Octavius

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–16.6 · 17.1–26.12 · 27.1–40.4

1. 1.1The author, remembering his dead friend Octavius, feels as if he were living the past again.
2. 1.2The less he can see Octavius, the more his friend lives in his heart.
3. 1.3Octavius loved his friend so much that they seemed to share one mind.
4. 1.4Octavius shared the author's former errors and came to the truth before him.
5. 1.5The author chooses to record the debate in which Octavius converted Caecilius.
6. 2.1Octavius had come to Rome, leaving his wife and small children at home.
7. 2.2The author was overjoyed at his friend's unexpected arrival.
8. 2.3During the grape-harvest holidays the friends went to Ostia for sea bathing.
9. 2.4On the beach Caecilius blew a kiss to a statue of Serapis, as pagans did.
10. 3.1Octavius rebukes Marcus for letting his friend Caecilius worship stone idols.
11. 3.2Talking, they reached the open beach.
12. 3.3They walked at the water's edge, enjoying the gentle waves.
13. 3.4Octavius told them about a sea voyage as they walked.
14. 3.5On the way back they saw boys skipping shells on the water.
15. 3.6The boys competed to see whose skipped shell went farthest and bounced most.
16. 4.1Caecilius stood apart, silent and troubled.
17. 4.2Marcus asks Caecilius why he is so gloomy.
18. 4.3Caecilius says Octavius's rebuke has stung him, since it indirectly called him ignorant.
19. 4.4Caecilius challenges Octavius to a formal debate.
20. 4.5Caecilius suggests they sit on the breakwater to debate.
21. 4.6Marcus sits between the two as the judge of the debate.
22. 5.1Caecilius asks Marcus, though a Christian, to judge the debate impartially.
23. 5.2Caecilius argues that everything in human affairs is uncertain.
24. 5.3Many people, tired of searching, accept any opinion at random.
25. 5.4Caecilius is indignant that uneducated Christians claim certainty about matters philosophers still debate.
26. 5.5Humans cannot know heavenly things and should be content to know themselves.
27. 5.6If we must speculate about the heavens, let us at least avoid frightening superstitions.
28. 5.7If the world arose from natural or chance causes, there is no need for a creator god or religious fear.
29. 5.8Living things simply combine from and dissolve back into the elements, with no creator or judge.
30. 5.9Weather and lightning arise naturally and strike the pious and the guilty alike.
31. 5.10Disasters kill good and bad without distinction.
32. 5.11In peacetime the wicked often prosper.
33. 5.12If providence ruled, tyrants would not reign nor good men suffer.
34. 5.13Harvests are ruined at random: either truth is hidden or blind chance rules.
35. 6.1Caecilius argues it is better to keep the ancestral religion, as every people worships its own gods.
36. 6.2Rome won its empire by its piety, even adopting the gods of conquered peoples.
37. 6.3Roman religion grows more venerable with age.
38. 7.1The Roman ancestors had good reason for their religious rites.
39. 7.2Rites were begun to thank the gods or to turn away their anger.
40. 7.3Caecilius lists famous Roman stories as proof of the gods' presence.
41. 7.4Roman disasters followed contempt for the auspices.
42. 7.5Rome's temples are made sacred by the gods who dwell in them.
43. 7.6Prophets and dreams show the gods are real.
44. 8.1Caecilius cannot tolerate anyone attacking a religion that all nations agree on.
45. 8.2Even famous atheist philosophers never gained real authority.
46. 8.3If Athens punished Protagoras, how much worse is the Christians' attack on the gods.
47. 8.4Caecilius describes Christians as a secret, low-class conspiracy that despises the gods.
48. 8.5Christians scorn present tortures out of fear of future punishment and hope of resurrection.
49. 9.1Caecilius says the Christian sect is spreading everywhere and must be destroyed.
50. 9.2Caecilius repeats the rumour that Christian 'brothers and sisters' commit incest.
51. 9.3Caecilius repeats the slander that Christians worship an ass's head.
52. 9.4Caecilius mocks Christians for worshipping a crucified criminal and repeats other obscene rumours.
53. 9.5Caecilius repeats the slander that Christian initiates kill and eat a baby.
54. 9.6Caecilius describes the rumoured Christian banquet that ends in the lamp being knocked over.
55. 9.7In the dark, the rumour says, they commit incest at random.
56. 10.1Caecilius says Christian secrecy proves the rumours true.
57. 10.2Why do Christians have no temples, altars, or images, and meet in secret, unless they have something to hide?
58. 10.4Even the Jews' one God was defeated along with his people by Rome.
