Against the Heathen

Let us therefore examine the meaning of this opinion, and weigh with equal measure what is said, and of what sort it is; and, setting aside all the zeal for contention by which the contemplation of things is wont to be obscured and covered over, let us weigh whether what is said is true. For it will assuredly be brought about by the connection of consequent reasoning, that not we so much as impious, but those very persons will be found guilty of this charge, who profess themselves to be worshippers of the divine powers and devoted to ancient religions. And first we inquire of these persons, in a friendly and calm discourse: since the name of the Christian religion began to exist upon the earth, what unheard-of thing, what unknown thing, what thing contrary to the laws originally established, has the very nature of things—which is so called and named—either felt or suffered? Have those first elements, of which all things are agreed to be composed, been changed into contrary qualities?

Has the structure of this fabric and mass, by which we are all covered and enclosed within, been loosened or dissolved in any part? Has this revolution of the world, exceeding the governance of its primordial motion, begun either to creep more slowly or to be swept along with headlong speed? Have the stars begun to rise from the western parts, and has the inclination of the signs begun to occur from the east? Has the sun himself, the prince of the stars, by whose light all things are clothed and by whose heat they are animated, blazed up or grown lukewarm, and corrupted the balance of its accustomed governance into contrary conditions? Has the moon ceased to renew itself, and to pass back into its former shapes by the ever-recurring restoration of new ones? Have cold seasons, have hot seasons, have the temperate seasons between them, perished through the confusions of unequal times? Has winter begun to have long days, and the night of summer to recall its most lingering lights?

Have the winds breathed out their souls, and, with the breezes dying, is the sky no longer gathered into clouds, nor do fields moistened by rains follow in succession? Does the earth refuse to receive the seeds entrusted to it, or do the trees refuse to put forth leaves? Has the flavor been changed in edible crops and in the juices of the vine? Is a foul fluid pressed from the berries of olives, and is it not supplied to the extinguished lamp? Do the animals accustomed to the lands and those dwelling in the waters not conceive and not bring forth?

Do they not preserve the offspring received in their wombs according to their own customs and their own law? Do men themselves, finally, whom the first and beginning vitality scattered through the uninhabitable borders of the earth, not join together in marriages with the lawful solemnities of wedlock? Do they not beget the most sweet offspring of children? Do they not conduct public, private, and domestic affairs? Do they not, as each has pleased, direct their talents through the various methods of arts and disciplines, and studiously render back the returns of their vitality? Do those to whom the lot of such things has been assigned not reign, not hold command? Are they not daily increased in dignities and powers? Do they not preside over the deliberations of courts? Do they not interpret laws and rights? Do not all peoples in all their nations celebrate all the other things by which human life is supported and sustained, according to the institutions of their ancestral customs?

Since, therefore, these things are so, and no novelty has broken in to have drawn apart the perpetual course of things by a severed continuity: what is this that is said—that a blight has been brought upon the earth since the Christian religion introduced itself into the world and laid open the hidden mysteries of truth? But, they say, pestilences, and droughts, wars, scarcity of crops, locusts, mice, and hailstorms, and other harmful things by which human affairs are assailed, are brought upon us by the gods, provoked and exasperated by your injuries and offenses. If, in matters that are plain and require no defense, it were not a mark of stupidity to linger longer, I would assuredly show, by reviewing the earlier ages, that these evils of which you speak are not unknown, not sudden; and that they did not break in after our people merited to be blessed with the good fortune of this name, and that these blights did not begin to assail mortal affairs with a variety of dangers.

For if we are the cause, and these plagues were devised as a punishment for our crime, how did antiquity come to know the names of these miseries? How did it give a word to wars? By what notion could it designate pestilence and hailstorms, or include them among its words by which speech was expressed? For if these evils are new and derive their causes from recent offenses, how could it have come to pass that it formed words for those things which it did not know itself to have experienced, nor had found to have been done in any times of its ancestors? Scarcity of crops, it says, and the straits of grain supply hold us more tightly. Were the ancient and most ancient ages ever free from this necessity? Do not the very names by which these evils are reckoned testify and cry aloud that no mortal has ever gone free from them?

But if the matter were difficult to believe, we could proceed by the testimonies of authors, to show how great, how often, and what peoples have felt dreadful famine and have perished overwhelmed by accumulated devastation. The very frequent accidents of hail occur and have reached all things. For do we not see it recorded and set down in ancient writings that even showers of stones have often shattered whole regions? Difficult rains cause crops to die and impose sterility upon the lands. Was antiquity free from these evils?—seeing that we have known even great rivers to have dried up with their mud parched. The contagions of pestilence burn the human race. Run through the written records of the annals, written in the diversity of tongues, and you will learn that all peoples have very often been desolated and widowed of their cultivators. By locusts, by mice, every kind of crop is cut down and gnawed away.

Go through your histories, and from these plagues you will be instructed how often the former age was afflicted and came to the miseries of poverty. Cities tremble and totter to the point of danger from the most violent earthquakes. What—did earlier times not see cities swallowed up by the greatest chasms together with their peoples, or did they have their fortunes secure from calamities of this kind?

When was the human race destroyed by floods of water? Was it not before us? When was the world burned and dissolved into ashes and cinders? Was it not before us? When were the most spacious cities covered by the waves of the sea? Was it not before us? When were wars and battles waged with wild beasts and with lions? Was it not before us? When was destruction given to peoples by venomous serpents? Was it not before us? For as to what you are accustomed to cast at us—that frequent wars, the devastations of cities, the incursions of the Germans and Scythians are caused by our religion—with your peace and good leave I would say: you do not see, through the license of calumnies, what sort of thing this is that is said.

That ten thousand years ago a great force of men should burst forth from the island which is said to be of Neptune's Atlantic, as Plato demonstrates, and should utterly destroy and extinguish innumerable nations—were we the cause of this? That between the Assyrians and Bactrians, with Ninus and Zoroaster once as leaders, the contest was not only with sword and strength but also with the secret arts of the Magi and Chaldeans—was this our doing? That Helen, snatched away by the guidance and impulse of the gods, was a dire fate both for her own times and for times to come—has this been attributed to the crime of our religion? That that monstrous Xerxes let the sea in upon the lands and crossed the seas on foot—was this brought about by our name as its cause? That a single young man, arising from the borders of Macedonia, subjected the kingdoms and peoples of the East to captivity and servitude—did we make and stir up these causes?

That the Romans, like some torrential river, submerged and overwhelmed all nations—did we, forsooth, hurl the divine powers into fury? But if there is no man who dares to impute to our times what was done long ago, how can we be the causes of present miseries, when nothing new is happening, but all things are old and unheard-of by no antiquity?

And yet it is not difficult to prove that these wars which you say are stirred up out of hatred for our religion have, since Christ was heard of in the world, not only not increased, but have even for the greater part been diminished by the restraints of fury. For since so great a multitude of men has received from his teachings and laws that evil ought not to be repaid with evil, that it is more excellent to endure an injury than to inflict one, and to shed one's own blood rather than to defile one's hands and conscience with another's gore: the ungrateful world has long had a benefit from Christ, through whom the rage of ferocity has been softened, and hostile hands have begun to restrain themselves from the blood of a kindred living being.

But if all who understand themselves to be men not by the appearance of their bodies but by the power of reason were willing to lend their ear for a little while to his salutary and peaceable decrees, and did not trust, with pride and the arrogance of light, their own senses rather than his admonitions: the whole world would long since, with its practices turned to gentler works, be living in the most tranquil peace, and would come together in wholesome concord, with the sanctions of its covenants unbroken.

But if through you, they say, nothing is brought as a harm to human affairs, whence come these evils by which pitiable mortality has long been pressed and burdened? You demand of me an opinion necessarily irrelevant to this cause. For the present dispute, which lies before us and is at hand, was not undertaken by me in order to show or prove by what causes and reasons each thing comes to pass: but in order to show that the slanders of so great a charge are far from us. Which if I accomplish, if the truth of the matter is set forth by deed and by notable arguments, I do not care whence these evils come, or from what sources and origins they flow.

And yet, lest I seem to bring forth nothing at all when asked what I think about matters of this kind, I can say: What if the primal matter, which has been arranged into the four elements of things, contains the causes of all miseries wrapped up within its own principles? What if the motions of the stars at fixed signs, positions, times, and lines produce these evils and bring upon those subject to them the necessities of various dangers? What if at fixed times the vicissitudes of things come to pass, and as in the tides of the sea, now prosperous things flow in abundance, and now again prosperity ebbs back with returning evils? What if this dregs of matter, which we tread beneath our steps, has this law given to it, that it breathes out most noxious vapors, by which this air, being corrupted, both brings blight upon bodies and weakens human affairs?

What if—and this is nearest to the truth—whatever seems adverse to us is not evil to the world itself: and, measuring all that happens by our own conveniences, we condemn with wrongful opinions the events of nature? Plato, that lofty summit and pillar of the philosophers, recorded in his commentaries that those savage floods and conflagrations of the world are a purging of the earth: nor did that prudent man shrink from calling the overthrow, destruction, ruin, deaths, funerals, and renewal of the human race a kind of youth restored to it with its strength renewed.

The sky does not rain, it says, and we labor under some scarcity of grain. Why do you demand that the elements serve your necessities? And, that you may live more softly and luxuriously, must the services of the seasons give themselves to your conveniences? What if in this manner one most eager for sailing should complain that there have been no winds for a long time, and that the blasts of the sky have fallen still? Must one therefore say that that calm of the world is harmful, because it hinders the wishes of voyagers? What if someone accustomed to baking himself in the sun and acquiring dryness for his body should complain in like manner that the pleasure of fair weather has been taken away by very frequent clouds? Must the clouds therefore be said to hang with hostile overcast, because idle desire is not permitted to glow in the flames and prepare causes for potions?

All these events which happen and occur under this nature of the world are to be weighed not by our own little conveniences, but by the principles and orders of nature itself.

Nor, if something happens which has fostered us ourselves or our affairs with less joyful outcomes, is it straightway an evil and to be placed in the category of a destructive thing. The world rains or does not rain for itself: and what you perhaps do not know, it either cooks off excessive moisture with the heat of drought, or tempers the aridity of a very long period with the outpourings of rains. It brings forth pestilences, diseases, famines, and other deadly forms of evils: how do you know that what overflows does not remove in such a way as to set a limit, through its own expenditures, upon things that are running to excess?

Do you dare to say that this or that thing in the world is evil, when you are able neither to explain nor to resolve its origin or its cause? And because it perhaps hinders the pleasures of your delights, and even of your lusts, do you call it pernicious and harsh? What then—because cold is adverse to your limbs and is wont to congeal the warmth of your blood, must winter therefore not exist in the world? And because you cannot endure the most blazing suns, must summer be removed from the year, and must nature be ordered anew according to other laws? Hellebore is a poison to men—must it therefore not have been allowed to grow? The wolf lies in wait for the sheepfold—is nature at fault for having brought forth so troublesome a beast for the fleecy flocks? The serpent takes away life with its bite: let me curse the beginnings of things, forsooth, because they added such savage monsters to breathing creatures.

It is an exceedingly arrogant thing, when you are not your own master and dwell in the possession of another, to lay down conditions for those more powerful: to wish that what you desire should come to pass, rather than what you find fixed in things by ancient ordinances. Therefore, if you men wish your complaints to have any place, it is first necessary that you show whence or what you are, and whether the world was begotten and fashioned for you, or whether you have come into it as lodgers from foreign regions. Since it is not yours to say this, and since you cannot explain for what reason you dwell beneath this vault of heaven, cease to think that anything pertains to you: since the things that happen do not happen in a partial manner, but return and are referred to the sum total of the whole.

On account of the Christians, they say, the gods bring all evils, and destruction of crops is prepared by the powers above. I ask you—when you say these things, do you not see that you are shamelessly slandering us in open and manifest lies? It is now nearly three hundred years, more or less, since we began to be Christians and to be counted in the world: were there throughout all these years continual wars, continual famines, no peace on earth, no cheapness or abundance of goods at all? For this must first be established by one who accuses us—that these calamities were perpetual and unceasing, that mortal things never breathed at all, and that, without any respite (as the saying goes), they endured the forms of manifold dangers.

And yet do we not see that in the midst of these years and times, innumerable victories have been won over conquered enemies? That the boundaries of the empire have been extended, and nations of unheard-of name brought under its power? That very often there have been the greatest yields of grain, cheapness and abundance of goods so great that all commerce was struck with wonder at prices brought low by their own cheapness? For how could affairs be conducted, and the race of mortals endure even to this time, if the fertility of things did not supply all that need demanded?

But there were at some times certain periods of hardship. And they were relieved by times of abundance. Again, certain wars were waged contrary to our wishes. And they were afterwards corrected by victories and successes. What then shall we say? That the gods are at one time mindful of our offences, and at another time again unmindful? If at a time of famine they are said to be angry, it follows that at a time of abundance they are not angry and harsh: and so the matter is brought to this, that by turns, as in a game, they both lay aside and resume their anger, and always restore themselves to their former state by recollection of their grievances.

And yet what this assertion amounts to cannot be grasped by any clear understanding. If they wished the Alamanni and Persians to be conquered because Christians dwelt and lived among those peoples, how did they grant victory to the Romans, when Christians likewise dwelt and lived among their peoples? If in Asia and Syria they wished mice and locusts to swarm prodigiously for the same reason—because Christians dwelt among those peoples—why in Spain and Gaul at the same time did none of these things occur, when innumerable Christians were living in those provinces as well? If among the Gaetulians and Tinguitanians they sent drought and sufficient aridity for this reason, why in that same year did they grant the most abundant harvests to the Moors and Nomads, when the same religion was practised in those regions too?

If in any one city they caused very many to die of famine through aversion to our name, why in that same place, by the dearness of provisions, did they make not only those of our body but even Christians richer and most wealthy? Either therefore all should have had nothing prosperous, if we are the cause of evils—for we are among all nations—or since you see prosperity mixed with adversity, cease to ascribe to us that which harms your affairs, since we do nothing to hinder what is joyful and prosperous. For if I cause things to go ill, why do I not prevent things from going well? If my name is the cause of great scarcity, why do I not at all impede the greatest fertility? If I am said to bring ill fortune so that wounds are received in wars, why, when men perish in duels, am I not an evil omen, nor branded by the foulness of a bad sign against good hopes?

And yet, O great worshippers and priests of the gods, why, just as you assert that those gods are angered against Christian peoples, do you not notice, do you not see, what base passions, what indecorous madnesses you attribute to the divine powers? For what is anger but to be mad, to rage, to be carried away by the lust for vengeance, and to rave in the alienation of a savage breast over the torments of another's pain? This then is what the great gods know, suffer, and feel—what wild beasts, what brutes, what deadly nurses contain in their venomous tooth. What is blameworthy as levity in a man, what is culpable in an earthly creature, that excellent nature, standing firm in the steadfastness of perpetual virtue, is asserted by you to know. And what then necessarily follows, unless that sparks flash from their eyes, flames blaze, their heaving breast casts breath from their mouth, and from their burning words a whitening dryness appears on their lips?

But if this is true, and is established and known—that a god blazes with anger and that immortal beings are tossed by disturbances of this kind—then they are not eternal, nor are they to be reckoned in any estimation of divinity. For wherever there is any passion, as it seems to the wise, there must necessarily be suffering. Where suffering is present, it is consistent that disturbance should follow. Where there is disturbance, there is pain and sickness. Where there is pain and sickness, there is already room for diminution and corruption: and if these two things afflict, death is close at hand—death that ends all things and takes away life from all sentient beings.

What of this—that in this manner you introduce them as not only fickle and hot-tempered, but also, which is far removed from what befits gods, as unjust and inequitable, and as possessing no account whatsoever of even moderate fairness? For what is so unjust as to be angry at some and to harm others, to complain about men and to tear apart innocent crops? To hate the Christian name and to undermine their own worshippers with every kind of loss?

Or do they perhaps rage against you as well, so that, stirred by inward wounds, you may rise up to avenge them? Therefore the gods seek human patronage, and unless they are protected by your advocacy, they are not themselves capable of repelling and defending their own affronts. Nay rather, if it is true that they burn with anger, allow them the power over themselves; let them defend themselves; let them exert and prove their strength in vengeance for the majesty that has been offended. They can, if they wish, destroy and consume us with heat, they can with most harmful cold, they can with pestilential airs, they can with the most obscure causes of diseases, and utterly banish us from all company of mortals; or if it is an evil plan to attack us by force, let them send forth some sign of their indignation, by which it may be clear to all that we dwell beneath the sky most unwillingly to them.

Let them grant you good health; to us adverse and most wretched health. Let them water your fields with timely rains; whatever dews of rain there are, let them drive them away from our little fields. Let them see to it that your flocks are multiplied with numerous offspring; let them bring ill-starred barrenness upon our herds. Let them make a full autumn yield from your olive groves and vineyards; but from ours let them forbid even one drop of moisture from the vine to be pressed out. Finally and lastly, let them ordain that crops retain their own nature in your mouths; but in ours let honey become bitter, let the streams of olive oil turn rancid, and let wine suddenly change, even as it is being drunk at the lips, into the treachery of vinegar.

But since the facts themselves testify that this does not happen at all, and since it is established that nothing less flows to us, and nothing more to you, from the benefits of life, what is this great desire to contend that the gods are enemies and foes to Christians, when you can see them differing in no respect, by any reckoning, in the most grievous and in the most joyful circumstances? If you allow the truth to be spoken to you, and without any flattery: these are words, these are words—nay rather, things believed through slanders, not confirmed by the testimony of any real knowledge.

But the true gods, who are worthy to hold and bear the authority of this name, neither grow angry, nor are indignant, nor contrive by insidious machinations what may harm another. For it is truly impious, and surpassing all sacrileges, to believe that that wise and most blessed nature considers it a great thing if someone submits himself to it with adulatory humility: and if this has not been done, to believe itself scorned and fallen from the height of its supreme eminence. It is childish, petty, and trivial—scarcely befitting even those whom the experience of the learned has long since called daemons and heroes—not to know celestial things, and to dwell in this coarser material of things, bereft of the condition proper to them.

These things are yours, yours—impiously conceived and even more impiously believed. Nay rather, to speak more truly, haruspices, soothsayers, diviners, seers, and fanatics never free from vanity have stitched together these fables: who, lest their arts perish and lest they shake out even the small coins from their now rare consultants, whenever they discover that things are coming into disrepute and that the gods are being neglected, cry out aloud, and that there is now the greatest scarcity in the temples: the ancient ceremonies lie in derision, and the most ancient rites of the sacred observances of old have perished under the superstitions of new religions: rightly is the human race oppressed by the straits of so many miseries, tormented by the hardships of so many labours. And men—a brutish race, and one which, placed beneath the light, cannot see by reason of its inborn blindness—dare to assert in their frenzy what you, in your sanity, are not ashamed to believe.

The gods are neglected, they cry out, and there is now the greatest scarcity in the temples: the ancient ceremonies lie in derision, and the most ancient rites of the sacred observances of old have perished under the superstitions of new religions: rightly is the human race oppressed by the straits of so many miseries, tormented by the hardships of so many labours.

And yet, lest anyone suppose that we, out of distrust of our reply, attribute to the Gods the gift of tranquillity, and ascribe to them minds free from guilt and removed from all disturbance—let us grant, as it has pleased you, that they direct their anger against us, that they thirst for our blood, and that they have long desired to remove us from the ages of mortals. But if it is not troublesome, not burdensome, if it is a matter of common duty—not out of favour but out of truth—to weigh the considerations of this dispute, we demand to hear from you what this reasoning is, what this cause, on account of which the gods above rage so greatly against us alone, and men, embittered, burn with fury. They practise impious religions, they say, and unheard-of forms of worship throughout the world. What, O partakers of reason, do you dare to say, O men—what do you blurt out, what do you attempt to bring forth in the desperation of reckless speech?

To worship God the first principle, the Lord of all things whatsoever they are, who holds the summit of all highest things, to invoke him with venerable homage, to embrace him in our wearied circumstances with all our senses, as I may say, to love, to look up to him—is this an execrable and ill-omened religion, full of impiety and sacrilege, contaminating with the superstition of its novelty the ceremonies established from antiquity?

Is this, I ask, that bold and monstrous deed on account of which the greatest heavenly beings direct against us the stings of their wrath and indignation? On account of which you yourselves, when savage passion has seized you, strip us of our goods, banish us from our ancestral homes, inflict capital punishments, torture, tear apart, burn, and at last expose us to wild beasts and the mauling of brutes? Whoever condemns this in us, or holds it worthy of any accusation, is he either to be called by the name of a man, however much he may seem so to himself? Or to be believed a God, however much he himself may profess to be one through a thousand prophets? Trophonius or Dodonian Jupiter calls us impious, and shall he himself be called a God and be reckoned in the number of the divine powers, who either fastens the charge of impiety upon those who serve the supreme king, or is tormented that his own majesty and worship should be set before him?

The Delian Apollo, or the Clarian, the Didymaean, the Philesian, the Pythian—is he also to be held divine, who either knows not the supreme ruler, or is ignorant that daily prayers of supplication are offered to him by us? Who, if he knew not the secrets of hearts, nor what we hold in our inmost thoughts, could yet have known by his ears that we invoke the supreme God and pray to him for what we ask, or could have recognized it by the very sound of the voice which we use in prayer.

This is not yet the place to explain who all those are who condemn us, or whence they are: how much they can do, or what they know: why they tremble at the mention of Christ, why they hold his disciples as enemies and objects of hatred: yet let us fix this with one common definition for those who promise human understanding: we Christians are nothing other than worshippers of the supreme king and prince under the teaching of Christ: nothing else, if you consider it, will you find to be practiced in this religion. This is the sum of the whole matter: this is the appointed end of divine duties, this is the goal. To him we all prostrate ourselves according to custom, him we adore with united prayers, from him we ask for things just and honorable and worthy of his hearing. Not that he himself desires us to be suppliants, or loves to see the veneration of so many thousands prostrated before him. This benefit is ours, and has regard to our own advantage.

For because we are prone to faults and to the various appetites of passion through the vice of our inborn weakness, he suffers himself to be ever conceived in our thoughts: so that while we pray to him and strive to merit his gifts, we may receive the will toward innocence, and purge ourselves from every stain by the cutting away of all our transgressions.

What say you, O sacred interpreters, O expounders of divine law? Are they of a better cause who worship the Grundules, the household Lares, the Aius Locutius, the Limentini, than we all who worship God the father of all things, and implore from him protection for our weary and failing affairs? And do those seem to you cautious, wise, most prudent, and deserving of no reproach, who reverence the Fauns, the Fatuae, the genii of cities, the Pausi and the Bellonas? We are pronounced dull, stupid, foolish, obtuse, and brutish: who have given ourselves to God, by whose will and judgment all that exists subsists, and is fixed in the permanence of his decree. Is this the sentence you pronounce? Is this the law you have established? Is this what you proclaim—that he who has worshipped your little servants should be honored with the greatest distinctions? That he who has supplicated you yourselves as lords should deserve the extreme cross?

In the greatest cities and among the most powerful peoples, public rites are performed for women who were once common harlots and prostitutes for general lust, and there is no swelling of indignation in the Gods. Temples have been raised with lofty rooftops for cats, scarab beetles, and heifers: the mocked powers of the divine beings are silent, nor are they affected with any jealousy because they see the sanctity of vile creatures set on a level with themselves. To us alone are they enemies, to us alone are the Gods most bitter foes—we who venerate the father of those very Gods, through whom, if they exist, they began to exist and to possess the substance of their divine power and majesty: from whom they perceive that they have received divinity itself, so to speak, and acknowledge it in the order of things; by whose will and judgment they can neither perish and be dissolved, nor be dissolved and perish?

For if we all grant that there is one prince alone, whom no other thing precedes in antiquity of time, then after him all things must necessarily have been born and brought forth, and have sprung forth into the nature of their own being. But if this is fixed and settled, it will follow for you to confess both that the Gods are born, and that they derive the origin of their birth from the source of all things, the prince. And if they are born and begotten, they are accordingly near to destruction and peril. But they are believed to be immortal, everlasting, and sharers in no end whatsoever. Therefore that gift and grant is from God the father, that they have merited to exist through infinite ages, though by nature they are perishable and dissoluble.

And would that it were granted to use this speech in the form of a single assembly, with the whole world gathered together, and to be placed before the hearing of the human race. Are we then guilty before you of impious religion, and because we approach the head and pillar of all things with reverent homage, are we called—to use your own insult—ill-omened and atheists? And who more rightly than others will bear the reproach of these names, than he who either knows, or seeks, or believes in any other God besides this one? Do we not all owe to him this very first thing—that we exist? That we are called human beings? That we are contained, whether sent or fallen by him, within the blindness of this body? Does not that we walk, that we breathe and live, come to us from him, and does not the very force of living cause us to exist and to be moved with animal motion?

Do not from him flow the causes by which our welfare is sustained through the bounty of varied pleasures? This world in which you dwell—whose is it? Or who has granted you to hold the enjoyment and possession of it? Who gave that common light, that you might see, handle, and contemplate the things subject to you? Who, lest the vital elements should grow stiff and torpid with fixed sluggishness, established the fires of the sun to serve for the increase of things? When you believe the sun to be a god, do you not seek his maker and artificer? When the moon is among you a goddess, do you not likewise care to know who her begetter and fashioner is?

Does not the thought come upon you to consider and inquire in whose possession you dwell? In whose property you are? Whose is this earth which you exhaust? Whose is this air which you breathe back and forth with the breath of life? Whose fountains do you use? Whose water? Who has arranged the blasts of the winds? Who has devised the wave-laden clouds? Who has distinguished the fruitful powers of seeds by the proper character of their principles? Does Apollo rain upon you? Does Mercury rain upon you? Did Aesculapius, Hercules, or Diana devise the system of rains and storms? And how can this be, when you profess that they were born in the world and at a fixed time laid hold of vital sensation?

For if the world in antiquity of time preceded them, and before they were born nature already knew rains and storms: those who were born later have no right of causing rain, nor can they insert into those processes, which they found already operating here and governed by a greater author, anything from themselves.

O most great, O supreme creator of invisible things! O thou who art thyself unseen and never comprehended by any natures! Worthy, truly worthy art thou—if indeed it is fitting to say worthy with mortal lips—that every breathing and intelligent nature should never cease to have and to render thee thanks: that all life should come together to fall prostrate with bended knee, and to supplicate thee with unceasing prayers. For thou art the first cause, the place and space of all things, the infinite foundation of all foundations whatsoever, unbegotten, immortal, everlasting, alone, whom no bodily form delimits, no circumscription bounds, without quality, without quantity, without position, motion, or condition, of whom nothing can be said or expressed by the signification of mortal words: who, that thou mayest be understood, must be passed over in silence, and that wandering conjecture may trace thee through a shadow, nothing at all must be uttered.

Grant pardon, O supreme king, to those who persecute thy servants: and as is proper to thy benevolence, forgive those who flee from the worship of thy name and religion. It is no wonder if thou art unknown: it is a matter of greater wonder if thou art known. Unless perhaps anyone dares—for this is the remaining madness of frenzy—to doubt and question whether this God exists or not: whether he is believed on the basis of proven truth of faith, or on the opinion of empty rumor. For we hear that some devoted to the pursuit of philosophy partly deny that there is any divine power, partly inquire daily whether there is one: others construct the sum of all things out of chance accidents and random collisions, and fashion it by the impulse of diversity: with whom at this time we shall have no contest at all over such obstinacy. For those of sound judgment say that to contradict foolish things is the greater folly.

Our discourse is with those who, while agreeing that the divine race exists, doubt concerning the greater ones, while they admit that the same lesser and more humble ones exist. Why then do we strive and labor to establish such great matters with arguments? Let madness depart far hence, and be averted far from us, as the saying goes. For it is just as dangerous to undertake to prove by arguments that God is the supreme prince, as it is to wish to know by such reasoning what manner of being he is. Nor does it matter or make any difference whether you deny him or assert him and confess that he exists: since in the same guilt stands both such an assertion and the denial of an incredulous refuter.

Is there any human being who has not entered upon the day of his first birth with the knowledge of this prince? To whom is it not innate, not fixed—nay, almost impressed and implanted in him in the very womb of his mother—that there is a king and lord, the ruler of all things whatsoever? If even dumb animals could open their mouths, if they could be loosed into the ease of our tongues—nay, if trees, clods, stones, animated with vital sense, could produce the sound of a voice and form the articulations of words—would they not, led by nature as their guide and teacher, by the faith of uncorrupted simplicity, both understand that God exists, and cry aloud that he alone is lord of all?

But in vain, says he, do you assail and attack us with a false and calumnious charge: as though we denied that God is greater—since Jupiter is both named by us and held to be best and greatest, and we have established for him most august temples and enormous Capitols. You are attempting to join unlike things together and force them into one form by introducing confusion. For God omnipotent is known by the one mind of all and by the assent of all mortality to be neither begotten, nor ever brought forth into new light, nor to have begun to exist at any time or age. For he himself is the fount of all things, the sower of ages and of times. For these do not exist of themselves, but proceed from his eternity in perpetual and infinite unbroken succession.

But Jupiter, as you report, has both a father and a mother, grandfathers, grandmothers, brothers: formed but recently in the womb of his mother, completed and perfected in ten months, he burst with vital sense into a light unknown to him. Therefore, if these things are so, how can Jupiter be God? Since it is established that the one is everlasting, while the other is described by you as having had a birthday and as having, terrified by the new experience, raised a lamentable wail.

But let them be, as you wish, one, and not differing in any power of divinity and majesty: why then do you persecute us with unjust hatreds? Why do you shudder at the mention of our name as at the worst of omens? If we worship the same God whom you worship? Or why do you contend that the Gods who are familiar to you in the same cause are enemies and most hostile to us? For if one religion is common to both us and you, the wrath of the heavenly beings ceases: but if they are hostile to us alone, it is manifest that neither you nor they know God: whom it is clear from the very indignation of the divine powers is not Jupiter.

But, he says, the gods are not hostile to you because you worship the omnipotent God: but because you contend that a man who was born, and who was put to death by the punishment of the cross—a thing infamous for persons of low station—was God, and because you believe he still survives, and worship him with daily supplications. If it pleases you, friends, explain who these gods are who believe that Christ being worshipped by us pertains to their injury? Janus, founder of the Janiculum, and Saturn, author of the Saturnian city? Fauna, also called Fatua, wife of Faunus, she who is called the Good Goddess, but better and more praiseworthy in the drinking of wine? Those Indigetes who creep along the river and dwell in the channels of the Numicus among frogs and little fish? Aesculapius, and Father Liber—the one born of Coronis, and the other hurled headlong by a thunderbolt from his mother's womb? Mercury, poured forth from the womb of Maia, and—what is more divine—of fair Maia.

Diana and Apollo, bearers of the bow, carried about through their mother's wanderings, and scarcely safe on a drifting island? Dione's offspring Venus, mother of the head of a Trojan household, and publisher of intimate beauty; Ceres, born in the borders of Sicily, and Proserpina, occupied in gathering flowers? Theban or Tyrian Hercules—the one buried in the borders of Spain, the other burned in the flames of Oeta? The Tyndaridae, the Castors—one accustomed to tame horses, the other a good boxer and invincible with the raw cestus: the Titans and the Moorish Bocchores, and the Syrian gods who are the offspring of eggs? Apis, produced in the Peloponnese and called Serapis in Egypt? Isis, darkened by Ethiopian suns, mourning her lost son and her husband torn limb from limb? We pass over and go beyond the royal offspring of Ops, whose nature and character your authors have set forth in their books for you to learn.

Do these, then, receive it with wounded ears that Christ is worshipped and accepted by us, and that he is branded upon hearts as a divine power? And, forgetting what their lot and condition was a little while ago, do they refuse to grant to another what has been conceded to themselves? Is this the justice of the heavenly ones? Is this the holy judgment of the gods? Is this not a kind of envy and greed—a certain base disparagement—to wish only their own fortunes to be eminent, while the affairs of others are suppressed and trodden down in contemptible lowliness?

We worship a man who was born. What then—do you worship no man who was born? Not one, and another? Not innumerable others? Nay, have you not taken all those whom you now have in your temples from the number of mortals, and bestowed upon them heaven and the stars? For if by chance it has escaped you that they were of human lot and common condition: unroll the most ancient writings, and run through the works of those who, being near to antiquity, set forth all things in clear truth without any flattery. You will then assuredly learn by what fathers, by what mothers each of them was begotten, in what region they were born, of what people, what they did, performed, endured, and practised, what adverse and favorable fortunes they experienced in the discharge of their affairs.

But if, knowing that they were carried in wombs and lived on earthly food, you nonetheless cast in our teeth the worship of a man who was born: you are acting quite unjustly, in establishing as damnable in us what you yourselves also do; or in being unwilling that what you permit to be lawful for yourselves should likewise be lawful for others.

But let us grant, sometimes yielding our hand to your opinions, that Christ was one of us, of one mind, soul, body, frailty, and condition: is he not worthy to be called God and regarded as God by us, in gratitude for so many gifts?

For if you have enrolled Liber among the company of the divine because he discovered the use of wine, Ceres because of bread, Aesculapius because of herbs, Minerva because of the olive, Triptolemus because of the plough, and finally Hercules because he overcame and subdued wild beasts, thieves, and the nurses of many heads: with what great honors ought he to be regarded by us, who by instilling truth has led us away from great errors; who, as though we were blind and walking everywhere without any guide, has brought us back from precipices and byways to more level ground; who, as the most fruitful and salutary thing for the human race, has shown what God is, who he is, how great, and of what nature; who has permitted and taught us to grasp and understand his profound and ineffable depths, as far as our mediocrity was able; who has caused it to be most graciously known by what author, by what father this world was established and founded; who has set forth the manner of its birth, and the matter of it, never before known to anyone's understanding.

Whence the life-giving warmth of the sun's fire is derived. Why the moon, ever in motion, is believed to be harmless to living creatures, ever resuming light and darkness. What the origin of living creatures is, what principles their seeds possess. Who fashioned man himself, who formed him, or from what kind of material he confirmed the very construction of bodies. What sensation is, what the soul is, whether it flew to us of its own accord or was sown and generated together with the very viscera; whether it lives as a partaker of death, or has been endowed with the perpetuity of immortality. What condition awaits us when we have departed from our dissolved members. Whether we shall see, or whether our senses and recollection shall retain no memory of ourselves. Who restrained our arrogance, and caused necks raised high with pride to acknowledge the measure of their own weakness.

Who showed that we are shapeless living creatures, trusting in vain opinions: that we have nothing comprehended, know nothing, and do not see what is set before our very eyes. Who—surpassing and going beyond all gifts—has led us from false religions to the true religion. Who has lifted us from inert images formed from the vilest clay to the stars and heaven: and has caused us to mingle the words of supplications and the discourse of prayers with God, the Lord of all things.

I used to venerate, O blindness, not long ago, images just brought out from furnaces, gods fashioned on anvils and with hammers, the bones of elephants, paintings, ribbons on decaying trees: whenever I had seen a stone made smooth and soiled with olive oil, as though some present power dwelt in it, I would fawn upon it, address it, and beg benefits from a stock that felt nothing: and I was treating with grave insults those very divinities whom I had persuaded myself existed, since I believed them to be wood, stones, and bones, or to dwell in material of this kind. Now, led into the ways of truth by so great a teacher, I know what all these things are: I think worthy thoughts of worthy things, I do no insult to the divine name: and what is owed to each, whether person or head, I assign in unconfused degrees and authorities. Shall Christ therefore not be held by us as God?

And shall he who can in any case be conceived as the greatest of all not be honored with the worship of divinity—he from whom we who are alive have long since received such great gifts, and await greater ones when the day shall come?

But he died, fixed to a gibbet. What has that to do with the matter? For the quality and ugliness of his death does not alter what he said or did, nor will the authority of his teachings seem the less because he departed from the bonds of the body not by natural dissolution but perished by violence inflicted upon him. Pythagoras of Samos was burned alive in a temple on a suspicion of seeking tyranny: did the things he taught thereby lose their proper force, because he poured out his spirit not of his own will but under the assault of cruelty? Likewise Socrates, condemned by the judgment of his own city, was visited with capital punishment: were the things disputed by him concerning morals, virtues, and duties thereby made void, because he was driven from life by injustice?

Innumerable others, distinguished in glory, virtue, and esteem, experienced the most bitter forms of death, such as Aquilius, Trebonius, Regulus: were they therefore judged base after their lives, because they perished not by the common law of fate, but were torn apart and tortured by the most savage kind of death? No innocent person who has been wickedly slain is ever infamous: nor is one stained with any mark of disgrace who suffers heavy penalties not by his own desert but by the cruelty of his tormentor.

And yet, O you who laugh at us for worshipping a man who died an ignominious death, do you not yourselves honor Father Liber, torn limb from limb by the Titans, with the consecration of shrines? Did you not name Aesculapius, discoverer of medicines, after the penalties and punishment of the thunderbolt, guardian and president of health, soundness, and safety? Do you not invite with sacrifices, victims, and burning incense that great Hercules himself, whom you yourselves report to have been burned alive after his sufferings and cremated on a funeral pyre? Do you not, with the shouting of the Galli, testify that that Phrygian Attis, castrated and stripped of his manhood, is a propitious God, a holy God in the inner shrines of the Great Mother? Do you not say that father Romulus himself, torn apart by the hands of a hundred senators, is Quirinus of Mars, and honor him with priests and sacred couches, and worship him in the most magnificent temples, and after all this swear that he ascended to heaven?

Either, therefore, you too are to be laughed at, who think and worship as gods men put to death by the most grievous torments: or, if there is a sure reason why you think this ought to be done by you, permit us likewise to know by what causes and reasons we do this.

You worship a man who was born. Even if that were true, as has been said in the passages above, he ought nonetheless to be called and named God on account of the many and so generous gifts which have proceeded from him to us. But since he is God in certain reality, and without any ambiguity of doubt in any matter, do you think we are going to deny that he is worshipped by us in the highest degree, and named the guardian of our body? Will someone then cry out, furious, angry, and agitated: Is that Christ God? He is God, we shall reply, and God of the inner powers: and—what may torment the faithless with the most bitter pains—sent to us from the supreme King for the sake of a most great matter. He will perhaps demand, grown more insane and frenzied, that the matter be proved to be as we say.

There is no greater proof than the credibility of the deeds performed by him, than the novelty of his powers; than all the decrees of fate overcome and dissolved, which peoples and nations saw carried out under his light with none dissenting: which they themselves dare not charge with falsehood—they whose ancient or ancestral laws he showed to be most full of vanity and of the most empty superstition.

He will perhaps come forward again with those many other calumnious and childish words: he was a magician, he accomplished all those things by secret arts; he stole from the inner shrines of the Egyptians the names of powerful angels and remote disciplines. What are you saying, O little ones, chattering with the loquacity of a rash tongue about things unknown and uncomprehended by you? Were those deeds, then, the illusions of demons and the games of magical arts? Can you point out and show us from all those magicians who ever existed through the ages anyone who did anything similar to Christ even to a thousandth part—who without any force of incantations, without the juices of herbs and grasses, without any careful observance of sacred rites, libations, or times? For we do not press and ask what they profess to be able to do, or in what kinds of actions all their learning and experience is wont to be contained.

For who does not know that they either strive to foreknow impending events which come by their own ordinances whether they will or not; or to send deadly pestilence upon whomever they please; or to break apart the bonds of affection in households; or to open without keys what is shut; or to bind mouths with silence; or to weaken, urge on, or slow horses in races; or to cast upon the wives and children of others, whether they be male or female, the flames of forbidden love and frenzied desires? Or if they seem to dare anything useful, they can do it not by their own power but by the power of those they invoke.

But it is established that Christ, without any aids of things, without the observance or law of any rite, accomplished all those things he did by the power of his name. And what was proper, fitting, and worthy of the true God, he bestowed with the munificent liberality of his power—nothing harmful or injurious, but beneficial, salutary, and full of helping goods.

What are you saying again, O men! Was he then mortal, or one of us, whose command, whose voice uttered in common and everyday words, diseases, sicknesses, fevers, and other torments of bodies fled? Was he one of us, whose presence, whose sight that race of those with demons sunk in their vitals could not bear, and terrified by the new force, yielded up possession of their members? Was he one of us, to whose command foul skin-diseases obeyed, driven away at once, and left harmony of color in the defiled flesh? Was he one of us, at whose light touch flows of blood stood still and restrained their immoderate streaming? Was he one of us, from whom the waters of subcutaneous dropsy fled, that penetrating fluid withdrew, and swollen flesh subsided with healing dryness? Was he one of us, who commanded the lame to run?

That too was a matter of deed: to stretch out withered hands, and joints long immovably fixed were loosened; those seized in their limbs rose up and now carried their own beds on shoulders that a little before had been carried on others'; those deprived of the light of their eyes now beheld sky and daylight—born with no eyes at all.

There was one, I say, from among us, who healed a hundred persons vexed with various infirmities and diseases, or even more, all at once with a single intercession? At whose simple voice the raging and maddened seas spread themselves calm? The whirlwinds of storms and tempests grew still? Who carried his foot unwetted over the deepest gulfs? Who trod upon the back of the sea, while the very waves stood in wonder and nature submitted itself to his service? Who satisfied five thousand of those following him with five loaves, and, lest these things should seem to the unbelieving and hard-hearted to be illusions, heaped up the folds of twice six baskets with the fragments of the leavings? There was one from among us who commanded souls long since breathed out to return into their bodies, bade those buried in tombs come forth, and after the third day of burial to be freed from the wrappings of those who had prepared them?

There was one from among us who perceived what each person was turning over in his mind, what was contained in their hidden thoughts, looking through the silent hearts of men? There was one from among us who, when he uttered a single word, was reckoned by diverse peoples speaking in discordant tongues to be using familiar sounds of speech, each one hearing him in his own language? There was one from among us who, when he was delivering the rites of a certain religion to his followers, suddenly filled the whole world, and showed how great he was and who he was, by revealing the immensity of his name? There was one from among us who, having laid aside the body, disclosed himself to countless men in open light? Who gave speech and received it, taught, rebuked, admonished? Who, lest they should think him a false apparition of vain imaginings, showed himself once, again, and yet more often in familiar conversation?

Who even now appears to just men of undefiled life who love him, not through empty dreams, but through the appearance of pure simplicity? Whose name, when heard, puts noxious spirits to flight, imposes silence upon soothsayers, renders diviners without answers, frustrates the workings of arrogant magicians—not by the terror of the name, as you say, but by the authority of a greater power?

And these things, set forth in summary, we have not brought forward on the ground that the greatness of him who did them was to be discerned in these virtues alone. For however great these things are, they will be found to be of some slight account, and mere sport, if it should be made known from what kingdoms he came to us, and as the minister of what divine power he arrived. These things indeed were done and performed by him, not that he might boast himself with vain ostentation, but that hard and unbelieving men might know that what was promised was not false, and might from the kindness of his works already begin to suspect what the true God was. At the same time we wish this also to be known: when the enumeration of his deeds has been made in summary, as was said, it was not only those things which he did that Christ was able to do, but he also surpassed the decrees of fate.

For if, as is clear and established, infirmities and sufferings of bodies—deafness, lameness, muteness, the contraction of sinews, and the loss of sight—befall men and are inflicted by the decrees of fate, and Christ alone corrected, restored, and healed these things, it is clearer than the sun itself that he was more powerful than the fates, since he dissolved and conquered what had been bound by perpetual chains and immovable necessity.

But in vain, says some unknown objector, do you attribute so much to Christ, since we know and have known that other gods too have often both given remedies to many who were suffering, and healed the diseases and ailments of many men. I do not inquire, I do not demand, what God, or at what time, aided whom, or restored what broken person to health: I desire only to hear whether, without the addition of any material—that is, of any medicine—he commanded diseases to fly away from men at a touch; whether he ordered and caused the source of ailments to die, and the bodies of the infirm to return to their natural state.

For Christ is known to have opened the ears of the deaf either by laying his hand upon the afflicted parts or by the command of a simple word, to have driven blindness from eyes, to have given speech to the mute, to have loosened the bonds of joints, to have given the power of walking to the lame, to have been accustomed to heal by word and command skin-diseases, scrofula, dropsy, and all other kinds of ailments which some harsh cruelty willed that human bodies should endure. What similar thing have all the gods done, by whom you say help was brought to the sick and those in peril?

If at any time, as report has it, they either granted medicine to some, or ordered some food to be taken, or a draught of some quality to be drunk, or the juices of herbs and grasses to be applied to troublesome causes, or ordered walking, or rest, or abstinence from something harmful—that this is no great thing, nor worthy of any stupor of admiration, is plain enough, if you will take the trouble to consider: physicians also heal in this way the creature born upon the earth, a creature not confused by the truth of knowledge, but placed in a conjectural art and wavering in the estimates of guesswork. But there is no virtue in removing by medicines what is harmful: these benefits belong to the properties of things, not to the powers of those who heal; and, granted that it is praiseworthy to know by what medicine or art each person should be treated, the place of this praise is established not in God but in man.

For it is no disgrace for man to have improved a person's health by means of things taken from without: it is unbecoming for God not to be able to act through himself alone, but to furnish health and soundness by the aids of external things.

And since you compare the benefits of salvation given by other divine powers and by Christ: how many thousands of infirm persons do you wish us to show you, how many afflicted with wasting diseases, who obtained no remedy at all, though they went as suppliants through all the temples, though prostrated before the faces of the gods they swept the very thresholds with their kisses, though they wearied Aesculapius himself—the giver, as they proclaim, of health—as long as life remained to them, both with prayers and with the most wretched vows? Do we not know that some died together with their afflictions, that others grew old in the torments of their diseases, that others began to be worse off after they had spent days and nights in continual prayers and in the expectation of divine mercy? What profit is it then to point out one or perhaps two who were healed, when no one came to the aid of so many thousands, and all the shrines are full of the wretched and the unfortunate?

Unless perhaps you say that help is brought by the gods to the good, and the miseries of the wicked are disregarded. Yet Christ came to the aid of good and evil alike: nor was anyone repulsed who sought help against harsh circumstances and the injuries of fortune. For this is the property of the true God and of royal power—to deny his kindness to none, and not to reckon who deserves it or who does not: since natural weakness makes a man a sinner, not the choice of will or judgment. Moreover, to say that help is brought by the gods to the suffering according to their merits is to place in the middle and make doubtful what you assert: so that he who is made well may seem to have been saved by chance, and he who is not, may be believed to have been unable to drive out his ailment not for lack of merit but through weakness, without any divine intervention.

What of this—that those virtues which have been set forth by us in summary, not as the greatness of the matter demanded, were not only accomplished by him through his own power, but, what was more sublime, he permitted many others to experience and perform them with the invocation of his name? For when he saw that you were going to be abrogators of the deeds performed by him and of his divine work, lest any suspicion should arise that he had bestowed those gifts and benefits by magical arts, from that immense multitude of people which followed his grace in admiration, he chose fishermen, craftsmen, country folk, and the like of the uneducated, who, sent through various nations, might accomplish all those miracles without any tricks or aids. By a word he restrained the torments of festering limbs, and they too by a word restrained the torments of raging sufferings.

By a single command he drove demons from bodies and restored their senses to the lifeless: those who bore themselves under similar afflictions were likewise restored to health and soundness by no other command. He wiped away the marks of whitening skin-diseases by laying on his hand: they too restored the features of bodies by a not dissimilar touch. He commanded watery and swollen organs to recover their natural dryness: and his servants in like manner checked wandering waters and bade them flow away from the destruction of bodies along their proper channels. He restrained within the space of a single word immense ulcers of the mouth that refused to endure healing, cutting off their spread: and they likewise compelled the stubbornness of savage cancer to submit to scarring by circumscribed incisions.

He gave the power of walking to the lame, sight to blind eyes, called back the dead to life: and these men too relaxed the contraction of sinews, filled eyes with light already lost, and commanded the dead to return from their tombs by reversing the funeral rites. And there is nothing that was done by him to the wonder and amazement of all, which he did not entirely grant to those humble and rustic men to do, and subject to their power.

What say you, O unbelieving, stubborn, hard minds? Did that Capitoline Jupiter give such power to any mortal? Did he bestow this right upon a Curio, or a Pontifex Maximus, or even upon the flamen dialis, by whom he is a god? I will not say to raise the dead, not to restore sight to the blind, not to give back the arrangement of limbs to the enfeebled and the dissolved: but to suppress a pustule, a hangnail, a pimple, either by the command of the voice or by the touch of the hand. Was that then human, or could such a right be given, such a license proceed, from a mouth nourished on earthly dung—and not divine and sacred? Or, if the matter admits of any superlative, more than divine and sacred?

For if you yourself do what you are able to do, and it is in keeping with your strength and power, admiration has nothing to exclaim at; for you will have done what you were able, and what your power ought to have furnished, so that the quality of the work and of the worker himself would be one and the same. But to be able to transfer your right to a man, to bestow upon the most fragile of things what you alone can do, to make it something to be shared in the doing—this belongs to a power set above all things, which holds within itself the causes of all things and the natures of their principles and capacities.

Come now, let there come from beyond the fiery zone some magician from the inner world—Zoroaster, if we are to agree with Hermippus as our authority. Let that Bactrian also come, whose deeds Ctesias sets forth in the first book of his histories; Hostanes the Armenian, grandson and intimate of Pamphylus of Cyrus; Apollonius, Damigerus, and Dardanus, Velus, Julianus, and Babulus, and whoever else is said to have held the first place and renown in such arts of illusion: let them permit one from among the common people to shape the mouths of the mute for the function of giving speech, to unseal the ears of the deaf, to restore the natures of eyes to those born without sight, and to bring back sensation and life to limbs long since cold.

Or, if this is too arduous a thing, and they cannot grant to others the powers of such works, let them do it themselves, and let them do it with their own rites—whatever the bosoms of the earth nourish of harmful herbs, whatever power is contained in that muttering of words and the compulsions of charms attached to them, we do not begrudge it, let them add it, we do not forbid it, let them gather it. It is our pleasure to put to the test and to recognize whether they can accomplish with their gods what was habitually done by rustic Christians with bare commands.

Cease, O you who do not know, to turn such great things into slanders—things that will do no harm to him who did them, but will bring danger upon yourselves: danger, I say, not small, but set in matters of the highest and most surpassing importance. For the soul is a precious thing, and nothing can be found more dear to a man than himself. Nothing, as I recall, was magical, nothing human, illusory, or deceitful, nothing of fraud lay hidden in Christ—though you may mock as is your custom and dissolve yourselves in the wantonness of laughter. He was a sublime God, God from the deepest root, God from unknown kingdoms, and as a saviour was sent from the first principle of all things: whom neither the sun itself, nor any stars, if they have feeling, nor rulers, nor princes of the world, nor finally the great gods, nor those who by feigning themselves gods terrify the whole race of mortals, were able to know or even to suspect whence or who he was. And rightly so.

But when, stripped of the body which he carried about in a small part of himself, he suffered himself to be seen and it became known whose he was and of what greatness, all the elements of the universe were disturbed and thrown into confusion by the novelty of events: the earth moved and trembled, the sea was stirred up from its depths, the air was wrapped in masses of darkness, the fiery orb of the sun grew stiff with its heat cooled. For what remained to happen, after that one was recognized as God who had long been judged to be one of us?

But you do not believe these things were done. But those who saw them happen and witnessed them taking place before their own eyes—the best witnesses and most certain authorities—both believed them themselves, and handed them down to us their posterity as things to be believed, with no slight proofs. Who these are, you perhaps ask. Nations, peoples, races, and that unbelieving human kind: which, unless the matter had been open and clearer, as the saying goes, than the light itself, would never have lent the assent of its belief to things of this sort. But shall we say that the men of that time were so vain, lying, foolish, and brutish as to pretend they had seen what they had never seen? And to hand down by false testimonies, or confirm by childish assertion, things that had not happened at all? And that when they could have lived in harmony with you and maintained untroubled relations, they took upon themselves gratuitous hatreds and were held in execrable repute?

