Book 2

Now our defense demands that we engage with you, pitiable nations, concerning your gods, summoning your own conscience to judge whether they are truly gods, as you would have it, or falsely, as you are unwilling to know. For this is the matter of human error, through its very contriver, so that ignorance may not be free of error, that you may be the more guilty for it. The eyes are open, yet they do not see; the ears gape, yet they do not hear; the heart, throbbing, is dull; the mind does not know what it acknowledges. In short, if it were permitted to dispel so great a perversity by a single prescription, the announcement would be ready at hand: since we know that all these gods were instituted by men, the trust in their true divinity already collapses on this very ground, that nothing which once had a beginning can by any right be seen as divine. But there are many things by which the tenderness of conscience is hardened into the callousness of voluntary error. The truth is besieged by a vast host, and is itself secure in its own power! Why not? She takes to herself as allies and protectors, from the very adversaries, whomever she wishes, and lays low all that whole multitude of besiegers. Against these, then, our task lies — against the institutions of forefathers, the authorities of those received, the laws of those who rule, the argumentations of the prudent; against antiquity, custom, necessity; against examples, portents, miracles, all of which have fortified that counterfeit divinity. Wherefore, following your own commentaries, which you have taken from every kind of theology, joining the contest step by step — since in such matters the authority of writings is greater among you than that of facts — I have chosen, for the sake of brevity, the works of Varro, who, having commented on divine matters out of all that has been arranged before, has set himself out to us as a suitable mark. If I question him, he points out as introducers of the gods either philosophers or peoples or poets. For he distinguished the reckoning of the gods into a threefold kind: one physical, which the philosophers handle; another mythical, which is tossed about among the poets; the third national, which each people has adopted for itself. Therefore, since the philosophers have contrived the physical by conjectures, the poets have drawn the mythical from fables, and the peoples have presumed the national of their own accord, where, then, is the truth to be placed? In conjectures? But the conception is uncertain. In fables? But the account is foul. In adoptions? But the adoption is haphazard and parochial. In short, among the philosophers it is uncertain, because various; among the poets all unworthy, because base; among the peoples all haphazard, because arbitrary. But divinity, if you examine the true one, is of such a definition that it can neither be gathered by uncertain argumentations, nor be contaminated by unworthy fables, nor be judged by haphazard adoptions; for it ought to be held, as it is, certain, entire, common, because of course it belongs to all. But what god am I to believe? The one whom suspicion has guessed at? The one whom history has bandied about? The one whom the city has willed? Far more worthily would I believe none than one that is dubious, or shameful, or adopted.

But the authority of the physicist philosophers patronizes itself as the bondservant of wisdom. To be sure, the pure wisdom of philosophers — whose feebleness is first attested by this very variety of opinions, which comes from ignorance of the truth. But what wise man is without truth, who is ignorant of God, the father and lord of that very wisdom and truth? For there is also the divine pronouncement of Solomon elsewhere: "The beginning of wisdom," he says, "is the fear of God." Now the origin of fear is knowledge; for who will fear what he does not know? Thus he who has feared God, when he is more known than all, having attained the knowledge and truth of the God of all, will obtain full and perfect wisdom. But this has not clearly fallen to philosophy. For although, through the curiosity of inspecting literature of every kind, they may seem to have run also into the divine scriptures, as the more ancient, and thence to have drawn off something, yet when they have interpolated it, they prove that they have either despised everything or not believed everything — for in other matters too the simplicity of truth wavers through the scrupulosity of a haphazard faith — and so, with the lust for glory added to the works of their own genius, they changed it, whereby even what they had found passed into uncertainty, and from one or another drip of truth there was made a flood of argumentations. For having found God in name only, they did not set him forth as they had found him, but so as to dispute about his quality and his nature, even about his abode: the Platonists, indeed, making him caring for things and arbiter and judge; the Epicureans, idle and unexercised and, so to speak, nobody; placed outside the world by the Stoics, within the world by the Platonists. Him whom they had not thoroughly admitted, they could neither know nor fear, nor thence be wise — straying, of course, from the beginning of wisdom, that is, the fear of God. There exist testimonies of a divinity as much unknown as doubted among the philosophers. Diogenes, consulted as to what is done in the heavens: "I have never," he said, "gone up." Likewise, asked whether there are gods: "I do not know," he said, "except that it would be expedient that there should be." Thales of Miletus, to Croesus inquiring what he thought about the gods, after several leaves of deliberation, replied, "Nothing." Socrates himself denied those gods, as if certain. The same man ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Aesculapius, as if certain. And therefore, since philosophy is found so uncertain and inconstant in defining about God, what fear could it have of one whom it could not clearly hold to define? Of the world as god we have learned. For this the physical kind of theology forces, since they have so handed down the gods that Dionysius the Stoic divides them three ways. He would have one species which is in plain sight, like the Sun, the Moon, the Stars; another which does not appear, like Neptune; the rest which is said to have passed from men to divinity, like Hercules, Amphiaraus. Likewise Arcesilaus draws a threefold form of divinity: the Olympians, the Stars, the Titans, from Heaven and Earth: of these, from Saturn and Ops, Neptune, Jupiter and Orcus, and the rest of the succession. Xenocrates the Academic makes it two ways: the Olympians and the Titans, who are from Heaven and Earth. Most of the Egyptians believe in four gods: the Sun and the Moon, the Heaven and the Earth. Democritus supposes the gods to have arisen, with the rest, from the upper fire — of which sort Zeno would have nature be. Whence Varro too makes fire the soul of the world, so that fire likewise governs all things in the world, just as the soul in us. But most emptily. For when it is in us, he says, we are ourselves; when it has gone out, we die. Therefore fire too, when it departs from the world through the lightning-flashes, the world dies.

