The City of God: Book 7

Those with sharper and more capable minds, for whom the earlier books were more than enough to accomplish their purpose, should bear with me patiently and generously as I work with unusual care to uproot and destroy the corrupt and ancient opinions that stand against true piety. Long centuries of human error have driven these opinions deep into unenlightened minds, and tearing them out requires sustained effort. In this work, I also cooperate, in my small way, with the grace of the one true God, who alone has the power to accomplish it and on whose help I depend throughout. For the sake of others who still need this work, those who no longer need it themselves should not consider it wasted. The stakes could not be higher: the true and genuinely holy God is being commended to humanity as the one they should seek and worship, not for the sake of this fleeting mortal life, but for the sake of eternal life, which is the only life that is truly blessed. And yet, even for this fragile life we are living now, He also provides the help we need.

If anyone remains unconvinced after reading the sixth book, which I have just completed, that true divinity (or deity, since our authors don't hesitate to use that word to translate more accurately what the Greeks call *θεότης*) cannot be found in what they call civil theology, as Marcus Varro laid out across sixteen books, then perhaps this present book will settle the question entirely. In other words, if someone still believes that eternal happiness can be achieved through the worship of gods that states have officially established and prescribed for public veneration, I hope what follows will remove any remaining doubt. It's quite possible, after all, that some readers might think the select and chief gods, whom Varro gathered together in his final book and whom we haven't yet addressed in sufficient detail, deserve to be worshipped precisely because they can offer the blessed life, which is nothing other than eternal life. On this point, I won't repeat what Tertullian said, perhaps more cleverly than accurately: "If gods are selected like onions, then certainly the rest are thrown out as bad ones." I won't say that, because I can see that even within a select group, some are chosen for a greater and more distinguished role. In warfare, for instance, once recruits have been chosen, a further selection is made from among them for more demanding military duties. In the church, when people are chosen as overseers, the rest are not thereby rejected, since all faithful Christians are rightly called the elect. When a building goes up, corner stones are chosen, but the other stones destined for different parts of the structure are not discarded. Grapes are chosen for eating, while those left for making wine are not considered inferior. There's no need to pile up more examples, since the point is clear enough. The fact that certain gods are singled out from among many is therefore no good reason to dismiss the writer who addressed this subject, or the worshippers of those gods, or the gods themselves. What we should actually be asking is who these gods are, and for what purpose they appear to have been set apart.

The gods Varro designates as select, devoting an entire book to the subject, are the following: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sol, Orcus, father Liber, Tellus, Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus, and Vesta. Of these twenty gods, twelve are male and eight are female. But why are they called select? Is it because they govern higher and more significant domains in the world, or simply because they became more widely known to the people and received more worship? If it is because of the greater works they perform in the world, then we should not find them mixed in with that essentially plebeian crowd of minor deities assigned to trivial and insignificant tasks. Consider what happens at the very moment of conception, the starting point from which all the functions distributed in fine detail among so many deities begin. Janus himself opens the way for the reception of the seed. Saturn is present on account of the seed itself. Liber is there to free the male through the emission of seed. And Libera, whom they also identify with Venus, grants the same benefit to the woman, freeing her likewise through the emission of seed. All of these belong to the ranks of the so-called select gods. Yet there is also the goddess Mena, who presides over menstruation; though she is a daughter of Jupiter, she remains obscure and undistinguished. Varro, in his book on the select gods, assigns this same domain of menstruation to Juno herself, who holds the rank of queen among the select gods; and here, as Juno Lucina, she presides over this function alongside Mena, her stepdaughter. Then there are two thoroughly obscure gods, Vitumnus and Sentinus, one of whom gives life to the fetus and the other sensation. And in truth, lowly as they are, what they bestow far surpasses anything those noble and select gods contribute. For without life and sensation, what is the fetus a woman carries in her womb but something utterly worthless and vile, no better than slime and dust?

What, then, drove so many of the select gods to occupy such minor roles, when they are clearly outranked by the obscure and barely-known Vitumnus and Sentinus in the most important gifts of all: life and sensation? Consider the division of labor. The select Janus provides an entrance, a kind of doorway for the seed. The select Saturn provides the seed itself. The select Liber grants men the release of that seed, while Libera (identified with either Ceres or Venus) performs the same function for women. The select Juno, together with Mena, daughter of Jupiter, governs menstruation for the growth of what has been conceived. And then, quietly, the obscure and undistinguished Vitumnus grants life, while the equally obscure Sentinus grants sensation. These last two gifts are as far superior to the others as reason and intellect surpass mere life and feeling. Just as beings capable of reason and understanding are preferable to those that merely live and feel without intelligence (as animals do), so too are beings endowed with life and sensation rightly preferred over things that neither live nor feel. Vitumnus the life-giver and Sentinus the sense-giver should therefore have ranked among the select gods, rather than Janus the admitter of seed, Saturn the sower of seed, and Liber and Libera the liberators of seed. Seed, after all, is worth nothing unless it reaches life and sensation. Yet these superior gifts are not given by superior gods; they are given by unknown, and given their importance, thoroughly neglected ones.

If someone replies that Janus governs all beginnings, and so it makes sense to assign him the opening of the way for conception; that Saturn governs all seeds, so the sowing of the seed that generates a human being naturally falls within his domain; that Liber and Libera govern the release of all seeds, so they naturally preside over those relevant to human reproduction; that Juno presides over all purifications and births, so she also oversees women's purifications and human births: if someone offers this defense, let them then answer the question about Vitumnus and Sentinus. Are they willing to grant that these two likewise have dominion over everything that lives and feels? If they are, they should notice how elevated a position they are about to assign these gods. For sprouting from seeds is an earthly process, but life and sensation are considered properties even of the celestial gods. If, on the other hand, they say that only those things which come to life in flesh and are sustained by the senses fall under Sentinus's care, then why doesn't the God who made all things live and feel simply extend that gift to flesh as well, granting life and sensation to the unborn as part of His universal work? In that case, what purpose do Vitumnus and Sentinus serve at all? But if these lowest and most fundamental gifts have been delegated by the one who universally governs life and sense to these minor gods as servants, then are the select gods so poorly staffed that they couldn't find servants of their own to handle their tasks? Must they, for all their dignity and supposed worthiness of selection, perform their work alongside such undistinguished figures?

Juno is the select queen of the gods, sister and wife of Jupiter, and yet she serves as Iterduca, the guide of children on their way, performing this task alongside a thoroughly undistinguished pair: the goddesses Abeona and Adeona. The theologians also placed among the minor deities the goddess Mena, who grants children a good mind, without including her among the select gods, as though anything greater could be given to a person than a good mind. Juno, meanwhile, earns her place among the select because she is Iterduca and Domiduca (she who guides one on a journey and brings one safely home again), as if going on a journey and returning home is of any real benefit to someone whose mind is not good. And yet the goddess who bestows that far more valuable gift was not placed by the selectors among the select, though she should in fact have ranked above Minerva herself. In this meticulous division of divine labor, Minerva was assigned the memory of children. But who could seriously doubt that having a good mind is far better than having a great memory? No one with a good mind is wicked, but some very wicked people possess remarkable memories, and are all the worse for it, since they are less able to forget the evil things they contemplate. Minerva sits among the select gods, while the goddess Mena is buried in an undistinguished crowd. What should we say about Virtus? What about Felicitas? I have already discussed both at length in the fourth book. Though the Romans regarded them as goddesses, they did not think to assign them a place among the select gods, and yet they gave that place to Mars, the bringer of death, and Orcus, the receiver of the dead.

Since even the select gods themselves work alongside the others, like a senate working with the people, in all those minor tasks that have been parceled out among many deities, and since we find that far greater and better things are administered by certain gods who were never considered worthy of selection than by those who carry the title of "select," we are left with only one conclusion: they were called select and chief not because they held more exalted offices in the world, but simply because they happened to become better known to the people. Even Varro himself admits that obscurity fell to the lot of some father gods and mother goddesses in the same way it falls to ordinary men. If Felicity perhaps should not have been placed among the select gods, because they reached that distinguished position not through merit but through chance, then at the very least Fortune should have been placed among them, or rather above them. They say, after all, that this goddess distributes her gifts not according to any rational plan, but according to the whims of chance. She should have held the highest place among the select gods, for it is precisely among them that she demonstrates her power most clearly. We can see that they were selected not on account of any outstanding virtue or genuine happiness, but by that arbitrary power of Fortune which the worshippers of these gods believe she exercises. Even the highly eloquent Sallust may have had the gods themselves in mind when he wrote: "In truth, fortune rules in everything; it makes all things famous or obscure according to caprice rather than truth." For they cannot explain why Venus should have been made famous while Virtus was left in obscurity, given that both have been formally recognized as divine and their merits are not even comparable. Furthermore, if Venus deserved her prominent position because she is so widely sought after (since more people pursue Venus than pursue Virtus), then why has Minerva been celebrated while Pecunia has been left in the shadows, given that avarice draws far greater numbers across the whole of humanity than skill ever has? Even among those who are skilled in the arts, you will rarely find anyone who does not practice his craft for the sake of financial gain, and the end for which something is made is always valued more than the thing made in service of that end. If this selection of gods was made by the judgment of the foolish masses, why was the goddess Pecunia not preferred to Minerva, given that so many craftsmen work for money's sake? But if the distinction was made by the few wise, why was Virtus preferred to Venus, when reason so clearly favors the former? In any case, as I have already said, Fortune herself, who according to those who attribute the most power to her makes all things famous or obscure according to caprice rather than truth, has clearly exercised enormous power even over the gods, rendering famous those she chose and leaving obscure those she did not. Fortune herself, therefore, should occupy the place of highest honor among the select gods, since she holds such commanding power even over them. Or must we suppose that the reason she is not among the select is simply this: that even Fortune herself has suffered an adverse fortune? She was, it seems, adverse to herself, for while raising others to prominence, she remained obscure.

