Against the Nations

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.28 · 1.29–1.51 · 1.52–2.7 · 2.8–2.27 · 2.28–2.49 · 2.50–2.68 · 2.69–3.12 · 3.13–3.38 · 3.39–4.16 · 4.17–4.36 · 4.37–5.17 · 5.18–5.36 · 5.37–6.12 · 6.13–7.4 · 7.5–7.22 · 7.23–7.37 · 7.38–7.51

1. 1.1Arnobius states his purpose: to answer the charge that since Christians appeared the world has gone to ruin and the gods have left the earth.
2. 1.2Arnobius asks what change in nature or in human life has actually occurred since Christianity appeared, and finds none.
3. 1.3Famine, plague, hail, drought, and earthquake are old evils with old names, so they cannot be caused by the recent arrival of Christians.
4. 1.4Floods, conflagrations, and disasters all happened before Christians existed, and so did wars and invasions.
5. 1.5Great wars of the past, from Atlantis to Alexander and Rome, were not caused by Christians.
6. 1.6Christ's teaching not to repay evil with evil has reduced war, and if all obeyed it the world would live in peace.
7. 1.7Arnobius's task is only to clear Christians of blame, not to explain the causes of evils.
8. 1.8Arnobius suggests possible natural causes of evils and notes that what harms us may not be evil for the world as a whole.
9. 1.9Weather and seasons serve the order of nature, not human convenience.
10. 1.10What seems harmful to us may serve to restore balance in nature.
11. 1.11Things harmful to human beings, like cold, heat, poisons, and wild beasts, are not therefore evils in nature.
12. 1.12Human beings do not own the world and cannot demand that it serve them, since events concern the whole.
13. 1.13In the roughly three hundred years of Christianity there have been times of peace and plenty, so disasters cannot be blamed on Christians.
14. 1.14Victories and good harvests during the Christian era disprove the charge.
15. 1.15If the gods caused famine out of anger at Christians, times of plenty would show that their anger comes and goes like a game.
16. 1.16Disasters and blessings fall on regions alike where Christians live, so Christians cannot be their cause.
17. 1.17To say the gods are angry is to attribute to them passions unworthy of divinity.
18. 1.18Gods subject to anger would be subject to passion and therefore to decay and death.
19. 1.19Gods who punish their own worshipers for the Christians' sake would be unjust.
20. 1.20If the gods are angry, let them defend themselves directly instead of needing human avengers.
21. 1.21If the gods hated Christians, they could make their blessings fall only on pagans.
22. 1.22Since pagans and Christians fare alike, the claim that the gods hate Christians is mere slander.
23. 1.23True gods would not be angry or vindictive; such pettiness hardly suits even demons.
24. 1.24The charge against Christians is spread by soothsayers and diviners who fear the loss of their income.
25. 1.25Granting the gods' anger for argument's sake, Arnobius asks its cause, and the accusation turns out to be that Christians worship the supreme God.
26. 1.26Christians suffer confiscation, exile, torture, and death merely for worshiping the supreme God, which no true god could condemn.
27. 1.27Christians are simply worshipers of the supreme God under Christ as teacher, and their prayer benefits themselves, not God.
28. 1.28Pagans honor minor deities, deified prostitutes, and sacred animals, yet persecute Christians for worshiping the Father from whom any gods would derive their being and immortality.
29. 1.29All that human beings are and enjoy comes from the supreme God, so those who worship other gods, not Christians, deserve the name of impious.
30. 1.30The gods, born later than the world, cannot be the authors of the rain and seasons they found already in operation.
31. 1.31Arnobius breaks into a prayer to the supreme, unknowable God, asking pardon for persecutors, and sets aside atheists and atomists as not worth refuting.
32. 1.32Arnobius refuses to prove the existence of the supreme God by argument, as though it were in doubt.
33. 1.33Knowledge of the supreme God is inborn in all people, and even nature would proclaim him if it could speak.
34. 1.34Jupiter, who was born and had parents, cannot be identified with the eternal, unbegotten God.
35. 1.35If Jupiter were the supreme God whom Christians also worship, the gods' supposed anger at Christians would make no sense.
36. 1.36The objection is that Christians worship a crucified man as God; Arnobius answers that the pagan gods were themselves once mortals with human births and stories.
37. 1.37Pagans worship deified mortals, so they cannot fault Christians for worshiping one who was born a man.
38. 1.38Even if Christ were only a man, his gifts of truth about God, the world, and the soul would make him more worthy of divine honor than any deified benefactor.
39. 1.39Arnobius recalls his former worship of idols and anointed stones and confesses Christ, his teacher, as God.
40. 1.40Christ's death on the cross no more discredits his teaching than violent deaths discredited Pythagoras, Socrates, or Regulus.
41. 1.41Pagans themselves worship gods who died violent deaths, such as Liber, Aesculapius, Hercules, Attis, and Romulus.
42. 1.42Arnobius affirms that Christ is truly God, sent by the supreme King, as his works prove.
43. 1.43Arnobius rejects the charge that Christ was a magician, since no magician ever did what he did without spells or rites.
44. 1.44Christ worked his miracles by the power of his name alone, and all of them were beneficial.
45. 1.45Christ's healings of the sick, the possessed, lepers, the blind, and the lame show he was more than a mortal.