59. 10.5Caecilius mocks the idea of an invisible God who sees everything.
60. 10.8Who is this lonely God whom no nation knows?
61. 11.1Caecilius ridicules the Christian belief that the world will end in fire.
62. 11.2Christians believe the dead will rise from their ashes.
63. 11.3They predict the end of the stars but eternity for themselves.
64. 11.4Christians reject cremation, though every body decays anyway.
65. 11.5Christians promise heaven to themselves and hell to others, yet they themselves believe everything is determined.
66. 11.6Christians attribute everything to God's choice, as others do to fate.
67. 11.7Caecilius asks what kind of body could rise again.
68. 11.8No one has ever come back from the dead.
69. 11.9The resurrection is a poets' fable that Christians have borrowed.
70. 12.1Caecilius tells Christians to learn from their present misery.
71. 12.2Most Christians are poor, so their God is either weak or unjust.
72. 12.3Sickness should teach Christians their mortality.
73. 12.4Why does God not rescue Christians from torture and execution?
74. 12.5Romans prosper without the Christian God, while Christians shun public festivities connected with the gods.
75. 12.6Christians deny themselves life's pleasures and gain nothing hereafter.
76. 12.7Uneducated people should not speculate about divine matters.
77. 13.1Caecilius commends Socrates' refusal to speculate about the heavens.
78. 13.2Socrates was wisest because he knew he knew nothing.
79. 13.3The sceptical Academy learned from Socrates to suspend judgment.
80. 13.4Simonides kept postponing his answer about the gods because the question grew harder.
81. 13.5Caecilius concludes that doubtful questions about the gods should be left undecided.
82. 14.1Caecilius finishes and taunts Octavius.
83. 14.2Marcus tells Caecilius not to celebrate before Octavius has replied.
84. 14.4Listeners are easily misled by eloquence.
85. 14.5Those often deceived end up doubting everything.
86. 14.6Disillusionment with arguments should not become distrust of everything, as disillusion with people can.
87. 14.7Every point should be weighed carefully, praising cleverness but choosing what is true.
88. 14.8Marcus worries that eloquence can make even plain truth look otherwise.
89. 15.1Caecilius protests that Marcus is weakening his case before Octavius replies.
90. 15.2Marcus explains his remarks and invites Octavius (Januarius) to reply.
91. 16.1Octavius begins his reply by pointing out that Caecilius contradicted himself.
92. 16.2Caecilius both affirmed the gods and claimed to be undecided, but not from cunning.
93. 16.3Like a traveller unsure of the way at a fork, Caecilius wavers without a firm judgment.
94. 16.4Octavius promises to establish one truth that will settle Caecilius's doubts.
95. 16.5All people, rich or poor, are born capable of reason; wisdom has often come from the poor.
96. 16.6What matters is not who argues but whether the argument is true; plain speech makes truth clearer.
97. 17.1Octavius agrees that people should know themselves and ask where they come from.
98. 17.2To know ourselves we must know God; humans, unlike beasts, are made to look up to heaven.
99. 17.3Those who think the world arose by chance are blind.
100. 17.4Looking at the world shows plainly that a supreme mind governs it.
101. 17.5The heavens, the year, and the month show a divine order.
102. 17.6Day and night and the stars' usefulness show the work of a supreme Maker.
103. 17.7The regular seasons testify to their Creator.
104. 17.8Spring and autumn soften the shift between winter and summer.
105. 17.9Sea, trees, tides, springs, and rivers all follow ordered laws.
106. 17.10The landscape and animals' natural defences show design.
107. 17.11The human body itself shows that God designed it.
108. 18.1Every part of the body is both useful and beautiful, and each person is distinct.
109. 18.2God gave the desire for children and the mother's milk.
110. 18.3God provides for each region, as rivers and seas supply what the land lacks.
111. 18.4As an orderly house implies a master, the ordered world implies a Lord.
112. 18.5Earthly kingdoms help show whether heaven is ruled by one or many.
113. 18.6Shared rule always ends in bloodshed, as history shows.
114. 18.7As nature has single rulers, so the one eternal God rules all by his word.
115. 18.8God is beyond sight, touch, and measure, known fully only to himself.
116. 18.9Claiming to know God's greatness diminishes it; 'God' is his only name.
117. 18.10God needs no personal name, since human titles would make him seem earthly.
118. 18.11Common speech ('God is great', 'God willing') witnesses to one God.
119. 19.1The poets too speak of one father of gods and men.
120. 19.2Virgil speaks of a single divine spirit and mind pervading the world.
121. 19.3The philosophers, in substance, agree with the Christian idea of God as mind and spirit.