Anyone who eagerly pursues fame and renown might congratulate these select gods and call them fortunate, were it not for the fact that their selection has brought them more harm than honor. The lower crowd of gods has actually been protected by their very insignificance and obscurity, shielded from being buried under infamy. We laugh, of course, when we see them parceled out by pure human invention, each assigned a specific function, much like tax collectors who lease small portions of public revenue, or like craftsmen in a silversmith's quarter where a single vessel passes through many hands to reach completion, when one skilled artisan could have finished it alone. The only reason such a division of labor seemed necessary was that it is faster and easier for each worker to master one narrow part of a craft than for all of them to achieve mastery across the whole art, which would take far longer and demand far greater effort. And yet, among all these lesser gods, you would be hard pressed to find even one who has brought disgrace on himself through any crime, while among the select gods, you would be equally hard pressed to find one who has not been branded with some notorious infamy. The select gods have stooped to the humble tasks of the lesser ones, while the lesser ones have never risen to their exalted crimes. As for Janus, nothing particularly shameful comes readily to mind when I think of him. Perhaps he was the kind of figure who lived more innocently than the rest, keeping greater distance from wrongdoing and crime. He graciously received Saturn when that god was a fugitive and in need of shelter; he divided his kingdom with his guest, so that each had a city of his own: one Janiculum, the other Saturnia. But those who make a habit of seeking out every kind of indecency in the worship of the gods have managed to disgrace even him, finding his life less scandalous than the others and compensating for that by saddling him with a grotesquely deformed image, sometimes giving him two faces, sometimes four, as though he were doubled. One wonders whether they intended this: since most of the select gods had forfeited all shame through their shameful crimes, his comparatively greater innocence should be marked by a proportionally greater number of faces.

But let us hear their own physical interpretations, by which they attempt to dress up the ugliness of a most miserable error in the appearance of deeper wisdom. Varro, for his part, praises these interpretations so enthusiastically that he claims the ancients invented the images, symbols, and ornaments of the gods so that those who entered the mysteries, seeing them with their physical eyes, might perceive with the eyes of the mind the soul of the world and its parts, which he considers the true gods. He also suggests that those who fashioned divine images in human form intended to convey a specific meaning: that the mind of mortals, housed in a human body, closely resembles the immortal mind. Just as vessels might be placed in a temple to represent the gods (a wine-vessel in the temple of Liber, for instance, signifying wine by the container standing in for the thing contained), so an image in human form was meant to signify the rational soul, since the human form is, in a sense, the vessel that holds the nature they attribute to God or to the gods. These are the secret teachings into which that most learned man delved, and which he now brings into the light.

But, O most sharp-minded of men, did you lose among those mysteries the very good judgment that led you to conclude, soberly and correctly, that those who first set up images for the people stripped citizens of reverence and filled them with error, and that the ancient Romans honored the gods more purely when they had no images at all? It was precisely that judgment which gave you the confidence to speak so critically of the later Romans. For if those earliest Romans had also worshipped images, you might well have buried those sentiments (true as they were) about the foolishness of image-worship under a silence born of fear, and instead praised these mysterious doctrines, with all their empty and destructive fictions, in even grander and more elaborate terms. Your soul, so learned and so keen (and it is for this that I grieve deeply for you), could never have found its way to its true God through those mysteries. I mean the God by whom it was made, not the God with whom it shares being; the God of whom it is not a part, but a creation; the God who is not the soul of all things, but the maker of every soul, and in whose light alone every soul finds blessedness, provided it is not ungrateful for His grace.

What follows in this book will reveal the true nature of these mysteries and how much weight we should give them. In the meantime, this most learned man openly states his view that the soul of the world and its parts are the true gods. From this, we can see that his natural theology, the branch of theology he holds in the highest regard, has managed to extend itself all the way to the nature of the rational soul. In this book on the select gods, he offers a few preliminary remarks about natural theology, and we will need to examine whether he has succeeded, through physical interpretations, in connecting civil theology to natural theology in that same work. If he has succeeded, then the whole system is essentially natural theology, which raises an obvious question: why go to such lengths to distinguish civil theology from natural theology in the first place? But if the distinction is genuine, then consider this: even the natural theology he finds so compelling is not true, because while it reaches as far as the soul, it never reaches the true God who made the soul. How much more hollow and false, then, is civil theology, which concerns itself primarily with physical and material things? This will become clear from the very interpretations its proponents have worked so diligently to uncover and refine, some of which I must inevitably discuss.

This same Varro, still speaking in anticipatory terms, says he believes God is the soul of the world (which the Greeks call *kosmos*), and that the world itself is God. Just as a wise man, though composed of both body and mind, is called wise on account of his mind, so the world is called God on account of its mind, even though it consists of both mind and body. Here Varro seems, at least in some limited sense, to acknowledge one God. But then, in order to introduce more gods, he adds that the world is divided into two parts, heaven and earth, each of which is further divided into two: heaven into ether and air, and earth into water and land. Of these four, ether is the highest, air the second, water the third, and earth the lowest. All four parts, he says, are filled with souls: those in the ether and air are immortal, while those in the water and on the earth are mortal. From the highest point of the heavens down to the orbit of the moon dwell souls in the form of stars and planets, which are understood to be gods and are, in fact, visible as such. Between the orbit of the moon and the beginning of the region of clouds and winds live aerial souls, perceived by the mind rather than the eyes, and called Heroes, Lares, and Genii. This is the natural theology briefly outlined in these preliminary statements, and it satisfied not only Varro but many other philosophers as well. I will need to examine it more carefully once I have, with God's help, finished what I still have to say about civil theology as it relates to the select gods.

So who exactly is Janus, the god with whom Varro begins his account? He is the world. A brief and unambiguous answer, to be sure. But then why do they say that beginnings belong to him while ends belong to another god entirely, one they call Terminus? They claim that two months were dedicated to these two gods in recognition of beginnings and ends: January to Janus, and February to Terminus, both standing apart from the ten months that run from March to December. This, they say, is why the Terminalia festival falls in February, the same month that hosts the sacred purification rite they call Februum, from which the month itself takes its name. So beginnings belong to the world, which is Janus, but not ends, since another god has been assigned to those? Do they not acknowledge that everything they say begins in this world also comes to an end in this world? What a strange inconsistency it is to grant him only half the power over his domain, when in his very image they give him two faces. Surely a far more elegant interpretation of that two-faced image would be to say that Janus and Terminus are one and the same, with one face looking toward beginnings and the other toward ends. After all, anyone who undertakes a task should keep both in view. A person who, in every act of effort, does not look back to where they started cannot look forward to where they are going. Purposeful intention and retrospective memory must work together. How can anyone know how to finish something if they have forgotten what they set out to do? Now, if they believed that the blessed life begins in this world and reaches its fulfillment beyond it, and for that reason assigned to Janus, that is, to the world, only the power over beginnings, then they should certainly have ranked Terminus above him rather than excluding him from the circle of the select gods. Even as things stand, with beginnings and ends of temporal life divided between these two gods, Terminus deserved the greater honor. The deeper joy, after all, belongs to completion. Beginnings are always shadowed by anxiety until they are brought to their conclusion, a conclusion that anyone who starts something longs for intensely, fixes their mind on, waits for, and desires. No one ever truly rejoices over something they have merely begun; the joy comes only when it is finished.

Now let's consider what the two-faced image is actually supposed to mean. They claim Janus has two faces, one in front and one behind, because our open mouths are thought to resemble the world. The Greeks, apparently, call the palate *οὐρανός* (sky or heaven), and some Latin poets, we're told, have called the heavens *palatum* (the palate). From this open mouth, they argue, there is a way out toward the teeth and a way in toward the gullet. Consider what the world has been reduced to for the sake of a Greek word or a poet's metaphor for the roof of our mouths! This god is to be worshipped, it seems, on account of saliva, which has two open doorways beneath the heaven of the palate: one through which it can be spat out, and another through which it can be swallowed. What could be more absurd than failing to find in the world itself two opposing doorways through which it might receive or expel anything, and then turning instead to the human throat and gullet (which bear no resemblance to the world) to construct an image of the world in Janus, simply because the world is said to resemble the palate, to which Janus bears no likeness whatsoever? When they give him four faces and call him the double Janus, they interpret this as referring to the four quarters of the world, as though the world gazes outward in four directions the way Janus does through his four faces. But here the problem deepens: if Janus is the world, and the world has four quarters, then the two-faced image of Janus is simply false. Or if the two-faced version is valid because the whole world can sometimes be understood by the terms east and west, would anyone then call the world "double" when north and south are also included, the way they call Janus double when he has four faces? They have no way at all of accounting for four doorways of entry and exit in relation to the world, as they managed (however awkwardly) with the two-faced Janus, where they could at least point to something in the human mouth that seemed to fit their argument. Unless, perhaps, Neptune comes to their rescue and hands them a fish, which, beyond its mouth and gullet, also has gill openings on either side. Even so, with all those doors accounted for, no soul escapes this emptiness except the one that hears the truth speaking: "I am the door."

