City of God 3.25–4.6

Chapter 25. On the temple of Concord, built by decree of the senate on the site of the seditions and slaughters.

By a truly elegant decree of the senate, a temple of Concord was built on the very spot where that deadly uproar took place, where so many citizens of every rank fell, so that, as a witness to the punishment of the Gracchi, it might strike the eyes of those addressing the assemblies and prick their memory. But what else was this than a mockery of the gods, to build a temple to that goddess who, if she had been in the city, would not have let it collapse, torn apart by such dissensions? Unless perhaps Concord, guilty of this crime because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, deserved to be shut up in that temple as in a prison. For if they wanted to fit the facts, why did they not rather build a temple of Discord there? Or is any reason given why Concord is a goddess and Discord is not, so that, according to Labeo's distinction, the one is good and the other evil? He himself seems to have followed nothing else than his observation that at Rome a temple had been established even to Fever, as to Health. In that way, then, a temple should have been established not only to Concord but also to Discord. So the Romans chose dangerously to live with so evil a goddess angry, and did not recall that the destruction of Troy took its origin from her offense. For she, because she had not been invited among the gods, contrived the quarrel of the three goddesses by slipping in the golden apple; hence the strife of the deities, and Venus victorious, and Helen carried off, and Troy destroyed. So if perhaps, indignant that she had not been thought worthy of any temple among the gods in the City, she was already troubling the city with such great tumults, how much more fiercely could she be provoked when she saw a temple set up to her adversary on the site of that slaughter, that is, on the site of her own work! Those learned and wise men are annoyed with us when we laugh at these vanities; and yet, as worshippers of good and evil deities, they cannot get out of this question of Concord and Discord: whether they passed over the worship of these goddesses and preferred to them Fever and Bellona, to whom they built ancient shrines, or worshipped these too, since, Concord departing, Discord raged and drove them on as far as civil wars.

Chapter 26. On the various kinds of war that followed the building of the temple of Concord.

They thought, then, that a fine obstacle to sedition would be the temple of Concord, the witness of the slaughter and punishment of the Gracchi, to be set before those addressing the assemblies. How much they gained by it is shown by the worse things that followed. For thereafter the speakers labored not to avoid the example of the Gracchi but to surpass their design: L. Saturninus, tribune of the plebs, and G. Servilius, praetor, and long afterwards M. Drusus, by whose seditions first very grievous slaughters broke out even then, and afterwards the Social wars, by which Italy was violently afflicted and brought to astonishing devastation and depopulation. Then the Servile war followed, and the civil wars. What battles were fought, what blood was shed, so that almost all the Italian peoples, in whom the Roman empire's chief strength lay, were subdued as if they were savage barbarians! Then how the Servile war was gathered from very few gladiators, that is, fewer than seventy, to what numbers it grew, how fierce and savage it became, which commanders of the Roman people that number defeated, which cities and regions it laid waste and how, even those who wrote the history could scarcely explain adequately. Nor was that the only Servile war; slaves had earlier ravaged the province of Macedonia, and then Sicily and the seacoast. And the great and horrible things done first by the robberies and then by the powerful wars of the pirates, who could describe as their magnitude deserves?

Chapter 27. On the civil war of Marius and Sulla.

When Marius, already stained with citizens' blood, having killed many of the opposing party, was defeated and fled from the City, the city had scarcely begun to breathe a little, to use Tullius's words, when “afterwards Cinna prevailed with Marius. Then indeed, with the most distinguished men killed, the lights of the city were put out. Afterwards Sulla avenged the cruelty of this victory; there is no need even to say with what loss of citizens and what calamity to the state.” For of this vengeance, which was more destructive than if the crimes being punished had been left unpunished, Lucan too says: “The cure exceeded measure and followed too far where the disease led the hand. The guilty perished; but by then only the guilty could survive.” In that war of Marius and Sulla, apart from those who fell in battle outside, in the City itself too the streets, squares, forums, theaters, and temples were filled with corpses, so that it was hard to judge when the victors caused more deaths, before, so as to conquer, or afterwards, because they had conquered. For first, in the victory of Marius, when he restored himself from exile, apart from the slaughters done everywhere in every direction, the head of the consul Octavius was set up on the Rostra; the Caesars were butchered in their homes by Fimbria; the two Crassi, father and son, were slaughtered in each other's sight; Baebius and Numitorius, dragged by the hook, died with their entrails scattered; Catulus drank poison to escape the hands of his enemies; Merula, the flamen of Jupiter, cut his veins and made an offering to his Jupiter even of his own blood. And before the very eyes of Marius, those were struck down at once to whom, when they greeted him, he had refused to hold out his right hand.

