a plague which, whether important or no, was in itself a serious calamity? Had it happened in our day, the heathen would have been more rabid against us than our animals were against them. Chapter 24 The civil wars originated in these seditions which the grouchy excited regarding the agrarian laws, for they were minded to divide among the people the lands which were wrongfully possessed by the nobility. But the reform and abuse of so long-standing was an enterprise full of peril, or rather is the event proved of destruction. For what disasters accompanied the death of the Elder Gracchus, when slaughter ensued when, shortly after, the younger brother met the same fate? For noble and ignoble were indiscriminately massacred in this not by legal authority and procedure, but by mobs and armed rioters. After the death of the Younger Gracchus, the Council Lucius Alpimius, who had given battle to him within the city, and had defeated and put to sword both himself and his Confederates, and had massacred many of the citizens, instituted a judicial examination of others, and has reported to a put to death as many as three thousand men. From this it may be gathered how many fell in the riotous encounters when the result even of a judicial investigation was so bloody. The assassin of Gracchus himself sold his head to the Council for its weight in gold, such being the previous agreement. In this massacre, too, Marcus Fulvius, a man of consider rank with all his children, was put to death. Chapter 25 A pretty decree of the Senate it was, truly, by which the Temple of Concord was built in the spot where that disastrous rising had taken place, and where so many citizens of every rank had fallen. I suppose it was that the monument of the Gracchus' punishment might strike the eye and affect the memory of the pleaders. But what was this but to deride the gods by building a temple to that goddess who, had she been in the city, would not have suffered herself to be torn by such dissensions? Or was it that Concord was chargeable with that bloodshed because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, and was therefore incarcerated in that temple? For if they had any regard to consistency, why did they not rather erect on that site a temple of discord? Or is there a reason for Concord being a goddess while discord is none? Does the distinction of Labéo hold here, who would have made the one a good, the other an evil deity? A distinction which seems to have been suggested to him by the mere fact of his observing at Rome a temple to fever, as well as one to health. But on the same ground discord as well as Concord ought to be deified. A hazardous venture the Romans made in provoking so wicked a goddess, and in forgetting that the destruction of Troy had been occasioned by her taking offense. For being indignant that she was not invited with the other gods to the nuptials of Palaeus and Thetis, she created dissension among the three goddesses by sending in the golden apple, which occasioned strife in heaven, victory to Venus, the rape of Helen, and the destruction of Troy. Wherefore, if she was perhaps offended that the Romans had not thought her worthy of a temple among the other gods in their city, and therefore disturbed the state with such two molds, how much fiercer passion would she be roused when she saw the temple of her adversary erected on the scene of that massacre, or in other words, on the scene of her own handiwork. Those wise and learned men are enraged that are laughing at these follies, and yet being worshippers of good and bad divinities alike, they cannot escape this dilemma about concord and discord. Either they have neglected the worship of these goddesses and preferred fever and war, to whom their shrines erected of great antiquity, or they have worshipped them, and after all concord has abandoned them, and discord has tempestuously hurled them into civil wars. Chapter 26 But they supposed that in erecting the temple of concord within the view of the orators as a memorial of the punishment and death of the Graci, they were raising an effectual obstacle to sedition. How much effect it had is indicated by the still more deplorable wars that followed. For after this the orators endeavored not to avoid the example of the Graci, but to surpass their projects, as said Lucius Saturnanus, a tribune of the people, and Chaos Servilius the Praetor, and sometime after Marcus Drusus, all of whom stirred seditions which first of all occasioned bloodshed, and then the social wars by which Italy was grievously injured, and reduced to a piteously desolate and wasted condition. Then followed the Servile War and the Civil Wars, and in them what battles were fought, and what blood was shed, so that almost all the peoples of Italy which formed the main strength of the Roman Empire were conquered as if they were barbarians. Then even historians themselves find it difficult to explain how the Servile War was begun by a very few, certainly less than seventy gladiators, what numbers of fierce and cruel men attached themselves to these, how many of the Roman generals disbanded defeated, and how it laid waste many districts and cities. That was not the only Servile War. The province of Macedonia, and subsequently Sicily and the Seacoast, were also depopulated by bands of slaves. And who can adequately describe out of the horrible atrocities which the pirates first committed, or the wars they afterwards maintained against Rome? But when Marius, stained with the blood of his fellow citizens whom the rage of party had sacrificed, was in his turn vanquished and driven from the city, it had scarcely time to breathe freely when, to use the words of Cicero, Cina and Marius together returned and took possession of it. Then indeed the foremost men in the state were put to death, its lights quenched. Silla afterwards avenged this cruel victory, but we need not say with what loss of life and with what ruin to the republic. For of this vengeance which was more destructive than if the crimes which it punished had been