28 gods discoverers not creators of goods, themselves bad. APOL. Nothing awaited Saturn and the race of Saturn. Men must be I. 11. fools, if they be not assured that from the beginning rain hath fallen from heaven, and stars have beamed, and light hath shot forth, and thunders have roared, and Jupiter himself hath feared those bolts which ye place in his hands; that all fruit likewise sprang abundantly from the earth before Bacchus, and Ceres, and Minerva, yea before that first man whosoever he was; because nothing provided, for the maintenance and support of man, could have been introduced after man. Finally they are said to have discovered these necessaries of life, not to have made them: but that which is discovered, was, and that which was, will not be accounted his who discovered, but his who made it: for it was, before it was discovered. Further, if Bacchus be therefore a god, because he first made known the vine, Lucullus, who first introduced cherries generally into Italy, hath been inven hardly dealt with, because, being the 'pointer out, he was omitted not thereupon deified as the author of a new fruit. Where tor et fore if the universe hath existed from the beginning, both ordered and dispensed by fixed laws for the exercise of its functions, there lacketh a cause in this particular for admitting man to the Godhead, because the posts and powers which ye have assigned to them, have existed just as much from the beginning as they would have, even if ye had not created these gods. But ye betake yourselves to another reason, and answer that the conferring Deity upon them was a means of rewarding their merits, and hence ye grant, I suppose, that this god-making God is excellent in justice, one who would not rashly, nor unworthily, nor lavishly, dispense so great a reward. I would therefore recount their merits, whether they be such as should raise them to heaven, 2 demer- and not rather sink them down into "the nethermost hell," which, when ye choose, ye affirm to be the prisonhouse of eternal punishments'. For thither are the wicked wont to be thrust, and such as are unchaste towards their parents, and their sisters, and the debauchers of wives, and the ravishers of virgins, and the corrupters of boys, and they who are of angry passions, and they who kill, and they who steal, and they who deceive, and whosoever are like some serint 29 Many men better than the gods, even though good. god of yours, not one of whom will ye be able to prove free from crime or vice, unless ye shall deny that he was a man. But as ye cannot deny that they were men, ye have, besides, 'potestis these marks which do not either allow it to be believed that they were afterwards made gods. For if ye sit in judgment for the punishment of such men, if all who among you are honest refuse the intercourse, the conversation, the company, of the evil and the base, and if that God hath admitted their compeers to a fellowship in his own majesty, why then condemn ye those whose fellows ye worship? Your justice is a stigma upon heaven. Make all your worst criminals gods, that ye may please your gods. The deifying of their fellows is an honour to them. But to omit farther discussion of this their unworthiness, grant that they be honest, and pure, and good. Still how many better men have ye left in the shades below! in wisdom a Socrates, in justice an Aristides, in warlike arts a Themistocles, in greatness of soul an Alexander, in good fortune a Polycrates, in wealth a Croesus, in eloquence a Demosthenes! Which of these gods of yours was more grave and wise than Cato? more just and warlike than Scipio? Which more great of soul than Pompey? more fortunate than Sylla? more wealthy than Crassus? more eloquent than Tully? How much more worthily would he have waited for these to be adopted as gods, foreknowing, as he must, the better men! He was hasty I trow, and shut up heaven once for all, and now blusheth doubtless to see better men grumbling in the shades below. XII. I say no more now of these, as knowing that, when I have shewn what they are, I shall by the very force of truth shew what they are not. As touching your gods therefore, I see names only, the statues of certain dead men of olden time, and2 statuas I hear fables, and in their fables I read their mysteries. But added as touching the images themselves I find nothing else than 3 esse materials akin to vessels and instruments of common use, or from these same vessels and instruments, as though changing their destiny by their consecration, the wantonness of art transforming them, and that too most insultingly, and in the work itself sacrilegiously: so that in very truth it may be a Athenag. c. 30. omitted I. 12. 