They also explain what they mean by Jove, who is also called Jupiter. He is the god, they say, who governs the causes by which anything comes into being in the world. How significant this is can be seen in that famous line from Virgil: "Happy is he who has learned the causes of things."

But why, then, is Janus ranked above him? Let that most sharp and learned man answer the question. "Because," he says, "Janus holds dominion over first things, while Jupiter holds dominion over highest things. Jupiter is therefore rightly regarded as king of all things, since what is highest is better than what is merely first. Though first things come before in time, highest things surpass them in dignity."

This point would have been valid if the author had properly distinguished between the *beginning* of an action and its *completion*. Setting out is the beginning of a journey; arriving is its fulfillment. Starting to learn is the first step; gaining knowledge is the goal. In every case, beginnings come first and endings stand highest. This question has already been addressed in the discussion of Janus and Terminus. But the causes attributed to Jupiter are efficient causes, not effects; and it is impossible for them to be preceded in time by things that are made or done, or by the mere beginnings of such things, since whatever causes something must always exist prior to what it produces. Therefore, even though the beginnings of things made or done belong to Janus, they are still not prior to the efficient causes attributed to Jupiter. Since nothing happens without an efficient cause preceding it, nothing can even begin to happen without one. Truly, if the Romans call Jupiter the god who holds in his power all the causes of every created nature and every natural thing, and yet worship him with such insults and shameful accusations, they commit a more appalling act of sacrilege than if they had simply denied the existence of any god altogether. It would be far better for them to assign the name Jupiter to some other deity, one actually worthy of base and criminal honors, and to substitute some empty fiction in Jupiter's place (just as Saturn was supposedly given a stone to swallow instead of his son) as the target of their blasphemies. That would be preferable to portraying the same god as both the lord of thunder and an adulterer: ruler of the entire world and yet devoted to every kind of licentiousness, holding in his power the whole of nature and the highest causes of all natural things, while his own moral character is anything but good.

So I must ask: where exactly do they find a place for Jupiter among the gods, if Janus is the world? Varro defined the true gods as the soul of the world and its parts. By that definition, anything that falls outside this category simply cannot be a true god, at least by their own standards. Will they then say that Jupiter is the soul of the world and Janus the body, meaning this visible world we inhabit? If they take that position, they can no longer consistently claim that Janus is a god at all. According to their own framework, the body of the world is not a god; only the soul of the world and its parts qualify. Varro, recognizing this problem, says he believes God is the soul of the world, and that the world itself is God. But just as a wise man, though composed of both soul and body, is nonetheless called wise because of his soul, so the world is called God because of its soul, even though it consists of both soul and body together. The body of the world alone, therefore, is not God. It is either the soul alone, or the soul and body together, yet even in that case it is God not by virtue of the body but by virtue of the soul. If Janus is the world, then, and Janus is a god, will they argue that Jupiter is merely some part of Janus, in order to preserve his status as a god? That seems unlikely, since they typically attribute universal existence to Jupiter, hence the familiar saying, "All things are full of Jupiter." They must therefore conclude that Jupiter, too, in order to be a god and especially the king of the gods, is the world itself, so that he rules over the other gods who are, by their own account, his parts. To this end, Varro interprets certain verses of Valerius Soranus in the book he wrote separately from the others on the subject of divine worship. The verses read:

"Almighty Jove, progenitor of kings, and things, and gods,

And also the mother of the gods, god one and all."

Since Janus is the world and Jupiter is the world, why are Janus and Jupiter two gods when there is only one world? Why do they have separate temples, separate altars, different rites, and different images? Perhaps the argument is that the nature of beginnings is one thing and the nature of causes is another, and that the first received the name Janus while the second received the name Jupiter. But consider this: if one person holds two distinct offices, or practices two different arts, do we therefore speak of two judges or two craftsmen simply because the offices or arts are different in nature? The same logic applies to a single god. If he holds power over both beginnings and causes, must we conclude he is actually two gods simply because beginnings and causes are two distinct things? If they insist this is correct, then they should also argue that Jupiter is as many gods as the surnames they have given him, since those surnames were assigned on account of his many powers, and the things those names refer to are many and varied. I will mention a few of them.

They gave him names like Victor, Invictus, Opitulus, Impulsor, Stator, Centumpeda, Supinalis, Tigillus, Almus, and Ruminus, among many others too numerous to list. These were all surnames applied to a single god, each reflecting a different attribute or function, yet none of this multiplicity of roles required him to become multiple gods. He was called these names because he conquered all things, because nothing could conquer him, because he aided those in need, because he had the power to drive things forward, to halt them, to establish them, and to cast them down. He was called Tigillus because, like a great beam, he held the world together and sustained it. He was called Almus because he nourished all things, and Ruminus because, like a nursing breast, he fed the animals. Here we find both grand and trivial functions attributed to the same single deity. Now, I would argue that the causes and origins of things, on account of which some have concluded that the one world requires two gods, Jupiter and Janus, are far more closely related to each other than the holding together of the entire world is to the nursing of animals. And yet, despite those two functions being so vastly different in both nature and dignity, no one felt compelled to invent two gods to account for them. Instead, one Jupiter was called Tigillus for the one and Ruminus for the other. I will not press the point that the nursing of suckling animals might more naturally have been assigned to Juno rather than Jupiter, especially given that the goddess Rumina already existed to assist with precisely that work. The likely reply, I suppose, is that Juno herself is nothing other than Jupiter, as those verses of Valerius Soranus suggest:

"Almighty Jove, progenitor of kings, and things, and gods,

And also the mother of the gods,"

and so on. Why, then, was he called Ruminus, when anyone who looks into the matter carefully enough may well discover that he is also that very goddess Rumina?

If it was considered beneath the dignity of the gods that one deity should oversee the joint of a single ear of corn while another handled the husk, how much more undignified is it that one lowly function, namely the giving of milk to nursing animals, should be shared between two gods, one of whom is Jupiter himself, the very king of all things? And he performs this duty not alongside his own wife, but with some obscure goddess named Rumina (unless perhaps he himself is Rumina, taking the masculine form Ruminus for males and the feminine Rumina for females). I would certainly have concluded that they were simply unwilling to give Jupiter a feminine name, had he not been addressed in certain verses as both "progenitor and mother," and had I not also found among his various titles the name Pecunia (money), which we encountered earlier as a goddess among those minor deities, as I mentioned in the fourth book. But since both men and women handle money (*pecuniam*), why has he not been called both Pecunius and Pecunia? That, however, is their problem to sort out.

How cleverly they have explained this name! "He is also called Pecunia," they say, "because all things belong to him." What a magnificent explanation for the name of a deity! Yes, the one to whom all things belong is given the petty and contemptible name of Money. Compared to everything contained within heaven and earth, what are all the possessions that men hold under the name of money? And this name, of all names, avarice has assigned to Jupiter, so that whoever loved money might imagine himself devoted not to some minor god, but to the very king of all things. It would have been a far different matter if he had been called Riches, because riches and money are not the same thing. We call the wise, the just, and the good rich, even when they have little or no money at all, because they are more truly wealthy in possessing virtue. Through virtue, even in matters of bodily necessity, they are content with what they have. The greedy, on the other hand, we rightly call poor, because they are always craving and always lacking. They may accumulate money in staggering quantities, yet no matter how great the pile, they cannot escape their own want. And we rightly call God Himself rich, not in money, but in omnipotence. So those who have an abundance of money are called rich, yet remain inwardly destitute if they are greedy. Likewise, those who have no money are called poor, yet remain inwardly wealthy if they are wise.

What, then, should the wise person make of this theology, in which the king of the gods receives the name of something "which no wise man has ever desired"? If this philosophy had anything genuinely wholesome to teach about eternal life, how much more fitting it would have been to call the ruler of the world not Money, but Wisdom, since the love of wisdom cleanses the soul of the filth of avarice, which is nothing other than the love of money.

But why say more about Jupiter, when perhaps all the other gods are simply aspects of him? If that's the case, then he is everything, and the belief in many gods becomes nothing more than an empty opinion with no real truth behind it. All the other gods can be traced back to him, whether we think of his various attributes and powers as separate deities, or whether the principle of mind that they believe flows through all things has simply been given many divine names based on the different parts of the visible world and the countless workings of nature. Consider Saturn: what is he? "One of the principal gods," we are told, "who rules over all sowings." But doesn't the exposition of the verses of Valerius Soranus teach that Jupiter is the world itself, that he sends forth all seeds from himself and receives them back into himself?

