 The City of God, Book II, CHAPTER I-XVII. If the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence of truth but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines as to a health-giving medicine until it obtained from God by its faith and piety the grace needed to heal it, they who have just ideas and express them in suitable language would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and hurtful than ever to such an extent that even after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man, they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable fancies, either on account of their great blindness which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on account of their opinionative obstinacy which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see. There therefore frequently arises a necessity of speaking more fully on those points which are already clear, that we may, as it were, present them not to the eye, but even to the touch, so that they may be felt even by those who close their eyes against them. And yet to what end shall we ever bring our discussions, or what bounds can be set to our discourse if we proceed on the principle that we must always reply to those who reply to us? For those who are either unable to understand our arguments, or are so hardened by the habit of contradiction that though they understand, they cannot yield to them, reply to us, and as it is written, speak hard things, and are incorrigibly vain. Now if we were to propose to confute their objections as often as they with brazen face chose to disregard our arguments, and so often as they could by any means contradict our statements, you see how endless and fruitless and painful a task we should be undertaking. And therefore I do not wish my writings to be judged even by you, my son Marchelinas, nor by any of those others at whose service this work of mine is freely and in all Christian charity put, if at least you intend always to require a reply to every exception which you hear taken to what you read in it. For so you would become like those silly women of whom the apostle says that they are always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. CHAPTER II In the foregoing book, having begun to speak of the city of God, to which I have resolved, heaven helping me, to consecrate the whole of this work, it was my first endeavour to reply to those who attribute the wars by which the world is being devastated, and especially the recent sack of Rome by the barbarians, to the religion of Christ which prohibits the offering of abominable sacrifices to devils. I have shown that they ought rather to attribute it to Christ that for his name's sake the barbarians, in contravention of all custom and law of war, through open as sanctuaries the largest churches, and in many instances showed such reverence to Christ, that not only his genuine servants, but even those who in their terror feigned themselves to be so, were exempted from all those hardships by which the custom of war may lawfully be inflicted. Then out of this there arose the question, why wicked and ungrateful men were permitted to share in these benefits, and why too the hardships and calamities of war were inflicted on the godly, as well as on the ungodly. And in giving a suitably full answer to this large question, I occupied some considerable space, partly that I might relieve the anxieties which disturb many when they observe that the blessings of God, and the common and daily human casualties, fall to the lot of bad men and good without distinction, but mainly that I might minister some consolation to those holy and chaste women who were outraged by the enemy in such a way as to shock their modesty, though not to sully their purity, and that I might preserve them from being ashamed of life, though they have no guilt to be ashamed of. And then I briefly spoke against those who with the most shameless wantonness insult over those poor Christians who were subjected to those calamities, and especially over those broken-hearted and humiliated, though chaste and holy women. These fellows themselves being most depraved and unmanly profligates quite degenerate from the genuine Romans whose famous deeds are abundantly recorded in history and everywhere celebrated, but who have found in their descendants the greatest enemies of their glory. In truth Rome, which was founded and increased by the labors of these ancient heroes, was more shamefully ruined by their descendants while its walls were still standing than it is now by the raising of them. For in this ruin there fell stones and timbers, but in the ruin those profligates affected there fell not the mural but the moral bulwarks and ornaments of the city, and their hearts burned with passions more destructive than the flames which consumed their houses. Thus I brought my first book to a close, and now I go on to speak of those calamities which that city itself, or its subject provinces, have suffered since its foundation, all of which they would equally have attributed to the Christian religion if at that early period the doctrine of the gospel against their false and deceiving gods had been as largely and freely proclaimed as now. CHAPTER III But remember that in recounting these things I have still to address myself to ignorant men, so ignorant indeed is to give birth to the common saying, drought and Christianity go hand in hand. There are indeed some among them who are thoroughly well educated men, and have a taste for history in which the things I speak of are open to their observation. But in order to irritate the uneducated masses against us they feign ignorance of these events, and do what they can to make the vulgar believe that those disasters, which in certain places and at certain times uniformly befall mankind, are the result of Christianity, which is being everywhere diffused, and is possessed of a renowned and brilliancy, which quite eclipse their own gods. Let them then, along with us, call to mind with what various and repeated disasters the prosperity of Rome was blighted before ever Christ had come in the flesh, and before his name had been blazoned among the nations with that glory which they vainly grudge. Let them, if they can, defend their gods in this article, since they maintain that they worship them in order to be preserved from these disasters, which they now impute to us if they suffer in the least degree. For why did these gods permit the disasters I am to speak of to fall on their worshipers before the preaching of Christ's name offended them, and put an end to their sacrifices? CHAPTER 4 First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the morals of their worshipers. That the true god should neglect those who did not seek his help, that was by justice. But why did those gods, from whose worship ungrateful men are now complaining that they are prohibited, issue no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous life? Surely it was but just that such care as men showed to the worship of the gods the gods on their part should have to the conduct of men. But, it is replied, it is by his own will a man goes astray. Who denies it? But, nonetheless, was it incumbent on these gods, who were men's guardians, to publish in plain terms the laws of a good life, but not to conceal them from their worshipers? It was their part to send prophets to reach and convict such as broke these laws, and publicly to proclaim the punishments which await evil doers, and the rewards which may be looked for by those that do well. Did ever the walls of any of their tempos echo to any such warning voice? I myself, when I was a young man, used sometimes to go to the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles. I saw the priests raving in religious excitement, and heard the choristers. I took pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honor of gods and goddesses, of the Virgin Cholestis, and Barysentia, the mother of all the gods. And on the holy day consecrated to her purification, that were sung before her couch, productions so obscene and filthy for the ear, I do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man. And they, so impure, that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience. For natural reverence for parents is a bond which the most abandoned cannot ignore. And accordingly the lewd actions and filthy words with which these players honored the mother of the gods, in presence of a vast assemblage and audience of both sexes, they could not for very shame have rehearsed at home in the presence of their own mothers. And the crowds that were gathered from all quarters by curiosity, offended modesty must, I should suppose, have scattered in the confusion of shame. If these are sacred rites, what is sacrilege? If this is purification, what is pollution? This festivity was called the tables, as if a banquet were being given at which unclean devils might find suitable refreshment. For it is not difficult to see what kind of spirits they must be who are delighted with such obscenities, unless indeed a man be blinded by these evil spirits passing themselves off under the name of gods, and utter disbeliefs in their existence or lead such a life as prompts him rather to propitiate and fear them than the true god. CHAPTER V In this matter I would prefer to have, as my assessors in judgment, not those men who rather take pleasure in these infamous customs than take pains to put an end to them, but that same Scipio Nassica, who was chosen by the Senate as the citizen most worthy to receive in his hands the image of that demon Sibaly, and convey it into the city. He would tell us whether he would be proud to see his own mother so highly esteemed by the State as to have divine honors adjudged to her. As the Greeks and Romans and other nations have decreed divine honors to men who had been of material service to them, and have believed that their mortal benefactors were thus made immortal and enrolled among the gods. Surely he would desire that his mother should enjoy such felicity were it possible. But if we proceed to ask him whether, among the honors paid to her, he would wish such shameful rites as these to be celebrated, would he not at once exclaim that he would rather his mother lay stone dead than survive as a goddess to lend her ear to these obscenities? Is it possible that he who was of so severe a morality that he used his influence as a Roman senator to prevent the building of a theater in that city dedicated to the manly virtues would wish his mother to be propitiated as a goddess with words which would have brought the blush to her cheek when a Roman matron? Could he possibly believe that the modesty of an estimable woman would be so transformed by her promotion to divinity that she would suffer herself to be invoked and celebrated in terms so gross and immodest that if she had heard the like while alive upon earth and had listened without stopping her ears and hurrying from the spot, her relatives, her husband, and her children would have blushed for her? Therefore the mother of the gods being such a character as the most profligate