Chapter Xxv.,
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. vinces (if I mistake not) are under the Roman eee and yet I do not find any of the Roman gods in worship among them ; because the gods of these countries are as little known at Rome as many of the municipal deities in several towns in Italy, as Delventinus of Casinum, Visidianus of Narni, Ancaria of Ascoli,
Nursia of Volsinium, Valentia of Ocricoly, Nortia of Sutri, and Juno of Monte Fiasco, who was worshipped by the name of Curetis in honour of her father Cures.
But we Christians, we alone are the people who are not tolerated to enjoy a separate religion proper to ourselves; we offend the Romans, and are not to be looked upon as Romans, because; we do not worship the God of the Romans ; however, we have this advantage, that God is the God of all, whose we are all, whether we will or no; but there is a universal toleration among you to pay divine honours to any but the true God, as if this was not emphatically the God of all, whose creatures we all are.
Sts CHAPTER XXV.,
THAT THE ROMAN GRANDEUR
IS NOT OWING TO THE
ROMAN RELIGION.
hoe I HAVE now, in my opinion, given sufficient proofs of the false and the true divinity ; having not only disputed and demonstrated this point from arguments drawn from reason, but also from the very confessions of those you acknowledge for gods; so that nothing more seems necessary to be reinforced upon that head.
But because the Roman greatness is an objection that comes properly in my way, I will not decline the combat I am challenged to, by the presumption-of those who say that the Romans! arrived to: such a pitch of grandeur as to be masters of the world, by the pure é 1 Romanos pro merito Religiositatis diligentissime in tantum Sublimitatis elatos.
That the Roman greatness was not owing to the Roman religion, Prudentius proves at large, lib. ii. adver. Symmach.
Sed multt duxere Dit per prospera Romam, Quos colit ob meritum magnis donata T; riumphis,
Ergo age, Bellatrix, que vis subjecerit, ede.
And Minutius is very particular upon the same head, but because he has borrowed _ so many hints from Tertullian, and is subjoined to this Apology, I will not forestall the reader.
However, that the Romans valued themselves as extraordinary
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dint and merits of their religion ; and consequently that theirs were _ the right gods, inasmuch as they who served them out-flourished all others in glory, as much as they surpassed them in devotion to _these deities ; and this surpassing figure, no doubt, was the return your own Roman gods made you for their worship; and these proper gods, who have thus enlarged your borders must be Ster- - culus, and Mutunus, and Larentina; for it is not to be imagined that strange gods should find in their hearts to be greater friends to a strange nation than to their own; and that they should make over their own native soil, in which they were bred, and born, and buried, and deified, to an outlandish people.
Let Cybele see to it, whether she transplanted her affections to Rome for the sake of her beloved countrymen the Trojans, screened from the Grecian arms
I warrant by her divine protection; let her say whether she went over to the Romans upon this view, as foreseeing them the people that would revenge her upon her enemies, and one day triumph over Greece, as Greece had done over Troy; and to prove that she did go over to the Romans upon this prospect, she has given a most glorious instance of her foresight in our age, for M.
Aurelius being taken off at Sirmium the seventeenth day of March,!
_ her chief priest and eunuch on the twenty-fourth day of the same month, having lanced his arms, and let out his impure blood upon the altar, offered up his usual vows for the life of the emperor, who was dead some days before.
O leaden-heeled couriers!
O drowsy dispatches! not to give Cybele notice before the emperor was dead ; in good troth, Christians must make a little merry with such a goddess.
But had kingdoms been at Jove's disposal, Jove surely had _ never suffered his own Crete to have come under the Roman rod ; unmindful of the Idean cave and the never-to-be-forgotten noise the Corybantes made to drown his infant cries, and of the agreeable sweets of his fragrant nurse the Goat Amaltheea.
What! would not he have preferred his own tomb before any capitol, and made the country which contained Jove's ashes? the mistress of the favourites of heaven upon the account of their grandeur, is evident from that of Valerius, lib. i. Mon Mirum igttur si pro eo imperio augendo custodiendog. ; pertinax Deorum indulgentia semper excubuit.
1M. Aurelio—exempto, die decimo sexto Kalend. Aprilium.
Thus Dion Cassius of the same emperor says—ri tara xal dendrg rod Mapriov wernrautey.
2 Que cineres Fovis texit.
There is hardly any one thing more talked of than Crete by the poets and historians, and the Christians apologists, where Jove was born, bred, and buried.
Thus Virgil— Dicteo Cali Regem pavere sub antro.
Thus St. Cyprian, de /dol, van, Antrum Jovis in Creta visitur.
And in the
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Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. j world?
Would Juno, do you think, could she have helped it, suffered her beloved Carthage, more beloved than Samos, to have been sacked and ruined by the detested race of Trojans; for I know her passion for this city from your own Virgil :
—Hrere, here, this darling place, Immortal Juno's arms, and chariot grace ; And here to fix the universal reign The mighty goddess strove, but strove in vain,
By mightier fate o'ercome.!
Poor unhappy Juno, wife and sister both to Jove, and yet nota ~ match for fate!
For, as another poet has it, Even Jove himself must bend to fate."
And yet the Romans cannot afford the fates who made them masters of Carthage in spite of all the intrigues of Juno, half so much honour as they pay to the most. infamous of prostitutes, Larentina.
But it is certain that many of your gods reigned once upon earth : if therefore kingdoms are now at their disposal, pray tell me from whom did they themselves receive their crowns?
Who was the god that Saturn or Jove worshipped?
Some dunghill-god, Sterculus I suppose ; but this could not well be, for Saturn and Jupiter were both dead long before Sterculus got his immortal honour at Rome for teaching his countrymen the art of dunging their ground.
