Against the Nations 7.38–7.51

'But if the immortal gods cannot be angry,' he says, 'and their nature is not shaken and stirred by any feelings of mind, what do the histories mean, what the annals, in whose records we read that the gods, moved by some offenses, brought pestilences, barrenness, shortages of crops, and other dangers on cities and nations, and again, appeased by the satisfaction of sacrifices, laid aside the heat of their indignation and changed the state of the sky and the weather into a happier condition? What of the roarings and movements of the earth which we have learned took place because games had been performed carelessly and not attended to in their proper form and conditions, and yet, when these were renewed and repeated with careful observance, the terrors of the gods above were quieted and they were called back to the care and friendship of men? How often, after a divine rite was performed at the command of the prophets and by the answers of the soothsayers, and certain gods were summoned from nations overseas and shrines were made for them, and certain statues and images were set up on higher columns, have the fears of impending dangers been turned away, the most dangerous enemies driven off, and the state enlarged by frequent joys of victories and the possession of very many provinces? This surely would not have happened if the gods despised sacrifices, games, and the other forms of worship and did not think they were honored by their observances. If, then, when these are given, all the heat and indignation of the deities grows cold and things which seemed to bring terrors are turned into prosperity, it is plain that all these things are not done without the will of the heavenly ones, and that it is in vain and with complete ignorance that you find fault with our giving them.'

While we speak, then, we have come to the very turning point of the case, to the hinge of the matter, to the true and most just question, into which we ought to look with the fear of superstition removed and partiality laid aside: whether these are gods, whom you assert rage when offended and are made gentle by sacrifices, or whether they are something far different and ought to be separated from the name and power of this title. For we do not deny that all these things you have brought forward in opposition are contained in the writings of the annals; for we ourselves, according to our small measure and the capacity of our wit, have read them and know that it is recorded that once, at the very Circensian games held for Jupiter Greatest, a certain head of a household, before the proceedings began, led a slave who had deserved very ill across the middle of the circus arena, beaten with rods, and then, as the custom was, punished him with the penalty of the gibbet. Then, when the games were over and the races finished, not long afterward the city began to be ravaged by pestilence; and as each day added a heavier evil to evil, and the people were dying in crowds, Jupiter said in a dream to a certain rustic, obscure in his humble lot, that he should go to the consuls and show that the leader of the dance had displeased him, and that it could go better for the city if the religious observance were restored to the games and they were held again from the beginning with careful observance. When he had by no means cared to do this, either because he suspected the dream was vain and would find no credit with those who would hear it, or because, mindful of his inborn humbleness, he shunned and feared approaching so great a power, Jupiter, made hostile to the delayer, inflicted on him the death of his sons as punishment. Soon, when he threatened him too with his own death unless he went as messenger about the disapproved leader of the dance, terrified by the fear of dying, and when he himself, touched by the pestilence, was already burning with its fever, on the advice of his relatives he was carried to the senate house of the fathers, and when the vision of the dream had been set out, the flames of the contagion flew away; then, the renewal of the games having been decreed, grave care was given to the spectacles and its former health restored to the people.

Nor likewise will we deny that we know that once, in hard times for the city and the state, whether caused by a hostile plague wasting the people with continuous contagion, or by powerful enemies already close to the danger of taking away its freedom through success in battles, by the commands and warnings of prophets certain gods were summoned from nations overseas and honored with magnificent temples, and that they calmed the heat of the plague, and that, the strength of the enemy being broken, triumphs were celebrated very often, the boundaries of the empire were extended, and countless provinces fell under the laws of your dominion. Nor does it escape our knowledge that it has been read and recorded that when the Capitol was struck by lightning, and many other things in it, the image of Jupiter too, which stood on a lofty pedestal, was thrown down from its base; that then an answer was given by the soothsayers that ill-omened and most gloomy things were portended, fires, murders, the destruction of the laws, and the fall of justice, but especially from enemies at home and an impious band of conspirators; but that these things could be turned aside, indeed that the wicked plans could not otherwise be made public, unless Jupiter were fixed again on a higher pedestal, turned toward the eastern quarter and facing the rays of the sun. Credit was given to the saying: for when the pedestal was raised and the statue turned toward the sun, hidden things were revealed and, laid open, the misdeeds were punished.

