To the pagans

The apology “To the Gentiles” (2 books) was written by Tertullian in 197. In its content and in the nature of the evidence, this apology has a strong resemblance to the “Apologetics”, only the formulation of the resolution of the issues is not legal, but rhetorical-philosophical. In the first book, of an apologetic nature (20 chapters), Tertullian defends Christians from accusations of moral crimes (killing children, eating them, incest) and disrespect for gods and emperors. The author proves that the crimes attributed to Christians are committed by the pagans themselves, who insult the gods because they worship them by choice, observe some bad customs on the day of the sun, worship gods who are a cross between a dog, a lion, a ram, etc. Accusations of secret crimes - murders and adulteries - are most suitable for pagans. All riots and uprisings against emperors are the work of the pagans, who at the same time dare to call them gods. In the second, polemical book (17 chapters), Tertullian proves the insignificance of pagan belief in gods and the emptiness of the ideas about the gods of philosophers and poets. *The title of the essay in Latin is Ad nations. Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 19 20 Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The evidence of your ignorance, which accuses injustice at the very time it defends it, is obvious; because all those who previously knew it with you and hated it with you, cease to hate, because they cease to not know, as soon as they managed to find out. On the contrary, they themselves become what they hated and begin to hate what they were. Therefore you groan that the number of Christians is daily increasing; That’s why you cry out that the state is under blockade, that Christians are in the fields, in fortresses, on islands. You mourn, as if about a military defeat, that every gender, every age and every rank is finally passing to us. And yet this very thing does not force you to assume that there is any good hidden here. You cannot make fair assumptions, you do not want to get to know us better. Here human curiosity only becomes numb. You love not knowing what others enjoy knowing. You prefer not to know, because you already hate, as if you probably know that you won’t hate. But if there is no reason for hatred, then it will be revealed that it is best, of course, to leave the previous injustice behind. If the accusation is confirmed, then hatred will not lose anything through this. On the contrary, it will increase even more thanks to the consciousness of justice, unless it is a shame to correct oneself, or it is not annoying to apologize. I know well with what objection you usually meet the evidence of our abundance. You say: of course, it is not because something is considered good that it deceives so many and draws them to its side, I know that the spirit deviates to the side of evil. How many are there who leave a good life? How many of them go over to the side of evil? Many do so of their own free will, but most do so due to difficult circumstances. But there can be no comparison here. For everyone knows about evil that even the criminals themselves, who go over to the side of evil and, leaving good, enter the path of crime, do not dare to defend evil as good. They fear the godless; they are ashamed of the shameful; generally want to hide; avoid showing themselves; when caught, they tremble; being accused, they deny; even being subjected to torture, they do not confess easily and always; being justly condemned, they lament; they condemn what was against themselves; the removal of evil will from innocence is attributed either to the stars or to fate. They do not want to consider it theirs because they cannot deny the evil in it. Do Christians do anything like that? None of them are ashamed; none of them repent of anything, except for the past. If a Christian is condemned, he is glorified. If he is dragged, he does not resist. If he is accused, he does not defend himself. If asked, he will confess. If he is condemned, he is glorified. What kind of evil is this in which there are no essential signs of evil? Yes, you yourself judge Christians differently than you judge evildoers. For you, of course, force criminals brought to trial to confession by torture if they deny their offenses; and you torture Christians who voluntarily confess to deny it. What great crime is it to rebel against a confession, to change the duty of torture, to force the guilty to go unpunished, to recant against his will? You, defenders of the discovery of truth, demand lies from us alone, forcing us to say that we are not what we really are. You, I think, do not want us to be villains, and therefore want to free us from this name. Indeed, for this you stretch others on their hind legs and torment them, although they deny what they are accused of. But if they deny them, you do not believe them; to us, if we renounce, you immediately believe. If you are convinced that we are great criminals, then why do you treat us differently from other criminals? I’m not talking about the fact that you don’t give room for either prosecution or defense (you usually deliberately condemn us without accusation or defense), but I’m talking about this, for example: if a murderer is tried, then the case ends or the inquiry is considered sufficient not immediately after he confesses to murder. Despite his recognition, you do not believe easily. You are also trying to find out the following: how many murders did he commit? what tools? in what places? for what gain? with what accomplices and concealers? so that nothing of the crime committed by an evil person remains a secret, and so that nothing is missing to draw up a true decision. About us, whom you accuse of the greatest and most numerous crimes, you draw up the shortest and most superficial sentences. You, I suppose, do not want to expose those whom you consider criminal in any matter, or you think that what you know should not be investigated. Therefore, if you force those about whom you have the most reliable information to renounce, then this is even more criminal. Moreover, how much would intensified efforts contribute to your hatred, with the help of the law on legal proceedings, which you abandoned at your own arbitrariness, not on renunciation, so as not to free those whom you hate, but on confession of various crimes, so that the enmity would be all the more satisfied through an increase in punishments, when it is revealed how many famous feasts each one has already celebrated, how many violent adulteries he has committed in the darkness, therefore it should intensify the search for a people who fully deserve destruction; the investigation must extend to allies and accomplices. Let the infantry, and the cooks, and the breeding dogs themselves be brought, and then the matter would be cleared up, and a new, most pleasant object for spectacle would be given. For with what pleasure would they go to the circus if someone had a chance to fight with the one who devoured a hundred children! If they say something so terrible and so monstrous about us, then, of course, we must prove it so that it does not seem incredible and so that public hatred towards us does not cool. For many weaken in faith in this, respecting nature, which has forbidden people the desire both for animal food and for copulation with animals. Therefore, since you, the most careful and tireless investigators of other very small crimes, abandon your thoroughness in relation to such terrible and surpassing all wickedness crimes, without accepting the consciousness that judges should always take care of, and without explaining the consequences with which prosecutors should always take into account, it is obvious that the accusation against her is directed against us of some crime, but in name. Of course, if the actual crimes were known, their very names would be attached to those convicted. Then they would announce about us like this: “that murderer, or adulterer, or guilty of anything else that you are accused of, is determined to be sent to prison, nailed to a cross, given to the beasts.” But your sentences declare nothing other than that the Christian confessed. There is no crime other than the crime in the name. And indeed, the name is the true reason for the hatred towards us. The name is accused, which is attacked by some secret force due to your ignorance. Therefore, you do not want to know for sure what you are convinced that you do not know for sure, and you do not believe what has not been proven, and so that it is not easily proven, you do not want to investigate in order to punish a name hostile to you under the pretext of crimes. Of course, we are forced to renounce in order to remove the hostile name. then, when we renounce, we are freed without any punishment for the past: we are no longer bloodsuckers, no longer adulterers, because we left that name. But since this foundation on which you rely when fighting against the name is considered in its place, then tell me: what is the fault of the name, what is its shortcoming and harm? For there is an objection against you: it is impossible to set up such crimes that neither the law defines, nor the evidence confirms, nor the decision enumerates. I find someone guilty of what is reported to the judge, what is investigated about him, what is accompanied by an objection or denial, what is read aloud in council. If names and words can be blamed for anything, it is only because they sound barbaric, that they foreshadow misfortune, that they offend a sense of shame, or that they express something differently than is appropriate for the speaker or the listener. This is the fault of words, or having, as a lack of sentences and speech constitutes barbarism, solecism and awkward phrases. The Christian name, as its etymology shows, comes from anointing. But since you incorrectly call us Christians (after all, you definitely don’t even know our name), then it also comes from pleasantness or kindness. So, you condemn our innocent name among innocent people, not hard on the tongue, not harsh on the ear, not ominous for a person, not hostile to the fatherland, but also Greek, and euphonious, and pleasant in meaning. And names should be punished, of course, not with a sword, not with a cross, not with animals. But, you say, the sect is being punished for the name of its Founder. However, there is, of course, a good and generally accepted right to name a sect after its founder. So, on behalf of their founders, philosophers are called Pythagoreans and Platonists, doctors - Erasistrataeans, grammarians - Aristarchies. So, if a sect is bad because its founder is bad, then it is punished as the offspring of a bad name. But it would be foolhardy to assume so. One should first know the Founder in order to know the sect, rather than judging the Founder by the sect. But now you, not knowing the sect, because you don’t know the Founder, or not criticizing the Founder, because you don’t criticize the sects, of necessity insist on just the name, as if having in it a sect and a Founder, whom you do not know at all. However, philosophers enjoy the free transition from you to the sect and freely take the names of their teachers, and no one hates them, although they openly and publicly pour out the howling bile of eloquence against your customs, rites, cults and clothes, despising laws, not paying attention to faces, so that some use their freedom with impunity even against emperors. But, of course, philosophers only strive for truth, which is very constrained in this age, and Christians own it, and those who own it are no longer liked, because those who strive for it joke about it, and those who own it defend it. Socrates was condemned because he came closer to the truth by overthrowing the gods. Although there was no Christian name on earth at that time, the truth was always condemned. And you will not deny wisdom in him, since even your Pythian oracle testified to this. “Socrates is the wisest of all men,” he said. Truth defeated Apollo, which is why he himself proclaimed against himself; for he himself admitted that he was not God, recognizing him as the wisest who denied the gods. But you do not consider him wise because he denied the gods, whereas he is wise because he denied the gods. You are in the habit of even telling us the following: “Lucius Titius is a good man, just a Christian”; or: “I am surprised that Guy Sey, a serious man, became a Christian.” Out of stupid blindness they praise what they know, blame what they do not know, and discredit what they know with what they do not know. It does not occur to anyone whether someone is good or wise because he is a Christian, or because he is a Christian because he is wise and good, although it is more reasonable to judge the unknown by the known than the known by the unknown. Some are surprised that those whom they previously knew as empty, low, dishonest people suddenly corrected themselves, and yet they are more likely to be surprised than to imitate. Others take up arms against Christians so obstinately that they sacrifice any advantage they might have from treating them. I know that two husbands, who previously doubted the behavior of their wives and, not without a suspicious shudder, stopped even the mice that crawled into their bedrooms, having learned the reason for the new anxiety and extraordinary captivity, granted their wives complete freedom, abandoned jealousy, and wished to be the husbands of harlots rather than Christians. They allowed themselves to change for evil, but their wives were not allowed to reform. The father disinherited his son because he stopped feeling sorry for him. The master imprisoned his slave, whom he previously considered necessary for himself. As soon as someone recognizes a Christian, he desires a criminal. For our teaching itself manifests itself as good, and we reveal ourselves by nothing else but by our good. Do villains show themselves this way because of