BOOK THIRD.
Argument
AS IN THE FOREGOING BOOK AUGUSTINE HAS PROVED REGARDING MORAL AND
SPIRITUAL CALAMITIES, SO IN THIS BOOK HE PROVES REGARDING EXTERNAL
AND BODILY DISASTERS, THAT SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY THE
ROMANS HAVE BEEN CONTINUALLY SUBJECT TO THEM; AND THAT EVEN
WHEN THE FALSE GODS WERE WORSHIPPED WITHOUT A RIVAL, BEFORE THE
ADVENT OF CHRIST, THEY AFFORDED NO RELIEF FROM SUCH CALAMITIES.
1. Of the ills which alone the wicked fear, and which the world continually
suffered, even when the gods were worshipped.
Of 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 except 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?[115] But that I may[Pg 92]
not be prolix, 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 called, 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.
2. Whether the gods, whom the Greeks and Romans worshipped in common,
were justified in permitting the destruction of Ilium.
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[116]), conquered, taken, and destroyed
by the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped
the same gods as they? Priam, some answer, paid the
penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon.[117] Then it is
true that Laomedon 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 Laomedon 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[118] (who lived and wrote before the
building of Rome) as predicting something great of the posterity
of Æneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer
says, Neptune also rescued Æneas in a cloud from the wrath of
Achilles, though (according to Virgil[119])
“All his will was to destroy
His own creation, perjured Troy.”
Gods, 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.[120]
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,[Pg 93]
they believe 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 Catiline, 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.
3. That the gods could not be offended by the adultery of Paris, this crime being
so common among themselves.
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 Sallust, “was first built
and inhabited, as I have heard, by the Trojans, who, flying
their country, under the conduct of Æneas, wandered about
without making any settlement.”[121] 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
Æneas’ 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 Anchises, and so became the mother of Æneas? Is it
because in the one case Menelaus[122] was aggrieved, while in
the other Vulcan[123] connived at 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[Pg 94]
suspected of turning the myths into ridicule, and not handling
so weighty a subject with sufficient gravity. Well, then, let
us say that Æneas is not the son of Venus. I am willing to
I 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
Cæsar in modern times believed no less that he was descended
from Venus,[124] than the ancient Romulus believed himself the
son of Mars.
4. Of Varro’s opinion, that it is useful for men to feign themselves the offspring
of the gods.
Some one 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 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
opened 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.
5. That it is not credible that the gods should have punished the adultery of
Paris, seeing they showed no indignation at the adultery of the mother of
Romulus.
But whether Venus could bear Æneas to a human father
Anchises, or Mars beget Romulus of the daughter of Numitor,[Pg 95]
we leave as unsettled questions. For our own Scriptures
suggest the 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 Æneas 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
on 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.
6. That the gods exacted no penalty for the fratricidal act of Romulus.
I add another instance: If the sins of men so greatly incensed
those divinities, that they abandoned Troy to fire and
sword 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; a crime this latter 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 agree that the brother of
Romulus was slain, not by enemies, not by strangers. If it[Pg 96]
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 on 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 parricide, which is worse.
For both brothers were the founders of that city, of which the
one was by villany 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 practise their
characteristic deceptions there. Nevertheless they kept a
footing for themselves in Troy, that they might deceive future
inhabitants who repeopled these lands; while at Rome, by a
wider exercise of their malignant arts, they exulted in more
abundant honours.
7. Of the destruction of Ilium by Fimbria, a lieutenant of Marius.
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 veriest villain among
Marius’ partisans, a more fierce and cruel destruction than
the Grecian sack.[125] 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 wrong-doing;
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, “forsook each fane, 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 Sylla,
and were therefore burnt and consumed by the enraged
general. Now, up to this time, Sylla’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 honourable, what more faithful to Rome, or
more worthy of her relationship, than to preserve their city for
the better part of the Romans, and to shut their gates against
a parricide 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 chaster
Rome might arise. But why did they a second time abandon
this same town, allied now to Rome, and not making
war upon her noble daughter, but preserving a most stedfast
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 basest of the Romans? Or, if the gods did not
favour Sylla’s cause, for which the unhappy Trojans maintained
their city, why did they themselves predict and promise
Sylla such successes? Must we call them flatterers 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 made this realm divine,” but that it might not
be said in their defence, They are “gone from each fane, 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.