But though some of your gods never arrived to the honour of being kings, yet others who were kings have not had the honour to be gods.
The disposal of kingdoms therefore must be lodged elsewhere, and not in the kings themselves; because they are kings before they have the good luck to be gods, or the disposers of kingdoms.
But how ridiculous a thing is it to ascribe the Roman grandeur to the merits of the Roman religion, when the grandeur is older than the religion ; or rather the religion increased and multiplied in proportion to the state.
For though your superstitious Alexandrian Chronic. we have' this inscription,
-EN@AAE KEITAI @ANOQN
IIIKOZ KAI O ZEY2 ON,
KAI AIAKAQOTSIN—HIC SITUS JACET PICUS
MORTUUS, QUI ET JUPITER, QUEM JOVEM VOCANT.
1 Hic illius arma, Fic currus fuit, hoc Regnum Dea Gentibus esse, St qua Huta sinant, jam tum tenditg. ; fovetg. ;
Fato stat Fupiter ipse.
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Te ertullian's Apology for the Christians.
85 \ curiosities had their first conception in Numa's brain,! and yet during his reign the Roman worship was without either statue or temple, their old religion was a thrifty plain religion,' without any pompous rites, or any capitol vying with heaven
;° their altars __were rude and hasty, and of turf only; their sacred vessels of Samian clay, And from hence the moderate steams of a slender sacrifice ascended, and not the image of any god to be seen amongst them ; for as yet the Grecian and Tuscan artists had not overflowed the city with the invention of images; and therefore it is certain that the Romans were not so exceeding religious before they were so exceeding great; and consequently their greatness cannot be owing to their religion.
But with what forehead can men entitle their greatness to religion, when their greatness stands upon the ruins of religion? ,
14 Numé concepta est Curiositas Superstitiosa, It has been objected that the ' consent of nations, if it argues anything, argues for Polytheism, that being more universal, and consequently more natural than the worship of one god ; but this is a very foolish objection; for there is in all mankind a propensity to religion in general, as there is an inclination to eat and drink in all; and as it is left to the direction of our appetites what we should choose to eat and drink in particular, so is it left to our reason what we should worship; but to eat and drink and worship sometbing, we are all inclined, though often abused as to the object.
It is this natural propensity to religion designing men strike in with ; and they would never apply to it so universally did they not find all mankind readily disposed for divine worship ; for an atheist has been looked upon as a monster in all ages.
Thus it was that Numa Pompilius worked upon his subjects, and procured an implicit veneration to all his institutions, by pretending an acquaintance with the goddess Aigeria.
Mama Pompilius, ut Populum Romanum sacris obligaret, volebat vidert. sibi cum Dea Atgeria congressus esse nocturnos, ejusgue monitu accepta Diis Immortalibus sacra imstituere.
Waler. Max. lib.-i. cap. 2.
2 Frugi Religio, etc.
Varro says that the Romans worshipped their gods one hundred and seventy years without any image, and thinks they had been better served had there been no images made; and this frugality in religion lasted to the conquest of Asia, wsgue ad devictam Asiam, says Pliny, lib, xxxiv.
Thus Ovid, speaking of the ancient simplicity, says— Jupiter exigud vix totus stabat in Ede, Inque Jovis dextrd fictile Fulmen erat.
In Fast. 3, and in like manner Juvenal— Hance rebus Latiis curam prestare solebat
Fictilis, et nullo violatus Jupiter auro.
Vid. Cicer. Paradox. I.
y A a ; 3 Capitolia certantia celo.
Capitols vying with heaven.
Agreeable to which Martial thus describes it— Nec Capitoliné summum penetrale Ti onamles,
QOuaeque nitent Celo proxima Templa sito.
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Lertullian's Apology for the Christians.
— / For, if I mistake not, kingdoms or empires are got by wars, and propagated by victories, and wars and victories for the most part conclude in the captivity and desolation of cities.
And this sort of business is not likely to be despatched without treading upon religion ; for the walls of a town and those of a temple are battered
© both alike—priests and people slain without distinction; and the plundering soldier will no more pardon the riches of the gods than those of men.
The Romans therefore may compute their sacrileges by their trophies, and tell how many gods they have triumphed over, by the nations they have conquered; and withal remember that all the statues of the captive deities now in the temple are but so many spoils of war.
And yet these gods will endure to be worshipped by such enemies, and decree them a perpetual empire ! for so doing, when in honour they ought to be revenged upon their outrages, rather than be cajoled by their adoration ; but gods who have neither sensation nor knowledge may be injured with as much impunity as they are served with vanity.
Certainly it cannot ~ enter into any one's head to imagine that the Romans grew to this bulk of greatness by the influence of religion, who (as I have suggested) one way or other always mounted to their greatness by treading upon religion ; for even those whose kingdoms are melted down, as it were, into one mass of Roman empire, those, I say, when they lost these kingdoms were no more without religion than they who got them.
CHAPTER' XXViu
THAT KINGDOMS ARE ONLY AT HIS DISPOSAL WHO IS THE TRUE.GOD.
ConsIDER therefore with yourselves, and see whether it must not needs be Him who is the disposer of kingdoms, who is the maker and proprietor of the world which is governed, and of the man who governs it; whether it must not be Him who orders the revolutions of empire in succeeding ages of time, who was before time itself, and who of the several parts or links of ages composed the whole body or chain of time; whether it is not He who raises up and 1 [itis Imperium sine fine decernunt.
'Tertullian frequently quotes Virgil expressly, which makes it probable that in these words he alludes to a like passage in that poet— \ :
~~ Limperium sine fine dedi.