These matters thus dispatched, we see that this physical reckoning is suborned to contend that the elements are gods, while it also alleges that from these other gods too are born; for gods could be born only from gods. Whom, since we shall examine them more fully in their place among the poets in the mythical, yet — what for the moment must be retracted concerning them, so far as makes for the present species — we shall perhaps show, turning at once from the present species to them, that those said to be born of the elements can in no way be seen to be gods; so that it may now hence be prejudged that the elements are not gods, since those said to be born of the elements are not gods; equally, demonstrating that the elements are not gods, we shall build up beforehand, against that species of kindred gods, that they are rightly defended as not gods whose parents, that is, the elements, are not gods. It is settled that a god is born of a god, just as of a non-god a non-god. Therefore, since this world contains the elements — to treat summarily of the whole, as supplying its parts (for whatever its condition is, the same surely will be that also of the elements and members) — it must either have been instituted by someone, as Plato's humaneness has it, or by no one, as Epicurus's hardness has it; and if it was instituted, having a beginning it will also have an end. Thus what once was not before its beginning, and at some time will not be after its end, surely cannot be seen as a god, lacking the substance of divinity, that is, eternity, which is reckoned to be without beginning and end. But if it was not instituted at all, and is therefore to be held a god, because as a god it suffers neither beginning nor end of itself — how do some assign to the elements, which they would have to be gods, a generation, when the Stoics deny that anything is born to a god? Again, how do they wish those whom they report to be born of the elements to be held gods, when they deny that a god is born? And so what belongs to the world, this will be ascribed to the elements — I mean to heaven and earth and the stars and fire — which Varro has proposed to you, in vain, to be believed gods and parents of gods, against the denial of generation and birth in a god; as the same Varro had indicated that heaven and the stars are animate beings. But if this is so, they must also be mortal, according to the form of an animate being; for although it is settled that the soul is immortal, this will be lawful only for it, not also for that to which it is joined, that is, the body. But no one will deny that the elements have a body, since we both touch them and are touched by them, and we see certain bodies fall away from them. Therefore, if they are animate beings, the reckoning of the soul set aside, by the condition of bodies, they are mortal, surely not immortal. And yet, whence do the elements seem to Varro to be animate beings? Because the elements move. And lest it be objected from the other side that many other things move, like wheels, like wagons, like other machines, he forestalls it of his own accord, saying that they were believed animate because they move of themselves, no mover or rouser of them appearing from without, as appears one who drives the wheel and turns the wagon and works the machine. Therefore, unless they are animate, they are not movable of themselves. But, alleging what does not appear, he shows what he ought to have sought, that is, an artificer and arbiter of the motion; for a thing is not at once nonexistent which, because we do not see it, we do not believe to exist. Rather, all the more highly is that to be investigated which is not seen, that we may be able to know of what sort is that which is seen. Otherwise, if only those things which are visible are believed to exist because they are visible, how do you receive as gods even those who are not visible? But if those seem to exist who do not exist, why should not those exist also who are not seen? I mean a mover of the heavenly things. Let them be animate beings, then, because they are movable of themselves; even movable of themselves, because not by another; yet so that they are not at once gods because animate, nor for this reason, that they are movable of themselves. Or what forbids that all animate beings, as movable of themselves, be held gods? And this indeed, by another vanity, the Egyptians are free to do.

Some say that the gods were so named for this reason, that "theein" and "seisthai" — the interpretation is to run forward and to be moved. Therefore now this word is not the mark of any majesty; for it is formed from running and motion, not from the dominion of divinity over them. But since even that one God whom we worship is surnamed "theos," and yet neither any motion nor any running of his appears, because he is not even visible to anyone, it is plain that this word is taken from elsewhere, and is proper, because native to itself, an invention of divinity. And so, setting aside the subtlety of that interpretation, it is more likely that the gods were called "theoi" not from running and motion, but borrowed from the appellation of the true God, so that those whom you had likewise fashioned as gods you might surname "theoi." Finally, that it is so, proof is at hand, since you commonly call even all your gods, in whom no office of running or motion is marked, "theoi." And so, if they are equally "theoi," equally immobile, one departs alike from the interpretation of the word and from the opinion of divinity, which, modulated from running and motion, is cut away. But if that name is proper to divinity, and simple, and not interpretative, in that God — reproved in the rest whom you would have to be gods — show also that there is a partnership of quality among them, so that a college may rightly stand by the community of the name through community of substance. Moreover, that "theos" already, by this alone, that he is not in plain sight, is exempt from comparison with those things which are in plain sight, and to the eye and to the sense — but to the sense enough — which is the announcement of testimony to the diversity of the hidden and the manifest. If the elements are openly set before all, if on the contrary God is so before no one, how can you, from that part which you have not seen, engage with what you see? Since, then, you cannot join them by sense or by reason, why do you join them by a word, so as to join them also by power? For behold, Zeno too separates the world's matter from God, or says that he passed through it as honey through the combs. And so matter and God are two words, two things. By the distinction of words even the things are separated; even the condition of matter follows the word. But if it is not matter — because thus too the appellation prescribes — how will those things that are in matter, that is, the elements, be held gods, when members cannot be of an alien kind from the body? But why do I bother with physiological argumentations? The mind ought to have ascended upward from the state of the world, not to descend into uncertainties. The world's form is round, says Plato. That it is square and angular, devised by others, they have gathered, I believe, with a round compass — a thing that labors to be believed alone without a head. But Epicurus, who had said, "What is above us is nothing to us," when he too desired to inspect the heaven, found the sun's orb a foot wide. Frugality, of course, was as yet practiced even in the heavens. Finally, as ambition advanced, the sun too extended its disk; so the Peripatetics marked out that orb as larger. I ask you, what does the lust of conjectures relish? What does the idleness of an affected fastidiousness prove with so great a presumption of asseveration, adorned by the artifice of eloquence? Rightly, then, did Thales of Miletus, while he examines the whole heaven and walks about with his eyes, fall basely into a well, much laughed at by that Egyptian: "On the earth," he said, "you perceived nothing, and you reckon you must scrutinize the heaven?" And so his fall, by way of figure, marks the philosophers — those, namely, who exercise their stupid curiosity upon the things of nature, rather than first upon their artificer and president, destined to have their study vain to themselves.

