Minucius Felix: Octavius — translated by Gerald Henry Rendall & Walter Charles Alan Kerr

The following translation of Marcus Minucius Felix’s Octavius by Gerald Henry Rendall & Walter Charles Alan Kerr is taken from Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Volume 250 of Loeb Classical Library (published 1931). Gerald Henry Rendall died in 1945 and Walter Charles Alan Kerr died in 1929. Therefore this translation is in the public domain in most countries in the world. In the U.S.A. this translation should enter the public domain in 2027.

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I. As in thought I pondered and reflected over memories of my good and trusty comrade, Octavius, such an impression of sweetness and charm remained with me that I seemed somehow reliving in the past, rather than recalling to memory things over and done; so vividly did his image, though withdrawn from the eyes, remain imprinted on my heart and inmost sense. No wonder that on his departure so excellent and saintly a man has left behind him a measureless sense of loss; the fact is that he cherished such warm affection for me that, both in our amusements and serious occupations, our wills were tuned to perfect concert, whether of likes or dislikes; you might have thought a single mind had been parted into two. Thus he was at once sole confidant of my affections, and my partner in wanderings from truth; and when, after the gloom had been dispelled, I was emerging from the depth of darkness into the light of wisdom and truth, he did not reject me as a companion, but—all honour to him—led the way. So, as my thoughts ranged over the whole period of our association and familiarity, my attention fastened above all else on that discourse of his, in which, by sheer weight of argument, he converted Caecilius, who was still immersed in superstitious vanities, to true religion.

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II. He had come to Rome on business and to pay me a visit, leaving home and wife and children—children still at the lovable stage of the years of innocence, trying to form broken words, in the pretty prattle which the broken efforts of a stumbling tongue render still sweeter. Words cannot express the transports of pleasure and joy with which I welcomed his arrival, and the unexpectedness of a visit from so dear a friend enhanced my delight beyond measure.

Well, after one or two days, when frequency of intercourse had satisfied the eager longings of affection, and we had learned by mutual talk things of which, through mutual absence, we were uninformed, we decided to go to Ostia, a very pleasant resort, as a course of sea baths seemed an agreeable and apt treatment as a corrective for the humours of my body; and just then too the vintage holidays had brought relief from judicial duties. For at that time after the summer solstice autumn was beginning to turn to a milder warmth.

So then, early one morning, as we were walking seaward along the shore, that the fresh sea breeze might invigorate our limbs, and that the yielding sand might give the delightful sensation of subsidence at each footstep, Caecilius noticed an image of Serapis, and—as is the superstitious habit of the vulgar—put his hand to his mouth and blew it a kiss.

III. Then Octavius said: “With a friend who indoors and out clings to your side, no good man, brother Marcus, has the right to leave him in the thick darkness of vulgar ignorance, and allow him in broad daylight to wreck himself on stones, however carved and anointed and garlanded they may be, {page 319} when you know that the shame of his error redounds no less to your discredit than to his.”

The conversation brought us half-way from the town to the open beach. A gentle ripple, playing over the verge of the sands, levelled them into a sort of promenade¹: the sea, even where there is no breeze, is in constant movement, and drove shorewards not in white crested waves, but in curling ripples. Its vagaries were quite delightful, as we let it wet our soles at the water’s edge, as the advancing wave now played around our feet, and anon receded and withdrew, sucking back into itself. So we went on our quiet leisurely way, skirting the edge of the gently curving shore and beguiling the way with stories. Our stories were an account of Octavius’s adventures at sea. But when, engaged in talk, we had gone some distance, we turned back and retraversed our steps; and when we had reached the place where some boats, supported on oak planking, to save them from ground rot, were lying idle, we saw a party of boys competing eagerly in their game of throwing sherds into the sea. The game is to choose from the shore a flat sherd, one smoothed by the friction of the waves, to catch hold of the sherd by the flat side, and then bending forward and stooping, to send it spinning as far as one can on the top of the waves, so that the missile either skims the surface of the sea and swims on its way, gliding forward with a gentle impulse; or else shaves the tops of the waves, glancing and jumping as it takes its successive leaps. The boy won, whose sherd went furthest, and made most hops.

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IV. While we were all enjoying the fun of looking on, Caecilius took no notice and did not laugh at the sport, but in silence, gloomy and aloof, showed in his face that he was troubled about something. I said to him: “What is the matter? Why no hint, Caecilius, of your usual liveliness, and why miss the gaiety you show even in serious affairs?”

He replied: “I have been brooding over the remarks of our friend Octavius, who stung and nettled me, when he attacked and chid you for negligence, but indirectly brought a heavier charge of ignorance against me. I will go further: I will have it out with Octavius from start to finish. If he is agreeable that I, as one of the following, should argue the case with him, he will, I am sure, find that it is easier to discourse among comrades than to join battle in philosophy. Let us just sit down on yonder boulders piled to protect the baths, and running out into the deep water: so that we may rest after our walk, and concentrate on the argument.”

We sat down, as he suggested, my friends flanking me, covering either side, and myself in the middle; not by way of etiquette as a mark of rank or distinction, for friendship always assumes or creates equality, but that I might act as arbiter, give close hearing to both, and as middle man part the two combatants.

V. Then Caecilius led off: “Although you, brother Marcus, have made up your mind on the subject of our inquiry, seeing that, after careful experience of either way of life, you have repudiated the one and approved the other, yet for the time being you must deliberately hold the balance of impartial justice, without any bias inclining to one side or the other, so that your decision may be felt to have been based {page 323} on our disputation rather than the product of your own feelings. So if you will please take your seat as a novice, ignorant as it were of either side of the case, it will be easy to make it clear, that in human affairs everything is doubtful, uncertain, and in suspense, everything a matter of probability rather than truth; it is no wonder that people, tired of deeply investigating truth, should hastily yield to any random opinion, rather than with unremitting diligence persevere in the search. Everyone must feel indignant and annoyed that certain persons—persons untrained in study, uninitiated in letters, ignorant even of the meaner arts—should come to fixed conclusions upon the universe in its majesty, which through the centuries is to this day matter of debate in countless schools of philosophy. And no wonder, seeing that man’s limited intelligence is so incapable of exploring God, that neither in the case of things above, suspended aloft in heaven, nor of things below the earth plunged beneath the depths, is it given to him to know, or permitted to scrutinize, without irreverence. Sufficient be it for our happiness, and sufficient for our wisdom if, according to the ancient oracle of the wise man,² we learn closer acquaintance with our own selves. But seeing that with mad and fruitless toil we over-step the limits of our humble intelligence, and from our earth-bound level seek, with audacious eagerness, to scale heaven itself and the stars of heaven, let us at least not aggravate our error by vain and terrifying imaginations.

“Suppose that in the beginning nature gathered the seeds of all things together,³ and formed them into a mass—what god was here the author? Or suppose that by their fortuitous clashing the elements {page 325} of the universe combined, took order and shape—what god was the artificer? Fire may have kindled the stars; the nature of its material have suspended heaven on high, founded the earth by its weight, drained moisture into the sea—if so, what ground is there for religion, for terror and superstitious dread? Man and each living thing is born, lives, grows up; consists of a spontaneous combination of elements, into which once again man and every living thing is separated, resolved and dispersed; so all things flow back to their source, and return unto themselves without artificer, or arbiter, or author of their being. So by the gathering together of the seeds of fire, new and ever new suns continually shine; so by the exhalation of earth’s vapours mists continually grow, and by their condensation and combination clouds rise on high; and as they drop, rains fall, winds blow, hailstorms rattle; as the storm-clouds collide, thunders growl, lightning flashes, thunderbolts dart; yes and they fall at random, hurtle down upon the mountains, charge trees, smite without distinction places sacred or profane; strike guilty men or often enough the god-fearing. Why tell of tempests capricious and uncertain, which without rule or rhyme bring havoc in their wake? or how in shipwrecks the fates of the good and of the evil are confounded, and their deserts confused? in fires, of indiscriminate destruction of the innocent and of the guilty? or, when some region of the sky is infected with the blight of pestilence, how all perish without distinction? In the rage and heat of battle, how the better men are first to fall⁴? In peace too, not only does rascality run level with virtue, but wins such respect that half the times one does not know whether to {page 327} detest their depravity or to envy their good fortune. But if the world were governed by divine providence and the authority of some deity, Phalaris⁵ and Dionysius⁶ would never have deserved a throne, Rutilius⁷ and Camillus⁸ exile, or Socrates⁹ the hemlock. See, the trees laden with fruit, the corn already white to harvest, the vineyard heavy with wine—ruined by rain or cut with hail. So hidden from our eyes and overlaid is the uncertain truth, or—as seems more credible—lawless chance, with tricky and haphazard accidents, rules over all.

VI. “Seeing then that either chance is certain,¹⁰ or nature uncertain, how much more reverent and better it is to accept the teaching of our elders as the priest of truth; to maintain the religions handed down to us; to adore the gods, whom from the cradle you were taught to fear rather than to know familiarly; not to dogmatize about divinities, but to believe our forefathers who, in an age still rude, in the world’s nativity, were privileged to regard gods as kindly or as kings! Hence it is that throughout wide empires, provinces and towns, we see each people having its own individual rites and worshipping its local gods, the Eleusinians Ceres,¹¹ the Phrygians the Great Mother,¹² the Epidaurians Aesculapius,¹³ the {page 329} Chaldaeans Bel,¹⁴ the Syrians Astarte,¹⁵ the Taurians¹⁶ Diana, the Gauls Mercury, the Romans one and all. Thus it is that their power and authority has embraced the circuit of the whole world, and has advanced the bounds of empire beyond the paths of the sun,¹⁷ and the confines of ocean; while they practise in the field god-fearing valour, make strong their city with awe of sacred rites, with chaste virgins, with many a priestly dignity and title; besieged and imprisoned within the limits of the Capitol, they still reverenced the gods, whom others might have spurned as wrath, and through the ranks of Gauls amazed at their undaunted superstition passed on armed not with weapons but with godly reverence and fear¹⁸; in captured fortresses, even in the first flush of victory, they reverence the conquered deities; everywhere they entertain the gods and adopt them as their own¹⁹; while they raise altars even to the unknown deities, and to the spirits of the dead. Thus is it that they adopt the sacred rites of all nations, and withal have earned dominion. Hence the course of worship has continued without break, not impaired but strengthened by the lapse of time; for indeed antiquity is wont to attach to ceremonies and to temples a sanctity proportioned to the length of their continuance.