46. 1.46Christ calmed the sea, walked on water, fed five thousand, raised the dead, knew hearts, appeared after his death, and his name still puts demons to flight.
47. 1.47Christ's miracles were meant to lead people to the true God, and they show him stronger than fate itself.
48. 1.48Pagan gods healed, if at all, by prescribing remedies like physicians, while Christ healed by word and touch alone.
49. 1.49Countless sufferers prayed in vain at the temples, while Christ helped good and bad alike without regard to merit.
50. 1.50Christ gave his unlearned disciples power to work the same miracles in his name, proving they were not magic.
51. 1.51No pagan god ever gave priests power to heal, whereas Christ's sharing of his power with men shows a power above all things.
52. 1.52Arnobius challenges the famous magicians of legend to do, even with all their arts, what simple Christians did by bare command.
53. 1.53Christ was God sent from the supreme God, unknown to the powers of the world, and at his death all creation was shaken.
54. 1.54The miracles were attested by eyewitnesses and believed by whole nations, who would not have suffered hatred for a fiction.
55. 1.55The rapid spread of Christianity and the willingness of believers to die prove that the Gospel events were real.
56. 1.56Not all of Christ's deeds could be written down, and some writings have been corrupted by demons and men, but his divinity rests on the truth of the deeds themselves.
57. 1.57Christian writings deserve no less credit than pagan ones, and the antiquity of pagan tradition is no guarantee of truth.
58. 1.58The simple, unpolished style of the Christian writings is a sign of their truthfulness.
59. 1.59Faults of grammar do not affect truth, grammatical gender is a human convention, and the pagans' own classics vary in the same way.
60. 1.60Christ took human form because otherwise his invisible divine power could not have been seen or heard by mortals.
61. 1.61Why God chose to act through a man is hidden, and unbelief prevents understanding it.
62. 1.62Arnobius argues that the divine Christ did not die; the death was that of the man he had assumed, as a prophet's death is not the death of the god who speaks through him.
63. 1.63Christ, who could have prevented his death, freely allowed it in accordance with God's plan, and in his life taught virtue and healed with gentleness.
64. 1.64Pagans deify tyrants and honor immoral philosophers, yet hate Christ, who harmed no one and brought good news of the soul's salvation.
65. 1.65People would welcome a physician promising health, yet they persecute Christ, who brought salvation of souls and let his humanity die to confirm that hope.
66. 2.1Arnobius asks what wrong Christ ever did to deserve such hatred: he conquered no nations, seized no wealth, violated no marriages, insulted no one.
67. 2.2Christ brought light and the way to heaven, and teaching people to worship the one God is the truest religion.
68. 2.3Everyone knows the supreme God by nature, and Christ forbade the worship of lesser gods for good reasons that pride keeps pagans from seeing.
69. 2.4Since the future cannot be proved, it is wiser to believe the promise that offers hope than to reject it and risk losing salvation.
70. 2.5The rapid spread of Christianity, the conversion of the learned, and the steadfastness of believers under persecution are evidence of its divine origin.
71. 2.6Pagan learning in grammar, rhetoric, and logic does not qualify anyone to judge ultimate truth, for human wisdom is foolishness with God.
72. 2.7Philosophers cannot know even basic facts about human nature, sleep, perception, or the mind, let alone divine things.
73. 2.8All human undertakings, from travel and farming to marriage and worship, depend on faith.
74. 2.9Philosophers too accept their doctrines on the authority of earlier teachers, not on sight.
75. 2.10Philosophers too rest on belief, and their constant disagreements show that nothing certain is known by them.
76. 2.11Pagans believe philosophers who worked no miracles; Christians believe Christ, whose mighty works justify faith in him.
77. 2.12Christ won the nations not by arguments but by mighty works; Arnobius recounts Peter's victory over Simon Magus at Rome.
78. 2.13Platonists mock Christian teaching on God, resurrection, and the soul's salvation, though Plato taught similar things.
79. 2.14Arnobius holds that souls are of a middle nature, neither immortal nor mortal by themselves: those who do not know God are finally destroyed in fire, while those who turn to God's mercy are saved.
80. 2.15Arnobius ironically draws out the claim of 'new men' that souls are divine and immortal: if so, all people would be perfect and in agreement.
81. 2.16Arnobius rejects the claim that divine souls are corrupted by descending into bodies, and argues that humans are closely akin to other animals.
82. 2.17Human reason is not so plainly superior to animals, who also build shelters and show signs of skill.
83. 2.18The arts were discovered gradually on earth out of need, which shows that souls do not bring divine knowledge with them.
84. 2.19Human arts are useful inventions, not proof of divinity, and people's unequal learning and conflicting opinions refute the Platonic doctrine that learning is recollection.
85. 2.20Arnobius begins a thought experiment: an underground chamber cut off from all sights and sounds.
86. 2.21A newborn child is to be raised in that chamber by a silent nurse on the simplest food.
87. 2.22Such a person, brought out at forty, would know nothing of himself or the world, which disproves the claim that souls come with divine knowledge.
88. 2.23The child raised in isolation would not recognize foods, dangers, or the simplest tools and could not speak.
