Against the Nations 4.37–5.17

But the matter stands thus: since you are very powerful with swords and the force of iron, you judge that you excel us also in the knowledge of truth, and that you are ... pious toward the gods, whose powers you were the first to defile by the obscenity of your opinions. At this point, if your fierceness allows and your rage permits, we beg you to answer us this: do you think that anger falls on the nature of the gods, or that divine blessedness is far removed from these feelings? For if they conceive these firebrands and are provoked by the motions of anger, as your opinions report (for you often say that because of games performed with too little care, because of leaders of the dance not approved, because of certain little spaces profaned, and because of ceremonies not properly performed, they have roared with earthquakes and corrupted the breezes of the west winds with the contagion of pestilence, with grievous devastation of the people), it follows that it must be understood that they hold no small anger because of the opinions mentioned above. If this is granted, it is also granted as a necessary consequence that all these miseries with which the human race has long been heaped up flow from fictions of this kind; and if the indignation of the deities proceeds from these causes, you are the authors of such great miseries, you who do not cease to offend the minds of the heavenly beings and to rouse them to a frenzy of revenge. But if the race of gods is free from such furies, and the gods do not know at all what it is to be angry, then they are said without any reason to be angry with us too, since they do not know what anger is and are free from its ... and admixture.

Granted: let all those disgraces of the immortal gods have been published by playful poets. What then? Were the things which histories contain, serious, grave, and careful, and which you have handed down in secret mysteries, also devised by the wantonness of poets? If these seemed to you fables of such foolishness, you would neither keep certain things in use ... nor celebrate them as festive joys in the yearly courses, nor preserve them in sacred rites as representations of things done. Of these, so many, I will set down one for the moment, following a measure of moderation, in which Jupiter himself is brought in as stupid and imprudent, tricked by ambiguities of words. In the second book of Antias (so that no one may think that we invent charges by slander) such a story is written: that King Numa, since he did not have the knowledge of expiating thunderbolts and was eager to know it, on the advice of Egeria hid twelve chaste young men with chains near a spring, so that when Faunus and Martius Picus came to that place to draw water (for this was their customary route for fetching water), they might seize, bind, and tie them up. But so that the matter might be done more easily, the king filled cups, no small number, with wine and mead and set them around the approaches to the spring as a trap for those who were coming. They, seized as usual by the desire to drink, came to their well-known resting place. But when they came upon the cups fragrant with scented liquors, they preferred the new things to the old, fell upon them greedily, and, captured by the sweetness of the drink, drank far too much and fell asleep, made heavy. Then the twice six youths fell upon them as they slept and threw chains on them, drenched as they were; and when they woke, they at once taught the king by what means Jupiter could be drawn down to earth by sacrifices; and the king, having received the knowledge, performed a sacred rite on the Aventine, drew Jupiter down to earth, and asked of him the manner of expiating what the thunderbolt had struck. Jupiter, after long hesitation, said: 'You will expiate what the lightning has struck with a head.' The king answered: 'Of an onion.' Jupiter again: 'Of a man.' The king replied: 'But with its hair.' The god in turn: 'With a living ...'; Pompilius added: 'Sprat.' Then Jupiter, caught by the ambiguous propositions, uttered these words: 'You have deceived me, Numa; for I had determined that what the lightning struck should be expiated with human heads, not with a sprat, hair, and an onion. But since your cunning has outwitted me, have the rite you wanted, and you will always undertake the expiation of things struck by lightning with these things you have bargained for.'