All these things that have been said have indeed the appearance of a miracle, or rather are believed to have it, if they come to human hearing just as they are set out; nor do we deny that there is something in them which, placed, as the saying is, on the front, can dazzle the ears and deceive them with the likeness of truth. But if you are willing to look closely at the deeds, the persons, and the wishes of the persons, you will find nothing worthy of the gods, nothing, as has often been said already, that relates to the appearance and dignity of this name. For who, first, would believe that he was a god, who was delighted by nags running for nothing and thought it most pleasant to be diverted by this kind of amusement? Indeed, who would agree that it was Jupiter, whom you call the chief god and the founder of all things that exist, who set out from heaven to watch geldings contending in speed, rounding the seven laps, and who, though he himself had willed them to be unequal in the swiftness of their bodies, rejoiced to see them pass and be passed, fall headlong and on their faces, be overturned on their backs with their chariots, others be dragged along and limp with broken legs; and who held among his greatest pleasures follies mixed with trifles and cruelties, which any cultivated person, even one not trained to the pursuit of full gravity and weight, would think childish and scorn as amusements? Who, I say, would believe, to repeat this word constantly, that he was of divine race, who, because a man who was to pay the penalty and punishment of his deserts was led through the space of the circus during the games, burned, embittered with anger, and girded himself to take his turn at vengeance? For if the slave was guilty and had to be punished with that penalty, how ought Jupiter to have been moved by any indignation, when nothing unjust was done, but a guilty person was punished with fitting penalties? But if he was free from crime and liable to no charge, he himself was the cause of the faulty leader of the dance, since, though he could have helped him, he did not, but himself chose both to suffer what he disapproved and to exact from others the penalty of his own permission. And why then did he complain that he was injured by that man and pronounce against him as leader of the dance, because he was led through the middle of the circus to the punishment of the cross, torn by rods and whips?

And what stain and foulness could flow from this deed that would make the circus less pure or Jupiter defiled, when every tiny moment and instant he saw so many thousands throughout the world perish by various kinds of death and different tortures? 'He was led through,' he says, 'before the games began to be performed.' If it was done with a sacrilegious heart and contempt of religion, then we ought to pardon Jupiter for being indignant that he was scorned and that no more careful attention was paid to his own Circensian games; but if the fault was hidden through error or chance and not noticed and recognized, would it not have been right and fitting to Jupiter to pardon human slips and grant the blindness of imprudence a pardonable indulgence? 'But the matter had to be avenged.' And after this will anyone believe that he was a god, who avenged and pursued with destruction the city's carelessness about a childish amusement; or that he had the firmness of any gravity, weight, or constancy, who, so that races might be run anew for the joys of his pleasure, turned the breathing of the air into poisonous destruction and decreed the slaughter of mortals by the disease of pestilence? If the magistrate who gave the games cared too little to learn who was led through the middle of the circus that day, and guilt was incurred from this, what had the unhappy people deserved, that they should pay for another's offenses with the penalty of their own lives and be cruelly driven from life by pestilential contagions? Indeed, what had the female sex done, whom the condition of their frailty excepted from public business; what grown maidens, what little boys, what finally those still small under the nourishment of nurses, that one and the same savagery should be let loose on them, and they should feel the bitterness of death before any sweetness of light?

If Jupiter wanted the games to be held and restored for him more scrupulously, if he wanted faithfully to give the people back their health and not to prolong and increase further the evil he had done, would it not have been more right to come to the consul himself, to one of the public priests, the chief pontiff or his own flamen Dialis, and show him in a dream both the fault of the leader of the dance and the cause of the deadly time? What reason was there to choose as the messenger of his will and the agent of the satisfaction he sought a man used to the country, unknown through the obscurity of his name, ignorant of city affairs, perhaps not knowing what a leader of the dance is? And if he surely knew, if only he was divine, that the man would be slow to obey, would it not have been easier and fitting for a god to change the man's mind and supply the will to obey, rather than to take savage ways and rage in the manner of a robber without any reason? For if the old rustic, unready in undertaking affairs, hesitated in the matter commanded, held back by the reasons given above, what had his unhappy sons deserved, that anger and indignation should be turned on them and that they should pay for another's offenses with the loss of their light? And is there anyone who would believe that he was a god, so unjust, so impious, not even keeping the ordinances of mortals, among whom it would be held a great wickedness for one to be punished for another and to avenge the offenses of some with the tortures of others? 'But he also caused the man himself to be seized by the savagery of the pestilence.' Would it not then have been better, indeed fairer, if this seemed necessary, for the terror of punishment to begin with the father himself, with whom lay the cause of such great disturbance and the failure to obey, rather than to use violence on his children to grieve him, and burn up and destroy innocent persons? What savagery, what great cruelty was that, that after the offspring was destroyed, it should afterward terrify the father with dangers within? If he had wanted to do this long before, that is, in the first place, neither would the innocent brothers have been destroyed, and the will of the offended deity would have been known. 'But when the duty of announcing was completed, the disease at once vanished and the man was immediately restored to health.' And what is wonderful in that, if he beat back the evil he had breathed in and boasted with empty display? But if you weigh the matter thoroughly, that was cruelty rather than a kindness of saving health, since he saved a wretched man, who longed to die after his sons, not for the joys of life but so that he might learn his solitude and feel the tortures of bereavement.