89. 2.24Plato's slave-boy in the Meno answered because he had learned numbers by use; Arnobius's isolated man could not answer even the simplest sum.
90. 2.25The supposedly divine soul, left untaught, is duller than a beast, and learning by training is something animals share.
91. 2.26If souls forget their knowledge on entering bodies, they are not incorporeal, and if they can suffer such change they are not naturally immortal.
92. 2.27A soul that forgets must undergo change and suffering, and whatever suffers is not immortal but holds life only on loan.
93. 2.28If the body made souls forget their former life, they would not remember decades of bodily life either, nor could Platonists know their own doctrine about the soul's descent.
94. 2.29The doctrine that souls are naturally immortal and godlike encourages vice, since it removes the fear of divine judgment.
95. 2.30If souls are immortal and incorruptible, punishments cannot touch them and virtue is pointless; if they simply perish, as Epicurus held, virtue is equally without reward.
96. 2.31The middle, uncertain nature of souls explains both the value of philosophy and the philosophers' disagreement about whether the soul is mortal or immortal.
97. 2.32Since souls can gain lasting life only by knowing God, Christians reasonably entrust themselves to their Deliverer, as people take precautions against lesser dangers.
98. 2.33Unlike philosophers who trust in their own divinity to rise to the stars, Christians trust God alone for life beyond death.
99. 2.34If Plato could have secured escape from death, people would rightly worship him; Christ promised it and proved it by his mighty works.
100. 2.35God can make souls immortal, and even the gods, having been produced by the one unbegotten Father, are of a middle nature.
101. 2.36Plato himself taught that the gods are immortal only by God's will; so God can make souls immortal, and Arnobius adds that souls were not begotten by the supreme God but by a lesser being of his court.
102. 2.37If souls were God's own offspring they would never have left heaven for bodies, and humans add nothing to the world's completeness.
103. 2.38Kings, soldiers, performers, and tradesmen contribute nothing to the constitution of the world.
104. 2.39Arnobius ridicules the idea that God sent his own divine offspring into bodies to be born in filth, learn deceit, make war, worship idols, and fall into confusion.
105. 2.40Continuing his irony, Arnobius asks whether God sent souls to toil for food and shelter, starve, and grow greedy, usurious, and litigious.
106. 2.41Arnobius asks whether God sent souls to delight in amphitheater slaughter, gluttony, and vain adornment, including effeminate grooming by men.
107. 2.42Arnobius asks whether God sent divine souls to become criminals, gourmets, lewd musicians and dancers, and prostitutes.
108. 2.43It is absurd to think that wise divine souls were sent to commit such crimes; the objection then is raised that they came of their own will.
109. 2.44If souls came of their own will, God, who foresaw their fall and did not prevent it, would still be responsible for their sins.
110. 2.45It is monstrous to believe that the almighty God begot such fickle souls and sent them into bodies to suffer and do all these evils.
111. 2.46It is impious to think that the good and perfect God made man, a wretched creature, or is the cause of any evil.
112. 2.47Christians need not know who made souls in order to deny that the supreme God made them, just as one can deny God made vermin without knowing their maker.
113. 2.48The vices of human souls show they cannot be the offspring of the perfect supreme God.
114. 2.49A few good people cannot outweigh the vicious majority when judging the character of the human race.
115. 2.50The philosophers' very struggle against their passions shows that souls are weak and prone to evil, not naturally good.
116. 2.51Arnobius defends his admission of ignorance about the soul's origin: the Platonists' claim that souls descend from God is itself only conjecture.
117. 2.52Human souls, like those of animals, may come from some unknown lower cause; even Plato assigned the making of man to lesser gods, not to the supreme God.
118. 2.53Arnobius restates that human souls are naturally mortal but can receive everlasting life from God if they hope in him.
119. 2.54Arnobius sets out the dilemma of evil: if all happens by God's will, he causes evil; if not, evil happens against his will or knowledge; and evil cannot be denied.
120. 2.55Arnobius declines to explain why God permits evil, holding only that nothing harmful comes from God, who does only what is good.
121. 2.56Christians leave aside questions beyond their knowledge, seeing that philosophers argue plausibly for contradictory views on the world and the gods.
122. 2.57Philosophers argue equally persuasively for opposite views of the soul, which shows that such questions cannot be settled by human reason.
123. 2.58The pagans are no less ignorant than Christians about the origin and working of the world, the heavens, and nature.
124. 2.59Arnobius lists questions about weather, the human body, animals, and plants that the pagans cannot answer.
125. 2.60Christ, who is God, commanded his followers to leave aside unanswerable questions and to direct their whole minds to the knowledge of God.
126. 2.61Christ bids his hearers leave speculative questions to God and attend to the salvation of their souls, which without knowledge of God face a slow and painful destruction.
127. 2.62Neither philosophers' claims of divine birth, nor the prayers of the magi, nor Etruscan rites can save souls; only almighty God can grant them lasting life.
128. 2.63To the question of souls who lived before Christ, Arnobius answers that God's mercy reached them too, though how is beyond present knowledge.
129. 2.64Christ calls all equally, but God compels no one; those who refuse his offer of salvation have only themselves to blame.
130. 2.65God does not force belief; salvation is given through Christ alone, whom God the Father appointed as the only door of life.