Why, then, are we not converted to some somewhat more human opinion, which may seem deduced from the common sense of all and from simple conjecture? For Varro too mentions it, saying that, besides, the divinity of the elements has been believed, because nothing at all can be born, nourished, or advanced toward the sowing of human life and of the earth without their suffrage; since not even bodies or souls could have sufficed without the tempering of the elements, by which this dwelling of the world, federated by the conditions of the circles, is provided — except that the excess of cold or heat denied human habitation, and therefore the sun is believed a god, which heaps up of its own to the day, ripens the crops with its heat, keeps the year by its stations; the moon, solace of the nights, patroness of the months by its governance; likewise the stars, certain seals of the seasons for marking the times of tillage; finally the heaven itself, under which are all things, the earth, over which are all things, and whatever of these conspires among itself to human advantages. And not only by benefits does the trust of divinity befit the elements, but also from the diverse things which are wont to befall as if from their anger and offense, like thunderbolts, like hail, like burnings, like pestilent breezes, likewise floods, likewise gapings and quakings of the earth; and that they are rightly believed gods, whose nature is to be honored in prosperity, to be feared in adversity, being mistresses, of course, of helping and harming. Moreover, if they are so perceived in the dealings of citizens, they do not likewise render thanks or direct complaints to the very things by which they are helped or harmed, but to those under whose force and power the working of things runs its course. For in pleasures too you do not adjudge the crown for a prize to the pipe or the lyre, but to the artist who tempers pipe and lyre by the force of sweetness. Likewise, when anyone is ill in health, you remember thanks not to the wools nor to the antidotes or the poultices themselves, but to the physicians, by whose work and prudence the remedies come forth. Likewise in adversities, those who are wounded by the sword do not accuse the sword itself or the spear, but the enemy or the robber; and those whom roofs crush do not arraign the tiles or the gutter-tiles, but the age of the building; just as the shipwrecked impute it not to the rock and the waves, but to the storm. Rightly. For it is certain that whatever is done is to be ascribed not to that through which it is done, but to that by which it is done, since he is the head of the deed who appoints both that it be done and by what means it be done — and there are in all things these three titles: what it is, through what it is, and from what it is — because he is prior who wills something to be done, and by what it may be brought about. And so rightly in other matters you act, considering the author; but in physical matters, against nature, your rule by which in other matters you judge wisdom, taking away the highest grade of the author, and considering what is done, not from what it is done. Thus it happens that the powers and judgments of the elements are believed to be what are really their servitudes and offices. In this investigation do we not show, within, the art of some artificer and master of the servitude of the elements, from certain of their works which you do, as a power? But the gods do not serve; therefore those things which serve are not gods. Or let them teach that it commonly happens, so that from the license of passivity liberty may be approved, from liberty dominion, from dominion divinity be understood. For if all these things over us are constituted in fixed courses, lawful runnings, proper spaces, equal turns, after the manner of a law, and remember to meet for the rolling of the seasons and the exercising of the seasons' guidances — do they not, from the very observance of their conditions, and the fidelity of their works, and the persistence of their courses, and the care of their changes, the memory of their reciprocations, persuade you that some dominion presides over them, to which all the world's business may seem to appear, reaching to the advantage and injury of the human race? For you cannot say that they do these things for themselves and care for themselves, nor dispose anything for the sake of men, since for this very reason you defend a divinity in the elements, because you feel yourself either helped or harmed by them. For if they provide for themselves, you owe them nothing.

Come now, do you grant that divinity ought not only not to run after the manner of a slave, but above all to stand entire, and ought neither to be diminished nor intercepted nor corrupted? For all its felicity is gone, if it ever suffers anything. But behold, the stars too perish, and attest that they have perished. The moon too confesses how much it has lost, when it recovers it. Indeed you are accustomed to consider its greater losses in the mirror of water, so that I would no longer believe in any part what the magi know. The sun itself too has often been assailed by eclipse. Feign whatever reasons you like for the misfortunes of the heavenly bodies; God will not wish either to be made less or to cease to be. Let the patronages of human doctrine, then, look to themselves, which by the artifice of conjecture counterfeit wisdom and truth. For at other times nature is such that he who has spoken the better seems to have spoken the more truly, not he who has spoken the more truly, the better. But for him to whom the matter is examined, surely he will speak the more plausibly who says that these elements are ruled by someone rather than that they move of their own accord; therefore they are not gods which are under someone. But if there is error in this, it is better to err simply than, like the physicists, diligently. Indeed, if you look to the mythical, mortality already errs better in the physical by ascribing divinity to those things which it thinks are perceived above man by position and force and magnitude and divinity. For what is above man, you may believe near to God.

But, to pass over to the mythical, which is allotted to the poets, I do not know whether it is worth seeking the equal of our mediocrity, whether they are confirmed by such documents of divinity, as Mopsus the African and Amphiaraus the Boeotian. For this species is now to be touched on lightly, of which the account will be rendered in its place. Meanwhile that these at least were men is plain even from this, that you do not consistently call them gods, but heroes. Why, then, do we contend? If divinity was to be assigned to the dead, surely not to such as these. Behold, you, with the same license of presumption, defame the heaven with the tombs of your kings; do you not — those proved by justice, virtue, piety, and every such good — honor with the solace of such consecration, content for such men to be even derided as you perjure yourselves; while on the contrary you take away even their former rewards of human glory from the impious, the base, you tear up their decrees and titles, you drag down their images, you restrike the coinage? But that surveyor of all things, the approver — nay, the bestower — of good things, will he prostitute to the crowd the ordination of so great a generosity of his, and will more diligence and justice be permitted to men in distributing divinities? Will the courtiers of kings and princes be cleaner than the supreme God? And yet you shudder at and turn away from vagabonds, exiles, the poor, the weak, the basely born, the dishonorably trained; against the incestuous, adulterers, ravishers, even parricides, you adorn yourselves with laws. Is it to be laughed at or to be raged at, that such gods are believed as men ought not to be? But indeed in this mythical kind, which the poets report, with what uncertainty do you act around the modesty of conscience and the defense of modesty! For as often as we reproach the wretched or base or atrocious deeds of the gods, you defend them as fabulous, by the plea of poetic license; as often as silence is kept of its own accord about such poetic matter, not only do you not shudder, but you even honor it, and hold it among the necessary arts, and finally, through this initiating literature, you advance the studies of free birth. The poets, accusers of the gods, Plato decreed should be banished; Homer himself, crowned indeed, should be driven from the city. But since you receive them and retain them, why should you not believe them as they recount such things of your gods? Therefore, if you believe the poets, why do you worship such gods? If you worship them for this reason, that you do not believe the poets, why do you bestow praise on liars, and do not beware lest you offend those whose detractors you honor? To be sure, faith is not to be exacted of the poets. Do you not, who say the gods were made after death, confess them men before death? What then is new, if those who were men are polluted by human chances or crimes or fables? You do not believe the poets, when from their relations you have even arranged certain sacred rites. Why is the priest of Ceres carried off, if Ceres did not suffer such a thing? Why are others' children sacrificed to Saturn, if he spared his own? Why is the male of the Idaean goddess amputated, if no youth, too disdainful, was castrated by her in the grief of frustrated lust? Why do the Lanuvian women not taste of the Herculean banquet, if it was not on women's account that it was begun? The poets lie, to be sure! But not for this reason — that your gods did such things, when they were men, nor that they ascribed divine foulnesses to divinity — when meanwhile it has seemed to you more credible that they were gods, but not such, than that they were such, but not gods.

