City of God (Penguin Classics) (24 page)
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Authors: Saint Augustine
4.
Varro’s opinion, that the fiction of divine descent has its uses
Someone will ask, ‘Do you yourself believe those tales?’ No, I certainly do not believe them; and Varro, the most learned of the Romans,
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almost admits their falsity, though timidly and diffidently. But he asserts that it is an advantage to communities that brave men should believe themselves to be sons of gods, even if it is not true. By this means the spirit of man, in the confidence of presumed divine descent, may be bolder in undertaking mighty enterprises, and more energetic in action, and so achieve greater success by reason of that sense of security. I have reproduced Varro’s opinion in my own words, as faithfully as I can; and you notice what a wide field it offers to falsehood. This may help us to realize that many more ostensibly religious rites may have been invented in cases where lies about the gods were thought to bring advantage to the citizens.
5.
That the gods punished the adultery of Paris is improbable, since they did not punish that crime in the case of Romulus’ mother
Let us leave undecided the question whether Venus could have given birth to Aeneas after a liaison with Anchises, or Mars have become father to Romulus after an amour with Numitor’s daughter. For a somewhat similar question arises from our Scriptures, where the question is whether the delinquent angels actually had intercourse with the daughters of men
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and produced the giants – the men of great
stature and strength, who filled the earth at that period. For the present, our discussion must be confined to this dilemma. If the often-read stories about the mother of Aeneas and the father of Romulus are true, how can the gods object to men’s adulteries, which they tolerate among themselves with equanimity? If they are untrue, even then the gods cannot be outraged by human adultery, seeing that they delight in false stories about their own. There is the further point that if the story about Mars is not credited and in consequence the tale about Venus is disbelieved, then the mother of Romulus cannot be defended by the plea that her liaison was with a god. Now Rhea was a priestess of Vesta, and for that reason the gods were more bound to avenge that sacrilegious sin on the Romans than they were to punish the Trojans for the adultery of Paris. For in antiquity when Vestal priestesses were caught in sexual offences the Romans used to bury them alive; as for adulterous women, they did indeed condemn them to some punishment, but they did not put them to death. For their vengeance for the profanation of their supposed divine sanctuaries was so much more severe than that for the pollution of the human marriage-bed.
6.
The gods did not avenge the fratricide of Romulus
Yet another point: if those divinities were so indignant at men’s sins, that they abandoned Troy and handed it over to fire and the sword in outrage at the action of Paris, then Romulus’ murder of his brother should have stirred them more against the Romans than the fooling of a husband moved them against the Trojans. Fratricide in a community just coming into being should have troubled them more than adultery in an established kingdom. It is not relevant to our present argument whether the crime was committed at Romulus’ bidding, or by his own hands. The latter possibility many brazenly deny, many honourably doubt, many sorrowfully refuse to admit. We need not waste time in minute examination of the question, carefully weighing the evidence of all the historians. One thing is agreed; the brother of Romulus was murdered, and not by enemies or strangers. Whether Romulus perpetrated or ordered this crime, he was much more the chief man of the Romans than Paris was of the Trojans. Why then did the ravisher of another’s wife call down the wrath of gods upon the Trojans, while the murder of a brother attracted their protection for the Romans?
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On the other hand, if Romulus had no part either in the committing or the ordering of the crime, it certainly should have been avenged, and therefore the whole community was guilty, because the whole community took no heed of it. And that was worse than fratricide; it was patricide. The pair were joint-founders, and the one who was put away by this crime was deprived of his right to be a ruler. There is, in my judgement, no way of showing why Troy deserved so ill that the gods abandoned her to destruction or why Rome deserved so well that the gods dwelt in her to promote her increase – unless perhaps the conquered gods escaped from Troy and took refuge with the Romans, to delude them in the same way? More likely they stayed behind to deceive in their usual manner those who afterwards settled in that country, while in Rome they practised those same techniques of deception on an even larger scale, and thus rejoiced in winning greater honours.
7.
The destruction of Troy by Fimbria, general of Marius
However that may be, what crime had poor Ilium committed that, when the civil wars were raging, she should be destroyed by Fimbria,
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the lowest scoundrel of the Marian party, with greater savagery and ruthlessness than she had suffered from the Greeks? For on that earlier occasion many escaped from Troy, and many were taken captive and at least preserved their lives, though in slavery. Whereas Fimbria first issued an edict that no one should be spared, and then set fire to the city and reduced the whole of it to ashes, with all its inhabitants. And Ilium won this treatment not from the Greeks whom she had provoked by her wrong-doing, but from the Romans, whom she had propagated as a result of her first disaster. While the gods whom she shared with Rome gave her no help to repel this calamity – or rather, to tell the truth, had not the power to help. Are we to say that, at this time also,
The shrines and altars were left deserted
By all the gods.
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the gods by whose favour the city had stood when rebuilt after its burning and destruction by the Greeks?
If they had withdrawn, I look into the cause; and the more merit I
find in the case for the townspeople, the lower the value I place on the case for the gods. For the townsfolk had shut their gates against Fimbria, so that they might keep the city intact for Sulla. It was Fimbria’s anger at this that made him set fire to the city, or rather to extinguish it utterly. Up to that time Sulla had been the leader of the better of the warring factions, and so far he had been striving to restore the commonwealth by force of arms. Those good beginnings had not yet led to their disastrous consequences. So what better course could the citizens of Troy have taken, what course more honourable, more loyal, more worthy of their Roman parenthood, than to preserve their city for the better of the Roman sides and to shut their gates against the murderer of the Roman commonwealth?