Chapter 28. What kind of victory Sulla's was, the avenger of Marius's cruelty.

The victory of Sulla that followed, the avenger, of course, of this cruelty, after so much citizens' blood, by the shedding of which it had been won, raged more cruelly in peace, now that the war was over and the enmities lived on. Already, after the earlier and most recent slaughters of the elder Marius, others more grievous had been added by the young Marius and Carbo, of the same Marian party, who, as Sulla approached, despairing not only of victory but of their very safety, filled everything with their own further slaughters. For, besides the carnage spread widely in various places, the senate too was besieged, and men were brought out from the very senate house, as from a prison, to the sword. The pontiff Mucius Scaevola, since nothing was held more sacred among the Romans than the temple of Vesta, was killed clasping the altar itself, and almost put out with his blood that fire which always burned by the perpetual care of the virgins. Then Sulla entered the City as victor, who in the Villa Publica, no longer in war but in peace itself raging, had cut down seven thousand men who had surrendered (and were therefore certainly unarmed), not by fighting but by command. And in the whole City each Sullan struck whom he wished, so that the deaths could not be counted at all, until it was suggested to Sulla that some should be allowed to live, so that the victors might have people to rule over. Then, when the license of butchery, which had been rushing madly this way and that everywhere, was restrained, that list was posted, amid great rejoicing, which contained two thousand men of both the distinguished orders, that is, the equestrian and senatorial, to be killed and proscribed. The number saddened, but the limit consoled; and there was not as much grief that so many were falling as joy that the rest were not in fear. But in the case of some of those ordered to die, even that security of the others, cruel though it was, groaned at the exquisite kinds of death. For the hands of those tearing one man apart without any iron pulled him to pieces, men tearing a living man more savagely than beasts usually tear a cast-out corpse. Another, his eyes dug out and his limbs cut off piece by piece, was forced to live long, or rather to die long, in such torments. Some famous cities too were sold at auction like farms; one indeed, as if one criminal were ordered to be led to execution, was ordered to be slaughtered whole. These things were done in peace after the war, not to hasten the winning of victory but so that the victory won should not be despised. Peace competed with war in cruelty and won. For war cut down the armed, peace the defenseless. War was such that he who was struck might strike back if he could; peace was such that he who had escaped might not live, but might die without resisting.

Chapter 29. A comparison of the Gothic invasion with the disasters the Romans suffered either from the Gauls or from the authors of the civil wars.

What madness of foreign nations, what savagery of barbarians, can be compared with this victory of citizens over citizens? What did Rome see that was more deadly, more hideous, more bitter: the invasion of the Gauls long ago and of the Goths a little while ago, or the ferocity of Marius and Sulla and other most distinguished men of their parties, as it were its own lights, against its own members? The Gauls indeed slaughtered the senate, whatever of it they could find in the whole City apart from the Capitoline citadel, which alone was defended in some fashion; but to those stationed on that hill they at least sold their lives for gold, lives which, even if they could not seize them by the sword, they could still have consumed by siege. The Goths, on the other hand, spared so many senators that it is more surprising that they killed any. But Sulla, while Marius was still alive, occupied as victor the very Capitol, which had been safe from the Gauls, to decree slaughters; and when Marius had escaped by flight, to return fiercer and bloodier, Sulla on the Capitol, even by decree of the senate, deprived many of life and property. And when Sulla was away, what was sacred to the Marian party, what would they spare, when they did not spare Mucius, a citizen, a senator, a pontiff, clasping in wretched embrace the very altar where, they say, the fates of Rome were kept? And that last list of Sulla's, to pass over countless other deaths, cut the throats of more senators than the Goths could even rob.