There remains that national kind of gods among the peoples, whom private knowledge teaches were taken up by caprice, not for the knowledge of truth. I think God, therefore, is everywhere known, everywhere present, everywhere ruling, to be worshipped by all, to be won over by all. But indeed, since even those whom the whole world worships in common fall short of the proof of true divinity, how much more these whom not even their own townsmen know? For what fit authority has gone before such a theology, which even report has deserted? How many are there who know, by sight or hearing, Atargatis of the Syrians, Caelestis of the Africans, Varsutina of the Moors, Obodas and Dusares of the Arabs, Belenus of Noricum, or those whom Varro sets down: Deluentinus of the Casinenses, Visidianus of the Narnienses, Numiternus of the Atinates, Anchararia of the Asculani, and Nortia, whom the Volsinienses have received — gods whose names not even in dignity differ from human surnames? Enough do I laugh too at the decurion gods of each municipality, whose honor is bounded within their own walls. To what lengths this liberty of adopting gods has advanced, the superstitions of the Egyptians teach, who worship even private beasts, cats, crocodiles, and their own serpent. It is a small matter, if they have even consecrated a man — I mean him whom now not Egypt or Greece, but the whole world worships, and by whom the Africans swear; about whose state, what can be conjectured from our literature, so as to seem plausible, has been set down. For that Serapis was once called Joseph, of the race of the holy ones. The youngest among the rest of the brothers, but loftier in genius, sold into Egypt by those same brothers through envy, he served in the household of the king of the Egyptians, Pharaoh. Desired by a queen less chaste, but because he did not comply, on the contrary, accused by her to the king, he is committed to prison. There, having interpreted certain dreams not amiss, he showed the force of his spirit. Meanwhile the king too dreams certain terrible things. Drawn forth — for he had been summoned — Joseph was able to expound; he gave proofs out of prison, he opens the dream to the king: that those seven fattest, overflowing oxen signify as many years of plenty; the latter, equally seven, lean, foretell the want of the following seven years. And so he advises about storing up defenses against a future famine from the former plenty. The king believed; the outcome of events proved him both prudent and holy ever and necessary. And so Pharaoh set him over all Egypt, both to be provisioned and thereafter to be cared for. This man they called Serapis from the head-dress with which his head was adorned; whose head-dress, of a modius's shape, seals the memory of his provisioning, and that the care of the crops was upon his head, it appears from the very ears of corn by which it is marked round about. For this reason too they dedicated the dog, which they reckon among the powers below, under his right hand, because under his hand the care of the Egyptians was compressed. And they add Pharia, whom the derivation of the name shows to be the daughter of king Pharaoh. For then too Pharaoh, among the rest of his honors and rewards, had given his daughter also to him in marriage. But because they had undertaken to worship both beasts and men, they combined both faces into one Anubis, in whom that quarrelsome race might be seen rather to have consecrated the proofs of its own nature and condition — recoiling against its own kings, cast down among strangers, and indeed itself a slave even in gluttony and canine filthiness.

These things, according to the threefold disposition of Varro's divinity, we have set out, the more notable or more signal of them, so that it may now seem enough to have answered concerning the physical kind, the poetical, the national. But since all the substitution is now not of the philosophers nor of the poets nor of the peoples, by whom it was handed down, but of the dominant Romans, by whom it was seized, by whom it built up authority for itself, another breadth of human error must now be entered by us — nay, a forest is to be cut down, which on every side, from the conceived seeds of superstitions, has overshadowed the boyhood of vice. But the Romans' gods too Varro disposed three ways: into certain, uncertain, and select. So great a vanity! For what had they to do with the uncertain, if they had the certain? Unless perhaps they wished to take up the Attic stupor. For at Athens too there is an altar inscribed: "TO THE UNKNOWN GODS." Does anyone, then, worship what he does not know? Then if they had the certain, they ought to have been content, and not to desire the select. In which they are caught out as irreligious too. For if gods are picked out like onions, those not picked out are pronounced bad. But we recognize the Romans' gods two ways, common and proper — that is, those they have with all, and those they themselves have devised. And are not these called public and adventitious? For this the altars teach: of the adventitious at the shrine of Carna, of the public on the Palatine. Wherefore, since the common gods are comprehended both in the physical and in the mythical, it is now done with these. It now pleases to speak of the species of proper ones. Let us be amazed at that third kind of Roman gods, the hostile gods, because no other nation has found out so much superstition for itself. The rest we arrange into two species: some taken up from men, others conceived in another manner. Therefore, since the same coloring of the consecration of the dead serves them, as if on account of life's merits, we must of necessity oppose the same answer also: that no one of these either was worth so much. They believed Aeneas a loving father — a soldier never glorious, disabled by a stone. What a weapon, how common and currish, so much the more ignoble the wound! But Aeneas too is found a traitor to his country, as much Aeneas as Antenor. And if they will not have this true, Aeneas certainly, his country in flames, deserted his comrades, to be subjected to the Punic woman, who did not, in Aeneas's cowardly fashion, accompany her husband Hasdrubal as he gently supplicated the enemy, snatching her children with her — she has it in her to have a fatherland and a father not by knowing how to flee, but she fell upon the fires of burning Carthage as into the embrace of her perishing fatherland. Pious Aeneas, on account of a single boy and a decrepit old man, while Priam and Astyanax were left forsaken? Yet the more to be detested by the Romans, who, for the safety of their princes and their house, swear against their children and wives and all their pledges. They consecrate the son of Venus, and this Vulcan suffers knowingly and Juno allows. If sons sit in heaven through the piety of their parents, why are not rather those Argive youths held gods, who, lest their mother should commit a sin in the rites, drew her yoke in more than human fashion? Why not rather she a goddess, who was the more pious, that daughter who reared her father, failing from hunger in prison, with her own breasts? What else of Aeneas was glorious, except that in the Laurentine battle he nowhere appeared? Perhaps again, in his wonted manner, he fled the battle as a deserter. Romulus likewise is a god after death. If because he founded a city? Why not others, even to women, founders of cities? To be sure, Romulus both killed his brother and ravished by guile the maidens of others. Therefore is he a god, therefore Quirinus, because then his parents were called upon for help through him. What did Sterculus deserve toward divinity? If he was diligent in helping the fields with dung, Augeas contributed more dung. If Faunus, son of Picus, was hauled into court, struck in his mind, he ought rather to have been cured than consecrated. If Faunus's daughter excelled in chastity, so that she did not even consort among men, either from barbarity or from awareness of deformity or from shame at her father's madness, how much worthier a Good Goddess Penelope, who, dwelling among so many most worthless suitors, protected her besieged chastity and kept it! There is also Sanctus, who obtained a shrine from king Plotius on account of his hospitality; Ulysses too could have conferred on you one more god from the most humane Alcinous.

