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| The Christians are Not the Only Contemners of the Gods. Contempt of Them Often Displayed by Heathen Official Persons. Homer Made the Gods Contemptible.
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Chapter X.604
| 604 Comp. The
Apology, cc. xii. xiii. xiv. xv. | —The Christians are Not the Only
Contemners of the Gods. Contempt of Them Often Displayed by Heathen
Official Persons. Homer Made the Gods Contemptible.
Pour out now all your venom; fling against this
name of ours all your shafts of calumny: I shall stay no longer to
refute them; but they shall by and by be blunted, when we come to
explain our entire discipline.605
| 605 See The
Apology (passim), especially cc. xvi.–xxiv.,
xxx.–xxxvi., and xxxix. | I shall content
myself now indeed with plucking these shafts out of our own body, and
hurling them back on yourselves. The same wounds which you have
inflicted on us by your charges I shall show to be imprinted on
yourselves, that you may fall by your own swords and javelins.606
Now, first, when you direct against us the
general charge of divorcing ourselves from the institutions of our
forefathers, consider again and again whether you are not yourselves
open to that accusation in common with us. For when I look through your
life and customs, lo, what do I discover but the old order of things
corrupted, nay, destroyed by you? Of the laws I have already
said, that you are daily supplanting them with novel decrees and
statutes. As to everything else in your manner of life, how great are
the changes you have made from your ancestors—in your style, your
dress, your equipage, your very food, and even in your speech; for the
old-fashioned you banish, as if it were offensive to you! Everywhere,
in your public pursuits and private duties, antiquity is repealed; all
the authority of your forefathers your own authority has superseded. To
be sure,607
you are for ever
praising old customs; but this is only to your greater discredit, for
you nevertheless persistently reject them. How great must your
perverseness have been, to have bestowed approbation on your
ancestors’ institutions, which were too inefficient to be
lasting, all the while that you were rejecting the very objects of your
approbation! But even that very heir-loom608
of
your forefathers, which you seem to guard and defend with greatest
fidelity, in which you actually609
find your strongest
grounds for impeaching us as violators of the law, and from which your
hatred of the Christian name derives all its life—I mean the
worship of the gods—I shall prove to be undergoing ruin and
contempt from yourselves no less than610
(from
us),—unless it be that there is no reason for our being regarded
as despisers of the gods like yourselves, on the ground that nobody
despises what he knows has absolutely no existence. What
certainly exists can be despised. That which is nothing,
suffers nothing. From those, therefore, to whom it is an existing
thing,611
must necessarily proceed the suffering which
affects it. All the heavier, then, is the accusation which burdens you
who believe that there are gods and (at the same time) despise them,
who worship and also reject them, who honour and also assail them. One
may also gather the same conclusion from this consideration, above
all: since you worship various gods, some one and some another,
you of course despise those which you do not worship. A
preference for the one is not possible without slighting the other, and
no choice can be made without a rejection. He who selects some
one out of many, has already slighted the other which he does
not select. But it is impossible that so many and so great gods can be
worshipped by all. Then you must have exercised your contempt (in
this matter) even at the beginning, since indeed you were not then
afraid of so ordering things, that all the gods could not become
objects of worship to all. For those very wise and prudent ancestors of
yours, whose institutions you know not how to repeal, especially in
respect of your gods, are themselves found to have been impious. I am
much mistaken, if they did not sometimes decree that no general should
dedicate a temple, which he may have vowed in battle, before the senate
gave its sanction; as in the case of Marcus Æmilius, who had
made a vow to the god
Alburnus. Now is it not confessedly the greatest impiety, nay, the
greatest insult, to place the honour of the Deity at the will and
pleasure of human judgment, so that there cannot be a god except the
senate permit him? Many times have the censors destroyed612
| 612 Adsolaverunt,
“thrown to the ground;” “floored.” | (a god) without consulting the people.
Father Bacchus, with all his ritual, was certainly by the consuls, on
the senate’s authority, cast not only out of the city, but out of
all Italy; whilst Varro informs us that Serapis also, and Isis, and
Arpocrates, and Anubis, were excluded from the Capitol, and that their
altars which the senate had thrown down were only restored by the
popular violence. The Consul Gabinius, however, on the first day of the
ensuing January, although he gave a tardy consent to some sacrifices,
in deference to the crowd which assembled, because he had failed to
decide about Serapis and Isis, yet held the judgment of the senate to
be more potent than the clamour of the multitude, and forbade the
altars to be built. Here, then, you have amongst your own forefathers,
if not the name, at all events the procedure,613
| 613 Sectam.
