Against the Nations 5.37–6.12

'Once,' he says, 'in the grove of Henna, the maiden Proserpina was gathering flowers.' So far this is whole and set out in straightforward statement; for what a grove and flowers are, what Proserpina is, what a maiden is, is known to all beyond doubt. 'Summanus sprang from the earth, carried in a four-horse chariot.' This too is equally simple; for four horses, a chariot, and Summanus need no interpretation. 'Unforeseen, he carried off Proserpina and took her with him under the earth.' 'The hiding of seed,' he says, 'is called by the carrying off of Proserpina.' What happened, I ask, that the history was suddenly turned into something else, that Proserpina was called seed, so that she who had just been held to be a maiden gathering flowers began, after she was taken and carried off, to have the meaning of seed? 'Jupiter, changed into a bull, sought intercourse with his mother Ceres': as was set out above, the earth and falling rain are called by these names. I see the law of allegory unfolded in dark ambiguities. 'Ceres was angry and burned, and received the ram's offspring as punishment and revenge.' This again I see plain in common statements; for both anger and satisfaction are spoken of according to their own nature and conditions. What happened here, then, that the matter passed from Jupiter who is rain and from Ceres who was called earth to the true Jupiter and to the simplest statement of facts?

So either everything must be written in the allegorical manner and all of it set out and demonstrated to us, or nothing is written in that manner, since it does not seem possible for there to be something compounded partly of history and partly of allegory. 'All these things are written in the allegorical manner.' That does not seem at all certain. On what ground, you ask, for what reason? Because everything that has been done and established in the evidence of some work cannot be converted into allegory; for what has been done cannot be undone, nor can the nature of a thing done degenerate into a nature not its own. Can the Trojan War be turned into the condemnation of Socrates, or that battle of Cannae become the proscription and cruelty of Sulla? A proscription may indeed, as Tullius jokes, be spoken of and called a battle of Cannae; but a battle fought long ago cannot be a battle and at the same time a proscription. For what has been done cannot, as I said, be anything but what was done, nor can what is fixed in its own force and in the quality of its own kind pass into another substance.

From where, then, do we prove that all these histories are records of things done? From the solemn rites and mysteries of initiation, of course, both those performed at fixed times and days and those which the nations hand down in secret, preserved by the perpetuity of their own custom. For it must not be believed that these are without their origins, done in vain and emptily, and not having causes joined to their first institution. That pine which is solemnly brought into the sanctuary of the mother of the gods, is it not the image of the tree under which Attis took away his manhood by cutting off his genitals, and which they record the goddess consecrated as a solace for her grief? That raising of phalluses and members, which Greece worships and celebrates in yearly rites, does it not recall the likeness of that deed by which Liber freed himself from his debt? Those Eleusinian mysteries and the hidden rites of the sacred things, of what do they contain the memory? Is it not of that wandering in which Ceres, seeking her daughter, when weary she came to the shores of Attica, brought grain crops, honored the family of the Nebridae with a fawn's skin, and laughed at that greatest spectacle in Baubo's groin? Or if there is another cause, that is nothing to us, provided all these things arise from some cause. For it is not credible that these were undertaken with no preceding causes; or else the Athenians must be judged mad, who invented for themselves a religious rite put together for no reasons. But if this is clear and established, that is, if the causes and origins of the mysteries flow from things done, they cannot be turned into allegorical forms by any conversion. For what has been made and done cannot be undone, since the nature of things forbids it.

And yet, even if we agree with you that these things are so, that is, that the histories sound one thing in their words and say something else, like soothsayers, do you not notice, do you not see, how much ... this is said with the dishonor and insult of the gods? Can any heavier injury be found than to call and name earth and rain, or anything else (for it makes no difference what conversion is made by interpretation), the intercourse of Jupiter and Ceres, and to signify the falling of rain from the sky and the moistening of the earth by the crimes of the gods? Can anything be thought or believed more irreligious than to call seeds sunk in the ground, or anything else (for again it makes no difference), the rape of Proserpina, and to speak about the work of farming with a brand upon Father Dis? Would it not have been a thousand times more desirable to become tongueless and dumb than to send forth this gushing of speech and the din of foul talkativeness, to call the most shameful things by the names of gods, or rather to signify common affairs by the shameful deeds of the gods?

