On the Vanity of Idols

Melicertes and Leucothea are cast headlong into the seas, and afterward become divinities of the sea. The Castors die in turns that they may live.

Aesculapius is struck by lightning that he may rise as a god. Hercules is burned in the fires of Oeta that he may put off his humanity. Apollo tended the flocks of Admetus. Neptune built walls for Laomedon, nor did the ill-fated builder receive payment for his work. The cave of Jupiter in Crete is visited, and his tomb is shown, and it is manifest that Saturn was put to flight by him. Hence Latium received its name from his hiding place. There he first established the practice of impressing letters, and here in Italy the first to stamp coins: hence the treasury is called that of Saturn. And he was a cultivator of rustic life: hence he is depicted as an old man bearing a scythe. When he was put to flight, Janus received him as a guest; from whose name the Janiculum was named, and the month of January was established. He himself is depicted with two faces, because, being placed in the middle, he seems to look equally upon the year beginning and the year departing.

The Moors indeed openly worship kings, and cover not this fact with any veil.

Hence throughout the various nations and provinces the religion of the gods is changed in diverse ways, since one god is not worshipped by all, but each people preserves the cult of its own ancestors. This Alexander the Great writes in a notable volume to his mother, that the secret concerning the gods as men had been revealed to him by a priest out of fear of his power, namely that the memory of ancestors and kings had been preserved, and from thence the rite of worshipping and sacrificing had grown up. But if gods were ever born, why are they not born even today? Unless perhaps Jupiter has grown old, or the capacity for birth has failed in Juno.

But why do you think that gods can avail anything for the Romans, when you see that they availed nothing for their own people against Roman arms? For we know that the gods of the Romans are home-grown.

Romulus was made a god by the perjury of Proculus, and Picus, and Tiberinus, and Pilumnus, and Consus, whom Romulus wished to be worshipped as the god of deceit or as the god of counsels, after treachery brought about the rape of the Sabine women. Tatius also both discovered and worshipped the goddess Cloacina, and Hostilius worshipped Pavor and Pallor. Soon afterward Fever was dedicated by someone or other, and Acca and Flora, who were harlots. Sometimes indeed the names of gods are invented among the Romans, so that there is among them even a god Viduus, who bereaves the body of the soul, who, being as it were funereal and belonging to the dead, is not kept within the walls; and nonetheless, because he has been made an outcast, he is condemned rather than worshipped by Roman religion. There is also Scansus, named from ascents, and Forculus from doors, and Limentinus from thresholds, and Cardea from hinges, and Orbona from bereavement of children. These are the Roman gods.

For the rest, Mars is Thracian, and Jupiter is Cretan, and Juno is either Argive or Samian or Punic, and Diana is Tauric, and the mother of the gods is Idaean, and the monstrosities of Egypt are not divinities: which assuredly, if they had possessed any power, would have preserved their own kingdoms and those of their people. Plainly there are among the Romans even conquered household gods, which the fugitive Aeneas brought with him. There is also a bald Venus, here far more shamefully bald than when wounded in Homer.

Moreover, kingdoms do not come about by merit, but are varied by lot. For the Assyrians and Medes and Persians held empire before, and we know that the Greeks and Egyptians also reigned. Thus, with power shifting in turns, the time of ruling fell to the Romans as well, as to the others. But if you go back to the origin, you would blush. The people is gathered from criminals and wrongdoers, and with an asylum established, impunity for crimes makes up the number. Now, that the king himself may hold the chief place, Romulus commits crime as a parricide. And, that he may make a marriage, he inaugurates a matter of concord through discord. They seize, they rage, they deceive, in order to increase the abundance of citizens. Their marriages are broken bonds of hospitality and cruel wars with allies. And the consulship is the highest rank in Roman honors. We see that the consulship began in this way, as did the kingship.

Brutus kills his sons so that the recommendation of his dignity may grow from the credit of his crime. Therefore it was not from holy religious observances, nor from auspices or auguries, that the Roman kingdoms grew, but they keep the time allotted to them within a fixed limit. Moreover, Regulus observed the auspices, and was taken captive; and Mancinus kept his religious duty, and was sent under the yoke and defeated. Paulus had the greedy chickens, and yet was slain at Cannae. Gaius Caesar, when the auguries and auspices resisted his sailing to Africa before the winter solstice, scorned them, and thereby sailed and conquered all the more easily.