I hasten to fouler things. Your authors were not ashamed to make public about Larentina. She was a hireling harlot, whether as the nurse of Romulus — and therefore a she-wolf because a harlot — or as the mistress of Hercules, and of a now dead Hercules, that is, of one now a god. For they say that his temple-keeper, alone by chance in the shrine, playing at dice, that he might represent to himself the playmate he did not have, played one hand in the name of Hercules, the other from his own person, with this stake: if he himself won, he should take from Hercules's offerings a little supper and a little harlot; but if Hercules — that is, the other hand — he should furnish the same to Hercules. Hercules's hand won. This too could be ascribed to his twelve titles. The temple-keeper pays out the supper to Hercules, hires the harlot Larentina; the fire that loosed Hercules's own body dines, and the altar consumed all. Larentina sleeps alone in the shrine, and the woman from the pander's school boasts that she served Hercules in her dreams, and might well, while she contemplated him in her mind, suffer it in a dream. As she came forth from the shrine at first dawn, a certain young man, a third Hercules as they say, desired her, invited her to himself. She complies, mindful that this had been told her by Hercules for her advantage, and at any rate obtains that they be joined in lawful wedlock — for it was not permitted with impunity to have to do with a god's harlot — and her spouse writes her also his heir. Soon, near death, she bequeathed to the Roman people a field, ample enough, which she had won through Hercules. Hence she sought divinity for her daughters too, whom the divine Larentina ought to have made heirs as well. The Romans' deities are increased by her dignity. Doubtless she alone of so many wives of Hercules was dear, alone indeed rich, and so far the more fortunate than Ceres, who pleased one dead. By so many examples and names among you, who could not have been affirmed a god? Who, finally, disputed Antinous's title to divinity? More comely was Ganymede, or dearer to his lover? Heaven lies open among you to the dead. You force a road from the lower world to the stars. Everywhere harlots ascend, lest you think you bestow much on your kings.

Nor are you content to affirm as gods those who in time past were seen, heard, and handled, whose effigies were described, their dealings recorded, their memory propagated; you demand from heaven I know not what shades, incorporeal, lifeless, and names from things, and you sanction them, dividing the whole state of man among single powers, even from the very conception in the womb: so that there should be a certain god Consevius, who presides over the sowings of intercourse, and Fluviona, who keeps the infant in the womb; hence Vitumnus and Sentinus, through whom the infant lives and first feels; then Diespiter, who leads the boy through to birth. When first they gave birth, there was also Candelifera, since they gave birth by candle-light, and the other goddesses who are named from the offices of birth. They willed the province of Postverta to be the helping of those born wrong, of Prosa-Carmentis of those born right. There is a god named also from speech, Farinus, and others from talking, Locutius. Cunina is at hand for the eye heavy with watching, and supplies rest. There is a rearer, Levana, and likewise Rumina. A wonder, that gods were not provided for washing away the infants' filth. Hence too Potina and Edula, for the first food to be taken and drink to be received, and Statina for setting the infant up. They have Adeona of approaching, Abeona of departing. They have also a Domiduca, and a goddess Mens, who makes the mind good and likewise bad; likewise of the will Volumnus and Voleta. They have also Paventina of dread, Venilia of hope, Volupia of pleasure, Praestitia of excellence; likewise from action Peragenor, from counsels Consus, Juventa of the newly togaed, Fortuna Barbata of grown men now. If I should discourse of the wedding gods: there is Afferenda, properly, of the dowries to be brought; but there are also — for very shame of our offspring! — Mutunus and Tutunus and a goddess Pertunda and Subigus and a goddess Prema and Perfica. Spare us, shameless gods! As the spouses struggle, no one intervenes. They themselves, whose business it is, rejoicing outside, blush.

