Against the Nations

I have found that some people who think themselves very wise in their own convictions are raving, running wild, and declaring, as though uttering something straight from an oracle, that since the Christian people began to exist in the world the world has gone to ruin, the human race has been struck with evils of many forms, and even the heavenly gods themselves, abandoning the customary care with which they once used to look after our affairs, have been driven out of the regions of the earth. So I have resolved, as far as my ability and my modest powers of speech allow, to oppose this ill will and to refute these slanderous charges, so that neither they may think they are saying something great when they repeat the talk of the crowd, nor, if we hold back from such disputes, may they think they have won a case that was lost by its own fault and not abandoned through the silence of its defenders. For I would not deny that this is a very grave accusation, and that we deserve the hatred due to enemies, if it were established that the causes lie with us through which the world has strayed from its laws, the gods have been driven far away, and such swarms of sorrows have been brought upon the generations of mortals.

Let us therefore examine the sense of that opinion and what sort of thing it is that is being said, and, setting aside all eagerness for dispute, by which the view of things is usually obscured and covered over, let us weigh with an even balance whether what is said is true. For it will surely come about, by a chain of consequent reasoning, that not we but they themselves are found guilty of that charge, who profess to be worshipers of the deities and devoted to long-established religions. And first we ask them this in friendly and gentle speech: since the name of the Christian religion began to exist on earth, what unusual thing, what unknown thing, what thing contrary to the laws laid down in the beginning has the so-called and so-named 'nature of things' felt or suffered? Have those first elements, from which it is agreed all things are compounded, been changed into opposite qualities? Has the structure of this machine and mass, by which we are all covered and held enclosed, been loosened or broken up in any part? Has this revolution of the universe, departing from the regulation of its original motion, begun either to creep too slowly or to be swept along in headlong rotation? Have the stars begun to rise in the west and the constellations to set in the east? Has the sun himself, the prince of the stars, whose light clothes all things and whose heat gives them life, blazed up or grown lukewarm, and changed into opposite conditions the balance of his usual regulation? Has the moon ceased to renew herself and to bring herself back into her old shapes by the constant restoration of new ones? Have the cold, the heat, the moderate warmth between the unequal seasons perished through confusion of the seasons? Has winter begun to have long days, and the night of summer to call back the slowest dawns? Have the winds breathed out their breath, so that with their blasts dead the sky is not gathered into clouds and the fields do not ... become wet with rain? Does the earth refuse to receive the seeds entrusted to it, or will the trees not put forth leaves? Has the taste of edible crops and the juice of the vine been changed? Is foul blood pressed out of the olive berries, and is oil no longer supplied to the extinguished lamp? Do animals that live on land and in the water not mate, not conceive, not protect according to their own habits and their own law the young conceived in their wombs? Finally, do human beings themselves, whom their first and original birth scattered over the two habitable zones of the earth, not join in marriage with the proper rites of weddings? Do they not beget the sweetest offspring of children? Do they not carry on public business, private affairs, and family matters? Do they not, as each one pleases, direct their talents to the various branches of the arts and learning, and reap the interest of their diligent industry? Do those to whom the lot of such things has been assigned not reign and command? Do people not rise daily in rank and power, preside over the hearing of lawsuits, and interpret the laws and rights? Do not all people in their own nations observe everything else by which human life is supported and maintained, according to the institutions of their ancestral customs?

Since this is so, and no novelty has broken in to split the unbroken course of things by interrupting its continuity, what is this that is said, that a plague was brought upon the earth after the Christian religion entered the world and revealed the mysteries of hidden truth? 'But pestilences,' they say, 'and droughts, wars, crop failures, locusts, mice, hailstorms, and other harmful things by which human affairs are assailed, the gods bring upon us, provoked by your wrongs and offenses.' If it were not foolish to linger long over things that are obvious and need no defense, I would show, by unrolling past ages, that these evils you speak of are not unknown, and that these plagues did not break in suddenly, and begin to afflict mortal affairs with various disasters, after our people earned the happiness of being given this name. For if we are the cause, and these plagues were devised as the deserved punishment of our guilt, how did antiquity know the names of these miseries? How did it give wars a name? By what reasoning could it mark pestilence and hail with a word, or take them among the terms by which speech was set out? For if these evils are new and draw their causes from recent offenses, how could it happen that antiquity formed words for things which it neither knew it had experienced nor had learned had ever occurred in the times of its ancestors? 'Shortage of crops,' he says, 'and scarcity of grain press hard upon us.' Were the ancient and very old ages ever free of this necessity? Do not the very names by which these evils are called testify and cry out that no mortal was ever exempt from them? If the matter were hard to believe, we could argue from the testimony of authors how great, how often, and which nations experienced dreadful famine and perished in heaped-up devastation. Hailstorms very often occur and destroy everything. Do we not find it recorded and set down in ancient literature that even showers of stones often crushed whole regions? Unfavorable rains make the crops die and impose barrenness on the land. Was antiquity free of these evils, when we know that even great rivers grew rough with dried mud? Contagions of pestilence consume the human race. Run through the records of the annals written in different languages: you will learn that all nations have often been laid waste and bereft of their inhabitants. Every kind of crop is cut down and gnawed away by locusts and mice. Go through your own histories and you will be taught by these plagues how often an earlier age was afflicted and came to the miseries of poverty. Cities shaken by violent earthquakes totter to the point of danger: what, did former times not see cities with their peoples swallowed up in huge chasms, or did they have fortunes secure from disasters of this kind?

When was the human race destroyed by floods of water? Was it not before us? When was the world set on fire and dissolved into embers and ashes? Was it not before us? When were very great cities covered by the waves of the sea? Was it not before us? When were wars waged with wild beasts and battles with lions? Was it not before us? When was destruction brought on peoples by venomous snakes? Was it not before us? As for your habit of blaming us for the causes of frequent wars, the laying waste of cities, the invasions of the Germans and Scythians, with your leave and your good pardon let me say it: you do not see, in your eagerness to slander, what sort of thing it is that you are saying.

Ten thousand years ago, when, as Plato shows, a great multitude of men burst out from the island called Atlantis of Neptune and utterly destroyed and wiped out countless nations, were we the cause? When between the Assyrians and the Bactrians, under the leadership once of Ninus and Zoroaster, war was waged not only with the sword and with strength but also with the secret arts of the Magi and the Chaldeans, was this ill will toward us? When Helen was carried off with the gods as leaders and instigators, and became a dreadful fate for her own people and for times to come, was that charged to the guilt of our religion? When that monstrous Xerxes let the sea in upon the land and crossed the seas on foot, was this brought about by the wrong done by our name? When a single young man rising from the borders of Macedonia subjected the kingdoms and peoples of the East to captivity and slavery, did we create and stir up the causes? When just now the Romans, like some rushing torrent, overwhelmed and swamped all nations, was it we, of course, who drove the gods into a frenzy? But if there is no one who dares to charge to our times what was done long ago, how can we be the causes of present miseries, when nothing new is happening, but all things are old and none of them unheard of in antiquity?

And yet it would not be hard to prove that these wars you speak of, since Christ was heard in the world, have not only not increased because of hatred of our religion, but have for the most part been reduced by the restraint of passions. For since so great a multitude of people has received from his teaching and laws that evil ought not to be repaid with evil, that it is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, that one should shed one's own blood rather than stain one's hands and conscience with another's, the ungrateful world has long enjoyed a benefit from Christ, through whom the madness of savagery has been softened and has begun to hold back hostile hands from the blood of a fellow creature. But if all without exception who understand that they are human not by the shape of their bodies but by the power of reason were willing to lend an ear for a little while to his saving and peaceful commands, and did not, swollen with pride and disdain, trust their own opinions rather than his admonitions, the whole world would long ago have turned the use of iron to gentler works and would be living in the softest tranquility, and would come together in wholesome concord, with the terms of its treaties kept inviolate.

'But if human affairs suffer no harm through you,' they say, 'where do these evils come from by which wretched mortality has long been pressed and burdened?' You ask of me an opinion that my case does not require at all. For the present dispute in hand was not undertaken by me in order to show or prove from what causes and reasons each thing comes about, but to show that the reproach of so great a crime is far from us. If I achieve this, if I do it, and the truth of the matter is set out by clear arguments, I do not care where these evils come from, or from what sources and beginnings they flow.

And yet, so that I may not seem, when asked, to say nothing at all of what I think about such matters, I can say this. What if the primary matter, which has been divided into the four elements of things, holds the causes of all miseries wrapped up in its own constitution? What if the motions of the stars, in certain signs, regions, times, and lines, give birth to these evils and bring on those below them the necessity of various disasters? What if at fixed times changes in things occur, and, as in the tides of the sea, prosperity now flows in and now ebbs again, with evils coming back in turn? What if this dregs of matter which we tread under our feet has had this law given to it, to breathe out most harmful vapors, by which this air is corrupted and brings disease to bodies and weakens human affairs? What if, which is nearest the truth, whatever seems adverse to us is not an evil for the world itself, and, measuring everything that happens by our own advantage, we find fault with the events of nature through wrong opinions? Plato, that lofty summit and pillar of philosophers, taught in his writings that those savage floods and conflagrations of the world are a purging of the earth, and that wise man was not afraid to call the overthrow of the human race, its disaster, ruin, destruction, and deaths a renewal of things, and to compare it to a kind of youth restored by renewed strength.

'The sky does not rain,' he says, 'and we are suffering from some shortage of grain.' Why, do you demand that the elements serve your needs, and that the seasons must yield their compliance to your convenience so that you can live more softly and luxuriously? What if, on the same principle, a man very eager to sail were to complain that for a long time there have been no winds and the breezes of the sky have fallen still? Must we therefore say that the calm of the world is harmful, because it hinders the wishes of travelers? What if someone accustomed to bake himself in the sun and to give his body dryness were to complain on similar grounds that the pleasure of fair weather had been taken away by frequent clouds? Must we therefore say that the clouds hang overhead with a hostile covering, because his desire is not allowed to redden itself idly in the flames and to work up a thirst for drinking? All these events that occur and happen within the mass of this world are to be weighed not by our petty conveniences but by the reasons and order of nature itself.

Nor, if something has happened that has favored us or our affairs with less happy results, is it at once an evil and to be counted a ruinous thing. The world rains or does not rain: it rains or does not rain for itself, and, what you perhaps do not know, it either dries up excessive dampness with the heat of drought or tempers the dryness of a very long time by pouring out rain. It brings on pestilences, diseases, famines, and other deadly forms of evil: how do you know whether it is not removing what is in excess, so as to set a limit, by its own losses, to things that are growing rank?

Would you dare to say: 'This and that thing in the world is evil', when you can neither explain nor unravel its origin or its cause, and call it harmful and harsh because perhaps it hinders the pleasures of your luxuries and desires? What then, because cold is hostile to your limbs and usually freezes and constricts the warmth of your blood, ought there therefore to be no winter in the world? And because you cannot bear and endure the most blazing suns, must summer be taken out of the year, and nature be arranged again differently under other laws? Hellebore is poison to men: ought it for that reason not to have been produced? The wolf lies in wait for sheepfolds: is nature at fault because it brought forth a most troublesome beast for the flocks? The serpent takes away life with its bite: curse the first beginnings of things, then, because they added such savage monsters to living creatures!

It is an excessively arrogant thing, when you are not your own master and live in another's property, to want to impose terms on those more powerful, so that what you desire happens rather than what you have found fixed in things by ancient ordinances. So if you want your complaints to have any standing, men, you must first teach us where you come from or who you are, whether the world was begotten and fashioned for you, or whether you came into it as tenants from foreign regions. Since it is not for you to say this, and you cannot explain for what purpose you dwell under this vault of heaven, stop thinking that anything concerns you, since what happens does not happen for parts but returns and is referred to the sum of the whole.

'Because of the Christians,' they say, 'the gods heap all evils upon us, and destruction is prepared for the crops by the powers above.' I ask you, when you say this, do you not see that you are wickedly slandering with open and manifest lies? It is about three hundred years, a little less or more, since we began to be Christians and to be counted in the world. Through all these years have there been continual wars, continual barren seasons, no peace on earth, and never any cheapness or abundance of goods at all? For this is the first thing that one who accuses us must prove: that these calamities have been perpetual and unbroken, that mortal affairs have never breathed again at all, and have endured the forms of manifold dangers without any holidays, as the saying goes.

Yet we see that during these years and these times countless victories have been won over conquered enemies, the boundaries of the empire extended, and nations of unheard-of name brought under its power; that there have very often been the greatest harvests, and such cheapness and abundance of goods that all trade stood amazed, with the level of prices laid low. For how could affairs be carried on, and the human race have lasted until this time, if the fertility of the earth had not supplied everything that the needs of life demanded?

'But there have been some times of want.' Yes, and they were relieved again by times of plenty. 'Some wars have gone against our will.' Yes, and they were afterward set right by victories and successes. What then, shall we say that the gods are at one time mindful of the wrongs done to them by us and at another forgetful? If they are said to be angry at a time of famine, it follows that at a time of plenty they are not angry and hard to please; and so the matter comes to this, that by playful alternations they lay aside and take up their anger again, and always restore themselves anew by recalling their offenses.

And yet what sort of thing this is that is being said cannot be grasped by any intelligible understanding. If the gods wished the Alamanni, Persians, and Scythians to be conquered because Christians lived and dwelt among their peoples, how did they give the victory to the Romans, when Christians also lived and dwelt among their peoples? If they wished mice and locusts to swarm prodigiously in Asia and Syria because, on the same reasoning, Christians lived among their peoples, why did nothing of the kind arise in Spain and Gaul at the same time, when countless Christians lived in these provinces too? If among the Gaetulians and ... they sent drought and dryness to the crops for this reason, why in that same year did they give the most abundant harvests to the Moors and the Nomads, when the same religion was practiced in these regions too? If in any one city they caused very many to die of hunger out of aversion to our name, why in that same place did they make not only people not of our body but even Christians richer and very wealthy by the high price of grain? So either no one at all ought to have had anything happy, if we are the cause of evils, for we are in all nations; or, since you see happy things mixed with troubles, stop ascribing to us what harms your affairs, since we do not hinder happy and prosperous things at all. For if I bring it about that things go badly, why do I not prevent them from going well? If my name is the cause of great want, why do I not hinder in the least the greatest fertility? If I am said to bring the fortune of receiving wounds in wars, why, when enemies perish, am I not a bad omen, and do not turn good fortune into adverse by the foulness of an evil portent?

And yet, O great worshipers and high priests of the deities, why do you insist that those most august gods are angry with the Christian peoples? Do you not notice, do you not see, what shameful passions, what unseemly madness you ascribe to the deities? For what else is being angry but raving, going mad, being carried away by the lust for revenge, and rioting in the derangement of a savage heart amid the torments of another's pain? So the great gods know, suffer, and feel what wild beasts and monsters and deadly water snakes with their venomous fangs contain. What is blameworthy in a human being as fickleness, in an earthly creature, you insist that that surpassing nature, standing in the firmness of perpetual excellence, knows. And what follows necessarily, then, but that fiery sparks flash from their eyes, their panting breast heaves, foam is thrown from their mouths, and the dryness of their lips grows white from their burning words?

But if this is true, and it is ascertained and known that the gods boil over with anger and are tossed by such emotion and disturbance, they are not immortal and everlasting, nor are they to be counted as having any divinity at all. For wherever there is any emotion, as the wise hold, there must be passion; where passion is found, disturbance naturally follows; where there is disturbance, there is pain and sickness; where there is pain and sickness, there is room at once for decline and corruption; and if these two afflict, destruction is near, death that ends all things and takes life from all that feel.

What of this, that in this way you represent them not only as fickle and hot-tempered but also, what ought to be far removed from gods, as unfair and unjust, and holding no measure of even the slightest equity? For what is so unjust as to be angry with some and to harm others, to complain of men and tear up the harmless crops, to hate the Christian name and ruin their own worshipers with every kind of loss? Or do they perhaps rage against us too for this reason,

so that you, stirred by wounds within, may rise up to avenge them? So the gods seek human protection, and unless they are protected by your support they are not able themselves to repel and defend themselves against insults. Rather, if it is true that they burn with anger, allow them power over themselves: let them defend themselves and put forth and try out their inward powers in vengeance for their offended majesty. They can, if they wish, kill us with heat, with most harmful cold, with pestilential winds, with the most hidden causes of disease; they can destroy us and banish us completely from all human society. Or if it is bad policy to attack us with force, let them send out some sign of their judgment, by which it may be clear to all that we live under heaven against their extreme will.

Let them give you good health and us bad and the worst. Let them water your fields with timely showers and drive whatever drops of rain there are away from our little plots. Let them see that your flocks multiply with numerous young, and bring an ill-omened barrenness on our herds. Let them make a full autumn harvest flow from your olive groves and vineyards, but forbid a single drop to be pressed from our vines. Finally and at last, let them command that in your mouths the crops keep their own nature, but in ours honey turn bitter, the streams of olive oil go rancid, and wine at the very lip of the cup suddenly change into treacherous sourness.

Since the facts themselves testify that this does not happen at all, and it is clear that no less comes to us and no more to you from the benefits that sustain life, what great desire is this, to maintain that the gods are enemies and foes of the Christians, when you see that in the saddest and the happiest circumstances they differ from you in no respect? If you allow the truth to be told to you, without any flattery: these are words, words, things believed through slanders, not proved by the testimony of any real knowledge.

But the true gods, those worthy to have and bear the dignity of this name, are neither angry nor indignant, nor do they devise harm to anyone by treacherous schemes. For truly it is impious and surpasses every sacrilege to believe that that wise and most blessed nature thinks it a great thing if someone submits himself to it with flattering humility, and, if this is not done, believes itself despised and fallen from the height of its supreme summit. It is childish, petty, and mean, hardly fitting even for those whom the experience of the learned has long called demons and heroes, beings who do not know heavenly things and dwell, by the lot of their condition, in this grosser matter of things.

These are your ideas, yours, irreligiously conceived and more irreligiously believed. Or rather, to speak more truly, it is soothsayers, interpreters of omens, diviners, prophets, and fanatics who are never not deluded who have strung these tales together. So that their arts may not perish, and so that they may not fail to shake small coins from their clients, who are already few, whenever they find you willing to have the matter made odious, they cry out: 'The gods are neglected, and there is now the greatest scarcity of worshipers in the temples; the ancient ceremonies lie ridiculed, and the very old rites of sacred things once observed have fallen before the superstitions of new religions; and rightly is the human race pressed by the straits of so many miseries and tortured by the hardships of so many toils.' And men, a dull race, unable through inborn blindness to see what lies in the light, dare in their madness to assert what you, in your right mind, do not blush to believe.

But so that no one may think that we, from lack of an answer, credit the gods with the gift of tranquility and ascribe to them minds that are harmless and removed from all disturbance, let us grant, as you please, that they direct their anger against us, that they thirst for our blood, and that they have long desired to remove us from the ages of mortals. But if it is not troublesome, not burdensome, if it is a matter of common duty to weigh the points of this dispute not by favor but by the truth, we ask to hear from you what this reason is, what cause, for which the gods above rage so against us and men burn with such bitterness. 'You practice impious religions,' they say, 'and unheard-of rites throughout the world.' What do you dare to say, you men who share in reason? What do you attempt to blurt out, to bring forth, with the recklessness of a rash tongue? To adore God the Supreme, the Lord of all things that exist, who holds the summit of all that is highest; to call upon him with reverent obedience; in our weariness to embrace him, so to speak, with all our senses, to love him, to look up to him: is this an accursed and ill-omened religion, full of impiety and sacrilege, polluting with the superstition of its novelty the ceremonies instituted of old?

Is this, I ask, that bold and monstrous crime, on account of which the greatest heavenly beings aim at us the stings of their anger and indignation, on account of which you yourselves, when savage lust comes over you, strip us of our goods, drive us from the homes of our fathers, inflict capital punishments on us, torture, tear, and burn us, and finally throw us to wild beasts to be mangled by monsters? Whoever condemns this in us, or thinks it should be counted in any charge, should he be called by the name of a man, however much he may seem so to himself, or be believed to be a god, though he declare himself one through a thousand prophets? Does Jupiter of Dodona call us profane and impious, and will he himself be called a god and be counted in the order of deities, who either charges with impiety those who serve the supreme King, or is tormented that God's majesty and worship are set above his own? Is Apollo of Delos or of Claros, of Didyma, the Philesian, the Pythian ... to be held divine, who either does not know the supreme Ruler or is unaware that we pray to him in daily prayers? Even if he did not know the secrets of our hearts, nor recognize what we hold in our inmost thoughts, he could still know by his ears that we call upon the supreme God and ask from him what we request, or recognize it from the very sound of the voice we use in prayer.

It is not yet the place to explain who all those are who condemn us, where they come from, how much power or knowledge they have, why they tremble at the mention of Christ, and why they hold his disciples as enemies and hated. But for those who lay claim to human understanding let us fix this in one definition: we Christians are nothing else but worshipers of the supreme King and Ruler, under Christ as our teacher. If you consider it, you will find nothing else involved in this religion. This is the sum of our whole practice, this is the set goal of our divine services, this is the end: before him we all prostrate ourselves according to custom, him we adore in joint prayers, from him we ask things just and honorable and worthy of his hearing. Not that he himself needs us to be suppliants, or loves to see the veneration of so many thousands laid at his feet: this is for our benefit and has regard to our advantage. For since we are prone to faults and to the various cravings of desire through the defect of our inborn weakness, he allows himself always to be conceived in our thoughts, so that while we pray to him and strive to deserve his gifts, we may receive the will to innocence and cleanse ourselves from every stain by cutting away all our sins.

What do you say, you sacred men, you interpreters of divine law? Have those a better case who adore the Grundulian Lares, the Aius Locutius, the Limentini, than all of us who worship God the Father of all things and ask of him protection in our weariness and weakness? And do those seem to you shrewd, wise, most prudent, and beyond all reproach, who revere Fauns and Fatuae and the geniuses of cities, Terrors and Bellonas, while we are pronounced dull, stupid, foolish, blunt, and brutish, who have given ourselves up to God, by whose nod and will all that exists stands and is fixed in the permanence of his decree? Is this the judgment you bring forth, the law you establish and promulgate, that whoever adores your little slaves should be granted the highest honors, while whoever prays to the masters themselves deserves the worst of crosses? In the greatest cities and among the more powerful peoples, rites are performed publicly in honor of women who were once hired prostitutes, prostituted to common lust: there is no swelling of indignation among the gods. Temples have been raised with lofty roofs to cats, beetles, and heifers: the powers of the deities, mocked, are silent, and are not stirred by any jealousy when they see the sanctity of vile animals set on a level with themselves. To us alone are the gods hostile, to us alone the bitterest enemies, because we worship their Father, through whom, if they exist, they began to be and to have the substance of their divinity and majesty; from whom, as they are aware, they received their very deity, so to speak, and are recognized in the number of things that exist; by whose will and pleasure they can both perish and be dissolved, and can neither be dissolved nor perish. For if we all agree that there is one sole First Principle, whom nothing else precedes in length of time, it is necessary that after him all things were born and brought forth and sprang into the nature of their own name. If this is fixed and settled, it will follow that we must confess that the gods too were born and draw the origin of their beginning from the primal source of things. And if they are born and begotten, they are surely also near to destruction and dangers. But they are believed to be immortal, everlasting, and never subject to any end. Therefore this is the gift and bounty of God the Father, that they have been granted to remain the same through endless ages, though they are by nature liable to fall and to be dissolved.

And would that it were granted me, with the whole world gathered into the form of a single assembly, to use this speech and to be placed in the hearing of the human race! Are we then accused among you of an impious religion, and because we approach the Head and Pillar of all things with reverent service, are we called, to use your abuse, ill-omened and atheists? And who would more rightly bear the odium of these names than one who knows, or inquires after, or believes in another god besides him? Do we not all owe to him this first of all, that we exist, that we are called human beings, that, whether sent from him or fallen away, we souls are held in the blindness of this body? Does it not come to us from him that we walk, breathe, and live, and does he not, by the very power of living, make us exist and be moved with the motion of a living being? Do not the causes flow from him by which our well-being is supported through the bounty of various pleasures? This world in which you live, whose is it? Or who has granted you to hold its fruit and possession? Who gave you this common light, so that you could see, handle, and consider the things placed beneath you? Who established the fires of the sun, to serve the growth of things, so that the vital elements should not grow numb in the stupor of fixed inertia? When you believe the sun to be a god, do you not ask who its founder and maker is? Since the moon is a goddess among you, do you not likewise care to know who is her begetter and fashioner?

Does it not occur to you to consider and inquire in whose possession you dwell, on whose property you are, whose is this earth which you wear out with labor, whose this air which you breathe in and out with the breath of life, whose springs you use freely, whose water; who ordered the blasts of the winds, who devised the watery clouds, who distinguished the fruitful powers of seeds by their proper natures? Does Apollo rain for you? Does Mercury rain for you? Did Aesculapius, Hercules, or Diana devise the system of rains and storms? And how can this be, when you declare that they were born in the world and at a certain time acquired the sense of life? For if the world preceded them in antiquity of time, and nature already knew rains and storms before they were born, those born later have no right to rain and cannot intrude themselves into arrangements which they found operating here and managed by a greater author.

O greatest, O supreme Creator of things invisible! O you who are yourself unseen and never comprehended by any nature! Worthy, truly worthy are you, if indeed you may be called worthy by a mortal mouth, to whom every breathing and understanding nature should never cease to give and render thanks, before whom all life should fall on bended knee and pray with unceasing prayers. For you are the first cause, the place and space of things, the foundation of all things that exist, infinite, unbegotten, immortal, everlasting, alone; whom no bodily form outlines, no circumscription bounds; without quality, without quantity, without position, motion, or state; of whom nothing can be said or expressed by the meaning of mortal words; to understand whom we must be silent, and, so that erring conjecture may trace you as though through a shadow, nothing at all must be uttered. Pardon, supreme King, those who persecute your servants, and, as is proper to your kindness, forgive those who flee from the worship of your name and religion. It is no wonder if you are unknown; it is a greater wonder if you are known. Unless perhaps someone dares, for this remains to raving madness, to doubt and question whether this God exists or not, whether he is believed on the ascertained truth of faith or on the opinion of empty rumor. For we hear that some who are devoted to the study of philosophy partly deny that there is any divine power, partly ask every day whether there is; others build up the sum of things from chance events and random collisions and have it fashioned by the impulse of diverse elements. With these we will have no dispute at all at this time over such obstinacy; for sensible people say that to contradict foolish things is a mark of greater foolishness.

Our discussion is with those who, while agreeing that there is a race of gods, doubt about the greater, though they admit that the common and lower ones exist. What then, shall we strive with arguments and labor to establish such great things? Let this madness depart far from us, far, I say, and be averted, as the saying goes. For it is as dangerous to set out to prove the supreme God by arguments as to want to know by reasoning of this kind that he exists. And it makes no difference whether you deny him or assert and confess that he exists, since the assertion of such a thing and the denial of an unbelieving opponent are equally at fault.

Is there any human being who has not entered on the day of his first birth with the notion of this First Principle? In whom is it not inborn, not fixed, indeed almost stamped and implanted in the very womb of his mother, that there is a King and Lord, the ruler of all things that exist? Finally, if dumb animals themselves could open their mouths, if they could be loosed into the ease of our languages, indeed if trees, clods, and stones, animated by vital sense, could produce the sound of a voice and form articulate words, would they not, with nature as their guide and teacher, in the faith of uncorrupted simplicity, both understand that there is a God and cry aloud that he alone is Lord of all?

'But in vain,' he says, 'do you assail and attack us with a false and slanderous charge, as though we denied that there is a greater God, when Jupiter is named by us and held Best and Greatest, and we have built him the most august seats and huge Capitols.' You are trying to join things unlike and force them into one form by introducing confusion. For the almighty God, by the single mind of all and the common agreement of mortals, is known neither to have been begotten, nor to have been brought forth at some time into new light, nor to have begun to exist from any point of time or age. For he himself is the source of things, the sower of ages and times. They do not exist of themselves, but proceed from his everlastingness, everlasting and in infinite continuity forever. But Jupiter, as you say, has a father and a mother, grandfathers, grandmothers, and brothers; he was lately formed in his mother's womb, and, completed and finished in ten months, is said to have burst with living sense into a light unknown to him. If then this is so, how can Jupiter be the God, when it is agreed that God is everlasting, and the other is represented by you as having had a birthday and, frightened by the new experience, as having uttered a pitiful wail?

But suppose, as you wish, that they are one and do not differ in any power of divinity or majesty. Why then do you persecute us with unjust hatred? Why do you shudder at the mention of our name as at a very bad omen, if the God you worship is the one we worship too? Or why do you maintain that in the same case the gods are friendly to you and hostile and most bitter toward us? For if one religion is common to us and to you, the anger of the heavenly beings ceases; but if they are hostile to us alone, it is clear that both you and they do not know God, who, as the very indignation of the deities makes plain, is not Jupiter.

'But the gods are not hostile to you,' he says, 'because you worship the almighty God, but because you maintain that a man who was born and, what is disgraceful even for vile persons, was put to death by the punishment of the cross, was God; and you believe that he still lives, and you worship him with daily prayers.' If you please, friends, explain to us who these gods are who think that our worship of Christ is an injury to them. Janus, founder of the Janiculum, and Saturn, author of the Saturnian city? Fenta Fatua, the wife of Faunus, who is called the Good Goddess, but is better and more praiseworthy in drinking wine? Those Indigetes who creep into the river and live in the channels of the Numicius with frogs and little fish? Aesculapius and Father Liber, the one born of Coronis, the other hurled by the thunderbolt from his mother's womb? Mercury, poured out of the womb of Maia, and, what is more divine, a fair one? The bow-bearing Diana and Apollo, carried about in their mother's flight and hardly safe on wandering islands? Venus, daughter of Dione, the mistress of a Trojan man's household and the publisher of her own private charms? Ceres, born in the borders of Trinacria, and Proserpina, busy gathering flowers? The Theban or the Tyrian Hercules, the one buried in the borders of Spain, the other burned up in the flames of Oeta? The Castors, sons of Tyndareus, one accustomed to tame horses, the other a good boxer, unbeatable with the raw-hide glove? The Moorish Tisianes and Bucures, and the Syrian gods, the offspring of eggs? Apis, brought forth in the Peloponnese and called Serapis in Egypt? Isis, darkened by Ethiopian suns, mourning her lost son and her husband torn limb from limb? We pass over and skip the royal offspring of Ops, whom your authors have described in their books, who and what they were, for you to learn. These, then, hear with wounded ears that Christ is worshiped and accepted by us and regarded as a deity, and, forgetting the lot and condition that was theirs a little before, refuse to share with another what has been granted to themselves? Is this the justice of the heavenly beings, this the holy judgment of the gods? Is this not a kind of envy and greed, a sordid detraction, to wish their own fortunes alone to stand out, and the affairs of others to be pressed down and trampled in contemptible lowliness?

We worship one who was born a man. What of it? Do you worship no one who was born a man? Not one and another? Not countless others? Indeed, have you not taken all those whom you now have in your temples from the number of mortals and presented them to heaven and the stars? For if perhaps it escapes you that they were of human lot and common condition, unroll the most ancient writings and run through the works of those who, living near antiquity, set everything down in clear truth without any flattery. You will surely learn from what fathers and mothers each one was begotten, in what region they were born, of what nation, what they did, carried out, endured, and practiced, what fortunes of adversity and prosperity they experienced in their undertakings. But if, knowing that they were carried in wombs and lived on the fruits of the earth, you nevertheless reproach us with the worship of one born a man, you act quite unjustly, in establishing as damnable in us what you yourselves regularly do, or in refusing to allow others likewise what you permit yourselves.

But let us grant for a while, yielding to your opinions, that Christ was one of us, of one mind, soul, body, weakness, and condition. Is he not worthy to be called God by us and regarded as God because of such great gifts? For if you have enrolled among the gods Liber because he discovered the use of wine, Ceres because she discovered bread, Aesculapius because he discovered herbs, Minerva because she discovered the olive, Triptolemus because he discovered the plow, and finally Hercules because he overcame and subdued wild beasts, robbers, and many-headed water snakes: with what honors must he be honored by us, who led us from great errors by instilling the truth; who, when we were walking about as though blind and without any guide, brought us back from precipices and pathless places to more level ground; who showed, what is most fruitful and saving for the human race, what God is, who, how great, and of what kind; who allowed and taught us to grasp and understand, as far as our littleness could, his deep and unspeakable heights; who most kindly made known by what author, by what Father this world was established and founded; who revealed the manner of its origin and its matter, never before grasped by anyone's knowledge; from where the life-giving heat of the sun is drawn from its fires; why the moon, always in motion, takes up its light and darkness again, whether for the same reasons as is believed or for others; what the origin of living creatures is; what principles seeds have; who fashioned man himself, who formed him, or from what kind of matter he established the very structure of bodies; what sense is, what the soul is; whether it flew to us of its own accord or was sown and begotten with our very flesh; whether it lives sharing in death or has been given the everlastingness of immortality; what state awaits us when we depart, dissolved, from our limbs; whether we shall see, or shall have no memory of our sensation and recollection; who restrained our arrogance and made our necks, raised in pride, recognize the measure of their weakness; who showed that we are unformed creatures, trusting in vain opinions, grasping nothing, knowing nothing, and not seeing what lies before our eyes; who, what surpassed and exceeded all gifts, led us across from false religions to the true religion; who raised us from lifeless images formed from the vilest clay to the stars and to heaven, and made us join words of supplication and converse in prayer with God the Lord of all things.

Only lately, O blindness, I used to worship images just taken from the furnaces, gods made on anvils and by hammers, elephants' bones, paintings, ribbons on ancient trees. Whenever I saw a smooth stone smeared with olive oil, I would flatter it, as though a present power were in it; I would speak to it and ask benefits of a senseless block. And I heaped grave insults on the very gods whom I had persuaded myself existed, when I believed them to be wood, stones, and bones, or to dwell in such material. Now, led into the ways of truth by so great a teacher, I know what all these things are, I think worthy things of the worthy, I offer no insult to the divine name, and I give to each person or head what is due, in unconfused ranks and dignities. Is Christ, then, not to be held God by us, and is he not to be honored with all the worship of divinity that can be conceived, even the greatest, from whom we have long received such great gifts while living, and expect greater when the day comes?

'But he died fastened to a gibbet.' What has that to do with the case? For neither does the kind and ugliness of his death change his words or deeds, nor will the authority of his teachings seem less because he departed from the bonds of the body not by natural dissolution but by violence done to him. Pythagoras of Samos was burned alive in a temple on an unjust suspicion of seeking tyranny: did what he taught lose its force because he did not breathe out his life of his own accord but was attacked with cruelty? Likewise Socrates, condemned by the judgment of his city, suffered capital punishment: were his discussions of morals, virtues, and duties made void because he was driven from life unjustly? Countless others, eminent in glory, virtue, and reputation, have suffered the most bitter forms of death, like Aquilius, Trebonius, and Regulus: were they therefore judged disgraceful after their lives, because they perished not by the common law of fate but torn and tortured by the harshest kind of death? No innocent person cruelly killed is ever infamous, nor is he stained with the mark of any disgrace who suffers heavy punishments not for his own deserts but by the savagery of a torturer.

And yet, you who laugh because we worship a man who died an ignominious death, do you not also honor Father Liber, torn limb from limb by the Titans, by consecrating shrines to him? Did you not, after the punishment and torment of the thunderbolt, name Aesculapius, the discoverer of medicines, guardian and protector of health, well-being, and safety? Do you not invite the great Hercules himself with sacrifices, victims, and burnt incense, though you yourselves say that he was burned alive after his sufferings and consumed on a funeral pyre? Do you not, with the loud cry of the Galli, invoke that Phrygian Attis, mutilated and stripped of his manhood, as a gracious god, a holy god, in the inner shrines of the Great Mother? Do you not say that Romulus himself, the father of the senators, torn in pieces by a hundred hands, is Quirinus, son of Mars, and honor him with priests and sacred couches, worship him in the most splendid temples, and after all this swear that he ascended into heaven? So either you too are to be laughed at, who think gods and worship men killed by the most grievous tortures, or, if there is a sure reason why you think you should do this, allow us also to know for what causes and reasons we do it.

'You worship one who was born a man.' Even if that were true, as was said in earlier places, he ought still to be called and named God for the many and so generous gifts that have come to us from him. But since he is God in sure fact and without the ambiguity of any serious doubt, do you think we will deny that he is worshiped by us as fully as possible and called the protector of our body? 'Is that Christ God, then?' someone will say, raging, angry, and excited. God, we will answer, and God of the inner powers, and, what may torture the unbelieving with still bitterer pain, sent to us by the supreme King for a matter of the greatest importance. Perhaps, grown madder and more furious, he will demand proof that the matter is as we say. There is no greater proof than the credibility of the things he did, than the newness of his mighty works, than all the decrees of fate conquered and dissolved, which peoples and nations saw done in their own daylight with no one disagreeing, and which even those whose ancient and ancestral laws he showed to be full of vanity and the emptiest superstition do not dare to accuse of falsehood.

Perhaps he will come back at us again with many other of those slanderous and childish cries: 'He was a magician; he did all those things by secret arts; he stole from the inner shrines of the Egyptians the names of powerful angels and hidden lore.' What do you say, little children, chattering with the loquacity of a rash tongue about things you have not found out and do not know? Were those things that were done, then, tricks of demons and games of magic arts? Can you point out and show us anyone among all those magicians who have ever existed through the ages who did anything like Christ, in the thousandth part? Who did it without any power of incantations, without the juices of herbs and grasses, without any anxious observance of sacred libations and times? For we do not press you or ask what they promise to do, or in what kinds of acts all their teaching and experience usually consists. For who does not know that they either strive to foreknow what is coming, which necessarily comes by its own ordering whether they will or no; or to send a deadly wasting disease on whom they please; or to break the affections of families; or to open without keys what is shut; or to bind mouths in silence; or to weaken, urge on, or slow down horses in the races; or to send on the wives and children of others, whether male or female, the flames of forbidden love and frenzied desires; or, if they seem to attempt anything useful, that they can do it not by their own power but by the power of those whom they invoke?

Yet it is established that Christ, without any aids from things, without the observance of any rite or rule, did all that he did by the power of his name; and, as was proper, fitting, and worthy of the true God, he gave us with bountiful generosity nothing hurtful or harmful, but what was helpful, saving, and full of power to aid us. What do you say again?

Was he, then, a mortal, or one of us, at whose command, at whose voice uttered in ordinary everyday words, illnesses, diseases, fevers, and other torments of the body fled? Was he one of us, whose presence, whose sight that race of demons sunk in people's inward parts could not bear, and, terrified by a new power, gave up possession of their limbs? Was he one of us, whose command foul leprosies obeyed, driven out at once, leaving evenness of color on the stained skin? Was he one of us, at whose light touch flows of blood stopped and checked their excessive issue? Was he one of us, whose hands the waters of dropsy fled, that penetrating fluid shrank away, and the swollen inward parts subsided in a healthy dryness? Was he one of us, who commanded the lame to run, and it was already done; the maimed to stretch out their hands, and their joints unfolded motions they had had from birth; the paralyzed to rise, and they were already carrying back their own beds, who a little before had been carried on others' shoulders; the blind to see, and they were already beholding the sky and the day, though born without eyes?

Was he one of us, I say, who healed at a single intervention a hundred or more afflicted with various infirmities and diseases? At whose mere voice the raging and maddened seas grew calm, and the whirlwinds of storms and tempests subsided? Who walked through the deepest waters with his foot unwet and trod the back of the sea, while the waves themselves were amazed and nature came under his service? Who fed five thousand of his followers from five loaves, and, so that it might not seem a trick to those unbelieving and hard people, heaped up the hollows of twelve baskets with the leftover fragments? Was he one of us, who commanded souls long since breathed out to return to their bodies, those buried to come out of their tombs, and, after the third day of the funeral, to be freed from the grave-clothes of the undertakers? Was he one of us, who saw clearly in the hearts of the silent what each was pondering, what they held in their hidden thoughts? Was he one of us, who, when he uttered a single word, was thought by different peoples speaking different languages to be using familiar sounds of words and each one's own speech? Was he one of us, who, when he taught his followers the duties of a sure religion, suddenly filled the whole world, and showed how great and who he was by the revealed immensity of his name? Was he one of us, who, after laying aside his body, showed himself in open light to countless people, who gave and received speech, taught, rebuked, and admonished; who, so that they might not think themselves deceived by empty imaginings, showed himself once, twice, and often in familiar conversation; who even now appears to righteous men, undefiled and loving him, not in empty dreams but in the form of pure simplicity; whose name, when heard, puts harmful spirits to flight, imposes silence on prophets, makes soothsayers unable to be consulted, and causes the actions of arrogant magicians to fail, not by the dread of the name, as you say, but by the free exercise of a greater power?

We have set out these things in summary, not on the principle that the greatness of the doer is to be seen in these mighty works alone. For how great these are, or how slight and trifling they will be found, if it should be granted to know from what realms he came to us, as the minister of what deity. The things he did and performed were not done so that he might boast of himself with empty display, but so that hard and unbelieving men might know that what was promised was not false, and might now learn from the kindness of his works to guess what the true God is. At the same time we want this also to be known, since the account of his deeds has been given in summary as was said: that Christ was not only able to do what he did, but even overcame the ordinances of fate. For if, as is plain and agreed, infirmities and sufferings of the body, contraction of the sinews, and loss of sight happen and are imposed by the decrees of fate, and Christ alone corrected, restored, and healed these things, it is clearer than the sun itself that he was more powerful than the fates, since he loosed and conquered what had been bound fast by everlasting bonds and immovable necessity.

'But in vain,' someone says, 'do you claim so much for Christ, since we know, and have known, that other gods have often given remedies to many sufferers and cured the diseases and illnesses of many people.' I do not inquire, I do not demand, which god, or when, or whom he helped, or what broken person he restored to health. I only want to hear this: whether, without the addition of any material, that is, of any medicine, he ordered diseases to fly away from people at a touch, or by command caused the cause of illnesses to die and the bodies of the weak to return to their proper nature. For Christ is known, either by putting his hand to the afflicted parts or by the command of a simple word, to have opened the ears of the deaf, driven blindness from the eyes, given speech to the dumb, loosened the bonds of the joints, given walking to the crippled, and to have been accustomed to heal by word and command shivering fevers, leprosies, dropsies, and all other kinds of illness which some unkind cruelty has willed human bodies to endure. What have all the gods done like this, from whom you say help has been brought to the sick and those in danger? If ever, as rumor has it, they have given healing to some, they either ordered some food to be taken, or a drink of some quality to be drunk, or the juices of herbs and grasses to be laid on the troublesome parts, or ordered walking, rest, or abstaining from something harmful. That this is nothing great nor worthy of any astonishment is plain if you will attend: for physicians cure in the same way, a creature born of the earth, not relying on true knowledge but placed in a conjectural art and wavering in the estimates of guesswork. But there is no special power in removing what is harmful by medicines: those are benefits of things, not powers of those who cure; and though it is praiseworthy to know which medicine suits which people or by what art they are to be cured, the place for this praise is found in a man, not in a god. For it is not shameful for a man to have improved someone's health by things taken from outside; it is unbecoming to a god not to be able to give health and safety by himself, but only with the help of external things.