Formerly it was the custom to veil shameful things by allegory with most honorable meanings, and to clothe things foul to utter with the dignity of honorable ones. But on your authority, serious things are spoken of through disgrace, and things strong in chastity are recounted in obscene words; so that what dignity once covered out of shame for the foul is now said slavishly and shamefully, with the language of the worthy changed. 'When we speak of Mars and Venus caught in adultery by Vulcan's art,' he says, 'we mean desire and anger repressed by the force and counsel of reason.' What prevented, what stood in the way of expressing each thing by its own words and its own meanings? Indeed, what compelled you, when you wanted to indicate something through commentaries and writings, to be unwilling for what you indicated to be understood, and to take on contrary things at once in one exposition, the zeal of one who wants to teach and the malice of one who does not want to show? Did it carry no danger to call the gods adulterers, while mentioning desire and anger would have defiled the tongue and mouth by obscene contact? If that had been done and the shadow of allegorical blindness removed, the matter would be easy to learn and the dignity of the gods would be kept unharmed. But now, when it is said that the restraint of vices is signified by the binding of Mars and Venus, two most perverse things happen at once: the appearance of foul things suggests the understanding of honorable things, and disgrace strikes the mind before the authority of any religion.

Unless perhaps you will say (for this alone remains that it seems you can oppose) that the gods do not want their mysteries to be known by men, and that therefore the histories are written in allegorical riddles. And how is it clear to you that the gods above do not want their mysteries published to men? How do you know them, or why do you take care to unravel them in the explanation of allegories? Finally and at last, what do the gods mean, that while they do not want honorable things said of themselves, they allow most shameful and unseemly things? 'When we name Attis,' he says, 'we signify and mean the sun.' But if Attis is the sun, as you record and say, who will be that Attis whom your writings declare and show to have been born in Phrygia, to have suffered certain things and likewise done certain things, whom all the theaters know in playful shows, to whom we see yearly rites performed specially and by name, in divine form, among the sacred cults? Was the transfer of this name made from the sun to the man, or from the man to the sun? For if this name belonged to the sun from its first origin, what, pray, has the golden sun deserved from you, that you should make this name common to him and a half-man? But if it is goatish and Phrygian, what has the father of Phaethon, the parent of this light and brightness, done wrong, that he should seem worthy to be called after a castrated man, and become more august by being marked with the name of an emasculated body?

But what this is, is now plain to all. For since you are ashamed of such writings and histories, and see that what has once been foully recorded in commentaries cannot be abolished, you strive to make shameful things respectable, and by every kind of subtlety you invert and corrupt the natures of words in place of the things underneath; and, as usually happens to the unsound of mind whose sense and understanding the troubled force of disease has driven out, you throw out confused and uncertain things and rave through fictions of empty things. Granted: let the watering of the earth be signified by the union of Jupiter and Ceres, the hiding of seed by the rape of Father Dis, wine spread through the earth by the torn inward parts of Liber, and the restraint of desire and rashness be called the binding of the adulterers Venus and Mars.

But if you want these fables to be written in the allegorical manner, what will become of the others, which we do not see can be forced into turns of this kind? For what shall we substitute for those undulations which the lust of Semele's offspring twisted on the mound of the tomb? And what for those Ganymedes carried off and set to the service of lusts? What for that change into a little ant, into which greatest Jupiter contracted the features of his vastness? What for the swans and satyrs? What for the golden showers, into which the same seducer put himself, with treacherous fraud, playing in varieties of forms? And so that we may not seem to want to speak of Jupiter alone, what allegories can there be in the loves of the other deities, what in their hired conditions and servitudes, what in their bonds, bereavements, and laments, what in their tortures, wounds, and tombs? In this, when you might have incurred a single fault, you added, as the saying is, ... to your writing about the gods above, since you called shameful things by the names of gods and again defiled the gods with the names of infamous things. But if you believed with undoubted knowledge that they were present here or existed anywhere, fear would restrain you in mentioning them, and it ought to be believed and held fixed in thought as though they heard you and received your words. For among people devoted to dutiful religion, not only the gods themselves but also the names of the gods ought to be revered, and as much dignity as is in those who are counted under these names, so much ought to be in their titles.