If that's true, then Jupiter is the one who truly holds dominion over all sowings. And what about Genius? "He is the god appointed over all things, with the power to bring them into being." Who else but the world could they believe to hold such power, the world to which the poets have said: "Almighty Jove, progenitor and mother?"

Then, when this same writer says elsewhere that Genius is the rational soul of each individual person, existing separately in each one, but that the corresponding soul of the entire world is God, he simply circles back to the same conclusion: the soul of the world itself must be understood as a kind of universal Genius. And this, he argues, is what Jupiter truly is. For if every Genius is a god, and the soul of every person is that person's Genius, it follows logically that every human soul is a god. But even these theologians are forced by the sheer absurdity of that conclusion to recoil from it. What remains, then, is that they apply the name "god" to that Genius alone who stands above all others by special and supreme distinction, the one they call the soul of the world, and therefore identify as Jupiter.

But they never managed to connect Mercury and Mars to any part of the natural world or to God's works in the elements, so they assigned them at least to human affairs: Mercury over speech, Mars over the conduct of war. Now, if Mercury also governs the speech of the gods, then he rules over Jupiter himself, since Jupiter would speak only as Mercury permits him to. That is plainly absurd. But if Mercury is thought to govern only human speech, then consider this: it is hard to believe that Jupiter would stoop to nurse not only children but even animals at the breast (which is why he was given the surname Ruminus), and yet refuse to concern himself with speech, the very faculty that sets us above the animals. And so speech would belong to Jupiter while also being Mercury. But if speech itself is Mercury, as the various interpretations of his name suggest, then by their own admission he is not a god at all. They say he was called Mercury, meaning "the one who runs between," because speech passes between people. They also say the Greeks called him *Hermes* (*Ἑρμη̂ς*) because the Greek word for speech or interpretation (*ἑρμηνεία*) is related to his name. He is said to preside over commerce because speech passes between buyers and sellers. The wings on his head and feet signify that speech flies through the air. He is called the messenger because all our thoughts are expressed through speech. If speech itself is Mercury, then by their own account he is no god. And when they fashion gods out of things that are not even demons, and then pray to unclean spirits, they find themselves possessed not by gods but by demons. In the same way, because they could find no element or region of the natural world for Mars to govern, they made him the god of war, which is a human activity, and not one anyone would consider desirable. If Felicitas were to grant perpetual peace, Mars would have nothing to do. But if war itself is Mars, just as speech is Mercury, I wish it were as true that there were no war to be falsely called a god as it is true that war is no god at all.

Perhaps the gods in question simply are these stars, since the pagans named certain stars after them. They call one star Mercury, another Mars. Among the stars bearing divine names is one they call Jupiter, and yet Jupiter, in their system, is also the entire world. There is also the star they call Saturn, and yet they assign Saturn a considerable domain of his own, namely, dominion over all seeds. Then there is the brightest of all the stars, which they call Venus, and yet they also insist that Venus is the moon. This is to say nothing of how Venus and Juno are said to have quarreled over that most brilliant star as though it were another golden apple. Some assign the star Lucifer to Venus, others to Juno, but as usual, Venus wins. The vast majority give that star to Venus, so decisively that you can barely find anyone who thinks otherwise. Yet since they call Jupiter the king of all the gods, who could keep a straight face upon learning that his star is so dramatically outshone by the star of Venus? Surely his star should surpass all the others in brilliance by the same measure that he surpasses them in power. Their answer is that it only appears dimmer because it sits higher up, much farther from the earth. If, then, Jupiter's greater dignity earned him a higher position in the sky, why does Saturn sit higher still? Did the fiction that made Jupiter king fail to reach all the way to the stars? And has Saturn been permitted to claim in the heavens at least what he could never hold in his own kingdom, nor even in the Capitol?

But why has Janus received no star? If it's because he is the world itself and all the stars exist within him, then the world also belongs to Jupiter, and yet Jupiter has a star. Did Janus simply make the best of a bad situation, and in place of the one star he lacks among the heavenly bodies, settle for so many faces here on earth? Furthermore, if the pagans believe that Mercury and Mars qualify as parts of the world solely because of their stars, and therefore deserve to be worshipped as gods, consider the problem this creates: speech and war are not parts of the world at all, but human activities. So why have they built no altars, established no rites, and constructed no temples for Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio, and the rest of the signs of the zodiac? These constellations are not single stars but groups of many stars, and they are said to occupy the highest region of the heavens, where a more constant motion keeps the stars on a perfectly regular course. Why have the pagans not counted these among their gods, not even among the common, ordinary gods, let alone the select ones?

Although they wanted Apollo to serve as both a diviner and a physician, they still assigned him a place within the physical world. They identified him with the sun, and likewise identified his sister Diana with the moon, also making her the guardian of roads. She was considered a virgin, they explained, because a road produces nothing. Both siblings were given arrows, since those two celestial bodies send their rays down from the heavens to the earth. Vulcan they identified with the fire of the world; Neptune with its waters; and Father Dis, also known as Orcus, with the earthy, lowest region of the world. Liber and Ceres they placed over seeds: the former over male seeds, the latter over female seeds, or alternatively, one over the fluid part of seed and the other over the dry part. All of this was ultimately referred back to the world itself, that is, to Jupiter, who was called "progenitor and mother," because he was said to have emitted all seeds from himself and received them back into himself. They also identified this same Ceres with the Great Mother, who they claimed was none other than the earth, and whom they likewise called Juno. For this reason they assigned to her the secondary causes of things, even though the title "progenitor and mother of the gods" had already been given to Jupiter, since, in their view, the entire world belongs to him. Minerva, whom they placed over human arts and for whom they could find no star to serve as her home, was said to be either the highest ether or the moon. Vesta herself they considered the greatest of the goddesses because she is the earth, though they assigned to her the gentler fire of the world, the kind used in ordinary human life, rather than the more violent fire that belongs to Vulcan. In this way, they wanted all those select gods to represent the world and its parts: some of them the whole world, others specific parts of it; Jupiter representing the whole, while Genius, Mater Magna, Sol and Luna (or rather Apollo and Diana), and the rest represent its various parts. Sometimes they collapse many things into a single god; at other times they expand one thing into many gods. Jupiter is the clearest example of many things becoming one god: the whole world is Jupiter, the sky alone is Jupiter, and a single star is also said and held to be Jupiter. Juno is mistress of secondary causes, Juno is the air, Juno is the earth, and had she prevailed over Venus, Juno would have been the star as well. Similarly, Minerva is the highest ether, and Minerva is also the moon, which they place at the lowest boundary of the ether. They also work the other way, making one thing into many gods: the world is both Janus and Jupiter, and the earth is at once Juno, Mater Magna, and Ceres.

The same holds true for everything else, not just the examples I've mentioned. These thinkers don't clarify anything; they only deepen the confusion. They dart back and forth, pulled in one direction and then another by the force of unstable opinion. Varro himself ultimately chose to doubt everything rather than commit to any firm position. He wrote the first of his three final books on the gods he considered certain, and then opened the second, on the uncertain gods, with this admission: "I should not be faulted for presenting doubtful opinions about the gods in this book. Anyone who reads them and believes they can be definitively resolved is welcome to resolve them. As for me, I find it easier to question what I wrote in the first book than to bring any kind of order to what I will write in this one." In saying this, he casts doubt not only on the book about the uncertain gods, but on the earlier book about the certain gods as well. Then, in the third book, on the select gods, he first lays out as much natural theology as he thinks necessary, and then, just as he is about to turn to the absurdities and hollow fictions of civil theology (a subject where he had no truth to guide him and was instead weighed down by the pressure of tradition), he writes: "In this book I will discuss the public gods of the Roman people, to whom they have built temples and lavished with honors; but, following the example of Xenophon of Colophon, I will say what I think, not what I am prepared to defend. It belongs to human beings to form opinions about such things; it belongs to God to know them."

It is not, therefore, a confident account of well-established truths that he promised when he set out to write about the institutions of human invention. He offers only a tentative account of things that remain matters of doubtful opinion. Nor, indeed, could he have affirmed with the same certainty that Janus was the world, or similar claims; nor could he have discovered with equal confidence such things as how Jupiter came to be the son of Saturn while Saturn was made subject to him as king. He could neither affirm nor discover such things with the same certainty he had when knowing that the world existed, that the heavens and earth existed, the heavens blazing with stars and the earth made fertile through seeds; nor with the same firm conviction with which he believed that this vast, universal order of nature is governed and administered by some invisible and mighty force.

A far more believable account of these gods emerges when we recognize that they were simply human beings, and that sacred rites and ceremonies were established in honor of each one according to his particular character, habits, deeds, and circumstances. These rites gradually seeped into human souls, which are naturally susceptible to demonic influence and hungry for entertainment, and so spread far and wide. The poets dressed them up with lies, and malicious spirits led people to embrace them. It is far more plausible, after all, that some young man, either wicked himself or desperate to avoid being killed by a wicked father, overthrew his father out of ambition to rule, than that Saturn was toppled by his son Jupiter because (as Varro would have it) cause, which Jupiter represents, precedes seed, which Saturn represents. If that interpretation were correct, Saturn could never have existed before Jupiter, nor could he have been Jupiter's father. Cause always precedes seed and is never itself produced from seed. Yet when scholars attempt to rescue these absurd myths and human exploits through philosophical interpretation, even the sharpest minds tie themselves in such knots that we can only grieve over their confusion.

