Octavius

How much more truly do dumb animals naturally judge concerning your gods? Mice, swallows, and kites know that they have no feeling. They gnaw them, trample on them, and sit upon them. Unless you drive them off, they build their nests in the very mouth of your god. Spiders indeed weave their webs over his face, and suspend their threads from his very head. You wipe, cleanse, and scrape them, and you protect and fear those whom you make. Yet not one of you thinks that he ought to know God before he worships Him. Without consideration, you desire to obey your ancestors, choosing rather to become an addition to the error of others than to trust yourselves, since you know nothing of what you fear. Thus avarice has been consecrated in gold and silver. Thus the form of empty statues has been established. Thus Roman superstition has arisen. And if you reconsider the rites of these gods, how many things are laughable, and how many also pitiable! Naked people run about in the harsh winter. Some walk bonneted, and carry around old bucklers, or beat drums, or lead their gods begging through the streets. Some fanes may be approached once a year. Some may not be visited at all. There is one place where a man may not go, and there are some places that are sacred from women. At some ceremonies, it is a crime needing atonement even for a slave to be present. Some sacred places are crowned by a woman having one husband, some by a woman with many. And she who can count the most adulteries is sought after with the greatest religious zeal. What! Would not a man who makes libations of his own blood, and supplicates his god by his own wounds, be better if he were altogether profane than religious in this way? And he whose shameful parts are cut off, how greatly does he wrong God in seeking to propitiate Him in this manner! Since, if God wished for eunuchs, He could bring them into existence as such, and would not make them so afterward. Who does not perceive that people of unsound mind, and of weak and degraded understanding, are foolish in these things, and that the very multitude of those who err affords to each of them mutual patronage? Here the defense of the general madness is the multitude of the mad people.

NEVERTHELESS: you will say that this very superstition gave, increased, and established the empire of the Romans, since they prevailed not so much by their valor as by their religion and piety. No doubt the famous and noble justice of the Romans had its beginning from the very cradle of their growing empire. Did they not, in their beginning, when they were gathered together and fortified by crime, grow by the terror of their own fierceness? For the first people were assembled as to an asylum. Abandoned people, profligate people, incestuous people, murderers, and traitors had flocked together. And so that Romulus himself, their commander and ruler, might excel his people in guilt, he committed fratricide. These are the first auspices of the religious state! Soon afterward 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 unexampled. Then they made war with their parents, that is, with their fathers-in-law, and shed the blood of their own relatives. What could be more irreligious? What could be more audacious? What could be safer than the very confidence of crime? To drive their neighbors from the land, to overthrow the nearest cities with their temples and altars, to drive them into captivity, to grow by the losses of others and by their own crimes, this is the course of training common to the rest of the kings and the latest leaders with Romulus. Thus, whatever the Romans hold, cultivate, and 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, and 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. Therefore, as often as the Romans triumphed, so often they were polluted. And as many trophies as they gained from the nations, so many spoils they took from the gods. Therefore, the Romans were not so great because they were religious, but because they were sacrilegious with impunity. For in the wars themselves, the gods against whom they took up arms were not able to help them. And they began to worship those, when they had triumphed over them, whom they had previously challenged. But what use were such gods on behalf of the Romans, when they had had no power on behalf of their own worshipers against Roman arms? For we know the indigenous gods of the Romans: Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, Consus, Pilumnus, and Picumnus. Tatius both discovered and worshiped Cloacina; Hostilius, Fear and Pallor. Later, Fever was dedicated by I do not know whom. Such was the superstition that nourished that city: diseases and ill states of health. Certainly also Acca Laurentia and Flora, infamous harlots, must be counted among the diseases and the gods of the Romans. Such as these, no doubt, enlarged the dominion of the Romans, in opposition to others who were worshiped 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 perhaps among the Romans the chastity of virgins was greater, or the religion of the priests more holy. Yet among very many of the virgins, unchastity was punished, because they, no doubt 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 priests than among the very altars and shrines? Where are more panderings debated, or more acts of violence concerted? Finally, burning lust is more often 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 no 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.