And since you compare the benefits of health given by other deities with those given by Christ, how many thousands of sick people do you want us to show you, how many afflicted with wasting diseases, who obtained no healing at all, though they went as suppliants through all the temples, though they lay prostrate before the faces of the gods and swept the very thresholds with their kisses, though, as long as life remained to them, they wearied Aesculapius himself, the giver of health as they call him, with prayers and summoned him with most pitiable vows? Do we not know that some died of their ills, that others grew old in the torments of disease, that others began to fare worse after they had spent days and nights in continual prayers and in pious expectation? What use is it, then, to show that one or two were perhaps cured, when no one helped so many thousands and all the shrines are full of the wretched and unhappy? Unless perhaps you will say that the gods bring help to the good and disregard the miseries of the wicked. Yet Christ helped good and bad alike, and no one was rejected by him who asked for help in hard circumstances against the attacks and injuries of fortune. For this is the mark of the true God and of royal power: to deny his kindness to no one, and not to consider who deserves it or not, since it is natural weakness, not the choice of will or judgment, that makes a person a sinner. Moreover, to say that the gods bring help to sufferers according to their merits is to leave the matter open and make what you assert doubtful, so that both the one who was made well may seem to have been saved by chance, and the one who was not may be believed to have been unable to drive out his illness, not because of his deserts, but because of the weakness of the divine power.

What of this, that these mighty works, which we have set out in summary and not as the greatness of the matter demanded, he not only performed by his own power, but, what was more sublime, allowed many others to attempt and to perform with the addition of his name? For since he saw that you would be deniers of the things he had done and of his divine work, so that no suspicion might arise that he had lavished those gifts and benefits by magic arts, from that immense multitude of people who followed his favor in wonder he chose fishermen, craftsmen, rustics, and unskilled people of that kind, to be sent through various nations and perform all those miracles without any pretense or aids. He by a word checked the tortures of racked limbs, and they by a word checked the racking of frenzied sufferings. He by a single command drove demons from bodies and restored their senses to the senseless; they too, by no other command, restored to health and soundness those tormented by them ... He wiped away the marks of whitening leprosy by laying on his hand; they too restored the outlines of bodies by a not dissimilar touch. He commanded dropsical and swollen inward parts to recover their natural dryness; and his servants in this way stopped the wandering waters and bade them flow away by their own channels, away from the ruin of the body. He, within the interval of a single word, curbed from further feeding ulcers of great size that refused to accept healing; and they in the same way forced the stubbornness of a savage cancer, its spreading growths confined, to form a scar. He gave walking to the lame, sight to the blind, called back the slain to life; and they no less loosened the contraction of sinews, filled with light eyes already lost, and commanded the dead to return from their tombs, reversing the funeral rites. Nor was anything done by him, to the astonishment of all, that he did not give entirely to those little and rustic men to do, and place under their power.

What do you say, unbelieving, difficult, hard minds? Did that Jupiter of the Capitol give such power to any mortal? Did he endow a curio or the chief pontiff, or indeed his own priest, the flamen Dialis, with such a right? I will not say to raise the dead, nor to restore light to the blind, nor to give back the proper position of their limbs to the bent and the paralyzed, but to suppress a pimple, a hangnail, or a pustule by the command of the voice or the touch of the hand. Was that, then, a human thing, or could such a right be given, such freedom proceed, from a mouth fed on earthly dung, and not something divine and holy, or, if the matter allows any higher term, more than divine and holy? For if you yourself do what you can, and what befits your strength and power, wonder has nothing to exclaim at: you will have done what you could, and what your strength ought to perform, so that the work and the worker were equal. To be able to transfer your right to a man, and to give to a most fragile thing and share with it the doing of what you alone can do, belongs to a power placed above all things and holding under itself the causes of all things and the natures of reasons and faculties.

Come now, let there come, I pray, through the fiery zone, from the inner world, Zoroaster the magus, if we agree with Hermippus as our authority; let that Bactrian also come, whose deeds Ctesias sets out in the first book of his histories; the Armenian grandson of Zostrianus, and Pamphylus the friend of Cyrus; Apollonius, Damigero, and Dardanus; Belus, Julianus, and Baebulus; and anyone else who is said to have held the first place and name in such tricks. Let them allow one of the people to join the lips of the dumb for the task of speaking, to unstop the ears of the deaf, to restore the nature of eyes to those born without sight, and to bring back sense and life to limbs long cold. Or if that is a hard thing, and they cannot grant others the power of such works, let them do it themselves, and do it with their own rites. Whatever evil herbs the bosom of the earth nourishes, whatever power that muttering of words and the added compulsions of spells contain, we do not grudge; let them add them. We do not forbid; let them gather them. We would like to test and to see whether they can accomplish, with their gods, what has been done by rustic Christians with bare commands.

Stop, you ignorant people, turning such great things into abuse. It will do no harm to him who did them, but it will bring danger to you, and no small danger, but danger in matters of the highest and chiefest importance, since the soul is a precious thing, and nothing can be found dearer to a person than himself. There was nothing magical in Christ, as you suppose, nothing merely human, deceptive, or crafty; no fraud lay hidden in him, though you may deride us as usual and dissolve into wanton laughter. He was God on high, God from his inmost root, God sent as Savior from unknown realms by God the Ruler of all; whom neither the sun himself nor any stars, if they have sense, nor the rulers and princes of the world, nor finally the great gods, or those who, pretending to be gods, terrify the whole race of mortals, could know or guess where he came from or who he was. And rightly. When, stripped of the body which he carried about as a small part of himself, he allowed himself to be seen and made known of whom he was and how great, all the elements of the world, terrified by the strangeness of the event, were thrown into confusion; the earth was moved and trembled, the sea was poured back from its depths, the air was wrapped in balls of darkness, and the fiery orb of the sun grew stiff, its heat cooled. For what remained to happen, after God was recognized, who until then was judged to be one of us?

But you do not believe that these things were done. Yet those who saw them happen and saw them done before their eyes, the best witnesses and the surest authorities, both believed them themselves and handed them on to be believed by us who came after, with no slight proofs. Perhaps you ask who these are? Tribes, peoples, nations, and that unbelieving human race, which, unless the matter were plain and, as the saying goes, clearer than daylight itself, would never lend the assent of its belief to things of this kind. Or shall we say that the people of that time were so empty, lying, stupid, and brutish as to pretend they had seen what they never saw, and to report with false testimony, or confirm with childish assertion, things that had not happened at all, and that, when they could live with you in harmony and maintain unoffended relations, they took on hatred for nothing and were held under an accursed name?

But if, as you say, that history of the events is false, how is it that in so short a time the whole world has been filled with this religion, or how could nations separated by regions, divided by the winds and the vaults of the sky, come together into one mind? Were they enticed by bare assertions, led into empty hopes, and did they choose of their own accord, in reckless despair, to throw themselves into danger of their lives, when they had seen nothing of the kind that could rouse them to this worship by the wonder of its newness? No: because they saw all these things done both by him and by his heralds, who, sent through the whole world, carried the benefits and gifts of the Father to ... souls and men, they were conquered by the force of truth itself and gave themselves to God, and did not count it a great loss to throw their bodies to you and offer their flesh to be torn.

'But your writers have set these things out falsely; they have magnified small deeds beyond measure and inflated slight matters with quite ambitious proclamation.' Yet if everything could have been put into writing, both what he himself did and what his heralds accomplished with equal right and power, so great a mass of mighty works would make you still more unbelieving, and perhaps you could seize on a point where it would seem very like the truth that additions had been made to the facts and falsehoods inserted into the writings and records. But neither could everything be written down or reach the ears of all, since many things were done among unknown nations who did not know the use of letters; or, if some things have been committed to letters and writings, some things have been interpolated and added, and partly changed and taken away in words, syllables, and letters, by the malice of the demons, whose care and effort is to intercept this truth, and of men like them, in order to slow the faith of the prudent and corrupt the authority of the deeds. But it will never be that what Christ was should be gathered only from the testimony of writings, since his case has been left to rest on this alone: that if what we say is established as true, he is shown by the confession of all to have been God.

You do not believe our writings, and we do not believe yours. We invent falsehoods about Christ, and you boast empty and false things about your gods; for no god slipped down from heaven, or wrote out your affairs with his own hands, or in similar fashion disparaged our affairs and religion. These were written by men, and those too were written by men, set out in mortal speech; and whatever you mean to say of our writers, take and hold it said with equal weight of yours. You want what is contained in your writings to be true: you must admit that what is recorded in our books is true too. You accuse our affairs of falsehood, and we accuse yours. 'But ours are older,' you say, 'and therefore full of credibility and truth.' As though antiquity were not the most fruitful mother of errors, and had not itself given birth to the things that fashioned the most shameful marks of disgrace for the gods in myths! For could false things not be heard and believed ten thousand years ago? Or is it not most like the truth that credibility belongs rather to things near and neighboring than to things distant by long intervals? For these are asserted by witnesses, those by opinions; and it is much more likely that there is less fiction in recent things than in things removed into ancient obscurity.

'But they were written by unlearned and uncultured men, and so they should not be believed on a ready hearing.' See whether this is not rather a stronger reason why they are stained with no lies: they were set out by a simple mind that knew nothing of enlarging things with allurements. 'The language is common and mean.' For truth has never pursued ornament, nor does what is examined and certain allow itself to be led around through a longer circuit of speech. Syllogisms, enthymemes, definitions, and all those ornaments by which belief is sought for an assertion help those who are guessing; they do not show the features of truth. But one who knows what it is that he is saying neither defines nor draws syllogisms nor pursues any other tricks of words by which hearers are usually caught and brought to assent through the compulsion of a trap.

'Your writings,' he says, 'are full of barbarisms and solecisms and defiled by the ugliness of faults.' A childish and narrow-minded criticism indeed! If we admit it as true, let us throw away from our use certain kinds of fruit because they grow with thorns and other refuse, which can neither nourish us nor yet prevent us from enjoying what comes first and what nature has willed to be most wholesome for us. For what harm does it do, I ask, or what slowness does it bring to the understanding, whether something is said smoothly or with rough harshness, whether what should have been accented acute receives a circumflex, or what should have been circumflexed is made acute? Or how is what is said less true if there is a fault in number or case, preposition, participle, or conjunction? Let that pomp of speech and oration composed by rules be kept for public assemblies, lawsuits, the forum, and the courts, and be given indeed to those who, seeking the charms of pleasure, have spent all their effort on the brilliance of words. When the subject is far removed from display, we must look at what is said, not with what charm it is said, nor at what soothes the ears, but at what benefits it brings to the hearers; especially since we know that even some who devoted themselves to wisdom not only threw away polish of speech, but, though they could speak more ornately and richly, deliberately followed a common plainness, so as not to spoil the strictness of their seriousness and parade themselves rather with sophistic display. Indeed it is the mark of a loose mind to seek pleasure in serious matters, and, when you have to deal with the sick and ailing, to pour sweeter sounds into their ears rather than apply medicine to their wounds. And yet, if you look at the truth, no speech is sound by nature, and likewise none faulty. For what natural reason is there, or what law written in the constitution of the world, that we should say hic paries ('this wall', masculine) and haec sella ('this chair', feminine), when they have no sex divided into feminine and masculine kinds, and not even the most learned man could teach me what hic and haec themselves are, or why one of them designates the male sex while the one that follows is applied to the feminine kind? These are human conventions, and certainly not necessary to all for the use of speech; for haec paries and hic sella could perhaps have been said without any blame, if it had pleased people from the beginning to say it so, and if it had been kept in common speech by the following generations. And yet you who charge our writings with being defiled by the ugliness of faults, do you not have those very blemishes in your greatest and most admired books? Do you not say sometimes haec utria and sometimes hos utres ('wineskins'), caelus and caelum ('heaven'), and likewise pileus and pileum ('cap'), crocus and crocum ('saffron'), fretus and fretum ('strait')? Is it not likewise found among you, hoc pane and hic panis ('bread'), hic sanguis and hoc sanguen ('blood'), candelabrum and iugulum, and on the same principle iugulus and candelaber? For if single nouns cannot have more genders than one, and the same words cannot be of this gender and that, since one gender cannot pass into another, then he who pronounces masculine words by feminine rules errs as much as he who puts masculine articles before feminine nouns. Yet we see you using masculine things in the feminine and feminine in the masculine, and those you call neuter in this way and that, without any distinction. So either there is no fault in using them indifferently, and you say in vain that we are disfigured by the foulness of solecisms; or, if it is fixed by what rules each must be expressed, you too are involved in similar faults, even if you have all your Epicadi, Caesellii, Verrii, Scauri, and Nisi.

'But if Christ was God,' they say, 'why was he seen in the form of a man, and why was he put to death in human fashion?' Could that invisible power, having no bodily substance, bring and lend itself to the world and take part in the assemblies of mortals in any other way than by assuming some covering of more solid matter, which could receive the glance of the eyes and on which the gaze of the dullest observation could fix itself? For which of mortals could see him, which could behold him, if he had willed to bring himself to earth such as his original nature is, and such as he willed himself to be in his own quality or divinity? So he took on the form of a man and enclosed his power under the likeness of our race, so that he could be seen and beheld, could speak and teach, and could carry out all those things for which he had come into the world, observing the command and arrangement of the supreme King.

'What,' he says, 'could the supreme King not accomplish what he had decreed to be done in the world without a pretended man?' If it had been fitting for it to be done as you say, perhaps he would have done it so; because it was not fitting, he did it otherwise. Why he willed it in this way and not in that, the causes lie wrapped up and hardly comprehensible to anyone. You might perhaps have been able to grasp them if you were not long since ready not to grasp them, and did not shape yourself to the stance of unbelief before what you are seeking to learn and hear had been set out to you.

'But he was put to death as a man is.' Not he himself: for the fall of death cannot befall divine things, nor can that which is one and simple, and not compacted by any joining of parts, pass away in the dissolution of destruction. Who then was seen hanging on the gibbet, who died? The man whom he had put on and carried with him. It is incredible to say and wrapped in blind obscurity. If you will, it is not blind, and it rests on a very close comparison. If at the time when the Sibyl was pouring out her presages and uttering those oracles, filled, as you say, with the power of Apollo, she had been cut down and killed by wicked robbers, would Apollo be said to have been slain in her? If Bacis, if Helenus, Marcius, and other soothsayers like them had been deprived of life and light, would anyone say that those who spoke through their mouths and explained the ways of things to inquirers had perished by the law of humanity? That death you speak of was the death of the man assumed, not of himself; of the thing carried, not of the carrier. And he would not have submitted even to suffer it, if so great a thing had not been to be done, and the inexplicable plan of fate to be disclosed in hidden mysteries.

'What are these hidden and obscure mysteries?' you will say. Things which no human beings can know, nor can even those who are called gods of the world reach them in any part by guess or opinion, except those whom he himself has deigned to share the gifts of so great a knowledge and to lead into the hidden recesses of the inner treasure. For what? If he had not wanted hands to be laid on him by anyone, would he have had to strive with the utmost effort to keep his enemies away from himself even with all his power? He who had restored light to the blind, could he not, if he had to, make people blind? He who had given soundness to the weak, did he find it difficult or laborious to make them weak? He who commanded the lame to walk, did he not know how to bind the movements of their limbs by stiffening their sinews? He who drew the dead out of their tombs, was it hard for him to impose death on whomever he wished? But because reason required that what had been destined should be done, and here in this very world, and in no other way than it was done, that inestimable and incredible gentleness, counting men's injuries against him as childish follies, allowed hands to be stretched out against him by savage men and the hardest robbers, and did not think he should consider what their audacity had devised, provided he showed his own what they ought to expect from him. For when, concerning the dangers of souls, ... he, the teacher and author, directed his laws and ordinances to the ends of fitting duties: did he not crush the arrogance of pride, quench the flames of lusts, check the gaping of greed, wrest weapons from hands, and cut off all the seeds of every vice? Finally, was he himself not gentle, peaceable, easy of access, friendly in speech, grieving at human miseries? Did he not pity all without exception who were afflicted with tortures and bodily evils and diseases, with that unique kindness, and give them back and restore them to health?

What then drives you, what urges you to curse and revile and to engage in implacable feuds with him whom no one at all could convict or hold guilty of any crime? Your tyrants and kings, who, setting aside the fear of the gods, plunder and ravage the offerings of the temples, who strip cities of their nobility by proscriptions, exiles, and murders, who by force undermine and wantonly snatch away the chastity of matrons and virgins, you call Indigetes and divine; and those whom you ought to have attacked with sharper hatred you honor with sacred couches, altars, temples, and other worship, with the celebration of games and birthdays. And also all those who, in many-sided writing of books, carp at public morals with biting abuse, who cut, burn, and tear your luxuries and vices, who hand down to posterity the marks of their own time through the permanence of writing; who urge that wives should be held in common; who lie with handsome, wanton, naked boys; who proclaim that you are cattle, runaways, exiles, slaves of the vilest brand, mad and insane: these you exalt to the stars of heaven with admiration and applause, you store them in the recesses of your libraries, you reward them with chariots and statues, and, as far as lies in you, you give them a kind of eternity by the testimony of immortal inscriptions. Christ alone you would assail and tear in pieces, if you could do so to a god; indeed, if it were allowed, you would chew him alone with bloody mouths in the manner of wild beasts and swallow him with his bones crushed. For what fault, I ask, tell me, for the guilt of what sin? What was committed by him to turn aside the course of right and stir you to bitter hatred with furious goads? Because he declared that he had been sent by the only King as the guardian of your souls? Because he brought you immortality, which you trust you have, persuaded by the human assertions of a few? But if you were sure that he spoke falsely and promised even the emptiest hopes, even so I do not see that there was a reason why you should hate him or condemn him with hostile punishment. On the contrary, if your mind had been kind and gentle, you ought to have embraced him for that alone, because he promised you desirable and prosperous things, because he was the messenger of good things, because he proclaimed things that hurt no one's mind but rather filled it with a more confident expectation.

O ungrateful and impious age, prepared for its own ruin by an incredible obstinacy of heart! If some physician had come to you from remote parts and from regions never known to you, promising a medicine that would keep from your bodies absolutely all kinds of diseases and illnesses, would you not all run to him eagerly? Would you not welcome him into your homes with every flattery and honor? Would you not wish that kind of medicine to be most certain and true, which promised that you would be free from so countless afflictions of the body to the very last limits of life? And though the matter were doubtful, you would still entrust yourselves to him, and would not hesitate to drink an unknown potion, with the hope of health set before you and inflamed with love of safety. Christ shone forth and appeared, the messenger of the greatest thing, bringing a happy omen and a saving proclamation to those who believe. What is this cruelty, what so great inhumanity, or rather, to speak more truly, what disdain and arrogance, not only to tear the announcer and bearer of so great a gift with abusive words, but even to pursue him with fierce war and with every shower of weapons and destruction? Do his words not please you, and do you hear them with offense? Count them as playful prophecies. Does he speak the stupidest things and promise foolish gifts? Laugh, like the wise men you are, and leave foolishness to wallow in its own errors. What is this savagery, to repeat what has often been said, what so murderous a lust, to declare implacable war on one who has deserved nothing from you, to want to tear him through the entrails if it were granted, who not only did no harm to anyone, but, kind to enemies alike, told what was being brought to souls for their salvation by God the Ruler, what must be done for them to escape destruction and gain an unknown immortality? And when the novelty of the things and the unheard-of promise troubled the minds of the hearers and made their belief waver, the Lord of all powers and destroyer of death himself allowed his man to be killed, so that from what followed they might know that the hopes they had long since received concerning the salvation of souls were safe, and that they could not escape the danger of death in any other way.

If any opportunity could be given at this point, I would like, turning aside a little from the defense I originally set out on, to exchange words like these with all those to whom the name of Christ is hateful. If you think it no insult to answer something when you are asked, explain to us and say: what is the matter, what is the reason, that you pursue Christ with such fierce wars, or what offenses of his do you hold, that at the mention of his name you boil over with the heat of raging hearts? Did he claim royal power for himself and seize the whole world with most hostile legions, destroying and wiping out some nations that had been at peace from the beginning, and forcing others to obey him with their necks under the yoke? Did he, burning with the heat of greed, claim as his own possession all that wealth with which the human race eagerly strives to fill itself? Did he, eager with the desires of lust, break by force the barriers of chastity, or lie in wait secretly for other men's marriages? Did he, swollen with the disdain of arrogance, inflict wrongs and insults everywhere without distinction of any person?

Did he not rather hold out to all the light of life and remove the danger of ignorance? Even if he were not worthy that you should listen to and believe him, he should not have been despised by you for this very reason, that he showed you saving things and opened to you the ways to heaven and the fulfillment of your hopes of immortality. 'But he deserves hatred because he drove religions out of the world, because he forbade people to approach the worship of the gods.' Is he then accused of destroying religion and introducing impiety, who brought true religion into the world, who opened the doors of piety to people who were blind and truly living in impiety, and showed them to whom they should submit? Or is there any religion truer, more dutiful, more powerful, more just, than to know God the Ruler, to know how to pray to God the Ruler, who alone is the head and everlasting source of all good things, the Father, founder, and maker of all things, by whom all things on earth and in heaven are animated and watered with the motion of life, and without whom there would surely be nothing bearing any name or substance?

Unless perhaps you doubt whether this Ruler of whom we speak exists, and rather believe that Apollo, Diana, Mercury, and Mars exist. Give a true judgment: looking around at all these things we see, one will sooner doubt whether the other gods exist than hesitate about God, whom we all know by nature to exist, whether when we cry out 'O God!', or when we make God the witness of wicked deeds and raise our face to heaven as though he saw us. 'But he forbade men to pray to the lesser gods.' Do you know who the lesser gods are, or where they are? Has any suspicion or mention of them ever touched you, so that you may rightly take it ill that their worship has been abolished and they have been deprived of the bestowal of honor? But if the conceit of mind and what the Greeks call typhos (vanity) did not stand in your way and hinder you, you could long ago have known what he forbade to be done and why, within what limits he wished true religion to stand, how great a danger would arise for you from what you think is service, or from what evils you would emerge if you renounced a treacherous error.

But all this will be set out more clearly and plainly when we have gone further on. For we will show that Christ did not teach the nations impiety, but rescued the ignorance of wretched people from the worst robbers. 'We do not believe,' you say, 'that what he says is true.' What then? Is it clear to you that what you deny to be true is not true, when things that are yet to come and have not yet been experienced cannot be refuted by any reasoning? 'But he himself does not prove what he promises.' That is so; for, as I said, there can be no proof of future things. Since, then, this is the condition of future things, that they cannot be grasped or comprehended by any touch of anticipation, is it not the sounder reasoning, of two uncertain things hanging in doubtful expectation, to believe rather the one that brings some hope than the one that brings none at all? For in the one case there is no danger, if what is said to be coming proves empty and void; in the other there is the greatest loss, namely the loss of salvation, if, when the time comes, it is revealed that it was no lie.

What do you say, you ignorant people, most worthy even of tears and pity? Are you not afraid that perhaps these things you despise and find laughable may be true? Do you not at least turn it over in your hidden thoughts, lest what you today refuse to believe in obstinate perversity be refuted by a time too late and punished by an irrevocable repentance? Do not even these arguments give you ground for believing: that already through all lands, in so short a space of time, the mysteries of this immense name have been spread; that there is now no nation so barbarous in its customs and ignorant of gentleness that it has not, changed by love of him, softened its harshness and passed into peaceful dispositions, having taken on tranquility; that orators endowed with such great talents, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers and physicians, and even those who search out the secrets of philosophy, seek this teaching, despising what they trusted a little before; that slaves prefer to be tortured by their masters in whatever way they decide, wives to be divorced from their marriages, children to be disinherited by their parents, rather than break their Christian faith and lay down the oath of the saving army; that though you have set such great kinds of punishment before those who follow the laws of this religion, the thing grows even more, and the people resist more boldly against all threats and fearsome prohibitions, and are roused to the zeal of believing by the very goads of prohibition? Or do you believe that these things happen at random and for nothing, that these minds are taken up by chance impulses? Is this, then, not divine and sacred? Or do such great conversions of their minds happen without God, so that, when the executioner's hooks and countless other tortures, as we said, hang over those who are about to believe, they, seized as it were by a kind of sweetness and love of all virtues, accept the teaching they have come to know and set the friendship of Christ before all the things of the world?

Unless perhaps these people seem dull and foolish to you, who throughout the whole world now agree and come together in the assent of this belief. What then? Do you alone, ... with wisdom and by the pure force of intelligence, see something else, something deep? Do you alone understand that all these things are trifles, you alone that what we promise ourselves will come from the supreme King is mere words and childish nonsense? Where, I ask, was so much wisdom handed down to you, where could you acquire so much sharpness and vigor, or from what branches of knowledge could you draw so much insight, so much divination? Because you know how to decline verbs and nouns through cases and tenses, how to avoid barbarous words and solecisms, because you yourselves know how to produce rhythmical, well-built, and well-arranged speech, or to know when it is unpolished; because you keep the Fornix of Lucilius and the Marsyas of Pomponius sealed in your memory; because you know what the issues are in lawsuits, how many kinds of cases, how many of speeches, what a genus is, what a species, by what rules an opposite is distinguished from a contrary: do you therefore think that you know what is false and what is true, what can or cannot happen, what the nature of the lowest and highest things is? Has that common saying never struck your ears, that the wisdom of man is foolishness with God?

And you yourselves see clearly, whenever you dispute about obscure matters and set out to unlock the secrets of nature, that you do not know even the things you say, assert, and often defend with deadly contention, and that each of you defends his own guesses with stubborn resistance as though they were proved and grasped. For, if I look at the truth, what can we know by ourselves, even if all ages were spent in investigating things, we whom some unknown cause brought forth and ill will put together so blind and proud that, though we know nothing, we nevertheless deceive ourselves completely and are raised to the opinion of knowledge by the swelling of a puffed-up heart? For, to pass over divine things and things sunk in natural obscurity, can any mortal explain what that Socrates could not grasp in the Phaedrus: what man is, or where he comes from, a being two-faced, changeable, fickle, deceitful, manifold, multiform; for what uses he was brought forth; by whose ingenuity he was devised; what he does in the world; why he experiences such swarms of evils; whether the earth, turned by the rotting of some dampness, gave him life like worms or mice, or whether he received these features of body and the shape of his face from the hand of some fashioner and maker? Can he know, I say, these things that lie open to all and are placed within the common senses: for what causes we sink into sleep, for what causes we wake, in what ways dreams and visions come about? Indeed, what Plato questions in the Theaetetus: whether we are ever awake, or whether what is called being awake is part of a perpetual sleep, and what we seem to do is a dream; when we say we see, whether we see by the reaching out of rays and light, or whether images of things fly to us and settle in our pupils; whether taste is in things or comes about by contact with the palate; for what causes hairs lose their natural blackness and grow gray, not all at once but gradually; why all liquids form one body by mixing, but oil alone refuses to allow itself to be mixed and always visibly gathers itself into its own nature, impenetrable; and finally, why the mind itself, which you say is immortal and a god, is sick in the sick, stupid in infants, exhausted in old age, and babbles delirious and mad things? But our weakness and ignorance is the more pitiable because, though it may happen that we sometimes say something true, even this is uncertain to us, whether we have said anything true.

And since you are accustomed to laugh at our faith and to tear our very belief with jokes and jests, tell us, you witty people, steeped in and filled with the pure wine of wisdom: is there any busy and active kind of work in life which its agents do not take up, undertake, and begin with faith leading the way? Do you travel and sail without believing that you will return home when your business is done? Do you cut the earth with iron and fill it with various seeds without believing that you will gather the crop at the turn of the seasons? Do you join in the partnership of marriage without believing that it will be chaste and a dutiful bond toward the husband? Do you take up the offspring of children without believing that it will be safe and come through the stages of life to the goal of old age? Do you entrust the sicknesses of your bodies to the hands of physicians without believing that diseases can be relieved when their severity is lessened? Do you wage wars with enemies without believing that you will bring back victory by successful battles? Do you worship and revere the gods without believing that they exist and lend a favorable ear to your prayers?

What of this? Those things about matters removed from human knowledge which you yourselves write and read, have you seen them with your own eyes and held them handled in your hands? Does not each of you believe this author or that? Does not each defend, as by a kind of pledge of faith, what he has persuaded himself is truly said by another? He who says that fire or water is the origin of all things, does he not believe Thales or Heraclitus? He who puts the cause in numbers, does he not believe Pythagoras of Samos and Archytas? He who divides the soul and establishes incorporeal forms, does he not believe Plato the Socratic? He who adds a fifth element to the first causes, does he not believe Aristotle, father of the Peripatetics? He who threatens the world with fire, that it will burn when the time comes, does he not believe Panaetius, Chrysippus, Zeno? He who is forever building and destroying worlds from indivisible bodies, does he not believe Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus? He who says that nothing is grasped by man and all things are wrapped in blind obscurity, does he not believe Arcesilaus, Carneades, or some follower of the Old or the New Academy?

Finally, do not the very founders and fathers of the opinions just mentioned say what they say because they believe their own guesses? For did Heraclitus see things come to be by conversions of fire, Thales by the condensation of water, Pythagoras numbers combine, Plato incorporeal forms, Democritus the collisions of atoms? Or do those who assert that nothing at all can be grasped know whether what they say is true, so that they understand that the very thing they define is a statement of truth? Since, then, you have nothing ascertained or known, and assert all that you write and contain in thousands of books with belief as your guide, what is this so unjust judgment, that you mock our faith, though you see that you share our belief? 'But you believe wise men instructed in all kinds of learning.' Yes, those who know nothing and do not declare one thing, who wage wars with their opponents for their opinions and always fight with hostile obstinacy; who, while one undermines, destroys, and tears up the doctrines of another, have made everything uncertain and have shown by their very disagreement that nothing can be known.

But let these things be no hindrance or obstacle at all to your believing and listening to them: what is there in this respect that you have more of, or we less? You believe Plato, Cronius, Numenius, or whomever you please; we believe and rest in Christ. How great an injustice this is, that when both of us stand by authors, and believing is one and shared by both, you want it granted to you to accept what is said by them, but will not have us hear and regard what is set forth by Christ! Yet if we are willing to match causes with causes and parts with parts, we can show better what we have followed in Christ than you can show what you have followed in the philosophers. And we have followed this in him: his magnificent works and most powerful mighty deeds, which he displayed and set forth in various miracles, by which anyone could be brought to the necessity of belief and judge faithfully that the things done were not of a man but of some divine and unknown power. What mighty works have you followed in the philosophers, that you should have more reason to believe them than we to believe Christ? Was any of them ever able by one word or the command of a single order, I will not say to restrain and check the madness of the sea or the fury of storms, nor to restore sight to the blind or give it to those born without eyes, nor to call back the dead to life, nor to dissolve sufferings of many years, but, what is much slighter, to heal a boil, a scab, or a little thorn stuck in the skin with a single prohibition? Not that we deny that they are praiseworthy for integrity of character or that they are not equipped with every kind of study and learning; for we know that they speak in most brilliant words and flow in polished compositions, draw syllogisms most acutely, arrange inductions in logical sequence, give their formulas to definitions, divide and distinguish, say much about the kinds of numbers, much about music, and explain even geometrical matters with their theorems and rules. But what has this to do with the case? Do enthymemes, syllogisms, and other such things guarantee that they know the truth, or make them worthy to be necessarily believed about the most obscure matters? A contest between persons is to be weighed not by the powers of eloquence but by the power of deeds and works. He is not to be called a good authority who has spoken elegantly, but he who follows up what he promises with the pledge of divine works.

You bring forward to us arguments and the subtleties of conjectures. If Christ himself (let me say it with his peace and pardon) had used these in the assemblies of the peoples, who would have assented, who would have listened, who would have judged that he was promising anything clearly, or who would have followed one boasting of empty and bare things, however imprudent and foolishly credulous he might be? The mighty works placed before their eyes, and that unheard-of power of deeds, whether done openly by himself or proclaimed by his heralds in the whole world, kindled such flames of longing and made tribes and peoples and nations most unlike in their customs run together with one mind to the assent of a single belief. For one could enumerate and bring into account what was done in India, among the Seres, Persians, and Medes, in Arabia, Egypt, Asia, Syria, among the Galatians, Parthians, and Phrygians, in Achaia, Macedonia, and Epirus, in the islands and all the provinces which the rising and setting sun surveys, and finally in Rome herself, the mistress of the world, where, though people were occupied with the arts of King Numa and ancient superstitions, they did not delay to abandon their ancestral ways and grow into one with Christian truth. For they had seen the chariot of Simon Magus and his fiery four-horse car blown away by the mouth of Peter and vanish when Christ was named. They had seen, I say, the man who trusted in false gods, betrayed by those same gods in their fear, fall headlong by his own weight and lie with his legs broken; and then, carried to Brunda, worn out by pain and shame, he threw himself down again from the top of a very high roof. All these deeds you neither know nor have wished to know, nor ever judged necessary for you; and while you trust your own hearts and call wisdom what is mere vanity, you have given room to deceivers, to those harmful ones, I say, whose interest it is that the Christian name be made to fade, to pour darkness over such great things and obscure them, to snatch faith from you and put contempt in its place, so that, since they foresee that the end due to their deserts is coming upon them, they might also bring on us a cause through which you might incur danger and be deprived of the divine kindness.

Meanwhile, you who admire and are dazzled by the teachings of the learned and of philosophy, do you not think it most unjust to ride roughshod over us and mock us as though we said foolish and brutish things, when you are found to say the same things, or things like those which you laugh at when we say and declare them? And my discussion is not with those who, scattered through the various byways of the sects, have formed these and those parties by the diversity of their opinions: you, you I address, who follow Mercury, Plato, and Pythagoras, and you others who are of one mind and walk the same paths of doctrine in unity. Do you dare to laugh at us because we worship and revere the Father and Lord of things, and give over and entrust our hopes to him? What of your Plato in the Theaetetus, to name him above all: does he not urge the soul to flee from the earth and to dwell always, as far as possible, in thought and mind around God? Do you dare to laugh at us because we say there will be a resurrection of the dead, which we confess we do say, but which you hear otherwise than we mean it? What of the same Plato in the Statesman? Does he not write that when the world begins to rise from the west and turn toward the point where the sun rises, people will again burst forth from the bosom of the earth, old, gray, and decrepit, and, when the years begin to come on, will come down through the same stages by which people now grow up to the cradle of infancy? Do you dare to laugh at us because we provide for the salvation of our souls, that is, of ourselves? For what are we human beings but souls shut up in bodies? Do you not all take care for their safety? Is it not because that fear holds you, lest you stick fast to your bodies as though fixed with beam-nails, that you abstain from all vices and desires? What do those rites of secret arts mean, by which you address I know not what powers, so that they may be gentle to you and not set obstacles in your way as you return to your fatherland?

Do you dare to laugh at us when we speak of Gehennas and certain unquenchable fires, into which we have learned that souls are cast by their foes and enemies? What of your same Plato, in the book he wrote on the immortality of the soul: does he not name the rivers Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, in which he asserts that souls are rolled, plunged, and burned? And a man of no small wisdom and of careful judgment takes up an insoluble problem: while he says souls are immortal, everlasting, and without bodily solidity, he still says they are punished and gives them the sense of pain. But who does not see that what is immortal, what is simple, can admit no pain, and that what feels pain cannot have immortality? Yet his authority does not depart very far from the truth. For though, being a gentle man of kindly will, he believed it inhuman to condemn souls to capital sentence, he nevertheless guessed not unreasonably that they are thrown into rivers rushing with balls of flame and foul with muddy whirlpools. For they are thrown in, and, reduced to nothing, vanish in the frustration of everlasting destruction. For they are of a middle quality, as has been learned from Christ as our authority, and can perish if they do not know God, and be freed from destruction if they apply themselves to his mercy and forgiveness, so that what is unknown may be made plain. This is the true death of man, this which leaves nothing remaining (for that death which is seen with the eyes is a separation of souls from bodies, not the last end of annihilation); this, I say, is the true death of man, when souls that do not know God are consumed through a torment of very long duration by a savage fire, into which certain cruel and savage beings will cast them, beings unknown before Christ and exposed by him alone who knows.

So there is nothing to deceive us, nothing to promise us empty hopes in what is said by certain new men, carried away by an immoderate opinion of themselves: that souls are immortal, next in rank of dignity to the Lord and Ruler of things, brought forth by that Begetter and Father, divine, wise, learned, and touched by no contact with the body. Since this is true and certain, we were brought forth by the Perfect with a perfection that cannot be improved: we live blameless and therefore beyond reproach, good, just, and upright, guilty of no vice; no desire conquers us, no lust dishonors us; we keep and maintain unbroken the course of all virtues. And because the souls of all of us flow down from one source, we therefore all think one and the same thing; we do not differ in character or in opinions; we all know the same things, and we do not have as many opinions as there are people in the world, divided by infinite variety.

'But while we slip down and hasten to human bodies, causes follow us from the circles of the world by which we become bad and very bad, boil with desires and anger, spend our life in shameful deeds, and are condemned to public lust by the prostitution of bodies for sale.' And how can bodies join themselves to incorporeal things, or things made by God the Ruler be led by weaker causes into the disgrace of vices? Will you, men, lay aside the inborn conceit and arrogance with which you claim God as your father and contend that you share one immortality with him? Will you seek, investigate, and examine what you yourselves are, whose you are, from what father you are reckoned, what you do in the world, in what way we are born, how we spring into life? Will you, setting partiality aside, see clearly in silent thought that we are living creatures either like the rest or not separated from them by very great difference? For what is there that shows we differ from their likeness? Or what eminence is there in us so great that we disdain to be counted among the animals? Their bodies are founded on bones and bound by the tying of sinews: our bodies too are founded on bones in the same way and bound by the tying of sinews. They take in air through their nostrils and give it back in breathing out: we likewise draw breath and breathe out in frequent passages. They are distinguished into feminine and masculine kinds: we too were formed by our author into as many sexes. They bring forth young from their wombs and beget by bodily union: we too are born of the joining of bodies and poured out and sent forth from our mothers' bellies. They are sustained by food and drink and discharge their superfluous filth by the lower passages: we too are sustained by food and drink and pour out what nature rejects by the same paths. All of them take care to ward off deadly hunger and must be watchful for their food: what else do we do in the great business of life but seek the means to avoid the danger of hunger and lay aside wretched anxiety? They feel diseases and starvation and at last are dissolved by old age: what then? Are we exempt from these evils, and are we not broken in the same way by the troubles of diseases and destroyed by the wasting of old age? But if that also is true which is said in the more secret mysteries, that the souls of the wicked, after they are stripped of human bodies, go into cattle and other beasts, it is proved still more clearly that we are neighbors to them and not separated by any long intervals, since one and the same thing is in us and in them, through which they are called living creatures and exercise vital motion.

'But we are rational, and surpass the whole race of dumb animals in intelligence.' I would believe that this is said most truly if all people lived by reason and counsel, kept to the course of their duties, abstained from unlawful things, did not undertake shameful business, and no one, through perversity of judgment and the blindness of ignorance, demanded things contrary and hostile to himself. Still, I would like to know what this reason is by which we are superior to all kinds of animals. Is it because we have made ourselves houses in which we can escape the cold of winter and the heat of summer? What, do the other animals not have foresight in this matter? Do we not see some building themselves nests in the most suitable places, others roofing and fortifying dwellings in rocks and overhanging cliffs, others hollowing out the soil of the earth and preparing shelters and lairs for themselves in dug-out holes? And if mother nature had chosen to give them serving hands as well, there would be no doubt that they too would build lofty walls and hammer out ingenious novelties. Even in the things they make with beaks and claws we see many images of reason and wisdom which we human beings could not imitate by any study, though we have craftsmen's hands and are skilled in every kind of accomplishment.

'They do not know how to make clothing, chairs, ships, and plows, nor the rest of the furniture that household use requires.' These are not gifts of knowledge but inventions of the barest necessity. The arts did not fall from the inner recesses of heaven along with souls; they were all sought out and born here on earth, and gradually put together by reflection with the passing of time. If souls had knowledge, as a divine and immortal race would fittingly have, all people from the beginning would have known everything, and there would be no age ignorant of any art or unprovided with experience of things. But in fact life, needy and lacking many things, seeing certain things turn out conveniently by chance, while it imitates, experiments, and tries, while it slips, reshapes, and changes, has by constant correction put together small bits of the arts' knowledge, and brought them, improved over very many ages, to a single result.

But if people knew themselves thoroughly, or received even a breath of some notion of God, they would never claim a divine and immortal nature for themselves, nor think themselves something magnificent because they have made gridirons, ladles, and mixing bowls; because they have made undershirts, cloaks, mantles, capes, robes of state, knives, breastplates, and swords; because they have made rakes, little axes, and the plowshare. Never, I say, would they, lifted up by conceit and arrogance, believe themselves to be first deities and equal to the supreme height of the Ruler because they gave birth to grammar, music, oratory, and geometrical formulas. We do not see what is so admirable in these arts that because of their invention souls should be believed superior to the sun and all the stars, and to surpass in dignity and substance this whole world of which these are the members. For what else do they promise to be able to impart or teach but that we may know the rules of nouns and their differences, the intervals in the sounds of voices, how to speak persuasively in lawsuits, how to measure the extent of lands? If souls had brought these things with them from the divine regions, all would necessarily know them, all over the world people would long since have been practicing them, and no race of people would be found that was not equally and uniformly learned in all of them. But in fact, how few in the world are musicians, logicians, and geometers, how few orators, poets, grammarians! From this it appears, as has often been said, that these things were discovered by the need of places and times, and that souls did not fly here divine and learned, since not all are learned, nor can all learn; and among them very many are of duller wit and slow, and must be compelled to the pursuit of learning by the discipline of blows. But if it were established that what we learn is recollection, as was held in ancient opinions, we would all, coming from one truth, have to know one thing and recollect one thing, not hold diverse, numerous, and conflicting opinions. But now, since each of us asserts one thing or another, it is plain and obvious that we brought nothing from heaven, but learn what was born here and defend what has grown together out of guesses.

And to show you more clearly and plainly what value man has, whom you believe to be very like the higher power, conceive this picture in your minds, and, since it could be done if we attempted it, let us treat it as though we had attempted it and hold it by way of comparison. Let there be for us, then, a dwelling place dug out in the earth, shaped like a chamber, enclosed by roof and walls, not chill in cold weather nor too hot in heat, but so tempered and moderate that we suffer neither the sense of cold nor the strong heat of summer. Into it let no sound whatever of any voice come, not of bird, nor of beast, nor of storm, nor of man, nor finally of any crash or of the sky thundering terribly. Next let us contrive how it receives light: not from fire brought in, nor from the sight of the sun, but let there be some borrowed light that counterfeits an image of light with gloom interposed. Let there be not one door, nor a straight entrance; let it be approached by winding turns, and never opened except when necessity requires.