Now the explanation of all these things is that which deceives and beguiles, and with blinding illusions leads astray the foolish and credulous common people. They are unclean and wandering spirits, who, after they have been plunged into earthly vices and have withdrawn from heavenly vigor through earthly contagion, do not cease, being themselves ruined, to ruin others, and, being themselves depraved, to pour in the error of depravity. The poets too know these as demons; and Socrates declared that he was guided and governed at the will of a demon, and hence their power extends more to things harmful or frivolous; of whom nonetheless the chief, Hostanes, both denies that the form of the true God can be beheld, and says that true angels stand attendant at his throne. In this Plato likewise agrees with equal reasoning, and, maintaining one God, calls the rest angels or demons. Hermes Trismegistus also speaks of one God, and confesses him to be incomprehensible and beyond all estimation.

These spirits therefore lurk hidden beneath statues and consecrated images. These inspire the breasts of seers with their breath, animate the entrails of sacrificial victims, govern the flight of birds, control lots, produce oracles, always interweaving falsehoods with truths, for they are both deceived and deceive; they trouble life, disturb sleep, creeping also as spirits into bodies they secretly terrify minds, distort limbs, shatter health, stir up diseases, so that they may compel men to their worship, and, fattened on the smoke of altars and the pyres of cattle, they may seem to have cured the very things they had bound fast when these are released. This is their remedy, when their own injury ceases; nor have they any other purpose than to draw men away from God and to turn them from the understanding of true religion to superstition of themselves, and, being themselves subject to punishment, to seek companions for punishment, whom they have made partakers of their crime through error.

These, however, when adjured by the true God by us, immediately yield and confess, and are compelled to depart from the bodies they have possessed. You may see them scourged by our word and the working of hidden majesty, tormented by fire, stretched out by the increase of growing punishment, wailing, groaning, beseeching, confessing whence they come and when they will depart, even to those who worship them as they listen; and they either leap out at once, or vanish away gradually, according as the faith of the sufferer assists or the grace of the healer breathes upon them. Hence they drive the common people to hatred of our name, so that men begin to hate us before they know us, lest, once known, they might be able either to imitate us or be unable to condemn us.

There is therefore one Lord of all, who is God. For that sublimity cannot have a partner, since it alone holds all power. Let us borrow an example even from earthly things for the divine rule. When did a sharing of kingship ever begin in good faith, or end without bloodshed? So the brotherhood of the Thebans was broken, and the discord persisting even in death with pyres that would not merge. And the Roman twins cannot be contained in one kingdom, they whom one womb yielded as its lodging. Pompey and Caesar were kinsmen, and yet they did not maintain the bond of relationship when their power was in rivalry. Nor should you wonder at this in the case of man, since all nature agrees in this. There is one king among bees, and one leader among flocks, and one ruler among herds: how much more is there one ruler of the world, who commands all things whatsoever they are by his word, orders them by his reason, and perfects them by his power.

He cannot be seen, for he is brighter than sight; nor grasped, for he is purer than touch; nor estimated, for he is greater than sense: and therefore we worthily estimate him when we call him beyond all estimation. But what temple can God have, whose temple is the whole world? And when man dwells in a wider space, shall the power of so great a majesty be enclosed within a single small building? He must be dedicated in our mind, he must be consecrated in our breast. Nor seek a name for God: God is his name. Names are needed where a multitude must be distinguished by the proper marks of their appellations: for God, who alone is, the word God is the whole. Therefore he is one, and is diffused whole everywhere. For even the common people naturally confess God in many ways, when the mind and soul is reminded of its author and source.

We often hear it said, O God, and God sees, and I commend to God, and may God repay you, and as God wills, and if God shall grant it. And this is the height of guilt, to be unwilling to acknowledge him whom you cannot fail to know.