AND NOW I COME TO THOSE ROMAN AUSPICES AND AUGURIES WHICH YOU HAVE GATHERED WITH GREAT EFFORT: You have testified that they were neglected with bad results, and observed with good fortune. Certainly Clodius, Flaminius, and Junius lost their armies for this reason, because they did not think it right to wait for the very solemn omen given by the greedy pecking of the chickens. But what about Regulus? Did he not observe the auguries and get taken captive? Mancinus kept his religious duty, and was sent under the yoke and handed over. Paulus also had greedy chickens at Cannae, yet he was overthrown with the greater part of the republic. Caius Caesar despised the auguries and auspices that opposed his voyage into Africa before winter, and so he more easily both sailed and conquered. But what more, and how much more, shall I go on to say about oracles? After his death, Amphiaraus answered about things to come, though while he was alive he did not know that he would be betrayed by his wife because of a bracelet. The blind Tiresias saw the future, although he did not see the present. Ennius invented the replies of the Pythian Apollo concerning Pyrrhus, although Apollo had already ceased to make verses. And that cautious and ambiguous oracle of his failed just when men began to be both more educated and less gullible. Demosthenes also, because he knew that the answers were made up, complained that the Pythia was taking Philip's side. But sometimes, it is true, even auspices or oracles have touched the truth. Although among many falsehoods chance may seem as if it imitated forethought, yet I will come to the very source of error and perverseness, from which all that obscurity has flowed. I will dig more deeply into it and lay it open more clearly. There are certain insincere and wandering spirits, degraded from their heavenly vigor by earthly stains and lusts. After these spirits lost the simplicity of their nature by being weighed down and immersed in vices, they do not stop ruining others as a comfort in their calamity, now that they themselves are ruined. Being depraved themselves, they infuse into others the error of their depravity. And being themselves alienated from God, they separate others from God by bringing in degraded superstitions. The poets know that those spirits are demons. The philosophers speak of them. Socrates knew it too. At the nod and decision of a demon beside him, he either declined actions or undertook them. The Magi also not only know that there are demons, but whatever miracle they claim to perform, they do it by means of demons. By their aspirations and communications, they display their wondrous tricks, making things appear which are not, or making things not appear which are. Of those magicians, Sosthenes, first both in eloquence and in deed, not only describes the true God with fitting majesty, but also the angels who are the ministers and messengers of the true God. And he knew that it enhanced His veneration, that they trembled in awe at the very nod and glance of their Lord. The same man also declared that demons were earthly, wandering, and hostile to humanity. What did Plato say, he who believed that finding God was difficult? Does he not also plainly speak of both angels and demons? And in his Symposium, does he not also try to explain the nature of demons? For he says that a demon is a substance between mortal and immortal—that is, between body and spirit—compounded by mingling earthly weight and heavenly lightness. For this reason also he warns us about the desire of love, and says that it is molded and slips into the human breast, stirs the senses, molds the affections, and infuses the ardor of lust.

TO SUM UP THE ARGUMENT: without doubt, here is a source of error. Demons hide under statues and images. They haunt temples. They stir the inner parts of sacrificed animals, direct the flight of birds, control lots, and give oracles wrapped in false answers. These things are not from God. But when they are commanded in the name of the true God, they are forced to confess, and they are driven out of possessed bodies. So they quickly flee from the neighborhood of Christians, and they stir up hatred against them in the minds of the Gentiles, who begin to hate Christians before they know them.

THEREFORE: these impure spirits—the demons—as is shown by the Magi, by the philosophers, and by Plato, consecrated under statues and images, lurk there. By their afflatus they gain the authority of a deity that seems present. Meanwhile, they are breathed into the prophets. They dwell in shrines. Sometimes they animate the fibers of the entrails, control the flights of birds, direct the lots, and cause oracles tangled with many falsehoods. For they are both deceived, and they deceive, since they are ignorant of the simple truth, and for their own ruin do not confess what they know. Thus they weigh men down from heaven and call them away from the true God to material things. They disturb life and make all men unquiet. They also creep secretly into human bodies. With subtlety, because they are spirits, they feign diseases, alarm minds, and wrench limbs, so that they may force men to worship them. Then, after being glutted with the fumes of altars and the sacrifices of cattle, by loosening what they had bound they seem to have cured it. These raging maniacs also, whom you see rushing about in public, are themselves prophets without a temple. Thus they rage, thus they rave, thus they are whirled around. In them too there is the same instigation of the demon, but the occasion for their madness is different. From the same causes also come those things you spoke of a little while ago: that Jupiter demanded in a dream that his games be restored, that the Castors appeared with horses, and that a small ship followed the leading of the matron's girdle. Very many people, even some of your own people, know all those things that the demons themselves confess about themselves, whenever they are driven by us out of bodies by the torments of our words and by the fires of our prayers. Saturn himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship, when overcome by pain, declare what they are. And surely they do not lie to their own disgrace, especially when some of you are standing by. Since they themselves are witnesses that they are demons, believe them when they confess the truth about themselves. For when they are adjured by the only and true God, the wretched beings shudder unwillingly in their bodies, and either leap out at once or vanish little by little, as the faith of the sufferer helps or the grace of the healer inspires. Thus they flee from Christians when nearby, whom at a distance they had harassed by your means in their assemblies. And thus, introduced into the minds of the ignorant, they secretly sow hatred of us there by means of fear. For it is natural both to hate one whom you fear, and to injure one whom you have feared, if you can. Thus they take possession of minds and block hearts, so that men begin to hate us before they know us, lest, if they come to know us, they should either imitate us or not be able to condemn us.