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VII. “It was not at mere random—though here I might venture to concede a point and go wrong in good company—that our ancestors devoted their attention to observing auguries, to consulting entrails, to instituting sacrifices, or dedicating shrines. Look at the written records; you will find that all religious rites originated either to secure the reward of divine approval or to avert impending anger, or to propitiate its swelling rage and fury. Witness the Idaean Mother who at her coming vindicated a matron’s chastity and freed the city from fear of the enemy²⁰; witness the statues of the horsemen brothers²¹ consecrated, even as they appeared, in the lake waters, who, breathless on their foaming and smoking steeds, announced the victory over Perses on the same day on which they had achieved it: witness the revival of the games in honour of offended Jupiter, thanks to the dream of a common plebeian²²; witness the devotion of the Decii, ratified by Heaven²³; and witness too Curtius and the gulf, whose yawning mouth²⁴ horse and rider, or the honour due to their devotion, closed. Only too often contempt for the auspices has attested the presence of {page 333} the gods. So with the Allia²⁵ of ‘ill-omened name’; so with the fleet of Claudius and Junius, not in action against the Carthaginians, but in disastrous wreck²⁶; and did not Trasimene run red with blood of Romans because Flaminius despised the auguries²⁷? And had we not to reclaim our standards from the Parthians because Crassus dared and derided the imprecations of the Dread Goddesses?²⁸ I omit old instances, not a few; I take no account of the songs of the poets touching the births of gods, their gifts and their rewards; I pass predictions of fate conveyed by oracles, for fear of your regarding antique lore as fabulous. Turn your gaze on the temples and shrines of gods by which the commonwealth of Rome is protected and adorned: they owe more to the presence and the tenancy of the deities who dwell therein than to the worship, the decorations and the votive gifts with which they are enriched. Hence it is that prophets, filled and inspired by God, anticipate the future, give warning in perils, healing in disease, hope to the afflicted, help to the wretched, solace in calamity, and in toil alleviation. Even in sleep we see, hear, and recognize the gods, whom by day we impiously deny, reject and mock with false oaths.

VIII. “Therefore, since all nations unhesitatingly agree as to the existence of the immortal gods, however uncertain may be our account of them or of their origin, it is intolerable that any man should be {page 335} so puffed up with pride and impious conceit of wisdom, as to strive to abolish or undermine religion, so ancient, so useful, and so salutary. He may be a Theodorus of Cyrene,²⁹ or an earlier Diagoras of Melos, called Atheist by antiquity, who both alike, by asserting that there were no gods, cut at the root of all the fear and reverence by which mankind is governed; yet will they never establish their impious tenets under the name and authority of pretended philosophy.

“When Protagoras of Abdera,³⁰ by way of debate rather than of profanity, discussed the godhead, the men of Athens expelled him from their borders, and burned his writings in the market-place. Is it not then deplorable that a gang—excuse my vehemence in using strong language for the cause I advocate—a gang, I say, of discredited and proscribed desperadoes band themselves against the gods? Fellows who gather together illiterates from the dregs of the populace and credulous women with the instability natural to their sex, and so organize a rabble of profane conspirators, leagued together by meetings at night and ritual fasts and unnatural repasts, not for any sacred service but for piacular rites, a secret tribe that shuns the light, silent in the open, but talkative in hid corners; they despise temples as if they were tombs; they spit upon the gods; they jeer at our sacred rites; pitiable themselves, they pity (save the mark) our priests; they despise titles and robes of honour, going themselves half-naked! What a pitch of folly! what wild impertinence! present tortures they despise, yet dread those of an uncertain {page 337} future; death after death they fear, but death in the present they fear not: for them illusive hope charms away terror with assurances of a life to come.

IX. “Already—for ill weeds grow apace—decay of morals grows from day to day, and throughout the wide world the abominations of this impious confederacy multiply. Root and branch it must be exterminated and accursed. They recognize one another by secret signs and marks; they fall in love almost before they are acquainted; everywhere they introduce a kind of religion of lust, a promiscuous ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ by which ordinary fornication, under cover of a hallowed name, is converted to incest. And thus their vain and foolish superstition makes an actual boast of crime. For themselves, were there not some foundation of truth, shrewd rumour would not impute gross and unmentionable forms of vice. I am told that under some idiotic impulse they consecrate and worship the head of an ass, the meanest of all beasts,³¹ a religion worthy of the morals which gave it birth. Others say that they actually reverence the private parts of their director and high-priest, and adore his organs as parent of their being. This may be false, but such suspicions naturally attach to their secret and nocturnal rites. To say that a malefactor put to death for his crimes, and wood of the death-dealing cross, are objects of their veneration is to assign fitting altars to abandoned wretches and the kind of worship they deserve. Details of the initiation of neophytes are as revolting as they are notorious. An infant, cased in dough³² to deceive the unsuspecting, is placed beside the {page 339} person to be initiated. The novice is thereupon induced to inflict what seem to be harmless blows upon the dough, and unintentionally the infant is killed³³ by his unsuspecting blows; the blood—oh, horrible—they lap up greedily; the limbs they tear to pieces eagerly; and over the victim they make league and covenant, and by complicity in guilt pledge themselves to mutual silence.³⁴ Such sacred rites are more foul than any sacrilege. Their form of feasting is notorious; it is in everyone’s mouth, as testified by the speech of our friend of Cirta.³⁵ On the day appointed they gather at a banquet with all their children, sisters, and mothers, people of either sex and every age. There, after full feasting, when the blood is heated and drink has inflamed the passions of incestuous lust, a dog which has been tied to a lamp is tempted by a morsel thrown beyond the range of his tether to bound forward with a rush.³⁶ The tale-telling light is upset and extinguished, and in the shameless dark lustful embraces are indiscriminately exchanged; and all alike, if not in act, yet by complicity, are involved in incest, as anything that occurs by the act of individuals results from the common intention.

X. “Much I purposely pass over; I have said more than enough of things most or all of which are true, as is shown by the secrecy of this depraved religion. Why make such efforts to obscure and conceal whatever is the object of their worship, when things honourable always rejoice in publicity, while guilt {page 341} loves secrecy? Why have they no altars, no temples, no recognized images? Why do they never speak in public, never meet in the open, if it be not that the object of their worship and their concealment is either criminal or shameful?

“Whence, who, or where is He, the One and only God, solitary, forlorn, whom no free nation, no kingdom, no superstition known to Rome has knowledge of? The miserable Jewish nationality did indeed worship one God, but even so openly, in temples, with altars, victims, and ceremonies; yet one so strengthless and powerless that he and his dear tribe with him are in captivity to Rome. And yet again what monstrous absurdities these Christians invent about this God of theirs, whom they can neither show nor see! that he searches diligently into the ways and deeds of all men, yea even their words and hidden thoughts, hurrying to and fro, ubiquitously; they make him out a troublesome, restless, shameless and interfering being, who has a hand in everything that is done, interlopes at every turn, and can neither attend to particulars because he is distracted with the whole, nor to the whole because he is engaged with particulars.

XI. “Further, they threaten the whole world and the universe and its stars with destruction by fire, as though the eternal order of nature established by laws divine could be put to confusion, or as though the bonds of all the elements could be broken, the framework of heaven be, split in twain, and the containing and surrounding mass be brought down in ruin. Not content with this insane idea, they embellish and embroider it with old wives’ tales; say that they are born anew after death from the cinders {page 343} and the ashes, and with a strange unaccountable confidence believe in one another’s lies: you might suppose they had already come to life again. One perversion and folly matches the other. Against heaven and the stars, which we leave even as we found them, they denounce destruction; for themselves when dead and gone, creatures born to perish, the promise of eternity! Hence no doubt their denunciation of funeral pyres and of cremation, just as though the body, even though spared the flame, would not in the course of years and ages be resolved into dust; and just as though it mattered whether it is torn to pieces by wild beasts or drowned in the sea, or buried in the ground, or consumed in the flame; for corpses, if they have sensation, must find all interment painful; while if they have not, speed of dispatch is the best treatment. Under this delusion they promise themselves, as virtuous, a life of never-ending bliss after death; to all others, as evildoers, everlasting punishment.

“Much might be added on this subject, but my discourse must hasten to its end. That they themselves are evil-doers I need not labour to prove; I have already shown it; though even if I grant their welldoing, guilt or innocence is usually, I know, attributed to destiny. And here we have your agreement; for all action which others ascribe to fate, you ascribe to God; followers of your sect are moved not by their own free-will, but by election; and thus you invent an unjust judge, to punish men for their bad luck, not for their use of will.

“Here I should like to ask whether the resurrection is with bodies or without bodies, and if so, with what bodies, their own or made anew? Without a body? {page 345} That means, so far as I know, neither mind, nor soul, nor life. With the same body? But that has already gone to pieces. With another body? in that case a new man is born, and not the former man renewed. And yet though time has come and gone, and innumerable ages have flowed on, what single individual has ever returned from the lower regions even with the Protesilaus³⁷ privilege of a few hours’ furlough, so that we might have one example to trust? Your figments of diseased imagination and the futile fairy-tales invented by poets’ fancy to give sweetness to their song have been rehashed by your credulity into the service of your God.

XII. “You do not anyhow allow your experiences of the present to undeceive your vain desires of promissory expectation. Let present life, poor fools, be your gauge of what happens after death. See how some part of you, the greater and the better part as you say, suffer want, cold, toil, hunger; and yet your God permits and seems to overlook it; he is unwilling or unable to help his own; consequently he is either powerless or unjust. You dream of posthumous immortality; when unnerved by danger, when parched with fever, when racked with pain. can you not be sensible of your condition? recognize your feebleness? against your will, poor fool, you are convicted of weakness, and yet will not admit it!

