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| Whether the Gods, Whom the Greeks and Romans Worshipped in Common, Were Justified in Permitting the Destruction of Ilium.
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Chapter 2.—Whether the Gods, Whom
the Greeks and Romans Worshipped in Common, Were Justified in
Permitting the Destruction of Ilium.
First, then, why was Troy or Ilium,
the cradle of the Roman people (for I must not overlook nor
disguise what I touched upon in the first book121
), conquered, taken and destroyed by
the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped the same gods as
they? Priam, some answer, paid the penalty of the perjury of his
father Laomedon.122
| 122 Virg, Georg. i. 502,
Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ. | Then it is
true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen. For
the story goes that he promised them wages, and then broke his
bargain. I wonder that famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a
work, and never suspected Laomedon was going to cheat him of his
pay. And Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the
sea, it really was not seemly that he should be ignorant of what
was to happen. For he is introduced by Homer123
| 123 Iliad, xx. 293 et seqq. | (who lived and wrote before the
building of Rome) as predicting something great of the posterity of
Æneas, who in fact founded Rome. And as Homer says,
Nep
tune also rescued Æneas in a cloud from the wrath of
Achilles, though (according to Virgil124
)
“All his will was to
destroy
His own creation, perjured
Troy.”
Gods, then, so great as Apollo and Neptune, in
ignorance of the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages,
built the walls of Troy for nothing but thanks and thankless
people.125
There may
be some doubt whether it is not a worse crime to believe such
persons to be gods, than to cheat such gods. Even Homer himself
did not give full credence to the story for while he represents
Neptune, indeed, as hostile to the Trojans, he introduces Apollo as
their champion, though the story implies that both were offended by
that fraud. If, therefore, they believe their fables, let them
blush to worship such gods; if they discredit the fables, let no
more be said of the “Trojan perjury;” or let them explain how
the gods hated Trojan, but loved Roman perjury. For how did the
conspiracy of Catiline, even in so large and corrupt a city, find
so abundant a supply of men whose hands and tongues found them a
living by perjury and civic broils? What else but perjury
corrupted the judgments pronounced by so many of the senators?
What else corrupted the people’s votes and decisions of all
causes tried before them? For it seems that the ancient practice
of taking oaths has been preserved even in the midst of the
greatest corruption, not for the sake of restraining wickedness by
religious fear, but to complete the tale of crimes by adding that
of perjury.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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