On a similar principle one could go through other histories and show that in them too something far other than the gods ought to be is said of them and indicated in their accounts, as in this one which I will set down next, one or two joined together, lest weariness be produced by excess. We do not deny that all these things which you have brought forward in opposition are contained in the writings of the annals. For we ourselves, according to our small measure and the capacity of our wit, have read these same things and know they are recorded; but the sum of the question is this: whether these are gods, whom you assert rage when offended and are made gentle by games and sacrifices, or something far different, which ought to be separated from the force of this name and power. For who, first, would think that they were gods, or believe that they are, who are dissolved into the joys of pleasures by stage movements and dances and by nags running for nothing, who set out from heaven to watch silly and cold performances, and are grieved that they are offended and their honors diminished if a dancer has stood still for a moment or a flute player, tired, has paused a little, who declare that the leader of the dance has displeased them if some guilty person goes through the middle of the circus to pay the penalty and punishment of his deserts? If all these things are examined thoroughly and without any partiality, they will be found foreign not only to the gods but to any cultivated person, even one not trained to the highest peaks of gravity and weight. Who, first, would think that they were gods, or believe that they are, who have a nature of harming and raging ..., and cast them off again, softened by one cup of blood and the fumigation of incense; who spend festive days and the fullest pleasures of merriment in stage movements and actors' dances; who set out from heaven to watch nags running for nothing and without any reason, and rejoice to see some of them pass and be passed, fall headlong and on their faces, be overturned on their backs with their chariots, others be dragged along disabled and limp with broken legs; who declare that the leader of the dance has displeased them if some guilty person goes through the middle of the circus to pay the penalty and punishment of his deserts; who grieve that they are offended and their honors diminished if a dancer has stood still for a moment, a tired flute player has paused, or that boy with his mother living falls by chance, slipping through someone's unsteadiness ...? If all these things are weighed thoroughly and without any partiality to sides, they are found to be very, very far from the gods, and foreign even to any man of common sense, though not trained in the knowledge of reasons for the pursuit of truth. 'After certain gods were brought from nations overseas,' you say, 'and after temples were founded for them and the altars were heaped with sacrifices, the people, who were in a bad way, recovered and grew strong, and the pestilent diseases fled as soundness was brought in.' What gods, tell me, I pray? 'Aesculapius,' you say, 'from Epidaurus, the god who presides over good health and is established on the island in the Tiber.' If we had a mind to treat these things more scrupulously, we would establish on your own authorities that he was not a god at all, who was conceived and born of a woman's womb, and who had ascended by the steps of years to that end of age at which the force of the thunderbolt, as is contained in your writings, drove him from both life and light. But we leave that question: let him be the son of Coronis, as you wish, of the number of the immortals and endowed with everlasting heavenly majesty. Yet what else was brought from Epidaurus but a snake of great length? If we follow the credibility of the annals and grant them ascertained truth, nothing else, as it is written. What then shall we say? This Aesculapius whom you proclaim, an excellent god, a holy god, the giver of health, the driver-away, preventer, and destroyer of the worst illnesses, is bounded by the form and outline of a serpent, crawling on the ground as little worms born of mud do, scraping the soil with chin and breast, dragging himself along in twisting coils, and, so that he can go forward, drawing his hindmost part along by the efforts of the front.