Give a true form of judgment, and you will be in that part of reproach, that in the use of your speech you call battle Mars, waters Neptune, wine Father Liber, bread Ceres, thread Minerva, obscene lusts Venus. For what reason is there that, when things can be reckoned by their own names, they should be called by the names of gods, and that such an insult should be done to the deities as we human beings would not endure, if someone took our names and turned them into trifles? 'But speech is mean if it is defiled with such words.' A modesty ... and worthy of praise! You blush to name bread and wine, and are not afraid to say 'Venus' for intercourse!

Now, since we have shown in summary how impious the slanders of opinion are that you have established about your gods, it follows that we speak of temples, of images, and of sacrifices, and of the other series of things attached to these and joined to them in close connection. For in this part you are accustomed to fix on us the greatest charge of impiety: that we do not build sacred buildings for the duties of worship, do not set up an image or form of any god, do not construct altars or hearths, do not offer the blood of slaughtered animals, nor incense, nor salted meal, and finally do not bring flowing wine in the pourings of bowls. We refrain from building or doing these things, not because we have impious and wicked minds, or have conceived some contempt for the gods in reckless despair, but because we think and believe that they (if indeed they are certainly gods and endowed with the eminence of this name) either laugh at these kinds of honors, if they laugh, or endure them with indignation, if they are provoked by motions of anger.

For so that you may know what we think of that name and what our judgment is: we think that they, if they are certainly gods, to say the same things again and fully, ought to be of all and perfect virtues, wise, just, grave (if there is no fault in heaping human praises on them), strong in inward goods, and not needing any external aids to complete the integrity of their unbroken blessedness; free from all passions and all disturbances; not boiling with anger, not roused by any desires, inflicting calamity on no one, not taking cruel pleasure from the evils of men, not terrifying with portents, not displaying prodigious terrors, not holding people bound and obliged by the debts of vows, nor demanding expiatory victims by threatening signs; not bringing pestilences and diseases by corrupting the air, not scorching crops with droughts, not taking part in the slaughter of wars or the destruction of cities, not wishing ill to some or favoring the advantages of others; but, what belongs to great minds, weighing all in an equal balance and showing undivided goodwill to all. For it belongs to a perishable race and to human weakness to do the contrary of these; and the teachings and statements of the wise declare that those whom passion touches suffer, grieve, and are diminished, and that it cannot be otherwise than that those who are slaves to any disturbances are bound by the laws of mortality. Since this is so, how can we be judged to hold the gods in contempt, whom we say cannot be considered gods or joined to the heavenly powers unless they are upright and praiseworthy for the admiration of great minds?