But let the defenders of the gods observe how this action turned into disaster for them. The gods may have deserted the adulterers and abandoned Ilium to the flames of the Greeks, so that a purer Rome might be born from its ashes. Why did they afterwards desert that same city, so closely related to the Romans, which was not in revolt against Rome, her illustrious daughter, but was keeping unswerving and loyal faith with the party which had more justice on its side? Why did the gods abandon that city to destruction, not by Greek heroes but by the most despicable villain in Rome? Or if the gods disapproved of the cause of the party of Sulla (for those unfortunate people closed their gates to preserve the city for that side) why did they promise and foretell such good fortune for that same Sulla? Are they not here revealed as flatterers of the lucky, rather than defenders of the unfortunate?
Not even at this time was it true that Ilium was overthrown because the gods deserted her. The demons, always on the watch for a chance to deceive, did as much as they could. For when all the images were overthrown and burnt, in the destruction of the town itself, only the image of Minerva, writes Livy,
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is said to have still stood unharmed when her temple fell in total ruin. This happened, not so that these lines could be quoted in praise of the gods:
Gods of our fathers, whose divine protection
Shelters great Troy,
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but to prevent the quotation of these words in their defence:
The shrines and altars now were left deserted
By all the gods.
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For what was granted to those gods was not the ability to prove their power, but to give evidence of their presence.
8.
Should Rome have been entrusted to the gods of Troy
?
Was it really prudent to entrust the defence of Rome to the gods of Ilium, after the lesson provided by the fate of Troy itself? Perhaps I may be told that when Ilium fell to the assault of Fimbria the gods had long been settled as residents of Rome? How is it then that Minerva’s image still stood? Then again, if the gods were at Rome when Fimbria destroyed Ilium, perhaps they were at Ilium when the Gauls took Rome and burned it? But so quick is their hearing and so swift their speed that they returned in a hurry at the goose’s cry, so that at least they could protect the Capitol hill, which remained in Roman hands. But they received the warning to return too late to defend the rest of the city.
9.
Is the peace of Numa’s reign to be credited to the gods
?
It is believed that the gods assisted Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus, so that he enjoyed peace for the whole of his reign and shut the gates of Janus, which are by custom kept open in time of war. I suppose he earned this good fortune by the institution of many religious rites among the Romans.
It would be right to congratulate this person on that long period of tranquillity if he had been wise enough to employ it in salutary activities and to abandon his mischievous superstition for the quest of the true God in the spirit of true godliness. In reality, it was not those gods who granted him this tranquillity; but they would perhaps have deceived him less if they had found him less at leisure. For the less occupied they found him, the more they occupied his thoughts. Varro reveals the kind of activities he engaged in, and the techniques by which he tried to bring the gods into alliance with himself and with his city. We shall discuss this more fully in another place, if the Lord so wills. Our present topic is simply the benefits conferred by the gods.
Peace is a great benefit, but it is a benefit bestowed by the true God, often, like the sun, the rain, and other supports of life, bestowed upon the ungrateful and the worthless. But if the gods bestowed this great benefit on Rome or on Pompilius, why did they never grant it to the Roman Empire afterwards, even in its praiseworthy periods? Were
the sacred rites more valuable when they were being established than when, after their establishment, they were still performed? And yet, in Numa’s time these rites were not in existence. Numa brought them into the Roman religion, and so they began to exist. When they existed they were carefully preserved for the good of the community. How is it then that forty-three years (some authorities say thirty-nine) passed in that long peace of Numa’s reign, while afterwards, when the rites had been established and the gods themselves, whose presence had been solicited by those rites, were now the protectors and guardians of the city, not more than one year
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has been recorded, in all that time from the foundation of the city to the reign of Augustus, in which the Romans were able to close the Gates of War. And that was recorded as a notable miracle!
10.
Rome could have been secure and tranquil, pursuing the aims of Numa. Was it desirable that Rome’s dominion should be increased by the mad pursuit of war
?
Are our opponents going to reply that the Roman Empire could not have been increased so far and wide, and Roman glory could not have spread, except by continual wars, following one upon another? What a satisfying explanation! Why must an empire be deprived of peace, in order that it may be great? In regard to men’s bodies it is surely better to be of moderate size, and to be healthy, than to reach the immense stature of a giant at the cost of unending disorders – not to rest when that stature is reached, but to be troubled with greater disorders with the increasing size of the limbs. Would any evil have resulted, would not, in fact, the result have been wholly good, if that first era had persisted? Here is Sallust’s brief description of those times:
At the beginning of history the name of kings was given to the first wielders of power. Those kings differed in their inclinations: some exercised their mental powers, others their physical abilities. At that time men’s life was lived without greed, and each man was content with what he had.
Was it necessary that, for the aggrandizement of empire, we should have the process deplored by Virgil, when he says,
By slow degrees, as agesucceeded age
life lost its beauty, and its worth declined,
As war’s fierce madness and the lust for gain
Possessed men’s hearts.
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Now obviously the Romans had a just excuse for undertaking and carrying on those great wars. When they were subjected to unprovoked attacks by their enemies, they were forced to resist not by lust for glory in men’s eyes but by the necessity to defend their life and liberty. We grant that; for, as Sallust says,
