City of God (Penguin Classics) (42 page)
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Authors: Saint Augustine
As for Brutus, even the poet who praises him testifies to his ill-fortune,
His sons, conspiring to an armed revolt
He punished, in fair liberty’s defence.
O most unhappy, howsoe’er the future
Speak of his deed!
Though in the next line he consoles the unhappy man,
Love of his country and the boundless passion
For high renown, these swayed his grim resolve.
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These were the two motives which drove the Romans to their wonderful achievements: liberty, and the passion for the praise of men. Then if a father could kill his sons for the liberty of those destined to die and because of a desire for the praises which were to be won from mortal beings, is it anything remarkable if, to gain the true liberty, which frees us from the domination of death, of iniquity and of the devil, not from desire for human praise but from the charitable longing to set men free (not from King Tarquin, but from the demons and the prince of the demons) – is it remarkable if, for the sake of all this we should be ready, not to kill our sons, but to reckon among our sons the poor people of Christ?
Another great man of Rome, surnamed Torquatus,
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put his son to death because he had fought, not against his country but for his country, yet in defiance of the command issued by his father, his commander. The son in his youthful ardour had accepted the enemy’s challenge to combat and he had conquered. Yet his father killed him, for fear that the evil of the bad example of contempt or orders would outweigh the glory of the victory over the enemy. In face of this, why should they plume themselves who, in obedience to the laws of their immortal country, despise all this world’s goods, which are much less dear than sons?
Furius Camillus
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had struck off from his country’s neck the yoke of Veii, Rome’s bitterest enemy, and then had been condemned by his rivals; yet he returned to rescue his ungrateful country again, this time from the Gauls. For he could find no better country where he could live with greater honour. Then why should we extol, as if for some grand accomplishment, a man who happens to have suffered grave injustice in the Church at the hands of worldly enemies by being deprived of his position; and then, instead of going over to the side of the Church’s enemies, or founding some heresy against her, has preferred to use all his efforts to defend the Church against the baneful perversions of the heretics, since there is no other Church where he can find, not the chance of living gloriously in men’s eyes, but the way to attain to life eternal?
When Porsenna was pressing hard on Rome in a struggle of the utmost gravity, Mucius
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failed in an attempt to kill the Etruscan chief and by mistake killed another man instead. Thereupon he stretched out his right hand into the flame of an altar before Porsenna’s eyes, saying, ‘You see what kind of man I am. There are many men of the same stamp who have sworn an oath together to destroy
you’ Shocked by this display of fortitude, and dreading a conspiracy of such men, Porsenna made peace without delay and stopped the war. Considering this, surely no one is likely to regard his own merits as entitling him to a share in the kingdom of heaven, if for that kingdom’s sake he has given to the flames not one of his hands but the whole of his body, and that not by a voluntary self-inflicted sacrifice but as the victim of another’s persecution.
Then there is the case of Curtius,
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He spurred on his horse and hurled himself, fully armed, into a gaping chasm in obedience to the oracles of his gods. They had ordered that the best possession of the Romans should be consigned to that abyss, and the Romans could only interpret this as referring to their excellence in warriors and in arms; hence it appeared that at the gods’ command a fully-armed warrior must hurl himself to that death. Remembering him, will anyone claim credit for something heroic if he has encountered an enemy of his faith and then has not sent himself to such a death of his own accord, but has been sent to meet it by that enemy? And we know that he has received from his Lord, who is the king of his own country, an oracle more definite than any oracle of Rome, ‘Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.’
The Decii
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devoted themselves to death, consecrating themselves in a way by sacrificial formulas, so that the anger of the gods might be appeased by the bloodshed as they fell, and the Roman army might be saved. In view of that act, the holy martyrs have no cause for boasting, as though they have done anything worthy of participation in that country where there is eternal and genuine felicity, if they have struggled in the faith of charity and the charity of faith, to the extent of shedding their blood – loving not only their brothers, for whom their blood was shed, but, in obedience to the commandment, loving even their enemies, by whom it was shed.
Marcus Pulvillus
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was dedicating the temple of Jove, Juno, and Minerva when he received a false report of the death of his son, put about by envious rivals in the hope that he would be so distressed as to retire from the ceremony, and his colleagues would gain the glory of the dedication. But he thought so little of it that he ordered his son’s body to be thrown out without burial, so completely had the passion for glory overcome the sorrow of bereavement in his heart. If Pulvillus could do that, then what of the man who was so concerned about his father’s burial, to whom the Lord said, ‘Follow me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead?’
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Is he to claim that he has performed some
great feat for the preaching of the gospel, by which the citizens of the country on high are freed from all kinds of error and gathered into a community?
Marcus Regulus
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refused to break his sworn promise to a ruthless enemy. He left Rome and went back to the enemy, because (as he is said to have replied to the Romans who would have kept him back) he could not hold up his head as an honourable citizen in Rome after he had been a slave to Africans. And the Carthaginians murdered him with hideous tortures, because he had acted against their interests in the Roman senate. Then surely we Christians should make light of any kind of torture in defence of the faith of that country to which faith itself guides us? Or ‘what return will be given to the Lord for all the benefits which he has given,’
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if a man has suffered, for the faith which is due to God, such torture as Regulus suffered for the faith which he owed to his pitiless foes?