Now, since we have prepared a place for our picture, let us next take someone just born and ... into the lodging of that place, which has nothing in it and is empty and void, even if he is of the stock of Plato or Pythagoras, or of one of those who are said to have been of divine insight or were called wisest by the oracles of the gods. When this is done, it follows that he must be nourished and brought up with suitable food. Let us provide a nurse, then, who always comes to him naked and always silent, uttering no word, nor opening her mouth and lips in the likeness of any speech, but who, when she has given the breast and fulfilled the duties that follow, leaves him to rest and stays day and night before the closed doors; for the matter usually requires a nurse's care to be at hand and watch his passing movements. And when the infant begins to need to be supported by more solid food, let it be brought by the same nurse, clothing laid aside as we said and the rule of silence kept. And let the food itself that is brought be always one and the same, not differing in material nor renewed with various flavors, but either millet porridge, or bread of spelt, or, to imitate the ancient ages, acorns roasted in hot ashes, or berries from wild branches. Let the drink of wine be wholly unknown, and let nothing else be offered to quench thirst but pure water from springs, untouched by the heat of fire, and, if it can be done, given by the hand. For familiar habit, turned into nature by custom, will occur, and desire will not stretch further, not knowing that there is anything more to seek. What, then, is the point of all this?

So that, since it has been believed that souls are divine and immortal and fly to human bodies with all their learning, we may test from this person whom we have chosen to bring up in this way whether the matter deserves belief, or has been lightly believed and taken for granted with a deceptive expectation. Let him come forth to us, then, reared in hidden solitude, of as many years as you like. Do you want him twenty years old? Do you want him thirty? Rather, when he has measured forty years, let him be brought into the company of mortals; and if it is true that he is a portion of the principal substance and lives here derived from the ... fountains of life, before he gains knowledge of anything or is imbued with human speech, let him give an answer when asked who he is, of what father, in what regions he was born, how or in what way he was brought up, what work or business he pursued as he ran through the course of his past time. Will he not stand there duller and more stupid than any beast, log, or stone? Sent into new things never known to him before, will he not be ignorant above all of himself? Will he be able, if you ask, to show what the sun is, the earth, seas, stars, clouds, mist, rains, thunder, snow, hail? Will he be able to know what trees are, herbs or grasses, a bull, a horse, or a ram, a camel, an elephant, or a kite?

If you give him when he is hungry grapes, a must-cake, an onion, a thistle, a cucumber, a fig, will he know that his hunger can be satisfied by all of these, or in what way each must be eaten? If you make a big fire, or set venomous creatures around him, will he not go through the midst of flames, vipers, and poisonous spiders, not knowing they are harmful and ignorant of what fear itself is? And if you set in front of him clothing and furniture, both town and country kinds, will he be able to distinguish and discern what task each thing suits, for what service each is fitted? Let him show for what dress each coverlet was made: a headband, a breast-band, a fillet, a cushion, a handkerchief, a cloak, a hood, a towel, a sheepskin, a slipper, a sandal, a shoe. What if you go on to ask what a wheel is, or a threshing sledge, a winnowing fan, a jar, a vat, an olive press, a plowshare, or a sieve, a mill, a plow-tail, or a hoe? What if a folding stool, a needle, a scraper, a washbasin, an armchair, a ladle, a small dish, a lampstand, a bowl, a broom, a cup, a sack? What if a lyre, a flute, silver, bronze, gold, a codex, a shuttle, a book? What if all the other tools by which human life is equipped and maintained? Will he not, as we said, like an ox or an ass, a pig, or any slower animal there may be, look at these things, observing their various shapes, but not knowing what each one is, and ignorant for what purpose they are possessed? If he is forced by some need to utter a sound, will he not, as the dumb usually do, cry out with open mouth something inarticulate?

What about you, Plato, in the Meno, questioning a little boy on points related to the reckoning of number, and trying to prove from his answers that what we learn we do not learn, but return to the memory of what we knew of old? If he answers you truly (for it is not fitting for us to deny credit to what you say), he is led not by knowledge of the matters but by intelligence; and because he knows some numbers from daily use, it happens that he follows when asked, and the very addition of multiplying always leads him on. But if you truly trust that immortal souls full of knowledge fly here, stop asking this young lad, whom you see to be acquainted with things and placed within the bounds of human society; call to you this forty-year-old man, and ask him not something abstruse, not something involved, not about triangles or squares, what a cube or a power is, what the ratio of nine to eight or four to three ..., but ask something that lies open to all: what sum twice two or twice three make. We want to see, we want to know what he answers when asked, whether he solves the question put to him. Will he even perceive, though his ears are open, whether you are saying anything, whether you are asking anything, whether you require any answer from him? Will he not stand speechless and dumb like a log, or, as the saying goes, a Marpesian rock, ignorant and unaware of this very thing, whether you are talking to yourself or to another, conversing with another or with yourself, whether what you utter is speech or a sound of the voice signifying nothing, drawn out in empty sequence?

What do you say, you men who attribute to yourselves more than is right from another's nobility? Is this that learned soul you speak of, immortal, perfect, divine, holding the fourth place after God the Ruler of things and after the demons and genii, and flowing from living mixing bowls? Is this that precious man endowed with most august reason, who is called a smaller world, fashioned and formed in the appearance and likeness of the whole world, but who, as has appeared, is no better than any beast, duller than a log or a stone? Who does not know people, and would live and linger always in dumb solitudes, inert ..., though he lived for countless years and was never released from the knots of the body. 'But when he has gone to school and been instructed by the teaching of masters, he becomes prudent and learned and lays aside the ignorance he had shortly before.' The ass and the ox too, by practice and constant compulsion, learn to plow and grind; the horse to go under the yoke and to know the turns in the race; the camel to kneel down both when it takes up loads and when it sets them down; the dove, let loose, to fly back to its master's house; the dog, when it finds game, to hold and check its barking; the parrot to form words and utter names with its beak.

But when I hear the soul called something excellent, near and next to God, coming here from higher ages knowing everything, I want it not to learn but to teach, and not, as they say, to become a beginner after being learned, but to keep its own knowledge while it binds itself to earthly bodies. For unless this is the case, how can one distinguish whether it recollects what it hears or learns it, when it is much easier to believe that it learns what it does not know than that it has forgotten what it knew a little before? 'It loses the recollection of former things because of the obstruction of the body.' And where then is that saying, ... that souls, being incorporeal, have no substance? For what has no body is not hindered by the obstruction of another, nor can that lose anything of its power which cannot receive the touch of an opposing thing. For as number, which exists without bodies, remains untouched and inviolable though it is buried under a thousand bodies, so souls, if they are incorporeal as is claimed, must suffer no forgetting of former things, however tightly the most solid bonds of bodies bind them. What of this, that the same reasoning not only shows that they are not incorporeal, but also deprives them all of immortality and brings them to the bounds by which life is usually ended? For whatever, when some cause falls upon it, is so changed and altered that it cannot keep its integrity, must be judged by nature to be subject to suffering. And what is open and exposed to suffering is declared to be corruptible by that very capacity for suffering.

Therefore, if souls too lose all that they knew when they are taken up by bodily bonds, they must suffer something that makes them put on the blindness of forgetfulness. For neither, having suffered nothing at all and keeping their integrity, can they lay aside their knowledge of things, nor pass into other states without change in themselves. Yet we think that what is one, what is immortal, what is simple, in whatever situation it may be, must always keep its own nature, and ought not and cannot suffer anything, if indeed it means to be everlasting and to keep within the bounds of its own immortality. For all suffering is the door of death and destruction, a road leading to death, bringing to things an inevitable end. If souls feel it and yield to its touch and assaults, then life has been given them for use, not as a possession, though some argue otherwise and place the credit of so great a matter in their own

arguments. But so that we may not go away not more fully instructed, and may not be laughed at by you, how do you say that souls, when they are wrapped in earthly bodies, have no recollection of former things, when, placed in those very bodies and made almost insensible by their mixture with them, they hold firmly and faithfully what they did, suffered, said, or heard many years before, eighty, if you like, or more? For if it is brought about by the obstruction of the body that they do not remember what they knew long before and before they became human, they ought rather to forget what they did while shut up in bodies than what they did when placed outside and not yet joined to human beings. For what takes away the recollection of former things from those who enter, ought also to destroy by unremembering obliteration what is done within. For one cause cannot produce two effects contrary to each other, putting to sleep the memory of some things and allowing others to come into the recollection of the doer. But if the souls, as you call them, are hindered by the obstacle of the limbs from recollecting their arts and ancient knowledge, how, placed in these very bodies, do they remember and know that they are souls and have no bodily substance, that they are honored with the condition of immortality, what rank they hold in the universe, in what order they have been set apart by God the Father, in what way they came to these lowest regions of the world, what qualities from what circles they drew to themselves while they slid down into these places? How, I say, do they know that they were most learned and have lost what they knew through the obstruction of bodies? For they ought not to know even this, if the joining with the body had brought any damage to them: for to know what you were and what you are not today is not a sign of lost memory but the proof and evidence of memory kept.

Since this is so, stop, I pray, stop valuing things small and of slight worth at huge prices; stop enrolling man in the first classes of citizens when he is a proletarian, and in the first orders when he is rated by head count only, since he is poor, of a poor hearth and a poor hut, and never deserved to be called by the distinction of a patrician. For when you, as men of right and teachers of integrity, ought to break the conceit and arrogance on whose wings we are all lifted up and puffed out with empty vanity, you not only do not think that these evils happen, but, what is much worse, you have added causes by which vices may grow and incurable wickedness remain. For who is there, even of a character that always shuns infamy and disgrace, who, when he hears it said, especially by wise men, that souls are immortal and not subject to the laws of the fates, would not rush headlong into every crime, would not undertake and set about unlawful things carefree and unafraid, would not finally grant to his desires all that uncontrolled lust commanded, protected besides by the freedom of impunity? For what will prevent him from doing these things? Fear of a higher power and divine judgment? And how can one be terrified by the horror of any fear, who has been persuaded that he is as immortal as the supreme God himself, and that nothing can be judged by him concerning himself, since there is one immortality in both, and neither can be troubled by the power of the other, because of the equality of their condition?

'But there are the punishments told of in the underworld, of many forms and kinds of torment.' And who will be so dull and ignorant of logical consequences as to believe that the darkness of Tartarus, or rivers of fire, or swamps with muddy whirlpools, or the turning of revolving wheels can harm incorruptible souls? For what cannot be touched and is removed from the laws of dissolution, even if it is surrounded by flaming rivers, rolled in the mud of rushing streams, and covered by the fall of overhanging rocks and the ruins of huge mountains, must remain unharmed and untouched and take on no sense of deadly suffering. What of this, that this persuasion not only incites to vice by the very freedom of sinning, but also removes the reason for philosophy itself, and declares that it is taken up in vain because of the difficulty of superfluous labor? For if it is true that souls share in no end and go on with all ages in everlastingness, what danger is there in despising and neglecting the virtues, by which life is more cramped and rougher, and in giving oneself to pleasures and spreading unbridled the heat of immense desire through every kind of lust? Lest it grow languid with luxuries and be corrupted by the softness of vices? And how can what is immortal, what always exists and is subject to no suffering, be corrupted? Lest it be soiled and polluted by the foulness of shameful actions? And how can what has no bodily substance be polluted, or where can pollution find a seat, where there is no space in which the mark of that pollution can fix itself? But again, if souls go to the gates of death, as the opinion of Epicurus defines it, even so there is no adequate reason why philosophy should be pursued, even if it is true that souls are cleansed by it and made pure from all vice. For if they perish in common, and their sense and vital power is lost and extinguished together with their bodies, it is not only the greatest error but stupid blindness to curb inborn appetites, to confine life in narrow bounds, to grant nothing to nature, not to do what desires have commanded and urged, since no rewards of so great a labor await you when the day of death comes and you are released from the bonds of the body.

So it is a certain middle state, the doubtful and ambiguous nature of souls, that gave philosophy its place and found a reason for pursuing it: while one person fears danger from wrongs committed, another conceives good hopes if he does no crime and passes his life in duty and justice. That is why there is dispute among learned men and those endowed with excellent minds about the quality of souls: some say they are of mortal nature and cannot sustain a divine substance, others that they are everlasting and cannot sink into mortal nature. That this happens is brought about by the law of their middle state: the former have arguments at hand by which souls are found to be capable of suffering and perishing, and the latter in turn do not lack arguments by which they are shown to be divine and immortal.

Since this is so, and we hold it handed down from the highest authority that souls are placed not far from the gaping jaws of death, but can nevertheless become long-lived by the gift and kindness of the supreme Ruler, if only they try and strive to know him (for knowledge of him is a kind of leaven of life and the glue of a thing otherwise liable to fall apart), and then, laying aside savagery and inhumanity, take on gentler dispositions, so that they may be ready for what will be given: why are we judged by you as brutish and stupid if, because of these fears, we have given and handed ourselves over to a Deliverer, to God? Against harmful stings and the venomous bites of snakes we often seek remedies and protect ourselves with amulets bought from the Psylli, the Marsi, and other peddlers and vagabonds; and so that cold and scorching suns may not trouble us, we prepare the protection of houses and clothing with anxious care.

When the fear of death, that is, of the destruction of souls, is set before us, do we not act from that sense of self-interest by which we all love ourselves, in holding fast and embracing the one who promises to free us from such danger, and setting him before our very souls, if the exchange is fair? You place the salvation of your souls in yourselves and trust that you become gods by your own inward effort; but we promise ourselves nothing from our weakness, seeing that our nature has no strength and is overcome by its own passions in every struggle. You think that as soon as you are released and depart from the knots of your limbs, wings will be ready for you, by which you can go to heaven and fly to the stars; we shrink from such boldness and do not think it lies in our power to seek the things above, since we are uncertain even of this, whether we deserve to receive life and to be taken away from the law of mortality. You take it for granted that you will return of your own accord, with no one hindering, to the Lord's court as to your own home; but we neither hope that this can happen without the Lord of things, nor think that so much power and freedom is granted to any human being.

Since this is so, what so great injustice is this, that we seem foolish to you for this belief, when we see that you both believe similar things and live in the same expectation? If we are thought worthy of mockery because we promise ourselves such a hope, the same mockery awaits you, who claim for yourselves the hope of immortality. If you hold and follow some reasoning, grant us too some share in that reasoning. If Plato in the Phaedrus, or another of that band, had promised us these joys, that is, a way of escaping death, and could provide it and bring his promises to fulfillment, it would have been fitting for us to take up the worship of the one from whom we expected so great a gift and bounty. Now, since Christ has not only promised it but also shown by such mighty works that it can be fulfilled, what strange thing are we doing, or on what grounds do we bear the charge of folly, if we bow before the name and majesty of him from whom we hope for both, to escape a tormenting death and to be granted eternal life?

'But if souls,' they say, 'are mortal and of a middle quality, how can they become immortal from middle qualities?' If we say that we do not know this, and have only believed it on hearing it from a more powerful one, where will our belief be seen to have gone wrong, if we have believed that nothing is difficult, nothing hard for the almighty King, and that what is impossible for us to do is possible for him and ready at the measure of obedience? For is there anything that can oppose his will? Or does it not necessarily follow that what he wills to be comes to be? Or shall we gather from our own distinctions what can or cannot happen, and not consider that our reasonings are as mortal as we ourselves are, and of no weight before the Ruler? And yet, you who do not believe that souls are of a middle quality and held on the middle border between life and destruction: are not absolutely all those whom opinion supposes to exist, gods, angels, demons, or whatever other name they have, themselves of a middle quality, and wavering in the condition of an uncertain lot? For if we all grant that there is one Father of things, alone immortal and unbegotten, and nothing at all bearing any name is found before him, it follows that all those whom the opinion of mortals believes to be gods were either begotten by him or brought forth at his command. If they were brought forth and begotten, they are later in order and time; if later in order and time, they must have a beginning and the start of birth and life; and what has an entrance and the start of a life that begins, necessarily must also have a setting.

'But the gods are said to be immortal.' Not by nature, then, but by the will and gift of God the Father. In the same way, then, as he has granted the gift of immortality to gods brought forth on a certain day, he will also deign to give souls immortality, though cruel death may seem able to extinguish them and to destroy them, reduced to nothing, in an annihilation from which there is no return. That divine Plato, thinking many things worthy of God and not common to the multitude, in the discourse and book which is entitled Timaeus, says that the gods and the world are by nature corruptible and by no means free from dissolution, but are held together in everlasting bonds by the will of God their King and Ruler. For what is rightly bound and tied with the most perfect knots is preserved by the goodness of God, and cannot be dissolved by any other than him who bound it, if the matter requires, and ... granted by his saving command. If then the matter is so, and it is not fitting to think or believe otherwise, why do you wonder that souls are said by us to be of a middle quality, when Plato says that the deities themselves have middle natures, but that a continuous and unending life is supplied to them by the Ruler's goodwill? For if perhaps you do not know it, and it was unknown to you before because of the newness of the matter, receive it late and learn it from him who knows and brought it into the open, Christ: that souls are not daughters of the supreme King, nor did they begin to know themselves and to be spoken of in the substance of their own name by being begotten by him, as is said; but they have some other begetter, separated from the Ruler by very many degrees of dignity and power, yet of his court and noble by the eminence of lofty birth.

But if souls, as rumor has it, were the Lord's offspring and the primary generation of his power, they would have lacked nothing for perfection, being produced by most perfect power; they would all have had one understanding and one agreement; they would always dwell in the royal court, and would not, leaving behind the seats of blessedness in which they had learned and retained the most august teachings, foolishly seek these earthly regions, to live wrapped in dark bodies among phlegm and blood, among these bags of dung and the filthiest jars of sacked-up fluid. 'But these parts too had to be inhabited, and therefore almighty God sent souls here as into some colonies.' And what use are human beings to the world, or for what purpose are they necessary, so that they may be believed to have had to live in this part not in vain and to be tenants of an earthly body? Do they contribute some part to completing the integrity of this mass, and unless they had been added, would the sum of the universe be imperfect and lame? What then, if there were no human beings, would the world cease from its functions, would the stars not complete their courses, would there be no summers and winters, would the blasts of the winds fall silent, and would rains not fall to the earth from gathered and hanging clouds to bring relief to droughts? Yet all things must go on their own courses and not depart from the continuity of their established order, even if no name of man were heard in the world and this globe fell silent in the stillness of empty solitude. How then is it boasted that an inhabitant had to be added to these regions, when it is clear that nothing comes back from man to the perfection of the world, and that all his efforts always look to private advantage and never depart from the limits of his own interest?

For what does it profit the world, to begin with serious things, that there are great kings here? What do tyrants and lords, and countless other very great powers? What do generals most experienced in military matters, skilled in taking cities, soldiers steadfast and unconquerable in cavalry battles or infantry fighting? What do orators, grammarians, poets? What do writers, logicians, musicians? What do pantomimes, farce actors, players, singers, those who blow the trumpet, the flute, and the reed pipe? What do runners, boxers, charioteers, trick riders, stilt walkers, rope dancers, jugglers? What do pickle sellers, salt makers, fishmongers, perfumers, goldsmiths, fowlers, weavers of winnowing fans and rush baskets? What do fullers, wool workers, embroiderers, cooks, confectioners, mule drivers, pimps, butchers, prostitutes? What do other kinds of peddlers, of professions and arts, for counting which every lifetime is too short, contribute to the plan and constitution of the world, so that it could not have been founded without human beings and would not attain its completeness unless the strife of a wretched and superfluous creature were joined to it?

Unless perhaps the Lord of things (which is the height of rashness to utter with a human mouth) sent souls begotten from himself here for this purpose: that those who had been goddesses with him, free from bodily contact and earthly bounds, should be plunged into human seed, spring from the genitals of women, utter and prolong the silliest wailing, suck at milky breasts, smear and soak themselves with their own filth, and then be brought to silence by the rocking of a frightened nurse and the sound of rattles? Did he send souls for this purpose: that those who had been simple and of a goodness until then harmless should learn among men to pretend, to dissemble, to lie, to cheat, to deceive, to entrap with flattering humility, to turn over one thing in the mind and promise another in the face, to ensnare, to trick the unsuspecting with wiles and ambushes, to seek out the poisons of malice through countless arts, and to be shaped by the fickleness of deceit to the use of the moment? Did he send souls for this purpose: that, living in peaceful and quiet tranquility, they should take from their bodies causes by which they would become wild and savage, should carry on feuds and enmities, wage wars with one another, storm and overthrow cities, oppress themselves and hand themselves over to the yoke of slavery, and finally become one the property of another, their condition of birth changed? Did he send souls for this purpose: that, made forgetful of the truth and having forgotten what God is, they should pray to lifeless images, address wood, bronze, and stones as divine powers, ask help with the blood of slaughtered animals, make no mention of him, and indeed that some of them should doubt that they themselves exist, or deny outright that any God exists? Did he send souls for this purpose: that those who in their own seats had been of one mind, equal in understanding and knowledge, after putting on mortal forms should disagree in the differences of their opinions; that one thing should seem just to some, another useful and right; that they should contend about what is to be sought and what avoided; that some should set one boundary of evils and goods, others another; that obscurity should confront those who desire to know the truth of things; and that, as though bereft of the light of their eyes, they should see nothing certain and be led astray on the doubtful paths of guesses?

Did he send souls for this purpose: that, while the other animals are fed on what grows of itself and is produced without sowing, and do not seek for themselves the protection or covering of houses or clothing, a pitiable necessity should be imposed on these, so that at the greatest expense and with unending sweat they should build themselves houses, make coverings for their limbs, gather various furniture for their daily need, borrow aids for their weakness from dumb animals, and do violence to the earth so that it should not produce its own grasses but raise crops it was ordered to; and when they had poured out all their blood in subduing the soil, should lose the hope of their labor through blight, hail, and drought, and finally, driven by famine, should fall upon human corpses and be separated and cut off from the form of human beings by wasting leanness? Did he send souls for this purpose: that those who, while they dwelt with him, had never had any love of possessions, should become most greedy here and burn for gain with an insatiable craving of the heart; should dig through high mountains and turn the unknown inward parts of the earth into materials of other name and use; should penetrate hidden nations at the risk of their lives and, by carrying goods from place to place, always look for high prices and low; should practice greedy and most unjust usury and increase their sleepless nights by counting thousands drawn from the blood of the wretched; should always extend the boundaries of their possessions, and, though they made whole provinces one farm, should wear out the forum with lawsuits over a single tree, over a furrow, and take up implacable feuds with friends and brothers?

Did he send souls for this purpose: that those who had once been gentle and did not know how to be moved by savage feelings should build themselves meat markets and amphitheaters, places of blood and public impiety: in the one to see men devoured and torn apart by the mangling of beasts, and others killing themselves for no fault of theirs but for the pleasure and enjoyment of the spectators, and to spend the very days on which such great wickedness was committed in common rejoicing and consecrate them with festive merriment; and in the other to tear apart the flesh of wretched animals, some snatching one portion and others another, as dogs and vultures do, to grind them with their teeth and give them to a most cruel belly; and, amid such savage and horrible customs, to weep for their lot, those whom the straits of poverty kept from such tables, as if those others lived blessed and happy? Were their mouths and faces to be polluted by such cruel fare? Did he send souls for this purpose: that, forgetful of divine weight and dignity, they should buy gems, pebbles, and pearls at the cost of chastity, seek paints for bodies meant to be looked at, wrap their necks in chains, pierce the lobes of their ears, narrow their foreheads with bands, darken their eyes with soot; and that, in the forms of men, they should not blush to wave their hair with curling irons, to make the skin of their bodies smooth, to walk about with bare knees, and by every other kind of adornment

to lay aside the vigor of manhood and grow soft into the dress and luxuries of women? Did he send souls for this purpose: that some should infest the roads, others cheat the unsuspecting, substitute forged wills, prepare poisoned drinks, break into houses by night, tamper with slaves, steal cattle, betray their trust and play traitor; that they should drive distaste for flavors from the palate, know how to keep in the fat that runs off when cooking fattened fowls, and make twisted cakes and sausages, forcemeats, rissoles, Lucanian sausages, sow's udder along with these, and savory mince in jelly? Did he send souls for this purpose: that beings of holy and most august name should practice here the arts of music and piping, puff out their cheeks in blowing flutes, lead off obscene songs, stir up rhythmic sounds with the clapping of foot-clappers, by which another wanton multitude of souls might be loosed into disorderly movements of their bodies, dance and sing, turn in dancers' circles, and finally, lifting their buttocks and hips, sway with the quivering of their loins? Did he send souls for this purpose: that among males they should become catamites, among females harlots, harp-girls, and lute-girls, that they should prostitute their bodies for sale, make their cheapness public to the people, ready in brothels, available in the arches, refusing to submit to nothing, and prepared to defile even their mouths for money? What do you say, you offspring and progeny of the first Deity?

Did those wise souls, then, brought forth from the first causes, know these kinds of disgrace, crimes, and wickedness, and were they ordered ... to dwell in these parts and be clothed with the covering of a human body so that they might practice, carry on, and celebrate these evils? And is there any mortal who has received the sense of any reason, who would think that the world was ordered for them, and not rather established as a seat and dwelling in which every wickedness might be committed daily, all misdeeds carried out, plots, frauds, tricks, greed, robberies, violence, crime, audacity, obscenity, disgrace, outrage, and all the other evils which human beings throughout the world bring forth with harmful minds and devise for each other's ruin? 'But they came of their own will,' you say, 'not by the King's sending.'

And where was the almighty Father, where the authority of royal majesty, to prevent them from departing and not allow them to slip into headlong pleasures? For if he knew that they would degenerate by change of place (and he must have known it, as the establisher of all causes), or that something would come to them from outside to make them forget their dignity and honor, then (I would beg him a thousand times to pardon me) no one other than he himself is the cause of all crimes: since he allowed them to have free right to wander, though he foresaw that they would not keep the state of their integrity. And so it turns out that it makes no difference at all whether they came of their own accord or obeyed his command, since by not forbidding what ought to have been forbidden he made the crime his own by his inaction, and by neglecting to restrain them he permitted it first.

But far be the monstrousness of so wicked an opinion as to believe that almighty God, the sower and founder, the begetter of great and invisible things, begot souls so fickle, of no weight, gravity, or constancy, liable to fall into vices, inclined to every kind of sin, and that, knowing them to be such and of this kind, he ordered them to go into bodies, so that, clothed in their prisons, they should be driven daily under the storms and tempests of fortune, now doing shameful things, now suffering obscene ones; that they should perish in shipwrecks, collapses, and conflagrations of fire; that poverty should press some, beggary others; that some should suffer the mangling of wild beasts, others die of the venom of flies; that some should walk lame, others lose their sight, others sit with their joints bound together; that finally they should be exposed to all the diseases which unhappy and pitiable mortality endures, torn by ... various punishments; and that then, forgetting that they are of one source, one parent and head, they should tear up and break the rights of kinship, overthrow their own cities, lay waste lands as enemies, make slaves of free people, assault virgins and other men's wives, hate one another, envy the joys and happiness of others, and then all curse, carp at, and tear one another with the bite of savage teeth.

But far be it, to say the same things again and more often, so monstrous and wicked a persuasion: that God, the salvation of things, the head of all virtues and the pillar of kindness, and, to extol him with human praises, most wise, just, making all things perfect and keeping the measures of his integrity, either made anything lame and falling short of right, or was the cause of miseries or dangers to anything, or ordained, commanded, and prescribed to flow from his own constitution the very acts by which human life is carried on and passed. These things are beneath him and destroy the power of his greatness; and so far is he from being believed the author of these things, that whoever has conceived that man was begotten by him falls into the charge of sacrilegious impiety: man, an unhappy and wretched thing, who grieves that he exists, who hates and mourns his condition, who understands that he was produced for no other reason than that evils should not lack material through which to spread, and that there should always be wretched beings, on whose torments some hidden power and cruelty hostile to humanity might feed.

'But if God is not the parent and begetter of souls,' you say, 'by what author were they begotten, and in what way were they brought forth?' If you want to hear it without disguise and not derived from any display of words, we confess again that we do not know this, we are ignorant of it; and we think that the knowledge of so great a matter surpasses not only our weakness and frailty but also that of all the powers in the world and of those who have usurped divinity in the opinions of mortals. 'But must we show whose they are, when we deny that they are God's?' That by no means necessarily follows. For if we deny that flies, beetles, and bugs, dormice, weevils, and moths are the work of the almighty King, it cannot therefore be demanded of us that we say who made and established them. For we can, without blame, not know who gave them their origin, and still maintain that things so superfluous, so vain, so irrelevant to any purpose, indeed sometimes even harmful and bringing damage to necessary things, were not produced by the supreme God.

So too here, when we deny that souls are the offspring of God the Ruler, it does not at once follow that we must explain from what parent they came forth and by what causes they were produced. For who forbids us either not to know from where they arose and came forth, or to know that they are not God's progeny? 'On what ground,' you say, 'in what way?' Because it is most true of all truths and most certain of all certainties that nothing is done, made, or established by the Ruler, as has often been said, except what ought and is fitting to be done, what is full and complete and finished in the perfection of its ... and integrity. Now we see that human beings, that is, souls themselves (for what are human beings but souls bound to bodies?), show by the perversity of countless vices that they are not of patrician race but born of middling families. For we see some who are savage, criminal, bold, rash, headlong, blind, false, dissemblers, liars, proud, arrogant, greedy, covetous, lustful, inconstant, weak, and unable to keep their own resolutions: which they surely would not be if a princely nobility claimed them, and they drew the honors of their birth from those descended from the Head of things.

'But there are also good men among human beings,' you will say, 'wise, just, of blameless and most correct character.' We raise no question whether there have ever been any such, in whom that very integrity of which you speak lacked nothing at all. Let them be most honorable and praiseworthy, let them have held the highest peak of perfection, and let their life never have limped in any slip: but we ask to hear how many they are or were in number, so that we may measure from the size of the multitude whether the opposition made is fair and balanced by an equal counterweight. One, two, three, four, ten, twenty, a hundred: certainly limited in number and perhaps confined within a list of names. But the human race ought to be judged and weighed not from a few good people but from all the rest. For the part is in the whole, not the whole in the part; and the whole ought to draw the portions to itself, not the whole be fitted to the portions. For what if you were to say that a man disabled in all his limbs and wailing from sharp torments is healthy because he suffers no pain in one little fingernail; or that the earth is golden because on the little wart of one hill there are tiny grains from which gold is produced when they are melted down and obtained by careful gathering? The whole of an element proves the quality of its matter, not grains of dust blown by the wind. Nor is the sea at once sweet if you add and pour in drops of milder water of some number: for that tiny amount is swallowed up in the immense; and what, spread through the whole, is lost and absorbed in the vastness of a great body must be counted not merely of little but of no weight.

You may say that there are good men in the human race, who are perhaps believed to be so because of comparison with the very bad. Who are these? Tell us. The philosophers, I suppose, who claim that they alone are most wise and have raised their eyebrows on the strength of this name: those, that is, who fight daily with their desires and strive with the stubborn resistance of virtues to drive and thrust out the passions rooted in their minds; who, so that they may not be provoked to vices by the prompting of any opportunity, flee from inheritances and wealth and take away from themselves the causes of falling. When they do and attend to this, they show most plainly that souls are liable to fall and prone to vices through weakness. But in our opinion, what is good by nature neither asks to be amended nor corrected; indeed it ought not even to know what evil is, if the form of each kind means to remain in its integrity. For a contrary cannot be implanted in its contrary, nor can evenness be contained in unevenness or sweetness in bitterness. He, then, who struggles to correct the inborn depravities of souls shows most plainly that he is imperfect and not approvable, however much he contends the contrary with every effort and persistence.

But our answer makes you laugh, because while we deny that souls are royal offspring, we do not say in return from what causes and origins they were produced. For what kind of crime is it either to be ignorant of something, or to confess without any pretense that you do not know what you do not know? Or which seems more worthy of mockery to you: we, who claim no knowledge of some dark matter, or the one who thinks that he knows most plainly, of himself, what surpasses human understanding and is wrapped in blind obscurity? If the nature of each thing is examined thoroughly, you are in the same position that you blame in us. For when you say that souls come down from the King himself and pass into human forms, you do not say anything ascertained and placed in the light of most manifest truth. For you guess; you do not know. You suspect; you do not hold. For if knowing is holding in mind what you yourself have seen or learned, you cannot say that you have ever seen any of the things you assert, namely that souls come down from a seat and region above. So you use conjecture, not the credibility of explicit knowledge. And what is conjecture but an uncertain opinion about things, and a throwing of the mind into hidden things with nothing set before it? So he who conjectures does not hold, nor does he walk in the light of knowledge. And if this is true and fixed, among upright and most wise judges this conjecture of yours in which you trust must also be counted as ignorance.

And yet, so that you may not think that only you are allowed to use conjectures and guesses, we can do the same, since what you ask is a common question. 'Where do human beings come from,' you say, 'and what are the souls of human beings, and where do they come from?' Where do elephants, bulls, deer, mules, and asses come from? Where do lions, horses, dogs, wolves, panthers come from, and what are the souls of those that live, and where do they come from? For it is not credible that their souls came from that Platonic mixing bowl which Timaeus prepares and mixes, or that the locust, the mouse, the shrew, the cockroach, the frog, and the centipede are believed to be animated and alive from it, since their cause and origin of birth is from the elements themselves, if hidden and most obscure principles for begetting the creatures that live in each of them are present in them. For we see some of the wise saying that the earth is their mother, others water, others joining to them the spirit of the air, and some saying that the sun is their maker and that, animated from his fires, they are moved by his vital motion. What if it is none of these, and there is some other thing, another cause, another principle, finally another power of a name unheard of and unknown to us, which fashioned the race of human beings and joined it to the constitution of things? Can it not be that human beings arose in this way, and that the authorship of their birth is not referred to the first God? For what reason do we think that great Plato, wise with piety and holiness, had when he removed the fashioning of man from the greatest God and transferred it to some lesser ones, and would not have the mixtures from which the souls of the human race were made be of the same purity as that from which he had made the soul of this universe, but that he thought the building of man unworthy of God, and the fashioning of a feeble thing unfitting to his greatness and eminence?

Since this is so, we believe, not absurdly or idly, that the souls of human beings are of a middle quality, as produced by beings that are not primary, subject to the law of death, of small and failing strength; and that they are granted everlastingness if they place the hope of so great a gift in God the Ruler, who alone has the power to bestow such things with corruption excluded. 'But this is a foolish belief of yours.' What is that to you, most silly and foolish man? Where do we harm you, or what injury do we do or inflict on you, if we trust that almighty God will take account of us when we begin to depart from our bodies and, as the saying is, to be rescued from the jaws of Orcus?

'Can anything happen, then,' someone will say, 'without the will of God?' We must consider this carefully and examine it with no small attention, lest, while we think we honor God by such a question, we slip into the opposite wickedness and destroy the eminence of his majesty. In what way, for what reason? Because if all things are brought about by his will, and nothing can occur or befall in the world apart from his nod, it necessarily follows that all evils too must be understood to arise by his will. But if we wish to say the opposite, refusing to lay the causes of the worst things on him, that he is conscious of no evil and the begetter of none, it will begin to appear either that the worst things happen against his will, or, what would be monstrous to say, without his knowledge, unaware and ignorant. But again, if we wish to say that there are no evils, as we find some have thought and held, all tribes and all nations will cry out against us, showing us their torments and the many forms of danger by which the human race is burned and torn at every moment. Then they will ask us: 'If there are no evils, why do you abstain from certain works and crimes? Why do you not do everything that impatient desire has ordered and commanded? Why, finally, do you fix punishments for the guilty by terrible laws?' For what more monstrous stupidity can be found than to maintain that there are no evils and yet to destroy and condemn sinners as evil?

When, overcome, we have agreed that evils exist, and have admitted that human affairs swarm with them ..., it will follow that they ask: 'Why then does almighty God not take these evils away, but allows them to exist and go on in stubborn continuity through all ages?' If we have understanding of God the King and Ruler and do not want to wander through the impious madness of guesses, we must answer that we do not know these things, and have never sought or studied to learn what could not be grasped by any faculties; and you will think it better, indeed best, to remain within the bounds of unknowing and ignorance rather than to say that nothing happens except by the will of God, so that it would be understood at the same time that he gives causes to evils and is the founder of countless miseries. 'Where then,' you will say, 'do all these evils come from?' 'From the elements,' say the wise, 'and from their inequality.' But how it can be that things which have no sense or judgment are said to be malicious and harmful, or whether he is not rather malicious and harmful who took up things that would be most wicked and hurtful for the accomplishment of some work, is for those who assert it to see clearly. What then of us? Where do we stand? There is no need for an answer. For whether we can say it or are less able and cannot, both are of small account with us; we do not think it a matter of great weight either to be ignorant of this or to know it, content to have laid down one thing only: that nothing harmful and ruinous proceeds from God the Ruler. This we hold, this we know, in this one truth of knowledge and understanding we stand: that nothing is done by him except what is saving for all, what is sweet, what is full of love, joy, and gladness, what has infinite and incorruptible pleasures, what each one would seek with all his prayers to befall him, and would think everything outside these ruinous and deadly.

All the other things that usually come up in questions and controversies, from what begetters they arose or by what authors they are made, we neither strive to know nor care to inquire into or track down: we leave all things to their own causes, and do not judge them joined or attached to what we seek. For what is there that human minds do not dare to shake and dissolve out of zeal for contradiction, though what they try to weaken is pure and clear and fortified with the seal of truth? Or again, what can they not assert with plausible arguments, though it is most plainly false, an evident and manifest lie? For when someone has persuaded himself that something is or is not, he loves to assert what he thinks and to outdo others in sharpness, especially if the matter is remote, hidden, and wrapped in the mist of nature. Some of the wise judge that the world was neither born nor will perish at any time; some that it is immortal, though they write that it was born and begotten; while a third group is pleased to say that it was born and begotten and will perish by the necessity of order. And though of these three opinions one must be true, still none of them lacks arguments by which to confirm their own doctrines and undermine and shake the teachings of others. Some teach and declare that this same world consists of four elements, others of two, a third group of one; there are some who say it is of none of these, but that atoms are its matter and first origin. And though one of these opinions is true, yet none of them is certain; likewise here too arguments are at hand for all, by which they establish that what they say is true and refute the falsehoods found in the opinions of others. So too some deny that there are gods; others say they doubt whether there are any anywhere; others that they exist but do not care for human affairs; still others maintain that they both take part in the affairs of mortals and administer earthly concerns.

Since this is so, and it cannot be otherwise than that one of all these is true, still they all fight with arguments, and none lacks something to say plausibly, whether in asserting their own views or contradicting the opinions of others. In no other and no unlike way do they discuss the condition of souls. For one thinks they are everlasting and survive the death of mortal bodies; another does not believe they survive, but that they perish with the bodies themselves; while it is the opinion of a third that they do not suffer anything at once, but that after the man has been laid aside some time is given them for life, and then they pass under the laws of mortality. And though all cannot share in the truth, yet all argue with such strong and powerful proofs that you cannot find what seems false to you, though you see things said on every side that are different and clash with contradictions. This surely would not happen if human curiosity could hold anything certain, or if what seemed to have been found were confirmed by the assent of all others. It is therefore a most empty thing and a superfluous work to put forth something as though you knew it, or to strive to want to know what, even if it is true, you see can be destroyed, or to accept as true what perhaps is not and is put forward in the manner of people who are raving. And rightly is it so. For we weigh and conjecture divine things not by divine but by human reasons, and as we think something deserved to happen, so we maintain that it must be. What then?

Are we alone ignorant, do we alone not know who is the maker of souls, who established them, what cause fashioned man, from where evils burst forth, or why the supreme King allows them to exist and be done and does not drive them from human affairs? Do you have any of these things ascertained and known? If you are willing to set aside the boldness of guesses, can you explain and set out whether this world that holds us was not born, or was established at some time? If it was established and made, by what kind of work, or for the sake of what? Can you bring forward and set out the reason why it does not remain fixed and immovable but is always carried around in circular motion? Does it turn itself of its own accord and will, or is it turned by the impulses of some power? What is the place and space itself in which it is situated and revolves? Infinite or finite, empty or solid? Does an axis resting on its outer poles support it, or does it rather carry itself by its own force and hold itself up by an inner breath? Can you, when asked, make plain and show most knowingly what opens snow into feathery flakes? What reason and cause was there that the first day did not rise from the west and end its light in the east? How does the sun itself, by one and the same contact, produce such various, indeed contrary, effects? What is the moon? What are the stars? Why does the moon not remain in one appearance, or why was it necessary for these fiery fragments to come together and be fixed throughout the whole body of the world? Why are some of them small, others larger and greater, some of dull light, others of sharper and brilliant clearness?

If what you want to know is ready at hand, and the knowledge of things lies open, explain to us and tell us in what ways and for what reasons rains come about, so that water is held suspended in the upper regions and in this middle air, though by nature it is a slippery thing, always inclined to flow and run down? Explain, I say, and tell us what drives the hail, what makes rain fall drop by drop, what makes the shower pour down, what spreads snow into feathers and little leaves; where the wind arises from and what it is; why the changes of the seasons were established, when one could have been set up and the sky could have had one appearance, so that the wholeness of things would lack nothing? What is the cause, what the reason, that the seas are salt, or that some waters of the earth are sweet or warm, others bitter or cold? From what kind of matter were the inward parts of human bodies compacted and established, from what were the bones made solid, what made the intestines, what made the veins hollow like pipes and passable? Why, when it would have been more useful to light us with several eyes against the danger of blindness, were we confined to the narrow limit of two? For what purpose were such infinite and countless kinds of beasts and snakes formed and brought forth? What do horned owls, screech owls, and buzzards do in the world? What do birds of omen and the other winged creatures? What do the kinds of ants and worms, born for various harms and ruin? What do fleas, shameless flies, spiders, shrews, mice, leeches, water-skaters? What do thorns, brambles, wild oats, darnel, the seeds of herbs or shrubs either fragrant to the nostrils or unpleasant in smell? Indeed, if you think anything can be known or grasped, tell us what wheat is, spelt, barley, millet, chickpea, bean, lentil, melon, cumin, leek, garlic, onion. For even if they are fruits for you and placed among the common kinds of food, it is not easy or ready to know what each one is, why they were shaped in such forms, whether there was some necessity that each thing should have no other flavors, smells, and colors than those it has, or whether they could have taken others; and then what these things themselves are, flavor, I mean, and the rest; from what reasons they derive the differences of their qualities? 'From the elements,' you say, 'and from the first origins of things.' Are the elements bitter, then, or sweet, of some smell or color, so that we should believe that the qualities in growing things, by which pleasantness arises or offense is caused to the senses, were distributed from their combination?

Since, then, the origins, causes, and reasons of so many and such great things escape you too, and you can neither say nor explain what was made or why, or why it ought not to have been, you tear and mangle our modesty, who confess that we do not know what cannot be known, and do not care to seek out or investigate what it is most clear cannot be grasped, though human conjecture reach out and stretch itself through a thousand hearts. And therefore Christ, though you are unwilling, is God, God, I say, Christ (for this must often be said, so that the hearing of the unbelieving may split and burst), speaking in the form of a man by command of God the Ruler. Since he knew that the nature of mortals is blind and can grasp no truth even of things placed before its eyes, yet holds as ascertained and known whatever it has persuaded itself of, and, for the sake of its guesses, does not hesitate to sow and press contentious questions, he commanded us to leave and put aside all these things, and not to direct fruitless thoughts to things removed far from our knowledge, but, as far as possible, to set out toward the Lord of things with our whole mind and soul, to be raised from these places and to carry over to him the uplifted movements of our hearts, to keep perpetual memory of him, and, though he cannot be formed by any imagining, still to picture to ourselves some breaths of the contemplation of him. For of all the things which the obscurity of august divinity contains, he alone is beyond doubt, he alone true, and one about whom no one can be in doubt except a madman of insane despair; whom it is enough to know, even if you know nothing else, and you will have attained the true and greatest knowledge, fixed on the knowledge of God, the Head of things.