And since we read that he also used food, by which life lingers in bodies, he has wide jaws with which to swallow food sought with the gaping of his mouth; he has a stomach as a receptacle and inward parts where he may digest what is chewed and swallowed, so that blood may be given to the body and renewal supplied to its strength; he has also the final passages through which the unclean dregs may go, unloading the body of its repulsive foulness. If ever he changes place and prepares to pass from some regions into others, he does not fly unseen through the stars of heaven like a god and come to a stop in a moment of time where the cause demands, but, like a brute animal, he seeks a vehicle by which to be carried; he avoids the waves of the sea, and, so that he may be kept safe and unharmed, he boards a ship with human beings, and that god of public health entrusts himself to fragile wood and the joining of planks. We do not think that you can prove and establish that Aesculapius was that serpent, unless you choose to bring in this color: to say that the god turned himself into a snake, so that people could not curiously look at who or what he was. But if this is said by you, the very inconsistency of the matter will show how weakly and feebly it is said. For if the god avoided being seen by human beings, he ought not to have wanted to be seen in the form of a serpent either, since in any form he would be not another but himself. But if he intended to let himself be seen (for he ought not to deny himself to the sight of eyes), why did he not show himself to be seen such as he knew he was, and such as he knew himself to be held in the power of his divinity? For this was preferable and much more excellent and fitting to august dignity than to become a beast, to be turned into the likeness of a bristling animal, and to give room to doubtful contradictions whether he was a true god or something else, far removed from heavenly majesty.

'But if he was not a god,' he says, 'why, after he took himself out of the ship and crawled to the island in the Tiber, did he at once appear nowhere and cease to be seen as before?' Can we know whether there was some obstacle, by whose interposition and opposition he protected himself, or some chasm? You declare, you tell us, what that was or to what kind of thing it should be assigned, if the functions of certain persons are certain. Since this is your affair, and the discussion is about your deity and your religion, it is rather for you to teach and show us what that thing was, than to want to hear our opinions and wait for our decisions. For what else can we say but what was and was seen, what all the histories have published and was grasped by the senses of the eyes? We call this, then, a snake of very strong body and immense length, or, if this name is mean, we say serpent, we call it a reptile, or whatever other word usage offers us or the enlargement of speech devises. For if he crawled like a snake, not carrying himself on feet nor unfolding his goings beneath him but pressing on belly and breast; if, formed of the matter of flesh, he stretched out his length slippery; if he had a head and a tail, a back covered with scales, a hide varied with patches of spots, a mouth bristling with teeth and equipped for inflicting bites: what else can we say but that he was of earthly kind, however huge and excessive he was, even if he surpassed in length and strength of body the one slain by the force of Regulus's army? 'But we think otherwise, and undermine and destroy the truth.' Then it is for you to explain what he was, or of what kind, name, and quality. For how could he be a god, when he had those things we have mentioned, which gods ought not to have, if they mean to be gods and possess the eminence of this name? 'After he crawled to the Tiber island, he at once appeared nowhere: by this it is shown that he was a deity.' Can we know whether there was some obstacle of something there, by whose interposition and opposition he protected himself, or some chasm, or some recesses and arches from masses heaped up unevenly, into which he carried himself quickly, escaping the sight of the onlookers? For what if he leaped across the river? What if he swam across? What if he gave himself to the thickets of the woods? It is a feeble argument to suspect from this that the serpent was a god, because he withdrew himself from their eyes by the swift haste of his motion, since by the same argument it could again be shown that he was not a god.

'But if that snake was not a present god, why, after his arrival, was the force of the pestilence broken and health restored to the Roman people?' We reply in turn: if the god Aesculapius was ordered, from the books of fate and the answers of prophets, to be invited to the city to keep it safe and unharmed from the contagion of plague and pestilent diseases, and he came without disdain, as you say, turned into the form of a snake: why has the Roman state so often been afflicted by the disasters of this evil, so often at one time and another torn, harassed, and made smaller by countless thousands of citizens in slaughters? For since the god is said to have been summoned for this purpose, to turn away absolutely all the causes by which pestilence was produced, it followed that the city ought to have been untouched and always kept free and unharmed by harmful breath. Yet we see, as was said above, that it has often had deadly courses of life from these diseases, and that the strength of the people has been broken and weakened with no slight losses. Where then was Aesculapius, where was he who was promised by venerable oracles? Why, after temples were founded and shrines built for him, did he long allow the plague of a city that deserved well of him to have access, when he had been summoned to heal the present evils and not allow anything of the kind that might be feared

