City of God 4.30–5.6

Chapter 30. What even their worshippers admit they think about the gods of the nations.

Cicero the augur laughs at auguries and laughs at men who regulate the plans of their life by the cries of the raven and the crow. But this Academic, who maintains that all things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these matters. In his work, in the second book On the Nature of the Gods, Quintus Lucilius Balbus argues; and though he himself introduces superstitions drawn from the nature of things, as if they were physical and philosophical, he is nevertheless indignant at the setting up of images and at fabulous opinions, speaking thus: “Do you see, then, how from physical discoveries, well and usefully made, reason has been drawn away to invented and fictitious gods? This has produced false opinions, turbulent errors, and superstitions almost fit for old women. For the forms of the gods are made known to us, and their ages, dress, and ornaments, and moreover their descents, marriages, kinships, and everything transferred to the likeness of human weakness. For they are even represented with troubled minds; for we have heard of the lusts, griefs, and angers of the gods. Nor, as the fables tell, have the gods been free of wars and battles; and not only, as in Homer, when different gods defended two opposing armies from opposite sides, but they have also waged wars of their own, as with the Titans or with the Giants. These things are both said and believed most foolishly, and they are full of vanity and the utmost levity.” See meanwhile what those who defend the gods of the nations admit. Then, when he says that these things belong to superstition, but to religion belong the things he himself seems to teach following the Stoics: “For not only the philosophers,” he says, “but also our ancestors separated superstition from religion. For those who prayed and sacrificed whole days that their children might survive them [superstites] were called superstitious.” Who does not understand that he is trying, while he fears the custom of the state, to praise the religion of the ancestors and to separate it from superstition, but cannot find how to do it? For if those were called superstitious by the ancestors who prayed and sacrificed whole days, were not those also superstitious who instituted (which he blames) images of the gods distinguished by age and dress, and the descents, marriages, and kinships of the gods? Certainly when these things are blamed as superstitious, the blame involves the ancestors who instituted and worshipped such images; it involves also Balbus himself, who, however eloquently he strives to extricate himself into freedom, was obliged to venerate these things; nor would he dare to mutter in an assembly of the people what he sounds forth so eloquently in this discussion. Let us Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our God, not to heaven and earth, as that man argues, but to him who made heaven and earth, who, through the most lofty humility of Christ, through the preaching of the apostles, through the faith of the martyrs who died for the truth and live with the truth, has overthrown these superstitions, which Balbus, as if stammering [balbutiens], scarcely reproves, not only in religious hearts but even in superstitious temples, by the free service of his own people.

Chapter 31. On the opinions of Varro, who rejected the popular belief and, though he did not come to the knowledge of the true God, still judged that one God should be worshipped.

What of Varro himself, who, we regret, placed stage plays among divine things, though not by his own judgment? Though in many places he urges the worship of the gods as if he were religious, does he not admit that he does not follow by his own judgment the things he records that the Roman state instituted, so that he does not hesitate to confess that if he were founding that state anew, he would rather have dedicated gods and their names according to the pattern of nature? But since he was now in an old nation, he says, he ought to keep the history of names and surnames received from the ancients as it was handed down, and to write and investigate these things to this end, that the common people might wish to worship the gods rather than despise them. By these words this most acute man shows plainly enough that he is not disclosing everything, things which would be contemptible not only to himself but would seem despicable even to the common people, unless they were kept silent. I might have been thought to be guessing this, were it not that in another place he himself says plainly, speaking of religions, that there are many true things which it is not useful for the common people to know, and, further, things which, though false, it is expedient for the people to think otherwise; and that this is why the Greeks enclosed their initiations and mysteries in silence and within walls. Here certainly he has betrayed the whole policy of those supposedly wise men by whom states and peoples were to be ruled. Yet in this deceit the malignant demons delight in marvelous ways, who possess deceivers and deceived alike; and from their domination nothing sets us free but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The same most acute and most learned author also says that only those seemed to him to have perceived what God is who believed him to be the soul governing the world by motion and reason. And so, though he did not yet hold what the truth holds (for the true God is not a soul, but the maker and founder of the soul too), still, if he could have been free against the prejudices of custom, he would have confessed and urged that one God should be worshipped, governing the world by motion and reason, so that the only question left between him and us on this matter would be that he called him a soul, and not rather the creator of the soul as well. He says also that the ancient Romans worshipped the gods for more than one hundred and seventy years without an image. “If this had remained until now,” he says, “the gods would be worshipped more purely.” As a witness to this opinion he brings, among others, the Jewish nation; and he does not hesitate to conclude that passage by saying that those who first set up images of the gods for the peoples both took away fear from their cities and added error, judging wisely that the gods could easily be despised in the dullness of images. And since he does not say “handed down error” but “added” it, he certainly means it to be understood that there was error already even without images. So when he says that only those have perceived what God is who believed him to be a soul governing the world, and thinks that religion is observed more purely without images, who does not see how near he came to the truth? For if he had had any power against the antiquity of so great an error, he would surely have judged both that one God should be worshipped, by whom he believed the world to be governed, and that he should be worshipped without an image; and having come so close, he might perhaps easily have been reminded of the changeableness of the soul, so as to perceive that the true God is rather the unchangeable nature which created the soul itself. Since this is so, whatever mockeries of many gods such men have set down in their writings, they were compelled to confess them by the hidden will of God rather than trying to persuade people of them. If, then, we bring forward any testimonies from there, we bring them to refute those who will not see from how great and how malignant a power of demons we are set free by the singular sacrifice of so holy a blood poured out and by the gift of the Spirit bestowed.