THEY STIR UP NOT ONLY HATRED AGAINST CHRISTIANS: but also charges of terrible crimes that no one has ever proved against them up to this time. This is the work of demons. By them, a false rumor is both started and spread. Christians are falsely accused of sacrilege, incest, adultery, and parricide. And besides this, it is certain and true that these very same crimes, or crimes like them or even worse, are actually committed by the Gentiles themselves.

BUT HOW UNJUST IT IS TO FORM A JUDGMENT ON THINGS UNKNOWN AND UNEXAMINED: as you do! Believe us ourselves when penitent, for we also were once the same as you. Formerly, while still blind and dull, we thought the same things as you: that Christians worshiped monsters, devoured infants, and mingled in incestuous banquets. And we did not understand that fables like these were always spread abroad by those newsmongers, and were never either inquired into or proved. Nor did we understand that, in so long a time, no one had appeared to betray their doings, and so obtain not only pardon for his crime, but also favor for its discovery. Moreover, we did not understand that it was so far from evil that, when a Christian was accused, he neither blushed nor feared, and only repented that he had not been one before. We, however, when we undertook to defend and protect sacrilegious and incestuous persons, and even parricides, did not think that these Christians were to be heard at all. Sometimes even, when we pretended to pity them, we were more cruelly violent against them. We tortured them when they confessed, so that they might deny, that is, so that they might not perish. We used a perverse inquisition against them, not to draw out the truth, but to compel a falsehood. And if anyone, because of greater weakness, overcome by suffering and conquered, should deny that he was a Christian, we showed favor to him, as if by forswearing that name he had at once atoned for all his deeds by that simple denial. Do you not acknowledge that we felt and did the same as you feel and do? When, if reason and not the instigation of a demon were to judge, they should rather have been pressed not to disavow themselves Christians, but to confess themselves guilty of incests, of abominations, of sacred rites polluted, of infants immolated. For with these and such stories those same demons filled the ears of the ignorant against us, to the horror of their execration. Nor yet was this wonderful, since the common report of men, always fed by the scattering of falsehoods, is wasted away when the truth is brought to light. Thus this is the business of demons, for by them false rumors are both sown and cherished. From there arises what you say you hear: that an ass's head is esteemed among us as something divine. Who is such a fool as to worship this? Who is so much more foolish as to believe that it is an object of worship? Unless perhaps you yourselves also consecrate whole asses in your stables, together with your Epona, and religiously devour those same asses with Isis. Also you offer up and worship the heads of oxen and of wethers. And you dedicate gods mingled also of a goat and a man, and gods with the faces of dogs and lions. Do you not, with the Egyptians, adore and feed Apis the ox? And you do not condemn their sacred rites instituted in honor of serpents, and crocodiles, and other beasts, and birds, and fishes. If anyone were to kill one of these gods, he is even punished with death. These same Egyptians, together with very many of you, are no more afraid of Isis than they are of the pungency of onions, nor of Serapis than they tremble at the basest noises produced by the foulness of their bodies. He also who invents fables against us about our adoration of the members of the priest tries to lay upon us what really belongs to himself. For perhaps these are the sacred rites of their shamelessness, among those with whom every sex is exposed in all its members; among whom utter indecency is called refinement; who envy the license of prostitutes; who lick men in the middle; who cling with lustful mouth to groins; men of evil tongue even if they were silent; men whom their shamelessness disgusts before it shames them. Abomination! They suffer on themselves such evil deeds as no age is so effeminate as to be able to bear, and no slavery so cruel as to be compelled to endure.