Chapter 30. On the chain of wars, very many and very grievous, that preceded the coming of Christ.

With what face, then, with what heart, with what impudence, with what folly, or rather madness, do they not blame those things on their gods, and blame these on our Christ? The cruel civil wars, more bitter, as even their authors admit, than all wars with enemies, by which that state was judged not afflicted but utterly ruined, arose long before the coming of Christ, and by a chain of wicked causes passed from the war of Marius and Sulla to the wars of Sertorius and Catiline (of whom the one had been proscribed by Sulla, the other brought up by him), thence to the war of Lepidus and Catulus (of whom one wanted to annul Sulla's acts, the other to defend them), thence to that of Pompey and Caesar (of whom Pompey had been a follower of Sulla and had equaled or even surpassed his power, while Caesar could not bear Pompey's power, but because he did not have it himself; yet he exceeded it once Pompey was conquered and killed), and from there they came to the other Caesar, who was afterwards called Augustus, in whose reign Christ was born. For Augustus himself too waged civil wars with many, and in them many most distinguished men also perished, among them Cicero, that eloquent craftsman of governing the state. For Gaius Caesar, Pompey's conqueror, who used his civil victory mercifully and granted his adversaries life and rank, was killed in the senate house itself by a conspiracy of certain noble senators as one who aimed at kingship, supposedly for the liberty of the state. Then Antony, very different in character and stained and corrupted by every vice, seemed to be aiming at Caesar's power, and Cicero resisted him vehemently for that same supposed liberty of the country. Then that other Caesar had come forward, a young man of wonderful talent, the adopted son of that Gaius Caesar, who, as I said, was afterwards called Augustus. Cicero favored this young Caesar, so that his power might be built up against Antony, hoping that when Antony's domination had been driven off and crushed he would restore the liberty of the state; so blind and unforeseeing of the future was he that that very young man, whose rank and power he was fostering, both allowed that same Cicero to be killed by Antony, in a kind of pact of concord, and subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the state for which Cicero had cried out so much.

Chapter 31. How impudently those who are not allowed to worship the gods blame present troubles on Christ, when such great disasters occurred at the time when the gods were worshipped.

Let those who are ungrateful to our Christ for such great goods accuse their own gods of such great evils. Certainly when those evils were happening, the altars of the deities were warm, “and breathed with Sabaean incense and fresh garlands”; the priesthoods were renowned, the shrines gleamed; there was sacrificing, playing, raving in the temples, while everywhere so much citizens' blood was being shed by citizens, not only in other places but even among the very altars of the gods. Tullius did not choose a temple to flee to, because Mucius had chosen one in vain. But these people, who insult the Christian times much more unworthily, either fled to places most dedicated to Christ, or the barbarians themselves led them there so that they might live. This I know, and so does anyone along with me who judges without partisanship, and he recognizes it very easily (to pass over the other things, many of which I have mentioned, and many more which I thought it would take too long to mention): if the human race had received the Christian teaching before the Punic wars, and such devastation had followed as wore down Europe and Africa in those wars, none of such people as we now suffer would have attributed those evils to anything but the Christian religion. Much less would their voices be tolerated, as far as the Romans are concerned, if the acceptance and spread of the Christian religion had been followed either by the invasion of the Gauls, or by that devastation by the river Tiber and by fire, or, what surpasses all evils, by those civil wars. As for other evils too, which happened so incredibly that they were counted among prodigies, if they had happened in Christian times, to whom would they have imputed them as crimes except Christian people? For I pass over those things that were more wonderful than harmful: oxen speaking, unborn infants crying out certain words from their mothers' wombs, serpents flying, women and hens changed into the male sex, and other things of this kind, which in their books, not of fable but of history, whether true or false, bring on men not ruin but astonishment. But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones (not as hail is usually called by this name, but actual stones), these things certainly could do serious harm as well. We read in their writings that when the fires of Etna ran down from the very summit of the mountain to the nearest shore, the sea boiled so that rocks were burned and the pitch of ships melted. This was certainly no slight harm, however incredibly marvelous. By the same heat of fires again, they wrote, Sicily was filled with such a mass of ash that it crushed and pressed down and destroyed the roofs of the city of Catina; moved by this calamity, the Romans mercifully remitted its tribute for that year. They also recorded that there was a multitude of locusts in Africa, like a prodigy, when it was already a province of the Roman people; for, having consumed the fruits and the leaves of the trees, it was thrown into the sea, they say, in a huge and immeasurable cloud; and when it died and was washed up on the shores, and the air was corrupted by it, such a pestilence arose that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone eight hundred thousand men are reported to have perished, and many more in the lands nearest the shores. They affirm that then at Utica, of the thirty thousand young men who were there, ten thousand remained. Such vanity, then, as we endure and are compelled to answer, which of these things would it not attribute to the Christian religion if it saw them in Christian times? And yet they do not attribute these things to their gods, whose worship they demand precisely so as not to suffer these or lesser things, although those by whom they were worshipped before suffered greater ones.

