To the Nations 1.20–2.8

How long then, most unjust nations, will you fail to acknowledge, nay, go on to curse, your own kind, if there is no difference between us, if we are one and the same? Since you do not hate what you are, give us your right hands instead, join kisses, mingle embraces, the bloody with the bloody, the incestuous with the incestuous, conspirators with conspirators, the obstinate and vain with their equals. We have alike injured the divinity of the gods; alike we provoke their indignation. You too have a third race, if not of a third rite, then of a third sex. That one is more aptly made of man and woman joined to men and women. Or do we offend you by the very fellowship? Equality usually supplies material for rivalry: so potter envies potter, and smith envies smith. But now, pretended confession, stop! Conscience has returned to the truth and to the constancy of the truth. For all these things will be found in us alone, and are refuted by us alone on whom they are laid, by knowledge, that is, of the other side, from which instructed knowledge both inspires counsel and governs judgment. Your own rule, after all, is that no one should judge a case without hearing both parties; this you neglect in our case alone. You indulge a fault of nature, condemning in others what you do not refute in yourselves, or hurling at others things whose guilt you remember in yourselves. You will be busy in contrary ways: chaste toward strangers, incestuous toward yourselves; vigorous abroad, submissive at home. This is the injustice: that we who know are judged by those who do not, the acquitted by the guilty. Take the straw out of your eye, or rather the beam out of your eye, so that you may draw the straw out of another's. Correct yourselves first, so that you may punish the Christians. Except that, once you have corrected yourselves, you will not punish them; nay, you will be Christians; nay, if you become Christians, you will be corrected. Learn what you accuse in us, and you will not accuse it; recognize what you do not accuse in yourselves, and you will accuse it. From this point, as far as we have been able to open it up in these few little books, the inspection of error and the recognition of truth lie open to you. Condemn the truth, but after inspecting it, if you can; and approve error, but after finding it out, if you think fit. But if it is laid down for you to love error and hate truth, why do you not know what you love and what you hate?

Now our defense desires to engage with you, pitiable nations, about your gods, calling on your own conscience to judge whether they are truly gods, as you would have it, or falsely, as you would rather not know. For this is the material of human error, supplied by its contriver, that ignorance of the error may not be lacking, so that you may be the more guilty. The eyes are open, and they do not see; the ears gape, and they do not hear; the heart, though it beats, is benumbed; the mind does not know what it recognizes. Indeed, if such perversity could be dispelled by a single prescription, the verdict would be ready to hand: since we know that all these gods were instituted by men, the credit of true divinity falls away at once, because nothing that ever had a beginning can rightly be regarded as divine. But there are many things by which the tenderness of conscience is hardened into the callousness of willful error. Truth is besieged by a huge host, and yet is secure in its own strength! And why not? It takes whomever it will from among its very adversaries as allies and protectors for itself, and lays low that whole multitude of assailants. Against these things, then, we have to contend: against the institutions of the ancestors, the authority of accepted writers, the laws of rulers, the arguments of the wise; against antiquity, custom, and necessity; against examples, portents, and miracles, all of which have strengthened this adulterated divinity. So, following step by step your own commentaries, which you have drawn from every kind of theology, since among you in such matters the authority of writings counts for more than that of facts, I have chosen for brevity the works of Varro, who, having written on divine matters from everything set out before him, has offered himself to us as a suitable target. If I ask him who introduced the gods, he points either to the philosophers, or to the peoples, or to the poets. For he divided the roll of the gods into three kinds: one natural, which the philosophers treat; another mythical, which is passed about among the poets; the third national, which the peoples have each adopted for themselves. So, since the philosophers have put together the natural kind by conjectures, the poets have drawn the mythical from fables, and the peoples have taken up the national of their own accord, where then is truth to be placed? In conjectures? But the conception is uncertain. In fables? But the account is foul. In adoptions? But the adoption is arbitrary and local. In short, with the philosophers everything is uncertain, because varied; with the poets everything is unworthy, because shameful; with the peoples everything is arbitrary, because voluntary. But divinity, if you consider the true one, is by definition such that it is neither gathered by uncertain arguments, nor defiled by unworthy fables, nor decided by arbitrary adoptions; for it ought to be held, as it is, certain, whole, and common, because it belongs to all. For the rest, what god am I to believe? One whom suspicion guessed at? One whom story boasted of? One whom a city chose? Far more fittingly would I believe in none than in one who is doubtful, or shameful, or adopted.

