Against the Nations 7.5–7.22

It follows that we examine also that part which we hear spread abroad commonly and current in popular belief: that sacrifices are made to the gods above for this reason, that they may lay aside their anger and passion and be made gentle and peaceful, the indignation of their burning breasts calmed. But if we hold that definition which it is fitting for us always to remember steadfastly, that all feelings of the mind are unknown to the gods, it is consistent to believe that the gods are never angry; indeed, that no feeling is further from them than that which, closest to wild beasts and monsters, disturbs those who suffer it with storms and leads them into the danger of destruction. For whatever is troubled by the motion of anything is agreed to be passible and fragile; what is subject to passion and fragility must be mortal; but anger troubles and dissolves those who suffer it; therefore what is subject to the passions of anger must be called mortal. Yet we know that the gods must be everlasting and hold the nature of immortality: if this is established and clear, anger is far from them and separated from their condition. So by no reasoning is it fitting to want to appease in the gods above what you see cannot belong to their blessedness.

But let us grant, as you wish, that disturbance of this kind is familiar to the gods, and that divine rites are performed and the solemnities of sacrifices celebrated in order to appease it: when then is it fitting to apply these services, or at what time to give them? Before they are angry and roused, or when they have been moved and are in the very midst of their indignation? If they must be met beforehand so that they do not take on passion, you are setting before us wild beasts, not gods, to which, so that they may not rage when excited and break the bars of their cages, it is customary to throw food on which they may savagely vent their rage and turn their desire for harm. But if this satisfaction of sacrifices is offered to them when they are already boiling and blazing with indignation, I do not inquire, I do not demand, whether that splendid and lofty magnanimity of the deities is moved by the offense of little men and holds it as a wound, if a blind creature, always walking in the clouds of ignorance, has done or said something by which their authority might be diminished.

But neither do I ask to speak or hear of this, what causes of anger the gods have against men, that they must be soothed by sacrifices for the offense contracted. Did they ever lay down any laws for mortals, and was it ever established by them what it was fitting for them to do or not, what to pursue, what to flee, or at least in what ways they wanted to be worshiped, so that they might pursue with the vengeance of anger things done otherwise than they had commanded, and, despised, want to avenge themselves on the bold and the transgressors? I think nothing was ever established or decreed by them, since it could never be known with the plainest knowledge whether any of them exist at all. What justice is it, then, that the heavenly gods should be angry for any causes with those to whom they have never deigned to show that they exist, nor given or imposed any laws which they wanted

to be kept by them and observed with inviolable obedience? But this, as I said, I pass over and allow to go, given up in silence. This one thing I ask above all: what is the cause that, if I kill a pig, a god changes his feeling and mind and lays aside his rage; if I burn a little hen or a calf before his eyes and on his altars, he brings on forgetfulness of the wrong and departs entirely from the sense of offense? What passes from this act to his pain, or of what remedy is a goose, a goat, or a peacock, that a medicine for the angry one should be applied from its blood? Do the gods, then, sell their injuries, and as little boys, to satisfy their minds and stop their crying, receive little sparrows, dolls, toy horses, and cakes with which they can divert themselves, so do the immortal gods take these appeasements by which to lay aside their anger and passion and come back into favor with their offenders? Yet I thought that the gods, if indeed it is right to believe that they are stirred by motions of anger, lay aside their anger and passion without any rewards and payments and forgive sinners their offenses. For this is proper to deities, to have generous pardons and free concessions. But if this cannot be, it is much wiser for them to persist stubbornly in their offense than to be softened by the corruption of gifts. For the multitude of sinners grows when hope of buying off sin is given, and it is easy to go to faults where the favor of those who pardon is for sale.