What the mind should pursue first and what last, or pass over in silence, is not easy to say, nor settled by any considerations. For everything is so devised and arranged for derision that you ought to strive to have these things believed false, even if they are true, rather than want to maintain them as true and put them forward as something wonderful, not without contempt for the deity himself. For what do you say? Do we believe that Faunus and Martius Picus, if they are of the number of the gods and of that everlasting and immortal nature, were ever parched with thirst, and, to water the heat of their veins, went for the streams of springs? Do we believe that, captured by strong wine and enticed by the sweetness of mead, they gorged themselves on the treacherous cups so long that it came to the danger of drunkenness? Do we believe that, overcome by sleep and sunk in the forgetfulness of deepest slumber, they offered earthly creatures the chance of binding them? On what parts, then, were those ties of chains thrown? Did they have any solidity, or were their hands formed of hard bones, so that they could be bound with nooses and held by the tying of knots? For I do not inquire or demand whether they could say anything while reeling in the delirium of drunkenness, or whether anyone could publish the rite of drawing Jupiter to earth against his will, or rather without his knowledge. I want only to hear this: why, if Faunus and Picus are of divine race and power, did they not themselves rather tell the inquirer what Numa desired, at greater risk, to hear from Jupiter himself? Did Jupiter alone know this? For do the thunderbolts fall from him ... so that the expiation of what threatens requires the discipline of some knowledge? Or, when he himself hurls these fires, is it the work of others to know in what ways his anger and temper should be moderated? For indeed it is most foolish to believe that he himself makes known the remedies by which the things he has determined to happen in human affairs through the hurling of the thunderbolt can be averted. For this is to say: 'By that kind of rite you will appease my anger; and whenever I signify by lightning that something is coming, do this and that, so that what I have decided should happen may be made void and empty and vanish by the power of the rites.'

But let us grant, as is said, that Jupiter himself made known the remedies against himself and the arts by which his own signs ought to be met: shall we also believe that a god of such great majesty was dragged down to earth, and, standing on the little wart of one hill, engaged in wrangling talk with a little man? And what, I ask, was that divine rite which compelled Jupiter to be called away from so great a business of things and to present himself at the summons of mortals? Salted meal, incense, blood, the smoke of sacred herbs, and the rumbling of terrible names? And were all these more powerful than Jupiter, so as to compel him to obey their commands against his will, or to hand himself over willingly to trickery? What of this, that what follows carries its own proof: that Saturn's son was so improvident as either to propose things by whose ambiguities he himself would be caught, or not to know in what ways the cunning and craft of a mortal would make a fool of him? 'You will expiate,' he says, 'what the lightning has struck with a head.' The utterance is still incomplete, not a full statement or a bounded sentence. For it is necessary to know whether Diespiter was prescribing that this expiation be made with the head of a ram, of a pig, of an ox, or of any other animal. Since he had not yet specified this, and it was still pending and the sentence not finished, how could Numa know that Jupiter was going to say 'of a man', so as to anticipate him, get ahead of him, and turn the uncertainty of that ambiguity into the head of an onion?

Unless perhaps you will say that the king was a diviner: could he be more of a diviner than Jupiter himself? Unless the man had anticipated what Jupiter would say, he would not have outwitted him: could the god not know in what ways the man was preparing to outwit him? Is it not plain and evident that these are the petty wits of childish fictions, in which, while liveliness of heart is gained for Numa, the greatest imprudence is imposed on Jupiter? For what is so imprudent as to confess that you have been caught by the subtlety of a human heart, and, while you grieve that you were deceived, to yield to the will of the victor and lay aside the remedy you had offered? For if there was a reason and a certain natural fitness why the expiation of what was struck by lightning ought to be undertaken with a human head, I do not see why the king's reply of 'onion' was accepted; but if it could be settled with an onion, then there was a lustful craving for human blood. And so both parts are turned into their contrary, so that neither is Numa shown to have wanted to know what he wanted, and Jupiter is shown to have been cruel, who said that he wanted to be expiated with human heads for what could be undertaken with a sprat and an onion.

In Timotheus, not an obscure theologian, and also in others equally learned, this is set out as the origin of the Great Mother of the gods and of her rites, drawn, as he himself writes and suggests, from hidden books of antiquity and from the inmost mysteries. In the borders of Phrygia, he says, there is a rock of wholly unheard-of vastness, whose name is Agdus, so called by the natives of that region. Stones taken from it, as Themis had commanded in prophecy, Deucalion and Pyrrha threw into a world empty of mortals; and from them, along with the others, this so-called Great Mother too was formed and divinely given life. When she had been given to rest and sleep on the very top of the rock, wicked Jupiter sought her with incestuous desires; but when, after struggling long, he could not obtain what he had promised himself, overcome, he spilled his pleasure on the stone. From this the rock conceived, and, after uttering many bellowings first, in the tenth month there was born one named Agdestis from his mother's name. He had invincible strength and an untamable fierceness of mind, an insane and frenzied lust, and from both sexes; he seized by force, laid waste, and destroyed wherever the savagery of his mind led; he cared for neither gods nor men, and did not believe that earth, heaven, or stars held anything more powerful than himself.