“Things, however, common to all I pass over: but for you there stand in wait punishments, tortures, crosses (crosses not for adoration, but for endurance), yes and the flames which you foretell and fear; where is the God who will succour you in the next life, but in this life cannot? Have not the Romans without your God empire and rule, do they not enjoy the whole {page 347} world, and lord it over you? Meanwhile in anxious doubt you deny yourselves wholesome pleasures; you do not attend the shows; you take no part in the processions; fight shy of public banquets; abhor the sacred games, meats from the victims, drinks poured in libation on the altars. So frightened are you of the gods whom you deny! You twine no blossoms for the head, grace the body with no perfumes; you reserve your unguents for funerals; refuse garlands even to the graves, pale, trembling creatures, objects for pity—but the pity of our gods! Poor wretches, for whom there is no life hereafter, yet who live not for to-day.

Well then, if you have any sense or modesty, have done with prying into the regions of the sky, into the destiny and secrets of the universe; enough for the ignorant and uncultured, the rude and boorish, to look at what is under their nose; those who are not privileged to understand things civic are still less qualified to discuss things divine.

XIII. “Yet, if philosophize you must, let any that is equal to the task imitate if he can Socrates, the prince of wisdom. When questioned about things in heaven his famous answer ran, ‘that which is above us, does not concern us.’³⁸ Well did he deserve the testimonial of the oracle to his superior wisdom. The reason, as he himself divined, why the oracle set him before all others, was not that he had found out the meaning of everything, but that he had learned that he knew nothing; so surely is the confession of ignorance the highest wisdom. From this source flowed the guarded scepticism of Arcesilas, and later of Carneades³⁹ and most of the Academic school, on {page 349} all the deepest questions: this is the kind of philosophy in which the unlearned may indulge with caution, the learned with distinction. May we not all admire and follow the hesitation of Simonides, the poet?⁴⁰ When Hiero the tyrant asked him what he thought of the being and attributes of the gods, he first begged for a day for consideration, next day for two days more; then, on a new reminder, for yet another. Finally, when the tyrant asked his reasons for so much delay, he replied ‘because to him, the longer the progress of the search, the more obscure became the truth.’ To my mind things that are doubtful, as they are, should be left in doubt, and, where so many and such great minds differ, rash and hasty votes should not be cast on either side for fear of countenancing old wives’ superstition, or of subverting all religion.”

XIV. Caecilius ended beaming, for the flow of his oratory had relieved the swell of his indignation. “And now, what says our brave Octavius, of the good old Plautine stock, prince of bakers but last and least of philosophers?”⁴¹

“No crowing over him,” said I, “you had better not plume yourself on your fine feathers, till both sides have been heard to a finish, especially as you are contending not for glory but for truth. Greatly as your speech has delighted me in matter as well as manner, I am still more deeply impressed—not so {page 351} much with reference to the present pleadings, as to discussion in general—by the way in which, as a rule, truth of the clearest kind is affected by the talents of the disputants and the power of eloquence. An audience, as everyone knows, is so easily swayed. Fascination of words distracts them from attention to facts, they give undiscriminating assent to all that is said; they fail to distinguish false from true, forgetting that the incredible contains an element of truth and probability an element of falsehood. The more often they believe asseverations, the more frequently they are put in the wrong by the clever; dupes of their own persistent rashness, they impute the incompetence of the judge to the score of uncertainty, and with wholesale condemnation prefer suspension of all judgement to fallible conclusions. Accordingly we must take good care that we are not to become the victims of a dislike of all arguments whatsoever, and so expose numbers of simple-minded people to general execration and odium. Careless credulity makes them the prey of those they trusted; and then they repeat their mistake by suspecting all alike, and distrusting the honesty even of those most entitled to their respect.

“We must therefore take every precaution: in every question there are arguments on both sides; on the one hand truth is generally obscure, on the other subtlety, by mere flow of words, sometimes usurps the credit of admitted proof. We must weigh each point as carefully as we can, that while admiring ingenuity we may be able to choose, approve, and accept what is correct.”

XV. “You are abandoning,” said Caecilius, “the role of a conscientious judge; it is grossly unfair to {page 353} break the force of my pleading by interpolating this weighty subject for debate; it is for Octavius to deal with my several points, whole and undiluted as they stand, and to refute them if he can.”

“Believe me,” said I, “what you object to was only meant as my contribution to the common stock, that in careful weighing of the scales our judgement might turn not upon frothy eloquence, but upon actual solid facts. But you shall have no reason to complain of further distraction; let us listen in complete silence to the reply our friend Januarius is burning to make.”

XVI. Whereto Octavius: “I will answer to the best of my ability, and I must rely on your assistance to turn the floodgates of truth upon the stains of blackening calumny.

“To begin with, I must honestly say that our good Natalis’ views have been so wavering and erratic, so vague and slipshod, as to raise a doubt whether his learning has led to confusion, or his vacillations been due to misunderstanding. For he wavered, from belief in the gods, at one moment, to keeping the question open at another, so that the ambiguity of statement might make my own line of reply more ambiguous. But to friend Natalis, I will not, and do not, impute trickery. Disingenuity is alien to his simplicity. Rather he is like a man who does not know the right way, when the road happens to fork off in several directions; and not knowing the way, he doubts and hesitates, and dare not choose one in particular, or approve all alike; so, with a man who has not any firm grasp on truth, any untrustworthy suspicion flung out is enough to shatter his own fluctuating ideas. It is no wonder that Caecilius finds himself tossed to and fro amid the waves and eddies of conflicting contradictions. {page 355} To end the trouble I will refute and disprove his inconsistent arguments by proving and establishing a single truth; setting him free from all further occasion for doubt or wandering.

“When our good brother gives vent to feelings of annoyance, vexation, indignation and regret that illiterate, poor and ignorant persons should discuss celestial things, he should remember that all men, without distinction of age, sex, or rank, were created with the capacity and power of reasoning and understanding; wisdom is not acquired by fortune, but implanted by nature; the philosophers themselves, the discoverers of arts whose names survive in memory, before their genius brought lustre on their names, were regarded as ignorant half-clad plebeians. Nay, the rich, engrossed in business calls, have their eyes on gold more often than on heaven; it is our poor folk who have pondered wisdom, and handed on its teachings. Brainpower assuredly is not gotten by bargaining, or won by study, but is part and parcel of the furniture of the mind. There is no call for indignation or resentment at anyone whatsoever inquiring, holding, or propounding views concerning the divine, for it is not the authority of the disputant, but the truth of the disputation that is in request. Indeed, the more unskilled the utterance the clearer is the reasoning, for it relies not on tricks of eloquence or graces of style, but is sustained on its own merits by the rule of right.

XVII. “I take no exception to what Caecilius advanced among his main contentions that man ought to know himself, to look round and see what, whence and why he is; whether he is composed of elements, or fashioned out of atoms, or rather made, {page 357} formed and soul-endowed by God. But this is the very thing we cannot investigate and unravel without inquiry into the universe; things are so coherent, so closely combined and interconnected that, without careful investigation of the nature of deity, you cannot know that of man; just as you cannot manage civic affairs successfully without some knowledge of the wider world-society of men; all the more that our distinction from the beasts is this, that their downward earthbound gaze is fixed only on their food: we, with countenance erect and heavenward gaze, endowed with speech and reason, enabling us to recognize, perceive and imitate God, neither may nor can ignore the heavenly sheen which thrusts itself upon our eyes and senses; for it is next door to sacrilege to seek upon the ground that which you ought to find on high.

“I cannot but feel that those who regard the design of this great universe not as the product of the divine reason, but a conglomeration of odds and ends fortuitously brought together, have neither mind, nor sense, nor even eyes. What can be more plain, more obvious, more patent as you lift your eyes to heaven, and survey all things beneath you and around, than that there exists some deity surpassing in wisdom, by whom all nature is inspired, moved, nourished, and directed?

“Look at heaven itself, its vast expanse, its rapid revolutions, at night studded with stars, by day illumined by the sun; it brings home to you the balance wondrous and divine maintained by the supreme controller. Look at the year, made by the circling of the sun; at the month determined by the waxing, waning and action of the moon. Why {page 359} speak of the recurrences of darkness and light, with their alternate provision for work and rest? I may leave to the astrologer a detailed description of the stars, their influence upon the course of mariners, their timing of the seasons for ploughing and for reaping. Not merely did their creation, production, and coordination require a supreme Artificer and perfected intelligence, but further they cannot be felt, perceived and understood without a supreme order of skilled reasoning. Look at the fixed and varying phases in the succession of the seasons and crops. Does not spring with its flowers attest its author and parent, summer with its harvests, the mellow ripeness of autumn, and winter with its needed olive yield? How easily would confusion overtake the order, were it not held together by sovereign reason! See how, to break the spell of winter’s blistering ice or summer’s parching heat, providence interposed the temperate mean of autumn and of spring, so that the year, returning on its traces, might glide forward on its imperceptible innocuous round.

“Mark well the sea, confined within its bounding shore. Look at what tree you will, each drawing its life from the bowels of earth! Behold the ocean, ebbing and flowing with alternate tides. Watch the fountains, flowing from perennial veins. Gaze on the rivers, moving on with ever busy flow.

“Why tell of the ordered ridges of the mountains, the winding of the hills, the stretches of the plains? Or of the intricate protective equipment of the animals; some armed with horns, some fenced with teeth, and shod with hoofs, or barbed with stings, or kept immune by swiftness of foot or soaring wing? Above all, beauty of form declares the handiwork of {page 361} God: our poise erect, our look upward, our eyes stationed in the watch-tower of the head, and the other senses all posted in the citadel.

XVIII. “It were a long task to enumerate particulars. There is not a detail in the human organism not made for use or ornament, and, more wonderful still, while all share the same figure, each individual shows personal deflections of type; thus viewed in the mass we seem alike, yet have our individual peculiarities.