man would be ashamed to have for his mother, and meaning to enthrall the minds of the Romans, demanded for her service their best citizen not to ripen him still more in virtue by her helpful counsel, but to entangle him by her deceit, like her of whom it is written, the adulterous will hunt for the precious soul. Her intent was to puff up this high-sold man by an apparently divine testimony to his excellence in order that he might rely upon his own eminence in virtue and make no further efforts after true piety and religion, without which natural genius, however brilliant, vapors into pride and comes to nothing. For what but a guileful purpose could that goddess demand the best man, seeing that in her own sacred festivals she requires such obscenities as the best men would be covered with shame to hear at their own tables? CHAPTER VI This is the reason why those divinities quite neglected the lives and morals of the cities and nations who worship them, and threw no dreadful prohibition in their way to hinder them from becoming utterly corrupt, and to preserve them from those terrible and detestable evils which visit not harvests and vintages, not house and possessions, not the body which is subject to the soul, but the soul itself, the spirit that rules the whole man. If there was any such prohibition, let it be produced, let it be proved. They will tell us that purity and probity were inculcated upon those who were initiated in the mysteries of religion, and that secret incitements to virtue were whispered in the ear of the elite. But this is an idle boast. Let them show or name to us the places which were at any time consecrated to assemblages in which, instead of the obscene songs and licentious acting of players, instead of the celebration of those most filthy and shameless fugalia, well-called fugalia since they banish modesty and right feeling, the people were commanded in the name of the gods to restrain avarice, bridal impurity, and conquer ambition, where in short they might learn in that school which Perseus vehemently lashes them to, when he says, Be taught, ye abandoned creatures, and ascertain the causes of things, what we are and for what end we are born, what is the law of our success in life, and by what art we may turn the goal without making shipwreck, what limit we should put to our wealth, what we may lawfully desire, and what uses filthy lucre serves, how much we should bestow upon our country and our family, learn in short what God meant thee to be and what place he has ordered you to fill. Let them name to us the places where such instructions were want to be communicated from the gods, and where the people who worshipped them were accustomed to resort to hear them, as we can point to our churches built for this purpose in every land where the Christian religion is received. CHAPTER VII But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the philosophers and their disputations? In the first place these belong not to Rome, but to Greece, and even if we yield to them that they are now Roman because Greece itself has become a Roman province, still the teachings of the philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries of men who, with the prompting of their own speculative ability, made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature and the right and wrong in ethics and in dialectic what was consequent according to the rules of logic and what was inconsequent and erroneous. And some of them, by God's help, make great discoveries, but when left to themselves they were betrayed by human infirmity and fell into mistakes. And this was ordered by divine providence that their pride might be restrained and that by their example it might be pointed out that it is humility which has access to the highest regions. But of this we shall have more to say if the Lord God of truth permit in its own place. However, if the philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been greater justice to vote divine honors to them? Were it not more according with every virtuous sentiment to read Plato's writings in a temple of Plato than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the priests of Sibyl mutilating themselves, the effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and whatever other cruel or shameful or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these? Were it not a more suitable education and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue if they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods instead of the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors? Certainly all the worshippers of the Roman gods, when once they are possessed by what Perseus calls the burning poison of lust, prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to hear what Plato taught or Cato censured. Hence the young profligate enterance, when he sees on the wall of fresco representing the fabled descent of Jupiter into the lap of Danii, in the form of a golden shower, accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own licentiousness and boasts that he is an imitator of God. And what God, he says, he who with his thunder shakes the loftiest temples, and was I a poor creature compared to him to make bones of it? No, I did it, and with all my heart. CHAPTER VIII But someone will interpose, these are the fables of poets, not the deliverances of the gods themselves. Well, I have no mind to arbitrate between the lewdness of theatrical entertainments and of mystic rites. Only this I say, and history bears me out in making the assertion, that those same entertainments in which the fictions of poets or the main attraction were not introduced in the festivals of the gods by the ignorant devotion of the Romans, but that the gods themselves gave the most urgent commands to this effect, and indeed extorted from the Romans these salendities and celebrations in their honor. I touched on this in the preceding book, and mentioned that dramatic entertainments were first inaugurated at Rome on occasion of a pestilence and by authority of the pontiff. And what man is there who is not more likely to adopt, for the regulation of his own life, the examples that are represented in plays which have a divine sanction rather than the precepts written and promulgated with no more than human authority? If the poets gave a false representation of Job in describing him as adulterous, then it were to be expected that the chaste gods should in anger avenge so wicked a fiction in place of encouraging the games which circulated it. Of these plays the most inoffensive are comedies and tragedies, that is to say the dramas which poets write for the stage, and which though they often handle impure subjects, yet do so without the filthiness of language which characterizes many other performances. And it is these dramas which boys are obliged by their seniors to read and learn as a part of what is called a liberal and gentlemanly education. CHAPTER IX The opinion of the ancient Romans on this matter is attested by Cicero in his work De Repubblica, in which Shippio, one of the interlocutors, says, the lewdness of comedy could never have been suffered by audiences unless the customs of society had previously sanctioned the same lewdness. And in the earlier days the Greeks preserved a certain reasonableness in their license, and made it a law that whatever comedy wished to save anyone it must say of him by name. And so in the same work of Cicero's, Shippio says, whom has it not dispersed? Nay, whom has it not worried? Whom has it spared? Allow that it may assail demagogues and factions, men injurious to the Commonwealth, a Cleon, a Cleopon, a hyperbolas. That is tolerable, though it had been more seemingly for the public censor to brand such men than for a poet to lampoon them. But to blacken the fame of Pericles was scurrilous verse, after he had with the utmost dignity presided over their state alike in war and in peace, was as unworthy of a poet as if our own plautas or navies were to bearing Publius and Caneus Shippio on the comic stage, or as if Cicilius were to caricature Cato. And then a little after he goes on. Though our twelve tables attached the penalty of death only to a very few offenses, yet among these few was this one, if any man should have sung a Pasquinade or have composed a satire calculated to bring infamy or disgrace on another person, wisely decreed. For it is by the decisions of magistrates and by a well-informed justice that our lives ought to be judged and not by the flighty fancies of poets. Neither ought we to be exposed to hear Calumnes save where we have the liberty of replying and defending ourselves before an adequate tribunal. This much have I judged it advisable to quote from the fourth book of Cicero's De Repubblica, and I have made the quotation word for word with the exception of some words omitted and some slightly transposed for the sake of giving the sense more readily. And certainly the extract is pertinent to the matter I am endeavouring to explain. Cicero makes some further remarks and concludes the passage by showing that the ancient Romans did not permit any living man to be either praised or blamed on the stage. But the Greeks, as I said, though not so moral, were more logical in allowing this license which the Romans forbade, for they saw that their gods approved and enjoyed the scurrilous language of low comedy when directed not only against men, but even against themselves. And this, whether the infamous actions imputed to them, were the fictions of poets or were their actual iniquities commemorated and acted in the theatres. And would that the spectators had judged them worthy only of laughter and not of imitation? Manifestly it had been a stretch of pride to spare the good name of the leading men and the common citizens where the varied deities did not grudge that their own reputation should be blemished. CHAPTER X It is alleged in excuse of this practice that the stories told of the gods are not true but false and mere inventions, but this only makes matters worse if we form our estimate by the morality our religion teaches. And if we consider the malice of the devils, what more wily and astute artifice could they practice upon men? When a slander is uttered against a leading statesman of upright and useful life, is it not reprehensible in proportion to its untruth and groundlessness? What punishment then shall be sufficient when the gods are the objects of so wicked and outrageous and injustice? But the devils, whom these men repute gods, are content that even iniquities they are guiltless of, should be ascribed to them so long as they may entangle men's minds in the meshes of these opinions and draw them on along with themselves to their predestinated punishment? Whether such things were actually committed by the men whom these devils, the lighting and human infatuation, caused to be worshipped as gods, and in whose stead they, by a thousand malign and deceitful artifices, substitute themselves and so receive worship? Or whether, though they were really the crimes of men, these wicked spirits gladly allowed them to be attributed to