by giving them the quasi-divine authority of their example._
Now, who does not hereby comprehend,--unless he has preferred to
imitate such gods rather than by divine grace to withdraw himself
from their fellowship,--who does not see how eagerly these evil
spirits strive by their example to lend, as it were, divine authority
to crime? Is not this proved by the fact that they were seen in a
wide plain in Campania rehearsing among themselves the battle which
shortly after took place there with great bloodshed between the
armies of Rome? For at first there were heard loud crashing noises,
and afterwards many reported that they had seen for some days
together two armies engaged. And when this battle ceased, they found
the ground all indented with just such footprints of men and horses
as a great conflict would leave. If, then, the deities were veritably
fighting with one another, the civil wars of men are sufficiently
justified; yet, by the way, let it be observed that such pugnacious
gods must be very wicked or very wretched. If, however, it was but
a sham-fight, what did they intend by this, but that the civil wars
of the Romans should seem no wickedness, but an imitation of the
gods? For already the civil wars had begun; and before this, some
lamentable battles and execrable massacres had occurred. Already
many had been moved by the story of the soldier, who, on stripping
the spoils of his slain foe, recognised in the stripped corpse his
own brother, and, with deep curses on civil wars, slew himself there
and then on his brother's body. To disguise the bitterness of such
tragedies, and kindle increasing ardour in this monstrous warfare,
these malign demons, who were reputed and worshipped as gods, fell
upon this plan of revealing themselves in a state of civil war,
that no compunction for fellow-citizens might cause the Romans to
shrink from such battles, but that the human criminality might be
justified by the divine example. By a like craft, too, did these
evil spirits command that scenic entertainments, of which I have
already spoken, should be instituted and dedicated to them. And in
these entertainments the poetical compositions and actions of the
drama ascribed such iniquities to the gods, that every one might
safely imitate them, whether he believed the gods had actually done
such things, or, not believing this, yet perceived that they most
eagerly desired to be represented as having done them. And that no
one might suppose, that in representing the gods as fighting with one
another, the poets had slandered them, and imputed to them unworthy
actions, the gods themselves, to complete the deception, confirmed
the compositions of the poets by exhibiting their own battles to the
eyes of men, not only through actions in the theatres, but in their
own persons on the actual field.
We have been forced to bring forward these facts, because their
authors have not scrupled to say and to write that the Roman
republic had already been ruined by the depraved moral habits of
the citizens, and had ceased to exist before the advent of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Now this ruin they do not impute to their own gods,
though they impute to our Christ the evils of this life, which cannot
ruin good men, be they alive or dead. And this they do, though our
Christ has issued so many precepts inculcating virtue and restraining
vice; while their own gods have done nothing whatever to preserve
that republic that served them, and to restrain it from ruin by such
precepts, but have rather hastened its destruction, by corrupting its
morality through their pestilent example. No one, I fancy, will now
be bold enough to say that the republic was then ruined because of
the departure of the gods "from each fane, each sacred shrine," as
if they were the friends of virtue, and were offended by the vices
of men. No, there are too many presages from entrails, auguries,
soothsayings, whereby they boastingly proclaimed themselves prescient
of future events and controllers of the fortune of war,--all which
prove them to have been present. And had they been indeed absent, the
Romans would never in these civil wars have been so far transported
by their own passions as they were by the instigations of these gods.