and the prohibition of polytheistic worship, since even when
the gods were worshipped such calamities befell the people._
Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits,
blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly
when these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and
there rose the mingled fragrance of "Sabæan incense and fresh
garlands;"[154] the priests were clothed with honour, the shrines
were maintained in splendour; sacrifices, games, sacred ecstasies,
were common in the temples; while the blood of the citizens was
being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the
very altars of the gods. Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary
in a temple, because Mucius had sought it there in vain. But they
who most unpardonably calumniate this Christian era, are the very
men who either themselves fled for asylum to the places specially
dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians that they
might be safe. In short, not to recapitulate the many instances I
have cited, and not to add to their number others which it were
tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am persuaded of, and this
every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge, that if the human
race had received Christianity before the Punic wars, and if the
same desolating calamities which these wars brought upon Europe and
Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, there is no one
of those who now accuse us who would not have attributed them to our
religion. How intolerable would their accusations have been, at least
so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had
been received and diffused prior to the invasion of the Gauls, or to
the ruinous floods and fires which desolated Rome, or to those most
calamitous of all events, the civil wars! And those other disasters,
which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies,
had they happened since the Christian era, to whom but to the
Christians would they have imputed these as crimes? I do not speak
of those things which were rather surprising than hurtful,--oxen
speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mothers'
wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other
sex; and other similar prodigies which, whether true or false, are
recorded not in their imaginative, but in their historical works,
and which do not injure, but only astonish men. But when it rained
earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones--not hailstones,
but real stones--this certainly was calculated to do serious damage.
We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from
the top of the mountain to the neighbouring shore, caused the sea to
boil, so that rocks were burnt up, and the pitch of ships began to
run,--a phenomenon incredibly surprising, but at the same time no
less hurtful. By the same violent heat, they relate that on another
occasion Sicily was filled with cinders, so that the houses of the
city Catina were destroyed and buried under them,--a calamity which
moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their tribute for that
year. One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a
province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts,
which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were
driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when
they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was polluted, and
so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Masinissa
alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a much greater
number in the neighbouring districts. At Utica they assure us that,
of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived only ten. Yet
which of these disasters, suppose they happened now, would not be
attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly
accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own
gods they attribute none of these things, though they worship them
for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do
not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were not preserved
from these serious disasters.
FOOTNOTES:
[115] Compare Aug. _Epist. ad Deogratias_, 102, 13; and _De Præd.
Sanct._ 19.
[116] Ch. iv.
[117] Virg. _Georg._ i. 502, 'Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ.'
[118] _Iliad_, xx. 293 et seqq.
[119] _Æneid_, v. 810, 811.
[120] Gratis et ingratis.
[121] _De Conj. Cat._ vi.
[122] Helen's husband.
[123] Venus' husband.
[124] Suetonius, in his _Life of Julius Cæsar_ (c. 6), relates that,
in pronouncing a funeral oration in praise of his aunt Julia, Cæsar
claimed for the Julian gens to which his family belonged a descent
from Venus, through Iulus, son of Eneas.
[125] Livy, 83, one of the lost books; and Appian, _in Mithridat_.
[126] The gates of Janus were not the gates of a temple, but the
gates of a passage called Janus, which was used only for military
purposes; shut therefore in peace, open in war.
[127] The year of the Consuls T. Manlius and C. Atilius, A. U. C. 519.
[128] Sall. _Conj. Cat._ ii.
[129] _Æneid_, viii. 326-7.
[130] Sall. _Cat. Conj._ vi.
[131] _Æneid_, xi. 532.
[132] _Ibid._ x. 464.
[133] Livy, x. 47.
[134] Being son of Apollo.
[135] Virgil, _Æn._ i. 286.
[136] _Pharsal._ v. 1.
[137] _Æneid_, x. 821, of Lausus:
"But when Anchises' son surveyed
The fair, fair face so ghastly made,
He groaned, by tenderness unmanned,
And stretched the sympathizing hand," etc.
[138] Virgil, _Æneid_, vi. 813.
[139] Sallust, _Cat. Conj._ ii.
[140] Ps. x. 3.
[141] _Æneid_, ii. 351-2.
[142] Cicero, _De Rep._ ii. 10.
[143] _Contra Cat._ iii. 2.
[144] _Æneid_, vi. 820, etc.
[145] His nephew.
[146] _Hist._ i.
[147] Lectisternia, from _lectus_, a couch, and _sterno_, I spread.
[148] _Proletarius_, from _proles_, offspring.
[149] The oracle ran: "Dico te, Pyrrhe, vincere posse Romanos."
[150] Troy, Lavinia, Alba.
[151] Under the inscription on the temple some person wrote the line,
"Vecordiæ opus ædem facit Concordiæ"--The work of discord makes the
temple of Concord.
[152] Cicero, _in Catilin._ iii. _sub. fin._
[153] Lucan, _Pharsal._ ii. 142-146.
[154] Virgil, _Æneid_, i. 417.
BOOK FOURTH.[155]
ARGUMENT.
IN THIS BOOK IT IS PROVED THAT THE EXTENT AND LONG DURATION OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE IS TO BE ASCRIBED, NOT TO JOVE OR THE GODS OF THE
HEATHEN, TO WHOM INDIVIDUALLY SCARCE EVEN SINGLE THINGS AND THE
VERY BASEST FUNCTIONS WERE BELIEVED TO BE ENTRUSTED, BUT TO
THE ONE TRUE GOD, THE AUTHOR OF FELICITY, BY WHOSE POWER AND
JUDGMENT EARTHLY KINGDOMS ARE FOUNDED AND MAINTAINED.