And to what length shall I bring forth the gods, since it must be discussed what sort of gods you have received? How much you ought to blush? Whether to laugh at the vanity or to reproach the blindness is quite uncertain. For how many gods, and which, shall I bring forward? The greater or also the lesser? The old or also the recent? The males or also the females? The unwed or also those joined to the bed? The skilled or also the inert? The rustic or also the urban? The citizens or also the foreigners? For so many families, so many nations, in good faith seek the census, that they cannot be looked over and distinguished and described. But the more diffuse the matter is, so much the more must it be straitened by us; and therefore, since in this species we hold to one design — of demonstrating that they were all men (not indeed that you may come to know it, for you act as if forgetful) — let us take a short cut from the very method of looking them over, by retracing the origin of their race. For the origin is of all posterity. That origin of your gods is signed, I suppose, in Saturn. For even if Varro reports the most ancient gods to be Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, it ought not to have escaped us that every father is older than his sons, both Saturn older than Jupiter and Heaven than Saturn; for from Heaven and Earth is Saturn. And yet I pass over the origin of Heaven and Earth. They were, somehow, long unwed and childless before they were husbands and parents. By a long age, of course, they had to grow up to such height. Finally, at the same time the voice began to grow strong in Heaven and the breasts of Earth to harden into pebbles; they make a marriage between themselves. I believe either Heaven came down to the bride, or Earth went up to the bridegroom. At any rate Earth conceived of Heaven, and she bore, in the eighth year, Saturn, by a wondrous reckoning. To which of the parents was he like? But even if she did bear, certainly before Saturn they procreated no one, nor afterwards any but one, Ops; and thereafter there was an end of offspring. For Saturn indeed castrated Heaven as he slept. We read that Heaven is of the masculine gender. But how a father unless masculine? But also, with what was he to be castrated? A sickle for him. At this age, of course? For Vulcan the artificer of iron was not yet. But Earth, bereaved, put off, though still of youthful age, marrying another. But neither did she have another Heaven. Yet what but the Sea embraces her? But it smells of brine; she was used to sweet waters. Thus Saturn the only male of Heaven and Earth. But he himself, coming to manhood, is joined to his own sister. There were not yet laws to forbid incest, nor to punish parricide. And so he devoured his sons of the male sex; he himself was better than the wolves, had he exposed them. He feared, of course, lest any of them should have learned from his father's sickle. Soon, Jupiter being born and stolen away, he gulped down a stone, the feigned infant. By this device long secure, at last, overpowered by the son whom he had not digested, grown up in the darkness, he was deprived of his kingdom. This man, the patriarch of the gods, Heaven and Earth, with the poets as midwives, procreated for you. But some seem to themselves to interpret elegantly, in a physiological way, by allegorical argumentation, that Saturn is Time, and therefore Heaven and Earth his parents, as themselves having no origin, and therefore furnished with a sickle because by time all things are cut apart, and therefore a devourer of his own because all things put forth from himself he consumes back into himself. They call in too the testimony of the name: that he was called in Greek "Kronos" as if "Chronos." Likewise those who conjecture him the procreator deduce the reckoning of the Latin word from sowings, through him the seeds of heaven being borne down into the earth. They join Ops to him, because the seeds confer help ("ops") of living, and again because by labor ("opus") the seeds come forth. What, I pray, is the transference of this — I would have you expound it. Either Saturn was, or Time. How Saturn, if Time? If he, how Time? For you cannot reckon both as corporeal in that one. But what forbade Time to be worshipped in its own quality? What forbade a man's body, or a man's story, to be worshipped in its own species, not in time? What does this notion of yours mean, except to color foul materials with lying argumentations? You neither wish Saturn to be Time, because you say he was a man, nor, while you make him Time, do you any longer wish him to have been a man. Plainly your god Saturn altogether is reviewed, in the records of the ancients, on earth, of human quality. Anything that never existed at all can be feigned incorporeally; there is room for feigning where there is no truth. But since it is settled that Saturn lived, you change him in vain; you are not granted leave concerning one whom you will not deny to have been a man, who can be defended neither as a god nor as Time. The census of Saturn stands everywhere in your literature. We read it in Cassius Severus, in the Cornelii Nepos and Tacitus, among the Greeks too in Diodorus, and whoever else have collected the hoary records of antiquity. Nor are his traces more faithfully marked than in Italy itself. For after very many lands and Attic hospitalities he settled in Italy — or, as it was then called, Oenotria — received by Janus, or Jane, as the Salii call it. The mountain he had inhabited was called Saturnius, the city he marked out is Saturnia to this day; finally all Italy was called from Saturn. With such a witness — the land which now rules the world — even if there is doubt about Saturn's origin, yet about his deeds it is settled that he was a man. Thus, if Saturn was a man, doubtless from a man, nay, because a man, surely not from Heaven and Earth; but, his parents being unknown, it was easy for some to call him the son of gods, of whom all may seem the children. For who would not, for veneration's sake, call heaven and earth father and mother? Or from human custom, by which any unknown persons appearing unexpectedly are said to have come from heaven? Accordingly, because he had come as a stranger, the saying of "heavenly" suddenly grew rooted everywhere. For commonly too we boast that those of uncertain race are sons of the earth. I allege nothing about the state of antiquity, in which both the eyes and minds of men were then so rude that at the sight of any new man they were moved as by something divine — much more of a king, and indeed the first. I shall dwell still on Saturn, that I may build up a short cut for the rest as well, the disputation of beginnings being satisfied; nor shall I pass over the weightier testimonies of the divine writings, to which faith superior for antiquity is owed. For before all literature existed the Sibyl — that Sibyl, I mean, the true prophetess of the true God, from whose name you have clothed the prophets of demons. She, in senarian verse, sets it forth to this sense concerning Saturn's lineage and his affairs: "In the tenth generation of men," she says, "from when the cataclysm befell the former ones, there reigned Saturn and Titan and Iapetus, the mightiest sons of Earth and Heaven." If, then, any faith attaches to your writers or your literature, the older — but for that reason the nearer, since of that age — it has been sufficiently proved concerning Saturn and his lineage that they were men. We hold our short cut, the prescription of origin for the rest, that we may not wander through them one by one. The quality of the posterity is shown from the chiefs of the race: mortal things from mortals, earthly from the earthly; grade is compared to grade; marriages, conceptions, births ran their course; fatherlands, abodes, kingdoms, monuments are plain. Therefore, let those who cannot deny that they were born, believe them dead; let those who confess them dead, not think them gods.