their evil? Or are we the only ones, contrary to the laws of nature, who are called evil people for our good? For what banner do we carry before us except the highest wisdom, thanks to which we do not worship the fragile works of human hands, except moderation, thanks to which we abstain from the things of others, except modesty, thanks to which we do not sin in sight, except compassion, thanks to which we take part in the poor, except truth itself, for which we suffer, except freedom itself, for which we know how to die? Anyone who wants to know what kind of people Christians are needs to use these indicators. Since you say that Christians are the worst people, the lowest due to greed, luxury and dishonesty, we will not deny that among them there are several such. For our protection it is enough even if not all of us are like that, if not the majority of you are like that. No matter how much you want your body to be spotless or clean, some stain will certainly appear on it, or a wart will grow, or a freckle will stain it. Even the clearest weather clears the sky itself so that there is not a scrap of any cloud on it. A small spot has appeared on the forehead, one of the main parts of the body, from which the whole society is free. There are many more examples of good than examples of evil. However, since you claim that some of us are bad, you thereby declare that Christians are not bad at all. Carry out a thorough investigation of your sect to determine its evil. When something happens against us, you yourself say in conversation: why doesn’t he repay the debt when Christians are selfless? Why is he cruel when Christians are soft-hearted? Of course, you testify by this that Christians are not like that, since you object by saying: why are those who are called Christians like that? There is a great difference between crime and name, between opinion and truth. For names are composed in such a way that they have their own boundaries between name and being. So how many people are called philosophers, and yet do not fulfill the law of philosophy? Everyone bears names from their professions, but those who do not justify them by their deeds bear them in vain. There are not always those who bear one name or another. Since they do not exist, they bear the name in vain, and deceive those who attribute the object itself to the name, although the name depends on the object. And yet this kind of people do not come to us and do not have communication with us, having become yours again through vices, since we do not have communication even with those whom your violence or cruelty brought to renunciation. For, of course, involuntary traitors to the teaching would be more likely to be allowed to come to us than voluntary ones. But you call without reason Christians those whom Christians themselves renounce, who do not know how to renounce. Every time your conscience, the secret witness of your ignorance, is confused and oppressed by these proofs of ours and the objections that the truth puts forward from itself, you in agitation resort to some kind of refuge, that is, to the authority of the laws, because you, of course, would not punish this sect if the legislators did not demand it. What prevented the executors of the laws from firmly adhering to the laws in our legal proceedings? After all, for all crimes, except ours, which are prosecuted and punished by laws, punishment is not imposed before the investigation is carried out. For one name, a murderer or an adulterer is not found guilty, although everyone knows this type of crime. Christians are punished by laws. If any crime is committed by a Christian, then it must be open: no law prohibits an investigation. The investigation acts, without a doubt, in favor of the laws. For how will you keep the law, fearing what is prohibited by the law, when you are deprived of fear due to ignorance of what you must observe? Every law owes the consciousness of its justice not to itself, but to those from whom it demands obedience. But the law arouses suspicion if it does not want criticism. So, until then, the laws against Christians are considered fair, worthy of respect and execution, until what they persecute is known. When this is known, then they will turn out to be unjust and will deservedly be rejected with their swords, racks and lions: there is no honor for an unjust law. I think that some of your laws are not fair, since you daily soften their severity and cruelty with new definitions and regulations. Where, you say, could such a rumor about you come from, evidence of which is probably sufficient for legislators? Who can guarantee either them then or you now regarding its authenticity? There is word of mouth. Isn’t this “rumor is an evil faster than which there is nothing?” Why evil if it was always true? Is she lying? She does not retreat from the passion for lies even when she communicates the truth. Although she then does not add falsehood to the truth, she nevertheless increases, decreases, and mixes up the truth. What? This is necessary for her. It exists as long as it invents. She lives until she proves something. After proof, she disappears and, as if having fulfilled her duty as a messenger, disappears. Then the subject, of course, the subject is named, and no one says, for example: they claim that this happened in Rome, or: there is a rumor that he received the province; but everyone says: he received the province, and: this happened in Rome. No one calls rumors by name except the one who doubts, because everyone acquires faith not by rumor, but by knowledge. No one believes a rumor except a fool, because a wise man does not believe an infidel. The rumor, no matter how widely spread, undoubtedly once originated from one mouth, then little by little spreads through other languages ​​and... ears, and its original small source is obscured by general talk, so that no one will think about whether those first lips have sown lies. And this often happens either due to an innate tendency to envy, or due to arbitrary suspicion, or due to the desire to invent news. But it is good that time reveals everything, as evidenced by your philosophical sayings, proverbs and nature itself, which is so structured that nothing is hidden, even what rumor has not announced. Look what kind of informer you have got against us. After all, he had not yet been able to prove what he once reported and which, thanks to such a long time, brought to certainty. Under Emperor Augustus the name of Christ appeared, under Tiberius His teaching shone, under Nero the persecution of Christians appeared, so from here you can judge the personality of the persecutor. If this emperor is pious, then the Christians are wicked. If he is just and innocent, then the Christians are unjust and guilty. If he is not a public enemy, then we are public enemies. What we are like was shown by our persecutor himself, who punished, of course, what was disgusting to him. And although all the laws of Nero were destroyed, only this one remained, of course, fair, as unlike its publisher. So, our life is not yet 250 years old. At that time there were so many villains, so many crosses who achieved holiness, so many murdered children, so many bloody loaves, so many overthrows of lamps, so many adulteries, and yet until now only rumor judges Christians. It has a solid basis, of course, in the perversity of the human mind; she is more successful in producing inventions in rude and cruel people. For the more inclined they are to evil, the more capable they are of believing it. In general, they believe in fictitious evil more easily than in real good. If, however, injustice left room for prudence in you, then, of course, justice, when examining the reliability of lightning, would require paying attention to who from whom it could go out to the people, and then to the whole world. I do not believe that from Christians themselves, since both in essence and according to the law of all mysteries a vow of silence is required. Is not this vow of silence all the more required of such mysteries which, if declared, would not escape real punishment by human judgment? So, if it is not Christians themselves who declare this about themselves, then it means strangers. I ask you: how do outsiders know this, when even legal and permitted mysteries are afraid of any outside witness? Perhaps illicit mysteries do not remove such witnesses? But both ignorance and fiction are more appropriate for outsiders. Or did the curiosity of the family steal it through the cracks and holes? What? When did your family hand over the guilty to you? How much more would none of them betray any of us, although there was such cruelty that would destroy all trust in friendship with shameful justice? However, she could not have held back what made her spirit tremble, what made her eye shudder. And this is surprising if both the one who, out of great impatience, quickly reported, and did not want to prove, and the one who heard, did not try to see, since the same merit would be given to the informer if he proved what he reported, and to the listener if he saw what he heard. You say: then, at the very beginning, they reported and proved it, heard and saw it, and then trusted it to rumor. Of course, it is beyond belief that what is once noticed is always done, unless we have stopped doing it. But we bear the same name, and are accused of the same, and are increasing in number from day to day. The more we are, the more we are hated. As the object of hatred increases, hatred also increases more and more. Why doesn’t the number of informers against them increase as the number of perpetrators increases? What do I know?... Your communication with us has become more frequent. You know the days of our meetings, which is why we are besieged, oppressed, and arrested in our most secret meetings. However, has anyone ever stumbled across a half-eaten corpse? Has anyone noticed teeth marks in the bloody bread? Did anyone see any unclean signs to indicate adultery, dispelling the darkness with sudden light? If we use money to ensure that we are not dragged to public court, then why are we being persecuted? We cannot be put on trial at all, for who either defends or condemns the name of any crime without the crime itself? But why should I eliminate third-party intelligence officers and informers when you accuse us of something that was not loudly announced by us ourselves, which was either heard by you immediately, if it was reported in advance, or was revealed later, if at that time it was not reported to you? For, without a doubt, there is a custom by virtue of which those who wish to be initiated into the Mysteries first come to their clan or father. Then he will say: you need a baby who would still shout hurray in order to sacrifice him; it takes a few loaves of bread to soak it in the blood; in addition, candlesticks are needed that would knock over the dogs tied to them, and pieces that would make the same dogs rush towards themselves; but especially a mother or sister is needed. What if there is neither one nor the other? Then you, I suppose, cannot be a legitimate Christian. I ask you: will this, being communicated by others, arouse self-confidence? But they don't need to know that. First, a deceitful deed is committed. The ignorant are offered lavish dinners and marriages; for they had never heard anything before about the Christian mysteries. However, they will of course have to learn what service is. But how is it possible that the uninitiated know something that the priest himself does not know? Therefore, they are silent and do not reveal anything like this and do not announce to the people the tragedies of Test and Oedipus. The secrets of ministers, teachers and those initiated into the mysteries are not stolen by their most intense torment. If nothing of the kind has been proven, then I don’t know what should be considered great, a reward that would be worth enduring such torment. Poor and pitiable pagans! Here we offer you what our religion promises us. She promises her followers and guardians eternal life, and threatens those uninitiated into her and her enemies with eternal punishment with eternal fire. For both, the resurrection of the dead is predicted. We will learn about the reliability of this, since it is considered in its place. But now believe as we believe. For I want to know whether you would dare to achieve such crimes as we? Come, load the burden on the baby, or, if this duty lies with another, then just look at the soul dying before life began; be sure to catch fresh blood to nourish your bread with it; eat with pleasure; meanwhile, when sitting down at the table, calculate the places where your mother or sister is reclining, note carefully so that you do not fall into sin by attacking someone else’s when darkness comes, which, of course, excites the zeal of everyone: you would have committed a great crime if you had not committed incest. If you do this, you will live forever. I wish you to answer: would you value eternity so dearly? On the contrary, that's why you wouldn't believe it. And if you believed it, then I claim that you would not want it. And if you wanted to, then I argue that you could not. If you can't do it, then why can others do it? If others can, then why can't you? How much do you think impunity and eternity cost? Or do Christians have a different structure of teeth, and different grooves in the throats, and different nerves for lust for incest? I don’t think so, because it is enough for us to differ from you in truth alone. We are directly called the third kind. Aren't we some kind of cynopenians or sciapods or some kind of antipodes from the underworld? If you have at least some basis for this, then I would like you to tell us about the first and second kind, so that the third kind can be known in this way. Psammetichus really believed that with his own mind he discovered the first race of people. For they say that he, having removed newborn children from all communication