But the authority of the natural philosophers is pleaded as if they owned wisdom outright. Pure wisdom indeed is that of the philosophers, whose weakness is first attested by this very variety of opinions, which comes from ignorance of the truth. But what wise man is without truth, who is ignorant of God, the father and lord of wisdom and truth itself? For the divine utterance of Solomon says elsewhere: “The beginning of wisdom is fear toward God.” Now the origin of fear is knowledge; for who will fear what he does not know? So he who fears God, even if he knows nothing else, having attained God, who is the knowledge and truth of all things, will possess full and perfect wisdom. This, however, did not clearly befall philosophy. For although, through curiosity in examining every kind of literature, they may seem to have come upon the divine Scriptures too, as being more ancient, and to have taken some things from them, yet by interpolating them they prove that they either despised all of them or did not believe all of them (for in any case the simplicity of truth wavers through the scruples of a wandering faith); and so, with the lust for glory added, they changed them into works of their own ingenuity, through which even what they had found went off into uncertainty, and a flood of arguments was made from one or two drops of truth. For having merely found God, they did not set him forth as they found him, but disputed about his quality and nature, and even his seat: the Platonists making him one who cares for things, their arbiter and judge; the Epicureans, idle and inactive and, so to speak, nobody; the Stoics placing him outside the world, the Platonists within it. Whom they had not admitted deeply, they could neither know nor fear nor thence be wise, straying, of course, from the beginning of wisdom, that is, from fear toward God. There are testimonies to a divinity as much unknown as doubted among the philosophers. Diogenes, asked what goes on in the heavens, said, “I have never gone up.” Likewise, asked whether gods existed, he said, “I do not know, except that it is expedient that they should.” Thales of Miletus, when Croesus inquired what he thought of the gods, after several extensions of time for deliberation, answered, “Nothing.” Socrates himself denied these gods as if he were certain; the same man, as if he were certain, ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Aesculapius. And so, since philosophy is found so uncertain and inconsistent in defining God, what fear could it have of one it could not clearly define? We have learned of the world as god. For they force the natural kind of theology to this, since they have handed down the gods in such a way that Dionysius the Stoic divides them in three. One class, he holds, is that which is in plain view, like the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars; another, that which does not appear, like Neptune; the rest, those said to have passed from men to divinity, like Hercules and Amphiaraus. Likewise Arcesilaus derives a threefold form of divinity: the Olympians, the Stars, and the Titans, from Heaven and Earth; from these, from Saturn and Ops, came Neptune, Jupiter, and Orcus, and the rest of the succession. Xenocrates the Academic makes two classes, Olympians and Titans, who come from Heaven and Earth. Most of the Egyptians believe in four gods: the Sun and the Moon, Heaven and Earth. Democritus supposes that the gods arose together with the rest of the fire above, and Zeno would have nature be of the same kind. Hence Varro too makes fire the soul of the world, so that in the world fire governs all things just as the soul does in us. But this is most foolish. For when it is in us, he says, we exist; when it has gone out, we die. Therefore when fire goes forth from the world in lightning, the world dies!