committed with impunity, Lucan says, the cure was excessive and too closely resembled the disease, the guilty perished, but when none but the guilty survived, and then private hatred and anger unbridled by law were allowed free indulgence. In that war between Marius and Silla, besides those who fell in the field of battle, the city too was filled with corpses in its streets, squares, markets, theaters, and temples, so that it is not easy to reckon whether the victors slew more before or after victory than they might be or because they were victors. As soon as Marius triumphed and returned from exile, besides the butcheries everywhere perpetrated, the head of the consul Octavius was exposed in the rostrum, Caesar and Fimbria were assassinated in their own houses, the Tucrasi, father and son, were murdered in one another's sight, Bebius and Numitorius were disemboweled by being dragged with hooks, Catullus escaped the hands of his enemies by drinking poison, Merula, the flamen of Jupiter cut his veins and made a libation of his own blood to his God. Moreover, everyone whose salutation Marius did not answer by giving his hand was at once cut down before his face. Chapter 28 Then followed the victory of Silla, the so-called Avenger of the Cruelties of Marius. But not only was his victory purchased with great bloodshed, but when hostilities were finished, hostilities survived, and the subsequent peace was bloody as the war. To the former and still recent massacres of the elder Marius, the younger Marius and Carbo, who belonged to the same party, added greater atrocities. For when Silla approached and they despaired not only a victory but of life itself, they made a promiscuous massacre of friends and foes, and not satisfied with staining every corner of Rome with blood, they besieged the Senate and led forth the Senators to death from the Curia as from a prison. Mutius Cevola the Pontiff was slain at the altar of Vesta, which he had plung to because no spot in Rome was more sacred than her temple, and his blood well-nigh extinguished the fire which was kept alive by the constant care of the virgins. Then Silla entered the city of Victorious after having slaughtered in the Villa Publica, not by combat but by an order, seven thousand men who had surrendered and were therefore unarmed, so fierce was the rage of peace itself even after the rage of war was extinct. Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of Silla slew whom he pleased so that the number of deaths went beyond computation till it was suggested to Silla that he should allow some to survive that the victors might not be destitute of subjects. Then this furious and promiscuous license to murder was checked, and much relief was expressed at the publication of the prescription list containing, though it did, the death warrant of two thousand men of the highest ranks, the senatorial and equestrian. The large number was indeed saddening, but it was conciliatory that a limit was fixed, nor was the grief at the number slain so great as the joy that the rest were secure. But this very security, hard-hearted as it was, could not but bemoan the exquisite torture applied to some of those who had been doomed to die. For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed hands of the executioners, men treating a living man more savagely than wild beasts are used to tear an abandoned corpse. Another had his eyes dug out, and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced to live a long while or rather to die a long while in such torture. Some celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms, and one was collectively condemned to slaughter just as an individual criminal would be condemned to death. These things were done in peace when the war was over, not that victory might be more speedily obtained, but that after being obtained it might not be thought lightly of. Peace vied with war and cruelty and surpassed it. For while war overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless. War gave liberty to him who was attacked to strike if he could. Peace granted to the survivors not life but an unresisting death. What fury of foreign nations what barbarian ferocity can compare with this victory of citizens over citizens? Which was more disastrous, more hideous, more bitter to Rome, the recent Gothic and the old Gallic invasion, or the cruelty displayed by Marius and Scylla and their partisans against men who were members of the same body as themselves? The Gauls indeed massacred all the senators they found in any part of the city except the capital, which alone was defended, but they at least sold life to those who were in the capital, though they might have starved them out if they could not have stormed it. The Gauls again spared so many senators that it is the more surprising that they killed any. But Scylla, while Marius was still living, established himself as conqueror in the capital, which the Gauls had not violated, and thence issued his death warrants. And when Marius had escaped by flight, though destined to return more fierce and bloodthirsty than ever, Scylla issued from the capital even decrees of the senate for the slaughter and confiscation of the property of many citizens. Then when Scylla left, what did the Marian faction hold sacred or spare when they gave no quarter even to Mucius, a citizen, a senator, a pontiff, and though clasping and piteous embrace the very altar in which they say resided the destinies of Rome, and that final prescription list of Scylla is not to mention countless other massacres dispatched more senators than the Gauls could even plunder. CHAPTER 30. With what effrontery, then, with what assurance, with what impudence, with what folly, or rather insanity, do they refuse to impute these disasters to their own gods, and impute the present to our Christ? These bloody civil wars, more distressing by the avowal of their own historians than any foreign wars, in which were pronounced to be not merely calamitous, but absolutely ruinous to the Republic, began long before