Look: suppose an ox, or any of these animals slaughtered to appease and soothe the fury of the deities, were to take a human voice and speak in these words: 'Is this then, O Jupiter, or whatever other god you are, humane and right, or to be counted in the reckoning of any justice, that when another has sinned I should be killed, and that you should allow satisfaction to be made to you with my blood, I who have never wronged you, never knowingly or unknowingly violated your divinity and majesty, an animal, as you know, dumb, following the simplicity of my nature and not slippery with the varieties of many-sided character? Did I ever perform your games less reverently and carefully? Did I lead any leader of the dance through them who offended your name? Did I ever swear falsely by you? Did I seize and plunder your offerings by sacrilegious theft? Did I uproot your most sacred groves, or pollute and profane some religious places with private buildings? What cause is there, then, that another's crime should be atoned for with my blood, and that my life and innocence should be led out to another's wickedness? Is it because I am a vile animal, sharing neither reason nor counsel, as those declare who call themselves human beings and surpass beasts in fierceness? Did not the same nature beget and form me from the same first beginnings? Is it not one spirit that rules both them and me? Do I not breathe, see, and am I not affected by the other senses in a like way? They have livers, lungs, hearts, intestines, stomachs: is not the same number of members given to me? They love their young and come together to beget children: do I not also have care and delight in offspring and in replacing myself, when it has been produced? But they are rational and utter articulate words. And how do they know whether I too do what I do by my own reasons, and whether the voice I put forth is the words of my kind, understood by us alone? Ask Piety whether it is fairer that I be killed and slaughtered, or that a man be given pardon and impunity for what he has done. Who formed iron into a sword? Was it not man? Who brought disaster on peoples, who imposed slavery on nations? Was it not man? Who put and mixed deadly potions for parents, brothers, wives, and friends? Was it not man? Who found out or devised crimes so great that they cannot be set out in ten thousand books of annals or of daily records? Was it not man? Is this not wild, monstrous, and savage, does it not seem to you, O Jupiter, unjust and barbarous, that I should be killed, that I should be slaughtered, so that you may be appeased and the wicked may gain impunity?' So it is established that sacrifices are made in vain for this reason, that is, so that angry deities may be appeased, since reason has taught us that the gods are never angry, and do not want one to be slaughtered and killed for another, nor abolition of misdeeds to be obtained with the blood of the innocent.

But perhaps someone will say: 'We spend victims and other gifts on the gods for this reason, that, made in a way friendly by our supplications, they may grant us prosperity and turn evils away from us, make us always live in joy, and drive away sorrows and what threatens from chance events.' This place requires no small care, and what is said is not so easy to hear or believe as it is customary. For at once that whole chorus of the most learned will fly up, which, asserting and proving that whatever happens happens by fate, will snatch this opinion from our hands and accuse us of trusting in empty persuasions. 'Whatever in the world,' it will say, 'has been done, is done, and will be done, has long been defined and fixed and has immovable causes, by which things are linked to one another and join an unconquerable necessity of the past with what is coming. If it is defined and fixed, it is already certain what evil or good must befall each person. If this is certain and fixed, all the help of the gods is idle, idle their hatred, idle their kindnesses. For they can no more bring about what cannot happen than prevent what must happen.' ... they will be able to press this opinion more strongly, if they wish, so as to say that even the gods themselves are worshiped by us in vain and adored with superfluous supplications. For since they cannot overturn the order and change the decrees of fate, what matter, what reason is there to want to weary and deafen the ears of those on whose help you cannot rely in the utmost necessities?

Finally, if the gods drive away sad and troublesome things and lavish what is happy and friendly, where do so many and such countless wretched people in the world come from, where so many unhappy ones leading a tearful life in the extremity of fortune? Why are those not exempt from calamities who every moment and instant load and heap the altars with sacrifices? 'Do we not see,' they say, 'some of them to be dwellings of diseases, their eyes put out and their ears shut, lacking the power to walk, living maimed without hands, sunk, overwhelmed, and destroyed by fires, shipwrecks, and collapses, turned out of huge inheritances and supporting themselves by hired labor, begging the last coins, banished, proscribed, always in mourning, broken by the loss of children, harassed by all the other misfortunes whose kinds and forms no enumeration can define?' This surely would not happen if the gods, bound by the merits of sacrifices, could drive away or turn aside these evils. But now, because there is no place for chance in these things and everything comes about by inescapable necessity, the prescribed order runs its course, and what has once been decreed is accomplished.