122. 19.4Thales held that God is the mind that formed everything from water.
123. 19.5Anaximenes and Diogenes also held that one infinite principle is God.
124. 19.6Anaxagoras and Pythagoras held God to be an infinite mind or world-soul.
125. 19.7Xenophanes, Antisthenes, and Speusippus also pointed to one God.
126. 19.8Even atomists and Epicurus acknowledged a supreme nature.
127. 19.9Aristotle and Heraclides, though inconsistent, recognize one divine power.
128. 19.10The Stoics, despite differences, agree on one providence and explain the gods as natural elements.
129. 19.11Chrysippus also explains the poets' gods as natural forces.
130. 19.12Diogenes of Babylon interprets the myths as describing nature, not gods.
131. 19.13Xenophon and Ariston recognized that God cannot be seen or grasped.
132. 19.14Plato calls God the maker and father of the world, hard to find and impossible to declare publicly.
133. 19.15Plato's view is almost the Christian view of God.
134. 20.1The philosophers taught one God under many names, as if they were Christians.
135. 20.2Ancient tradition should not override the philosophers' reasoned case for one God.
136. 20.3Our ancestors believed in monsters and fables.
137. 20.4Tales of people turned into animals or plants are impossible, since such things never happen now.
138. 20.5The gods began as dead kings whose memorial statues came to be worshipped.
139. 20.6Each nation honoured its founders and benefactors, who later became gods.
140. 21.1Euhemerus showed that the gods were once men, with known birthplaces and tombs.
141. 21.2Prodicus and Persaeus say the gods were discoverers of useful crops.
142. 21.3Alexander the Great learned from a priest that the gods were men.
143. 21.4Ancient historians agree that Saturn was a man.
144. 21.5Saturn fled to Italy and taught the natives the arts.
145. 21.6Place names like Latium and Janiculum come from Saturn and Janus.
146. 21.7Saturn was a man called son of Heaven or Earth only because his parents were unknown.
147. 21.8Jupiter lived, reigned, and died in Crete, where his tomb is still shown.
148. 21.9Deified kings like Romulus and Juba were honoured, not truly believed to be gods.
149. 21.10The divine has neither beginning nor end, so born or dead men cannot be gods.
150. 21.11If gods were born, why are no new gods born now?
151. 21.12Gods who were born and died must have been men, as the rites of Isis and Osiris show.
152. 22.1The rites of Isis act out a yearly loss and finding of her son.
153. 22.2It is absurd to mourn one's gods; the Eleusinian rites act out Ceres' search for her daughter.
154. 22.3Jupiter's rites recall his being hidden as a baby from his devouring father.
155. 22.4Cybele's priests castrate themselves in memory of her shameful myth.
156. 22.5The strange forms of the gods in statues show how absurd they are.
157. 22.6Jupiter appears in many contradictory forms under different titles.
158. 22.7Myths make gods out of those who died violent deaths.
159. 23.1Children learn myths from parents, school, and poets, who harm the truth.
160. 23.2Plato rightly banished Homer from his ideal city.
161. 23.3Homer showed the gods fighting and wounded in the Trojan War.
162. 23.4Homer tells shameful stories of Jupiter's weakness and lust.
163. 23.5Gods are shown doing menial labour, even cheated of their pay.
164. 23.6Poets say Vulcan forged Jupiter's thunderbolt, though lightning is older than Jupiter.
165. 23.7Myths of divine adultery and lust give authority to human vice.
166. 23.8Children raised on myths grow old in error, though truth is available to seekers.
167. 23.9People worship images because they are dazzled by precious materials.
168. 23.10Anyone who saw how idols are made would be ashamed to fear them.
169. 23.11A wooden idol is made from a log like any other.
170. 23.12Metal and stone idols feel neither their making nor their worship.
171. 23.13An idol becomes a 'god' only when people choose to dedicate it.
172. 24.1Animals treat idols as senseless objects, nesting on them.
173. 24.2People worship out of habit and inherited error, and many Roman rites are ridiculous or pitiable.
174. 24.4Self-wounding and castration in worship are madness excused only by the numbers who do it.
175. 24.8Roman rites are full of arbitrary and shameful customs.
176. 25.1Octavius ironically answers the claim that Rome's piety won its empire.
177. 25.2Rome was founded by criminals, and Romulus murdered his brother.
178. 25.3Romulus's Romans seized the Sabine women and fought their own in-laws.
179. 25.4Rome grew by conquest, plunder, and crime.
180. 25.5Rome's temples come from plunder, and worshipping captured gods is sacrilege.
181. 25.6Rome is great not by piety but by unpunished sacrilege.