But if that history of events is false, as you say, how has the whole world been filled with this religion in so brief a time, or how could peoples separated by regions, divided by winds and the curvatures of the sky, come together into one mind? Were they enticed by assertive trifles, led into empty hopes, and did they willingly throw themselves into dangers to their lives with reckless desperation: when they had seen nothing of such a kind as could stir them to these new forms of worship by its miracle? Nay rather, because they saw all these things both performed by him himself, and by his heralds, who were sent throughout the whole world and brought the benefits of the Father to the souls and persons of men to be rewarded: overcome by the very force of truth, they gave themselves to God; nor did they count it a great loss to cast their bodies before you and offer their flesh to be torn.

But our writers have set forth these things falsely, have magnified small deeds to an immense degree, and have spread narrow matters with a sufficiently ambitious proclamation. And yet would that all things could have been committed to writing, both what was done by him himself, and what was accomplished by his heralds with equal right and power. So great a force of virtues would make you still more incredulous, or perhaps you might find a place where it would seem most like the truth that additions had been made to the facts, and that falsehoods had been inserted into the writings and records.

But neither could all the deeds done among unknown peoples, who had no knowledge of the use of letters, be written down or reach the ears of all; or, if any have been committed to letters and writings, by the malice of demons—whose care and zeal it is to intercept this truth—and of men like unto them, certain things have been interpolated and added, partly altered and taken away in words and syllables, so as both to slow the faith of the prudent and to corrupt the authority of the deeds. But may it never go well with those who would have it that what Christ was is gathered from the testimonies of letters: letters which were sent for this one purpose alone, that, if the things we say are established as true, he may be shown by the confession of all to have been God.

You do not believe our writings; and we do not believe your writings. We fabricate falsehoods about Christ; and you boast of empty and false things about your gods. For no god has fallen from heaven, nor set your affairs in order with his own hands, nor in like manner disparaged our affairs and religion. These things were written by men; and those things likewise were written by men, set forth in mortal speech; and whatever you intend to say against our writers, take and hold those same words as said with equal weight against your own. You wish the things contained in your writings to be true; and you must confess that the things recorded in our writings are likewise true. You charge our matters with falsehood; and we charge your matters with falsehood. But our writings are more ancient, you say, and therefore most full of trustworthiness and truth.

As if antiquity were not the most prolific mother of errors, and as if it had not itself given birth to those things which fashioned the most shameful marks upon the gods in disgraceful fables. For could falsehoods not be heard and believed ten thousand years ago? Or is it not most like the truth that credibility resides more in those who are neighbors and near at hand than in those separated by the distance of great spaces? For the latter are affirmed by witnesses, the former by opinions; and it is far more likely that there is less fiction in recent things than in those buried in ancient obscurity.

But they were written by unlearned and unpolished men, and therefore ought not to be believed upon easy hearing. Consider whether this may not rather be a stronger reason why those writings are tainted with no falsehoods, being set forth by a simple mind, ignorant of how to embellish with allurements. The language is common and plain. For truth has never pursued adornment, nor does that which is tested and certain suffer itself to be led about through the longer circuit of speech. Syllogisms, enthymemes, definitions, and all those ornaments by which credibility is sought for an assertion, aid those who are in doubt; they do not demonstrate the lineaments of truth. Moreover, he who knows what that is which is being said neither defines, nor draws conclusions, nor pursues those other artifices of words by which hearers are accustomed to be caught and led to assent to a matter by the necessity of circumlocution.

Your writings, he says, are riddled with barbarisms and solecisms, and polluted with the deformity of faults. A truly childish and narrow-minded reproach; which, if we were to admit as true, we should cast out from our use certain kinds of fruits, because they grow with thorns and other refuse which can neither nourish us nor yet prevent us from enjoying that which is principally foremost and which nature willed to be most wholesome for us. For what harm does it do, I ask, or what slowness does it bring to the understanding, whether something is expressed smoothly or with rough harshness? Whether what should be accented is inflected, or what should be inflected is accented? Or how is that which is said any less true, if there is an error in number, or case, preposition, participle, or conjunction?

Let that pomp of speech, and discourse sent through the rules, be reserved for assemblies, lawsuits, the forum, and courts of law, and let it be given to those who, seeking the blandishments of pleasures, have directed all their study toward the embellishments of words. When the subject matter is treated apart from display, what is said must be regarded, not with what elegance it is said; nor what may soothe the ears, but what utilities it brings to its hearers: especially since we know that even some devoted to wisdom have not only cast aside the cultivation of speech, but have also, when they could have spoken more ornately and copiously, deliberately followed a common plainness, lest they should corrupt the rigor of gravity and rather parade themselves with sophistical ostentation. Indeed it is the mark of a dissolute mind to seek pleasure in serious matters; and when your business is with those who are ill and ailing, to pour sweeter sounds into their ears rather than to apply medicine to their wounds.

Although, if you look at the truth, no speech is by nature correct, and likewise none is faulty. For what natural principle is there, or what law written in the constitution of the world, that this should be called paries and that sella? Since they have no sexes distinguished into female and male genders, nor can even the most learned man teach me what hic and haec themselves are, or why one of these designates the male sex, and that which follows is applied to female genders. These are human conventions, and not at all necessary for all in the making of speech; for perhaps haec paries and hic sella could have been said without any reproach, if it had pleased people to say so from the beginning, and had been preserved in common speech by succeeding ages. And yet, O you who charge our writings with pollution by the foulness of faults: do you not have these very absurdities in your great and admirable books? Does not one of you say haec utria, another hos utres? Coelus and coelum?

Likewise filus and filum? Likewise crocus and crocum? Likewise fretus and fretum? Is it not likewise found among you: hoc pane and hic panis, hic sanguinis and hoc sanguen? Candelabrum and jugulum, and by the same reasoning jugulus and candelaber? For if individual nouns cannot have more than one gender each, nor can the same noun be of this gender and of that—for one gender cannot pass over into another—then he who pronounces masculine genders by feminine rules errs just as much as he who places masculine articles before feminine genders. And yet we observe you setting forth masculine things in a feminine manner, and feminine things in a masculine manner, and those which you call neuter, in both this and that way without any distinction.

Either, therefore, there is no fault in using these indifferently, and you call us deformed by the obscenity of solecisms in vain; or if it is certain that individual things must be expressed by the rules proper to them, you too are involved in similar faults: although you may have all the Epicadiuses, Caeselliuses, Verriuses, Scauruses, and Nisuses.

But if Christ was God, they say, why did he appear in the form of a man? And why was he put to death after the manner of men? Could that invisible power, having no corporeal substance, have introduced and accommodated itself to the world, been present at the assemblies of mortals, in any other way than by assuming some covering of more solid matter, which could receive the gaze of eyes, and upon which the sight of the most sluggish contemplation could fix itself? For who among mortals could have been able to see him, who could have discerned him, if he had wished to present himself to the earth such as his primordial nature is, and such as he himself willed to be in his own quality or name?

He therefore assumed the form of a man, and enclosed his power under the likeness of our kind, so that he could be seen and beheld; that he might speak and teach; and carry out all those things for the doing of which he had come into the world, the command and disposition of the supreme King being preserved.

For what, you say, could not the supreme King accomplish the things he had decreed to be done in the world without a simulated man? If it had been necessary for it to be done as you say, he would perhaps have done it thus; because it was not necessary, he did it otherwise. Why he willed it in this way and did not will it in that manner—the reasons lie hidden, wrapped up in such a way and scarcely comprehensible to anyone; which perhaps you could have received, had you not long since been prepared not to receive them, and had you not formed your face toward unbelief before that which you might know and seek to hear had been set before you.

But he was put to death after the manner of a man. Not he himself; for the fall of death cannot befall divine things, nor can that which is one and simple, and compounded by no gathering of parts, dissolve away in the dissolution of destruction. Who then is seen to hang upon the gibbet, who died? The man whom he had put on and carried about with himself. It is incredible to say, and wrapped in blind obscurities—if you wish it so; it is not blind, and is placed in close proximity to likeness. If at the time when the prophetic Sibyl, uttering those oracles, poured them forth full of the power of Apollo, as you say, she had been slain and destroyed by impious robbers: would Apollo be said to have been slain in her?

If Bacis, if Helenus, if Martius, and other seers similarly prophesying had been deprived of life and light: would anyone say that those who spoke through their mouths and unfolded the ways of things to those who asked had been extinguished by the law of humanity? That death of which you speak was the death of the name assumed, not of him himself; of the thing borne, not of the bearer; which he would not have submitted to suffer even that, had there not been so great a matter to be accomplished, and an inexplicable reason of fate to be laid open through the unlocking of sealed mysteries.

What are these sealed and obscure mysteries, you will say, which neither men nor even those who are called gods of the world can touch in any part by conjecture and opinion, save those whom he himself has deigned to endow with the gifts of so great a knowledge, and to lead into the hidden recesses of the inner treasury? For you see, if he had not wished any hand to be laid upon him by anyone, he would have had to strive with the utmost effort to restrain his enemies from himself, either by a reversal of power. He who had restored sight to the blind—if he had needed to do so, could he not have made men blind? He who had given wholeness to the crippled—did he find it difficult or laborious to render men crippled? He who made the lame walk—did he not know how to bind the movements of limbs with the hardness of sinews?

He who drew the dead from their tombs—would it have been hard for him to inflict death upon whomever he wished? But because the reason of those things which had been destined demanded that it be done thus; and here in the world itself, and in no other manner than as it was accomplished, that inestimable and incredible gentleness, counting the injuries of men against himself as childish follies, suffered hands to be stretched out against itself by savage robbers, and did not think it worth reckoning what their audacity had perpetrated, provided only that it might show its own people what they ought to expect from it. For when the adversary, teacher, and author of evil spoke much against the perils of souls, he directed his own laws and ordinances to the ends of fitting duties: did he not break down the deeds of pride? Did he not extinguish the flames of lusts? Did he not compress the gaping maw of greed?

Did he not wrest weapons from hands, and cut off all the seeds of every kind of vice? And finally, was he not himself gentle, not placid, not easy of approach, not familiar in address, not grieving over human miseries—he who, pitying with that one benevolence all who were afflicted with crosses and bodily ills, restored and returned them all to health?

What then compels you, what urges you to speak evil, to revile, to enter into implacable enmities against one whom no man can convict, whom no man can hold guilty of any crime?

Your tyrants and kings, who, setting aside all fear of the gods, plunder and despoil the votive offerings and temples: who strip cities of their nobility through proscriptions, exiles, and slaughters: who with licentious violence undermine and tear away the chastity of matrons and virgins, you call indigetes and divine: and those whom it would have been fitting for you to assail with sharper hatred, you honor with couches, altars, temples, and other forms of worship, with games and the celebration of their birthdays: and likewise all those who in writings of many kinds tear at public morals with biting reproaches: who cut, burn, and wash away your luxuries and your lives: who spread the marks of their own age to posterity through the permanence of their writings: who persuade men that wives ought to be held in common: who lie with beautiful, wanton, naked boys: who proclaim you to be cattle, runaways, exiles, slaves of the vilest brand, madmen and lunatics: these you lift up in admiration and applause to the stars of heaven: you store them away in the inner chambers of libraries: you number them among chariots and statues, and as far as lies in your power you endow them with a kind of eternity, through the testimony of immortal titles: Christ alone you are able to tear apart, to rend, if he be God, or rather, if it were permitted, to devour him alone in the manner of wild beasts of the field, with bloody mouths, swallowing him down crushed together with his bones.

For what merit, I ask, tell me, for the guilt of what sin? What has he committed that would bend the course of right, and stir you with furious goads into bitter hatred? Because he declared that he had been sent as guardian of your souls from the king on high alone: because he offered you immortality, which you are confident you possess, persuaded by the assertions of a few men? But if it were certain among you that he speaks falsehood, that he promises utterly vain hopes, even so I do not see that there was cause why you ought to hate him, why you ought to condemn him with hostile judgment; nay, if your spirit had been gentle and mild, you ought for that very reason alone to have embraced him, because he pledged you things desirable and prosperous: because he was a messenger of good tidings: because he proclaimed things that would wound no man's heart: because he would fill you with a more secure expectation.

O ungrateful and impious age! O age prepared for its own private ruin with incredible obstinacy of heart! If some physician had come to you from distant regions never known to you, promising a remedy of such a kind as would ward off from your bodies absolutely all kinds of diseases and ailments: would you not all have run together in rivalry? Would you not, cherishing him with all manner of flattery and honors, have received him within your familiar walls? Would you not have wished that kind of remedy to be most certain, to be true, which pledged that you would be free from so many countless afflictions of the body even to the last bounds of life? And even if the matter were doubtful, would you not have committed yourselves, and not hesitated to drink an unknown potion, inflamed by the hope of health set before you and by love of safety? Christ shone forth and appeared, the herald of a most great matter, bearing a favorable omen and a saving proclamation to those who believe.

What cruelty is this, what so great inhumanity, or rather, to speak more truly, what disdainful arrogance, not only to rend with verbal abuse the herald and bearer of so great a gift, but also to pursue him with heavy war and with all the volleys and assaults of weapons? Do the things he says not please you, and are they heard by you with offense? Reckon them as foolish prophecies. Does he speak most stupid things and promise fatuous gifts? Laugh, as wise men that you are, and leave his folly to wallow in its own errors. What is this savagery, to repeat what has been said many times, what so murderous a lust, to declare inexpiable war against one who has done you no wrong?

To wish, if it were granted, to tear through the entrails of one who not only has brought no harm to any man, but who, equally benevolent even toward enemies, would tell them what salvation was being brought to them from God the prince: what needed to be done, that they might flee destruction and attain immortality unknown to them? And when the novelty of the matter and the unheard-of promise troubled the minds of those who heard, and caused their belief to waver: the Lord of all virtues and the destroyer of death itself permitted his man to be slain, so that from the events that followed they might know that their hopes were safe, the hopes they had long since received concerning the salvation of souls, and that they could not avoid the peril of death by any other means.

At this point, if any opportunity could be granted, I would wish, with all those to whom the name of Christ is hateful, turning aside for a little while from the defense I have principally undertaken, to mingle such words as these. If you think it no affront to make some reply when questioned, set forth and tell us what the matter is, what the reason is, that you assail Christ with such grievous wars? Or what offenses of his do you harbor, that at the mention of his name you boil over with the ardors of raging hearts? Has he, claiming royal power for himself, occupied the whole circle of the earth with most hostile legions, and destroyed and removed some nations that were at peace from the beginning, and compelled others to obey him with necks brought under the yoke? Has he, burning with the fires of avarice, claimed for the ownership of his possession all those riches with which the human race strives earnestly to fill itself?

Has he, driven by the desires of lust, broken by force the barriers of chastity, or stealthily laid snares against the marriages of others? Has he, swollen with the arrogance of pride, inflicted injuries and insults everywhere without distinction of any person? If he were not worthy that you ought to listen to him and believe him: yet for this very reason alone he ought not to have been spurned by you, that he pointed out to you things wholesome, that he wished for you ways to heaven and the blessings of immortality. So that he might not have extended to all alike both the light of life and removed the peril of ignorance?

But he is worthy of hatred, because he drove religion from the world, because he forbade access to the worship of the gods? Is he then charged as the destroyer of religion and the author of impiety, who introduced true religion into the world? Who opened the doors of piety to men who were blind, and truly living in impiety, and pointed out to whom they should submit themselves? Is there any religion more true, more dutiful, more powerful, more just, than to know God the prince, to know how to supplicate God the prince, who alone is the head and source of all good things, and equally the founder and creator of everlasting things, by whom all things earthly and all things heavenly are animated and watered with vital motion: and who, if he were not, there would assuredly be no thing that bore any name or substance? Unless perhaps you doubt whether he of whom we speak is the ruler: and you believe rather that Apollo is, or Diana, Mercury, Mars.

Give a boy as judge: and surveying all these things which we see, he will sooner doubt whether the other gods exist, than hesitate concerning God, whom we all know by nature to exist: whether when we cry out, O God, or when we call him as witness against the wicked, and as though he beholds us, we lift our face to heaven.

But he forbade men to supplicate the lesser gods. For the lesser gods, do you know who they are or where they are? Has any suspicion or mention of them ever touched you, so that you rightly take it ill that their worship has been abolished and they have been deprived of the sharing of honor? But if mental pride, and that which is called by the Greeks typhus, did not stand in your way and hinder you, you could long since have known what he forbade to be done, within what bounds he wished true religion to stand, what peril would arise for you from what you supposed to be an act of devotion, and from what evils you would emerge, if you renounced the deceitful error.

But all these things will be recalled more fully and plainly when we have been carried further along. For we shall show that Christ did not teach impiety to the nations, but rescued the imprudence of wretched men from the worst of robbers. We do not believe, you say, that what he says is true. What then? The things which you deny to be true, are they clear among you, when things imminent and not yet void can be refuted by no arguments? But he himself also does not prove what he promises. So it is. For, as I have said, no proof of future things can come into existence. Since therefore this is the condition of future things, that they can be grasped and comprehended by no anticipatory touch: is it not the purer reasoning, of two things uncertain and hanging in ambiguous expectation, to believe rather that which bears some hope, than that which bears none at all?

For in the former there is no danger, if what is said to be imminent proves void and empty: in the latter there is the greatest loss, that is, the loss of salvation, if when the time has come, it is revealed that it was no falsehood.

What do you say, O you who are ignorant, and most worthy even of weeping and compassion? Do you not fear lest perhaps these things be true which are objects of contempt to you and furnish matter for laughter? Do you not at least revolve within yourselves in hidden thoughts, lest what you refuse with obstinate perversity to believe this day, a later time may convict you of, and irrevocable repentance chastise? Do not even these arguments at least produce faith in you for believing: that already throughout all lands in so brief and short a time the mysteries of this immense thing have been spread abroad? That there is now no nation of such barbarous custom and ignorant of gentleness that has not, turned by love of him, softened its harshness, and passed into peaceful sentiments with tranquility embraced? That orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, experts in law and medicine, and even those who search out the secrets of philosophy, endowed with such great talents, seek out these teachings, having despised those in which they trusted a little before?

That slaves prefer to be subjected by their masters to whatever torments they may determine, wives to be dissolved from their marriages, children to be disinherited by their parents, rather than break the Christian faith and lay down the sacraments of the saving service? That when so many kinds of punishments are proposed by you for those who follow the laws of this religion, the matter grows rather, and the people more boldly resist all threats and the prohibitions of terrors, and is stirred to zeal for believing by the very goads of prohibition? Do you believe that these things happen everywhere and to no purpose, that these minds are seized by chance encounters? Is this not divine and sacred, or can such great conversions of souls come about without God, so that when executioners' hooks and countless other torments, as we have said, hang over those who are to believe, they receive the known teachings as though seized by a certain sweetness and love of all virtues, and prefer the friendship of Christ to all things in the world?

Unless perhaps those seem to you dull and foolish who throughout the whole world now conspire and come together in assent to this belief.

What then? Do you alone, steeped in wisdom and the pure force of understanding, see something else and something deep? Do you alone understand that all these things are trifles, do you alone see that they are words and childish follies, the things which we promise ourselves as coming from the king on high? Whence, I ask, has so much wisdom been handed down to you? Whence so much keenness and quickness? Or from what disciplines of knowledge were you able to take up so much understanding, to draw so much power of divination? Because you know how to decline words and nouns through their cases and tenses, because you know how to avoid barbarisms and solecisms, because you yourselves know how to produce speech that is rhythmical, well-ordered, and well-composed, or know it when it is inelegant; because they haunt the Fornix of Lucilius and the Marsyas of Pomponius.

You hold in memory by heart; because you know what the rules in lawsuits are, how many kinds of cases there are, how many of pleadings, what genus is, what species, by what reasoning the opposite is distinguished from the contrary: for this reason you think you know what is false, what is true, what can or cannot come to pass: what the nature of the lowest and highest things is? Has that common saying never struck your ears, that the wisdom of man is foolishness before God? First, you yourselves look deeply into yourselves, whenever you dispute about obscure matters and proceed to unlock the secrets of nature, and the very things which you say, which you assert, which you very often defend with mortal contention, you do not know, and each man defends his own suspicions as things proved and grasped, with stubborn resistance?

For what, if we look at the truth, even if all ages were spent in the investigation of things, can we know through ourselves—we whom some jealousy, I know not what, has brought forth and fashioned so blind and so proud, that, though we know nothing at all, we yet deceive ourselves, and are lifted up into the opinion of knowledge by the swelling of a puffed-up breast? For, to pass over divine things and matters sunk in natural obscurity, can any mortal explain that which Socrates himself in the Phaedo could not comprehend? What man is, or whence he is—uncertain, various, changeable, deceitful, manifold, multiform? For what purposes he has been brought forth? By whose ingenuity he was devised? What he does in the world? Why he experiences such great swarms of evils? Whether the earth, transformed by the rottenness of some slime, animated him as it does worms, as it does mice? Or whether these outlines of body and face received their form from the hand of some moulder and maker?

Can one know, I say, these things set in the midst and established in the common senses—by what causes we are plunged into sleep, by what we awake, by what means dreams come about, by what visions? Nay, what Plato doubts in the Theaetetus, whether we are ever awake, or whether what is called waking is itself a portion of perpetual sleep? And what we seem to be doing when we say we see in a dream? Whether we see by the projection of rays and light, or whether images of things fly toward us and settle in our pupils? Whether taste resides in things, or is produced by contact with the palate? From what causes hairs lay aside their inborn blackness, and not all alike at once, but gradually, by addition, grow white? What it is that causes all humors to form one body by their mixture, yet oil alone refuses to suffer immersion into itself, but always gathers itself transparently into its own impenetrable nature?

Finally, the soul itself, which is declared by you to be immortal and a God—why is it sick in the sick, dull in infants, exhausted in old age, delirious and foolish and insane? The wretchedness of whose weakness and ignorance is the more pitiable in this, that while it may happen that we sometimes say something true, even this itself is uncertain to us, whether we have said anything true.

And since you are accustomed to mock our faith, and to tear apart that very credulity with jesting witticisms, tell me, O you witty ones, steeped and saturated with the undiluted draught of wisdom—is there any laborious and active kind of work in life which those who undertake it do not take up, assume, and approach with faith going before? You travel abroad, you sail: do you not, trusting that you will return home after your business is completed? You cleave the earth with iron and fill it with a variety of seeds: do you not, trusting that you will gather a harvest in the succession of seasons? You join conjugal partnerships: do you not, trusting that they will be chaste and faithful to the bond of dutiful wedlock toward husbands? You receive the offspring of children: do you not, trusting that they will be safe and will come through the stages of age to the goal of old age?

You commit the ailments of bodies to the hands of physicians: do you not, trusting that diseases can be soothed with their harshness mitigated? You wage wars against enemies: do you not, trusting that you will carry off victory through the succession of battles? You venerate and worship the gods: do you not, trusting that they exist and lend propitious ears to your supplications?

What of those things concerning matters set apart from human knowledge, which you yourselves write, which you read repeatedly—did you see them with direct inspection and hold them handled in your hands? Does not each one of you believe this or that author? Does not each one guard, as by a certain pledge of faith, what he has persuaded himself is truly said by another? He who says the origin of all things is fire or water—does he not believe Thales or Heraclitus? He who places the cause in numbers—does he not believe Pythagoras of Samos, does he not believe Archytas? He who divides the soul and establishes incorporeal forms—does he not believe Plato the Socratic? He who applies a fifth element to the primary causes—does he not believe Aristotle, father of the Peripatetics? He who threatens the world with fire, and that when the time comes it will burn—does he not believe Panaetius, Chrysippus, Zeno? He who always constructs and destroys worlds out of indivisible bodies—does he not believe Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus?

He who holds that nothing can be comprehended by man and that all things are wrapped in blind obscurities—does he not believe Arcesilaus, Carneades? Does he not believe some devotee of the Old or the New Academy?

Finally, do not the very founders and fathers of the aforementioned sects themselves say the very things they say, believed on their own conjectures? For did Heraclitus see that things come to be through the transformations of fires? Thales, through the condensation of waters? Pythagoras, that they proceed from number? Plato, the incorporeal forms? Democritus, the collisions of indivisible bodies? Or do those who maintain that nothing at all can be comprehended know whether what they say is true; or do they understand that the very pronouncement they make is one of truth? Since, therefore, you have nothing established and known, and all those things which you write and comprise in thousands of books you assert with credulity as your guide—what manner of judgment is this, so unjust, that you mock our faith, which you can see that you hold in common with us in our credulity? But you believe in wise men, instructed in all kinds of disciplines?

Those, namely, who know nothing and pronounce nothing as one; who wage wars with their opponents on behalf of their own opinions and always fight with hostile stubbornness; who, as each overturns, destroys, and tears apart the decrees of the other, have made all things uncertain, and have shown by their very disputation that nothing can be known.

But let these things hinder nothing and stand in the way of nothing; let them not at all prevent you from believing and hearkening to them. And what is it that in this matter you have more, or we less? You believe in Plato, you believe in Cronius, you believe in Numenius, or in whomever you please: we believe and acquiesce in Christ. How great is this injustice, that when both sides stand by their authorities, and believing is one and the same thing shared between us and you—you wish it to be granted to you to receive what is thus said by them; yet you are unwilling to hear and consider what is set forth by Christ? And yet if we wish to weigh causes against causes, parts against parts: we are better able to show what we followed in Christ than you are to show what you followed in the philosophers.

And indeed we followed in him these things: those magnificent works and most powerful deeds of power which he displayed and exhibited through various miracles, by which anyone could be brought to the necessity of belief and faithfully judge that what was done was not the work of a man, but of some divine and unknown power. What virtues did you follow in the philosophers, that you ought rather to have believed them than us Christ? Which of them was ever able by a single word, or by the command of a single order—I will not say to restrain and check the raging of the sea or the fury of storms; not to restore sight to the blind or give it to those born without sight; not to call back the dead to life; not to dissolve long-standing afflictions—but, which is far the slightest thing, to heal a boil, a rash, or a thorn embedded in a callus by a single prohibition?

Not that I deny them to be praiseworthy for integrity of character, or not versed in every kind of study and discipline: for we know that they speak with most brilliant words and flow with polished compositions; that they construct syllogisms most acutely; that they arrange their inductions in orderly sequence; that they render formulas by definitions, classify, divide; that they say much about the kinds of numbers; much about music; that they explain geometrical matters also by their own principles and precepts. But what has this to do with the matter? Do enthymemes, syllogisms, and other such things pledge that they know the truth; or are they on that account worthy to be necessarily believed concerning the most obscure matters? The comparison of persons is to be weighed not by the force of eloquence, but by the virtue of deeds performed. He is not to be called a good authority who has put forth speech in a polished manner: but he who follows up what he promises with the guarantee of divine works.

You bring forward to us arguments and the subtleties of conjectures: if Christ himself—with his peace and with his pardon let me say this—were to use these in an assembly of peoples, who would acquiesce, who would listen, who would promise openly to judge anything? Or who, though he were imprudent and of foolish credulity, would follow one casting about empty and bare words? The mighty works set before the eyes, and that unheard-of manner of things, whether wrought openly by himself or celebrated throughout the whole world by his heralds—these kindled the flames of desire, and caused nations and peoples, and nations most unlike in character, to run together with one mind to the assent of a single belief.

For those things which were done in India, among the Seres, Persians, and Medes; in Arabia, Egypt; in Asia, Syria; among the Galatians, Parthians, Phrygians; in Achaia, Macedonia, Epirus; in all the islands and provinces which the rising and setting sun surveys; and finally in Rome herself, their mistress—in which, though men were occupied with the arts of King Numa and ancient superstitions, they did not delay to leave their ancestral customs and to unite themselves with Christian truth—these things can be enumerated and brought into the reckoning. For they had seen the chariot of Simon Magus and his fiery four-horse team dispersed by the mouth of Peter, and vanished at the naming of Christ. They had seen, I say, one who trusted in false gods and was betrayed by those same gods in their fear, cast down headlong by his own weight, lying with his legs broken; and then, carried to Brundisium, worn out with torments and shame, hurling himself again headlong from the height of a lofty roof.

All of which things you neither know to have happened, nor wished to know, nor ever judged necessary for yourselves; and while you play with your own hearts and call what is pride wisdom, you gave opportunity to deceivers—those harmful ones, I mean, whose interest it is that the Christian name should fall into disrepute—to pour darkness over and obscure such great matters, to snatch faith from you and to subject it to contempt: so that, since they have a foreboding that an end befitting their deserts is imminent for themselves, they might also cast upon you a cause by which you too might be able to incur danger and be bereft of divine benevolence.

Meanwhile, however, O you who admire, who marvel at the teachings of the learned and of philosophy: do you not consider it most unjust to ride roughshod over us, to mock us as though we say foolish and brutish things—when you yourselves are found to say the very same or similar things which you laugh at being said and pronounced by us? And my discourse is not with those who, scattered through the various byways of the sects, have made these and those parties by diversity of opinions. You, you I address, who follow Mercury, who follow Plato and Pythagoras: and you others who are of one mind and walk by the same paths of agreed doctrine in unity. Do you dare to mock us for venerating and worshipping the Father of all things and God, and for committing our hopes to him and entrusting them to him?

What does your Plato in the Theaetetus—to name him above all—does he not counsel the soul to flee from the earth, and always to dwell in thought and mind around him, as much as may be possible? Do you dare to mock us because we say there will be a resurrection of the dead? Which indeed we confess we say: but it is heard by you otherwise than we mean it. What does the same Plato in the Politicus? Does he not write that when the world shall have begun to rise from the western parts and to turn toward the axis of the rising sun, men will again burst forth from the bosom of the earth, old, grey-haired, decrepit, and that as the years begin to grow longer, they will descend by the same stages by which growth proceeds today, to the cradle of infancy? Do you dare to mock us because we provide for the salvation of our souls, that is, for ourselves? For what are we men, but souls enclosed in bodies?

For not all of you bear cares for their safety, not in that you abstain from all vices and lusts: that fear possesses you, lest, fastened as if by great nails, you cleave to bodies. What do the rites of the secret arts mean, by which you address certain powers I know not what, that they may be favorable to you and not set obstacles of hindrance in the way of those returning to their native abodes?

Do you dare to laugh at us when we speak of gehenna, and of certain inextinguishable fires, into which we have learned that souls are cast by their enemies and adversaries? What then? Does not your own Plato, in that volume which he composed on the immortality of the soul, name Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon as rivers in which he asserts souls are tossed about, submerged, and burned? And a man of no mean prudence, and of careful examination and judgment, takes up an insoluble problem: for while he says that souls are immortal, everlasting, and deprived of bodily solidity, he nevertheless says that they are punished, and afflicts their sense with pains. But who among men does not see that what is immortal, what is simple, can admit no pain? And that what feels pain cannot possess immortality? Yet his authority does not depart very far from the truth.

For although, being a gentle man and of benevolent disposition, he believed it to be inhuman that souls should be condemned by a capital sentence, he nevertheless not unreasonably suspected that they are cast into rivers torrential with balls of flame and foul with muddy abysses. For they are indeed cast in, and, reduced to nothing, they vanish away in the frustration of perpetual destruction. For they are of a middle quality, as has been ascertained on the authority of Christ, and such as can perish if they have been ignorant of God, and can be freed from death and saved unto life if they have applied themselves to His warnings and His mercies. And that what is unknown may become clear: this is the true death of man, this is what leaves nothing remaining. For that death which is seen before our eyes is the separation of souls from bodies, not the final end of annihilation.

This, I say, is the true death of man, when souls ignorant of God are consumed by fire and iron through the torment of a very long time—fire and iron into which certain cruelly savage beings shall cast them, beings unknown before Christ and revealed by Him alone who knows.

Therefore there is nothing that should deceive us, nothing that should promise us empty hopes, nothing in what is said by certain new men, lifted up by immoderate opinion of themselves: that souls are immortal, nearest in rank of dignity to God the ruler and first principle, brought forth by that begetter and father, divine, wise, learned, and untouched by any contact with the body; and that because this is true and certain, and we have been brought forth by a perfect being in faultless perfection, we live blamelessly and therefore irreproachably, good, just, and upright, free from all vice; no desire conquers us, no lust dishonors us; we maintain the wholly unblemished course of all the virtues. And because the souls of all of us flow down from one and the same source, we therefore think one and the same thing in harmony: we do not differ in customs, we do not differ in opinions; we all know God, nor are there as many opinions as there are men in the world, nor are they separated by infinite variety.

But while we glide and hasten down into human bodies, causes follow us from the circles of the world, by which we become evil and most wicked, burn with desires and anger, spend our life in shameful deeds, and are condemned to public lust by the prostitution of bodies for hire. And how can bodies be joined to incorporeal things? Or how can things made by God the first principle be led over by weaker causes into the dishonor of vices? Do you wish to lay aside your pretension and your haughtiness, you who claim God as your father and contend with Him that you share one immortality? Do you wish to inquire, investigate, and probe what you yourselves are, whose you are, by what father you are reckoned, what you do in the world, by what reason you are born, in what manner you spring forth into life? Do you wish, setting aside partiality, to perceive in silent thought whether we are living beings either similar to the rest or not differing from them by very many differences?

For what is there to indicate that we differ from their likeness? Or what is so great an eminence in us that we disdain to be numbered among living creatures? Those bodies are founded upon bones and bound together by the fastening of sinews: and our bodies likewise are founded upon bones and bound together by the fastening of sinews. They receive air through their nostrils and give it back again through breathing: and we likewise draw breath and breathe in frequent passages. They are distinguished into female and male kinds: and we too are formed by our maker into the same number of sexes. They bring forth offspring through wombs and procreate by bodily unions: and we too are born through the joining of bodies and are poured forth and sent out from the wombs of mothers. They are sustained by food and drink, and expel and cast off superfluous filth through their lower parts and hinder passages: and we too are sustained by food and drink, and what nature now rejects we pour out through the same channels.

Their whole concern is to ward off deadly hunger and to keep necessary watch for sustenance: what else do we do in all the occupations of life, except seek those things by which the danger of hunger may be avoided and unhappy anxiety laid aside? They feel diseases and want of food, and are at last dissolved by old age: for how are we exempt from these evils, and are we not in the same way broken by the inconveniences of diseases and destroyed by the wasting of old age? And if that also is true which is said in the more secret mysteries, that the souls of the wicked pass into cattle and other beasts after they have been stripped of human bodies, it is more plainly proved that we are neighbors and not separated by any great intervals. Since the same thing is one and the same in us and in them, through which we are said to be living creatures and to move with vital motion.

But we are rational, and by our intelligence we surpass every kind of dumb creature. I would believe this to be most truly said, if all men lived with reason and deliberation, maintained the course of their duties, abstained from unlawful things, and did not engage in base transactions; and if no one through perversity of counsel and the blindness of ignorance demanded things contrary and harmful to himself. I would wish, however, to know what this reason is by which we are superior to all kinds of animals: because we have made dwellings for ourselves in which we can avoid the cold of winter and the heat of summer? What then? Do the other living creatures not have foresight for this matter? Do we not see some of them building themselves dwellings in the most convenient sites of nests? Others covering and fortifying themselves under overhanging rocks and crags? Others hollowing out the surface of the earth and preparing for themselves shelters and lairs in dug-out burrows?

And if parent nature had been willing to grant them also ministering hands, there would be no doubt that they too would construct the lofty heights of walls and fashion things with skilled novelty. Yet even in those things which they make with their claws and beaks, we observe many likenesses of reason and wisdom which we men cannot imitate by any amount of practice, although we have craftsman's hands and hands skilled in every kind of perfection.

They do not know how to make clothing, to put together chairs, ships, and ploughs, nor finally the rest of the household furnishings which domestic use demands. These things are not gifts of knowledge, but inventions of the most pressing necessity. Nor did the arts descend with souls from the inner chambers of heaven: but all of them were sought out and born here on earth, and gradually forged by practice over the course of time. For if souls possessed those kinds of knowledge which it is fitting for a divine and immortal race to have, from the beginning all men would know all things, nor would there be any age that was ignorant of any art, or unprepared by experience of things.

But as it is, life, being poor and in want of many things, observing that certain things happened to turn out conveniently by chance, while it imitated, tried, and tested, while it stumbled, reformed, and changed, through constant correction prepared and fashioned for itself the little skills of the arts, and brought them to a single result by being cemented together over many ages.

But if men had thoroughly known either themselves or had received even a breath of some suspicion of the understanding of God, they would never have claimed for themselves a divine and immortal nature; nor would they have thought themselves something magnificent because they had made for themselves gridirons, ladles, and mixing-bowls, because they had made undergarments, light mantles, cloaks, short capes, robes of state, knives, breastplates and swords, because they had made rakes, small axes, a ploughshare. Never, I say, would they have believed, lifted up by pride and arrogance, that they were the first divinities and equal to the supremacy of the first principle: because they had given birth to grammar, music, oratory, and geometric figures. We do not see that there is anything admirable in these arts, such that from their invention souls should be believed to be superior to the sun and all the stars, and to surpass in dignity and substance this whole world of which these things are parts.

For what else do they promise to be able to suggest or to impart, except that we may know the rules of words and their distinctions? That we may know the intervals in the sounds of voices? That we may speak persuasively in lawsuits? That we may measure the extents of lands? And if souls had brought these things with them from the divine regions, and it were necessary to know them, all men would long since be practicing them everywhere throughout the whole world; nor would any race of men be found that was not equally and uniformly instructed in all these things. But as it is, in the world how few are musicians, dialecticians, and geometers, how few are orators, poets, grammarians?

From which it is apparent, as has been said more than once, that these things were invented by the necessity of places and times; and that divine souls did not fly hither already learned: because not all of them are learned, nor can all of them learn, and there are very many among them of duller sharpness, and dullards, and they are compelled to the pursuit of learning by the compulsion of blows. But if it were established that the things we learn are acts of recollection, as has been held in ancient opinions, it would be fitting that all of us, coming from one truth, should know one thing and recollect one thing, and not hold diverse and very many and discordant opinions. But as it is, since each of us asserts one thing and another, it is manifest and plain that we have brought nothing from heaven, but learn here what has been born here, and claim as our own what has been built up by conjecture.

And that we may show you more clearly and plainly of what worth is man, whom you believe to exist as most like to the power on high, conceive this image in your minds, and, as regards what can be done if we set about it, let us hold it by the assumption of a likeness as though we had set about it. Let there be for us therefore a habitable place dug out of the earth, making the form of a chamber, enclosed with a roof and walls; not cold with chill, not excessive in the heat of warmth, but so tempered and moderate that it suffers neither the sensation of cold nor the strong heat of summer. Into this place let no sound of any voice fall at all, not of bird, not of beast, not of storm, not of man, not finally of any crash or of the sky thundering terribly.

Let us then devise how it may receive light, not from fire brought in, nor from the sun seen directly, but let something spurious be contrived which, with darkness interposed, counterfeits the appearance of light; let there not be one door, nor let the entrance be straight, but let it be approached by winding turns; nor let it ever be opened except when necessary reason shall have demanded it.

Now since we have prepared a seat for our image, let us next receive someone newly born into the lodging of that place, who has nothing and is empty and void: of Platonic or Pythagorean stock if you will, or of someone among those who are said to have been of divine sharpness, or of one named most wise by the responses of God. When this has been done, it follows that he must be nourished and reared on suitable food. Let us therefore also provide a nurse, who shall always approach him naked, always silent, saying no word, and not opening her mouth and lips into any speech; but when she has given the breast and performed the consequent duties, let her leave him given over to rest and continue day and night before the closed doors. For the situation often demands that nursing care be present and that it observe the movements that occur from time to time.

But when the infant shall have begun to need to be supported by more solid food, let these be brought in by the same nurse, with her clothing laid aside as we said, and with the manner of silence maintained. Moreover, the food itself that is brought in shall be one and the same always: differing in no ingredient, nor renewed through various flavors; but either let it be porridge of millet, or bread of spelt, or, to imitate ancient ways, acorns from hot ashes, or small berries from wild branches. But let wine be altogether unknown as a drink, nor let anything else be applied to quench thirst than pure liquid from springs untouched by the heat of fire; and, if it can be done, administered in cupped hands. For familiar custom turned into nature will arise from habit; nor will desire reach out further, not knowing that there is more to be sought.

To what end, then, do these things tend? That, since it has been believed that souls are divine and moreover immortal, and that they fly down to the bodies of men together with all their disciplines, we may test from this person whom we wished to be reared in this manner, whether the matter admits of belief, or whether it has been credulously accepted and presumed upon with a deceptive expectation. Let there come forth before us, then, one nourished in the hidden depths of solitude, of as many years as you wish—do you wish him to be twenty years old? Do you wish thirty?

Nay, when he shall have completed forty years, let him be brought into the assemblies of mortals: and if it is true that he is a portion of the primal substance, so joyful and derived from the fountains of life, dwelling here—before he acquires knowledge of any thing, or is imbued with human speech, let him, when asked, give answer as to who he himself is, or by what father, in what regions he was born, in what manner or by what means he was nourished, and what work or business he pursued through the course of his past life. Will he not stand there more dull and blunted than any cattle, wood, or stone? Will he not, cast into things new and never before known to him, be above all ignorant of his very self? Will he be able, if you ask, to point out what the sun is, the earth, the seas, the stars, clouds, mist, rains, thunder, snow, hail?

Will he be able to know what trees are, herbs, or grasses, the bull, the horse, or the ram, the camel, the elephant, or the mule?

If when he is hungry you give him a grape, a cake, an onion, a thistle, a cucumber, a fig, will he know that hunger can be appeased by any of these? Or in what manner each ought to be eaten? And if you make a great fire near him, or place venomous beasts around him, will he not walk through the midst of the flames, the vipers, the solifugae, not knowing them to be harmful, and ignorant of what fear itself is? And indeed if you place in the middle both clothing and household goods, both urban and rustic, will he likewise be able to distinguish to what occupation each thing belongs?

To what use of what function they are suited? Let him declare for what purposes the coverlet, the mitre, the breast-band, the sash, the cushion, the handkerchief, the cloak, the calantica, the towel, the mastruca, the sock, the sandal, the shoe were made. What if you add what a wheel is, or a threshing-sledge, a winnowing-fan, a cask, a tub, an oil-press, a ploughshare, or a sieve, a millstone, a plough-beam, or a hoe? What if a curved stool, a needle, a strigil, a basin, a siliquastrum, a ladle, a small dish, a candlestick, a bowl, a broom, a cup, a sack? What if a lyre, a flute, silver, bronze, a writing-tablet, a weaver's shuttle, a book? What if the other instruments by which human life is supported and sustained?

Will he not, as we said, after the manner of an ox, or an ass, or a pig, or if there is any animal more sluggish, behold these things indeed, gazing at their various shapes, but not knowing what each one is, and ignorant of the purpose for which they are possessed? Will he not, if compelled by some necessity to utter a sound, as is customary with the dumb, cry out some inarticulate thing with gaping mouth?

Why, O Plato, in the Meno, do you question a certain boy about matters noted by numerical reasoning, and strive to prove from his answers that we do not learn what we learn, but return to the memory of those things which we had known of old? If he truly answers you—for it does not befit us to deny credence to the things you say—he is guided not by knowledge of the subject but by understanding: and from the fact that he has some numbers known to him from daily use, it comes about that when questioned he follows along, and the very successive multiplication always leads him on. But if you truly believe that immortal souls fly hither, full of knowledge, question that young man whom you see to be ignorant of things and set within the bounds of humanity—question him on a fixed matter.

Call that forty-year-old man to you, and ask him not something abstruse, not something involved, not about triangles, not about squares, what a Cube is, or a Dynamis sesquioctave, or a sesquitertius at the last: but ask what lies in the middle, what sum twice two, twice three, make. We wish to see, we wish to know, what he answers when asked, whether he resolves the question put to him. Will he thus perceive, though his ears be open, whether you are saying something, or asking something, or requiring some answer from him: and will he not stand like some post, or, as the saying goes, like the Marpesian rock, tongueless and mute, not knowing and not understanding this very thing—whether you are conversing with yourself or with another, discoursing with another or with yourself: whether that which you utter is speech, or a sound of voice signifying nothing, but drawn out in empty continuance?

What do you say, O men, who attribute to yourselves more than enough from another's nobility? Is this that learned soul which you speak of—immortal, perfect, divine, holding the fourth place after God the first principle of things and after the twin minds, and flowing from living mixing-bowls? Is this that precious man endowed with the most august faculties, called the lesser world, fashioned and formed in the likeness and image of the whole: no better, as has appeared, than any cattle, more dull than wood or stone, who knows not men, and dwells always in mute solitudes, remaining inert, thriving in the open air, though he live for countless years and is never freed from the bonds of the body. But when he has attended schools and been instructed by the teachings of masters, he becomes prudent, learned, and lays aside the ignorance which he had but lately.

And the little ass and the ox likewise, compelled by use and habit, learn to plough and to grind: the horse to submit to the yoke and to recognize the turns in the course: the camel to lower itself, whether when it takes up burdens or when it puts them down: the dove when released to fly back to its master's dwelling: the dog when it has found its prey to hold back and restrain its barking: the parrot to repeat words whole, and the raven to utter names.

But when I hear the soul called something surpassing, close and near to God, knowing all things, coming hither from ages past: I do not wish it to learn, but to teach: nor to become elementary from being learned, as is said: but, retaining its own knowledge, to bind itself to earthly bodies. For unless the matter stands thus, who will be able to discern whether it remembers what it hears, or learns it? Since it is far easier to believe that it learns what it does not know, than that, having forgotten what it knew a little before, it loses through the opposition of the body the power of recovering former things. And where is that which is said—that the incorporeal soul has no substance? For that which belongs to no body is not hindered by the opposition of another, nor can it be persuaded to lose that which it cannot sustain the touch of an opposing thing to affect.

For just as number, established in bodies, though overwhelmed by a thousand bodies, remains untouched and inviolable, so it is necessary that souls, if they are, as is maintained, incorporeal, should suffer no forgetfulness of former things: however solid the joinings of bodies may have bound them around. What of the fact that the same reasoning not only shows them not to be incorporeal, but also strips them entirely of immortality, and brings them to the limits by which life is customarily terminated? For whatever is so changed and turned by the onset of some cause that it cannot retain its integrity: that must necessarily be judged to be passive by nature. But that which is ready and exposed to passion is declared to be corruptible, by the very intervention of passibility.

Therefore, if souls also lose all that they had known, occupied by bodily bonds, they must necessarily suffer something which causes them to put on the blindness of forgetfulness. For having suffered nothing at all, or preserving their integrity, they cannot lay aside knowledge of things, or pass into other conditions without mutability of themselves. Yet we hold that what is one, what is immortal, what is simple, wherever it may be, necessarily always retains its own nature: and ought not and cannot suffer anything, if indeed it intends to be perpetual and to abide within the bounds of its own immortality. For every passion is the gate of death and destruction, the road leading to death, and bringing upon things their inevitable end: which if souls feel, and yield to its touch and assaults, life is granted to them also by use and not by freehold, however some may argue otherwise and place their confidence in their arguments for so great a matter.

And yet, lest we depart not fully instructed, let us hear from you in what manner you say that souls, when they have been wrapped in earthly bodies, do not retain memory of former things. Souls, when they have been wrapped in earthly bodies, do not retain memory of former things; when, placed within those very bodies and made almost insensible by their commingling, they persistently and faithfully hold fast those things which, more than many years ago—say eighty years if you will, or more than that—they either did, or suffered, or said, or heard. For if it is brought about by the obstacle of the body that they do not remember those things which long ago, and before their human existence, they knew, it is more fitting that they should forget those things which, enclosed in bodies, they habitually did, than those which, placed outside, not yet joined to men, they did.

For that which takes away from things that have entered the recollection of former things, ought also to obliterate by irrecoverable forgetfulness the things done within itself. For one cause cannot produce two things that are contrary to each other—that it lulls to sleep the memories of some things, yet allows others to come into the recollection of the doer. But if the souls which you speak of are hindered by the obstacle of their members from remembering their ancient arts; how is it that, constituted within those very bodies, they remember and know that they are souls, and have no corporeal substance, endowed with the condition of immortality? What rank they hold among things, in what order they have been set apart from God the Father? By what means they have come down to these lowest regions of the world? What qualities they have drawn from what circles as they glided down to these places?

How, I say, do they know that they were most learned, and that through the obstruction of bodies they have lost what they knew? For they ought not to have known even this, if the joining of bodily defilement had brought any taint upon them; for to know what you were, and what today you are not, is not a sign of memory lost, but a proof and indication of memory preserved.

Since these things are so, cease, I pray, cease to estimate small things and things of little name at immense prices: cease to enroll man, who is of the proletarian class, in the first orders, when he is reckoned by head-count: when he is destitute, poor in hearth, and of a poor hovel, and never deserving to be called of patrician distinction. For when it was fitting for you, as men of uprightness and integrity, to break down the pride and arrogance by whose evils we are all puffed up and swollen with the vanity of empty things: you not only consider that these evils do not occur, but, what is far more serious, you have added causes by which both vices might grow and incorrigible wickedness might persist.

For who among men, however much he may be of a character always fleeing infamy and disgrace, who, when he hears it proclaimed by men of the greatest wisdom that souls are immortal and not subject to the laws of fate, will not hurl himself headlong into every wickedness, will not fearlessly undertake and engage in unlawful deeds? Will he not finally grant to his desires all that impotent lust shall have commanded, secured moreover by the freedom of impunity? For what will prevent him from doing these things? The fear of a higher power, and divine judgment? And who will be able to be terrified by the dread of any fear, one who has been persuaded that he is as immortal as God himself the first, and that nothing concerning him can be judged by him: since there is one immortality in both, and neither can be troubled by the equality of the other's condition?

But what of the punishments said to exist in the underworld, and the many forms of torments? Who will be so brutish, and so ignorant of the consequences of things, as to believe that either the darkness of Tartarus, or rivers of fire, or swamps with muddy whirlpools, or the revolutions of spinning wheels, can do any harm to incorruptible souls? For that which is not subject to contact, and is removed from the laws of dissolution, even if it be surrounded on all sides by the flames of torrential rivers, rolled in mud, battered by the falls of overhanging rocks, and buried under the ruins of enormous mountains, must necessarily remain unharmed and untouched, and can take on no sensation of deadly suffering. What of this further point: that this persuasion is not only an incitement to vice through the very freedom of sinning, but also removes the very purpose of philosophy itself, and declares that it is taken up in vain, with the difficulty of superfluous labor?

For if it is true that souls share in no end, and proceed together with all ages in the perpetuity of eternity: what danger is there in despising and setting aside the virtues, by which life is made more constrained and harsh, and in giving oneself over to pleasures, and scattering through every kind of lust the unbridled ardor of immense desire? Lest it grow faint in delights and be corrupted by the softness of vices? And by what reasoning can that be corrupted which is immortal, which always exists, and is subject to no suffering? Lest it become foul and be polluted by the baseness of shameful deeds? And how can that be polluted which has no bodily substance, or where can contamination establish its seat, where there is no space in which the mark of contamination itself can be affixed?

But again, if souls approach the gates of death, as the opinion of Epicurus defines it, not even so is there a sufficient reason why philosophy ought to be sought after: even if it is true that souls are purified by it, and rendered free from all vice. For if they die in common, and sensation perishes and is extinguished in them along with the bodies themselves: it is not only the greatest error, but blind stupidity, to bridle innate appetites, to confine life within narrow limits, to indulge nature in nothing, not to do what desires have commanded and urged, when no rewards of such great labor await you, when the day of death has come, and you have been released from the bonds of the body.

A certain middle state, therefore, and the uncertain and ambiguous nature of souls, gave birth to the place of philosophy, and found the reason why it should be sought after: while one man, that is, fears danger from evil deeds committed; another conceives good hopes, if he does nothing wicked, and passes his life with duty and justice. Hence it is that among learned men, and those endowed with excellence of intellect, there is a contest concerning the nature of souls: and some say they are of mortal nature, and cannot sustain divine substance; while others say they are everlasting, and cannot degenerate into mortal nature. That this should come about is effected by the law of the middle state: because those who find them to be subject to suffering and perishable have arguments ready to hand; and those on the other side are not without arguments by which they are shown to be divine and immortal.