with people, gave them to be raised by a nurse, whose tongue was cut off, so that they, complete exiles, would form a language, not hearing human speech, but, producing it from themselves, would indicate the first people that nature itself taught to speak. The first word was spoken by beccos; The Phrygians call it bread; therefore the Phrygians are considered the first race. This alone should immediately tell us about the emptiness of your stories, why we want to point out to you that you believe more fiction than reality. Is it even possible to believe that after such a member was cut off, and, of course, at the root, after the organ of the soul itself was brought into disorder, after the throat was emasculated, which received a dangerous wound even from the outside, but after the flow of spoiled blood to the heart, and finally, after the cessation of nutrition for some time, that nurse continued to live? But let us assume that her life continued thanks to the medicines of Philomela, about whom even the more prudent people say that she became mute because her tongue was cut out, but because she was very bashful. So, if she lived, she could have muttered something muffledly, for it is possible to emit inarticulate sounds from the throat alone without a smooth movement of the lips, without opening the mouth, with the tongue numb. Then the children, pronouncing it more easily, somewhat more fluently, since they had tongues, accidentally stumbled upon the invention of some better sounds. Let the Phrygians now be the first, but the Christians will not be the third, for where are the second? But think about whether those whom you call the third race are not overestimating the first place, since there is not a single people who are not Christian. Therefore, no matter which nation was the first, it is nevertheless Christian. You call us the newest, you call us the third. These are crazy jokes. But you consider us a third race in terms of religion, not nationality, so Romans, Jews, and then Christians. Where are the Greeks? Or if in religious terms they are considered among the Romans, since Rome really dragged the gods of Greece to itself, then where, at least, are the Egyptians and those who have a private and curious religion? If those who occupy third place are so monstrous, then what are those who occupy first and second place? But why should we be surprised at your emptiness, when evil and stupidity, naturally united and forming one body, are under the power of the same author of error? In fact, since I am not surprised, it is necessary for me to point out your error, so that when you reflect, you will be amazed at the stupidity you have fallen into, believing that we are the cause of every social disaster and misfortune. If the Tiber overflows its banks, if the Nile does not overflow, if there is no rain, if an earthquake occurs, if devastation occurs, if famine strikes, then everyone immediately shouts: the merit of the Christians. It is as if those who fear the true God are enjoying tranquility or are afraid of something else. I believe that we, as despisers of your gods, bring these disasters. Our life, as I said above, is not yet three hundred years old, but how many disasters have fallen on the universe before this time, affecting individual cities and provinces? How many wars were there, external and internal? How many epidemics, famines, fires and earthquakes has the world suffered? Where were the Christians then when the Roman state suffered so many disasters? Where were the Christians then when the islands of Hiera, Anatha, Delos, Rhodes and Kea perished with many thousands of people, or when, as Plato tells us, the land greater than Asia and Africa was submerged by the Atlantic Ocean? Where were the Christians then, when Volsinia was consumed by fire from heaven, and Pompeii by fire from its mountain, when the Sea of ​​Corinth was formed by an earthquake, when the flood destroyed the whole world? Where were then, I don’t say, the despisers of your gods, the Christians, but your gods themselves? That your gods appeared after the flood is proven by the villages, cities in which they were born, lived, buried, and those that they founded. If all this had not appeared after this disaster (flood), then, of course, it would not have existed to this day. But you do not try to collect chronological dates and reflect on them, which tell you otherwise, especially because you do not want to declare your gods most unjust, since they also punish their admirers because of their despisers. If you recognize gods that do not distinguish you, the admirers, from us, the despisers, then don’t you thereby prove that you are mistaken? If they are angry with you, as some empty people say, because you do not care about exterminating us, then this directly speaks of their powerlessness and weakness. For they would not be angry with you for the slowness of punishments if they themselves had any power. However, you yourself are aware of this in some cases, when, apparently, you take revenge for them by punishing us. If one protects the other, then the stronger protects the weaker. So, it is a shame for the gods to use the protection of people. So, pour out all kinds of poisons, shoot all kinds of arrows at Christians, I will not be slow in repelling them in the future. Afterwards they will be amazed by the presentation of our entire teaching, and now I will turn these very arrows on you, tearing them out of my body; I will show that the same wounds of crime are hidden in you, so that you too will be subjected to your swords and belts. You first and foremost accuse us of abandoning the institutions of our ancestors; but think more carefully whether you, along with us, are not guilty of this crime. For I know that you not only changed the ancient life and the ancient teaching in everything, but even completely abandoned both. It has already been said about laws that you are replacing them with new definitions and regulations every day. From your other way of life, it is obvious how much you have departed from your ancestors in worship, clothing, utensils, food itself and speech itself; for you are putting away the former as if it were something that stinks. Antiquity is excluded everywhere in commercial and official matters. Your authority has banished all the authority of the ancestors. You especially deserve to be reproached for always praising antiquity and yet rejecting it. By what vicissitude should the rulings of your ancestors remain with you when you reject what you praise? But since it seems to you that you keep the very thing that was passed down to you from your ancestors in complete inviolability and protect, for which you especially accuse us, which is what drives all the hatred towards Christians (I mean the veneration of the gods), then I will show that you also despise and destroy this. There is no reasonable basis for considering us despisers of the gods, because no one despises what he knows does not exist. In general, what exists can be despised; and what is not, does not allow contempt. So, contempt is allowed, of course, by those for whom something exists. All the more guilty are you that you believe and despise, worship and abhor, honor and insult. This can also be seen from the following: since some of you worship some gods, and others others, then, of course, you despise those gods that you do not worship. There can be no preference for one without insulting the other, and no choice without disapproval. He who accepted one out of many despised those whom he did not accept. But so many and so great gods cannot be worshiped by everyone. Therefore, from the very beginning you despised your gods, not being afraid to arrange things in such a way that they cannot all be worshipped. But even those wisest and most prudent ancestors, whose institutions you do not know how to reject, especially those who relate to your gods, themselves turn out to be wicked. I am lying if it was never decreed that no general should build the church promised in war before the Senate approved it. M. Emilius managed to find out this, who promised the church to the god Alburn. Of course, it is very wicked, even very shameful, to make the honor of the Divine dependent on the arbitrariness and whim of man, so that no one can be a god except the one whose existence the Senate allows. Often the censors, without consulting the people, destroyed the churches. At least the consuls, by the will of the Senate, expelled Liber's father and his mother-in-law not only from Rome, but from all of Italy. Varro tells us that Serapis, Isis, Arpocrates, and Anub were removed from the Capitol, and that their altars, overthrown by the Senate, were restored only by the power of the people. But, however, the consul Gabinius, on the Kalends of January, when he barely allowed sacrifices before the meeting of the popular party, because he had not decreed anything about Serapis and Isis, preferred the decree of the Senate to the violence of the people and forbade the building of altars. Therefore, in your ancestors you have, although not a Christian name, a Christian sect that despised the gods. Even if you fully revered your gods, you would still be guilty of insulting religion; but I know that you unanimously succeed in both superstition and atheism. What kind of great atheists do you really turn out to be? For the private gods, whom you call lares and penates after their family consecration, you dishonor them through family arbitrariness: you sell them, pawn them when you have a need and desire. Of course, such daring insults to religion would be more bearable if they were so shameful of it, because they were petty. But insulting private and domestic gods finds some consolation in the fact that you act even more vilely and even more shamefully towards public gods. First of all, those gods that you put on the auction list are subordinated to tax farmers, and for all five years you include them in state revenues. This is how the church of Serapis, the church of Jupiter, is acquired; the gods give themselves up, are bought off at the same words of the herald, at the same demand of the quaestor. But fields burdened with taxes are cheaper; people who pay taxes are not noble, for this is a sign of captivity and fine; the more taxes they pay, the more sacred the gods are, or vice versa; the more sacred they are, the more taxes they pay. Greatness is exhibited for profit, trade in religion is published, holiness is hired out. You demand payment for a place in the church, for entry into the sanctuary, for alms, for sacrifices. You are selling all the gods. It is not allowed to honor them for nothing. Farmers help out more than priests. It was not enough for you to insult the taxed gods, which, of course, came from contempt for them; you are not satisfied that you did not show honor to the gods, unless you destroy the honor that you show them thanks to their unworthiness. For what do you do to honor them that you do not also do for your dead? You build churches as much for the gods as for the dead. And you also build altars equally for both. The epitaphs of both are written with the same letters, and you use the same forms for both statues, in accordance with the art, or craft, or age of each. Saturn is depicted as an old man, Apollo as a beardless man, Diana as a maiden, Mars as a warrior, Vulcan as a blacksmith. Therefore, it is not surprising if you offer the same sacrifices to the dead as you do to the gods, and if you burn the same incense to both. Who will forgive this insult, which consists in equal veneration of the dead and the gods? Priests and religious settings are also assigned to the kings: tenses, chariots, solisterias, lectisternias, and sacred games. Since heaven is open to them, then, of course, the gods are insulted by this, firstly because they should not count others among them, even if it were possible to become gods after death, and secondly because the one who saw a man taken to heaven would not swear so freely and so openly before the people, if he himself did not despise those by whom he swore, and those who allow his oath. For they themselves agree that there is nothing that is confirmed by an oath, but they even reward him for the fact that he publicly despised the judges with a false oath. However, how many of you are free from a false oath? Yes, the fear of swearing by the gods has disappeared, although there is great reverence for swearing by the emperor, which greatly respects your gods. For those who swear by the emperor are more likely to be punished than those who swear by some Jupiter. But contempt, which has a consciousness of its own dignity, is respectable, because it sometimes comes either from confidence, or from purity of conscience, or from natural sublimity of spirit. The funnier the ridicule, the more dishonoring it is. Therefore, remember how you ridicule your gods. I will not talk about what you yourself are like during sacrifices; but I will only point out that you sacrifice what is exhausted, what is wasted, and from what is fat and undamaged, you bring only what is unsuitable for food: heads, hooves and feathers and wool plucked from the front, and what you would throw away at home. I omit that the ignorant and sacrilegious language raises almost a cry against the religion of the ancestors; but I will say this: the most learned and serious people, as far as seriousness and prudence depend on learning, have always been and are very disrespectful towards their gods, and their writing does not stop until they say something false or empty about the gods. I will begin with your most important poet, from whom comes all right and all justice, whom the more you honor, the more you take away honor from your gods, since you exalt the one who laughed at them. We still remember Homer. He, I believe, is the one who represents divine majesty in human form, subjecting the gods to human calamities and sufferings; which makes up of them, different in their arrangements, in