How can a Christian dare to pride himself on poverty voluntarily accepted to enable him to walk less encumbered on the road that leads to his own country, where God himself is the true wealth, when he hears or reads about Lucius Valerius,
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who died during his consulship, so poor that a public collection was made to pay for his burial? Or when he hears or reads about Quintius Cincinnatus
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who owned two acres of land, which he cultivated with his own hands, who was taken from his plough to become dictator – an office much higher than that of consul – and who, when he had conquered the enemy and won immense glory, then continued in the same poverty as before?
And can the Christian brag of any extraordinary performance, if he has refused to be seduced from the fellowship of that Heavenly Country by any of this world’s prizes, when he learns that Fabricius
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could not be torn from his allegiance to the Roman state by the most lavish presents of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who offered him as much as a quarter of his kingdom? Fabricius preferred to remain in poverty as an ordinary citizen.
Those Romans had a republic richly endowed with all resources (and ‘republic’ means ‘state of the people’, ‘state of the country’, ‘commonwealth’), while they themselves lived in poverty in their own homes. So much so that one of them,
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who had already been consul
twice, was dismissed from the senate by the censor’s ban, because it was discovered that he had ten pounds of silver plate. Such was the poverty of men whose triumphs enriched the public treasury. It is a far nobler resolution that leads Christians to regard their riches as belonging to all, according to the principle described in the Acts of Apostles; by which everything is shared out according to individual need, no one claims anything as his private property, and everything belongs to the common stock.
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But Christians must understand that this gives them no ground for self-conceit, since they do this to attain to the fellowship of the angels, while the Roman worthies did much the same to preserve the glory of their country.
Such instances as these (and there are many others to be found in Roman literature) would never have gained such renown, or been so often quoted, had not the Roman Empire extended far and wide, coming to greatness with so impressive a record of success. Accordingly, it was that Empire, so far-spread and so long-lasting, and given lustre and glory by the heroic quality of its great men, that gave to them the return they looked for as a recompense for their resolution, while it sets before us Christians examples whose message we cannot but heed. If we do not display, in the service of the most glorious City of God, the qualities of which the Romans, after their fashion, gave us something of a model, in their pursuit of the glory of their earthly city, then we ought to feel the prick of shame. If we do display these virtues, we must not be infected with pride, for, as the Apostle says, ‘The sufferings of the present time are not worth thinking of, in view of the glory which will be manifested in us.’
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Whereas the Romans judged their life abundantly worthwhile in view of the glory of men in the immediate present.
The Jews put Christ to death, when the New Testament revealed what was veiled in the Old Testament,
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the knowledge that God, the one true God, is to be worshipped for the sake of eternal life and everlasting gifts and for participation in that City on high, and not for earthly and temporal blessings, which divine providence bestows on good and evil without discrimination. And for this the Jews were justly given over to the Romans, for the greater glory of Rome, so that those who had sought earthly glory and attained it by their virtue (of
whatever kind), overcame those who in their perverse wickedness spurned and put to death the giver of true glory and of citizenship in the Eternal City.
19.
The difference between ambition for glory and ambition for domination
There is a clear difference between the desire for glory before men and the desire for domination. There is, to be sure, a slippery slope from the excessive delight in the praise of men to the burning passion for domination; and yet those who long for true glory, though it be the glory of merely human praise, are anxious for the good opinion of enlightened judges. For there are many good moral qualities which are approved by many, though many do not possess them. And it is by those moral qualities that glory, power, and domination are sought by the kind of men who, as Sallust says, ‘strive for them in the right way’.
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But if anyone aims at power and domination without that kind of desire for glory which makes a man fear the disapprobation of sound judges, then he generally seeks to accomplish his heart’s desire by the most barefaced crimes.
Thus the man who covets glory either ‘strives by the right way’ for it or ‘struggles by trickery and deceit’, desiring to seem a good man without being so. Therefore it is a great virtue in a virtuous man to despise glory, because this contempt is seen by God, but is not revealed to the judgement of men. If anyone acts before men’s eyes with the intention of seeming to despise glory, then men may suspect that such action is designed to win greater praise, that is, greater glory; and there is no way in which he can make it apparent to perception that such suspicion is groundless. But the man who despises flattering judgement, also despises baseless suspicions; and yet, if he is a truly good man, he does not regard the salvation of his fellow-men as of no importance. For so great is the righteousness of one who has his virtues from the Spirit of God, that he loves even his enemies; and such is his love even for those who hate and disparage him, that he wishes them to be reformed so that he may have them as fellow-citizens, not of the earthly city, but of the heavenly. As for those who praise him, though he takes little account of their applause, he does not undervalue their love; he does not want to deceive those who praise him, because he would not want to play tricks on those who love him. And for that reason his ardent concern is that praise should
rather be given to him from whom man receives whatever in him is rightly deserving of praise.
On the other hand, the man who despises glory and is eager only for domination is worse than the beasts, in his cruelty or in his self-indulgence. Some of the Romans were men of this kind, who, while caring nothing for the opinion of others, were possessed by the passion for domination. History shows that there were many such; but it was Nero Caesar who first scaled, as it were, the heights of this vice, and gained the summit. So debauched was he that one would have supposed that nothing virile was to be feared from him; such was his cruelty that one would not have suspected anything effeminate in his nature, if one had not known about it.
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Yet even to men like this the power of domination is not given except by the providence of God, when he decides that man’s condition deserves such masters. God’s statement on this point is clear, when the divine Wisdom says, ‘It is through me that kings rule, and through me that tyrants possess the land.’
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It might be supposed that ‘tyrants’ here is used not in the sense of ‘wicked and irresponsible rulers’, but in the ancient meaning of ‘men of power’, as when Virgil says,