'What is it to you,' he says, 'to investigate and inquire who made man, what the origin of souls is, who devised the causes of evils, whether the sun is larger than the earth or measures a foot in width, whether the moon shines with borrowed light or with its own brightness?' Things which it is no gain to know and no loss not to know. Leave these things to God and grant that he knows what is, why, or from where; whether it ought to be or not; whether something is without beginning or has its first origins; whether it is fitting that it be abolished or preserved, burned up, dissolved, or renewed with its wholeness restored. Your reason is not free to entangle you in such things and to care uselessly about things so remote. Your affair is placed in danger, the salvation of your souls, I mean; and unless you attach yourselves to the knowledge of God the Ruler, when you are released from the bonds of the body a cruel death awaits you, bringing not sudden extinction but consuming you over a length of time in the bitterness of tormenting punishment.

And do not let yourselves be misled or flattered by an airy hope because of what is said by certain smatterers who claim very much for themselves: that they are born of God and not subject to the laws of fate; that if they live rather strictly, his court lies open to them, and after the end of human life they are carried back, with no one hindering, as though to their ancestral home. Nor by what the magi promise, that they have prayers of recommendation, by which I know not what powers are softened and offer easy ways to those striving to fly up to heaven; nor by what Etruria promises in the Acherontic books, that by the blood of certain animals given to certain deities souls become divine and are drawn out from the laws of mortality. These are empty flatteries and the kindling of vain wishes. No one but almighty God can save souls, and there is no one besides who can make them long-lived and supply the breath of everlastingness, except him who alone is immortal and everlasting and bounded by no limitation of time. For since all the gods, whether those who are true or those who are said by rumor and opinion to exist, are immortal and everlasting by his will and the gift of his kindness, how can it be that they are able to give others what they themselves are, since they have it as another's and lent by the power of a greater? Let Etruria slaughter as many victims as it likes, let the wise deny themselves everything human, let the magi soften and soothe all the powers: unless what ... reason requires is given to souls by the Lord of things, and given ... by his command, they will greatly regret afterward that they made it a thing to laugh at, when they begin to come near the sense of destruction.

'But if Christ,' they say, 'was sent by God for this purpose, to free unhappy souls from the ruin of destruction, what did the former ages deserve, which were consumed by the condition of mortality before his coming?' Can you know what was done with the souls of the ancient and earliest mortals, whether they too were helped, cared for, and provided for in some way? Can you know, I say, what could have been learned from Christ's teaching: whether the ages since the human race began to exist on earth are infinite or finite; when souls were first bound to bodies; who was the author of that binding, indeed who was the maker of man himself; where the souls of former people went; in what parts or regions of the world they were; whether they were corruptible or the opposite; whether they could have come to the danger of dying ..., if Christ had not come as a preserver at the needful time? Lay aside these anxieties and leave questions unknown to you: the royal mercy was shared with them too, and the divine benefits ran equally through all; they were preserved, they were set free, and they laid aside the lot and condition of mortality. 'In what way, which ones, when?' If arrogance, conceit, and pride were absent from you, you could long ago have known these things from Christ as your teacher.

'But if Christ came as the preserver of the human race,' you say, 'why does he not free all without exception with equal generosity?' Does he not free equally who calls all equally? Or does he repel or spurn anyone from the Ruler's kindness, who gives the high, the lowest, slaves, women, and children alike the power of coming to him? The fountain of life is open to all, and no one is kept from or driven away from the right to drink. If you are so fastidious as to spurn the benefit of the gift offered you, indeed if you so excel in wisdom that you call what is offered by Christ a joke and nonsense, what is expected of him who invites you, whose only part is to set out the fruit of his kindness under the judgment of your own will? 'God is not the cause,' says Plato, 'of anyone's choice of a lot in life'; nor can another's will rightly be ascribed to anyone, since the freedom of the will lies in the power of the one who wills. Or must you be begged to deign to accept from God the benefit of salvation, and must the grace of divine goodwill be poured into your lap while you spurn it and flee as far as you can? Will you take what is offered and turn it to your use? You will have provided for yourself. Do you spurn, scorn, and despise it? You will have deprived yourself of the advantage of the gift. God forces necessity on no one; he terrifies no one with commanding fear. For our salvation is not necessary to him, so that he should suffer any gain or loss whether he makes us gods or allows us to be reduced to nothing by the dissolution of corruption.

'Rather,' he says, 'if God is powerful, merciful, and a preserver, let him change our minds and make us believe his promises against our will.' That is force, then, not grace nor the generosity of God the Ruler, but a childish ... struggle of the mind in eagerness to win. For what is so unjust as to wrest the wills of those who resist and are unwilling into the contrary, to force on them what they do not want and what their minds shun, to harm before you help, and, taking away their former opinion, to lead them over into a disposition and belief not their own? You who want to be changed and to suffer force, so that you may do and seize under compulsion what you do not want, why do you refuse to take up willingly what you want to do when changed and transformed? 'I do not want it,' he says, 'and I have no will for it.' Why then do you accuse God, as though he failed to bring help to you when you desired it? You not only spurn and flee his gifts and bounties, but call them empty words and pursue them with jokes and jests. 'Then unless I become a Christian, I cannot have hope of salvation?' It is so, as you yourself propose. For the part of giving salvation and conferring on souls what is fitting to bestow and necessary to apply has been enjoined on and handed over to him alone by God the Father, for hidden and inward reasons that make it so. For as certain gods have with you certain charges, rights, and powers, and you do not ask of any of them what is not within his power and right, so it is the prerogative of Christ alone to give salvation to souls and to add the breath of everlastingness. For if you believe that Father Liber can give a vintage but not healing, Ceres crops, Aesculapius health, Neptune one thing and Juno another, and that Fortune, Mercury, and Vulcan are each the givers of certain particular things, you must also accept this from us: that souls can receive the power of life and safety from no one except him whom the supreme King has set over this gift and office. The almighty Ruler willed this to be the way of salvation, this the door of life, so to speak; through him alone is there entrance to the light, and it has not been granted to creep in or break in any other way, all other ways being shut and fortified by an impregnable citadel.

So even if you are pure and cleansed from every stain of vice, and have won over and swayed those powers not to shut the ways and block the passage for you as you return to heaven, you will not be able by any efforts to reach the reward of immortality unless you have received what makes immortality itself as Christ's gift and have been admitted to the true life. As for your habit of reproaching us that our religion is new and born almost a few days ago, and that we ought not to have left the ancient religion of our fathers and passed over to barbarous and foreign rites, this is urged without any reason. For what if in this way we wanted to lay blame on those earlier and most ancient ages because, when crops were discovered, they despised acorns and rejected arbutus berries; because they stopped covering themselves with bark and wrapping themselves in skins after woven clothing was devised, handier in use and convenience; or because, when houses were built and more elegant developments introduced, they did not cling to their old huts nor prefer to remain like beasts under rocks and in caves? It is common to all, and handed down almost from the cradle, to prefer good things to bad, to set useful things before useless, and to pursue and seek what has been found more precious and more pleasing, and to fix on it the hope of safety and of saving benefits.

So when you charge us with turning away from the religion of our ancestors, you should look at the cause, not the act, and not set against us what we have left, but consider above all what we have followed. For if it is a fault or a crime to change one's opinion and pass from old institutions to other new things and preferences, that charge concerns you too, who have so often changed your life and customs, who have passed over to other habits and rites, condemning those of your ancestors. Do you have the people divided into five classes, as your ancestors once had? Do you create magistrates through the people? Do you know what the military, urban, and common assemblies are? Do you watch the sky, or make public business void by announcing unfavorable omens? If you prepare wars, do you display the signal from the citadel? Or do you practice the fetial law? Do you demand back what was seized by a formal declaration? Or when entering on the hazard of Mars, do you take hope of battle from the auspices of spear-points? In seeking office, do you keep the laws of age? In gifts and presents, the Cincian laws? In restraining expenses, the sumptuary laws? Do you keep perpetual fires burning in your inner rooms and kitchens? Do you make tables sacred by setting salt-cellars and images of the gods on them? When you marry, do you spread the couches with a toga and invoke the genii of husbands? Do you comb the hair of brides with the celibate spear? Do you carry the girls' little togas to Fortuna Virginalis? Do your matrons work in the atria of their houses, bearing witness to their industry? Do they abstain from drinking wine? Do their in-laws and relatives have the right to kiss them, to prove that they are sober and abstinent?

In ancient times on the Alban Mount it was not lawful to sacrifice any bulls except those of snowy whiteness: did you not change this custom and religious rule, and was it not established by a decree of the senate that reddish ones might be offered? When, under the reigns of Romulus and Pompilius, the entrails were burned for the gods thoroughly cooked and soft, did you not begin under King Tullus to offer them half-raw and barely warmed, despising the old observance? Before Hercules came into Italy, when by Apollo's advice Father Dis and Saturn were propitiated with human heads, did you not likewise change this custom by a clever trick and an ambiguity of words? Since, then, you yourselves have followed now those customs and now other laws, and have rejected and despised many things, either on recognizing your errors or on observing better ones, what have we done against common sense and judgment if we have chosen greater and surer things and have not allowed ourselves to be held by the religions of false beings?

'But our name is new, and the religion we follow was born a few days ago.' To grant for the moment that the charge against us is not false, what is there in human affairs, whether done by bodily work and hands or held by the learning and knowledge of the mind alone, that did not begin at some time and come into the use and experience of mortals? Were medicine, philosophy, music, and all the other arts by which common life has been built up and polished born together with human beings, and did they not rather begin only recently, indeed almost a little while ago, to be practiced, understood, and celebrated? Before Tages the Etruscan reached the shores of light, did anyone know, or care to learn and study, whether anything was signified by the fall of thunderbolts or in the veins of entrails? When did the motion of the stars or the reckoning of nativities begin to be known? Was it not after Theuth the Egyptian, or after Atlas, as some say, that bearer, porter, prop, and pillar of heaven? But why do I mention these small things?

Did not the immortal gods themselves, whose temples you now approach and whose deities you adore as suppliants, as your literature and beliefs hand down, begin to exist, to be known, and to be called by the names given them at certain times? For if it is true that Jupiter with his brothers was begotten of Saturn and his wife, before the marriage and childbirth of Ops there was nowhere a Jupiter, Jupiter the supreme or the Stygian one, nowhere a lord of the sea, nowhere a Juno; indeed, no one else dwelt in the seats of heaven except the two parents, but from their union they were conceived and born and drew the breath of life. So at a certain time Jupiter began to be a god, at a certain time to deserve worship and sacrifices, at a certain time to be set above his brothers in power. And again, if Liber, Venus, Diana, Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, the Muses, the Castors sons of Tyndareus, and Vulcan lord of fire were produced by Father Jupiter and begotten of the son of Saturn, then before Memory, before Alcmena, Maia, Juno, Latona, Leda, Dione, and Semele were made pregnant by the embraces of Diespiter, these too were nowhere at all, nor in any part of the nature of things; but, sown by the intercourse of Jupiter, they were born and began to have some sense of themselves. So these too began to exist at a certain time and to be invoked in the number of the deities for sacred ceremonies. The same can be said in turn of Minerva. For if, as you assert, she sprang from the brain of Jupiter without the casting of any seed, then before Diespiter was born and received the form of bodily limitation in his mother's womb, it is certain that Minerva did not exist and was not counted in the number of things or in any substance; but from the time she sprang from Jupiter's head she began to be a thing and to be set in some essence. So she does not have a primal origin, and at a certain time began to be called a goddess, to be set up in sacred temples, and to be hallowed with inviolable religion. Since this is so, when you speak of the novelty of our religion, do your own not come to your mind, and do you not care to consider when your gods arose, what origins, what causes they have, or from what roots they burst and sprang forth? What sense of shame, or rather what shamelessness, is it to blame another for what you see yourself doing, to make a reproach and charge of things that can be turned back against you in return?

'But what we do is ancient and very old, while what you do is new.' And how does that help you, or harm our case and reasoning? What we practice is new; some day it too will become old. What you practice is old; but at the time it began it was new and sudden. The authority of a religion must be judged not by its age but by its deity, and one must consider not on what day but what one has begun to worship. 'Three hundred years ago,' he says, 'your religion did not exist.' And your gods did not exist two thousand years ago. By what reasoning, or by what calculations, can this be gathered? Not difficult or obscure ones, but such as anyone who wishes can see and, as the saying is, handle with his hands. Who begot Jupiter with his brothers? Saturn, joined in marriage with Ops, as you say, himself begotten of Caelus and Hecate. Who begot Picus, the father of Faunus and grandfather of Latinus? Saturn, as you likewise hand down in your writings and authors. If this is so, it follows that Picus and Jupiter are joined by the tie of brotherhood, as being begotten of one blood and one seed. It is reasonable that what is said is so. From Jupiter and Picus down to Latinus, how many degrees of descent are there? Three, as the line shows. Suppose Faunus, Latinus, and Picus each lived one hundred and twenty years; for it is denied that human life can be extended further. The estimate is fair and clear. So there are a full three hundred and sixty years after these? It is so, as the reckoning shows. Whose father-in-law was Latinus? Aeneas's. Aeneas was the father of whom? Of Ascanius, founder of the town of Alba. For how many years was there kingship at Alba? Four hundred and nearly twenty. What age is the city of Rome shown to be in the annals? It counts one thousand and fifty years, or not much less. So from Jupiter, who is the brother of Picus and the father of the lesser and remaining gods, there are nearly two thousand years to these times, or a full two thousand, to be generous about the age. Since this cannot be refuted, not only is the religion you practice shown to be recently born, but the gods themselves to whom you offer bulls and other victims, at the risk of spoiling their digestion, are shown to be still infants and little children, who ought still to be fed at the breast and with drops of milk.

'But your religions precede ours by many years and are the truer because they are fortified by the authority of antiquity.' And what does it help them to come first by very many years, since they began at a certain time; or what is a span of two thousand years compared with so many thousands of ages? And yet, so that we may not seem to betray our case by so long a pretense, tell us, if it is not troublesome: does the almighty and first God seem to you a new thing, and do those who revere and worship him seem to you to practice and introduce unheard-of, unknown, sudden religions? Is there anything older than he, or can anything be found which precedes him in fact, time, or name? Is he not alone unbegotten, alone immortal and everlasting? Who is the head and source of things? Is it not he? To whom does eternity owe the very fact that it is called eternity? Is it not to him? Is it not brought about by his everlastingness that the ages go on without end? This is beyond doubt and true. So what we follow is not new; but we have learned late what we ought to follow and worship, or where we ought to fix the hope of salvation and place the aids to it. For he had not yet shone forth who would show the way to the wandering and send the light of knowledge to those placed in the deepest darkness and dispel the blindness of ignorance. But does the case turn on this ... alone?

What of this: did you not bring the Egyptian deities called Serapis and Isis into the number of your gods after the consulship of Piso and Gabinius? What of the Phrygian Mother, whose founder is said to be either Midas or Dardanus: did you not begin to know her and learn of her, and hallow her with memorable worship, when Hannibal the Carthaginian was plundering Italy and demanding the rule of the world? Is it not held that the rites of Mother Ceres, adopted a little while ago because they were unknown to you, are called 'Greek', with the very name witnessing to their novelty? Is it not contained in the writings of the learned that the Pompilian invocation lists do not know the name of Apollo? From this it appears and is clear that he too was unknown to you, and afterward at some time began also to be known. So if anyone were to ask you why you took up the worship of the deities we have just mentioned so late, it is certain that you will answer: either because we did not know until lately that they were in the number of the gods, or because we have now been advised by prophets, or because in the harshest circumstances we were saved by their kindness and help. But if you think this is rightly said by you, consider that it has been answered on our side on a similar principle. Our religion is born now: for now he has come, sent to show it to us, to lead us into its truth, to show what God is, and to call us away from things of mere opinion to his worship.

'And why,' he says, 'did it seem good to God the King and Ruler that Christ the Savior should be sent to you from the heights of heaven only a few hours ago, as the saying is?' We ask in return: what is the cause, what the reason, that the seasons are sometimes not restored in their proper months, but winters, summers, and autumns come later? Why do rains sometimes fall after the harvests have withered and the grain has died, rains which ought to have come while things were sound and been supplied at the right times? Indeed, we ask rather this: why, if Hercules had to be born, and Aesculapius, Mercury, Liber, and some others, to be added to the councils of the gods and bring some benefit to mortals, were they produced by Jupiter so late that only posterity knew them, while the antiquity of earlier people was ignorant of them? You will say there was some reason. So there was a reason here too why the Savior of our race came not lately but today. What reason, then? We do not deny that we do not know. For it is not easy for anyone to see the mind of God, nor can man, a blind creature who does not know himself, grasp by any reasoning in what ways God has ordered his affairs: what ought to happen, when, or in what way, only the Father, Ruler, and Lord of all things himself knows. And if I cannot set out for you the causes why something is done in this way or that, it does not at once follow that what has been done becomes undone, and that a fact which has been shown beyond doubt by such kinds of mighty works and powers loses its credibility.

You may object and reply: 'Why was the Savior sent so late?' In infinite and everlasting ages nothing at all can be called late. For where there is no end and no beginning, nothing is premature, nothing slow. For time is known by limits and extremities, which an everlasting series and unmeasured continuity of ages cannot have. For what if the very things to which help had to be brought required that particular time? What if earlier things were of one condition and later ones of another? What if the ancients had to be helped in one way and those who came after cared for in another? Do you not hear your writings telling that there were once men who were demigods, heroes, with huge and vast bodies? Do you not read that infants at their mothers' breasts gave a wail a hundred years old, whose bones, dug up in various regions, hardly convinced their finders that they were the remains of human limbs? It may be, then, that almighty God, the only God, sent Christ only when the human race had begun to be weaker and more fragile in nature, as we are. If what has been done today ought to have been done thousands of years ago, the supreme King would have done it; or if what has been done today ought to have been fulfilled after as many thousands, nothing forced God not to wait for the necessary measures of time. His affairs are carried out by fixed plans, and what has once been decreed to happen cannot be changed by any novelty.

'Why then,' he says, 'if you serve the almighty God and trust that he cares for your salvation and safety, does he allow you to suffer such great persecutions and undergo every kind of punishment and torture?' Let us ask in return: why, when you worship so many and such countless gods, and build them sacred temples, fashion images of gold, slaughter herds of animals, and heap on the altars whole censers full of incense, do you not live exempt from so many dangers and storms by which ruinous and manifold fortunes drive you every day? Why, I say, do your gods fail to turn away from you so many kinds of diseases and illnesses, shipwrecks, collapses, fires, pestilences, barrenness, the loss of children and the confiscation of goods, discords, feuds, wars, the capture of cities, and slavery with freedom taken away? 'But God does not help us at all either in such misfortunes.' The reason is plain and evident. For nothing has been promised us for this life, nor has any help been pledged or aid decreed for us while we are placed in the little bag of this bit of flesh. On the contrary, we have been taught to count all threats of fortune, whatever they are, as small and to value them little; and if ever some heavier violence falls on us, whose end must follow, to count the misfortune a pleasure, and neither to fear nor flee it, so that we may the more easily be stripped of the bonds of the body and escape its dark blindness.

So that harshness of persecution you speak of is our liberation, not persecution, and harassment will not bring us punishment but lead us out to the light of freedom. It is as if some dull and stupid person, when a man has been put in prison, should think that he would never be affected by sufficiently heavy and cruel punishments at the beginning of his questioning unless he raged against the prison itself, broke its material, and burned the roof, and stripped, threw down, and smashed the wall, the doors, and the other parts of the building, not knowing that by doing this he was giving light to the one he seemed to harm and snatching away accursed darkness. In the same way you, with the flames, exiles, tortures, and beasts with which you tear and harass our bodies, do not take away our life, but unknowingly relieve us of our hides and skins; and the more you press on and continue to rage against these images and forms of ours, the more you relieve us of tight and heavy bonds, and, cutting the ties, make us fly away to the light.

Therefore, men, refrain from hindering your hopes with empty questions, and if something is otherwise than you think, you ought not to trust your own opinions rather than a thing so august. The times press on, full of dangers, and deadly punishments hang over us: let us flee to God who saves, and not demand the reason for the gift offered. When the salvation of souls and regard for ourselves is at stake, something must be done even without reason, as Arrian confirms that Epictetus said. We doubt, we hesitate, and we suspect that what is said is not fully credible: let us commit ourselves to God, and let not our unbelief weigh more with us than the greatness of his name and power, lest, while we seek arguments for ourselves by which what we do not want to be true may seem false, the last day creep upon us and we be found in the jaws of hostile death.

All these charges, or rather, to speak truly, these slanders, have long since been answered fully and carefully enough by men eminent in this field and worthy to know this truth, and not the smallest point of any question has been passed over which has not been refuted in a thousand ways and with very strong reasons. There is no need, then, to linger longer on this part of the case. For the matter cannot fail to stand without defenders; nor will the Christian religion be proved true because it has very many supporters and takes its authority from men. It is content with its own strength and rests on the foundations of its own truth, and is not robbed of its force even if it has no champion; indeed, even if all tongues speak against it and strive against it, and conspire with the passion of united agreement to destroy belief in it,

... Now let us return to the order from which we necessarily digressed a little while ago, so that our defense, interrupted too long, may not be said to have yielded the palm to the slanderers as though the charge were proved. For they add this: 'If divine things are dear to you, why do you not worship and adore the other gods with us, nor share common rites with your nations and join in their religious ceremonies?' We can say for the present: for performing the worship of divinity, the first God is enough for us, the first God, I say, the Father and Lord of things, the establisher and ruler of all. In him we worship all that is to be worshiped, adore what it is fitting to adore, and earn by our reverence what the service of reverence demands. For since we hold the head of divinity itself, from which the very divinity of all divine beings, whatever they are, is derived, we think it superfluous to go through them one by one in person, since we do not know who they are or what names they have, and moreover can have nothing clear, grasped, or ascertained about their number.

And as in earthly kingdoms we are under no necessity to adore by name, together with the rulers, those placed in the royal families, but whatever is attached to them feels itself included in the tacit honor paid in the worship of the kings themselves: in the same way, whoever these gods are whom you set before us as existing, if they are royal offspring and spring from the chief head, even if they receive no worship from us by name, they still understand that they are honored in common with their king and included in the reverence paid to him. And let this be said by us on the assumption that it is clear and established that besides the King and Ruler himself there are other heads of deities, which, arranged and separated through ..., make up a kind of people of the common multitude. And do not show us in your sacred buildings, as gods, the effigies, figurines, and images which you too understand, even though you refuse and decline to admit it, are shapes of the vilest clay and the childish fashionings of craftsmen. And since we are speaking with you about a divine matter, we ask you to show this: that there are other gods in nature, power, and name, not those set up in images, which we see, but in that substance in which it is fitting that the power of so great a name should be judged to exist.

But it is not my intention to linger longer on this part of the case, lest we seem to want to stir up very great disputes and join in tumultuous contests. Let there be, as you declare, a populace of deities, let there be countless clans of gods: we agree, we assent, we close our eyes, and we raise no doubt or ambiguity about it in any question. But this we ask and beg to hear from you: from where have you learned, or by what reasoning have you grasped, whether those whom you think exist and worship are in heaven, or some others of unheard-of opinion and name? For it may be that there are those whom you do not think exist, and that those whom you trust exist are found in no part of nature. For you have never flown up to the stars of heaven, nor seen the faces and features of each, nor, remembering that certain gods are there, established the worship of the same gods here as though known and seen. And again we want to hear this: do they have these names by which you call them because you gave them, or did they give them to themselves on their naming days? If these are divine and heavenly names, who brought them to you? But if they have these designations because you applied them, how could you give names to those whom you had never seen, and whom you did not know by any knowledge, what they were like or who they were?

But, as you wish and believe and are persuaded, let these be gods; let them be called even by the names by which popular commonness leads ... to be reckoned. Still, how is it clear to you whether these complete the roll by their names, or whether there are some unknown to you and never brought into your sight and knowledge? For it is not easy to know whether their number is a defined and certain multitude, or whether their population has no sum and is bounded by no reckoning of calculation. For let us suppose that you worship a thousand gods, or rather five thousand: yet in the nature of things it may perhaps be that there are a hundred thousand gods, it may be even more; indeed, as we said a little while ago, the sum of gods may be none, not bounded by any countable limit. So either you too are impious, who apart from a few gods do not perform the services due to the rest; or, if you ask pardon for your ignorance of the others, you will win the same pardon for us if, in a like proportion, we abstain from the worship of those whom we do not know to exist at all.

And yet let no one think that we stubbornly refuse to take up the rites of the other deities, whoever they are. For we stretch out devoted minds and suppliant hands, and do not refuse to go wherever you invite us, if only we learn who these divine beings are whom you press on us, and whom it is right to join to the veneration of the supreme King and Ruler. 'Saturn,' he says, 'and Janus, Minerva, Juno, Apollo, Venus, Triptolemus, Hercules, and all the others, to whom religious antiquity dedicated magnificent temples in almost all cities.' You might perhaps have been able to invite us to the worship of these deities, if you yourselves had not been the first, with the foulness of shameful opinions, to invent such things about them as not only defile their dignity but prove, by the qualities attached to them, that they do not exist at all. For first we cannot be brought to believe that that immortal and most excellent nature is divided into sexes, and that one part is male and the other female. This point men of lively mind have long since set out fully, in Latin as well as Greek writings; and above all Tullius, the most eloquent of the Roman race, fearing no charge of impiety, showed candidly, firmly, and freely, with greater piety, what he thought of such an opinion. If you would take from him the things he wrote with truth of judgment, and not the brilliance of his words, this case would be finished, and would not, as the saying is, require second hearings from us who are but infants in speech.

But why should I say that the chasing of words and splendor of speech are sought from him, when I know that there are not a few who turn away from and flee his books on this subject and will not even admit into their ears the reading of what overthrows their preconceived opinions; and when I hear others muttering indignantly and saying that the senate ought to decree the destruction of these writings, by which the Christian religion is supported and the authority of antiquity overthrown? Rather, if you trust that you say anything ascertained about your gods, convict Cicero of error, refute and disprove him, prove that he says rash and impious things. For to intercept writings and to want to suppress a published reading is not to defend the gods but to fear the testimony of the truth.

And yet, so that no thoughtless person may bring a false charge against us too, as though we believed the God we worship to be male, because when we speak of him we use the masculine gender, let him understand that it is not sex but his name and meaning that is expressed, by the use and habit of speech. For God is not male, but his name is of the masculine gender; which you cannot say in your religion. For you are accustomed to say in your prayers, 'whether you are a god or a goddess', and this exception of doubt declares by its very division that you give sex to the gods. We cannot be brought, then, to believe that the gods are bodies. For they must be bodies if they are male and female, or the distinction of kinds is meaningless. For who of even slight sense does not know that the different sexes of earthly animals were established and formed by that maker for no other reason than that, through the intercourse and unions of bodies, a perishable and fleeting thing might last by the renewal of perpetual succession? What then?

Shall we say that gods beget, that gods are born, and that therefore genital parts were added to them, so that they might supply offspring, and, as each new brood arose, a returning substitution might replace whatever an earlier age had taken away? If this is so, that is, if the gods above beget ... and experience sexes according to these laws, and are immortal and are not worn out by the chills of old age, it follows that all things must be full of gods, and countless heavens could not hold their multitude, since they themselves beget perpetually, and their countless number, multiplied through offspring of offspring, always grows. Or if the obscenity of intercourse is absent from the gods, as is fitting, what cause and reason will be shown why they are marked with those parts by which sex usually recognizes itself through the promptings of its own desires? For it is not likely that these are held for nothing, or that nature wished to play a wanton game in them, loading them with parts they were not to use. For as hands, feet, eyes, and the rest of the structure of the limbs were each set up for certain uses and their own functions, so it is fitting to believe that these parts were prepared for performing their own office; or it must be confessed that in the bodies of the gods there is something empty and useless

and made in vain. What do you say, you holy and undefiled high priests of religion? Do the gods, then, have sex, and do they carry about the ugliness of genital members which it is disgraceful, by decent standards, to utter by their proper names? What remains, then, but to believe that they are eager for the frenzies of lust like unclean four-footed beasts, rush into mutual embraces with rabid desires, and finally, their bodies broken and dissolved, languish in the exhaustion of pleasure? And since certain things are proper to the female sex, it follows that we must believe that goddesses too pay their laws when the months come round, bear the burden of conception with nausea, miscarry, and sometimes give birth prematurely to seven-month offspring. O pure, O holy divinity, separated and removed from every stain of disgrace! My mind longs and burns to see, in those great porticoes and palaces of heaven, gods and goddesses with uncovered and naked bodies; Ceres, full-breasted from nursing Iacchus, as the muse of Lucretius proclaims; and Hellespontine Priapus among the virgin and mother goddesses, carrying about those parts always ready for the campaign of battles. I long, I say, to see goddesses pregnant, goddesses with child, some slowed by the heaviness of the inward burden as their bellies swell day by day, others in long labor seeking the hands of midwives, others pierced by heavy darts and sharp pains, wailing, writhing, and amid all this imploring the help of Juno Lucina. Is it not much more right to curse, to revile, and heap other insults on the gods, than, under a pious pretext, to presume such monsters of opinion about them to their dishonor?

And do you dare to ascribe to us the cause of the gods' offense, when, if a judgment were held, it would be found most certainly to lie in you and to consist in an insult other than you suppose? For if the gods, as you say, are affected by anger and grow hot with indignation of mind, why should we not think that they bear it with great and very great displeasure that you give them sexes, the organs with which dogs and pigs are formed, and that, since you believe so, they are represented in no other way and set out with shameful display? Since this is so, you are the cause of all miseries; you drive the gods, you rouse them to infest the earth with every evil and devise new ones every day, by which they may avenge themselves, provoked by so many wrongs and slanders from you: slanders, I say, and wrongs, which you celebrate partly in shameful fables, partly in unseemly opinions, which your theologians, your poets, and you yourselves also celebrate in shameful rites. You will find human affairs ruined and the gods having thrown away the helm, if indeed it is their concern to rule and administer the fortunes of mortals. For they have no reason to be angry with us, whom they see and perceive neither worshiping nor mocking them, as the saying is, and thinking, rather than believing, much more honorably than you about the dignity of their name. So much for sex.

Now let us come to the appearance and forms in which you believe the gods above are depicted, or rather in which you fashion them and place them in the most spacious seats of temples. And let no one here set against us the Jewish fables and those of the Sadducee sect, as though we too ascribe forms to God: for this is thought to be said in their writings and to be confirmed as a certain thing ... and by authority. These either do not concern us at all and have nothing in common with us in any part, or, if they are shared with us, as is believed, you must seek teachers of deeper understanding, through whom you may learn in what ways the clouds and wrappings of those writings should be unfolded. Our opinion on this is as follows: every divine nature, which never began to exist and will never come to the end of life, lacks bodily outlines and possesses no images of forms by which the outer boundary of the limbs usually closes their joining. For whatever is such, we think is mortal and perishable; and we do not believe that what is confined by outer limits, which a necessary boundary encloses, can have everlasting duration.

But for you it is not enough to embrace the gods in the measure of forms; you even bound them by the human outline and, what is much more unworthy, limit them by the contour of earthly bodies. What then shall we say? That the gods carry a head held up by the smooth roundness of a neck, tied to the back and chest by the ropes of sinews, and supported for the necessary bendings of the neck by joints of vertebrae and a bony framework? If we accept this as true, it follows that they also have ears bored through with curved windings; movable eyeballs shaded by the edges of the eyebrows; the hanging gutter of the nose, a passage for snotty wiping and for the drawing of breath; teeth of three kinds for chewing food, arranged for three tasks; hands to serve in work, easy to handle through jointed fingers and movable elbows; feet for supporting the body; knees for making strides and furnishing the forward movements of walking. And if they have what is visible, it is consistent that they also carry what the skins and the membranes of the omentum cover under the ribs and their framework: gullets, stomachs, spleens, lungs, bladders, livers, the coils of the winding intestines, and the veins of purple blood running through all the inward parts, joined with the breathing arteries.

Or are the bodies of the heavenly ones free from these foul things, and, since they abstain from mortal food, must we believe they are toothless like little children, and, bereft of all their inward parts, hang like blown-up bladders in the emptiness of swollen bodies? What of this, that if this is so, you will need to consider whether all the gods are alike or are held in unequal outlines of form. For if all have one equal kind of likeness, it is not absurd to believe that they go astray and are deceived in recognizing one another. But if they bear differences in their faces, it follows that it must be understood that these dissimilarities were given them for no other reason than that each might be recognized by the particular marks of different features. So it must be said that some are big-headed, with drooping eyelids, big-foreheaded, thick-lipped, snub-nosed; others long-chinned, with moles, and big-nosed; these with flaring nostrils, those with turned-up ones; some with swollen jaws, or puffed-out cheeks ..., sharp-voiced; dwarfs, tall, middling, lean, plump, stout; these curly with twisted hair, others shaved with baldness and hairlessness. Nor do we think this falsely: your workshops betray and show it, since when you make and form gods, you model some with long hair, others smooth, old, young, boys, dark, gray-eyed, tawny, half-naked, uncovered, or, so that the cold may not trouble them, covered with flowing garments thrown over them.

Is there any human being touched by a taste of any reason, who would believe that hair and down grow on the bodies of the gods, that differences of age exist among them, that they go about clothed in various kinds of coverings and garments and protect themselves from heat and cold? Whoever holds this as true must also accept this as true: that there are fuller gods and barber gods, to wash the sacred garments or to trim the hair when it has grown into a forest of tangled locks. Is this not shameful, full of impiety and insult, to give the gods the features of a dying and perishable creature, to mark them with parts which no decent person would dare to enumerate or describe, or conceive in his mind's imagination without horror at their extreme foulness? Is this that fastidiousness of yours, this arrogant wisdom, with which you spit on us as uncultured and think that all knowledge of divine things lies open to you? You laugh at the riddles of the Egyptians, because they joined the forms of dumb animals to their divine causes and receive the same images with much incense and the rest of the equipment of ceremonies; you venerate human effigies as the powers of gods, and are not ashamed to put on them the faces of an earthly animal, to condemn others for error and folly, and to be caught in the likeness of the same error and fault.

Unless perhaps you will say that the gods have other forms, but that you have given them the appearance of mortals for the sake of honor and for form's sake: which is a much greater insult than to have done something in error through ignorance. For if you confessed that you had given the divine forms what your conjecture had believed, the wrong of sinning in a preconceived opinion would be less. But now, since you believe one thing and fashion another, you are both insulting to those to whom you give what you confess they do not have, and shown to be irreligious, since you adore what you fashion, not what you judge to be so in fact and truth. If asses, dogs, and pigs had some human understanding and arts of fashioning, and wanted to honor us with some worship and consecrations of statues, what flames of anger, what whirlwinds of indignation would they stir in us, if they wanted our images to bear and keep the forms of their bodies? What flames of anger, I say, would they pour out and stir up, if Romulus the founder of the city stood with the face of an ass, holy Pompilius with that of a dog, or if the name of Cato or of Marcus Cicero were inscribed under the likeness of a pig? Do you then think that your stupidity is not laughed at by your deities, if they laugh; or, since you believe they are affected by anger, that they do not rage, do not go mad, do not want to go to avenge such great wrongs and insults, and hurl at you what pain usually hurls and the bitterness of offense devises? How much more right it would have been to give them the forms of elephants, panthers, or tigers, of bulls and horses! For what is beautiful in man, what, I ask, admirable or seemly, except what some author willed to be shared even with the ape-like herd?

'But if our opinion displeases you,' they say, 'you show us, you tell us, with what form God is endowed.' If you want to hear the true opinion: either God has no form, or, if he is formed in some way, we certainly do not know what it is. For we do not think it shameful not to know what we have never seen, nor are we prevented from refuting the opinions of others because we ourselves put forward no opinion on this matter. For just as, if the world were said to be of glass, or of silver, or of iron, or rolled up and fashioned out of brittle earthenware, we would not hesitate to maintain that this is false, though we do not know what its material is: so, when God's appearance is in question, we prove that it is not what you declare, even if we are less able to explain what it is.

'What then,' someone will say, 'does God not hear, not speak, not see and behold the things set before him?' Perhaps in his own way, not in ours. For in so great a matter we can know nothing true, nor trace it out by guesses, which it is clear are unstable, slippery, and like empty dreams with us. For if we say that he sees in the same way as we see, it follows that it must be understood that he has membranes laid over his pupils, closes his eyes, blinks, sees by rays or images, or, what is common to all eyes, sees nothing at all without the addition of another light. The same must likewise be said of hearing and of the manner of speech and the uttering of words: if he hears through ears, he must also have them bored through with winding passages, through which the voice can creep in to announce the sense of speech; or if words are poured from his mouth, he must have lips with teeth, by whose striking and many-sided movement the tongue shapes sounds and forms the voice into words.

But if you do not refuse to hear the mind of our soul, so far are we from ascribing bodily features to God that we fear to ascribe even the graces of minds and the virtues themselves, in which hardly a few are granted to excel, to so great a being. For who would call God brave, steadfast, temperate, wise? Who would call him upright, who sober, who indeed would say that he knows anything, understands, foresees, or directs the decisions of his actions to the fixed ends of duties? These are human goods, and they have earned their praiseworthy reputation from their opposition to vices. And who is so dull-hearted, so brutish, as to say that God is great by human goods, or that he excels in the majesty of his name because he is free from the ugliness of vices? Whatever you say of God, whatever you conceive in the silent thought of your mind, passes over into a human sense and is corrupted; and what is said in our words, which are framed for human affairs, does not have the mark of its own meaning. The one most certain understanding a human being has of the nature of God is to know and feel that nothing can be expressed about him in mortal speech.

And this indeed is the first insult to your deities, which you, good defenders and religious authorities that you are, have established about forms and sexes. But what of what follows, that you present to us gods of whom some are smiths, others physicians, others wool-workers, sailors, lyre-players, flute-singers, hunters, shepherds, and, what was left over, farmers? 'That one,' he says, 'is a musical god, and this other is a prophet.' For the other gods are not musicians, and do not know how to foretell the future through lack of skill and ignorance of what is to come. That one is trained in the arts of midwifery, another has been instructed in the disciplines of physicians. Is each strong only in his own field, and when called for help can they give no aid in other areas? This one is eloquent in speech and ready in the flow of words: for the others are slow and can say nothing clever if a speech must be made.

And I ask: what reason is there, what harsh necessity, what cause, that the gods above should know and practice these crafts like mean artisans? Is there singing and lyre-playing in heaven, so that the nine sisters may skillfully join and modulate the intervals and rhythms of voices? Are there forests, wild haunts, and groves among the motions of the stars, so that Diana may be held mighty in the hunt in her expeditions? Do the gods not know what is coming, and live and are they driven by lots and fates, so that the prophet son of Latona may explain and reveal what tomorrow or the hour will bring to each? Is he himself filled by another god and pressed and driven by the power of a greater deity, so that he may rightly be called and held a prophet? Are the gods seized by diseases, and can they be wounded and troubled by something, so that, when need demands, the helper of Epidaurus may come to their aid? Do they go into labor and give birth, so that Juno Lucina may soothe and cut short the difficult troubles of childbirth? Do they practice farming or attend to military duties, so that Vulcan, mighty in flames, may forge swords for them or hammer out tools for the country? Do they need the covering of clothing, so that the Tritonian maiden may carefully spin thread for them and, according to the season, make them tunics of triple twill or of silk? Do they accuse and refute charges, so that the offspring of Atlas may win the first prize of eloquence, sought by diligent practice? 'But you are wrong,' he says, 'and deceived.'

'For the gods are not craftsmen themselves, but they instill these arts into the minds of men and hand them down to mortals to be learned, so that life may be better equipped.' But whoever instills some discipline in one who is unskilled and ignorant, and strives to make him skillful in the knowledge of some work, must himself first know what he has determined the other should master. For no one can be the teacher of any knowledge without having learned the precepts of what he teaches and holding its method understood with the utmost practice. So the gods are the first craftsmen, either because, as you say, they themselves instill knowledge into minds, or because, being immortal and never born, they precede the whole earthly race in length of time. This, then, is the question: since there is no place or use for these arts among the gods above, and their nature does not require them to know anything ingenious or belonging to artisans, why do you say that some are skilled in some accomplishments and others in others, and have skills in which each surpasses the others, distinguished by knowledge of different sciences?

Unless perhaps you say that the gods are not craftsmen, but preside over and care for these arts; indeed that all that we manage and do is placed under their guardianship, and is cared for by their providence so that it may turn out well and happily. This would seem to be rightly and plausibly said if what we undertake, do, or risk in human affairs always went according to our will and intention. But since things turn out the opposite every day, and the ends of our actions do not answer to the purpose of our will, it is mere play to say that the gods are our guardians, whom our guesswork has invented and no ascertained truth has grasped. Mater Matuta provides the safest voyages for those who sail the seas: then why does the raging sea demand the ruin of so many cruel shipwrecks? Consus suggests wholesome and trustworthy counsels to our thoughts: then why does an unexpected change of plans constantly turn them to contrary outcomes? Pales and Inuus are guardians presiding over herds of cattle and flocks: then why, with hostile idleness, do they not take care to turn cruel contagions and pestilent diseases away from the summer pastures? Flora the mother, with the holy obscenity of her games, takes good care that the fields flower: then why does most harmful frost daily scorch and kill the little buds and growing grasses? Juno is set over childbirth and helps mothers in labor: then why do thousands of mothers perish every day, killed by deadly labor? Fire is under Vulcan's guardianship and its matter is placed under his rule: then why does he allow sacred temples and parts of cities to collapse into ashes so often by the greed of flames? The Pythian gives the knowledge of divination to soothsayers: then why does he more often give and supply oblique, doubtful answers, sunk in the fog of obscurity? Aesculapius presides over the offices and arts of healing: then why can many kinds of diseases and illnesses not be brought to health and soundness, and indeed become worse under the very hands of those who treat them? Mercury cares for the wrestling-grounds and presides over boxing and wrestling: then why does he not make all those over whom he presides invincible? Why, in the office of a single presidency, does he let some win victory and others be laughed at for shameful weakness?

'No one prays to the guardian gods,' he says, 'and so they each fail in their proper duties and help.' So unless they receive incense and salted meal, the gods cannot do good, and unless they see their little altars smeared with the blood of cattle, they desert and abandon their charges? Yet I thought a little while ago that the kindnesses of the deities were spontaneous, and that the unexpected gifts of their goodwill flowed from them of their own accord. For is the King of the heavens courted by any libation or victim to lavish on the nations of mortals all the benefits by which we live? Does God not supply the life-giving heat of the sun, the times of night, winds, rains, and crops equally to all, good and bad, unjust and just, free and slave, poor and rich? For this is the mark of the powerful and true God: to give unasked benefits to things weary, weak, and always surrounded by manifold harshness. For to grant what you are asked for when sacrifices have been offered is not to help petitioners but to sell the bounty of one's own kindness. We human beings play and frolic in so great a matter, and, forgetting what God is and what the magnificence of this name is, we attribute to the guardian gods whatever mean or sordid thing we have been able to invent with suspicious credulity.