According to Varro, Saturn was said to devour everything that came from him because seeds return to the earth from which they sprang. And when the story tells us that a lump of earth was placed before Saturn to be devoured in place of Jupiter, Varro explains this as signifying that before the art of plowing was discovered, seeds were buried in the earth by human hands. But if that's the case, then the earth itself, not seeds, should have been called Saturn, since the earth in a sense devours what it has produced when the seeds that sprang from it return back into it. And what does Saturn receiving a lump of earth instead of Jupiter have to do with the idea that seeds were covered in the soil by human hands? Was the seed somehow spared from being devoured, unlike everything else, simply by being covered with soil? Because what they're actually describing would suggest that whoever placed the soil on top took the seed away, just as Jupiter is said to have been taken away when the lump of soil was offered to Saturn in his place. It does not suggest that the soil, by covering the seed, merely caused it to be devoured all the more thoroughly. And so, by this reasoning, Jupiter is the seed itself, not the cause of the seed, as was claimed just a moment before.

But what can men say when they have nothing wise to offer, because the things they're interpreting are foolish to begin with? Saturn carries a pruning knife. That, says Varro, is because of agriculture. Yet there was no agriculture during Saturn's reign, which is precisely why those early days of Saturn are spoken of the way they are: as Varro himself interprets the myths, the first men lived on seeds the earth produced on its own. Perhaps Saturn received his pruning knife after losing his scepter, so that a man who had once been king and lived comfortably in his early years would become a laboring workman while his son sat on the throne. Varro then tells us that boys were traditionally sacrificed to Saturn by certain peoples, the Carthaginians for instance, and that grown men were sacrificed by others, such as the Gauls, on the grounds that of all seeds, the human race is the finest. What more needs to be said about this most cruel absurdity? Let us instead focus on this point and hold it firmly: these interpretations never lead us upward to the true God, a living, incorporeal, and unchanging nature from whom an eternal and blessed life may be obtained. Instead, they terminate in things that are physical, temporary, changeable, and mortal. As for the myth that Saturn castrated his father Cœlus, Varro explains this to mean that the power of seed belongs to Saturn and not to Cœlus, the reasoning being, as far as any reasoning can be found here, that nothing in heaven is born from seed. But consider this: if Saturn is the son of Cœlus, then he is also the son of Jupiter, since the ancients insist repeatedly and emphatically that the heavens are Jupiter. And so the things that don't arise from truth very often collapse under their own weight, without anyone needing to push them. Varro says Saturn was called Kronos (Κρόνος), which in Greek signifies a span of time, because without time, seed cannot bear fruit. These and many other things are said about Saturn, and all of them circle back to the subject of seed. But surely Saturn, with all his great power, should have been sufficient to account for seed on his own. Why must other gods be called in to assist, especially Liber and Libera, that is, Ceres? About them, in relation to seed, Varro says just as much as if he had said nothing about Saturn at all.

Among the rites of Ceres, the Eleusinian rites were the most celebrated, held in the highest regard among the Athenians. Varro interprets them only in terms of grain, which Ceres discovered, and the loss of Proserpine, whom Orcus abducted. Proserpine herself, he says, represents the fertility of seeds. When this fertility disappeared at a certain season and the earth took on a sorrowful appearance due to the resulting barrenness, people came to believe that the daughter of Ceres, that is, fertility itself (called Proserpine from the Latin *proserpere*, meaning to creep forth or spring up), had been carried off by Orcus and held captive among the dead. This belief gave rise to public mourning. Then, when fertility returned, there was rejoicing because Proserpine had been given back by Orcus, and from this cycle these rites were established. Varro adds that the mysteries of Ceres contain many teachings that relate solely to the discovery of crops.

Now, regarding the rites of Liber, whom the Romans appointed as god over liquid seeds, and therefore not only over the juices of fruits (among which wine holds, so to speak, the place of honor) but also over the seeds of animals: I am reluctant to describe in full how far these rites descended into depravity, because doing so would require a lengthy digression. Yet I am not unwilling to expose them as proof of the proud stupidity of those who practiced them. Among the many other rites I am forced to pass over simply because of their sheer number, Varro tells us that in Italy, at crossroads throughout the country, the rites of Liber were celebrated with a degree of shamelessness that is difficult to overstate, to the point that a man's genitals were openly worshipped in his honor. Nor was this obscenity conducted in secret, where at least some concession to decency might have been made; it was displayed openly and without any shame whatsoever. During the festival of Liber, this obscene object, mounted on a cart, was paraded with great ceremony, first through the rural crossroads and then into the city itself. In the town of Lavinium, an entire month was set aside for Liber alone, during which the entire population gave itself over to the most dissolute conversation and behavior, until this object had been carried through the forum and returned to its designated resting place. At that point, the most respected matron of the community was required, in full view of the assembled people, to place a wreath upon it. This, apparently, was how the god Liber was to be appeased for the sake of the harvest. This was how enchantment was to be driven from the fields: by compelling a woman of the highest social standing to perform in public what not even a prostitute should be permitted to do on a stage, especially before an audience that included respectable women. For these reasons, then, Saturn alone was deemed insufficient as a god of seeds. The impure mind was always seeking new pretexts for multiplying its gods, and having been justly abandoned to its own filth by the one true God, it prostituted itself to the worship of countless false ones. Driven by an insatiable appetite for ever greater degradation, it called these sacrilegious practices sacred, and surrendered itself to be violated and defiled by crowds of foul demons.

Neptune's wife was Salacia, who supposedly represented the deep waters of the sea. So why was Venilia also joined to him? Was it anything other than the soul's sheer lust for more demons to give itself over to, rather than any genuine necessity for the perfection of their sacred rites? Let the defenders of this celebrated theology step forward with a satisfying explanation to spare it from this criticism. Venilia, this theology tells us, is the wave that comes to the shore; Salacia is the wave that retreats back into the sea. Why, then, are there two goddesses for what is essentially one wave moving in two directions? This is nothing but mad desire itself, in its hunger for more and more deities, mirroring the waves that crash endlessly on the shore. The water going out is no different from the water coming back, yet the soul that goes out and never returns is defiled by two demons, whom it has seized on this flimsy pretext to welcome in. I put this question to you, Varro, and to all of you who have read the works of such learned men and believe you have gained some great insight. I ask you to explain this, not necessarily in a way consistent with the eternal and unchangeable nature that alone is God, but at least in a way consistent with your own doctrine about the soul of the world and its parts, which you take to be the true gods. It is somewhat more tolerable that you have made Neptune the god of that portion of the world-soul pervading the sea. But is the wave that comes to shore and retreats to the deep really two separate parts of the world, or two distinct parts of the world-soul? Who among you is foolish enough to think so? Why, then, have they given you two goddesses for this? The only explanation seems to be that your wise ancestors arranged things not so that many gods would govern you, but so that many demons, the kind who delight in vanity and falsehood, would take possession of you. And why, under this interpretation, has Salacia lost her claim to the lower depths of the sea, given that she was supposed to be subject to her husband? By identifying her as the receding wave, you have placed her on the surface. Was she furious with her husband for taking Venilia as a concubine, and so drove him out of the upper sea entirely?

The earth we see, teeming with its own living creatures, is a single thing: a vast mass among the elements, and the lowest part of the world at that. Why, then, would anyone insist it is a goddess? Is it because it is fruitful? If so, why aren't human beings considered gods instead, since they are the ones who make the earth fruitful by cultivating it, even as they plow it without worshiping it? The answer given is that the portion of the world-soul that pervades the earth is what makes it divine. But surely it is far more obvious, and entirely beyond dispute, that there is a soul in every human being. And yet human beings are not considered gods. Worse still, and this is genuinely tragic, through a delusion both astonishing and pitiable, they end up subjecting themselves in worship and adoration to things that are not gods at all, things that are, in fact, inferior to the very people bowing before them. Varro himself, in his book on the select gods, identifies three levels of soul in universal nature. The first pervades all the living parts of the body but has no sensation, only the capacity for life: it is the principle that reaches into the bones, nails, and hair. This is the principle by which trees in the world are nourished and grow without any power of sensation, living in their own particular way. The second level of soul is the one that includes sensation, penetrating into the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and the other organs of sense. The third and highest level is what we call the mind, the seat of intelligence. No mortal creature except humanity possesses this level of soul. Now this highest part of the world-soul, Varro tells us, is called God, and within us it is called Genius. The stones and earth we see around us, which have no power of sensation, are, in this framework, like the bones and nails of God. The sun, moon, and stars, which we perceive and through which He perceives, are His sense organs. The ether is His mind, and the power residing in it penetrates into the stars, making them gods as well. Because that same power then penetrates through the stars into the earth, it makes the earth the goddess Tellus; and from there it enters and permeates the sea and ocean, making them the god Neptune.