higher beings, that there might seem to be conveyed from heaven itself a sufficient sanction for the perpetration of shameful wickedness? The Greeks, therefore, seeing the character of the gods they served, thought that the poet should certainly not refrain from showing up human vices on the stage, either because they desired to be like their gods in this, or because they were afraid that if they required for themselves a more unblemished reputation than they asserted for the gods, they might provoke them to anger. CHAPTER XI It was a part of the same reasonableness of the Greeks which induced them to bestow upon the actors of these same plays no inconsiderable civic honors. In the above-mentioned book of the Dei Repubblica it is mentioned that Eskenes, a very eloquent Athenian who had been a tragic actor in his youth, became a statesman, as that the Athenians again and again sent another Tragedian, Aristodemus, as their plenipotentiary to Philip. For they judged it unbecoming to condemn and treat as infamous persons those who were the chief actors in the scenic entertainments which they saw to be so pleasing to the gods. No doubt this was immoral of the Greeks, but there can be as little doubt they acted in conformity with the character of their gods. For how could they have resumed to protect the conduct of the citizens from being cut to pieces by the tongues of poets and players who were allowed, and even enjoined by the gods, to tear their divine reputation to tatters? And how could they hold in contempt the men who acted in the theaters those dramas which, as they had ascertained, gave pleasure to the gods whom they worshipped? Nay, how could they but grant to them the highest civic honors? On what plea could they honor the priests who offered for them acceptable sacrifices to the gods if they branded with infamy the actors who, on behalf of the people, gave to the gods that pleasure or honor which they demanded, and which, according to the account of the priests, they were angry and not receiving? Labeo, whose learning makes him an authority on such points, is of opinion that the distinction between good and evil deities should find expression in a difference of worship. That the evil should be propitiated by bloody sacrifices and doleful rites, but the good with a joyful and pleasant observance, as, for example, as he says himself, with plays, festivals, and banquets. All this we shall, with God's help, hereafter discuss. At present, and speaking to the subject on hand, whether all kinds of offerings are made indiscriminately to all the gods as if all were good, and it is an unseemly thing to conceive that there are evil gods, but these gods of the pagans are all evil, because they are not gods but evil spirits. Or whether, as Labeo thinks, a distinction is made between the offerings presented to the different gods the Greeks are equally justified in honoring alike the priests by whom the sacrifices are offered, and the players by whom the dramas are acted, that they may not be open to the charge of doing an injury to all their gods, if the plays are pleasing to all of them, or, which were still worse, to their good gods, if the plays are relished only by them. CHAPTER XII. The Romans, however, as Shippeo boasts in that same discussion, declined having their conduct in good name subjected to the assaults and slanders of the poets, and went so far as to make it a capital crime if anyone should dare to compose such verses. This was a very honorable course to pursue, so far as they themselves were concerned, but in respect to the gods it was proud and irreligious, for they knew that the gods not only tolerated but relished being lashed by the injurious expressions of the poets, and yet they themselves will not suffer this same handling, and what their ritual prescribed is acceptable to the gods their law prohibited as injurious to themselves. How then, Shippeo, do you praise the Romans for refusing this license to the poets, so that no citizen could be columnated, while you know that the gods were not included under this protection? Do you count your Senate House worthy of so much higher regard than the capital? Is the one city of Rome more valuable in your eyes than the whole heaven of gods that you prohibit your poets from uttering any injurious words against a citizen, though they may with impunity cast what imbutations they please upon the gods, without the interference of senator, censor, prince, or pontiff? It was foresooth intolerable that Poptus or Navius should attack Publius and Canaeus Shippeo insufferable that Chachilius should lampoon Cato, but quite proper that your Terence should encourage youthful lust by the wicked example of Supreme Jove. CHAPTER XIII But Shippeo, were he alive, would possibly reply, how could we attach a penalty that that which the gods themselves have consecrated, for the theatrical entertainments in which such things are said and acted and performed were introduced into Roman society by the gods who ordered that they should be dedicated and exhibited in their honor? But was not this then the plainest proof that they were no true gods nor in any respect worthy of receiving divine honors from the republic? Suppose they had required that in their honor the citizens of Rome should be held up to ridicule, every Roman would have resented the hateful proposal? How then, I would ask, can they be esteemed worthy of worship when they propose that their own crimes be used as material for celebrating their praises? Does not this artifice expose them and prove that they are detestable devils? Thus the Romans, though they were superstitious enough to serve as gods those who made no secret of their desire to be worshiped in licentious plays, yet had sufficient regard to the hereditary dignity and virtue to prompt them to refuse to play as any such rewards as the Greeks accorded them? On this point we have this testimony of Scipio recorded in Cicero. They, the Romans, considered comedy in all theatrical performances as disgraceful, and therefore not only debarred players from offices and honors open to ordinary citizens, but also decreed that their names should be branded by the censor and erased from the role of their tribe. An excellent decree and another testimony to the sagacity of Rome. But I could wish their prudence had been more thoroughgoing and consistent. For when I hear that if any Roman citizen chose the stage as his profession, he not only closed to himself every laudable career, but even became an outcast from his own tribe, I cannot but exclaim, this is the true Roman spirit that is worthy of a state jealous of its reputation. But then someone interrupts my rapture by inquiring with what consistency players are debarred from all honors while plays are counted among the honors due to the gods. For a long while the virtue of Rome was uncontaminated by theatrical exhibitions, and if they had been adopted for the sake of gratifying the taste of the citizens, they would have been introduced hand in hand with a relaxation of manners. But the fact is that it was the gods who demanded that they should be exhibited to gratify them. With what justice, then, is the player excommunicated by whom God is worshiped. On what pretext can you at once adore him who exacts and brand him who acts these plays? This, then, is the controversy in which the Greeks and Romans are engaged. The Greeks think they justly honor players because they worship the gods who demand plays. The Romans, on the other hand, do not suffer an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe, far less the senatorial order. And the whole of this discussion may be summed up in the following syllogism. The Greeks give us the major premise. If such gods are to be worshiped, then certainly such men may be honored. The Romans add the minor, but such men must by no means be honored. The Christians draw the conclusion, therefore such gods must by no means be worshiped. CHAPTER XIV We have still to inquire why the poets who write the plays, in whom by the law of the twelve tables are prohibited from entering the good name of the citizens, are reckoned more estimable than the actors, though they so shamefully asperse the character of the gods. Is it right that the actors of these poetical and god-dishonoring effusions be branded while their authors are honored? Must we not hear award the poem to a Greek, Plato, who, in framing his ideal republic, conceived that poets should be banished from the city as enemies of the state? He could not brook that the gods be brought into disrepute, nor that the minds of the citizens be depraved and besotted by the fictions of the poets. Compare now human nature as you see it in Plato, expelling poets from the city that the citizens be uninjured, with the divine nature as you see it in these gods exacting plays in their own honor. Plato strove, though unsuccessfully, to persuade the light-minded and lascivious Greeks to abstain from so much as writing such plays. The gods used their authority to extort the acting of the same from the dignified and sober-minded Romans. And not content with having them acted, they had them dedicated to themselves, consecrated to themselves, solemnly celebrated in their own honor. To which then would it be more becoming an estate to decree divine honors? To Plato, who prohibited these wicked and lascivious plays, or to the demons who delighted and blinding men to the truth of what Plato unsuccessfully sought to inculcate. This philosopher Plato has been elevated by Labéo to the rank of a demigod, and set thus upon a level with such as Hercules and Romulus. Labéo ranks demigods higher than heroes, but both he counts among the deities. But I have no doubt that he thinks this man whom he reckons a demigod worthy of greater respect, not only than the heroes, but also than the gods themselves. The laws of the Romans and the speculations of Plato have this resemblance, that the latter pronounce a wholesale condemnation of poetical fictions, while the former restrain the license of satire, at least so far as men are the objects of it. Plato will not suffer poets even to dwell in his city. The laws of Rome prohibit actors from being enrolled as citizens, and if they had not feared to offend the gods who had asked the services of the others, they would in all likelihood have banished them altogether. It is obvious, therefore, that the Romans could not receive nor reasonably expect to receive laws for the regulation of their conduct from their gods, since the laws they themselves enacted far surpassed and put the shame and the morality of the gods. The gods demand stage plays in their own honor. The Romans exclude the players from all civic honors. The former commanded that they should be celebrated by the scenic representation of their own disgrace. The latter commanded that no poet should dare to blemish the reputation of any citizen. But that demigod Plato resisted the lust of such gods as these, and showed the Romans what their genius had left incomplete. For he absolutely excluded poets from his ideal state, whether they composed fictions with no regard to truth, or set