Having begun to speak of the city of God, I have thought it necessary
first of all to reply to its enemies, who, eagerly pursuing earthly
joys, and gaping after transitory things, throw the blame of all the
sorrow they suffer in them--rather through the compassion of God
in admonishing, than His severity in punishing--on the Christian
religion, which is the one salutary and true religion. And since
there is among them also an unlearned rabble, they are stirred up as
by the authority of the learned to hate us more bitterly, thinking
in their inexperience that things which have happened unwontedly
in their days were not wont to happen in other times gone by; and
whereas this opinion of theirs is confirmed even by those who know
that it is false, and yet dissemble their knowledge in order that
they may seem to have just cause for murmuring against us, it was
necessary, from books in which their authors recorded and published
the history of bygone times that it might be known, to demonstrate
that it is far otherwise than they think; and at the same time to
teach that the false gods, whom they openly worshipped, or still
worship in secret, are most unclean spirits, and most malignant and
deceitful demons, even to such a pitch that they take delight in
crimes which, whether real or only fictitious, are yet their own,
which it has been their will to have celebrated in honour of them at
their own festivals; so that human infirmity cannot be called back
from the perpetration of damnable deeds, so long as authority is
furnished for imitating them that seems even divine. These things we
have proved, not from our own conjectures, but partly from recent
memory, because we ourselves have seen such things celebrated, and
to such deities, partly from the writings of those who have left
these things on record to posterity, not as if in reproach, but as
in honour of their own gods. Thus Varro, a most learned man among
them, and of the weightiest authority, when he made separate books
concerning things human and things divine, distributing some among
the human, others among the divine, according to the special dignity
of each, placed the scenic plays not at all among things human, but
among things divine; though, certainly, if only there were good and
honest men in the state, the scenic plays ought not to be allowed
even among things human. And this he did not on his own authority,
but because, being born and educated at Rome, he found them among the
divine things. Now as we briefly stated in the end of the first book
what we intended afterwards to discuss, and as we have disposed of
a part of this in the next two books, we see what our readers will
expect us now to take up.