When the gods had often asked in deliberation in what ways his boldness could be weakened or suppressed, and the others hesitated, Liber took on himself the care of this task. He mixed with the strongest wine a spring familiar to Agdestis, where he was accustomed to relieve his heat and the burning of thirst roused by sport and hunting. At the time of need Agdestis runs to drink, and snatches the drink too greedily into his gaping veins: it happens that, overcome by the unaccustomed thing, he sinks into the deepest sleep. Liber is at hand for the trap; he throws a noose made of most skillfully twisted hairs over the bottom of his foot, and with the other part seizes his organs of generation. When the force of the wine had been breathed off, he leaps up with a rush, and, as his foot draws the noose, by his own strength he deprives himself of the sex by which he was a man. At the tearing away of the parts, a huge amount of blood flows; they are snatched up and drunk in by the earth, and suddenly from them a pomegranate tree springs up with its fruit. Nana, daughter of King Sangarius, or of the river, looking at its beauty, plucks it in wonder and puts it in her bosom: from it she becomes pregnant. Her father shuts her up as though she had been defiled, and sees to it that she dies of starvation: she is kept alive by the mother of the gods with fruits and other food. She gives birth to a little child. But Sangarius orders it to be exposed. Someone finds it, takes it up ..., nourishes it with goat's milk; and since Lydia calls handsome youths so, or because the Phrygians in their speech call goats attagi, from this it came about that he received the name Attis. The mother of the gods loved him uniquely, because he was of most excellent beauty. Agdestis also loved him, a flattering companion to him when grown, and, in the only way he could, bound him by by no means upright indulgences, leading him through wooded groves and presenting him with many gifts of wild beasts; these the boy Attis at first said were the fruit of his own toil and work, boasting; then, through wine, he confessed that he was loved by Agdestis and honored with gifts of the forest. From this it is unlawful for those polluted by wine, because it betrayed silence, to enter his sanctuary.

Then Midas, king of Pessinus, wanting to separate the boy from so infamous an association, intended his own daughter for him in marriage, and, so that no ill-omened person might interrupt the wedding joys, had the town closed. But the mother of the gods, knowing the youth's fate, and that he would be safe among men only as long as he was free from the bond of marriage, so that nothing sad might happen, entered the city, closed by walls, by raising them with her head; for that reason she began to be depicted crowned with towers. ... Agdestis, seething with anger at the boy's being torn from him and drawn off to the pursuit of a wife, inspires all the banqueters with frenzy and madness. The Phrygians, terrified ..., cry out; the daughter of Gallus ... cuts off her breasts; Attis snatches the pipe which the instigator of the madness himself carried, and, now himself full of frenzy, after raving and tossing about he finally throws himself down and under a pine tree cuts off his genitals, saying: 'Take these, Agdestis, for whose sake you stirred up such great commotions of frenzied danger.' His life flies away with the flow of blood; but the Great Mother of the gods gathered up what had been cut off ..., throws earth on them, having first covered and wrapped them in the dead man's garment. From the flow of blood the violet flower springs, and the tree is wreathed with it: from this arose and began the custom, still kept, of veiling and crowning the sacred pines. The maiden who had been his bride, whose name the pontiff Valerius writes was Ia, covers the dead man's breast with softer wools, sheds tears with Agdestis, and kills herself; the blood of the slain girl is turned into purple violets. The mother buries Ia too, from whom the almond tree springs, signifying the bitterness of death. Then she carries the pine tree, under which Attis had stripped himself of manhood, into her cave, and, joining her laments with Agdestis, beats and wounds her breast around the trunk of the tree now at rest. Jupiter, asked by Agdestis that Attis should come back to life, does not allow it; but what could be done by fate he grants without any difficulty: that his body should not decay, that his hair should always grow, that his smallest finger should live and alone be kept in perpetual motion. Content with these favors, Agdestis is said to have consecrated the body at Pessinus and to have honored it with yearly ceremonies and priestly ministers.