8. Whether Rome ought to have been entrusted to the Trojan gods?
Where, then, was the wisdom of entrusting Rome to the[Pg 98]
Trojan gods, who had demonstrated their weakness in the
loss of Troy? Will some one 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 Capitol, though to
defend the rest of the city they were too long in being warned.
9. Whether it is credible that the peace during the reign of Numa was brought
about by the gods.
It is also believed that it was by the help of the gods that
the successor of Romulus, Numa Pompilius, enjoyed peace
during his entire reign, and shut the gates of Janus, which
are customarily kept open[126] during war. And it is supposed
he was thus requited 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.
Varro 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 did they never afterwards
grant it to the Roman empire during even more meritorious
periods? Were the sacred rites more efficient at[Pg 99]
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 recognised 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, viz., which followed the close of the first Punic
war—in which, for a marvel, the Romans were able to shut
the gates of war?[127]
10. Whether it was desirable that the Roman empire should be increased by such
a furious succession of wars, when it might have been quiet and safe by
following in the peaceful ways of Numa.
Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have
been so widely extended, nor so glorious, save 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 it to
find no rest, but to be pained the more in proportion to the
size of your members? What evil would have resulted, or
rather what good would not have resulted, had those times
continued which Sallust 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, others
the body: at that time the life of men was led without
covetousness; every one was sufficiently satisfied with his
own!”[128] Was it requisite, then, for Rome’s prosperity, that the
state of things which Virgil reprobates should succeed:
“At length stole on a baser age,
And war’s indomitable rage,
And greedy lust of gain?”[129]
But obviously the Romans have a plausible defence for
undertaking and carrying on such disastrous wars,—to wit,
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, let that pass. Here is Sallust’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 neighbouring 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 favours.”[130]
This was to build up Rome’s greatness by honourable means.
But, in Numa’s reign, I would know whether the long peace
was maintained in spite of the incursions of wicked neighbours,
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 neighbours 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 favour what lies not
in their power to bestow, but in the will of another man.
These demons, indeed, in so far as they are permitted, can
terrify or incite the minds of wicked men by their own peculiar
wickedness. But if they 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[Pg 101]
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.
11. Of the statue of Apollo at Cumæ, whose tears are supposed to have portended
disaster to the Greeks, whom the god was unable to succour.
And it is still this weakness of the gods which is confessed
in the story of the Cuman Apollo, who is said to have wept
for four days during the war with the Achæans 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 Cumæ 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 favourable 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 Cumæ
was a Greek colony, and that Apollo was bewailing (and
thereby presaging) the grief and calamity that was about to
light 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,[131] and Hercules wept for Pallas doomed
to die.[132] This is perhaps the reason why Numa 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 safe keeping
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 Æneas had[Pg 102]
brought to Italy had been able to preserve neither the Trojan
nor Lavinian kingdom founded by Æneas 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.
12. That the Romans added a vast number of gods to those introduced by
Numa, and that their numbers helped them not at all.
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 Capitol. And Æsculapius left Epidaurus for
Rome, that in this foremost city he might have a finer field
for the exercise of his great medical skill.[133] The mother of
the gods, too, came I know not whence from Pessinuns; it
being unseemly that, while her son presided on the Capitoline
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 Cynocephalus, who a long
while afterwards came from Egypt. Whether also the goddess
Fever was her offspring, is a matter for her grandson Æsculapius[134]
to decide. But of whatever breed she be, the foreign
gods will not presume, I trust, to call a goddess base-born who
is a Roman citizen. Who can number the deities to whom
the guardianship of Rome was entrusted? Indigenous and
imported, both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers;
and, as Varro says, gods certain and uncertain, male and
female: for, as among animals, so among all kinds of gods
are there 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 the great smoke of
her altars 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[Pg 103]
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 under the kings (with the exception of Numa Pompilius,
of whom I have already spoken), how wicked a contentiousness
must have existed to occasion the death of
Romulus’ brother!