[Rather—“A Christian secession.”] | of
the Christians, which despises the gods. If, however, you were
even innocent of the charge of treason against them in the honour you
pay them, I still find that you have made a consistent advance in
superstition as well as impiety. For how much more irreligious
are you found to be! There are your household gods, the Lares and the
Penates, which you possess614
by a family
consecration:615
you even tread them
profanely under foot, you and your domestics, by hawking and pawning
them for your wants or your whims. Such insolent sacrilege might be
excusable, if it were not practised against your humbler deities; as it
is, the case is only the more insolent. There is, however, some
consolation for your private household gods under these affronts, that
you treat your public deities with still greater indignity and
insolence. First of all, you advertise them for auction, submit them to
public sale, knock them down to the highest bidder, when you every five
years bring them to the hammer among your revenues. For this purpose
you frequent the temple of Serapis or the Capitol, hold your sales
there,616
conclude your contracts,617
as if they were markets, with the well-known618
voice
of the crier, (and) the self-same levy619
| 619 Exactione, “as
excise duty for the treasury.” | of
the quæstor. Now lands become cheaper when burdened with tribute,
and men by the capitation tax diminish in value (these are the
well-known marks of slavery). But the gods, the more tribute they
pay, become more holy; or rather,620
the more holy
they are, the more tribute do they pay. Their majesty is converted into
an article of traffic; men drive a business with their religion; the
sanctity of the gods is beggared with sales and contracts. You make
merchandise of the ground of your temples, of the approach to your
altars, of your offerings,621
| 621 “In money,”
stipibus. | of your
sacrifices.622
You sell the whole
divinity (of your gods). You will not permit their gratuitous worship.
The auctioneers necessitate more repairs623
than
the priests.
It was not enough that you had insolently made a
profit of your gods, if we would test the amount of your contempt; and
you are not content to have withheld honour from them, you must also
depreciate the little you do render to them by some indignity or other.
What, indeed, do you do by way of honouring your gods, which you do not
equally offer to your dead? You build temples for the gods, you erect
temples also to the dead; you build altars for the gods, you build them
also for the dead; you inscribe the same superscription over both; you
sketch out the same lineaments for their statues—as best suits
their genius, or profession, or age; you make an old man of Saturn, a
beardless youth of Apollo; you form a virgin from Diana; in Mars you
consecrate a soldier, a blacksmith in Vulcan. No wonder, therefore, if
you slay the same victims and burn the same odours for your dead as you
do for your gods. What excuse can be found for that insolence which
classes the dead of whatever sort624
as equal with
the gods? Even to your princes there are assigned the services of
priests and sacred ceremonies, and chariots,625
and
cars, and the honours of the solisternia and the
lectisternia, holidays and games. Rightly enough,626
since heaven is open to them; still it is
none the less contumelious to the gods: in the first place, because it
could not possibly be decent that other beings should be numbered with
them, even if it has been given to them to become divine after their
birth; in the second place, because the witness who beheld the man
caught up into heaven627
| 627 Rigaltius has the
name Proculus in his text; but Tertullian refers not merely to
that case but to a usual functionary, necessary in all cases of
deification. | would not forswear
himself so freely and palpably before the people, if it were not for
the contempt felt
about the objects sworn to both by himself and those628
| 628 Oehler reads
“ei” (of course for “ii”); Rigalt. reads
“ii.” |
who allow the perjury. For these feel of themselves, that what is sworn
to is nothing; and more than that, they go so far as to fee the
witness, because he had the courage to publicly despise the avengers of
perjury. Now, as to that, who among you is pure of the charge of
perjury? By this time, indeed, there is an end to all danger in
swearing by the gods, since the oath by Cæsar carries with it more
influential scruples, which very circumstance indeed tends to the
degradation of your gods; for those who perjure themselves when
swearing by Cæsar are more readily punished than those who violate
an oath to a Jupiter. But, of the two kindred feelings of contempt and
derision, contempt is the more honourable, having a certain glory in
its arrogance; for it sometimes proceeds from confidence, or the
security of consciousness, or a natural loftiness of mind. Derision,
however, is a more wanton feeling, and so far it points more
directly629
to a carping
insolence. Now only consider what great deriders of your gods you show
yourselves to be! I say nothing of your indulgence of this feeling
during your sacrificial acts, how you offer for your victims the
poorest and most emaciated creatures; or else of the sound and healthy
animals only the portions which are useless for food, such as the heads
and hoofs, or the plucked feathers and hair, and whatever at home you
would have thrown away. I pass over whatever may seem to the
taste630
| 630 Gulæ,
“Depraved taste.” | of the vulgar and profane to have constituted
the religion631
| 631 Prope religionem
convenire, “to have approximated to.” | of your forefathers;
but then the most learned and serious classes (for seriousness and
wisdom to some extent632
profess633
| 633 Credunt, one would
expect “creduntur” (“are supposed”), which is
actually read by Gothofredus. | to be derived from learning) are always, in
fact, the most irreverent towards your gods; and if their learning ever
halts, it is only to make up for the remissness by a more shameful
invention of follies and falsehoods about their gods. I will begin with
that enthusiastic fondness which you show for him from whom every
depraved writer gets his dreams, to whom you ascribe as much honour as
you derogate from your gods, by magnifying him who has made such sport
of them. I mean Homer by this description. He it is, in my opinion, who
has treated the majesty of the Divine Being on the low level of human
condition, imbuing the gods with the falls634
| 634 Or,
“circumstances” (casibus). | and
the passions of men; who has pitted them against each other with
varying success, like pairs of gladiators: he wounds Venus with an
arrow from a human hand; he keeps Mars a prisoner in chains for
thirteen months, with the prospect of perishing;635
he parades636
| 636 Traducit, perhaps
“degrades.” | Jupiter as suffering
a like indignity from a crowd of celestial (rebels;) or he draws from
him tears for Sarpedon; or he represents him wantoning with Juno in the
most disgraceful way, advocating his incestuous passion for her by a
description and enumeration of his various amours. Since then, which of
the poets has not, on the authority of their great prince, calumniated
the gods, by either betraying truth or feigning falsehood? Have the
dramatists also, whether in tragedy or comedy, refrained from making
the gods the authors637
| 637 Ut dei præfarentur.