to return in the future? Unless perhaps someone will say that the protection of such a god was lacking to the later and following ages because people were then living with impious and disreputable characters, while he gave help to the ancestors because they were innocent and far removed from all contagion of crimes. This could perhaps have been heard and said with some reason, if either in ancient times everyone to a man had been good, or the following times produced all bad people, distinguished by no difference. But since the fact is that in great peoples and nations, indeed in all cities, the human race is mixed in natures, wishes, and characters, and good and bad could exist together as much in earlier ages as in new times, it is foolish enough to say that later mortals did not deserve the help of the deities because of their wickedness. For if the good of recent times were not protected because of the bad of the following ages, then neither ought the good ancestors to have deserved the goodwill of the deities, because of the bad people of old; but if the bad of old were also preserved because of the good of old, then the following age too, however disreputable, ought to have been protected because of the good among the later generations. So either that snake, brought when the force of the disease was already broken and diminished, took on the reputation of a preserver though he had brought no benefit at all; or it must be said that the prophetic songs of fate strayed far from true presages, since the remedy given by them is found to have been a help not to all ages thereafter but only to one.

'But the Great Mother too,' he says, 'summoned from Phrygian Pessinus likewise by the commands of prophets, was a source of health to the people and the cause of great joys. For the enemy, long powerful, was driven from the possession of Italy, the former glory was restored to the city by glorious and famous victories, the boundaries of the empire were extended far and wide, the right of freedom was taken from countless nations, cities, and peoples and the yoke of slavery imposed, and many other things accomplished abroad and at home founded the name and majesty of the race with unshakable firmness.' If the histories speak the truth and insert no falsehoods in their records of events, nothing else is written to have been brought from Phrygia, sent by King Attalus, but a certain stone, not large, which could be carried in a man's hand without any pressure, of dark and black color, uneven with little projecting corners, and which we all see today placed in that very statue in the place of the mouth, unhewn and rough, giving the image a face too little expressed in its likeness. What then shall we say?

Did a stone drive out of Italy that Carthaginian Hannibal, a powerful and strong enemy, under whom the Roman state trembled, uncertain and doubtful, and its greatness shook? Did a stone break him, did a stone make him fugitive, timid, and unlike himself? And that the city leapt up again to the pinnacle of empire and royal primacy, was nothing done by counsels, nothing by human strength, and was nothing contributed toward the return of its former greatness by so many and such great generals through military science or experience of affairs? Did a stone give strength to some and weakness to others, cast these down from prosperity, and raise the fortunes of others laid low by despair? And who among men will believe that a stone taken from the earth, moved by no sense, of sooty and black body, was the mother of the gods? Or who again would accept (for this alone remains) that the force of some deity dwelt in the fragments of flint, placed beneath like fire, and hidden in its veins? 'And from where was the victory won, if there was no deity in the stone of Pessinus?' We can say: by the diligence and courage of the fighters, by practice, time, counsel, and reason; we can say also by fate and the alternating variety of fortune. But if the situation was improved and happy victory recovered by the help of a stone, where was the Phrygian Mother at that time when, so many and such great armies having been slaughtered, the whole state leaned toward and came into the danger of final ruin? Why did she not present herself to the threatening enemy? Why did she not break and drive back such great attacks of war before those huge and ... blows fell, by which all the blood was poured out and life itself almost collapsed with its vitals drained? 'She had not yet been brought, nor had she been asked to lend her favor.' Granted: but a good helper never demands to be asked, always coming to aid with spontaneous help. 'She could not drive and put to flight the enemy while still separated from Italy by much sea and land.' But to a god, if he is a god, nothing at all is far, for whom the earth is a point and all things are placed under his nod.

But let there have been a deity present, as you demand to be believed, in that very stone: is there any mortal, however credulous and however easily he lends his ears to any fictions, who would judge that she was a goddess at that time, or ought to be called and named one today, who now seeks these things and now demands those, deserts and disdains her worshipers, moves from humbler provinces and joins herself to more powerful and richer peoples? Or that she loves warlike affairs and desires to be among battles, slaughter, deaths, and blood? If it is proper to gods, if indeed they are true and such as it befits to call by the force of that word and the power of that name, to do nothing maliciously, nothing unjustly, and to show themselves to all human beings with one and equal favor without any bias, will any human being believe that she was of divine race, or had a fairness worthy of gods, who, thrusting herself into human discords, broke the power of some and showed and displayed herself as the patron of others, took freedom from these and raised others to the pinnacle of dominion; who, so that one city might stand out, born for the ruin of the human race, subjugated an innocent world?