Since these things are so, and since we hold it as handed down from the highest authority that souls are not placed far from the gaping jaws and throat of death: yet they can be made long-lived by the gift and beneficence of the highest ruler, if only they attempt and endeavor to know him: for the knowledge of him is a kind of leaven of life, and a bond for that which tends to dissolution: and then, having laid aside ferocity and inhumanity, let them take up gentler dispositions: so that they may be prepared for that which will be given. What is it that causes you to judge us as brutish and stupid, if on account of these fears we have surrendered and devoted ourselves to God our deliverer? Against harmful blows and the venomous bites of serpents, we often seek out remedies.

And we protect ourselves with amulets, with Psylli and Marsi selling their wares, and other peddlers and charlatans: and lest cold and scorching sun cause us discomfort, we prepare with careful diligence of precaution the protection of houses and garments.

When the fear of death is set before us, that is, the destruction of souls: what do we not do from that common instinct by which we all love ourselves, in that we hold fast and embrace the one who pledges to free us from such a danger, and, if only the exchange is just, prefer him even to our own souls? You place the salvation of your souls in yourselves, and trust that you will become gods by your own inward effort: but we promise ourselves nothing from our own weakness, beholding our nature to be of no strength, and to be overcome by its own passions in every contest of things.

You, as soon as you have departed freed from the bonds of your limbs, think that wings will be at hand for you, by which you may make your way to heaven and fly to the stars: we dread such great boldness, and do not consider it to lie within our power to seek the heavenly abodes: since we hold it uncertain even whether we deserve to receive life, and to be led away from the law of mortality. You presume that you will return of your own accord, with none forbidding, to the lordly court as to your own proper seat: but we neither hope that this can come to pass without the master of all things, nor do we think that so great power and license is attributed to any man.

Since these things are so, what great injustice is it that we should seem foolish to you in our credulity in these matters; when we see you believing similar things and dwelling in the same expectation? If we are deemed worthy of mockery because we promise ourselves such hope, the same mockery awaits you, who claim for yourselves the hope of immortality. If you hold and follow some reasoning, grant us also some share of that reasoning. If Plato in the Phaedo, or another from that company, had promised us these joys, that is, the way of escaping death, and could fulfill it and bring it to the end of his promise, it would have been fitting for us to take up the worship of him from whom we expected so great a gift and benefit.

Now since Christ has not only promised it, but has also shown by such great powers that it can be fulfilled: what strange thing do we do, or by what reasoning do we sustain the charge of folly, if we submit ourselves to his name and majesty, from whom we hope for both things, to escape painful death and to be granted eternal life?

But if souls, they say, are mortal and of middle quality, how can they be made immortal from middle qualities? If we say that we do not know this, and have only believed on the word of one more powerful, where will our credulity appear to have gone astray, if we have believed that nothing is difficult, nothing arduous, for the omnipotent king? If what is impossible for us to do is possible for him, and quite ready for execution? Is there anything that can stand in the way of his will, or that, once he has willed it to be, does not necessarily follow that it comes to be? Or shall we gather from our own divisions what can or cannot come to be: and shall we not consider that our reasonings are as mortal as we ourselves are, and of no weight before the ruler?

And yet, O you who do not believe that souls are of middle quality, and are held in the middle boundary between life and death, are not all those whatsoever whom opinion supposes to exist—gods, angels, demons, or by whatever other name they are called—themselves also of middle quality, and mutable in the condition of an uncertain lot? For if we all grant that there is one father of all things, immortal and unbegotten alone, and nothing whatsoever is found before him that bore any name: it follows that all those whom opinion has believed to be gods of mortals were either begotten by him, or brought forth at his command. If they were brought forth and begotten, they are also of a later order and time: if of a later order and time, they must necessarily have a beginning, and the commencement of birth, and of life: but that which has an entrance and the beginning of a life commencing must necessarily follow that it should also have a setting.

But the gods are said to be immortal. Not therefore by nature, but by the will and gift of God the Father. In what manner therefore the bestowal of immortality is a gift of God, certainly for those who have been brought forth, and in this manner he will deign to bestow immortality upon souls, even though savage death may seem able to extinguish them, and to destroy them reduced to nothing by irrevocable annihilation. That divine Plato, thinking many things worthy of God and not common to the multitude, in that discourse and book which bears the title Timaeus, says that the gods and the world are of a corruptible nature, and are not at all exempt from dissolution: but are held in perpetual bond by the will of God the king and ruler. For that which is rightly bound and fastened with most perfect knots is preserved by the goodness of God: and can be dissolved by none other than by him who bound it, if the matter requires, and granted the saving bond.

If therefore the matter is so, and nothing else is fitting either to suppose or to believe, why do you wonder that souls are said by us to be of middle quality: when Plato himself says that the very divine powers are of middle natures, but that a continuous and unending life is supplied by the goodwill of the ruler? If perhaps you do not know, and it was previously unknown to you on account of the novelty of the matter, receive it late, and learn from him who knows and has brought it forth into the open through Christ, that souls are not daughters of the greatest king, nor, as is said, having begun to know themselves as generated by him, and to be proclaimed in the essence of his name, but that there is some other begetter of them, separated from the Emperor by very many degrees of dignity and power: yet noble from his court and lofty by the eminence of high birth.

But if souls were, as report has it, offspring of the Lord and a generation of princely power, nothing would have been lacking to them for perfection, created as they would be by most perfect virtue: they would all have had one understanding and one consent, they would always inhabit the royal court, and would not, having abandoned the seats of blessedness in which they had known and retained most august teachings, imprudently seek out these earthly places, wrapped in dark bodies, living among phlegm and blood: among these wineskins of dung and the most foul jars of the sack. But these regions too had to be inhabited, and for this reason God almighty sent souls hither as into certain colonies. And what do men profit the world, or for the sake of what thing are they necessary, so that they should not be believed to have had to dwell in this part in vain, and to be tenants of an earthly body?

They contribute some part toward completing the integrity of this mass: and unless they were added, this sum of the universe is imperfect and lame. What then? If there were no men, would the world cease from its functions? Would the stars not complete their revolutions? Would there be no summers and winters? Would the blasts of winds fall silent? And would rain not fall from gathered and hanging clouds to the earth, to bring relief to parched lands? And yet all things must go through their courses, and not depart from the continuous succession of the order into which they were born, even if no name of man were heard in the world, and this globe of lands fell silent in the silence of empty solitude. How then is it asserted that an inhabitant had to be added to these regions, when it is clear that nothing returns from man to the perfection of the world, and that all his endeavors always look to private advantage, and do not depart from the bounds of his own utility?

For what does it profit the world—to begin with serious matters—that there are here the greatest kings? What tyrants, what lords, what countless other and most ample powers? What commanders most experienced in military affairs, skilled in the capture of cities, soldiers immovable and most unconquerable in cavalry battles or in infantry combat? What orators, grammarians, poets? What writers, dialecticians, musicians? What pantomimes, what little mime-players, actors, singers, those who blow on trumpet, flute, and reed? What runners, what boxers, chariot-racers, trick-riders, stilt-walkers, rope-walkers, jugglers? What fish-sellers, salt-sellers, sausage-makers, perfumers, goldsmiths, fowlers, weavers of fans and baskets? What fullers, wool-workers, embroiderers, cooks, pastry-makers, muleteers, pimps, butchers, prostitutes? What other kinds of traders?

What do professors, and the arts—for the enumeration of which all time is too short—contribute to the workings and constitution of the world, so that it should be believed that it could not have been founded without men, nor would have obtained its integrity, unless the striving of a wretched and superfluous animal had been joined to it?

Unless perchance the king of the world—which is of the greatest rashness to utter from a human mouth—sent souls born from himself hither for this purpose: that those who had been goddesses in his presence, untouched by bodily contact and free from earthly confinement, might be plunged into human seed, might spring forth from the wombs of women, might utter and prolong most foolish wailings; might suck at bitter-tasting breasts, might smear and drench themselves with their own discharge; and that they might be brought to silence by the movements and rattles of a frightened nurse when heard.

He sent souls for this purpose: that those who had been simple, and lately of innocent goodness, might learn among men to dissemble, to conceal, to lie, to circumvent, to deceive, to ensnare with flattering humility, to revolve one thing in the mind and to promise another in the face; to entrap, to beguile the unwary with tricks and snares, to gather poisons through innumerable arts of wickedness, and to shape them with pliant versatility for the occasion's use. He sent souls for this purpose: that those dwelling in peaceful and calm tranquility might take on from bodies the causes by which they would become fierce and savage, would carry on feuds and enmities, would wage wars among themselves, would storm and overthrow cities; would be crushed under the yoke of servitude and enslave themselves to it, and at last one would become the property of another's power with the condition of birth changed?

He sent souls for this purpose: that, having become unmindful of truth and having forgotten what God is, they might supplicate inert images, might address wood, bronze, and stone as divine powers, might seek aid from the blood of slaughtered animals, might make no mention of themselves; nay more, that some among them might doubt their own existence, or utterly deny that any exists?

He sent souls for this purpose: that those who in their own abodes had been of one mind, equal in understanding and knowledge, after putting on mortal forms, might disagree through differences of opinion, that what is just, what is useful, and what is right might seem different to different ones; that they might contend about things to be sought and things to be shunned, that different ones might set different limits of good and evil; that for those desiring to know the truth, the obscurity of things might be set in the way, and as though bereft of the light of their eyes, they might see nothing certain, and might be led into error along the doubtful paths of conjecture?

He sent souls for this purpose: that whereas other living creatures are nourished on spontaneously grown food and on what is produced without any sowing, and seek for themselves neither the protection of houses nor coverings of clothing, upon these souls a wretched necessity might be added: that with the greatest expense and unceasing toil they might build houses for themselves, might fashion coverings for their limbs, might gather various furnishings against the want of each day, might borrow from dumb animals aids for their weakness, might do violence to the earth so that its own grasses might not suffice, but that it might raise up crops as commanded, and when they had poured out all their blood in subduing the soil, through blight, hail, and drought they might lose the hope of their labor; and at last, driven by the force of famine, they might lie upon human corpses, and be separated and torn away from human form by wasting leanness?

He sent souls for this purpose: that those who, dwelling with him, had never had any love of possession: might here become most avaricious, and might burn with insatiable appetite of heart in the pursuit of having; might dig out deep mountains and turn the unknown entrails of the earth into materials of foreign name and use; might penetrate hidden nations at the risk of their lives, and by transporting merchandise might always seek advantage in price and cheapness; might practice greedy and most unjust usury, and might torment themselves with sleepless nights of reckoning from the blood of the wretched; might always extend the boundaries of their thousands of possessions; and though they might make whole provinces into a single estate, for a single tree, for a single furrow, they might wear out the courts with lawsuits; might take up implacable feuds with friends and brothers?

He sent souls for this purpose: that those who had lately been gentle and ignorant of being stirred by impulses of savagery, might establish for themselves shambles and amphitheatres, places of blood and public impiety; in one of which they might behold men of the world being torn apart and mangled by the rending of beasts; others killing one another for no cause of any merit, but for the gratification and pleasure of the spectators, and might spend those very days on which so great a wickedness was committed in common rejoicings, and consecrate them with festive merriment; while in the other they might tear apart the entrails of wretched animals, different ones snatching portions as is the custom of dogs and vultures, might crush them with their teeth and give them to a most cruel belly, and in such savage and horrible habits might account those fortunate whose lot the straitness of poverty rescued from such tables; might live as blessed and happy those whose mouths and faces such cruel preparations defiled?

He sent souls for this purpose: that, forgetful of divine weight and gravity, they might purchase gems, pebbles, and pearls at the cost of chastity, might wind these about their necks, might pierce the plates of their ears, might diminish their foreheads with headbands, might seek cosmetics for adorning their bodies, might shade their eyes with soot, and might not blush in the forms of males to curl their hair with heated irons, to smooth the skin of the body, to walk with bare knees, and by every other manner of dress both to expose and to soften into the habit and delicacies of women the vigor of manhood?

He sent souls for this purpose: that some might infest the passages of roads, others might defraud the unwary, might forge false wills, might prepare poisoned draughts, might scheme to break into houses by night, might steal cattle, might act corruptly, and betray; that they might learn to shake off the fastidiousness of flavors from the palate, might know how to retain the dripping fat in cooking birds, might make sausage-rolls and puddings, minced meat, ragouts, Lucanian sausages, along with these stuffed sow's belly, and pickled meats in icy brine?

He sent souls for this purpose: that beings of a holy and most august name might here practice the arts of musicians and flute-players, might puff out their cheeks in blowing flutes, might lead the way in obscene songs with measured beat and the loud clatter of clappers, by which another wanton multitude of souls might be dissolved into the unrestrained movements of their bodies, might leap and sing, might spin in dancing circles, and at last, with haunches and hips raised, might undulate with the writhing of their loins? He sent souls for this purpose: that among males there might be catamites, among females harlots, sambuca-players, psaltery-players, that they might prostitute their bodies for hire, might publish their cheapness to the people, ready in brothels, bound in archways, refusing to suffer nothing, prepared for the defilement of the mouth?

What say you, O offspring and first progeny of the supreme deity? Did those wise souls then, brought forth from first principles, come to know these kinds of baseness, crimes, and wickedness, and were they commanded to inhabit these regions and to be clothed in the surrounding garment of a human body, in order that they might practice, carry out, and celebrate these evils? And is there any mortal who receives the sense of any reason, who thinks the world is ordered through these things, and not rather that it has been established as a seat and dwelling-place in which every wickedness might daily be perpetrated, all evil deeds might flow together—treacheries, frauds, deceits, avarice, rapines, violence, crime, audacity, obscenity, baseness, infamy, and all other evils which men throughout the whole world bring forth with harmful mind and contrive to their mutual ruin?

But they came, you say, by their own will, not by the king's command. But where was the almighty father, where was the authority of royal majesty, to prevent them from departing, and not to permit them to fall into headlong pleasures? For if he knew they would degenerate through changes of place (and he ought to have known, as the establisher of all causes), or that something would come to them from without which would make them forget their own dignity and honor: a thousand times—may he pardon it—I would pray: he himself is no other than the cause of all things; since he suffered them to have free right of wandering, those whom he foresaw would not retain the habit of their own integrity, and thus it comes about that it makes no difference at all whether they came voluntarily or obeyed his command; since by not preventing what ought to have been prevented, he made the fault his own by his inaction, and by the dissimulation of restraint permitted it beforehand.

But far be this monstrousness of a wicked opinion, that the almighty God, sower and founder, creator of great and invisible things, should be believed to have begotten souls so unstable, of no gravity, weight, or constancy; prone to vices, inclined to every kind of sin; and knowing them to be such and of this sort, to have commanded them to enter into bodies, clothed in the prisons of which they might be driven daily under the storms and tempests of fortune, and might now do shameful things, now suffer obscene things; might perish in shipwrecks, ruins, and the conflagrations of fires.

That poverty might oppress some, beggary others, that some might suffer the mangling of wild beasts, others might perish by the poison of mice, that some might walk lame, that others might lose their sight; that others might sit with their joints bound, and finally that all might be exposed to all the diseases which unhappy and pitiable mortality sustains through the tearing of diverse punishments; and then, forgetting that they are of one source, one begetter and head, they might tear apart and sever the bonds of kinship; might overthrow their own cities, might ravage lands in hostile fashion, might make slaves of free persons, might assault virgins and others' marriages, might hate one another mutually, might envy the joys and felicities of others; and then might all curse one another, tear one another apart, and mangle one another with the biting of savage teeth.

But far be—that we may say the same thing again more frequently—so monstrous and wicked a persuasion, that that God, the salvation of all things, the head of virtues, the pillar of benevolence, and, to extol him with human praises, most wise, just, making all things perfect, and preserving the integrity of his own wholeness, should either have made any dwelling, or anything lame and remote from the right, or should have been the cause of miseries or dangers to any thing, or should have ordained, commanded, and decreed that the very acts by which human life is conducted and celebrated should flow from his own constitution.

These things are beneath him, and destructive of the power of his greatness; and so far is he from being believed the author of these things, that whoever has conceived that man was begotten by him—man, that unhappy and wretched being, who grieves that he exists; who detests and mourns his own condition; who understands himself to have been created for no other reason than that there might not be lacking a medium through which evils might spread themselves, and those might always be wretched whose torments some hidden power and cruelty hostile to humanity might feed upon—incurs the guilt of sacrilegious impiety.

But if God is not even the sparing begetter of souls, you say, by whose authorship were they begotten, and by what reason were they brought forth? If you wish to hear what is unvarnished and not drawn from any display of words: likewise we confess that we are ignorant of this, that we do not know it, and we hold that the knowledge of so great a matter surpasses not only our own weakness and frailty, but also that of all the powers which are in the world, and of those which have claimed by the opinions of mortals to be divine. But those which we deny to be of God—of whom they are, must we show?

Nothing of this follows necessarily; for if we deny that flies, beetles, and bugs, dormice, weevils, and moths are the work of the almighty king: it is not consequently required of us that we say who made and established them; for we can without any reproach be ignorant of who gave origin to them as well, and maintain that things so superfluous, so vain, pertaining to no purposes, nay even sometimes harmful and bringing necessary injuries, were not brought forth by the God above.

Similarly here too, when we deny that souls are the offspring of the chief God, it does not immediately follow that we must explain by what parent they were produced and by what causes begotten. For who prevents us either from not knowing whence they arose and came forth, or from knowing that they are not the progeny of God? By what reasoning, you say, by what way? Because it is most true of all truths, and most certain of all certainties, that nothing among things is done, made, or determined by the chief, as has been said very often, except what ought to be and is fitting to be done; except what is full and complete and finished in the perfection of its own integrity. But further, we observe that men—that is, souls themselves, for what are men but souls bound to bodies?—by their innumerable perversity of vices declare themselves to be not of patrician birth, but begotten from middling families.

For we see some to be savage, criminal, audacious, rash, headlong, blind, deceitful, dissembling, lying, proud, arrogant, avaricious, covetous, lustful, inconstant, weak, and unable to keep their own resolutions; which they certainly would not be, if noble birth from the first principle claimed them, and they derived the honor of their lineage from descent from the head of all things.

But there are also, you will say, good men in human affairs, wise men, just men, of blameless and most upright character. We raise no question whether there have ever been any such, in whom that very integrity, as it is called, desired nothing at all. Let them be ever so honourable, and let them have been praiseworthy, and have held the highest pinnacle of perfection, and let their life never have faltered in any stumble: but we demand to hear how many they are, or have been in number, so that from the greatness of the multitude we may judge whether the objection has been justly made, or balanced by an equal counterweight. One, two, three, four, ten, twenty, a hundred—certainly a definite number, and perhaps bounded by the enumeration of their names. But the human race ought to be estimated and weighed not by a few good men, but by all the rest.

For the part is in the whole, not the whole in the part; and the totality ought to draw in the portions, not the totality be applied to the portions. For what if you were to say that a man seized in all his limbs and wailing from sharp torments is therefore healthy, because one little fingernail suffers no pain? Or that the earth is golden, because in a tiny wart of one hill there are small specks from which, when melted together, gold is born, and the wonder is gathered by their collection? The totality of the element proves the quality of the material, not stable grains of dust; nor is the sea continuously sweet if you add and pour in drops of somewhat milder water of any number, for that minuteness is consumed by the immensity; nor should what is diffused through everything and perishes, and is swallowed up in the vastness of a great body, be reckoned not merely of small, but of no account at all.

You say there are good men in the human race, who are believed to be such perhaps only because comparison with the worst makes them so. Who are these men? Tell us. Philosophers, I suppose, who claim that they alone are the wisest, and on the strength of this name have raised their brows: namely those who fight daily with their own desires, and strive with the persistent struggle of the virtues to drive out and expel the passions implanted in their souls, who, lest they be able to be provoked into vices by the prompting of any faculty, flee from patrimony and riches, so as to remove from themselves the occasions of falling—and in doing and caring for this, they most plainly show that souls are unstable and prone to vices through weakness.

But in our view, that which is good by nature neither needs to be amended nor corrected; nay, it ought not even to know what evil is, if the form proper to each kind thinks to persist in its own integrity; for a contrary cannot be implanted in a contrary, nor can equality be contained in inequality, nor sweetness in bitterness. He therefore who struggles to correct the innate depravities of souls most plainly shows himself to be imperfect, however much he strives with all effort and perseverance.

But our answer is a matter of ridicule to you, because while we deny that souls are of royal descent, we do not in turn set forth from what causes and origins they were produced. For what kind of fault is it either to be ignorant of some matter, or to profess without any dissimulation that very thing which you do not know? Or which of the two seems to you most worthy of ridicule: he who claims no knowledge of some obscure matter, or he who thinks himself to know most plainly that which surpasses human understanding and is wrapped in blind obscurity? If the nature of any matter is examined to the bottom, you are in a similar case to that which you reproach in us. For because you say that souls descend from the king himself and pass into human forms, you do not thereby say something established and set in the clear light of most manifest truth. For you conjecture, you do not know; you surmise, you do not hold.

For if to know is to contain within oneself what you yourself have seen or grasped with the mind, you cannot say that you have ever seen any of the things you assert—that is, that souls descend from the heavenly seat and region. You therefore use surmise, not the assurance of express knowledge. But what is surmise, if not an uncertain opinion of things, and a casting of the mind aimed at nothing definite? He who surmises, therefore, does not hold, nor does he walk set in the light of knowledge. But if this is true and fixed before upright and most wise judges, then that surmise of yours also, in which you trust, must be held as ignorance.

And yet, lest you think it is permitted to you alone to use conjectures and surmises, we too can do the same; since what you ask us to set forth is common ground. Whence, you say, are men, and what and whence are the souls of those men? Whence are elephants, bulls, stags, mules, asses? Whence are lions, horses, dogs, wolves, panthers, and what and whence are the souls of those living things? For it is not credible that either their souls came from that Platonic bowl which Timaeus composes and mingles, or that a locust, a mouse, a shrew-mouse, a cockroach, a frog, a centipede are believed to be animated and to live, because the cause and origin of their birth is from the elements themselves; if there are hidden and most obscure principles within each of these for the generation of the animals that dwell in them. (For we also see some among the wise saying that the earth is the mother of men, others joining water with her, others adding the airy spirit to these, and some holding that the sun is the maker of these, and that they are set in motion animated by his vital agitation.) What if even these explanations are not the case, and there is some other thing, another cause, another reason, another power, finally a kind unknown to us and of unheard-of name, which fashioned men and attached them to the constitutions of things—is it not possible that men arose in such a way, and that the authority of their birth is not to be referred to the first God?

For what do we think was the reasoning of that great Plato, piously and holily wise, when he removed the fashioning of man from the greatest God and transferred it to certain lesser ones; and when he was unwilling that the souls of the human race should be of the same purity of mixture as the soul he had made of this universe—except that he thought the fashioning of man unworthy of God, and that the making of so frail a thing did not befit his greatness and eminence?

Therefore, since this is so, we believe not absurdly nor vainly that the souls of men are of a middle quality, as having been produced by things that are not primary, subject to the law of death, of small and unstable powers; and that they are granted perpetuity if they commit the hope of so great a gift to the chief God, to whom alone belongs the power to bestow such things with corruption excluded. But do we believe this foolishly? What is that to you? Most ineptly, foolishly. Where do we harm you, or what injury do we do or inflict upon you, if we trust that almighty God will take account of us when we shall have begun to depart from our bodies, and to be rescued, as it is said, from the jaws of Orcus?

Can anything then, someone will say, come to pass without the will of God? We must consider carefully, and examine with no small care, lest, while we think we are honouring the Lord by such a question, we slide into the contrary impiety, destroying the eminence of his majesty. For what reason, for what cause? Because if all things are accomplished by his will, and nothing can come to pass or fall out in the world apart from his nod, it necessarily follows that evils also are understood to arise by his will. But if on the other hand we shall wish to say the contrary, rejecting from him the causes of the worst things, that he is conscious of no evil and the begetter of none; it will begin to appear either that the worst things happen against his will, or—and it is monstrous to say it—without his knowledge, while he is unaware and ignorant.

Again, if we shall wish to say that there are no evils, as we find some have thought and held; all peoples and all nations will cry out against us, displaying their torments and the manifold kinds of dangers by which the human race is burned and torn asunder moment by moment. Then they will further demand of us: why, if there are no evils, do you abstain from certain works and deeds? Why do you not do all things that impatient lust has commanded and enjoined? Why finally do you establish punishments for the guilty by terrible laws? For what greater folly can be found than to contend that there are no evils, and yet to destroy and condemn sinners as though they were wicked?

When we have been compelled to agree that these things exist, and have nodded assent that human affairs teem with them by name, it will follow that they ask: why then does almighty God not remove these evils, but suffers them to exist and to proceed through all ages in persistent continuity? If understanding of God the king and ruler shall have been present with us, and we shall not have wished to wander through impious frenzies of suspicion, we must answer that we do not know these things; and that we have never sought or studied to know what could be comprehended by no faculties, and that we judge it better—nay rather, far better—to remain within the bounds of ignorance and unknowing, than to say that nothing happens without God (through his will), so that at the same time he is understood both to give causes to evils and to be the maker of innumerable miseries. Whence then, you will say, are all these evils?

From the elements, and from their inequality, say the wise; but as to how it can come about that things which have no sense or judgment are said to be malicious and harmful—or whether he is not rather malicious and harmful who took up things destined to be most wicked for the accomplishment of some work—that is for those who assert it to see clearly. What then do we say, whence? There is no necessity of an answer; for whether we can say, or are less able and cannot, either is of small account with us; and we count it of no great weight either to be ignorant of this or to know it, content to have established one thing alone: that nothing harmful and destructive proceeds from God the ruler.

This we hold, this we know, in this one truth of knowledge and understanding we stand firm: that nothing is done by him save what is wholesome for all, what is sweet, what is most full of love and joy and gladness, what has infinite and incorruptible pleasures, what each person desires with all his prayers to obtain for himself, and counts whatever is outside these to be deadly and death-bringing.

All other things whatsoever, which are wont to be treated in questions and controversies—from what parents they arose, or by what agents they come to pass—we neither strive to know, nor care to inquire or investigate; we leave all things to their own causes, and judge them not to be joined and attached to what we seek. For what is there that human minds do not dare, with zeal for contradiction, to shake and dissolve, even though that which they labour to weaken be pure and clear and fortified by the seal of truth? Or what again can they not assert with plausible arguments, even though it be most plainly false, even though it be an evident and manifest lie? For when someone has persuaded himself that something is or is not, he loves to assert what he believes, and to surpass others in acuteness, especially if the matter treated is remote and hidden and wrapped in the darkness of nature.

Some among the wise think that the world was neither born nor will perish at any time; some hold it immortal, though they write that it was born and generated. To a third group it has seemed good to say that it was both born and generated and will perish by ordinary necessity. And although one of these three opinions must necessarily be true, yet all have arguments by which they both confirm their own decrees and undermine and shake the decisions of others. Some hand down that this same world stands composed of four elements and declare it to be so; others of two; a third group of one; there are those who say it is composed of none of these, and that indivisible bodies are its matter and first origin. And since one opinion among these is true, or none of them is certain, here likewise arguments are ready for all, by which they both establish that what they say is true and refute the falsehoods set in the opinions of others.

So too some deny that gods exist; others say they are altogether in doubt whether they exist anywhere; others hold that they exist but do not care for human affairs; nay, others maintain that they both take part in the affairs of mortals and administer earthly concerns.

Since, then, these things are so, and it cannot be otherwise but that one out of all is true, yet all contend with arguments, and none lacks that which he may say with some plausibility, whether in asserting his own views or in contradicting the opinions of others. In no different or dissimilar manner is the condition of souls debated by these men. For one holds that they are everlasting and that they survive the death of mortals; another does not believe they survive, but that they perish together with the bodies themselves. Yet another's opinion is that they suffer nothing immediately, but that after a man is laid aside something is granted to them for life, and that they then pass under the laws of mortality. And although all of these cannot share in the truth, yet all argue with such strong and most forceful proofs that you cannot find what seems to you to be false, even though you see things said that are on every side contrary and discordant in their mutual contradictions.

This would certainly not happen if human curiosity could hold to something certain, or if what seemed to have been discovered were confirmed by the agreement of all others. It is therefore a most empty thing, and a work of superfluous effort, to put forward something as though you know it, or to strive to know what, even if it be true, you may see can be destroyed; or to accept as true that which perhaps is not, and which is put forward after the manner of those who are deceived. And rightly is the matter so. For we weigh and measure divine things not by divine but by human reasonings, and as we think something ought to have happened, so we contend that it must be so.

Do we alone, then, not know, not understand, who is the maker of souls, who their establisher? What cause fashioned man? Whence evils have burst forth? Or why the supreme king both permits them to exist and to be wrought, and does not drive them away from human affairs? For do you have any of these things explored and known? If you are willing to set forth the boldness of your conjectures, can you explain and declare whether this world which contains us was not generated, or was established at some point in time? If it was established and made, by what kind of work, or for the sake of what thing? Can you introduce and set forth the reason why it does not remain fixed and motionless, but is always carried about in circular motion? Does it revolve of its own accord and will, or is it driven by the impulses of some force? What is the very place and space in which it is situated and rolls,—infinite or finite? Empty or solid?

Does an axis sustain it, resting on its outermost poles, or does it rather support itself by its own force and hold itself suspended by an inner breath? Can you, when asked, make plain and show with the greatest knowledge what it is that opens up snow into feathery flakes? What reason and cause there was that the first day should not rise from the western parts and end its light in the east? How the sun by one and the same contact produces things so various, nay even contrary? What the moon is, what the stars? Why the moon does not remain of one appearance, or why these little bits of fire have come together and needed to be fixed throughout the whole body of the universe? Why some of these are small and others larger and greater, some of dim light, others of sharper and brilliant brightness?

If what one wishes to know is at hand, and knowledge of things is set forth in the open, expound and tell by what means and by what reasons rains are produced; how water, a thing by nature fluid and always so prone to flow and run downward, is held suspended in the upper regions and in this middle air; expound, I say, and tell what it is that hurls hail; what makes rain fall drop by drop; what spreads out showers and feathery snows and lightnings; whence wind arises and what it is; why the alternations of seasons were established, when it would have been possible to fix one, and there could be one aspect of the sky, so that the wholeness of things might lack nothing. What is the cause, what the reason, that the seas are salt, or that some of these waters of the lands are fresh, others bitter, or cold? Of what kind of material are the viscera of human bodies compacted and established, whence are the bones made solid?

What made the intestines, what made the veins tubular and passable? Why, when it would have been more useful to illuminate us with several eyes against the danger of blindness, are we confined to the narrow provision of two?

Of beasts and serpents there are so infinitely and innumerably many kinds—what is the cause for which they were either formed or brought forth? What do owls, sparrowhawks, and buzzards do in the world? What do the other winged creatures and birds do? What do the kinds of ants and worms, born for various destructions and ruinations? What do fleas? What do shameless flies, spiders, shrews, mice, leeches, crane-flies? What do thorns, what do briars, what do wild oats, what does darnel? What are the seeds of plants or shrubs that are either offensive to the nostrils or disagreeable in their odors? Nay, if you think anything can be known or comprehended, tell me what wheat is: spelt, barley, millet, chickpea, bean, lentil, melon-seed, cumin, leek, wild garlic, onion?

For even if these are of use to you and are placed among the common kinds of food, it is not easy or ready to know what each one is: why they are shaped with such forms; whether there was some necessity that they should not have other flavors, other odors, other colors than those which each thing has, or whether they could have taken on others. Then what these things themselves are—I mean flavor as flavor is, and the rest—by what reasons they derive their differences of quality? From elements, you say, and from the primary origins of things. Are the elements bitter or sweet, of some odor or smell, so that from their combination we should believe that the qualities are distributed among things as they come into being, by which either sweetness arises or offense is brought to the senses?

Since, therefore, the origins, causes, and reasons of so many and such great things escape even you yourselves, and you cannot explain what has been made, or why, or why it ought not to have been, you tear apart and rend our modesty—we who confess that we do not know what cannot be known, and take no care to seek out or investigate what it is most clear cannot be comprehended, however far human conjecture may stretch and strain itself through a thousand hearts.

And therefore Christ—though against your will he is God, God I say, Christ—for this must often be said, so that the hearing of the faithless may burst and break asunder—speaking by the command of God the chief in the form of a man, since he knew that the nature of mortals is blind and can comprehend no truth, not even of things set before their eyes, and that they hold for certain and known whatever they have persuaded themselves to be so, and cleave wholly to conjectures, and sow and press contentious questions—commanded us to leave all these things aside and set them below, and not to cast fruitless thoughts upon things that are far removed from our knowledge.

But as much as can be done, to set out with the whole mind and soul toward the Lord of all things, to be lifted up from these places, and to turn the suspended reflections of the heart toward him, to hold perpetual remembrance of him; and although he can be formed by no imagination, yet to fashion for oneself certain airs, as it were, of contemplation. For of all things which the obscurity of august divinity contains, he alone is beyond doubt, alone true, and one about whom none can be in doubt save one who is mad and of desperate insanity—whom it is enough to know, so that you need know nothing else; and so you will have attained true and greatest knowledge, fixed in God, the head and source of all things.

What is it to you, he says, to investigate and seek out who made man? What is the origin of souls? Who devised the causes of evils? Whether the sun is larger than the earth, or is measured by the breadth of one foot? Whether the moon shines by borrowed light or by its own radiance?—things of which to know brings no profit, and to be ignorant brings no loss. Leave these things to God, and grant that he himself knows what, why, or whence a thing is; whether it ought to have been or not; whether something has always been born or has its first beginnings; whether it is fitting that it be abolished or preserved; burned, dissolved, or renewed with restored wholeness. It is not within your reasonings to entangle yourselves in such things, and to concern yourselves uselessly with matters so remote.

Your affair is set in uncertainty—I mean the salvation of your souls—and unless you attach yourselves to the knowledge of God the chief, a cruel death awaits you when freed from bodily bonds, bringing not sudden extinction, but consuming you over a stretch of time with the bitterness of torturing punishment.

And let not this creep in upon you or flatter you with airy hope, what is said by certain pretenders to knowledge and those who arrogate much to themselves: that they are born of God and not subject to the laws of fate; that if they have lived their life with some restraint, his court lies open to them, and that after the function of man they are brought back as to a native home with none to hinder; nor what the Magi promise, that they have commendatory prayers by which certain powers, being softened, provide easy ways for those striving to fly up to heaven; nor what Etruria promises in its Acherontic books, that by giving the blood of certain animals to certain divinities, souls become divine and are led out from the laws of mortality. These are empty flatteries and the nourishment of vain desires.

No one but God almighty can save souls; nor is there anyone besides who can make them long-lived and impart the breath of perpetuity, save he who alone is immortal and everlasting, and bounded by no circumscription of any time. For since all gods, whether those who are truly such or those who are said to be so by rumor and opinion, are immortal and everlasting by his will and by the gift of his beneficence, how can it be that they are able to bestow upon others that which they themselves are, since they hold it as something foreign and lent by a greater power? Let Etruria sacrifice as many victims as it will; let the wise deny themselves all human things; let the Magi soften and soothe all the powers; unless that which reason demands is granted to souls by the Lord of all things, and that through his command, it will afterward be greatly repented that one was made a mockery, when one begins to approach the sense of destruction.

But if, they say, Christ was sent by God for this purpose, to free unhappy souls from the ruin of destruction, what did the earlier ages deserve, which were consumed under the condition of mortality before his coming? For can you know what was done with those souls of the most ancient and earliest mortals? Whether aid was brought to them also by some means, and provision and care taken for them? You can know, I say, that which could be known through Christ's teaching: whether the ages are infinite or finite from the time when the race of men began to exist on earth; when souls were first bound to bodies; who was the author of this union, nay who was the maker of man himself; whither the souls of those earlier ones departed, in what parts or regions of the world they were, whether corruptible or otherwise; whether they could have come into the danger of dying had not Christ the preserver met them at the necessary time.

Lay aside these cares and leave these questions unknown to you: royal compassion was bestowed upon them also, and divine benefits ran equally through all; they were preserved, they were freed, and they laid aside the lot and condition of mortality. In what manner, which ones, when? If arrogance, if pride, if haughtiness were absent from you, you could long since have known this through that author.

But if Christ came as the preserver of the human race, you say, why does he not free all equally with equal munificence? Does he not liberate equally who calls all equally? Or does he drive away or reject anyone from the principal indulgence, who makes the power of coming to him available uniformly to the high, the low, slaves, women, children? The fountain of life, he says, is open to all, nor is anyone forbidden or driven away from the right to drink. If your disdain is so great that you spurn the benefit of the gift offered, nay if your wisdom so prevails that you call what is offered by Christ a jest and foolishness, in what does he who invites sin against you, whose sole part it is to set forth the fruit of his kindness under the judgment of your own will?

God is not the cause of anyone's choice of the lot of life, says Plato, nor can another's will rightly be ascribed to anyone, since the freedom of will lies in the power of him who willed. Or must you perchance be entreated to deign to receive from God the benefit of salvation, and must the grace of divine benevolence be poured into the lap of one who spurns and flees it from the greatest distance? Do you wish to take what is offered and turn it to your own use? You will have consulted your own interest.

You spurn, despise, and disdain? You will have deprived yourself of the benefit of the gift. God forces necessity upon no one, terrifies no one with imperious dread. For our salvation is not necessary to him, such that he suffers any gain or loss: whether he makes us gods, or permits us to be reduced to nothing by the dissolution of corruption.

Nay, says he, if God is powerful, merciful, a preserver, let him turn our minds, and make us believe his promises against our will. That then is compulsion, not grace, nor the liberality of God as sovereign, but a childish and empty striving for the sake of conquest. For what is so unjust as to wrest the wills of those who resist, who are unwilling, into the opposite direction, to force upon them what they do not wish, and to press upon their minds what they flee from? To harm before you benefit, and, having first stripped away what was their own, to transfer them into a foreign condition and opinion? You who desire to be turned and to suffer violence, so that you may accomplish and seize under compulsion what you do not wish: why do you refuse to take by your own will what, once turned and changed, you desire to accomplish? I am unwilling, he says, and have no will. Why then do you accuse God, as though he were lacking toward you?

You desire him to bring you aid, whose gifts and bounties you not only spurn and flee, but even rename with other words and pursue with jesting mockery. If therefore I shall not be a Christian, can I have no hope of salvation? It is as you yourself propose. For the part of giving salvation, and of conferring upon souls what it is fitting to bestow and necessary to apply, God the Father alone has had enjoined and delivered to him, the inner and deeper causes being such as they are. For just as certain gods among you have certain guardianships, jurisdictions, and powers, and you do not demand from any one of them what is not within his power and jurisdiction: so it is the sole prerogative of Christ to give salvation to souls, and to bestow the spirit of perpetuity.

For if you believe that Father Liber can give the vintage but not medicine: that Ceres can give grain, Aesculapius health, Neptune one thing, Juno another, Fortune, Mercury, Vulcan, and that each is the giver of certain and individual things: this too you must needs accept from us, that souls can receive the power of life and safety from none other than him whom the supreme King has set over this office and duty. The almighty Ruler willed this to be the way of salvation, this, so to speak, the gate of life; through him alone is there entrance to the light, nor is it granted to creep in or force entry by any other way, all others being closed and fortified with an impregnable citadel.

Even if you should be pure and cleansed from all contamination of vices, and should have won over and bent those powers so that they do not close the ways and block the passage of one returning to heaven, you will be able by no efforts to attain the prize of immortality, unless you have received what immortality itself consists in, by the bestowal of Christ, and have been admitted to true life. For as to what you are accustomed to cast at us, that our religion is new, and born but a few days ago, and that you could not abandon your ancient and ancestral faith and be transferred to barbarian and foreign rites, this is urged by no reason. For what if in this manner we should wish to lay blame upon those earlier and most ancient ages, because, when grain was discovered, they spurned and rejected acorns and arbutus berries? Because they ceased to be covered and clothed with bark and skins, after woven garment was devised, more convenient in use and comfort?

Or because, when houses were built and more refined dwellings established, they did not cherish their old huts, nor prefer to remain like beasts under rocks and in caves? It is common to all, and handed down from almost the very cradle, to prefer good things to bad, to set useful things before useless, and to pursue and seek what has been found to be more precious and more joyful: and to fix therein the hope of salvation and of saving benefits.

And so when you charge us with turning away from the religion of our forebears, you ought to examine the cause, not the deed: and not to set against us what we have left, but above all to consider what we have followed. For if to change one's opinion is any fault or crime, and to migrate from ancient institutions to other new things and purposes; that accusation applies to you as well, who have so often changed your life and custom: who have passed, condemning the ways of your forebears, into other manners and other rites. Do you now divide the people into five classes, as your ancestors once did? Do you create magistrates through the people? Do you know what the military, urban, and common assemblies are? Do you observe the heavens, or do you render actions void by announcements of ill omens? When you prepare for war, do you display the signal from the citadel?

Do you conduct the rites of the fetials? Do you reclaim seized property by formal demand? Or when going forth to the hazard of Mars, do you take the omen of battle from the points of consecrated spears? In undertaking offices, do you observe the laws concerning age?

In gifts and largesses, the Cincian laws? In restraining expenditures, the Censorian? In your inner shrines do you maintain perpetual hearths? Do you make your tables sacred by the placing of salt-cellars and images of the gods? When you come together in marriage, do you spread the couches with a toga and invoke the genii of the husbands? Do you smooth the hair of brides with a bachelor's spear? Do you dedicate the little togas of girls to the goddess of maidenhood? Do your matrons of the household work in the atria of their homes, bearing witness to their industry? Do they abstain from wine? Is it the right of kinsmen and relatives to kiss them, so as to prove that they are sober and abstemious?

On the Alban Mount in ancient times it was lawful to sacrifice none but bulls of snowy whiteness: did you not change this custom and religious observance, by a decree of the Senate, so that reddish ones might be permitted to be offered? When Romulus and Pompilius were reigning, the entrails offered to the gods were thoroughly cooked and sodden: did you not, under King Tullius, begin to offer them half-raw and barely warmed, the ancient observance being set aside? Before the coming of Hercules into Italy, when, by the oracle of Apollo, human heads were offered in sacrifice to Father Dis and Saturn: did you not likewise change this custom, not by clever trickery and ambiguity of names?

Since therefore you yourselves have at one time followed those customs, at another time other laws, and many things have been rejected and despised by you, either through recognized errors or through the discernment of better things: what has been done by us contrary to common sense and judgment, if we have chosen greater and more certain things, and have not suffered ourselves to be held fast by the religions of falsehoods?

But our name is new, and the religion we follow was born but a few days ago. Even granting for the moment that what is objected against us is not a false charge: what is there in the affairs of men, whether accomplished by bodily labor and hands, or held by the discipline and knowledge of the mind alone, that did not begin at some time, and come into the use and experience of mortals? For philosophy, music, and all the other arts by which common life has been cultivated and refined, were born with men, and did they not rather begin to be practiced, understood, and celebrated but recently, nay indeed but a little while ago? Before Tages the Etruscan touched the borders of light, did any man know, or take care to learn and study, what was signified in the falling of thunderbolts, or what was signified in the veins of entrails? When did the movement of the stars, or the genethliaca reckoning, begin to be known?

Was it not after Theuth the Egyptian, or after Atlas, as some report, that bearer, carrier, piper, and prop of the sky?

But why do I speak of these small matters? The immortal gods themselves, whose temples you now enter and whose divine powers you humbly adore, as is handed down in your writings and opinions, did they not begin to exist, to be known, and to be called by the names imposed upon them, at certain fixed times? For if it is true that Jupiter was begotten by Saturn and his wife along with his brothers, before the marriage and the births of Ops, Jupiter was nowhere—neither the supreme nor the Stygian; nowhere was the lord of the salt sea, nowhere was Juno; nay indeed no other, save the two parents, dwelt in the seats of heaven, but from their union they were conceived and born and drew the breath of life. At a fixed time, therefore, Jupiter began to be God, at a fixed time worship and sacrifices were established for him: at a fixed time he was set before his brothers in power.

Again, if Liber, Venus, Diana, Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, the Muses, the Tyndarid Castors, and fire-powerful Vulcan were brought forth by Father Jupiter and begotten by the Saturnian sire, before Memory, Alcmena, Maia, Juno, Latona, Leda, Dione, and then Semele also, were made pregnant by the embraces of the Father of Days, these too were nowhere among the nations, nor in any part of the nature of things, but were sown from the union of Jupiter and born, and began to have some sense of themselves. Therefore these too began to exist at a fixed time, and to be invoked in the number of sacred divinities for ceremonies. The same may likewise be said, transferred to Minerva.

For if she flashed forth, as you assert, from the brain of Jupiter without the casting of any seed: before the Father of Days was begotten and received in the womb of a bodily mother the form of bodily outline, it is certain that Minerva did not exist, nor was she reckoned in the number of things, nor counted as being in any substance: but from the time she was born from the head of Jupiter, she began to be something established in being. She has therefore her primordial origins, and from a fixed time began to be called a goddess, to be set up in sacred temples, and to be hallowed with inviolable religion. Since this is so, when you speak of the newness of our religions, do your own not come to mind, nor do you take care to examine when your gods arose, what origins they have, what causes, or from what roots they sprang and burst forth?

But what shamelessness, nay what impudence is it, to reproach another for what you yourself are seen to do, and to make those things a matter of reproach and accusation which could be turned back and retorted against yourself in reciprocal fashion?

But what we do is new, and what you do is ancient and of exceeding antiquity: and how does this either help you, or sadden our cause and argument? The thing we practice is new: in time it too will become old. The thing you practice is old: but at the times when it began, it was new and sudden. The authority of a religion, however, is not to be measured by time, but by divine power: nor is it fitting to consider on what day you began to worship, but what you began to worship. Your religion, you say, did not exist four hundred years ago. And your gods did not exist two thousand years ago. By what reckonings can this be gathered, or by what calculations? Not difficult ones, not obscure ones, but such as anyone who wishes may see and, as the saying goes, handle with his hands. Who begot Jupiter with his brothers? Saturn, joined to Ops in procreation, as you report, himself begotten of Coelus and Hecate.

Who was Picus, the father of Faunus and grandfather of Latinus? Saturn, as you yourselves likewise hand down in your writings and authorities. If these things are so, it follows that Picus and Jupiter were joined to each other by the bond of brotherhood: inasmuch as they were begotten from one blood and one seed. It is consistent that what is said is so. From Jupiter and Picus, how many degrees of descent are there down to Latinus? Three, as the sequence shows. Are you willing that Faunus, Latinus, and Picus each lived a hundred and twenty years? For it is denied that the life of a man can be extended beyond that. The reckoning is just and clear. There are therefore three hundred and sixty full years after these: the matter is as the calculation shows. Whose father-in-law was Latinus? Aeneas's. Whose father was he? The founder of the town of Alba. How many years was there reign at Alba? Four hundred and nearly twice ten.

Of what age is the city of Rome said to be in the annals? It counts a thousand and fifty years, or not much less than these. From Jupiter therefore, who is the brother of Picus and the father of the lesser and remaining gods, the years down to the present time are nearly two thousand, or full, if we grant generously to the reckoning. Since this cannot be refuted, it is shown that not only is the religion you practice recently born, but that the gods themselves to whom you offer bulls and other victims at the risk of corruption are still infants and small children—gods who ought still to be nourished on the breast and with dripped milk.

But your religions precede ours by many years, and are therefore more true, because they are fortified by the authority of antiquity. And what does it profit them to have gone before by ever so many years, since they began at a definite time? Or what are two thousand years of space, compared with so many thousands of ages? And yet, lest we seem to be betraying our cause by so long a concealment, unless it is troublesome, tell us: does the omnipotent and first God seem to you a novel thing, and do those who worship and revere him seem to be stirring up and introducing unheard-of, unknown, and sudden religions? Is there anything more ancient than he, or can anything be found that precedes him in reality, in time, in name? Is he not alone unbegotten, alone immortal and eternal? Is he not the head and source of all things? Does not eternity owe to him this very thing which is called eternity? Is it not from his perpetuity that infinite ages come forth?

This is beyond doubt and true: therefore what we follow is not new, but we have learned late what we ought to follow and worship, or where it is fitting to fix the hope of salvation and to place the remedies of salvation. For he had not yet shone forth who would show the way to those who were wandering, and would send the light of knowledge into those set in deepest darkness, and would dispel the blindness of ignorance.

But we alone are turned about in a cause of this kind. What then? Did you not, after the consuls Piso and Gabinius, admit the Egyptian divinities, to whom the names Serapis and Isis belong, into the number of your gods? Did you not, when Hannibal the Carthaginian was seizing the affairs of Italy and demanding the supremacy of the world, begin to know and acknowledge the Phrygian mother, whose founder is said to be either Midas or Dardanus, and to consecrate her with memorable religious observance? Was it not obtained, regarding the rites of mother Ceres—not because they were unknown to you, but because they were adopted a little before—that they should be called Greek, the very novelty being attested by the surname? Is it not contained in the writings of learned men that the Pompiline invocations know not the name of Apollo? From which it is apparent, and clear, that he too was unknown to you, and that afterwards at some point he began to be known.

If therefore you were asked why you so late took up the worship of those divinities of which we have just made mention, you would certainly answer either that we did not recently know that they were in the number of the gods, or that we are now warned by seers, or that in the most grievous circumstances we were saved by their benefits and aid. But if you shall rightly judge this to be well said by you, judge also from our side that an answer has been given on similar reasoning. Our religion is born now: for now he has come who was sent to show it to us, to lead us into its truth, to show what God is, and to call us away from matters of opinion to his worship.

And what, says he, seemed good to God the king and ruler, that Christ should be sent to you from the citadels of heaven as a saviour a few hours before the end, as it is said? We ask you in return: what cause, what reason is there that the seasons are not sometimes restored to their proper months, but that winter, summer, and autumn come late? Why, after harvests have dried up and grain has perished, do rains sometimes fall which ought to have flowed down while things were unharmed and to have been supplied at the fitting times of the season? Nay, we inquire rather this: why, if Hercules had to be born, if Aesculapius, Mercury, Liber, and certain others, who were both to be joined to the councils of the gods and to bring some benefit to mortals, were they brought forth by Jupiter so late that only posterity knew them, while the antiquity of earlier ages was ignorant of them? You will say there was some reason.

There was reason also here, therefore, why our race's saviour should come not recently but today. What reason then? We do not deny that we do not know. For it is not easy for anyone to see the mind of God, or in what ways he has ordered his affairs. Man, a blind creature, not knowing even himself, can by no reasoning attain to what ought to be done, when, or in what manner: the father, moderator, and Lord of all things alone knows. Nor, if I shall have been unable to set forth to you the reasons why something is done in this or that way, does it straightway follow that what has been done is undone, and that the matter loses its credibility, which has been shown to be beyond doubt by so many kinds of virtues and powers.

You may object and urge: why was the saviour sent so late? In infinite and eternal ages nothing at all is to be called late. For where there is no end and no beginning, nothing is slow. For time is known by limits and extremities, which the unbroken and boundless succession of ages cannot have. What if the very matters which needed to be helped required that particular opportunity of time? What if the ancient things were of one condition, and the following things of another? What if the ancients needed to be helped in one way, and the later ones needed to be provided for in another? Do you not hear your own writings recording that there were once demigods and heroes, men of monstrous and vast bodies? Do you not read that infants at their mothers' breasts uttered stentorian cries, whose bones dug up in various regions scarcely made credible to those who found them that they were the remains of human limbs?

It is possible, therefore, that God omnipotent, God alone, sent Christ at that very time when the race of men began to be of a more feeble and weaker nature. If what has been done today could have been done thousands of years before, the supreme king would have done it: or if what has been done today ought to have been fulfilled after as many thousands of years, nothing compelled God not to await the necessary measures of time. His affairs are carried out by fixed reasons, and what has once been decreed to be done can be changed by no new circumstance.