'But we build them no temples, nor adore their images, we do not slaughter victims, we do not pour libations of incense and wine.' And what greater honor or dignity can we give them than to place them in the same position as the Head and Lord of things, the supreme King himself, to whom the gods owe, together with us, that they feel they exist and are held in living substance? For do we honor him with shrines or the construction of temples? Do we slaughter victims to him? Do we give him other things, which to offer and pour out is not a matter of weighed reason but of custom drawn out by habit? For it is complete madness to measure the more powerful by your own needs, and to give the gods, the givers, things that are of use to you, and to think this an honor and not an insult. For what use of the gods, then, we ask, or for the necessity of what thing, do you say temples were built or think they ought to be built again? Do they feel winter's cold or are they scorched by summer suns? Do they get soaked by rainstorms? Do whirlwinds trouble them? Are they in danger of suffering an enemy's attack or the rabid attacks of wild beasts, so that it is right to shut them in by the protection of roofs or guard them by the barrier of stones? For what are these temples? If you ask human weakness, something huge and ample; if you measure the power of the gods, certain small recesses, and, to speak more truly, a most narrow kind of cave, devised by the thought of a poor heart. If you want to hear who was their first founder and builder, you will be shown either Phoroneus, the Egyptian, or Merops, or, as Varro records in his Wonders, Aeacus, the offspring of Jupiter. So let them be built of masses of marble, or shine with gilded coffered ceilings, let gems glitter here and pour out starry flashes in varied inlay: all these are earth and compacted from the lowest dregs of baser matter. For if you value them at dearer prices, it must not be believed that the gods are delighted with them, or do not refuse and scorn to be fenced in and confined, shut up by their barriers. 'This,' he says, 'is the temple of Mars, this of Juno and Venus, this of Hercules, Apollo, Dis.' What else is this than to say: this is the house of Mars, this of Juno and Venus, Apollo lives here, in this Hercules stays, in that Summanus? Is it not the first and greatest insult to keep the gods confined in dwellings, to give them little huts, to build them rooms and cells, and to think that they need the things that human beings need, that cats need, that ants and lizards need, and fleeing, timid, tiny mice?

'But we do not give the gods temples,' he says, 'to keep off damp showers, winds, rains, or suns from them, but so that we may see them face to face and close at hand, address them from nearby, and in some way join in conversations of worship with them as they are present. For if they are invoked under the open sky and the covering of the ether, they hear nothing, and unless prayers are brought near to them, they will stand blocked and unmoved, as though nothing were said.' Yet we think that every god whatever, if he is strong with the power of this name, ought to hear, as though he were present, whatever anyone has said from any part of the world; indeed, ought to anticipate with foreknowledge what anyone has conceived in hidden and silent thoughts; and as the stars, sun, and moon, when they move above the earth, are at once seen by absolutely all and present everywhere, so it is fitting that the hearing of the deities be closed to no tongue and always present, even though voices flow to it from distant regions. For this is proper to gods: to fill all things with their power, to be whole everywhere, not partially somewhere, not to be present and absent, not to go to dine with the Ethiopians and return to their private dwelling after twelve days.

But if this is not so, all hope of help is taken away, and it will be doubtful whether you are heard by the gods or not, whenever you perform sacred rites with the due ceremonies. For, to understand the matter, let us suppose that there is a temple of some deity in the Canary Islands, of the same in farthest Thule, of the same among the Seres, among the dark Garamantes, and among any others whom seas, mountains, forests, and the four quarters of the world separate from our knowledge: if all at one time, having performed the divine rites, ask of the deity what their need compels each to ask, what hope of receiving a favor will all have, if the god does not hear the voice sent to him from everywhere, and if there is any distance where the prayer of one asking help cannot penetrate? For either he will be present in no parts, if he can at some time not be somewhere, or he will be present only to one, since he cannot give his hearing to all in common and without distinction. And so it comes about that either the god helps no one at all, if, occupied with something, he could not fly to hear their voices, or only one goes away heard and the rest have achieved nothing.

What of this, that many of these temples, which are raised with golden domes and lofty roofs, are proved by the writings of authors to cover ashes and bones and to be the tombs of dead bodies? Is it not plain and evident that either you worship the dead instead of immortal gods, or an inexpiable insult is done to the deities, whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the dead? Antiochus, in the ninth book of his histories, records that Cecrops was buried in the temple of Minerva at Athens; again, in the temple of the same goddess on the citadel of Larissa, Acrisius is written and shown to be buried; Erichthonius in the shrine of Polias; the brothers Dairas and Immaradus in the enclosure of the Eleusinium, which lies below the city. What of the daughters of Celeus? Are they not said to have received the rites of burial in the temple of Eleusinian Ceres? Are not Hyperoche and Laodice, who are said to have been brought there from the lands of the Hyperboreans, buried in the shrine of Diana which is set in the temple of Delian Apollo? Leandrius says that Cleochus received his last funeral rites in the Didymaeum at Miletus. Zeno of Myndus declares and records that the monument of Leucophryne is in the shrine of Diana at Magnesia. Is it not shown by consistent writings that the seer Telmessus is buried under the little altar of Apollo seen at the town of Telmessus? Ptolemy son of Agesarchus, in the first book of the work he published on Philopator, declares on the authority of literature that Cinyras, king of Paphos, with all his family, indeed with all his line, is laid in the temple of Venus. It would be infinite and immeasurable to describe who are in what shrines throughout the whole world; nor does it require exact care (although Egypt established a penalty for anyone who revealed where Apis lay hidden) to describe by what temples Varro's common graves are covered and what masses of heavy weight they have on top of them. But why do I speak of these small things?