the worst possible examples before wretched men under the guise of divine actions. We, for our part, indeed reckon Plato neither a god nor a demigod. We would not even compare him to any of God's holy angels, nor to the truth-speaking prophets, nor to any of the apostles or martyrs of Christ, nay, not to any faithful Christian man. The reason of this opinion of ours we will, God prospering us, render in its own place. Nevertheless, since they wish him to be considered a demigod, we think he certainly is more entitled to that rank, and is every way superior, if not to Hercules and Romulus, though no historian could ever narrate nor any poet sing of him that he had killed his brother or committed any crime, yet certainly to Priapus or Acinocephalus or the fever, divinities whom the Romans have partly received from foreigners and partly consecrated by homegrown rites. How then could gods such as these be expected to promulgate good and wholesome laws, either for the prevention of moral and social evils, or for their eradication where they had already sprung up? Gods who used their influence even to sow and cherish profligacy by appointing that deeds truly or falsely ascribed to them should be published to the people by means of theatrical exhibitions, and by thus gratuitously fanning the flame of human lust with the breath of a seemingly divine approbation. In vain does Cicero, speaking of poets, exclaim against this state of things in these words. When the plaudits and acclimation of the people who sit as infallible judges are won by the poets, what darkness benights the mind, what fears invade, what passions inflame it. CHAPTER XV But is it not manifest that vanity, rather than reason, regulated the choice of some of their false gods? This Plato, whom they reckoned a demigod, and who used all his eloquence to preserve men from the most dangerous spiritual calamities, has yet not been counted worthy even of a little shrine. But Romulus, because they can call him their own, they have assumed more highly than many gods, though their secret doctrine can allow him the rank only of a demigod. To him they allotted a flamen, that is to say, a priest of a class so highly esteemed in their religion, distinguished too by their conical mitres, that for only three of their gods were flamens appointed, the flamen Dialis for Jupiter, Marcialis for Mars, and Quirinalis for Romulus, for when the ardor of his fellow citizens had given Romulus a seat among the gods, they gave him this new name Quirinus. And thus by this honor Romulus has been preferred to Neptune and Pluto, Jupiter's brothers, and to Saturn himself their father. They have been assigned the same priesthood to serve him as to serve Jove, and in giving Mars the reputed father of Romulus the same honor, is this not rather for Romulus's sake than to honor Mars? CHAPTER XVI Moreover, if the Romans had been able to receive a rule of life from their gods, they would not have borrowed Solon's laws from the Athenians, as they did some years after Rome was founded, and yet they did not keep them as they received them, but endeavored to improve and amend them. Although Lycurgus pretended that he was authorized by Apollo to give laws to the Lacedaemonians, the sensible Romans did not choose to believe this, and were not induced to borrow laws from Sparta. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingdom, is said to have framed some laws which, however, were not sufficient for the regulation of civic affairs. Among these regulations were many pertaining to religious observances, and yet he is not reported to have received even these from the gods. With respect then to moral evils, evils of life and conduct, evils which are so mighty that according to the wisest pagans, by them states are ruined while their cities stand uninjured, their gods made not the smallest provision for preserving their worshipers from these evils, but on the contrary took special pains to increase them as we have previously endeavored to prove. But possibly we are to find the reason for this neglect of the Romans by their gods in the saying of Sallist that equity and virtue prevailed among the Romans not more by force of laws than of nature. I presume it is to this inborn equity and goodness of disposition we are to ascribe the rape of the Sabine women. What indeed could be more equitable and virtuous than to carry off by force as each man was fit, and without their parents' consent girls who were strangers and guests and who had been decoyed and trapped by their pretense of a spectacle. If the Sabines were wrong to deny their daughters when the Romans asked for them, was it not a greater wrong in the Romans to carry them off after that denial? The Romans might more justly have waged war against the neighbouring nation for having refused their daughters in marriage when they first sought them than for having demanded them back when they had stolen them. War should have been proclaimed at first. It was then that Marsh should have helped his warlike son that he might by force of arms avenge the injury done him by the refusal of marriage, and might also thus win the women he desired. There might have been some appearance of right of war in a victor carrying off, in virtue of this right, the virgins who had been without any show of right denied him, whereas there was no right of peace in titling him to carry off those who were not given to him, and to wage an unjust war with their justly enraged parents. One happy circumstance was indeed connected with his act of violence, that, though it was commemorated by the games of the circus, yet even this did not constituted a precedent in the city or realm of Rome. If one would find fault with the results of this act, it must rather be on the ground that the Romans made Romulus a god in spite of his perpetrating this iniquity, for one cannot reproach them with making this deed any kind of precedent for the rape of women. Again, I presume it was due to this natural equity in virtue that after the expulsion of King Tarquin, whose son had violated Lucretia, Junius Brutus the consul forced Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Lucretia's husband and his own colleague, a good and innocent man, to resign his office and go into banishment on the one-soul charge that he was of the name and blood of the Tarquins. This injustice was perpetrated with the approval, or at least connivance, of the people who had themselves raised to the consular office both Collatinus and Brutus. Another instance of this equity in virtue is found in their treatment of Marcus Camulus. This eminent man, after he had rapidly conquered the Veians, at that time the most formidable of Rome's enemies, and who had maintained a ten-years war in which the Roman army had suffered the usual calamities attendant on bad generalship, after he had restored security to Rome which had begun to tremble for its safety, and after he had taken the wealthiest city of the enemy, had charges brought against him by the malice of those that envied his success, and by the insolence of the tribunes of the people, and seeing that the city bore him no gratitude for preserving it, and that he would certainly be condemned, he went into exile, and even, in his absence, was fined ten thousand asses. Shortly after, however, his ungrateful country had again to seek his protection from the Gauls. But I cannot now mention all the shameful and iniquitous acts with which Rome was agitated when the aristocracy attempted to subject the people, and the people resented their encroachments, and the advocates of either party were actuated rather by the love of victory than by any equitable or virtuous consideration. Book 2. CHAPTER XVIII. 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 2. CHAPTER XVIII. I will therefore pause and reduce the testimony of Salist himself, whose words and praise are the Romans, that equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of laws than of nature, have given occasion to this discussion. He was referring to that period immediately after the expulsion of the kings, in which the city became great in an incredibly short space of time. And yet this same writer acknowledges in the first book of his history, in the very exhortium of his work, that even at that time, when a very brief interval had elapsed after the government had passed from kings to consuls, the more powerful men began to act unjustly, and occasioned the defection of the people from the patricians and other disorders in the city. For after Salist had stated that the Romans enjoyed greater harmony in a purer state of society between the Second and Third Punic Wars than at any other time, and that the cause of this was not their love of good order, but their fear lest the peace they had with Carthage might be broken. This also, as we mentioned, Nassica contemplated. When he opposed the destruction of Carthage, for he supposed that fear would tend to repress wickedness and to preserve wholesome ways of living, he then goes on to say, yet after the destruction of Carthage, discord, avarice, ambition, and the other vices which are commonly generated by prosperity more than ever increased. If they increased, and that more than ever, then already they had appeared, and had been increasing. And so Salist adds this reason for what he said. For, he says, the oppressive measures of the powerful and the consequent secessions of the plebes from the patricians and other civil dissensions had existed from the first, and affairs were administered with equity and well-tempered justice for no longer a period than the short time after the expulsion of the kings, while the city was occupied with the serious Tuscan War and Tarquin's vengeance. You see how, even in that brief period after the expulsion of the kings, fear, he acknowledges, was the cause of the interval of equity and good order. They were afraid, in fact, of the war which Tarquin waged against them after he had been driven from the throne in the city and had allied himself with the Tuscans. But observe what he adds. After that the patricians treated the people as their slaves, ordering them to be scourged or beheaded just as the kings had done, driving them from their holdings and harshly tyrannizing over those who had no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive measures, and most of all by exorbitant usury and obliged to contribute both money and personal service to the constant wars, at length took arms and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus obtained for themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the Second Punic War that put an end on both sides to discord and strife. You see what kind of men the Romans were, even so early as a few years after the expulsion of the kings. In it is of these men, he says, that equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of law than of nature. Now if these were the days in which the Roman Republic shows fairest and best, what are we to say or think of the succeeding age, when, to use the words of the same historian, changing little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was, it