THESE AND OTHER SHAMEFUL THINGS LIKE THEM ARE THINGS WE ARE NOT FREE EVEN TO HEAR: It is disgraceful even to defend ourselves against such charges with more words. You claim that chaste and modest people do these things. But we should not believe that such things are done at all, unless you proved that they were true of yourselves. For when you attribute to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross, you wander far from the neighborhood of truth. You think either that a criminal deserved to be believed God, or that an earthly being was able to be believed God. Miserable indeed is the man whose whole hope depends on a mortal man, for all his help comes to an end with that man's death. The Egyptians certainly choose a man for themselves to worship. Him alone they propitiate. They consult him about all things. They slaughter victims for him. And he who is a god to others is certainly a man to himself, whether he wants to be or not. For he does not deceive his own conscience, even if he deceives that of others. Moreover, false flattery shamefully flatters princes and kings, not as great and chosen men, as is right, but as gods. Yet honor is more truly given to an illustrious man, and love is more pleasantly given to a very good man. Thus they call on their deity. They beg before their images. They appeal to their Genius, that is, their demon. And it is safer to swear falsely by the genius of Jupiter than by that of a king. We neither worship crosses nor wish for them. But you, who consecrate gods made of wood, perhaps worship wooden crosses as parts of your gods. For your standards, your banners, and the flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man fastened to it. We certainly see the sign of a cross naturally in a ship, when it is carried along with swelling sails, and when it glides forward with outspread oars. It is there also when the military yoke is lifted up, and when a man adores God with a pure mind and with hands stretched out. Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.

AND NOW I SHOULD WISH TO MEET HIM WHO SAYS OR BELIEVES THAT WE ARE INITIATED BY THE SLAUGHTER AND BLOOD OF AN INFANT: Do you think it can be possible for so tender, so little a body to receive those deadly wounds, for anyone to shed, pour forth, and drain that fresh blood of a little child, of a human being scarcely come into existence? No one can believe this, except one who would dare to do it. And I see that you at one time expose your begotten children to wild beasts and birds. At another, you crush them, strangled in a miserable kind of death. There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very wombs, and thus commit parricide before they bring forth. And these things surely come down from the teaching of your gods. For Saturn did not expose his children, but devoured them. With reason, infants were sacrificed to him by their parents in some parts of Africa, caresses and kisses repressing their crying, so that a weeping victim might not be sacrificed. Moreover, among the Tauri of Pontus, and to the Egyptian Busiris, it was a sacred rite to sacrifice their guests, and for the Galli to slaughter to Mercury human, or rather inhuman, sacrifices. The Roman sacrificers buried alive a Greek man and a Greek woman, a Gallic man and a Gallic woman. And to this day, Jupiter Latiaris is worshipped by them with murder. And, what is worthy of the son of Saturn, he is gorged with the blood of an evil and criminal man. I believe that he himself taught Catiline to conspire under a compact of blood, and Bellona to steep her sacred rites with a draught of human gore, and taught men to heal epilepsy with the blood of a man, that is, with a worse disease. They also are not unlike him who devour the wild beasts from the arena, besmeared and stained with blood, or fattened with the limbs or entrails of men. To us it is not lawful either to see or to hear of homicide. And so much do we shrink from human blood, that we do not use the blood even of eatable animals in our food.

AND AS FOR THE CHARGE OF INCESTUOUS BANQUETING: the plotting of demons has falsely devised an enormous fable against us. Its purpose is to stain the glory of our modesty by the loathing stirred up by an outrageous infamy, so that before people inquire into the truth, the terror of an abominable charge may turn them away from us. This is how your own Fronto acted in this matter. He did not bring forward testimony, as one making a charge, but scattered reproaches as a rhetorician. For these things have come rather from your own nations. Among the Persians, promiscuous relations between sons and mothers are allowed. Marriages with sisters are lawful among the Egyptians and in Athens. Your records and your tragedies, which you both read and hear with pleasure, glory in incests. In the same way, you also worship incestuous gods, who have intercourse with mothers, daughters, and sisters. Therefore, with good reason, incest is often found among you and is continually allowed. Miserable men, you may even, without knowing it, rush into what is unlawful. Since you scatter your lusts everywhere, since you beget children everywhere, and since you often expose even those born in your own homes to the mercy of others, it must happen that you return to your own children and stray to your own offspring. In this way you keep alive the story of incest, even though you have no awareness of your crime. But we keep our modesty not in appearance, but in our heart. We gladly remain in the bond of a single marriage. In the desire to have children, we know either one wife or none at all. We take part in banquets that are not only modest, but also sober. For we do not indulge in entertainments or drag out our feasts with wine. But we temper our joy with seriousness, with chaste conversation, and with bodies even more chaste. Many of us, still unviolated, enjoy rather than boast of a perpetual virginity of the body. So far, in fact, are they from indulging in incestuous desire, that with some even the idea of modest intercourse between the sexes causes a blush. Nor are we at once on the level of the lowest people, if we refuse your honors and purple robes. Nor are we hard to please, if we all discern one good, and are gathered together with the same quietness with which we live as individuals. And we are not talkative in corners, although you either blush or are afraid to hear us in public. And the fact that our number increases day by day is not a reason for charging us with error, but a testimony that calls for praise. For by a fair way of life, our own number both continues and remains undiminished, and strangers increase it. In short, we are not marked out, as you suppose, by some small bodily sign, but easily enough by the mark of innocence and modesty. So we love one another, to your regret, with mutual love, because we do not know how to hate. So we call one another, to your envy, brothers, because we are men born of one God and Parent, companions in faith, and fellow-heirs in hope. But you do not recognize one another, and you are cruel in your hatred for one another. Nor do you acknowledge one another as brothers, unless perhaps for the purpose of fratricide.