13. By what right or agreement the Romans obtained their first wives.
How is it that neither Juno, who with her husband Jupiter
even then cherished
“Rome’s sons, the nation of the gown,”[135]
nor Venus herself, could assist the children of the loved
Æneas 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 neighbours.” Yes; but with what
wounds on both sides, and with what sad slaughter of relatives
and neighbours! The war of Cæsar and Pompey was the
contest of only one father-in-law with one son-in-law; and
before it began, the daughter of Cæsar, Pompey’s wife, was
already dead. But with how keen and just an accent of grief
does Lucan[136] exclaim: “I sing that worse than civil war
waged in the plains of Emathia, and in which the crime was
justified by the victory!”
The Romans, then, conquered that they might, with hands
stained 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 Bellona; or possibly that[Pg 104]
infernal fury Alecto had more liberty to injure them now that
Juno was aiding them, than when the prayers of that goddess
had excited her against Æneas. Andromache in 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 in battle 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 exultation. 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 guile, 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 valour 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 dishevelled 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 brook his own brother as a colleague, was compelled to
accept Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as his partner on the
throne. But how long would he who misliked the fellowship
of his own twin-brother endure a stranger? So, Tatius being
slain, Romulus remained sole king, that he might be the[Pg 105]
greater god. See what rights 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.
14. Of the wickedness of the war waged by the Romans against the Albans, and
of the victories won by the lust of power.
But what happened after Numa’s reign, and under the other
kings, when the Albans were provoked into war, with sad results
not to themselves alone, but also to the Romans? The
long peace of Numa had become tedious; and with what
endless slaughter and detriment of both states did the Roman
and Alban armies bring it to an end! For Alba, which had
been founded by Ascanius, son of Æneas, and which was more
properly the mother of Rome than Troy herself, was provoked
to battle by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, and in the conflict
both inflicted and received such damage, that at length both
parties wearied 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, from the Albans the three Curiatii. Two of the
Horatii were overcome and disposed of by the Curiatii; but
by the remaining Horatius the three Curiatii were slain. Thus
Rome remained victorious, but with 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 Æneas, 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 neighbours), the
sister of the Horatii had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii;
and she, when she saw her brother wearing the spoils of her
betrothed, 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[Pg 106]
lamenting the man to whom already she had plighted her troth,
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 Æneas (in Virgil[137]) 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 betrothed inflicted by her brother’s hand,
Rome was rejoicing that such devastation had been wrought
on her mother 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.”[138]
This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that
social and parricidal war,—a vice which Sallust brands in
passing; for when he has spoken with brief but hearty commendation
of those primitive times in which life was spent
without covetousness, and every one was sufficiently satisfied
with what he had, he goes on: “But after Cyrus in Asia, and
the Lacedemonians and Athenians in 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[Pg 107]
consisted in the greatest empire;”[139] 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, and 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 abhorreth.”[140] Away, then, with these deceitful masks,
these deluding whitewashes, 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
meed 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 carcases not of two gladiators, but of many of the
flower of two nations; and that those contests were viewed not
by the amphitheatre, 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 those gods, guardians of the Roman empire, and, as it
were, theatric spectators of such contests as these, were not
satisfied until the sister of the Horatii 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 Æneas 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 fane, each sacred shrine,
Are those who made this realm divine.”[141]
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 conglomerate 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 seemed to have been finished by great victories; and of
wars that time after time were 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 tutelar gods, no one of them
reigned in peace.
15. What manner of life and death the Roman kings had.
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 suborned 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[Pg 109]
cruelty and impiety of the Jews. For it is 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 Scipio’s remarks in the
De Republica, he says: “Such a reputation had he acquired,
that when he suddenly disappeared during an eclipse of the
sun, he was supposed 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.”[142] By these words, “he
suddenly disappeared,” we are 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, which certainly
either afforded opportunity for the crime, or itself made an end
of Romulus. And of Tullus Hostilius, who was the third king
of Rome, and who was 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 should bring it
into contempt by gratuitously assigning it to all and sundry.”
In one of his invectives,[143] too, he says, in round terms, “The
founder of this city, Romulus, we have raised to 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 Hortensius,
too, while speaking of the regular eclipses of the sun,
he says that they “produce 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 an eulogist.
