To the Nations 2.17

Finally, since you do not deny to the guardians of your religion all these whom antiquity willed to be gods and posterity believed, there remains for us that enormous presumption of Roman superstition, over which we have to engage with you, nations: that the Romans became masters and arbiters of the whole world because by the duties of religion they deserved to rule, so much so that they come near to surpassing their gods themselves. No doubt Sterculus, and Mutunus, and Larentina advanced this empire! The Romans, one people destined by its gods for dominion! For I would not think that foreign gods wished this done for an alien people rather than their own, so as to become deserters and abandoners, nay traitors, of their native soil, in which they were born, grew up, gained renown, and were buried. So not even Jupiter would allow his Crete to be shaken by the Roman fasces, forgetting that Idaean cave, and the Corybantian bronzes, and the most pleasant smell of his nurse there. Would he not have preferred that tomb of his to the whole Capitol, so that the land which covers Jupiter's ashes might rather reign? Would Juno want the Punic city, loved above Samos, to be burned, and by the fires of Aeneas's race at that? As far as I know, “Here were her arms, here her chariot; that this should be the kingdom of the nations, if the fates allowed, the goddess even then strives and fosters.” Poor thing, she could not prevail against the fates! And yet the Romans did not decree as much honor to the fates, who surrendered Carthage to them, as they did to Larentina. But these gods do not have the power of conferring a kingdom. For if Jupiter reigned in Crete, and Saturn in Italy, and Isis in Egypt, they reigned as men, and many of them are recorded as having worked for others. So the one who serves also makes masters, and the bondsman of Admetus enlarges the Roman citizens with empire, while he ruined his generous worshipper Croesus by deceiving him with ambiguous oracles. What was the god afraid of, that he did not steadily foretell the truth, that Croesus was to lose his kingdom? As if, enriched with the power of reigning, they could ever have protected their own cities! If they had power to grant it to the Romans, why did Minerva not defend Athens from Xerxes? Or why did Apollo not rescue Delphi from the hand of Pyrrhus? Those who lost their own cities preserve the city of Rome, if Roman religiosity has earned this! And yet was not superstition sought out after the supreme empire had been won, when the state had already grown? Although rites were introduced by Numa, still the divine did not yet mock your affairs with images or temples. Religion was frugal, and superstition poor; altars were makeshift and vessels plain, the smoke from them slight, and the god himself nowhere. So they were not religious before they were great, as though they were great because they were religious. And yet how can empire seem to have been won by the Romans on account of supreme religion and the deepest care for the gods, when it was increased rather by injuring the gods? For, unless I am mistaken, every kingdom or empire is won by wars and enlarged by wars. But the gods of a city too are injured by the victors. For there is the same destruction of walls and temples, equal slaughter of citizens and priests, the same plunder of things profane and sacred. As many trophies as the Romans have, so many sacrileges; as many triumphs over nations, so many over gods. The captive images still remain, and surely, if they perceive their conquerors, they do not love them. But because they perceive nothing, they are injured with impunity, and because they are injured with impunity, they are adored in vain. So those whose eminence grew through victories cannot be thought to have grown by the merits of religion, whether they injured religion by growing or grew by injuring it. All nations have held dominion, each in its own time, as the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians; some hold it still; and yet those who lost it were not without religions and worship and gods to propitiate, until at last almost universal dominion passed to the Romans. The lot of the times has so turned kingdoms about. Ask who ordered the changes of the times. The same one dispenses kingdoms, and has now gathered that supreme power among the Romans, like money exacted from many debtors, into one chest. What he has determined about it, those near him know.