BUT DO YOU THINK THAT WE CONCEAL WHAT WE WORSHIP: if we have no temples and altars? And yet what image of God shall I make, since, if you think rightly, man himself is the image of God? What temple shall I build to Him, when this whole world fashioned by His work cannot receive Him? And when I, a man, dwell far and wide, shall I shut up the might of so great majesty within one little building? Would it not be better that He should be dedicated in our mind, consecrated in our inmost heart? Shall I offer victims and sacrifices to the Lord, such as He has produced for my use, that I should throw back to Him His own gift? It is ungrateful, when the victim fit for sacrifice is a good disposition, and a pure mind, and a sincere judgment. Therefore he who cultivates innocence supplicates God. He who cultivates justice makes offerings to God. He who abstains from fraudulent practices propitiates God. He who snatches man from danger slaughters the most acceptable victim. These are our sacrifices. These are our rites of God's worship. Thus, among us, he who is most just is he who is most religious. But certainly the God whom we worship we neither show nor see. Truly, for this reason we believe Him to be God, that we can be conscious of Him, but cannot see Him. For in His works, and in all the movements of the world, we behold His power ever present when He thunders, lightens, darts His bolts, or when He makes all bright again. Nor should you wonder if you do not see God. By the wind and by the blasts of the storm, all things are driven on and shaken, are agitated, and yet neither wind nor tempest comes under our eyesight. Thus we cannot look upon the sun, which is the cause of seeing to all creatures. The pupil of the eye is withdrawn from its rays. The gaze of the beholder is dimmed. And if you look too long, all power of sight is extinguished. What! Can you sustain the Architect of the sun Himself, the very source of light, when you turn yourself away from His lightnings, and hide yourself from His thunderbolts? Do you wish to see God with your carnal eyes, when you are neither able to behold nor to grasp your own soul itself, by which you are enlivened and speak? But, moreover, it is said that God is ignorant of man's doings; and being established in heaven, He can neither survey all nor know individuals. You err, O man, and are deceived. For from where is God afar off, when all things heavenly and earthly, and which are beyond this province of the universe, are known to God, are full of God? Everywhere He is not only very near to us, but He is infused into us. Therefore once more look upon the sun. It is fixed fast in heaven, yet it is diffused over all lands equally. Present everywhere, it is associated and mingled with all things. Its brightness is never violated. How much more God, who has made all things, and looks upon all things, from whom there can be nothing secret, is present in the darkness, is present in our thoughts, as if in the deep darkness. Not only do we act in Him, but also, I had almost said, we live with Him.

NEITHER LET US FLATTER OURSELVES ABOUT OUR NUMBERS: We seem many to ourselves, but to God we are very few. We distinguish peoples and nations. To God, this whole world is one family. Kings know all the matters of their kingdom only by the service of their servants. God has no need of information. We not only live in His eyes, but also in His bosom. But it is objected that it profited the Jews nothing that they themselves worshiped the one God with altars and temples, with the greatest superstition. You are guilty of ignorance if you are calling to mind later events while you forget, or do not know, the former ones. For they themselves also, as long as they worshiped our God—and He is the same God of all—with chastity, innocence, and religion, as long as they obeyed His wholesome precepts, from a few became innumerable, from poor became rich, from being servants became kings. A few overcame many. Unarmed men overcame armed men as those men fled from them, while they pursued them by God's command, and with the elements striving on their behalf. Read their Scriptures carefully. Or, if Roman writings please you more, inquire about the Jews in the books—to say nothing of ancient documents—of Flavius Josephus or Antoninus Julianus, and you will know that by their wickedness they deserved this fate, and that nothing happened that had not been predicted to them beforehand, if they should persist in their obstinacy. Therefore you will understand that they forsook before they were forsaken, and that they were not, as you impiously say, taken captive with their God, but were given up by God as deserters from His discipline.