the coming of Christ, and gave birth to one another, so that a concatenation of unjustifiable causes led from the wars of Marius and Scylla to those of Sertorius and Catalan, of whom the one was prescribed, the other brought up by Scylla, from this to the war of Lepidus and Catullus, of whom the one wished to rescind the other to defend the acts of Scylla, from this to the war of Pompey and Caesar, of whom Pompey had been a partisan of Scylla, whose power he equalled or even surpassed, while Caesar condemned Pompey's power because it was not his own, and yet exceeded it when Pompey was defeated in slain. From him the chain of civil wars extended to the second Caesar, afterwards called Augustus, and in whose reign Christ was born. For even Augustus himself waged many civil wars, and in these wars many of the foremost men perished among them that skillful manipulator of the Republic, Cicero. Caus, Julius Caesar, when he had conquered Pompey, though he used his victory with clemency and granted to men of the opposite faction both life and honors, was suspected of aiming at royalty, and was assassinated in the Curia by a party of noble senators who had conspired to defend the liberty of the Republic. His power was then coveted by Antony, a man of very different character, polluted and debased by every kind of vice, who was strenuously resisted by Cicero on the same plea of defending the liberty of the Republic. At this juncture that other Caesar, the adopted son of Caus, and afterwards, as I said, known by the name of Augustus, had made his debut as a young man of remarkable genius. This youthful Caesar was favored by Cicero in order that his influence might counteract that of Antony. For he hoped that Caesar would overthrow and blast the power of Antony and establish a free state, so blind and unaware the future was he, for that very young man, whose advancement and influence he was fostering, allowed Cicero to be killed as a seal of an alliance with Antony, and subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the Republic in defense of which he had made so many orations. CHAPTER XXXI Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for his great benefits blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly, when these occurred, the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and the rose-demingled fragrance of Sabian incense and fresh garlands. The priests were clothed with honor, the shrines were maintained in splendor, sacrifices, games, sacred ecstasies were common in the temples, while the blood of the citizens was being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the very altars of the gods. Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary in a temple because Mucius had sought it there in vain. But they who most unpardonably columnniate this Christian era are the very men who either themselves led for asylum to the places specially dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians that they might be safe. In short, not to recapitulate the many instances I have cited, and not to add to their number others which it were tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am persuaded of, and this every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge, that if the human race had received Christianity before the Punic Wars, and if the same desolating calamities which these wars brought upon Europe and Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, there is no one of those who now accuse us who would not have attributed them to our religion. How intolerable were their accusations have been, at least so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had been received and diffused prior to the invasion of the Gauls, or to the ruinous fires and floods which desolated Rome, or to those most calamitous of all events, the Civil Wars. And those other disasters which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies, had they happened since the Christian era, to whom but to the Christians would they have imputed these as crimes. I do not speak of those things which were rather surprising than hurtful, oxen speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mother's wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other sex, and other similar prodigies which whether true or false, are recorded not in their imaginative but in their historical works, and which do not injure but only astonish men. But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones, not hail stones but real stones, this certainly was calculated to do serious damage. We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from the top of the mountain to the neighboring shore, caused the sea to boil so that rocks were burnt up, and the pitch of ships began to run. A phenomenon incredibly surprising, but at the same time no less hurtful. By the same violent heat they relate that on another occasion Sicily was filled with cinders so that the houses of the city Catina were destroyed and buried under them, a calamity which moved the Romans to pity them and remit their tribute for that year. One may also read that Africa, which by that time become a province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts, which after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud, so that when they were drowned and cast upon the shore, the air was polluted and so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Messinissa alone they say there perished eight hundred thousand persons besides a much greater number in the neighboring districts. At Utica they assure us that if thirty thousand soldiers then garrisoning it, they were survived only ten. Yet which of these disastrous, suppose they happen now, would not be attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly accuse us and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own gods they attribute none of these things, though they worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do not reflect that they who formerly worshiped them were not preserved from these serious disasters.