When therefore, you say, you serve the omnipotent God, and are confident that he has care of your salvation and safety, why does he suffer you to endure such great persecutions, and to undergo all kinds of punishments and torments? Let us inquire in return: why, when you worship so many and so countless gods, and build sacred temples for them, fashion images from gold, slaughter herds of animals, and fill all the altars with incense-boxes full, why do you not live free from so many dangers and storms by which destructive and manifold fortunes daily drive you? Why, I say, do your gods cease to turn away from you so many kinds of diseases and ailments, shipwrecks, ruins, fires, pestilences, famine, the loss of children, and the proscription of goods, discords, wars, enmities, the capture of cities, and, with freedom taken away, servitudes? But God also in no way aids us in calamities of this kind. The reason is ready and manifest.

For nothing has been promised to us for this life, nor has any help been pledged or aid decreed to those established in the sack of this little flesh: nay rather we have been taught to reckon as of little account all threats, whatever they are, and to esteem fortune lightly. And if at any time some heavier force shall have come upon us, which must necessarily have an end, not to fear it, nor to flee it, so that we may the more easily be stripped of bodily chains and escape the darkened blindness.

And so this harshness of persecution, as you call it, is our liberation, not persecution; nor will the vexation bring punishment, but will lead us out to the light of freedom: just as if some brutish and stupid person, having put a man in prison, should think he is not afflicting him with heavy and grievous torments of questioning unless he rages against the prison itself, breaks down its material, and burns the roof, the wall, the doors, and strips away, throws down, and batters the other parts of the structure, not knowing that by this act he is giving light to the one he seems to harm and snatching him from accursed blindness; in the same way you also, with flames, exiles, tortures, and beasts, with which you tear and rend our bodies, do not take life from us but relieve us of our skins and hides;

not knowing that the more you press on and persist in raging against these forms and appearances of ours, the more you relieve us of tight and heavy chains, and by cutting away our bonds enable us to fly toward the light.

Wherefore, men, refrain from hindering your hopes with empty questionings; nor, if something is otherwise than you think, ought you to trust your own opinions rather than an august matter. Times full of dangers press upon us, and deadly punishments threaten; let us flee to the saving God, and let us not demand a reason for the gift bestowed. When the salvation of souls is at stake, and regard for ourselves, something must be done even without reason, as Arrian attests that Epictetus said. We doubt, we waver, and we suspect that what is said is not full of faith; let us commit ourselves to God, and let not our own incredulity weigh more with us than the greatness of that name and power; lest, while we seek out for ourselves arguments by which that may seem false which we are unwilling and striving to be true, the last day steal upon us and we be found in the jaws of hostile death.

To all these charges—or rather, to speak truly, slanders—a sufficiently full and careful answer has long since been given by men excellent in this part and deserving to know this truth; nor has any point of any question been passed over which has not been refuted in a thousand ways and with the most valid arguments. It is therefore not necessary to linger longer on this part of the cause. For can the Christian religion not stand without defenders? Or will it be proved true if it has had very many supporters and has taken its authority from men? It is content with its own strength, and rests on the foundations of its own truth: nor is it stripped of its force, even if it has no champion; nay, even if all tongues act against it and strive against it, and conspire with the animosity of united agreement to abrogate faith in it.

Now let us return to the order from which we were necessarily a little while ago diverted: lest a defense too long interrupted be said to have conceded to the calumniators the palm of a proven charge. For they add this: If divine matters are dear to your heart, why do you neither worship nor adore other gods along with us, nor mingle common rites with your peoples, nor join the observances of religions? We can say in the meantime that for the performance of the worship of divinity, the first God is sufficient for us; God, I say, the first, Father and Lord of all things, founder and moderator of everything; in him we worship all that is to be worshipped; what it is fitting to adore, we adore; what demands the homage of veneration, we merit by acts of veneration.

For since we hold the very head of divinity, from which the divinity itself of all divine things, whatever they are, is derived, we consider it superfluous to go through each one individually; since we neither know who they are nor what names they have; and moreover of what number they are we can have nothing clear, comprehended, or ascertained.

And just as in earthly kingdoms we are compelled by no necessity to adore by name those established in royal households among the chief persons, but in the worship of the kings themselves, whatever is attached to them feels itself to be comprehended in a silent honor: by no other reasoning, whoever these gods are whom you set before us as existing—if they are of royal descent and spring from the chief head—even if they receive no worship by name from us, they understand themselves nevertheless to be honored in common with their king, and to be contained in his acts of veneration. And this indeed would have been thus set forth by us, if only it is clear and established that besides the king and ruler himself there are other heads, which, distributed and separated by number, make as it were a certain populace of plebeian multitude.

Nor do you wish to show us in sacred buildings images in place of gods and those statues: which you yourselves also understand, and refuse and decline to confess, to be forms of the vilest clay and childish fabrications of craftsmen. And when we speak with you about a divine matter, we demand that you show this: that there are other gods by nature, by power, by name; not those set before us in statues which we see, but in that substance in which it is fitting that the force of so great a name ought to be esteemed. But it is not our intention to linger longer on this part of the cause, lest we seem to wish to stir up the greatest disputes and to join tumultuous contests.

Let there be, as you proclaim, that multitude of divine beings, let there be innumerable clans of gods; we agree, we acquiesce, we wink at it, nor do we feign this matter to be doubtful and ambiguous in any question. Yet we demand and ask to hear from you by what means you have come to know, or by what reasonings you have grasped, whether those whom you suppose to exist and worship are absent from heaven; or whether there are certain others, of unheard-of repute and name? For it can happen that those also exist whom you do not recall; and that those in whose existence you are confident are found in no part of nature. For you have never flown up to the stars of heaven, you have never seen the faces and countenances of each one: and those gods whom you recall to be there, you have set about worshipping here as though known and seen.

But we also desire again to hear from you whether the names by which you call them have been imposed upon them, or whether they themselves imposed these names upon themselves on their naming-days? If these are divine and heavenly names, who brought them down to you? But if they have these appellations assigned by you, how were you able to give names to those whom you had never seen, and whose nature or identity you knew in no acquaintance whatsoever?

But as you wish and believe, and as you are persuaded, let these be gods: let them be called even by those names by which common popular usage leads the populace to regard them: yet how can you know how many complete the census of this name, even if some have at some time been brought to your knowledge, use, and acquaintance?

For it is not easy to know whether the multitude of their number is fixed and certain, or whether the total is without any limit and not bounded by the reckonings of any computation. For let us suppose that you worship a thousand gods, or rather five thousand: yet in the nature of things it can perhaps happen that there are a hundred thousand gods; it can be that there are more than this, nay, as we said a little before, it can be that the total of gods is none, and not bounded by any numerable circumscription. Either, therefore, you also are impious, who besides a few gods do not perform the duties owed to the rest: or if you seek pardon for your ignorance of the others, you will obtain the same pardon for us as well: if for a like portion we abstain from the worship of those whom we do not know to exist at all.

And yet, lest anyone stubbornly suppose that we are unwilling to receive the sacred rites of the other divine beings, whatever they may be: for we stretch forth devoted minds and suppliant hands, nor do we disdain to approach wherever you invite us: if only we may learn who these divinities are whom you press upon us, and whom it is fitting to join to the veneration of the supreme king and ruler. Saturn, one says, and Janus, Minerva, Juno, Apollo, Venus, Triptolemus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and all the others, to whom devout antiquity has consecrated magnificent temples in almost all cities. You might perhaps have been able to invite us to the worship of these divine beings, had not you yourselves been the first to pour forth against them, with the foulness of shameful opinions, such things as would not only pollute their dignity, but would prove by the qualities attached that they are by no means divine.

For we cannot first be brought to believe this: that that immortal and most excellent nature is divided by sexes, and that one part are males and the other part females. This point indeed men of living mind have long since fully expounded, both in Latin writings and in Greek: and before all others Tullius, the most eloquent of the Roman race, fearing no reproach of impiety, openly, steadfastly, and freely showed with greater piety what he thought of such an opinion; from whom, if you were to take the matters written down in the truth of his judgment rather than pursue his verbal splendors, this case would have been concluded: nor would it demand of us, as the saying goes, second pleadings from beginners.

But why should I say that verbal quibbles and the brilliance of speech are sought from him, when I know there are not a few who shun and flee his books on this subject, and are unwilling to admit to their ears a reading that overcomes the presumptions of their own opinions? And when I hear others muttering indignantly and saying that it ought to be decreed by the senate that those writings be abolished by which the Christian religion is confirmed and the authority of antiquity suppressed? Nay rather, if you trust that you can say anything well-established about your gods, convict Cicero of error, refute his rash and impious words by the facts, rebuke them, reject them. For to intercept writings and to wish to suppress a published reading is not to defend the gods, but to fear the testimony of truth.

And yet lest some inconsiderate person raise a calumny against us as well, as though we believed the God whom we worship to be male—on the ground, namely, that when we speak of him we pronounce him in the masculine gender—let him understand that it is not sex, but by the usage and familiarity of speech that his appellation and designation is brought forth. For God is not male, but his name is of the masculine gender: which you for your part cannot say in your religion. For you are accustomed in prayers to say, whether you are a god or a goddess: which exception of doubt declares that you assign sex to the gods by that very distinction. We cannot therefore be brought to believe that God has a body. For bodies, if there are males and females, must necessarily be marked with the distinction of sex.

For who, even of slight understanding, does not know that the sexes of different kinds were established and formed among earthly living creatures by that creator of animals for no other reason than that through the unions and couplings of bodies, a thing perishable and fleeting might endure through the perpetual renewal of succession?

What then shall we say? That gods beget? That gods are born? And that therefore the parts of the generative members have been added, so that they might be able to furnish offspring, and that with each new brood arising, a recurring substitution might supply whatever the previous age had taken away? If these things are so, that is, if the gods above beget, and if through these laws they experience the functions of sex, and are immortal, and are not rendered barren and exhausted by the chills of old age, it follows that all things ought to be full of gods: and that not even innumerable heavens could contain the multitude of them: since they themselves generate perpetually, and through the offspring of offspring a multiplied innumerability is always increasing; or if the obscenity of coupling is absent from gods, as is fitting, what cause and reason will be shown why they are marked with those parts by which the sexes are accustomed to recognize themselves by the promptings of their own lusts?

For it is not plausible that these are held in vain, or that an improvident nature wished to sport pleasantly with them in such a way as to burden them with those parts which are not to be used. For just as hands, feet, eyes, and the rest of the structure of members have each been established for their certain uses and functions, so it is fitting to believe that these parts have been fashioned for the performance of their own office: or it must be confessed that in the bodies of the gods there is something superfluous, which has been fabricated in vain and to no purpose.

What do you say, O holy and undefiled priests of the religions? Have the gods then sexes, and do they carry about the foulnesses of the generative members, which it is shameful even to utter by their proper names from modest lips? What then remains, except that we believe them to rage in the frenzy of lusts after the manner of unclean four-footed beasts, to rush with rabid desires into mutual embraces, and finally to grow languid with the enervation of pleasure, their bodies broken and dissolved? And since certain things are proper to the female sex, it follows that we must believe these also to discharge their own laws as the months revolve: to have and to hold conceptions with disgust: to miscarry, to endure, and by premature birth sometimes to bring forth seven-month offspring. O pure, O holy divinity, separated and removed from every stain of baseness!

The mind eagerly desires and burns to behold in those great Chalcidian halls and in the palaces of heaven the gods and goddesses with their bodies uncovered and naked—Ceres full-breasted by Iacchus, as the muse of Lucretius proclaims, and Priapus of the Hellespont carrying among the virgin goddesses and mothers those things of his, always ready for the expedition of battles. The mind desires, I say, to see goddesses with child, goddesses in labor, lingering with the tedium of the internal burden as their bellies swell day by day, some in travail for a long time seeking the hands of a midwife: those fixed by heavy pangs and the sharp points of pain, wailing, writhing, and amid all this imploring the aid of Juno Lucina. Is it not far more right to curse, to revile, and to heap other reproaches upon the gods, than under a pious pretext to presume such monstrous opinions about them with such indignity?

And do you dare to ascribe to us the cause of the gods' offense, when, if judgment be made, this is found most certainly to reside in you, and not to consist in the insult which you suppose? For if the gods, as you say, are affected by anger and grow hot with the indignation of their minds: why should we not suppose that they bear it ill and most bitterly that sex is assigned to them by you—sex with which dogs and swine have been formed? And that when you so believe, they are fashioned in no other way, and set forth with ignominious display?

Therefore since these things are so, you are the cause of all miseries, you drive the gods, you stir them up to afflict the lands with all evils, and to contrive each day new things by which they may avenge themselves, exasperated by so many injuries and maledictions from you: maledictions, I say, and injuries, which you celebrate partly in shameful fables, partly in indecorous opinions—which your theologians, which your poets, which you yourselves also celebrate in ignominious rites—you will find human affairs ruined, and the gods having abandoned the helm; if indeed their care extends to ruling and administering the fortunes of mortals. For as for us, they have no reason to be angry: since they see and perceive that we neither worship them, nor mock them, as the saying goes, and that we hold a far more honorable opinion of the dignity of their name than you do.

Enough of sex. Now let us come to the appearance and forms in which you believe the gods above to be described: nay rather, in which you have fashioned them and placed them in the most spacious seats of temples. And let no one here oppose to us the fables of the Jews and of the Sadducean kind, as though we too assign forms to God: for this is supposed to be said in their writings, and to be confirmed as a certain fact and by authority: which either have nothing to do with us, nor share anything in common with us in any part: or if they are, as is believed, kindred to us, you must seek from them teachers of deeper understanding, through whom you may be able to learn in what manner it is fitting to unloose the clouds and wrappings of those writings. Our opinion on this matter is as follows.

That all divine nature, which neither began to exist at any time, nor will ever come to a vital end, lacks bodily lineaments, and possesses no likenesses of forms by which the outermost circumscription of members is accustomed to bound and confine their joinings. For whatever is of such a kind we judge to be mortal and perishable: nor do we believe that what is enclosed within extreme limits and shut in by a necessary boundary can maintain perpetual duration.

But as for you, it is not enough that you embrace the gods within the measure of human forms and outlines: and what is far more unworthy, you confine them within the circumscription of earthly bodies. What then shall we say? That the gods carry a head gathered into a smooth roundness, bound to the back and chest by the fastenings of sinews, and supported at the necessary bendings of the neck by the joinings of vertebrae and a bony substructure? But if we accept this as true, it follows also that they have ears bored through with curved windings: movable orbs of eyes, shaded by the margins of eyebrows: the suspended gutter of the nostrils, passable for mucous discharges and for the passage of breath: teeth of three kinds for the working of food, arranged for three functions: hands as servants of works, manageable by joints, fingers, and the mobility of elbows: feet for sustaining bodies, for unfolding steps, and for supplying the advances of journeys.

But if those things which are visible are consistent, those things also must be carried which the skin beneath the ribs and their lattice-work covers, and the membranes of the caul: gullets, stomachs, spleens, lungs, bladders, livers, the coils of the winding intestines, and the veins of purple blood coursing through all the viscera, joined with the arteries that carry breath.

Or do the bodies of the celestial beings lack these foulnesses? And since they abstain from mortal foods, must we believe them to be toothless after the manner of little children, and stripped of all internal organs, hanging like inflated wineskins in the emptiness of swollen bodies?

What of this: if these things are so, it will be necessary for you to consider whether all the gods are alike, or whether they are held within a dissimilar circumscription of forms. For if the likeness of appearance is equal and one for all, it is not absurd to believe that they err and are deceived in the mutual recognition of one another. But if they bear distinction in their countenances, it follows that it must be understood that dissimilarities were given to them for no other reason than that each might be able to recognize himself by the distinctive marks of differing signs. Therefore it must be said that some are large-headed, some small-eared, some broad-browed, some thick-lipped: among these some are heavy-chinned, some marked with moles, some large-nosed. Some with flattened nostrils, others with turned-up ones, some with swollen cheeks or puffed out with an accumulation of jowls, dwarfish, tall, middling, lean, stout, fat: some curly with the twisting of their hair, others shaved bald and smooth.

Nor do we suppose falsely: your own workshops both reveal and declare this. For when you make and fashion gods, you depict some with flowing hair, others smooth, old men, young men, boys, dark-complexioned, grey-eyed, tawny, half-naked, uncovered, or, lest the cold inconvenience them, drenched with the covering of flowing garments.

Is there any man touched by even a taste of reason who believes that hairs and down grow upon the bodies of the gods? Who believes that distinctions of years exist among them? Who believes that they go about clothed in various forms of coverings and garments, and protect themselves from heat and cold? He who holds this to be true must also accept this as true: that there are gods who are fullers, gods who are barbers—who either wash their sacred garments, or trim their hair, tangled in the fleece of overgrown locks. Is this not shameful, is it not full of impiety and insult, to give to gods the features of a dying and perishable creature? To mark them with those parts which no upright person would dare to enumerate, to pursue in speech, or to conceive in the imagination of the mind without horror of the utmost foulness?

Is this that fastidiousness of yours, this that arrogant wisdom, by which you spit upon us as ignorant, and claim that all knowledge of divine things lies open to you alone? You laugh at the riddles of the Egyptians, because they have inserted the forms of mute animals into divine causes, and because those same images receive much incense and the rest of the apparatus of ceremonies: yet you venerate the likenesses of men as the powers of gods; and you are not ashamed to place upon them the face of an earthly creature; to condemn others for error and folly, and yet to be caught in the same likeness and fault of error.

Unless perhaps you will say that the gods have other forms indeed, and that you have accommodated to them the appearances of mortals for the sake of honor and convention—which is a far greater insult than to have done something out of ignorance and error. For if you confessed that you had attributed to divine forms what your conjecture had believed, it would be a lesser wrong to have sinned through presumptuous opinion. But as it is, since you believe one thing and fashion another, you are insulting toward those to whom you attribute what you yourselves confess they are not; and you are shown to be irreligious, since you adore what you fashion, not what you judge to exist in reality and in truth itself.

If little asses, dogs, swine had some human understanding, and possessed the arts of fashioning, and if they wished to honor us with some form of worship and to honor us with the consecration of statues, what flames of anger, what whirlwinds of indignation would they stir up in us, if they wished their statues to bear and display the forms of their own bodies? What flames of anger, I say, would they pour forth and kindle, if Romulus the founder of the city stood with an ass's face, if holy Pompilius stood with a dog's face, if the name of Cato or of Marcus Cicero were inscribed beneath the appearance of a swine? Is it thus that your stupidity is not laughed at—if they do laugh—by your own divinities?

Or, since you judge that they are moved by anger, do they not go mad, do they not rage, and do they not wish to avenge themselves for such great wrongs and insults, and to hurl against you those things which pain is wont to hurl, and the bitterness of offense to devise? How much better would it have been to give them the forms of elephants, panthers, or tigers, bulls, or horses? For what is beautiful in man, what I ask is admirable or comely, except that which some author has wished to be shared also with the monkey tribe?

But if our opinion displeases you, they say, do you demonstrate, do you say, with what form God is endowed. If you wish to hear the true opinion: either God has no form at all, or if He is formed with some form, what that form is we assuredly do not know. Nor do we consider it shameful not to know what we have never seen; nor are we prevented from refuting the opinions of others because we ourselves put forward no opinion of our own on this matter. For just as if the world were said to be made of glass, or of silver, of iron, or fashioned and fabricated from fragile earthenware, we would not hesitate to contend that this is false, even though we do not know what its material is: so when the question concerns the form of God, which you assert and we prove not to exist, even if we are less able to explain what it is.

What then, someone will say, does God not hear? Does He not speak? Does He not see things placed before Him? Does He not behold them? Perhaps in His own manner, not in ours. For we cannot know anything true in so great a matter, nor track it out by conjectures: which it is clear are among us unstable, slippery, and resembling the visions of empty dreams. For if we were to say that He sees by the same means by which we also see, it follows that He must be understood to have membranes overlying His pupils, to close His eyes, to blink, to perceive by rays or images, or—what is common to all eyes—to discern nothing at all without the admixture of another light. The same must likewise be said of hearing, and of the form of speech, and of the utterance of words.

If He hears through ears, that He also has them pierced with winding passages, through which a voice may creep in to announce the meaning of speech; or if words are poured forth from a mouth, that He has lips together with teeth, by whose striking and manifold movement the tongue articulates sounds and shapes the voice into words.

If you do not refuse to hear the movement of our mind: so far are we from attributing bodily features to God, that we shrink from ascribing even the adornments of souls, and those very virtues by which it is scarcely granted to a few to excel, to so great a being. For who would call God brave, steadfast, temperate, wise? Who would call Him upright? Who sober? Who indeed knowing anything? Who understanding? Who foreseeing? Who directing the decrees of His actions toward fixed ends of duties? These are human goods, and have earned a praiseworthy estimation by contrast with vices. But who is so dull of heart, so brutish, as to say that God is great by human goods? Or that He excels in the majesty of His name because He lacks the foulness of vices?

Whatever you say of God, whatever you conceive in the thought of your silent mind, passes over into human sense and is corrupted; nor does what is said in our words, composed for human affairs, bear the mark of its own proper signification. The one most certain understanding a man has of the nature of God is this: if you know and feel that nothing about Him can be drawn forth in mortal speech.

And this indeed is the first insult to your divinities, which you—fine champions of religion and pious founders—have established concerning their forms and sexes. But what follows, of what sort is it: that you introduce to us gods who are some of them smiths, some physicians, some wool-workers, sailors, lute-players, pipe-players, hunters, shepherds, and—what remained—farmers? And that one, they say, is a musical god; and this other is divine. For the rest of the gods are not so, and through ignorance and lack of knowledge of the future they do not know how to foretell things to come. He was trained in the arts of midwifery, another was instructed in the disciplines of physicians. Do they then each excel in their own domain, and when called to aid are they unable to assist in parts outside their own? This one is eloquent in speech and ready in the stringing together of words: for the others are dull, and if a speech must be made, they cannot utter anything clever.

But I ask, what reason is there, what so harsh a necessity, what cause, that the gods above should know and possess these crafts as though they were base artisans? For in heaven there is singing and playing of strings, so that the nine clever sisters may combine and modulate the intervals and measures of sounds!

Are there forests on the starry mountains, are there lairs, are there groves, so that Diana, all-powerful in the chase, may be held in her expeditions? Do the gods not know what is impending, and do they live by lots and are driven by the decrees of fate, so that the son of Latona, the prophet, may unfold and reveal what the morrow or the hour brings to each? Is he himself filled by another god, and pressed and driven by the force of a greater divinity, so that he may rightly be called and held divine? Are the gods seized by diseases, and can they be wounded or afflicted by anything, so that when reason demands it, the Epidaurian helper may come to their aid? Do they labor in childbirth and give birth, so that Juno may soothe the difficult entanglements of delivery, and Lucina hasten them? Do they till the land, or attend to military duties, so that flame-powerful Vulcan may forge swords for them, or hammer out the iron tools of the field?

Do they need the covering of garments, so that the virgin Tritonia may carefully weave thread for them, and according to the quality of the season compose either triple-woven tunics or garments of silk? Do they bring accusations and answer charges, so that the offspring of Atlas may bear the first prize of eloquence sought by eager practice?

You err, he says, and are deceived: for the gods themselves are not the craftsmen, but they instill these arts into the minds of men, and in order that life may be better equipped, they hand on to mortals what is to be known. But he who instills some discipline into one who is ignorant and unknowing, and strives to make him skilled through knowledge of some work, must himself necessarily know first that which he has determined another shall practice. For no one can be the transmitter of any knowledge without having the precepts of what he transmits as known to himself, and holding its method in most practiced comprehension. The gods therefore are the first craftsmen: whether because, as you yourselves say, they instill knowledge into minds; or because, being immortal and never having been born, they precede the whole earthly race by the antiquity of time.

This therefore is what is asked: since among the gods above there is no place for these arts, and neither their use nor their nature demands knowledge of anything ingenious or of the artisan's bench—why do you say that among them some are more skilled in some accomplishments than others, and that they possess expertises in which each surpasses the rest, distinguished by their knowledge of their several sciences?

Unless perhaps you say this: that the gods are not craftsmen, but that they preside over and care for these arts; nay, that all things which we administer and carry out are placed under their guardianship, and that it is by their providence that these things turn out well and happily. This indeed would seem to be said with reason and probability, if the things which we undertake, which we carry out, or in which we take risks in human affairs, always proceeded according to the will and judgment of the gods. But since things daily turn to the contrary, and the outcomes of actions do not answer to the proposed intention of the will, it is the speech of one who mocks to say that gods stand over us as guardians—gods whom our conjecture has fashioned, not whom tested truth has grasped. Portunus provides the safest voyages over the seas for those who travel: but why has the raging sea exposed so many to the ruin of cruel shipwrecks?

Consus suggests salutary and trustworthy counsels to our thoughts: and why does the unexpected change of what has been resolved daily turn to contrary outcomes? Pales and Inuus stand as guardians over herds of cattle and flocks of sheep: and why do they not take care to avert savage contagions and pestilential diseases from the summer flocks, through their hostile neglect? That harlot Flora, and the holy obscenity of her games, takes good care that the fields bloom: and why does the most harmful frost daily scorch and kill the little buds and sprouting herbs? Juno is set over childbirths and aids mothers in labor, and why do thousands of mothers daily perish, slain by murderous birth-pangs? Fire is under the guardianship of Vulcan, and its substance is placed under his governance: and why does he allow sacred buildings and portions of cities to collapse most frequently into ashes by the voracity of flames?

The Pythian god bestows the knowledge of divination upon those who divine, and why does he more often give and supply responses that are oblique, ambiguous, submerged in the darkness of obscurity? Aesculapius presides over the duties and arts of healing: and why can more kinds of diseases and ailments not be brought to health and soundness, nay, become more severe under the very hands of those who treat them? Mercury cares for the wrestling-ground, presides over boxing and wrestling: and why does he not make all those over whom he presides unconquerable? Why, in the one office of his presidency, does he allow some to be victorious, while others are laughed at, sought out by shameful weakness?

No one, he says, supplicates the tutelary gods, and therefore they are individually absent from their familiar duties and aids. Can the gods not do good unless they receive incense and salted spelt? And unless they have seen their little altars smeared with the blood of cattle, do they abandon and desert their presidencies? But I thought a little while ago that the kindnesses of the divine powers were spontaneous, and that the gifts of their benevolence flowed from them of their own accord and unexpectedly. Is the king of heaven solicited by any libation or victim, so that He may bestow upon the nations of mortals all those comforts by which they live? Does not God supply to all alike—good and bad, just and noble, slaves and poor and rich—the generative warmth of the sun, the seasons of night, winds, rains, crops? For this is the property of a powerful and true God: to provide inexorable benefits to things that are weary and feeble and always hemmed in by manifold hardship.

For to grant what is asked when sacrifices have been offered is not to come to the aid of those who ask, but to put up for sale the munificence of one's own kindness. We play and sport in so great a matter, we men, and forgetting what God is, what the magnificence of that name, we attribute to tutelary divinities whatever vile or sordid thing we have been able to fabricate by credulous suspicion.

Unxia, he says, presides over anointings, Cinxia over the loosening of girdles, and the most holy Victa and Potua attend to food and drink. O excellent and singular interpretation of the powers of the divinities—unless the doorposts of husbands were smeared with fat ointment by brides, unless husbands already ardent and pressing were to loosen the maiden knots, unless men were to drink and eat, the gods would have no names? What of the fact that, not content with having subjected and entangled the gods in such degrading cares, you also attribute to them natures that are fierce, savage, monstrous, ever rejoicing in evils, and in the devastation of the human race.

We shall not here call to mind the goddess Laverna of thieves, the Bellonas, the Discords, the Furies, and those sinister powers you establish as divinities; we shall pass them over in the silence of taciturnity. We shall place Mars himself in the midst, and that fair mother of the Cupids: of whom you set one over battles, the other over loves and the ardor of desire. Mars, it is said, holds power over wars—whether to restrain them once stirred up, or to stir them up when they are at rest and quiet? For if he is the calmer of military madness, why do wars never cease from day to day?

But if he is their author, then we shall say that a God dashes the whole world together for the sweetness of his own pleasure: that he sows the seeds of discord and danger among nations separated by the vast distances of the earth: that he draws together from different quarters so many thousands of mortals, and within the space of a single word heaps the fields with corpses, sends torrents of blood rushing down, destroys the most firmly established empires, levels cities to the ground, strips the freeborn of their liberty and imposes upon them the condition of slavery, rejoices in civil dissensions, in the parricide slaughter of brothers dying together, and finally in the horror of sons and fathers meeting in parricide combat.

This same charge may be transferred to Venus by an equal and identical line of reasoning. For if she, as you maintain and believe, kindles the flames of love in human thoughts, it follows that whatever stain and crime proceeds from such madness must be imputed to the wounds of Venus. Is it then at the compulsion of a Goddess that men of noble rank more often betray their dignity to harlots of the vilest name, that the bonds of steadfast marriages are sundered, that kinship of blood blazes up into incestuous lusts, that mothers go mad with passion for their children, that fathers turn upon themselves the desires felt for their own daughters, that old men, contrary to the dignity of their age, groan under youthful cravings for shameful appetites, that wise and brave men dissolve the resolutions of their constancy with their manly vigor softened, that nooses are fastened about necks, that blazing funeral pyres are mounted, and that men fling themselves here and there over vast and lofty cliffs, hurled headlong by voluntary leaps?

Is there any man endowed with even the first rudiments of reason, who would defile or contaminate the steadfastness of divinity with such foul conduct? Who would attribute to gods such natures as human gentleness has often softened and diminished even in wild beasts? Where, I ask, is that principle that the gods are removed far from every emotion of disturbance? That they are gentle, calm, mild, that in the united character of virtue they hold the summit of perfection and the very height of wisdom? Or why do we pray to them to drive away from us adversities and hostile things, if they themselves are found to be the authors to us of all the evils by which we are daily afflicted? However much you may call us impious, irreligious, or atheists, you will never persuade us that there are gods of loves, gods of wars, gods who sow discords, who disturb minds with frenzied goads.

For either they are most truly gods, and do not do the things you have mentioned: or if they do the things you say, they are without any doubt not gods.

And yet we might somehow accept from you these notions most full of impious fictions, if you did not compel the mind's assent to endure many things about the gods themselves so contradictory and self-dissolving. For while each of you strives to surpass the others in the glory of deeper knowledge, you both abolish the very gods you profess to believe in, and put others in their place who are manifestly non-existent; and one says one thing, another another, about the same matters, and you write that those are numberless whom human consensus has always agreed to be single. Let us therefore begin solemnly, as is customary, with Father Janus, whom some among you have declared to be the world, others the year, and some the sun.

But if we accept this as true, it follows that we must understand there never was any Janus at all—the one who is said to have been born of Coelus and Hecate, to have reigned first in Italy, to have been the founder of the town of Janiculum, the father of Fons, the son-in-law of Vulturnus, the husband of Juturna: and so by your own doing the name of the god is uprooted, whom you place first in all your prayers and believe to open for you the way to the hearing of the gods. Again, if Janus is the year, he cannot be a god even so. For who does not know that the year is a fixed circumscription of time, and that what is enclosed within the intervals of months and the counting of days has no power of divinity? This same argument may be transferred to Saturn by a not dissimilar line of reasoning.

For if by this name time is signified, as the interpreters of the Greeks maintain—so that what is chronos is taken as Cronos—then there is no divine power of Saturn. For who is so senseless as to say that time is a god, which is a measure of a certain span enclosed in the continuous series of perpetuity? And so he too will be removed in order from the company of the heavenly ones—he whom ancient antiquity declared to have been born of his father Heaven, to be the begetter of the great gods, the planter of the vine, the bearer of the scythe, and handed down to later ages.

For what shall we say of Jupiter himself, whom the wise have repeatedly declared to be the sun, driving his winged chariot with a throng of gods following? Some say he is the aether blazing with fiery force and the boundless vastness of inextinguishable heat? But if this is clear and established, then by your own authority there is no Jupiter at all: he who is remembered to have been born of his father Saturn and his mother Ops, and, to escape his father's rage, to have been hidden in the territory of the Cretans. Now does not a similar opinion remove Juno from the roll of gods? For if she is the air, as you are accustomed to play and repeatedly declare, deriving it from the inversion of a Greek name, then no sister and wife of almighty Jupiter will be found, no Fluonia, no Pomona, no Ossipagina, no Februtis, Populonia, Cinxia, Caprotina: and so the fiction of that name will be found to be utterly empty, spread abroad by the celebrity of a hollow opinion.

Aristotle, as Granius records, a man of surpassing genius and preeminent in learning, explains with probable arguments and demonstrates with literary authority that Minerva is the moon. Others have said that she is the topmost height of the aether and the summit of that very summit: some say she is memory—whence the very name Minerva is formed, as it were a certain Meminerva. But if the matter receives credence, then there is no daughter of Mind, no daughter of Victory, no offspring of Jupiter born from his brain, inventress of the olive, no one trained in the mastery of arts and the variety of disciplines. Because water weds the earth, Neptune, they say, was called and named.

If therefore by the appearance of liquid this name's appellation is signified, then Neptune is no god at all: and so the brother of the Stygian Jupiter and kinsman of the Olympian is removed and taken away from the midst—armed with his iron trident, lord of sea-monsters and of the maenads, king of the salt deeps, and shaker of the trembling ground.

Mercury too was called as it were a medicurius: and because speech runs back and forth as a medium between two persons conversing, the character of this name was fashioned. If therefore these things are so, Mercury is not the name of a god, but of reciprocating speech and voice, and in this way the Cyllenian herald, spread over the cold mountain peak, inventor of words and names, exchanger of fairs, merchandise, and commerce, is abolished and extinguished. Some among you have said that the Great Mother is the earth, because she furnishes food to all living creatures: others declare that this same earth is Ceres, because she bears the fruit of healthful seeds: and some say she is Vesta, because she alone stands still in the world, while the other parts of it are set in perpetual motion.

But if this is put forward and affirmed with certain reasoning, then by your own interpretation three names alike are nothing: neither Ceres nor Vesta will be counted among the gods in the calendar: nor indeed will the very Mother of the gods herself—whom Nigidius holds to have been the wife of Saturn—rightly be able to be called a goddess: since all these are names of the one earth, and by these appellations alone is she indicated.

We pass over here, to avoid tedium, Vulcan, whom you all with equal assent of voice declare to be fire: that Venus was named because she comes to all, and that Proserpina was so named because seeds creep forth into the light: whereby again you abolish the names of three divinities: since the first is the name of an element, not the designation of a sentient power; the second belongs to lust diffused through all living creatures; the third signifies seeds raising themselves up and the stirrings of growing crops. What? When you contend that Liber, Apollo, and the Sun are one divine power amplified by three names, is not the number of the gods diminished by your own opinions, and the proclaimed belief dissolved?

For if it is true that the Sun is the same as Liber and the same as Apollo, it follows that in the nature of things there is neither any Apollo nor any Liber: and so by your own doing the son of Semele and the Pythian are abolished and uprooted: the one the giver of foaming merriment, the other the destruction of the Sminthian mice.

Men among you not unlearned, and not speaking as caprice may have led them, declare with common kinship that Diana, Ceres, and the Moon are the head of one God: and that, as there are three dissimilarities of names, there are not three differences of persons: that in all of these the Moon is named, and that the series of the remaining surnames is heaped together into her designation. But if this is established, if it is fixed, and if the truth of the matter shows it to be so, then the name of Ceres is again empty, the name of Diana is empty: and so the matter is brought to this point, that even that inventress of crops, as you maintain, is by your own guidance and authority nothing, and Apollo is stripped of his sister—she whom that horned hunter once beheld washing the filth from her limbs in pure springs, and found the punishment of his curiosity.

Those who are celebrated for their zeal in philosophy, and elevated by your praises to the pinnacle of that name, define with probable assertion that this entire mass of the world, by whose embrace we are all encompassed, covered, and sustained, is one animal, wise, rational, and provident: if their opinion is true and fixed and certain, then those too will straightway cease to be gods whom you were just now establishing in its parts under changed names. For just as one man cannot, while the integrity of his body remains, be divided into many men: nor again can many men, while the difference of their separation is preserved, be fused into the simplicity of one consciousness: so if the world is one animal and is moved by the agitation of one mind, it can neither be dispersed into many divine powers, nor, if its parts are gods, can they be gathered and turned into the consciousness of one living being.

The moon, the sun, the earth, the aether, the stars, are members and parts of the world: but if they are parts and members, they are assuredly not living beings of their own name: for parts cannot in any respect be that very same thing which the whole is: nor can they have their own perception, their own sensation, since the whole living being is not affected by any motions of its own without the consent of the whole—which being established and set down, the entire sum returns to this: that neither is the sun a god, nor the moon, nor the aether, the earth, and the rest. For they are parts of the world, not the individual names of divine powers: and so it comes about, with you confounding and mingling all things divine, that in the nature of things one God, the world, is established, all the rest being expelled—or rather, constituted emptily, vacuously, and without any substance.

If we were subverting the credibility of your gods in as many ways and with as many opinions, no one would doubt that, stirred by anger and rage, you would demand fires, wild beasts, and swords, and other kinds of punishments against us, with which you are accustomed to slake your thirst by craving our blood. But when by your own doing nearly the entire company of divine powers is abolished under the display of your talents and learning, you dare to allege that human affairs are oppressed by the gods on account of our name: when indeed, if it is true that they exist somewhere and burn with the flames of wrath, they have nothing more just for which to rage against you than that you deny them to subsist and to exist in any part of nature.

Mnaseas is the authority that the Muses are daughters of Earth and Heaven: the rest declare them to be daughters of Jupiter by his wife Memory, or Mind: some write that these were virgins, others that they were mothers. For it is now pleasing to touch briefly upon those points also, in which you are shown by the diversity of opinions to say one thing and another about the same matter. Ephorus therefore sets forth that they are three in number: Mnaseas, whom we mentioned, four: Myrtilus introduces seven: Crates asserts eight: finally Hesiod brings forward nine, with their names, enriching the gods with heaven and stars. Unless we are mistaken, this disagreement belongs to those who know nothing true, and does not descend from the truth of the matter. For if it were clearly known what the truth is, the voice of all would be unanimous and the assent of all would proceed and converge toward the conclusion of the same opinion.

In what manner, then, can you establish the full force of religion, when you wander in error concerning the gods themselves? Or how can you invite us to venerable acts of worship, when you teach us nothing certain about the comprehension of those divine powers? For, to say nothing of the authors in between, either the first of them destroys and does away with six divine Muses, if it is established that they are nine; or the last and most recent adds six that do not exist, with only three truly subsisting in reality: so that it cannot be known or grasped which ought to be added, which taken away, and the very undertaking of religion is brought into peril, since one either worships that which does not exist, or perhaps passes by that which does. Piso believes the Novensiles are nine gods established among the Sabines near Trebia.

Granius thinks these are the Muses, lending his agreement to Aelius; Varro hands down the number nine, because it is always held to be most powerful and greatest in the moving of things; Cornificius says they are presiders over novelties, because under their care all things are renewed and maintained by newness; Manilius says they are nine gods to whom alone Jupiter has permitted the power of hurling his thunderbolt. Cincius declares that these are foreign divine powers named from their very novelty: for the Romans were accustomed to scatter the religions of conquered cities partly in private through families, and partly to consecrate them publicly; and lest any of the gods be passed over through their great number or through ignorance, for the sake of brevity and conciseness all of them together are invoked under the single name Novensiles.

There are moreover some who declare that those made divine from among men are signified by this appellation, such as Hercules, Romulus, Aesculapius, Liber, Aeneas. These opinions, as is apparent, are all different from one another; nor can it be possible by the nature of things that those who differ in their opinions should be held as authorities for one single truth. For if the opinion of Piso is true, Aelius and Granius lie; if what is said by these is certain, the most learned Varro errs, who, upon things established in substance, imposes the most empty and hollow matters. If the number nine gives the Novensiles their name, Cornificius is shown to totter, who assigns to gods presiding over novelty the force of a power belonging to another. But if the opinion of Cornificius is true, Cincius is found to be imprudent, who endows the gods of conquered cities with the power of the Novensile divine powers.

But if these are those whom Cincius proclaims, Manilius will be found to say what is false, who includes hurlers of another's thunderbolt under the designation of that name. But if what Manilius maintains is established and true, those are in the greatest error who think that mortals enriched with divine honors and consecrated are called by this name on account of the novelty of the honor. But if the Novensiles are those who have deserved to be raised to the stars after they have departed from mortal life, then there are absolutely no Novensile gods at all. For just as slaves, soldiers, masters are not names of the persons subject to them, but of offices, conditions, and functions: so when we say Novensiles is the name of gods who from among men have deserved to be gods, it is manifest and plain that not persons specifically defined, but novelty itself is designated by the name Novensiles.

Nigidius reported that the Penates gods are Neptune and Apollo, who once enclosed the city of Ilium with walls under a stipulated condition. The same man again sets forth in the sixth and tenth book, following Etruscan disciplines, that there are four kinds of Penates, and that some of these belong to Jupiter, others to Neptune, a third group to the gods of the underworld, a fourth to mortal men—saying I know not what inexplicable thing. Caesius, himself likewise following these disciplines, considers them to be Fortuna and Ceres, the Jovial Genius, and Pales—but not that female figure whom the common people understand, but some minister of Jupiter of masculine gender, I know not what, and a steward. Varro considers that the gods we speak of are those who are within and in the innermost recesses of heaven, and that neither their number nor their names are known.

These the Etruscans call and name Consentes and Complices, because they rise together and set together: six males and an equal number of females, of unknown names and of most sparing compassion; but they are considered to be the counselors and chief ministers of supreme Jupiter. Nor were there lacking those who wrote that Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva are the Penate gods, without whom we can neither live nor think, but who govern us inwardly by reason, heat, and breath. As you see, here too nothing harmonious is said, nothing is settled in a single pronouncement; nor is there anything reliable upon which the mind, drawing as close as possible to truth by conjecture, can take its stand. For the opinions waver so, and one view is torn away by another, that either nothing out of all of them is true; or if something is said by someone, it remains unknown amid so many diverse contradictions.

We can, if it seems good, say something briefly also about the Lares, whom the common people consider to be gods of neighborhoods and roads, from the fact that the Greeks call neighborhoods lauras. In various writings Nigidius calls them now guardians of roofs and houses, now those Curetes who are said to have once concealed the wailing of Jupiter in his dwelling, now the Samothracian Digits, whom the Greeks indicate are called Idaean Dactyls. Varro, similarly hesitating, now pronounces them to be Manes, and that for this reason Mania has been named the mother of the Lares; now again he declares them to be aerial gods and to be called heroes; now, following the opinions of the ancients, he says the Lares are larvae, as it were certain genii, the souls of the dead departed.

It is an infinite and immense task to go through the individual kinds, and to make plain from the very books themselves that there is no god among you, neither reckoned nor believed, concerning whom you have not put forth ambiguous and discordant opinions in a thousand varieties of views. But for the sake of brevity and to avoid tedium, it is enough to have said what has been said; and it is far too laborious to heap many things into one, when from one or another example it becomes manifest and plain that you waver, and say nothing certain about these matters which you assert—unless perhaps you will say: even if we do not know individually who the Lares are, who the Novensiles, who the Penates, yet they exist, vindicated by the very agreement of the authorities, and hold the form of their own kind in the ranks of the heavenly ones. And how will it be possible to know whether any god exists, if it shall be unknown and unrecognized what he is?

Or how will the very petition for benefits avail, if it shall not be established and certain who ought to be called upon for each particular consultation? For everyone who seeks to obtain the response of some divine power must necessarily know to whom he supplicates, whom he implores, from whom he seeks aid for human needs and necessities: especially since you yourselves report that not all gods can grant all things, and that the feelings of each individual are offended and appeased by dissimilar rites.

For indeed if this one desires a dark fleece, that one a white one; if sacrifice must be made to this one with head veiled, to that one with head uncovered; if that one is consulted about marriages, this one provides remedies for ailments—it cannot be of no consequence whether he be this Novensilis or that one, since ignorance of the facts and confusion of persons offends the gods and necessarily compels a sin of impiety to be incurred. For imagine that I myself, for the sake of avoiding some affliction and declining some danger, supplicate one of these divine powers, saying: Be present, be present, ye Penate gods, thou Apollo, and thou Neptune, and avert by the clemency of your divine power all these evils by which I am burned, scorched, and vexed: will there be any hope of receiving aid from them, if Ceres, Pales, Fortuna, or the Jovial Genius, and not Neptune and Apollo, are the Penate gods?

Or if I invoke the Curetes in place of the Lares, whom a part of your authorities assert to be the Samothracian Digits, how shall I be able to use them as helpers and as propitious, when I shall have imposed upon them neither their own names nor those belonging to others? So much does the matter require that one know the gods specifically, and neither be uncertain nor in doubt about the power and name of each one; so that if they have been invoked with alien rites and appellations, they both have ears that are closed, and hold us bound under inexpiable acts of impiety.

Wherefore if it is clear to you that this multitude of gods which you enumerate inhabits and dwells in the lofty palaces of heaven, it befits you to stand within the bounds of a single pronouncement, and not, torn apart by various and contradictory opinions, to detract credibility from the very things you are constructing. If Janus exists, let him be Janus; if Liber exists, let him be Liber; if Summanus, let him be Summanus: for this is to have confidence, this is to hold firm, to be fixed in the knowledge of a thing established—not to say after the manner of the blind and wandering: the Novensiles are the Muses, nay rather they are the Trebian gods, nay rather the number nine, or rather the presiders over conquered cities—and to bring matters of such importance into that peril, that while you remove some and put others in their place, it may justly be doubted of all of them whether they exist anywhere at all.

It pleases us to ask you, and before all others the Roman lords of the world and their princes, whether you consider that Piety, Concord, Safety, Honor, Virtue, Felicity, and other names of this kind, for which we see altars built by you together with magnificent shrines, possess divine power and dwell in the regions of heaven? Or whether, as is customary, for the sake of a word, because we desire and wish these good things to befall us, you have enrolled them in the census of the gods above? For if, considering these to be empty words and names of no substance, you have nevertheless consecrated them with divine religious rites, you will need to consider whether this is a childish game, or one that looks to the mockery of your own divine powers, to which you equate and attach the inventions of empty words.

But if from a more certain conviction of the mind you have judged these also to be gods, and have burdened them with temples and couches, we beg you to instruct our ignorance: by what reasoning, by what path can Victory, Peace, Equity, and the rest that have been mentioned above, be understood to be gods and to belong to the assembly of those above?

For we, unless perhaps you take away and snatch from us our common sense, perceive and discern that none of these things possesses the force of a divine power, nor is contained in any form of its own kind; but that virtue belongs to a virtuous man, safety to one who is safe, honor to one who is honored, victory to a victor, concord to one who is concordant, piety to one who is pious, memory to one who is mindful; and felicity to one who lives happily and without any offenses. That this is most truly said by you is easy to recognize from the contrary oppositions: infelicity, discord, forgetfulness, iniquity, impiety, faintheartedness, and bodily health that is less than favorable. For just as these things befall men and are situated in their actions and fortuitous affections, so what is opposite to them is named from more benign qualities, and must necessarily inhere in others, from whom, being thus formed, that configuration of names has been conceived.

For as to the fact that you introduce to us other crowds of unknown gods, we cannot determine whether you do this seriously and from the confidence of an established fact, or whether, playing with empty fictions, you wanton in the luxury of your ingenuity. Because a she-wolf, not gentle, spared abandoned infants, Luperca, says Varro, is a goddess named from this event. Is that goddess then produced from the outcome of events, and not from the force of nature? And after the savage beast withheld her fierce bites, did she herself also begin to exist, and draw to herself the significance of her own name? Or if she was already a goddess long before Romulus and his brother were born, tell us what her name and appellation was. Praestana, as you report, was so called because Quirinus surpassed the strength of all in the hurling of a javelin; and because it was permitted to Titus Tatius to open and clear a way to seize the Capitoline hill: a goddess was called Panda, or Pantica.

Before these deeds were done, therefore, these divine powers never existed; and unless Romulus had held the Palatine by the cast of his weapon, and the Sabine king had been able to receive the Tarpeian rock, there would be no Pantica, no Praestana? And if you say these existed before the cause of their name, indicate—as was asked in the preceding chapter—what their name was.

Pellonia is the powerful goddess of driving back enemies. Of whose enemies, if it is not troublesome, tell us. Two sides clash and decide the matter between themselves in close combat with weapons joined: and this side is the enemy to that one, and that is hostile to this one. Whom, therefore, will Pellonia drive back when battle is joined on both sides, or in whose favor will she yield, since she ought to render to both sides the force and function of her name? But if she does this in any case—that is, if she lends her favor and support to both sides—she will lose the force of her name, which was formed with reference to the driving back of one side. Unless perhaps you will say that she is the goddess of the Romans only, and acting on behalf of the Quirites alone, she is ever present with gracious assistance. That this is so, we wish and hope for the sake of the name we favor; but the matter raises no small question.

For what reason do the Romans possess gods peculiar to themselves, who do not belong to other nations? And how will they be able to be gods, if they do not display the equality of their divine power to all nations that exist everywhere? And where, I ask, was this Pellonia all this time, when at the Caudine Forks the public honor was subjected to the yoke? When bloody torrents ran at the lake of Trasimene? When the fields of Diomedes were heaped up with Roman corpses? When a thousand other wounds of battles were received with countless disasters? Was she sleeping, snoring, or—as worthless persons are accustomed to do—had she fled away to the enemy camp?

The gods of the left, and of the left hand, are overseers of the left regions only, and enemies of the right-hand parts. By what reasoning this is said, or with what intention of mind, neither do we ourselves grasp, nor do we trust that it can be brought by you into any light of common understanding. For first of all, the world itself, of itself, has neither right nor left, neither upper nor lower regions, neither front nor back. For whatever is round, and enclosed on every side by the convexity of solid roundness, has no beginning and no end; where there is no end and no beginning, no portion of it can have a name or a beginning.

And so when we say, this region is the right and that the left, we do not say it with reference to the aspect of the world, which is wholly most like itself, but we refer it to our own position and situation, we who are so formed that some things are called right and others left to us; yet these very things which we call left, and those others which are right, have nothing permanent in us, nothing fixed; but according as chance and the circumstance of the moment has placed us, so they take their configurations from our sides. If I look toward the rising sun, the pole of cold and the north becomes my left: if I turn my face toward it, the west, which will be reckoned as behind the sun, becomes my left.

Again, if I cast my eyes toward the western quarter, the south wind and midday pass into the name of left; and if the necessary course of time has turned me toward that part, it comes about that the east is called left, the position of the body being changed—from which it can most easily be recognized that there is no right or left by nature, but only by position, by time, and according as the situation of our body has been placed in relation to the surrounding circumstances. Since this is so, by what reasoning, in what manner, will there be gods of the left-hand parts, since it has been established that the same regions become now right, now left? Or what have the right-hand parts deserved of the immortal gods, that they should dwell without any overseers—parts which they have declared to be auspicious and always attended by favorable omens?

Lateranus, as you say, is a god and genius of hearths, and is called by this name because that kind of furnace is built by men from unbaked bricks. What then, if hearths have been constructed of tile or of any other material, will they have no geniuses? And will Lateranus, whoever he is, withdraw from the guardianship of his office, because the possession of his kingdom has not been built of clay forms? And what, I ask, has this god, having obtained the oversight of hearths, to do? He runs through the kitchens of the human race, inspecting and examining by what kinds of wood the heat in the hearths is kindled; he contributes soundness to earthen vessels, lest they burst overcome by the force of the flames; he takes care that the flavors of uncorrupted things come to the sense of the palate with their proper pleasantness, and whether the stews have been properly seasoned, he performs and tests the office of a taster.

Is this not shameful—nay rather, to speak more truly, is it not insulting, is it not impious, to introduce these fictions of gods for this purpose alone, not that you may honor them with worthy honors, but that you may set them over base things and infamous action?