If some despiser of the deities, raging with the monstrousness of a sacrilegious heart, had set his mind on reviling your gods, would he dare to say anything more grievous against them than this history publishes, which you have reduced to a formula in your records as something wonderful, and, so that the force of time and length of antiquity might not wear it away, honored with the honor of permanence? For what is set down or written about the gods in it that, if you said it against a man brought up in modest character and rather strict discipline, would not make you guilty of insult and wrongs, and bring on you a hatred prepared for irreconcilable feuds? 'From the stones,' you say, 'which Deucalion and Pyrrha threw, the mother of the gods was produced.' What do you say, you theologians, you high priests of the powers above? Was there, then, no mother of the gods in any part of nature before the disaster of the flood, and if the force of the rains had not killed the whole race of mortals, would the cause and origin of that begetting have been lacking? It is a human gift, then, that she feels herself to exist, and she owes it to Pyrrha's kindness that she sees herself counted in the quality of some substance. If this is true, this too will necessarily not be false: that she was a human being, not a goddess. For if it is certain that human beings draw the origin of their birth from that throwing of stones, it must be believed that she too was one of us, produced by the principles of similar causes. For it could not happen, by a contradiction in things, that from one kind of stones and the same manner of throwing, some should be set in the lot of immortals and others in the human condition. The famous Roman Varro, eminent in many kinds of learning and a searcher in the investigation of antiquity, teaches with careful calculations, in the first of the four books he left on the race of the Roman people, that from the time of the flood mentioned above to the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa there are not yet two thousand years. If faith stands with him, the Great Mother too must be said to have her age enclosed within the limits of this number; and so the matter comes to this, that she who is said to be the mother of all the deities is not a mother but a daughter, indeed an infant and a little one, since we grant that the gods have neither beginnings nor ends of ages in their perpetual continuity.

But why do we speak of your having wrapped the mother of the gods in earthly filth, when you could not make any pause from slandering Jupiter himself, even for a brief interval? When the mother of the gods was sleeping on the top of Agdus, her son, you say, strove as a lurking attacker to creep upon the modesty of the sleeping woman. After countless virgins and matrons robbed of their chastity, did Jupiter also conceive a hope of unspeakable desire toward his mother, and could not that horror turn him from the heat of that craving, which nature itself has placed not only in human beings but also in some animals, that sense implanted in all alike? Or was regard for piety and honor lacking to the guardian of the Capitols, and could he, his mind confused by madness, neither reconsider nor see clearly what crime he desired? But however that may be, forgetting his weight and majesty, he went creeping to that shameful theft, frightened and trembling, holding the breath of his mouth, his steps held up by fear, and, placed between the borders of anxiety and hope, he felt his way to intimate things, testing the depth of sleep and his mother's tolerance. O unseemly picture of things! O foul posture of Jupiter prepared for the campaign of an obscene contest! Did that king of the world, then, when, careless and hasty in his creeping, he was repulsed from his theft, turn to force, and, since he could not snatch pleasure by treacherous fraud, attack his mother by violence and begin most openly to overthrow her venerable chastity? After struggling very long with her against her will, was he overcome, broken, and defeated, and he whom piety could not separate from unspeakable desire for his mother, did his spilled lust separate?

Unless perhaps you will say: 'The human race avoids and curses unions of this kind; among the gods there is no incest.' Then why did the mother fight most fiercely against her son as he offered violence? Why did she flee from his embraces, avoiding his touches as unlawful? For if there were nothing evil in the matter, she ought to have complied without any reluctance, as much as he eagerly wished to satisfy the stirring of his desire. And indeed at this point, men of great thrift and rather sparing even in matters of shameful work, so that those holy seeds might not seem to have been poured out in vain, you say, 'the flint drank in the foulness of Jupiter's incontinence.' What followed then, I ask? Tell us. In the middle of the stone's bosom and in that hardness of flint an infant was formed and given life, the future offspring of great Jupiter. It is not easy to contradict such prodigious and wonderful conceptions. For since the human race is said among you to have arisen and been produced from stones, it must be believed that the stones too had genital receptacles, drank in the seed cast at them, when their time was completed bore heavy bellies, and at last gave birth, straining with the difficulty of the female way. This compels our curiosity to ask: since you say that the offspring was delivered after ten months, during the time he was shut up in the stone's womb, with what nourishment was he watered, with what juices, or what food could he draw from the stony rigidity, as is customary for offspring from their mothers? 'He had not yet reached the light,' he says, 'and already, bellowing, he was imitating and reproducing his father's thunder; and after it was granted him to see the sky and the day, he laid waste whatever he met, rushing upon it, and promised himself that he could thrust the gods themselves from the region of heaven.' O cautious and provident mother of the gods, who, so as not to incur odium for so insolent a son, or so that the bellowing offspring might not disturb her sleep or interrupt her rest, withdrew herself and transferred that most harmful poison of seed far away from herself and offered it to the roughness of the rocks!