some way gladiator bunks; who pierces Venus with a human arrow, who keeps Mars in chains for thirteen months, perhaps with the aim of his death; who takes Jupiter there too, having almost suffered from the lower gods, makes him float over Sarpedon and disgrace him, drowning in bliss with Juno, approving the lust of voluptuousness by remembering his mistresses and listing them. Which of the poets later, out of respect for their leader, was not insolent towards the gods, distorting the truth or inventing lies? And did the tragedians and comedians spare them when speaking of their misfortunes and punishments? I am silent about philosophers. They, freed from fear as a result of a serious consciousness of their own dignity and firmness of doctrine, are directed against the gods by some premonition of the truth. So Socrates swears by an oak tree, a dog, and a goat in order to insult them. Although Socrates was condemned for this, however, since the Athenians repented of condemning him, also punishing his accusers, his teaching is accepted, and I can claim that he approved what is now disapproved of in us. But Diogenes, I don’t know, ridiculed something in Hercules, and Diogenes of the Roman style, Varro, represents three hundred headless Eves, or, I should say, Jupiters. Other funny witticisms also give you pleasure, shame of the gods. Consider the godless charms of your Lectules and Hosts, whether you laugh at the mimes or at your gods in stanzas and games. But you also listen with great pleasure to acting literature that depicts all the abominations of the gods. Gods in unclean bodies are disgraced before you. The mask of any god covers a disgraced and broken head. The sun mourns his son killed by lightning, and you rejoice; Cybele sighs for the proud shepherd, but you do not blush and support the singing of Jupiter’s hymns. In the gladiator circus you are, of course, more religious. There they also present the fables and stories of your gods in human blood and in the filth of the slain, exterminating criminals, so that the criminals are punished in the person of the gods themselves. We often saw that the one who played Atteka, the god of Pessinus, was celibated, and the one who represented Hercules was burned alive. We also laughed at the laughter of the southern games, in which Plutov, the brother of Jupiter, sees off the bodies of gladiators with a hammer, in which Mercury, winged on his bald head, fiery on the herald’s staff, tries with an iron instrument bodies that are already soulless and taking on the appearance of death. Who would have been able to reveal in particular all the ways in which they insult the honor of the gods and humiliate the height of their greatness? The gods are so valued, of course, because they are despised both by those who do it and by those who see and hear it. I don’t know why your gods shouldn’t complain more about you than about you?... On the other hand, you flatter them, pay them off if you sin against them in anything, and finally you can sin against those whose existence you recognize; we completely turn away from them. Because of the Christian name, we are accused not only of abandoning the common religion, but also of inventing a new religion. For you, like some, think that our God is the head of a donkey. This idea was suggested by Cornelius Tacitus. For in the fourth book of his history, where he talks about the Jewish war, starting with the origin of the people and speaking both about the very origin of the religion and about its name, as he pleased, he tells that the Jews, while traveling through the desert, exhausted from thirst due to lack of water, were saved thanks to the donkeys, who, as they believed, were coming from the pasture to the watering hole and showed them the source, and that for this the Jews honor the head of this animal. From here, I believe, came the opinion that we, as close to the Jews in religion, worship the same image. But the same Cornelius Tacitus, who is truly prolific in inventions, having forgotten this story of his, tells below that the great Pompey, having conquered the Jews and taken Jerusalem, entered the church and, having carefully examined it, did not find any image there. So where was that god? Of course, nowhere else than in a church so glorious, carefully locked from everyone except the priests, so that they were not afraid of a stranger. But why should I defend myself when I openly declared my intention to transfer onto you everything that you accuse us of? Let them believe that our God is the head of a donkey. But will you deny that you have the same thing? In fact, you idolize whole donkeys with their Aenon, all large and small livestock and animals with their dwellings. And you probably charge us with a crime because, living among worshipers of all animals, we worship only donkeys. But the one who claims that we are representatives of the cross will be the same priest as we are. The cross is a figure made of wood, and you also honor a substance with an image. Just as you have a human figure, so we have our own. Now its features are important, since the substance is the same; the form is not important, since the substance itself constitutes the body of the god. If this causes a difference, then is there a great difference between the longitudinal part of the cross and the Attic Pallas and the Farsky Ceres, which is depicted without form, in the form of a rough ox, in the form of only one ugly wooden idol? Every tree placed straight is part of the cross, and a large one at that. But we are credited with the whole cross with its rim and ischial protrusion. You who idolize a shortened and chopped tree are all the more guilty because others idolize a full and slender tree. However, you also have a whole religion of the whole cross, as I will show. You also do not know that your gods originated from the same rack. For it is necessary that the work of the sculptor precedes every image, whether it is carved on wood or stone, or cast from copper, or made from some other better material. The sculptor first of all places the tree in the shape of a cross, because our body has the secret and hidden outline of a cross, since the head protrudes, the back extends in a straight direction, and the shoulders protrude at an angle. If you put a man with outstretched arms, you would make an image of a cross. So, the clay, laid on top of this tree, as if on a skeleton, little by little completes the members and forms the body and gives the cross from the inside the appearance of any clay. Then the prepared image is transferred either to marble, or to a church, or to copper, or to silver, or to whatever God wants to do using compasses and lead models. From the cross - clay, from clay - God: the cross in some way passes into God through clay. Therefore, you idolize the cross, from which the one you idolize originates. For example, the following will be said: from the kernel of an olive, from a peach seed and from a grain of pepper placed in the ground, a tree grows with branches, leaves, in the form of a kind. If you graft it or use a shoot from its branches for another tree, then who will own what comes from this grafting? Is it not this grain, or the kernel, or the seed? For just as the third stage is connected to the second, and the second also to the first, so the third, with the help of the second, must reach the first. There is no need to provide further evidence for this, because according to natural prescription, every descendant is generally valued according to his ancestor, and the more a descendant is valued according to his ancestor, the more the ancestor is contained in the descendant. Therefore, in the descendants of the gods you honor the ancestor - the cross. He will be the kernel and the original grain from which come your many idols. I'm moving on to the obvious. You consider the Victorias to be gods and, moreover, as sacred as they are joyful. So, in Victoria, the military religion also honors crosses, if it worships banners, if it swears by banners, if it prefers banners to Jupiter himself. But that decoration of images and that golden clothing belong to crosses. Therefore, in the imperial banners and in the banners of generals, which the soldiers guard with no less reverence, the veils make up the clothing of the crosses. You, I believe, are ashamed to venerate crosses that have not been removed and are naked. Others, of course, more prudently believe, thinking that the Christian God is the sun, because it is known that we pray to the east, or because we celebrate the day of the sun. What? Aren't you doing the same? Very many of you, sometimes wanting to pray to the heavenly gods, don’t you move your lips towards the east? You, of course, are those who accepted the day of the sun as one of the seven days, and of these days you chose this day first, on which you do not use baths, or put them off until the evening, or take care of rest and breakfast. Of course, you do this by moving away from your own religion to someone else’s. Jewish holidays - the Sabbath, and the holy supper, and the Jewish rituals of lamps, and fasts with unleavened bread, and coastal prayers, which, of course, is alien to your gods. Therefore you who blaspheme us for the sun and its day. Recognize your kinship with us. We are not far from Saturn and your Saturdays. Rumor has already brought new things about our God: very recently, one most depraved person, who even betrayed his religion, a Jew by circumcision alone, who, of course, was severely bitten by beasts who daily circumcise his entire body, put up to shame our picture with the inscription: onocoetes. He had horse ears, a toga, a book, and a hoof on one leg. And the worm believed the disgraced Jew. Because what? Our shame spreads in another way. So, the whole city is talking about our Onokoite. But this, so to speak, yesterday’s accusation against us, which therefore does not have the authority of time behind it and is too weak due to the quality of the culprit himself, I willingly accept, wanting to turn it on you. Therefore, let's see if you and our people are not guilty of this. For it does not matter what form, since we worship formless images. You have gods with the heads of dogs and lions, with the horns of bulls, rams and goats. You have gods of the goat, snake and bird kind on the soles, foreheads and backs. So why are you pointing to our only Onokoite? After all, you have a lot of them. If you and I have the same gods, then, of course, there is no difference between us in worship or sacrifice, so here too we have quite enough similarities. We Appease God or Serve Him by Committing Infanticide If you have forgotten what we know you have done through homicide and infanticide, then you will know it by your behavior. For now we are omitting a lot so that it does not seem that we are saying the same thing everywhere. Now, as I said, there is no lack of comparison on the other side. For although you kill children differently than we do, you are also infanticides: you starve newborn children to death. True, the laws prohibit you from doing this; but no laws are violated with such impunity, as calmly as these. But it makes no difference if you do not kill according to a sacred rite and not for the sake of the gods. And it is crueler that you throw out children when there is hunger, cold or animals, or drown them: after all, death then lasts longer. But if you commit infanticide for other reasons, then add to this the fact that you are destroying your very embryos, and then what is missing from another area will be supplemented and fulfilled. But they say that we make our own dinner out of that most godless sacrifice. Since it is proven where it is more convenient to prove that this sacrifice is also performed by you, then we differ little from your insatiability. If your victim is shameless, and ours is cruel, then we, of course, agree with you by nature, since cruelty is always in agreement with shamelessness. But what less are you doing? On the contrary, what are you not doing anymore? Do you open your mouths enough for human entrails, because you devour the living and adults? Do you lick human blood a little, because you extract future blood? Do you not eat enough children, because you are tearing from the wombs of mothers those who are not yet formed? We have reached the hour of lamps, and the service of dogs, and the inventions of darkness. I'm afraid I'll give in to you here. For what can I not find with you? But you already praise us for our intention to be ashamed of adultery, because we invented adulterous darkness so as not to defile either real light or real darkness, because we think that we must spare earthly lamps, because we play with our conscience; for in everything we do, we doubt whether we want it. But your adulteries, by virtue of their freedom, find pleasure in all light, and in all darkness, and in full knowledge of heaven, and you alone do not know what comes to light in abundance, because you commit adultery openly, with all heaven as a witness. Of course, the Persians, as Ctesias says, cohabit freely with their mothers, knowing this and not being afraid of it. But the Macedonians also proved that they clearly do this; for when the blinded Oedipus first appeared on the stage, they greeted him with laughter and shame. The embarrassed actor, taking off his mask, said: “Gentlemen! “Didn’t you really like me?” The Macedonians replied: “You really play beautifully; but the writer is too empty if he invented this, or Oedipus is too stupid if he did this,” and they immediately said to each other: “Bloody hell...” But is one or two nations an insignificant blemish for the whole world? We, of course, contaminate the entire sun, desecrate the entire ocean. So, point out some nation that is free from that which leads to adultery. If a nation is free from the very cohabitation of persons of different sexes, and from the needs of age and sex, not to say lust and sensuality, that will be a nation that is free from