“Or consider the mechanism of birth, the instinct of reproduction. Is it not given of God that, as the embryo matures, the breasts should fill with milk, and the tender babe be nourished with the flow of milky dew?

Nor is it for the whole only that God takes thought, but likewise for the parts. Britain, for instance, lacks sunshine, but gets warmth from the surrounding sea; the river Nile tempers the drought of Egypt; the Euphrates serves Mesopotamia in place of rain; the river Indus is said both to sow and to water the east. Supposing you went into a house and found everything neat, orderly and well-kept, surely you would assume it had a master, and one much better than the good things, his belongings; so in this house of the universe, when throughout heaven and earth you see the marks of foresight, order and law, may you not assume that the lord and author of the universe is fairer than the stars themselves or than any portions of the entire world?

“But perhaps, while the existence of Providence admits no doubt, you think we should inquire whether a single sway or collective rule directs the heavenly realm. That question finds an easy answer {page 363} if you think of earthly dominions, which surely have analogies with heaven. When has joint monarchy ever started in good faith, or ended without bloodshed? I need not refer to Persians, choosing their ruler by omen of a horse’s⁴² neigh, nor to the dead and buried legend of the Theban brothers.⁴³ Who does not know the story of the twins fighting for kingship over a few shepherds and a hut?⁴⁴ Wars waged between son-in-law and father-in-law⁴⁵ spread over the whole world, and the fortunes of a world empire could not find room for two.

“Look where you will: bees have but one king, flocks one leader, cattle one monarch of the herd. Can you suppose that in heaven the supreme power is divided, that the prerogative of true and divine authority is sundered, when it is plain that God, the author of all, has neither beginning nor end; God, who brings all to birth, to himself gave perpetuity; who, before the world was, was to himself the world; who by his word calls into being all things that are, orders them by his wisdom, and perfects them by his goodness?

“God cannot be seen—he is too bright for sight; nor grasped—he is too pure for touch; nor measured—for he is beyond all sense, infinite, measureless, his dimensions known to himself alone. Too narrow is our breast to take him in, therefore we can only measure him aright in calling him immeasurable. As {page 365} I feel, so will I speak; he who thinks he knows the greatness of God, makes it less; he who would not lessen it, knows it not.

“Seek not a name for God: God is his name. Terms are needed when individuals have to be distinguished from the mass, by proper marks and designations: for God, who alone is, the term ‘God’ sums all. Should I call him ‘Father,’ you would think of flesh; or ‘King,’ you would reduce him to this world; or ‘Lord,’ you will surely deem him mortal. Away with names and appanages, and you will see him in his splendour.

“Herein do I not command the assent of all? List to the common crowd: when they stretch forth their hands to heaven, they utter no other word but ‘God,’ or ‘God is great,’ or ‘God is true,’ or ‘if God grant it.’ Is that the natural language of the crowd, or the formulary of some confessing Christian? Even those who would make Jupiter their potentate are mistaken in the name, but on holding to one only power agree.

XIX. “Poets, too, I hear proclaiming one ‘Father of Gods and men,’ and saying ‘Such is the mind of mortals, as the day which the Parent of all ushered in.’⁴⁶ Again, does not the bard of Mantua⁴⁷ say in terms more plain, more pointed and more true, that ‘in the beginning Heaven and earth’ and the other portions of the universe, ‘a spirit within nourishes, and a mind infused stirs them: thence springs the race of men and of the flocks,’ and whatsoever living things there are? And in another place he gives to mind and spirit the name of God. For these are his words: {page 367}

“What else do we too proclaim God to be but mind, reason and spirit?

“Next, let us, if you will, review the teaching of philosophers; you will find them, though in differing phraseology, yet in substance all agreeing, and in harmony upon this one point. I may omit the primitives whose dicta earned them the title of ‘the wise men.’ Let us begin with Thales of Miletus,⁴⁸ the earliest, and first of all to discuss celestial things. This Thales of Miletus said that water was the first principle, and that God was the mind which formed all things out of water. [Here you have a theory of water and spirit too deep and sublime to have been invented by a man: it was handed down by God.]⁴⁹ The opinion of the pioneer philosopher you see is in full accord with ours. Next, Anaximenes, and after him Diogenes of Apollonia, posit air as God, infinite and measureless; showing a similar agreement on the nature of the Deity. Anaxagoras regards God as the sphere and movement of an infinite intelligence; the God of Pythagoras is mind pervading and extending through the universe of nature, from which also the life of all things living is derived. Xenophanes, as is well known, held God to be the infinite and intelligent All; Antisthenes that for the people there were many gods, but in nature one presiding over all; and Speusippus recognized God in the vital force that governs all. Once more Democritus, albeit the originator of atoms, speaks constantly of nature, the source of mental images, and of intelligence, {page 369} as God. So Straton, too, of nature. Even Epicurus, whose gods are either unconcerned or nonexistent, sets Nature over them. Aristotle, in varying terms, assigns a single power; one while speaking of mind, at another of the universe as God; and at another setting God above the universe. Theophrastus similarly varies, assigning the primacy now to the universe, now to a divine intelligence. Heraclides of Pontus, though in varying terms, ascribes to the universe divine intelligence. Zeno, Chrysippus and Cleanthes in expositions multiform all revolve around a central Providence. Cleanthes discourses of the mind and soul of nature, or again of aether, or more often of reason, as God. Zeno, his master, will have natural law, which is also divine, occasionally the aether, and sometimes reason, as the first principle of all things; by interpreting Juno as air, Jupiter as heaven, Neptune as the sea, Vulcan as fire, and by showing that the rest of the gods of popular belief are similarly elements, he vigorously assails and refutes the vulgar error. Chrysippus says much the same: he believes in divine force, the rational nature of the universe, or sometimes fate and necessity, as God; and he follows Zeno in his naturalistic interpretation of Hesiod, Homer and Orpheus in their poems. Diogenes of Babylon again adopts a similar school of teaching in expounding the birth of Jupiter, the production of Minerva and the like, as terms denoting things, not gods. Xenophon, the disciple of Socrates, says that the true God’s form cannot be seen, and therefore should not be inquired into; Aristo the Stoic, that it is beyond all comprehension: both realizing that the majesty of God is the despair of {page 371} understanding. Plato deals more frankly with God, and actual things and names; his discourse would be quite divine, were it not sometimes sullied by the intrusion of political bias. For Plato, in the Timaeus, God is by virtue of his name the author of the universe, the artificer of soul, the constructor of all things in heaven and earth; hard to discover, as he declares, by reason of his incredible and extraordinary power, and, when discovered, impossible to describe in popular terms.

“The position is pretty much the same as our own; we too recognize God, and call him the parent of all; yet avoid popular expositions except when questioned.

XX. “I have now cited the opinions of almost all philosophers of any marked distinction, all designating God as one, though under great variety of names, so that one might suppose, either that Christians of to-day are philosophers, or that philosophers of old were already Christians.

“But if the universe is ruled by Providence, and directed by the will of a single God, we must not allow an ignorant tradition, charmed or captivated by its pet fables, to hurry us into the mistake of agreement; they are refuted by the opinions of their own philosophers, supported by the authority of reason and of antiquity. Our ancestors were so ready to believe in fictions, that they accepted on trust all kind of wild and monstrous marvels and miracles: Scylla with serpent coils, a hybrid Chimaera, a Hydra replenishing its life from vivifying wounds, Centaurs half-horse half-man, or any other fiction of folk-lore fell upon willing ears. Why recall old wives’ tales of human beings changed {page 373} into birds and beasts, or into trees and flowers? Had such things happened in the past, they would happen now; as they cannot happen now, they did not happen then. So with our ancestors’ attitude to the gods: blind and credulous they yielded simple-minded credence. Devoutly reverencing their kings, while, after death, desiring to see their likenesses portrayed, eager to perpetuate their memories in statues, they formed objects of worship from things designed for consolation. Before the world was opened up by commerce, and nations adopted each others’ rites and customs, each individual group revered its founder, or some famous chief, or virtuous queen strong beyond her sex, or the inventor of some social boon or art, as a citizen worthy of remembrance. It was at once a tribute to the dead and an example to posterity.

XXI. “Read history, or the writings of the learned,⁵⁰ and you will recognize the truth of what I say.

“Euhemerus⁵¹ gives a list of gods accepted for their merits or their services; enumerates their birthdays, fatherlands, and places of sepulture, and province by province localizes Dictaean Jupiter, Delphic Apollo, Pharian Isis, and Eleusinian Ceres. Prodicus tells of the apotheosis of men who by travel and the discovery of new fruits conferred blessings upon men. To the like effect Persaeus philosophizes in the same sense, and associates the fruits discovered with discoverers of the fruits bearing the same names, as in the comic line: ‘Venus, without Liber and Ceres, is a-cold.’⁵² Alexander the Great of Macedon in a striking letter to his {page 375} mother wrote that he had frightened a priest into betraying to him the secret about deified men; in it he puts Vulcan at the head of the line, and after him the family of Jupiter. Saturn, the fountain-head of this family and clan, all antiquarians, Greek and Roman, treat as a man. So Nepos, and Cassius in his history, and Thallus and Diodorus⁵³ say the same. Saturn they tell us was a fugitive from Crete, who in terror of his son’s violence came to Italy and there received hospitality from Janus; there, as you might expect of a soft and polished Greek, he taught the untutored rustics many arts—the use of letters, coinage, and making of implements. For his hiding-place, where he had found safe hiding, he chose the name of Latium; the Saturnian city, called by his own name, and Janiculum from Janus, have handed down their memory to posterity. Assuredly a mere refugee, and one who lay in hiding, was a man; father of a man, and son of a man; reputed to be son of Earth or Heaven, merely because his parents were unknown to the Italians; just as to this day we speak of unexpected visitants as ‘Heaven-sent,’ and obscure nonentities as ‘sons of Earth.’ His son Jupiter, after his father’s expulsion, reigned in Crete; there died; there had sons; visits are still paid to the cave of Jupiter, and his grave is shown; and the actual rites observed prove his humanity.