131. 2.66Not even purity or rites of passage bring immortality apart from Christ, and the novelty of Christianity is no fault, since people always rightly exchange the worse for the better.
132. 2.67The Romans have themselves abandoned many ancestral institutions and customs, so they cannot fault Christians for changing religion.
133. 2.68The Romans have altered even their sacrificial rites, so Christians may rightly choose a better and truer religion.
134. 2.69Every art and science began at some time, so newness is no argument against Christianity.
135. 2.70By the pagans' own myths, their gods were born at particular times, so the pagans' religion too had a beginning.
136. 2.71Arnobius calculates from the Roman legendary genealogy that Jupiter lived under two thousand years ago, so the pagan gods are themselves recent.
137. 2.72The God whom Christians worship is older than all things, so their religion is not new; they have only lately learned whom to worship.
138. 2.73Rome itself adopted new gods, such as Isis, Serapis, and the Great Mother, at known dates, so Christianity's recent arrival is no reproach.
139. 2.74Why Christ came so late is known only to God, but his coming is no less certain for that; the pagans cannot explain the late births of their own gods.
140. 2.75In eternity nothing is late; God sent Christ at the fitting time according to his fixed plan, perhaps when humanity had grown weaker.
141. 2.76The pagan gods do not protect their worshipers from misfortune either; Christians were promised nothing for this life and regard suffering and death as a release.
142. 2.77Persecution frees Christians rather than harming them, as breaking down a prison frees the prisoner.
143. 2.78Arnobius urges his readers to stop raising idle objections and entrust themselves to God before death overtakes them.
144. 3.1Earlier Christian apologists have answered the charges fully, and Christianity rests on its own truth, not on human defenders.
145. 3.2Christians do not worship other gods because worship of the first God, the source of all divinity, suffices.
146. 3.3If there are lesser gods, they are honored in the worship of their King, as members of a royal house are honored in the king; but images are not gods.
147. 3.4Even granting many gods, the pagans cannot know which gods really exist or what their true names are.
148. 3.5Pagans cannot know the number of the gods and so neglect countless of them; they should pardon Christians for neglecting gods whose existence is unknown.
149. 3.6Christians would honor the gods if they knew them, but pagan myths degrade them, beginning with the idea that the gods are male and female, as Cicero himself criticized.
150. 3.7Some pagans want Cicero's books on the gods suppressed; suppressing writings is not a defense of the gods but a fear of truth.
151. 3.8The masculine name for God does not imply sex; gods with sexes would have to be bodies.
152. 3.9If the gods beget, heaven would overflow with them; if they do not, their sexual organs would be pointless.
153. 3.10Arnobius mocks the implications of gods with sexes: lust, menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth among the deities.
154. 3.11If the gods are angry, it is with the pagans who dishonor them with shameful myths and rites, not with Christians.
155. 3.12Arnobius denies that God has any bodily form; anthropomorphic language in Jewish scriptures either does not concern Christians or must be interpreted spiritually.
156. 3.13If the gods have human form, they must also have all the organs and entrails of the human body.
157. 3.14If the gods have human shape, they must differ in features, and the sculptors' workshops show them as young, old, bald, or clothed.
158. 3.15Giving the gods human bodies with hair, age, and clothing is as absurd as the Egyptians' animal gods, whom the pagans mock.
159. 3.16If the pagans shape the gods in human form merely for honor, they insult them, as men would be insulted by statues of themselves with animal faces.
160. 3.17Christians do not know God's form, if he has one, but can still show that the pagan conception of it is false.
161. 3.18If God sees, hears, and speaks, he does so in his own way, not with human organs.
162. 3.19Even human virtues cannot properly be attributed to God; the surest knowledge of God is that he cannot be expressed in human words.
163. 3.20Arnobius mocks the assignment of particular crafts and skills to particular gods.
164. 3.21Arnobius asks why gods would need music, hunting, prophecy, medicine, midwifery, smithing, weaving, or oratory for themselves.
165. 3.22If the gods teach the arts, they must first know them, which returns to the absurdity of gods practicing crafts they do not need.
166. 3.23If gods preside over seafaring, farming, childbirth, healing, and athletics, why do those enterprises so often fail?
167. 3.24Gods who help only when paid with sacrifices are selling favors; the true God gives his benefits freely to all, good and bad alike.
168. 3.25Arnobius ridicules minor deities assigned to wedding rites and to eating and drinking, and the savage natures ascribed to some gods.
169. 3.26If Mars governs wars, either he fails to stop them or he delights in all the slaughter and ruin they bring.
170. 3.27If Venus inspires love, she is responsible for adultery, incest, and the suicides of desperate lovers.
171. 3.28Gods who stir up love, war, and discord cannot be the tranquil, perfect beings philosophy describes; either they do not do these things or they are not gods.
172. 3.29Allegorical interpretations that make Janus the world or year and Saturn time abolish the very gods of myth and worship.
173. 3.30If Jupiter is the sun or ether and Juno the air, the mythical Jupiter and Juno with all their cult titles do not exist.
174. 3.31Allegories making Minerva the moon or memory and Neptune the sea-water likewise abolish these gods.
175. 3.32Etymologies making Mercury 'speech' and the Great Mother, Ceres, and Vesta all 'the earth' abolish these gods.