Chapter 1. On the matters discussed in the first book.

Having begun to speak of the city of God, I thought I should first answer its enemies, who, pursuing earthly joys and gaping after fleeting things, blame the Christian religion, which alone is the wholesome and true religion, for whatever sorrow they suffer in these things, sent rather by the mercy of God who warns than by the severity of God who punishes. And since, as the unlearned common people too are among them, they are stirred up to hatred of us the more grievously as if by the authority of the learned, the ignorant thinking that the unusual things that have happened in their own times did not usually happen in earlier times, and this opinion of theirs being confirmed, so that they may seem to have just grounds for murmuring against us, even by those who know it to be false, by concealing their own knowledge, it had to be shown from the books which their own authors committed to memory for the knowledge of the history of past times that things are far otherwise than they think; and at the same time it had to be taught that the false gods, whom they used to worship openly or still worship secretly, are most unclean spirits and most malign and deceitful demons, so much so that they delight in their own crimes, whether true or even invented, which they wanted celebrated for them at their festivals, so that human weakness cannot be called back from committing damnable deeds while a seemingly divine authority is offered for imitating them. We proved these things not from our own conjecture but partly from recent memory, because we ourselves saw such things offered to such deities, and partly from the writings of those who left them written for posterity, not as an insult but as an honor to their gods; so much so that Varro, a most learned man among them and of the weightiest authority, when he made separate books on human and divine things, assigning some to human things and others to divine according to the dignity of each subject, placed the stage plays not at least among human things but among divine things; whereas surely, if there were only good and honorable men in the city, stage plays ought not to have had a place even among human things. He did this certainly not on his own authority, but because, born and educated at Rome, he found them among divine things. And since at the end of the first book we briefly set out what was to be said next, and have said some of it in the two following books, we recognize that we must give the readers what they are waiting for in what remains.

Chapter 2. On the contents of the second and third books.