Who among men does not know that on the Capitol of the ruling people is the tomb of Olus of Vulci? Who, I say, does not know that from the seat of the foundations a man's head was rolled out not very long before, either alone without the other parts (for some say this) or having received burial rites with all its limbs? If you ask that this be made plain by the testimony of authors, Sammonicus, Granius, Valerianus, and Fabius will show you whose son Aulus was, of what race and nation, why he was robbed of life and light by the hand of a little slave, and what he deserved from his fellow citizens that burial in his native soil was denied him. You will also learn, though they pretend not to want to publish this, what was done when the head was uncovered, or in what part of the area it was shut up in careful obscurity, so that, of course, the perpetuity of the sealed omen might stand immovable and fixed. Although it was fitting that this should be suppressed and hidden by the forgetfulness of antiquity, the composition of the name threw it into the open and made it go on with its causes, through the times given to it, with inextinguishable testimony; nor was the greatest city, the worshiper of all the deities, ashamed, when it gave a name to the temple, to call it Capitolium from the head (caput) of Olus rather than from the name of Jupiter.

We have shown enough, I think, that temples were either built in vain for the immortal gods or built, contrary to their believed honor and power, with insulting opinions. It follows that we say something about the statues and images which you compose with much art and tend with religious care. On this point, if there is any honesty, we cannot settle with ourselves by any considerations whether you do this seriously and with grave purpose, or play with the things themselves in childish delusion, laughing. For if it is certain among you that there are gods, as you suppose, and that they live in the highest regions of heaven, what cause, what reason is there for these images to be made by you, since you have certain beings to whom you can pour out prayers and ask help in pressing circumstances? But if you do not believe, or, to put it mildly, are in doubt, even so, what reason is there to fashion and set up images of doubtful beings, and to form by empty imitation what you do not believe exists? Or do you perhaps say that some presence of the deities is shown to you under these images, and, because it is not granted to see the gods, ...? Whoever says and asserts this does not believe that there are gods, and is convicted of having no faith in his own religion, since he needs to see what he holds, lest perhaps what is not seen, being obscure, be empty.

'We venerate the gods through images,' you say. What then? If these did not exist, would the gods not know they are worshiped, and would they think no honor was given them by you? So they take and receive your worship through certain byways and, as the saying is, through certain trusts; and before those to whom that service is owed perceive it, you first sacrifice to the images, and send on to them some leftovers, as it were, on another's authority. And what can be more injurious, insulting, and harsh than to know one god and pray to another thing? To hope for help from a deity and to plead before an image of no sense? Is it not, I ask, what is said in the common proverbs, to strike the smith when you hit the fuller, and, when you seek a man's advice, to ask opinions about what is to be done from little asses and piglets?