30 Process of image-making disgrace to image-worship. APOL. consolation to us in our punishments, especially since we are punished on account of these very gods, that they themselves also suffer the same things in order that they may be made. Ye put the Christians upon crosses and stakes". What image doth not the clay first form, moulded upon a cross and a stake? It is on the gibbet that the body of your god is first consecrated! Ye tear the sides of the Christians with claws but upon your gods hatchets, and planes, and files, are more stoutly laid over all their limbs. We lay down our necks until lead and glue and pegs have been used, your gods are headless. We are driven to the beasts; those surely which ye attach to Bacchus, and to Cybele, and to Cælestis'. We are burned with fire: so too are they in their original mass. We are condemned to the mines: it is thence that your gods are derived. We are banished to islands in an island also one or other of your gods useth to be born or to die". If by such means any deity is formed, then those who are punished are deified, and your condemned criminals ought to be called gods. But clearly your gods feel not these injuries and insults in the forming of them; as neither do they the honours paid to them. O impious words! O sacrilegious revilings! Gnash your teeth and foam upon us. Ye are the same men who approve of a Seneca declaiming against your superstition in more copious and bitter words". Wherefore if we worship not statues and cold images, very like their dead originals, which the kites, and the mice, and the spiders, well know", did not the renouncing of the discovered error deserve praise rather than punishment? For can we think that we injure those, who we are sure have no being at all? That which is not, suffereth nothing from any, because it is not. h By impaling, (Theod. de Cur. Gr. Aff. Disp. viii. init.) or when exposed to the wild beasts, Eus. H. E. v. 1. or burnt alive, Lips. de Cruce. Justin M. Apol. i. 9. Ep. ad Diogn. k Cyprian. de Laps. c. 10. Auct. de The tutelary goddess of Carthage. They were pictured as drawn by lions, tigers, or lynxes. Jupiter in Crete, Apollo and Diana in Delos, Juno in Samos. See in Aug. de Civ. D. vi. 10. • See note B. at the end of the Apology. P See Baruch vi. 19. Clem. Al. Cohort. c. iv. p. 15. Arnob. 1. vi. p. 202. Minut. F. p. 221. Lact. ii. 4. Aug. in Ps. 113. §. 2. Profanations in heathenism toward their own gods. 31 1 1 2 illos, ut XIII. But,' sayest thou,' they are gods to us.' And how is it that ye on the other hand are found to be impious, and sacrilegious, and irreligious, towards those gods? Deos neglecting those, whom ye presume to exist; destroying negligathose, whom ye fear, and even mocking those, whom yelis, &c. avenge! Mark whether I speak falsely. First in that, when qui ye worship, some one, some another, of course ye offend those whom ye worship not. The preference of one cannot go on without the slight of another, because there is no choice without rejection. Ye despise then at once those whom ye reject; whom ye fear not, by rejecting, to offend. For as we have before shortly hinted, the case of each god depended upon the judgment of the Senate. He was not a god, whom man, after consultation, had refused, and, by refusing, had condemned. Your household gods, whom ye call Lares, ye deal with according to your household rights, by pledging, selling, changing them, sometimes from a Saturn into a chamber vessel, sometimes from a Minerva into a pan, as each hath become worn and battered by being long worshipped, as each man hath found his household need the more sacred god. Your public gods ye equally profane by public right, whom ye have in the register as a source of revenue. Thus the capitol, thus the herb-market is bid for'. Under the same proclamation of the crier, under the same spear, in the same catalogue of the quæstor, Deity is consigned and hired. But in truth lands charged with a tribute are of less value: men assessed for a poll-tax are less noble. For these are the marks of villenage. But the gods