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Chapter XXV.
I think I have offered sufficient proof upon the
question of false and true divinity, having shown that the proof rests
not merely on debate and argument, but on the witness of the very
beings whom you believe are gods, so that the point needs no further
handling. However, having been led thus naturally to speak of the
Romans, I shall not avoid the controversy which is invited by the
groundless assertion of those who maintain that, as a reward of their
singular homage to religion, the Romans have been raised to such
heights of power as to have become masters of the world; and that so
certainly divine are the beings they worship, that those prosper beyond
all others, who beyond all others honour them.114
114 [See
Augustine’s City of God, III. xvii. p. 95, Ed.
Migne.] | This,
forsooth, is the wages the gods have paid the Romans for their
devotion. The progress of the empire is to be ascribed to Sterculus,
the Mutunus, and Larentina! For I can hardly think that foreign gods
would have been disposed to show more favour to an alien race than to
their own, and given their own fatherland, in which they had their
birth, grew up to manhood, became illustrious, and at last were buried,
over to invaders from another shore! As for Cybele, if she set her
affections on the city of Rome as sprung of the Trojan stock saved from
the arms of Greece, she herself forsooth being of the same
race,—if she foresaw her transference115
115 Her image was taken from
Pessinus to Rome. | to
the avenging people by whom Greece the conqueror of Phrygia was to be
subdued, let her look to it (in regard of her native country’s
conquest by Greece). Why, too, even in these days the Mater
Magna has given a notable proof of her greatness which she has
conferred as a boon upon the city; when, after the loss to the State of
Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of
April, that most sacred high priest of hers was offering, a week after,
impure libations of blood drawn from his own arms, and issuing his
commands that the ordinary prayers should be made for the safety of the
emperor already dead. O tardy messengers! O sleepy despatches! through
whose fault Cybele had not an earlier knowledge of the imperial
decease, that the Christians might have no occasion to ridicule a
goddess so unworthy. Jupiter, again, would surely never have permitted
his own Crete to fall at once before the Roman Fasces, forgetful of
that Idean cave and the Corybantian cymbals, and the sweet odour of her
who nursed him there. Would he not have exalted his own tomb above the
entire Capitol, that the land which covered the ashes of Jove might
rather be the mistress of the world? Would Juno have desired the
destruction of the Punic city, beloved even to the neglect of Samos,
and that by a nation of Æneadæ? As to that I know,
“Here were her arms, here was her chariot, this kingdom, if the
Fates permit, the goddess tends and cherishes to be mistress of the
nations.”116
116 [Familiar reference to
Virgil, Æneid, I. 15.] | Jove’s hapless
wife and sister had no power to prevail against the Fates!
“Jupiter himself is sustained by fate.” And yet the Romans
have never done such homage to the Fates, which gave them Carthage
against the purpose and the will of Juno, as to the abandoned harlot
Larentina. It is undoubted that not a few of your gods have reigned on
earth as kings. If, then, they now possess the power of bestowing
empire, when they were kings themselves, from whence had they received
their kingly honours? Whom did Jupiter and Saturn worship? A Sterculus,
I suppose. But did the Romans, along with the native-born inhabitants,
afterwards adore also some who were never kings? In that case, however,
they were under the reign of others, who did not yet bow down to them,
as not yet raised to godhead. It belongs to others, then, to make gift
of kingdoms, since there were kings before these gods had their names
on the roll of divinities. But how utterly foolish it is to attribute
the greatness of the Roman name to religious merits, since it was after
Rome became an empire, or call it still a kingdom, that the religion
she professes made its chief progress! Is it the case now? Has its
religion been the source of the prosperity of Rome? Though Numa set
agoing an eagerness after superstitious observances, yet religion among
the Romans was not yet a matter of images or temples. It was frugal in
its ways, its rites were simple, and there were no capitols struggling
to the heavens; but the altars were offhand ones of turf, and the
sacred vessels were yet of Samian earthen-ware, and from these the
odours rose, and no likeness of God was to be seen. For at that time
the skill of the Greeks and Tuscans in image-making had not yet overrun
the city with the products of their art. The Romans, therefore, were
not distinguished for their devotion to the gods before they attained
to greatness; and so their greatness was not the result of their
religion. Indeed, how could religion make a people great who have owed
their greatness to their irreligion? For, if I am not mistaken,
kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars, and are extended by
victories. More than that, you cannot have wars and victories without
the taking, and often the destruction, of cities. That is a thing in
which the gods have their share of calamity. Houses and temples suffer
alike; there is indiscriminate slaughter of priests and citizens; the
hand of rapine is laid equally upon sacred and on common treasure. Thus
the sacrileges of the Romans are as numerous as their trophies. They
boast as many triumphs over the gods as over the nations; as many
spoils of battle they have still, as there remain images of captive
deities. And the poor gods submit to be adored by their enemies, and
they ordain illimitable empire to those whose injuries rather than
their simulated homage should have had retribution at their hands. But
divinities unconscious are with impunity dishonoured, just as in vain
they are adored. You certainly never can believe that devotion to
religion has evidently advanced to greatness a people who, as we have
put it, have either grown by injuring religion, or have injured
religion by their growth. Those, too, whose kingdoms have become part
of the one great whole of the Roman empire, were not without religion
when their kingdoms were taken from them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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