176. 3.33Identifying Vulcan with fire, Venus with desire, Proserpina with sprouting crops, and Liber and Apollo with the sun abolishes these gods too.
177. 3.34If Diana and Ceres are both the moon, then neither Ceres the giver of crops nor Diana the sister of Apollo exists.
178. 3.35If the world is one living being, as the Stoics hold, its parts cannot be separate gods, and only the world itself would be divine.
179. 3.36The pagans' own allegorizing philosophers abolish the gods more thoroughly than Christians do, so any divine anger should fall on them.
180. 3.37Pagan authors disagree about the parentage and number of the Muses, which shows that they know nothing certain.
181. 3.38Roman antiquarians give contradictory accounts of the gods called Novensiles, so worshipers cannot know whom they are honoring.
182. 3.39The contradictory explanations of the Novensiles refute one another, and on one view the name denotes no persons at all.
183. 3.40Pagan authorities disagree completely about who the Penates are.
184. 3.41Nigidius and Varro give conflicting accounts of what the Lares are.
185. 3.42If worshipers do not know who the gods are, they cannot know whom to ask for help or how to appease them.
186. 3.43A prayer addressed to the wrong gods under the wrong names would anger them rather than win their help.
187. 3.44Because the pagans constantly replace one account of their gods with another, it is doubtful whether any of them exist.
188. 4.1Arnobius asks whether the Roman deified virtues, such as Piety, Concord, and Victory, are real gods or mere names.
189. 4.2Virtues and blessings are qualities of people, not divine beings, as their opposites show.
190. 4.3Gods like Luperca, Praestana, and Panda are named from events of Roman legend; if they existed before, what were they called?
191. 4.4A goddess Pellonia who drives off enemies could not serve both sides in a battle, and she did not save Rome from its great defeats.
192. 4.5Gods assigned to the left-hand regions make no sense, since left and right exist only relative to the observer.
193. 4.6Arnobius mocks Lateranus, a god of brick hearths, as a divine cook's assistant.
194. 4.7Arnobius lists obscene and trivial Roman deities, whose names reveal them as inventions.
195. 4.8Gods older than the world could not have taken their names from later things like bees and bones, and humans could not know which names to give them.
196. 4.9Gods of profit, lust, thresholds, and money cannot be real, since the things they supposedly guard are often shameful or unprotected.
197. 4.10If honey and bones have gods, every vegetable and bodily part should have one too, and there would be as many gods as things.
198. 4.11If any gods exist, the pagans' absurd inventions would offend them; and the answers given by soothsayers are often false.
199. 4.12Even if omens are real, deceiving spirits may answer in the name of the gods invoked, as the magi themselves admit.
200. 4.13Perhaps one being, and the spirits under him, impersonates all the gods; and the pagans absurdly multiply gods who share the same names.
201. 4.14Pagan theologians distinguish several Jupiters, Suns, Mercuries, and Minervas, multiplying gods under the same names.
202. 4.15The theologians' multiplication of gods with the same names leaves religion confused and uncertain.
203. 4.16Arnobius imagines five Minervas quarreling over the sacrifices offered to 'Minerva', leaving the worshiper unable to decide between them.
204. 4.17Christians would consider worshiping the gods if shown a single, worthy god for each name, but not multiplied gods under one name.
205. 4.18The pagans cannot disown their theologians' writings, since all their knowledge of the gods comes from books.
206. 4.19Myths of divine births through sexual intercourse are human and degrading; true divine beings would be unborn or produced purely by the supreme God.
207. 4.20Arnobius mocks myths of divine marriages and weddings, including the discord that led to the Trojan War.
208. 4.21The myth that Jupiter was born, nursed, and rocked in a cradle degrades him to the level of animals.
209. 4.22The myths of Jupiter's many affairs brand the king of the gods as a lecherous adulterer.
210. 4.23Human laws punish adultery, yet the myths make Jupiter an adulterer who became a swan and a bull for the sake of mortal women.
211. 4.24The shameful myths about the gods, not the Christians, are the cause of humanity's troubles; Arnobius lists many such myths.
212. 4.25It is the pagans' own poets and historians, not Christians, who tell of the gods' crimes, servitude, wounds, and burials.
213. 4.26The pagans' own writings tell of the gods' countless seductions and of their love for boys.
214. 4.27The goddesses too are described as lovers of mortals; either these tales are slanders deserving divine punishment or the gods were merely human.
215. 4.28Gods to whom the myths ascribe birth, castration, war, lust, theft, and death would be human, not divine.
216. 4.29Arnobius notes that Euhemerus and others have shown that the gods were once human beings.
217. 4.30The pagans, who tell disgraceful stories about the gods, dishonor them more than anyone; true worship lies in the heart and in worthy thoughts of God, not in sacrifices.
218. 4.31If trivial slips in ritual anger the gods, the pagans' slanderous myths must anger them far more than Christian abstention from sacrifice.
219. 4.32Even if the myths are poets' inventions, the pagans share the guilt by tolerating such slanders of the gods without punishment.
220. 4.33The pagans delight in poetry that shows the gods feasting, lusting, murdering, grieving, and fighting, and excuse it as allegory.
221. 4.34Romans protect their rulers and citizens from slander by law but let poets slander the gods freely, which shows they do not truly revere them.