Does even the martial Venus preside over the blows of the camp and the defilement of boys? Does even Perfica stand as one among the people of divine powers, who brings those obscene and filthy pleasures to their conclusion, proceeding with unimpeded sweetness? Does even Pertunda stand ready in bedchambers for husbands who dig out the virginal furrow? Does even Tutunus exist, upon whose enormous private parts and bristling fascinum you consider it auspicious and desirable that your matrons should ride? But if the things themselves do not at all move you toward an understanding of the truth: can you not at least recognize from the very names that these are fictions of the most empty superstition, and imaginings of false gods? Puta, you say, is present for the pruning of trees, Peta for things to be sought; the god of groves is Nemestrinus; Patellana is a divine power, and Patella, of whom one is appointed over things already opened, the other over things to be opened.

There is said to be a god Nodutis, because he brings growing things to their nodes; and she who presides over the bearing of crops is Terensis; from the wanderings of roads the goddess Vibilia delivers; under the protection of Orbona are parents bereaved of children; under that of Nenia, those whose last hours are at hand. Now she who hardens and solidifies the bones of small infants is herself called Ossilago. Mellonia is a goddess powerful and mighty over bees, caring for and guarding the sweetness of honey.

Tell me, I pray, so that Peta, Puta, Patella may be propitious and favorable to you, if there were no bees at all on earth, or if the human race were born boneless, like certain little worms, would the goddess Mellonia not exist? Or would Ossilago the hardener of bones not have her own proper name? For I ask and inquire whether it seems to you that the gods are older by nature, by time, by antiquity than men, than bees, than crops, shrubs, and the rest? No one among men will doubt that you say the gods precede by innumerable ages and centuries all things whatsoever that exist. But if this is so, how can it come about through the nature of things that those which are prior in time should receive their names from things created afterward? Or that the gods should obtain guardianship over those things which had not yet been born and assigned for the use of mortals?

Or were the gods perhaps without names for a long time, and after things began to be born and to exist on earth, were they deemed worthy by you to be designated by these signs and appellations? And how could you have known what names to assign to each, since you were entirely ignorant of their existence, or that they possessed certain powers—since it was equally unknown to you which of them could do what, and over what thing each ought to be set in accordance with the power of his divine nature?

What then, you say, do you judge that these gods exist nowhere among the nations, but have been established by false opinions? Not we alone say this, but truth itself says it, and reason, and that common sense which is in all mortals. For who is there who would believe that there are gods Lucrii and that they preside over the gaining of profits, since these most frequently come from base causes and always consist in the losses of others? Who that Libentina, who that Liburnus, stands over the guardianship of lusts, which wisdom bids us flee, and which shameful obscenity experiences and exercises through a thousand forms? Who that Linentinus, who that Lima, performs the custody of thresholds and sustains the offices of doorkeepers: when we daily see the gates of temples and of private houses torn down and demolished, and that without these there are shameless passages to brothels? Who the Limi, overseers of obliquities? Who that Saturn presides over sowings? Who Montinus over mountains? Who sluggish Murcia?

Who finally would believe that Pecunia is a goddess, whom your writings indicate, as though she were the greatest divine power, to bestow golden rings, the foremost places at games and spectacles, the highest platforms of honors, the greatness of magistracies, and—what the lazy most love—secure leisure amid opulence?

But if you insist that bones, honey, thresholds, and the other things which we have either touched upon in passing or have not touched upon through weariness of their excess, have their own proper overseers, it is permissible by the same reasoning to introduce a thousand other gods who ought to provide their care and guardianship over innumerable things. For why should a god preside over honey alone, and not preside over gourds, turnips, not over savory, cress, not over figs, beets, cabbages? Why should bones alone have deserved guardianship, and not nails, hairs, and the other things placed in hidden and more modest parts, which are subject to very many accidents and require more the care and diligence of the gods? Or if you say that these parts too act under their own tutelary divinities, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things; and no account will be rendered of why divine cares should not preside over all things, if you have said that there are certain things over which divine powers preside and provide.

What say you, O fathers of new religions, what of powers? Do you cry out and complain that these gods are violated and neglected by us with sacrilegious contempt—Lateranus the genius of hearths, Limentinus the overseer of thresholds, Pertunda, Perfica, Nodutis, Terensis? And because we do not prostrate ourselves as suppliants before Mutinus and Tutunus, do you say that affairs have collapsed into ruin and that the world itself has changed its laws and ordinances? But rather look, consider, lest while you fabricate such monstrosities and attempt such things, you have offended the most certain gods, if indeed there are any who deserve to bear and hold the dignity of that name, and that for no other reason do those evils which you speak of seethe and grow by daily increase. Why then perhaps someone among you will say: you contend that those gods are false? And yet when invoked by haruspices they obey, and when summoned by their own names they come, and render faithful responses to those who inquire?

We are able to maintain that what is said is false, either because the whole matter is most full of suspicions, or because we daily see many predictions either fall out otherwise, or be twisted into contrary outcomes, their expectation frustrated.

But grant, as you assert, that these things are true; will you nevertheless produce the same credibility that Mellonia, for example, or Limentinus, inserts itself into entrails and adapts itself to the significances of the things you inquire about? Have you ever seen the face, appearance, or countenance of any of them? Or can these same things be discerned in lungs or livers? Is it not possible—though you may cleverly dissemble it—that one substitutes itself for another, deceiving, playing, tricking, and presenting the appearance of one who has been invoked? If magicians, the brothers of haruspices, report that in their summonings antitheos very often creep in in place of those summoned—and that these are certain spirits of coarser substance who feign themselves to be gods and sport with the ignorant through lies and pretenses—why should we not with equal reason believe that here too others substitute themselves in place of those who do not exist, both to confirm your opinions and to rejoice that victims are slaughtered to themselves under the names of others?

Or if you refuse to accept this on account of the novelty of the matter, how do you know whether there may be some one being who succeeds in place of all those you invoke, and placing himself in all the parts of the regions and divisions, presents to you the appearance of many divine powers and potencies? Who is this one? Someone will ask. Perhaps we can name him from true authorities: but lest you be unwilling to believe us, let him inquire of the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chaldeans, Armenians, and all those others who have seen and come to know these things in their inner parts through their arts: and you will then assuredly learn who is the one God, or under him who are the very many who feign themselves to be gods and sport with the imprudence of the human race. We have long been ashamed to come to that point where not only boys and the impudent, but even serious persons hardened into the severity of stern character, cannot restrain their laughter.

For since we have all received it instilled and handed down from our teachers that plural numbers in the declensions of gods do not exist, because the gods are individual, and the proper name of each one could not pass in common through many (for it cannot come about through the nature of things that what is one should become two, and that unity, divided by its innate simplicity, should pass into different things): you, forgetful of this, and with the recollection of your boyhood lessons set aside, have both placed several gods under the same names, and, though you are otherwise more restricted in their number, have again made them manifold by the fellowship of surnames—which part of the matter men of keen judgment and penetrating intellect long ago set forth as well in the Italian tongue as in the Greek.

And this matter could have afforded us a shortcut, had we not seen that some persons are unacquainted with those writings, and had not the discourse we have undertaken compelled us also to bring forth something about these matters, though taken and cited from those authors.

Your theologians, therefore, and the founders of hidden antiquity, say that there are three Jupiters in the nature of things: of whom one was begotten by Father Aether, another by Heaven, and the third by Saturn, and was both buried and born in the island of Crete. Five Suns, and five Mercuries: of whom, as they report, the first Sun is called the son of Jupiter and is held to be the grandson of Aether; the second likewise the son of Jupiter, brought forth by Hyperion as his mother; the third the son of Vulcan—not the Lemnian, but of the Nile; the fourth the father of Jalysus, whom Acantho bore to him in Rhodes in heroic times; the fifth is held to be the son of a Scythian king and of the shape-shifting Circe. Now the first Mercury, who is said to have neighed with upraised members toward Proserpina, is the offspring of the highest Heaven. A second is beneath the earth, who is boasted to be Trophonius.

The third was procreated by his mother Maia and by Jupiter—but the third Jupiter; the fourth is the offspring of the Nile, whose name the Egyptian people shudder and revere to utter. The fifth is the slayer of Argus, a fugitive and exile, and the one who revealed letters to Egypt. But also of Minerva, they say, there are five, just as of the Suns and Mercuries: of whom the first is not a virgin, but the mother of Apollo by Vulcan; the second is the offspring of the Nile, and is said to be the Egyptian Sais. The third is the stock of Saturn, and she who devised the use of arms; the fourth is the progeny of Jupiter, whom the Messenians call Coryphasian; and she who slew her father Pallas, who sought incest, is the fifth.

And lest it seem too long and excessive to wish to go through each heading one by one, the same Theologians say there are four Vulcans, and three Dianas, as many Aesculapiuses, and five Dionysuses, twice three Herculeses, and four Venuses, three kinds of Castors, and as many Muses, teams of three and four of winged Cupids and of Apolline names; whose fathers likewise, whose mothers likewise, the places where they were born, they indicate, and they show the origin of each with their own lineages. But if this is true and certain, and is demonstrated from the assertion of a known fact, then either all of them are not gods, since several under the same name, as we have received, cannot exist; or if any one of them is a god, he will be unknown and unrecognized: because he is blinded by the confusion of like names.

And so through yourselves, though you would not have it so, the result is that religion wavers in confusion, and has no fixed end toward which it can direct itself, deceived by the errors of ambiguity.

Imagine that we, moved either by sufficient authority or by the force of your terror, have brought ourselves to wish to worship Minerva, for example, with your solemn rites and customary ceremony; if, when we are preparing divine offerings and approach the flaming altars to render her appointed dues, all the Minervas should fly to us, and contending over possession of that name, each should demand that the preparation of those rites be rendered to herself; what shall we, a humble creature, do in the midst of this, or to which party shall we rather transfer the duties of our pious service? For perhaps that first one of whom we spoke will say: the name of Minerva is mine, with its divine power—I who gave birth to Apollo, who gave birth to Diana, and by the fruit of my womb enriched heaven with divine powers and multiplied the number of the gods.

Nay, the fifth Minerva will say, you are ringing hollow, you who have been a wife and so many times a mother, diminished in the sanctity of pure chastity? Do you not see that in all the Capitols the images of Minervas are virginal, and that the forms of married women are never given to them by any artists? Cease therefore to claim for yourself a name that is not yours by right. For that I am Minerva, born of my father Pallas, is attested by the whole chorus of poets, who call me Pallas, a surname derived from my father. What do you say, the second will ask upon hearing this: Do you then bear the name of Minerva, you who are insolent, seeking it from a parricide, and polluted by the defilement of incestuous love? Who, while you adorned yourself with the arts and tricks of harlots, already stirred up your father's mind, full of furious lusts, against yourself.

Go then, seek yourself another sign: for this matter belongs to me, whom the greatest of rivers, the Nile, generated from its liquid waters, and formed into virginal shape by the condensation of dew. And if you seek proof of the fact, I too will give the Egyptians as witnesses, by whose tongue I am called Neith, as Plato's Timaeus attests. What then do we suppose will happen? Will she also cease to call herself Minerva, to whom the name Coryphasian belongs—either from the sign of her mother Coryphé, or because she sprang forth bearing a shield from the very crown of Jupiter's head, girded with the terrors of arms? Or will she who is the third yield her name patiently, and not give account of herself in such words, and refute the arrogance of the first? Do you dare to usurp for yourself the majesty of my name, O Sais, brought forth from mud and from the floods, and curdled from the slime?

Assume for yourself some other dignity, you who falsely claim to have been born from the crown of Jupiter's head, and persuade the most foolish of mortals that you are Reason? Does he beget and bring forth sons conceived in his head? So that the arms you bear might be forged and fashioned, was there a smith's workshop in the very hollow of his crown—anvils, hammers, furnaces, bellows, coals, and tongs? Or if what you assert is true, that you are Reason, cease to claim for yourself that name which is mine; for what you call Reason is not a definite form of divinity, but the understanding of obscure causes. If therefore, as we have said, when we approach our religious duties five Minervas should be present, and each, quarreling over the ownership of this name, should desire either that the smoke of incense be offered to herself, or that libation wine be poured from golden bowls, by what arbitrator, by what judge shall we resolve such great disputes?

Or who shall be the examiner, who the arbiter for such great claims, who between persons of this kind would attempt either to render just decisions, or to pronounce oaths—whether just or unjust? Will he not rather go home, and, abstaining from such matters, judge it safer to touch none of these things, lest by giving to one what belongs to all he make the rest his enemies, or incur the charge of folly if he attributes to all what ought to belong to one?

We could set forth these same arguments concerning the Mercuries, the Suns, and indeed all the others whose numbers you extend and multiply. But it is enough to know that the same reasoning applies in the rest from one example; and lest perhaps prolixity breed weariness in the hearing, we shall refrain from going through each one, lest while we charge you with excess, we ourselves incur the fault of immoderate loquacity. What do you say, O you who invite us to the worship of the gods with the tearing of limbs, and compel us to take up the worship of your divine powers? We can be not difficult, if only something worthy of the opinion of so great a name be shown to us. Show us Mercury, but one: give us Liber, but one: one Venus, and one Diana likewise. For that there are four Apollos, or three Jupiters, you will never make us believe: not even if you cite Jupiter himself as witness, or set up the Pythian as your authority.

But from the other side, someone from I know not where says: How do we know whether the theologians wrote down things explored and known, or whether, as seemed good and settled to them, they put forth a licentious fiction? This is nothing to the point: nor is the reasoning of this discourse established in that question, whether things are as the writings of the theologians indicate, or whether they stand otherwise and widely separated by difference; for it is enough for us to speak of things that have been made public, and not to inquire what is true, but to refute and convict that which has been set before us and which human opinion has conceived. But if those men are liars, do you set forth what the truth is, and lay open the irrefutable secret. And how can this be done, with the teachings of literature removed? For what is there that can be said about the immortal gods, which has not come to human knowledge from human writings about them?

Or can you yourselves narrate anything about their rites and ceremonies which has not been committed to writing and published in the commentaries of authors? Or if you judge these to be of no weight, let all the books be abolished which you have composed about the gods—those of the theologians, of the pontiffs, and of some also devoted to philosophy: nay rather, let us imagine that from the beginning of the world no mortal had ever written anything about the gods: we wish to make trial, and desire to know, whether you could murmur or open your lips at the mention of the gods, or conceive in your minds those gods whom no written notion had formed in your souls. But since it is established that you have learned their names and powers from books that supply them to you, it is unjust to deny credence to those writings, by whose testimony and authority you confirm the things you say.

Unless perhaps these things are false, and those which are said by you will be true. By what argument, by what sign? For since both those who composed these things and those who composed those others were human beings, and the matter has been disputed on both sides concerning uncertain things, it is the mark of an arrogant person to say that what pleases him is true, and to charge with caprice and falsehood what offends his mind. By the rights of the human race and the fellowship of mortality itself, when you hear and read: That god was brought forth from such a one and from such a mother—does not the sense of your mind feel that something human is being said, proceeding from the lowliness of an earthly race?

Or when you think yourselves to be as you are, do you conceive no anxiety lest you contract some offense against the gods themselves, whoever they are—because you believe them to have come forth from a shameful union and from the casting of seed, brought to a light unknown to themselves through the services of obscenity? For we, lest anyone perhaps suppose we are ignorant and do not know what befits the dignity of that name, are of the opinion that gods ought certainly to be without birth; or if they have some origin, we hold and believe that they were sent by the Lord and Prince of all things, by reasons known to himself—immaculate, most chaste, pure, ignorant of what that foulness of coupling is, and with procreation from the First Principle ending at those very beings themselves.

But you, on the contrary, unmindful of majesty and of so great sublimity, attach to them those births and ascribe to them those origins which men of more refined minds hold in execration and horror. From Ops as mother, you say, and from Saturn as father, the Father of Days was born together with his brothers. Do gods then have wives, and come into the bonds of marriage on conditions previously sought out? Do they contract the sacraments of the marriage bed by use, by spelt, by purchase? Do they have betrothed women, do they have women pledged to them, do they have brides with stipulations interposed? And why do we speak of the unions themselves? When you say that certain ones celebrated weddings and had festive gatherings, and that goddesses played at these; and that because they were not made partakers of the wedding songs, they threw everything into confusion with their quarrels; and sowed for the human race thereafter the seeds of deadly disasters?

But perhaps in other matters the foulness of this shameful thing shines forth less clearly. Is that ruler of the heavens, then, the father of gods and men, who moves and shakes the whole sky with his brow and nod, formed from a man and a woman? And unless both sexes were dissolved into obscene pleasures by bodies joined together, would that great Jupiter not exist, and would the divine powers to this day have no king, and would heaven stand without a lord? And why do we marvel that you repeatedly say Jupiter was poured forth from a woman's womb, when your own authors write that he also had a nurse, and that he soon received and retained life from the nourishment of another's breast? What do you say, O men?

Is it so, then—I will say it again—that the thunderer, the lightning-bearer, the hurler of bolts, the gatherer of terrible clouds, sucked the streams of breasts, uttered a wail, crawled, and, to cease his most foolishly provoked weeping, fell silent at the sound of rattles, and was lulled to sleep lying in the softest cradle, soothed by broken murmuring voices? O what a devout assertion of the gods! O what a reverent display and suggestion of awe-inspiring and fearful majesty! Is it thus, I ask, that among you the eminence of the powers above is born? Do your gods come forth into the light by those same births by which asses, swine, dogs, by which all this unclean flood of earthly beasts is conceived and brought forth?

And not content with having attributed these unions to the gravity of Saturn's wife, you also proclaim that the very king of the world begot children in a manner more shameful than that in which he himself was born and brought forth. From Hyperione, you say, as mother, and from Jupiter the hurler of the thunderbolt, the golden and most blazing Sun was born; from Latona and the same, the Delian Far-shooter, and Diana the huntress of the forests; from Leda and the same, the Castors, whose Greek name is Dioscuri; from Alcmena and the same, that Theban Hercules, whom a club and a hide protected; from Semele and the same, Liber, who is called Bromius, and who was born a second time from his father's thigh; from the same again, and Maia, Mercury of eloquent tongue, and bearer of the kindly serpents.

Can any graver insult be inflicted upon your Jupiter, or is there anything else that undermines or destroys the authority of the chief of the gods, than that you believe him to have been at some time overcome by the pleasures of lust, and to have burned with the heat of an inflamed heart in pursuit of female desires? And what business had the Saturnian king with marriages with others' wives? Was Juno not enough for him, nor could he calm the impulse of his desires in the queen of the divine powers, when such great nobility commended her, her beauty, the dignity of her face, and the snow-white and marble-like brightness of her arms? Or, not content with one wife, was he delighted with concubines, mistresses, and paramours, and scattered his incontinence everywhere, as wanton young men are wont to do—a lustful God, and hoary, restoring from countless bodies the ardor of fading pleasures? What do you say, O impious ones, or what foulnesses of opinion do you fabricate about your Jupiter?

Do you not perceive, do you not see, with what disgrace you brand him, of what crime you make him the author, or what stains of shameful deeds, what great infamies you heap upon him?

Men, prone to lust and inclined by the weakness of nature toward the allurements of pleasures, nonetheless punish adulteries by law, and afflict with capital penalties those whom they have caught casting themselves into another's marriage bond by the storming of the marriage bed. The greatest of kings did not know of what shameful character, of what notoriety, was the role of the lurker and adulterer, and that observer, as fame has it, of the well-deserving and the ill-deserving, did not perceive with his reason lost what it was fitting for him to wish. And perhaps this ill treatment might be endured, if at least you joined him with persons of equal rank, and the adulterer were established by you as one of the immortal goddesses. But in human bodies, I ask, what beauty was there, what comeliness, that could provoke or turn the eyes of Jupiter upon itself?

Skin, viscera, phlegm, and all that flood of intestines set beneath their coverings, at which not only that Lynceus with his penetrating gaze might shudder, but any other person might recoil from by thought alone. O what a noble reward for guilt, O what a worthy and precious sweetness, for the sake of which the great Jupiter would become a swan, and a bull, and a begetter of white eggs.

If you wish to open the eyes of the mind and to behold the truth itself without any private partiality, you will find that the causes of all the miseries by which the human race, as you say, has long been afflicted, flow from such opinions as you held of old concerning your gods, and which you have refused to reform for the better when the truth was set before your eyes. For what have we ever thought concerning them that was unseemly, or published in unworthy writings, that the labors of the human race and the comforts by which men live, now diminished, should be cast as a reproach against us? Is it we who say that certain gods were begotten from eggs, like storks, like doves? Is it we who say that the brightness of the Cytherean Venus coalesced and was formed from the foam of the sea and from the severed genitals of heaven?

Is it we who say that Saturn was bound on account of parricide, and is relieved only on his own days from the weight of his chains? Is it we who say that Jupiter was saved from destruction by the favor of the Curetes? Is it we who say that he drove his father from his kingdom, and held dominion over another's right by violence and fraud? Is it we who say that the old man, driven out, hid in the borders of Italy, and that because he had been safe from his son, he gave the name Latium to the land as a gift? Is it we who say that Jupiter himself contracted an incestuous marriage with his sister? Or that he, invited to the right of the table, unknowingly dined on Lycaonian offspring in place of swine's flesh? Is it we who say that Vulcan, lame in one foot, practiced the craft of the forge on the island of Lemnos?

Is it we who say that Aesculapius was pierced by the bolt of the thunderbolt on account of greed and avarice, as the Boeotian Pindar sings? Is it we who say that Apollo, enriched by those very kings whose treasures and gifts had made him wealthy, deceived them by the ambiguity of his response? Is it we who have published Mercury as a thief? Or that Laverna exists, and that together with him she presides over stealthy frauds? Is it we who are the source of Myrtilus, who declares that the handmaidens of Megalcon's daughter, the daughter of Macar, were the Muses?

Who revealed that Venus, enriched by a Cyprian king whose name is Cinyras, was consecrated among the number of the gods; who revealed that the Palladium was fashioned from the remains of Pelops? Was it not you? Who said that Mars was a Spartan? Was it not Epicharmus, your own authority? Who said he was born in the borders of Thrace? Was it not Sophocles the Athenian, with all the theatres in agreement? Who said he was born in Arcadia? Was it not you? Who said he was bound for thirteen months? Was it not the son of the river Melas? Who said that Apollo was not principally among the others? Was it not Apollodorus? Who said that dogs are sacrificed to him by the Carians, and asses by the Scythians? Who said that, while he mocks at others' marriage-beds, he was himself caught and entangled in snares? Was it not your own commentaries, your own stage?

Was it ever written by us that the Gods served mercenary servitude—that Hercules did so for the sake of base love and wantonness, that the Delian Apollo served Admetus, that the brother of Jupiter served Laomedon of Troy, that the Pythian god served the same master together with his uncle, that Minerva, the minister of light and governess of lamps, was present at the mingling of conjugal secrets? Is not that poet of yours the one who made Mars and Venus wounded by mortal hands? Is not Panyassis one of your own number, who records that Dis the father and Queen Juno were wounded by Hercules? Do not the writings of your own Polemon declare that the warrior goddess was slain, bloodied, and harassed by Ornytos? Does not Sosibius declare that Hercules himself was tormented by the sons of Hippocoon, both by the wound inflicted and by the pain? Is it we who hand down the tradition that Jupiter was committed to burial on the island of Crete?

Is it we who say that the brothers were reared together in the regions of Sparta and Lacedaemon, nurtured in their cradles? Is that author ours who is identified in the titles of writings as Patrocles of Thurii, who records that the tombs and remains of Saturn are contained in the Sicilian land? Is Plutarch of Chaeronea proved to be of our party, who reported that Hercules, on the heights of Oeta, was dissolved into ashes after the ravages of the falling sickness?

For what shall I say of those loves by which the holy celestial beings are said to have burned for women, as is recorded in your writings and by your authorities? Is it by us that the king of the sea is accused of having deprived Amphitrite, Hippothoe, Amymone, Melanippe, Alope, of the chastity of their virginity through the ardour of frenzied desire? Is it by us that the Latonian Apollo, that spotless, most chaste and pure one, is said to have pursued Arsinoe, Aethusa, Hypsipyle, Marpessa, Zeuxippe, and Prothoe, Daphne, and Sterope, with the fervours of an unrestrained heart? Is it in our poems that old Saturn, long since covered with grey hairs and now grown cold with the age of years, is shown to have been caught by his wife in adultery, to have put on the form of a beast, and to have fled away under the appearance of a horse with tossing whinnies?

Jupiter himself, the king of the world—was he not defamed by you as having gone through countless forms, and as having veiled the flame of wanton love with servile deceits? Was it ever written by us that, in order to accomplish his lustful thefts, he was at one time turned into gold, at another into a sportive satyr, into a serpent, into a bird, into a bull, and—to pass over all other kinds of insults—into a tiny ant, so that he might make the daughter of Clitor, namely Myrmidon's mother, among the Thessalians? Who made him keep vigil through nine continuous nights with Alcmena? Was it not you? Who said he lay idle in his loves, having abandoned his post in heaven? Was it not you? And indeed you add benefits of no small account: for by your account the god Hercules was born, who in such matters would surpass and exceed the virtues of his father.

That father could barely produce, fashion, and put together one offspring in nine nights; but the holy god Hercules in a single night instructed fifty daughters of Thestius how to lay aside the name of virginity and bear the burdens of motherhood. What of the fact that, not content with having attributed to the gods the pursuit of the female sex, you also add males beloved by them? Someone loves Hylas. Another is taken up with Hyacinthus; one burns with desire for Pelops, another sighs more ardently for Chrysippus; Ganymede is carried off to be a favourite and cup-bearer. And that he may be called the fledgling of Jupiter, Fabius is branded in the soft parts, and sealed from behind.

But among you only males are in love, and sanctity is preserved for the female sex. Is it not set down in your writings that Aurora loved Tithonus, that the Moon burned for Endymion, a Nereid for Aeacus, Thetis for the father of Achilles, Proserpina for Adonis, her mother Ceres for some rustic Jasion, and after Vulcan, Phaethon, and Mars, that very Venus herself, mother of the Aeneadae and author of Roman dominion, for the marriage of Anchises? Since therefore you yourselves cast forth such shameful and disgraceful monstrosities, not against any one person by name, but equally against the entire race of the gods above, whom you profess to believe in, without exception for any, do you dare, with modesty intact, to say either that we are impious or that you are pious, when the gods receive far greater offences from you out of all the insults you heap together for their defamation than they receive of greatness and honour from the rite and duty of your worship?

For either all those things which have been brought forth concerning each of them, damaging their reputation and majesty, are false—and it is a matter altogether worthy that on account of it the gods ought to utterly destroy the entire race of mortals—or if they are established and true and grasped without any doubt, the matter is brought to this conclusion, that, much against your will, we must believe them to have been not of heavenly but of human stock.

For where there are marriages, weddings, childbirths, nurses, crafts, infirmities, where there is legal status and the condition of slavery, where there are wounds, slaughters, bloodshed, where there are loves, longings, pleasures, where there is every passion of the soul arising from restless disturbances, there must of necessity be nothing divine; nor can what is proper to a perishable race and earthly frailty adhere to a more excellent nature. For who is there who would believe, if he but recognises and perceives what the power of that majesty is, either that a god had generative parts and was deprived of them by most foul mutilation; or that he ever intercepted offspring produced from himself and was restrained by the punishment of chains; or that he in some fashion waged civil wars with his father and justly deprived him of royal power; or that, terrified by the threat of a lesser being, he turned his back in flight and, like a fugitive and exile, hid himself away in remote retreats?

Who is there, I say, who would believe that a god reclined at human tables, was slain for the sake of greed, deceived suppliants with ambiguous responses, excelled in the tricks of theft, committed adultery, served as a slave, was wounded, fell in love, and through all the forms of lust drove about the enticement of incestuous desires? And yet you assert that all these things both were and are present in your gods; nor do you pass over any form of vice, wickedness, or failing which you do not, in the wantonness of your opinions, heap upon the gods as reproach. Either, therefore, you must seek other gods, upon whom none of these things fall—for those upon whom these things do fall are of human and earthly stock—or if these alone are the gods whose names and characters you have published, you destroy them by your own opinions. For whatever you narrate is mortal.

And we could indeed at this point demonstrate that all those beings whom you introduce and invoke as gods were men, either by unrolling the Agragantian Euhemerus, whose little books Ennius translated into the Italian tongue so that they might become known to all; or by Nicanor the Cyprian, or Leon of Pella, or Theodorus of Cyrene, or Hippo and Diagoras of Melos, or a thousand other authors, who with the care of scrupulous diligence brought hidden matters to light with frank freedom of mind. We could, I say, if it please, set forth both the deeds of Jupiter and the wars of Minerva and the virgin Diana; by what stratagems Liber sought the kingdom of the Indians; what was the condition of Venus, what her occupation, what her earnings; what great mother held whose marriage; what hope, what pleasure she conceived from the handsome Attis. Whence came Egyptian Serapis, whence Isis, or from what causes the very designation of those names was put together.

But we have not undertaken in this discourse which we are making either the task or the intention of showing and publishing who all these beings were. Our purpose is this: since you call us impious and irreligious, while you on the contrary contend that you are pious and worshippers of the gods, to demonstrate and set forth that they are treated more ignominiously by no men than by you. And if this is evident from their very defamations, it follows that it must be understood that you stir up in the gods above the goads of furious indignation, you who either hear, or believe, or yourselves compose such foul and disgraceful tales about them. For he who carefully re-reads and slaughters unblemished victims, who gives heaps of incense to be consumed by fire, is not to be judged as worshipping the divine powers or as alone fulfilling the duties of religion.

True worship lies in the heart and in a worthy opinion of the gods; nor does the offering of blood and gore profit anything, if you believe concerning them things which not only are far removed and distant from their nature, but also bring upon their majesty and dignity some stain and baseness.

For I would like to question you and call you to answer a brief inquiry: whether you judge it more serious to sacrifice no victims to the gods, because you think that so great a nature neither wishes nor desires such things; or to conceive such shameful opinions about them as would rouse the mind of any person to a rage of vengeance? If the weight of the matters be weighed, you will find no judge so unfair as not to judge it more criminal for a person's reputation to be assailed and branded with notable slanders than to be passed over by someone in silence. For the former can perhaps be thought and believed to be a matter of reason; but the latter is the act of a sacrilegious mind and of desperate blindness in its fictions.

In your ceremonies and sacred rites, there is a place for expiation, and it is said that the guilt of an offence is incurred if through a slip of inadvertence someone errs either in a word or in the use of the simpulum; or if in the course of the solemn games and sacred races, you all immediately cry out that a violation of sacred rites has been committed if a dancer stopped or a flute-player suddenly fell silent; or if that boy who is called patrimus failed through ignorance of the places, or could not hold the ground; and yet you dare to deny that in offences so grave the gods are always violated by you, when in lesser matters you yourselves more often confess with the ruin of the state that they are angered?

But these, they say, are all the fictions of poets, and amusements composed for pleasure. It is indeed not credible that men of less brutish mind and investigators of the most remote antiquity either inserted into their poems tales which would survive in the minds of men and be lodged in their ears; or that they themselves wished to claim for themselves so great a licence as to fabricate through folly things which were not far removed from madness, and which could bring upon them fear and danger from the gods and from men. But let us grant, as you say, that the poets are the composers and inventors of such great deformities: nevertheless you are not thus free from the ill-treatment of the gods—you who either fail to avenge such crimes; or have not enacted laws and the severity of punishments to stand in the way of such great recklessness, and established that no one henceforth should say anything that was close to baseness or unworthy of the majesty of the gods.

For whoever permits a wrongdoer to sin supplies strength to his audacity; and it is a matter of greater insult to brand and mark someone with false accusations than to cast in his face and charge him with true offences.

For what you know to be said of you, and what you feel yourself to be, has a lesser sting, broken by the testimony of silent recognition. But that wounds most bitterly which brands the innocent and defames the honour of one's name and reputation.

Your gods are written of as dining and drinking in the celestial banqueting-halls and golden halls, and at last being soothed by strings and the modulation of voices. You lend your most patient ears; nor do you judge it unworthy that those pleasures be attributed to the gods by which earthly bodies are sustained and which ears softened by the dissolution of an enervated heart seek out. Some of them are introduced as lovers, adulterers of chastity, and as mixing shameful and disgraceful intercourse not only with women but also with men. You have no concern for what is said about matters so great, nor do you restrain the audacity of wanton writings with even any fear of censure. Others are shown mutilating themselves in fits of madness and frenzy, and staining themselves with their own blood as if with that of an enemy, in an act of self-slaughter.

You marvel at those sacrileges exalted on high, and what ought to be punished with every penalty, you extol with the incentive of praise so that audacity may rise more boldly.

Others are shown groaning over the wounds of bereavement and with unseemly wailings accusing cruel fate: you are struck with admiration at the power of the eloquence, and what ought utterly to be removed from the fellowship of the human race, you rehearse, you learn by heart, and take care that it perish not in oblivion. They are recorded as being wounded, harassed, waging wars among themselves in the ardour of furious conflicts: to you that description is a pleasure, and in order to defend the great audacity of the writers, you falsely claim that those things are allegories and teachings of natural science.

But why do I complain of the insults to other deities that are left unavenged? That Jupiter himself, whose name it was fitting for you to utter not without fear and a trembling of the whole body, is described as having been captivated by love for his wife, confessing his faults, and, hardened in shamelessness, as one senseless and unknowing, publicly declaring which mistresses he had preferred to his companion, which concubines to his wife. You who have extolled such monstrous things declare that the poets who produced them are princes and kings endowed with divine genius, most sacred authorities: and you have so far flown from the duty of the religions you profess, that the words of poets weigh more with you than the violated majesty of the heavenly ones.

Thus it was not fitting, if only there were any fear of the gods among you, or if you believed with the confidence of certain presumption that they existed anywhere, to interpose by petitions, plebiscites, by the fear of the senate's counselors, to forbid, to enact, that no one should wish to utter concerning the gods anything at random save what was full of reverence. Nor did the gods deserve even this honor from you, that by the same means by which you drive away from yourselves, you should by those same laws repel injuries from them. Those who have murmured something unfavorably about your kings are held guilty of treason before you. To reduce a magistrate to the ranks, to pursue a senator with abuse, is most perilous in penalties for those who act against their decrees.

You were unwilling to let it pass with impunity to compose an evil poem by which another's reputation and life are defiled, as the decemviral enactments declare: and lest anyone should assail your ears with some more insolent abuse, you have established formulas for atrocious injuries. The gods alone are among you unhonored, contemptible, worthless: against whom you have granted the right to say whatever anyone wishes: to cast forth the forms of shameful deeds which lust has invented and devised. And you are not ashamed to charge us with neglect of deities so infamous, when it is far better either not to believe that gods exist, than to believe that they exist as such and to hold such an opinion of them.

But did you wish that only poets should be permitted to invent unworthy tales about the gods and shameful mockeries? What of your pantomimes, what of your actors, what of that multitude of mimes and of the worn-out kind? Do they not abuse your gods for the profit of their trade, and does the pandering of pleasures draw its allurements from divine injuries and insults?

In the public spectacles sit the colleges of all the priests and magistrates, the pontiffs maximus and the greatest curiones; sit the fifteen men crowned with laurel, and the flamines diales with their apex-caps; sit the augurs, interpreters of the divine mind and will, and likewise the chaste virgins, the perpetual nurses and guardians of the fire; sits the whole people and the senate; fathers who have held consulships, kings most close to the gods and most august; and—what would be abominable to hear—that mother, the ancestress of the Martian race, Venus the loving progenitress of the ruler and the people, is danced upon the stage, and through all the emotions of harlot baseness is shamelessly expressed in bacchic imitation.

There is also danced the great Mother adorned with sacred fillets; and that Pessinuntian Dindymene, contrary to the dignity of her age, is feigned to burn with shameful desire in the embrace of a single herdsman; and likewise that offspring of Jupiter, Hercules of Sophocles in the Trachiniae, entangled in the snare of the pestilential garment, is brought on stage to utter pitiful lamentations, to be broken by the violence of pain, and to be consumed to the last by the wasting of his dissolving entrails. Moreover, that greatest ruler of the sky himself in the plays is introduced without any dread of his name and majesty to play the parts of adulterers, and that he may be able to deceive the chastity of the households of other men's mothers, to change his face with beguiling disguises, and to take the place of husbands in the simulation of a counterfeit body.

Nor is this offense enough: even in mimes and scurrilous shows the persons of the most holy gods are introduced. And that laughter and merriment may be stirred in the idle spectators, the divine powers are struck with jesting taunts, the theaters shout and rise, all the auditoriums resound with crashes and applause. And what can be expiated by no satisfactions, gifts and rewards are established for the worn-out mockers of the divine powers, leisure from public duties, immunity and exemption with crowns. And after all this you dare to wonder whence arise those evils by which mortality is inundated and oppressed without any intermission; when you both rehearse daily and learn daily all the things in which the shames of the divine powers are wrapped up, and the words of malediction; and when you wish to occupy an idle mind with vacant hallucinations, you demand that days be given you and be provided without any interruption.

But if any indignation on behalf of your religions possessed you, you ought long since rather to have burned these writings, these books, to have demolished and torn down these theaters rather, in which the infamies of the divine powers are daily published in shameful plays. For why did our writings deserve to be given to the flames? Why were our meeting-places savagely torn down?—in which the highest God is prayed to, peace and pardon are sought for all magistrates, armies, kings, friends, enemies, those still living out their lives, and those released from the bond of their bodies; in which nothing else is heard save what makes men humane, what makes them gentle, modest, chaste, pure, sharers of their household goods, and bound in close kinship with all whom brotherhood makes one.

But the matter stands thus: because you prevail greatly by swords and the power of iron, you judge that you also surpass in the knowledge of truth; and that you are pious toward gods whose powers you were the first to defile with the obscenity of your opinions. At this point, if your ferocity permits and your rage suffers it, we beg you to answer us this: whether you think that anger falls within the nature of the gods, or that divine blessedness is far removed and separated from these emotions?

For if they conceive these expressions and are exasperated by the movements of wrath, as your opinions hold—for you often say that they have trembled the earth with earthquakes and corrupted the air of the seasons with the contagion of pestilence and a mournful devastation of the people, both on account of games performed with less care, and on account of presiding officers not approved, and on account of certain small consecrated spaces, and on account of ceremonies not rightly completed—it follows that it must be understood that they harbor no small angers from the aforesaid opinions. If this is granted, then this also necessarily follows: that all these miseries by which the human race has long been burdened flow from fictions of this kind; and if the indignation of the divine powers proceeds from these causes, you are the authors of such great miseries, you who do not cease to offend the minds of the heavenly ones and to stir them to the fury of vengeance.

But if the race of gods is immune from furies of this kind, and the gods do not know at all what it is to be angry: then they are said to be angry at us also without any reason, who do not know what anger is, and are freed from its composition and admixture.

Be it so: let all those shameful things concerning the immortal gods have been put forth by poets at play. What of those things which serious, grave, careful histories contain, and which have been devised by the wantonness of poets in the secret transmitted mysteries? If such tales of absurdity seemed to you mere trifles, you would neither retain certain of them in their own use, nor would you celebrate joys as festive through the annual courses, nor would you preserve them in sacred rites as representations of things actually done. From so many of these I will set forth one for the present, following the restraint of moderation, in which that Jupiter himself is introduced as foolish and imprudent, tricked by the ambiguities of words.

In the second book of Antias, lest anyone perhaps think we are fabricating charges through calumny, such a tale is written out: that that king Numa, since he did not have the knowledge of averting lightning and had a desire to learn it, by the counsel of Egeria concealed twelve chaste young men near the water with chains; so that when Faunus and Martian Picus came to that place to drink—for they had a customary path for watering here—they might attack, bind, and fetter them. But that the thing might be done more easily, the king filled no small cups with pure wine and mead, and set a treacherous snare against those who would come near the approaches of the spring. That those two, seized by their customary desire for drinking, came to their familiar haunt.

But when they encountered the fragrant cups with their scented liquors, they preferred the new things to the older ones, fell upon them eagerly, captivated by the sweetness of the drink drank more than enough, and fell asleep made heavy: then the twelve fell upon the sleeping ones, cast chains upon the drunken ones, and as soon as they awoke led them straight to the king; and they told him by what means and sacrifices Jupiter could be drawn down to earth; and the king, having received the knowledge, performed a divine rite on the Aventine, drew Jupiter down to earth, and asked him the rite of aversion. Jupiter, after long hesitation, said: you will expiate the lightning-struck with a head; the king answered, with an onion-head. Jupiter again said, with a human one; the king replied, but with hair. The god in turn said, with a life; Pompilius rejoined, of a fish.

Then Jupiter, caught by the ambiguous propositions, uttered this word: you have deceived me, Numa; for I had ordained that the lightning-struck be expiated with human heads, not with an onion-head and hair; yet since your cunning has circumvented me, have the custom you wished; and with these things which you have agreed upon, you shall always undertake the expiation of the lightning-struck.

What to pursue first, what last, or what to pass over in silence, is neither easy to say nor readily settled by any consideration. For all things are so devised and arranged for mockery, that you must strive to make these things believed to be false, even if they are true, rather than wish to maintain them as true and introduce them as something wonderful not without contempt of the divine power itself. For what do you say, O you people—do we believe that Faunus and Martian Picus, if they are of the number of the gods and of that perpetual and immortal nature, were ever dried up by the aridity of thirst, and that, in order to be able to irrigate the heat of their veins, they went to the streams of springs? Do we believe that they were captured by wine and enticed by the sweetness of mead, and gorged themselves so long with the treacherous cups that they came to the danger of drunkenness?

Do we believe that bound by sleep and submerged in the oblivion of deepest slumber, they gave earthly creatures the opportunity of binding them? In what parts then were those bonds of chains cast upon them? Did their hands have any solidity, or had they been formed of hard bones, such that they could be bound with nooses and restrained by the tying of knots? For I do not inquire, I do not demand, whether they could say anything while reeling in the alienation of drunkenness; whether without Jupiter's knowledge, or rather without his knowing it, anyone could have been able to publish the rite of drawing him down to earth; I desire only to hear this: why, if Faunus and Picus are of divine race and power, did they not themselves rather reveal to the inquirer that which Numa desired more perilously to hear from Jupiter himself?

Or was it that Jupiter alone had knowledge of this matter—for it is from him that thunderbolts fall, so that the averting of what threatens must belong to some knowledge and discipline? Or when he himself hurls these fires, is it the work of others to know by what means it is fitting to temper his wrath and disposition? For indeed it is most foolish to believe that he himself knows the remedies by which those things may be averted which he has ordained to happen in human affairs through the hurling of the thunderbolt. For this is to say: by that kind of rite you will appease my wrath; and whenever I shall have signified through thunderbolts that something is imminent, do this and that, so that what I have ordained to happen may become empty and void, and may vanish by the power of sacred rites.

But let us grant, as is said, that Jupiter himself knew the remedies against himself, and the arts by which it was fitting to go against his own signs; shall we also believe that a God of such great divine power was drawn down to earth, and standing on a little hillock with a mere mortal, engaged in a contentious exchange of words? And what, I ask, was that divine thing which compelled Jupiter, so great in the command of affairs, to be called away, and to present himself at the summons of mortals? Spelt-cake, incense, blood, the fumigation of vervain, and the mutterings of terrible names? And were all these things more powerful than Jupiter, so that they compelled him to obey their commands against his will, or to surrender himself voluntarily to their circumventions?

What of what follows—will it gain credence, that the son of Saturn was so improvident as either to propose things by whose ambiguities he himself would be caught, or not to know in what ways the cunning and cleverness of a mortal was going to make sport of him? You will expiate, he said, the lightning-struck with a head. The utterance is still incomplete, and the statement not full, and the meaning circumscribed. For it is necessarily fitting to know whether the father of the day ordains this expiation to be performed with the head of a wether, or a pig, or an ox, or any other animal whatsoever. Since he had not yet determined this specifically, and the matter was still pending and the meaning not yet concluded, how could Numa know that Jupiter was going to say a human head, so that he might anticipate, get ahead of him, and redirect the uncertainty of that ambiguity into an onion-head?

Unless perhaps you will say that the king was divine: could anyone be more divine than Jupiter himself? Unless a man, presuming to know what Jupiter would say, circumscribed him; a God could not know by what means a man was preparing to circumscribe him. So it is not readily apparent, and it is clear that these are the inventions of childish minds; by which, while the cleverness of Numa's heart is acquired, the greatest imprudence is imported to Jupiter. For what is so imprudent as to confess that you were caught by the cunning of a human heart, and when you grieve that you were deceived, to yield to the will of the victor and to lay aside the remedy you had offered?

For if there was a reason, and a certain natural fitness, why the averting of a lightning-strike ought to have been undertaken with a human head, I do not see why the king's response involved an onion; but if the matter could also be settled with an onion, then the man's craving for blood was wanton. And so each part is brought to the opposite conclusion, so that Numa is shown not to have wished to know what he did wish to know, and Jupiter is shown to have been cruel, in that what could have been accepted by Numa even with an onion, he is said to have wished to be expiated with human heads.

In the writings of Timotheus, a man not unknown among theologians, and likewise in those of other equally learned men, concerning the Great Mother of the gods and her rites, this origin is set forth, drawn from recondite books of antiquities and extracted from the innermost mysteries (as he himself writes and intimates). Within the borders of Phrygia, he says, there is a certain rock of unheard-of vastness in every respect, called Agdus, so named by the natives of that region. From it Deucalion and Pyrrha took stones and, as Themis had foretold in her prophecy, cast them into a world empty of mortals; from these, along with the rest, she who is called the Great Mother was formed and divinely animated. While she lay given to rest and sleep on the very summit of that rock, Jupiter assailed her with wicked and incestuous desires. But when, after long struggling, he could not obtain what he had promised himself, overcome, he poured out his pleasure upon the stone.

From this the rock conceived, and after first emitting many bellowings, in the tenth month one was born, surnamed from his mother's name Agdestis. He had invincible strength and an intractable ferocity of spirit, a mad and furious lust, and from both sexes he seized by force, to ravage, to destroy, to lay waste wherever the savagery of his spirit led him; he cared nothing for gods, nothing for men, believed nothing more powerful than himself, and despised earth, heaven, and the stars.

When it had been frequently debated in the council of the gods by what means his audacity could be weakened or restrained, while the rest hesitated, Liber took upon himself the charge of this task: the familiar spring from which Agdestis had been accustomed to quench the burning heat of his thirst, inflamed by sport and hunting, he charged with the most potent strength of unmixed wine; at the moment of need Agdestis came running and drank the potion in with gaping veins more immoderately than was fitting; the result was that, overcome by the unaccustomed thing, he was plunged into the deepest sleep.

Liber came to lay his snare, and with most skillfully twisted bristles cast a single noose about his foot; with the other end he bound his offspring together with the genitals themselves; Agdestis, when the force of the unmixed wine had evaporated, started up with a rush, and as the noose drew his foot, by his own strength he deprived himself of the sex he had possessed, with the severing of the parts a vast flow of blood poured forth; these were caught up and drunk in by the earth; suddenly from them a pomegranate tree sprang up with its fruits, and Nana, the daughter of the king or river Sangarius, gazing upon its beauty, plucked it in wonder and laid it in her bosom: from this she became pregnant; her father, as though she had been violated, shut her up and took care that she should die of starvation, but she was sustained by the Mother of the gods with pomegranates and other berries; she brought forth a little child: but Sangarius ordered it to be exposed; some person or other, I know not who, named Phorbas, found it and nourished it on goat's milk; and because the Lydians call pretty boys by such a name, or because the Phrygians call goats Atagi in their speech, from this it came about that the name Attis was given to him: him the Mother of the gods loved uniquely, with a face that was most excellent, and Agdestis was his fond companion as he grew up, bound to him by less than upright flatteries in the only way he could be, leading him through wooded groves and bestowing on him many gifts of wild beasts, which the boy Attis at first said were the fruit of his own toil and labor, boasting of his work; then through wine he confessed both that he was loved by Agdestis and that he was honored by him with woodland gifts: wherefore wine, which betrayed the secret, is held sacred and it is forbidden to bring oneself defiled into his rite.

Then Midas, king of Pessinus, wishing to separate the boy from so infamous a companionship, destined his own daughter for him in marriage; and lest some ill omen should interrupt the nuptial joys, he had the town closed. But the Mother of the gods, knowing the fate of the young man and that he would remain safe among men only so long as he was free from the bond of matrimony, entered the closed city lest anything sad should befall, raising its walls with her head: from this reason the wearing of a turreted crown began.

Agdestis, seething with rage at the boy being torn from him and turned toward the pursuit of a wife, instilled frenzy and madness into all who were feasting; the Phrygians cried out in terror at the moment; the daughter of the Gallus, the concubine, cut off her own breasts; Attis seized the flute which the instigator of the madness himself had been carrying; now himself full of the Furies, raving in a bacchic frenzy, tossed about, he at last threw himself down, and under a pine tree cut off his own genitals, saying: Take these, Agdestis, for which you have stirred up such great tumults of furious calamities. Life flew away with the outpouring of blood; but the Great Mother of the gods gathered up the parts that had been cut off, and cast them into the earth, first covering and wrapping them in a garment of the dead man. From the flow of blood a violet flower was born, and the tree was garlanded with it.

From this arose and originated the custom, observed even now, of sacred pine trees being veiled and crowned. The virgin bride, whom the pontiff Valerius records as having already been named, covered the breast of the lifeless man with softest wool, shed tears together with Agdestis, and slew herself; the blood of the slain woman was turned into crimson violets. The Mother of the gods caused these also to spring up, whence the almond tree is born, signifying the bitterness of the funeral. Then she carried the pine tree, under which Attis had despoiled himself of the name of man, into her own cave, and with united lamentations beat and wounded her breast together with Agdestis around the trunk of the tree at rest.

Jupiter was asked by Agdestis that Attis might come back to life; he did not permit it; yet what could be brought about by fate he granted without any difficulty: that his body should not decay, that his hair should always grow, that his smallest finger should live and be perpetually moved alone with unceasing motion; with which benefits Agdestis, content, consecrated the body at Pessinus; and honored it with annual rites and the entrails of priests.

If some contemner of the divine powers, furious with the enormity of a sacrilegious heart, had set his mind to revile your gods: would he dare to say anything more grievous against them than this history sets forth, which you have compiled as something wonderful into the form of a commentary, and lest the force of time and the length of antiquity should cause it to fade, you have honored it with the distinction of perpetuity?

For what is set down in it concerning the gods, or what is written therein, which, if you were to say it of a man brought up with modest morals and stricter disciplines, you would not be liable for insult and injury, and incur the hatred of offense matched with implacable enmities? From the stones, you say, which Deucalion and Pyrrha cast, the Mother of the gods was brought forth. What do you say, O theologians? What, O ministers of the powers above? Was the Mother of the gods then in no part of nature before the flood? And unless the force of the rains had destroyed the entire race of mortals, would the cause and origin of that procreation have ceased? Her gift is therefore inhuman, as she herself perceives; and she owes it to Pyrrha's beneficence that she is seen to be worshipped in the quality of some substance; which indeed, if it is true, this also will necessarily not be false, that she was a human being, not a goddess.

For if it is certain that human beings trace the origin of their birth from that casting of stones, she too must be believed to have been one of us, brought forth by the workings of like causes. For it cannot happen, by the contrariety of things, that from one kind of stones and from the same manner of casting, some should be assigned to the lot of immortals, others to the condition of humanity.

That Roman Varro, eminent in manifold disciplines and a searcher into the investigation of antiquity, in the first of the four books which he left written concerning the race of the Roman people, teaches by careful calculations that from the time of the flood, of which we made mention above, down to the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, there are not yet two thousand years; if faith stands with this, the Great Mother too must be said to have her age enclosed within the limits of this number; and so the matter is brought to the point that she who is narrated to be the mother of all divine powers is not a mother but a daughter; nay rather an infant and a little child, since we grant that the gods have obtained neither beginnings nor ends of ages in perpetual continuity.