182. 25.7The conquered gods could not protect their own people, and Rome's native gods are mere men.
183. 25.8Rome worships sewers, fear, fever, and deified prostitutes.
184. 25.9Other nations' gods did not help them against Rome.
185. 25.10Many Vestal virgins were punished for unchastity, and the rest were merely luckier.
186. 25.11Temples are centres of vice more than brothels.
187. 25.12Other empires flourished without Rome's religious institutions, by God's providence.
188. 26.1Octavius turns to the Roman auspices Caecilius praised.
189. 26.2Roman generals lost battles, supposedly for ignoring the sacred chickens.
190. 26.3Others obeyed the omens and were defeated anyway.
191. 26.4Caesar ignored the omens and won.
192. 26.5Famous seers could not foresee their own fates.
193. 26.6Oracles were invented or biased and faded as people became less credulous.
194. 26.7Octavius explains that impure spirits lie behind oracles.
195. 26.8Fallen spirits seek to draw others away from God through false religions.
196. 26.9Poets and philosophers, including Socrates, knew of demons.
197. 26.10Magicians work their tricks through demons.
198. 26.11The magus Hostanes acknowledged the true God, his angels, and hostile demons.
199. 26.12Plato describes demons as beings between mortal and immortal who stir human desires.
200. 27.1Demons hide in idols and produce omens and oracles.
201. 27.2Demons cause illness and then 'cure' it to win worship.
202. 27.3Demons also drive the frenzied public prophets.
203. 27.4The wonders Caecilius cited were the work of demons.
204. 27.5Demons confess what they are when Christians cast them out.
205. 27.6The gods themselves, under exorcism, admit they are demons.
206. 27.7Adjured by the true God, demons leave the possessed and flee from Christians.
207. 27.8Demons stir up hatred of Christians so people will condemn them without knowing them.
208. 28.1Octavius, once a persecutor himself, says it is unjust to judge Christians unheard.
209. 28.2Octavius once believed the slanders too, though no Christian ever confessed such crimes.
210. 28.3As advocates they defended criminals but tortured Christians to make them deny their faith.
211. 28.4Those who denied Christ under torture were let off as if cleared of all crimes.
212. 28.5If the charges were real, courts would demand confessions of the crimes, not denials of the name.
213. 28.6Demons spread the rumours, which vanish once the truth is known.
214. 28.7The charge of worshipping an ass's head is absurd, but pagans do honour animals.
215. 28.8Pagans accept Egyptian animal worship.
216. 28.9Egyptian worship extends even to onions and bodily noises.
217. 28.10The obscene charges reflect the pagans' own sexual vices.
218. 28.11Pagans commit acts no one should have to endure.
219. 29.1Christians are ashamed even to hear the crimes pagans invent against them.
220. 29.2Christians do not worship a guilty man, nor believe a mere earthly man is God.
221. 29.3Hope in a mere mortal ends when he dies.
222. 29.4The Egyptians worship a man who knows he is only a man.
223. 29.5Pagans worship rulers as gods, but Christians do not worship crosses.
224. 29.6Pagans who worship wooden idols may be the ones who adore wooden crosses.
225. 29.7Roman military standards and trophies are themselves shaped like crosses.
226. 29.8The shape of the cross is found in nature, in ships, and in the posture of prayer.
227. 30.1Only someone capable of killing an infant could believe Christians do it.
228. 30.2Pagans expose infants and procure abortions.
229. 30.3Child sacrifice to Saturn in Africa followed the example of the god.
230. 30.4Human sacrifice has been practised by many peoples, including the Romans.
231. 30.5Pagan practices include blood oaths and drinking human blood.
232. 30.6Christians abhor bloodshed so much that they do not even eat animal blood.
233. 31.1Demons invented the incest slander to make people shun Christians.
234. 31.2Fronto's charge was mere rhetorical abuse.
235. 31.3Incest is found in pagan law, literature, and myth.
236. 31.4Pagan promiscuity and child exposure make unknowing incest likely.
237. 31.5Christians keep to one marriage, sober meals, and many to lifelong virginity.
238. 31.6Christians are neither low-class, factious, nor secretive by choice.
239. 31.7Christianity's growth testifies to its goodness.
240. 31.8Christians know each other by virtue and love each other as brothers in God.
241. 32.1Christians have no images or temples because man is God's image and the world cannot contain him.
242. 32.2The true sacrifice to God is a good spirit and a pure conscience, not animal victims.
243. 32.3Christian sacrifices are innocence, justice, honesty, and rescuing others.
244. 32.4God is invisible but perceived in his works in nature.