These points being settled, we see that this natural theology has been suborned to maintain that the elements are gods, while it alleges that other gods too were born from them; for gods would be born only of gods. We shall examine these gods more fully in their own place, under the mythical kind, among the poets; yet as regards what must meanwhile be treated about them that bears on the present subject, turning at the same time from the present subject to them, we shall perhaps show that those who are said to be born of the elements can in no way be regarded as gods, so that it is thereby prejudged that the elements are not gods, since those said to be born of the elements are not gods; and likewise, by showing that the elements are not gods, we shall lay the ground for that class of offspring, that those cannot rightly be maintained to be gods whose parents, that is the elements, are not gods. It is an accepted maxim that god is born of god, as non-god of non-god. So, since this world contains the elements (to treat of the whole summarily, as a preliminary to its parts; for whatever its condition, the same will surely be that of its elements and members), it must either have been established by someone, as Plato's humanity holds, or by no one, as Epicurus's hardness holds; and if it was established, then having a beginning it will also have an end. So what once did not exist, before its beginning, and at some time will not exist, after its end, cannot possibly be regarded as god, since it lacks the substance of divinity, that is, eternity, which is reckoned to be without beginning and end. But if it was not established at all, and for that reason is to be held god, because like a god it admits neither beginning nor end, how do some assign generation to the elements, which they want to be gods, when the Stoics deny that a god has any birth? Likewise, how do they want those whom they report born of the elements to be held gods, when they deny that a god is born? So whatever belongs to the world will be ascribed to the elements: I mean heaven and earth and the stars and fire, which Varro has proposed to you, to no purpose, for belief as gods and parents of gods, against the denial of the generation and birth of a god, since this same Varro had indicated that heaven and the stars are living beings. If this is so, they must also be mortal, according to the form of a living being; for even if it is agreed that the soul is immortal, this will be permitted to it alone, not also to that to which it is joined, namely the body. But no one will deny that the elements have body, since we touch them and are touched by them, and we see certain bodies fall from them. Therefore if they are living beings, then, setting aside the account of the soul, they are mortal, as is the condition of bodies, and by no means immortal. And yet why do the elements seem to Varro to be living beings? Because the elements move. And lest it be objected on the other side that many other things move, such as wheels, wagons, and other machines, he anticipates it of his own accord, saying that they were believed to be living because they moved by themselves, with no mover or driver appearing from outside, as one appears who drives the wheel, rolls the wagon, and regulates the machine. So if they were not living, they would not be self-moving. But in alleging what does not appear, he points to what he ought to have sought, namely the artificer and director of the motion; for a thing does not at once fail to exist because, since we do not see it, we do not believe that it exists. Rather, what is not seen must be investigated all the more deeply, so that we may know the nature of what is seen. Otherwise, if only the things that appear are believed to exist because they appear, how do you receive as gods also those who do not appear? And if those who do not exist seem to exist, why should not those also exist who are not seen? I mean the mover of the heavenly things. Let them be living beings, then, because they are self-moving, and self-moving because not moved by another; still, just as they are not at once gods because they are living, so neither are they gods because they are self-moving: or what forbids all living things, as self-moving, to be held gods? And this, indeed, with another kind of vanity, is permitted to the Egyptians.