But why do we speak of the Mother of the gods as having grown stale in earthly filth, when you have been unable to allow even a brief interval of respite from the slanders of Jupiter himself? When the Mother of the gods was then sleeping on the summit of Agdus, you say, her son, acting as a stealthy assailant, strove to creep upon the modesty of one at rest. After countless virgins and matrons despoiled of their chastity, did Jupiter also conceive a hope of unspeakable desire toward his mother, and could not the horror which nature itself has implanted even in some animals, and that sense commonly inborn in all alike, turn him away from the burning of that appetite? Or did the guardian of the Capitols lack regard for piety and honor, and could he neither draw back nor perceive, with his mind disordered by madness, what crime he was desiring?

But as the matter stands, forgetful of his weight and majesty, he went creeping toward those shameful thefts, fearful and trembling with breath held, with steps suspended in dread, and standing between the very borders of anxiety and hope, he groped at her intimate parts, testing the depth of her sleep and the endurance of his mother. O indecorous imagining of things! O foul posture of Jupiter prepared for the expedition of an obscene contest! So that king of the world, when he was carelessly and hastily repulsed from his theft, turned to violence, and when he could not seize his pleasure by treacherous fraud, assailed his mother by force, and most openly began to undermine her venerable chastity? He therefore struggled for a very long time with one who was unwilling, and overcome, broken, and vanquished he failed; and he whom piety could not separate from the unspeakable appetite for his mother, his poured-out lust did separate?

Unless perhaps you will say that the human race shuns and execrates an assembly of this kind; among the gods there are no acts of incest. And why did the mother resist most fiercely the son who was inflicting violence? Why did she flee from his embraces, shunning his touch as unlawful? For if there were nothing evil in the matter, she ought to have complied with him without any resistance, just as he was eagerly wishing to fulfill the incitements of his desire. And indeed at this point men of great frugality, and more sparing even in the matter of shameful deeds, lest those sacred seeds should seem to have been shed in vain, say: the flint, he says, drank in the foulness of Jovian incontinence. What then, I ask, followed? Tell us. In the very bosom of the stone and in the hardness of that flint, an infant was formed and animated, destined to be the offspring of great Jupiter. It is not easy to contradict such prodigious conceptions and such wondrous things.

For since the human race is said among you to have arisen and been brought forth from stones, it is necessary to believe that stones also had receptacles for generation, and drank in the seed that was cast into them, and when the time was completed bore heavy wombs, and at last brought forth with the difficulty of travail in the manner of females. That point compels our curiosity to inquire: since you say the birth was delivered after ten months, during that time when he was enclosed in the womb of the stone, by what nourishments was he irrigated, by what juices; or what nourishing sustenance could he draw from the stony hardness, as is customary for fetuses from their mothers? He had not yet reached the light, and already bellowing and imitating his father's thunder he gave it back? And after he was given to behold the sky and the day, he rushed upon and laid waste everything he encountered, and pledged himself that he could drive the very gods of heaven from their region.

O cautious and provident Mother of the gods, who, lest she should incur the ill-will of so insolent a son, or lest the bellowing fetus should disturb her sleep or interrupt her rest, withdrew herself and sent that most noxious venom of the seed far away from her, and offered it to the roughness of the rocks.

It was debated in the councils of the gods by what means that intractable force of savagery might be tamed, and when no way remained, recourse was had to the one remedy, that he should be soaked with much unmixed wine and despoiled of his strength by castration. As though indeed those afflicted with these bodily injuries become of more languid audacity, and we do not daily see that those who have cut away these parts from themselves become of greater wantonness, and with all the reins of modesty and shame cast aside, break forth into obscene vileness, their confession of shameful deeds made public.

I would wish to see, however, if it had been given to me to be born in those times, that father Liber, conqueror of the ferocity of Agdestis, descended from the lofty heights of heaven after the most straitened councils of the gods, trimming the trappings of gelded horses, tying noble nooses, consecrating the harmless purity of the waters with much unmixed wine; and after drunkenness had emerged from the drinking, carefully inserting his hands, handling the genitals of the sleeping one, and when all the bites of the surrounding nooses should encircle everything, then applying the cares of his craft to the parts about to perish.

Would anyone, even one tainted with the slightest opinion of the gods, say this of them? Or if they are occupied with such affairs, thoughts, and cares, would any wise man believe them to be gods, or even reckon them in the number of mortals? This Acdestis, I ask, whose obscenity, once cut away, was to have brought security to the heavenly ones—was he one of earthly creatures, or some god endowed with the honor of immortality? For if he was held to be of our lot and of human condition, why did he bring such terror upon the divine powers? But if he had been a god, how could he be deceived, or have something cut away from a divine body? But we raise no question on this side, whether he was of divine race or one of us—if you think it more correct to say so; was it truly from a flow of blood and from the severed genitals that a tree of the pomegranate sprang up?

Or was it that when that force was covered by the embrace of the earth's bosom, the soil clasped it with its root, it shot up into the strength of a trunk, put forth branches laden with blossoms, and in an instant brought forth fruits completed with the ripeness of their own perfection? And because these things arose from red blood, therefore they have a color tinged with the suffusion of purple light; add to this also that they are therefore moist, therefore wine-like, because they draw their origin from blood-saturated stock, and you fittingly complete the fable. O Abdera, Abdera, what great occasion would you give to mortals for mockery, if such a fable were among you so fashioned? All the fathers recite it, and cities read it through with raised eyebrows, and you are judged foolish and of the most frigid stupidity.

Through her bosom, it says, Nana conceived a son from the fruit; the reasoning follows consistently; for where hard rocks and stones give birth, there fruits must needs spring up. The Berecyntian goddess fed the bound one with acorns and figs, fittingly and rightly; for she who had been made a mother from fruit ought to have lived on fruits. After the offspring was born, it was ordered to be cast far away from the Sangarius; he who had long believed the conception to be divine disdained to have the child called the offspring of his own blood. The infant was nourished on goat's milk. O a fable ever hostile and most inimical to the male sex; in which not only men of the male sex but even cattle become mothers from males. He was distinguished by renowned beauty and praiseworthy comeliness. A sufficiently remarkable thing, that the goatish stench did not render him repellent and to be fled.

His mother loved him greatly—if as a grandmother loves a grandson, the matter is simple; but if, as the theaters loudly proclaim, it is a shameful and flagitious love. Acdestis also loved him, enriching him with gifts of the hunt; from a half-man indeed there could be no danger to chastity; but what Midas feared, it is not easy for those who suspect to determine. His mother entered together with him within the walls. We admire indeed in this part the strength and fortitude of the divine power; but we blame the negligence of the king, who, though mindful of the law and fate, laid open the city less providently to enemies. Upon those celebrating the nuptial vows, Acdestis inflicts frenzy and madness—if Midas the king had given offence, who was binding the youth to a wife; what had the Gallus done, what had the concubine's daughter done, that the one should deprive himself of his manhood, and the other of the honor of her breasts?

"Take these things for yourself," he says, "on account of which you have stirred up such great upheavals of minds." We should all still not know what the Acdestian frenzy had desired in the body of the grown youth, had not the boy, by casting off what was cut away, thrown it as an object of offence to the offended party.

What do you say, O nations: what do you say, O peoples given over to opinions of this kind? When these things are brought forth, does not shame seize you, and the sense of modesty at such great foulnesses? We are eager to hear from you something worthy of the gods, something to learn; but you set before us the cutting off of breasts, the amputation of male members, angers, blood, frenzies, the voluntary deaths of maidens, and flowers and trees produced from the blood of the dead. Tell us, O again—did the mother of the god, mourning by herself with the scattered genitals and their flows of blood, gather them with officious diligence, handle and take up with holy hands, with divine hands, the instruments of the shameful and foul deed, and commit them to be hidden in the earth, and lest they should flow out bare in the bosom of the soil, before she covered and wrapped them in a garment, did she wash them with balsams and anoint them?

For how could fragrant violets have been able to spring up, unless that suffusion of unguents tempered the stench of the member? When you read through such histories, I ask, do you not seem to yourselves to be hearing either girls at their weaving, spinning out the delays of their tedious work; or aged women seeking diversions for credulous children, and setting forth various fictions under the appearance of truth? When Acdestis spoke with Jupiter, that he might restore life to the beloved one: Jupiter refused to assent, because he was prevented by the more powerful fates: and lest he should be altogether most harsh, he granted one favor—that the body should not be dissolved by any putrefaction, that the hair should always grow, that the smallest of the fingers alone should live in the body, alone should exhibit perpetual motion. Would anyone admit this, or confirm it with the assent of belief, that hair grows on a dead man, that a part has perished, and that a mortal body, separated from the law of putrefaction, endures even still?

We could long since have pressed you to a comparison with this matter, were it not that it is a part of folly both to learn such things and to demand proofs of matters of this kind. But this history is false, and contains within itself no part of truth. It is indeed of no concern to us, on whose account you contend that the gods have been driven from the earth: whether it be consistent and supported by the firmness of credibility, or on the contrary composed falsely and by the fiction of some falsehood.

For it is enough for us, whose purpose today is to make manifest: that these divine powers which you set forth, if they are anywhere among the nations and grow hot with the fervor of angers, receive the causes of their furious offences no more from us than from you: and that this thing exists in the records, and has been set down by you in commentaries, and is daily read through by those who wish, and is handed down through the succession of future time for instruction. Which if it is altogether true, we see no reason underlying why the heavenly gods are said to be angry with us, since we have neither published such great shameful deeds of theirs, nor committed them to any writings, nor sent them forth into public testimony at the celebrations of sacred rites.

But if, as you recall, it is false and interpolated with deceitful lies, no man can doubt that you are the cause of the offence, who either permitted certain persons to write such things, or suffered what was written to endure in the memory of the ages.

And yet how can you argue that this written account is false, when the very sacred rites which you perform through the course of each year are testimony, and are judged by you to be true and of proven credibility? For what does that pine mean, which on fixed days you always bring into the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods? Is it not the likeness of that tree beneath which the frenzied and unhappy youth laid hands upon himself, and which the divine mother of the gods consecrated as a solace for her wound? What mean the fleeces of wool with which you bind and wrap around the trunk of the tree? Are they not a repetition of those wools with which she covered the failing one, and thought she could bring some warmth to his chilling limbs? What mean the branches of the tree adorned with violet crowns and wreathed? Do they not indicate how the mother adorned the pine with the first-born flowers, as a token and testimony of her pitiable fortune?

What mean the Galli beating their breasts with their palms, with hair disheveled? Do they not call to mind the mourning with which the turreted mother, together with Acdestis, followed the boy with tearful lamentation? What means the bread restrained from nourishment, to which you have given the name Castus? Is it not an imitation of that time when the divine power abstained from the grain of Ceres by the violence of grief?

Or if the things we say are not so, do you set them forth, do you speak: these emasculated and effeminate ones, whom we see taking part with you in the sacred rites of this divine power, what business, what anxiety, what care have they there? And why do they beat their arms upon their breasts after the manner of mourners, and imitate the fortune of those placed in a lamentable condition? What mean the crowns? What mean the violets? What mean the wrappings of soft wool? Why finally is the pine itself—a little while ago a most inert piece of wood nodding in the thickets—presently set up in the dwelling of the Mother of the Gods as some present and most august divine power?

For either this is the reason which we find in your writings and commentaries: and it is manifest that you are not performing divine ceremonies, but renewing the image of sorrowful events: or if there is another reason, which the obscurity of the mystery has denied to us, it too must necessarily share in the infamy of some shameful thing. For who is there who would believe that there is anything of honor in that matter which vile Galli initiate, which effeminate degenerates perform?

The greatness of the subject matter and the duty of the defense itself demands that we similarly pursue the other kinds of shameful deeds: either those which the histories of antiquity disclose, or those which those holy mysteries contain, which bear the name of initiations, and which are handed down not to all in common but to the silence of a few: but the innumerable rites of the sacred ceremonies and the foulness attached to each one bodily prevents us from going through all of them; nay rather, to express the truth, from some we ourselves turn aside by deliberate choice and reason: lest while we strive to set forth everything, we be polluted by the contaminations of the exposition itself.

Let us therefore pass over Fauna Fatua, who is called the Good Goddess, whom Sextus Clodius indicates in his Greek work On the Gods addressed to Sextus, was beaten with myrtle rods because, without her husband's knowledge, she drank a full jar of wine; and that a sign is shown, that when women perform the divine rite for her, a wine-jar is set up covered over; and that it is not lawful to bring in myrtle branches: as Butas writes in his work on causes. But let us also pass over in like manner and with equal dissimulation the gods who sowed seed, whom Flaccus writes, along with others, were transformed into the likeness of a human penis and buried themselves in the ash which had been made beneath a small pot of entrails: which when Tanaquil, skilled in the disciplines of Etruria, removed, the gods arose and stiffened with divine sinews.

He says she commanded the Corniculan captive to understand and recognize what they wished of her: that the most prudent woman Ocrisia inserted the divine ones into her genitals: that she performed the proper motions. Then the holy and fervent divine powers poured forth the force of Lucilius, and the Roman king Servius was born.

Let us also pass over the dreadful Bacchanalia, which bear the Greek name Omophagia, in which, with feigned frenzy and with the sanity of the breast set aside, you wind serpents about yourselves, and to show that you are filled with the divine power and majesty of the god, you tear apart with bloodied mouths the entrails of bleating goats. And let us also pass over those hidden initiations of the Cyprian Venus, whose founder is indicated to have been king Cinyras; in which those who take part bring fixed coins as to a harlot, and carry away phalli given as signs of the propitious divine power. Let the Corybantic rites also be consigned to oblivion, in which that holy mystery is handed down: a brother slain by brothers, from the blood of the slain one a bee was born, that vegetable forbidden to be set upon tables, lest an inexpiable offence be contracted from the shade of the dead.

But we also cease to proclaim those other Bacchanalia, in which a secret and unspeakable matter is disclosed and communicated to the initiated; that Liber, occupied with childish games, was distracted by the Titans; that cut limb from limb by the same and cast into little pots to be cooked; how Jupiter, enticed by the sweetness of the smell, was summoned and flew to the feast; and having discovered the grave deed, overwhelmed the perpetrators with his thunderbolt and hurled them into the lowest seats of Tartarus. The testimony and proof of this fortune the Thracian Bard disclosed in his poems: knucklebones, a mirror, spinning tops, rolling wheels, and smooth balls, and golden apples taken from the Hesperides by maidens.

It was our intention to pass over, to sail past also those mysteries by which Phrygia is initiated, and all that nation, had not the name of Jupiter interposed in them prevented us from passing briefly over his injuries and disgraces: not that it is sweet to us to ride upon such foul mysteries, but that it may become plain to you yourselves again and again what injury you heap upon those whose guardians, avengers, and worshippers you profess yourselves to be.

Once upon a time, they say, Diespiter, when he burned with impure lusts and unlawful desires toward his mother Ceres—for she is handed down as the mother of Jupiter by the inhabitants of that region—and yet did not dare to seek by open force what he had conceived in wanton appetite, devised ingenious stratagems: by which he might diminish the chastity of his mother, suspecting nothing of the kind: he becomes from a god a bull, and concealing under the appearance of a beast the mind and boldness of a rider, he is let loose in furious violence upon her who was unsuspecting and unknowing, he carries out his incestuous business, and with the deceit betrayed through lust, understood and recognized, he flies away: the mother blazes with furies and indignation, foams, pants, seethes, and unable to contain the roaring and the storm of her angers, from her continual passion she thenceforth assumed the name Brimo: nor has she any other care at heart than to pursue the audacity of her son with such punishments as she is able.

Jupiter, broken with fear, is at a loss: nor does he find by what remedies he may soothe the spirit of the one he has wronged: he pours forth prayers and supplicates: the ears of the grieving one are stopped: the entire order of the gods is brought forward as intercessors, yet no one's authority is great enough to be heard: at last his son, seeking out ways of making satisfaction, devises such a remedy as this. He selects a noble ram with well-grown testicles, cuts these off himself, and strips them from the woolly covering of their pouch. Drawing near, sorrowful and submissive, to his mother, and as though he had condemned himself by his own sentence, he casts them into her lap and throws them upon her: upon seeing the pledge of manhood she takes on a gentler spirit, and is recalled to care for the conceived offspring; after the tenth month she brings forth a daughter of radiant form, whom the mortal age that followed called now Libera, now Proserpina.

When the ram-like Jupiter observed that she was well grown, blooming, and of fuller vigour, forgetting how great an evil and crime he had but a little before attempted, and how great a rashness, he returns to his former acts: and because it seemed sufficiently abominable for a father to be joined with his daughter in the close union of marriage, he transforms himself into the terrible shape of a dragon; with his vast coils he winds about the terrified virgin, and under that fierce guise plays upon her and flatters her with the softest embraces; the result is that she too is filled with the seed of the most mighty Jupiter, yet not under the same condition as her mother: for the mother gave back a daughter described in her own lineaments, but from the birth of the virgin a bull's form was poured forth, a monument of Jovian seduction.

Someone will ask for the authority for this matter; then we shall cite that Tarentine and the well-known senarius which antiquity sings, saying: The bull begat the dragon, and the dragon the bull. The very rites themselves, and the ceremony of initiation, which are called the Sabazian mysteries, will be able to bear witness to the truth: in these a golden serpent is let down into the bosom of the consecrated, and is drawn out again from the lower and lowest parts.

I do not think it necessary here with much speech either to go through the individual members, or to show how great are the springs of shameful deeds and outrages that lie hidden in the several wicked parts. For who among mortals, bearing even a slight sense of humanity, does not himself perceive what all these things are, how criminal, how foul, and what great disgraces the gods incur from the very sacred rites of the mysteries and from the unseemly origins of those rites? Jupiter, it is said, burned with passion for Ceres. What, I ask, has this Jupiter of yours, whoever he is, deserved of you, that there is no kind of baseness, no adultery, which you do not heap upon his head as upon some vile and muddy character? Leda betrayed the right of marriage: Jupiter is said to be the author of the offence. Danae could not keep her virginity: the theft is narrated as Jupiter's.

Europa hastened at the name of a woman—the same man is boasted to be the assailant of her chastity. Alcmena, Electra, Latona, Laodamia, a thousand other virgins and a thousand mothers, and along with them the boy Catamitus was stripped of the honour of his modesty: everywhere the story is the same about Jupiter, nor is there any kind of baseness in which his name is not bound up with associated lusts: so that he seems altogether pitiable, born for no other reason than to be a crop of crimes, a subject for reproaches, a certain exposed place into which all the filth of the stage's sewage might drain. Yet if you said he had had commerce with women who were strangers to him, the wrong of the misdeed would indeed be impious, but tolerable. Did he also neigh with the appetites of a frenzied breast after his mother, after his daughter?

And could neither the sanctity or reverence due to his parent, nor even the awe of the offspring sprung from himself, draw him away from the image of so foul a thought?

I should therefore like to see that father of the gods, Jupiter, the eternal power over all things and men, adorned with the horns of an ox: shaking his shaggy ears, with his steps contracted into a hoof, chewing the cud of pale grasses, and from the hinder part besmeared with tail, hocks, and ankles with soft dung, and drenched with the overflow of his bowels.

I should like, I say, to see—for it must be said more than once—him who twists the stars and who terrifies and prostrates pale nations with his thunder, pursuing flocks of wethers, inspecting the testicles of rams, seizing these with that censorious and divine hand with which he is accustomed to brandish flashing lightnings and to rage with thunderbolts: then next probing the hidden parts with a hot scalpel, and with the bystanders removed, tearing away the membranes spread around the offspring, and offering to the still-fevered mother, as it were certain fillets, to draw forth the torments of pain; then led away, pale, wounded, and defiled with the blood of the ram, with the lie of the wound covered over with woollen bandages and little linen cloths.

Is this to be heard and read through under this vault of heaven? And are those who handle these things to be thought to wish themselves considered pious, holy, and guardians of religion? Is there any sacrilege greater than this; or can any nation be found endowed with opinions so irreligious as one which believes such things, or receives them, or hands them on in the innermost mysteries of its sacred rites? That Jupiter, whoever he is, if he felt that he existed, or if he were affected by any sense of injury, would it not be a worthy cause for him, angered and roused, to withdraw his steps from our lands, to extinguish the lights of the sun and moon, nay rather to confound all things into the likeness of their ancient unity?

But these rites, someone says, do not belong to our commonwealth. Who says this, or who puts it forward? A Roman, a Gaul, a Spaniard, an African, a German, or a Sicilian? And what does it help the case, if these are not yours, when those who perform them are of your party? Or what does it matter whether you approve them or not: when those things which are properly yours are found to be of similar foulness, or of a greater kind of baseness? For do you wish us to consider those divine mysteries which are called Thesmophoria by the Greeks: to which, sprung from Attica, those holy night-vigils and solemn all-night festivals are consecrated?

Do you wish, I say, that we examine what origins they have and what causes, so that we may prove even Athens itself—that city flourishing in the arts and studies of civilization—to speak things as contumelious against the gods as others are said to speak: and that no lesser reproaches are published by them than by the rest under the guise of religion, as you charge against others? At a certain time, they say, when Proserpina, not yet a woman, still a virgin, was gathering purple flowers in the meadows of Sicily, and while the desire of gathering drew her hither and thither through the flowery harvest, the king of the Shades, leaping forth through a chasm of deep depth, carried off the ravished virgin with him, and is hidden again in the recesses of the earth.

When Ceres did not know what had happened, nor could suspect where in the world her daughter might be, she set her mind to seek her lost one throughout the whole world: she takes two torches kindled with Aetnean flames, by the light of which she goes forth to seek through all the regions of the earth.

In the wandering of this search she comes also to the borders of Eleusis; that is the name of a village situated in the region of Attica: those who at that time inhabited these parts were earth-born folk, who had these names: Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Dysaules, Eumolpus—Triptolemus a yoker of oxen, Dysaules a keeper of goats, Eubuleus of swine, Eumolpus of the woolly flock: from whom both the race of the Eumolpidae flows, and that famous name among the Cecropians is derived, and those who afterwards flourished as Heralds, Hierophants, and Criers. Therefore that Baubo, whom we said was an inhabitant of the Eleusinian village, receives Ceres, wearied by manifold misfortunes, as a guest: she soothes her with gentle attentions: she asks her to take care to refresh her body: to the thirsty goddess she offers a drink of spelt, the potion which Greece calls cyceon: the grieving goddess turns away and rejects the offices of kindness, nor does her fortune allow her to be mindful of the common need of health.

The other entreats and urges in return, as is the custom in such cases, that she should not take her hospitality as a slight: Ceres persists most obstinately, and retains the stubbornness of her untamed severity. When this happened repeatedly, and the inexorable purpose could not be worn down by any attentions, Baubo changes her arts, and resolves to cheer with the wonders of mockery one whom she could not attract by earnest means.

That part of the body by which the female sex is accustomed both to bring forth offspring and to acquire a name for the race, she frees from its longer neglect, causes it to take on a purer appearance, and to be smoothed into the likeness of a not-yet-hardened and tight little boy: she returns to the sad goddess, and amid those common things by which it is customary to break and temper grief, uncovers herself; and reveals all those places of modesty with bared groin: and the goddess fixes her eyes upon the pubis, and feeds upon the sight of an unheard-of solace. Then, made more expansive through laughter, she takes up and drinks down the potion she had scorned: and what the modesty of Baubo had long been unable to extract, the obscenity of the shameful act extorted.

If perhaps any man suspects that we are shamelessly slandering, let him take up the books of the Thracian bard, which you record as being of divine antiquity: and he will find that we neither cleverly invent anything, nor seek and contrive that the sanctities of the gods should be objects of ridicule: for let us set forth in the open the very verses which the son of Calliope uttered in the Greek tongue, and singing made known through the ages to the human race: So speaking, she drew her garment up from the hem, And set before the eyes the forms shaped at the groin, Which Baubo, shaking with hollow hand—for a boyish Face was upon them—claps, and strokes with friendly touch. Then the goddess, fixing the orbs of her august light, Her sadness of spirit a little softened, lays it aside: Then with her hand she takes the cup, and with ensuing laughter Joyfully draws down the whole liquid of the cyceon.

What say you, offspring of Erechtheus, what say you, citizens of Minerva? The mind is eager to know with what words you intend to defend such dangerous matters, or what arts you have by which to give safety to persons, wounds, and causes so openly confessed. This is no false suspicion, nor are you assailed by a calumnious accusation: the shameful marks and origins of your Eleusinian rites are brought forward, and the testimonies of ancient writings: and finally the very symbols which, when asked at the reception of the sacred rites, you answer: "I fasted, and I drank the cyceon: I took from the chest, and put into the basket, I received it back again, I transferred it into the little chest."

Is it so then, as those holy and secret mysteries declare, that your gods are ravished and ravish? That they join marriages sought by stealthy frauds? That the honour of virginity is torn from those who resist and are unwilling? That impending wrongs are not known, that what has befallen the ravished is ignored? That the lost are sought as men seek the lost? And that under the clearest sun, with lanterns and torches, they traverse the vastness of the world? That they are affected, fall sick, take on the squalor of mourners and the marks of misery, and that in order to be able to apply their mind to food and to taking nourishment, no reasoning, no occasion, no grave discourse is employed, nor any earnest affability, but the obscenity of bodies is displayed in shameful fashion, and those parts are set before them which common modesty, which the law of natural shame bids to be hidden: which it is a sin to name before chaste ears without pardon and without the prefatory honours?

What, I ask, was there in such a sight, what in the shameful and awe-inspiring parts of Baubo, that could turn a goddess of the female sex, formed with a like member, to wonder and laughter, that when set before the divine gaze and sight, could give forgetfulness of miseries and translate her bearing into a more joyful state by sudden merriment? O what things, O how great things we could have brought forth in mockery and jest, if the reverence of the nation and the authority of letters did not forbid us!

I confess I have long been hesitating, gaping around, drawing back, doubling up Tellene tricks, as the saying goes, while shame holds me back from setting forth those Alimontian mysteries, in honour of which Greece raises up the ithyphallus in honour of father Liber, and all the territories bloom with images of virile fascina. What this is may perhaps be obscure, and the reason why it is done is inquired into: whoever is ignorant of this, learn, and having marvelled at such great matters, keep them always in pure thoughts with fearful and scrupulous observance. When Nysius and Semeleian Liber was still among men, they say, he desired to know the underworld, and to inquire what was going on beneath the seats of Tartarus: but this desire of his was impeded by certain difficulties, because he did not know by what way he should go and proceed, through ignorance of the road.

A certain Prosumnus appears, a shameless lover of the god, and sufficiently inclined to abominable lusts, who promises to point out the gate of Dis and the Acherusian approaches, if the god would comply with his wishes and allow wifely pleasures to be taken from him. The god, compliant, swears that he will be subject to his power and will, but only when he had returned from the underworld in possession of his wish and his expedition. Prosumnus courteously points out the way, and prostitutes himself on the very threshold of the underworld. Meanwhile, while Liber surveys with curious inquiry the Styx, Cerberus, the Furies, and all other things, that guide departs from the number of the living, and is buried after human custom: Evius emerges from the underworld, and recognizes that his guide is dead.

Who, in order to fulfil the pledge of the compact, and to discharge himself of the obligation of his oath, proceeds to the place of burial, and cutting off a very stout branch from a fig tree, trims it, planes it, smooths it, and fashions it into the likeness of a human penis: he fixes it upon the mound of the tomb and, bared from behind, draws near, places himself upon it, sits down upon it. Then, having assumed the wantonness of one in heat, he twists his haunches this way and that, and practises suffering from the wood what he had long since promised to suffer in reality.

But lest anyone perhaps suppose that we have fabricated such impious things, we do not ask him to believe Heraclitus as a witness, nor do we wish him to learn from reading Heraclitus what he thought about such matters: let him ask all of Greece what those phalli mean, which ancient custom erects and venerates throughout the countryside and towns, and he will find the reasons to be those which we state: or if it would be shameful to explain the truth plainly, what will it profit to obscure, to cover the reason for the rite and its origin, when the accusation lies in the very thing of the religion itself? What do you say, O nations, what do you say, peoples occupied and devoted to the veneration of temples? Is it to these sacred rites that you compel us with flames, exiles, slaughters, and the rest of the kinds of punishment, and with the fear of cruelty?

Is it these gods you import, insinuate, and inflict upon us: gods whose like you would not wish either yourselves to be, or anyone else joined to you by degree of blood and the right of kinship? Can you disclose to your prepubescent and toga-clad children what compacts Liber has arranged with his lovers? Can you urge your daughters-in-law, or indeed those joined to you in marriage, to the shamelessness of Baubo and to the chaste pleasures of Ceres? Do you wish your young men to know, hear, and learn what manner of man Jupiter himself showed himself to be toward one mother and another? Do you wish grown maidens and fathers still in their prime to learn by what art that same one sported with his daughter? Do you wish brothers already ardent, and those born of the same seed, to learn again that the same one did not disdain the bed of his sister's embrace?

Should one not therefore flee at once far from gods of this kind, and close all hearing entirely, lest the obscenity of so impure a religion creep into the mind? For who among mortals is so trained in chaste habits that the examples of the gods would not provoke him to such frenzies? Or who could restrain his desires from kindred and revered persons, when he sees that among the gods nothing sacred has been preserved amid the confusion of lusts? For when the first and most perfect nature has not been able to bridle its desire within just limits, why should a man not pour himself out into promiscuous appetites, both headlong by innate frailty and aided by the instruction of holy divinity?

I confess that for some time now, when turning over in my mind the monstrous things of this kind, I have been accustomed to wonder that you dare to call anyone an atheist, irreligious, or sacrilegious, who either denies altogether that the gods exist, or doubts it; or who contends that they were men, and were numbered among the gods on account of some power and merit: since, if a true and proper examination be made, no one is more fitting to be called by such names than you, who under the guise of worship heap upon them more insults and crimes than if you had drunk them in with open and avowed maledictions.

He who doubts that the gods exist, or who denies that they exist at all, although he may seem to follow monstrous opinions with audacious boldness, yet without attacking any person he withholds belief from obscure matters: and he who asserts that they were of earthly stock, although he deprives them of the sublimity of heaven-dwellers, yet heaps upon them supplementary praises: for he supposes them to have been raised to the merit of Divinity by their benefactions and by the admiration of their virtues.

But you, who contend that you are the defenders and propagators of their immortality, have you passed over any one of them, have you left him unwounded by your maledictions? Or is there any kind of reproach so damnable in common estimation that you have feared to heap it upon them, or been deterred even by the authority of their name? Who has published that the gods loved frail and mortal bodies? Was it not you? Who that they perpetrated those sweetest thefts in the marriage-beds of others? Was it not you? Who that sons lay with their mothers, and fathers again in ill-fated intercourse with their own daughters? Was it not you? Who that comely boys and grown youths of most beautiful form were dishonorably desired? Was it not you?

Who that they were castrated, who that they were worn out with debauchery, who that they were shape-shifters, who that they were thieves, who that they were kept in bonds, who in chains, who finally were struck by thunderbolts, who were wounded, who met their last days, and even merited earthly burial? Was it not you? Why therefore, since so many and so great crimes have been fabricated by you to the dishonor of the gods, do you dare to object that on account of our name the minds of the divinities are offended, when it is already clear that you are the guilty parties of such great wrath, and the authors of divine indignation?

But you err, says he, and go astray, and in the very pursuit of these matters you show yourself sufficiently ignorant, unlearned, and rustic. For all those stories which seem to you shameful and pertaining to the defilement of divinity contain within themselves holy mysteries, wondrous and deep meanings: nor are they such as anyone can easily come to know by the quickness of his intellect. For what is written and placed on the surface of the words is not what is signified and meant, but all those things are understood through allegorical senses and through quasi-divine secrets. And so he who says that Jupiter lay with his own mother does not signify unchaste or shameful embraces of Venus, but names Jupiter for rain and Ceres for earth. And he who again relates that he exercised his wantonness with his daughter speaks nothing of foul pleasures, but puts Jupiter in place of the name of rain, and in the signification of daughter he means the sowing of seed.

So also he who says that Proserpina was carried off by her father Dis does not mean, as you suppose, that the maiden was seized for the most shameful desires; but because we hide seeds in clods of earth, he signifies that the goddess went beneath the earth, and that she made a compact with Orcus for the bringing forth of fertile offspring. By a similar reasoning in the other stories too, one thing is said but another is understood, and beneath the common simplicity of speech there lies hidden a secret meaning and the enfolded depth of mystery.

These are subtleties, as is apparent, and refinements, all of them, by which it is customary to prop up bad cases in courts of law. Or rather, to speak more truly, they are the colorings of sophistical disputations, by which not truth but always the image and semblance of truth and its shadow is sought. For since it is shameful and unseemly to accept the straightforward readings, recourse has been had to this expedient, that one thing might be substituted for another, and the interpretation of shameful things be forced into an appearance of decency. But what does it matter to us whether other senses and other meanings underlie those vain writings? For it is enough for us, who contend that the gods are treated by you wickedly and impiously, to accept what is written and what is heard, and not to care what may lie hidden in the depths, since the insult to the divinities is contained not in the obscure meaning of thoughts but in the signification of the prominent words.

And yet, lest we seem unwilling to examine what this thing is that is said: first we inquire of you this—if indeed you are willing to lend patience—first, how is it known to you, or by whom has it been made known to you, that these writings are of the allegorical kind, or that they ought to be understood in the same manner? Do you call the writers into counsel, forsooth? Or were you lurking in their breasts at the time when, with truth taken captive, they were substituting one thing for another? Then, if they wished to wrap those mysteries in dark obscurity out of some regard for reason and religion, how great is your audacity in wishing to understand what they did not wish understood: to know it yourselves and to lay open to the notice of all what they concealed in vain with words of less true signification?

But granting that we agree with you that in all these fables hinds are said in place of Iphigenias, how is it nevertheless clear to you, when you unfold or expound these allegories, that you are interpreting the same things and thinking the same things as were thought by the historians in their silent reflections and not expressed in proper words but explained by other significations? You say that the union of Jupiter and Ceres was called the rain fallen into the bosom of the earth: another person can invent something else by his subtleties and conjecture something else with a semblance of truth: a third can conjecture something different, a fourth something different again, and as the qualities of the opining intellects have led them, so individual things can be explained by infinite interpretations.

For since all that allegory which is spoken of is drawn from hidden matters and has no fixed end at which the meaning of the thing spoken of is settled and immovable, it is open to each person to draw the reading toward whatever he wishes, and to affirm that it could mean that toward which his suspicion and conjectural guess has led him. Since this is so, how can you take certain things from uncertain ones, and attach a single signification to a saying which you see can be led through innumerable modes by the variety of expositions?

Finally, if you think it fitting, we also seek from you by a repeated question this: do you consider all the fables about the Gods, that is each one of them in its entirety, to have been written in an ambiguous and double-tongued manner and in shifting modes; or do you consider some parts of them to say nothing ambiguous, while other parts are manifold and veiled by the superimposition of an allegorical covering? For if the whole text and series of exposition from beginning to end is closed by allegorical concealments, set forth and show what we ought to substitute and bring forth in place of the individual things which each fable expresses, and to what other things and meanings we should refer them.

For just as you wish Jupiter to be heard in place of rain, and Ceres for instance in place of earth, and in place of Libera and father Dis the submersion and casting of seed: so it is fitting for you to say what we ought to understand in place of the bull, what in place of the anger and wrath of Ceres? What the word Brimo means, what the supplication of anxious Jupiter? What the gods summoned and not heard? What the castrated ram? What the offspring of the castrated ram? What the satisfaction made to them? What the things again done in more obscene lust with Illia? And similarly in the other fable, what the grove of Enna and the flowers are? What the fire taken from Etna and those torches seized? What the wandering through the world with them? What the region of Attica? What the village of Eleusis? What the hut and rustic lodging of Baubo? What the draught of the mixed drink signifies? What the rejection of the drink?

What the uncovering and revelation of the shameful parts? What the flagitious sweetness of the spectacle, and the forgetfulness of bereavement procured by such remedies? But if for all these things you show what ought to be substituted by the exchange of things, it will be that we grant you assent upon such an assertion: but if you can neither substitute individual things for individual things, nor call forth another sequence of things, why do you obscure with honorable allegories what has been said plainly and published for common understanding?

Unless perhaps you will say that these allegories are not present throughout the whole body of the story, but that some parts are written in the common manner, while others are double and veiled by an ambiguous concealment. That subtlety is elegant and open to any brute. For because it is most inconvenient for you to transfer, invert, and derive everything that is written, you choose certain things agreeable to your will, and from these very things you contend to maintain that known and spurious readings are superimposed upon an inner truth. Yet even granting that this is so as you say, how do you know, or from where do you recognize, which part is written in simple statements of the story, and which is covered by discordant and alien significations? For it can happen that what you suppose to be one way is otherwise; or that what you believe to be otherwise has been set forth with other and contrary conceptions.

For when it is said that in the body of a single subject matter one part is written allegorically and the other in undoubted and straightforward speech, and there is no sign in the matter by which the difference between the ambiguous and the plainly stated can be judged, then what is simple can just as well be supposed to have been said in an ambiguous form, as what has been written ambiguously can be believed to have its concealments laid open. In what manner this either happens or can be believed to happen, we confess we are entirely unable to understand.

Let us examine what is said in this manner. In the grove of Enna, says he, the maiden Proserpina once gathered flowers. This is still intact and set forth in straightforward expression; for what a grove is, and flowers, and Proserpina, and a maiden, is known to all without doubt. Summanus burst forth from the earth, borne in a four-horse chariot; this likewise is simple; for a four-horse team, a chariot, and Summanus require no interpretation. He unexpectedly seized Proserpina and carried her with him beneath the earth; the hiding of seed, says he, is named by the carrying off of Proserpina. What happened, I ask, that the story was suddenly turned into something else, and Proserpina was called seed? So that she who had long been held as a maiden in the gathering of flowers, after she was taken up and carried off, began to have the signification of sowing? Jupiter, says he, turned into a bull, sought intercourse with his mother Ceres; as was explained above, by these names earth and falling rain are designated.

I see the allegorical law explained through dark ambiguities. Ceres was angry and blazed with wrath, and the offspring of the ram was taken for punishment and vengeance. This again I see brought forth in common expressions: for anger, and witnesses, and satisfaction are here spoken of in their own proper manner and conditions. What then happened here, that from Jupiter, who was rain, and from Ceres, who was called earth, the matter passed over to the true Jupiter and to the most simple expression of things?

Either, therefore, all things must have been written in the allegorical manner, and everything must be demonstrated to us; or nothing has been written in that manner, since what is believed to exist does not appear to be so, as it were, from the historical part. All these things are written in the allegorical manner. That does not seem at all certain. You ask for what reason, for what cause? Because everything that has been done, and established in the evidence of some work, cannot be led into an allegorical conversion: for what has been done cannot be made undone; nor can the nature of a thing accomplished degenerate into an alien nature. Can the Trojan War be turned into the condemnation of Socrates? Or can that battle of Cannae become the proscription and cruelty of Sulla? The proscription can indeed, as Cicero plays with words, be called a battle, and be called a Cannae.

But the battle that was fought long ago cannot be that same battle, nor that same proscription; for what has been done cannot, as I said, be anything other than what has been done; nor can that which is fixed in its own proper force and in the quality of its own kind migrate into an alien substance.

From what source, then, do we prove that all these histories are records of things that have been done? From the solemn rites and mysteries of initiations, of course; either those which are performed at fixed times and days, or those which peoples hand down in secret, with the perpetuation of their own custom preserved. For it is not to be believed that these things exist without their own origins, that they are done in vain and to no purpose, and that they have no causes joined to their first institutions. That pine tree, which is solemnly carried into the sanctuary of the Great Mother, is it not the image of that tree beneath which Attis deprived himself of his manhood by cutting off his genitals, and which they record that the goddess consecrated in consolation of her grief? That erection of phalli and of shameful members, which Greece adores and celebrates in annual rites, does it not bear the likeness of that deed by which Liber freed himself from his obligation?

Those Eleusinian mysteries, and the hidden rites of those sacred things, what memory do they contain? Is it not the memory of that wandering in which Ceres, wearied in the search for her daughter, when she came to the shores of Attica, brought the gift of wheat, adorned the company of fawn-skins with the hide of a young deer, and laughed at that greatest spectacle of Baubo's groin?

Or if there is another cause, that is nothing to us, provided that a cause underlies all these things. For it is not credible that these things were undertaken with no preceding causes; or else the Athenians must be judged to be mad, who have fastened upon themselves a rite of religion fashioned from no reasons. But if this is clear and established, that is, if the causes and origins of the mysteries flow from things that have been done, they cannot be transferred by any conversion into allegorical forms. For what has been done and accomplished cannot be made undone, the nature of things forbidding it.

And yet, even if we grant you that these matters are as you say, that is, that histories sound one thing in their words but say something else after the manner of soothsayers, do you not notice, do you not see, with how great dishonor and insult to the gods this is said to be done? Or can any graver injury be found than to call and name the union of Jupiter and Ceres as earth and rain, or whatever else it may be—for it makes no difference what conversion the interpretation makes—and to signify by the crimes of the gods the moisture of rain from heaven and the dampness of the earth? Can anything be thought or believed more irreligious than to call seeds buried in the ground, or whatever else it may be—for it similarly makes no difference—the rape of Proserpina, and to speak of the work of agriculture under the notorious name of Father Dis?

Was it not a thousand times more desirable to become tongueless and mute, and to lose that flood of speech and the noise of foul loquacity, than to call the most shameful things by the names of the gods! Nay rather, to signify common affairs by the shameful deeds of the gods?

Formerly it had been the custom to veil allegorical expressions with the most honorable meanings, and to clothe shameful things, foul to utter, with the dignity of honorable ones. But by your authority, serious matters are spoken of through shameful things, and affairs of chastity and purity are commemorated in obscene words; so that what was once concealed out of modesty because of the baseness of the foul thing, is now spoken scurrilously and shamefully, the manner of expression of worthy things being exchanged. When we say in the adultery that Mars and Venus were caught in Vulcan's net, he says, we mean desire and anger, suppressed by the force and counsel of reason. For what prevented, what stood in the way, of setting forth each thing in its own words and its own meanings?

Nay, what compelled you, when you wished to indicate something through commentaries and writings, to be unwilling that what you indicated should be understood; but to take up contrary things at once in a single exposition, showing the zeal of one who wishes to teach, and the ill-will of one who refuses to reveal? Or did calling the gods adulterers carry any danger? Would the utterance of desire and anger have defiled the tongue and mouth with obscene contact? But if this were done in any case, both the veil of allegorical obscurity would be removed, and the matter would be easy to learn, and the dignity of the gods would be preserved unharmed. But as it is, when it is said that in the binding of Mars and Venus the suppression of vices is signified, two most perverse things happen at the same time in the same moment: that the appearance of a foul thing presents to the mind the understanding of something honorable, and that shameful matter strikes the mind before any authority of religion touches it.

Unless perhaps you will say—for this alone remains that seems able to be urged by you—that the gods do not wish their mysteries to be known by men, and that for this reason the histories have been written with allegorical obscurities. And from what source is it clear to you that the gods above do not wish their mysteries to be made public to men? How do you know those things, or why do you take care to dissolve them into the explanation of allegories? Finally and lastly, what do the gods intend, that while they are unwilling that honorable things be said of them, they endure that the most shameful and unbecoming things be said? When we name Attis, he says, we signify the sun, and we say so; but if Attis is the sun, as you reckon and say, who will that Attis be whom your writings produce and indicate as born in Phrygia? Who suffered certain things, and likewise did certain things? Whom all the theaters know in their stage spectacles?

For whom, among the sacred rites, we see things done that are specifically annual and expressly divine? Was the transfer of this name made from the sun to the man, or from the man to the sun? For if that name has its origin principally from the sun, what in the end has the golden sun deserved of you, that you should make that name common to him and a half-man? But if it is a goatish and Phrygian name, what has the father of Phaethon, the father of this light and brightness, done amiss, that he should seem worthy to be called by a name taken from a castrated man, and should be made lesser, marked by the designation of an emasculated body?

But what this is, is now plain to all: for because you are ashamed of such writings and histories, and you see that you cannot abolish what has once been foully set down in records, you strive to make shameful things honorable, and by every device of cleverness, in place of the underlying matters, you invert and corrupt the natures of words; and as is wont to happen to those of unsound mind, whose turbid force of disease has driven out sense and understanding, you toss about confused and uncertain things, and rave through the fictions of empty matters. Granted that in the union of Jupiter and Ceres the watering of the earth is signified; the hiding of seed in the father's rape by Dis; wine poured through the earth in the limbs of Liber torn apart; the suppression of desire and rashness said to be the binding of the adultery of Venus and Mars.

But if you wish these fables to have been written in the allegorical manner, what will become of the rest, which we do not see can be forced into a conversion of this kind? For what shall we put in place of those clubs which the passion of the Semeleian offspring hurled over the mound of the tomb? And what for those Ganymedes who were seized and substituted as instruments of lusts? What for that transformation into an ant, into which Jupiter the greatest contracted the outlines of his vast form? What for the swans and satyrs? What for the golden showers, into which that same seducer clothed himself with treacherous deceit, sporting with varieties of forms? And lest we seem to have wished to speak of Jupiter alone, what allegories can there be in the loves of the remaining divinities? What in their mercenary conditions and servitudes? What in their chains, bereavements, lamentations? What in their torments, wounds, and tombs?

In which, when you could have incurred one fault by writing such things about the gods above, you added, as the saying goes, a gudgeon to the fish-sauce, when you called shameful things by the names of the gods, and again defiled the gods with the names of infamous things. But if you believed with undoubted knowledge that they were present here, or that they existed anywhere, fear would strike you in making mention of them; and just as they hear you and receive your words, so it ought to be believed and held fixed in thought. For among men devoted to dutiful religious observances, not only the gods themselves, but even the names of the gods ought to be revered; and as great as is the dignity in those who are honored by these names, so great ought it to be in their appellations.

Give a true form of judgment, and you are in that part of reproach, that in the usage of your speech you call Mars for battle, Neptune for waters, Father Liber for wine, Ceres for bread, Minerva for the warp, Venus for obscene lusts. For what is the reason that, when things can be designated by their own names, they should be called by the names of the gods, and that insult be done to the divine powers which we men do not endure, if someone takes our names and applies and turns them to frivolous things? But speech is sordid if it has been polluted with such words. A modesty worthy of praise: you blush to name bread and wine, and you do not fear to say Venus for intercourse.

Now since we have shown in summary fashion what infamous opinions you have established concerning your gods, it follows that we speak of temples, of images also, and of sacrifices; and of the other series of things that is annexed to these matters and joined in close connection. For in this part of customary practice you affix to us the greatest charge of impiety: that we neither build sacred dwellings for the offices of veneration, nor set up any image or form of any god; that we fabricate no altars, no hearths; that we give no blood of slaughtered animals, no incense, no salted meal; that finally we offer no flowing wine in the pourings of libation bowls.

These things we refrain from building or doing, not because we bear impious and wicked minds, or have taken up any contempt of the gods in reckless desperation; but because we judge and believe that they, if indeed there are certain gods endowed with the eminence of this name, either hold these kinds of honors in derision, if they laugh, or suffer them indignantly, if they are stirred by the impulses of anger.

For that you may know what we think of that name, and of what judgment we are, we consider that they, if indeed there are certain gods—that the same things may again be said to satiety—ought to be wise in all and perfect virtues, just, grave; if indeed there is no fault in our accumulating them with human praises; abounding in inward goods, not given over to external supports, since their integrity is completed by the unimpaired blessedness of their nature; free from all passions and all disturbances; not boiling over with anger, not stirred by any desires; inflicting calamity on none; not receiving cruel pleasure from the misfortunes of men; not terrifying with portents; not displaying monstrous fears; not holding men bound and obligated by the debts of vows; not demanding expiatory victims with threatening signs; not bringing pestilences, not bringing diseases by the corruption of the air; not burning crops with droughts; not taking part in the slaughters of wars, in the destruction of cities; not wishing adversity to these, not favoring the advantages of those; but, as befits great minds, weighing all with an equal balance and showing undivided benevolence to all.

For it is the mark of a perishable kind and of human weakness to need opposites, and to suffer, grieve, and be diminished by those whom affection touches—so the maxims and pronouncements of the wise define; and it cannot be otherwise but that those who are subject to any disturbances are bound by the laws of mortality. Since this is so, how can we be judged to hold the gods in contempt, when we deny that they exist as gods, and that they can be associated with heavenly powers, unless they are upright and worthy of admiration for the greatness of their minds?

But we build no temples to them, nor do we adore their images, we slaughter no victims, we pour no libations of incense and wine. And what more can we attribute to them either of honor or of dignity, than that we place them in that part where is the head and lord of all things, and that supreme king himself, to whom the gods owe it, together with us, that they perceive themselves to exist and to be contained in vital substance? For do we honor him with shrines or with the construction of temples? Do we also slay victims? Do we give other things which it is not the expenditure of reason but of custom dragged along by habit to pour out and offer? For it is utter madness to measure things more powerful than your needs, and to give to the gods who bestow them the things that are of use to you, and to count this an honor, not an insult. For what use, then, do we seek temples for the gods?

Or for what necessity do you say they have been built, or do you judge they ought to be built again? Do they feel the cold of winter, or are they scorched by summer suns, do they get soaked by rainy showers, do whirlwinds or storms of wind vex them? Are they in danger of suffering a hostile assault, or the savage attacks of wild beasts, so that it would be fitting to shut them in with the protection of roofs, or to guard them with a barrier of stones? For what are these temples? If you ask human weakness, something vast and immense: if you measure the power of the gods, certain small achievements, and, to speak more truly, a most cramped kind of cavern, devised by the contrivance of a poverty-stricken mind. If you wish to hear who was the first builder of these, either Phoroneus, or the Egyptian Merops will be shown to you to have been that person: or, as Varro records in his book of wonders, Aeacus, the offspring of Jupiter.

Let these therefore be built, whether of masses of marble, or let them gleam with gilded ceilings, let gems shine here and pour forth starry brilliance with varied interspersing: all these things are earth, and formed from the lowest dregs of baser matter. Nor, if you value them at higher prices, is it to be believed that the gods are delighted with them: nor that they refuse or disdain to be enclosed within them and confined by their walls. This temple, he says, is Mars's, this is Juno's and Venus's, this is Hercules's, Apollo's, Dis's: what else is it to say, than this house is Mars's, this is Juno's and Venus's, Apollo dwells here, Hercules abides in this one, Summanus in that? Is it not then the first and greatest insult to have the gods confined to dwellings?

To give them hovels, to build them chambers and little cells, and to think that things are necessary to them which are necessary to men, to cats, to ants, to lizards, to fleeing, timid, and tiny mice?

But, he says, we do not assign temples to the gods for this reason, as though we were keeping off from them damp rains, winds, showers, or suns: but that we may be able to behold them face to face and close at hand, to address them from nearby, and in some manner to mingle the conversations of our veneration with those who are present. For if they are invoked under the bare sky and under the canopy of the heavens, they hear nothing; and unless prayers are brought close to them from nearby, as though nothing were being said, they will stand blocked and motionless. But we hold that every god whatsoever, if only he has power worthy of that name, ought to hear from whatever part of the world whatever anyone has spoken, as though he were present: nay, to anticipate with foreknowing understanding whatever anyone has conceived in the hidden recesses of his mind.

And just as the stars, the sun, the moon, when they pass above the earth, are immediately present everywhere to all who behold them, so likewise it is fitting that the hearing of divine powers be closed to no tongue and be always present; even though voices flow together to it from distant regions. For this is the property of gods, to fill all things with their power, not to be anywhere partially, but to be wholly everywhere: not to be present, not to be absent, not to make an effort to go to the Ethiopians, and after twice six days to return as a private person to their dwelling.

But if it shall not be so, all hope of aid is removed, and it will be in doubt whether you are heard by them or not: whenever you perform sacred rites with the due conflicts of ceremonies. Let us suppose, for the sake of understanding the matter, that there is a temple of some deity at the Canary Islands, another of the same at the farthest Thule: another of the same among the Seres, among the swarthy Garamantes, and if there are any others whom seas, mountains, forests, and the four cardinal points separate from knowledge of one another. If all at one and the same time, having performed divine rites, ask of the deity what their several necessity compels each to think of, what hope of receiving a benefit will there be for all, if God does not hear from every direction the voice sent to him, and if there is any distance into which the prayer of one seeking aid cannot penetrate?