incest. If some nature, free from human traits, is so constructed that it is inaccessible to ignorance, error, and chance, then it will be one that alone can give Christians a decisive answer. Consider whether there are no people who are driven to this crime by many accidents, when lust floats here and there among errors like the winds. When you abandon your children to the pity of others, or when you adopt them to the best parents, do you forget how many occasions there are for incest, what scope is open for chance? Of course, you are moderate as a result of some teaching, or you abstain from lust in every place, in your own country and in others, as a result of a correct view of accidents of this kind, so that the scattering of seed and universal lustful leaps do not produce children in the darkness of ignorance, which will then be stumbled upon either by the parents themselves or by other children, since even a moderate age is not free from lust. How many adulteries, how much violence, how much voluptuousness committed in favor of the treasury with a fixed or moving sign, so much incest, so much generic copulation, so many shoots for incest from here. From here, of course, come the fables for mimics and comedians. From here also came this such a great tragedy, which Fuscian, the prefect of Rome, dealt with. A boy of a noble family, having left the door due to the accidental negligence of his teachers, disappeared from the house, being taken by passers-by. Or maybe his Greek teacher took him, or someone else, entering the house, stole him from the threshold according to Greek custom. They say that he, having changed over time in Asia, was then brought to Rome among slaves. The father, not knowing, buys it and uses it like a Greek. Then, as is your custom, the lord sends the young man to the village in chains. There, the man and the nurse had been preparing revenge for a long time. For them the whole matter seems clear, they report! each other their conclusions. They say that the pupil disappeared since childhood, and this one, that he also disappeared in childhood and, moreover, came from a noble family. Perhaps he discovered other signs. So, according to the will of God, it is happening that such great crimes are condemned in this century: the spirit removes its veil more and more every day, time corresponds to age, something resembles the eyes in its signs, some features are noticed on the body. Careful care for such an open investigation worries the gentlemen; no, my parents. They are looking for a slave trader; Unfortunately, they find it. Upon discovery of the crime, the parents heal themselves with rope. The prefect awards the estate to a son who has suffered misfortune, not by right of inheritance, but as a reward for rape and fornication. This one example of the public discovery of crimes of this kind hiding among you is enough. In human affairs nothing happens once. As for the secrets of your religion, then, of course, they, I believe, can only be revealed once. You attack us because of them, but they are the same as your secrets. As for those stubbornness or prejudices that you put forward against us, they are not alien to comparison with yours. The first stubbornness concerns the imperial majesty, which is recognized as a second religion after the religion of the gods, because we are accused of being irreligious in relation to the emperors, since we do not honor their statues with incense and do not swear by their geniuses. We are called enemies of the Roman people. Is this so, when you, pagans, are constantly being made into emperors of Parthia, Lydia, and Germany? Now let the Romans see among whom there are rebellious and hostile peoples. However, you of our own rebel against us. We, of course, recognize the Roman oath to the emperors. No rebellion ever broke out, no imperial blood left a mark in the Senate or in the palace itself, no majesty was molested in the provinces. Until now in Syria there is the smell of corpses, until now in Gaul they do not wash in its Rodan. But I omit insane crimes, because they do not even admit the name of Roman. I will turn to empty reproaches; I will remind you of the disrespect of the native people themselves - of those lampoons that the statues know - of those sometimes allegorical sayings of the crowd and of the slander that is heard in circuses. You always create riots, if not with weapons, then at least with your tongue. But, I understand, it is a completely different matter not to swear by the genius of the emperor; for they rightly doubt those who break oaths, since you do not swear in conscience even by your gods. But we do not call the emperor God; for we do not mock what is being said everywhere. On the contrary, you, calling the emperor God, mock him because you call him what he is not, and proclaim evil to him, because he does not want to be what you call him: after all, he would rather live than be called God. You believe our second stubbornness is that we courageously resist swords, crosses, your beasts, fire, and torture because of our insensitivity and contempt for death. But your best ancestors, as a rule, not only did not despise all this, but even praised it as valor. Yes, how many and how great men have fallen the sword according to their desire! It's boring to talk about this. Your Regulus willingly doomed himself to new, numerous and hidden torments. The Queen of Egypt took advantage of her beasts. Then Dido herself taught the Carthaginian woman, braver than her husband Astrubal, to throw herself into the fire at the destruction of her fatherland. But the Athenian woman grew tired of the torture, not giving an answer to the tyrant, and finally, fearing the betrayal of her body and sex, she spat out her tongue, biting it off, and thus depriving herself of the opportunity to confess. But you impute this to yours as glory, and to us as insensibility. Now destroy the glory of your ancestors in order to destroy ours too. Be content now, taking away glory even from your ancestors, so as not to give it to us because of them. Perhaps the nature of the time of rough antiquity required a rough character, but now, with the peace of the world, both characters are soft, and human hearts are tender even towards enemies. So be it, you say, be equal to our ancestors; but we must hate in you that which we do not approve of, because we do not have it. So, answer each item separately. I don't require the same examples. If, indeed, the sword created glorious stories about your ancestors because they despised death; then, of course, you sell yourself to gladiator teachers for the sword not out of love for life, you, in fear, give the name of death to your service. If some woman had a glorious death thanks to the beasts, then you, in the midst of the world, constantly go to the beasts of your own free will. If until now none of you Regulus has erected a cross for himself, an instrument of crucifixion, then, however, contempt for fire has already appeared, as a result of which someone very recently undertook to go to a certain place, dressed in a fireproof tunic. If a woman jumped from the lashes, then the one who ran through the street among the hunters counted them. I am already silent about the Lacedaemonian glory. Until now, I believe, we have talked about the terrible stubbornness of Christians, which, however, you also have. Now it remains to connect something about ridiculous beliefs, for we hope for the resurrection of the dead. The hope of resurrection is the reason for despising death. So, laugh as much as you like at the stupidest people who die in order to live; but in order to laugh more freely, you, taking a sponge or stretching out your tongue, now destroy all your writings, which, like us, claim that souls will return to bodies. However, how much more pleasant is our belief, which claims that souls will return to the same bodies? On the contrary, how unreasonable is your opinion that the spirit of a person will pass into either a dog, a mule, or a peacock? We also declare that God will judge every person after his death according to his merits. You attribute this to Minos and Radomantus, having for some reason denied this to the most just Aristides. We say that after this judgment the wicked will suffer eternal fire, while the godly and innocent will dwell in paradise forever. You have Pyriphlegethon and Elysium for no other purpose. Not only fabulists and poets, but also philosophers speak about the return of souls and the execution of judgment. So, if there is no difference between us and your most unjust pagans, if we and you are one and the same, then why do you not only not recognize your own, but even curse them? Since you do not hate what you yourself, then quickly give us your right hands, kiss us, embrace us, the bloodied - the bloody, the adulterers - the adulterers, the conspirators - the conspirators, the stubborn - the stubborn, and the superstitious - superstitious. In the same way we insult the greatness of the gods, in the same way we provoke their anger. And you have a third generation, although not from a third religious rite, but from a third gender. It is more convenient for men and women to have a relationship with a man and a woman. Do we really blame you for the college itself? Equality usually gives rise to competition. Thus a potter envies a potter, and a craftsman envies a craftsman. But you, feigned calling, stop! Conscience returned to the truth and to the steadfastness of truth. For all this will only be in us alone, and we alone, to whom all this has penetrated, are exposed in this, since you recognize in us the opposite party, by which knowledge is organized, and the council is inspired, and the court is governed. Finally, you have a decree that no judge will decide a case without hearing two. But this decree you neglect in relation to us is only one. You give satisfaction to natural vice, although what you do not conquer in yourself, you condemn in others, although you blame on others that which you recognize yourself to be guilty of. You are different: in relation to outsiders you are chaste, but in relation to yourself you are adulterers, on the outside you are free, but on the inside you are slaves. It is unfair that we who know are judged by those who do not know; we innocents are judged by the guilty. Take the straw or log out of your own eye to remove the straw from someone else's eye. Correct yourselves first in order to punish Christians. If only you correct yourself, you will not punish Christians, you will even become Christians yourself; or if you become Christians, you will correct yourself. Find out what you blame in you, and you will not blame. Remember what you don’t blame about yourself, and that’s what you will blame. Already here the error is seen and the truth is learned, as far as we were able to show this in these small books. Condemn the truth, but not otherwise than after knowing it, if you can condemn it even then. Praise error, but also not otherwise than by revealing it, if you have the ability to think. If you are commanded to love error and hate the truth, then why do you not recognize what you love and what you hate? Now your defense wants to enter into a contest with you, miserable pagans, about your gods. It calls upon your very conscience to discuss whether your gods are true, which you claim, or whether they are false, which you do not want to know. For in this matter people are mistaken due to the care of the culprit so that ignorance of the error does not cease, so that you are even more guilty. The eyes are open and do not see; the ears are open and do not hear; the heart beats and does not feel; the spirit does not know what it knows. If it were possible to destroy such perversity with one objection, then the prohibition of the gods would be ready: since you do not deny that all your gods owe their origin to people, this no longer allows recognizing them as true gods, because nothing, of course, can rightfully be considered a god that ever had an origin. But there are many reasons why a sensitive conscience becomes coarse to the point that it does not sense arbitrary error. Truth is besieged by a huge crowd; but it (the truth) is safe due to its own strength. How can she not be safe? Of her opponents, she accepts as her allies and defenders whomever she wants; and defeats the entire crowd of his enemies. So we have a battle against the following: against the institutions of the ancestors, against the authority of the priests, against the laws of the rulers, against the arguments of the philosophers, against antiquity, habit, fate, against examples, prophecies, miracles, since all this has strengthened your false gods. Therefore, going to your commentaries, which you borrowed from all kinds of theology, I chose the works of Varro, who, having collected everything from all the religious books that were before him, became very suitable for us for your purpose. If I asked him who is the culprit of the gods, he would point either to the philosophers, or to the people, or to the poets, for he divided the gods according to their origin into three kinds. One kind is physical, which is recognized by philosophers; the other is mythical, which revolves between poets; the third is the tribal one, which every nation has adopted. So, since the philosophers compiled the physical race of gods from guesses, the poets borrowed the mythical one from fables, and the peoples of the race were grafted in arbitrarily; then where should the truth be? Guessing? But the guesses are wrong. In fables? But fables are vile. In adoptions or adoptions? But adoption is messy and municipal. In general, with philosophers everything is wrong, because it is different; among poets everything is unworthy because it is vile; among nations everything is disorderly because it is arbitrary. But if you were to reflect on the true Deity, then it is defined in such a way that it is not associated with incorrect arguments, and is not stained by unworthy