Some say that they were called gods (theoi) because theein and seiesthai, “to run” and “to be moved,” is the interpretation. So this word is not one of any majesty, for it is formed from running and motion, not from their dominion as divine. But since the one God whom we worship is also named theos, and yet no motion or running of his appears, since he is not visible to anyone, it is plain that the word was taken from elsewhere, and was found as the proper name of divinity, being native to it. So, setting aside the cleverness of that interpretation, it is more likely that the theoi were not so called from running and motion, but that the name was borrowed from the designation of the true God, so that you named theoi those whom you had likewise forged as gods. Indeed, proof that this is so is at hand, since you call all your gods in common theoi, even those in whom no function of running or motion is observed. So if they are all alike theoi and alike immobile, the interpretation of the word is abandoned, and so too the opinion of their divinity, which, being framed from running and motion, is cut away. But if that name is proper to divinity, simple and not a matter of interpretation in that God, and is misapplied in the other things that you would have be gods, show also that there is a fellowship of nature among them, so that the partnership in the name may rightly rest on a communion of substance. Now that theos, by this alone, that he is not in view, is exempt from comparison with the things that are in view both to sight and to the senses (though to the senses enough), which is a declaration bearing witness to the difference between the hidden and the manifest. If the elements are set openly before all, while God, on the contrary, is set before none, how can you bring the things you see into company with that side which you have not seen? Since, then, you cannot join them by sense or by reason, why do you join them by a word, so as to join them also in power? For see, Zeno too separates the matter of the world from God, or says that he passed through it like honey through the combs. So matter and God are two words and two things. According to the distinction of the words, the things too are separated; the condition of matter also follows its word. But if God is not matter, as the very name prescribes, how will the things that are in matter, that is, the elements, be held gods, since members cannot be foreign to their body? But why do I deal with physiological arguments? The mind ought to have ascended upward from the state of the world, not descended into uncertainties. The Platonic shape of the world is round. Others imagined it square and angular … But Epicurus, who had said, “What is above us is nothing to us,” when he too wished to look at the sky, found the sun's disk to be a foot across. Frugality, no doubt, was still practised even in the heavens! Then, as ambition advanced, the sun too extended its beam; so the Peripatetics declared its disk to be larger. I ask you, what wisdom is there in this lust for conjectures? What does it prove, this idleness of affected fastidiousness, decked out with the art of eloquence, with such presumption of assertion? Rightly, then, did Thales of Miletus, while examining the whole sky and walking with his eyes on it, fall shamefully into a well, much mocked by that Egyptian: “On earth,” she said, “you saw nothing; do you think you should gaze at the sky?” So his fall marks the philosophers figuratively: those, that is, who exercise a stupid curiosity on the things of nature rather than first on its maker and ruler, and who will have their study for nothing.

Why, then, do we not turn to a somewhat more humane opinion, which seems drawn from the common sense of all and from simple conjecture? For Varro too mentions it, saying that the divinity of the elements was believed besides because nothing at all could be born, nourished, or brought forward for human life and the sowing of the earth without their support, since not even bodies or souls could have sufficed without the tempering of the elements, by which this dwelling-place of the world, bound by the conditions of its zones, is provided, except where excessive cold or heat has denied it to human habitation; and that therefore the sun is believed a god, because he adds to the day from his own store, ripens the crops by his heat, and keeps the year by his stations; the moon, the comfort of the nights, the patron of the months by her guidance; likewise the stars, signs of the seasons to be marked for husbandry; and finally heaven itself, under which are all things, and earth, on which are all things, and whatever among them works together for human benefit. Nor, he says, does the belief in the divinity of the elements rest only on their benefits, but also on the contrary things that usually befall as if from their anger and offense, such as thunderbolts, hail, scorching heat, pestilential winds, likewise floods, likewise chasms and earthquakes; and rightly are those believed gods whose nature is to be honored in prosperity and feared in adversity, being, of course, masters of helping and harming. But if that is so, in the dealings of citizens people do not likewise return thanks or bring complaints to the very things by which they are helped or harmed, but to those under whose force and power the working of the things runs its course. For in your pleasures too you do not award the crown as a prize to the flute or the lyre, but to the artist who by his skill tunes the flute and the lyre to sweetness. Likewise, when someone is ill, you do not remember to thank the wool, or the antidotes or poultices themselves, but the physicians, by whose work and skill the remedies come. Again, in adversity, those wounded by iron do not accuse the sword itself or the lance, but the enemy or the robber; and those crushed by a house do not blame the tiles or gutters but its age; just as shipwrecked men do not impute their wreck to the rock and the waves but to the storm. And rightly. For it is certain that whatever happens is to be ascribed not to that through which it happens but to him by whom it happens, because he is the head of the deed who has determined both that it be done and by what means it be done (and in all things there are these three titles: what it is, through what it is, and by whom it is), since he who wills something to be done comes first, and then that by which it can be brought about. And so in other matters you act rightly, considering the author; but in natural things your rule, by which you judge wisdom in other matters, runs against nature, taking away the highest rank, that of the author, and considering the things done and not by whom they are done. So it happens that you believe to be the powers and free choices of the elements what are in fact services and duties. Have we not, in this investigation, shown from the fixed works of the elements, which you take for works of power, the art of some artificer within them and master of their service? But gods do not serve; therefore the things that serve are not gods. Or let them show that it commonly happens that from the license of wandering freedom is proved, from freedom dominion, and from dominion divinity is understood. For if all these things above us, established as under a law in fixed courses, lawful runs, proper spaces, and equal alternations, are mindful to meet their appointments for the rolling of the seasons and the exercise of the seasons' guidance, would they not, by the very observance of their conditions, the faithfulness of their works, the persistence of their courses, the care of their changes, and the memory of their returns, persuade you that some dominion presides over them, to whom the whole business of the world seems to be subject, reaching to the benefit and the harm of the human race? For you cannot say that they do these things for themselves and care for themselves and arrange nothing for the sake of men, since the very reason you claim divinity for the elements is that you feel yourselves helped or harmed by them. For if they serve only themselves, you owe them nothing.