FURTHER: in respect to the burning up of the world, it is a common error not to believe either that fire will come upon it unexpectedly, or that the world will be destroyed by it. For what wise man doubts, or who is ignorant, that all things which have had a beginning perish, and all things that are made come to an end? Heaven also, with all things contained in heaven, will cease, just as it began. The nourishment of the seas by the fresh waters of springs will pass into the power of fire. The Stoics firmly believe that, when the moisture is dried up, this whole world will catch fire. The Epicureans hold the same opinion about the conflagration of the elements and the destruction of the world. Plato says that parts of the world are at one time flooded, and at another time burned up by alternating changes. And although he says that the world itself was made everlasting and indissoluble, yet he adds that to God Himself, the only maker, it is both dissoluble and mortal. So it is no wonder if that mass is destroyed by Him by whom it was built. You see that philosophers argue about the same things we are saying. It is not because we are following their path, but because they copied the shadow of a corrupted truth from the divine declarations of the prophets. In the same way, the most famous of the wise men, first Pythagoras and especially Plato, handed down the teaching of resurrection with a corrupted and divided belief. For they taught that when bodies are dissolved, only the souls remain forever, and that they often pass into other new bodies. To this they also add, in a misrepresentation of the truth, that the souls of men return into cattle, birds, and beasts. Certainly such an opinion is not worthy of a philosopher's inquiry, but of a buffoon's ribaldry. But for our argument, it is enough that even in this matter your wise men agree with us to some extent. But who is so foolish or so brutish as to dare deny that man, just as he could first be formed by God, can also be formed again; that after death he is nothing, and that before he began to exist he was nothing; and that, just as it was possible for him to be born from nothing, so it is possible for him to be restored from nothing? Moreover, it is harder to begin what does not exist than to repeat what has existed. Do you think that if anything is taken away from our weak eyes, it perishes to God? Every body, whether it is dried into dust, dissolved into moisture, pressed into ashes, or reduced into smoke, is hidden from us, but it is kept for God in the custody of the elements. Nor, as you think, do we fear any loss from burial, but we follow the ancient and better custom of burying in the earth. See, therefore, how all nature points to a future resurrection for our comfort. The sun sets and rises. The stars disappear and return. The flowers die and live again. After their winter fading, the shrubs put out leaves again. Seeds do not grow again unless they rot. In the same way, the body in the tomb is like the trees that in winter hide their greenness under a deceiving dryness. Why are you in a hurry for it to revive and return while winter is still harsh? We too must wait for the springtime of the body. And I am not unaware that many people, because they know what they deserve, rather wish than believe that they will be nothing after death. For they would prefer to be completely destroyed rather than to be restored for punishment. And their error is made worse both by the freedom allowed them in this life and by God's very great patience, whose judgment, the more delayed it is, is all the more just.

"...from nothing." Based on this chapter, if not on others, some have too quickly claimed that our author believed the soul dies with the body and must be made again out of nothing. But the argument is completely ad hominem, and, as I understand it, it states nothing from the author's own point of view. He gives what is enough for his argument and claims nothing more. He was not a clergyman, and his work is not a sermon to the faithful. He challenges anyone to deny that, if God could make man out of nothing, He can make him new again out of nothing. The rest of the argument is a brilliant statement of the imperishability of matter, in words that might satisfy modern science. And the implication is that the soul no more passes from God's sight than the body does when it is turned to vapor and kept in the custody of the elements.

AND YET PEOPLE ARE WARNED IN THE BOOKS AND POEMS OF THE MOST LEARNED POETS ABOUT THAT RIVER OF FIRE: and about the heat flowing in many winding courses from the Stygian marsh. These things were prepared for eternal torments. They knew of them through the information of demons and from the oracles of their prophets, and they handed them down to us. Therefore, among them, even King Jupiter himself swears reverently by the burning banks and the black abyss. For, knowing beforehand the punishment appointed for him, along with his worshippers, he shudders. There is no measure or end to these torments. There the intelligent fire burns the limbs and restores them. It feeds on them and nourishes them. Just as the fires of thunderbolts strike bodies and do not consume them, and just as the fires of Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius, and burning lands everywhere, glow but are not used up, so that fire of punishment is not fed by the wasting away of those who burn, but is nourished by the unexhausted eating away of their bodies. But that those who do not know God are deservedly tormented as impious and unrighteous people, no one except a profane man hesitates to believe. For it is no less wicked to be ignorant of the Parent of all and the Lord of all than to offend Him. And although ignorance of God is enough for punishment, just as knowledge of Him is useful for pardon, yet if we Christians are compared with you, although in some things our discipline is inferior, we will still be found much better than you. For you forbid adulteries, and yet commit them. We are born as men only for our own wives. You punish crimes when they are committed. With us, even to think of crimes is to sin. You are afraid of those who know what you do. We are afraid even of our conscience alone, without which we cannot exist. Finally, your great numbers make the prison boil over, but there is no Christian there, unless he is accused on account of his religion, or is a deserter.