There was agitation in the councils of the gods as to how that untamable savagery could be subdued; and when no way was left, they ran to a single remedy: that he should be soaked with much strong wine and robbed of his manhood by cutting it off. As if, indeed, those affected by these bodily losses become of more languid boldness, and we did not see every day that those who have cut off these parts from themselves become more wanton, and, casting aside all the reins of shame and modesty, burst into obscene vileness with the public confession of their shameful acts. Still, I should like to see, if it had been granted me to be born in those times, that Father Liber, the vanquisher of Agdestis's savagery, having come down from the heights of heaven after the most august councils of the gods, cutting short the tails of geldings, twisting slip-knots, spoiling the harmless purity of the waters with much force of wine; and, after drunkenness had sunk the drinker, cautiously putting in his hands, handling the private parts of the sleeper, and then, so that the bites of the nooses placed around might encircle everything, applying the care of his craft to things about to perish.

Would anyone polluted by even a slight opinion of the gods say this about them? Or, if they are occupied with such business, thoughts, and cares, would any wise person believe them to be gods, or even count them in the number of the immortals? This Agdestis, I ask, whose obscenity when cut off was to bring security to the heavenly ones, was he one of the earthly creatures, or one of the gods, endowed with the honor of immortality? For if he was considered of our lot and human condition, why did he bring such terror on the deities? But if he was a god, how could he be deceived, or anything be cut from a divine body? But we raise no question on this point; let him have been of the divine race or one of us, if you think that more rightly said: was it from the slow flow of blood and from the cut-off genitals that the pomegranate tree grew; or, when that force was covered in the bosom of the earth, did it embrace the soil with a root, leap up into the strength of a trunk, put forth branches laden with blossoms, and in a moment's space bring forth ripe fruit, filled with the maturity of its own perfection? And because they arose from red blood, therefore their color is yellowish, with a tinge of purple light underneath; add also that they are therefore juicy and therefore winy, because they draw their origin from blood loaded with wine, and you have completed the fable fittingly. O Abdera, Abdera, what ways of mockery you would give mortals if such a fable had been put together among you! All the fathers learn it, and supercilious cities read it through; and you are judged foolish and of the coldest stupidity. 'Through her bosom,' he says, 'Nana conceived a son from a pomegranate.'

The logic follows, of course: where crags and hard stones give birth, there fruits must be pregnant. The Berecyntian goddess fed the imprisoned girl with acorns and figs. Fitting and right: for she who had become a mother from a fruit ought to live on fruits. After the child was brought forth, Sangarius ordered it to be thrown far away: though he had long believed it was conceived by divine means, he disdained to be called the offspring's grandfather. The infant was reared on goat's milk. O fable always hostile and most inimical to the male sex, in which not only do men lay aside their manhood, but even he-goats become mothers! He was marked by famous and praiseworthy beauty. A wonderful thing indeed, that the goatish smell did not make him someone to avoid and flee! The Great Mother loved him. If as a grandmother loves a grandson, it is a simple matter; but if, as the theaters din, it is an infamous and shameful love. Agdestis also loved him, enriching him with hunting gifts. From a half-man indeed there could be no danger to chastity; but what Midas feared is not easy to judge for those who guess. The Mother entered along with the walls themselves. We admire indeed in this part the strength and might of the goddess, but we blame again her negligence, because, though she remembered the law and fate, she opened the city to enemies with too little foresight. Agdestis instilled frenzy and madness into those celebrating the wedding vows. If King Midas had given offense by binding the youth with a wife, what had Gallus done, what had the daughter of the concubine done, that he should deprive himself of his manhood and she of the ornament of her breasts? 'Take these,' he says, 'for whose sake you stirred up such great things by the overthrow of minds.' We would all still not know what Agdestis's frenzy had desired in the body of the grown youth, if the boy had not, satisfied, thrown the cut-off parts to the offended one.