And finally, how do you know whether all these images which you form as substitutes for the immortal gods reproduce and have the divine likeness? For it may be that he who is represented by you as smooth-faced is bearded in heaven; that he to whom you give a boyish age is further advanced in years; that this one is fair ... who in truth has gray eyes; that he whom you make and shape with a big nose has flaring nostrils. For it is not right to say or call something an image which does not carry over like lines from the original face; and that this is plain and certain can be recognized from obvious things. For while all people see by the undoubted contemplation of their eyes that the sun is round, you have given him the face of a man and the features of mortal bodies. The moon is always in motion and takes thirty faces in her monthly restoration: with you as guides and shapers she is a woman, and has one face, though she changes through a thousand appearances in daily instability. We all understand that the winds are a flow of air driven and stirred by the workings of the world: through you they are human forms, animating trumpet-coils with inward and domestic breaths. Among your gods we see a lion's most savage face smeared with pure vermilion and called by the name ... If all these images are likenesses of the deities above, then it must be said that such a god lives in heaven too, to whose form and appearance the likeness of this image is directed; and, of course, as this one here, so that one there is a mask without the rest of a body, a face alone, roaring with savage gapings, dreadful, blood-colored, pressing ... with his teeth, and, like tired dogs, thrusting his tongue out of his open mouth .... But if this is certainly not so, as we all think it is not, what great boldness is it to fashion for yourself whatever form you please and to say it is the image of a god whom you cannot prove to exist in any part of nature?

You laugh that in ancient times the Persians worshiped rivers, as the memorial writings show; the Arabs a shapeless stone; the Scythian nations a sword; the Thespians a branch instead of Cinxia; the Icarians an unhewn log instead of Diana; the people of Pessinus a flint instead of the Mother of the Gods; the Romans a spear instead of Mars, as the Muses of Varro show; and, as Aethlius records, before the use and skill of sculptors, the Samians a plank instead of Juno. And do you refrain from laughing when you pray to little figurines of men and human forms instead of the immortal gods? Indeed, you think that the figurines themselves are gods, and believe that nothing besides them has divine power. What do you say? Do the heavenly gods have ears and temples, necks, backs of the head, spines, loins, sides, knees, buttocks, hamstrings, ankles, and all the other limbs of which we are built, and which were spoken of somewhat more fully in the first part and set out in more ample writing? Would that it were possible to look into your feelings and the very recesses of your mind, in which you turn over and enter into various most obscure thoughts: we would find that you yourselves think the same as we do and hold no other opinions about the shaping of the deities. But what can we do against stubborn zeal, what against those who threaten with swords and devise new punishments? Threatening, you, most knowing, assert a bad case; and what you once did without reason you defend, so as not to seem ever to have been ignorant of anything, and you think it better not to be conquered than to yield and assent to the confessed truth.

From causes of this kind it has also followed, with your connivance, that the playfulness of artists has sported with the bodies of the gods and given them forms that could be laughed at by any gloomy person. So Hammon is now formed and fashioned with ram's horns; Saturn with a hooked sickle, as guardian of the fields, like some pruner of luxuriant branches; the son of Maia with a broad-brimmed hat, as though preparing to set out on the road and avoid the sun and dust; Liber with soft limbs, most loose with the languor of feminine softness; Venus naked and exposed, as if you were to say she publishes and sells the form of a body for hire; Vulcan with a cap and hammer, his hand free, but his right arm girded as for a smith's task; the Delian with plectrum and lyre, keeping the gestures of a lyre player and of an actor about to sing dirges; the king of the sea with a trident, as though he had to fight a gladiator's contest. Nor can you find any image of a deity that does not bear certain attributes given by the generosity of the craftsmen. Suppose some clever city-dweller, without your knowledge and unawares, takes the Sun from its doors and moves it into Mercury's seat, and again seizes Mercury and makes him move into the Sun's shrine (for both are made by you beardless and with smooth faces), and gives rays to the one and puts a little hat on the Sun's head: how will you be able to tell whether this is the Sun or that Mercury, since attributes, not the particularity of the face, usually indicate the gods to you? Again, by a similar transfer, if he takes the horns from Jupiter Hammon and fixes them on the temples of Mars, strips Mars of his arms and surrounds Hammon with them: how can each be distinguished, when he who was Jupiter can be thought to be Mars, and he who was Mavors can take on the appearance of Jupiter Hammon? So much a game is it to fashion these images and dedicate names to them as their own, when, if you take away their attributes, recognition of each is removed: a god may be believed for a god, one seen for another, indeed each may be thought to be both.