Let him turn back from what he considers natural theology and return to where he started, civil theology, resting from the exhaustion of so many twists and turns along the way. Let him return, I say. I want to hold him there for a moment, because I have something to say that concerns that theology directly. I am not yet arguing that, just as earth and stones resemble our bones and nails, they are equally without intelligence as they are without sensation. Nor am I yet arguing that if our bones and nails are said to possess intelligence simply because they belong to a person who has intelligence, then whoever claims that the world's analogous elements are gods is just as foolish as someone who claims that our bones and nails are human beings. We may have occasion to take up those arguments with the philosophers later. For now, however, I want to engage with Varro as a political theologian. It's possible that, even though he seemed to reach toward the freedom of natural theology, his awareness that the book he was writing belonged to the category of civil theology pulled him back into that framework. He may have said what he said simply so that his nation's ancestors, and other peoples, would not be thought to have offered Neptune an irrational worship. Here is the point I want to make: since the earth is one, why has the part of the world-soul that permeates the earth not made it a single goddess, the one Varro calls Tellus? But if it had, what would have become of Orcus, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis? And where, in that case, would his wife Proserpine have fit, who, according to another view offered in the same book, represents not the fertility of the earth but its lower region? If they say that the part of the world-soul permeating the upper earth produces the god Father Dis, while the part pervading the lower earth produces the goddess Proserpine, then what exactly is Tellus? Everything she was has been divided between these two figures and these two deities, leaving no clear role or place for her as a third goddess. The only way out would be to say that Orcus and Proserpine together simply are Tellus, and that what appear to be three gods are really one or two. Yet they are still called three, treated as three, and worshipped as three, each with their own altars, shrines, rites, images, and priests, while their own false demons use all of this to corrupt and defile the soul that has given itself over to them. Now let this further question be answered: what region of the earth does the world-soul permeate in order to produce the god Tellumo? Varro's response is that the earth, being one and the same, has a twofold nature: the masculine, which produces seed, and the feminine, which receives and nurtures it. From the feminine principle it is called Tellus, and from the masculine, Tellumo. Why, then, do the priests, as he notes, perform sacred rites to four gods rather than two, adding Altor and Rusor to the list alongside Tellus and Tellumo? We have already addressed Tellus and Tellumo. But why is Altor worshipped? Because, Varro says, everything that springs from the earth is also nourished by the earth. And why Rusor? Because all things eventually return to the place from which they came.

The earth is one, and because of this fourfold virtue attributed to it, it should have received four surnames rather than been divided into four separate gods. Consider Jupiter and Juno: each carries a great many surnames yet remains a single deity. All those names simply point to the many qualities belonging to one god or goddess; the number of names does not imply a number of gods. Yet just as even the most degraded women sometimes grow weary of the crowds they once sought out in the grip of corrupt desire, so too the soul, having grown vile and given itself over to impure spirits, sometimes begins to tire of multiplying the gods to whom it surrenders itself for defilement, just as it once took pleasure in doing so. Varro himself, as though embarrassed by that crowded pantheon, preferred to treat Tellus as a single goddess. "They say," he writes, "that the great mother's tympanum represents the orb of the earth; the towers on her head represent towns; and the seats fixed around her represent the fact that while all things move, she does not. The Galli who serve this goddess represent those who need seed and should therefore follow the earth, since all seeds are found within it. Their prostrating themselves before her teaches that those who cultivate the earth should not sit idle, for there is always work to be done. The clashing of cymbals represents the noise of iron tools being thrown, of human hands at work, and all the other sounds of agricultural labor; these cymbals are made of bronze because the ancients used bronze implements before iron was discovered. A wild lion, unbound and tamed, is placed beside the goddess to show that no land is so wild or so utterly barren that it would be pointless to bring it under cultivation." He then adds that because so many names and surnames were given to mother Tellus, people came to assume they referred to separate gods. "They believe," he says, "that Tellus is Ops, because the earth is improved by labor; Mother, because it produces abundantly; Great, because it produces seed; Proserpine, because fruits creep forth from it; Vesta, because it is clothed with herbs. And so," he concludes, "they identify other goddesses with the earth, and not without reason." If, then, Tellus is one goddess (though, if we consult the truth, she is not even that), why do they still divide her into many? Let there be many names for one goddess, and let the number of goddesses not multiply to match the number of names.

But the authority of the mistaken ancients weighs heavily on Varro, and forces him, after expressing this opinion, to show signs of uneasiness. He immediately adds, "With which things the opinion of the ancients, who thought that there were really many goddesses, does not conflict." How does it not conflict? It is an entirely different thing to say that one goddess has many names, and to say that there are many goddesses. But it is possible, he says, that the same thing may be both one and yet contain within it a plurality of things. Granted: there are many things in one man, but does that mean there are many men in him? In the same way, there may be many things in one goddess, but does that mean there are therefore many goddesses? Let them divide, unite, multiply, reduplicate, and entangle these ideas however they like.

These are the celebrated mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, all of which are shown to relate to mortal seeds and to agriculture. Do these things, then, namely the tympanum, the towers, the Galli, the frenzied tossing of limbs, the clash of cymbals, the images of lions, do these things, with this reference and this purpose, promise eternal life? Do the mutilated Galli serve this Great Mother in order to signify that those who lack seed should follow the earth, as though this very service were not precisely what caused them to lack it? Consider the question plainly: by following this goddess, do they acquire seed in their want of it, or do they lose seed by following her when they once had it? Is this interpretation, or is it a curse? Nor does anyone stop to consider how thoroughly malign demons have gained the upper hand, given that they have been able to exact such cruel rites without having dared to promise anything significant in return. Had the earth not been worshipped as a goddess, men would have worked it with their hands in order to obtain seed from it, and would not have turned violent hands on themselves in order to lose seed because of it. Had it not been a goddess, it would have been made fertile by the labor of others, rather than compelling a man to render himself barren by his own hands. Nor would it have required that at the festival of Liber an honorable matron place a wreath on the private parts of a man before a crowd, where perhaps her husband stood nearby, flushing and sweating, if any shame remains in men at all. Nor that at the celebration of marriages the newly-wed bride was ordered to sit upon Priapus. These things are bad enough, yet they are small and contemptible compared to that most cruel abomination, or most abominable cruelty, by which each party is so deceived that neither perishes from the wound. In one case, a spell cast on fields is feared; in the other, the amputation of limbs is not feared. In one case, the modesty of the bride is violated, but in such a way that neither her fruitfulness nor even her virginity is taken from her; in the other, a man is so mutilated that he is neither transformed into a woman nor remains a man.

Varro says nothing about that Atys, and offers no interpretation for him, in whose memory the Gallus is mutilated because Ceres loved him. But the learned and wise Greeks have certainly not kept silent on so holy and illustrious a matter. The celebrated philosopher Porphyry claimed that Atys represents the flowers of spring, the most beautiful season, and that he was mutilated because the flower falls before the fruit appears. They did not, then, compare the man himself (or rather that semblance of a man they called Atys) to the flower, but his male organs: these fell while he was still living. Did I say fell? No, they did not simply fall, nor were they plucked off; they were torn away. And when that flower was lost, no fruit followed. Only sterility remained. So what, exactly, do they say is signified by the castrated Atys himself, and by whatever remained of him after the castration? What does that point to? What interpretation does it produce? After failing to find a satisfying answer, do they simply try to persuade people to believe what rumor has spread and what has been written about him, namely that he was a mutilated man? Our Varro rightly resisted this and refused to state it, for that most learned man was certainly not unaware of it.

Regarding the effeminates consecrated to this same Great Mother, in violation of every standard of decency expected of both men and women, Varro chose to say nothing, and I don't recall reading anything about them elsewhere either. Yet these effeminates were, as recently as yesterday, walking through the streets and public spaces of Carthage with oiled hair, whitened faces, limp bodies, and a feminine gait, demanding money from passersby to sustain their shameful lives. Nothing was said about them. Interpretation failed, reason recoiled, and speech fell silent. The Great Mother has surpassed all her sons, not in the greatness of her divinity, but in the greatness of her crimes. Even the monstrosity of Janus cannot be compared to this. His deformity existed only in his image; hers was the deformity of cruelty embedded in her sacred rites. He has an excess of limbs in stone statues; she inflicts the loss of limbs on living men. Even Jupiter's countless acts of licentiousness don't reach this level of abomination. He, for all his seductions of women, only disgraced heaven with a single Ganymede; she, with her many open and public effeminates, has both defiled the earth and insulted heaven. We might compare Saturn to this Magna Mater, or even rank him above her in this particular brand of monstrous cruelty, since he mutilated his own father. But at Saturn's festivals, men were killed by the hands of others rather than mutilated by their own. He devoured his sons, as the poets tell it, and the natural theologians interpret that story as they see fit. History says he simply killed them. But the Romans never adopted, as the Carthaginians did, the custom of sacrificing their sons to him. This Great Mother of the gods, however, brought castrated men into Roman temples and preserved that brutal custom, on the belief that she strengthened Rome by emasculating its men. Compared to this evil, what are Mercury's thefts, Venus's promiscuity, and the base and shameful deeds of the rest of them, which we could easily pull from books if they weren't already being sung and performed in the theatres every day? But what are any of those things against an evil of this magnitude, an evil whose scale was matched only by the supposed greatness of the Great Mother herself? And these other offenses, we're told, were invented by the poets, as if the poets had also invented the idea that the gods find such things pleasing. Fine, then: blame the poets' audacity and shamelessness for the fact that these things were written and sung. But that they were incorporated into the body of official divine rites and honors, with the deities themselves demanding and forcing that incorporation, what is that if not the crime of the gods? Or rather, the confession of demons and the deception of miserable human beings? As for the belief that the Great Mother is properly worshipped through the consecration of castrated men, that is not a poetic invention. On the contrary, the poets have recoiled from it in horror rather than celebrated it in verse. Should anyone, then, be consecrated to these so-called select gods in hopes of living blessedly after death, when consecration to them made it impossible to live decently before death, binding a person to foul superstitions and handing him over to unclean demons? But all these things, says Varro, are to be referred back to the world. He should consider whether they might not more accurately be referred to what is unclean. And why not refer to the world what is plainly demonstrated to exist within the world? We, however, are looking for a mind that, grounded in true religion, does not worship the world as its god, but rather praises the world as God's creation, and, cleansed of the world's corruptions, comes pure to God Himself, the One who founded the world.