What do you say, O Gentiles? What, you nations devoted to opinions of this kind? When these things are published, are you not seized by shame and embarrassment at such great foulness? We long to hear or learn from you something worthy of the gods; but you set before us the cutting off of breasts, the amputation of male members, anger, blood, frenzies, the voluntary deaths of virgins, and flowers and trees produced from the blood of the dead. Tell us again: did the mother of the gods herself, grieving, with dutiful diligence gather those cut-off genitals with their flowing blood; did she herself, with holy hands, with divine hands, handle and take up the instruments of a shameful and foul work; did she also commit them to the earth to be hidden, and, so that they might not, naked, melt away in the bosom of the soil, before she veiled and covered them with a garment, did she of course wash them and anoint them with balsams? For from where could fragrant violets have sprung, unless that application of ointments had tempered the stench of the member? When you read such histories, I ask, do you not seem to yourselves to be hearing little weaving-girls cheating the delays of tedious work, or old women seeking distractions for credulous infants ... and setting out various fictions under the image of truth? Agdestis spoke with Jupiter that he should restore life to his beloved: Jupiter refused to consent, because he was prevented by more powerful fates; but so as not to be altogether most harsh, he granted one favor: that the body should not be dissolved by any decay, that the hair should always grow, that the smallest of the fingers alone should live in the body and alone show perpetual motion. Would anyone admit this or confirm it with the assent of belief: that hair grows on a dead man, that a part remains sound, and that a mortal body lasts until now, separated from the law of decay?

We could have long been pressing you to prove this matter, were it not equal folly both to say such things and to demand proofs of things of this kind. 'But this history is false and contains no part of truth in it.' It makes no difference to us whether the things for which you maintain the gods have been driven from the earth are consistent and supported by firm credibility, or on the contrary composed falsely by some fiction of falsehood. For it is enough for us, whose purpose today is to make it plain, that those deities you put forward, if they exist anywhere and grow hot with the heat of anger, receive the causes of their frenzied offense no more from us than from you; and that this history is ... and recorded by you in your commentaries, and read daily by those who wish, and handed down to successive generations for the instruction of future time. If it is true, we see no reason why the heavenly gods are said to be angry with us, since we have neither published such great disgraces of theirs, nor put them into any writings, nor inserted them in the public testimony of the celebration of rites. But if, as you think, it is false and interpolated with deceitful lies, no human being can doubt that you are the cause of offense, who either allowed some to write such things or permitted what was written to last in the memory of the ages.

And yet how can you accuse that writing of falsehood, when the very rites which you perform in the yearly courses bear witness that it is believed by you to be true and judged to be of ascertained credibility? For what is the meaning of that pine which you always bring on fixed days into the sanctuary of the mother of the gods? Is it not the likeness of the tree under which the frenzied and unhappy youth laid hands on himself, and which the mother of the gods consecrated as a solace for her wound? What of the fleeces of wool with which you bind and wrap the trunk of the tree? Are they not a repetition of those wools with which Ia covered the dying youth and thought she could give some warmth to his cold limbs? What of the little branches of the tree adorned and wreathed with violet garlands? Do they not show that the mother adorned the pine with the first flowers as an indication and witness of a pitiable fortune? What of the Galli beating their breasts with their palms, with hair unbound? Do they not recall to memory the lamentations with which the tower-crowned mother, with Agdestis, followed the boy with tearful wailing? What of the abstinence from the food of bread, to which you have given the name 'chastity'? Is it not an imitation of that time in which the deity abstained from the fruit of Ceres through the violence of grief?

Or if what we say is not so, you explain, you tell us: those emasculated and effeminate men whom we see taking part with you in the rites of this deity, what business, anxiety, or care do they have there, and why, like mourners, do they beat their arms along with their breasts, and imitate the fortune of those placed in a pitiable lot? What of the garlands, the violets, the wrappings of soft wools? Why finally is the pine itself, which a little before was nodding in the thickets as a most inert piece of wood, soon set up in the seats of the mother of the gods as some present and most august deity? For either this is the cause which we find in your writings and commentaries, and it is plain that you are not performing divine ceremonies but renewing the image of sad events; or, if there is another reason which the obscurity of the mystery has denied us, it too must share in the infamy of some disgrace. For who would believe that there is anything honorable in a matter which vile Galli undertake and effeminate catamites carry out?