Or the heavenly ones must be called ungrateful, if, having the right to prevent it, they allow the unhappy race to be entangled in so many punishments and calamities. But perhaps the philosophers of fate may say something great, and not to be taken with deceitful, light, and scornful ears. We pass over these parts, however, unexplained and untouched, since the matter requires very long and much discussion, content to have set down only this: that you attach dishonorable reputations to your gods if you deny that they grant good things and turn away hostile ones unless they have first been bought with the blood of goats and sheep and the other things brought to the altars. For first it is unworthy that the power of the deities and the majesty of the heavenly ones should be believed to have their benefits for sale, taking first and then giving; and then, what is much fouler, that unless they have received, they help no one and allow the most wretched to undergo the fortunes of dangers, though they could prevent and help. If, of two people performing sacred rites, one is guilty but rich, and the other of a narrow hearth but praiseworthy for innocence and uprightness; if the first slaughters a hundred oxen and as many ewes with their lambs, and the poor man burns a little incense and a single lump of some fragrance: will it not follow that it must be believed, if the deities give nothing without rewards first paid, that they lend their favor to the rich man and turn their eyes away from the poor man, whom not his mind but the need of his household made stingy? For where the giver is venal and mercenary, there favor must be granted according to the size of the gift, and support inclined to the side from which much more of the fee and of unseemly corruption has flowed to the one who grants it. What if two peoples, again at odds in hostile arms, enriched the altars of the gods above with equal sacrifices, and each asked that strength and help be given to itself against the other? Will it not again necessarily be believed, if they are induced by rewards to help, that they must hesitate between the two sides, be stuck, and not find what to do, since they understand that their favors are bound by the acceptance of the sacrifices? For either they will give help on this side and that, which cannot happen, since they will fight against themselves and strive against their own favors and wishes; or they will fail to give help to both peoples, which is a great crime after the payment has been made and accepted. So this whole infamy must be driven far from the gods, and it must by no means be said that they are enticed by rewards and fees to confer good things and remove the contrary, if indeed they are true gods and to be placed in the exception of this name. For either whatever happens happens by fate, and there is no place in the gods for canvassing and favor; or, if fate is excluded and thrown out, it is not worthy of heavenly dignity to sell the favors of a good work and the bounties it confers.

We have shown sufficiently, I think, that victims with their accompanying things are offered to the immortal gods in vain, since they are neither nourished by them nor receive any pleasure, nor do they lay aside anger and passion because of them, nor grant happy things, nor drive away and avert the contrary. It follows that we examine also that part which some are accustomed to assert and apply to the causes of ceremonies. For they say that these rites were instituted to honor the heavenly ones, and that they do this for the sake of honor and so increase the powers of the deities. What if they said likewise that they wake and sleep, walk about and stand still, write something and read, in order to show honor to the gods and make them greater in dignity? For what is added to them from the blood of cattle, from the performance of the other rites, what power is put on and added to them? For all honor which is said to be shown by someone and paid as higher reverence is relative, of the kind that refers to another, and consists of two parts: the concession of the giver and the enlargement of the receiver. As, if someone, on seeing a man of most powerful name and authority, steps out of the way, rises, uncovers his head, and leaps down from his carriage, and then greets him bowing, imitating the service of slaves with fearful trembling: I see what is done in a duty of honor of this kind: by the submission of one, very much is given to the other, and it comes about that he whom the respect of a lesser man has lifted up and set before his own interests seems great.

