trusted that they would be benefited by the gods who had been
unable to defend Troy._
And these be the gods to whose protecting care the Romans were
delighted to entrust their city! O too, too piteous mistake! And
they are enraged at us when we speak thus about their gods, though,
so far from being enraged at their own writers, they part with money
to learn what they say; and, indeed, the very teachers of these
authors are reckoned worthy of a salary from the public purse, and of
other honours. There is Virgil, who is read by boys, in order that
this great poet, this most famous and approved of all poets, may
impregnate their virgin minds, and may not readily be forgotten by
them, according to that saying of Horace,
"The fresh cask long keeps its first tang."[33]
Well, in this Virgil, I say, Juno is introduced as hostile to the
Trojans, and stirring up Æolus, the king of the winds, against them
in the words,
"A race I hate now ploughs the sea,
Transporting Troy to Italy,
And home-gods conquered. "[34]...
And ought prudent men to have entrusted the defence of Rome to these
conquered gods? But it will be said, this was only the saying of
Juno, who, like an angry woman, did not know what she was saying.
What, then, says Æneas himself,--Æneas who is so often designated
"pious?" Does he not say,
"Lo! Panthus, 'scaped from death by flight,
Priest of Apollo on the height,
His conquered gods with trembling hands
He bears, and shelter swift demands?"[35]
Is it not clear that the gods (whom he does not scruple to call
"conquered") were rather entrusted to Æneas than he to them, when it
is said to him,
"The gods of her domestic shrines
Your country to your care consigns?"[36]
If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and were
conquered, and that when conquered they could not escape except under
the protection of a man, what madness is it to suppose that Rome had
been wisely entrusted to these guardians, and could not have been
taken unless it had lost them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods
as protectors and champions, what is this but to worship, not good
divinities, but evil omens?[37] Would it not be wiser to believe,
not that Rome would never have fallen into so great a calamity had
not they first perished, but rather that they would have perished
long since had not Rome preserved them as long as she could? For who
does not see, when he thinks of it, what a foolish assumption it is
that they could not be vanquished under vanquished defenders, and
that they only perished because they had lost their guardian gods,
when, indeed, the only cause of their perishing was that they chose
for their protectors gods condemned to perish? The poets, therefore,
when they composed and sang these things about the conquered gods,
had no intention to invent falsehoods, but uttered, as honest men,
what the truth extorted from them. This, however, will be carefully
and copiously discussed in another and more fitting place. Meanwhile
I will briefly, and to the best of my ability, explain what I meant
to say about these ungrateful men who blasphemously impute to Christ
the calamities which they deservedly suffer in consequence of their
own wicked ways, while that which is for Christ's sake spared them
in spite of their wickedness they do not even take the trouble to
notice; and in their mad and blasphemous insolence, they use against
His name those very lips wherewith they falsely claimed that same
name that their lives might be spared. In the places consecrated
to Christ, where for His sake no enemy would injure them, they
restrained their tongues that they might be safe and protected; but
no sooner do they emerge from these sanctuaries, than they unbridle
these tongues to hurl against Him curses full of hate.