222. 4.35In the theaters, before the priests and magistrates, actors portray Venus as a harlot, the Great Mother in lust, Hercules in agony, and Jupiter as an adulterer.
223. 4.36Pagans reward actors who mock the gods, yet burn Christian books and destroy churches where prayer is made for all, including rulers and enemies.
224. 4.37If the gods are angry, the pagans' myths have provoked them; if they cannot be angry, they are not angry with Christians either.
225. 5.1Arnobius retells from Valerius Antias the legend of Numa tricking Faunus and Picus, and then Jupiter, into substituting an onion, hair, and a fish for human heads in the rite of expiating lightning.
226. 5.2The story is absurd: immortal gods do not thirst, get drunk, or get tied up, and Jupiter would not reveal how to frustrate his own thunderbolts.
227. 5.3It is absurd that Jupiter was summoned by rites and outwitted by Numa, who could not have known in advance what Jupiter would say.
228. 5.4The story makes Jupiter either foolish or cruel, since he first demanded human heads for a rite that an onion and a fish could satisfy.
229. 5.5Arnobius begins to recount, from Timotheus, the Phrygian myth of the Great Mother and the birth of the violent two-sexed Agdestis.
230. 5.6In the myth, Liber tricks Agdestis into castrating himself; from his blood a pomegranate grows, by which Nana conceives Attis, who is loved by the Great Mother and Agdestis.
231. 5.7The myth continues: Agdestis drives the wedding guests mad, Attis castrates himself and dies under a pine, and from these events come the rites of the Great Mother's cult.
232. 5.8If the Great Mother was born from Deucalion's stones, she is of human origin and, by Varro's chronology, less than two thousand years old.
233. 5.9Arnobius ridicules the myth's picture of Jupiter attempting to violate his mother, the Great Mother.
234. 5.10Arnobius mocks the myth's account of Agdestis conceived in a rock and born bellowing in the tenth month.
235. 5.11Arnobius ridicules the gods' council deciding to castrate Agdestis and pictures Liber preparing the noose.
236. 5.12Arnobius mocks the myth's account of the pomegranate that grew from Agdestis's blood and made Nana pregnant.
237. 5.13Arnobius continues to mock the details of the Attis myth.
238. 5.14The details of the Attis myth are shameful fables fit for old women's tales, and its ending is incredible.
239. 5.15Whether the myth is true or false, it is the pagans who preserve and publish it and so offend the gods, not the Christians.
240. 5.16The rites of the Great Mother, with the sacred pine, wool, violets, mourning Galli, and fasting, reenact the Attis myth and show that it is believed.
241. 5.17The mourning rites of the Galli either reenact the shameful myth or conceal something equally disgraceful.
242. 5.18Arnobius passes over, while briefly mentioning, the Good Goddess's punishment for drinking wine and an obscene legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius.
243. 5.19Arnobius mentions the savage and obscene rites of Bacchus, Cyprian Venus, and the Corybantes, and the myth of Liber torn apart by the Titans.
244. 5.20Arnobius recounts the Phrygian mystery myth of Jupiter violating his mother Ceres in the form of a bull.
245. 5.21The myth continues: Jupiter appeases Ceres with a ram's testicles, then as a serpent fathers a bull-child on their daughter Proserpina, as the Sabazian rites commemorate.
246. 5.22The pagans heap every kind of adultery and even incest on Jupiter.
247. 5.23Arnobius pictures the degrading scenes of Jupiter as a bull and gelding a ram, and says that such myths would rightly anger any real Jupiter.
248. 5.24The Greek Thesmophoria are no better; Arnobius begins the Eleusinian myth of Proserpina's abduction and Ceres' search.
249. 5.25Arnobius recounts the Eleusinian story in which Baubo cheers the grieving Ceres by an obscene exposure, so that she drinks the kykeon.
250. 5.26Arnobius quotes Orphic verses describing Baubo and Ceres, and the Eleusinian password, as proof of the rites' shameful origin.
251. 5.27The Eleusinian myth portrays gods who abduct, grieve, and are consoled by obscenity, which is unworthy of divinity.
252. 5.28Arnobius recounts the obscene legend of Liber and Prosymnus as the origin of the phallic processions honoring Liber.
253. 5.29The phallic cults show the truth of these myths; such gods, whose incest and lusts are celebrated, set a corrupting example that Christians rightly refuse to worship.
254. 5.30Atheists and Euhemerists treat the gods more respectfully than the pagans, whose worship is full of slander against them.
255. 5.31It is the pagans who have attributed every disgrace to the gods, so they, not Christians, have provoked divine anger.
256. 5.32The pagan objection: the myths are allegories of natural processes, such as rain and seed, not literal accounts of divine vice.
257. 5.33Allegorical interpretation is a sophist's trick; the insult lies in the words themselves, and the pagans cannot know the writers' hidden meanings.
258. 5.34Allegory has no fixed limits; anyone can interpret the myths in countless ways, so no certain meaning can be drawn from them.
259. 5.35If the myths are allegories, the pagans should explain every detail allegorically, which they cannot do.
260. 5.36If only some parts of the myths are allegorical, there is no way to tell which parts, so selective allegory is arbitrary.