'Unxia,' he says, 'presides over anointings, Cinxia over the untying of girdles, and the most holy Victa and Potua attend to eating and drinking.' O excellent and remarkable interpretation of the powers of the deities! Unless the doorposts of husbands were smeared with the fat of ointment by brides, unless husbands, already burning and pressing on, loosed the maidens' girdles, unless people drank and ate, would the gods have no names? What of this, that, not content with having subjected and entangled the gods in such ugly cares, you also attribute to them wild, fierce, savage natures, always rejoicing in evils and in the destruction of the human race?

We will not mention here the goddess Laverna of thieves, the Bellonas, Discords, and Furies, and we will pass over in silence those ill-omened deities you establish. We will set Mars himself in the middle, and that beautiful mother of the Cupids, of whom you set the one over battles, the other over loves and the heat of desire. 'Mars,' he says, 'has power over wars.' Is it to calm them when stirred, or to stir them when quiet and at rest? For if he is the calmer of military madness, why are wars never lacking every day? But if he is their founder, then we shall say that a god, for the sweetness of his pleasure, dashes the whole world together, sows the causes of discords and dangers among nations separated by the great distance of lands, brings together so many thousands of mortals from opposite sides, and within the space of a single word heaps the fields with corpses, sends torrents of blood rushing, destroys the best-founded empires, levels cities to the ground, takes freedom from the free-born and imposes the condition of slavery, rejoices in civil strife, in the murderous death of brothers who die together, and finally in the horror of parricidal combat between sons and fathers.

The same can be transferred to Venus on the same principle. For if she instills the flames of love into human thoughts, as you declare and believe, it follows that it must be understood that whatever disgrace and crime proceeds from such madness must be charged to the wounds of Venus. Is it by the compulsion of the goddess, then, that even nobles often betray their dignity for harlots of the vilest name, that the bonds of firm marriages are unstitched, that the ties of blood burn into incestuous lusts, that mothers go mad for their sons, that fathers turn their daughters' desires toward themselves, that old men, against the dignity of their age, groan with youthful passions for obscene cravings, that wise and brave men dissolve the resolutions of constancy as the vigor of their manhood is softened, that nooses are tied around necks, that burning pyres are mounted, and that people throw themselves headlong everywhere from vast and very high cliffs in voluntary leaps?

Is there any human being endowed with the first beginnings of reason who would pollute or defile the substance of divinity with such foul characters? Who would attribute to the gods such natures as human gentleness has often soothed and softened even in wild beasts? Where, I ask, is that teaching, that the gods are far removed from every feeling of disturbance, that they are gentle, peaceful, mild, that in a united kind of virtue they hold the peak of perfection and the summit of wisdom itself? Or why do we pray to them to drive away from us adverse and hostile things, if they themselves are found to be the authors of all the evils by which we are torn every day? However much you call us impious, irreligious, or atheists, you will never convince us that there are gods of loves, gods of wars, gods who sow discords and disturb minds with furious goads. For either they are most truly gods and do not do the things you have mentioned, or, if they do what you say, they are without any doubt not gods.

And yet we might somehow accept from you these ... full of impious fictions, if you did not yourselves put forward many things about the gods so contradictory and self-destroying that you compel the assent of the mind to endure them. For while each of you strives to surpass the others in the praise of deeper knowledge, you both take away the very gods you believe in and put others in their place who plainly do not exist; you name different gods for the same things; and you write that there are countless ones where human agreement has always accepted single ones. Let us begin, then, in due form, we too, with Father Janus, whom some of you have declared to be the world, others the year, some the sun. If we accept this as true, it follows that it must be understood that there never was any Janus, who, they say, was begotten of Caelus and Hecate, reigned first in Italy, founded the town of Janiculum, was father of Fons, son-in-law of Vulturnus, husband of Juturna; and so by you the name of the god is erased whom you put first in all your prayers and believe opens for you the way to the hearing of the gods. Again, if Janus is the year, even so he cannot be a god. For who does not know that the year is a fixed limit of time, and that what is enclosed by spaces of months and a count of days has no divine power? The same can be transferred to Saturn on a similar principle. For if time is signified by this name, as the interpreters of the Greeks maintain, so that Kronos is taken to be chronos (time), there is no Saturnian deity. For who is so mad as to say that time is a god, when it is the measure of a certain space enclosed in the continuous series of everlastingness? And so this one too of the heavenly beings will be removed from the order, whom ancient antiquity declared to be born of Father Caelus, the begetter of the great gods, the planter of the vine, the bearer of the sickle, and handed down to a younger age.

For what shall we say of Jupiter himself, whom the wise have often called the sun, driving winged chariots with a crowd of gods following, and some the ether, blazing with fiery force and an unquenchable vastness of heat? If this is clear and established, then on your own authority there is no Jupiter at all, who was born of Saturn his father and Ops his mother and is said to have been hidden in the land of Crete to escape his father's rage. And does not a similar opinion remove Juno from the roll of gods? For if she is the air, as you are accustomed to play and repeat by reversing the Greek name, there will be found no sister and wife of almighty Jupiter, no Fluonia, no ..., no Ossipagina, no Februtis, Populonia, Cinxia, Caprotina; and so the fiction of this name will be found to be utterly empty, spread abroad by the fame of an empty opinion.

Aristotle, as Granius records, a man of mighty intellect and outstanding in learning, explains with plausible arguments and shows by learned authority that Minerva is the moon. Others have said that she is the ethereal summit and the height of the highest itself; some that she is memory, from which the very name Minerva was formed, as though Meminerva. If this is believed, then there is no daughter of Metis, no ... of Victory, no discoverer of the olive sprung from the brain of Jupiter, none instructed in the teaching of the arts and in various disciplines. 'Because water covers the earth,' they say, 'he was named and called Neptune.' If, then, the spreading of liquid is signified by this name, there is no god Neptune at all; and so the brother of the Stygian Jupiter and of the Olympian is taken away and removed, the one armed with the iron trident, lord of sea monsters and small fish, king of the salt depths, and shaker of the trembling ground.

Mercury too has been called, as it were, 'Medicurrius', and the quality of this name was contrived because speech runs in the middle between two speakers and passes back and forth. If this is so, Mercury is not the name of a god but of speech and voice passing to and fro; and in this way that Cyllenian herald's-staff bearer, born on the chill mountain, the deviser of words and names, the exchanger at markets, in goods, and in trade, is abolished and extinguished. Some of you have said that the earth is the Great Mother because it supplies food to all living things; others declare that this same earth is Ceres because it bears the fruit of wholesome seeds; and some that it is Vesta, because it alone stands still in the world while its other parts are set in perpetual motion. If this is put forward with reason and asserted with certainty, then, on your own interpretation, three deities alike are nothing: neither Ceres nor Vesta will be counted in the calendar of the gods, nor finally can the Mother of the Gods herself, whom Nigidius declares to have been married to Saturn, rightly be called a goddess, since all these are names of the one earth and it alone is indicated by these titles.

We pass over here, to avoid tedium, Vulcan, whom you all declare with one voice and sense to be fire; Venus, so named because she comes to all; and Proserpina, so called because the sown seeds creep forth into the light. In this part again you remove the persons of three deities, since the first is the name of an element, not the word for a sentient power; the second of the lust spread through all living things; and the third signifies the shoots raising themselves and the movements of crops growing up. What, when you maintain that Liber, Apollo, and the Sun are one deity enlarged with three names, is not the roll of the gods diminished by your opinions, and the prejudged belief brought to nothing? For if it is true that the sun is the same as Liber and the same as Apollo, it follows that in the nature of things there is neither any Apollo nor any Liber; and so, by yourselves, the son of Semele and the Pythian are abolished and erased, the one the giver of muddy merriment, the other the destroyer of the mice of Sminthe.

Men among you who are not unlearned, and not chattering whatever fancy suggests, declare that Diana, Ceres, and the Moon are the person of one goddess ..., and that there are not three distinct persons, as there are three different names: that she is called the Moon in all these, and that the series of the other titles is heaped together into her name. If this is ascertained and fixed, and if the truth of the matter shows it so, then again the name of Ceres is empty and that of Diana is empty; and so it comes to this, that on your guidance and authority there is no discoverer of crops, as you declare, and Apollo is robbed of his sister, whom once, as she washed the dirt from her limbs in pure springs, that horned hunter saw and found the punishment of his curiosity.

Men memorable in the pursuit of philosophy, and raised by your praises to the pinnacle of that name, define with plausible assertion that this whole mass of the world, in whose embrace we are all surrounded, covered, and supported, is one living being, wise, rational, and deliberate. If their opinion is true, fixed, and certain, those too will at once cease to be gods whom you established a little while ago in its parts under changed names. For as one man cannot, while the integrity of his body remains, be split into many men, nor again many men, keeping their distinctness, be fused into the ... and simplicity of one mind; so, if the world is one animal and is moved by the action of one mind, it cannot be broken up into several deities, nor, if its particles are gods, can they be forced and turned into the consciousness of one living being. Moon, sun, earth, ether, and stars are members and parts of the world; and if they are parts and members, they are surely not living beings in their own name. For parts cannot in any respect be the very thing that the whole is, or be wise for themselves or feel for themselves, since without the assent of the whole living being they are affected by no motions of their own. When this is established and laid down, the whole sum comes back to this: that neither the sun is a god, nor the moon, nor the ether, the earth, and the rest. For they are parts of the world, not special names of deities; and so it comes about, while you disturb and mix up all divine things, that one god is established in the nature of things, the world, all the rest being hissed off the stage, established wholly in vain, emptily, and without any substance.

If we undermined belief in your gods in as many ways and with as many opinions, no one would doubt that, roused by anger and rage, you would demand fires, beasts, swords, and the other kinds of punishment against us with which you are accustomed to quench your thirst by craving our blood. But since almost the whole race of deities is removed by you yourselves under the display of intellect and learning, do you dare to maintain that human affairs are oppressed by the gods because of our name? For indeed, if it is true that they exist anywhere and grow hot with the flames of anger, they have no juster reason to rage against you than that you deny that they exist and are in any part of nature.

Mnaseas is the authority that the Muses are daughters of Earth and Heaven; the others declare them daughters of Jupiter by his wife Memory, or Mind; some write that they were virgins, others that they were mothers. For I would now like to touch briefly also on those points in which you are shown to say one thing and another about the same matter through the diversity of opinions. Ephorus, then, states that they are three in number; Mnaseas, whom we mentioned, four; Myrtilus brings in seven; Crates asserts eight; finally Hesiod gives nine with their names, enriching heaven and the stars with gods. Unless we are mistaken, this disagreement belongs to people who know nothing true, and does not come from the truth of the matter. For if what it is were clearly known, the voice of all would be unanimous, and the assent of all would proceed and meet in the conclusion of the same opinion.

How then can you restore the full force of religion, when you err about the gods themselves, or invite us to venerable worship when you teach us nothing certain about the understanding of the deities themselves? For, to say nothing of the authors in between, either the first erases and kills six goddesses, if it is established that there are nine, or the last and final one adds six who are nothing, if only three truly exist; so that it cannot be known or grasped which ought to be added and which taken away, and the very undertaking of religion is brought into danger, either worshiping what does not exist or perhaps passing over what does. Piso believes that the Novensiles are nine gods established among the Sabines at Trebia. Granius thinks they are the Muses, agreeing with Aelius; Varro teaches that they are the number nine, because it is always held most powerful and greatest in moving things; Cornificius, that they are the guardians of renewal, because by their care all things are renewed and stand firm; Manilius, that they are the nine gods to whom alone Jupiter granted the power of hurling his thunderbolt. Cincius declares that they are foreign deities named from their very novelty; for the Romans used partly to spread the religions of conquered cities privately among families and partly to consecrate them publicly, and, so that none of the gods might be passed over through their multitude or through ignorance, for the sake of brevity and conciseness all were invoked together under one name, Novensiles.

There are besides some who declare that men made gods are signified by this name, such as Hercules, Romulus, Aesculapius, Liber, Aeneas. These opinions, as appears, are all different, and it cannot happen in the nature of things that those who differ in their opinions should be held to be authors of one truth. For if Piso's opinion is true, Aelius and Granius are lying; if what they say is certain, the most learned Varro errs, who substitutes the emptiest and vainest things for things established in substance. If the number nine gives the Novensiles their name, Cornificius is convicted of bleating nonsense, who gives the force of another's power to gods presiding over renewal. If Cornificius's opinion is true, Cincius is found imprudent, who endows the gods of conquered cities with the power of the Novensile deities. If they are those whom Cincius declares, Manilius will be found to say what is false, who includes under this name the hurlers of another's thunderbolt. If what Manilius asserts is ascertained and true, those are in the greatest error who think that mortals exalted and consecrated with divine honors are called Novensiles from the newness of their honor. And if the Novensiles are those who deserved to be raised to the stars after they finished the mortality of life, there are no Novensile gods at all. For as slaves, soldiers, and masters are not names of the persons underlying them but of offices, conditions, and functions, so when we say Novensiles, if this is the name of those who from men deserved to be gods, it is plain and evident that not specially defined persons but newness itself is named by the title Novensiles.

Nigidius declared that the Penates are Neptune and Apollo, who once, on an agreed condition, surrounded Ilium with immortal walls. Again, in his sixteenth book, following the Etruscan lore, he sets out that there are four kinds of Penates: some of Jupiter, others of Neptune, a third kind of the underworld, and a fourth of mortal men, saying something inexplicable. Caesius, also following that lore, thinks they are Fortune and Ceres, the Genius Jovialis, and Pales, not the female whom the common people accept, but some male attendant and steward of Jupiter. Varro thinks that the gods we speak of are those within and in the inmost recesses of heaven, and that neither their number nor their names are known. The Etruscans say and name them the Consentes and Complices, because they rise together and set together, six males and as many females, of unknown names and very sparing of pity; but they are thought to be the counselors and partners of supreme Jupiter. Nor have there been lacking those who wrote that Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva are the Penates, without whom we cannot live and think, but who rule us inwardly by reason, heat, and breath. As you see, here too nothing harmonious is said, nothing is settled by a single statement, nor is there anything trustworthy on which the mind can rest, conjecturing ... the truth most nearly by guess. For the opinions totter so, and one opinion is torn up by another, that either nothing of all is true, or, if the truth is told by someone, it is not known amid so many differences.

We can, if you like, say something briefly about the Lares too, whom the common people think are gods of streets and roads, because Greece calls streets laurai. In different writings Nigidius says now that they are guardians of houses and dwellings, now that they are those Curetes who are said once to have hidden the wailing of Jupiter with the clashing of bronze, now that they are the Samothracian Fingers, whom the Greeks call five in number, ... named the Idaean Dactyls. Varro, similarly hesitating, declares now that they are the Manes, and that therefore Mania is called the mother of the Lares; now again that they are gods of the air and are called heroes; now, following the opinions of the ancients, he says that the Lares are Larvae, as it were certain genii and the souls of the departed.

It would be endless and immeasurable to go through each kind and make it plain from the books themselves that there is no god considered or believed in by you about whom you have not put forth ambiguous and conflicting opinions in a thousand varieties. But for brevity's sake and to avoid tedium it is enough to have said what has been said, and it is too laborious to heap many things together, when from one or two it becomes clear and evident that you hesitate and waver and say nothing certain about the things you assert. Unless perhaps you will say: 'Even if we do not know personally who the Lares are, who the Novensiles, who the Penates, still the very agreement of the authorities vindicates their existence and establishes that they hold the form of their kind among the number of the heavenly beings.' And how can it be known whether someone is a god, if what he is will be unknown and not known? Or how can the very request for benefits avail, if it will not be ascertained and certain who ought to be called for each consultation? For everyone who seeks to obtain an answer from some deity must necessarily know to whom he prays, whom he implores, from whom he asks help in human affairs and needs; especially since you yourselves report that not all gods can provide all things, and that the minds and offenses of each are appeased by very different rites.

For if this god wants a black hide and that one a white; if one must be sacrificed to with the head veiled and another with it bare; if one is consulted about marriages and another provides remedies for troubles: it cannot make no difference whether this or that one is the Novensile, since ignorance of the facts and confusion of persons both force the gods to be offended and necessarily incur guilt requiring atonement. For imagine me praying to one of these deities to escape some trouble and avert danger, saying: 'Be present, be present, gods Penates, you Apollo and you Neptune, and by the mercy of your divinity avert all these evils by which I am burned, scorched, and troubled.' Will there be any hope of receiving help from them, if Ceres, Pales, Fortune, Jovialis, or the Genius, and not Neptune and Apollo, are the Penates? Or if I invoke the Curetes as Lares, whom part of your authors assert to be the Samothracian Fingers, how shall I be able to have them as helpers and well-disposed, when I shall have given these not their own names and those names not their own? So far does the matter demand that the gods be known individually, and that there be no uncertainty or doubt about the power of each one's name, lest, if they are invoked with others' rites and titles, they keep their ears closed and hold us bound by inexpiable guilt.

So if it is clear to you that this multitude of gods which you enumerate dwells and abides in the lofty palaces of heaven, you ought to stand within the bounds of a single statement, and not, pulled apart through various and conflicting opinions, destroy the credibility of the very things you build up. If it is Janus, let it be Janus; if Liber, let it be Liber; if Summanus, let it be Summanus: for this is to trust, this is to hold, to be fixed in the knowledge of an ascertained thing; not, like the blind and wandering, to say: 'The Novensiles are the Muses; no, they are the gods of Trebia; no, the number nine; or rather the guardians of overthrown cities', and to bring such great things into this danger, that while you take away some and put others in their place, it may rightly be doubted of all of them whether they exist in any part at all.

I would like to ask you, and above all the Romans themselves, lords and rulers of the world: do you think that Piety, Concord, Safety, Honor, Virtue, Happiness, and the other names of this kind, to which we see you have built altars with magnificent shrines, have divine power and dwell in the regions of heaven? Or have you, as usually happens, entered them in the roll of the gods above for form's sake, because we wish and want these good things to befall us? For if, thinking these are empty words and names without substance, you nevertheless consecrate them to the divine regions, you will have to consider whether this is a childish game or aims at mocking your deities, to whom you equate and join the fictions of empty words. But if, from a firmer conviction of mind, you have honored these too with temples and sacred couches, thinking them gods, we beg you to teach our ignorance: in what way, by what path, can Victory, Peace, Equity, and the others mentioned above be understood to be gods and to belong to the council of the gods above?

For we, unless perhaps you take away and snatch from us common sense, perceive and see that none of these has the power of a deity or is contained in any form of its own kind; rather, virtue is the virtue of a man, safety of one who is safe, honor of one who is honored, victory of a victor, concord of the concordant, piety of the pious, memory of one who remembers, and happiness of one who lives happily and without any misfortunes. That this is said by us most truly is evident from the contraries and can be recognized from the opposites: unhappiness, discord, forgetfulness, injustice, impiety, cowardice of heart, and poor health of body. For as these happen to people and are found in human actions and chance feelings, so what is opposed to them and named from kinder qualities must reside in others, from whom, thus formed, this fashioning of names was conceived.

As for your bringing in other troops of unknown gods, we cannot judge whether you do it seriously and in the belief of an ascertained fact, or whether, playing with empty fictions of the imagination, you frolic in extravagance. 'Because a she-wolf, not gentle by nature, spared the abandoned infants,' he says, 'she was called the goddess Luperca, on the authority of Varro.' Was this goddess, then, produced by the outcome of events, not by the force of nature? And after the savage beast held back its fierce bites, did she herself begin to exist and draw the meaning of her very name from it? Or if she was a goddess long before Romulus and his brother were born, tell us what her name and title was. Praestana was so called, as you say, because Quirinus surpassed (praestiterit) the strength of all in throwing the javelin; and because Titus Tatius was allowed to open and lay open (pandere) the way to take the Capitoline hill, a goddess was called Panda or Pantica. So these too had never been deities before the deeds; and unless Romulus had held the Palatine by the cast of his spear, and unless the Sabine king had been able to take the Tarpeian rock, would there be no Pantica and no Praestana? If you say that these too existed before the cause of their name, then, as was asked in the previous point, tell us what their names were.

Pellonia is a goddess mighty in driving away (pellendis) enemies. Tell us, if it is not troublesome: whose enemies? Sides clash and decide the issue between them in close combat with weapons, and this side is the enemy of that, and that hostile to this: whom, then, will Pellonia drive away when there is fighting on both sides? Or to whom will she yield her favor, when she ought to give the power and service of her name to both sides? If she does so, that is, if she gives favor and support to both sides, she will lose the force of her name, which was formed for driving away one side. Unless perhaps you will say: 'This goddess belongs to the Romans only, and, siding with the Quirites alone, is always ready with favorable help.' We would indeed wish it were so, for we favor the name; but the matter raises no small question. For what? Do the Romans possess gods of their own, who do not belong to other nations? And how can they be gods if they do not show the evenness of their name to all nations everywhere? And where, I ask, was this Pellonia long ago, when the public honor was sent under the yoke at the Caudine Forks, when torrents of blood ran at Lake Trasimene, when the plains of Diomedes were heaped with Roman corpses, when a thousand other wounds of battle were received in countless defeats? Was she sleeping, snoring, or, as base persons usually do, had she deserted to the enemy's camp?

The left gods and left goddesses preside only over the left-hand regions and are enemies of the right-hand parts. On what principle or in what sense of mind this is said, we neither grasp ourselves nor trust that you can bring it into any light of common understanding. For first, the world itself in itself has no right or left regions, no upper or lower, no front or back. For whatever is round and enclosed on every side by the convexity of solid roundness has no beginning and no end; and where there is no end and no beginning, there cannot be any part of that name. So when we say, 'This region is right, and that left', we do not say it with respect to the state of the world, which is wholly alike to itself, but we refer it to our position and situation, since we are so formed that some things are said to be on our right and others on our left. Yet these very things we call left and right have nothing permanent, nothing fixed in us, but take their shapes from our sides according as chance and the event of the moment have placed us. If I look toward the rising sun, the pole of cold and the north becomes my left; if I turn my face toward it, the west, which was behind my back with respect to the sun, will be on my left. Again, if I cast my eyes toward the west, the south and midday pass into the name of left; and if the necessary course of time turns me around to that part, it happens that the east is called left by the change of my body's direction. From this it can very easily be recognized that nothing is right or left by nature, but by positions, by times, according as the situation of our body is placed with respect to the surroundings of things. Since this is so, on what principle, in what way, will there be gods of the left-hand parts, when it is established that the same regions become now right and now left? Or how have the right-hand parts deserved it of the immortal gods to live without any guardians, the parts which they have always declared lucky and attended with favorable omens?

Lateranus, as you say, is the god and genius of hearths, and received this name because this kind of fireplace is built by people from unbaked bricks (laterculi). What then? If hearths are made of earthenware or any other material, will they have no genii, and will this Lateranus, whoever he is, withdraw from his office of guardianship because the possession of his kingdom is not built of clay forms? And what, I ask, does this god, who has drawn the presidency of hearths, do? Does he run through the kitchens of the human race, inspecting and exploring what kinds of wood are used to kindle the heat in his hearths; does he give strength to earthen pots so that they do not burst, overcome by the force of the flames; does he see to it that the flavors of unspoiled food come to the sense of the palate with their pleasantness; and does he perform the office of a taster, testing whether the dishes are properly seasoned? Is this not foul, or rather, to speak more truly, is it not insulting and impious to bring in some fictions of gods merely for this purpose, not to honor them with worthy honors, but to set them over base things and shameful activity?

Does military Venus also preside over the shameful doings of the camp and the debauching of boys? Is Perfica also one of the populace of deities, who makes those obscene and filthy pleasures proceed to completion with unhindered sweetness? Pertunda too, who is present in bedrooms when husbands dig through the virginal trench? Tutunus too, on whose huge private parts and bristling member you think it lucky and desirable for your matrons to ride? But if the facts themselves do not move you at all to understand the truth, can you not at least recognize from the names themselves that these are the fictions of the emptiest superstition and the imaginings of false gods? Puta, you say, is present at the pruning (putationes) of trees, Peta at asking (petendis) for things; Nemestrinus is the god of groves (nemora); Patellana is a deity and so is Patella, one of whom is set over things opened (patefactis), the other over things to be opened. Nodutis is said to be the god who brings sown crops to the knots (nodos); and the goddess who presides over threshing (terendis) crops is Noduterensis; the goddess ... frees from wandering off roads; parents bereaved (orbati) of children are under the guardianship of Orbona, and those whose last hours have come under Nenia's. Now she who hardens and solidifies the bones (ossa) of little infants is called Ossipago herself; Mellonia is a goddess powerful and mighty among bees, caring for and guarding the sweetness of honey (mel).

Tell me, I pray you, so that Peta, Puta, and Patella may favor you: if there were no bees at all on earth, or if we human beings were born boneless like some little worms, would the goddess Mellonia not exist, or would Ossipago, the solidifier of bones, not have her own name? For I ask and ask again: do the gods seem to you older by nature, time, and antiquity than human beings, or than bees, crops, shrubs, and the rest? No one will doubt that you say the gods precede all things that exist by countless ages and generations. If this is so, how can it happen in the nature of things that beings earlier in time should receive names from things produced later, or that the gods should have drawn the guardianship of things not yet born and given to mortals for their use? Or were the gods long without names, and after things began to be born and to exist on earth, were they deemed worthy by you to be called by these marks and titles? And how could you know what names to give each, when you did not know at all that they existed or that certain powers were in them, since it was likewise unknown to you which of them could do what and over what thing each ought to be set according to the power of its divinity?

'What then,' you say, 'do you judge that these gods exist nowhere at all and have been established by false opinions?' Not we alone say this, but truth itself, and reason, and that common sense which is in all mortals. For who would believe that there are Lucrian gods who preside over the gaining of profits (lucra), when profits very often come from shameful causes and always consist of others' losses? Who would believe that Libentina and ... watch over lusts, which wisdom bids us flee and which shameless obscenity tries and practices in a thousand forms? Who would believe that Limentinus and Lima keep watch over thresholds (limina) and perform the duties of doorkeepers, when we see the thresholds of shrines and of private houses torn down and undermined every day, and the shameful goings to the brothels are not without them? Who would believe in the Limi, guardians of crookedness, in Saturn, guardian of sowing, in Montinus of mountains, in Murcida of the sluggish? Who, finally, would believe that there is a goddess Money, whom your literature shows, as though she were the greatest deity, giving gold rings, front seats at games and shows, the highest platforms of honors, the grandeur of magistracy, and, what the lazy love most, carefree leisure through wealth?

But if bones, honey, thresholds, and all the other things we have either touched on in passing or left untouched to avoid excessive tedium have their own guardians in the divine seats, it is possible on the same principle to bring in a thousand other gods, who must give their care and protection to countless things. For why should a god preside over honey alone, and not over gourds, turnips, savory, cress, vetches, beets, and cabbages? Why should bones alone have deserved guardianship, and not nails, hair, and all the other things placed in hidden and more modest parts, though they are exposed to very many accidents and need the gods' care and attention more? Or if you say that these parts too are under guardian gods, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things; and no reason will be given why divine care should not preside over all things, if you say there are certain things over which deities preside and provide.

What do you say, you fathers of new religions and new powers? Do you cry out and complain that these gods are violated and neglected by us with sacrilegious contempt: Lateranus, genius of hearths, Limentinus, guardian of thresholds, Pertunda, Perfica, Noduterensis? And because we do not fall down as suppliants before Mutunus and Tutunus, do you say that affairs have slipped into ruin, and that the world itself has changed its laws and ordinances? But look and consider whether, when you invent and devise such monsters, you have not offended the true gods, if there are any who deserve to bear and hold the dignity of that name, and whether it is not for this reason that the evils you speak of boil up and grow worse with daily additions. 'Why then,' perhaps one of you will say, 'is it false that these gods exist? They obey when invoked by the soothsayers, come when summoned by their names, and give faithful answers to those who ask.' We can maintain that what is said is false, either because the whole matter is full of superstitions, or because we see every day many predictions either fall out otherwise or be twisted into contrary outcomes, with expectation disappointed.

But let them be true, as you assert: how will you prove that Mellonia, for example, or Limentinus enters the entrails and fits them to the meanings of the things you ask about? Have you ever seen their face, bearing, and features, or can these be seen in lungs or little livers? Can it not happen, however cunningly you conceal it, that one comes in place of another, deceiving, playing, tricking, and presenting the appearance of the one invoked? If the magi, the brothers of the soothsayers, report that in their summonings 'counter-gods' often creep in in place of those summoned, and that these are certain spirits of grosser matter who pretend to be gods and mock the ignorant with lies and pretenses, why should we not believe on a like principle that here too others substitute themselves for those who do not exist, both to confirm your opinions and to rejoice that victims are slaughtered for themselves under others' names?

Or if you refuse to accept this because it is new, how can you know whether there is one single being who takes the place of all whom you invoke, and, putting himself in all the parts and divisions of places, presents to us the appearance of many gods and powers? 'Who is this one?' someone may ask. We can say, taught by true authorities; but so that you may not refuse to believe us, let him ask the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chaldaeans, Armenians, and all those others who have seen and learned these things by more secret arts: you will surely learn who the one god is, or who are the very many under him who pretend to be gods and mock the ignorance of the human race. We have long been ashamed to come to that point at which not only little boys and saucy fellows cannot keep from laughing, but even serious people hardened into sternness of face. For since we have all received it as taught and handed down by our teachers that in the declension of gods' names there are no plural numbers, because the gods are individuals and the particularity of each one's name cannot be shared in common by many, you, forgetting this fact and with the memory of your childhood schooling put to sleep, have both supplied several gods under the same names, and, though elsewhere you are rather restrictive in their number, have made them manifold again by sharing titles. This part men of keen judgment and penetrating mind once explained in both the Italian and the Greek language. And that fact could have given us a shortcut, if we did not see that some are unacquainted with that literature, and if the discourse we have undertaken did not compel us also to set out something on these matters, though taken and recorded from them.

Your theologians, then, and the authors of hidden antiquity, say that there are three Jupiters in the nature of things: one begotten of Father Ether, another of Heaven, and the third of Saturn, both born and buried in the island of Crete. Five Suns and five Mercuries: of whom, as they relate, the first Sun is said to be the son of Jupiter and is considered the grandson of Ether; the second, likewise of Jupiter, born of Hyperiona as his mother; the third, of Vulcan, not the Lemnian but the son of the Nile; the fourth, the father of Ialysus, whom Acantho bore at Rhodes in heroic times; the fifth is held to be the father of the Scythian king and of shape-shifting Circe. Now the first Mercury, who is said to have neighed with lust at Proserpina with his parts erect, is the offspring of highest Heaven; the second is under the earth, who is claimed to be Trophonius; the third was born of Maia his mother and of Jupiter, but the third Jupiter; the fourth is the offspring of the Nile, whose name the Egyptian people shudder and fear to utter; the fifth is the slayer of Argus, a fugitive and exile, and the discloser of letters in Egypt. 'But there are also five Minervas,' they say, 'as there are five Suns and Mercuries': the first not a virgin, but the mother of Apollo by Vulcan; the second the offspring of the Nile, who is held to be Egyptian; the third is the child of Saturn, who devised the use of weapons; the fourth the offspring of Jupiter, whom the Messenians call Coryphasia; and the fifth is she who killed her father Pallas when he sought her incestuously.

And so as not to seem long and excessive by wanting to go through each item in detail, the same theologians say that there are four Vulcans and three Dianas, as many Aesculapiuses, and five Dionysuses, twice three Herculeses and four Venuses, three kinds of Castors and as many of Muses, a set of three winged Cupids and a set of four bearing the name of Apollo, whose fathers and mothers they likewise point out, and the places where they were born, and show the origin of each with its lineage. If this is true and certain and shown by the assertion of an ascertained fact, either none of them are gods, since several cannot exist under the same name, as we have learned; or, if one of them is, he will be unknown and not recognized, because he is blinded by the confusion of like names. And so it comes about through you yourselves, though you would not have it so, that religion wavers, thrown into confusion, and has no certain goal toward which it can direct itself, deceived by the many errors of ambiguity.

For imagine that we, moved either by authority or by the violence of your terror, have made up our minds to worship Minerva, for example, with your solemn rites and in the customary manner. If, when we are preparing to undertake the divine service and to pay her dues on flaming altars, all the Minervas fly to us, and, contending for possession of this name, each demands that that sacrificial preparation be given to her: what shall we do in the midst, feeble creatures that we are, or to which party shall we rather transfer the duties of pious service? For perhaps that first one we mentioned will say: 'Mine is the name of Minerva, mine the divinity, who bore Apollo and Diana, and by the offspring of my womb enlarged heaven with deities and multiplied the number of the gods.' 'No,' the fifth Minerva will say, '..., you who, as wife and mother so many times, have been diminished in the holiness of pure chastity. Do you not see that in all the Capitols the image of the Minervas is virginal, and all artists give them the forms of the unmarried? Stop, then, claiming a name of a right not yours. For all the chorus of poets is witness that I am Minerva, born of Pallas as my father, who call me Pallas by a surname derived from my father.' 'What do you say?' the second will say on hearing this. 'Will you bear the name of Minerva, you wanton parricide, polluted by the defilement of incestuous love, who, while you adorned yourself with paints and harlots' arts, even roused your father's mind toward you with plainly frenzied desires? Go on, then, look for another emblem for yourself; for this title is mine, whom the Nile, greatest of rivers, begot from its liquid waters and brought into virgin form by the thickening of dew. If you ask proof of the fact, I too will give the Egyptians as witnesses, in whose language I am Neith, as Plato's Timaeus testifies.' What then do we think will happen? Will she too desist from calling herself Minerva, whose name is Coryphasia, either from the sign of her mother Corypha or because she sprang from the very top (vertex) of Jupiter's head, bearing a shield and girded with the terrors of arms? Or will the one who is third patiently give up the name? Will she not take account of herself with such words as these, and refute the arrogance of the first: 'Do you dare to usurp the pure majesty of my name, you who were brought forth and clotted out of mud and muddy whirlpools? Or you, do you take on the dignity of another goddess, you who falsely claim to have been born from the head of Jupiter and persuade the silliest mortals that you are reason? Does Jupiter beget children conceived in his head? And so that the weapons you carry could be forged and fashioned, was there a smithy in the hollow of his skull, with anvils, hammers, furnaces, bellows, coals, and tongs? Or if what you assert is true, that you are reason, stop claiming for yourself the name that is mine: for what you call reason is not a certain form of a deity but the understanding of obscure causes.' If, then, as we said, when we approach to perform the religious duties of Minerva, five are present, and, quarreling over the ownership of this name, each wants either the fumes of incense to be offered to her or wine to be poured out from golden bowls as an offering, by what arbitrator, by what judge shall we settle such great disputes? Or what investigator, what umpire will there be for such great personages, to try either to award just possession among persons of this kind or to pronounce not unjust judgments on the pledges? Will he not rather go home and, keeping himself away from such business, think it safer to touch none of these things, lest by giving to one what belongs to all he makes the others his enemies, or incur the charge of folly if he assigns to all what ought to belong to one?

We could say the same things about the Mercuries, the Suns, indeed about all the others whose numbers you stretch and multiply. But it is enough to know from one case that the reasoning is the same in the rest; and so that prolixity may not breed weariness in the hearers, we will stop going through them one by one, lest, while we accuse you of excess, we too incur the fault of immoderate talkativeness. What do you say, you who invite us to the worship of the gods by the mangling of our limbs and compel us to take up the worship of your deities? We can be not difficult, if only something worthy of the reputation of so great a name is shown us. Show us Mercury, but one; give us Liber, but one; one Venus and likewise one Diana. For you will never make us believe that there are four Apollos or three Jupiters, not even if you summon Jupiter himself as a witness or set up the Pythian as your authority.

But someone on the other side says: 'How do we know whether the theologians wrote what they had examined and known, or put forth an arbitrary fiction as it seemed good to them and as they pleased?' That has nothing to do with the case, and the reasoning of this discussion does not rest on whether things are as the theologians' writings indicate or are otherwise and differ by a great distance. For it is enough for us to speak about things published, and not to ask what is in truth but to refute and convict what is set before the public and what human opinion has conceived. But if they are liars, you set out what the truth is and disclose the irrefutable secret. Yet how can this be done if the teachings of literature are set aside? For what can be said of the immortal gods that has not come to human notice from the writings of men? Or can you yourselves tell anything about their rites and ceremonies that has not been recorded in literature and published in the commentaries of writers? Or if you think these are of no weight, let all the books you have that were composed about the gods by theologians, pontiffs, and even some devoted to philosophy be abolished; indeed, let us rather imagine that from the beginning of the world no mortal ever ... anything about the gods: we want to test and desire to know whether you could mutter or open your mouth in mentioning the gods, or conceive in your mind those whom no notion from any writing had formed in your souls. But since it is agreed that you learned their names and powers from the prompting of books, it is unfair to take away credibility from those writings by whose testimony and authority you confirm what you say.

Unless perhaps these things will be false and what is said by you true. By what argument, by what sign? For since those who wrote this and those who wrote that were certainly human beings, and both sides disputed about uncertain matters, it is arrogant to say that what pleases you is true and to accuse what hurts your feelings of license and falsehood. By the rights of the human race and the fellowship of mortality itself, when you hear and read that such a god was born of such a father and such a mother, does it not touch the sense of your minds that something human is being said, something proceeding from the lowliness of the earthly race? Or, since you think this is so, do you feel no anxiety lest you incur some offense with those gods, whoever they are, because you believe they came out into a light unknown to them from shameful intercourse and the casting of seed, by the kind services of obscenity? For we, so that no one may think we are ignorant or do not know what befits the dignity of this name, hold that gods ought either to be without birth, or, if they have some origin, we hold and judge that they were sent forth by the Lord and Ruler of things for reasons that he himself knows, spotless, most chaste, pure, not knowing what that foulness of intercourse is, and with procreation brought to an end in them by the first begetting.

But you, on the contrary, forgetful of such great majesty and exaltation, join to them such births and ascribe to them such origins as people of more refined minds would hold in execration and horror. 'Diespiter,' you say, 'was born with his brothers of Ops his mother and Saturn his father.' Do the gods, then, have wives, and do they enter the bonds of marriage on terms first sought out? Do they solemnize the rites of the marriage bed by usage, by the spelt-cake ceremony, by purchase? Do they have girls they hope for, girls promised, betrothed with stipulations interposed? And why speak of the terms themselves, when ... say that some celebrated weddings and held festive gatherings, and that goddesses made merry at them, and that one, because she had no share in the Fescennine songs, threw everything into confusion by discord and sowed the dangers of destruction for the human race in time to come?

But perhaps the foulness of this disgrace shines out less in the others. Is that ruler of the sky, then, the father of gods and men, who moves and shakes the whole heaven with his brow, that is, his nod, formed from a man and a woman? And unless both sexes had dissolved into obscene pleasures with joined bodies, would that greatest Jupiter not exist, and would the deities to this day have no king, and would heaven stand without a lord? And why do we wonder that you say Jupiter was poured out of a woman's womb, when your authors write that he also had a nurse and kept the life he had received by the nourishment of another's breast? What do you say, men? Did he, I will say again, who thunders, flashes, hurls lightning, and gathers terrible clouds, suck the streams of breasts, utter wails, crawl, and, when he displayed his weeping in a most silly drawn-out way, fall silent on hearing rattles, and was he brought to sleep lying in the softest cradle and soothed by broken baby-talk? O religious defense of the gods! O showing forth and instilling of the venerable dignity of awesome greatness! Is it so, I ask, that the eminence of the powers above is born among you? Do your gods come forth into the light by the same generations by which asses, pigs, and dogs, by which all this unclean flood of earthly beasts is conceived and born?

And not content with having attributed these unions to the dignity of Saturn, you declare that the king of the world himself begot children even more shamefully than he himself was born and produced. 'Of Hyperiona as mother,' you say, 'and of Jupiter the hurler of thunderbolts, the golden and most blazing Sun was born; of Latona and the same, the Delian archer and Diana the huntress of the woods; of Leda and the same, ... whose name in Greek is the Dioscuri; of Alcmena and the same, that Theban Hercules, whom a club and a skin protected; of Semele and the same, Liber, who is called Bromius and was born a second time from his father's thigh; of the same again and Maia, Mercury, eloquent of speech and the bearer of friendly snakes.' Can any heavier insult be fixed on your Jupiter, or is there anything else that shakes or destroys the authority of the ruler of the gods, than that you believe he was once overcome by lustful pleasures and grew hot with the heat of an inflamed heart toward the desire of women? And what business did Saturn's royal son have with other men's marriages? Was Juno not enough for him, and could he not calm the rush of his desires in the queen of the deities, though such great nobility commended her, her beauty, face, dignity, and the snowy, marble-white arms? Or, not content with one wife, delighted by concubines, mistresses, and little girlfriends, did he spread his lack of self-control everywhere, as foolish young men usually do, a lecherous god, and, gray-haired, restore the ardor of his flagging pleasures from countless bodies? What do you say, you impious ones, or what foul opinions do you invent about your Jupiter? Do you not notice, do you not see, with what disgrace you brand him? Of what crime you make him the author? What stains of shameful deeds, how great infamies you heap on him?

Human beings, prone to lust and inclined to the allurements of pleasure by the weakness of nature, still punish adulteries by laws, and inflict capital penalties on those whom they catch having thrown themselves into other men's marriages by assaulting the marriage bed. Did the greatest of rulers not know what disgrace, what brand belonged to the role of seducer and adulterer? And did that watcher, as report has it, of those who deserve well and ill, having lost the reasoning of his heart, not see what it befitted him to want? And this maltreatment might perhaps be tolerated if you at least joined him to equal persons, and he were made by you an adulterer with immortal goddesses. But what beauty, I ask, what grace was there in human bodies that could provoke and turn Jupiter's eyes toward them? Skins, entrails, phlegm, and all that filth of the intestines placed beneath the coverings, at which not only that Lynceus with his penetrating sight might shudder, but anyone else might shun even by thought alone. O excellent reward of guilt! O worthy and precious sweetness, for the sake of which greatest Jupiter became a swan and a bull and the begetter of white eggs! If you are willing to open the eyes of the mind and look at the

truth itself without any private partiality, you will find that the causes of all the miseries by which, as you say, the human race has long been afflicted flow from such opinions as you have held from ancient times about your gods, and which you have refused to reform for the better when the truth was placed before your eyes. For what unseemly thing have we ever thought about them, or published in unbecoming writings, that the troubles of the human race and the diminished resources by which we live should be thrown on us as a reproach? Is it said by us that some gods were begotten from eggs like storks and pigeons? That the whiteness of Cytherean Venus grew together from the foam of the sea and the cut-off genitals of Caelus? That Saturn was bound for parricide and on fixed days is washed and relieved of the weight of his chains? That Jupiter was saved from death by the kindness of the Curetes? That he drove his father from the kingdom and held by violence and fraud a rule that belonged to another? That the old man, driven out, hid in the borders of the Italians, and because he had been safe there from his son, gave the name Latium as a reward? Do we say that Jupiter himself made an incestuous marriage with his sister, or that, invited to the right of the table, he unknowingly dined on Lycaon's child in place of pork? That Vulcan, lame in one foot, practiced the work of a smith on the island of Lemnos? That Aesculapius was pierced by the bolt of the thunderbolt for greed and avarice, as Pindar the Boeotian sings? That Apollo, made rich, deceived by the ambiguity of his answer the very kings whose treasures and gifts had enriched him? Did we publish that Mercury was a thief? That Laverna exists and presides together with him over thieves' frauds? Is Myrtilus, who declares that the Muses were the little maidservants of Megaclo, daughter of Macar, one of ours? That Venus, a little harlot ... by a Cyprian king named Cinyras, was consecrated in the number of the gods?