But all this concession and bestowal of honor of which we speak has its seat only among human beings, whom natural weakness and the love of standing higher teach to rejoice in eminence and to be set above others by comparison. But, I ask, where is there a place for honor among the gods above, or what eminences are found to be added to them from the performance of sacrifices? Do they become more august, more powerful, when cattle are slaughtered? Is anything added to them from this, or do they begin to be gods more, their divinity enlarged? Yet I judge it next to an insult, indeed a full insult, when a god is said to be honored by a man and exalted by the offering of some gift. For if honor increases and heaps up the dignity of the one to whom it is given, it follows that a god becomes greater through a man, by whom he has been presented with a gift and the bestowal of honor; and so the matter comes to this, that the god who is exalted by human honors is inferior, and the man who increases the power of the deity is higher.

'What then,' someone will say, 'do you think that no honor at all should be given to the gods?' If you set before us gods such as, if they exist, they ought to be, and such as we all feel that we mean in speaking that name: how can we not hold them in honor, indeed the greatest, when we have been taught to revere even human beings in higher offices, of whatever rank and whatever fortune? 'What is that greatest honor?' One much more dutiful than that paid by you, and placed in a more powerful kind. 'Tell us,' you say, 'what opinion of the gods is worthy, right, and honorable, and not blameworthy for the ugliness of any disgrace.' First, that you should not believe that they have anything like a man, nor expect anything that comes to them from outside and from without; then, as has often been said, that they do not burn with the flames of anger, do not exult in bodily pleasure, are not courted with rewards to help, are not provoked to harm, do not hold their kindness and favor for sale, do not rejoice in honor paid, are not indignant and affected when it is not paid; but, what is proper to divine being, that they know themselves by their own power and do not value themselves by others' flatteries. And yet, so that we may see what sort of thing this is that is said, what kind of honor is it to tie a wether, a ram, a bull under a god's face and kill it in his sight? What kind of honor is it to invite a god to blood which you see him take and share with dogs? What kind of honor is it to veil the sky with smoke from burning piles of wood and to darken the images of the deities with funereal blackness? If we choose to weigh what is done by its own force and not to judge it by preconceived opinions, these altars you speak of and these beautiful altar-tables are crematories of the most unhappy kind of animals, pyres and burning-grounds built for a most foul work and made as a seat of stench.

What do you say? Is that stench which rises and breathes out from burning hides, from bones, from bristles, from the wool of lambs and the feathers of hens, the gift and honor of a god; and are they honored with this, whose temples you, when you plan to approach them, present yourselves pure from every stain, washed, and most chaste? And what can be more polluted, fetid, and filthy than these, if their senses are so made by nature that they love such savage things and stenches are a pleasure to them, which neither the sacrificers themselves can bear nor well-bred nostrils endure when drawn in by breath? But if you think that the minds of the gods above are honored and affected by the blood of animals, why do you not slaughter to them mules, elephants, and asses? Why not dogs, bears, and foxes, camels, martens, and lions? And since you put birds too among the number of victims, why not vultures, eagles, storks, owls, buzzards, ravens, hawks, and night owls, and with them salamanders, water snakes, vipers, and poisonous spiders? Surely they too have blood beneath and are moved by the breath of life in a similar way. What is there in those of greater work, or in these of less skill, that these do not increase and those enlarge the dignity of the gods above? 'Because,' he says, 'it is right to honor the heavenly gods with those things by which we ourselves are nourished, sustained, and live, and which they have deigned to give us for food by the kindness of their divinity.' But the same gods have also given you cumin, cress, turnips, bulbs, celery, thistles, roots, gourds, rue, mint, basil, pennyroyal, and chives, and have ordered them to be among your uses as part of your foods. Why then do you fail to give these too on the altars, to sprinkle all these things with ox-marjoram, and to mix in the pungency of onions?