For either he will be present in no regions, if he can ever be absent from any place, or he will be present to some alone, since he cannot offer his hearing commonly and without distinction. And thus it comes about that either God aids no one at all, if occupied with something he could not fly to hear voices; or only those who were heard alone depart having gained something, the rest having accomplished nothing.

What of the fact that many of these temples, which are raised with golden domes and lofty pediments, are proved by the writings of authors to cover ashes and bones, and to be the burial places of dead bodies? Is it not plain and evident, either that you worship the dead in place of immortal gods, or that an inexpiable insult is done to the divine powers, whose shrines and temples are built over the tombs of the dead? Antiochus in the ninth book of his histories records that Cecrops was buried in the earth at Athens in the Minerveion; in the temple of the same goddess which is in the citadel of Larissa, Acrisius is written and noted to have been interred: Erichthonius in the shrine of Polias: Dairas and Immarus, brothers, in the Eleusinian precinct which lies below the city. Were not the virgins of Celeus said to have had their burial rites in the temple of Eleusinian Ceres?

Were not Hyperoche and Laodicê, who are reported to have been brought there from the borders of the Hyperboreans, buried in the shrine of Diana which is established in the Delian temple of Apollo? Leandrius says that Clearchus had his last funeral rites in the Didymaean temple of Miletus. Zeno of Myndus professes and records that the monument of Leucophryne is in the shrine of Diana at Magnesia. Is it not attested by consistent writings that Telmessus the seer is buried beneath the small altar of Apollo which is visited at the town of Telmessus? Ptolemy, in the first book he published concerning Philopator, declares by the authority of his writings that Cinyras, king of Paphos, together with all his family, nay with all his lineage, was laid to rest in the temple of Venus.

It is infinite and immense to describe in which shrines throughout the whole world each person lies: nor does it require careful attention, what penalty that Egyptian established against one who should publish in which place Apis lay hidden, what temples cover those mass graves of Varro, and what masses of heaped-up weight they contain within themselves?

But why do I mention these small matters? On the Capitol of the ruling people, who is there among men who does not know that there is the tomb of Olus of Vulci? Who is there, I say, who does not know that from the foundations, not very long before, a human head was rolled out, either alone or with the other parts—for some report this—or together with all its limbs, having received the rites of burial? But if you demand that this be made plain by the testimonies of authors, Sammonicus, Granius, Valerianus, and Fabius will tell you whose son Olus was, of what family and nation, how he was robbed of life and light by the hands of his own slaves: what he deserved of his fellow citizens, that burial in the soil of his fatherland was denied him.

You will also learn, although they pretend they do not wish this to be made public; what was done with the severed head, or in what part the matter was enclosed with curious obscurity: so that, namely, the immovable and fixed permanence of the sealed omen might stand. Which, though it was fitting that it be suppressed and concealed by the oblivion of antiquity, the composition of the name cast it into the open, and with its causes made it proceed through the ages allotted to it with inextinguishable testimony: nor did the greatest city, and worshipper of all the divine powers, blush, when giving a name to the temple from the head of Olus, to call it the Capitolium rather than to name it from the name of Jupiter.

Sufficiently therefore, as I think, we have shown that temples are either built to the immortal gods in vain, or constructed with insulting notions contrary to their reputed dignity and power. It follows that we say something about the statues and images which you fashion with great art and tend with religious observance. In this matter, if there is any good faith, we can determine among ourselves by reflection, whether you do this seriously and with grave purpose, or whether you are making sport of the very things themselves with childish delusion and laughter. For if it is certain, in your view, that there are gods whom you worship, and that they dwell in the highest regions of heaven, what cause, what reason is there for these images to be fashioned by you, when you have certain objects to which you can pour out prayers and seek aid in pressing circumstances?

But if you do not believe, or, to speak more moderately, if you are in doubt; even so, what reason is there to fashion and set up images of things uncertain, and to form in windy imitation what you do not believe to exist? Or do you perhaps say that a certain presence of divine powers is exhibited to you through these images, and that because it is not given to see the gods, they are thus worshipped, and dutiful services are rendered to them? He who says and asserts this does not believe that gods exist: nor is he shown to have faith in his own religious observances, he who needs to see what he holds: lest perhaps that be empty which is not seen because it is obscure.

You worship the gods, you say, through images. What then? If these did not exist, would the gods not know they are being worshipped, nor think that any honor is being paid to them by you? Through certain channels, then, and through a certain trust, as it is said, they receive and accept your acts of worship: and before those perceive it to whom that homage is owed, having first made offerings to the images, you transmit to them, as it were, certain remnants from another's authority. And what can be done more injuriously, more insultingly, more harshly, than to know one god and to supplicate another thing? To hope for aid from a divine power, and to pray to an image that has no sense? Is it not that, I ask, which is said in common proverbs, that you are striking the fuller when you mean to strike the smith? And when you seek a man's counsel, to ask advice on what is to be done from asses and little pigs?

And how do you finally know that all these images, which you fashion as vicarious substitutes for the immortal gods, bear a likeness and have a divine appearance? For it may be that he is bearded in heaven who is fashioned by you as smooth-faced: it may be that he is more advanced in old age to whom you lend a boyish age: it may be that this one is fair-haired who in reality has grey eyes: that he has a flattened nose whom you make and fashion with a sharp one. Nor is it right to call or name a statue that which does not reproduce lines equal to those of the original face: that this is plain and certain can be recognized from manifest examples. For since all men see by the undoubted contemplation of their eyes that the sun is round, you bestow upon it a human face and the features of mortal bodies.

The moon is always in motion, and in her monthly restoration receives thirty different appearances: under your guidance and fashioning she is a woman and has one face, she who changes through a thousand aspects with daily instability. We all understand that winds are a flow of air driven and stirred by the workings of the world: in your representation they have the forms of men, animating twisted coils of trumpets with their own domestic breath. Among your gods we see the most fierce face of a lion, smeared with pure red lead, and called by the name of the fruit-bearer.

If all these images are likenesses of the divine powers above, then it must be said that such a god also dwells in heaven, to whose form and appearance the likeness of this image is directed: and evidently just as this one here, so that one there, without the rest of a body, is a mask and face alone, roaring with savage gaping, dreadful, with a blood-red pigment, crushing evil with his teeth, and as weary dogs thrust out their tongue from their open mouth in eager thirst for drink. But if this is by no means so, as all of us judge it not to be, what great audacity is it to fashion for yourself whatever form you please, and to declare it to be the image of a god whom you cannot prove to exist in any part of nature?

You laugh that in ancient times the Persians worshipped rivers, as memorial writings indicate; the Arabs an unformed stone; the nations of Scythia a scimitar; the Thespians a branch in place of Cinxia; the Icarians an unhewn piece of wood in place of Diana; the Pessinuntians a flint in place of the mother of the gods; the Romans a spear in place of Mars, as the Muses of Varro indicate; and, as Aethlius records, the Samians, before the use and practice of moulded images, a plank in place of Juno: and yet you refrain from laughter when you supplicate on behalf of the immortal gods little figurines of men and human forms. Nay rather, you yourselves judge those very figurines to be gods, and believe that divine power resides in nothing beyond these. What say you, O ye men!

Have the celestial gods then ears, and temples, necks, the back of the head, spine, loins, sides, knees, buttocks, houghs, ankles, and all the other members of which we are constructed, which were spoken of somewhat more fully a little earlier and set forth in more abundant writing? Would that it were permitted to look into your innermost thoughts, and into those very recesses of the mind in which you turn over and enter upon your most obscure cogitations: we should find that you yourselves feel the same as we do, and hold no different opinions concerning the figuration of the divine powers. But what can we do against stubborn zeal, against those who brandish swords and devise new punishments? You assert the bad cause of a living being most knowingly, and what you once did without reason you defend, lest you should seem at some point to have been ignorant; and you think it better not to be overcome than to yield and assent to a truth that has been confessed.

From causes of this kind there has also followed, with your connivance, that the tricks of craftsmen played upon the bodies of the gods, and gave them forms which could be a subject of mockery to any gloomy person.

And so Hammon is now shaped and fashioned with the horns of a ram; Saturn with a curved sickle, like some guardian of a field, a pruner of luxuriant branches; the son of Maia with a broad hat, as though he were preparing to take to the roads and to avoid the sun and the dust; Liber with soft limbs and utterly relaxed with feminine liquidity; Venus naked and exposed, as though you would say she is making public and selling for hire the form of a mercenary body; Vulcan with a cap and hammer, balancing it in his right hand and girt for the work of a smith; the Delian with plectrum and strings, keeping the gestures of a lyre-player, and of an actor about to sing his ditties; the king of the sea with a trident, as though he had a gladiatorial contest to undergo; nor is there any image of any divine power to be found that does not bear certain fixed attributes bestowed by the generosity of craftsmen.

Lo, if some clever and cunning city king, without your knowledge and awareness, were to remove the Sun from his own doorposts and transfer him to the abode of Mercury, and were again to seize Mercury and cause him to migrate into the shrine of the Sun—for both are fashioned by you smooth and with a smooth face—and were to give rays to this one and place a little broad hat upon the head of the Sun: in what way would you be able to distinguish whether that one is the Sun or Mercury, since it is the attribute, not the distinctive character of the face, that is wont to indicate the gods to you?

Again, by a similar transposition, if he were to remove the horns from a naked Jupiter and fix them on the temples of Mars, and were to strip Mars of his arms and surround Hammon with them in turn: what distinction of each could be made, when he who had been Jupiter could equally be thought to be Mars, and he who had been Mars could take on the appearance of Jupiter or of Hammon? So much is it a game to fashion these images, to dedicate names to them as though proper to them, from which if you remove the attribute, the recognition of each is taken away: so that a god could be believed in place of a god, one seen in place of another, nay each could be taken for both?

But why do I mock the false and propped-up endowments of the gods? Why the horns, hammers, and caps, when I know that certain images are the forms of particular men and the likenesses of infamous harlots? For who is there that does not know that those Hermae of the Athenians were fashioned in the likeness of the body of Alcibiades? Who does not know—if he reads Posidippus—that Praxiteles, in the rivalry of his skills, was compelled to shape the face of the Cnidian Venus after the form of the harlot Cratina, whom in his wretchedness he loved to distraction? But is Venus the only one upon whom borrowed beauty derived from the face of a prostitute has been bestowed?

That famous Phryne of Thespiae, as those relate who have written of the affairs of Thespiae, when she was at the very height of beauty, grace, and bloom, is said to have been the model for all the Venuses that are held in repute: whether throughout the cities of Greece, or wherever the love and desire for such images has flowed. And so all the craftsmen of that very time, to whom the truth of reproducing likenesses gave the first place, strove with all care and zeal to transfer the thread of the head of a prostitute into the images of the Cytherean: the skills of the craftsmen burned; and each sought to surpass the other in contentious rivalry, not that Venus might become more august, but that Phryne might stand in place of Venus.

And so the matter was brought to the point that sacred rites were performed for harlots in place of the immortal gods, and an unhappy people was deceived by the fabrications of images. Among the image-makers that celebrated Phidias is foremost, who, when he had raised up the form of Olympian Jupiter by the immense effort of his work, inscribed upon the finger of the god Pantarces is beautiful: this was the name of a boy beloved by him and cherished with obscene desire; nor was he moved by any fear or scruple to name a god by the name of a prostitute; nay rather to consecrate the divine power and image of Jupiter to a catamite. So much is it a game and a childish fancy to fashion these figurines, to adore them in place of gods, to heap divine sanctities upon them: when we see the very craftsmen playing in the fashioning of these things, and consecrating monuments of their own lusts.

For what would it matter if you ask why Phidias should have hesitated to play and sport, when he knew, a little while before, that Jupiter himself, whom he had made, had been gold, stones, and shapeless bones, scattered, confused, and that he himself was the gatherer and binder of all these, that the attributes given to them through himself in the fashioned likeness of limbs were his own doing, and, what is first among all things, that it was the benefit of his own gift that he had been born of himself and was worshipped among human affairs?

It is pleasing in this place, as though all the nations of the world were present, to hold one assembly, and to bring forth into the ears of all these things to be heard in common. What is this, O men, that you yourselves willingly deceive and circumscribe yourselves in matters so ready and plain with a voluntary blindness? Dispel at last the darkness, and returning to the light of the mind, look more closely and see what this thing is that is being done: if indeed you retain your own right and move within the bounds of the reason and counsel that have been given.

These images, which terrify you, and which you adore prostrate and humble in all the temples, are bones, stones, bronze, silver, gold, earthenware, wood taken from a tree, or a mixture of glue and gypsum: gathered perhaps from the ornaments of harlots, or from women's trinkets, from camel bones, or from the tooth of an Indian beast, from pots and little jars, from candelabra and lamps, or from other more obscene little vessels, melted down, drawn into these shapes, and brought out into the forms which you behold: baked in potters' furnaces, born from anvils and hammers, scraped with rasps, filed down with files, saws, sawdust, adzes, cut, hewn, hollowed out, excavated by the turning of drills, smoothed by the planes of joiners. Is this then not an error? Is it not, to speak properly, madness, to believe to be a god one whom you yourself have fashioned?

To supplicate trembling a thing fabricated by yourself; and when you know and are certain that it is the work of your own hands and the skill of your fingers, to fall prostrate upon your face, to beg for help suppliantly, and in adversity and in harsh times to seek the aid of a propitious divine power?

Lo, if someone were to place in the midst rough bronze cast into no work, masses of unworked silver, unrefined gold, wood, stones, and bones, and all the other things of which images and likenesses of divine powers are customarily composed: nay, if someone were to place in the midst the faces of shattered gods, images that have been melted down and diminished; and were to bid you strike victims with the same fragments and pieces, and bestow sacred rites and divine offices upon shapeless masses: we demand to hear from you whether you would do this, or whether you would refuse contrary to what is commanded. Perhaps you will say, for what reason? Because there is no one among human affairs so stupidly blind as to reckon silver, bronze, gold, gypsum, ivory, clay among the number of gods, and to say that these things of themselves have divine power and authority.

What reason is there, then, that if all these bodies remain untouched and unworked, they lack the power of a divine being and celestial authority; but if they receive the forms of men, if they receive little ears, noses, cheeks, lips, eyes, eyebrows, they straightway become gods and are reckoned in the order and census of the celestials? Does the fashioning add something of novelty to these bodies, so that by that very addition you are compelled to believe that something of divinity and majesty has been conferred upon them? Does it change gold into bronze, or force the cheapness of a potsherd to degenerate into a silvery material? Does it cause those things which a little before were insensible to be alive and moved by spiritual agitation?

If they retain all the natures which they had before when established in the bodies of images; how great is the stupidity—for I decline to say blindness—to think that the natures of things are changed by the quality of their forms, and that what in its original body was inert and dull and deprived of the movement of sense receives a divine power from its appearance.

And so, unmindful and forgetful of the substance and origin of images, what it is, you, rational animals and endowed with the gift of wisdom and counsel, bow down before baked earthenware, adore plates of bronze, seek from elephants' teeth second states of health, magistracies, commands, powers, victories, acquisitions, gains, rich harvests, and most fruitful vintages; and when it is plain and clear that words are being addressed to dumb things, you imagine that you are heard, and of your own accord you expose yourselves to the deception of an empty credulity? O would that it were permitted to enter into the very inner cavities of some image! Nay, would that it were permitted to draw apart those Olympian and Capitoline Jupiters resolved into their members, and to behold all those parts by which the sum of their bodies is enclosed, separated and each by itself.

You would by now see that these gods, whom the outer smoothness narrows with the allurement of splendour, are lattices of beaten plates, joinings of shapeless pieces, held together against the hazards of ruin and the fear of dissolution by props and chains, hooks and rings; and that through all the hollows and joints of the seams poured lead runs, and provides saving delays for the long duration of the images. You would see, I say, by now faces alone without the backs of heads, hands half-complete without arms, bellies halved with their sides, imperfect traces of soles, and what most of all provokes laughter, on one side wooden and on the other stony, put together with unequal construction of bodies. Which things if they could by no means be seen by reason of the art of concealment, at least those things which are set in the open ought to have taught and warned you that you are doing nothing, and are spending the vanities of your duties upon empty things.

For do you not see that these breathing images, whose soles and knees you touch and handle as you pray, are now slipping away by the falls of dripping water, now loosened by the decay of rottenness, so that, suffused and discoloured by fumes and smoke, they grow black; how through the neglect of a longer age they lose their appearance through decay and are eaten away and wounded by rust? Do you not see, I say, that beneath the hollows of these images lizards, mice, and light-shunning cockroaches make their nests and dwell? That they bring together here all their filth and other things suited to their uses, the hardness of half-gnawed bread, bones dragged into a heap, rags, fluff, little scraps of paper for the softness of their nests, and as warmth for their wretched young? That sometimes in the mouth of an image spiders begin to spin their webs and treacherous snares, with which they can entangle the flight of shrilling and shameless flies?

That finally swallows flying within the very domes of the buildings hurl their loads full of dung, and now paint the very faces, now the mouths of the divine powers, their beards, eyes, noses, and all the other parts, upon whichever they discharge the outpouring of their unburdened vent? Blush therefore, if late, and receive from dumb animals ways and lessons, and let them teach you that there is no divine power in images: upon which they neither fear to cast their filth, nor avoid it, following their own laws and impelled by the truth of nature.

But you err, he says, and go astray, for neither do we decree that bronze, nor the substances of gold and silver, nor the other materials from which images are cast, are gods in themselves and objects of religious veneration; but in these we worship and revere those whom a sacred dedication introduces and causes to dwell in images wrought by craftsmen. It is not an unreasonable or contemptible argument, by which any slow-witted person, as well as the most prudent, might believe that gods, leaving their own abodes, that is, heaven, do not refuse or shun entering earthly habitations; nay, that impelled by the right of dedication they unite themselves with the joining of images. Do your gods then dwell in plaster and in tiles? Nay, are the minds, spirits, and souls of tiles and plaster the gods? And that the most worthless things may become more august, do they suffer themselves to be enclosed and to lurk in the confinement of an obscure dwelling?

Therefore in this part we first desire and demand to hear from you: do they do this unwillingly, that is, drawn by the right of dedication do they enter the dwellings of images? Or readily and willingly, with no necessities imposed upon them? If they do this unwillingly, how is it possible that they are compelled into any necessity with their majesty diminished? If voluntarily by the consent of compliance, then what do the gods seek in tiles, that they should prefer them to starry abodes, bound as it were by the force of confinement, ennoble the tiles and the other materials from which images are cast? If we grant that they prefer these to heaven and starry abodes, they will have lost the power of their divinity.

What then? Do the gods dwell forever in such materials and go nowhere, even if the greatest need should require it? Or have they free movement, to go wherever they please and to depart from their abodes and images? If they endure the necessity of remaining, what can be more wretched than they, or what more unhappy, if hooks and leaden fastenings hold them thus upon their pedestals? But if, when they wish, they fly away and have the unqualified right to leave the images empty; then at some time the images will cease to be gods, and it will be uncertain when sacred rites ought to be rendered, and when it is fitting and proper to abstain from them. We often see these images made by craftsmen now very small and reduced to a span's smallness, now raised to an immense size and elevated to a wonderful magnitude.

By this reasoning, therefore, it follows that we must understand that gods contract themselves in small figurines and are compressed to the likeness of an alien body; but in vast ones they stretch themselves out further and extend themselves to the greatest size. Therefore if this is so, in seated images the god must be said to sit, and in standing ones to stand, in running ones to run, in those hurling weapons to hurl, to form and adapt himself to their faces, and to accommodate himself to the likeness of the remaining postures of the figured body.

Do the gods dwell in images, each one wholly in each single image, or partially and divided among the members? For neither can one God be present in many images at one time, nor again divided into parts by intervening division. Let us suppose there are ten thousand images of Vulcan throughout the whole world; can one, as I said, be present in all ten thousand at one time? I think not. For what reason? Because things that are by nature individual and singular cannot become many while the integrity of their simplicity is preserved; and this they are the less able to do, if the gods have the forms of men, as your opinion declares. For a hand separated from the head, or a foot divided from the body, cannot perform the function of the whole; or it must be said that the parts can do the same as the whole, though the whole cannot exist unless it has been constituted by the gathering of its parts.

But if the same god is said to be in all, all reason and integrity of truth perishes, if this assumption is made, that one can remain in all at one time; or each of the gods must be said so to divide himself from himself, that he is both himself and another, not separated by any distinction, but the very same and yet another. Since nature refuses, rejects, and spurns this; either innumerable Vulcans must be said to exist and acknowledged, if we wish him to dwell and be present in all images; or he will be in none, because nature forbids him to be divided among many.

And yet, O you men! If it is open and clear to you that gods live in the inner parts of images and that heavenly beings dwell there, why do you keep them under the strongest locks and under great bolts, under bars, latches, and other such things, guard them, preserve them, and hold them enclosed, and lest some thief or nocturnal robber should creep in, protect them with a thousand temple-keepers and a thousand watchmen? Why do you feed dogs in the Capitols? Why do you provide food and sustenance for geese?

Nay, if you trust that gods are there and nowhere depart from the images and statues; allow them the care of themselves, let the shrines always be unlocked and open; and if anything has been stolen away by anyone through reckless fraud, let them show the power of their divinity, and under the very weight of the theft and the deed pin the sacrilegious with fitting punishments. For it is an unworthy thing, and one that destroys the power and authority of the highest divinities, to entrust their guardianship to the anxious care of dogs; and when you seek some terror to deter thieves, not to seek it from the gods themselves, but to place and lodge it in the cackling of geese.

They say that Antiochus of Cyzicus removed a golden Jupiter fifteen cubits high from a shrine, and substituted one of bronze overlaid with gold leaf. If the gods are present and dwell in their own images, by what business, by what cares was Jupiter bound, so that he could not pursue his own private wrongs and avenge himself substituted for himself in a baser material? That Dionysius, the younger one, when he stripped Jupiter of his golden mantle and put a woolen one in its place, even playing with jesting witticisms, saying that the golden one was cold in the frosts, the woolen one burdensome in the summer heats, and the latter again airy in the scorching seasons: where was the king of heaven, that he might prove his presence by some show of terror and recall the urbane mocker to seriousness with torments? For why should I mention that the dignity of Aesculapius was laughed at by him?

When he stripped him of his very full beard, of good weight and philosophic thickness, he said it was an unworthy deed that, born of Apollo his father who was smooth and beardless and very like one not yet of age, the son should be fashioned so bearded that it remained doubtful which of them was the father and which the son, or indeed whether they were of one family and kindred. When all these things were being done, and when the plunderer was jesting with sacrilegious mockeries, if a divine power was present in the statue consecrated to his name and majesty: why did he not pursue with just and deserved vengeance the insult to his smoothed and dishonored face, and show by this deed that he was present and guarded his own abode and images with persistent watchfulness?

Unless perhaps you say that the gods disregard these losses and do not consider them a sufficient cause to bestir themselves and inflict punishment on the guilty for violation of religion. Therefore if this is so, and the gods themselves have no desire for the very images which they suffer to be torn away and plundered with impunity: nay, on the contrary they make it fully clear that they spurn those images in which they take no care to signify their contempt by any vengeance.

Philostephanus in his Cypriaca attests that Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, fell in love with a statue of Venus which was held among the Cyprians in ancient sanctity and veneration, as if it were a woman, with his mind, soul, and the light of reason and judgment blinded; and that the madman was accustomed, as if it were a conjugal matter, to lie down with the divine image raised onto a couch and to join it in embraces and with his mouth, and to perform other acts of desire frustrated by the imagination of an empty phantom. In like manner Posidippus, in the book which he indicates was written about Cnidus and its affairs, mentions a young man of no mean birth, though he conceals his name, seized by love for the Venus for whose sake Cnidus is famous, who likewise mingled amorous wantonness with the image of that same divinity, having used it on the nuptial couch and to the ends of the pleasures that followed.

That I may similarly ask again: if the powers of the gods above lie hidden in bronze and in the other materials from which images are formed, where in the world were the one and the other Venus, that they might drive far from themselves the shameless immodesty of the young men and punish the impious contact with tormenting chastisement? Or, since the goddesses are mild and of gentler natures, how much would it have cost them to quench the frenzied joys of the wretches and restore their insane minds with renewed senses?

Unless perhaps, as you maintain, the goddesses of lust and pleasures found these insults most welcome, and did not consider the deed worthy of vengeance, since it also soothed their own minds and since they knew that they were subject to human desires. But if the Venuses, endowed with gentler natures, judged that they ought to indulge the misfortunes of the blind, when the Capitol was so often consumed by devouring fire, and the Capitoline Jupiter himself was seized along with his wife and daughter, where was the thunderer at that time, to ward off that wicked conflagration and to defend his own possessions and himself and his whole family from the destructive disaster? Where was Queen Juno, when the same force of flame destroyed her famous shrine and her priestess Chryseis in the Argive city? Where was Egyptian Serapis, when by a similar disaster he lay dissolved into ashes, together with all his mysteries and Isis? Where was Liber Eleutherius at Athens? Where was Diana at Ephesus? Where was Dodonian Jupiter at Dodona?

Where finally was divine Apollo, when he was so plundered and burned by pirates and sea-robbers that of all the weights of gold which countless ages had heaped up, he had not even a single scruple left to show to his swallow guests, as Varro says in his Menippean manner? It would be a task of infinite labor to describe throughout the whole world what shrines have been overthrown by earthquakes and storms; what have been burned by enemies, what by kings and tyrants, what the very attendants and priests themselves have stripped bare under the suspicion of turning away; what finally thieves and those who open barred doors by the obscure art of their tools have plundered—things which would certainly have remained safe and subject to no accidents, if the presiding gods were present or had any care for their temples, as is said.

But now, because they are empty and covered by no inhabitants, fortune has its own right over them, and they are subject to all accidents just as all other things are that are deprived of inner motion.

In this same part, those who defend images are also accustomed to say that the ancients were not ignorant that images have no divine power and that there is absolutely no sense in them; but that for the sake of the untamed and ignorant common people, which is the greatest part in nations and cities, they formed them beneficially and by design: so that, with a certain appearance of divine powers set before them, the people might cast off their harshness through fear; and judging that they lived under the eyes of present gods, they might lay aside impious deeds and pass over to human duties by a change of character. And for no other reason did they seek venerable forms fashioned in gold and silver, except that some power might be believed to reside in their very splendors, which would not only dazzle the sense of the eyes but also terrify the minds themselves with the radiance of a most august light.

This might perhaps seem to be said with some reason, if after the temples of the gods had been founded and images established, there were no wicked person in the world, no wickedness at all, and justice, peace, and good faith possessed the hearts of mortals; and no one on earth were called guilty or innocent, all being ignorant of criminal deeds. But now, since on the contrary all things are full of evils, the name of innocence has almost perished, and at every moment, at every instant, new swarms of crimes are bred by the wickedness of the guilty: how can it be fitting to say that images were established to strike terror into the common people, when besides the countless forms of crimes and misdeeds we see the very temples themselves assailed with sacrilegious violations by tyrants, by kings, by robbers, and by nocturnal thieves; and those very gods themselves, whom ancient tradition fashioned and consecrated to inspire fear, going off into the dens of plunderers, together with their very golden and awe-inspiring splendors?

For what, if you look at the truth and without any flattery, do those images which they speak of have in themselves that is so great, that antiquity might rightly have hoped and supposed that by the sight of them the vices of men could be broken and their conduct restrained from evil-doing?

The harvesting sickle, which is attributed to Saturn, was surely going to strike fear into mortals, that they might wish to lead a peaceful life and cast aside malicious intentions; or the two-faced brow of Janus, or that toothed key with which he is marked; or Jupiter in his cloak and beard, holding in his right hand a roughly worked brand in the manner of a thunderbolt; or that girdle of Juno, or the little maiden lurking under a military helmet; or the mother of the gods with her tympanum; or the Muses with their flutes and psalteries; or Mercury winged, the slayer of Argus; or Aesculapius with his staff; or Ceres with her great breasts, or the drinking cup hanging from the right hand of Liber; or Mulciber in craftsman's garb; or Fortune with her horn full of apples, figs, or autumn fruits; or Diana with half-covered thighs; or Venus naked, inciting to lust; or Anubis with his dog's face; or Priapus inferior in his own genitals.

O dreadful shapes of terror, and fears to be dreaded, on account of which the race of men would be fixed in perpetual numbness, would attempt nothing, struck with amazement, and would restrain itself from every wicked and shameful act! Little sickles, keys, head-coverings, firebrands, winged sandals, staffs, little drums, flutes, psalteries, breasts full and large, little drinking-cups, tongs, and fruit-bearing horns, naked bodies of women, and the publicized enormities of the genitals. Would it not have been better to dance and sing, than under the title of gravity and the pretense of severity, to recount images so frigid and so inept, fashioned by the ancients to restrain men from sins and to inspire dread in the harmful and the impious? Were the mortals of that age and time so utterly empty of heart, of no reason and no sense, that they might be held back from wicked deeds—as little boys are—even by the most monstrous grimness of faces, by jeers and by bugbears?

And whence has the matter turned to the contrary, so that although there are so many temples in cities filled with images of all the gods, and so many laws and kinds of punishments so great, no headway can be made against the multitude of the wicked; nor can boldness be cut off by any remedies; and crimes, doubled and multiplied, increase all the more, the more it is attempted by laws and judgments to diminish cruel deeds and to calm them by the restraint of punishments? For if images were to inflict some fears upon mortals, the enactment of laws would cease, nor would such varied crosses be established against the audacity of criminals.

But now, because it has been established and proven by the very fact that the opinion of fear said to flow from statues is empty, recourse has been had to the sanctions of laws, from which the dread would be most certain, and condemnation fixed and established—to which the images themselves owe it that they still stand unharmed and are protected by the concession of some honor.

But since it has been shown sufficiently, as the matter required, how vainly images are made, the order of discourse may next speak, as briefly as possible and without any circumlocutions, concerning sacrifices, concerning the slaughter and immolation of victims, concerning wine, incense, and all the other things that flow together in this part. For in this part you are accustomed to stir up the most tumultuous ill-will against us, to call us atheists, and because we do not in the least attribute such things to the gods, to inflict even capital punishment with the cruelties of beasts. This indeed we confess we do not out of contempt and divine disdain, but because we judge that the powers of this name demand no such thing, nor are they touched by desires for things of this kind.

What then, someone may say, do you judge that no sacrifices at all are to be made? To answer you not with our own opinion but with that of your Varro, none.

Why so? Because, he says, true gods neither desire them nor demand them; and those made of bronze, earthenware, plaster, or marble care far less for these things, for they lack sense; nor is any guilt incurred if you do not perform them, nor any favor if you do. No opinion can be found more sound, more true, or one that any man, however perverse and most difficult he may be, could seize upon. For who is of such dull breast as either to slay victims and sacrificial animals for things that have no sense, or to think they must be given to those who are far removed from these things by their nature and blessedness?

Who are the true gods, you ask? To answer you with a common and simple word, we do not know. For those whom we have never seen, how can we know who they are? We are accustomed to hear from you that there are very many gods, and that they are reckoned in a series of names; who, if they exist as you say, somewhere, and are true, as Terence believes, it follows that they are like unto their own name, that is, such as we all perceive they ought to be, and such as are to be called by the appellation of this name. Nay rather, to conclude briefly, such as the Lord of all things is, and the Almighty himself, whom we all know and understand to be the true God when we come to the mention of his name.

For one God differs from another in that in which he is God in no respect; nor can that which is one in kind be less or more in its parts, the uniformity of its proper quality being preserved. Since this is not in doubt, it follows that they must never have been begotten, and must be everlasting, desiring nothing from without, nor drawing any earthly pleasures from the riches of matter.

If these things are so, then first we seek to learn from you what cause, what reason there is for you to perform these sacrifices; and next, what gain thereby comes to the gods themselves and settles to their advantage.

For whatever is done ought to have a cause for itself, and ought not to be so divorced from reason as to be carried along in empty works and to play in the vain errors of futility. Perhaps the heavenly gods are nourished by these sacred rites, and for the maintenance of their constitution some supply of material is needed? And who among men is so ignorant of what a god truly is, as to suppose that they are sustained by some kind of nourishment, and that it is the function of food to make them live and endure in immeasurable perpetuity? For whatever is propped up by external causes and things must of necessity be mortal, and have a path prone to peril whenever something begins to fail by which it lives. Then too, we see that nothing of those things which are brought to the altars reaches or comes to the substance of the divine powers.

For either incense is given, and melted by the coals it vanishes away; or the victim is an animal, and the blood is lapped up by dogs; or if some entrail has been committed to the altars, it burns in like manner and falls dissolved into ash—unless perhaps the god devours the souls of the victims, or pursues the steam and smoke from the burning altars, and feeds upon the savors exhaled by the burning entrails, still wet with blood and moist with their former juices. But if God, as is said, has no body and is untouched by all contact, how can it come to pass that an incorporeal being is nourished by corporeal things, that what is mortal should sustain what is immortal, and should supply safety to a thing it cannot touch, and administer vital motions? This reason for sacred rites therefore fails, as is apparent; nor can it be said by anyone that sacrifices are celebrated for the reason that the divine powers are nourished by them and sustained from their feeding.

If perhaps this is not the case, are victims slain for the gods and cast upon kindled altars for the sake of some pleasure and, as they say, of delight of mind? And is there any man who persuades himself that gods are softened by the diffusion of pleasures, that they exult in the joy of desire, and like a base animal are affected by flattering sensations and soothed by the fleeting titillation of a passing sweetness? For that which is dissolved by pleasure must of necessity be contracted by the opposite grief; nor can that which trembles with joy and is lifted up by the levities of gladness be free from the anxiety of sorrow. But gods must be free from both these affections, if we wish them to be everlasting and deprived of mortal frailty.

What of the fact that all pleasure is, as it were, a certain flattery of the body, and is received through those well-known five senses—which if the gods above feel, they must also be partakers of bodies, through which there is a way for the senses and a door for receiving pleasures? Finally, what joy is it to delight in the slaughter of innocent living creatures, to hear their pitiful lowing, to behold rivers of blood, souls fleeing with the gore, and when the hidden parts are laid open, to see the intestines rolling out with their dung, and hearts still leaping with the last breath, and veins trembling and quivering in the entrails?

We half-savage men—nay rather, to pronounce what is truer and more plainly said, savage men—whom unhappy necessity and evil custom have taught to take food from these creatures, are sometimes moved with compassion for them; we accuse ourselves, and having seen and examined the matter, we condemn ourselves utterly, because, having laid aside the law of humanity, we have broken the fellowship of our natural origin. Does anyone believe that the gods, who are pious, beneficent, and gentle, delight in the slaughter of cattle, and are spread abroad with joy whenever these creatures fall beneath them and miserably yield up their breath? And so, as we see, there is no cause of pleasure in sacrifices, nor any reason why they should be made; since there is no pleasure at all, and if by chance there is any, it has been shown that it can by no reason fall upon the gods.

It remains that we also examine that part which we hear bandied about commonly and current in popular persuasion: that sacrifices are made to the gods above for the reason that they may lay aside their wrath and their passions, and become gentle and placid, their indignation of burning hearts being calmed.

But if we hold to that definition which it is fitting we always remember persistently, that all affections of the mind are unknown to the gods, it follows that we must believe the gods never grow angry; nay rather, that no affection is further from them than that which, being nearest to wild beasts and brutes, disturbs those who suffer it with tempests and leads them to the peril of destruction. For whatever is vexed by the impulse of some thing is evidently subject to passion and is fragile; what is subject to passion and fragility must of necessity be mortal; but anger vexes and dissolves those who suffer it; therefore that which is subject to the passions of anger must be said to be mortal. But we know that gods must be everlasting and hold the nature of immortality; and if this is established and clear, anger is far from them and disjoined from their condition.

By no reasoning therefore is it fitting to wish to appease in the gods above that which you cannot see to be compatible with their blessedness.

But let us grant, as you wish, that a disturbance of this kind is familiar to the gods, and that divine rites are performed and the solemnities of sacred observances celebrated for the purpose of appeasing it: when then would it be fitting for these duties to be applied, or at what time given? Before they are angered and roused? Or when they have been moved and are in the very midst of their indignation? If we must meet them beforehand lest they take on passion, you set before us wild beasts, not gods—to whom, lest when roused they rage and shatter the bars of their cages, it is customary to throw food, upon which in their frenzy they may vent their rage and turn the desire of their violence.

But if this satisfaction of sacrifices is offered to them when already burning and blazing with indignation, I do not inquire, I do not demand, whether that joyful and lofty magnanimity of the divine powers is moved by the offense of little men, and takes it as a wound if some blind creature, ever walking in the clouds of ignorance, has done or said something by which their authority might be diminished.

But neither do I demand that it be said or heard, what causes of wrath against men the gods have, such that they must be appeased by sacrifices when offense has been incurred: have they ever at any time enacted any laws for mortals, and has it ever been established by them what it was fitting for men to do or not to do, what to pursue, what to flee, or at least in what manner they wished to be worshipped, so that they might pursue with the vengeance of their wrath what was done otherwise than they had commanded, and might wish to avenge themselves upon the bold and the transgressors for their contempt? As I think, nothing has ever been established or ordained by them, since they have never been seen, and if there are any of them, they could not be recognized by the most open knowledge.

What justice is it then that the heavenly gods should be angry for any causes with those to whom they have never deigned to show that they exist, and to whom they have given or imposed no laws by which they wished to be worshipped by them and kept with inviolable obedience?

But this, as I said, I pass over and allow to depart dismissed in silence: this one thing above all I ask—what is the reason that if I slay a pig, the god changes his affection and lays aside his passion and rage; if I burn a little hen, a calf, before his eyes and altars, he takes on forgetfulness of the injury and withdraws entirely from the sense of offense? What passes from this act to his pain as a remedy, or what is a goose, a goat, or a peacock, that from its blood a medicine should be applied to one who is angry? Do the gods then sell their injuries, and—as little boys, that their feelings may be spared and they may refrain from weeping, receive little sparrows, dolls, little horses, and loaves of bread by which they may be diverted—so do the immortal gods accept these appeasements by which they lay aside their wrath and passion, and return to favor with those who have offended them?

And yet I thought that the gods, if it is right to believe that they are agitated by the impulses of wrath, lay aside their wrath and passion without any rewards and without any payment, and forgive sins to sinners. For this is the property of divine powers, to have liberal pardons and concessions freely given. But if this cannot be, it is far wiser for them to persist stubbornly in offense than to be softened by the corruption of gifts. For the multitude of sinners increases when hope of redeeming sin is given; and one goes easily to faults where the favor of those who pardon is for sale.

Behold, if some ox, or any animal of those kinds which are slaughtered to appease and soften the fury of the divine powers, were to take on a human voice and speak in these words: Is it then, O Jupiter, or whatever other god you are, human and right, or to be reckoned as any kind of equity, that when another has sinned, I should be slain, and that you should allow satisfaction to be made to you from my blood, I who have never wronged you, who have never knowingly or unknowingly violated your divine power and majesty, an animal, as you know, mute, following the simplicity of my nature, not slippery with the variety of manifold moral shifts? Have I ever performed your games less reverently and diligently? Have I ever brought before you any presiding officer who might offend your divine power? Have I ever sworn falsely by you? Have I ever seized your property by sacrilegious thefts and plundered your shrines?

Have I ever uprooted most sacred groves, or defiled and profaned certain holy places with private building works? What cause is there, then, that another's crime should be atoned by my blood, and that my life and innocence should be drawn into an alien wickedness? Is it because I am a lowly animal, sharing neither in reason nor in deliberation?—as those pronounce who call themselves men, and in ferocity surpass the beasts. Did not nature at the same beginnings beget and form me as well? Is there not one breath which governs both them and me? Do I not breathe, and see, and be affected by the other senses in like manner? They have livers, lungs, hearts, intestines, stomachs; and has not the same number of members been assigned to me? They love their offspring and come together to beget children: have I not also the care and the sweetness of offspring, and of rearing it once it has been born?

But they are rational, and utter articulate sounds: and how do they know whether I too, in what I do, do it by my own reasoning, and whether this voice which I produce is the speech of my kind, and is understood only by us? Ask justice, whether it is more equitable that I be slain, that I be destroyed, or that a man be granted pardon and impunity for his offences? Who shaped iron into a sword? Was it not man? Who brought slaughter upon peoples, who imposed servitude upon nations? Was it not man? Who administered and mixed deadly potions for parents, for brothers, for wives, for friends? Was it not man? Who devised evil deeds, or contrived so many as could scarcely be set forth in ten thousand years or days of annals? Was it not man? Is that then not savage, not monstrous, not cruel?

Does it not seem to you, O Jupiter, unjust and barbarous, that I am slain, that I am struck down, so that you may become appeased, and so that the wicked may obtain impunity? Therefore for this reason, that is, that angry divine powers may be appeased, it is established that sacrifices are performed in vain, since reason has taught us that the gods are never angry, and do not wish one to be destroyed and slain in place of another, nor that the cancellation of offences be purchased by the blood of the innocent.

But perhaps someone will say: we offer victims and other gifts to the gods for this reason, that, having been made in some way familiar through our supplications, they may bestow prosperous things, and turn away evils from us, and cause us always to live in joy, and drive away sorrows and those things threatening from chance misfortunes. This point requires no small care, and what is said is not so customary as to be easily heard or believed. For that entire chorus of the most learned will immediately fly in, who, asserting and affirming that whatever happens happens by fate, will snatch this opinion from your hands and press you to trust in empty persuasions. Whatever has been done in the world, is being done, and will be done, it will say, was long ago determined and fixed; and it has immovable causes, through which things bound together in sequence establish an indestructible necessity of past events with those impending. If it is determined and fixed, then what evil or good ought to befall each individual is already certain.

But if it is certain and fixed, all the aids of the gods are void, their hatreds are void, their kindnesses are void. For they can no more grant what cannot happen than prevent what must necessarily come to pass: except that if they wish to press this opinion more forcefully, they will be able to do so, so as to say even that the gods themselves are worshipped by you in vain, and adored with superfluous supplications. For since they cannot overturn the order and change the decrees of fate, what purpose, what reason is there to weary and wish to beat upon the ears of those upon whose aid you cannot rely in the utmost necessities?

Finally, if the gods drive away sad and troublesome things; if they bestow those things which are joyful and friendly: whence come so many and so countless miserable people in the world? Whence so many unhappy ones leading a lamentable life in the most extreme condition? Why are those not free from calamities who at every moment, at every instant, load and heap up the altars with sacrifices? Do we not see, they say, that some of them have bodies that are dwellings of diseases; deprived of sight and with ears stopped up, lacking the use of their feet, living as trunks without hands, being swallowed up, overwhelmed, and destroyed by fires, shipwrecks, and collapses; driven out from great patrimonies, sustaining themselves by hired labour; begging for the last scraps, being banished, proscribed, always in mourning, broken by the bereavement of children; tormented by the other misfortunes, whose kinds and forms no enumeration can define? This would certainly not happen, if the gods, bound by the merits of sacred rites, knew how to drive away and avert these evils.

But now, because there is no place for chance in these things, but all things are accomplished by inescapable necessity, the prescribed order works itself out, and completes what has once been decreed.

Or the heavenly ones must be called ungrateful, if, while they have the right to forbid, they allow the unhappy race to be entangled in so many punishments and calamities. And perhaps they might say something great, and not such as ought to be received with frustrating, frivolous, and contemptuous ears. Yet we, because the matter requires an exceedingly long and extensive discourse, pass over these points unexplained and untouched: content only to have established this, that you attach shameful reputations to your gods, if you deny that they otherwise bestow good things and avert hostile ones, unless they have first been purchased by the blood of she-goats and sheep, and the other things which are brought to the altars. For it is first unworthy that that power and sublimity of the divine powers should be believed to have its benefits for sale, to receive first, and so to bestow.

Then, what is far more disgraceful, unless they have received, to be of use to no one, and to allow the most wretched to undergo the fortunes of dangers, when they could prevent and come to their aid. If of two persons performing sacred rites, one is honourable and wealthy, the other of narrow means, but praiseworthy for innocence and uprightness: the one slays a hundred oxen, and as many mothers with their lambs, the poor man burns a small amount of incense and a single lump of some fragrant substance: will it not follow that one must believe, if the divine powers bestow nothing except upon preceding rewards, that they lend their favour and aid to the wealthy man, and turn their eyes away from the poor man, whom not his spirit but the necessity of his domestic circumstances has made restricted?

For where the giver is for sale and mercenary, there it is necessary that favour be granted in proportion to the greatness of the gift, and that the vote incline toward the side from which more payment and the influx of corruption a has flowed to the one who bestows. What if again two peoples at war with hostile arms have enriched the altars of the gods above with equal sacrifices, and each demands that strength and aid be lent to itself against the other: must it not again be believed, if they are solicited by rewards to be of use, that they hesitate between both sides, are fixed in place, and cannot find what to do, since they understand their favours to be bound by the receipt of sacred rites? For either they will render aid to both sides, which cannot happen: for they will fight against themselves, and strive against their own favours and wills: or they will cease to supply help to both peoples, which is a great wickedness, after the payment has been expended and received.

Therefore all this infamy must be driven far away from the gods: and it must not be said at all that they are enticed by rewards and payments to confer good things and remove contrary ones, if indeed they are true gods and are to be placed within the meaning of this name. For either whatever happens happens by fate, and there is no place for ambition and favour among the gods: or if fate is excluded and rejected, it is not worthy of divine dignity to sell the favour of a good work and bestowed munificence.

We have shown sufficiently, as I think, that victims together with the accompanying things are offered to the immortal gods in vain: because they are neither nourished by these, nor receive any pleasure, nor lay aside anger or resentment, nor bestow prosperous things, nor drive away and avert contrary ones. It follows that we should also examine that part which is customarily asserted by some and applied to the reasons for ceremonies. For they say that these sacred rites were instituted for the honouring of the heavenly ones, and that what they do, they do for the sake of honour, and by these things they increase the powers of the divine powers. What if they were similarly to say that they keep watch and sleep, walk about and stand still, write something and read, in order to honour the gods and make them greater in dignity? For what is added to them from the blood of cattle? What is added and appended to their power from the performance of the remaining sacred rites?

For all honour, which is said to be shown by someone and attributed as a mark of greater reverence, is of a relative kind toward another, and consists of two parts, from the concession of the one who gives and the augmentation of the one who receives. As if someone, upon seeing a man of most powerful name and authority, were to step aside from the road, rise up, uncover his head, and leap down from his vehicle: and then greet him with a bow, imitating the service of a little slave with trembling trepidation: I see what is done in such an office of veneration: by the submission of one, very much is given to the other: and the effect is that he seems great whom the regard of an inferior has exalted and placed before his own concerns.

But all this concession, and the attribution of honour of which we speak, has its place only among men: whom natural weakness and the love of standing higher teaches to rejoice in distinctions and to be placed before others by comparison. But I ask, where among the gods above is there a place for honour, or what eminences are found to accrue to them from the performance of sacred rites? Do they become more august, more powerful by the slaying of cattle: is anything added to them from this, or do they begin to be gods more greatly with divinity enlarged? Yet I judge it to be very close to insult, nay rather to be full insult, when a god is said to be honoured by a man and enriched by the offering of some gift.

For if honour augments and accumulates the dignity of him to whom it has been attributed, it follows that the god should be made greater by the man by whom he has been enriched by a gift and the conferring of honour: and so the matter is brought to this point, that the god who is enriched by human honours is inferior; but the man who augments the power of the divine being is more exalted.

What then, someone will say, do you judge that no honour at all is to be given to the gods? If you set before us gods such as, if they exist, they ought to be, and such as we all feel ourselves to say in the proclamation of this name, how can we not hold them in the highest honour; since we have received by the commands of those more powerful that even men of whatever rank, of whatever fortune, are to be revered? What is this highest honour? Far more dutiful than what is held by you, and established in a more powerful kind. Tell us, you say, what opinion of the gods is worthy, right, and honourable, and not blameworthy with the deformity of any baseness.

First, that you believe neither that they have anything similar to man, nor that they expect anything which comes from outside themselves and from without: then, what has been said more often, that they do not burn with the flames of anger, do not exult with bodily pleasure, are not solicited to be of benefit, are not provoked by rewards lest they harm, do not have kindness and favour for sale, do not rejoice in honour conferred, are not indignant and affected when it is not given; but, what is proper to the divine nature, know themselves by their own power, and do not measure themselves by the flatteries of others. And yet, that we may see what kind of thing this is that is spoken of, what kind of honour is it to bind a wether, a ram, a bull before the face of a god and to slay it in his sight? What kind of honour is it to invite a god to blood, which you may see him share and have in common with dogs?

What kind of honor is it to cover the sky with smoke from burning piles of wood, and to suffuse the images of the gods with funereal blackness? But if it pleases us to estimate those things which are done by their own proper force, and not by previously assumed valuations, these altars of yours, as you call them, and these fair high-altars, are funeral pyres of the most wretched class of animals, are pyres and burial-grounds built for the most foul purpose, and constructed as a seat of stenches.

What say you, O ye men! Is that stench, then, which rises and breathes forth from burning hides, from bones, from bristles, from the fleeces of lambs, and from the feathers of hens, a gift and honor to a god? And is this offered in sacrifice to those in whose temples, when you arrange to enter them, you present yourselves pure from every stain, washed, and most chaste? And what can be more defiling, more wretched, more foul than these gods, if they are so made by the nature of their own sense that they hold such loathsome things in affection, and that stenches are a pleasure to them—stenches which neither the sacrificers themselves can endure, nor can refined nostrils bear when drawn in through the breath? But if you think that the minds of the higher beings are honored and gratified by the blood of living creatures, why do you not also sacrifice to them mules, and elephants, and asses? Why not also dogs, bears, foxes, camels, belbae, and lions?

And since you also reckon birds among the number of beasts, why not vultures, eagles, storks, kites, buzzards, ravens, hawks, owls, and along with these salamanders, grass-snakes, vipers, solifugae? Surely these too have blood within them, and are animated by a vital spirit on the same principle? What is there of greater worth in those, or of less skill in these, that the latter should not augment, while the former amplify, the dignity of the gods above? Because, says he, it is fitting to honor the heavenly ones with those things by which we ourselves are nourished, sustained, and live, and which they in the bounty of their divine power have deigned to grant us for our sustenance. But cummin, nasturtium, turnips, bulbs, parsley, thistles, roots, gourds, rue, mint, basil, pennyroyal, and the cut leek—these same gods gave to you as well, and ordained that they should be among the provisions of your food.

Why then do you delay to place these also upon the altars, and to sprinkle over all these things the dung of cattle, and to mingle in the pungency of onions?

Behold, if dogs—for it is necessary to feign certain things, that the matter may be seen more clearly—if, I say, dogs and asses, if wagtails together with these, if chattering swallows, and likewise with these pigs, having received some sense of humanity, were to think and believe you to be gods, and were to undertake to perform sacred rites of honor to you, not from other materials and other things, but from those on which it is their custom to feed and by which they are sustained by natural provision: we ask you to say whether you would judge this honor, or rather the most signal insult—when swallows were slaying and consecrating flies to you, when wagtails were sacrificing little ants, when asses were placing hay upon your altars and pouring out chaff as a libation, when dogs were laying bones upon them and burning an outpouring of human dung, when finally little pigs were pouring out upon you mire taken from their horrible wallowing-places, muddy and full of filth?

Would you not then be inflamed that your dignities were being spat upon, and would you not count it among atrocious injuries that you were being received with dung? But you honor the gods with the bodies of bulls and with the slaughter of other animals; and how does this differ from that, since these things too, if not yet, will soon become dung, and putrefy when a brief interval of time has elapsed?