“It is waste of time to go through all one by one, and to trace the whole family line; the mortality which we have proved in the case of their first parents has descended to the rest by order of succession. But perhaps you imagine that men become gods after death; Romulus was made a god by the false {page 377} oath of Proculus⁵⁴; Juba a god by the vote of the Mauritanians; and so the other kings deified by consecration due not so much to belief in their divinity, as to recognition of greatness and desert. In point of fact they dislike the attribution of the name; they desire to remain men; they are afraid of becoming gods⁵⁵; old though they be, they would rather not.

“The dead cannot become gods, for a god cannot die; neither can those of mortal birth, for everything that is born dies; that which is divine, has neither rising nor setting. If gods are born, why pray are no gods born to-day? Can it be perhaps that Jupiter has become aged, and Juno past child-bearing, and Minerva grey before becoming a mother? Or is it that reproduction has come to an end, because belief in fables of that kind is no longer forthcoming?

“Besides, if gods could procreate and could not die, we should have more gods than all mankind together, and by now there would be no room for them in heaven, no place in the air, no standing ground on earth. And this proves that those gods were men, of whose births we read, and whose deaths we know.

XXII. “Who can doubt that it is to their consecrated images that the common folk offer prayer and public worship, while the fancy and judgement of the uncritical is at the mercy of artistic finish, dazzled by the glitter of gold, lulled to rest by the sheen of silver, and the whiteness of ivory? But if anyone calls to mind the cranks and the machines that go to the shaping of an image, he would blush at the idea of fearing raw matter, which the play of the craftsman’s fancy has transformed into a god. A god of {page 379} wood, a fragment perhaps of a funeral pile or a gallows-tree, is hung up, sawn, chiselled and planed; your god of bronze or silver, made as it often was from some dirty vessel for an Egyptian king,⁵⁶ is melted down, hammered with mallets, and shaped on anvils; your god of stone is hewn, carved and polished by some lewd fellow, and is no more aware of the stains upon his birth than he is afterwards of the homage of your worship.

“Say you the stone, or wood, or silver is not as yet a god? When then does he come to the birth? See him cast, moulded, sculptured—not yet is he a god; see him soldered, assembled, and set up—still not a god; see him bedizened, consecrated, worshipped; hey presto! he is a god—by a man’s will and act of dedication.

“How much truer the judgement which the dumb animals pass instinctively upon those gods of yours! Mice, swallows, kites know that they have no feeling; they gnaw them, perch and settle on them,⁵⁷ and (unless you scare them) build in your god’s own mouth; spiders spin webs across his face, and hang their threads from his head. You wipe, and clean, and scrape, you at once protect and fear the images which you construct; you all of you forget that a man ought to know his god before he worships him; you vie in thoughtless obedience to your parents; you prefer becoming parties to the errors of others, rather than trusting yourselves; and of the things you fear, you know nothing. Such is the way in which avarice is consecrated in gold and silver, the {page 381} form and pattern of empty images prescribed, and Roman superstition brought into being.

“Examine into their attendant rites, how ridiculous, how pitiable even they appear! Men running about naked in mid-winter⁵⁸; others marching about in felt caps, or parading old shields⁵⁹; drumming on skins, and dragging their gods to beg from street to street.⁶⁰ Some temples may only be entered once a year, some never visited at all. There are rites which a man may not attend,⁶¹ others which may be held only in the absence of women; others where the mere presence of a slave is an outrage needing expiation.⁶² For some rites the wreath is laid by a woman with one husband, for others by a woman with several, or ceremonial hue and cry is made for one still more promiscuous in her attachments. Or take the man who pours libations of his own blood, and from his own wounds draws supplication⁶³—would he not be better without religion than religious in this fashion? and propitiatory self-mutilation—is it not an insult to God? if God wanted eunuchs, could he not produce, not make them?

“These, anyone can see, are the aberrations, follies and excesses of a disordered mind, and the mere number of those who go wrong supplies mutual securities. General insanity shields itself behind the multitude of the insane.

XXIII. “And lastly, consider the sacred rites of the mysteries: you will find tragic deaths, dooms, funerals, mourning and lamentations of woebegone {page 383} gods. Isis, with her Cynocephalus and shaven priests, mourning, bewailing and searching for her lost son; her miserable votaries beating their breasts and mimicking the sorrows of the unhappy mother; then, when the stripling is found, Isis rejoices, her priests jump for joy, the Cynocephalus glories in his discovery; and, year by year, they cease not to lose what they find or to find what they lose. Is it not absurd either to mourn your object of worship, or to worship your object of mourning? Yet these old Egyptian rites have now found their way to Rome, so that you may play the fool to the swallow and sistrum of Isis, the scattered limbs, and the empty tomb of your Serapis or Osiris.⁶⁴

“Ceres, with lighted torches, serpent-girt, with anxious troubled footsteps follows the trail of her decoyed and ravished Libera⁶⁵—such are the Eleusinian mysteries. And what are the rites of Jupiter? His nurse is a she-goat; the infant is withdrawn from his greedy sire, for fear he should be eaten; the tinkling cymbals of the Corybants are clashed for fear the father should hear his infant wails.⁶⁶ Of Cybele and Dindyma⁶⁷ it is a shame to speak: unable to satisfy the affections of her luckless paramour—for mothering of many gods had made her plain and old—she reduced {page 385} the god to impotence, and in deference to this fable her Galli priests inflict the same disablement upon their bodies. Such practices are not sacred rites, but tortures.

“Again, form and feature bring contempt and mockery upon your gods. Vulcan is lame and crippled; Apollo after years and years still beardless; Aesculapius full bearded, though the son of ever young Apollo. Neptune has sea-green eyes, Minerva grey, like a cat’s, Juno those of an ox; Mercurius has winged feet, Pan hoofs, Saturn feet shackled.⁶⁸ Janus has two faces, ready to walk backwards; Diana is sometimes short-kilted for the hunt, while at Ephesus she is figured with many breasts and paps, and as Trivia is a dreadful being with three heads and many hands. Your own Jupiter himself sometimes stands beardless, at others portrayed with a beard; under the name of Hammon,⁶⁹ he has horns; Jupiter of the Capitol wields thunderbolts; Jupiter Latiaris is drenched with gore⁷⁰; as Feretrius he wears a wreath.⁷¹ But, not to linger over Jupiters, his phases are as many as his names. Erigone⁷² hanged herself, to shine as Virgo among the stars; Castor and his twin live, by alternate deaths; Aesculapius, to rise to godhead, is struck by lightning; Hercules puts off mortality by being consumed in the flames of Oeta.

XXIV. “Such are the fables and fooleries we learn at our parents’ knees, and—worse still—improve {page 387} upon by our own studies and training, especially in the works of poets, who have had such fatal influence in injuring the cause of truth. Plato did quite right in excluding Homer, however crowned with praise and honour, from his ideal Republic. For he above all others in his Iliad, though half in jest, gave gods a place in the affairs and doings of men; he matched them as combatants; drew blood from Venus; chained up Mars, wounded him and put him to flight.⁷³ He tells us how Briareus set Jupiter free to save him from being bound by the rest of the gods; and how, when he could not rescue his son Sarpedon from death, he wept showers of blood; and that under the spell of Venus’s girdle he mated with Juno his wife with more than usual ardour. In another poet Hercules clears out the cow dung, and Apollo tends the flocks for Admetus. Neptune built walls for Laomedon, and the luckless builder got no pay for his job. In another poet Jupiter’s thunderbolt is forged on the anvil along with the arms of Aeneas, though heaven and thunderbolts and lightning existed long before Jupiter was born in Crete, and no Cyclops could have imitated the flames of genuine thunderbolts nor Jupiter have failed to fear them. Why should I mention Mars and Venus caught in adultery, or Jupiter’s passion for Ganymedes, hallowed in Heaven? Such stories are but precedents and sanctions for men’s vices.

“Choice figments and falsehoods of this kind corrupt the minds of boys; they grow up to full manhood with these fables sticking in their memory, and unhappily grow old in the same beliefs, though the truth is before their eyes if only they would look for it.

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XXV. “All the same, you say, this so-called superstition gave world-empire to the Romans, increased and established it, for their strength lay not so much in valour as in religion and piety. Say you the noble and majestic fabric of Roman justice drew its auspices from the cradle of infant empire! Yet were they not in origin a collection of criminals? did they not grow by the iron terror of their own savagery? The plebs first congregated in a city of refuge; thither had flocked ruffians, criminals, profligates, assassins and traitors; and Romulus himself, to secure criminal pre-eminence in office and rule, murdered his own brother. Such were the initial auspices of our religious commonwealth! Next, without leave or law, he carried off other men’s maidens, some betrothed, some promised, some already married wives, outraged and mocked them, and then went to war with their parents, that is with their own fathers-in-law, and shed kinsmen’s blood. Was there ever procedure more irreligious, more outrageous, more cynical in its avowal of crime? Thenceforward it becomes the practice of all succeeding kings and leaders to dispossess neighbours of their territory, to overthrow adjoining states with their temples and their altars, to drive them into captivity, to wax fat on losses inflicted, and crimes committed.

“All that the Romans hold, occupy and possess is the spoil of outrage; their temples are all of loot, drawn from the ruin of cities, the plunder of gods and the slaughter of priests.

“It is an insult and a mockery to serve vanquished religions, first to enslave and then worship the vanquished. To adore what you have seized by {page 391} force is to hallow sacrilege, not deities. Each Roman triumph has meant a new impiety, and all trophies over nations new spoliations of the gods. The Romans then have grown great not by religion, but by unpunished sacrilege; for in their actual wars they could not have had the assistance of the gods against whom they took up arms. A triumph over trampled gods is the preliminary to their worship; yet what can such gods do for Romans, when they could not help their own votaries against the arms of Rome?

“The indigenous gods of the Romans we know⁷⁴; Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, and Consus and Pilumnus and Volumnus; Tatius invented and worshipped Cloacina; Hostilius Pavor (Panic) and Pallor; some one or another canonized Febris (Fever); such, in superstition, is the foster-child of your city of diseases and maladies. Presumably Acca Larentia too and Flora, prostitutes lost to shame, may be numbered among the diseases—and the gods—of Rome.

