Against the Nations 3.13–3.38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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