became utterly wicked and disillute. This was, as he mentions, after the destruction of Carthage. Salist's brief son and sketch of this period may be read in his own history, in which he shows how the profligate manners which were propagated by prosperity resulted at last even in civil wars. He says, and from this time the primitive manners instead of undergoing an insensible alteration, as hitherto they had done, were swept away as by a torrent. The young men were so depraved by luxury and avarice that it may justly be said that no father had a son who could either preserve his own patrimony or keep his hands off other men's. Salist adds a number of particulars about the vices of Silla and the debased condition of the Republic in general, and other writers make similar observations, though in much less striking language. However, I suppose you now see, or at least anyone who gives his attention has the means of seeing, in what a sink of iniquity that city was plunged before the advent of our Heavenly King. For these things happened not only before Christ had begun to teach, but before he was even born of the Virgin. If then they dare not impute to their gods the grievous evils of those former times, more tolerable before the destruction of Carthage, but intolerable and dreadful after it. Although it was the gods who by their malign craft instilled into the minds of men the conceptions from which such dreadful vices branched out on all sides, why do they impute these present calamities to Christ, who teaches life-giving truth, and forbids us to worship false and deceitful gods, and who, abominating and condemning with his divine authority those wicked and hurtful lusts of men, gradually withdraws his own people from a world that is corrupted by these vices, and is falling into ruins to make of them an eternal city whose glory rests not on the acclamations of vanity, but on the judgment of truth. CHAPTER XIX Here then is this Roman Republic which has changed little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was, and has become utterly wicked and disillute. It is not I who am the first to say this, but their own authors, from whom we learned it for a fee, and who wrote it long before the coming of Christ. We see how, before the coming of Christ, and after the destruction of Carthage, their primitive manners, instead of undergoing insensible alteration, as his or two they had done, were swept away as by a torrent, and had depraved by luxury and avarice the youth were. Let them now, on their part, read to us any laws given by their gods to the Roman people, and directed against luxury and avarice, and would that they had only been silent on the subjects of chastity and modesty, and had not demanded from the people indecent and shameful practices to which they lent a pernicious patronage by their so-called divinity. Let them read our commandments in the prophets, Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, or Epistles. Let them preuse the large number of precepts against avarice and luxury which are everywhere read to the congregations that meet for this purpose, and which strike the ear not with the uncertain sound of a philosophical discussion, but with the thunder of God's own oracle peeling from the clouds. And yet they do not impute to their gods the luxury and avarice, the cruel and disillute manners that had rendered the republic utterly wicked and corrupt even before the coming of Christ. But whatever affliction their pride and effeminacy have exposed them to in these latter days, they furiously impute to our religion. If the kings of the earth and all their subjects, if all princes and judges of the earth, if young men and maidens, old and young, every age, and both sexes, if they whom the Baptist addressed, the Republicans and the soldiers, were all together to harken and observe the precepts of the Christian religion regarding a just and virtuous life, then should the Republic adorn the whole earth with its own felicity and attain in life everlasting to the pinnacle of kingly glory. But because this man listens, and that man scoffs, and most are enamored at the blandishments of vice rather than the wholesome severity of virtue, the people of Christ, whatever be their condition, whether they be kings, princes, judges, soldiers or provincials, rich or poor, bond or free, male or female, are enjoined to endure this earthly republic, wicked and disillude as it is, that so they may by this endurance win for themselves an eminent place in that most holy and august assembly of angels and republic of heaven in which the will of God is the law. CHAPTER XX But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities, and are no wise concerned that the Republic be less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources, let it be glorious by its victories or still better secure in peace, and what matters it to us? This is our concern that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquility, and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependents to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who provide them with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden. Let kings estimate their prosperity not by the righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and purveyors of their pleasures, not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to another man's property than of that done to one's own person. If a man be a nuisance to his neighbor, or injure his property, family, or person, let him be actionable, but in his own affairs let everyone with impunity do what he will and accompany with his own family and with those who willingly join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for everyone who wishes to use them, but especially for those who are too poor to keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description. In these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets where everyone who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit, dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theater. Let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy, and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it, let it be silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods who procure for the people this condition of things and preserve it when once possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish. Let them demand whatever games they please, from or with their own worshippers. Only let them secure that such felicity be not imperiled by foe, plague, or disaster of any kind. What sane man would compare a republic such as this? I will not say to the Roman Empire, but to the palace of Sardinopolis, the ancient king who was so abandoned to pleasures that he caused it to be inscribed on his tomb that now that he was dead he possessed only these things which he had swallowed and consumed by his appetite while alive. If these men had such a king as this, who, while self-indulgent, should lay no severe restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus. But if our adversaries do not care how foully and disgracefully the Roman Republic be stained by corrupt practices, so long only as it holds together and continues in being, and if they therefore poo-poo the testimony of Salas to its utterly wicked and profligate condition, what will they make of Cicero's statement that even in his time it had become entirely extinct and that there remained extant no Roman Republic at all? He introduces Shippio, the Shippio who had destroyed Carthage, replacing the Republic at a time when already there were pre-sentiments of its speedy ruin by that corruption which Salas describes. In fact, at the time when the discussion took place, one of the Graci, who, according to Salas, was the first great instigator of seditions, had already been put to death. His death indeed is mentioned in the same book. Now Shippio, at the end of the second book, says, As among the different sounds which proceed from liars, flutes, and the human voice, there must be maintained a certain harmony which a cultivated ear cannot endure to hear disturbed or jarring, but which may be elicited and full and absolute concord by the modulation, even if voices vary and like one another. So, where reason is allowed to modulate that averse elements of the state, there is obtained a perfect concord from the upper, lower, and middle classes, as from various sounds. And what musicians call harmony in singing is concord in matters of state, which is the strictest bond and best security of any Republic, in which by no ingenuity can be retained where justice has become extinct. Then when he had expatiated somewhat more fully, and had more copiously illustrated the benefits of its presence and the ruinous effects of its absence upon a state, Pylos, one of the company present at the discussion, struck in and demanded that the question should be more thoroughly sifted, and that the subject of justice should be freely discussed for the sake of ascertaining what truth there was in the maxim which was then becoming daily more current, that the Republic cannot be governed without injustice. Shippeo expressed his willingness to have this maxim discussed and sifted, and gave it as his opinion that it was baseless, and that no progress could be made in discussing the Republic unless it was established, not only that this maxim, that the Republic cannot be governed without injustice, was false, but also that the truth is that it cannot be governed without the most absolute justice. And the discussion of this question, being deferred to the next day, is carried on in the third book with great animation, for Pylos himself undertook to defend the position that the Republic cannot be governed without injustice, at the same time being at special pains to clear himself of any real participation in that opinion. He advocated with great keenness the cause of injustice against justice, and endeavored by plausible reasons and examples to demonstrate that the former is beneficial, the latter useless to the Republic. Then at the request of the company, Leelius attempted to defend justice, and strained every nerve to prove that nothing is so hurtful to a state as injustice, and that without justice a Republic cannot be governed, nor even continue to exist. When this question has been handled to the satisfaction of the company, Shippeo reverts to the original thread of discourse and repeats with commendation his own brief definition of a Republic that it is the wheel of the people. The people he defines as being not every assemblage or mob, but an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgement of law and by a community of interests. Then he shows the use of definition and debate, and from these definitions of his own he gathers that a Republic, or wheel of the people, then exists only when it is well and justly governed, whether by a monarch, or an aristocracy, or by the whole people. But when the monarch is unjust, or as the Greeks say, a tyrant, or the aristocrats are unjust and form a faction, or the people themselves are unjust and become a Shippeo for