Who declared that the Palladium was put together from the remains of Pelops? Was it not you? Who, that Mars was a Spartan? Was it not Epicharmus, your author? Who, that he was born in the borders of Thrace? Was it not Sophocles the Athenian, with all the theaters agreeing? Who, that he was bound for thirteen months in Arcadia? Was it not the son of the river Meles? Who, that dogs are sacrificed to him by the Carians and asses by the Scythians? Was it not, first and foremost with the others, Apollodorus? Who, that while he was insulting another's marriage bed he was caught entangled in snares? Was it not your commentaries? Was it not your stage? Was it ever written by us that gods served in hired slavery, as Hercules at Sardis for love and wantonness, as Delian Apollo for Admetus, as the brother of Jupiter for Laomedon of Troy, as the Pythian for the same king together with his uncle, and as Minerva for those joining in the secrets of marriage, as the attendant of light and the regulator of lamps? Is it not your prophet who made Mars and Venus wounded by the hands of mortals? Is not Panyassis one of you, who records that Father Dis and Queen Juno were wounded by Hercules? Do not the writings of your Polemo show that the warrior maiden was struck, bloodied, and harassed by Ornytus? Does not Sosibius declare that Hercules himself, tortured by the sons of Hippocoon, came back with inflicted wounds and pain? Is it handed down as told by us that Jupiter was committed to burial on the island of Crete? Do we say that the brothers born together in eggs were buried in the Spartan and Lacedaemonian lands? Is he our author, who is shown in the titles of writings as Patrocles of Thurii, who records that the tomb and remains of Saturn are kept in Sicilian soil? Is Hieronymus ... Plutarch proved to be of our party, who declared that Hercules, after the ruin of epileptic fits, was dissolved into ashes on the heights of Oeta?

For what shall I say of those loves by which, as it is recorded in your literature and authors, the holy heavenly ones burned for women? Is it we who accuse the king of the sea of robbing Amphitrites, Hippothoes, Amymones, Melanippes, and Alcyones of the chastity of their virginity through the heat of furious desire? That Apollo, son of Latona, that spotless, most chaste, and pure one, sought Arsinoes, Aethusas, Hypsipyles, Marpessas, Zeuxippes and Prothoes, Daphnes and Steropes with the passions of a reckless heart? Is it shown in our poems that old Saturn, long covered with gray hair and already cold with the age of years, was caught by his wife in adultery, put on the form of a beast, and flew off under the appearance of a horse, neighing? Is not Jupiter himself, king of the world, infamous through you for going through countless forms and hiding the flame of wanton love under slavish deceptions? Was it ever written by us that, to accomplish his lustful thefts, he was turned now into gold, now into a playful satyr, into a serpent, a bird, a bull, and, what surpasses every kind of insult, into a little ant, so that, forsooth, he might make Clitor's daughter the mother of Myrmidon among the Thessalians? Who made him stay awake for nine continuous nights with Alcmena? Was it not you? Who made him lie idle in his loves, having abandoned his post in heaven? Was it not you? And indeed you add no small benefits, since there was born for us a god, Hercules, who in matters of this kind surpassed and exceeded the powers of his father. The one, in hardly nine nights, could beat out, put together, and compose one offspring; but Hercules, the holy god, in one night taught fifty daughters of Thestius both to lay aside the name of virginity and to bear the burdens of mothers. What of this, that not content with having attributed to the gods cares for the female sex, you also add males loved by them? Someone loves Hylas, another is occupied with Hyacinthus; that one burns with desire for Pelops, this one sighs more ardently for Chrysippus; Catamitus is snatched away to become a darling and keeper of the cups, and Fabius, so that he may be called Jupiter's chick, is branded in his soft parts and sealed behind.

But among you do only the male gods love, and has the female sex kept its holiness? Is it not recorded in your literature that Tithonus was loved by Aurora, that the Moon burned for Endymion, a Nereid for Aeacus, Thetis for the father of Achilles, Proserpina for Adonis, her mother Ceres for some rustic Iasion, and, after Vulcan, Phaethon, and Mars, that very Venus, mother of the sons of Aeneas and author of Roman dominion, for marriage with Anchises? Since, then, you hurl such disgraces and shameful monstrosities, not at some one god by name, but at the whole race of gods above, whom you think we deny, without any exception, do you dare, with your modesty intact, to say either that we are impious or that you are pious, when they receive much greater offenses from you from all the disgraces you gather into slanders against them than dignities and honors from the rite and duty of worship? For either all those things that are published about each of them, injuring their reputation and majesty, are false, and it is a matter wholly worthy of the gods utterly destroying the whole race of mortals; or, if they are ascertained, true, and grasped beyond any doubt, the matter is brought to this conclusion, that, very much against your will, we believe that they were not of the race above but of the human race.

For where there are weddings, marriages, childbirths, nurses, crafts, and infirmities; where there is loss of civil status and the condition of slavery; where there are wounds, slaughter, and blood; where there are loves, desires, and pleasures; where there is every feeling of the mind arising from restless disturbances: there nothing divine can be, nor can what is proper to a perishable race and earthly frailty attach to a more excellent nature. For who, if only he recognizes and perceives what the force of that power is, would believe either that God had genital parts and was deprived of them by a most shameful cutting off; or that he once swallowed the offspring produced from himself and was restrained by the punishment of chains; or that he somehow waged civil war with his father and kept him from his royal right; or that, terrified by fear of a younger one, he turned his back, overcome, and hid like a runaway and exile in remote hiding places? Who, I say, would believe that a god reclined at human tables, was killed for greed, deceived suppliants with the ambiguity of an answer, excelled in the tricks of theft, committed adultery, served as a slave, was wounded, fell in love, and carried the seductiveness of incestuous desires through every form of lust? Yet you assert that all these things both happened and are present in your gods, and you pass over no kind of vice, crime, or fall that you do not, by the wantonness of your opinions, bring in to slander the deities. So either you must seek other gods to whom all these things do not apply (for those to whom they apply are of the human and earthly race), or, if these are the only ones whose names and characters you have published, you abolish them by your own opinions. For whatever you relate is mortal.

And we could show at this point that all those whom you bring before us and call gods were human beings, either by unrolling Euhemerus of Acragas, whose books Ennius translated into the Italian language so that the matter might become clear to all; or through Nicagoras of Cyprus, Leon of Pella, Theodorus of Cyrene, Hippon and Diagoras of Melos, or a thousand other authors, who with the care of scrupulous diligence brought hidden things to light with free and frank independence. We could, I say, if you please, set out both the deeds of Jupiter and the wars of Minerva, the virgin, and of Diana; by what tricks Liber aimed at the rule of the Indians; of what condition Venus was, of what trade, of what earnings; whose marriage the Great Mother held; what hope, what pleasure she conceived from handsome Attis; where Egyptian Serapis came from, where Isis; or for what reasons the very designation of their names was devised.

But in this discourse we have not undertaken the small labor or the intention of showing and publishing who all these were. Our purpose is this: since you call us impious and irreligious and, on the contrary, maintain that you are pious and worshipers of the gods, to demonstrate and set forth that they are treated more disgracefully by no people than by you. If it is plain from the very slanders that this is so, it follows that it must be understood that it is you who provoke the gods to the goads of frenzied indignation, you who either hear or believe such foul things about them, or yourselves compose disgraceful fables. For it is not the one who carefully rereads the ritual and slaughters unblemished victims, who gives heaps of incense to be burned in the fire, who must be judged to worship the deities or alone to fulfill the duties of religion. True worship is in the heart, and an opinion of the gods worthy of them; and the offering of blood and gore is of no use if you believe things of them that are not only far removed and distant from their nature, but even bring some stain and disgrace on their majesty and honor.

For I would like to question you and call you to answer a brief question: do you think it more serious to slaughter no victims for them, because you think so great a nature neither wants nor desires them, or to conceive, in the foulness of your opinions, such disgraces about them as could rouse anyone's mind to a frenzy of revenge? If the weight of things is weighed, you would find no judge so ... as not to think it more criminal to have one's reputation torn by notorious slanders than to be passed over by someone in silence. For the latter may perhaps be thought and believed to have some reason; the former belongs to a sacrilegious mind and to a desperate blindness in fictions. If in your ceremonies and divine rites there is room for demands for repetition, and the commission of a fault needing atonement is said to have been incurred if through a slip of carelessness someone has gone astray in a word or with the ladle; or again, if in the solemn games and sacred races you all at once cry out that a fault has been committed against the sacred rites, if a dancer has stopped, or a flute player has suddenly fallen silent, or if that boy who is called patrimus and matrimus has let go of the thong through ignorance or has not been able to keep hold of the ground: do you dare to deny that the gods are always outraged by you in such serious offenses, when you yourselves confess that they are angry, often to the ruin of the state, for slighter causes?

'But all these things,' they say, 'are the fictions of poets and games composed for pleasure.' It is certainly not credible that men by no means stupid, and investigators of the most remote antiquity, either did not insert in their poems those tales which survived in people's notions and were lodged in their ears, or that they wanted to claim for themselves so licentious a right as to invent through folly things which were not far from madness and which could bring them fear from the gods and danger from men. But let us grant, as you say, that the poets were the composers and inventors of such great deformities: even so you are not free from mistreating the gods, you who either fail to punish such misdeeds, or do not meet such great recklessness with laws passed and severe penalties, and have not decreed that no one in future should say anything close to disgrace or unworthy of the majesty of the gods. For whoever allows the sinner to sin supplies strength to his boldness; and it is a greater insult to brand and mark someone with false charges than to press and reproach him with true offenses. For what you are said to be and feel yourself to be has a lesser sting, blunted by the testimony of silent recognition; but what brands the innocent and defames the honor of their name and reputation wounds most bitterly.

Your gods are written of as dining in heavenly banqueting halls and golden porticoes, drinking, and finally being soothed by lyres and the melody of voices. You lend most patient ears, and do not judge it unworthy that the gods are given those pleasures by which earthly bodies are sustained and which ears softened by the enervation of a weakened heart desire. Some of them are brought in as lovers, adulterers of chastity, having shameful and disgraceful intercourse not only with women but also with men. You have no care what is said about such great matters, nor do you restrain the boldness of licentious literature with any fear of correction. Some, through madness and frenzy, bereave themselves and stain themselves with their own parricide as though with an enemy's blood: you admire those sacrileges, exalted in lofty style, and what ought to have been punished with every penalty you extol with the incentive of praise, so that boldness may rise up more spiritedly. Others groan at the wounds of bereavement and accuse the cruel fates with unseemly wailing: you are amazed at the power of the eloquence, and what ought to have been entirely removed from the ... of the human race, you review, you learn by heart, and you take care that none of it perishes by forgetfulness. They are said to be wounded, harassed, and to wage wars among themselves with the heat of frenzied conflicts: that description is a pleasure to you, and, to defend the great boldness of the writers, you pretend that those things are allegories and teachings of natural science.

But why do I complain of the neglected insults to other deities? That Jupiter himself, whose name it befitted you not to utter without fear and a trembling of the whole body, is described as caught by his wife with a lover and confessing his faults, and, as though insane and unaware, hardened in shamelessness, publishing which girlfriends he preferred to his spouse, which mistresses to his wife. You say that those who produced such monstrosities are the princes and kings of poets, endowed with divine talents, most holy persons; and you have flown so far from the duty of the religions you introduced that words which violate the majesty of the heavenly beings carry more weight with you. Was it not fitting, then, if there were any fear of the gods among you, or if you believed with the confidence of a most certain conviction that they exist anywhere, to intervene, forbid, and decree by bills, plebiscites, and decrees of the senate, under fear, that no one should wish to say anything at random about the gods except what was full of reverence? Did they not at least deserve this honor from you, that by the same laws by which you drive injuries away from yourselves you should drive them away from these? Those who have muttered anything unfavorable about your kings are guilty of treason among you. You have decreed that to degrade a magistrate, or to assail a senator with abuse, is most dangerous, with severe penalties. You would not let one who writes an evil song, by which another's reputation and life are defiled, escape unpunished under the decrees of the decemvirs; and so that no one might strike your ears with more insolent abuse, you established formulas concerning outrageous injuries. Only the gods above are dishonored among you, contemptible and cheap, against whom you have given the right to say whatever anyone wants, and to hurl whatever forms of disgrace lust has invented and devised. And you do not blush to charge us with neglecting such infamous deities, when it is much more right not to believe that there are gods than to think that they are such, and of such repute?

But did you want only the poets to be allowed to invent unworthy tales and scandalous mockeries about the gods? What of your pantomimes, your actors, that multitude of mimes and of the debauched kind? Do they not misuse your gods for their own profit, and draw the enticements of pleasure from insults and outrages to the divine? The colleges of all the priests and magistrates sit at the public shows, the chief pontiffs and chief curios; the fifteen men sit crowned with laurel, and the flamens of Jupiter with their pointed caps; the augurs sit, interpreters of the divine mind and will; the chaste virgins too, perpetual nurses and keepers of the fire; the whole people and senate sit, fathers who have held the consulship, kings nearest to the gods and most august: and, what would be wicked to hear, that mother of the race of Mars, begetter of the ruling people, Venus, is danced as a lover, and is represented in shameless imitation as raving through all the feelings of a cheap harlot. The Great Mother too, adorned with sacred fillets, is danced; and that Pessinuntian Dindymene, against the dignity of her age, is represented as eager with shameful desire for the embrace of a herdsman. And in the Trachinian Women of Sophocles, Hercules, that offspring of Jupiter, caught in the snare of a poisonous garment, is brought on uttering pitiable wails, broken by the violence of pain, and consumed by the wasting of his dissolving inward parts to the last decay. Indeed, in the plays that greatest ruler of the sky himself is brought on, without any awe for his name and majesty, playing the part of adulterers, and changing his face with deceit in order to seduce the chastity of other men's wives, and taking the place of husbands by the pretense of a counterfeit body.

Nor is this fault enough. The persons of the most holy gods are also brought into mimes and scurrilous farces, and so that laughter and merriment may be stirred in idle spectators, the deities are struck with joking jibes. The theaters shout and rise, all the tiers resound with crashes and applause; and, what could be expiated by no satisfaction, gifts and rewards are established for the debauched mockers of the deities, leisure from public duties, immunity, and exemption with crowns. And after this do you dare to wonder where these evils arise from, by which mortality is flooded and oppressed without any interruption, when every day you recite and every day learn by heart all those things in which the disgraces of the deities and the inscriptions of slander are wrapped up, and, whenever you want your idle mind to be occupied with leisurely delusions, you demand that days be given you and that they be performed without any interruption? But if you had any indignation for your religions, you ought long ago to have burned these writings instead, torn down those books, and destroyed these theaters instead, in which the infamies of the deities are published daily in shameless plays. For why have our writings deserved to be given to the flames? Why have our meeting places deserved to be savagely torn down, in which the supreme God is prayed to, and peace and pardon are asked for all, for magistrates, armies, kings, friends, enemies, both those still living and those released from the bonds of the body; in which nothing is heard but what makes people humane, gentle, modest, chaste, pure, sharing their property, and joined with all of you in the bond of firm brotherhood?

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?

The greatness of the subject and the duty of the defense itself indeed demand that we likewise pursue the other kinds of disgrace, both those which the histories of antiquity publish and those which the holy mysteries contain, called initiations, which you hand down not to all in common but to the silence of a few. But the countless rites of the sacred things and the deformity attached to each ... prevent us from going through them all; indeed, to express it more truly, we ourselves turn aside from some by design and reason, lest, while we strive to explain everything, we be polluted by the defilements of the exposition itself. Let us pass over, then, Fenta Fatua, who is called the Good Goddess, whom Sextus Clodius, in the sixth book of his Greek work on the gods, shows was beaten with myrtle rods because she drank a jar full of wine without her husband's knowledge; and that a sign of this is shown, that when women perform a sacred rite to her, an amphora of wine is set up covered, and it is not lawful to bring in myrtle branches, as Butas writes in his Causes. But let us also be silent, with like restraint and discretion, about the Conserentes gods, of whom Flaccus writes, among other things, that they, turned into the likeness of a human member, covered themselves with the ash that had been made under a little pot of entrails; and that when Tanaquil, skilled in the lore of Etruria, moved it, the gods rose up and grew hard with divine sinews. Then she ordered a captive woman from Corniculum to understand and recognize what the matter meant: that Ocrisia, a most prudent woman, took the gods into her body and made the proper movements; then the holy deities, boiling over, discharged their force ..., and King Servius was born a Roman.

We will also pass over the monstrous Bacchanalia, whose Greek name is Omophagia, in which, with feigned frenzy and with soundness of mind set aside, you wrap yourselves with snakes, and, to show that you are full of the god's divinity and majesty, you tear apart with bloody mouths the flesh of bleating goats. We will also pass over those hidden initiations of Cyprian Venus, whose founder is said to have been King Cinyras, in which those admitted bring certain fees as to a harlot and take back phalluses given as signs of the gracious deity. Let the Corybantic rites also be given to oblivion, in which this holy mystery is taught: a brother killed by his brothers; parsley sprung from the blood of the slain; that herb forbidden to be set on tables, lest inexpiable offense be incurred from the dead man's Manes. And we refrain from proclaiming those other Bacchanalia, in which a secret and unspeakable thing is disclosed and instilled into the initiates: how Liber, occupied with childish playthings, was torn apart by the Titans; how he was cut limb from limb by them and thrown into little pots to be cooked; how Jupiter, enticed by the sweetness of the smell, flew to the meal uninvited, and, discovering the grave deed, overwhelmed the robbers with his thunderbolt and hurled them into the lowest seats of Tartarus. The Thracian poet has published in his songs testimony and evidence of this event: knucklebones, a mirror, tops, rolling wheels and smooth balls, and golden apples taken from the Hesperides for the maidens.

It was our plan to pass over and sail past also those mysteries into which Phrygia and the whole people of Ilium are initiated, were it not that the name of Jupiter placed in them forbids us to pass over his wrongs and disgraces briefly; not that it is pleasant for us to ride roughshod over such foul mysteries, but so that it may be made plain to you yourselves again and again what injury you heap on those whose guardians, defenders, and worshipers you profess to be. Once, they say, when Diespiter burned with wicked lusts and forbidden desires for Ceres, his mother (for this goddess is held by the inhabitants of that region to be Jupiter's mother), and yet did not dare to seek by open force what he had conceived in wanton craving, he devised ingenious traps by which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of the kind. From a god he becomes a bull, and, hiding the mind and boldness of a seducer under the appearance of a beast, he rushes with sudden violence, raging, upon her, unsuspecting and unaware; he does his incestuous deed, and, the fraud betrayed by his lust, recognized and known, he flies away. The mother burns with frenzy and indignation, foams, pants, boils over, and, not able to contain her roaring and the storm of her anger, from her continuous passion she took thereafter the name Brimo. Nor has she anything else at heart than to pursue her son's audacity with what punishments she can.

Jupiter is in distress, broken by fear, and does not find by what remedies he may soothe the mind of the violated one. He pours out prayers and supplicates: the ears of the grieving one are closed. The whole order of the gods is sent as envoys: no one's authority is great enough to be heard. At last the son, seeking ways of making amends, devises this remedy: he picks out a fine ram with very large testicles, cuts them off himself, and strips them of the woolly covering of the scrotum. Approaching his mother, grieving and humble, as though he had condemned himself by his own sentence, he throws them into her lap. Seeing the manhood of the pledge, she takes on a gentler mind and is brought back to care for the offspring she had conceived. After the tenth month she bears a daughter of splendid body, whom the following age of mortals called now Libera and now Proserpina. When Jupiter the wether saw her very strong, blooming, and full of sap, forgetting what evils and crime he had lately undertaken and how much rashness, he returns to his former deeds; and since it seemed wicked enough for a father to be joined with his daughter in close conjugal union, he changes into the terrible form of a serpent, binds the terrified maiden in huge coils, and under the disguise of a beast plays and fawns on her with the softest embraces. It happens that she too is filled with the seed of mighty Jupiter, but not on the same terms as her mother: for the mother produced a daughter drawn with her own features, but from the maiden's childbirth there was poured forth, in the form of a bull, a monument of Jupiter's seduction. Someone will want an authority for the matter: then we will cite that well-known Tarentine iambic line which antiquity sings, saying: 'The bull begot the serpent, and the serpent the bull.' Finally, the rites themselves and the ritual of initiation, called the Sebadia, can be witness to the truth: in them a golden snake is let down into the bosom of the initiates and taken out again from the lower and lowest parts.

I do not think it necessary here also to go through each member with much talk and show how great springs of disgrace and shameful deeds are in the separate parts. For who among mortals, bearing even a slight sense of humanity, does not himself see clearly what all these things are, how wicked, how foul, and what great disgraces the gods bear from the very rites of the mysteries and from the unseemly origins of the rites? 'Jupiter,' he says, 'burned for Ceres.' What, I ask, has this Jupiter, whoever he is, deserved so much from you, that there is no kind of disgrace, no infamy, no adultery which you do not heap on his head as on some vile and dirty character? Leda betrayed the right of marriage: Jupiter is said to be the author of the fault. Danae could not keep her virginity: it is told as Jupiter's theft. Europa hastened to the name of woman: the same one is boasted to be the conqueror of her chastity. Alcmena, Electra, Latona, Laodamia, a thousand other virgins and a thousand mothers, and with them the boy Catamitus, were stripped of the honor of their modesty: everywhere the story of Jupiter is the same, and there is no kind of disgrace with which you do not join his name in shared lusts; so that he seems, pitiable one, to have been born for no other reason at all than to be the companion of crimes, the material of slanders, a kind of exposed place into which all the filth from the sewers of the bilges might drain. Yet if you said that he had dealings with strange women, the thing would indeed be impious, but the injury of the slander would be tolerable. Did he neigh after his mother too, after his daughter too, with the cravings of a savage heart, and could neither the holiness nor reverence of his mother, nor even the horror of a pledge sprung from himself, draw him away from the image of so foul a thought?

I should like, then, to see that father of the gods, Jupiter, the eternal power over things and men, adorned with cattle's horns, shaking hairy ears, his steps contracted into hooves, chewing the cud of green grass, and at the back, his tail, hocks, and ankles smeared with soft dung and covered with the flow of his intestines. I should like, I say, to see (for it must be said more often) him who turns the stars and terrifies and lays low the pale nations with his crash, chasing flocks of wethers, inspecting rams' testicles, seizing them with that censorial and divine hand with which he is accustomed to brandish flashing fires and rage with thunderbolts; then searching out hidden parts, and, with witnesses removed, tearing off the membranes surrounding the progeny, and offering them to his mother, still boiling with anger, as some kind of fillets for eliciting pity: gaping, pale, wounded, feigning the torments of pain, and, to make the deed believed, stained with ram's blood and covered with woolen bandages and linen cloths for the lie of a wound. Is this to be heard and read under this axis of the world? And do those who handle these things want to be thought pious, holy, and guardians of religion? Is there any sacrilege greater than this, or can any mind be found endowed with opinions so irreligious as one which believes, accepts, or publishes such things in the inmost mysteries of the rites? That Jupiter, whoever he is, if he felt that he existed or were affected by any sense of injury, would it not be a fitting matter for him, angry and roused, to take the earth from under our feet, put out the lights of the sun and moon, and indeed throw all things together into the appearance of the ancient unity?

'But these rites,' he says, 'do not belong to our state.' Who says this, or who replies? A Roman, a Gaul, a Spaniard, an African, a German, or a Sicilian? And what does it help the case if these are not yours, when those who perform them are of your party? Or what does it matter whether you approve of them or not, when those that are properly yours are found to be of similar foulness or of a greater kind of disgrace? For do you want us to consider those divine mysteries which the Greeks call the Thesmophoria, for which those holy night-long vigils and solemn all-night festivals were consecrated by the Attic people? Do you want us, I say, to see what origins and causes they have, so that we may prove that Athens itself too, powerful in the arts and studies of humane culture, speaks as insultingly against the gods as others do, and that no lesser disgraces are published by them under the appearance of religion than those which you throw at others? Once, they say, when Proserpina, not yet a woman and still a maiden, was gathering purple flowers in the little meadows of Sicily, and when the desire of gathering drew her here and there through the flowery harvest, the king of the Manes, leaping up through a cave of great depth, carried off the maiden with him and hid himself again in the depths of the earth. When Ceres did not know this had happened and could not guess where in the world her daughter was, she set her mind on seeking the lost one through the whole world: she takes twin torches kindled with the flames of Etna, and, lighting her way with them, goes to search in all the regions of the earth.

In the wandering of this search she comes also to the borders of Eleusis: that is the name of a district located in the region of Attica. At that time five earth-born people lived in these parts, whose names were these: Baubo, Triptolemus, Eumolpus, Eubuleus, Dysaules: Triptolemus the yoker of oxen, Dysaules the keeper of goats, Eubuleus of pigs, Eumolpus of the woolly flock, from whom the race of the Eumolpidae flowed and that famous name among the Cecropians is derived, and those who later flourished as heralds, hierophants, and criers. So that Baubo, whom we said was an inhabitant of the district of Eleusis, receives Ceres, worn out by manifold evils, with hospitality, and flatters her with gentle attentions. She asks her to take care to refresh her body, and offers to her burning thirst a drink of barley groats, which Greece calls kykeon. The grieving goddess turns away and rejects the kind services, and her misfortune does not allow her to remember her health. Baubo, on the other hand, courteously asks and urges her, as is the custom in such cases, not to scorn her kindness: Ceres persists most obstinately and keeps the stubbornness of untamed rigidity. When this happened often and her unconquerable resolve could not be worn down by any attentions, Baubo changes her tactics, and resolves to cheer with wonders of mockery one whom she could not entice by serious means. That part of the body by which the female sex both brings forth offspring and usually gains the name of mother, she frees from longer neglect, makes it take a smoother appearance, and smooths it into the likeness of a boy's face, not yet hard and bristly. She returns to the sad goddess, and, among those ordinary things with which it is customary to break and temper grief, she uncovers herself and shows all those parts of shame, her groin exposed. The goddess fixes her eyes on it and feeds on the appearance of an unheard-of consolation; then, made more cheerful by laughter, she takes and drinks the drink she had spurned, and what the modesty of Baubo could not long obtain, the obscenity of a shameless act extorted.

If anyone perhaps suspects that we are wickedly slandering, let him take the books of the Thracian prophet, which you say are of divine antiquity, and he will find that we neither cunningly invent anything nor seek and contrive to make the holiness of the gods laughable. For we will set before you the very verses which the son of Calliope uttered in the Greek language and, by singing, made public for human use through the ages: 'So saying, she drew up her robe from the bottom and showed to her eyes the parts formed in her groin; ... which Baubo, shaking with hollow hand (for the face was like a boy's), claps and handles in friendly fashion. Then the goddess, fixing the orbs of her august eyes, softened a little, lays aside the sadness of her mind; then she takes the cup in her hand, and, with laughter following, gladly drinks all the liquor of the kykeon.' What do you say, you shrewd sons of Erechtheus, you citizens of Minerva? My mind longs to know with what eloquence you will defend such dangerous business, or what arts you have to give safety to persons or matters and cases so pierced through. This is not a false indictment, nor are you attacked by a slanderous denunciation. The shameful origins of your Eleusinian rites are known: the inscriptions of ancient literature publish them, and finally the very tokens which you answer when asked at the reception of the rites: 'I have fasted and drunk the kykeon; I have taken from the chest and put in the basket; I have received again and transferred to the little chest.'

So then, as those holy and secret mysteries declare, do your gods carry off and get carried off, contract marriages sought by stealthy frauds; is the ornament of virginity snatched from those who resist and are unwilling; are impending injuries not known; is it unknown what has happened to those carried off; do they search for what is lost like human beings, and wander through the vastness of the world with lamps and torches under the brightest sun? Are they affected, do they grow sick, do they take on the squalor of mourners and the marks of misery; and, so that they may turn their minds to nourishment and the taking of food, is no reason, no time, no serious speech or earnest kindness applied, but a shameless obscenity of the body shown, and those parts thrown before them which common modesty bids us hide, which the law of natural shame bids us conceal, which it is unlawful to name among chaste ears without asking pardon and without prefacing apologies? What spectacle, I ask, what was there in Baubo's private and shameful parts, that turned to wonder and laughter a goddess of the female sex, formed with a like member, and that, thrown before her eyes and divine gaze, both gave her forgetfulness of her miseries and brought her into a happier state by sudden merriment? O what things, how many, could we set forth in mockery and jest, if the religion of our people and the authority of our writings did not forbid us!

I confess that I have long been hesitating, looking about, and shuffling, doubling the Tellenian tricks, as the saying is, while shame keeps me from bringing forward those Alimuntian mysteries in which Greece sets up phalluses in honor of Father Liber, and all the territories flourish with images of male members. What this is is perhaps obscure, and one asks for what reason it is done. Whoever of you does not know it, learn it, and, admiring such great things, guard it always in pure minds with fearful observance. When Liber, the Nysian and son of Semele, was still among men, they say, he desired to know the underworld and to inquire what went on under the seats of Tartarus; but this desire of his was hindered by some difficulties, because through ignorance of the route he did not know by what way to go and proceed. A certain Prosymnus appears, a shameful lover of the god and quite prone to wicked lusts, who promises to show him the door of Dis and the approaches to Acheron, if the god would comply with him and allow wifely pleasures to be taken from him. The god, easygoing, swears that he will be in his power and at his will, but only when he had returned from the underworld, having gained his wish and completed his expedition. Prosymnus courteously explains the way and sets him at the very threshold of the underworld. Meanwhile, while Liber surveys Styx, Cerberus, the Furies, and all the other things with curious inquiry, the guide departs from the number of the living and is buried in the human manner. Euius emerges from the underworld and learns that his guide is dead: and so that he might fulfill the terms of the pact and free himself from the religious obligation of his oath, he goes to the place of burial, cuts a very strong branch from a fig tree, hews, planes, and smooths it, and fashions it into the likeness of a human member; he fixes it on the mound of the tomb, and, stripped behind, approaches, lowers himself, and sits upon it. Then, taking on the wantonness of one in heat, he twists his buttocks this way and that, and pretends to suffer from the wood what he had long ago promised in reality.

And so that no one may think such impious things have been invented by us, we do not ask him to believe Heraclitus as a witness, nor do we want him to learn from his own reading what he thought about such mysteries: let him ask the whole of Greece what these phalluses mean which ancient custom sets up and venerates through the countryside and towns; he will find that the causes are those we state. Or if they are ashamed to explain the truth simply, what will it help to obscure and cover the cause and origin of the rite, when the very accusation lies in the religious act itself? What do you say, you Gentiles, you nations occupied and devoted to the veneration of temples? Is it to these rites that you drive us by flames, exiles, slaughter, and other kinds of punishment, and by fear of cruelty? Are these the gods you bring upon us, press upon us, force upon us, whom you would neither wish to be like yourselves, nor wish anyone joined to you by degree of blood and right of kinship to be like? Can you tell your beardless boys still in the purple-bordered toga what pacts Liber made with his lovers? Can you urge your daughters-in-law, indeed your own wives joined to you in marriage, to the modesty of Baubo and the chaste pleasures of Ceres? Do you want your young men to know, hear, and learn what sort of man Jupiter himself proved toward one mother and another? Do you want grown maidens and fathers still vigorous to learn by what art the same god sported with his daughter? Do you want sisters already passionate, and brothers from the same seed, to hear again that the same god did not spurn the bed of his sister? Must one not then flee far at once from such gods, and must all hearing be closed so that the obscenity of so impure a religion may not creep into the mind? For who among mortals is trained in such chaste character that the examples of the gods would not provoke him to such frenzies? Or who could restrain his desires from kin and persons to be revered, when he sees that among the gods above nothing holy is kept in the confusion of lusts? For when it is established that the first and perfect nature could not rein in its desire within just limits, why should man not pour himself into promiscuous cravings, thrown headlong by inborn frailty and helped by the teaching of the holy divinity?

I confess that I have long been accustomed, as I reflect in my mind on the monstrosities of such things, to wonder that you dare to call anyone an atheist, irreligious, or sacrilegious, among those who either deny or doubt that there are gods at all, or who maintain that they were human beings and were brought into the number of the gods because of some power and merit; when, if a true examination were made and held, no one would more fittingly be called by such names than you, who under the appearance of worship heap on them more slanders and charges than if you had done it openly, steeped in avowed abuse. He who doubts that there are gods, or denies altogether that they exist, though he may seem to follow monstrous opinions with boldness, still, without attacking any person, does not lend belief to obscure matters; and he who asserts that they were of earthly race, though he deprives them of the loftiness of heavenly beings, still heaps extra praises on them, since he maintains that they were raised to the merit of divinity by their benefits and the admiration of their virtues.

But you, who maintain that you are the defenders and champions of their immortality, have you passed over any one of them, left any unwounded by your slanders? Or is there any kind of disgrace, condemned by common judgment, that you have feared to bring upon them, or have been slowed down by at least the authority of their name? Who declared that the gods loved perishable and mortal bodies? Was it not you? That they committed those sweetest thefts in other men's marriage beds? Was it not you? That sons joined in ill-omened intercourse with their mothers, and fathers in turn with their own daughters? Was it not you? That handsome little boys and grown youths with the most beautiful features were sought after incestuously? Was it not you? Who said that they were castrated, debauched, shape-shifters, thieves, held in bonds and chains, finally attacked with thunderbolts, wounded, that they died and even received earthly burials? Was it not you? Since, then, so many and such great charges have been composed by you to insult the gods, do you dare to object that the minds of the deities are offended because of our name, when it has long been clear that you are guilty of such great anger and the authors of divine indignation?

'But you are wrong,' he says, 'and you slip, and you show by your very attack on these things that you are quite unskilled, uneducated, and boorish. For all these histories, which seem to you shameful and to tend to the dishonor of the divine, contain holy mysteries in themselves, wonderful and deep reasons, not such as anyone could easily discern by liveliness of wit. For what is written and placed on the surface of the words is not what is signified and meant; all those things are understood in allegorical senses and hidden meanings put underneath. So he who says that Jupiter lay with his mother does not mean incestuous or shameful embraces of Venus, but names Jupiter for rain and Ceres for the earth. And he who again declares that he practiced wantonness with his daughter says nothing of foul pleasures, but puts Jupiter for the name of rain and the daughter for the seed. So too he who says that Proserpina was carried off by Father Dis does not say, as you think, that the maiden was carried off for most shameful desires, but, because we hide seeds in the clods, means that the goddess went under the earth and made a pact with Orcus for fruitful increase. In the same way in the other histories too one thing is said and another understood, and under the common simplicity of speech lies a secret meaning and the wrapped-up depth of a mystery.'

All these are, as appears, subtleties and sharp points, with which it is customary to prop up bad cases in the courts; or rather, to speak more truly, the colors of sophistical disputes, by which not the truth but always an image, appearance, and shadow of truth is sought. For since it is shameful, unbecoming, and unseemly to accept the straightforward readings, the course has been taken of substituting one thing for another and forcing the interpretation of disgrace into an appearance of decency. But what is it to us whether other senses and other meanings lie beneath your writings? For it is enough for us, who maintain that the gods are treated wickedly and impiously by you, to accept what is written and what is heard, and not to care what is in the hidden part, since the insult to the deities is held not in the obscure intention of the meanings but in the signification of the prominent words. And yet, so that we may not seem unwilling to examine what sort of thing this is that is said, we ask you first, if you are willing to lend us patience: from where have you learned or been informed that these things were either written in an allegorical manner or must in the end be understood in that way? Did the writers call you into their counsel? Or were you hiding in their breasts at the time when they substituted some things for others, with the inner truth covered? Then, if they, for some reason and from religious fear, wanted to wrap those mysteries in dark obscurity, how bold of you to want to understand what they did not want understood, to know and lay open to the knowledge of all what they hid, in vain, with words that do not signify the truth!

But even if we agree with you that in all these fables hinds are spoken of instead of Iphigenias, how is it clear to you, when you want to explain or disclose these allegories, that you interpret and understand the same things that were felt by the historians themselves in their silent thoughts, and set out not by their proper words but by other meanings? You say that the union of Jupiter and Ceres means rain falling into the bosom of the earth: another may devise something else, more cleverly, and guess it with the likeness of truth; a third may devise something else, a fourth something else; and as the qualities of the imaginers' minds carry them, so each thing can be explained by infinite interpretations. For since all this so-called allegory is taken from hidden matters and has no certain limit in which the meaning of what is said is fixed and unmoved, each is free to draw the reading to whatever he wishes and to affirm that the meaning lies where his own suspicion and plausible conjecture has led him. Since this is so, how can you take certain things from doubtful ones, and attach a single meaning to a saying which you see drawn off in countless ways by the variety of expositions?

Finally, if you think it suitable, we ask you this also with a repeated question: do you think that all these fables, that is, each of them in its entirety, were written in a double-edged, two-tongued, shape-shifting way, or that some parts of them say nothing ambiguous and others are manifold and veiled with the overlay of an allegorical covering? For if the whole fabric and series of the exposition, from beginning to end, is enclosed in allegorical coverings, explain and show us what we ought to substitute for the individual things each fable speaks of, and bring forth and call into other things and meanings. For as you want us to understand Jupiter as rain, Ceres, for example, as the earth, and Libera and Father Dis as the sinking of seed and ..., so you must tell us what we ought to understand by the bull, what by the indignation and anger of Ceres, what the word Brimo means, what the supplication of anxious Jupiter, what the heavenly ones sent as envoys and not heard, what the castrated ram, what the offspring of the castrated ram, what the satisfaction made by these, what the things done again with more obscene lust with the daughter? Likewise in the other fable, what are the grove of Henna and the flowers, what the fire taken from Etna and the torches kindled with it, what the wandering through the world with these, what the Attic region, what the Eleusinian district, what Baubo's hut and rustic hospitality, what the drink of kykeon signifies, what the refusal of the drink, what the shaving and uncovering of the private parts, what the shameful sweetness of the spectacle and the forgetfulness of bereavement obtained by such remedies? If you show what ought to be substituted for all these by a change of things, we shall grant you assent to such an assertion; but if you can neither substitute one thing for each nor call the connection of the facts into another sense, why do you load with allegorical obscurities what is written simply and published for common understanding?

Unless perhaps you will say that these allegories are not in the whole body of the history, but that some parts are written in the common way and others veiled with a double and two-sided covering. That is a clever subtlety, but plain to any dullard. For since it is most difficult for you to transpose, invert, and divert everything that is written, you choose some things that suit your wish and strive to maintain from them that spurious and adulterated readings are laid over an inner truth. But even if we grant you that the matter is as you say, how do you know, or from where do you learn, which part of the history is written in simple meanings and which is covered by discordant and foreign significations? For it may happen that what you think is so is otherwise, and that what you believe is otherwise was put forth in other and contrary conceptions. For when it is said that in the body of one subject part is written allegorically and the other in undoubted and straightforward speech, and there is no sign in the matter by which the difference between the ambiguous and the simply spoken can be shown, what is simple may as well be thought to have been said ambiguously as what is written ambiguously may be believed to be free of coverings. In what way this is done or can be believed possible, we confess we cannot understand at all. For let us examine what is said in this way.

'Once,' he says, 'in the grove of Henna, the maiden Proserpina was gathering flowers.' So far this is whole and set out in straightforward statement; for what a grove and flowers are, what Proserpina is, what a maiden is, is known to all beyond doubt. 'Summanus sprang from the earth, carried in a four-horse chariot.' This too is equally simple; for four horses, a chariot, and Summanus need no interpretation. 'Unforeseen, he carried off Proserpina and took her with him under the earth.' 'The hiding of seed,' he says, 'is called by the carrying off of Proserpina.' What happened, I ask, that the history was suddenly turned into something else, that Proserpina was called seed, so that she who had just been held to be a maiden gathering flowers began, after she was taken and carried off, to have the meaning of seed? 'Jupiter, changed into a bull, sought intercourse with his mother Ceres': as was set out above, the earth and falling rain are called by these names. I see the law of allegory unfolded in dark ambiguities. 'Ceres was angry and burned, and received the ram's offspring as punishment and revenge.' This again I see plain in common statements; for both anger and satisfaction are spoken of according to their own nature and conditions. What happened here, then, that the matter passed from Jupiter who is rain and from Ceres who was called earth to the true Jupiter and to the simplest statement of facts?

So either everything must be written in the allegorical manner and all of it set out and demonstrated to us, or nothing is written in that manner, since it does not seem possible for there to be something compounded partly of history and partly of allegory. 'All these things are written in the allegorical manner.' That does not seem at all certain. On what ground, you ask, for what reason? Because everything that has been done and established in the evidence of some work cannot be converted into allegory; for what has been done cannot be undone, nor can the nature of a thing done degenerate into a nature not its own. Can the Trojan War be turned into the condemnation of Socrates, or that battle of Cannae become the proscription and cruelty of Sulla? A proscription may indeed, as Tullius jokes, be spoken of and called a battle of Cannae; but a battle fought long ago cannot be a battle and at the same time a proscription. For what has been done cannot, as I said, be anything but what was done, nor can what is fixed in its own force and in the quality of its own kind pass into another substance.

From where, then, do we prove that all these histories are records of things done? From the solemn rites and mysteries of initiation, of course, both those performed at fixed times and days and those which the nations hand down in secret, preserved by the perpetuity of their own custom. For it must not be believed that these are without their origins, done in vain and emptily, and not having causes joined to their first institution. That pine which is solemnly brought into the sanctuary of the mother of the gods, is it not the image of the tree under which Attis took away his manhood by cutting off his genitals, and which they record the goddess consecrated as a solace for her grief? That raising of phalluses and members, which Greece worships and celebrates in yearly rites, does it not recall the likeness of that deed by which Liber freed himself from his debt? Those Eleusinian mysteries and the hidden rites of the sacred things, of what do they contain the memory? Is it not of that wandering in which Ceres, seeking her daughter, when weary she came to the shores of Attica, brought grain crops, honored the family of the Nebridae with a fawn's skin, and laughed at that greatest spectacle in Baubo's groin? Or if there is another cause, that is nothing to us, provided all these things arise from some cause. For it is not credible that these were undertaken with no preceding causes; or else the Athenians must be judged mad, who invented for themselves a religious rite put together for no reasons. But if this is clear and established, that is, if the causes and origins of the mysteries flow from things done, they cannot be turned into allegorical forms by any conversion. For what has been made and done cannot be undone, since the nature of things forbids it.

And yet, even if we agree with you that these things are so, that is, that the histories sound one thing in their words and say something else, like soothsayers, do you not notice, do you not see, how much ... this is said with the dishonor and insult of the gods? Can any heavier injury be found than to call and name earth and rain, or anything else (for it makes no difference what conversion is made by interpretation), the intercourse of Jupiter and Ceres, and to signify the falling of rain from the sky and the moistening of the earth by the crimes of the gods? Can anything be thought or believed more irreligious than to call seeds sunk in the ground, or anything else (for again it makes no difference), the rape of Proserpina, and to speak about the work of farming with a brand upon Father Dis? Would it not have been a thousand times more desirable to become tongueless and dumb than to send forth this gushing of speech and the din of foul talkativeness, to call the most shameful things by the names of gods, or rather to signify common affairs by the shameful deeds of the gods?