The other kings of Rome, too, with the exception of Numa
Pompilius and Ancus Marcius, who died natural deaths, what[Pg 110]
horrible ends they had! Tullus Hostilius, the conqueror and
destroyer of Alba, was, as I said, himself and all his house
consumed by lightning. Priscus Tarquinius was slain by his
predecessor’s sons. Servius Tullius was foully murdered by
his son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus, who succeeded him on the
throne. Nor did so flagrant a parricide committed against
Rome’s best king drive from their altars and shrines those gods
who were said to have been moved by Paris’ adultery to treat
poor Troy in this style, and abandon it to the fire and sword
of the Greeks. Nay, the very Tarquin who had murdered, was
allowed to succeed his father-in-law. And this infamous parricide,
during the reign he had secured by murder, was allowed
to triumph in many victorious wars, and to build the Capitol
from their spoils; the gods meanwhile not departing, but abiding,
and abetting, and suffering their king Jupiter to preside and
reign over them in that very splendid Capitol, the work of a
parricide. For he did not build the Capitol in the days of
his innocence, and then suffer banishment for subsequent
crimes; but to that reign during which he built the Capitol,
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 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, but he
was excluded, abandoned by his troops, and the gates shut 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 on
whom he most depended, despairing of regaining the kingdom,
he lived a retired and quiet life for fourteen years, as it
is reported, in Tusculum, a Roman town; 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[Pg 111]
abetting, if report be true. And this Tarquin the Romans
called, not the Cruel, nor the Infamous, but the Proud; their
own pride perhaps resenting his tyrannical airs. 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
defence 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 wearing them
out by severe wars. Such was the life of the Romans under
the kings during the much-praised epoch of the state which
extends to the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus in the 243d
year, during which all those victories, which were bought 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 Gætulian
state.
16. Of the first Roman consuls, the one of whom drove the other from the country,
and shortly after perished at Rome by the hand of a wounded enemy,
and so ended a career of unnatural murders.
To this epoch let us add also that of which Sallust says,
that it was ordered with justice and moderation, while the
fear of Tarquin and of a war with Etruria was impending. For
so long as the Etrurians aided the efforts of Tarquin to regain
the throne, Rome was convulsed with distressing 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 fulfil their
term of office. For Junius Brutus deprived his colleague
Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, and banished him from the
city; and shortly after he himself fell in battle, at once
slaying and slain, having formerly put to death his own sons
and his brothers-in-law, because he had discovered that they
were conspiring to restore Tarquin. It is this deed that[Pg 112]
Virgil shudders 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! howsoe’er
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,
And unextinguished thirst of praise.”[144]
In the tragic end of Brutus, who slew his own sons, and
though he slew his enemy, Tarquin’s son, yet could not survive
him, but was survived by Tarquin the elder, does not
the innocence of his colleague Collatinus seem to be vindicated,
who, though a good citizen, suffered the same punishment
as Tarquin himself, when that tyrant was banished?
For Brutus himself is said to have been a relative[145] of Tarquin.
But Collatinus had the misfortune to bear not only
the blood, but the name of Tarquin. 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 L. Collatinus.
But he was not compelled to lose what he could
lose without detriment, but was stripped of the honour 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 Tarquin the tyrant was expelled, L. Tarquinius Collatinus,
the husband of Lucretia, 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 honour 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[Pg 113]
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 M. Horatius,
who filled the vacancy occasioned by the death of Lucretius,
completed that disastrous and funereal year, which had
five consuls. Such was the year in which the Roman republic
inaugurated the new honour and office of the consulship.
17. Of the disasters which vexed the Roman republic after the inauguration of
the consulship, and of the non-intervention of the gods of Rome.