Chapter 32. For what apparent advantage the rulers of the nations wished false religions to remain among the peoples subject to them.

He also says, concerning the generations of the gods, that the peoples inclined more to the poets than to the natural philosophers, and that therefore his ancestors, that is, the ancient Romans, believed in both the sex and the generations of the gods and established their marriages. This seems to have been done for no other reason than that it was the business of men supposedly prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion, and in this very thing not only to worship but also to imitate the demons, whose greatest desire is to deceive. For just as the demons cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived, so also men who were rulers, not just men indeed but like the demons, persuaded the peoples, in the name of religion, of things they knew to be empty as though they were true, in this way binding them more tightly, as it were, to civil society, so that they might possess them as subjects in the same way. And what weak and unlearned man could escape rulers of the state and demons deceiving him at once?

Chapter 33. That the times of all kings and kingdoms are ordered by the judgment and power of the true God.

Therefore that God, the author and giver of happiness, because he alone is the true God, himself gives earthly kingdoms both to the good and to the evil; and not rashly and as it were by chance, because he is God, not fortune, but according to an order of things and times hidden from us and perfectly known to him. Yet he does not serve this order of times as one subject to it; he rules it as its lord and arranges it as its governor. But happiness he gives only to the good. For those who serve can either have it or not have it, and those who reign can either have it or not have it; yet it will be full in that life where no one will serve any longer. And so earthly kingdoms are given by him both to the good and to the evil, lest his worshippers, still children in the progress of the soul, should desire these gifts from him as if they were something great. And this is the mystery of the Old Testament, in which the New was hidden: that there earthly promises and gifts are found, while those who were spiritual even then understood, though they did not yet proclaim it openly, both what eternity was signified by those temporal things and in which gifts of God true happiness lay.

Chapter 34. On the kingdom of the Jews, which was founded and preserved by the one true God as long as they remained in the true religion.

And so, that it might be known that even those earthly goods, for which alone those gape who cannot think of better things, lie in the power of the one God himself and not of the many false gods whom the Romans formerly believed should be worshipped, he multiplied his people in Egypt from very few and delivered them from there by wonderful signs. Nor did those women call on Lucina when he himself saved their offspring, so that they multiplied in wonderful ways and that nation grew beyond belief, from the hands of the Egyptians who persecuted them and wished to kill all their infants. Without the goddess Rumina they sucked, without Cunina they lay in cradles, without Educa and Potina they took food and drink; they were brought up without all those gods of childhood, married without the gods of marriage, united with their wives without the worship of Priapus; without calling on Neptune the sea parted and opened for them as they crossed, and, its waves returning upon themselves, it overwhelmed their enemies who followed them. Nor did they consecrate any goddess Mannia when they received manna from heaven; nor, when the struck rock poured out water for them in their thirst, did they worship the Nymphs and Lymphs. Without the mad rites of Mars and Bellona they waged wars; and though they did not conquer without victory, they held it not as a goddess but as a gift of their God. Without Segetia they had crops, without Bubona oxen, honey without Mellona, fruit without Pomona; and in short, everything for which the Romans thought they must supplicate so great a crowd of false gods, they received far more happily from the one true God. And if they had not sinned against him, drifting away to foreign gods and to idols, led astray by impious curiosity as if by magic arts, and at last killing Christ, they would have remained in the same kingdom, if not a larger one, then a happier one. And now, that they are dispersed through almost all lands and nations is the providence of that one true God, so that, when the images, altars, groves, and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown and their sacrifices forbidden, it may be proved from their books how this was prophesied so long before; lest, if it were read only in ours, it might be thought to have been invented by us. What follows must be seen in the next book, and here an end must be put to this long discussion.