fables, and is not judged by disorderly adoptions; for It must be considered as It is - reliable, intact, general, because it belongs, of course, to everyone. But which god will I believe in? Is it the one that the guess came up with? Is it the one suggested by the fable? Is it the one the state wanted? It is much more worthy not to believe in anyone than to believe in someone about whom one should doubt, or about whom one should be ashamed, or who is adopted. But the authority of philosophers, as possessors of wisdom, protects the physical race of gods. The wisdom of philosophers, of course, is true: its inconsistency is evidenced, first of all, by the difference of opinions arising from ignorance of the truth. What kind of sage is this who is devoid of truth, who does not know God, the father and lord of wisdom and truth itself? For the divine saying of Solomon says differently, namely: “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). But fear comes from title; for who will fear what he does not know? And so whoever fears God, even if he were extremely ignorant, will acquire complete and perfect wisdom, having understood God, the source of all calling and wisdom. But philosophy did not quite succeed in this. For although, as a result of the desire to study literature of all kinds, philosophers could, it seems, come across divine books, as the most ancient, and borrow something from there; but since they introduced innovations, this shows either that they despised everything, or that they did not believe everything (for in other matters simple truth does not have universal faith). So, with the advent of a passion for fame, they changed everything to give work to their wit. Therefore, what they found turned out to be incorrect, and many arguments arose as a result of a gradual deviation from the truth. For they, having found God, did not discover Him as they found them, because they argued about His properties, and about His nature, and about His whereabouts. So the Platonists say that God takes care of the world and is its Provider and Judge, while the Epicureans believe that He is careless and inactive - so to speak, a nobody. The Stoics teach that He is outside the world, and the Platonists that He is inside the world. They did not perceive Him deeply and could neither know Him, nor fear Him, nor sensibly reflect on Him, having, of course, moved away from the beginning of wisdom, that is, from the fear of God. There is evidence both that philosophers do not know God and that they doubt Him. Diogenes, being asked what was happening in heaven, replied: “I never ascended there.” He, having also been asked whether there were gods, replied: “I don’t know, except to serve.” Thales of Miletus to Croesus, who asked him repeatedly what he thought about the gods, said nothing after several delays received from him for a mature discussion. Socrates himself rejected your gods as if out of conviction, but he ordered the sacrifice of a rooster to Aesculapius, as if also out of conviction. And therefore, if philosophy speaks about God so doubtfully and unreliably, then could it fear Him about whom it did not have a clear and precise title? We have learned that God is peace. The physical kind of theology leads to such a god. This is how it teaches about the gods. Dionysius the Stoic divides the gods into three kinds. One kind, in his opinion, is that which sees, such as: the Sun, the Moon; the other is the one who does not see, such as: Neptune; the third genus is the one that is said to have originated from people, such as: Hercules, Amphiaraus. Arcesilaus also divides the gods into three kinds: Olympian, stellar, Titanic, descended from Heaven and Earth. From the latter came Saturn and Opa, and from Saturn and Opa came Neptune, Jupiter, Orcus and other offspring. Academician Xenocrates divides the gods into two kinds: Olympian and Titanic, descended from Heaven and Earth. Many Egyptians believe in four gods: the Sun and Moon, Heaven and Earth. Democritus assumes that the gods, with everything else, originated from heavenly fire. And Zeno, like him, believes that nature originated from fire. Therefore, Varro also considers fire to be the soul of the world, so that fire, in his opinion, rules everything in the world just as the soul rules in you. But this is completely false. For he says: “When the fire is there, we ourselves exist, but when it goes out, we die.” Therefore, when fire leaves the world through lightning, the world dies. So, having stated this in a few words, we see that this physical kind of gods was invented in order to show that the elements are gods, and that the gods and those who are born from them; for only gods can be born from gods. Although we will discuss the latter more fully in our place, when we talk about the mythical race of gods belonging to the poets; However, even now regarding the real, that is, physical kind of gods, you intend to say that in no way can those who are said to be born from the elements be considered gods, so that from here it must first be decided that the elements are not gods, when those who are said to be born from the elements are not gods. Likewise, pointing out that the elements are not gods, we affirm in advance that those whose parents, that is, the elements, are not gods, cannot be considered gods. It is known that God is born from God, just as not God is born from not God. The world contains elements. What belongs to the world, then, of course, belongs to its elements and members. But it is necessary that the world either be arranged by someone, as Plato’s idealism believes, or not organized by anyone, as Epicurus’ materialism believes. And if the world is structured, then, having a beginning, it will also have an end. What once, before the beginning, did not exist, and someday, after the end, will not exist, then, of course, cannot be considered God, as not having the substance of the Divine, that is, eternity, which appears without beginning and end. If the world is not created at all and should be considered God, since it, like God, has neither beginning nor end; then how come some ascribe birth to the elements which they consider to be gods, when the Stoics assert that nothing is born from God? Likewise, on what basis do they believe that those who are said to be born from the elements are gods when they assert that God is not born? So, what belongs to the world must be attributed to the elements, that is, heaven, earth, stars, and fire, which Varro in vain declared to be gods and parents of gods, despite the fact that the birth and origin of the Divinity was denied. It was in vain that those who told Varro that the sky and stars were living beings declared this. If the ego is so, then it is necessary that they also be mortal, like living beings; for although it is known that the soul is immortal, this is granted only to it alone and the same is not given to that which is connected to it, that is, to the body. No one will deny that the elements have a body, since we touch them, and they touch us, and since we see that certain objects fall away from them. So, if living beings that do not have a mind or a soul are mortal, like a corporeal creature, then, of course, they are not gods. And yet why does Varro think that the elements are living beings? Because elements move. And so that the opposite side does not expose the fact that many other things are moving, such as carts, trucks and various machines, he himself voluntarily warns, saying: the elements are recognized as living beings because they move on their own, since no engine or motivator is visible from the outside, while the one who moves, or carries the cart, or controls the machine is visible. Therefore, if they were not living beings, they could not move by themselves. But by saying that the originator and director of the movement is not visible, he thereby shows that one should look for him; for that which we do not think exists is not always non-existent because we do not see it. On the contrary, the more deeply we need to investigate what is not visible, so that we can know what is what is visible. Moreover, if they consider to exist only what is visible because it is visible, then how do you accept those who are not visible as gods? If those that do not exist seem to exist, then why should those that do not seem to exist also not exist? I am talking about the One who sets the heavenly bodies in motion. So, let them be living beings, because they move by themselves; let them also move by themselves, because no one else sets them in motion: however, just as what exists is not always God because it is a living being, so it is not always God because it moves by itself. Or what prohibits all living beings, as moving by themselves, from being considered gods? And this is possible among the Egyptians, of course, for another empty reason. Some say that the gods are called "theoi" because "tesin" means to run and move. So, the name does not indicate any greatness; for it is taken from running and moving, and not from the dominion of the Divine. But since that one God whom we worship is called “theos,” and yet no movement or running of Him is visible, because no one can see Him; it is clear that this name was taken from something else, and it is the own invention of the Divine, because it came from Him. So, leaving this cunning explanation, I consider it more probable that the gods are not named from running or moving, but that this name is taken from the name of the true God, so that you also call “theoi” those whom you yourself have invented. Finally, although this would be so, there is still evidence against you, since you generally call “theoi” and all those of your gods in whom no duty of running or movement is noticed. So, if you call “theoi” equally both those that move and those that do not move, then the explanation of the name and the thought of the Divine are equally eliminated, which is destroyed, since it is measured by running and moving. If that proper name of the deity, both simple and non-derivative, is taken from that God for those whom you call gods, then teach also that between niches there is communication in properties, since communication in the name rightfully takes place with communication in substance. But that “theoi”, for the sole reason that it is perceptible, is free from comparison with those that are accessible to both sight and touch. If the elements are open to everyone, if God, on the contrary, is not open to anyone, then how could you get from what you did not see to what you see? So, if you cannot unite them either by feeling or by reason, then why do you unite them with words in order to unite them with power? For Zeno also separates the matter of the world from God, or says that Op passed through it, just as honey passes through a honeycomb. So, matter and God are two words, two objects. By the difference in words, objects also differ, and the property of matter follows the name. If matter is not God, because the name indicates so, then how can that which is in matter, that is, the elements, be considered gods, when the members cannot be dissimilar from the body? But why should I dwell so long on physiological arguments? The mind should ascend upward from the properties of the world, but not descend into the unknown. According to Plato, the world is round. I believe others have come up with square and angular shapes. He circled the world with a compass, because he cared to assure that he (the world) is the only one without a head. But Epicurus, who said that above us, is nothing for us, wanting to look into the sky himself, imagines a circle of the sun a foot in size. Of course, frugality has hitherto been carried out in heaven. However, as soon as the rotation increased, the sun increased its circle. Therefore, the Peripatetics declared that the sun is a large circle. I ask you, what does the passion for guessing mean? What does such a bold statement prove the calm of satisfied petty curiosity, tinted by the art of eloquence? So, Thales of Miletus, examining and exploring the entire sky, deservedly fell into a pit in disgrace. The Egyptian ridiculed him, saying: “You haven’t looked at anything on earth, so how do you think about looking at the sky?” So, his fall figuratively shows that philosophers, precisely those who direct rude curiosity to the objects of nature before to the Author and Head of it, have to fall into the abyss. Let us therefore turn to a more reasonable opinion, for it seems to be taken from a general sentiment and a mere supposition. For Varro also mentions it, saying that the elements are recognized as a deity because absolutely nothing can be born, or nourished, or produce human and earthly life without their help. The bodies and souls themselves cannot be formed without the proper combination of elements. Thanks to this connection, this population of the world, associated with the conditions of the zones, persists, unless extreme cold or intense heat denies people habitation. Therefore, the sun is recognized as gods, since by its own power it lengthens the days, preserves fruits with warmth and the year depends on it, the moon, the joy of the night, the guide in establishing the months, also the stars, some signs to the villagers for determining the time, finally the sky itself with everything that is under it, and the earth itself with everything that is on it and all that is of them that is for the benefit of man. And usually the elements are recognized as deities not only for good deeds, but also for disasters that arise from anger or their dislike, such as lightning, hail, heat, infection in the air, also floods, earthquakes and eruptions, and those whose nature should be honored in happy circumstances and feared in unfortunate ones are rightfully recognized as gods, since she, of course, is the mistress of help and harm. But if this also happens in the lives of citizens, then gratitude or complaint is brought not to the very objects that help or harm, but to those