We can see that these so-called select gods have indeed become more famous than the rest, though not because their virtues have been brought to light, but because their shameful deeds could not be hidden. This actually makes it more believable that they were once real human beings, just as both poetic and historical literature has consistently maintained. Consider what Virgil says:

"Then from Olympus' heights came down

Good Saturn, exiled from his throne

By Jove, his mightier heir;"

Everything that follows concerning this affair is fully recounted by the historian Euhemerus and translated into Latin by Ennius. Since those who wrote before me in Greek or Latin against such errors have already said a great deal on the subject, I saw no need to dwell on it here. When I examine the physical explanations by which learned and clever men try to elevate human things into divine ones, all I find is that they can only connect these things to temporal works and to what has a bodily nature, which, even if invisible, remains subject to change. That is by no means the true God. If this worship had at least been performed as a symbolic system with some coherence with genuine religion, it would still have been cause for grief that the true God was not proclaimed through it, yet it might have been tolerated to some degree, provided it did not give rise to foul and abominable practices. But since it is already impious to worship body or soul in place of the true God, in whose presence alone the soul finds happiness, how much more impious is it to worship things through which neither soul nor body can obtain salvation or even ordinary human dignity? Therefore, if a temple, a priest, and a sacrifice, which are all owed to the true God, are instead directed toward any element of the world or any created spirit, even one that is not impure or evil, that worship is still corrupt. Not because the outward forms of worship are themselves evil, but because those forms should only be used in the service of the One to whom such worship is exclusively owed. If someone insists that he worships the one true God, the Creator of every soul and every body, yet does so through grotesque idols, human sacrifice, the crowning of phallic images, the wages of prostitution, the mutilation of limbs, castration, the consecration of men who have been emasculated, and impure and obscene theatrical performances, that person does not sin by worshipping One who should not be worshipped. He sins because he worships the One who should be worshipped in a manner that is utterly unworthy of Him. But the person who worships with such foul and obscene rites, and directs that worship not toward the true God, the maker of soul and body, but toward some creature, even a creature that is not wicked, whether it be soul or body or both together, sins twice against God. He worships as God what is not God, and he worships with the kind of things that neither God nor anything else should ever be worshipped with. It is, in fact, perfectly clear how these pagans worship, that is, how shamefully and criminally they do so. What or whom they worship might have remained obscure, had their own historical records not confirmed that those same universally acknowledged base and degrading rites were performed in direct response to the demands of gods who required them with terrifying severity. It is therefore beyond any reasonable doubt that this entire civic theology is nothing more than a system for attracting wicked and utterly corrupt spirits, drawing them into senseless idols, and through those idols taking possession of empty and foolish hearts.

So what exactly is this most learned and sharp-minded man Varro trying to accomplish when he attempts, through subtle argumentation, to trace all these gods back to heaven and earth? He simply cannot do it. They slip through his fingers like water; they recoil; they slide away and fall. When he is about to discuss the female deities, that is, the goddesses, he says: "Since, as I observed in the first book on places, heaven and earth are the two origins of the gods (which is why they are called celestials and terrestrials), and since I began the earlier books with heaven by speaking of Janus (whom some have identified as heaven and others as earth), I now begin with Tellus when turning to the goddesses." I can see exactly what kind of difficulty a mind as great as his was struggling with.

He is led astray by a superficial analogy when he argues that heaven is the active principle and earth the passive one, and on that basis assigns the masculine to the former and the feminine to the latter. He fails to consider that it is rather the One who made both heaven and earth who is the true source of both activity and passivity. On this basis, he interprets the celebrated mysteries of the Samothracians, and promises, with an air of great devoutness, that he will explain in writing these mysteries, which his own countrymen have never even known, and will send them his exposition. He then says that from many proofs he had gathered that, within those mysteries, certain images represent heaven, others the earth, and others the patterns of things that Plato calls ideas. He takes Jupiter to signify heaven, Juno the earth, and Minerva the ideas: heaven as the agent by which something is made, earth as the material from which it is made, and the pattern as the model according to which it is made. On that last point, I should note that Plato placed such enormous weight on these ideas that he did not say heaven makes things according to them, but rather that heaven itself was made according to them. Returning to the main thread, however, one notices that Varro, in his book on the select gods, has already abandoned the very theory by which he claimed to embrace all things within these gods. He assigns the male gods to heaven and the female gods to earth, yet among the latter he places Minerva, whom he had previously set above heaven itself. Then the male god Neptune belongs to the sea, which pertains far more to earth than to heaven. Finally, Father Dis, known in Greek as Pluto (*Πλούτων*), another male god and brother of both Jupiter and Neptune, is also counted as a god of the earth: he holds the upper region of the earth himself and assigns the lower region to his wife Proserpine. How, then, can they claim to refer the gods to heaven and the goddesses to earth? What coherence, what consistency, what intellectual sobriety does this argument actually possess? Consider also that Tellus is supposed to be the origin of the goddesses, the great mother, around whom there is perpetual noise from the mad and obscene revelry of effeminates, mutilated men, men who cut themselves, and those who indulge in frenzied gesticulations. How is it, then, that Janus is called the head of the gods and Tellus the head of the goddesses? In the one case, confusion does not produce a coherent leader; in the other, frenzy does not produce a sane one. Why do they strain so pointlessly to connect all of this to the world? Even if they could make that connection, no person of genuine piety would worship the world as the true God. Yet plain truth makes clear that they cannot even manage that much. Let them instead acknowledge these figures for what they are: dead men and thoroughly wicked demons. Once they do, no further question will remain.

Everything that the so-called physical theologians attributed to the world and its parts can, without any religious misgiving, be more properly assigned to the true God, who made heaven and earth and created every soul and every body. Here is how we understand this to work. We worship God: not heaven and earth, the two parts that make up this world, and not the soul or souls spread through all living things, but the God who made heaven and earth and everything in them, who made every soul, whatever its nature may be, whether it possesses life without sensation or reason, life with sensation alone, or life with both sensation and reason.

And now, let us turn to the works of the one true God, the very works that led these people to invent so many false gods for themselves, as they tried to put a respectable face on their most shameful and degrading religious rites. We worship the God who assigned to every nature He created both its origin and the limit of its existence and movement; who holds, knows, and directs the causes of all things; who gave life to seeds; who bestowed a rational soul, what we call the mind, on whatever creatures He chose; who granted the capacity for language and speech; who gave the gift of prophecy to whatever spirits He saw fit; who Himself foretells future events through whichever agents He chooses, and through whom He also drives away disease; who, when the human race must be corrected and disciplined through war, governs the beginning, course, and conclusion of those wars; who created and sustains the fierce, consuming fire of this world in proper balance with the other vast elements of nature; who rules over all the waters; who made the sun the brightest of all material lights and gave it its power and its course; who has not withdrawn His authority even from the inhabitants of the underworld; who appointed fitting food and drink, both solid and liquid, to sustain mortal creatures; who cultivates and makes the earth fruitful; who lavishes its produce on animals and human beings alike; who knows and ordains not only primary causes but secondary ones as well; who set the moon on its path; who opens ways through heaven and earth for travel from place to place; who has given to the human minds He created the knowledge of the various arts that sustain life and nature; who established the union of male and female for the bearing of children; who blessed human society with the gift of earthly fire for the most basic and familiar purposes, for the hearth and for light. These are the very things that the exceptionally sharp and learned Varro labored to distribute among his select gods, through some physical interpretation he partly borrowed from others and partly worked out for himself. But all of these things are the work of the one true God, and He does them all *as the same God*, that is, as the one who is wholly present everywhere, contained by no space, constrained by no bonds, unchanged in any aspect of His being, filling heaven and earth with His omnipresent power rather than with a nature that is in any way limited or needy. He governs all things in such a way that He allows them to carry out and exercise their own proper movements. For although nothing can exist without Him, nothing is what He is. He also works through angels in many things, but He alone is the source of the angels' blessedness. In the same way, though He sends angels to serve human beings for particular purposes, He does not make people blessed through any goodness residing in the angels; He does so through Himself, just as He does for the angels themselves.