But indeed force assists the manifest. Those whom from the beginning they cannot assert to have been anything but men, they receive into divinity, affirming that they were made gods after death, as Varro and those who dreamed with him. Here, then, I take my stand: if your gods have been elected into this name and godhead, as into the senatorial order, you must now of necessity grant — it is your own wisdom — that there is some supreme governor who has the power of electing, and as it were a Caesar; for no one can confer on others what he does not himself rule over. But if they were able to make themselves gods after death, come, why did they choose to be of a worse condition from the beginning? Or if there is no one who has made gods, how shall those be said to have been made who could only have been made by another? Thus no place is given you for refusing that there is a certain proprietor of divinity. Let us, then, examine the causes of electing mortality into heaven. Of these I believe you will produce a twofold reckoning. For either he, whoever so bestowing it acts, does so that he may have supports or defenses or even ornaments of his own height, or the necessity of merits, conferring it upon all the worthy. Anything else you cannot suspect. No one, in bestowing on anyone, acts either not for his own cause or for that one's. But neither can this befit a deity, that, while there is so great a power in him, namely to make gods, so great a humanity should be imposed, that he should need the work or aid of certain persons, and indeed of dead ones — which is a wonder, since from the beginning he could have established immortals for himself. Nor, arguing longer about these things, will he inquire who has compared human things with divine. To be sure, that opinion which is the latter must be examined: whether God has bestowed divinity by the remembrance of merits. But if it was so attributed, if heaven lay open to men of old on account of their merits, it must be reconsidered that thereafter no one was worthy of that honor. Unless the place can no longer hold them. By such great privileges, of course, did antiquity merit the heavenly things. Let us, then, retract whether it merited. He who says it merited, let him set out the merits themselves. If any deeds done in the cradle of temporality avail for the suffrage of divinity, then, defiled with incest, you have received Ops and Saturn as brothers. Your stealthy infant Jupiter, unworthy both of roof and of human breast, deservedly remained in Crete, offspring so bad. Grown up at last, he deprives of his kingdom whatever sort of begetter — most fortunate, the king of the golden age, under whom rested a peace knowing no toil, no want; under whom "no settlers subdued the fields, and the earth herself bore all things, none demanding." But he hated his father, incestuous, and once the castrator of his own grandfather. But behold, he too mingles with his sister, so that I would think that saying first applied to him: "The child takes after the father." As pious a father as a pious son. If even then things were done by just laws, Jupiter ought to have been parted into two sacks. After this, what would he hesitate to do, his lust strengthened by incest, but to spread himself into lighter things, that is, adulteries and debaucheries? Of which poetry has so made sport as we are wont, generally, when something becomes public about a runaway, both to sell his services for another's inquiry and abuse — now figuring him for the prices of luxury, as if he had weighed out an ox or the price of an ox, and sent a shower into the garrets, or burst open an entrance by money; now into the very likenesses of his acts, into the eagle that snatched, the swan that had sung. Are these fables not, then, composed of the most loathsome foulnesses and the highest disgraces? Or do not, perhaps, the manners and characters of men come out the more wanton from them? How these demons, the offspring of evil angels, long since sent forth from faith through unbelief, have striven to turn men aside by similar fables, we need not here treat more at length. For if the same common folk, governed by their kings and princes and propagators, was not indeed of the same nature, yet authority elsewhere demanded a likeness of manners. But how much worse were theirs, who were no better? For by a private title you commonly call Jupiter "the Best," and there is Virgil's "Jove the Just." All alike are incestuous toward their own, unchaste toward strangers, impious, unjust. The one to whom fable has left no signal infamy was not worthy to become a god.

But since they would have others received into divinity from men separately, and a distinction made between the born and the made, according to Dionysius the Stoic, I shall add also concerning this species. Of Hercules himself, indeed, will be the sum of the answer, whether he is worthy of heaven and divinity; for thus, at pleasure, they adjudge divinity to merits. If on account of virtue, because he steadfastly dispatched wild beasts, what so memorable? Do not those punished in the games, or even given for the show of the arena's cheapness, dispatch very many at once, and indeed more eager beasts? If on account of traversing the world, to how many, and wealthy ones, sweet liberty, or to philosophers their servile beggary, has done the same? Do they not remember that Asclepiades the Cynic, with a single little cow, on whose back too he was carried and from whose udder, whenever, he was fed, subdued the whole world with his eyes? If Hercules went also to the lower world, who does not know that the road to the lower world lies open to all? If you consecrated him on account of his many slaughters and battles, that great Pompey put forth a far greater number, victor over the pirates of the sea, who had not left even Ostia safe: and how many thousands, I ask, were slain by Scipio in the single corner of the Byrsa of Carthage? So that Scipio is to be reckoned more worthy of divinity than Hercules. Add rather to the Herculean titles the debaucheries of maidens and of wives, and the swaddling-bands of Omphale, and the military service of the Argonauts basely deserted on account of the loss of a comely boy. Add to his glory, after the brand of disgrace, even his furies; adore the arrows that slew his sons and wife. He who would then more worthily have inflicted himself upon the pyre, from grief at his parricides — who, surrounded by poisons on account of his wife's wantonness, deserved rather to die a dishonorable death — him you have lifted up from the pyre into heaven, with that facility by which you raised another too, made away with by the force of divine fire, who, having contrived a few inventions of experience, was said to have recalled the dead to life. He, Apollo's son, as much a man as a grandson of Jupiter, great-grandson of Saturn (or rather a bastard, as of uncertain father, as the Argive Socrates reported, since exposed and found, more basely brought up by Jupiter, namely at a canine udder), deservedly — which no one can deny — was drained off by a thunderbolt. The bad Jupiter is here again "the Best," impious toward his grandson, envious toward the artificer. But indeed Pindar did not conceal his merit: he says that his cupidity and avarice of gain were avenged in him, by which indeed he drove the living to death, but not the dead to life, by the prevarication of venal medicine. His mother too is said to have perished by the same chance, and deservedly she who had brought forth so dangerous a beast for the world burst up to heaven by the same ladder, as it were. And yet the Athenians will know to sacrifice to such gods. For to Aesculapius and his mother they make funeral offerings among the dead. As if they too did not adore their own Theseus, deservedly a god. Why not? If he abandoned his preserver on a foreign shore, by that same forgetfulness, nay madness, which to his father was the cause of death?