“Such forsooth were the powers who carried forward the banners of Rome against the gods worshipped by other nations. For Thracian Mars, or Cretan Jupiter, or Juno Argive, Samian and Carthaginian⁷⁵ by turns, Tauric Diana, or the Idaean Mother, or the Egyptian monsters rather than deities never took sides for you against their own people.

“But perhaps your virgins were more chaste, or your priests more religious. Nay, but in more of the {page 393} virgins than not, who committed indiscretions with men, no doubt without the knowledge of Vesta, immorality was brought home; and among the rest impunity resulted not from stricter chastity, so much as more fortunate indulgence. And where are more lewd bargains made, assignations arranged, and adulteries planned, than by priests among the altars and sanctuaries? Lust gratifies its flames in the chambers of the sacristans more often than in the houses of ill-fame.

“And after all, under God’s dispensation, before Romans existed, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks too and Egyptians ruled great empires, although they had no Pontiffs, no Arval Brothers, no Salii Vestals or Augurs, no cooped chickens to rule the destinies of state by their appetite or distaste for food.

XXVI. “I come next to the auspices and auguries which you have laboriously collected and cited, to prove retribution attending on neglect, and success upon observance. Clodius, you say, Flaminius, and Junius lost their armies because they refused to wait till the chickens ate heartily.⁷⁶ But what of Regulus⁷⁷? Did he not observe the auguries? yet was he not taken captive? Mancinus did nothing irreligious, yet he passed under the yoke, and was surrendered to the enemy.⁷⁸ Paulus’s chickens were in good feed, yet at Cannae⁷⁹ he and the greater part of the republic were laid low. When auguries and auspices were adverse to his crossing into Africa before winter, Gaius Caesar disregarded them⁸⁰: as the result both voyage and victory were made easy.

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“What, or rather how much, shall I dwell on oracles? Amphiaraus after death gave responses about the future, though he did not know that, for a necklace, he would be betrayed by his wife.⁸¹ The blind Tiresias⁸² saw into the future, though he could not see things present. Ennius put together the responses of the Pythian Apollo⁸³ about Pyrrhus, though Apollo had already ceased to compose in verse; and his wary and ambiguous oracle failed as men began to be both more educated and less credulous. Demosthenes, knowing that responses were fabricated, complained of the Pythian priestess for ‘Philippizing.’

“Yet, on occasion, even auspices or oracles have hit the truth. Though, among hosts of falsehoods, chance may sometimes have worn the semblance of design, yet I will try to get to the true source of error and perversity, which lies behind the thick darkness, expose its roots, and let in the light of day.

There exist unclean and wandering spirits, whose heavenly vigour has been overlaid by earthly soils and lusts. These spirits, burdened and steeped in vices, have lost the simplicity of their original substance; as some consolation for their own calamity, these lost spirits cease not to conspire for others’ loss, to deprave them with their own depravity, and under the alienation of depraved and heathen superstitions to separate them from God. Such spirits are recognized as ‘demons’ by the poets, are discussed by philosophers, and were known to Socrates who, at the instigation and will of his attendant demon, declined or pursued certain courses of action. The Magi {page 397} not only know of the demons, but by their aid perform their magical tricks; by their suggestion and connivance they produce their feats of conjuring, making things visible that are not, or things that are invisible. Hostanes,⁸⁴ whose eloquence and faculty give him first place among the Magi, renders due homage to the true God; angels, he tells us—ministers and messengers of God—attend the throne of God, and stand by to render worship, trembling and affrighted at the nod and countenance of their Lord. He has borne witness also to demons of the earth, ranging to and fro, the enemies of mankind. Does not Plato too, who accounted it a hard matter to find out God, find it no hard matter to tell of angels and of demons? in his Symposium is he not at pains to define their nature? He will have it that there is a substance intermediate between mortal and immortal, that is, between body and spirit, compounded of an admixture of earthly weight and heavenly lightness; out of which he tells us Love is fashioned, and glides into the hearts of men, and stirs their senses, and shapes affections, and instils the ardour of desire.

XXVII. “These unclean spirits, or demons, as revealed to Magi and philosophers, find a lurking place under statues and consecrated images, and by their breath exercise influence as of a present God: at one while they inspire prophets, at another haunt temples, at another animate the fibres of entrails, govern the flight of birds, determine lots, and are the authors of oracles mostly wrapped in falsehood. Deceived as well as deceivers, they know not essential truth, and what they know they confess not to their own undoing. Thus they drag {page 399} men downwards from Heaven, call them away from the true God to material things, perturb their life, disquiet their slumbers, creep into their bodies covertly, as impalpable spirits, produce diseases, strike terror into minds, distort the limbs, thus driving men to do them worship, in order that, when glutted with the reek of altars or with victim beasts, they may loosen the tightened bonds and claim to have effected a cure. From them too come the maniacs whom you see running into the street, soothsayers without a temple, raving, possessed, and whirling round. There is the same demoniac possession, though the guise of frenzy is different. To them too we may trace delusions already mentioned, Jupiter by a dream claiming the renewal of his games; Castor and Pollux being seen with their horses; and the bark towed by a matron’s girdle.⁸⁵

“All this, as most of your people know, the demons themselves admit to be true, when they are driven out of men’s bodies by words of exorcism and the fire of prayer. Saturn himself, Serapis, Jupiter, or any other demon you worship, under stress of pain, confess openly what they are; and surely they would not lie to their own disgrace, particularly with some of you standing by. When the witnesses themselves confess the truth about themselves, that they are demons, you cannot but believe; when adjured in the name of the one true God, reluctantly, in misery, they quail and quake, and either suddenly leap forth at once, or vanish gradually, according to the faith exercised by the sufferer or the grace imparted by the healer. Challenged at close quarters they run away from Christians, though at a distance in mixed crowds they set you on to {page 401} harry them. Worming their way into the minds of the ignorant, they sow secret hate against us based on fear; for it is natural to hate one you fear, and to launch what attacks you can upon one of whom you are afraid. They seize and close the approaches of men’s hearts, to insure their hating us before they know us, for fear that when they know us they may either proceed to imitate or feel unable to condemn.

XXVIII. “How unfair it is to pass judgement, as you do, without knowledge and investigation, a guilty conscience reminds us. We too were once in the same case as you, blindly and stupidly sharing your ideas, and supposing that the Christians worshipped monsters, devoured infants, and joined in incestuous feasts; we did not understand that the demons were for ever setting fables afloat without either investigation or proof; and that all the while no one came forward with evidence, though he would have gained not only pardon for wrong done but also reward for his disclosure; and that, so far from any wrong-doing of any kind, accused Christians neither blushed nor feared, but regretted one thing only, that they had not been Christians before. At the time when we used to undertake the defence and protection of cases of sacrilege or incest or even murders, we regarded Christians as not even entitled to a hearing; sometimes under pretence of pity, with savage cruelty we tortured those who confessed, to make them deny, in order to save their lives; in their case we reversed the usual practice, employing torture not to elicit truth, but to compel falsehood. And if anyone, overcome by the pressure of pain, succumbed and denied his faith, we extended indulgence to him, as {page 403} though forswearing the name was in itself enough to purge him of all his misdoings. Do you recognize that what we felt and did was exactly what you feel and are doing now? Whereas, if the decision rested with reason, and not the instigation of a demon, they should rather be pressed not to disavow their Christianity, but to confess to incest and fornication, to unholy rites, and to child-sacrifice. For these are the kind of tales with which these demons have stuffed the ears of the ignorant to excite horror and execration against us. Nor need we be surprised; seeing that scandal, which always feeds on the dissemination of falsehoods, and withers in the light of truth, is the handiwork of demons; for false rumour is their seed-plot and their nursery.

“Hence the gossip which you say you hear about our treating the head of an ass as divine. Who would be foolish enough to worship that? Who more foolish still, to believe in such worship? except perhaps those of you who keep whole asses in your stalls consecrated to your or their Epona,⁸⁶ and decorate them ceremonially in company with Isis, or who sacrifice and worship heads of oxen and of wethers, and dedicate gods half-goat, half-man, and lion-headed or dog-headed deities. Do not you join the Egyptians in adoring and feeding the bull Apis? and approve rites instituted in honour of serpents and crocodiles and all the other beasts and birds and fishes, gods whose slaughter is made punishable by death? And yet these same Egyptians, like most of you, stand in no more awe of Isis than of a pungent leek, or of Serapis than of a breaking of wind.

“The man who fakes up stories of our adoring the privates of a priest is only trying to foist his own {page 405} abominations upon us. Indecencies of that kind may be countenanced, where modesty in any kind of sexual relation or exposure is unknown. But faugh!…their obscenities are more revolting than modern refinement can stomach, or servitude endure.

XXIX. “Such filth and beastliness are an offence to our ears; for most the mere mention of them, even in self-defence, is a disgrace; to modest and clean-living folk you impute acts which we should regard as impossible, did you not prove them by your own practices.

“As for the worship of a malefactor and his cross, which you ascribe to our religion, you go very far wide of the truth, in supposing that a criminal deserved or that a mortal man had the right to be believed in as God. Pitiable indeed the man whose hope is stayed upon a mortal man, with whose death all that he builds on comes to an end! True indeed that Egyptians choose a man for their worship; that they propitiate him and him alone; that they consult him on all matters and kill victims in his honour. But though to others he is a god, to himself at least he is a man, whether he like it or no; for he does not impose upon his own consciousness, even if he deludes others. Princes and kings may rightly be hailed as great and elect among men, but homage to them as gods is base and lying flattery; honour is the truer tribute to distinction, affection the more acceptable reward to worth. Yet that is the way men invoke their deity, make supplications to their images, pray to their Genius, that is their daemon; and think it safer to swear falsely by the genius of Jupiter than by that of their king.

