were not mitigated by the protection of the gods._
In the Punic wars, again, when victory hung so long in the balance
between the two kingdoms, when two powerful nations were straining
every nerve and using all their resources against one another, how
many smaller kingdoms were crushed, how many large and flourishing
cities were demolished, how many states were overwhelmed and ruined,
how many districts and lands far and near were desolated! How often
were the victors on either side vanquished! What multitudes of
men, both of those actually in arms and of others, were destroyed!
What huge navies, too, were crippled in engagements, or were sunk
by every kind of marine disaster! Were we to attempt to recount
or mention these calamities, we should become writers of history.
At that period Rome was mightily perturbed, and resorted to vain
and ludicrous expedients. On the authority of the Sibylline books,
the secular games were re-appointed, which had been inaugurated a
century before, but had faded into oblivion in happier times. The
games consecrated to the infernal gods were also renewed by the
pontiffs; for they, too, had sunk into disuse in the better times.
And no wonder; for when they were renewed, the great abundance of
dying men made all hell rejoice at its riches, and give itself up to
sport: for certainly the ferocious wars, and disastrous quarrels, and
bloody victories--now on one side, and now on the other--though most
calamitous to men, afforded great sport and a rich banquet to the
devils. But in the first Punic war there was no more disastrous event
than the Roman defeat in which Regulus was taken. We made mention of
him in the two former books as an incontestably great man, who had
before conquered and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would have
put an end to the first Punic war, had not an inordinate appetite for
praise and glory prompted him to impose on the worn-out Carthaginians
harder conditions than they could bear. If the unlooked-for captivity
and unseemly bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath, and his
surpassingly cruel death, do not bring a blush to the face of the
gods, it is true that they are brazen and bloodless.
Nor were there wanting at that time very heavy disasters within the
city itself. For the Tiber was extraordinarily flooded, and destroyed
almost all the lower parts of the city; some buildings being carried
away by the violence of the torrent, while others were soaked to
rottenness by the water that stood round them even after the flood
was gone. This visitation was followed by a fire which was still
more destructive, for it consumed some of the loftier buildings
round the Forum, and spared not even its own proper temple, that of
Vesta, in which virgins chosen for this honour, or rather for this
punishment, had been employed in conferring, as it were, everlasting
life on fire, by ceaselessly feeding it with fresh fuel. But at the
time we speak of, the fire in the temple was not content with being
kept alive: it raged. And when the virgins, scared by its vehemence,
were unable to save those fatal images which had already brought
destruction on three cities[150] in which they had been received,
Metellus the priest, forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and
rescued the sacred things, though he was half roasted in doing so.
For either the fire did not recognise even him, or else the goddess
of fire was there,--a goddess who would not have fled from the fire
supposing she had been there. But here you see how a man could be of
greater service to Vesta than she could be to him. Now if these gods
could not avert the fire from themselves, what help against flames or
flood could they bring to the state of which they were the reputed
guardians? Facts have shown that they were useless. These objections
of ours would be idle if our adversaries maintained that their idols
are consecrated rather as symbols of things eternal, than to secure
the blessings of time; and that thus, though the symbols, like all
material and visible things, might perish, no damage thereby resulted
to the things for the sake of which they had been consecrated,
while, as for the images themselves, they could be renewed again
for the same purposes they had formerly served. But with lamentable
blindness, they suppose that, through the intervention of perishable
gods, the earthly well-being and temporal prosperity of the state can
be preserved from perishing. And so, when they are reminded that even
when the gods remained among them this well-being and prosperity were
blighted, they blush to change the opinion they are unable to defend.