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 Sallust 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, at 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.”[146] But why should I spend time in writing such
things, or make others spend it in reading them? Let the
terse summary of Sallust 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 they will harbour
none. For we speak no more severely than their own authors,
and much less elaborately and strikingly; yet they diligently[Pg 114]
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 Sallust 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 pretence 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 judged that an honourable 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 are 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 Capitol, that had been fired by exiles and slaves? He
was himself better able to defend the temple of Jupiter, than
that crowd of 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[Pg 115]
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 this same prefect, and on the authority
of the superannuated dictator L. 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 wearisome 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 honour of the gods, which accounts for
the name of this sacred rite, or rather sacrilege?[147] 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 succour
of Furius Camillus, 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
Furius Camillus 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 Samnites in
the Caudine Forks, and forced to strike a shameful treaty,
600 Roman knights being kept as hostages; while the troops,
having laid down their arms, and being stripped of everything,
were made to pass under 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 Epidaurus for Æsculapius as a god of medicine; since the[Pg 116]
frequent adulteries of Jupiter in his youth had not perhaps
left this king of all who so long reigned in the Capitol, any
leisure for the study of medicine? Or when, at one time,
the Lucanians, Brutians, Samnites, Tuscans, and Senonian
Gauls conspired against Rome, and first slew her ambassadors,
then overthrew an army under the prætor, putting to the sword
13,000 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 Janiculus; 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 a shame to those
gods who had now Æsculapius 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 beget offspring.[148] Pyrrhus, king of Greece, and at
that time of wide-spread renown, was invited by the Tarentines
to enlist himself against Rome. It was to him that Apollo,
when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise, uttered
with some pleasantry so ambiguous an oracle, that whichever
alternative happened, the god himself should be counted
divine. For he so worded the oracle,[149] that whether Pyrrhus
was conquered by the Romans, or the Romans by Pyrrhus,
the soothsaying god would securely await the issue. And
then what frightful massacres of both armies ensued! Yet
Pyrrhus remained conqueror, and would have been able now
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. And Æsculapius, I fancy, excused
himself in this matter on the ground that he professed to be
arch-physician, not midwife. Cattle, too, similarly perished;[Pg 117]
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? Spite of all the drugs of Æsculapius, it only grew worse
in its second year, till at last recourse was had to the Sibylline
books,—a kind of oracle which, as Cicero says in his De
Divinatione, 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
Æsculapius 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 recognised 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 Varro’s great erudition, that in his work on
sacred places he cites 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.
18. The disasters suffered by the Romans in the Punic wars, which were not
mitigated by the protection of the gods.
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[Pg 118]
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, we should become writers of history. At
that period Rome was mightily perturbed, and resorted to
vain and ludicrous expedients. On the authority of the
Sibylline books, the secular games were re-appointed, which
had been inaugurated a century before, but had faded into
oblivion in 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 made 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 there 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[Pg 119]
Vesta, in which virgins chosen for this honour, 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[150] in which they had been received, Metellus the priest,
forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and rescued the sacred
things, though he was half roasted in doing so. For either
the fire did not recognise 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 are consecrated
rather as symbols of things eternal, than to secure the
blessings of time; and that thus, though the symbols, like all
material and visible 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 formerly served.
But with lamentable blindness, they suppose 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 are reminded that even when the gods remained
among them this well-being and prosperity were blighted,
they blush to change the opinion they are unable to defend.
19. Of the calamity of the second Punic war, which consumed the strength
of both parties.
As to the second Punic war, it were tedious to recount the
disasters it brought on both the nations engaged in so protracted
and 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[Pg 120]
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 lustre on the
arms of Hannibal! And what shall I say of the wonderfully
crushing defeat at Cannæ, 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 of their property, that, saving the
gold ring and bulla 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 endurable as they are now,[Pg 121]
when more money is spent on actors for the sake of a superfluous
gratification, than was then disbursed to the legions?
20. Of the destruction of the Saguntines, who received no help from the Roman
gods, though perishing on account of their fidelity to Rome.
But among all the disasters of the second Punic war, there
occurred none more lamentable, or calculated to excite deeper
complaint, than the fate of the Saguntines. 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 occasion for provoking them to war,
and accordingly made a fierce assault upon Saguntum. 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 matter in hand, I will briefly touch upon it. First, then,
famine wasted the Saguntines, so that even human corpses
were eaten 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 the sword. Could these gods, these debauchees 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? Saguntum, 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,[Pg 122]
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 defence 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 defence 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 Saguntine disaster; and how silly
it is to believe that Rome was preserved from destruction at
the hands of Hannibal by the guardian care of those gods who
were unable to rescue the city of Saguntum from perishing
through its fidelity to the alliance of Rome. If the population
of Saguntum 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 defence, 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. Does, then, the keeping
of faith provoke 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 enlist perjured
persons as their worshippers. If, on the other hand, men and
states can suffer great and terrible calamities, and at last perish
while favoured by the gods, then does their worship not produce[Pg 123]
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 favour, 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.
21. Of the ingratitude of Rome to Scipio, its deliverer, and of its manners
during the period which Sallust describes as the best.