want of a better name calls them, themselves the tyrant, then the Republic is not only blemished, as had been proved the day before, but by legitimate deduction from those definitions it altogether ceases to be. For it could not be the people's wheel when a tyrant factiously lorded it over the state, neither would the people be any longer a people if it were unjust, since it would no longer answer the definition of a people, an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgement of law and by a community of interests. Even therefore the Roman Republic was such as Salas described it, it was not utterly wicked and profligate, as he says, that had altogether ceased to exist if we were to admit the reasoning of that debate maintained in the subject of the Republic by its best representatives. Tully himself, too, speaking not in the person of Shippeo or anyone else, but uttering his own sentiments, uses the following language in the beginning of the fifth book, after quoting a line from the poet Aeneas, in which he said, Rome's severe morality and her citizens are her safeguard. This verse, says Cicero, seems to me to have all the sententious truthfulness of an oracle. For neither would the citizens have availed without the morality of the community, nor would the morality of the commons, without outstanding men, have availed either to establish, or so long to maintain in vigours so grand a republic, but so wide and just an empire. Accordingly before our day the hereditary usages formed our foremost men, and they on their part retained the usages and institutions of their fathers. But our age, receiving the republic as a chef-durve of another age, which has already begun to grow old, has not merely neglected to restore the colors of the original, but has not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general outline in most outstanding features. For what survives of that primitive morality which the poet called Rome's safeguard, it is so obsolete and forgotten that far from practicing it one does not even know it. And of the citizens what shall I say? Morality is perished through poverty of great men, a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason, but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime. For it is through our vices, and not by any mishap, that we retain only the name of a republic, and have long since lost the reality. This is the confession of Cicero, long indeed after the death of Africanus, whom he introduced as an interlocutor, in his work De Repubblica, but still before the coming of Christ. Yet if the disastrous he bewails have been lamented after the Christian religion had been diffused and had begun to prevail, is there a man of our adversaries who would not have thought they were to be imputed to the Christians? Why then did their gods not take steps then to prevent the decay and extinction of that republic over the loss of which Cicero, long before Christ had come in the flesh, sings so legubrious a dirge? Its admirers have need to inquire whether, even in the days of primitive men and morals, true justice flourished in it. Or was it not perhaps even then to use the casual expression of Cicero rather a colored painting than a living reality? But if God will, we shall consider this elsewhere. For I mean in its own place to show that, according to the definitions in which Cicero himself, using Shepio as his mouthpiece, briefly propounded what a republic is, and what a people is, and according to many testimonies, both of his own lips, and of those who took part in that same debate, Rome never was a republic because true justice had never a place in it. But accepting the more feasible definitions of a republic, I grant there was a republic of a certain kind, and certainly much better administered by the more ancient Romans than by their modern representatives. But the fact is true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, if at least any choose to call this a republic. And indeed we cannot deny that it is the people's will. But if perchance this name, which has become familiar in other connections, be considered alien to our common parlance, we may at all events say that in this city is true justice, the city of which holy scripture says, glorious things are said of thee, O city of God. Chapter 22 But what is relevant to the present question is this, that however admirable our adversaries say that republic was, or is, it is certain that by the testimony of their own most learned writers that it become, long before the coming of Christ, utterly wicked and disillute, and indeed had no existence but had been destroyed by profligacy. To prevent this, surely these guardian gods ought to have given precepts of morals and a rule of life to the people by whom they were worshiped in so many temples was so great a variety of priests and sacrifices, with such a numberless and diverse rights, so many festal salendities, so many celebrations of magnificent games. But in all this the demons only looked after their own interest and cared not at all how their worshipers lived, or rather were at pains to induce them to lead an abandoned life, so long as they paid these tributes to their honor and regarded them with fear. If anyone denies this, let him produce, let him point to, let him read the laws which the gods had given against sedition, in which the grouchy transgressed when they threw everything into confusion, or those Marius and Sina and Carbo broke when they involved their country in civil wars most iniquitous and unjustifiable in their causes, cruelly conducted and yet more cruelly terminated, or those which Silla scorned whose life, character, and deeds as described by Salist and other historians of the abhorrence of all mankind, who will deny that at that time the Republic had become extinct. Possibly they will be bold enough to suggest in defense of the gods that they abandoned the city on account of the profligacy of the citizens according to the lines of Virgil. Gone from each feign, each sacred shrine are those who made this realm divine. But firstly, if it be so, then they cannot complain against the Christian religion as if it were that which gave offense to the gods and caused them to abandon Rome, since the Roman immorality had long ago driven from the altars of the city a cloud of little gods like as many flies. And yet where was this hosted divinities when long before the corruption of the primitive morality Rome was taken and burnt by the Gauls? Perhaps they were present but asleep. For at that time the whole city fell into the hands of the enemy with a single exception of the capitaline hill, and this too would have been taken had not the watchful geese aroused the sleeping gods. And this gave occasion to the festival of the goose in which Rome sank nearly to the superstition of the Egyptians who worshiped beasts and birds. But of these adventitious evils which are inflicted by hostile armies or by some disaster in which attach rather to the body than the soul, I am not meanwhile disputing. At present I speak of the decay of morality which at first almost imperceptibly lost its brilliant hue, but afterwards was wholly obliterated, was swept away as by a torrent, and involved the Republic in such disastrous ruin that though the houses and walls remain standing, the leading writers do not scruple to say that the Republic was destroyed. Now the departure of the gods from each fain, from each sacred shrine, and their abandonment of the city to destruction was an act of justice if their laws inculcating justice and immoral life had been held in contempt by that city. But what kind of gods were these, pray, who declined to live with the people who worshiped them, and whose corrupt life they had done nothing to reform? CHAPTER XXIII But further, is it not obvious that the gods have abetted the fulfillment of men's desires instead of authoritatively bridling them? For Marius, a low-born and self-made man who ruthlessly provoked and conducted several wars, was so effectually aided by them that he was seven times consul and died full of years in his seventh consulship, escaping the hands of Scylla, who immediately afterwards came into power. Why then did they not also aid him so as to restrain him from so many enormities? For if it is said that the gods had no hand in his success, this is no trivial admission that a man can attain the dearly coveted felicity of this life, even though his own gods be not propitious. That men could be loaded with the gifts of fortune as Marius was, can enjoy health, power, wealth, honor, dignity, length of days, though the gods be hostile to him. And that, on the other hand, men can be tormented, as Regulus was, with captivity, bondage, destitution, watchings, pain, and cruel death, though the gods be his friends. To concede this is to make a compendious confession that the gods are useless and their worship superfluous. If the gods had taught the people rather what goes clean counter to the virtues of the soul, and that integrity of life which meets a reward after death, if even in respect of temporal and transitory blessings they not or hurt those whom they hate nor profit whom they love, why are they worshipped, why are they invoked with such eager homage? Why do men murmur in difficult and sad emergencies as if the gods had retired in anger, and why on their account is the Christian religion injured by the most unworthy calamities? If in temporal matters they have power either for good or for evil, why did they stand by Marius, the worst of Rome's citizens, and abandon Regulus the best? Does this not prove themselves to be most unjust and wicked? And even if it be supposed that for this very reason they are rather to be feared and worshipped, this is a mistake. For we do not read that Regulus worshipped them less assiduously than Marius. Neither is it apparent that a wicked life is to be chosen on the ground that the gods are supposed to have favored Marius more than Regulus. For Metellus, the most highly esteemed of all the Romans, who had five sons in the consul ship, was prosperous even in this life, and Catelyn, the worst of men, reduced to poverty and defeated in the war his own guilt had aroused, lived and perished miserably. Real and secure felicity is the peculiar possession of those who worship that God by whom alone it can be conferred. It is thus apparent that when the Republic was being destroyed by profligate manners, its gods did nothing to hinder its destruction by the direction or correction of its manners, but rather accelerated its destruction by increasing the demoralization and corruption that already existed. They need not pretend that their goodness was shocked by the iniquity of the city, and that they withdrew in anger. For they were there, sure enough. They are detected, they were equally unable to break silence so as to guide others and to keep silence so as to conceal themselves. I do not dwell on the fact that the inhabitants of Maternae took pity on Marius, and commended him to the goddess Marica, in her grove, that she might give him success in all things, and that from the abyss of despair in