Chapter 1. That the cause of the Roman empire and of all kingdoms is neither chance nor the position of the stars.

The cause, then, of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither chance nor fate, in the sense or opinion of those who call things chance which either have no causes or causes that do not come from some rational order, and call things fated which happen, apart from the will of God and of men, by the necessity of some order. Human kingdoms are established by divine providence, pure and simple. If anyone ascribes them to fate because he calls the will or power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion but correct his language. For why does he not say first what he will say afterwards, when someone asks him what he meant by fate? For when people hear that word, by the ordinary usage of speech they understand nothing but the power of the position of the stars as it is when someone is born or conceived; and some detach this from the will of God, while others affirm that this too depends on it. But those who think that the stars decide, apart from the will of God, what we do, or what goods we have, or what evils we suffer, must be driven from everyone's ears, not only of those who hold the true religion but of those who wish to be worshippers of any gods whatever, even false ones. For what does this opinion do but bring it about that no god at all is worshipped or prayed to? Against these, however, our discussion is not now directed, but against those who oppose the Christian religion in defense of those they think are gods. As for those who make the position of the stars, which in some way decides what each person is like and what good comes to him or what evil befalls him, depend on the will of God: if they think that these same stars have this power handed over to them by his supreme power, so that they decide these things by their own will, they do great wrong to heaven, in whose most illustrious senate, as it were, and most splendid council-house they suppose that crimes are decreed to be done, such that if any earthly state had decreed them, it would have deserved to be overthrown by the decree of the human race. What judgment, then, is left to God over the deeds of men, when a heavenly necessity is applied to them, since he is the Lord both of the stars and of men? Or if they say that the stars do not decide these things by their own choice, though they have received power from the supreme God, but simply carry out his commands in imposing such necessities: must we then think of God himself what it seemed most unworthy to think of the will of the stars? But if the stars are said rather to signify these things than to cause them, so that their position is a kind of speech foretelling the future, not bringing it about (for this has been the opinion of men of no ordinary learning): the astrologers are indeed not accustomed to speak like that, saying, for example, “Mars in this position signifies a murderer,” but “makes a murderer.” Still, let us grant that they do not speak as they ought, and that they should take from the philosophers the rule of speech for announcing the things they think they find in the position of the stars. How is it that they have never been able to say why in the life of twins, in their actions, in their fortunes, in their professions, arts, honors, and the other things belonging to human life, and even in death itself, there is often so great a difference that, as far as these things are concerned, many strangers are more like them than the twins are like each other, though they were separated at birth by a very small interval of time and at conception were sown by one act of intercourse, even in one moment?

Chapter 2. On the like and unlike health of twins.