Formerly it was the custom to veil shameful things by allegory with most honorable meanings, and to clothe things foul to utter with the dignity of honorable ones. But on your authority, serious things are spoken of through disgrace, and things strong in chastity are recounted in obscene words; so that what dignity once covered out of shame for the foul is now said slavishly and shamefully, with the language of the worthy changed. 'When we speak of Mars and Venus caught in adultery by Vulcan's art,' he says, 'we mean desire and anger repressed by the force and counsel of reason.' What prevented, what stood in the way of expressing each thing by its own words and its own meanings? Indeed, what compelled you, when you wanted to indicate something through commentaries and writings, to be unwilling for what you indicated to be understood, and to take on contrary things at once in one exposition, the zeal of one who wants to teach and the malice of one who does not want to show? Did it carry no danger to call the gods adulterers, while mentioning desire and anger would have defiled the tongue and mouth by obscene contact? If that had been done and the shadow of allegorical blindness removed, the matter would be easy to learn and the dignity of the gods would be kept unharmed. But now, when it is said that the restraint of vices is signified by the binding of Mars and Venus, two most perverse things happen at once: the appearance of foul things suggests the understanding of honorable things, and disgrace strikes the mind before the authority of any religion.

Unless perhaps you will say (for this alone remains that it seems you can oppose) that the gods do not want their mysteries to be known by men, and that therefore the histories are written in allegorical riddles. And how is it clear to you that the gods above do not want their mysteries published to men? How do you know them, or why do you take care to unravel them in the explanation of allegories? Finally and at last, what do the gods mean, that while they do not want honorable things said of themselves, they allow most shameful and unseemly things? 'When we name Attis,' he says, 'we signify and mean the sun.' But if Attis is the sun, as you record and say, who will be that Attis whom your writings declare and show to have been born in Phrygia, to have suffered certain things and likewise done certain things, whom all the theaters know in playful shows, to whom we see yearly rites performed specially and by name, in divine form, among the sacred cults? Was the transfer of this name made from the sun to the man, or from the man to the sun? For if this name belonged to the sun from its first origin, what, pray, has the golden sun deserved from you, that you should make this name common to him and a half-man? But if it is goatish and Phrygian, what has the father of Phaethon, the parent of this light and brightness, done wrong, that he should seem worthy to be called after a castrated man, and become more august by being marked with the name of an emasculated body?

But what this is, is now plain to all. For since you are ashamed of such writings and histories, and see that what has once been foully recorded in commentaries cannot be abolished, you strive to make shameful things respectable, and by every kind of subtlety you invert and corrupt the natures of words in place of the things underneath; and, as usually happens to the unsound of mind whose sense and understanding the troubled force of disease has driven out, you throw out confused and uncertain things and rave through fictions of empty things. Granted: let the watering of the earth be signified by the union of Jupiter and Ceres, the hiding of seed by the rape of Father Dis, wine spread through the earth by the torn inward parts of Liber, and the restraint of desire and rashness be called the binding of the adulterers Venus and Mars.

But if you want these fables to be written in the allegorical manner, what will become of the others, which we do not see can be forced into turns of this kind? For what shall we substitute for those undulations which the lust of Semele's offspring twisted on the mound of the tomb? And what for those Ganymedes carried off and set to the service of lusts? What for that change into a little ant, into which greatest Jupiter contracted the features of his vastness? What for the swans and satyrs? What for the golden showers, into which the same seducer put himself, with treacherous fraud, playing in varieties of forms? And so that we may not seem to want to speak of Jupiter alone, what allegories can there be in the loves of the other deities, what in their hired conditions and servitudes, what in their bonds, bereavements, and laments, what in their tortures, wounds, and tombs? In this, when you might have incurred a single fault, you added, as the saying is, ... to your writing about the gods above, since you called shameful things by the names of gods and again defiled the gods with the names of infamous things. But if you believed with undoubted knowledge that they were present here or existed anywhere, fear would restrain you in mentioning them, and it ought to be believed and held fixed in thought as though they heard you and received your words. For among people devoted to dutiful religion, not only the gods themselves but also the names of the gods ought to be revered, and as much dignity as is in those who are counted under these names, so much ought to be in their titles.

Give a true form of judgment, and you will be in that part of reproach, that in the use of your speech you call battle Mars, waters Neptune, wine Father Liber, bread Ceres, thread Minerva, obscene lusts Venus. For what reason is there that, when things can be reckoned by their own names, they should be called by the names of gods, and that such an insult should be done to the deities as we human beings would not endure, if someone took our names and turned them into trifles? 'But speech is mean if it is defiled with such words.' A modesty ... and worthy of praise! You blush to name bread and wine, and are not afraid to say 'Venus' for intercourse!

Now, since we have shown in summary how impious the slanders of opinion are that you have established about your gods, it follows that we speak of temples, of images, and of sacrifices, and of the other series of things attached to these and joined to them in close connection. For in this part you are accustomed to fix on us the greatest charge of impiety: that we do not build sacred buildings for the duties of worship, do not set up an image or form of any god, do not construct altars or hearths, do not offer the blood of slaughtered animals, nor incense, nor salted meal, and finally do not bring flowing wine in the pourings of bowls. We refrain from building or doing these things, not because we have impious and wicked minds, or have conceived some contempt for the gods in reckless despair, but because we think and believe that they (if indeed they are certainly gods and endowed with the eminence of this name) either laugh at these kinds of honors, if they laugh, or endure them with indignation, if they are provoked by motions of anger.

For so that you may know what we think of that name and what our judgment is: we think that they, if they are certainly gods, to say the same things again and fully, ought to be of all and perfect virtues, wise, just, grave (if there is no fault in heaping human praises on them), strong in inward goods, and not needing any external aids to complete the integrity of their unbroken blessedness; free from all passions and all disturbances; not boiling with anger, not roused by any desires, inflicting calamity on no one, not taking cruel pleasure from the evils of men, not terrifying with portents, not displaying prodigious terrors, not holding people bound and obliged by the debts of vows, nor demanding expiatory victims by threatening signs; not bringing pestilences and diseases by corrupting the air, not scorching crops with droughts, not taking part in the slaughter of wars or the destruction of cities, not wishing ill to some or favoring the advantages of others; but, what belongs to great minds, weighing all in an equal balance and showing undivided goodwill to all. For it belongs to a perishable race and to human weakness to do the contrary of these; and the teachings and statements of the wise declare that those whom passion touches suffer, grieve, and are diminished, and that it cannot be otherwise than that those who are slaves to any disturbances are bound by the laws of mortality. Since this is so, how can we be judged to hold the gods in contempt, whom we say cannot be considered gods or joined to the heavenly powers unless they are upright and praiseworthy for the admiration of great minds?

'But we build them no temples, nor adore their images, we do not slaughter victims, we do not pour libations of incense and wine.' And what greater honor or dignity can we give them than to place them in the same position as the Head and Lord of things, the supreme King himself, to whom the gods owe, together with us, that they feel they exist and are held in living substance? For do we honor him with shrines or the construction of temples? Do we slaughter victims to him? Do we give him other things, which to offer and pour out is not a matter of weighed reason but of custom drawn out by habit? For it is complete madness to measure the more powerful by your own needs, and to give the gods, the givers, things that are of use to you, and to think this an honor and not an insult. For what use of the gods, then, we ask, or for the necessity of what thing, do you say temples were built or think they ought to be built again? Do they feel winter's cold or are they scorched by summer suns? Do they get soaked by rainstorms? Do whirlwinds trouble them? Are they in danger of suffering an enemy's attack or the rabid attacks of wild beasts, so that it is right to shut them in by the protection of roofs or guard them by the barrier of stones? For what are these temples? If you ask human weakness, something huge and ample; if you measure the power of the gods, certain small recesses, and, to speak more truly, a most narrow kind of cave, devised by the thought of a poor heart. If you want to hear who was their first founder and builder, you will be shown either Phoroneus, the Egyptian, or Merops, or, as Varro records in his Wonders, Aeacus, the offspring of Jupiter. So let them be built of masses of marble, or shine with gilded coffered ceilings, let gems glitter here and pour out starry flashes in varied inlay: all these are earth and compacted from the lowest dregs of baser matter. For if you value them at dearer prices, it must not be believed that the gods are delighted with them, or do not refuse and scorn to be fenced in and confined, shut up by their barriers. 'This,' he says, 'is the temple of Mars, this of Juno and Venus, this of Hercules, Apollo, Dis.' What else is this than to say: this is the house of Mars, this of Juno and Venus, Apollo lives here, in this Hercules stays, in that Summanus? Is it not the first and greatest insult to keep the gods confined in dwellings, to give them little huts, to build them rooms and cells, and to think that they need the things that human beings need, that cats need, that ants and lizards need, and fleeing, timid, tiny mice?

'But we do not give the gods temples,' he says, 'to keep off damp showers, winds, rains, or suns from them, but so that we may see them face to face and close at hand, address them from nearby, and in some way join in conversations of worship with them as they are present. For if they are invoked under the open sky and the covering of the ether, they hear nothing, and unless prayers are brought near to them, they will stand blocked and unmoved, as though nothing were said.' Yet we think that every god whatever, if he is strong with the power of this name, ought to hear, as though he were present, whatever anyone has said from any part of the world; indeed, ought to anticipate with foreknowledge what anyone has conceived in hidden and silent thoughts; and as the stars, sun, and moon, when they move above the earth, are at once seen by absolutely all and present everywhere, so it is fitting that the hearing of the deities be closed to no tongue and always present, even though voices flow to it from distant regions. For this is proper to gods: to fill all things with their power, to be whole everywhere, not partially somewhere, not to be present and absent, not to go to dine with the Ethiopians and return to their private dwelling after twelve days.

But if this is not so, all hope of help is taken away, and it will be doubtful whether you are heard by the gods or not, whenever you perform sacred rites with the due ceremonies. For, to understand the matter, let us suppose that there is a temple of some deity in the Canary Islands, of the same in farthest Thule, of the same among the Seres, among the dark Garamantes, and among any others whom seas, mountains, forests, and the four quarters of the world separate from our knowledge: if all at one time, having performed the divine rites, ask of the deity what their need compels each to ask, what hope of receiving a favor will all have, if the god does not hear the voice sent to him from everywhere, and if there is any distance where the prayer of one asking help cannot penetrate? For either he will be present in no parts, if he can at some time not be somewhere, or he will be present only to one, since he cannot give his hearing to all in common and without distinction. And so it comes about that either the god helps no one at all, if, occupied with something, he could not fly to hear their voices, or only one goes away heard and the rest have achieved nothing.

What of this, that many of these temples, which are raised with golden domes and lofty roofs, are proved by the writings of authors to cover ashes and bones and to be the tombs of dead bodies? Is it not plain and evident that either you worship the dead instead of immortal gods, or an inexpiable insult is done to the deities, whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the dead? Antiochus, in the ninth book of his histories, records that Cecrops was buried in the temple of Minerva at Athens; again, in the temple of the same goddess on the citadel of Larissa, Acrisius is written and shown to be buried; Erichthonius in the shrine of Polias; the brothers Dairas and Immaradus in the enclosure of the Eleusinium, which lies below the city. What of the daughters of Celeus? Are they not said to have received the rites of burial in the temple of Eleusinian Ceres? Are not Hyperoche and Laodice, who are said to have been brought there from the lands of the Hyperboreans, buried in the shrine of Diana which is set in the temple of Delian Apollo? Leandrius says that Cleochus received his last funeral rites in the Didymaeum at Miletus. Zeno of Myndus declares and records that the monument of Leucophryne is in the shrine of Diana at Magnesia. Is it not shown by consistent writings that the seer Telmessus is buried under the little altar of Apollo seen at the town of Telmessus? Ptolemy son of Agesarchus, in the first book of the work he published on Philopator, declares on the authority of literature that Cinyras, king of Paphos, with all his family, indeed with all his line, is laid in the temple of Venus. It would be infinite and immeasurable to describe who are in what shrines throughout the whole world; nor does it require exact care (although Egypt established a penalty for anyone who revealed where Apis lay hidden) to describe by what temples Varro's common graves are covered and what masses of heavy weight they have on top of them. But why do I speak of these small things?

Who among men does not know that on the Capitol of the ruling people is the tomb of Olus of Vulci? Who, I say, does not know that from the seat of the foundations a man's head was rolled out not very long before, either alone without the other parts (for some say this) or having received burial rites with all its limbs? If you ask that this be made plain by the testimony of authors, Sammonicus, Granius, Valerianus, and Fabius will show you whose son Aulus was, of what race and nation, why he was robbed of life and light by the hand of a little slave, and what he deserved from his fellow citizens that burial in his native soil was denied him. You will also learn, though they pretend not to want to publish this, what was done when the head was uncovered, or in what part of the area it was shut up in careful obscurity, so that, of course, the perpetuity of the sealed omen might stand immovable and fixed. Although it was fitting that this should be suppressed and hidden by the forgetfulness of antiquity, the composition of the name threw it into the open and made it go on with its causes, through the times given to it, with inextinguishable testimony; nor was the greatest city, the worshiper of all the deities, ashamed, when it gave a name to the temple, to call it Capitolium from the head (caput) of Olus rather than from the name of Jupiter.

We have shown enough, I think, that temples were either built in vain for the immortal gods or built, contrary to their believed honor and power, with insulting opinions. It follows that we say something about the statues and images which you compose with much art and tend with religious care. On this point, if there is any honesty, we cannot settle with ourselves by any considerations whether you do this seriously and with grave purpose, or play with the things themselves in childish delusion, laughing. For if it is certain among you that there are gods, as you suppose, and that they live in the highest regions of heaven, what cause, what reason is there for these images to be made by you, since you have certain beings to whom you can pour out prayers and ask help in pressing circumstances? But if you do not believe, or, to put it mildly, are in doubt, even so, what reason is there to fashion and set up images of doubtful beings, and to form by empty imitation what you do not believe exists? Or do you perhaps say that some presence of the deities is shown to you under these images, and, because it is not granted to see the gods, ...? Whoever says and asserts this does not believe that there are gods, and is convicted of having no faith in his own religion, since he needs to see what he holds, lest perhaps what is not seen, being obscure, be empty.

'We venerate the gods through images,' you say. What then? If these did not exist, would the gods not know they are worshiped, and would they think no honor was given them by you? So they take and receive your worship through certain byways and, as the saying is, through certain trusts; and before those to whom that service is owed perceive it, you first sacrifice to the images, and send on to them some leftovers, as it were, on another's authority. And what can be more injurious, insulting, and harsh than to know one god and pray to another thing? To hope for help from a deity and to plead before an image of no sense? Is it not, I ask, what is said in the common proverbs, to strike the smith when you hit the fuller, and, when you seek a man's advice, to ask opinions about what is to be done from little asses and piglets?

And finally, how do you know whether all these images which you form as substitutes for the immortal gods reproduce and have the divine likeness? For it may be that he who is represented by you as smooth-faced is bearded in heaven; that he to whom you give a boyish age is further advanced in years; that this one is fair ... who in truth has gray eyes; that he whom you make and shape with a big nose has flaring nostrils. For it is not right to say or call something an image which does not carry over like lines from the original face; and that this is plain and certain can be recognized from obvious things. For while all people see by the undoubted contemplation of their eyes that the sun is round, you have given him the face of a man and the features of mortal bodies. The moon is always in motion and takes thirty faces in her monthly restoration: with you as guides and shapers she is a woman, and has one face, though she changes through a thousand appearances in daily instability. We all understand that the winds are a flow of air driven and stirred by the workings of the world: through you they are human forms, animating trumpet-coils with inward and domestic breaths. Among your gods we see a lion's most savage face smeared with pure vermilion and called by the name ... If all these images are likenesses of the deities above, then it must be said that such a god lives in heaven too, to whose form and appearance the likeness of this image is directed; and, of course, as this one here, so that one there is a mask without the rest of a body, a face alone, roaring with savage gapings, dreadful, blood-colored, pressing ... with his teeth, and, like tired dogs, thrusting his tongue out of his open mouth .... But if this is certainly not so, as we all think it is not, what great boldness is it to fashion for yourself whatever form you please and to say it is the image of a god whom you cannot prove to exist in any part of nature?

You laugh that in ancient times the Persians worshiped rivers, as the memorial writings show; the Arabs a shapeless stone; the Scythian nations a sword; the Thespians a branch instead of Cinxia; the Icarians an unhewn log instead of Diana; the people of Pessinus a flint instead of the Mother of the Gods; the Romans a spear instead of Mars, as the Muses of Varro show; and, as Aethlius records, before the use and skill of sculptors, the Samians a plank instead of Juno. And do you refrain from laughing when you pray to little figurines of men and human forms instead of the immortal gods? Indeed, you think that the figurines themselves are gods, and believe that nothing besides them has divine power. What do you say? Do the heavenly gods have ears and temples, necks, backs of the head, spines, loins, sides, knees, buttocks, hamstrings, ankles, and all the other limbs of which we are built, and which were spoken of somewhat more fully in the first part and set out in more ample writing? Would that it were possible to look into your feelings and the very recesses of your mind, in which you turn over and enter into various most obscure thoughts: we would find that you yourselves think the same as we do and hold no other opinions about the shaping of the deities. But what can we do against stubborn zeal, what against those who threaten with swords and devise new punishments? Threatening, you, most knowing, assert a bad case; and what you once did without reason you defend, so as not to seem ever to have been ignorant of anything, and you think it better not to be conquered than to yield and assent to the confessed truth.

From causes of this kind it has also followed, with your connivance, that the playfulness of artists has sported with the bodies of the gods and given them forms that could be laughed at by any gloomy person. So Hammon is now formed and fashioned with ram's horns; Saturn with a hooked sickle, as guardian of the fields, like some pruner of luxuriant branches; the son of Maia with a broad-brimmed hat, as though preparing to set out on the road and avoid the sun and dust; Liber with soft limbs, most loose with the languor of feminine softness; Venus naked and exposed, as if you were to say she publishes and sells the form of a body for hire; Vulcan with a cap and hammer, his hand free, but his right arm girded as for a smith's task; the Delian with plectrum and lyre, keeping the gestures of a lyre player and of an actor about to sing dirges; the king of the sea with a trident, as though he had to fight a gladiator's contest. Nor can you find any image of a deity that does not bear certain attributes given by the generosity of the craftsmen. Suppose some clever city-dweller, without your knowledge and unawares, takes the Sun from its doors and moves it into Mercury's seat, and again seizes Mercury and makes him move into the Sun's shrine (for both are made by you beardless and with smooth faces), and gives rays to the one and puts a little hat on the Sun's head: how will you be able to tell whether this is the Sun or that Mercury, since attributes, not the particularity of the face, usually indicate the gods to you? Again, by a similar transfer, if he takes the horns from Jupiter Hammon and fixes them on the temples of Mars, strips Mars of his arms and surrounds Hammon with them: how can each be distinguished, when he who was Jupiter can be thought to be Mars, and he who was Mavors can take on the appearance of Jupiter Hammon? So much a game is it to fashion these images and dedicate names to them as their own, when, if you take away their attributes, recognition of each is removed: a god may be believed for a god, one seen for another, indeed each may be thought to be both.

But why do I laugh at the sickles and tridents given to the gods, why at horns, hammers, and caps, when I know that some images bear the forms of certain men and the features of infamous harlots? For who does not know that those Athenian Hermae were made in the likeness of the body of Alcibiades? Who does not know, if he rereads Posidippus ..., that Praxiteles ... forced the face of the Cnidian Venus into the shape of the harlot Cratina, whom he loved desperately, poor man? But is this the only Venus to whose face borrowed beauty was added from a prostitute's face? That Phryne of Thespiae, as those who wrote of Thespian affairs report, when she was at the very height of beauty, charm, and bloom, is said to have been the model for all the Venuses that are in repute, whether throughout the Greek cities or wherever the love and desire of such statues has spread. So all the artists who lived at the same time, and to whom truth in expressing likenesses gave first place, strove with all care and zeal to carry over the outline of a prostitute's head into images of Cythera's goddess; the ... of artists burned, and each sought to surpass the other in contentious rivalry, not that Venus might become more august, but that Phryne might stand in place of Venus. And so the matter was brought to this, that sacred rites were performed to harlots instead of immortal gods, and unhappy religion was deceived by the making of statues. Among the sculptors, that famous and first Phidias, when he had raised the form of Olympian Jupiter by the labor of an immense work, inscribed on the god's finger 'Pantarces is handsome' (now this was the name of a boy he loved and cherished with obscene desire), and he was not moved by any fear or religious scruple to call the god by the name of a prostitute, indeed to consecrate the divinity and image of Jupiter to a catamite. So much is it a game and a childish passion to form these figurines, to adore them as gods, to heap divine sanctities on them, when we see the artists themselves playing in making them and consecrating memorials of their own lusts. For why, if you ask, should Phidias hesitate to play and be wanton, when he knew that a little while before the Jupiter he had made had been gold, stones, and shapeless bones, separate and mixed up; that he himself was the one who gathered and bound all these, who gave them forms made in the likeness of limbs; and, what is first of all, that it was the kindness of his own gift that the god was born and adored among human affairs?

I would like at this point, as if all the nations of the world were present, to make a single assembly and set these things before the ears of all to be heard in common. What is this, men, that you yourselves willingly deceive and ensnare yourselves by voluntary blindness in matters so obvious and clear? Shake off the mist at last, and, returning to the light of the mind, look more closely and see what sort of thing this is that is done, if only you keep your right and remain within the bounds of the reason and counsel given you. These images which frighten you, and which you adore lying prostrate and humble in all the temples, are bones, stones, bronze, silver, gold, earthenware, wood taken from a tree or glue mixed with gypsum, perhaps put together from harlots' ornaments or women's toilet articles, from camels' bones or the tooth of the Indian animal, from little cooking pots and jars, from lampstands and lamps or from other more obscene little vessels; melted, drawn into these shapes, and come out in the forms you see; baked in potters' furnaces, born from anvils and hammers, scraped with ... , filed down, cut, hewn, and dug out with saws, augers, and adzes, hollowed by the turning of drills, smoothed by the planes of routers. Is it not an error, not to say properly madness, to believe a god to be what you yourself have formed, to pray trembling to a thing made by you, and, when you know and are sure that it is your own work and the offspring of your fingers, to fall prone on your face, to ask help suppliantly, and to have it come to your aid in adversity and hard times by the favor of a gracious deity?

Suppose someone sets before you rough bronze not worked into any object, masses of untamed silver and unworked gold, wood, stones, and bones, and all the other things of which statues and images of the deities are usually made; indeed, suppose someone sets before you the smashed faces of gods and broken and damaged images, and bids you slaughter victims to the pieces and fragments and give sacred rites and divine services to the shapeless masses: we ask to hear from you whether you will do it or refuse, contrary to what is ordered. Perhaps you will say: 'For what reason?' Because there is no one in human affairs so stupidly blind as to count silver, bronze, gold, gypsum, ivory, and clay among the gods and say that they have and hold divine power by themselves. What reason is there, then, that if all these bodies remain untouched and unworked they lack the power of deity and heavenly authority, but if they receive human forms, ears, noses, cheeks, lips, eyes, and eyebrows, they at once become gods and are brought into the order and roll of heavenly beings? Does the fashioning add something new to these bodies, so that by this very addition you are compelled to believe that something of divinity and majesty has been conferred on them? Does it change bronze into gold, or force the cheapness of a potsherd to degenerate into the material of silver? Does it make things which were senseless a little before become alive and moved by the motion of breath? If they keep, placed in the bodies of images, all the natures they had outside, what great stupidity is it (for I shrink from saying blindness) to think that the natures of things are changed by the quality of forms, and that what was inert, brutish, and deprived of the movement of sense in its original body receives divinity from a shape?

And so, unmindful and forgetful of what the substance and origins of images are, you human beings, a rational creature endowed with the gift of wisdom and counsel, bow down before baked potsherds, adore plates of bronze, ask good health from elephants' teeth, magistracies, commands, powers, victories, acquisitions, profits, the best harvests and most fruitful vintages; and though it is plain and clear that you are speaking to brute things, you think you are heard, and of your own accord lead yourselves astray by the deception of empty credulity. O would that it were possible to enter the inner hollows of some image; indeed, would that it were possible to take apart those Olympian and Capitoline Jupiters, loosened into their members, and see separate and individual all those parts by which the sum of their bodies is enclosed! You would long ago see that these gods, whom an outer smoothness makes august by the allure of brilliance, are frameworks of hammered plates, joinings of shapeless little parts, held together against the fall of ruins and the fear of dissolution by dovetails and clamps, hooks and little handles, and that lead is poured into all the hollows and joints of the seams, lending saving delays to the durability of the statues. You would see, I say, faces alone without backs of the head, hands without arms, half-filled, bellies with half sides, unfinished traces of feet, and, what would bring the most laughter, gods of wood on one side and stone on the other, drawn together in an unequal construction of bodies. But if these things could not be seen because the art hides them, at least the things placed in plain view ought to have taught and warned you that you are doing nothing and spending the vanities of your services on empty things. For do you not see that these breathing statues, whose feet and knees you touch and handle as you pray, now slip down from the falling of drips, now are loosened by the rot of decay; how, fumigated with the fumes and smoke of sacrifices, they grow black and discolored; how through the neglect of a longer age they lose their appearance by mold and are wounded and eaten by rust? Do you not see, I say, that under the hollows of these images newts, shrews, mice, and light-shunning cockroaches make their nests and dwell, bring all sorts of filth there and other things suited to their uses, hard crusts of half-gnawed bread, bones dragged in ..., rags, down, and scraps of paper, carefully for the softness of their nests, as comforts for their wretched young? That spiders sometimes weave nets and treacherous snares in the image's mouth, with which to entangle the flights of buzzing and shameless flies? Finally, that swallows, flying about within the very domes of the temples, shoot out their droppings ... and bespatter now the faces themselves, now the mouths of the deities, beard, eyes, noses, and all other parts on which the outflow of their unburdened hindquarters falls? Blush, then, even late, and take ways and reasons from dumb animals, and let them teach you that there is no divinity in images, on which they neither fear nor avoid dropping filth, following their own laws and prompted by the truth of nature.

'But you are wrong,' he says, 'and you slip: for we do not judge that bronze or the materials of gold and silver, or the others of which statues are made, are gods in themselves and religious deities; but in them we worship and revere those whom sacred dedication brings in and causes to dwell in the craftsmen's images.' Not a wicked or contemptible reasoning, by which any dull person, and also the most prudent, might believe that the gods, leaving their own seats, that is, heaven, do not refuse or flee to enter earthly dwellings, but, driven by the right of dedication, grow into union with the images! So your gods stay in gypsum and potsherds; indeed, are the gods the minds, breath, and souls of potsherds and gypsum? And so that the vilest things may become more august, do they allow themselves to be shut in and to hide in the confinement of a dark seat? So first we want and ask to hear from you on this point: do they do this unwillingly, that is, do they enter the dwellings of images drawn by the right of dedication, or readily and willingly, with no necessities imposed? Do they do it unwillingly? And how can it be that they are forced into any necessity, with their majesty diminished? With the assent of voluntary compliance? And what do the gods seek in potsherds, that they prefer them to their starry seats? What then?

Do the gods always stay in such materials and never go anywhere, even if the greatest matter demands it, or do they have free goings, to go wherever they please and depart from their seats and images? If they suffer the necessity of remaining, what could be more wretched or unhappy than they, if hooks and lead fastenings hold them thus on their bases? But let us grant ... that they prefer them to heaven and the starry seats, and have lost the power of their divinity; but if they fly away when they wish and have the absolute right to leave the images empty, then at some time the statues will cease to be gods, and it will be doubtful when sacred rites ought to be paid and when it is fitting and proper to abstain from them. We often see these statues made by artists now tiny and contracted to the smallness of a palm, now raised to immense size and lifted to a wonderful greatness. By this reasoning, then, it follows that we must understand that in little figurines the gods contract themselves and are compressed into the likeness of another's body, but in vast ones they stretch themselves further and extend to hugeness. If this is so, it must be said that in seated statues the god sits, in standing ones stands, in running ones runs, in those throwing weapons throws, and that he shapes and fits himself to their faces and adapts himself to the likeness of the other features of the fashioned body.

The gods dwell in images. Is each one whole in each, or partly and divided into members? For neither can one god be in several images at one time, nor again be divided into parts by cutting. For let us suppose that there are ten thousand images of Vulcan in the whole world: can one be, as I said, in all ten thousand at one time? I do not think so. For what reason? Because things that are single and individual by nature cannot become many while keeping the integrity of their simplicity; and still more they cannot if the gods have human forms, as your opinion declares. For neither a hand separated from the head nor a foot divided from the body can present the sum of the whole; or it must be said that portions can do what the whole can, though the whole cannot exist unless it is formed by the gathering of parts. But if the same god is said to be in all, the whole reason and integrity of truth perishes, if it is assumed that one can remain in all at one time; or it must be said that each of the gods divides himself from himself so that he is both himself and another, not separated by any difference but the same himself and another. Since nature refuses, rejects, and spurns this, either it must be said and confessed that there are countless Vulcans, if we do not want him to live and be present in all the images, or he will be in none, since nature forbids him to be divided among many.

And yet, if it is plain and clear to you that the gods live in the inward parts of statues and the heavenly ones dwell there, why do you guard, keep, and hold them shut in under the strongest keys and huge bars, bolts, latches, and other things of this kind, and protect them with a thousand temple-keepers and a thousand watchmen, lest perhaps some thief or nighttime robber creep in? Why do you feed dogs on the Capitol? Why do you provide geese with food and nourishment? Rather, if you trust that the gods are there and never depart from the statues and images, leave them the care of themselves: let the shrines always be unlocked and open, and if anything is stolen by anyone with reckless fraud, let them show the power of their divinity and transfix the sacrilegious with fitting punishments in the very act of theft. For it is an unworthy thing, destroying their power and authority, to entrust the guarding of the highest deities to the vigilance of dogs, and, when you seek some means of fear to keep thieves away, not to ask it of them but to place and put it in the cackling of geese.

They say that Antiochus of Cyzicus took a golden Jupiter ten cubits high from a shrine and substituted one of bronze gilded with thin leaves. If the gods are present and dwell in their images, with what business, what cares was Jupiter bound, that he did not pursue his private wrongs and avenge himself on being replaced by himself in a baser material? When the younger Dionysius stripped Jupiter of his golden mantle and put a woolen one in its place, even playing with jesting witticisms, saying that the one was cold in frosts and the other warm, the one heavy in summer and the other airy in the heat: where was the king of heaven, that he did not prove his presence by some terror and call the witty jester back to seriousness by torments? For why should I mention that he mocked the gravity of Aesculapius? When he stripped him of his very full beard, of good weight and philosophic thickness, he said it was an unworthy thing that a son born of Apollo, a smooth and beardless father most like a boy, should be fashioned so bearded that it was left doubtful which of them was the father and which the son, indeed whether they were of one race and kinship. When all this was done and the plunderer joked with sacrilegious mockery, if a divinity was present in the statue consecrated to his name and majesty, why did he not pursue with just and deserved vengeance the insult of his mouth being shaved and his face dishonored, and show by this deed both that he was present and that he protected his temples and images with unremitting guard?

Unless perhaps you will say that the gods neglect these losses and do not think it a sufficient cause for bestirring themselves and inflicting punishment on the guilty for violated religion. If this is so, then they do not even want to have images, which they allow to be torn down and plundered with impunity; on the contrary, they teach that they despise those images in which they do not care to show by any vengeance that they have been scorned. Philostephanus, in his Cypriaca, is the authority that Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, fell in love with an image of Venus, which was held among the Cyprians in ancient holiness and reverence, as though with a woman, his mind, soul, light of reason, and judgment blinded; and that, mad, as though it were a wifely matter, he used to lift the deity onto his bed, join with it in embraces and kisses, and do other things frustrated by the imagination of empty lust. In a similar way Posidippus, in the book he declares he wrote about Cnidus and its affairs, records that a young man not of low birth (but he conceals his name), seized with love for the Venus for whom Cnidus is famous, himself mingled amorous wantonness with the statue of the same deity, enjoying the marriage bed and the consequences of pleasure. So that I may ask again in like manner: if the powers of the gods above hide in bronze and the other materials of which statues are formed, where in the world were one Venus and the other, to drive the young men's shameless wantonness far away from themselves and punish the impious contacts with torturing restraint? Or, since the goddesses are gentle and of more tranquil disposition, how much would it have taken to extinguish the frenzied joys of the wretches and restore their minds to sanity with their senses renewed?

Unless perhaps, as you say, the goddesses of lust and pleasures found these insults most pleasing and did not think worthy of vengeance a deed which soothed their own minds too, and which they knew was subject to human desires because of them. But if the goddesses Venus, endowed with gentler dispositions, judged that they should indulge the misfortunes of the blind, when devouring fire so often consumed the Capitol and seized Capitoline Jupiter himself with his wife and daughter, where was the Thunderer at that time, to ward off that wicked fire and rescue his possessions, himself, and his whole family from the deadly disaster? Where was Queen Juno, when the same force of flame destroyed her famous shrine and her priestess Chrysis in the city of Argos? Where was Egyptian Serapis, when by a similar disaster he lay dissolved into ashes with all his mysteries and Isis? Where was Liber Eleutherius, when at Athens? Where was Diana, when at Ephesus? Where was Jupiter of Dodona, when at Dodona? Where finally was the prophet Apollo, when he was so despoiled and burned by pirates and sea-robbers that, of so many weights of gold which infinite ages had heaped up, he did not have even a single scruple to show hospitality to the swallows, as Varro, but the Menippean, says? It is an infinite task to describe in the whole world which shrines were overthrown by earthquakes and storms, which burned by enemies, which by kings and tyrants, which the high priests and priests themselves stripped, with suspicion turned away from them, which finally thieves and those who open what is locked ... : which would surely remain safe and exposed to no accidents, if the guardian gods were present or had any care of their temples, as is said. But now, because they are empty and roofs without inhabitants, fortune has its right in them, and they are exposed to all accidents just as all other things deprived of inner motion.

In this same part the defenders of images usually also say that the ancients were not unaware that statues have no divinity and that there is no sense at all in them, but that because of the untamed and ignorant common people, which is the largest part in peoples and cities, they formed them for their good and by design, so that, with a kind of appearance of the deities set before them, they might throw off their roughness through fear, and, thinking they acted under the gods as present, might renounce impious deeds and pass over to human duties by a change of character; and that for no other reason were venerable forms sought for them in gold and silver than that some power might be believed present in the very gleams, which would not only dazzle the sense of the eyes but also terrify the minds themselves with the rays of most august light. This would perhaps seem to be said with some reason, if after the founding of the temples of the gods and the institution of images there were no wicked person in the world, no wickedness at all; if justice, peace, and good faith possessed the hearts of mortals, and no one on earth were called guilty or innocent, all being ignorant of wicked works. But now, since on the contrary everything is full of evils, the name of innocence has almost perished, and new swarms of crimes are born every moment and instant by the wickedness of the guilty, how is it fitting to say that images of the gods were instituted to strike fear into the crowd, when besides countless forms of crimes and misdeeds we see even the temples themselves attacked with sacrilegious violations by tyrants, by kings, by robbers and nighttime thieves, and those very gods, whom old antiquity fashioned and consecrated to cause fear, going into robbers' caves with their golden and fearsome gleams?

For, if you look at it truly and without any flattery, what great thing do these statues they speak of have in them, that antiquity rightly hoped and thought that by the sight of them the vices and misdeeds of men could be broken and their characters tempered? The reaping sickle, of course, which is assigned to Saturn, was to strike fear into mortals so that they would want to lead a peaceful life and cast away malicious wishes; or Janus with his two-faced brow, or that toothed key with which he is marked; Jupiter in a cloak and bearded, holding in his right hand a stick hewn in the shape of a thunderbolt; that girdle of Juno, or the little girl hiding under a soldier's helmet; the Mother of the Gods with her tambourine; the Muses with flutes and psalteries; winged Mercury, slayer of Argus; Aesculapius with his staff; Ceres with great breasts; or the drinking cup hanging in Liber's right hand; Mulciber in smith's dress; or Fortune with her horn full of apples, figs, or autumn fruits; Diana with thighs half covered, or naked Venus stirring to lust; Anubis with a dog's face, or Priapus, inferior to his own private parts.

O dreadful forms of fear and fearful terrors, on account of which the human race was to be fixed in perpetual numbness, attempt nothing in its astonishment, and rein itself in from every criminal and shameful act: little sickles, keys, headdresses, sticks, winged sandals, staffs, little tambourines, flutes, psalteries, breasts prominent and huge, little cups, tongs, fruit-bearing horns, the naked bodies of women, and the publicly displayed size of male members! Would it not have been better to dance and sing than, under the title of gravity and the pretext of severity, to tell such cold and silly stories, that images were formed by the ancients to restrain sins and to frighten the guilty and impious? Were the mortals of that age and time so empty of heart, of no reason or sense, that they were restrained from wicked actions, like little boys, by the most monstrous grimness of masks, by grimaces and bogeys? And how has the matter turned out the opposite, so that, although there are so many temples in the cities full of images of all the gods, the multitude of the guilty cannot be met by so many laws and kinds of punishments, nor boldness be cut off by any remedies, and misdeeds multiply the more, doubled, the more it is striven by laws and courts to diminish cruel deeds and quiet them by the restraint of punishments? If images inflicted any fears on mortals, the passing of laws would cease, and such different tortures would not be established for the boldness of criminals. But now, because it is established and proved by the fact itself that the opinion of fear said to flow from statues is empty, recourse has been had to the sanctions of laws, from which there might be the most certain fear and a condemnation already fixed and established; to which even the images themselves owe it that they still stand unharmed and are protected by the grant of some honor.

Since it has been shown sufficiently, as the matter allowed, how vainly images are made, the order next demands that we speak as briefly as possible and without any circumlocutions about sacrifices, about the slaughter and immolation of victims, about wine, about incense, and about all the other things done in this part. For in this part you are accustomed to stir up the most tumultuous odium against us, to call us atheists, and, because we do not sacrifice to the gods, even to inflict capital punishment on us through the cruelty of beasts. We confess that we do this, not out of contempt and scorn of the divine, but because we think that the powers of this name demand nothing of the kind and are not held by desires for such things.

'What then,' someone may say, 'do you think that no sacrifices at all should be made?' To answer you with the opinion not of ourselves but of your Varro: none. Why so? 'Because,' he says, 'the true gods neither desire nor demand them, and those made of bronze, earthenware, gypsum, or marble care much less for them, for they lack sense; and no guilt is incurred if you do not make them, nor any favor gained if you do.' No sounder or truer opinion can be found, nor one which anyone, however perverse and difficult he may be, could seize upon. For who is so dull-hearted as either to slaughter victims and offerings to things that have no sense, or to think they should be given to those who are far removed from them in nature and blessedness?

'Who are the true gods?' you say. To answer you with a common and simple word: we do not know. For how can we know who those are whom we have never seen? We have been accustomed to hear from you that there are very many gods and that they are counted in a series of deities. If they exist anywhere, as you say, and are true, as Terentius believes, it follows that they are like their name, that is, such as we all conceive they ought to be and should be called by the title of this name; indeed, to define it briefly, such as the Lord of things and the Almighty himself is, whom we all know and understand is truly called God when we come to mention that name. For a god differs from another in nothing in which he is a god, nor can what is one in kind be less or more in its parts, the uniformity of its proper quality being kept. Since there is no doubt of this, it follows that they must be never born and everlasting, seeking nothing from outside and plucking no pleasures from the wealth of earthly matter.

If this is so, then first we want to learn from you what is the cause, what the reason that you make these sacrifices, and then what gain from this comes to the gods themselves and settles into their advantage. For whatever is done must have its cause, and not be so separated from reason that it is done in empty works and plays in the vain errors of emptiness. Are the heavenly gods perhaps nourished by these rites, and is there need of a supply of some matter to hold their frame together? And who among men is so wholly ignorant of what a god is as to think that they are kept alive by some kind of nourishment, and that it is the gift of food that makes them live and last into immense everlastingness? For whatever is supported by external causes and things must be mortal and have a road inclined toward danger when something by which it lives begins to fail. Then ... that nothing of those things which are brought to the altars is seen to be added to and reach the substance of the deities. For either incense is given and, melted on the coals, perishes; or it is an animal victim, and the blood is licked up by dogs; or if some inward part has been given to the altars, it burns in the same way and falls, dissolved, into ashes. Unless perhaps the god devours the souls of the victims or pursues the smell and smoke from the burning altars, and feeds on the fat-savor which the burning inward parts belch out, still wet with blood and moist with their former juices. But if God, as is said, has no body and is untouchable by any contact, how can the incorporeal be nourished by bodily things, the mortal sustain the immortal and give health and supply vital motion to a thing it cannot touch? This reason for the rites falls away, then, as appears, and no one can say that sacrifices are celebrated for this reason, that the deities are fed by them and sustained by their pasture.

If perhaps this is not so, are victims slaughtered to the gods and put on the kindled altars for the sake of some pleasure and delight of mind, as is said? And is there any human being who persuades himself that the gods grow soft with the diffusion of pleasures, exult ... in the joy of lust, and, like a vile animal, are affected by pleasant sensations and soothed by the fleeting titillation of passing sweetness? For what is dissolved by pleasure must be contracted by the contrary sadness, and what quivers with joy and is lifted by the frivolities of delight cannot be free from the anxiety of grief. But the gods must be free from both feelings, if we want them to be everlasting and exempt from the frailty of mortals. What of this, that all pleasure is a kind of flattery of the body and is received by those well-known five senses? If the gods above feel it, they must also share in bodies, through which there is a way for senses and a door for receiving pleasures. Finally, what joy is it to rejoice in the slaughter of harmless animals, often to hear pitiful lowings, to see rivers of blood, lives fleeing with the gore, and, the hidden parts laid open, the intestines rolling out with dung, and hearts still leaping from the remaining breath, and veins throbbing in the trembling inward parts? We human beings, half-wild, or rather, to say more plainly what is truer and more fitting to say, wild, whom unhappy necessity and bad custom have taught to take food from them, are sometimes moved with pity for them, reproach ourselves, and, when we have seen and examined the matter thoroughly, condemn ourselves for having laid aside the law of humanity and broken the fellowship of a natural bond. Will anyone believe that the gods, pious, beneficent, and gentle, are delighted by the slaughter of cattle and spread with joy whenever they fall before them and pitifully lay down their breath? So there is no reason of pleasure in sacrifices, as we see, and that is not the reason they are made, since there is no pleasure in them; and if perhaps there is some, it has been shown that it can by no means fall upon the gods.

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.