which he then lay he forthwith returned unhurt to Rome, and entered the city the ruthless leader of a ruthless army, and they who wished to know how bloody was his victory, how unlike a citizen, and how much more relentlessly than any foreign foe he acted, let them read the histories. But this, as I said, I do not dwell upon, nor do I attribute the bloody bliss of Marius to I know not what Maternae and goddess, Marica, but rather to the secret providence of God that the mouths of our adversaries might be shut, and that they who are not led by passion but by prudent consideration of events might be delivered from error. And even if the demons have any power in these matters, they have only that power which the secret decree of the Almighty allots to them, in order that we may not set too great store by earthly prosperity, seeing it as often times vouchsafed even to wicked men like Marius. And that we may not, on the other hand, regard it as an evil, since we see that many good and pious worshipers of the one true God are, in spite of the demons, preeminently successful. And finally, that we may not suppose that these unclean spirits are either to be propitiated or feared for the sake of earthly blessings or calamities. For as wicked men on earth cannot do all they would, so neither can these demons, but only insofar as they are permitted by the decree of him whose judgments are fully comprehensible, justly reprehensible by none. CHAPTER XXIV It is certain that Scylla, whose rule was so cruel that in comparison with it the preceding state of things which he came to avenge was regretted, when first he advanced toward Rome to give battle to Marius, found the auspice so favourable when he sacrificed that according to Livy's account the auger posthumous expressed his willingness to lose his head if Scylla did not, with the help of the gods, accomplish what he designed. The gods you see had not departed from every feign and sacred shrine since they were still predicting the issue of these affairs, and yet were taking no steps to correct Scylla himself. Their presages promised him great prosperity, but no threatenings of theirs subdued his evil passions. And then, when he was in Asia conducting the war against Mithridates, a message from Jupiter was delivered to him by Lucius Titius to the effect that he would conquer Mithridates, and so it came to pass. And afterwards, when he was meditating a return to Rome for the purpose of avenging in the blood of the citizens, injuries done to himself and his friends, a second message from Jupiter was delivered to him by a soldier of the Sixth Legion to the effect that it was he who had predicted the victory over Mithridates, and that he now promised to give him power to recover the Republic from his enemies, though with great bloodshed. Scylla had once inquired of the soldier what form had appeared to him, and on his reply recognized that it was the same as Jupiter had formally employed to convey to him the assurance regarding the victory over Mithridates. How then can the gods be justified in this matter for the care they took to predict these shadowy successes and for their negligence in correcting Scylla and restraining him from stirring up a civil war so lamentable and atrocious that it not merely disfigured but extinguished the Republic. The truth is, as I have often said, and as Scripture informs us and as the facts themselves sufficiently indicate, the demons are found to look after their own ends only, that they may be regarded and worshipped as gods, and that men may be induced to offer to them a worship which associates them with their crimes and involves them in one common wickedness and judgment of God. Afterwards, when Scylla had come to Tarantum and had sacrificed there, he saw on the head of the victim's liver the likeness of a golden crown. Thereupon the same soothsayer, Postumius, interpreted this to signify a signal victory in order that he only should eat of the entrails. A little afterwards, the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius cried out, I am Bologna's messenger, the victory is yours, Scylla. Then he added that the capital should be burned. As soon as he had uttered this prediction he left the camp, but returned the following day more excited than ever and shouted, the capital is fired. And fired indeed it was. This it was easy for a demon both to foresee and quickly to announce. But observe as relevant to our subject what kind of gods they are under whom these men desire to live, who blaspheme the Savior that delivers the wills of the faithful from the dominion of devils. The man cried out in prophetic rapture, the victory is yours, Scylla. And to certify that he spoke by a divine spirit he predicted also an event which was shortly to happen, and which indeed did fall out, in a place from which he in whom this spirit was speaking was far distant. But he never cried, for bear thy villainies, Scylla, the villainies which were committed at Rome by that victor to whom a golden crown on the calf's liver had been shown as the divine evidence of his victory. If such signs as this were customarily sent by just gods and not by wicked demons, then certainly the entrails he consulted should rather have given Scylla intimation of the cruel disasters that were to befall the city and himself. For that victory was not so conducive to his exaltation to power as it was fatal to his ambition. For by it he became so insatiable in his desires, and was rendered so arrogant and reckless by prosperity that he may be said rather to an inflicted immoral destruction on himself than corporal destruction on his enemies. But these truly woeful and deplorable calamities the gods gave him no previous hint of, neither by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction. For they feared his amendment, more than his defeat. Yea, they took good care that this glorious conqueror of his own fellow-citizens should be conquered and led captive by his own infamous vices, and should thus be the more submissive slave of the demons themselves. CHAPTER XXV Now who does not hereby comprehend, unless he is preferred to imitate such gods rather than by divine grace to withdraw himself from their fellowship? Who does not see how eagerly these evil spirits strive by their example to lend, as it were, an authority to crime? Is not this proved by the fact that they were seen in a wide plain in Campania rehearsing among themselves the battle which shortly after took place there with great bloodshed between the armies of Rome? For at first there were heard loud crashing noises, and afterwards many reported that they had seen for some days together two armies engaged. And when this battle ceased they found the ground all indented with just such footprints of men and horses as a great conflict would leave. If then the deities were veritably fighting with one another, the civil wars of men are sufficiently justified. Yet by the way, let it be observed that such pugnacious gods must be very wicked or very wretched. If, however, it was but a shamfight, what did they intend by this, but that the civil wars of the Romans should seem no wickedness but an imitation of the gods? For already the civil wars had begun, and before this some lamentable battles and exegrable massacres had occurred. Already many had been moved by the story of the soldier who, on stripping the spoils of his slain foe, recognized in the stripped corpse his own brother, and was deep curses on civil wars slew himself there and then on his brother's body. To disguise the bitterness of such tragedies and kindle increasing ardor in this monstrous warfare these maligned demons who were reputed and worshipped as gods fell upon this plan of revealing themselves in a state of civil war that no compunction for fellow citizens might cause the Romans to shrink from such battles, but that the human criminality might be justified by the divine example. By a light craft, too, did these evil spirits command that scenic entertainments, of which I have already spoken, should be instituted and dedicated to them. And in these entertainments the poetical compositions and actions of the drama ascribed such iniquities to the gods that everyone might safely imitate them, whether he believed the gods had actually done such things, or not believing this, yet perceived that they most eagerly desired to be represented as having done them. And that no one might suppose that in representing the gods as fighting with one another the poets had slandered them, and imputed to them unworthy actions, the gods themselves to complete the deception confirmed the compositions of the poets by exhibiting their own battles to the eyes of men, not only through actions in the theaters, but in their own persons in the actual field. We have been forced to bring forward these facts because their authors have not scrupled to say and to write that the Roman Republic had already been ruined by the depraved moral habits of the citizens, and it ceased to exist before the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now this ruin they do not impute to their own gods, though they impute to our Christ the evils of this life which cannot ruin good men be they alive or dead. In this they do, though our Christ has issued so many precepts inculcating virtue and restraining vice, while their own gods have done nothing whatever to preserve that Republic that served them, and to restrain it from ruin by such precepts, but have rather hastened its destruction by corrupting its morality through their pestilent example. No one, I fancy, will now be bold enough to say that the Republic was then ruined because of the departure of the gods from each feign, each sacred shrine, as if they were the friends of virtue and were offended by the vices of men. No, there are too many presages from ventrals, auguries, soothsayings whereby they boastingly proclaimed themselves, prescient of future events and controllers of the fortune of war, all which proved them to have been present. And had they been indeed absent, the Romans would never in these civil wars have been so far transported by their own passions as they were by the instigation of these gods. Chapter 26 Seeing that this is so, seeing that the filthy and cruel deeds that is graceful in criminal actions of the gods, whether real or feigned, were at their own request published and were consecrated and dedicated in their honor as sacred and stated solemnities, seeing they vowed vengeance on those who refused to exhibit them to the eyes of all, that they might be proposed as deeds worthy of imitation, why is it that these same demons, who by taking pleasure in such obscenities, acknowledge themselves to be unclean spirits, and by delighting in their own villainies and iniquities real or imaginary, and by requesting from the immodest and extorting from the modest, the celebration of these licentious acts proclaimed themselves instigators to a criminal and lewd life. Why, I ask, are they represented as giving some good moral precepts to a few of their own elect, initiated in the secrecy of their shrines? If it be so, this very thing only