Come now, do you not grant that divinity not only does not run its course like a slave, but above all stands whole, and ought not to be diminished, interrupted, or corrupted? Otherwise all its blessedness is gone, if it ever suffers anything. But see, the stars too are eclipsed and bear witness that they have been eclipsed. The moon too confesses how much she has lost, when she recovers it. Her greater losses you are accustomed to observe in the mirror of water, so that I would no longer believe in any respect what the magi claim to know. The sun himself has often been assailed by eclipse. Invent whatever explanations you like for these heavenly mishaps: a god will not wish either to be made less or to cease to be. Let the champions of human learning see to it, who by the art of conjecture counterfeit wisdom and truth. For in other matters nature is so ordered that he who has spoken better seems to have spoken more truly, not that he who spoke more truly spoke better. But the one for whom the matter is weighed will surely say that it is more likely that these elements are ruled by someone than that they move of themselves; therefore things that are under someone are not gods. But if one errs in this, it is better to err simply than diligently, like the natural philosophers. And yet, if you look at the mythical kind, mortals err better in the natural kind, in ascribing divinity to things which they think are perceived to be above man in position, force, greatness, and divinity. For what is above man you may believe to be nearest to God.

But to pass on to the mythical kind, which is assigned to the poets: I do not know whether it befits our small capacity to inquire so far, or whether such figures as Mopsus the African and Amphiaraus the Boeotian are confirmed by any evidences of divinity. For this class must now be only touched on; an account of it will be given in its own place. Meanwhile it is plain that these were certainly men, if only from this, that you do not consistently call them gods but heroes. What, then, do we contend? If divinity was to be assigned to the dead, surely not to such as these. See: when with the same license of presumption you disgrace heaven with the tombs of your kings, do you not honor those approved for justice, virtue, piety, and every good with the consolation of such a consecration, content even to be laughed at as perjurers on their behalf; and on the contrary, do you not strip the impious and base even of the former rewards of human glory, tear up their decrees and titles, pull down their images, and restrike their coinage? And will that beholder of all things, the approver, nay the bestower, of good things, prostitute to the crowd the ordinance of his great indulgence, and will men be permitted to show more diligence and justice in distributing divinities? Will the companions of kings and emperors be cleaner than those of the supreme God? And yet you shudder at and turn away from vagrants, exiles, the poor, the weak, the low-born, and the dishonorably reared, while the incestuous, adulterers, ravishers, and parricides you even honor with laws. Should one laugh or be angry that such beings are believed gods as men ought not to be? But in this mythical kind, which the poets bring forward, how uncertainly you handle the shame of your conscience and the defense of that shame! For whenever we reproach the gods with wretched or shameful or atrocious deeds, you defend them as fables by pleading poetic license; whenever nothing is said against such poetry, you not only do not shudder at it, but even honor it and count it among the necessary arts; in fact, through it, as the initiator into letters, you bring forth the studies of liberal education. Plato judged that the poets, as slanderers of the gods, should be banished, and that Homer himself, though crowned, should be driven from the city. But since you receive and retain them, why do you not believe them when they tell such things of your gods? If, then, you believe the poets, why do you worship such gods? If you worship them because you do not believe the poets, why do you give praise to liars, and why are you not careful not to offend those whose detractors you honor? Certainly truth is not to be demanded of the poets. But do you not, who say that the gods were made gods after death, confess that they were men before death? What is new, then, if those who were men are defiled by human mishaps, or crimes, or fables? Do you not believe the poets, when you have even arranged certain rites according to their accounts? Why is the priestess of Ceres carried off, if Ceres suffered no such thing? Why are other people's children sacrificed to Saturn, if he spared his own? Why is a male castrated for the Idaean mother, if no disdainful youth was castrated for her in the pain of frustrated lust? Why do the women of Lanuvium not taste the sacrifice to Hercules, if he did not take precautions on account of women? The poets lie, to be sure! But not in saying that your gods did such things when they were men, nor in ascribing foulness to those they called divine; and meanwhile it seemed more credible to you that they were gods, but not such, than that they were such, but not gods.