Beyond the benefits He pours out on both the good and the wicked alike through the natural order we have already discussed, God has shown us something far greater: a profound expression of love reserved only for those who are His. We can never adequately thank Him for the fact that we exist, that we are alive, that we can look up at the heavens and the earth, that we possess minds and reason with which to seek the One who made all of it. And yet, what heart could contain, what number of tongues could express, sufficient gratitude for this: that He did not abandon us entirely, though we were weighed down and overwhelmed by sin, turned away from the light of His presence, and blinded by our love of darkness and wickedness? Instead, He sent us His own Word, His only Son, so that through His birth and His suffering in the flesh He took on, we might understand how deeply God values humanity. Through that singular sacrifice, we are cleansed of all our sins. And through His Spirit, love is poured into our hearts, enabling us to overcome every obstacle and arrive at eternal rest and the inexpressible joy of contemplating God Himself.

The mystery of eternal life was announced from the very beginning of human history, communicated through angels to those who were ready to receive it, by means of signs and sacred rites suited to each era. Then the Hebrew people were gathered into what amounted to a single nation, specifically to carry out this mystery. Within that nation, everything that has unfolded since the coming of Christ up to the present day, and everything that is still to come, was foretold, sometimes through people who understood what they were saying and sometimes through people who did not. That same nation was later scattered among the other peoples of the world, so that they might serve as witnesses to the scriptures in which eternal salvation through Christ had been declared. For it was not only the prophecies expressed in words, nor only the moral and spiritual teachings on how to live rightly, that were contained in those sacred writings. The rites, the priesthood, the tabernacle and temple, the altars, the sacrifices, the ceremonies, and everything else belonging to the worship owed to God (what the Greeks properly call *latreia*, meaning divine service) all of these pointed toward and foreshadowed the things we who believe in Jesus Christ unto eternal life hold to have been fulfilled, or see being fulfilled before us, or trust with confidence will yet be fulfilled.

This is the only true religion, and it alone has been able to expose the gods of the nations for what they really are: corrupt demons who crave divine status, hiding behind the names of dead souls or the forms of earthly creatures, reveling in shameful and degrading acts as though these were sacred honors, and resenting any human soul that turns toward the true God. From the brutal and godless tyranny of these demons, a person is set free when he places his faith in the One who showed us what humility looks like, and by following that example, human beings can rise to the very heights from which their pride once caused them to fall. This applies not only to the gods we have already discussed at length, and to the many others worshipped across various nations and lands, but also to those we are examining now, the ones who were chosen, as it were, for a kind of divine senate. They were chosen, however, not because of any noble virtue, but because of the sheer notoriety of their crimes. Varro attempts to connect their sacred rites to certain natural explanations, trying to dress up what is base and make it respectable, but he cannot make the pieces fit, because the causes he proposes (whether sincerely believed or merely hoped to be convincing) are simply not the real causes of those rites. If they had been genuine causes, not only for these gods but for all others of the same kind, then even setting aside any connection to the true God and to eternal life, which is what religion should ultimately seek, they would at least have offered some plausible grounding in the nature of things. That alone might have softened the offense caused by the more shameful or absurd elements of the sacred rites, elements that most people did not understand. Varro did attempt something like this with certain theatrical myths and the mysteries of the shrines, but in doing so he didn't manage to clear the theaters of their resemblance to the shrines; he only succeeded in condemning the shrines for resembling the theaters. Still, he made some effort to ease the shock of the more disturbing material by offering what he wanted his readers to accept as natural interpretations.

On the other hand, we find, as this same remarkably learned man has recorded, that the explanations of the sacred rites contained in the books of Numa Pompilius were considered utterly intolerable. They were judged unworthy not only of being read by the devout, but even of remaining written down in the darkness where they had long been hidden. Let me now say what I promised in the third book of this work to address in its proper place. As we read in Varro's own book on the worship of the gods, a certain Terentius owned a field on the Janiculum, and one day, while his ploughman was working near the tomb of Numa Pompilius, the plough turned up from the earth a collection of Numa's books, in which the reasons behind the sacred institutions were written out. The ploughman brought these books to the praetor, who read the opening sections and then referred the matter to the senate, judging it too significant to handle alone. When the senior senators had read through some of the explanations for why this or that rite had been established, the senate deferred to the long-dead Numa, and the assembled fathers, acting as though they were guardians of religion, ordered the praetor to burn the books. Let each person believe what he will; let every defender of such impiety say whatever reckless argument his passion suggests. For my part, it is enough to point out two things: first, that the reasons behind those sacred rites, as written down by King Numa Pompilius, the founder of Roman religious practice, should never have been made known to the people, the senate, or even the priests themselves; and second, that Numa himself had arrived at these demonic secrets through an unlawful curiosity, writing them down so he could refresh his memory by reading them later. Yet even as king, with no one to fear, he neither dared to teach them to anyone nor to destroy them by erasure or any other means. Because he was unwilling for anyone to learn them (lest people be instructed in shameful things), and because he was afraid to violate them (lest he provoke the demons against himself), he buried them in what he believed was a secure location, confident that no plough could ever reach his tomb. The senate, for their part, could not bring themselves to condemn the religious ceremonies of their ancestors, and so felt compelled to defer to Numa. Yet they were thoroughly convinced that the books were dangerous. They did not order them reburied, knowing that human curiosity would only be inflamed to seek out the already-disclosed contents with far greater eagerness. Instead, they ordered the scandalous remains to be destroyed by fire, reasoning that since those sacred rites now had to be performed regardless, the confusion that comes from not knowing their origins was more bearable than the public disorder that knowledge of those origins would certainly cause.

Numa himself, to whom no prophet of God and no holy angel was ever sent, was driven to resort to hydromancy so that he could see images of the gods in the water (or rather, apparitions through which demons mocked him) and learn from them what he should establish and observe in the sacred rites. This form of divination, Varro tells us, was introduced from Persia and was practiced by Numa himself and later by the philosopher Pythagoras. In this practice, Varro says, they also consulted the inhabitants of the underworld and made use of blood; the Greeks called this *νεκρομαντείαν* (necromancy). But whether we call it necromancy or hydromancy, the substance is the same: in both cases, the dead are supposed to foretell future events. As for the methods by which these things were accomplished, let those who practiced them account for that. I am reluctant to say that such methods were typically forbidden by law and severely punished even in pagan states before the coming of our Savior. I am reluctant, I say, to assert this, since perhaps such things were permitted at that time. What is clear, however, is that it was through these arts that Pompilius learned the sacred rites he then presented as established facts while concealing their underlying causes, for even he himself was afraid of what he had learned. The senate, for its part, had the books containing those causes burned. What does it matter, then, that Varro attempts to supply all manner of fanciful physical interpretations? If those books had actually contained such interpretations, they would certainly never have been burned. Otherwise, the senators would also have burned the books that Varro himself published and dedicated to the high priest Caesar. Now, Numa is said to have married the nymph Egeria because, as Varro explains in the book already mentioned, he carried water with him for his hydromancy. This is how historical facts tend to be transformed into myths through layers of false embellishment. It was through that hydromancy, then, that this excessively curious Roman king learned both the sacred rites to be recorded in the priestly books and the causes behind those rites, though he was unwilling for anyone but himself to know those causes. He therefore arranged for those causes to die with him, taking care to have them written separately and buried in the earth, hidden from human knowledge. The things written in those books were therefore either demonic abominations, so vile and harmful as to make that entire civic theology repulsive even to men like those senators who had already accepted so many shameful elements in the sacred rites themselves, or they were simply accounts of dead men whom, over the passage of ages, nearly all the pagan nations had come to believe were immortal gods. Those same demons took pleasure in such rites, having presented themselves to receive worship under the pretense of being those very dead men whom they had caused to be regarded as immortal gods through certain deceptive miracles performed to reinforce that belief. By the hidden providence of the true God, however, these demons were permitted to confess these things to their friend Numa, having been drawn in through the arts by which necromancy is performed, yet they were not compelled to urge him, as he approached death, to burn rather than bury the books in which these things were written. Still, in their desire to keep those books unknown, the demons could not resist the plow that turned them up from the earth, nor the pen of Varro, through which the events surrounding this matter have reached our knowledge. They are not able to accomplish anything they are not permitted to do; they are allowed to influence only those whom God, in His deep and just judgment, hands over to them according to their deserts, whether simply to be afflicted, or also to be subdued and deceived. How dangerous these writings were judged to be, and how far removed from the worship of the true God, can be understood from the simple fact that the senate chose to burn what Pompilius had hidden rather than to share the fear that had prevented him from daring to do the same. Let anyone who has no desire to live a godly life even now go ahead and seek eternal life through such rites. But let anyone who has no wish to be in fellowship with malicious demons have no fear of the harmful superstition by which those demons are worshipped, and instead recognize the true religion by which they are exposed and defeated.