Omitting many things, that I may not exceed the limits
of the work I have proposed to myself, I come to the epoch
between the second and last Punic wars, during which, according
to Sallust, the Romans lived 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 and 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 valour had saved and liberated, to spend
the remainder of his days in the town of Liternum, 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
Cn. 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, not of the
evils men voluntarily practise, but of those they suffer in spite
of themselves. So that the case of Scipio, who succumbed 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 are worshipped only for the sake of securing temporal[Pg 124]
happiness. But since Sallust, 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 then
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 Voconia 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 Scipio, 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 Cæsar 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, and which now was
quite enervated 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 régime;—during this whole period, I say, many military
disasters were sustained on a variety of occasions, all of which
I here pass by. There was specially the treaty of Numantia,
blotted as it was with extreme disgrace; for the sacred
chickens, they say, flew out of the coop, and thus augured
disaster to Mancinus the consul; just as if, during all these
years in which that little city of Numantia had withstood the
besieging army of Rome, and had become a terror to the
republic, the other generals had all marched against it under
unfavourable auspices.
22. Of the edict of Mithridates, commanding that all Roman citizens found in
Asia should be slain.
These things, I say, I pass in silence; but I can by no
means be silent regarding the order given by Mithridates,
king of Asia, that on one day all Roman citizens 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 and treacherously
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, in 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 kindliness
of friendship, and in the midst of peace set about the
business of war; and, shall I say, give and receive wounds,
the slain 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.
23. Of the internal disasters which vexed the Roman republic, and followed a
portentous madness which seized all the domestic animals.
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[Pg 126]
occasioned in Italy by wars social, wars servile, wars 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 a portent, how serious a calamity must have been
portended by a plague which, whether portent or no, was in
itself a serious calamity! Had it happened in our day, the
heathen would have been more rabid against us than their
animals were against them.
24. Of the civil dissension occasioned by the sedition of the Gracchi.
The civil wars originated in the seditions which the
Gracchi excited regarding the agrarian laws; for they were
minded to divide among the people the lands which were
wrongfully possessed by the nobility. But to reform an
abuse of so long standing was an enterprise full of peril, or
rather, as the event proved, of destruction. For what disasters
accompanied the death of the elder Gracchus! what slaughter
ensued when, shortly after, the younger brother met the same
fate! For noble and ignoble were indiscriminately massacred;
and this not by legal authority and procedure, but by mobs
and armed rioters. After the death of the younger Gracchus,
the consul Lucius Opimius, who had given battle to him
within the city, and had defeated and put to the sword both
himself and his confederates, and had massacred many of the
citizens, instituted a judicial examination of others, and is
reported to have put to death as many as 3000 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 consul for its weight in gold, such being the previous
agreement. In this massacre, too, Marcus Fulvius, a man of
consular rank, with all his children, was put to death.
25. Of the temple of Concord, which was erected by a decree of the senate on the
scene of these seditions and massacres.
A pretty decree of the senate it was, truly, by which the
temple of Concord was built on the spot where that disastrous[Pg 127]
rising had taken place, and where so many citizens of every
rank had fallen.[151] I suppose it was that the monument of the
Gracchi’s 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 Labeo 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 offence.
For, being indignant that she was not invited with the other
gods [to the nuptials of Peleus 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 tumults, to 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 at our 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 there are
shrines erected of great antiquity, or they have worshipped[Pg 128]
them, and after all Concord has abandoned them, and Discord
has tempestuously hurled them into civil wars.
26. Of the various kinds of wars which followed the building of the temple of
Concord.
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 Gracchi, 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 endeavoured not to avoid the example of the
Gracchi, but to surpass their projects; as did Lucius Saturninus,
a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius the prætor,
and some time 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 this band defeated,
and how it laid waste many districts and cities. And that
was not the only servile war: the province of Macedonia, and
subsequently Sicily and the sea-coast, were also depopulated
by bands of slaves. And who can adequately describe either
the horrible atrocities which the pirates first committed, or the
wars they afterwards maintained against Rome?