As for what we hear you say, that some of the gods are good and others evil and more prone to the desire of harming, and that sacrificial solemnities are performed to the former that they may help, to the latter that they may not harm, we confess we cannot understand on what reasoning this is said. For to say that the gods are most kind and have gentle natures is holy, religious, and true; but that they are evil and ill-omened must by no means be taken into our ears, because that divine power is far removed and separated in nature from harming. And whatever can cause calamity must first be examined as to what it is, and ought to be set apart from the name of god by the greatest difference. So, to grant you assent that there are gods favoring both right and left things, even so there is no reason why you should entice some to prosperity and soothe others with sacrifices and rewards so that they may not harm. First, because good gods cannot do evil, even if they have been honored with no honor; for whatever is gentle and peaceful by nature is far separated from the practice and thought of harming; but an evil one does not know how to restrain his fierceness, though he be enticed with a thousand flocks and a thousand altars. For bitterness cannot turn itself into sweetness, nor dryness into moisture, the heat of fire into cold, or what is contrary to anything take into its own nature and change what is contrary to it. As, if you stroke a viper with your hand or caress a venomous scorpion, the one attacks you with a bite and the other plants its sting at the touch, and your daring does not help at all, since both things are driven to harm not by the goads of anger but by a certain property of nature: so it is of no use to want to win over the ill-omened gods with victims, since whether you do it or not, they act according to their nature and are led to what they will do by inborn laws and a certain necessity. What of this, that in this way both kinds of gods cease to remain in their powers and qualities? For if a divine rite is performed to the good that they may help, and the evil are supplicated on the same principle that they may not harm, it follows that it must be understood that the right-hand gods will be of no help if they receive no gifts, and thereby become evil; and the evil, if they receive them, will lay aside the mind to harm and thereby become good; and so the matter comes to this, that neither are these right-hand nor those left-hand, or, what cannot be, both are right-hand and both again left-hand.

Granted: let it be conceded that the most unhappy cattle are slaughtered at the temples of the gods not without some duty of religion, and that what has been done from the habit of custom contains some cause of reason. But if it seems magnificent and grand to cut the throats of bulls to the gods, and to burn the inward parts of animals whole and entire, what do these other things mean, which cling to the lore of the magi, which ... the pontifical mysteries in the hidden laws of the rites and inserted in divine matters? What, I say, do these mean: apexaones, hirciae, silicernia, longavi? These are names and kinds of sausages, some stuffed with goat's blood, others with chopped lungs. What of taedae, neniae, and the offae called not common but penitae? Of these, the first is fat cut in small bits of little dishes, according to custom; what stands second is a stretch of intestine, through which the waste is passed, thoroughly dried of the vital juices; and offa penita is the tail of an animal cut off with a bit of flesh. What of polimina, omenta, palasea, or, as some call it, plasea? Of these, the omentum is a certain part by which the receptacles of the stomach are enclosed and bounded; plasea is an ox's tail smeared with fine flour and blood; polimina, further, are those which we more modestly call 'offspring', and which the common people usually call by the name of testicles. What of fitilla, frumen, africia, gratilla, catumeum, ..., cubula? Of these, the first two are names of porridges, but different in kind and quality; the series that follows contains the names of cakes, for they too do not have one and the same form. I do not care to name strebula flesh, which is taken from the haunches of bulls; the pulpamenta, not roasted; the entrails on spits, quickened on coals and toasted on embers; nor finally salsamina, which is a single mixture joined of four grains; nor likewise the fendicae, which are themselves the hirae, as the speech of the common people usually calls them when it speaks of them; nor on the same principle the rumae, which are the first heads in the gullets, by which it is natural for ruminants to swallow and bring back their food; nor the magmenta, the augmina, the thousand kinds of ... or fitilla, to which you have given obscure names and made them more august than the common people.

For if whatever is done by human beings, and especially in a sacred matter, ought to have its causes, and nothing should be done without reason in any business and administration, explain to us and tell us what the cause is, what the reason, that these things too are given to the gods and burned on the sacred altars. For we linger, persist, and stick at this point for this cause longer, and especially necessarily, wanting to learn what a god has to do with porridges, with cakes, with various sausages prepared with many sauces and seasoned with a variety of expenses. Are the deities treated to sumptuous dinners or lunches, so that countless dishes must be devised for them? Do they suffer from queasiness of stomach, and is variety of flavors sought to drive away their distaste, so that now roasted, now raw things are set before them, half-cooked and now half-raw? But if the gods love to receive all these parts which you call prosiciae, and they are pleasing to them with a sense of some pleasure or sweetness, what stands in the way, what forbids, that you should not bring all these at once with the whole animals? What is the cause, what the reason, that strebula flesh separately, the ruma, the tail, and the plasea separately, the hirae alone, and the omentum alone are added for the purpose of augmenting? Are the heavenly gods affected by the varieties of relishes, as is the custom after the fattening dinners of the wealthy and rich, and do they take these tiny scraps as sweet tidbits, not to quiet their hunger, but to remind their palate of its leisure and, though full, to stir themselves to a craving of voracity? O wonderful greatness of the gods, grasped by no human natures, understood by none, since, to make them help, they are bought off with the testicles and gullets of cattle, and do not lay aside their anger and passion unless they have seen neniae prepared to be burned for them and offae penitae offered!

It follows that we say something, without any excess, about incense and wine. For these kinds of ceremonies too are joined and mixed, and are used in worship very much. And first we ask and inquire of you about incense itself: from where or at what time could you know or learn of it, so that you rightly think it should be given to the gods or is most acceptable to their will? For it is almost a new thing, and no inexplicable series of years has passed since knowledge of it flowed into these parts and it earned a place in the divine shrines. For neither in the heroic times, as is believed and declared, was it known what incense was, as is proved by the ancient writers, in whose books no mention of it is found; nor did Etruria, the begetter and mother of superstition, know the opinion or report of it, as the rites of its chapels show; nor in the four hundred years during which the Alban state flourished did it come into anyone's use when a sacred rite was performed; nor did Romulus himself or Numa, the craftsman in devising religions, know that it existed or grew, as the pious spelt-meal shows, with which the duties of solemn sacrifices were customarily performed. From where, then, did the use of it begin to be taken up, or what novelty broke into the old and ancient custom, so that what was not necessary for such long ages took a place in the ceremonies first? For if the duty of religion limps without incense, and its power is necessary to make the heavenly ones gracious and gentle to human beings, the ancients sinned; indeed, the whole life of those was full of guilt needing expiation who through carelessness neglected to offer what was most fitting for the pleasure of the gods. But if in ancient times neither men nor gods sought this material of incense, it is proved that today too it is offered to no purpose and in vain, since neither antiquity believed it necessary, and novelty sought it without any reasons.

Finally, so that we may always keep that rule and definition by which it has been shown and fixed that whatever is done by a human being must have its causes, we will keep it in this part too, and ask of you what the cause is, what the reason, that incense is thrown on the altars before the very images of the deities, and that by its burning they are thought to become friendly and gentle. What is gained for them from an act of this kind, or what is added to their minds, that we may rightly judge that it is properly spent and not burned in vain and to no purpose? For as you ought to show why you give incense to the gods, so it follows that you ought also to show that the gods have some cause why they do not reject it, indeed why they desire it so familiarly. 'We honor the gods with it,' someone will perhaps say. But we ask not your feeling but that of the deities, and not what is done by you, but how highly what is given as a reward of favor is valued by them. But still, O piety, how great or what kind of honor is it, which is made from the smell of fire and obtained from the resin of a tree? For in case you do not know what that incense is or where it comes from: it is a gum flowing from bark ..., as a resin from the almond or cherry grows together by tearful dripping. Does this, then, honor and increase the dignities above, or, if an offense has at some time been incurred, is it dissolved by the vapor of incense and put to sleep, the indignation tempered? Why then do you not burn the gum of any tree whatever, without any distinction? For if the deities are honored by this and do not take it ill that little Panchaean resins burn for them, what does it matter where the smoke is made on the holy altars, or from what kind of gum the clouds of fumigation boil up? Or will someone say

that incense is given to the gods above because it has a sweet smell and soothes the sense of the nostrils, while the rest are harsh and excluded because of offense? Do the gods, then, have nostrils with which to draw in the breath of the air, do they take in and send back breezes, so that the qualities of different odors can penetrate them? If we grant this, we join them to the law of mortality and exclude them from the bounds of divinity. For whatever breathes and draws back-and-forth breaths through passable openings must be mortal, since it is sustained by the food of the air. And whatever is sustained by the food of the air, if you take away the returns by which the alternation of life is given back and taken away, its breath must be choked and the principle of living undermined and destroyed. So if the gods too breathe and draw to themselves odor wrapped in accompanying breezes, it is not beside the point to say both that they live by outside supplies and that they can perish if their breathing passages are blocked. And finally, how do you know whether, if they are captivated by the sweetness of odors, the same things are pleasant to them as to you, and soothe and affect the natures of the gods with the same sense as yours? Can it not be that what brings you pleasure seems harsh and unpleasant to them? For since their essences are unlike and their substances not the same, in what way can it be brought about that what is different in quality should feel and receive one contact? Do we not see daily, even among animals born on earth, that the same things are bitter to some and sweet to others, deadly to these which are not born to harm those, so that the things which soothe some with pleasant odors breathe out deadly breaths on the bodies of others? But that this happens and occurs is not caused by the things, which cannot be at the same time deadly and wholesome, sweet and bitter, but each one, as it is made, is affected by the touch of the thing coming from outside, and receives a quality born not from the impact of things but from the nature of its own sense and contact. But all this reasoning is set far from the gods and separated by no small boundary. For if it is true, as is believed by the wise, that they are incorporeal and not raised up by any prominence of solidity, odor is empty with them, and the breath of any fumes cannot move them sensibly, not if you burn a thousand pounds of male incense and this whole sky is shut in by the cloudiness of overflowing vapors. For what does not have strength and bodily substance cannot be touched by bodily substance; but odor is a body, as is shown when the nostrils are touched; so it cannot by any reasoning be perceived by a god, who lacks the strength of a body and is deprived of all sense and contact.

Wine is the companion of incense, and we likewise ask that it be explained why it is poured over the burning incense. For unless the reason why it is done is shown, and it has no cause set out for it, this must no longer be charged to playful error but, to say it more expressly, to madness, insanity, and blindness. For, as has already often been said, everything that is done ought to have its cause clear and not covered by the obscurity of any mist. If, then, you trust in what you do, disclose and show why this liquid is given, that is, why wine is poured on the altars. Do the bodies of the deities feel dry thirst, and must their dryness be tempered by some moisture? As it is our custom as mortals to mix drinks with dinners, do they in the same way, after their solid meals of cakes, porridges, and slaughtered victims, water and fill themselves most frequently with wine, so that the food may soften and be digested more easily? Give the immortal gods something to drink, I pray. Bring out goblets, cups, bowls, and ladles; and since they stuff themselves with sumptuous and rich feasts and fat foods, lest some morsel badly swallowed stick in the passage of the stomach, come to help, hurry: give Jupiter Best and Greatest wine so that he does not choke. He wants to belch and cannot; and unless that obstruction slips down and dissolves, there is the greatest danger that his breath may be crushed and cut off, and heaven remain bereft of its administrators.

'But in vain,' he says, 'you ride roughshod over us: for we do not pour out wine to the gods above for these reasons, as though we thought they are thirsty or drink or are gladdened by a liking for its sweetness. It is given them for honor: so that their majesty may become more exalted, greater, and more august, we pour libations over the very altars and rouse the venerable fragrances on extinguished coals.' And what heavier insult can be inflicted on the gods than if you believe that they become gracious when they have received wine, or think that great honor has been paid them if you have only thrown and dripped a few drops of wine on a live coal? We are not speaking with men lacking reason, nor with those who do not share common understanding and truth: there is wisdom in you too, there is sense, and you yourselves know in your inner judgment that we speak the truth. But what can we do, when you are unwilling to consider the things themselves thoroughly and speak with yourselves? For you do what you see done, not what you trust ought to be done; because custom, which has no reason, is worth more with you than the nature of things examined and weighed by the test of truth. For what has a god to do with wine, or what or how great is the power in its substance, that when it has been poured out his majesty increases and his authority is thought honored? What, I say, has a god to do with wine, a thing most closely akin to Venus, weakening the sinews of all virtues, the enemy of modesty, shame, and chastity, which has often thrown roused minds into madness and frenzy and driven them to degrade the very gods with insane curses? Is it not wicked and a crime full of sacrilege to give the gods for honor that which, if you take it too greedily, you do not know what you do, you are unaware of what you say, and at last you earn the abuse and infamy of a drunkard, a debauchee, and a profligate?

It is worthwhile also to set out the very words which it is customary to use and pray with when wine is given: 'Be thou honored with this wine of offering (inferium).' 'Inferium,' says Trebatius, 'is added for this reason and uttered on this principle: lest all the wine whatever which is stored in the cellars and storerooms, from which what is poured out is taken, begin to be sacred and be taken away from human uses. So by adding this word, only what is offered will be sacred, and the rest will not be bound by religious obligation.' What kind of honor is this, then, in which a law, as it were, is imposed on a god not to seek more than is given? Or of what greed is the god himself, who, unless he is kept off by the prescription of a word, would stretch his desire further and rob his suppliant of his storerooms? 'Be thou honored with this wine of offering': this is an injury, not an honor. For what if the god wants more than this and is not content with what is offered? Must he not be said to be notably injured, who is forced to receive honor on a condition? For if, without the exception added, all the wine whatever in the cellars must become sacred, it is plain both that an insult is done to the god, on whom a limit is imposed against his will, and that you yourselves violate the duties of ceremonies in a sacred matter, since you do not give as much wine as you see the god wants to be given him. 'Be thou honored with this wine of offering': what else is this than to say: 'Be honored as much as I wish, increased as much as I command; take as much honor as I decree you shall have and define by the limitation of words'? O mighty majesty of the gods, which you ought to venerate and worship with ceremonial duties, on which the worshiper imposes a law, which he adores with pacts and formulas, which is kept from immoderate desires for wine by the fear of a single word!

But let there be honor in wine, as you wish, let there be honor in incense; let the anger and offenses of the deities be appeased by the sacrifice and slaughter of victims. Are the gods also affected by garlands, crowns, and flowers? By the ringing of bronze and the shaking of cymbals? By tambourines? By concerts? What? Do the clappers of foot-castanets bring it about that, when the deities have heard them, they think they have been treated honorably and lay aside their burning minds in forgetfulness of their anger? Or as little boys are frightened out of their silly wailing by hearing rattles, are the almighty deities in the same way soothed by the shrill sound of flutes and, their indignation softened, grow limp to the rhythm of cymbals? What do those wakings mean which you sing in the morning, joining your voices to the flute? Do the gods above fall asleep, so that they must come back to wakefulness? What of those sleepings, to which you bid them good health with an auspicious greeting? Are they released into the quiet of sleep, and to be able to be occupied with this, must they hear gentle lullabies? 'Today is the washing of the Mother of the gods.' Do the deities get dirty, and is there need of washing waters, with some rubbing with ashes added, to wash off the dirt? 'Tomorrow is the feast of Jupiter.' Does Jupiter dine, and must he be filled with great feasts, having long been eager from starvation and fasting in the yearly interval? '... the vintage of Aesculapius is held and celebrated.' Do the gods tend vineyards and press out wine for their own uses with vintagers hired? 'There will be a feast-couch of Ceres on the next Ides.' Do the gods have couches, and, so that they may lie on softer bedding, is the pressed-down impression of the cushions lifted and plumped? 'It is the birthday of Earth.' Do the gods come forth from wombs, and do they have happy days on which it is recorded that they began to draw the breath of life?

But the games which you hold, called the Floralia and Megalensia, and all the others which you have wanted to be sacred and counted among the duties of religion: what reason, what cause do they have, that they had to be instituted and founded and marked with the names of deities? 'The gods are honored by them,' he says, 'and if they hold any memories of offenses brought on them by men, they cast them off, shut them out, and return to us as favorers with friendship renewed.' And what is the cause again that they are made tranquil, peaceful, and gentle, if silly things are done and idle men play while the multitude looks on? Does Jupiter lay aside his passion if the Amphitryon of Plautus is acted and recited? Or if Europa, Leda, Ganymede, or Danae is danced, does he check the motion of his anger? Is the Great Mother made more tranquil and gentle if she sees the old story of Attis rubbed up again by actors? Will Venus forget her offense if she sees a pantomime acting the part of Adonis in dancing movements? Does the indignation of Alcides grow languid if Sophocles' tragedy called the Trachinian Women, or the Hercules of Euripides, is performed? Or does Flora think herself honorably treated if she sees shameful things done in her games and a migration from the brothels to the theaters? Is this not to diminish the dignity of the gods, to dedicate and consecrate to them the most shameful things, which a censorious mind would reject, and whose performers your law has judged dishonorable and counted among persons marked with infamy? The gods, no doubt, rejoice in mimes, and that surpassing power, grasped by no human natures, most willingly lends its ears to hearing these, in whose many intertwinings they know they are mixed as material for mockery. They are delighted, as the fact is, by the shaved heads of fools, by the sound and clapping of slaps, by shameful deeds and words, by the redness of huge members. And now, if they see men weakening themselves into feminine softness, some shouting to no purpose, others running about without cause, others, with the faith of friendship kept, beating one another and mutilating themselves with raw-hide gloves, these competing in breath, puffing out their cheeks with wind and clattering with huge voices: they raise their hands to heaven, leap up moved by wonderful things, cry out, and come back into favor with men. If these things bring the immortal gods forgetfulness of their grudges, if they draw the happiest pleasures from comedies, Atellan farces, and mimes, why do you delay, why do you hesitate to say that the gods themselves play, frolic, dance, compose obscene songs, and sway with twisting buttocks? For what difference does it make whether they do these things themselves or count it among their loves and delights that they are done by others?

From where, then, did this perversity of opinions flow, or from what causes did it arise? Chiefly, of course, from this: that human beings, unable to know what God is, what his power is, his nature, substance, and quality, whether he has a form or is bounded by no limitation of body, whether he does anything or not, whether he is always awake or is sometimes released into sleep, whether he runs, sits, walks, or is free from such motions and rest; unable, as I said, to know all these things or to see them clearly by any reasoning, they fell into these opinions, so that they fashioned gods after themselves, and gave them such a nature of actions, feelings, and wishes as their own nature is. But if they saw that they are a creature of no value, and that there is no great difference between themselves and an ant, they would surely stop thinking that they have anything in common with the gods above and would keep the modesty of their lowliness within their own bounds. But now, because they see that they have mouths, eyes, heads, cheeks, ears, noses, and the other portions of limbs and inward parts, they think that the gods too are formed in the same way and have their state in a bodily frame; and because they see that they rejoice at a happy thing and become sad from gloomier causes, they think that the deities too rejoice at more cheerful things and are drawn into contraction of mind by less happy ones; because they are affected by games, they think that the minds of the heavenly ones too are soothed by the delight of games; and because it is pleasant for them to be refreshed by the warmth of baths, they think that the cleanliness of washings is pleasing to the gods above too; we human beings gather the vintage, and they think and believe that the gods gather and conduct their vintages; we have birthdays, and they declare that the heavenly powers have birthdays. And if they could ascribe illnesses, sicknesses, and bodily diseases to the gods, they would not hesitate to call them splenetic, bleary-eyed, and ruptured, because they themselves are often splenetic and bleary-eyed and weighed down by the size of huge hernias.

Come now, since our discussion has been carried forward and brought to this place, let us compare in summary, by setting the individual points against each other, whether you think better about the gods above, or whether we hold a much more honorable and correct opinion, and one which gives and assigns to the divine its proper dignity. And first, you declare that the gods, whom you either think or believe exist in the nature of things, and whose images and forms you have set up in all the temples, were born and begotten by the law of union from the seeds of males and females. But we on the contrary, if indeed they are certainly gods and have the authority, power, and dignity of this name, hold either that they are unbegotten (for this is the religious belief), or, if they have a beginning of birth, it belongs to the supreme God to know in what ways he made them, or how many ages it is since he gave them to begin the everlastingness of their divinity. You think that the gods have sexes, and that some of them are male and others of the female kind; we deny that the heavenly powers are distinguished by sexes, since distinction of this kind was given to earthly animals, which the author of things willed to unite and beget, to replace offspring through desire. You think that they bear the likeness of human beings and are formed with the faces of mortals; we think that images are far removed from them, since form belongs to a mortal body, and if perhaps there is any, we swear that no one can grasp it with undoubted assertion. By you each is said to have crafts like workmen; we laugh when we hear these things, since we think arts are not necessary to gods, and it is established and clear that they were devised as aids to poverty.

You say that some of them cause discords, others bring pestilences, others loves and frenzies, and others preside over wars and rejoice in the shedding of blood; but we on the contrary judge that these things ... are separated from the dispositions of deities; or, if there are any who bring and put these evils on most wretched mortals, we maintain that they are far from the nature of gods and must not be placed under the name of this title. You judge that the deities are angry and disturbed and are slaves and subject to the other feelings of the mind; we think that motions of this kind are foreign to them, for they are functions of fierce kinds and of those who undergo mortality. You think that they rejoice and are glad in the blood of cattle, in the slaughter and immolation of victims, and return into favor with men when their offenses are put to sleep; we think that there is no love of blood in the heavenly ones, nor are they so hard as to cast off their anger when sated with the slaughter of wretched animals. You think that honor is added to the gods by wine and incense and that their dignities increase; we judge it a monstrosity and a portent that any human being believes that a god becomes more august by smoke, or himself thinks he has been supplicated holily and honorably enough by men with a few drops of wine. You are persuaded that the gods are delighted and affected by the ringing of bronze and the sounds of flutes, by horse races and theatrical games, and that their anger once conceived is softened by this satisfaction; we think it unfitting, indeed judge it incredible, that those who have passed through every kind of virtue by a thousand degrees to the summit of perfection should find pleasure and delight in things at which a wise man would laugh, and which seem to hold any charm only for little infants and those brought up in a common and vulgar way.

Since these things are so, and since there is so great a difference between our opinions and yours, where are we impious and you pious, since the reckoning of piety and impiety ought to be weighed from the feelings of the heart? For it is not he who makes himself some image to venerate as a god, or slaughters an innocent animal and burns incense on sacred altars, who is to be held devoted to divine things. It is opinion that makes religion, and a right mind about the gods, so that you think they seek nothing contrary to the honor of their own majesty. For since we see all the things given to them consumed here before our eyes, what else must be said to reach them from us but opinions worthy of the gods and most fitting to their name? These are the surest gifts, these the true sacrifices; for porridges and incense with meat are food for greedy fires and most closely akin to the offerings made to the dead.

'But if the immortal gods cannot be angry,' he says, 'and their nature is not shaken and stirred by any feelings of mind, what do the histories mean, what the annals, in whose records we read that the gods, moved by some offenses, brought pestilences, barrenness, shortages of crops, and other dangers on cities and nations, and again, appeased by the satisfaction of sacrifices, laid aside the heat of their indignation and changed the state of the sky and the weather into a happier condition? What of the roarings and movements of the earth which we have learned took place because games had been performed carelessly and not attended to in their proper form and conditions, and yet, when these were renewed and repeated with careful observance, the terrors of the gods above were quieted and they were called back to the care and friendship of men? How often, after a divine rite was performed at the command of the prophets and by the answers of the soothsayers, and certain gods were summoned from nations overseas and shrines were made for them, and certain statues and images were set up on higher columns, have the fears of impending dangers been turned away, the most dangerous enemies driven off, and the state enlarged by frequent joys of victories and the possession of very many provinces? This surely would not have happened if the gods despised sacrifices, games, and the other forms of worship and did not think they were honored by their observances. If, then, when these are given, all the heat and indignation of the deities grows cold and things which seemed to bring terrors are turned into prosperity, it is plain that all these things are not done without the will of the heavenly ones, and that it is in vain and with complete ignorance that you find fault with our giving them.'

While we speak, then, we have come to the very turning point of the case, to the hinge of the matter, to the true and most just question, into which we ought to look with the fear of superstition removed and partiality laid aside: whether these are gods, whom you assert rage when offended and are made gentle by sacrifices, or whether they are something far different and ought to be separated from the name and power of this title. For we do not deny that all these things you have brought forward in opposition are contained in the writings of the annals; for we ourselves, according to our small measure and the capacity of our wit, have read them and know that it is recorded that once, at the very Circensian games held for Jupiter Greatest, a certain head of a household, before the proceedings began, led a slave who had deserved very ill across the middle of the circus arena, beaten with rods, and then, as the custom was, punished him with the penalty of the gibbet. Then, when the games were over and the races finished, not long afterward the city began to be ravaged by pestilence; and as each day added a heavier evil to evil, and the people were dying in crowds, Jupiter said in a dream to a certain rustic, obscure in his humble lot, that he should go to the consuls and show that the leader of the dance had displeased him, and that it could go better for the city if the religious observance were restored to the games and they were held again from the beginning with careful observance. When he had by no means cared to do this, either because he suspected the dream was vain and would find no credit with those who would hear it, or because, mindful of his inborn humbleness, he shunned and feared approaching so great a power, Jupiter, made hostile to the delayer, inflicted on him the death of his sons as punishment. Soon, when he threatened him too with his own death unless he went as messenger about the disapproved leader of the dance, terrified by the fear of dying, and when he himself, touched by the pestilence, was already burning with its fever, on the advice of his relatives he was carried to the senate house of the fathers, and when the vision of the dream had been set out, the flames of the contagion flew away; then, the renewal of the games having been decreed, grave care was given to the spectacles and its former health restored to the people.

Nor likewise will we deny that we know that once, in hard times for the city and the state, whether caused by a hostile plague wasting the people with continuous contagion, or by powerful enemies already close to the danger of taking away its freedom through success in battles, by the commands and warnings of prophets certain gods were summoned from nations overseas and honored with magnificent temples, and that they calmed the heat of the plague, and that, the strength of the enemy being broken, triumphs were celebrated very often, the boundaries of the empire were extended, and countless provinces fell under the laws of your dominion. Nor does it escape our knowledge that it has been read and recorded that when the Capitol was struck by lightning, and many other things in it, the image of Jupiter too, which stood on a lofty pedestal, was thrown down from its base; that then an answer was given by the soothsayers that ill-omened and most gloomy things were portended, fires, murders, the destruction of the laws, and the fall of justice, but especially from enemies at home and an impious band of conspirators; but that these things could be turned aside, indeed that the wicked plans could not otherwise be made public, unless Jupiter were fixed again on a higher pedestal, turned toward the eastern quarter and facing the rays of the sun. Credit was given to the saying: for when the pedestal was raised and the statue turned toward the sun, hidden things were revealed and, laid open, the misdeeds were punished.

All these things that have been said have indeed the appearance of a miracle, or rather are believed to have it, if they come to human hearing just as they are set out; nor do we deny that there is something in them which, placed, as the saying is, on the front, can dazzle the ears and deceive them with the likeness of truth. But if you are willing to look closely at the deeds, the persons, and the wishes of the persons, you will find nothing worthy of the gods, nothing, as has often been said already, that relates to the appearance and dignity of this name. For who, first, would believe that he was a god, who was delighted by nags running for nothing and thought it most pleasant to be diverted by this kind of amusement? Indeed, who would agree that it was Jupiter, whom you call the chief god and the founder of all things that exist, who set out from heaven to watch geldings contending in speed, rounding the seven laps, and who, though he himself had willed them to be unequal in the swiftness of their bodies, rejoiced to see them pass and be passed, fall headlong and on their faces, be overturned on their backs with their chariots, others be dragged along and limp with broken legs; and who held among his greatest pleasures follies mixed with trifles and cruelties, which any cultivated person, even one not trained to the pursuit of full gravity and weight, would think childish and scorn as amusements? Who, I say, would believe, to repeat this word constantly, that he was of divine race, who, because a man who was to pay the penalty and punishment of his deserts was led through the space of the circus during the games, burned, embittered with anger, and girded himself to take his turn at vengeance? For if the slave was guilty and had to be punished with that penalty, how ought Jupiter to have been moved by any indignation, when nothing unjust was done, but a guilty person was punished with fitting penalties? But if he was free from crime and liable to no charge, he himself was the cause of the faulty leader of the dance, since, though he could have helped him, he did not, but himself chose both to suffer what he disapproved and to exact from others the penalty of his own permission. And why then did he complain that he was injured by that man and pronounce against him as leader of the dance, because he was led through the middle of the circus to the punishment of the cross, torn by rods and whips?

And what stain and foulness could flow from this deed that would make the circus less pure or Jupiter defiled, when every tiny moment and instant he saw so many thousands throughout the world perish by various kinds of death and different tortures? 'He was led through,' he says, 'before the games began to be performed.' If it was done with a sacrilegious heart and contempt of religion, then we ought to pardon Jupiter for being indignant that he was scorned and that no more careful attention was paid to his own Circensian games; but if the fault was hidden through error or chance and not noticed and recognized, would it not have been right and fitting to Jupiter to pardon human slips and grant the blindness of imprudence a pardonable indulgence? 'But the matter had to be avenged.' And after this will anyone believe that he was a god, who avenged and pursued with destruction the city's carelessness about a childish amusement; or that he had the firmness of any gravity, weight, or constancy, who, so that races might be run anew for the joys of his pleasure, turned the breathing of the air into poisonous destruction and decreed the slaughter of mortals by the disease of pestilence? If the magistrate who gave the games cared too little to learn who was led through the middle of the circus that day, and guilt was incurred from this, what had the unhappy people deserved, that they should pay for another's offenses with the penalty of their own lives and be cruelly driven from life by pestilential contagions? Indeed, what had the female sex done, whom the condition of their frailty excepted from public business; what grown maidens, what little boys, what finally those still small under the nourishment of nurses, that one and the same savagery should be let loose on them, and they should feel the bitterness of death before any sweetness of light?

If Jupiter wanted the games to be held and restored for him more scrupulously, if he wanted faithfully to give the people back their health and not to prolong and increase further the evil he had done, would it not have been more right to come to the consul himself, to one of the public priests, the chief pontiff or his own flamen Dialis, and show him in a dream both the fault of the leader of the dance and the cause of the deadly time? What reason was there to choose as the messenger of his will and the agent of the satisfaction he sought a man used to the country, unknown through the obscurity of his name, ignorant of city affairs, perhaps not knowing what a leader of the dance is? And if he surely knew, if only he was divine, that the man would be slow to obey, would it not have been easier and fitting for a god to change the man's mind and supply the will to obey, rather than to take savage ways and rage in the manner of a robber without any reason? For if the old rustic, unready in undertaking affairs, hesitated in the matter commanded, held back by the reasons given above, what had his unhappy sons deserved, that anger and indignation should be turned on them and that they should pay for another's offenses with the loss of their light? And is there anyone who would believe that he was a god, so unjust, so impious, not even keeping the ordinances of mortals, among whom it would be held a great wickedness for one to be punished for another and to avenge the offenses of some with the tortures of others? 'But he also caused the man himself to be seized by the savagery of the pestilence.' Would it not then have been better, indeed fairer, if this seemed necessary, for the terror of punishment to begin with the father himself, with whom lay the cause of such great disturbance and the failure to obey, rather than to use violence on his children to grieve him, and burn up and destroy innocent persons? What savagery, what great cruelty was that, that after the offspring was destroyed, it should afterward terrify the father with dangers within? If he had wanted to do this long before, that is, in the first place, neither would the innocent brothers have been destroyed, and the will of the offended deity would have been known. 'But when the duty of announcing was completed, the disease at once vanished and the man was immediately restored to health.' And what is wonderful in that, if he beat back the evil he had breathed in and boasted with empty display? But if you weigh the matter thoroughly, that was cruelty rather than a kindness of saving health, since he saved a wretched man, who longed to die after his sons, not for the joys of life but so that he might learn his solitude and feel the tortures of bereavement.

On a similar principle one could go through other histories and show that in them too something far other than the gods ought to be is said of them and indicated in their accounts, as in this one which I will set down next, one or two joined together, lest weariness be produced by excess. We do not deny that all these things which you have brought forward in opposition are contained in the writings of the annals. For we ourselves, according to our small measure and the capacity of our wit, have read these same things and know they are recorded; but the sum of the question is this: whether these are gods, whom you assert rage when offended and are made gentle by games and sacrifices, or something far different, which ought to be separated from the force of this name and power. For who, first, would think that they were gods, or believe that they are, who are dissolved into the joys of pleasures by stage movements and dances and by nags running for nothing, who set out from heaven to watch silly and cold performances, and are grieved that they are offended and their honors diminished if a dancer has stood still for a moment or a flute player, tired, has paused a little, who declare that the leader of the dance has displeased them if some guilty person goes through the middle of the circus to pay the penalty and punishment of his deserts? If all these things are examined thoroughly and without any partiality, they will be found foreign not only to the gods but to any cultivated person, even one not trained to the highest peaks of gravity and weight. Who, first, would think that they were gods, or believe that they are, who have a nature of harming and raging ..., and cast them off again, softened by one cup of blood and the fumigation of incense; who spend festive days and the fullest pleasures of merriment in stage movements and actors' dances; who set out from heaven to watch nags running for nothing and without any reason, and rejoice to see some of them pass and be passed, fall headlong and on their faces, be overturned on their backs with their chariots, others be dragged along disabled and limp with broken legs; who declare that the leader of the dance has displeased them if some guilty person goes through the middle of the circus to pay the penalty and punishment of his deserts; who grieve that they are offended and their honors diminished if a dancer has stood still for a moment, a tired flute player has paused, or that boy with his mother living falls by chance, slipping through someone's unsteadiness ...? If all these things are weighed thoroughly and without any partiality to sides, they are found to be very, very far from the gods, and foreign even to any man of common sense, though not trained in the knowledge of reasons for the pursuit of truth. 'After certain gods were brought from nations overseas,' you say, 'and after temples were founded for them and the altars were heaped with sacrifices, the people, who were in a bad way, recovered and grew strong, and the pestilent diseases fled as soundness was brought in.' What gods, tell me, I pray? 'Aesculapius,' you say, 'from Epidaurus, the god who presides over good health and is established on the island in the Tiber.' If we had a mind to treat these things more scrupulously, we would establish on your own authorities that he was not a god at all, who was conceived and born of a woman's womb, and who had ascended by the steps of years to that end of age at which the force of the thunderbolt, as is contained in your writings, drove him from both life and light. But we leave that question: let him be the son of Coronis, as you wish, of the number of the immortals and endowed with everlasting heavenly majesty. Yet what else was brought from Epidaurus but a snake of great length? If we follow the credibility of the annals and grant them ascertained truth, nothing else, as it is written. What then shall we say? This Aesculapius whom you proclaim, an excellent god, a holy god, the giver of health, the driver-away, preventer, and destroyer of the worst illnesses, is bounded by the form and outline of a serpent, crawling on the ground as little worms born of mud do, scraping the soil with chin and breast, dragging himself along in twisting coils, and, so that he can go forward, drawing his hindmost part along by the efforts of the front.

And since we read that he also used food, by which life lingers in bodies, he has wide jaws with which to swallow food sought with the gaping of his mouth; he has a stomach as a receptacle and inward parts where he may digest what is chewed and swallowed, so that blood may be given to the body and renewal supplied to its strength; he has also the final passages through which the unclean dregs may go, unloading the body of its repulsive foulness. If ever he changes place and prepares to pass from some regions into others, he does not fly unseen through the stars of heaven like a god and come to a stop in a moment of time where the cause demands, but, like a brute animal, he seeks a vehicle by which to be carried; he avoids the waves of the sea, and, so that he may be kept safe and unharmed, he boards a ship with human beings, and that god of public health entrusts himself to fragile wood and the joining of planks. We do not think that you can prove and establish that Aesculapius was that serpent, unless you choose to bring in this color: to say that the god turned himself into a snake, so that people could not curiously look at who or what he was. But if this is said by you, the very inconsistency of the matter will show how weakly and feebly it is said. For if the god avoided being seen by human beings, he ought not to have wanted to be seen in the form of a serpent either, since in any form he would be not another but himself. But if he intended to let himself be seen (for he ought not to deny himself to the sight of eyes), why did he not show himself to be seen such as he knew he was, and such as he knew himself to be held in the power of his divinity? For this was preferable and much more excellent and fitting to august dignity than to become a beast, to be turned into the likeness of a bristling animal, and to give room to doubtful contradictions whether he was a true god or something else, far removed from heavenly majesty.

'But if he was not a god,' he says, 'why, after he took himself out of the ship and crawled to the island in the Tiber, did he at once appear nowhere and cease to be seen as before?' Can we know whether there was some obstacle, by whose interposition and opposition he protected himself, or some chasm? You declare, you tell us, what that was or to what kind of thing it should be assigned, if the functions of certain persons are certain. Since this is your affair, and the discussion is about your deity and your religion, it is rather for you to teach and show us what that thing was, than to want to hear our opinions and wait for our decisions. For what else can we say but what was and was seen, what all the histories have published and was grasped by the senses of the eyes? We call this, then, a snake of very strong body and immense length, or, if this name is mean, we say serpent, we call it a reptile, or whatever other word usage offers us or the enlargement of speech devises. For if he crawled like a snake, not carrying himself on feet nor unfolding his goings beneath him but pressing on belly and breast; if, formed of the matter of flesh, he stretched out his length slippery; if he had a head and a tail, a back covered with scales, a hide varied with patches of spots, a mouth bristling with teeth and equipped for inflicting bites: what else can we say but that he was of earthly kind, however huge and excessive he was, even if he surpassed in length and strength of body the one slain by the force of Regulus's army? 'But we think otherwise, and undermine and destroy the truth.' Then it is for you to explain what he was, or of what kind, name, and quality. For how could he be a god, when he had those things we have mentioned, which gods ought not to have, if they mean to be gods and possess the eminence of this name? 'After he crawled to the Tiber island, he at once appeared nowhere: by this it is shown that he was a deity.' Can we know whether there was some obstacle of something there, by whose interposition and opposition he protected himself, or some chasm, or some recesses and arches from masses heaped up unevenly, into which he carried himself quickly, escaping the sight of the onlookers? For what if he leaped across the river? What if he swam across? What if he gave himself to the thickets of the woods? It is a feeble argument to suspect from this that the serpent was a god, because he withdrew himself from their eyes by the swift haste of his motion, since by the same argument it could again be shown that he was not a god.

'But if that snake was not a present god, why, after his arrival, was the force of the pestilence broken and health restored to the Roman people?' We reply in turn: if the god Aesculapius was ordered, from the books of fate and the answers of prophets, to be invited to the city to keep it safe and unharmed from the contagion of plague and pestilent diseases, and he came without disdain, as you say, turned into the form of a snake: why has the Roman state so often been afflicted by the disasters of this evil, so often at one time and another torn, harassed, and made smaller by countless thousands of citizens in slaughters? For since the god is said to have been summoned for this purpose, to turn away absolutely all the causes by which pestilence was produced, it followed that the city ought to have been untouched and always kept free and unharmed by harmful breath. Yet we see, as was said above, that it has often had deadly courses of life from these diseases, and that the strength of the people has been broken and weakened with no slight losses. Where then was Aesculapius, where was he who was promised by venerable oracles? Why, after temples were founded and shrines built for him, did he long allow the plague of a city that deserved well of him to have access, when he had been summoned to heal the present evils and not allow anything of the kind that might be feared

to return in the future? Unless perhaps someone will say that the protection of such a god was lacking to the later and following ages because people were then living with impious and disreputable characters, while he gave help to the ancestors because they were innocent and far removed from all contagion of crimes. This could perhaps have been heard and said with some reason, if either in ancient times everyone to a man had been good, or the following times produced all bad people, distinguished by no difference. But since the fact is that in great peoples and nations, indeed in all cities, the human race is mixed in natures, wishes, and characters, and good and bad could exist together as much in earlier ages as in new times, it is foolish enough to say that later mortals did not deserve the help of the deities because of their wickedness. For if the good of recent times were not protected because of the bad of the following ages, then neither ought the good ancestors to have deserved the goodwill of the deities, because of the bad people of old; but if the bad of old were also preserved because of the good of old, then the following age too, however disreputable, ought to have been protected because of the good among the later generations. So either that snake, brought when the force of the disease was already broken and diminished, took on the reputation of a preserver though he had brought no benefit at all; or it must be said that the prophetic songs of fate strayed far from true presages, since the remedy given by them is found to have been a help not to all ages thereafter but only to one.

'But the Great Mother too,' he says, 'summoned from Phrygian Pessinus likewise by the commands of prophets, was a source of health to the people and the cause of great joys. For the enemy, long powerful, was driven from the possession of Italy, the former glory was restored to the city by glorious and famous victories, the boundaries of the empire were extended far and wide, the right of freedom was taken from countless nations, cities, and peoples and the yoke of slavery imposed, and many other things accomplished abroad and at home founded the name and majesty of the race with unshakable firmness.' If the histories speak the truth and insert no falsehoods in their records of events, nothing else is written to have been brought from Phrygia, sent by King Attalus, but a certain stone, not large, which could be carried in a man's hand without any pressure, of dark and black color, uneven with little projecting corners, and which we all see today placed in that very statue in the place of the mouth, unhewn and rough, giving the image a face too little expressed in its likeness. What then shall we say?

Did a stone drive out of Italy that Carthaginian Hannibal, a powerful and strong enemy, under whom the Roman state trembled, uncertain and doubtful, and its greatness shook? Did a stone break him, did a stone make him fugitive, timid, and unlike himself? And that the city leapt up again to the pinnacle of empire and royal primacy, was nothing done by counsels, nothing by human strength, and was nothing contributed toward the return of its former greatness by so many and such great generals through military science or experience of affairs? Did a stone give strength to some and weakness to others, cast these down from prosperity, and raise the fortunes of others laid low by despair? And who among men will believe that a stone taken from the earth, moved by no sense, of sooty and black body, was the mother of the gods? Or who again would accept (for this alone remains) that the force of some deity dwelt in the fragments of flint, placed beneath like fire, and hidden in its veins? 'And from where was the victory won, if there was no deity in the stone of Pessinus?' We can say: by the diligence and courage of the fighters, by practice, time, counsel, and reason; we can say also by fate and the alternating variety of fortune. But if the situation was improved and happy victory recovered by the help of a stone, where was the Phrygian Mother at that time when, so many and such great armies having been slaughtered, the whole state leaned toward and came into the danger of final ruin? Why did she not present herself to the threatening enemy? Why did she not break and drive back such great attacks of war before those huge and ... blows fell, by which all the blood was poured out and life itself almost collapsed with its vitals drained? 'She had not yet been brought, nor had she been asked to lend her favor.' Granted: but a good helper never demands to be asked, always coming to aid with spontaneous help. 'She could not drive and put to flight the enemy while still separated from Italy by much sea and land.' But to a god, if he is a god, nothing at all is far, for whom the earth is a point and all things are placed under his nod.

But let there have been a deity present, as you demand to be believed, in that very stone: is there any mortal, however credulous and however easily he lends his ears to any fictions, who would judge that she was a goddess at that time, or ought to be called and named one today, who now seeks these things and now demands those, deserts and disdains her worshipers, moves from humbler provinces and joins herself to more powerful and richer peoples? Or that she loves warlike affairs and desires to be among battles, slaughter, deaths, and blood? If it is proper to gods, if indeed they are true and such as it befits to call by the force of that word and the power of that name, to do nothing maliciously, nothing unjustly, and to show themselves to all human beings with one and equal favor without any bias, will any human being believe that she was of divine race, or had a fairness worthy of gods, who, thrusting herself into human discords, broke the power of some and showed and displayed herself as the patron of others, took freedom from these and raised others to the pinnacle of dominion; who, so that one city might stand out, born for the ruin of the human race, subjugated an innocent world?