There remains that national kind of gods among the peoples, which a merely local knowledge shows to have been taken up by whim, not out of knowledge of the truth. I consider God, then, to be known everywhere, present everywhere, ruling everywhere, to be worshipped by all and to be won over by all. But since even those whom the whole world worships in common fall short of the proof of true divinity, how much more these whom not even their own townsmen know? For what fit authority has gone before such a theology, which even rumor has abandoned? How many are there who know by sight or by hearing Atargatis of the Syrians, Caelestis of the Africans, Varsutina of the Moors, Obodas and Dusares of the Arabs, Belenus of Noricum, or those whom Varro lists: Delventinus of the people of Casinum, Visidianus of Narnia, Numiternus of Atina, Ancharia of Asculum, and Nortia, whom the Volsinians have received, gods whose names do not even differ in dignity from human surnames? I laugh enough, too, at the gods who are town councillors of each municipality, whose honor is confined within their own walls. How far this freedom of adopting gods has gone is shown by the superstitions of the Egyptians, who even worship their own private beasts, cats, crocodiles, and their snake. It is a small matter that they have also deified a man: I mean the one whom not only Egypt or Greece but the whole world worships, and by whom the Africans swear. What can be conjectured about his state from our writings, so as to seem likely, is set down here. For this Serapis was once called Joseph, of the race of the saints. Younger than his other brothers, but loftier in mind, he was sold into Egypt by those same brothers out of envy and served in the household of Pharaoh, king of the Egyptians. Desired by the unchaste queen, but refusing to comply, he was instead denounced by her and cast into prison by the king. There, by interpreting dreams for certain persons correctly, he showed the power of his spirit. Meanwhile the king too dreams certain terrible things. Joseph was brought out to him, because, when summoned, he was able to explain them, having given proof of this in prison; and he opens the dream to the king: that those seven very fat and sleek cows signified the plenty of as many years, and the seven after them, likewise starved, foretold the want of the seven years following. So he advises laying up stores out of the earlier plenty against the famine to come. The king believed him; the outcome proved him prudent, holy, and always indispensable. So Pharaoh set him over all Egypt, to gather in the grain and afterwards to manage it. Him they called Serapis from the headdress with which his head was adorned; the bushel-shaped figure of this headdress seals the memory of his grain-gathering, and the ears of grain with which it is marked round about show that the care of the crops rested on his head. For this reason too they placed under his right hand the dog, which they assign to the underworld, because the Egyptians were held under his hand and care. And they join to him Pharia, whom the derivation of her name shows to be the daughter of king Pharaoh. For at that time Pharaoh, among his other honors and rewards, had also given him his daughter in marriage. But since they had undertaken to worship both beasts and men, they combined both faces into one Anubis, in whom one might rather see the proofs of its own nature and condition which that quarrelsome nation had consecrated: rebellious toward its own kings, abject before foreigners, and indeed a slave itself to a dog's gluttony and filth.