To the Nations 2.7

But to pass on to the mythical kind, which is assigned to the poets: I do not know whether it befits our small capacity to inquire so far, or whether such figures as Mopsus the African and Amphiaraus the Boeotian are confirmed by any evidences of divinity. For this class must now be only touched on; an account of it will be given in its own place. Meanwhile it is plain that these were certainly men, if only from this, that you do not consistently call them gods but heroes. What, then, do we contend? If divinity was to be assigned to the dead, surely not to such as these. See: when with the same license of presumption you disgrace heaven with the tombs of your kings, do you not honor those approved for justice, virtue, piety, and every good with the consolation of such a consecration, content even to be laughed at as perjurers on their behalf; and on the contrary, do you not strip the impious and base even of the former rewards of human glory, tear up their decrees and titles, pull down their images, and restrike their coinage? And will that beholder of all things, the approver, nay the bestower, of good things, prostitute to the crowd the ordinance of his great indulgence, and will men be permitted to show more diligence and justice in distributing divinities? Will the companions of kings and emperors be cleaner than those of the supreme God? And yet you shudder at and turn away from vagrants, exiles, the poor, the weak, the low-born, and the dishonorably reared, while the incestuous, adulterers, ravishers, and parricides you even honor with laws. Should one laugh or be angry that such beings are believed gods as men ought not to be? But in this mythical kind, which the poets bring forward, how uncertainly you handle the shame of your conscience and the defense of that shame! For whenever we reproach the gods with wretched or shameful or atrocious deeds, you defend them as fables by pleading poetic license; whenever nothing is said against such poetry, you not only do not shudder at it, but even honor it and count it among the necessary arts; in fact, through it, as the initiator into letters, you bring forth the studies of liberal education. Plato judged that the poets, as slanderers of the gods, should be banished, and that Homer himself, though crowned, should be driven from the city. But since you receive and retain them, why do you not believe them when they tell such things of your gods? If, then, you believe the poets, why do you worship such gods? If you worship them because you do not believe the poets, why do you give praise to liars, and why are you not careful not to offend those whose detractors you honor? Certainly truth is not to be demanded of the poets. But do you not, who say that the gods were made gods after death, confess that they were men before death? What is new, then, if those who were men are defiled by human mishaps, or crimes, or fables? Do you not believe the poets, when you have even arranged certain rites according to their accounts? Why is the priestess of Ceres carried off, if Ceres suffered no such thing? Why are other people's children sacrificed to Saturn, if he spared his own? Why is a male castrated for the Idaean mother, if no disdainful youth was castrated for her in the pain of frustrated lust? Why do the women of Lanuvium not taste the sacrifice to Hercules, if he did not take precautions on account of women? The poets lie, to be sure! But not in saying that your gods did such things when they were men, nor in ascribing foulness to those they called divine; and meanwhile it seemed more credible to you that they were gods, but not such, than that they were such, but not gods.