serves further to demonstrate the malicious craft of these pestilent spirits. For so great is the influence of probity and chastity that all men, or almost all men, are moved by the praise of these virtues, nor is any man so depraved by vice, but he has some feeling of honor left in him. So that, unless the devil sometimes transformed himself, as Scripture says, into an angel of light, he could not compass his deceitful purpose. Accordingly, in public, a bold impurity fills the ear of the people with noisy clamour. In private, a faint chastity speaks and scares audible whispers to a few. An open stage is provided for shameful things, but on the praiseworthy the curtain falls. Grace hides, disgrace flaunts. A wicked deed draws an overflowing house. A virtuous speech finds scarce a hearer, as though purity were to be blessed at, impurity boasted of. Where else can such confusion reign but in devil's temples? Where but in the haunts of deceit? For the secret precepts are given as a sop to the virtuous who are few in number. The wicked examples are exhibited to encourage the vicious who are countless. Where and when those initiated in the mysteries of Cholestis received any good instructions, we know not. What we do know is that before her shrine in which her image is set, and amidst a vast crowd gathering from all quarters, and standing closely packed together, we were intensely interested spectators of the games which were going on, and saw, as we pleased to turn the eye, on this side a grand display of harlots, on the other the virgin goddess. We saw this virgin worshipped with prayer, and with obscene rites. There we saw no shame-faced mimes, no actress overburdened with modesty, all that the obscene rites demanded was fully complied with. We were plainly shown what was pleasing to the virgin deity, and the matron who witnessed the spectacle returned home from the temple a wiser woman. Some indeed of the more prudent women turned their faces from the immodest movements of the players, and learned the art of wickedness by a furtive regard. For they were restrained by the modest demeanor due to men from looking boldly at the immodest gestures, but much more were they restrained from condemning with chaste heart the sacred rites of her whom they adored. And yet this licentiousness, which if practiced in one's home could only be done there in secret, was practiced as a public lesson in the temple, and if any modesty remained in man it was occupied in marveling that wickedness which men could not unrestrainedly commit should be part of the religious teaching of the gods, and that to omit its exhibition should incur the anger of the gods. What spirit can that be which by a hidden inspiration stirs men's corruption and goads them to adultery, and feeds on the full-fledged iniquity unless it be the same that finds pleasure in such religious ceremonies sets in the temple's images of devils, and loves to see and play the images of vices, that whispers in secret some righteous sayings to deceive the few who are good, and scatters in public invitations to profligacy to gain possession of the millions who are wicked. CHAPTER 27 Cicero, a weighty man, and a philosopher in his way, when about to be made edile, wished the citizens to understand that among the other duties of his magistracy he must propitiate flora by the celebration of games, and these games are reckoned devout in proportion to their eludeness. In another place, and when he was now consul in the state in great peril, he says that games had been celebrated for ten days together, and that nothing had been omitted which could pacify the gods, as if it had not been more satisfactory to irritate the gods by temperance than to pacify them by debauchery, and to provoke their hate by honest living than soothed by such unseemly grossness. For no matter how cruel was the ferocity of those men who were threatening the state, and on whose account the gods were being propitiated, it could not have been more hurtful than the alliance of gods who were one with the foulest vices. To avert the danger which threatened men's bodies the gods were conciliated in a fashion that drove virtue from their spirits, and the gods did not enroll themselves as defenders at the battlements against the besiegers until they had first stormed and sacked the morality of the citizens. This propitiation of such divinities, a propitiation so wanton, so impure, so immodest, so wicked, so filthy, whose actors the innate and praiseworthy virtue of the Romans disabled from civic honors erased from their tribe, recognized as polluted and made infamous. This propitiation, I say, so foul, so detestable, and alien from every religious feeling, these fabulous and ensnaring accounts of the criminal actions of the gods, these scandalous actions which they either shamefully and wickedly committed, or more shamefully and wickedly feigned. All this the whole city learned in public, both by the words and gestures of the actors. They saw that the gods delighted in the commission of these things, and therefore believed that they wished them not only to be exhibited to them, but to be imitated by themselves. But as for that good and honest instruction which they speak of, it was given in such secrecy, and to so few, if indeed given at all, that they seemed rather to fear it might be divulged than that it might not be practiced. CHAPTER XXVIII. They, then, are but abandoned in ungrateful wretches and deep and fast bondage to that maligned spirit who complain in murmur that man are rescued by the name of Christ from the hellish thralldom of these unclean spirits and from a participation in their punishment, and are brought out of the night of pestilential ungodliness into the light of most healthful piety. Only such men could murmur that the masses flocked to the churches and their chaste acts of worship where a seemingly separation of the sexes is observed, or they learn how they may so spend this earthly life as to merit a blessed eternity hereafter, where holy scripture and instruction in righteousness are proclaimed from a raised platform in presence of all that both they who do the word may hear to their salvation, and they who do it not may hear to judgment. And though some enter who scoff at such precepts, all their petulance is utter quenched by a sudden change, or as restrained through fear or shame. For no filthy and wicked action is there set forth to be gazed at or to be imitated, but out of the precepts of the true God are recommended, his miracles narrated, his gifts praised, or his benefits implored. CHAPTER XXIX This rather is the religion worthy of your desires, though admirable Roman race, the progeny of your chevolas and shipios, you have regulus and a febricius. This rather covet this distinguish from that foul vanity and crafty malice of the devils. If there is in your nature any eminent virtue, only by true piety is it purged and perfected, while by impiety it is wrecked and punished. Choose now what you will pursue, that your praise may be not in yourself, but in the true God in whom is no error. For of popular glory you have had your share, but by the secret providence of God the true religion was not offered to your choice. Awake, it is now day, as you have already awaked in the persons of some in whose perfect virtue and sufferings for the true faith we glory. For they, contending in all size with hostile powers, and conquering them all by bravely dying, have purchased for us this country of ours with their blood. To which country we invite you, and exhort you to add yourselves to the number of the citizens of this city, which also has a sanctuary of its own in the true remission of sins. Do not listen to those degenerate sons of thine who slander Christ and Christians, and impute to them these disastrous times, though they desire times in which they may enjoy rather impunity for their wickedness than a peaceful life. Such has never been Rome's ambition even in regard to her earthly country. Lay hold now on the celestial country, which is easily one and in which you will reign truly and forever. For there shalt thou find no vestal fire, no capitalene stone, but the one true God. No date, no goal, will here ordain, but grant an endless boundless reign. No longer than follow after false and deceitful gods, abjure them rather, and despise them, bursting forth into true liberty. Gods they are not, but malignant spirits, to whom your eternal happiness will be a sore punishment. Juno, for whom you deduce your origin according to the flesh, did not so bitterly grudge Rome's citadels to the Trojans as these devils, whom yet you repute gods, grudge an everlasting seat to the race of mankind. And thou thyself hast in no wavering voice past judgment on them, when thou didst pacify them with games, and yet didst account as infamous the men by whom the plays were acted. Suffer us then to assert thy freedom against the unclean spirits who had imposed on thy neck the yoke of celebrating their own shame and filthiness. The actors of these divine crimes thou hast removed from offices of honor. Supplicate the true God that he may remove from thee those gods who delight in their crimes, a most disgraceful thing if the crimes are really theirs, and a most malicious invention if the crimes are feigned. Well done, and that thou hast spontaneously banished from the number of your citizens all actors and players. Awake more fully, the majesty of God cannot be propitiated by that which defiles the dignity of man. How then can you believe that gods who take pleasure in such lewd plays belong to the number of the holy powers of heaven when the men by whom these plays are acted, or by yourselves, refused admission into the number of Roman citizens even of the lowest grade? Incomparably more glorious than Rome is that heavenly city in which for victory you have truth, for dignity, holiness, for peace, felicity, for life, eternity. Much less does it admit into its society such gods if thou dost blush to admit and design such men. Wherefore if thou wouldst detain to the blessed city shun the society of devils, they who are propitiated by deeds of shame or unworthy of the worship of right-hearted men. Let these then be obliterated from your worship by the cleansing of the Christian religion as those men were blotted from your citizenship by the censer's mark. But so far as regards carnal benefits which are the only blessings the wicked desire to enjoy, and carnal miseries which alone they shrink from enduring, we will show in the following book that the demons have not the power they are supposed to have. And although they had it, we ought rather on that account to despise these blessings than for the sake of them to worship those gods and by worshiping them to miss the attainment of these blessings they grudge us. But that they have not even this power which is ascribed to them by those who worship them for the sake of temporal advantages, this I say I will prove in the following book, so let us here close the present argument. Book 2, chapters 18 through 29. Recording by Darren L. Slider, Fort Worth, Texas, www.logoslibrary.org.