We had promised, then, to say certain things against those who blame the disasters of the Roman state on our religion, and to recall, as many and as great as might come to mind or seem sufficient, the evils that city, or the provinces belonging to its empire, suffered before their sacrifices were forbidden; all of which they would undoubtedly blame on us if our religion had already been shining on them or had forbidden them their sacrilegious rites in the same way. These things, I think, we have dealt with sufficiently in the second and third books: in the second treating of the evils of morals, which are to be counted either the only or the greatest evils; in the third of those evils which fools alone dread to suffer, namely of the body and of external things, which the good too often suffer; while those evils by which they themselves become evil they have, I do not say patiently, but gladly. And how little I said about that city alone and its empire! Not even everything from there up to Caesar Augustus. What if I had wanted to recall and enlarge on those evils which men do not do to one another, such as the devastations and destructions of those at war, but which befall earthly things from the elements of the world itself, which Apuleius briefly touches on in one place in that little book he wrote On the World, saying that all earthly things undergo changes, overturnings, and destruction? For he says, to use his words, that by immoderate earthquakes the ground has burst open and cities have been swallowed up with their peoples; whole regions have been washed away by sudden rains; those which were formerly mainland have been made islands by strange and incoming waves, and others, by the withdrawal of the sea, have been made passable on foot; cities have been overturned by winds and storms; fires have flashed from the clouds, by which regions of the East have been burned up and perished; and in the regions of the West certain outbursts and floods of water have caused the same destruction; so once from the summits of Etna, its craters poured out, rivers of flames ran down the slopes like a torrent in a divine fire. If I had wanted to collect these and such things as history contains, from where I could, when would I have finished with what happened in those times, before the name of Christ checked any of their vain practices, so pernicious to true salvation? I had also promised to show what morals of theirs, and for what reason, the true God, in whose power are all kingdoms, deigned to help for the increase of their empire, and how those whom they think gods helped them not at all, and rather how much harm they did by deceiving and misleading them; I see that I must now speak of this, and more of the growth of the Roman empire. For how many evils the harmful deceit of the demons, whom they worshipped as gods, brought on their morals has already been discussed at some length, especially in the second book. And throughout all three completed books, where it seemed opportune, we have pointed out how much consolation God has given, even in the very evils of war, to good and bad through the name of Christ, to which the barbarians paid such honor beyond the custom of wars, as he who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

Chapter 3. Whether breadth of empire, which is acquired only by wars, is to be counted among the goods either of the wise or of the happy.

Now, then, let us see what it is that they dare to attribute so great a breadth and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom they claim to have worshipped honorably even through the services of foul plays and the ministries of foul men. Though I would like first to inquire a little what reason, what prudence there is in wishing to glory in the breadth and greatness of an empire, when you cannot show that men are happy, always living amid the disasters of war and in blood, whether of citizens or of enemies, but human blood, with dark fear and bloody greed, so that their joy is like glass, brittle and bright, for which one fears more horribly that it may suddenly be broken. To judge this more easily, let us not vanish, puffed up with empty windiness, and blunt the edge of our attention with high-sounding names of things when we hear of peoples, kingdoms, provinces; but let us set up two men (for each single man, like one letter in a discourse, is as it were an element of a city and kingdom, however broad in its occupation of lands), and of these two men let us think of one as poor, or rather of moderate means, and the other as very rich; but the rich man anxious with fears, wasting with griefs, burning with greed, never secure, always restless, panting in the perpetual strife of enmities, increasing his estate indeed beyond measure by these miseries, and by these increases heaping up also the bitterest cares; while the man of moderate means is sufficient to himself with a small and compact property, most dear to his own, enjoying the sweetest peace with relatives, neighbors, and friends, devout in godliness, kindly in mind, sound in body, sparing in life, chaste in morals, secure in conscience. I do not know whether anyone is so foolish as to dare to doubt which to prefer. As with these two men, then, so with two families, two peoples, two kingdoms, the rule of fairness follows; and if our attention is corrected by applying it watchfully, we shall see very easily where vanity dwells and where happiness. Therefore, if the true God is worshipped and served with true rites and good morals, it is useful that the good should reign far and wide and long; and this is useful not so much to themselves as to those over whom they reign. For as far as they themselves are concerned, their godliness and uprightness, which are great gifts of God, suffice them for true happiness, by which both this life is lived well and afterwards eternal life is received. In this world, then, the reign of the good is granted not so much for their own sake as for human affairs; but the reign of the wicked harms the rulers more, who lay waste their own souls by greater license for crimes, while it does not harm those who are subjected to them in service, except by their own iniquity. For whatever evils are inflicted on the just by unjust masters are not the punishment of a crime but the testing of virtue. So the good man, even if he is a slave, is free; but the wicked man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and not of one man but, what is worse, of as many masters as he has vices. Of these vices divine Scripture says: “For by whatever a man is overcome, to that he is also bound as a slave.”

Chapter 4. How like robber bands kingdoms are without justice.