Oehler explains the verb “præfari” to mean
“auctorem esse et tanquam caput.” | of the calamities and
retributions (of their plays)? I say nothing of your philosophers, whom
a certain inspiration of truth itself elevates against the gods, and
secures from all fear in their proud severity and stern discipline.
Take, for example,638
Socrates. In contempt
of your gods, he swears by an oak, and a dog, and a goat. Now,
although he was condemned to die for this very reason, the Athenians
afterwards repented of that condemnation, and even put to death his
accusers. By this conduct of theirs the testimony of Socrates is
replaced at its full value, and I am enabled to meet you with this
retort, that in his case you have approbation bestowed on that which is
now-a-days reprobated in us. But besides this instance there is
Diogenes, who, I know not to what extent, made sport of Hercules;
whilst Varro, that Diogenes of the Roman cut,639
introduces to our view some three hundred Joves, or, as they ought to
be called, Jupiters,640
| 640 Tertullian gives the
comic plural “Juppiteres.” | (and all) without
heads. Your other wanton wits641
likewise minister to
your pleasures by disgracing the gods. Examine carefully the
sacrilegious642
| 642 Because appropriating to
themselves the admiration which was due to the gods. | beauties of your
Lentuli and Hostii; now, is it the players or your gods who become the
objects of your mirth in their tricks and jokes? Then, again, with what
pleasure do you take up the literature of the stage, which describes
all the foul conduct of the gods! Their majesty is defiled in your
presence in some unchaste body. The mask of some deity, at your
will,643
covers some infamous paltry head. The Sun
mourns for the death of his son by a lightning-flash amid your rude
rejoicing. Cybele
sighs for a shepherd who disdains her, without raising a blush on your
cheek; and you quietly endure songs which celebrate644
the gallantries of Jove. You are, of course, possessed of a more
religious spirit in the show of your gladiators, when your gods dance,
with equal zest, over the spilling of human blood, (and) over those
filthy penalties which are at once their proof and plot for executing
your criminals, or else (when) your criminals are punished personating
the gods themselves.645
| 645 It is best to add the
original of this almost unintelligible passage:
“Plane religiosiores estis in gladiatorum cavea, ubi super
sanguinem humanum, supra inquinamenta pœnarum proinde saltant dei
vestri argumenta et historias nocentibus erogandis, aut in ipsis
deis nocentes puniuntur.” Some little light may
be derived from the parallel passage of the Apology (c. xv.),
which is expressed somewhat less obscurely. Instead of the words in
italics, Tertullian there substitutes these: “Argumenta et
historias noxiis ministrantes, nisi quod et ipsos deos vestros
sæpe noxii induunt”—“whilst furnishing the
proofs and the plots for (executing) criminals, only that the said
criminals often act the part of your gods themselves.”
Oehler refers, in illustration of the last clause, to the instance of
the notorious robber Laureolus, who personated Prometheus; others,
again, personated Laureolus himself: some criminals had to play the
part of Orpheus; others of Mutius Scævola. It will be observed
that these executions were with infamous perverseness set off with
scenic show, wherein the criminal enacted some violent death in
yielding up his own life. The indignant irony of the whole passage, led
off by the “plane religiosiores estis,” is evident. | We have often
witnessed in a mutilated criminal your god of Pessinum, Attis; a wretch
burnt alive has personated Hercules. We have laughed at the sport of
your mid-day game of the gods, when Father Pluto, Jove’s own
brother, drags away, hammer in hand, the remains of the gladiators;
when Mercury, with his winged cap and heated wand, tests with his
cautery whether the bodies were really lifeless, or only feigning
death. Who now can investigate every particular of this sort
although so destructive of the honour of the Divine Being, and so
humiliating to His majesty? They all, indeed, have their
origin646
in a contempt (of the gods), on the part both
of those who practise647
these personations,
as well as of those648
| 648 i.e., the gods
themselves. | who are susceptible
of being so represented.649
I hardly know,
therefore, whether your gods have more reason to complain of yourselves
or of us. After despising them on the one hand, you flatter them on the
other; if you fail in any duty towards them, you appease them with a
fee;650
in short, you allow yourselves to act towards
them in any way you please. We, however, live in a consistent and
entire aversion to them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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