Cicero says that Hippocrates, the most famous physician, left it in writing that he suspected certain brothers to be twins because they began to be ill at the same time, and their illness grew worse at the same time and eased at the same time; while Posidonius the Stoic, much given to astrology, used to assert that they had been born under the same arrangement of the stars and conceived under the same. So what the physician believed belonged to a very similar temperament of health, the philosopher-astrologer attributed to the power and arrangement of the stars as it was at the time they were conceived and born. In this case the medical conjecture is much more acceptable and more nearly credible, since the first beginnings of those conceived could be affected according to how the parents were affected in body when they lay together, so that, having received their first growth from their mother's body, they were born with equal health; then, brought up in one house on the same foods, where, as medicine testifies, the air, the situation of the place, and the quality of the waters have great power for the good or bad condition of the body, and accustomed also to the same exercises, they would have bodies so alike that they would be moved in the same way to fall ill at one time and from the same causes. But to wish to drag the arrangement of the sky and the stars at the time when they were conceived or born into this equality of sickness, when so many things of the most different kinds, with the most different effects and fortunes, may have been conceived and born at the same time in the land of one region under the same sky, I do not know what kind of arrogance it is. We, however, know twins who not only have different actions and travels but also suffer different illnesses. For this Hippocrates would give, as it seems to me, a very easy explanation: that different foods and exercises, which come not from the temperament of the body but from the will of the mind, may have brought them different states of health. Moreover, it will be surprising if Posidonius or any other defender of fatal stars can find anything to say here, unless he wishes to make sport of the minds of the unskilled in matters they do not know. For what they try to make out from the small interval of time that the twins had between them when they were born, because of the small part of the sky where the mark of the hour is placed, which they call the horoscope: either it has not as much power as the difference found in the wills, actions, characters, and fortunes of twins; or it has even more power than the equal lowliness or nobility of the twins' family, the greatest difference in which they place in nothing but the hour in which each is born. And so, if one is born after the other so quickly that the same part of the horoscope remains, I look for everything to be equal, which can be found in no twins; but if the later one's delay changes the horoscope, I look for different parents, which twins cannot have.

Chapter 3. On the argument which the astrologer Nigidius took from the potter's wheel in the question of twins.

In vain, then, is that famous invention of the potter's wheel brought forward, which they say Nigidius gave in reply when troubled by this question, and from which he was also called Figulus [“potter”]. For when he had spun a potter's wheel as hard as he could, he struck it twice with ink as it ran, with the greatest speed, as if at one spot on it; then, when the motion stopped, the marks he had made were found at no small distance from each other on the rim of the wheel. “So,” he said, “in so great a speed of the heavens, even if one twin is born after the other as quickly as I struck the wheel twice, it amounts to a very great distance in the space of the sky; from this,” he said, “come all the great dissimilarities reported in the characters and fortunes of twins.” This fiction is more fragile than the vessels shaped by that turning. For if so much difference arises in the sky, which cannot be grasped by the constellations, that an inheritance falls to one twin and not to the other, why do they dare, when they have examined the constellations of others who are not twins, to pronounce things that belong to that secret which no one can grasp and note in the moments of those being born? But if they say such things in the nativities of others because these belong to longer stretches of time, while those moments of tiny parts that twins can have between them at birth are assigned to the smallest matters, about which astrologers are not usually consulted (for who would consult them about when to sit, when to walk about, when or what to eat?): are we speaking of such things when we point out very many and very great differences in the characters, works, and fortunes of twins?

Chapter 4. On the twins Esau and Jacob, who were very unlike each other in character and actions.

Two twins were born in the ancient memory of the fathers (to speak of famous cases), one after the other in such a way that the second held the heel of the first. So different were they in their life and character, so unequal in their actions, so unlike in their parents' love, that the very distance between them made them enemies to each other. Is this said because while one walked the other sat, and while one slept the other was awake, and while one spoke the other was silent? These belong to those minute details which cannot be grasped by those who write down the arrangement of the stars under which each is born, for which astrologers are consulted. One spent years in hired service, the other did not serve; one was loved by his mother, the other was not; one lost an honor that was held great among them, the other obtained it. What of their wives, what of their sons, what of their possessions: how great a difference! If, then, these things belong to those minute intervals of time which twins have between them, and are not ascribed to the constellations, why are they told when the constellations of others are examined? But if they are told because they belong not to incomprehensible minutes but to stretches of time that can be observed and noted, what does that potter's wheel do here, except to send men with hearts of clay spinning round, so that the idle talk of the astrologers may not be refuted?

Chapter 5. In what ways the astrologers are proved to profess an empty science.