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“Crosses again we neither worship nor set our hopes on.⁸⁷ You, who consecrate gods of wood, very possibly adore wooden crosses as being portions of your gods. For what are your standards, and banners, and ensigns but gilded and decorated crosses? Your trophies of victory show not only the figure of a simple cross, but also of one crucified. Quite true we see the sign of the cross naturally figured in a ship riding the swelling waves, or impelled by outspread oars; a cross-beam set up forms the sign of the cross; and so too does a man with outstretched hands devoutly offering worship to God. In this way the system of nature leans on the sign of the cross or your religion is shaped thereby.

XXX. “I should now like to join issue with the man who says or believes that we are initiated by the slaughter and blood of an infant. Can you think it possible that its tender, tiny body should be gashed by fatal wounds? that any man alive would sacrifice, and spill, and drain the innocent blood of a babe yet hardly born? None can believe it, but one capable of the crime. Among you I do see newly-born sons at times exposed to wild beasts and birds, or violently strangled to a painful death; and there are women who, by medicinal draughts, extinguish in the womb and commit infanticide upon the offspring yet unborn. Such practices of course follow the precedents set by your gods⁸⁸; Saturnus did not indeed expose his sons, but devoured them. Not without reason in some parts of Africa infants were sacrificed to him by their parents, and their cries smothered by endearments and kisses for fear of a victim being sacrificed {page 409} in tears. Among the Pontic Tauri and for the Egyptian Busiris, the custom was to immolate strangers; for the Gauls, to slay human—or rather inhuman—victims to Mercurius. The Romans, by way of sacrifice, buried alive a Greek man and woman, and a Gaulish man and woman; even to-day a human victim is offered to Jupiter Latiaris,⁸⁹ and, as becomes the son of Saturn, he battens on the blood of a criminal offender. It was he, I believe, who instructed Catiline⁹⁰ to cement conspiracy with a covenant of blood, and Bellona⁹¹ to imbrue her sacrifice with draughts of human blood; and to heal the falling sickness with a man’s blood, a cure worse than the disease.⁹² They are on a par with those who eat of wild beasts from the arena, fresh glutted with blood and gorged with the limbs and entrails of men.⁹³ For us it is not permissible either to see or to hear of human slaughter; we have such a shrinking from human blood that at our meals we avoid the blood of animals used for food.

XXXI. “The tall story of incestuous banqueting is a lying concoction of demons leagued against us to throw the mud of infamous aspersions upon our boasted purity, that before looking into the truth popular opinion might be turned against us by shocking and horrible imputations. In this way your own Fronto⁹⁴ did not produce evidence as on affidavit, but spattered abuse like an agitator. The truth is such practices originated with your own people. Among the Persians the law approves unions with mothers; in Egypt and at Athens {page 411} marriage with sisters is legal; your legends and tragedies glory in tales of incest, which you read and listen to with relish; the gods you worship have incestuous relations with a mother, a daughter, or a sister. No wonder then that among you cases of the same offence are often exposed, and constantly practised. Without knowing it you may incur the risk of illicit connexions; with promiscuous amours, with children begotten here or there; with frequent exposure of legitimate children to the mercy of strangers, you inevitably return upon your own tracks and go wrong with children of your own. Unwittingly you involve yourselves in a tragedy of guilt.

“On the other hand our modesty lies not in outward look, but in soul; of our own free will we cleave to the bond of single marriage; in desire of procreation we are content with one wife or with none. Our feasts are conducted not only with modesty, but in sobriety; for we do not indulge in delicacies, or prolong conviviality with wine; but temper our gaiety with gravity, with chaste conversation. Chaste still more in person, many find in perpetual virginity food for satisfaction rather than for boasting; in a word, so far removed is the desire for unchastity, that to some even chaste connexion raises a blush.

“We do not take our place among the dregs of the people, because we reject your official titles and purples; we are not sectarian in spirit, if in quiet gatherings as in individual intercourse we are of one mind for good; neither are we ‘talkative in corners,’ because you are either ashamed or afraid to give us an open hearing. As for the daily increase {page 413} in our numbers, that is no proof of error, but evidence of merit; for beauty of life encourages its followers to persevere, and strangers to join the ranks. We do in fact readily recognize one another, not as you suppose by some token on the body, but by the sign manual of innocence and modesty; our bond, which you resent, consists in mutual love, for we know not how to hate; we call ourselves ‘brethren’ to which you object, as members of one family in God, as partners in one faith, as joint heirs in hope. You do not acknowledge one another, amid outbursts of mutual hate; you recognize no tie of brotherhood, except indeed for fratricidal murder.

XXXII. “Do you suppose we conceal our object of worship because we have no shrines and altars? What image can I make of God when, rightly considered, man himself is an image of God? What temple can I build for him, when the whole universe, fashioned by his handiwork, cannot contain him? Shall I, a man, housed more spaciously, confine within a tiny shrine power and majesty so great? Is not the mind a better place of dedication? our inmost heart of consecration? Shall I offer to God victims and sacrifices which he has furnished for my use, and so reject his bounties? That were ingratitude, seeing that the acceptable sacrifice is a good spirit and a pure mind and a conscience without guile. He who follows after innocence makes prayer to God; he who practises justice offers libations; he who abstains from fraud, propitiates; he who rescues another from peril, slays the best victim. These are our sacrifices, these our hallowed rites; with us justice is the true measure of religion.

“But, you say, the God we worship we neither {page 415} show nor see. Nay, but herein is the ground of our belief that we can perceive him, though we cannot see. For in his works, and in the motions of the universe, we behold his ever-present energy; in the thunder and the lightning, in the thunderbolt or the clear sky. It is no cause for wonder if you see not God; wind and storm drive, toss, disorder all things, yet the eyes see not wind and storm. We cannot look upon the sun, which is to all the cause of vision; its rays dazzle our eyesight; the observer’s vision is dimmed, and if you look too long, all power of sight is extinguished. How could you bear the sight of the author of the sun himself, the fountain of light, when you turn your face from his lightnings and hide from his shafts? Do you expect to see God with the eyes of flesh, when you can neither see nor lay hold of your own soul, the organ of life and speech?

“But God, you say, heeds not the doings of man, and from his place in heaven can neither visit all nor have knowledge of individuals. There, man, you err, and are deceived. God is never afar; all things in heaven and earth, and those which are beyond, the province of this world, are known of God, and full of him. Everywhere he is not merely close at hand, but interfused. Once more direct your thoughts sunward: fixed in heaven, he yet scatters his rays over all lands; equally present everywhere, he mingles and has part in all; and nowhere is his brightness dimmed. How much more is God, the author of all things and the spier-out of all, from whom nothing can be hid, present in darkness and present in that other darkness of our thoughts! Not only do we act under his eye, but with him, I may almost say, we have our life.

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XXXIII. “Nor need we plume ourselves upon our numbers; to ourselves we seem many, but to God we are very few. We distinguish nations and tribes: to God the whole world is a single household. Kings know the affairs of their kingdom through the official reports of ministers, but God has no need of signed reports: we live, not only in his eyes but in his bosom.

“‘But what did it profit the Jews that they too, with reverence the most scrupulous, worshipped one God with altars and with temples?’ There you are betrayed into ignorance, if you forget or ignore their earlier history, and remember only the later; the Jews, so long as they worshipped our God—one God, the same for all—in purity and innocence and holiness—so long as they obeyed his precepts of salvation, grew from a small people to a numberless, from being poor to rich, from being slaves to kings; few in numbers and unarmed they overwhelmed armed hosts, and at the command of God with the assistance of the elements pursued them in their flight.⁹⁵ Read their own writings; or omitting the ancients, turn to Flavius Josephus; or, if you prefer Romans, consult Antonius Julianus on the Jews, and you will see that it was their own wickedness which brought them to misfortune, and that nothing happened to them which was not predicted in advance, if they persisted in rebelliousness. You will understand that they deserted God before he deserted them, and that they were not—as you profanely say—led captive with their God, but were handed over by God as deserters from his disciplines.

XXXIV. “As for the destruction of the world by fire, it is a vulgar error to regard a sudden conflagration, {page 419} or a failure of moisture as incredible. What philosopher doubts, or does not know, that all things which have come into being die, that all things created perish, that heaven and all things contained therein cease as they began. So too the universe, if sun, moon and stars are deprived of the fountains of fresh water and the water of the seas, will disappear in a blaze of fire. The Stoics firmly maintain that when the moisture is dried out, the universe must all take fire. And Epicureans hold the same about the conflagration of the elements and the destruction of the universe. Plato⁹⁶ speaks of parts of the world as subject alternately to floods and to fire; and while maintaining that the universe itself was created eternal and indissoluble, adds that only God himself, who created it, can make it dissoluble and mortal. What wonder then if it should be destroyed in its entirety by him who built it up!

“The philosophers, you observe, use the same arguments as we; not that we have followed their footsteps, but that they, from the divine predictions of the prophets, have borrowed the shadow of a garbled truth.

“Similarly the more illustrious philosophers, Pythagoras first, and more particularly Plato, have put on record a perverted half-truth about the conditions of the future life; on the dissolution of the body, the souls alone they hold remain eternal, and usually migrate into other new bodies. And further, to the distortion of truth, they add that the souls of men pass into sheep, birds and beasts. Though the theory is more like a pantomime joke than serious philosophy, still it is so far to the point as showing a measure of {page 421} agreement between your experts and ourselves. Furthermore, who is so stupid or senseless as to venture to maintain that man, originally formed by God, cannot be remade by him anew? that after death there is nothing, just as before birth there was nothing? that as he could be born out of nothing, so he can be reconstructed out of nothing? Besides, it is more difficult to start what does not exist, than to repeat what has existed. Do you suppose that, because a thing is withdrawn from our dull eyes, it is therefore lost also to God? The whole body, whether it crumbles into dust, or is resolved into moisture, or reduced to ashes, or attenuated into smoke, is withdrawn from us, but the elements remain in the keeping of God. We are not, as you imagine, afraid of damage arising from the mode of sepulture, though we adhere to the good old custom of earth-burial.