It would be long to review also those whom you have buried among the stars and boldly attended upon as gods. Thus, I suppose, worthy of heaven are the Castors and Perseus and Erigone, just as Jupiter's minion. But what wonder? You have transferred even dogs and scorpions and crabs into heaven. I defer concerning those whom you worship in oracles; this has the testimony of the divine. What? Do you wish the gods to be arbiters even of sorrows, so that there is a Viduus, who widows the soul from the body, whom you have condemned to be shut out by not admitting him within the walls; likewise Caeculus, who deprives the eyes of sense; likewise Orbana, who extinguishes the seed into bereavement; and there is a goddess of death herself. To pass over the rest, you reckon as gods even the places of regions or of the city, Father Janus (and there is a divine Jana of the arches), and Septimontius of the seven mounds. To these same genii they make offerings who have altars or shrines in those places, and besides to others who dwell in another's place or for hire. I say nothing of Ascensus from climbing, and Clivicola from the slopes; I say nothing of the gods Forculus from doors and Cardea from hinges and Limentinus of thresholds, or whatever other doorkeeper deities are adored among you among your neighbors. For what great matter is it, when they have their deities even in brothels, in kitchens, and even in prison? And so heaven is filled with countless proper gods, these and other Roman ones, among whom the offices of the whole of life are distributed, so that there is no need of the other gods. Nay, since those whom we marked above are reckoned privately among the Romans, and not easily known abroad, how do all those things over which they willed them to preside come to pass throughout all the human race and in every nation, where their patrons lack not only honor but even knowledge itself?

But indeed some have discovered certain fruits and necessaries of life. I ask you, when you say that they discovered them, do you not confess that the things to be discovered existed before? Why, then, do you not rather honor the author whose gifts these are, but transfer the author to the discoverers? Before he who discovered did so, surely he gave thanks to the author, surely he perceived him a god, whose truly is the ministry of the establisher, by whom both the discoverer himself was established and that very thing which was to be discovered. No one at Rome knew the green African fig when Cato brought it before the senate, to express how near at hand the hostile province now was, which he was always pressing to be subdued. Cnaeus Pompey first published abroad to Italy the cherry from Pontus. The discoverers among the Romans of new fruits could have earned for me the proclamation of divinity. As vain this as also that gods are held on account of the inventions of the arts. With whom if the artificers of our age were compared, how much more worthily would consecration have befitted the later than the earlier? I ask you, has not antiquity by now been outgrown in all crafts, since daily use everywhere equips novelty? And so those whom you sanctify on account of their arts, you injure in the very arts, and you provoke them with rivals who surpass them.

Finally, you do not deny to the patrons of your religion all those whom antiquity willed to be gods, posterity believed. There remains to us still that very great presumption of the Roman superstitions, with which, against you, nations, we have to engage: namely, that the Romans were made lords and arbiters of the whole world for this reason, that by the offices of religions they deserved so to rule, that it is little short of their prevailing over their very own gods. Doubtless Sterculus and Mutunus and Larentina advanced this empire. The Romans alone, the people destined by their own gods to dominion. For I would not think that they wished it done rather for a foreign people than for their own — that they should become deserters and abandoners, nay, betrayers of their native soil, in which they were born, grew up, were ennobled and buried. Thus not even Jupiter would allow his own Crete to be shaken by the Roman fasces, forgetful of that Idaean cave and the Corybantian bronze and the most pleasant odor of his nurse there. Would he not have preferred that tomb of his to every Capitol, that rather that land should reign which covered Jupiter's ashes? Would Juno have wished the Punic city — beloved before Samos — to be consumed, of all things, by the fires of the Aeneadae? Though I know that "here were her arms, here her chariot; that this should be a kingdom for the nations, the goddess even then, if by any means the fates allow, strives and cherishes." Wretched, she did not prevail against the fates! And yet the Romans decreed not so much honor to the fates that, when they surrendered Carthage to themselves, they gave as much as to Larentina. But these gods are not in the power of conferring a kingdom. For if Jupiter reigned in Crete and Saturn in Italy and Isis in Egypt, men too have reigned, to whom indeed many are reported to have done service. Thus he who serves both makes lords, and the surrendered slave of Admetus increases the Roman citizens with empire, while he ruined his liberal worshipper Croesus by deceiving him with ambiguous oracles. What did the god fear, steadfastly to foretell that his kingdom must fall from him? Increased with the power of reigning, could they ever even have protected their own cities! If they were able to bestow on the Romans, why did Minerva not defend Athens from Xerxes? Or why did Apollo not rescue Delphi from the hand of Pyrrhus? They guard the city of Rome who lost their own — if this is what Roman religiosity has merited. But was not superstition sought after, when the supreme empire was already attained, things now increased? Even if rites were introduced by Numa, yet not yet by images or temples did they delude your affairs with the divine. Frugal was the religion and poverty-stricken the superstition; the altars rude and the vessels mean, and small the smoke from them, and the god himself nowhere. Therefore they were not religious before they were great, because religious. Then how can it seem that empire was sought for the Romans on account of supreme religion and the deepest care of the gods, when it was increased rather by the gods being injured? For unless I am mistaken, every kingdom or empire is sought by wars and enlarged by wars. Moreover, in victories the very gods of a city are injured. For there is the same destruction both of walls and of temples, equal slaughters both of citizens and of priests, the same plunderings of profane things and of sacred. As many sacrileges of the Romans as trophies, as many triumphs thereafter over gods as over nations. There remain too captive images, and surely, if they perceive their conquerors, they do not love them. But because they perceive nothing, they are injured with impunity, and because they are injured with impunity, they are adored in vain. And so those whose height has grown up through victories cannot be seen to have increased by the merits of religion, having increased either as injurers of religion in growing, or by injuring. A kingdom all nations have had, each in its own times, as the Assyrians, as the Medes, as the Persians, as the Egyptians; it is even now with certain peoples, and yet those who have lost it did not dwell without religions and worship and the gods made propitious, until at last almost the whole dominion passed to the Romans. The lot of the times has so rolled the kingdoms. Seek who has ordained the changes of the times. The same dispenses the kingdoms, and now, among the Romans, has gathered that sum, as it were money exacted from many names, into one chest. What he has decreed about it, they know who are nearest to him.