261. 5.37The allegorists arbitrarily switch between literal and allegorical readings within the same story.
262. 5.38Stories of events that actually happened cannot be turned into allegories, just as the Trojan War cannot become something else.
263. 5.39The mystery rites commemorate the events of the myths, which proves that the myths were understood as history, not allegory.
264. 5.40Even as allegory, describing rain and sowing as divine incest and rape insults the gods.
265. 5.41Allegory used to veil shameful things in decent words; the pagans veil decent ideas in shameful stories, which is perverse.
266. 5.42If the gods wanted their mysteries hidden, allegorists should not reveal them; and identifying Attis with the sun dishonors the sun.
267. 5.43The allegorists, ashamed of their myths, twist words to make them respectable; Arnobius grants their interpretations for argument's sake.
268. 5.44Many myths cannot be allegorized at all, and the pagans have doubled their fault by calling shameful things by the gods' names.
269. 5.45Using gods' names for common things like wine, bread, and intercourse insults the gods.
270. 6.1Arnobius turns to the charge that Christians have no temples, images, altars, or sacrifices, which true gods would not want.
271. 6.2True gods, if they exist, must be perfect, passionless, and equally good to all; this is a higher view of divinity than the pagans hold.
272. 6.3Christians honor the gods as they honor the supreme God, without temples; temples are useless to gods, who need no shelter, and confining gods in houses insults them.
273. 6.4Gods need no temples to hear prayers, for true divinity is present everywhere and knows even silent thoughts.
274. 6.5A god confined to temples could not hear worshipers praying at the same time in distant temples.
275. 6.6Many temples are built over the tombs of mortals, which means either that the dead are worshiped or that the gods are insulted.
276. 6.7Even the Roman Capitol is named after the head of a dead man, Olus, found in its foundations.
277. 6.8If the pagans believe in the gods, they do not need images; if they doubt, images of doubtful beings are pointless.
278. 6.9Worshiping gods through images is like praying to one being while addressing another, a senseless substitution.
279. 6.10Images cannot be true likenesses of gods whom no one has seen, as the human-shaped sun, moon, and winds, and a lion-faced god, show.
280. 6.11The pagans mock ancient aniconic cult objects yet worship human-shaped statues, and defend by force what they privately know to be absurd.
281. 6.12The gods' statues are distinguished only by the attributes artists give them; exchange the attributes and no one could tell which god is which.
282. 6.13Statues of gods were modeled on real people, even prostitutes and a sculptor's boy-lover, which shows the images are human products.
283. 6.14Idols are made from base materials by human craftsmen, so it is madness to worship them as gods.
284. 6.15Raw materials are not worshiped, and shaping them into human forms adds no divinity to them.
285. 6.16Statues are hollow assemblies of metal and wood, decaying and fouled by vermin and birds, which shows they contain no divinity.
286. 6.17Arnobius asks whether the gods, supposed to dwell in statues by dedication, enter them willingly or by compulsion, and why they would prefer clay to heaven.
287. 6.18If gods dwell in statues, they are either imprisoned in them or come and go, and they must shrink, stretch, sit, or run to fit each statue.
288. 6.19One god cannot be present whole in thousands of statues at once, nor divided among them.
289. 6.20If gods lived in their statues, they would not need locks, guards, dogs, and geese to protect them from thieves.
290. 6.21Temple robbers like Antiochus of Cyzicus and Dionysius of Syracuse stripped statues of Jupiter and Aesculapius unpunished, showing that no gods dwelt in them.
291. 6.22Even when statues of Venus were violated by lovers, the goddess did nothing, which shows she was not present in them.
292. 6.23Famous temples burned or were plundered while their gods did nothing, showing that no gods inhabit them.
293. 6.24The claim that images were made to frighten the crowd into virtue is refuted by the continuing prevalence of crime, even against temples themselves.
294. 6.25Arnobius lists the attributes of the statues of the gods, none of which could frighten anyone into virtue.
295. 6.26The attributes of the statues could frighten no one; it is laws and punishments, not images, that restrain crime and even protect the images themselves.
296. 6.27Christians refuse to sacrifice, not from contempt of the divine, but because true divinity needs no sacrifices; for this they are called atheists and executed.
297. 7.1Following Varro, Arnobius holds that no sacrifices should be offered, since true gods do not want them and images cannot perceive them.
298. 7.2Christians do not know which gods are true, but any true gods would be like the supreme God: unborn, everlasting, and needing nothing.
299. 7.3Sacrifices cannot feed the gods, since true gods need no nourishment and the offerings are simply burned or eaten by dogs.
300. 7.4Gods cannot take pleasure in sacrifices, since they are free from passions and bodily senses, and the slaughter of animals is a pitiable sight even to humans.
301. 7.5Sacrifices cannot appease the gods' anger, since true gods, being immortal and impassible, cannot be angry.
302. 7.6If sacrifices prevent the gods' anger, the gods are like caged beasts; if they calm it afterward, the gods are moved by trivial human offenses.
303. 7.7The gods never gave laws to humanity, so they have no just cause for anger against human beings.
304. 7.8Gods whose anger could be bought off with animals would be like children soothed with toys, and selling pardon only encourages sin.