245. 32.5Like the wind, God is unseen; like the sun, he is too bright to look at.
246. 32.6If we cannot look at the sun or see our own soul, how could we see God with bodily eyes?
247. 32.7God is not distant but fills everything and is within us.
248. 32.8Like the sun, God is present everywhere without being diminished.
249. 32.9God sees into darkness and into our thoughts; we live with him.
250. 33.1To God the whole world is one house, and all live in his presence.
251. 33.2Octavius answers the objection that the Jews' one God did not save them.
252. 33.3While the Jews obeyed God they prospered and were delivered, as at the Red Sea.
253. 33.4Jewish and Roman writers show that the Jews' fall was foretold for their disobedience.
254. 33.5The Jews were not captured with God but handed over by him for abandoning his law.
255. 34.1Octavius turns to the end of the world by fire.
256. 34.2The Stoics too teach that the world will end in fire.
257. 34.3The Epicureans agree that the world will perish.
258. 34.4Plato says the world is indestructible only by God's will.
259. 34.5The philosophers' ideas echo the prophets, from whom they borrowed a distorted shadow of truth.
260. 34.6Pythagoras and Plato taught a garbled version of the resurrection.
261. 34.7They taught that only souls survive and move into new bodies.
262. 34.8Transmigration into animals is a ridiculous idea.
263. 34.9Even so, the philosophers partly agree with Christians.
264. 34.10God who made man from nothing can remake him; no body is lost to God, whatever happens to it.
265. 34.11Nature's cycles of death and renewal point to the resurrection.
266. 34.12Many wish there were no afterlife because they fear judgment; God's patience is not indifference.
267. 35.1Pagan poets and writers too speak of fiery punishment after death.
268. 35.2Even Jupiter swears by the river of hell, fearing its punishment.
269. 35.3The fire of punishment torments without end and without consuming.
270. 35.4Ignorance of God, the Father of all, deserves punishment as much as offending him.
271. 35.5Even with their shortcomings, Christians live far better than pagans.
272. 35.6Christians avoid even sinful thoughts, and none are in prison except for their faith.
273. 36.1Fate is no excuse: the mind is free and people are judged by their actions.
274. 36.2Fate is simply what God, foreknowing each person's character, has declared.
275. 36.3Christian poverty is a glory, since frugality strengthens the mind.
276. 36.4The truly poor are those who always want more; Christians are rich toward God.
277. 36.5Like the birds, Christians possess everything by not coveting.
278. 36.6Life's journey is easier without the weight of wealth.
279. 36.7Christians prefer virtue to wealth, and their sufferings are a soldier's service, not punishment.
280. 36.8Hardship trains virtue, as the pagans' own heroes show.
281. 36.9God allows suffering to test and prove his people, as gold is tested by fire.
282. 37.1A Christian facing torture and death bravely is a beautiful sight to God.
283. 37.2A soldier fights bravely under his general's eye, though the general cannot give life.
284. 37.3God's soldier is never abandoned; pagans praise heroes like Mucius Scaevola for enduring pain.
285. 37.4Many Christians have been burned alive without complaint, though they could have gone free.
286. 37.5Even Christian children and women endure torture with God-given courage.
287. 37.6Such endurance is impossible without God.
288. 37.7The prosperity of the ungodly only prepares their fall.
289. 37.8Without God, happiness is a fleeting dream.
290. 37.9Kings live in fear, and wealth only burdens life's short journey.
291. 37.10Office and noble birth mean nothing; only virtue distinguishes people.
292. 37.11Christians avoid the public games, rooted in idolatry and full of violence.
293. 37.12The theatre teaches adultery and dishonours the gods; pagans weep at fictional deaths but demand real ones.
294. 38.1Christians avoid sacrificial food not from fear but to make clear they do not honour demons.
295. 38.2Christians enjoy flowers, but do not wear crowns on their heads.
296. 38.3Crowning the dead is pointless, whether they feel it or not.
297. 38.4Christians await an unfading crown from God and live in hope of the resurrection.
298. 38.5Christians reject the sceptical philosophers praised by Caecilius, whose lives contradict their words.
299. 38.6Christians have found by living it the truth that philosophers sought in vain.
300. 39.1Marcus and Caecilius sit in amazed silence after Octavius's speech.
301. 40.1Caecilius declares that both have won: Octavius over him, and he over his error.
302. 40.2Caecilius accepts Christianity and asks for further instruction the next day.
303. 40.3Marcus rejoices and credits Octavius's victory to God's gift.
304. 40.4The three friends part joyfully: Caecilius has believed and Octavius has won.