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| The Power of Rome. Romanized Aspect of All the Heathen Mythology. Varro's Threefold Distribution Criticised. Roman Heroes (Æneas Included,) Unfavourably Reviewed. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
IX.—The Power of Rome. Romanized Aspect of All the Heathen
Mythology. Varro’s Threefold Distribution Criticised. Roman
Heroes (Æneas Included,) Unfavourably Reviewed.
Such are the more obvious or more remarkable
points which we had to mention in connection with Varro’s
threefold distribution of the gods, in order that a sufficient answer
might seem to be given touching the physical, the poetic, and the
gentile classes. Since, however, it is no longer to the philosophers,
nor the poets, nor the nations that we owe the substitution of all
(heathen worship for the true religion) although they transmitted the
superstition, but to the dominant Romans, who received the tradition
and gave it wide authority, another phase of the widespread error of
man must now be encountered by us; nay, another forest must be felled
by our axe, which has obscured the childhood of the degenerate
worship922 with germs of superstitions gathered from all
quarters. Well, but even the gods of the Romans have received from (the
same) Varro a threefold classification into the certain, the
uncertain, and the select. What absurdity! What need had
they of uncertain gods, when they possessed certain ones? Unless,
forsooth, they wished to commit themselves to923
923 Recipere (with a
dative). | such
folly as the Athenians did; for at Athens there was an altar with this
inscription: “To the unknown
gods.”924 Does, then, a man
worship that which he knows nothing of? Then, again, as they had
certain gods, they ought to have been contented with them, without
requiring select ones. In this want they are even found to be
irreligious! For if gods are selected as onions are,925
925 Ut bulbi. This is the
passage which Augustine quotes (de Civit. Dei, vii. 1) as
“too facetious.” |
then such as are not chosen are declared to be worthless. Now we on our
part allow that the Romans had two sets of gods, common and
proper; in other words, those which they had in common with
other nations, and those which they themselves devised. And were not
these called the public and the foreign926
926 Adventicii,
“coming from abroad.” |
gods? Their altars tell us so; there is (a specimen) of the foreign
gods at the fane of Carna, of the public gods in the Palatium. Now,
since their common gods are comprehended in both the physical and the
mythic classes, we have already said enough concerning them. I should
like to speak of their particular kinds of deity. We ought then to
admire the Romans for that third set of the gods of their
enemies,927
927 Touching these
gods of the vanquished nations, compare The Apology, xxv.;
below, c. xvii.; Minucius Felix, Octav. xxv. | because no other
nation ever discovered for itself so large a mass of superstition.
Their other deities we arrange in two classes: those which have become
gods from human beings, and those which have had their origin in some
other way. Now, since there is advanced the same colourable pretext for
the deification of the dead, that their lives were meritorious, we are
compelled to urge the same reply against them, that no one of them was
worth so much pains. Their fond928
father Æneas, in whom they believed, was never glorious, and was
felled with a stone929
929 See Homer,
Il. v. 300. | —a vulgar
weapon, to pelt a dog withal, inflicting a wound no less ignoble! But
this Æneas turns out930 a traitor to his
country; yes, quite as much as Antenor. And if they will not believe
this to be true of him, he at any rate deserted his companions when his
country was in flames, and must be held inferior to that woman of
Carthage,931
931 Referred to also above,
i. 18. | who, when her husband
Hasdrubal supplicated the enemy with the mild pusillanimity of our
Æneas, refused to accompany him, but hurrying her children along
with her, disdained to take her beautiful self and father’s noble
heart932
932 The obscure
“formam et patrem” is by Oehler rendered
“pulchritudinem et generis nobilitatem.” | into exile, but plunged into the flames of
the burning Carthage, as if rushing into the embraces of her (dear but)
ruined country. Is he “pious Æneas” for (rescuing) his
young only son and decrepit old father, but deserting Priam and
Astyanax? But the Romans ought rather to detest him; for in defence of
their princes and their royal933
933 The word is
“eorum” (possessive of “principum”), not
“suæ.” | house, they
surrender934 even children and
wives, and every dearest pledge.935
935 What Tertullian himself
thinks on this point, see his de Corona, xi. | They deify the
son of Venus, and this with the full knowledge and consent of her
husband Vulcan, and without opposition from even Juno. Now, if sons
have seats in heaven owing to their piety to their parents, why are not
those noble youths936
936 Cleobis and Biton; see
Herodotus i. 31. | of Argos rather
accounted gods, because they, to save their mother from guilt in the
performance of some sacred rites, with a devotion more than human,
yoked themselves to her car and dragged her to the temple? Why not make
a goddess, for her exceeding piety, of that daughter937
937 See Valerius Maximus, v.
4, 1. |
who from her own breasts nourished her father who was famishing in
prison? What other glorious achievement can be related of Æneas,
but that he was nowhere seen in the fight on the field of Laurentum?
Following his bent, perhaps he fled a second time as a fugitive from
the battle.938
938 We need not stay
to point out the unfairness of this statement, in contrast with the
exploits of Æneas against Turnus, as detailed in the last
books of the Æneid. | In like manner,
Romulus posthumously becomes a god. Was it because he founded the city?
Then why not others also, who have built cities, counting even939 women? To be sure, Romulus slew his brother
in the bargain, and trickishly ravished some foreign virgins. Therefore
of course he becomes a god, and therefore a Quirinus (“god of the
spear”), because then their fathers had to use the spear940
940 We have thus rendered
“quiritatem est,” to preserve as far as one could the
pun on the deified hero of the Quirites. | on his account. What did Sterculus do to
merit deification? If he worked hard to enrich the fields
stercoribus,941
941 We insert the
Latin, to show the pun on Sterculus; see The Apology, c.
xxv. [See p. 40, supra.] | (with manure,) Augias
had more dung than he to bestow on them. If Faunus, the son of Picus,
used to do violence to law and right, because struck with madness, it
was more fit that he should be doctored than deified.942
942 Curaria quam
consecrari. |
If the daughter of Faunus so excelled in chastity, that she would hold
no conversation with men, it was perhaps from rudeness, or a
consciousness of deformity, or shame for her father’s insanity.
How much worthier of divine honour than this “good
goddess”943
943 Bona Dea, i.e., the
daughter of Faunus just mentioned. | was Penelope, who,
although dwelling among so many suitors of the vilest character,
preserved with delicate tact the purity which they assailed! There is
Sanctus, too,944
944 See Livy, viii. 20,
xxxii. 1; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 213, etc. Compare also Augustine,
de Civ. Dei, xviii. 19. [Tom, vii. p. 576.] | who for his
hospitality had a temple consecrated to him by king Plotius; and even
Ulysses had it in his power to have bestowed one more god upon you in
the person of the most refined Alcinous.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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