305. 7.9Arnobius imagines a sacrificial ox protesting that it is unjust to kill an innocent animal to atone for the crimes of guilty human beings.
306. 7.10The philosophers of fate argue that, if all is fixed, sacrifices cannot win help from the gods, and even prayer to them is pointless.
307. 7.11Worshipers who sacrifice constantly still suffer every misfortune, which the fatalists take as proof that sacrifices change nothing.
308. 7.12Gods who grant favors only in return for sacrifices would be venal, favoring the rich over the innocent poor and caught between warring peoples.
309. 7.13Arnobius turns to the claim that sacrifices are offered to honor the gods, and explains that honor involves the lesser exalting the greater.
310. 7.14Honor can exalt only human beings; to say that sacrifices honor the gods implies that humans increase the gods' power.
311. 7.15The right honor for gods is a worthy opinion of them, not sacrifices, which turn altars into crematories.
312. 7.16Sacrificial smoke is a stench; and if gods were honored with blood or human food, why not sacrifice every beast or offer vegetables too?
313. 7.17Animals honoring humans with their own food would insult them; likewise sacrifices of rotting flesh insult gods and treat them like dogs to be bribed with scraps.
314. 7.18If sacrifices honor the gods, why must particular gods receive particular animals, as though they had differing tastes and digestions?
315. 7.19Rules matching victims' sex and color to the gods rest on false beliefs about divine sexes and an underworld.
316. 7.20If black victims suit the gods below, all offerings should be black; since they are not, the rule is inconsistent.
317. 7.21No reason can be given why particular animals belong to particular gods, except human custom.
318. 7.22Matching victims to goddesses by likeness, a pregnant sow for Earth and a virgin heifer for Minerva, leads to absurdity.
319. 7.23Good gods would help without sacrifices and evil ones could not be changed by them; sacrifices to both kinds would confuse good and evil.
320. 7.24Arnobius mocks the obscure technical names for the sausages, cakes, and entrails used in Roman sacrificial ritual.
321. 7.25The elaborate menu of sacrificial dishes implies that the gods are gourmets with fussy stomachs, which is absurd.
322. 7.26Incense was unknown to early Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, so it cannot be necessary to the gods.
323. 7.27Incense is merely tree resin; there is no reason why gods should be honored or appeased by it rather than any other gum.
324. 7.28If gods enjoyed smells they would have nostrils and breathe, and so be mortal; incorporeal gods cannot perceive odors at all.
325. 7.29Arnobius mocks the offering of wine as though the gods needed a drink to wash down their sacrificial meals.
326. 7.30Pouring wine cannot honor the gods; wine is linked with lust and madness, and customs without reason should not govern worship.
327. 7.31The ritual formula limiting the wine offered to the gods implies that they are greedy and must be restrained by legal wording.
328. 7.32Music, morning waking songs, ritual washings, divine banquets, feast-couches, and birthdays treat the gods like human beings.
329. 7.33Games and plays, often obscene and performed by men legally marked with infamy, cannot honor or appease the gods.
330. 7.34People, ignorant of God's nature, fashion gods in their own image, attributing to them human bodies, feelings, pleasures, and customs.
331. 7.35Arnobius begins a point-by-point comparison: Christians hold nobler views than pagans on the birth, sex, form, and crafts of the gods.
332. 7.36The comparison continues: Christians deny that true gods cause evils, feel anger, love blood, or delight in incense, wine, music, and games.
333. 7.37True piety lies in right thoughts about the divine; worthy opinions, not material offerings, are the true sacrifices.
334. 7.38The pagan objection: history shows that the gods sent disasters when offended and relented when appeased by sacrifices and games.
335. 7.39Arnobius accepts that the annals record such events, and retells the story of the flogged slave at the games, Jupiter's dream, and the pestilence.
336. 7.40Arnobius acknowledges the Roman records of gods brought from abroad in crises and of Jupiter's statue turned to the east revealing a conspiracy.
337. 7.41A god who delighted in chariot races and was angered by a slave's punishment at the games is unworthy of the name.
338. 7.42Punishing a whole city, including women and infants, with plague for a fault at the games would be monstrous in a god.
339. 7.43Jupiter's choosing an ignorant rustic, killing his innocent sons, and then sparing him only to feel his bereavement show cruelty, not divinity.
340. 7.44The histories show gods delighting in games and angered by trifles; and the Aesculapius brought to Rome to end a plague was simply a large snake.
341. 7.45The snake ate, digested, and needed a ship to travel, like an animal; a god who wished to be seen should have appeared in his true form.
342. 7.46The snake's disappearance on the Tiber island proves nothing; by every visible feature it was an earthly animal.
343. 7.47If Aesculapius had come to protect Rome from plague, why did Rome continue to suffer many plagues afterward?
344. 7.48The claim that later generations were too wicked for Aesculapius's help fails, since every age mixes good and bad; so either the snake was credited with a recovery already under way or the oracles were false.
345. 7.49The Great Mother brought from Pessinus, credited with Rome's victories, was only a small black stone.
346. 7.50Rome's victory over Hannibal came from human courage and circumstance, not a stone; a true god would not have waited to be summoned or been hindered by distance.
347. 7.51A goddess who deserted her own people, favored the powerful, and helped one city subjugate the world could not be a true divinity.