27. Of the civil war between Marius and Sylla.
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, “Cinna and
Marius together returned and took possession of it. Then,
indeed, the foremost men in the state were put to death, its
lights quenched. Sylla afterwards avenged this cruel victory;[Pg 129]
but we need not say with what loss of life, and with what ruin
to the republic.”[152] 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.”[153] In that war between Marius and Sylla, besides
those who fell in the field of battle, the city, too, was filled
with corpses in its streets, squares, markets, theatres, and
temples; so that it is not easy to reckon whether the victors
slew more before or after victory, that 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 on the
rostrum; Cæsar and Fimbria were assassinated in their own
houses; the two Crassi, father and son, were murdered in one
another’s sight; Bebius and Numitorius were disembowelled by
being dragged with hooks; Catulus 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, every one whose salutation Marius did not answer
by giving his hand, was at once cut down before his face.
28. Of the victory of Sylla, the avenger of the cruelties of Marius.
Then followed the victory of Sylla, the so-called avenger of
the cruelties of Marius. But not only was his victory purchased
with great bloodshed; but when hostilities were finished,
hostility 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 Sylla approached,
and they despaired not only of 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. Mucius Scævola the
pontiff was slain at the altar of Vesta, which he had clung to[Pg 130]
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 Sylla entered
the city victorious, after having slaughtered in the Villa Publica,
not by combat, but by an order, 7000 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 Sylla slew
whom he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond
computation, till it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow
some to survive, that the victors might not be destitute of
subjects. Then this furious and promiscuous licence 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 consolatory that a limit was fixed; nor was the
grief at the numbers 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 in
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.
29. A comparison of the disasters which Rome experienced during the Gothic
and Gallic invasions, with those occasioned by the authors of the civil wars.
What fury of foreign nations, what barbarian ferocity, can[Pg 131]
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 Sylla 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 Capitol, which alone was defended; but
they at least sold life to those who were in the Capitol, though
they might have starved them out if they could not have
stormed it. The Goths, again, spared so many senators, that
it is the more surprising that they killed any. But Sylla,
while Marius was still living, established himself as conqueror
in the Capitol, 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, Sylla issued from the Capitol even decrees of the
senate for the slaughter and confiscation of the property of
many citizens. Then, when Sylla 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
in piteous embrace the very altar in which, they say, reside
the destinies of Rome? And that final proscription list of
Sylla’s, not to mention countless other massacres, despatched
more senators than the Goths could even plunder.
30. Of the connection of the wars which with great severity and frequency
followed one another before the advent of Christ.
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,
and 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
Sylla to those of Sertorius and Catiline, of whom the one was
proscribed, the other brought up by Sylla; from this to the
war of Lepidus and Catulus, of whom the one wished to rescind,
the other to defend the acts of Sylla; from this to the war of[Pg 132]
Pompey and Cæsar, of whom Pompey had been a partisan of
Sylla, whose power he equalled or even surpassed, while Cæsar
condemned Pompey’s power because it was not his own, and
yet exceeded it when Pompey was defeated and slain. From
him the chain of civil wars extended to the second Cæsar,
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 skilful manipulator of the republic, Cicero. Caius
[Julius] Cæsar, when he had conquered Pompey, though he
used his victory with clemency, and granted to men of the opposite
faction both life and honours, 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 Cæsar, the adopted son of Caius, and afterwards, as I
said, known by the name of Augustus, had made his début as
a young man of remarkable genius. This youthful Cæsar was
favoured by Cicero, in order that his influence might counteract
that of Antony; for he hoped that Cæsar would overthrow and
blast the power of Antony, and establish a free state,—so blind
and unaware of the future was he: for that very young man,
whose advancement and influence he was fostering, allowed
Cicero to be killed as the seal of an alliance with Antony, and
subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the republic in
defence of which he had made so many orations.
31. That it is effrontery to impute the present troubles to Christ and the prohibition
of polytheistic worship, since even when the gods were worshipped
such calamities befell the people.
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 there rose the mingled fragrance of “Sabæan
incense and fresh garlands;”[154] the priests were clothed with
honour, the shrines were maintained in splendour; sacrifices,[Pg 133]
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
calumniate this Christian era, are the very men who
either themselves fled 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 would 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 floods and fires 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 mothers’
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 hailstones, 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 neighbouring 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[Pg 134]
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 had 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
Masinissa alone they say there perished 800,000 persons,
besides a much greater number in the neighbouring districts.
At Utica they assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning
it, there survived only ten. Yet which of these disasters,
suppose they happened 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 worshipped
them were not preserved from these serious disasters.
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