Look: suppose dogs (for some things must be imagined so that the matter can be seen more clearly), suppose, I say, dogs and asses, wagtails with them, chattering swallows, and pigs along with them, having received some human sense, thought and judged that you were gods, and planned to perform sacred rites to you for honor's sake, not from other materials and things, but from those by which they are accustomed to be fed and sustained by natural desire. We ask to hear from you whether you would judge this an honor, or rather the greatest insult, when swallows slaughtered and consecrated flies to you, wagtails ants; when asses put hay on your altars and offered chaff as libations; when dogs put bones on them and burned the filth of human dung; when finally little pigs poured out to you mud taken from their horrid wallows and muddy pits? Would you not be inflamed that your dignities were spat upon, and count it among the cruelest injuries to be received with dung? 'But you honor the gods with the bodies of bulls and the slaughter of other animals.' And how does this differ from that, since these too, if not yet, will soon be dung, and rot after the brief interval of a little time? Finally, stop putting fire under the altars: you will surely see those sacred entrails of bulls, by which you increase the honor of the gods, seethe and swarm with worms, spoil and corrupt the state of the air, and infect the neighboring regions with diseased odors. If the gods ordered you to turn this care of yours toward your own health, and to make lunches or dinners from them in the customary way, you would flee far, and, cursing that kind of smell, would ask pardon of the gods above and swear that you would never perform such rites for them. Is this not playing, confessing, and revealing that you do not know what God is, nor to what power the force of this name and its title ought to be subjected? You increase the gods with your foods, honor them with fumes and juices; and because the things that nourish you are pleasant and agreeable to you, you believe that the gods too flow into their pleasures, and, like barking dogs, lay aside their fierceness for morsels and fawn on those who hold them out more often?

And since our discussion is concerned with victims, what is the cause, what the reason, that, although the immortal gods (let them be, as far as we are concerned, whatever they are believed to be) are of one essence, or ought to be of one nature, kind, and quality, not all are soothed by all victims, but certain ones by certain victims, by the laws of the rites? For what is the cause, to ask the same thing again, that this god is honored with bulls, another with kids or sheep, this with suckling pigs, another with unshorn lambs, this with heifers, that with horned goats, this with barren cows, that with pregnant sows, this with white victims, that with black, one with those of the female sex, another with male animals? For if victims are slaughtered to the gods for the sake of honor and reverence, what does it matter or make any difference from the head of what animal this debt is paid, by which a god's anger and offense are laid aside? Is the blood of one animal more pleasing and agreeable to one god, while the blood of another fills another with pleasure and joy? Or, as usually happens, does one abstain from goat's flesh from fear of some observance and religion, another curse the touch of pork, to another mutton be ill-smelling, and does one, so as not to tire a weak stomach, avoid the toughness of beef and take the tenderness of sucklings so as to digest more easily?

'But you are wrong,' he says, 'and slip: for there is a hidden and inner reason, removed from the knowledge of the crowd, for sacrificing female victims to female gods and male to male.' I do not inquire, I do not demand, what the laws of the rites prescribe or contain; but if reason prevails and truth holds that there is no difference of kinds among the gods and they are not distinguished by any sexes, must not all these reasons be dissolved, must they not be proved and found to have been believed from the most foolish opinions? I will not call on the opinions of wise men, who cannot keep from laughing when they hear distinctions of sex attributed to the immortal gods; I ask each one of human beings whether he himself believes within himself and persuades himself that the race of the gods is distinguished, that they are males and females and formed with an arrangement of fitting members for begetting offspring. But if the laws of sacrifices prescribe that like sexes be sacrificed to like, that is, female victims to female and male victims to male gods, what reason is there in colors, that it is fitting for white ones to be slaughtered to these, and black and blackest to those? 'Because,' he says, 'to the gods above, powerful in the favorableness of omens, a joyful color is acceptable and happy with the cheerfulness of whiteness; but to the ill-omened gods who dwell in the lower seats a dark color is more pleasing, dyed with gloomy stains.' But if reason prevails again that the name of the underworld is wholly empty and void, and that there are no realms under the earth and no dwellings of Pluto, the opinion you hold about black cattle and the gods beneath the earth must also be frustrated. For if there is no underworld, there must also be no gods of the Manes. For how can it be that, when there are no places, any are said to be inhabitants of what does not exist?