AND LET NO ONE EITHER TAKE COMFORT FROM: or make excuses for, what happens by fate. Let what happens be from the disposition of fortune, yet the mind is free. Therefore a man's actions are judged, not his dignity. For what else is fate than what God has spoken concerning each one of us? Since He can foresee our character, He also determines our fates for us according to each person's deserts and qualities. So in our case, it is not the star under which we are born that is punished, but the particular nature of our disposition is blamed. Enough has been said about fate. Or if, because of the time, we have said too little, we will discuss the matter more abundantly and more fully at another time. But that many of us are called poor, this is not our disgrace, but our glory. For just as the mind is weakened by luxury, so it is strengthened by frugality. And who can be poor if he is not in want, if he does not crave the possessions of others, if he is rich toward God? Rather, he is poor who, although he has much, desires more. Yet I will speak as I feel. No one can be as poor as he is when he is born. Birds live without any inheritance, and the cattle are fed day by day. Yet these creatures are born for us, and if we do not lust after these things, we possess them. Therefore, just as the man who travels a road is happier the more lightly he walks, so he is happier in this journey of life who moves forward in poverty and does not breathe heavily under the burden of riches. And even if we thought wealth useful to us, we would ask it of God. Surely He, to whom all things belong, could grant us some measure of it. But we would rather despise riches than possess them. We would rather desire innocency. We would rather ask for patience. We prefer being good to being prodigal. And that we feel and suffer the human mischiefs of the body is not punishment; it is warfare. For fortitude is strengthened by infirmities, and calamity is very often the discipline of virtue. In addition, the strength of both mind and body grows torpid without the exercise of labor. Therefore all your mighty men, whom you present as examples, have become illustrious through their afflictions. And so God is neither unable to help us, nor does He despise us, since He is both the ruler of all men and the lover of His own people. But in adversity He examines and searches out each one. He weighs every person's disposition in dangers, even at last in death. He investigates the will of man, certain that to Him nothing can perish. Therefore, as gold by the fires, so we are proved by critical moments.

How beautiful is the spectacle to God when a Christian does battle with pain; when he is drawn up against threats, punishments, and tortures; when, mocking the noise of death, he treads under foot the horror of the executioner; when he raises up his liberty against kings and princes, and yields to God alone, whose he is. Then, triumphant and victorious, he tramples upon the very man who has pronounced sentence against him. For he has conquered who has obtained that for which he contends. What soldier would not face danger more boldly under the eyes of his general? For no one receives a reward before his trial, and yet the general does not give what he does not have. He cannot preserve life, but he can make the warfare glorious. But God's soldier is neither forsaken in suffering, nor brought to an end by death. Thus the Christian may seem to be miserable; he cannot really be found to be so. You yourselves extol unfortunate men to the skies; Mucius Scaevola, for instance, who, when he had failed in his attempt against the king, would have perished among the enemies unless he had sacrificed his right hand. And how many of our people have borne that not their right hand only, but their whole body, should be burned—burned up without any cries of pain, especially when they had it in their power to be sent away! Do I compare men with Mucius or Aquilius, or with Regulus? Yet boys and young women among us treat with contempt crosses and tortures, wild beasts, and all the bugbears of punishments, with the inspired patience of suffering. And do you not perceive, O wretched men, that there is nobody who either is willing without reason to undergo punishment, or is able without God to bear tortures? Unless, perhaps, the fact has deceived you, that those who know not God abound in riches, flourish in honors, and excel in power. Miserable men! In this respect they are lifted up higher, that they may fall lower. For these are fattened as victims for punishment; as sacrifices they are crowned for slaughter. Thus in this respect some are lifted up to empires and dominations, that the unrestrained exercise of power might make a market of their spirit to the unbridled license that is characteristic of a ruined soul. For, apart from the knowledge of God, what solid happiness can there be, since death must come? Like a dream, happiness slips away before it is grasped. Are you a king? Yet you fear as much as you are feared. And however you may be surrounded with abundant followers, yet you are alone in the presence of danger. Are you rich? But fortune is ill trusted; and with a large traveling equipage the brief journey of life is not furnished, but burdened. Do you boast of the fasces and the magisterial robes? It is a vain mistake of man, and an empty worship of dignity, to glitter in purple and to be sordid in mind. Are you elevated by nobility of birth? Do you praise your parents? Yet we are all born with one lot; it is only by virtue that we are distinguished. We therefore, who are estimated by our character and our modesty, reasonably abstain from evil pleasures, and from your pomps and exhibitions. We know their origin in connection with sacred things, and condemn their mischievous enticements. For in the chariot games who does not shudder at the madness of the people brawling among themselves? Or at the teaching of murder in the gladiatorial games? In the scenic games also the madness is not less, but the debauchery is more prolonged. For now a mimic either expounds or shows forth adulteries; now a nerveless player, while he feigns lust, suggests it. The same actor disgraces your gods by attributing to them adulteries, sighs, and hatreds. The same actor provokes your tears with pretended sufferings, with vain gestures and expressions. Thus you demand murder in fact, while you weep at it in fiction.