“And see too how, for our comfort, all nature suggests a future resurrection. The sun dips down and is born again; the stars sink and return; the flowers fall and renew their life; shrubs age and then break into leaf; seeds must decay in order to renew their life. The body in the grave is like trees in winter; they conceal their greenness under a show of dryness. Why press that in raw winter it should revive and return to life? We must wait too for the springtime of the body.

“Many, I am well aware, conscious of their deserts, hope rather than believe that annihilation follows death; they would rather be extinguished than restored for punishment. They are led astray by the impunity allowed them in life, and also by the infinite patience of God, whose judgements though slow are ever sure and just.

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XXXV. “And yet writings of the learned, and verses of the poets, warn men of that river of fire, and the naming circles of the Stygian mere, prepared for eternal tortures, to which the declarations of demons and the oracles of prophets have borne witness. And by that token King Jupiter himself makes solemn oath by the burning shores and the black ooze of Styx, with shuddering prescience dreading the punishment for him and his worshippers. And to these torments there is neither bound nor end. The fire has skill to burn and to remake, to riddle and yet nourish, the limbs committed to it. As lightnings strike without consuming, and as the fires of Etna and Vesuvius, and volcanoes in other lands, burn on without exhaustion, so the penal fire does not undo those whom it burns, but feeds on the mangled fuel of bodies unconsumed.

“That those who know not God deserve their tortures, as impious and unrighteous, none but an atheist doubts; it is as culpable to ignore as to wrong the parent of all, and Lord of all. And although unacquaintance with God is sufficient reason for punishment, in the same way that knowledge avails for pardon, yet, if we Christians are compared with you, although in some cases our training falls short of yours, yet we shall be found on a much higher level than you. You forbid adultery, yet practise it; we are born husbands for our wives alone; you punish crimes committed, with us the thought of crime is sin; you fear the voice of witnesses, we the sole voice of conscience which is ever at our side; and finally, the prisons are crowded to overflowing with your following and not a single Christian is there, except on charge of his religion, or as a renegade.

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XXXVI. “And let no one turn for refuge, or excuse results by appeals to ‘Fate.’ Fortune may deal her lot, yet the mind is free; and therefore it is man’s action, not his position, that is judged. What does ‘Fate’ mean,⁹⁷ but God’s ‘pronouncement’ upon each one of us? With full foreknowledge of the factors contained, God determines his pronouncements in accordance with individual deserts and qualities. The rod is not laid upon the condition of birth, but the nature of disposition entails the chastisement. But enough of Fate for the moment; we reserve it for fuller and more complete discussion elsewhere.⁹⁸

“That most of us are reputed poor is no disgrace, but a credit, for the mind is relaxed by luxury, and braced by frugality. Yet who can be poor, who is free from wants, who does not covet what is another’s, who is rich towards God? The poor man is he who, having much, craves for more. I will tell you how I look at it: no man can be so poor as he is at birth. Birds have no settled income, the cattle feed from day to day; these things are provided for us, and all these we possess, if we do not covet more. As on the highroad he who walks lightest walks with most ease, so on the journey of life more happiness comes from lightening needs by poverty than from panting under a burden of wealth. Yet for a competence, put to good use, we may well ask God, and He who owns the whole may indulge us with a portion. We would rather despise wealth than hoard it; innocence comes first in our desires, patience in our intreaties; we would rather be good than prodigal.

“The human and bodily infirmities which we experience {page 427} and suffer are not a punishment, but a school of discipline. For fortitude is braced by weaknesses, and calamity is frequently the school of virtue; strength, both of mind and body, grows slack without hard training. Your heroes, one and all, whom you quote for our example, won their renown by trials endured. God cannot fail to help us, nor does he disregard, seeing that he is ruler of all and lover of his own; but in adversities he tries and tests us every one; weighs each man’s disposition in the scales of peril; proves man’s will even to the last extreme of death, with the assurance that in his sight nothing can perish. As gold is tried by fire so are we by ordeals.

XXXVII. “How fair a spectacle for God to see, when a Christian comes face to face with pain, stands matched with threats and punishments and tortures, confronts with a smile the din of death and the hideous executioner, rises to the full height of his liberty in the face of kings and princes, and yields to God alone, Whose he is, as with victorious triumph he defies the judge who has passed sentence on him! For victory rests with him who wins that which he fought for. What soldier would not face risks more boldly under the eyes of his general? None takes the prize before facing the ordeal. Yet the general cannot give what is not his; he cannot grant new lease of life, though he can do honour to good service. But the soldier of God is not forsaken in his pain, neither does death end all. The Christian may seem miserable, but will not so be found. You yourselves extol to the skies victims of misadventure like Mucius Scaevola, who, having failed in his attempt upon the king, would have perished among the enemy, had he {page 429} not sacrificed his right hand.⁹⁹ How many of our number have, without a moan, allowed not their right hand only, but their whole body to be burned to ashes, when it was within their power to win release! Am I comparing men only with Mucius or Aquilius, or Regulus?¹⁰⁰ Nay, our boys and tender women are so inspired to sufferance of pain that they laugh to scorn crosses and tortures, wild beasts and all the paraphernalia of punishment. Poor fools! you do not see that without reason no one would voluntarily submit to punishment, or without God’s help endure the tortures.

“You may be deceived by the fact that men who know not God abound in riches, are loaded with honours and set in the seats of authority. Unhappy they, who are raised to high place, that they may fall the lower! They are like victims fattened for sacrifice, and garlanded for execution: there are men so lifted up by sovereignty and dominion, that in an abandon of unreason, license, and power they freely traffic away their humanity.¹⁰¹ For, apart from a knowledge of God, what solid base has happiness, when—there stands death! Like a dream, before it is grasped it slips away. Are you king? You feel as much fear as you inspire, and, however numerous your bodyguard, in the presence of danger you are alone. Are you rich? Yet fortune is ill to trust, and for life’s brief journey a big provision-train is more burden than equipment. Are fasces and purples your pride? It is a vain will-of-the-wisp and an empty show of state to shine in purple and be squalid in mind. {page 431} Are you of noble lineage? proud of your ancestry? Yet we are all born equal; virtue alone gives mark.

“We, whose values rest on morals and on modesty, have good reason to abstain from the vicious delights of your processions and spectacles; we know the rites from which they originated and condemn their pernicious attractions. At the curule games, who would not shrink from the frenzy of the struggling mob? or the organized bloodshed of the gladiatorial shows? In your stage plays there is the same wild passion, with indecencies still more prolonged; at one a farcer describes or acts adulteries; at another an actor expends his forces on the amours which he depicts; by masquerading their intrigues, their sighs, and their hates, he brings disgrace upon your gods. For feigned sorrows he moves you to tears by unreal nods and gestures, till in the arena you clamour for the bloodshed for which upon the stage you weep.

XXXVIII. “As regards our rejection of the sacrificial leavings and cups used for libation, it is not a confession of fear, but an assertion of true liberty. Though everything created, as the inviolable gift of God, cannot be made corrupt, yet we abstain from participation, to show that we have no truck with the demons to whom the libations are poured, and are not ashamed of our own religion.

“Who can deny that we delight in the flowers of spring, when we gather the spring rose and the lily and every flower with charm of hue and smell? We strew or wear them loose, we twine soft garlands for our necks. You must excuse us for not crowning our heads; our custom is to sniff sweet flower perfumes with our nose, not to inhale them with the scalp or the back hair.

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“Nor do we place wreaths on the dead. I am surprised at your custom of giving to the dead a torch if he is still conscious, or a wreath if he is no longer so: if he is happy, he needs no flowers, if unhappy, he can take no pleasure in them. Our funeral rites we order with the same quietness as our lives; we twine no fading crown, but expect from God the crown that blossoms with eternal flowers; in quietness and modesty, safe in the bountifulness of our God, we keep quick our hope of future happiness with faith in his present majesty. So do we rise again to bliss and live in contemplation of that which is to come.

“For the rest then, let Socrates look to himself! Socrates, ‘the buffoon of Athens’ (as Zeno called him), who confessed that he knew nothing, though he boasted of the promptings of a deceiving demon; Arcesilas too, and Carneades, and Pyrrho, and the whole host of the Academics, let them argue on! and Simonides¹⁰² procrastinate for ever! we think scorn of the high-brow philosophers, corrupters of youth, adulterers, and tyrants, for ever declaiming against their own pet vices. As for us, the wisdom we display lies not in outward dress, but in the mind; we do not preach great things, but we live them; our boast is that we have won what they with the utmost strain have sought, yet could not find.

“What cause have we to be ungrateful or dissatisfied, if the truth of godhead has in this our time come {page 435} to completion? Let us enjoy our good things, coordinate our sense of right, keeping check on superstition, amending all impiety, and holding fast to true religion.”

XXXIX. When Octavius had thus closed, we kept our eyes fixed on him for a while, in silent amaze. For myself, I was lost in admiration at the way in which by argument and illustration and quotation of authorities he had handled subjects easier to feel than to express, and by the way in which he had disarmed ill-will by the very weapons which the philosophers use for their attack, and had set forth the truth in a guise at once so easy and so attractive.

XL. As I was turning over these thoughts in silence, Caecilius burst out: “Congratulations ever so many, dear Octavius! and a share for me too! I need not wait for the ruling. We are quits, as it stands, for I too have the face to claim a victory! If he has been victorious over me, I too have had my triumph over error.

“On the main issue I admit his pleas for Providence, and his belief in God, and as to the sincerity of your sect—now my own—I am at one. But there remain still some minor difficulties, not contradictions fatal to the truth, but yet requiring more complete elucidation; these—for the sun is already dropping towards its setting—we shall do better to discuss to-morrow, in agreement on general principles.”

“No one of us,” I said, “has cause for heartier satisfaction than I in the victory won by Octavius; it relieves me from the invidious task of passing judgement. But no words of praise are adequate to his deserts. Man’s witness—and that too an individual’s {page 437}—is but weak; his gift and his reward is from God, to whose help and inspiration he owes his eloquence and his success.”

Thereupon we went our way cheerful and light-hearted—Caecilius, in belief attained, Octavius, in a victory won, I in my friend’s belief and my friend’s victory.