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| Argument: Then He Shows that Cæcilius Had Been Wrong in Asserting that the Romans Had Gained Their Power Over the Whole World by Means of the Due Observance of Superstitions of This Kind. Rather the Romans in Their Origin Were Collected by Crime, and Grew by the Terrors of Their Ferocity. And Therefore the Romans Were Not So Great Because They Were Religious, But Because They Were Sacrilegious with Impunity. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XXV.—Argument: Then He Shows that
Cæcilius Had Been Wrong in Asserting that the Romans Had Gained
Their Power Over the Whole World by Means of the Due Observance of
Superstitions of This Kind. Rather the Romans in Their Origin
Were Collected by Crime, and Grew by the Terrors of Their
Ferocity. And Therefore the Romans Were Not So Great Because They
Were Religious, But Because They Were Sacrilegious with
Impunity.
“Nevertheless, you will say that that very
superstition itself gave, increased, and established their empire for
the Romans, since they prevailed not so much by their valour as by
their religion and piety. Doubtless the illustrious and noble
justice of the Romans had its beginning from the very cradle of the
growing empire. Did they not in their origin, when gathered
together and fortified by crime, grow by the terror of their own
fierceness? For the first people were assembled together as to an
asylum. Abandoned people, profligate, incestuous, assassins,
traitors, had flocked together; and in order that Romulus himself,
their commander and governor, might excel his people in guilt, he
committed fratricide.1799 These are the
first auspices of the religious state! By and by they carried
off, violated, and ruined foreign virgins, already betrothed, already
destined for husbands, and even some young women from their marriage
vows—a thing unexampled1800
1800 Virg.,
Æneid, viii. 635. | —and then
engaged in war with their parents, that is, with their fathers-in-law,
and shed the blood of their kindred. What more irreligious, what
more audacious, what could be safer than the very confidence of
crime? Now, to drive their neighbours from the land, to overthrow
the nearest cities, with their temples and altars, to drive them into
captivity, to grow up by the losses of others and by their own crimes,
is the course of training common to the rest of the kings and the
latest leaders with Romulus. Thus, whatever the Romans hold,
cultivate, possess, is the spoil of their audacity. All their
temples are built from the spoils of violence, that is, from the ruins
of cities, from the spoils of the gods, from the murders of
priests. This is to insult and scorn, to yield to conquered
religions, to adore them when captive, after having vanquished
them. For to adore what you have taken by force, is to consecrate
sacrilege, not divinities. As often, therefore, as the Romans
triumphed, so often they were polluted; and as many trophies as they
gained from the nations, so many spoils did they take from the
gods. Therefore the Romans were not so great because they were
religious, but because they were sacrilegious with impunity. For
neither were they able in the wars themselves to have the help of the
gods against whom they took up arms; and they began to worship those
when they were triumphed over, whom they had previously
challenged. But what avail such gods as those on behalf of the
Romans, who had had no power on behalf of their own worshippers against
the Roman arms? For we know the indigenous gods of the
Romans—Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, and Consus, and Pilumnus, and
Picumnus. Tatius both discovered and worshipped Cloacina;
Hostilius, Fear and Pallor. Subsequently Fever was dedicated by I
know not whom: such was the superstition that nourished that
city,—diseases and ill states of health. Assuredly also
Acca Laurentia, and Flora, infamous harlots, must be reckoned among the
diseases1801
1801 Some read
“probra” for “morbos,” scil.
“reproaches.” | and the gods of the
Romans. Such as these doubtless enlarged the dominion of the
Romans, in opposition to others who were worshipped by the
nations: for against their own people neither did the Thracian
Mars, nor the Cretan Jupiter, nor Juno, now of Argos, now of Samos, now
of Carthage, nor Diana of Tauris, nor the Idæan Mother, nor those
Egyptian—not deities, but monstrosities—assist them; unless
perchance among the Romans the chastity of virgins was greater, or the
religion of the priests more holy: though absolutely among very
many of the virgins unchastity was punished, in that they, doubtless
without the knowledge of Vesta, had intercourse too carelessly with
men; and for the rest their impunity arose not from the better
protection of their chastity, but from the better fortune of their
immodesty. And where are adulteries better arranged by the
priests than among the very altars and shrines? where are more
panderings debated, or more acts of violence concerted? Finally,
burning lust is more frequently gratified in the little chambers of the
keepers of the temple, than in the brothels themselves. And
still, long before the Romans, by the ordering of God, the Assyrians
held dominion, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks also, and the
Egyptians, although they had not any Pontiffs, nor Arvales, nor Salii,
nor Vestals, nor Augurs, nor
chickens shut up in a coop, by whose feeding or abstinence the highest
concerns of the state were to be governed.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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