In short, cease to put fire under the altars, and you will straightway see that those entrails of bulls which are sacred, by which the honor of the gods is increased by you, are seething with worms and heaving, corrupting and destroying the condition of the air, and infecting the neighboring regions with pestilential odors: which if the gods, caring for your welfare and health, were to bid you turn to account, to prepare from them dinners or suppers after the customary fashion, you would flee far away, and having execrated the nature of the smell, would beg pardon of the gods above, and would swear that you would never offer them such sacrifices. Is this not then to trifle, not to confess, not to reveal, that one does not know what god is, nor to what power the force of this name ought to be subject, and the appellation applied?

You magnify the gods with new foods, you do them honor with savors and juices; and because those things which nourish you are pleasant and agreeable to you, you believe that the gods also overflow with pleasure in them, and after the manner of barking dogs lay aside their fierceness at a bone, and frolic before those who offer it repeatedly?

And since the discourse about victims is in our hands: what cause, what reason is there, that whereas the immortal gods—for let them exist, even by our concession, whoever they are believed to be—ought to be of one mind, or of one nature, kind, and quality, not all gods are appeased by all victims, but certain ones by certain laws of sacrifice? For what is the reason, I shall ask, that one god is honored with bulls, another with kids, or with sheep; this one with suckling pigs, another with unshorn lambs; this one with virgin heifers, that one with horned she-goats; this one with barren cows, but that one with pregnant sows; this one with white animals, that one with dark ones, another with animals of the female sex, another indeed with male animals? For if victims are slaughtered to the gods for the sake of honor and reverence, what does it matter or make a difference from the head of what animal this due debt is discharged, by whose anger and offense is laid aside?

Or is the blood of one perhaps less pleasing and agreeable to another? Does one pour pleasure and joy into another? Or, as is the custom of observance, does that god out of some fear of religious scruple abstain from goat's flesh, does another execrate the touch of pork, are the entrails of sheep rank to this one; and, lest he weary a weak stomach, does this one avoid the toughness of beef and take the tenderness of suckling animals, that he may digest more easily?

But you err, says he, and go astray; for to sacrifice female victims to female goddesses, and male to male gods, is an abstruse and deeper reason, removed from the knowledge of the common people. I do not inquire, I do not demand, what the laws of sacred rites prescribe or contain; but if reason shall prevail and truth shall hold good that there is no difference of sexes among the gods, and that they are not distinguished by any sex: must not all these reasonings necessarily be dissolved, and be found to be believed and confirmed upon the most foolish opinions? I will not invoke the judgments of wise men, who cannot contain their laughter when they hear differences of sex attributed to the immortal gods: I ask each one of the common people whether he himself believes within himself, and persuades himself, that the race of gods is distinguished, that some are male and female, and formed with the arrangement of appropriate members for begetting offspring?

But if the laws of sacrifice prescribe that sexes equal to sexes—that is, females to females, but male victims to male gods—be sacrificed: what reason is there in colors, that it is fitting for white victims to be sacrificed to some, and dark and very black ones to others? Because to the gods above, says he, and those powerful in the favor of all, a joyful color is acceptable, and one happy in the brightness of whiteness. But to the gods on the left, and those inhabiting the lower abodes, a dark color is more pleasing, and one suffused with gloomy dyes. But if reason shall again prevail that the name of the underworld is utterly empty and void, and that there are no kingdoms and Plutonian dwellings beneath the earth, that opinion too which you hold concerning dark cattle and the gods below must necessarily be frustrated. But if there are no underworld regions, the gods of the Manes must also necessarily be none.

For how can it be that, when there are no places, any worshippers of those things which do not exist are said to exist?

But let us grant, as you wish, that there is an underworld, and that there are shades, and that certain gods less favorable to men and set over more gloomy affairs dwell in it; and what cause, what reason is there, that dark victims and those of the blackest color are brought near to them? Because black things suit black things, and gloomy things are pleasing to their like. What then? Do you not see how together with you we also foolishly and similarly praise the fact that the flesh of victims is white, and the bones, teeth, fat, cauls with brains, and the soft marrow in the bones? But the fleeces are black, and the bristles of the animals are black. Sacrifice therefore to the gods only the wools and the little bristles plucked from the victims, and leave the most wretched cattle, though stripped and shorn, to breathe the air of heaven and to lie upon their most innocent pastures.

But if you think that those things which are black and of a dark color are pleasing to the infernal powers, why do you not take care that all the other things which it is customary to bring to their sacrifices are black and smoky and colored with dark hues? Dye the incense, if it is offered; the salted spelt and all the libations—let one put a purple color here upon the milk, oil, blood, let another pour in soot with ashes so that they may be lurid. But if you have no scruple about bringing certain white things and those retaining their own brightness: you yourselves dissolve your own religious observances and reasonings, since in the performance of sacred rites you preserve nothing uniform and consistent.

But it is also fitting in this place to learn from you the following: if a he-goat is slaughtered for Jupiter, which it is customary to sacrifice to Father Liber, or to Mercury; or if a barren cow for Unxia, which you assign to Proserpina, by what rite and observance this is prescribed: what crime will there be in this, what accumulation of evils or wickedness; since it makes no difference to the act of homage from the head of what animal this honorary debt is discharged? These things, says he, must not be confused, nor is it a small act of sacrilege to mix up the duties of rites and their administration. I beg you to set forth the reason. Because it is right to consecrate victims of a certain kind to certain divine powers, and certain supplications are to be rendered. And what again is the reason that it is right to consecrate victims of a certain kind to certain divine powers, and that certain supplications are to be rendered?

For this law itself must have its own cause, and must arise and be derived from definite reasons. You are going to cite antiquity and custom? You are pronouncing to me the ordinances of men, and the findings of a blind creature. But I, when I demand that a reason be drawn out for me, desire to hear either something fallen from heaven, or—as the matter more requires—what affinity Jupiter has with the blood of a bull, that it ought to be sacrificed to him and not to Mercury or Liber? Or what is the nature of a he-goat, that it is in turn suited to these, and not fitting for Jovian sacrifices? Has a division of animals been made among the gods, has it been agreed by some compact of arrangement, that one should refrain from the victim of another, that another should cease to usurp the rights over alien blood? Or, like jealous little boys, do they refuse to share the taste of their own provisions?

Or, as it is reported to be the custom of very different peoples, what is held as food by some is rejected from the diet of others?

If therefore these things are empty, and possess no firmness of reason, the rationale of sacrifices itself is likewise empty. For how can that which follows have an adequate cause, when that very first thing from which the second flows is found to be most empty and void, and confirmed by no solidity? To Mother Earth, they say, a pregnant sow and a forda are sacrificed; but to the virgin Minerva a virgin heifer is slaughtered, never exercised by any goads, never by the effort of any labor. And yet we think that neither ought a virgin to have been sacrificed to a virgin, lest virginity be violated in the beast in which the goddess is most powerful; nor ought pregnant and fertile ones to be offered to Earth for the honor of that very fecundity which we all seek and desire, proceeding as it does by an inextinguishable and perpetual virginity.

For if, because Tritonia is a virgin, it is therefore fitting that virgin victims be sacrificed to her; and because Earth is a mother, she is similarly to be received with pregnant sows; then Apollo, because he is a musician, ought to be sacrificed to with musicians; and Aesculapius, because he is a physician, with physicians; and Vulcan, because he is a smith, with smiths; and Mercury, because he is eloquent, ought to be sacrificed to with the eloquent and most skilled in speech. But if to say this is insane, or, to speak more moderately, stupid: it is a thing of far greater madness to slaughter pregnant animals for Earth because she is heavy with offspring, and chaste and virgin ones for Minerva because she is pure and of untouched virginity.

For as to what we hear said by you, that certain of the gods are good, others however evil, and more ready to the desire of doing harm: and that solemn rites are administered to the former that they may benefit, to the latter that they may truly not harm—by what reasoning this is said, we confess we are unable to understand. For to call the gods most benign, and to hold that they have gentle natures, is holy, and religious, and true: but to call them evil and sinister is by no means to be admitted to the ears, for the reason that that divine power is by nature removed and separated far from doing harm. But whatever is capable of bringing about the cause of calamity, what it is must first be seen, and it ought to be set apart from the name of god by the greatest distance.

And so, granting you our assent that there are gods who are patrons of prosperous and adverse things: even so there is no reason why you should attract some with offerings for prosperity, and others, lest they harm, should soothe with sacrifices and rewards. First, because the good gods cannot do evil, even if they have been honoured with no worship: for whatever is by nature mild and gentle is kept far from the practice and thought of doing harm: but the evil one does not know how to restrain his ferocity, even if he be enticed with a thousand flocks and a thousand altars: for bitterness cannot turn itself into sweetness, nor dryness into moisture, nor the heat of fire into cold, nor can that which is contrary to any thing take into itself and change into its own nature that which is contrary to it.

As if you were to stroke a viper with your hand, or flatter a venomous scorpion: the one will attack you with its bite, the other, when touched, will fix its sting: and that caressing will profit nothing, since both creatures are driven to do harm not by the goads of anger, but by a certain property of nature. So it profits nothing to wish to propitiate sinister gods through victims, since whether you do that or on the contrary do not do it, they act according to their nature, and are led by innate laws and a certain necessity to those things for which they were made. What of the fact that in this way both sets of gods cease to remain in their own powers and in their own qualities?

For if sacred rite is performed so that the good may benefit, and supplication is made to others by the same means lest they harm: it follows that it must be understood that the propitious ones will profit nothing if they receive no gifts; but the evil ones, if they receive gifts, will lay aside the intention of harming, and thereby become good: and so the matter is brought to the point that neither are these propitious, nor those sinister, or—which cannot be—both alike are propitious, and both alike again are sinister.

So be it, let it be conceded that hapless beasts are not slaughtered at the temples of the gods without some observance of religion, and that what has been done by the usage of custom contains some cause of some reason: but if it seems magnificent and grand to slaughter bulls for the gods, if it seems right that the unblemished and whole entrails of living creatures be burned, what do all these other things mean that belong to the disciplines of magicians, which the pontifical laws of sacred rites restore to the hidden mysteries and insert into divine affairs? What, I say, do these mean: apexanes, hircicae, silicernia, longavi? Which are names and kinds of sausages, some stuffed with the blood of a he-goat, others with crushed lungs. What do the torches mean? What the dirges?

What the offae—not of the common sort, but those which have the name and designation of penitae: of which the first is fat cut in the customary manner into tiny morsels for the little dishes; what is in the second place is a length of intestine through which a flux is discharged, dried out of its vital juices: but the offa penita is a small piece of flesh with the tail of the animal cut off. What are the polimina? What the omenta? What the palasea, or, as some call them, plasea? Of which the omentum is a certain part by name; by which the receptacles of the belly, enclosed in a net, are bounded. The plasea is the tail of an ox, smeared with spelt-flour and blood. The polimina moreover are those things which we more modestly call proles: but by common people they are usually called by the name of testes. What are the fitilla, what the frumen, what the africia, what the gratilla, catumeum, conspolium, cubula?

Of which the first two are names of porridges, but different in kind and quality. The series that follows, however, contains the meanings of libations: and these too do not all have one and the same form. For it does not please him to name the strebula flesh, which is taken from the haunches of bulls, nor the roasted meats on spits, which are entrails first animated and scorched over coals; nor finally the salsamina, which are a single mixture joined from four kinds of grain. Nor likewise the fendicas, which are also hirae, which the speech of the common people is accustomed to call ilia when it speaks of them.

Nor by the same reasoning the aerumnae, which are the first heads in the gullets, which it is the nature of ruminating animals to cast down food and bring it back. Nor the magmenta, nor the augmina, nor the thousand kinds either of sausages or of fitillae, to which you have given obscure names, and have made them more restricted so that they should be unknown to the common people.

For if whatever is done by men, and especially in sacred matters, ought to have its own causes, and nothing in all affairs and in all administration is to be done without reason; explain to us and say, what is the cause, what the reason, that these things also are given to the gods and burned upon the sacred altars? For in this place we linger, press on, and cling especially to this most necessary cause, desiring to learn what the gods have to do with porridges, what with libation-cakes, what with various stuffings prepared with manifold right of composition and variety of ingredients? Are the divine powers affected by sumptuous dinners or luncheons, so that innumerable dishes must be devised for them? Do they suffer from aversions of the stomach, and is variety of flavours sought to drive away fastidiousness, so that now roasted, now raw things are set before them, now half-cooked and half-raw?

But if the gods love to receive all these portions which you call praesiciae, and they are pleasing to them with some sense of pleasure or sweetness; what intervenes, what prevents you from bringing all these things at once together with whole animals? What cause, what reason is there that the strebula flesh separately, the ruma, the tail and the plasea separately, the intestines alone, the omentum alone, should be added for the purpose of the augmenta? Are the heavenly gods affected by varieties of relishes, so that, as is the custom after the feasts of rich and wealthy men, these tiny morsels are taken as pleasant tidbits, not to satisfy hunger, but to remind the palate of its leisure, and to stimulate themselves with the appetite of full voracity? O wondrous greatness of the gods, comprehended by no men, understood by no natures!

Since, in order that they may be propitious, they are won over by the testicles of cattle and by rumae, and do not sooner lay aside their anger and their spirits unless they have seen the prepared dirges burned before them, and the offae redeemed.

It follows that we should say something about incense and about unmixed wine without any excess. For these kinds of ceremonies also are joined and mingled together, and are employed very largely in worship. And first we ask and inquire of you on this very point about incense: from where or at what time could you have come to know or learn of it, so that you rightly judge either that it ought to be given to the gods, or that it is most acceptable to their will? For it is a comparatively recent thing, and the inexplicable series of years is not long since knowledge of it flowed into these parts and merited a place in the divine shrines.

For neither in the heroic times, as is believed and reported, was it known what incense was, as is attested by ancient writers, in whose books no mention of it is found placed anywhere; nor did Etruria, the mother and parent of superstition, know its repute or fame, as the rites of its shrines indicate; nor in the four hundred years during which the Alban state flourished did it come into use for anyone when sacred rite was performed; nor did Romulus himself, nor Numa, that craftsman in devising religious observances, either know that it existed or that it grew: as the pious spelt-grain shows, by which it was the custom for the duties of solemn sacrifices to be performed. From where therefore did the practice of using it begin to be taken up; or what novelty broke into the ancient and old custom, so that what had not been necessary in such great ages should take first place in ceremonies?

For if without incense the observance of religion is lame, and its force is necessary to make the heavenly beings propitious and gentle to men, the ancients sinned—nay rather, the whole life of those was full of expiations, who through negligence failed to offer what would have been most pleasing to the will of the gods. But if in ancient times neither men nor gods sought this material of incense, it is proved that even today it is offered vainly and to no purpose, since antiquity did not consider it necessary, and a later age sought it without any reasons.

Finally, that we may always hold to that rule and definition by which it has been demonstrated and established that whatever is done by a man ought to have its own causes, we shall maintain it also in this part, so as to inquire of you what is the cause, what the reason, that incense is thrown upon altars before the very images of the divine powers, and that from the burning of it they are thought to become familiar and gentle: what is gained for them from an act of this kind, or what is added to their minds, so that we may rightly judge that these things are duly rendered, and are not burned vainly and to no purpose? For just as you ought to show why you give incense to the gods, so it follows that you ought also to declare that the gods have some cause why they do not reject it, nay rather why they desire it so eagerly. We honour the gods with these things, someone will perhaps say.

But we inquire not into your feeling but into that of the divine powers: and we ask not what is done by you, but how highly it is valued by them, what is given as the reward of favour. But yet, O piety, how great is this honour, or of what kind, which is produced from the smell of fire and is obtained from the resin of a tree? For lest perchance you do not know what or whence this incense is: it is a gum flowing from bark, coalescing by a tearful distillation, as from an almond tree or cherry tree. Does this then honour and magnify the powers on high, or if some offence has at any time been incurred, is it dissolved by the vapour of incense, and lulled to rest with anger moderated? Why then do you not hasten to burn indiscriminately the gum of any tree whatsoever without any distinction?

For if the divine powers are honoured by this, and do not disdain to have Panchaean resins burned for them: what does it matter from what source smoke is produced at the holy altars, or from what kind of gum the cloud of fumigation blazes up?

But will anyone say that incense is given to the gods above for this reason, that it has pleasant fragrances and soothes the sense of the nostrils; while other things are harsh and excluded on account of giving offence? Do the gods then have nostrils through which they draw in airy breath, receive breezes and release them: so that the qualities of different vapours can penetrate them? But if we grant this to be so, we bind them to the law of mortality and shut them out from the borders of divinity. For whatever breathes and draws reciprocal exhalations through passable channels of air must necessarily be mortal, because it is sustained by the nourishment of the sky. But whatever is sustained by the nourishment of the sky—if you take away the returns by which the alternation of vital breath is given and withdrawn—its soul must necessarily be suffocated, and its reason subverted and its life extinguished.

Therefore if the gods also breathe and draw fragrance toward themselves wrapped in accompanying breezes, it is not beside the point to say both that they live by the fumigations of others, and that they can perish if their breathing is cut off. And whence do you finally know whether, if they are captivated by the sweetness of odours, the same things are pleasant to them as to you, and whether they soothe and affect your natures with equal sensation? Is it not possible that what brings you pleasure may on the contrary seem harsh and disagreeable to them? For since the natures of the gods are diverse and their substances not uniform, by what reasoning can it come about that what is different in quality should feel and receive one and the same contact?

Do we not daily observe even among living creatures born on earth, that the same things are bitter to some and sweet to others: that things are deadly to some which are not born to harm others: so that what soothes some with pleasant odours breathes pestilential exhalations upon the bodies of others? But the cause of this happening and occurring lies not in the things themselves, which cannot be at once deadly and wholesome, at once sweet and bitter; but, as each creature is constituted with respect to the contact of an external thing coming upon it, so it is affected: it receives its quality not from the impulses of things but from its own sense and from its nature through contact. But all this reasoning is far removed from the gods, and not separated by the interposition of a small boundary.

For if it is true, as the wise believe, that they are incorporeal and not elevated by any eminence of bodily strength, then odour is empty among them, and no breeze of any vapour can move them perceptibly: not even if you were to kindle a thousand pounds of male frankincense, and this whole sky were closed in by the cloudiness of overflowing vapours. For what has no bodily strength and substance cannot be handled by a bodily substance: but odour is a body, as is shown when it touches the nostrils: therefore it cannot by any reasoning be perceived by a god, who lacks the thing of body and is deprived of all sense and thought.

The companion of frankincense is unmixed wine, which we likewise demand be explained: why it is poured over the burning. For if the reason why it is done is not shown, nor its cause set forth, this is no longer to be charged to laughable error, but—to speak more plainly—to madness, to lunacy, to blindness. For as has already been said very often, everything that is done ought to have its cause clear and not covered by the obscurity of any darkness. If therefore you trust in the act, open it up, show it, why this liquid is given—that is, why wine is poured over altars. Do the bodies of the divine powers feel a dry thirst, and must their dryness be tempered by some moisture? Is it our custom, as with mortals, to mix drinks with meals: and likewise after solid food of cakes and porridges and slaughtered victims, in order that the food may more easily putrefy and be digested, do they drench themselves and take in wine most frequently?

Give the immortal gods something to drink, I pray; bring out cups, flagons, bowls, and ladles: and since they stuff themselves with fat bulls and rich and sumptuous feasts—lest some organ badly swallowed in the passage of the stomach should stick fast—come to the rescue, make haste, give unmixed wine to Jupiter Best and Greatest, lest he be choked: he wishes to belch and cannot: and unless that obstruction slides away and dissolves, there is the greatest danger that his breath, being suffocated, may be cut off, and heaven may remain widowed without its administrators.

But in vain, he says, do you press us: for we do not pour unmixed wine upon the gods above for those reasons, as though we thought them to be either thirsty, or drinking, or rejoicing in the pleasure of its sweetness. It is given to them therefore as an honour, so that their sublimity may be made more exalted, more ample, and more august; we pour libations over the very altars and kindle venerable incense on extinguished coals. And what greater insult can be inflicted upon the gods than if you believe them to be made propitious by the receipt of unmixed wine: or if you think great honour has been paid to them, merely because you have cast and dripped a few drops of a little wine over a glowing ember? Our discourse is not with men devoid of reason, nor with those who do not share the truth of common understanding: wisdom is in you too, sense is in you, and you yourselves know by your own inner judgment that we speak the truth.

But what can we do with those who are utterly unwilling to consider the things themselves and to speak with themselves? For you do what you see being done, not what you are confident ought to be done: doubtless because among you custom, which has no reason, prevails more than the nature of things weighed by the examination of truth. For what has God to do with wine, or what quality or quantity of power is there in its substance, such that when it has been poured out his sublimity should increase and his authority be deemed honoured? What, I say, has God to do with wine—a thing closely akin to Venus, weakening the sinews of all virtues, the enemy of modesty, shame, and chastity? Which has very often hurled minds into frenzies and rages when aroused, and has compelled those very gods themselves to be dishonoured with mad insults.

Is it not then a sacrilege and a crime full of impiety to assign to honour that which, if you take it too greedily, you know not what you do, you know not what you say: and in the end you deserve the reproach and infamy of being a turbulent, dissolute, and abandoned person?

It is worth the trouble to set forth also the very words which custom uses and employs in supplication when wine is given: Be thou honoured by this poured wine. Inferio, says Trebatius, is a word added for this reason and uttered for this purpose: lest all the wine whatsoever stored in cellars and storerooms, from which that which is poured out is drawn, should begin to be sacred and be snatched from human use. Therefore with this word added, only that which is brought forward shall be sacred, and the rest shall not be bound by religious obligation. What kind of honour is this, then, in which a law is as it were imposed upon a god, that he should not seek more than has been given? Or of what greediness is that god, who, unless he is restrained by the prescription of a word, would extend his desire further and deprive his suppliant of his storerooms? Be thou honoured by this poured wine: this is an injury, not an honour.

For what if the divine being should want more of this and not be content with what has been brought? Must it not be said emphatically that he is wronged, who is compelled to receive honour with a condition attached? For if without the addition of the exception it is necessary for all the wine whatsoever in the cellars to become sacred, it is manifest both that an insult is done to the god, for whom a limit is set against his will: and that you yourselves in a sacred matter violate the duties of ceremonies, who do not bestow as much wine as you see the god wishes to have provided for himself. Be thou honoured by this poured wine: what is this other than to say, be thou honoured only as much as I will: be thou magnified only as much as I command: take to thyself only as much honour as I determine thee to have, and define by the circumscription of words.

O all-powerful sublimity of the gods, whom you ought to venerate, whom you ought to worship with all duties and ceremonies: upon whom the worshipper imposes a law, whom he adores with bargains and formulas: who is restrained from immoderate desires for wine by the dread of a single word.

But let it be, as you wish, that there is honour in wine, honour in frankincense, that by the slaughter and killing of victims the wrath and offences of the divine powers are appeased. Are the gods also affected by garlands, crowns, and flowers? Also by the clashing of bronze and the shaking of cymbals? Also by drums? Also by musical ensembles? What effect do the rattlings of foot-clappers produce, so that when the divine powers hear them they think themselves honourably treated and lay aside their burning anger in forgetfulness? Or is it that just as a little child is frightened away from its foolish wailing by the sound of rattles: in the same way the omnipotent divine powers are soothed by the shrilling of flutes, and softened at the rhythm of cymbals their indignation subsides? What is the meaning of those morning reveilles which you sing, joining your voices to the flute? Do the gods above fall asleep, so that they must return to their waking hours?

What of those lullabies, in which you bid them good health with an auspicious salutation? Are they dissolved in the quiet of sleep, and in order that they may be occupied with this, must soothing lullabies be heard? The washing of the Mother of the Gods is today, someone says. Do the divine beings become dirty, and in order to wash away their filth do they need washing waters and the ancient rubbing with ashes? The feast of Jupiter is tomorrow. For Jupiter dines and must be filled with great banquets, having long been eager with hunger and fasting through the interval of a year. The vintage of Aesculapius is being held and celebrated: for the gods tend vineyards and press wine for their own use by hiring in vintagers. The lectisternium of Ceres will be on the next Ides: for the gods have couches and, in order that they may recline upon softer bedding, the stuffing of cushions is lifted up and fluffed.

It is the birthday of Tellus: for the gods come forth from the womb and have joyful days on which it is recorded that they first breathed the vital air.

But the games which you hold, which bear the names of the Floralia and the Megalesia, and all the other various ones which you have wished to be sacred and to be counted among the duties of religious observances—what reason have they, what cause, that they ought to have been instituted and established and designated by the names of divine powers? They honour the gods, he says, and if the gods retain any memories of offences inflicted by men, they cast them aside, exclude them, and render themselves our favourers with renewed goodwill. And what is the reason again that they become calm, placid, and mild: if foolish things are done and idle men play before a watching crowd? Does Jupiter lay aside his feelings if the Amphitryon of Plautus has been performed and declaimed? Or if Europa, if Leda, Ganymede has been danced, or Danae, does he restrain the stirring of his wrath? Does the Great Mother become more tranquil and gentle if she has seen the ancient story of Attis revived by actors?

Will Venus blot out her offence if she has seen a pantomime in dancing movements perform the role of Adonis in costume? Will the indignation of Alcides grow faint if the tragedy of Sophocles called the Trachiniae, or the Hercules of Euripides, is performed? Or does Flora think herself treated honourably if at her own games she has seen shameful things enacted and a migration from brothels into theatres? Is it not then diminishing the dignity of the gods to dedicate and consecrate to them the most disgraceful things, which a censorious mind rejects, and whose performers your own law has judged to be dishonourable and to be reckoned among the infamous?

The gods doubtless delight in mimes, and that surpassing power comprehended by no human natures most willingly lends its ears to hearing those in whose embraces many know themselves to have been mixed in as material for mockery: they delight, as the matter stands, in the shaved heads of Stupidus characters, in the sound and clapping of slaps, in shameful words and deeds, in the blush of enormous phalluses. And indeed if they see men unmanning themselves into feminine softnesses, some crying out in vain, others running about without cause, others beating themselves with loyalty to friendship intact and mutilating themselves with raw boxing-gloves, others competing with breath and puffing out their cheeks with wind and rattling with empty vows—they raise their hands to heaven, leap up moved by admirable things, cry out, and return to favour with men.

If these things bring the immortal gods forgetfulness of their quarrels, if from comedies, Atellan farces, and mimes they draw their most joyful pleasures: why do you delay, why do you hesitate to say that the gods themselves also play, frolic, dance, compose obscene songs, and undulate with writhing haunches? For what difference or distinction is there between their doing these things themselves, and their counting it among their loves and delights that they be done by others?

From what source, then, did it flow, or from what causes did this perversity of opinions arise?

From this above all: that men, being unable to know what God is, what his power is, his nature, his substance, his quality; whether he has a form, or whether he is bounded by no circumscription of body; whether he acts or does not act; whether he is perpetually wakeful, or is at some time dissolved in sleep; whether he runs, sits, walks, or is free from motions of this kind and from movement—all these things, as I said, being unable to know, and unable to perceive by any reasoning, they have fallen into those opinions that they should fashion gods from themselves, and give to them such a nature of actions, things, and wills as their own nature is. But if they perceived that they are animals of no worth, and that there is not much difference between themselves and an ant, they would surely cease to think that they have anything in common with the beings above, and would keep the modesty of their lowliness within their own limits.

But as it is, because they see that they bear faces, eyes, heads, cheeks, ears, noses, and all the other portions of limbs and organs, they also think that the gods are formed in the same manner, and that they contain their own form within a bodily frame; and because they observe themselves rejoicing, being glad, and becoming sorrowful at more grievous causes, they think that the divine powers also rejoice at more cheerful things, and are drawn together by a contraction of spirit at less joyful ones; they think themselves delighted by games, and that the minds of the heavenly ones are soothed by the pleasure of games. And because it is a pleasure for them to refresh themselves with the warmth of baths, they conclude that the cleanliness of washings is pleasing to the beings above. We men hold vintage, and they suppose and believe that the gods lead and carry on their own vintages; we have birthdays, and they imagine that the heavenly powers have birthdays of their own.

And if they could ascribe illnesses, ailments, and bodily diseases to the gods, they would not hesitate to call them spleen-afflicted, blear-eyed, and ruptured, for the reason that they themselves are often spleen-afflicted and blear-eyed, and weighed down by the bulk of enormous hernias.

But if the immortal gods, someone says, are unable to be angry, and their nature is not shaken and disturbed by any emotions of the mind: what do the histories mean, what do the annals mean, in whose records we read that the gods, moved by certain offences, brought pestilences, famines, and scarcities of crops, and other calamities upon cities and nations; and that they, being again appeased by the satisfaction of sacred rites, laid aside the heat of their indignations, and changed the state of the sky and of the seasons to a more favorable condition? What of the rumblings of the earth, what of the earthquakes, which we have received as having occurred because games were conducted through neglect and not attended to in their proper form and condition? Yet when these were restored and repeated with careful observance, the terrors of the gods above subsided, and they were recalled to care and familiarity with men.

How often, at the commands of seers and the responses of haruspices, after a divine rite was performed, and certain gods were summoned from transmarine peoples, and shrines were made for them, and certain images and statues were set up on loftier columns: both the fear of impending dangers was averted, and the most formidable enemies were routed, and the commonwealth was enlarged, and there were frequent joys of victories, and the possession of very many provinces? Which surely would not happen, if the gods despised sacrifices, games, and the other forms of worship, and did not consider themselves honored by the performance of these things. If therefore, when these are given, all the heat and indignation of the divine powers grows cold, and those things which seemed to bring terrors are turned to prosperity, it is manifest that all these things do not happen without the will of the heavenly ones, and that what is bestowed by us is reproved in vain and with complete ignorance.

We have come, then, while speaking, to the very crux of the matter, we have come to the hinge of the affair, we have come to the true and most closely joined question: into which it is fitting that we should look, with the fear of superstition set aside and flattery laid down, whether these are gods whom you assert to be enraged when offended, and to be made mild by sacrifices; or whether they are something far different, and ought to be separated from the force of this name and power.

For we do not deny that all these things which have been brought forward by you in objection are contained in the writings of the annals: for we ourselves, according to our measure and the capacity of our understanding, have both read and know it to be recorded, that at the Circensian games which were held for Jupiter Maximus, a certain paterfamilias, before the proceedings began, had led a slave who had behaved very badly through the middle of the circus area, beaten with rods, and had punished him after the customary manner with the penalty of the cross. Then, after the games were finished and the races completed, not long afterward the city received a pestilence that laid it waste.

And as day added evil heavier than evil, and the people were perishing in crowds: Jupiter said to a certain rustic of obscure and lowly lot, in a dream, that he should go to the consuls and show that the presiding officer had displeased him, and that things could go better for the city if the proper religious observance were restored to the games, and they proceeded again from the beginning with careful attention. When he had taken no care to do this—either because he suspected the dream was vain and would find no credence with those who heard it, or because, mindful of his inborn lowliness, he shrank from and feared the approach of so great a power—Jupiter, hostile to the one who delayed, inflicted the deaths of his sons as punishment.

Then, when he threatened his own destruction as well, unless he proceeded as the messenger of the condemned presiding officer: terrified by the fear of dying, when he himself was already burning with the fire of the pestilence he had contracted, he was carried to the senate of the fathers by the advice of his kinsmen, and the vision of the dream was set forth, and the flames of the contagion flew away; then, with the restoration of the games decreed and careful attention given to the spectacles, the former health was restored to the people.

But neither shall we equally deny knowing that in times of hardship for the city and the commonwealth, whether a destructive plague was afflicting the people with continuous contagion, or powerful enemies, already close to the danger of taking away their liberty through the prosperity of their battles: at the commands and warnings of seers, certain gods were summoned from transmarine peoples, honored with magnificent temples, and both the burning of the plague was stilled, and with the strength of enemies broken, there was very frequent triumph, and the boundaries of empire were enlarged, and innumerable provinces fell under the laws of your dominion. But neither does this escape our knowledge: that it has been read and recorded that when the Capitol was struck by lightning, and many other things happened to it, even the statue of Jupiter which stood on the lofty summit was hurled from its base.

Then a response was given by the haruspices, that savage and most grievous things were portended—from fires, from slaughters, from the destruction of the laws and the ruin of justice, but most of all from domestic enemies and from the impious hand of conspirators. But that these things could be averted, and indeed that the criminal designs could not be made public in any other way, unless Jupiter were again fixed on a loftier summit, turned toward the eastern quarter, and set facing the rays of the sun. That credence was given to the saying: for when the summit was raised and the statue turned toward the sun, hidden things were laid open, and those unmasked in their crimes were punished.

All these things that have been spoken have indeed the appearance of a miracle—or rather, they are believed to have it—if they come to human hearing just as they are presented; and we do not deny that there is in them something which, placed, as they say, in the first aspect, can strike the ears and deceive with the semblance of truth. But if you are willing to look deeply into the things done, the persons, and the wills of the persons, you will find nothing worthy of gods, and—as has already been said many times—nothing that can be referred to the appearance and dignity of this name. For who is there, first of all, who would believe that he was a god who took delight in horses running their courses in vain, and considered it most pleasant to be summoned forth by this kind of sport?

Nay, who is there who would agree that he was that Jupiter, whom you call the chief god and the creator of all things that exist: who would go from heaven to watch horses competing in speed, retracing their seven circuits, and who, though he himself had willed that they should be unlike in the swiftness of their bodies, yet took pleasure in seeing them strive, pass, be passed, plunge headlong and tumbling, be overturned backward with their chariots, some dragged by their legs and limping with broken shanks, and had held these follies mixed with cruelties as his highest pleasures—things which any man, however merry and not trained to the pursuit of full gravity and weight, would consider childish and despise as trifles?

Who is there, I say, who would believe—let us repeat this expression continually—that he was of divine race, who, because a slave was led through the space of the circus while the games were in progress, to receive the penalties and punishments due to his deserts, was inflamed with anger and girded himself for the forces of vengeance? For if the slave was guilty and deserved to be punished with that chastisement: how ought Jupiter to have been moved by any indignation, when nothing was being done unjustly, nay, when a guilty head was being struck with fitting penalties?

But if he was free from crime and liable to no charge, Jupiter himself was the cause of the wicked presiding officer, for whom, when he could have intervened, he did not do so; nay, he himself both sought to have what he disapproved suffered, and to exact from others the penalties of his own permission: and why did he then complain and declare that he had been injured by that presiding officer, because he was led through the middle of the circus to the punishments of the cross, torn with rods and scourges?

And what stain and defilement could flow from this act, such as would make the circus less pure, or Jupiter contaminated, when throughout brief moments, throughout instants, he beheld in the world so many thousands perishing in various kinds of death and diverse torments? He was led, someone says, before the games began to be celebrated. If with sacrilegious heart and contempt of religion, we must pardon Jupiter for being indignant that he was scorned and that less careful attention was given to his own Circensian games: but if through error or chance, the hidden fault was not noticed and recognized, was it not right, and fitting for Jupiter, to pardon human lapses and grant the blindness of imprudence with a venial concession? But the matter had to be avenged. And after this will anyone believe that he was a god, who avenged and pursued with the destruction of the city the neglect of a childish sport?

Or that he had the firmness of any gravity, weight, or constancy, who, in order that the races might be run again for the joys of his pleasure, turned the breath of the air into poisoned destruction, and by the disease of pestilence decreed a slaughter of mortals? If the magistrate who exhibited the games took insufficient care to learn who had been led through the middle of the circus on that day, and guilt was thereby incurred: what had the unhappy people deserved, that they should pay the penalty for another's faults with their own lives, and be cruelly driven from life by pestilential contagions? Nay, what had the female sex deserved, whom the condition of their frailty exempts from public affairs? What had grown maidens done, what had little boys done? What finally had those still small ones done, placed under the nourishment of nurses, that an equal and single savagery should be let loose upon them, and they should taste the bitterness of death before any sweetness of the light?

If Jupiter sought that the games be performed for him more scrupulously and be restored, and faithfully to restore health to the people and not to prolong and increase further the evil he had caused: would it not have been more correct for him to come to the consul himself, to some one of the public priests, to the Pontifex Maximus, or to his own Flamen Dialis, and to indicate to him through a dream both the fault of the presiding officer and the cause of the fatal time? What was the reason for choosing as the messenger of his will and the author of the demanded satisfaction a man accustomed to the country, unknown in obscurity of name, ignorant of urban affairs, perhaps not knowing what a presiding officer is?

Whom, if as a divine being he truly knew he would be a procrastinator in compliance: was it not more straightforward, and fitting for God, to turn the man's mind and subdue his will to obedience, than to take to more savage courses and rage everywhere after the manner of a brigand without any reason? For if the rustic, an old man, unfit for carrying out affairs, was hesitating in the commanded matter, held back by the reasons stated above: what had his unhappy children deserved, that anger and indignation should be turned upon them, and that they should pay for another's offences with the loss of their own light? And is there any man who would believe that he was a god so unjust, so impious, not even observing the ordinances of mortals, among whom it was held a great sin for one to be punished in place of another, and for the faults of some to be avenged upon the necks of others?

But the savagery of the pestilence caused even him himself to be seized by it. Was it not therefore more excellent, nay more equitable, if this seemed to be the thing to be done, that the terror of coercion should begin with the father himself, with whom lay the cause of so great a disturbance and the disobedient delay, rather than to do violence to his children for his grief, and to burn and destroy innocent persons? What was that savagery, what cruelty so great, that, with his offspring destroyed, he should afterward terrify the father with internal dangers? Which if he had wished to do from the beginning, that is, in the first place, neither would the innocent family be destroyed, nor would the offended will of the divine power need to be made known. But when the duty of announcement was completed, the disease immediately vanished, and the man was at once restored to health.

And what wonder does this thing have, if he drove away the evil which he himself had breathed in, and boasted himself with empty ostentation? But if you weigh the matter deeply, that was cruelty rather than a benefit of health; since he preserved the wretched man, who longed to die after his sons, not for the joys of life, but that he might learn his solitude and feel the torments of bereavement.

By the same reasoning it will be possible to go through other histories, and to show that in these also far different things are said about these very gods than gods ought to be, and are indicated in the expositions of those histories: as in this very one which I shall set down next, joined with one or two others, lest disgust be produced by excess. After certain gods, you say, were brought over from peoples beyond the sea, and after temples were founded for them, after altars were heaped with sacrifices, the people, which had been ailing, recovered and grew well, and pestilential diseases fled when purity was restored. What gods, I ask you, tell me? Aesculapius, you say, the god presiding over good health from Epidaurus, and established on the Tiberian island.

If it were our intention to treat these matters more scrupulously, we would prove by your own authorities that he was by no means a god, who had been conceived and born from a woman's womb: who had ascended by the steps of years to that point of age at which the force of a thunderbolt, as is contained in your own writings, drove him out both from life and from light. But we depart from that question: let the son of Coronis be, as you wish, of the number of the immortals, and endowed with perpetual celestial sublimity. Yet what else was brought from Epidaurus but a serpent of great size? If we follow the testimony of the annals, and attribute to them a proven truth, nothing else, as it is written. What then shall we say?

This Aesculapius whom you proclaim, an excellent god, a holy god, giver of health, repeller, preventer, and destroyer of the worst diseases, is bounded and circumscribed by the form and shape of a serpent: creeping along the ground, as is the way of worms born in the mud, he scrapes the soil with his chin and breast, dragging himself in tortuous coils, and that he may be able to move forward at all, draws the hindmost part of himself along by the efforts of the foremost part.

And since he is read to have used also those foods by which life lingers in bodies, he has gaping jaws with which to swallow down foods seized by the openings of his mouth: he has a receptacle of a belly, and inner organs where what has been chewed and swallowed may be digested, so that blood may be supplied to the body and renewal be furnished to its strength: he has also the outermost passages through which the unclean dregs may pass, unburdening the body of its loathsome filth. Whenever he changes places, and prepares to pass from one region into another: he does not fly obscurely through the stars of heaven as a god, and halt in a moment of time wherever the occasion demands: but like a brute animal he seeks a vehicle to carry him: he avoids the waves of the sea; and that he may be kept safe and unharmed, he boards a ship along with men, and that god of public health entrusts himself to fragile wood and the joints of planks.

We do not think you can prove and establish that that Aesculapius was the serpent: unless you should wish to introduce this explanation, that the god transformed himself into a snake, so that he might conceal who he was, or what sort of men were looking upon him. But if this is said by you, how infinitely and feebly it is said, the very inequality of the facts will show. For if the god was avoiding being seen by men, he ought not to have wished to be seen even in the form of a serpent: since in whatever form he appeared, he would be not another instead of himself, but himself. But if he had intended to allow himself to be perceived, he ought not to have denied himself to the sight of eyes: why did he not present himself to be seen such as he knew himself to be, and such as he knew himself to be contained in the power of his divinity?

For this would have been more fitting, and far more excellent, and befitting his august dignity, than to become a beast, and to be turned into the likeness of a terrifying animal, and to give occasion for ambiguous contradictions: whether he was the true God, or something else, and far removed from the sublimity above.

But if he was not a god, someone says, why, after he had brought himself out of the ship, did he creep to the Tiberian island: why did he nowhere immediately appear, and why did he cease to be seen as before? For can we know whether there was some obstacle by the interposition and opposition of which he shielded himself, or some chasm? Do you declare, do you say, what that thing was or to what class of things it ought to be assigned, if the functions of persons are fixed and certain in your system. Since the matter is thus, and it is your own divinity and your own religion that is under discussion, it is rather for you to explain and for you to show what that thing was, than to wish to hear our opinions and to await our judgments. For what else can we say, except what it was and what was seen: what all the histories have handed down, and what was grasped by the senses of eyes?

This serpent, then, of very powerful body and immense length; or, if that name is too base, we call it a snake, we name it a serpent; or by whatever other name usage may offer us, or amplification of speech may fashion. For if it crept as a serpent, not carrying itself on feet, nor unfolding its own movements, but resting on belly and breast: if formed from the substance of flesh it was stretched out into slippery length, if it had a head and a tail, if a back covered with scales, if varied with the suffusions of spots, if a mouth bristling with teeth and fitted for inflicting bites: what else can we do but say it was of the earthly kind; although it may have been monstrous and excessive, although it may have surpassed in length of body and strength that one slain by force by the army of Regulus? But we think otherwise, and we undermine and destroy the truth.

Therefore it is for you to explain what that creature was, or of what kind, name, and quality. For how could it be a god, when it had those things which we have mentioned, which gods ought not to have, if gods think themselves to be gods and to possess the eminence of that name? After it crept to the Tiberian island it nowhere appeared immediately: from which fact is it shown to have been a divine power? For can we know whether there was there some obstacle of some thing, by the interposition and opposition of which it shielded itself, or some chasm, or from masses of stone unevenly piled up some recess and arches, into which it quickly withdrew, with the view of those watching cut off? For what if it leaped across the river? What if it swam across? What if it gave itself to the denseness of the woods?

The argument is feeble, to suspect that it was a god because it withdrew itself from eyes with all possible haste: since by the same argument it can again be shown that it was not a god.

But if that serpent was not the god present, why after its arrival was the force of the pestilence broken, and health restored to the Roman people? We in turn reply: if from the books of fate and the responses of seers Aesculapius the god was commanded to be invited to the city, so that he might keep it safe and unharmed from the contagion of plague and pestilential diseases, and he came not disdaining, as you say, transformed into the form of serpents: why was the Roman state so many times afflicted with the disasters of this evil? So many times at various periods torn apart, harassed, and diminished by countless slaughters of citizens by thousands? For since the god is said to have been summoned for this purpose, that he might altogether avert all the causes by which pestilence was kindled: it followed that the city ought to have been untouched, and always kept immune and harmless from the noxious breath.

Yet we see, as was said above, that very often by these diseases it had a course of life made deadly: and that the strength of the people was broken and weakened by no slight losses. Where then was Aesculapius, where was that venerable one promised by oracles? Why, after temples were founded and shrines built for him, did he suffer well-deserving cities to endure the plague for so long, when he had been summoned for the purpose of both remedying present evils and not allowing any such thing to creep in hereafter that might be feared?

Unless perhaps someone will say that in the lesser and subsequent ages the protection of such a god was lacking for this reason, that life was then lived with impious and reprehensible morals: but that he had brought aid to the ancients because they were innocent and removed from all contagion of crimes; which could perhaps have been heard with some reason and said, if either in ancient times all were good to the last man, or the following times produced all men evil and distinguished by no diversity. But since the matter is such that in great peoples, nations, and indeed in all cities, the human race is mixed in natures, wills, and morals, and good and evil alike could have existed in earlier ages just as in later ones: it is quite foolish to say that posterity did not deserve the aid of the gods on account of wickedness.

For if on account of the wicked of later ages the good of the new times were not protected, then equally on account of the ancient wicked the good ought not to have deserved the benevolence of the gods any more than the ancients. But if on account of the ancient good the ancient wicked were also preserved: then on account of the good of later times the following age ought to have been protected, even if it was reprehensible. Either therefore that serpent, brought over when the force of the disease was already broken and rendered harmless, assumed the reputation of a Preserver, when it had brought no benefit whatsoever: or the books of fate must be said to have strayed far from true predictions, since the remedy given by them is found to have been of benefit not to all subsequent ages, but to one age alone.

But also the Great Mother, someone says, summoned from Phrygian Pessinus, likewise by the commands of seers, was salutary to the people and the cause of great joys. For both a long-powerful enemy was thrust away from possession of Italy, and by glorious and illustrious victories the ancient glory of the city was restored, and the boundaries of the empire were extended far and wide, and from innumerable nations, cities, and peoples the right of liberty was seized and the yoke of servitude imposed; and many other things accomplished at home and abroad founded with irresistible firmness the name and majesty of the nation.

If the histories speak truly, and insert no falsehoods into their records of events, nothing else is written as having been brought from Phrygia, sent by king Attalus, but a certain stone not large, which could be carried in a man's hand without any strain: of a dark and black color, uneven with prominent angles: and which we all see today placed in that very image in the position of the mouth, unworked and rough, and presenting to the face of the statue a likeness less clearly expressed in its representation.

What then shall we say? That famous Hannibal the Carthaginian, a powerful and mighty enemy, under whom the Roman cause trembled in uncertainty and doubt, and its greatness was in trepidation—did a stone drive him from Italy, did a stone break him, did a stone make him a fugitive and timid and unlike himself? And as for the fact that it again leapt to the height of empire and royal supremacy, was nothing accomplished by counsels, nothing by the strength of men: and toward the recovery of ancient sublimity was nothing contributed by so many great commanders through military science or experience of affairs? Did a stone give strength to some, weakness of body to others: did it hurl these down from prosperity, and raise up the fortunes of others laid low by despair? And who among men would believe that a stone taken from the earth, stirred by no sense, of a sooty and black color of body, was the mother goddess?

Or who again would accept—for this alone remains—that the presence of some divine power dwelt in fragments of flint in the manner of a subject, and was hidden away in its veins? And whence was the victory gained, if no divine power was in the Pessinuntian stone? We can say by the diligence and valor of those fighting, by practice, time, counsel, reason, by fate also we can, and by the reciprocal variety of fortune. But if the matter was made better by the aid of the stone, and a fortunate victory was recovered, where was that Phrygian mother at that time when, with so many great armies slaughtered, the supreme cause was brought low, and came to the danger of utter ruin? Why did she not boldly present herself against the threatening force? Why did she not first break and repel such great onslaughts of war, before the monstrous blows fell by which all blood would be poured out, and life itself would nearly collapse with its vital forces exhausted?

For she had not yet been brought over, nor had she been asked to bestow her favor. But a good helper never demands to be asked, always coming to aid with spontaneous assistance. She could not drive away and put to flight the enemy, still separated by much sea and habitable land. But to a god, if he is a god, nothing is far, to whom the earth is a point and all things are set under his nod.

But let the divine power have been present, as you demand to be believed, in that very stone: is there any mortal, however credulous he may be, and however readily he lends his ears to any fictions whatsoever, who would judge her to have been a goddess at that time, or to deserve to be called and named one today?—she who at one time seeks these things, at another demands those, abandons and disdains her own worshippers: migrates from humbler provinces, and attaches herself to more powerful and wealthier peoples. Indeed she loves warlike affairs, and desires to be present amid battles, slaughters, deaths, and bloodshed.

If it is proper to gods—if indeed there are true ones, and such as it befits to be named by the force of that word and the power of divinity—to do nothing maliciously, nothing unjustly, and to present themselves to all men with one and equal favor without any partiality: let no man believe her to have been of divine race, or to have possessed the equity worthy of gods, who, inserting herself into human discords, broke the power of some, presented and showed herself as a patron to others, took liberty from these, raised others to the height of dominion: who, that one city might be preeminent, born for the destruction of the human race, subjugated an innocent world.

Come now, since the discourse has been brought forth and led to this point, let us briefly compare the opposing positions of each side, to determine whether you hold better opinions concerning the gods, or whether we rather think of them more honorably and more rightly, and in a way that preserves and attributes to divine matters their proper dignity. And first: you profess that the gods, whom you either suppose or believe to exist in the nature of things, and whose images and forms you have set up in all temples, were born, and begotten according to the law of unions from the seed of males and females.

But we, on the contrary, if indeed there are certain gods possessing the authority, power, and dignity of this name, either judge them to be unbegotten—for this is the pious thing to believe—or, if they have a beginning of birth, hold that it belongs to the supreme god alone to know by what means he made them, or how many ages have passed since he granted them the beginning of the perpetuity of his divine power. You consider that gods have sexes, and that some of them are male and others of the female kind: we deny that heavenly powers are distinguished by such senses; for this kind of distinction was given to earthly living beings, which the author of things willed to come together and to generate, so that offspring might be produced through desire.

You think that they bear the likeness of men and are formed with the faces of mortals: we reckon that their forms are far removed from these, since form belongs to the mortal body; and if by chance there is any form at all, we swear with undoubting assertion that no one can comprehend it. By you they are said each to possess the crafts after the manner of artisans: we laugh when we hear this; for we judge and consider that arts are not necessary to gods, and it is established and clear that arts were devised as a remedy for poverty.

You say that some of these gods preside over discord, others inflict pestilences, others govern loves and frenzies, and others preside over wars and rejoice in the shedding of blood: but we, on the contrary, judge that such things are foreign to the natures of divine powers; or if there are beings who bring these evils upon and subject them to wretched mortals, we contend that they are far removed from the nature of gods, and are not to be placed under the designation of this name. You judge that divine powers are subject to anger and agitation, and are enslaved and liable to the other passions of the soul; we consider that such movements are alien to them: for they belong to fierce kinds of beings, and to those performing the functions of mortality.

You think that the gods rejoice and delight in the blood of cattle, in the slaughter and killing of victims, and return to favor with men once their offenses are appeased: we hold that there is no love of blood in the heavenly ones, and that they are not so harsh as to cast aside their anger once sated by the slaughter of wretched living creatures. You think that honor is added to the gods by wine and by incense, and that their dignities are thereby increased: we judge it a monstrosity and a prodigy that any man believes either that a god becomes more august from smoke, or that he considers himself to have been supplicated by men with sufficient holiness and honor through a few drops of wine.

You are persuaded that gods are both delighted and afflicted by the clashing of bronze and the sounds of flutes, by horse-races and theatrical games, and that angers once conceived are sometimes softened by such satisfaction: we consider this incongruous, nay we judge it incredible, that those who have passed through every kind of virtue by steps to the summit of perfection should hold as pleasures and delights those things which a wise man would laugh at, and which seem to contain some charm only for small children and those trained in a trivial and common manner.

Since these things are so, and since there is such great diversity between our opinions and yours, where are we impious, or where are you pious: when the reckoning of piety and impiety ought to be weighed according to the convictions of each side? For neither he who fashions some image for himself to venerate in place of a god, nor he who slaughters an innocent animal and burns it on the sacred altars, is to be considered as devoted to divine matters. Opinion makes religion, and a right mind concerning the gods; so that you think they seek nothing contrary to the dignity of their assumed sublimity. For since we see everything that is given to them consumed here before our very eyes, what else can we say reaches them from us, except opinions worthy of gods and most fitting to their name? These are the most certain gifts, these are the true sacrifices: for little porridges, incense together with flesh, are the food of ravening fires, and are most closely akin to the funeral offerings of the dead.