But let us agree, as you wish, that there is an underworld, that there are Manes, and that some gods dwell there, of less favorable omens and set over sadder things. And what is the cause, what the reason, that black victims of the blackest color are brought to them? 'Because black things suit black ones, and sad things please their like.' What then? Do you not see (to play stupidly with you in the same way) that the flesh of victims is white, their bones, teeth, fat, cauls with the brains, and the soft marrow in the bones? 'But the fleeces are black, and the bristles of the animals are black.' Then sacrifice only the wool to the gods and the little bristles plucked from the victims; leave the most unhappy cattle, even though stripped and shorn, to draw the breath of heaven and lie down in the most innocent pastures. But if you think that things that are black and of dark color are pleasing to the gods below, why do you not take care that all the other things it is customary to bring to their sacrifices are black, smoked, and colored gloomily? Dye the incense, if it is given, the salted meal, and all the libations; pour soot with ashes into the milk, oil, and blood, so that the one loses its purple color and the others become lurid. But if you have no religious scruple about bringing some white things that keep their whiteness, you yourselves dissolve your religious rules and reasons, since in the work of the rites you keep nothing uniform and constant.

But it is also fitting at this point to learn this from you. If a goat is slaughtered to Jupiter, which it is customary to sacrifice to Father Liber and Mercury, or a barren cow to Unxia, which you assign to Proserpina, as the rite and observance prescribe: what crime will there be in this, what evil or wickedness incurred, when it makes no difference to the service from the head of which animal this honorary debt is paid? 'It is not lawful,' he says, 'to confuse these things, and it is no small sin to mix up the duties of rites and expiations.' Explain the cause, I pray. 'Because it is right to consecrate victims of a certain kind to certain deities and to offer certain supplications.' And again, what is the cause that it is right to consecrate victims of a certain kind to certain deities and to offer certain supplications? For this right itself too must have its cause and arise and be derived from certain reasons. Are you going to say antiquity and custom? You declare to me the decrees of men and the inventions of a blind creature; but I, when I ask for the cause to be set out to me, want to hear either something that fell from heaven, or, what the matter rather demands, what connection Jupiter has with the blood of a bull, that it must be sacrificed to him and not to Mercury or Liber; or what the nature of a goat is, that, suitable to these, it is not fitting for Jupiter's sacrifices. Has a division of animals been made among the gods? Was it agreed by the terms of some settlement that this one should keep away from that one's victim, and that one stop usurping the rights to another's blood? Or, as jealous little boys will not share the taste of their own cattle, or as, among peoples of very different customs, what is held as food by some is rejected from the diet of others?

So if these things are empty and have no firmness of any reason, the reason for sacrifices itself is empty too. For how can what follows have a suitable cause, when that first thing from which the second flows is found to be most empty, void, and fixed by no solidity? 'To Mother Earth,' they say, 'a pregnant and teeming sow is sacrificed, and to Minerva the virgin a virgin heifer is slain, never roused to effort by any goads of any work.' Yet we think that neither ought a virgin to have been slaughtered to a virgin, lest virginity, in which the goddess is most powerful, be violated in the animal, nor pregnant and teeming animals to Earth, out of honor for that fruitfulness which we all desire and wish always to go on with inextinguishable .... For if, because the Tritonian is a virgin, it is fitting for virgin victims to be sacrificed to her, and because Earth is a mother she must likewise be received with pregnant sows, then Apollo too, because he is a musician, ought to have musicians slaughtered to him, and Aesculapius, because he is a physician, physicians; and Vulcan, because he is a smith, smiths; and Mercury, because he is eloquent, the eloquent and most fluent. But if to say this is insane, or, to put it mildly, brutish, it is much greater madness to cut the throats of pregnant animals to Earth because she is heavy with offspring, and of chaste virgins to Minerva because she is pure, of untouched virginity.