Now as to the fact that Christ exists, and how salvation has come to us through him, such is the order, such is the account. Grace with God belonged first to the Jews. For in former times they were righteous, and their ancestors obeyed the divine ordinances. Hence both the height of their kingdom flourished and the greatness of their race came forth. But afterward, having become negligent and undisciplined and proud, and puffed up by confidence in their fathers, while they despised the divine commandments, they lost the grace that had been given to them. How profane their life was, what offense from violated religion was incurred, they themselves also bear witness, who, though they are silent in voice, confess it by their end. Scattered and wandering they roam; exiles from their own sky, they are tossed about through the lodgings of others.

Moreover God had foretold beforehand that it would come to pass that, as the age declined and the end of the world was now drawing near, God would choose for himself from every nation and people and place worshippers far more faithful and of better obedience, who would draw indulgence from the divine gifts, which the Jews, having received it, had lost by despising their religious duties. Therefore the Word and Son of God is sent as the arbiter and master of this grace and discipline, who through all the Prophets of old was proclaimed as the enlightener and teacher of the human race. There is the power of God, there is his reason, there is his wisdom and his glory. There he glides into a virgin, the Holy Spirit puts on flesh, God is mingled with man. This is our God, this is Christ, who as mediator of the two, puts on man, that he may lead man to the Father. What man is, Christ willed to be, so that man also might be what Christ is.

The Jews also knew that Christ was to come. For he was always announced to them by the admonition of the Prophets. But since his twofold coming was signified—one which would fulfill the role of a man in suffering and example, the other which would declare him God—not understanding the first coming, which preceded hidden in the Passion, they believe only in the one which will be manifest in power. Now that the people of the Jews could not understand this was the deserved consequence of their sins. So were they punished with blindness of wisdom and understanding, that those who were unworthy of life had life before their eyes and did not see it.

And so, when Christ Jesus, according to what had been foretold beforehand by the Prophets, was casting out demons from men by his word and the command of his voice, was restoring paralytics, cleansing lepers, giving sight to the blind, granting the power of walking to the lame, bringing the dead back to life again, compelling the elements to serve him, the winds to obey, the seas to be subject, the underworld to yield—the Jews, who had believed him to be merely a man on account of the lowliness of his flesh and body, reckoned him a magician on account of the license of his power. Their teachers and chief men, that is, those whom he was refuting both in learning and in wisdom, inflamed with anger and provoked by indignation, pursued him, and at last, having seized him, handed him over to Pontius Pilate, who was then governing Syria on behalf of Rome, demanding his crucifixion and death with violent and persistent clamor.

That they would do this he himself had foretold, and the testimony of all the Prophets had preceded it, that he must suffer, not in order to feel death, but in order to conquer it; and that when he had suffered, he would return again to those above, in order to show the power of the divine majesty. The course of events therefore fulfilled the faith. For when crucified, anticipating the office of the executioner, he voluntarily gave up his spirit, and on the third day he rose again voluntarily from the dead. He appeared to his disciples such as he had been, he offered himself to be recognized by those who saw him, at once present among them and conspicuous in the solidity of his bodily substance, and remained for forty days, so that they might be instructed by him in the precepts of life, and might learn what they were to teach.

Then, wrapped in an encircling cloud, he was taken up into heaven, so that, as victor, he might present to the Father the man whom he had loved, whom he had put on, whom he had protected from death—he who is yet to come from heaven for the punishment of the devil and for the judgment of the human race with the vigor of an avenger and the power of a judge: and throughout the world his disciples, at the bidding of their master and God, were dispersed to give commandments unto salvation, to lead men from the error of darkness to the way of light, to open the eyes of the blind and ignorant to the knowledge of truth.

And, lest the proof be less solid and the confession of Christ too delicate, they are tried through torments, through crosses, through many kinds of punishments. Pain, which is the witness of truth, is applied so that Christ the Son of God, who is believed to have been given to men for life, might be proclaimed not only by the proclamation of the voice, but also by the testimony of suffering. Him therefore we accompany, him we follow, him we have as the guide of our journey, the prince of light, the author of salvation, promising heaven alike to those who seek and believe in the Father. We Christians shall be what Christ is, if we have imitated Christ.