CHRISTIANS KEEP AWAY FROM THINGS CONNECTED WITH IDOL SACRIFICES: so that no one may think either that they give in to demons or that they are ashamed of their religion. They do not despise all the color and fragrance of flowers. They are used to having them scattered around loosely and simply, and also to wearing garlands around their necks. But they think it is unnecessary and useless to place a crown on the head of a dead body. Also, with the same calmness with which they live, they bury their dead, waiting with a very sure hope for the crown of eternal blessedness. Therefore, since their religion rejects all the superstitions of the Gentiles, it should be accepted by all people as true.

BUT THAT WE DESPISE THE LEAVINGS OF SACRIFICES: and the cups out of which libations have been poured, is not a confession of fear. It is an assertion of our true liberty. For although nothing that comes into existence as an inviolable gift of God is corrupted by any agency, yet we abstain, lest anyone should think either that we are submitting to demons, to whom libation has been made, or that we are ashamed of our religion. But who is there who doubts that we enjoy spring flowers, when we gather both the rose of spring and the lily, and whatever else among the flowers has agreeable color and odor? For these we both use, scattered loose and free, and we twine our necks with them in garlands. Pardon us, then, that we do not crown our heads. We are accustomed to receive the scent of a sweet flower in our nostrils, not to inhale it with the back of our head or with our hair. Nor do we crown the dead. And in this respect I the more wonder at you, in the way that you apply a torch to a lifeless person, or to one who does not feel, or a garland to one who does not smell it, when either, as blessed, he does not want flowers, or, being miserable, he has no pleasure in them. Still we adorn our obsequies with the same tranquility with which we live. And we do not bind to ourselves a withering garland, but we wear one living with eternal flowers from God, since we, being both moderate and secure in the liberality of our God, are animated to the hope of future felicity by the confidence of His present majesty. Thus we both rise again in blessedness, and are already living in contemplation of the future. Then let Socrates the Athenian buffoon see to it, confessing that he knew nothing, although boastful in the testimony of a most deceitful demon. Let Arcesilaus also, and Carneades, and Pyrrho, and all the multitude of the Academic philosophers, deliberate. Let Simonides also forever put off the decision of his opinion. We despise the bent brows of the philosophers, whom we know to be corrupters, and adulterers, and tyrants, and ever eloquent against their own vices. We who bear wisdom not in our dress, but in our mind, do not speak great things, but live them. We boast that we have attained what they sought with the utmost eagerness, and were not able to find. Why are we ungrateful? Why do we grudge if the truth of divinity has ripened in the age of our time? Let us enjoy our benefits, and let us in rectitude moderate our judgments. Let superstition be restrained. Let impiety be expiated. Let true religion be preserved.

WHEN OCTAVIUS HAD FINISHED SPEAKING: we were silent for some time. We kept our faces fixed in attention. As for me, I was overwhelmed by the greatness of my admiration. He had so beautifully expressed things that are easier to feel than to say, using arguments, examples, and authorities drawn from reading. He had also driven back the malicious objectors with the very weapons of the philosophers by which they are armed. And he had shown that the truth is not only easy, but also pleasing.

WHILE I WAS SILENTLY TURNING THESE THINGS OVER IN MY OWN MIND: Caecilius suddenly spoke out: “I congratulate both my Octavius and myself, as much as I can, on the peace in which we live, and I do not wait for the decision. Even so, we have won. It is not unjust for me to claim the victory for myself. For just as he is my conqueror, so I am triumphant over error. Therefore, regarding the substance of the question, I both confess providence and yield to God. And I agree about the sincerity of the way of life that is now mine. Yet even now some things still remain in my mind, not as resisting the truth, but as necessary for complete instruction. Tomorrow, since the sun is already sinking toward its setting, we will ask about them at length in a more suitable and ready way.”

BUT AS FOR ME: I said, I rejoice even more for all of us, because Octavius has also won on my behalf, since the great burden of making a judgment has been taken away from me. Nor can I match the worth of his words with my praise. The testimony of a man, and of only one man, is weak. He has a glorious reward from God, by whose inspiration he has argued his case, and by whose help he has won the victory.

AFTER THESE THINGS: we left glad and cheerful: Cæcilius rejoicing that he had believed, Octavius that he had succeeded, and I that the one had believed and the other had won.