who pay the highest tribute are the most holy; yea, rather, they who are the most holy pay the highest tribute. Their majesty is made a source of gain: Religion goeth about the taverns begging'. Ye exact payment for a footing in the temple, for access to the sacred rite. Ye may not know the gods for nothing: they have their price. What do ye at all to honour them, which ye do not bestow on your dead men also? Athenag. c. 14. Aug. de Civ. D. vii. 1. The fees for visiting the capitol were let by auction every five years (ad Nat. i. 10.) like the tolls of the herb market. Chiefly the Dea Syria, Magna Mater, whence the term μnrgayúşrai; 32 Degraded objects of Roman worship-Simon Magus. APOL. Temples all the same, altars all the same, the same dress I. 13. and badges on the statues. As the dead man hath his age, hath his profession, hath his occupation, so hath the god. How doth the funeral feast differ from the feast of Jupiter? a bowl from a chalice'? an embalmer from a soothsayer? for a soothsayer also attendeth on the dead. But rightly do ye offer divine honours to your deceased Emperors, to whom even when living ye assign them. Your gods will count themselves your debtors, yea will be thankful because their masters are made their equals. But when among your Junos, and Cereses, and Dianas, ye worship Larentina", a public harlot, (I would at least it had been Lais or Phryne ;) when ye instal Simon Magus' with a statue and the title of an holy god; when ye make I know not whom out of the court pages a god of the synod; although your ancient Out of which libations to the dead were poured. The sameness of the rites argues that the gods also were but dead men. u Arca Larentia, the nurse of Romulus, Plin. xviii. 1. Licinius Macer ap. Macrob. Sat. i. 10. A. Gell. vi. 7. * Justin M. Apol. i. c. 26. gives the inscription "Simoni Deo Sancto," and says that the statue with this inscription "stood by the Tiber between the two bridges." This was the title of the Island of Esculapius, (Plutarch. in Poplic. p. 221. ed. Bryan.) where A.D. 1572 was dug up a statue with the inscription," Semoni Sanco" (or "Sango") Deo Fidio sacrum Sex. Pompeius, &c. whence some have thought that he confounded Semo [the Sabine Hercules] with Simon Magus, and that the more, since the i and e are interchanged in inscriptions, e. g. Mircurius, Gimina, and that the Sabine god is called Sanctus, Ov. Fast. vi. 214. Grabe ad Euseb. H. E. ii. 13. [This however is doubtful. Sancto is thought to be a corrupt reading, derived from the abbreviation SCO. Yet he is called Sanctus in the edd. of Sil. Ital. viii. 422. and in a second inscription it is used as an epithet Sango Sancto Semoni Deo," which comes nearer to the use in Justin, see Comm. in Ovid. 1. c. ed. Burmann.] Tillemont, on the other hand, remarks, (t. ii. Notes sur Simon le Mag.) 1. that Justin implies (ib. c. 56.) that the statue was erected by Claudius and the Senate, (and S. Augustine affirms it, Hær. i. 6. " auc toritate publica,") that discovered, is by an individual: 2. that the words are not the same, nor the order: 3. that Justin speaks of it, as a single case, and asks for one statue to be removed, whereas there were many statues of Simon; (so Baronius, who mentions one on the Quirinal:) 4. that S. Augustine, who makes the same statement, knew of the Sabine Semo (de Civ. D. xviii. 19.) [as did Lact. i. 15.] 5. that Theodoret, Hær. Fab. i. 1. says, that the statue was of brass, that this was of stone, [but it does not seem that any statue was found, but the base only, Baron. 1. c.] There is then to set against the authority of Justin, only a similarity of inscription and the identity of the place, which however was full of temples, and was hence called the sacred island, (Liv. ii. 5. Plut. l. c.) Another contrast would be suggested by Baronius A. 44. §. 55. who says on the authority of S. Irenæus, i. 20. [23, 4.] Epiph. xxi. 3. that Simon's statue was in the form of Jupiter, while that of Semo represented Hercules. But these fathers are not here speaking of the Roman statue, but of that which his followers had and worshipped, of which S. Irenæus speaks positively, of the Roman, as a report. (ib. §. 1.) The degraded Antinous, by the Emp. Adrian. see Orig. c. Cels. iii. 36. Hegesippus ap. Eus. H. E. iv. 8. Spartian. in Adriano. An ancient inscription calls him "enthroned" (ovvlgora) "with the Egyptian gods." |