What of those same brothers whose illness, because it appeared worse and lighter in both at the same time, led Hippocrates, examining it medically, to suspect they were twins: do they not sufficiently refute those who wish to give to the stars what came from a similar bodily temperament? For why were they ill in the same way and at the same time, and not one first and the other later, as they had been born, since they certainly could not both be born at once? Or if their being born at different times had no effect in making them ill at different times, why do they contend that a different time of birth has power to produce differences in other things? Why could they travel at different times, marry wives at different times, beget sons at different times, and many other things, because they were born at different times, and could not, for the same reason, also fall ill at different times? For if an unequal delay in birth changed the horoscope and brought inequality into the other things, why did there remain in their illnesses what they had from being conceived at the same time? Or if the fates of health lie in conception, while those of other things are said to lie in birth, they ought not to say anything about health from examining the constellations of birthdays, since the hour of conception is not given them to examine. But if they predict illnesses without examining the horoscope of conception because the moments of birth indicate them, how would they tell either of those twins from the hour of his birth when he would fall ill, since the other, who did not have the same hour of birth, would necessarily fall ill at the same time? Next I ask: if there is so great a distance of time in the birth of twins that different constellations must come about for them because of the different horoscope, and so all the different cardinal points, in which such great power is placed that their fates differ as a result, how could this happen, since their conception cannot have had different times? Or if the fates of two conceived at one moment of time could be unequal for birth, why may not the fates of two born at one moment of time be unequal for living and dying? For if the one moment in which both were conceived did not prevent one from being born first and the other later, why, if two are born at one moment, should anything prevent one from dying first and the other later? If a conception at one moment allows twins to have different fortunes in the womb, why should not a birth at one moment also allow any two people to have different fortunes on earth, and so all the inventions of this art, or rather this vanity, be done away with? What is this, that those conceived at one time, at one moment, under one and the same position of the sky have different fates, which bring them to birth at different hours, and two born together at one moment of time under one and the same position of the sky from two mothers cannot have different fates, bringing them to a different necessity of living or dying? Or do those conceived not yet have fates, which they cannot have unless they are born? What then is it that they say, that if the hour of conception is found, many things can be said by them more divinely? This is also why some tell the story that a certain wise man chose the hour at which to lie with his wife, so as to beget a wonderful son. From this, finally, comes also the answer of Posidonius, the great astrologer and also philosopher, about those twins who fell ill together: that it happened because they had been born at the same time and conceived at the same time. For surely he added conception so that it might not be said to him that they could not have been born at exactly the same time, when it was certain that they had been conceived at exactly the same time; so that he might not attribute their falling ill in the same way and together to the nearest cause, an equal bodily temperament, but might bind this equality of health too by starry bonds. If, then, there is so great a power in conception for equality of fates, the same fates ought not to have been changed by birth. Or if the fates of twins are changed because they are born at different times, why should we not rather understand that they had already been changed so that they would be born at different times? Does the will of the living, then, not change the fates of birth, when the order of those being born changes the fates of conception?

Chapter 6. On twins of different sex.

Yet even in the conception of twins, where certainly the moments of time are the same for both, how does it happen that under the same fatal constellation one is conceived a male and the other a female? We know twins of different sex; both are still living, both still in the vigor of life. Though they are alike in bodily appearance, as far as is possible in different sexes, yet in the pattern and purpose of their life they are so unlike that, besides the actions in which women's lives must differ from men's (he serves in the army in the office of a count and is almost always away from home, she never leaves her native soil and her own estate), moreover (what is more incredible if astral fates are believed, but not surprising if the wills of men and the gifts of God are considered) he is married, she is a consecrated virgin; he has begotten numerous offspring, she has not even married. But, they say, the power of the horoscope is very great. How it is nothing I have already shown sufficiently. But whatever it is, they say it has power at birth; has it also at conception? There it is evident both that there was one act of intercourse, and that the power of nature is so great that when a woman has conceived she cannot conceive another at all afterwards; so that the moments of conception in twins must be the same. Or perhaps, because they were born under different horoscopes, either he was changed into a male or she into a female while they were being born? Now it might be said, not altogether absurdly, that certain influences of the stars have power over mere differences of bodies, as we see that the seasons of the year itself vary with the approach and withdrawal of the sun, and that certain kinds of things increase and diminish with the waxing and waning of the moon, such as sea urchins and shellfish and the wonderful tides of the ocean; but not that the choices of the mind are subject to the positions of the stars. Now these men, since they try to tie even our actions to them, prompt us to ask how their reasoning cannot hold even for bodies themselves. For what belongs so much to the body as the sex of the body? And yet under the same position of the stars twins of different sex could be conceived. What, then, could be said or believed more foolishly than that the position of the stars, which at the hour of conception was the same for both, could not bring it about that she should not have a sex different from her brother, with whom she had the same constellation; while the position of the stars at the hour of birth could bring it about that she differed so greatly from him by her virginal holiness?