So, justice removed, what are kingdoms but great robber bands? For what are robber bands themselves but little kingdoms? The band too is itself made up of men; it is ruled by the command of a leader, it is bound together by a pact of association, the loot is divided by an agreed law. If this evil grows by the accession of desperate men to such an extent that it holds territory, establishes seats, occupies cities, and subjugates peoples, it assumes the name of kingdom more openly, which is now conferred on it in the eyes of all, not by the removal of greed, but by the addition of impunity. For it was an elegant and true answer that a certain pirate, when captured, gave to the famous Alexander the Great. When the king asked the man what he meant by keeping the sea in turmoil, he said with bold defiance: “The same as you mean by keeping the whole world in turmoil; but because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber; because you do it with a great fleet, an emperor.”

Chapter 5. On the runaway gladiators, whose power was like royal rank.

So I pass over asking what kind of men Romulus gathered, since much care was taken for them that, being given a share in the city in exchange for that life, they would stop thinking about the punishments they deserved, the fear of which drove them to greater crimes, so that thereafter they might be more peaceable toward human affairs. This I say: that the Roman empire itself, already great, having subjugated many nations and being terrible to the rest, felt it bitterly, feared it gravely, and with no small effort to avoid a huge disaster crushed it, when a very few gladiators in Campania, fleeing from their training school, gathered a great army, had three leaders, and laid waste Italy most widely and cruelly. Let them say which god helped these men to rise from a small and contemptible robber band to a kingdom to be feared even by the Romans, with such great forces and strongholds. Or will it be denied that they were helped by divine power because they did not last long? As if the life of any man at all were long! On that basis, then, the gods help no one to reign, since each individual dies quickly; nor is anything to be counted a benefit which in each man, and therefore in all, one by one, vanishes like vapor in a short time. For what does it matter to those who worshipped the gods under Romulus and have long since died that after their death the Roman empire grew so great, when they are pleading their own cases in the underworld? Whether good cases or bad does not concern the present matter. This must be understood of all who, through that empire (although it extends over long periods as mortals depart and succeed), passed quickly and hurriedly through the few days of their life, carrying the burdens of their deeds. But if even the benefits of the shortest time are to be attributed to the help of the gods, those gladiators were helped not a little: they broke the chains of their servile condition, fled, escaped, gathered a great and very strong army, and, obeying the counsels and commands of their kings, were much to be feared by Roman majesty and unconquerable by several Roman commanders; they took much, won very many victories, enjoyed the pleasures they wished, did what lust suggested, and finally, until they were conquered, which was done with the greatest difficulty, lived exalted and reigning. But let us come to greater things.

Chapter 6. On the greed of King Ninus, who, in order to rule more widely, was the first to make war on his neighbors.

Justin, who, following Trogus Pompeius, wrote a Greek, or rather a foreign, history, not only in Latin, as Trogus did, but also briefly, begins the work of his books thus: “At the beginning of affairs, the rule of peoples and nations was in the hands of kings, whom not popular ambition but moderation approved among good men raised to the height of this majesty. The peoples were bound by no laws; it was the custom to guard the boundaries of rule rather than extend them; kingdoms were limited, for each king, within his own homeland. The first of all, Ninus, king of the Assyrians, changed the old and, as it were, ancestral custom of nations by a new desire for rule. He was the first to make war on his neighbors, and he subdued peoples still untrained to resist, as far as the borders of Libya.” And a little later: “Ninus,” he says, “strengthened the greatness of the dominion he had acquired by continuous possession. So, having subdued his nearest neighbors, when he passed on to others, stronger by the addition of forces, and each nearest victory was the instrument of the next, he subjugated the peoples of the whole East.” With whatever regard for the facts either he or Trogus wrote (for other more trustworthy writings show that they told some lies), it is agreed among other writers too that the kingdom of the Assyrians was extended far and wide by King Ninus. And it lasted so long that the Roman empire is not yet of its age. For, as those who have pursued chronological history write, this kingdom lasted twelve hundred and forty years from the first year in which Ninus began to reign, until it was transferred to the Medes. But to make war on neighbors and go on from there to the rest, and to crush and subdue peoples who have done one no harm, from mere greed for rule, what else is it to be called but great robbery?