under whose leadership and authority actions are performed. For in your amusement, do not use the flute or the zither to award a wreath as a prize to the artist who plays this or that instrument. Likewise, when someone is sick, you give thanks not to wool, not to antidotes and poultices, but to doctors, through whose diligence and knowledge medicines are obtained. Also, when they receive wounds from iron tools, they do not blame the sword or spear, but the enemy or the robber. And those who are crushed by roofs do not blame the roof tiles or gutter tiles, but the disrepair. Likewise, shipwrecked people do not complain about rocks or waves, but about the storm. That's fair. For there is no doubt that everything that is done must be attributed not to the thing through which it is done, but to the one by whom it is done; because he is the head of the fact who determined both what was to be done and what would be done through. (And in everything there are these three tituli: what exists, through what exists and from whom it exists). First there is one who wants something to be done, and who can find something through which it would be done. And therefore you act correctly in relation to other things, carefully considering the culprit, and in relation to nature, your rule is against nature, by which (rule) you reveal prudence in the rest, since you eliminate the highest position of the culprit and consider what is done, and not what is done. That is why you believe that the elements have power and dominion, who are actually servants and slaves. By admitting the Artist and the Lord, are we not pointing out the slavery of the elements in their very deeds, which you consider to be an expression of power? But gods are not slaves, and those who are slaves are not gods. Or let them declare that in general it happens that freedom is proven from the permission of indifference, dominion is seen from freedom, divinity from domination. If everything that exists is arranged according to a known plan, in accordance with laws, in its place, occurs periodically and is consistent with circumstances and what governs them; then is it really impossible from constancy and immutability, as well as from periodicity, to be convinced that there is some kind of Lord above all this, for Whom, it seems, all the world’s activities aimed at the benefit and harm of the human race are clear? For you cannot say that the elements do everything and take care of everything for themselves and produce nothing for people, since you attribute deity to them because they either help or harm you. Because if they do everything for themselves, then you don’t owe them anything. Okay. Do you admit that the Divinity not only rushes slavishly, but stands completely motionless, that It should neither be diminished, nor damaged, nor destroyed? However, all His bliss would disappear if He ever suffered anything. But the stars fall, and they themselves testify that they fell. And the moon, returning to its former form, admits how much it has shrunk. You usually see the great damages of the moon on the surface of the water, although I don’t believe anything that the Magi know. Even the sun itself often experienced eclipses. Imagine any causes of celestial events; but God will not want to decrease or cease His existence. So let the defenders of human doctrine take note of this, who invent wisdom and truth through imaginary assumptions. For in other cases there is such a custom that whoever speaks better seems to have spoken more truthfully, and it is not he who has spoken better who has spoken more truly. But whoever thinks properly about this subject will, of course, say that it is more likely that these elements are controlled by someone when they even push. So, those who are under the authority of someone else are not gods. But if they are mistaken about this, then it is better to be mistaken simply than in an elaborate way, like the physicists. If you look at the mythical race of gods, then you can rather allow people to wander in physical theology, since here they attribute deity, at least to those whom they consider higher than themselves in position, in greatness and in divinity. For whatever is higher than man must be considered very close to God. But, moving on to the mythical family of gods that is attributed to the poets, I do not know whether such an important investigation should be carried out about your insignificant gods, or whether such great gods as Pug Africanus and Amphiaraus of Boeotia should be confirmed according to documents on the Deity. For now we must only touch upon this kind of gods, a thorough consideration of which will be given in its place. That these gods were people is evident from the fact that you do not always call them gods: you also call them heroes. So, what should you talk about? If the dead should be awarded deity, then, of course, this is not the case. Although you disgrace heaven with the tombs of your emperors out of the same self-willed insolence, yet with this kind of consecration do you not recognize them as people proven in justice, virtue, piety and all that is good, trying to punish oath-breakers for them? On the contrary, as wicked and shameful people, do you not take away their former awards of human glory, destroy their decrees and titles, remove their images, and re-mint coins? But the One who sees everything, who not only approves of good, but also rewards for it, if He gives the order of such mercy to public shame, will He not allow diligent and just people to reflect more when distributing the deity? Will the retinue of kings and emperors be purer than the retinue of the highest God? But you fear and turn away from the vagabonds, the exiles, the poor, the crippled, those of low birth, the wicked, and you even condemn to heaven by laws incestors, adulterers, robbers, and parricides. Should one laugh or be angry that the gods are presented as people should not be? You are ashamed of this mythical kind of gods and at the same time you defend them. For every time we condemn in your gods what is actually pathetic, vile, dirty in them, you defend them by considering all this to be fables allowed by poetic license. Whenever they are silent about this kind of poetic fables, you not only do not disdain them, but even reverence them and express them in the arts that are necessary for you, and through this culprit of literature you carry out free studies. Plato believed that poets, as accusers of the gods, are expelled from the fatherland, and Homer, the head of the poets, should be expelled from the state. But since you again accept them and protect them, why don’t you believe their stories about your gods? So, if you believe the poets, then why do you worship such gods? If you revere them because you do not believe the poets, then why do you praise the priests and are not afraid to offend those whose humiliators you revere? Indeed, poets need to be believed. Do you not, when you say that your gods became gods after death, openly admit that they were men before death? So, what is new if those who were people are dishonored either by human failures, or by human crimes, or by human fables? Do you really not believe poets even when, on the basis of their stories, you even establish some sacred rites? Why is the priest of Ceres kidnapped if Ceres did not tolerate this? Why are other people's children sacrificed to Saturn if he spared his own? Why is the man of Idea circumcised if no proud youth was castrated for her in grief over a vain passion? Why don’t Lanuvin women taste the treats of Hercules, if the women’s guilt did not precede it? The poets do lie, but not in that your gods, when they were men, did what they said, and not in the fact that the abominations of your gods were attributed to the divine, while it seems more likely to you that they were not such gods as they imagine them to be, but in that they are represented as gods, when they are not gods. There remains the last, the ancestral race of gods belonging to the peoples. There is private information about these gods, taken arbitrarily and not according to knowledge of the truth. I think that God is everywhere known, everywhere present, everywhere dominant, everyone should revere Him, everyone should deserve His mercy. But if those whom the whole world honors together do not have evidence of true divinity, then even more so those whom even their own municipalities do not know. For what worthy authority preceded such a theology, which even rumor has abandoned? How many have seen or heard about the Atargata of the Syrians, about the Celeste of the Africans, about the Varzutin of the Moors, about the Rim and Dusar of the Arabs, about Belenus of the Norics, or about those of whom Varro speaks: about Delventinus of Kazanien, about Visidian of Narnien, about Numiternus of Atine, about Ancharius of Asculanus, the dignity of whose names is in no way different from human ones nicknames? I laugh enough at the gods, the decurions of every municipality, whose honor is limited to their walls. To what great success this freedom of adoption of gods has reached is shown by the superstitions of the Egyptians, who even worship private animals, cats, crocodiles and their Anub. It’s not enough for them that they deified a person. I am talking about the one who is revered not only by Egypt or Greece, but by the whole world, by whom Africans swear, and about which correct information can be found in our books. For that Serapis, who was once called Joseph, came from a sacred people. He, the youngest among the brothers, but superior to them in intelligence, was sold to Egypt by his brothers out of envy and there he served in the house of the king of Egypt, Pharaoh. The shameless queen desired him; but since he did not obey her, she denounced him to the king, and the king imprisoned him. Here, having correctly interpreted the dreams of some, he thereby revealed the strength of his spirit. Meanwhile, the king also saw some terrible dreams. Since those whom the king called refused to explain his dreams to him, Joseph was given the opportunity to explain them. He was released from prison and interpreted his dreams to the king this way: seven fat cows mean seven years of fertility, and seven lean cows mean seven years of crop failure. therefore, he advised the king to stock up on funds for a future famine from the previous bountiful harvest. The king believed him. Events showed his intelligence, his holiness, and his care. Pharaoh made him commander over all of Egypt and ordered him to take care of acquiring grain and storing it. They named him Serapis because of the decoration with which his head was decorated. This decoration, having the shape of a modium, resembled the distribution of bread. The ears of corn around the head show that the burden of bread was on the head. And the dog, which is at the entrance to hell, was placed under his right hand, because by his hand the Egyptians were saved. He is also joined by Faria, the etymology of whose name indicates that she was the daughter of the pharaoh. Pharaoh placed among other honors and awards the one who gave him her daughter in marriage. But since they decided to honor both animals and people, they combined the image of both in one Anub, so that it could be better seen that the features of their nature and their character were idolized by a quarrelsome people, disobeying their kings, despised among strangers, truly the very throat of a dog and the most slavish abomination. These three kinds of theology, which became either more famous or more remarkable after Varro divided the gods in the above-mentioned manner, we have considered, so that our answer to the physical, mythical and generic kind of gods can be considered sufficient. And since now every purpose of the gods no longer belongs to philosophers, and not to poets, and not to peoples, but to the rulers of the Romans, to whom they handed it down, by whom it received it from them and from whom it acquired authority, then we must now enter another abyss of human error, into a forest wilderness that needs to be cut down, which, of course, has darkened the youth of error by accepting the seeds of superstition. But Varro divided the Roman gods into three kinds: known, unknown and chosen gods. What emptiness! Why did the Romans need unknown gods if they had known ones? Or maybe they wished to embrace Athenian stupidity. For the Athenians had a church with the inscription: “to the unknown gods.” But who honors him whom he does not know? If they then had known gods, they should have been pleased with them and should not have desired the chosen ones. And here they are exposed as not being religious. For if they choose gods like onions, then those whom they do not choose are declared unfit. And we divide the Roman gods into two kinds: into general and private gods, that is, into those that they have together with all other peoples, and into those that they themselves invented. And were they really called public gods and aliens? For this is taught by the altars of strangers at the church of Karna and by the public in the Palacium. since the general gods are among the physical and mythical gods, they have already been spoken of. Speaking about private gods, about the Roman ones, we are amazed at this third class of enemy gods, because no other people accepted them as much as they accepted. We divide all other gods into two types: some are taken from people, while others are invented differently. So, since the dead are idolized as if for their merits during life, we will show that they did not deserve it. They believed that Aeneas was a loving father, that he never aspired to military glory, that he was mutilated by a stone. To the extent that this weapon is vulgar and typical of dogs, the wound is also ignominious. But Aeneas turns out to be a traitor to the fatherland. He is the same as Antenor. And if they want the truth, then let them know that Aeneas abandoned his compatriots when his fatherland was burning, that he should be placed lower than the Carthaginian woman who did not follow her husband Astrubal, who submitted to the enemy, did not think, by taking her children, to preserve her beauty and her offspring by flight, but lay down in the fire of burning Carthage, as if in the arms of a dying fatherland. Is Aeneas pious because he took his only son and elderly father with him when he left Priam and Astyanax? But the Romans should rather curse him, since for the sake of the well-being of the emperors and their families they swear to the detriment of their children, wives and everything that is dear to them. They worship the son of Venus, and Vulcan, knowing this, tolerates it, and Juno allows it. If sons reach heaven for respecting their parents, then shouldn’t the Argive youths rather be considered gods because, contrary to custom, they, harnessed to a chariot as a couple, brought their mother so that she could make a peace offering? Why not rather the goddess - that daughter of the father who was dying of hunger in prison, who fed him with her breasts, since she showed great love? What else is glorious about Aeneas, except that he is nowhere to be seen in the Laurentian battle. Likewise, Romulus became a god after death. If he became a god because he founded a city, then why didn’t other city founders, including women, become gods? Yes, Romulus killed his brother and kidnapped other people’s maidens by cunning. Because he is a god, because he is Quirin, because thanks to him the parents raised a cry then. What did Sterkulin do to deserve deity? If Sterkulin, loving the fields, respected them, then Avgey collected even more manure. If Favi, the son of Picus, touched by intelligence, acted against the law, then he should have been treated rather than idolized? If the daughter of Faun was distinguished by such chastity that she did not even live with men, either out of savagery, or out of consciousness of ugliness, or ashamed of her father’s madness, then how much more worthy is the good Dea Penelope, who managed to maintain her chastity, being among so many despised friends? And the Saint received the church from King Plotius for his hospitality. And Ulix could bring you another god from the most humane Alcinous. I hasten to something more vile. Your writers were not ashamed to talk about Larentina. She was a public woman either when she fed Romulus, and was called Ypra because she was a harlot, or when she was the mistress of Hercules, and the already deceased, that is, already a god. For they say that the caretaker of his church, playing alone in the church with pebbles, in order to represent to himself a player whom he did not have, entered the game with one hand on behalf of Hercules, and with the other on his own behalf, with the idea that if he himself won, he would take the supper of Hercules from the sacrifices of the harlot, and if Hercules won, that is, with the other hand, he would also offer it to Hercules. The hand of Hercules won, and this can be counted among his twelve labors. The church caretaker gives Hercules lunch and brings the harlot Larentina. Fire, which signifies the body of Hercules himself, dines and destroys everything on the altar. Larentina is sleeping alone in the church: the woman, immediately after the pimping game, is tormented by the fact that she suffered in a dream from Hercules, and she could have suffered in a dream, contemplating in spirit. One young man, Tarutius, rushes to her, walking from the church early in the morning, another, as they say, Hercules, and invites her to come. She obeys, thinking that what Hercules said will benefit her; of course, she tries to unite in a legal marriage (for God is not allowed to deal with a harlot with impunity); the spouse also produces an heiress. Then, not long before her death, she bequeathed to the Roman people the rather vast field that she acquired with the help of Hercules. By this, the divine Larentina acquired deity for her daughters, whom she was to make her heirs. She increased the gods of the Romans through his merits. Of the many wives of Hercules, of course, she is the only one dear, for she alone is rich, and much happier than Ceres, who pleased the deceased. With such examples and with such desires of the entire people, who could not be recognized as a god? Who even disputed the deity of Antinous? Was Ganymede more charming than he or dearer to his lover? You have the sky open to the dead, you drive them everywhere along the road from the underworld to the stars. Harlots ascend there, so that you do not think that you rank your emperors much higher. The Romans, not content with recognizing as gods those whom they had previously seen, heard and touched, whose images were drawn, whose deeds were told, whose memory is widespread, demand some kind of incorporeal and soulless shadows and names from things and recognize them as gods, entrusting every state of man to individual deities from the very conception in the womb. So, there is some god Consevius who protects marital copulation; there is the goddess Fmovionia, who nourishes the baby in the womb; then Vitumn and Sentin, with the help of which the baby begins to live and feel; then Diespiter, who brings the pregnant woman to birth. At birth, Candelifera is also present, because they gave birth by candlelight, and those other goddesses who received their name from certain services at birth. The Romans believed that at birth, the one born incorrectly was helped by Postverta, and the one born correctly was helped by the prose of Carmenta. Farinus “ab effatu” and Locutius “a loquendo” were called gods. Kunina protects the child from the evil eye and lulls him to sleep. Both Levan and Runtsin are being raised together. It is surprising that the gods did not bother to cleanse the abominations of children. Then Potina and Edula teach the child to drink and eat for the first time, and Statina teaches the child to stand, Adeona to come, Abeona to leave. The Romans have both Domiduca and Menta, which teaches equally good and evil. There are also gods of desire: Volumnus and Voleta. They have Paventina, the goddess of fear, and Venilia, the goddess of hope, and Volupia, the goddess of pleasure, and Prestina, the goddess of excellence, and Peragenori from the movement, and Consus from the council. Juventa is the goddess of toga-wearing youths, Fortuna Barbata is the goddess of men. If we talk about wedding gods, then they have an Afferenda from bringing a dowry. Oh shame! they have invented Mutun, and Tutun, and the goddess Pertunda, and Subig; and Prema mater. Shameless gods! have mercy. No one is present at the marriage bed. The bridegrooms themselves blush, rejoicing on the beds. Since it is necessary to reason about which gods you have accepted, then why reason so much about these gods? How much should you be ashamed of? I don’t know at all whether to laugh at the emptiness or condemn the stupidity. For how many gods and which ones must I represent? Are they big or small? Are they ancient or new? Are they male or female? Are they single or married? Those who know art and those who don’t? Are they village or city? Are they domestic or foreign? For there are so many families, so many clans asking about their origins that it is impossible to examine, divide, or describe them. But the broader the subject, the more we need to narrow it, and therefore, intending to show that all your gods are people (not because you do not know this, but to remind you, for you seem to have forgotten), for the sake of brevity we will talk only about their ancestor. For the nature of the ancestor undoubtedly belongs to all his descendants. Your gods, I believe, come from Saturn. For although Varro calls Jupiter, Juno and Minerva the most ancient gods, we should not deviate from the opinion that every father is older than his children. Therefore, Saturn is older than Jupiter, and Heaven is older than Saturn: after all, Saturn originated from Heaven and Earth. However, I will not talk about the origin of Heaven and Earth. Why were they unmarried and childless for a long time before they became spouses and parents? Of course, it took them a long time to grow to such maturity. Finally, as soon as Heaven’s voice began to change and the Earth’s breasts began to harden, they entered into marriage. I think either the Sky descended to the bride, or the Earth ascended to the groom. However, the Earth conceived from Heaven and gave birth to Saturn, worthy of wonder. He didn't look like either of his parents. But let her give birth. At least they did not give birth to anyone before Saturn and no one after, except Opa alone. From here there have already been offspring. For Sature truly castrated the sleeping Sky. We consider Heaven to be masculine. For what is a father, if not a man? But what was it supposed to castrate? He had a sickle. At that time? After all, Vulcan, the inventor of iron tools, did not yet exist. The widowed land did not think of getting married, although she was young, others are getting married. But she had no other Heaven. But what? Perhaps the Sea loves her? But the water in it is salty. and she was accustomed to simple waters. So, Saturn is the only man of Heaven and Earth. But he himself, having reached adulthood, marries his sister. At that time there were no laws prohibiting incest or punishing parricide. Then he devoured his sons: it was better for him to devour them himself than for the wolves to throw them away. Of course, he was afraid that one of them would find out about his father's sickle. Immediately after the birth of Jupiter and his removal, he swallowed a stone instead of a child. Having long been at peace, thanks to this cunning deception, he was finally attacked and deprived of his kingdom by a son whom he had not swallowed and who grew up in obscurity. This patriarch of the gods was born to you by Heaven and Earth with the help of poetic midwives. But some subtly, physically, through allegories explain Saturn, namely: Saturn is time, Heaven and Earth are his parents, since they do not come from anyone; he is equipped with a sickle because in time everything is destroyed; He devours children because he destroys everything that came from him in himself. This is confirmed by the name itself: Κρόνος is named in Greek instead of Ηρόνος. Likewise, the reason for the Latin name is derived from the sowing by those who think that he is the creator, that through him the seeds of heaven descend to the earth. Opu is added to it both because the seeds bring wealth (opem) to life, and because they arise as a result of labor (opere). Please explain this allegorical interpretation. The patriarch of your gods was either Saturn or time. If time, then how Saturn? If Saturn, then how is time? For you cannot think that both are really (corporale) in him. What prevented him from honoring time in his own being? What prevented us from reading a person or a fable about a person in his own image, and not in the image of the time? What does such an interpretation want, except to color a vile subject with false explanations? You do not want Saturn to be time because you call him man. Or you don’t want him to be a person, because you consider him time. There is no doubt that your god Saturus is represented by ancient writers as a man when he was on earth. Everything that does not exist can be represented as incorporeal, but not that which exists. When it is known that Saturn lived, then in vain you understand him allegorically. You are not allowed to understand him this way, because you will not deny that he was a man who cannot be considered either god or time. Your literature constantly talks about the origin of Saturn. We read about this from Cassius Severus, from the Cornelius Nepos and Tacitus, also from the Greeks Diodorus and others who studied antiquities. For there are no material monuments anywhere more reliable than in Italy. For after wandering through many countries and Attica, he settled in Italy, or, as it was then called, in Oenotria, being received by Janus, or Jan, as they themselves call him. The mountain on which he settled was called Saturn; the city that he founded still exists under the name of Saturnia. Finally, all of Italy was named after Saturn. Although doubt arises about the origin of Saturn, since this is evidenced by such a country that dominates the world; however, from his actions it is clear that he was a man. So, if Saturn is a man, then, of course, he is not God. If he is a man, then, of course, he did not come from Heaven and Earth. But since his parents were unknown to some, they could easily call him the son of those whose children everyone can consider, For who does not call heaven and earth father and mother out of respect? Isn’t it human custom to talk about those unknown people who suddenly appear that they came from Heaven? Therefore, since the stranger appeared suddenly, everyone began to call him heavenly. For we also represent to the people people of unknown origin as sons of the earth. I am silent about the fact that then people were ignorant and rude, and therefore could easily mistake an unknown person or a person for God. I will also dwell on Saturn in order to prepare a short speech for the other gods, having made a sufficient discussion about the ancestor, and in order not to omit the important evidence of the divine scripture, which should be completely trusted due to its antiquity. For the Sibyl existed before all literature, precisely that Sibyl who was the true predictor of the truth, whose words you put into the mouths of the prophets - demons. She speaks in six-foot verse about the generation of Saturn and his adventures: “in the tenth generation of the human race after the flood, Saturn, Titan and Iapetus reigned, the bravest sons of Heaven and Earth.” So, if you have any confidence in your most divine and ancient scripture, then this is already enough to see that Saturn and his descendants were people. We will not speak separately about each of your gods, limiting ourselves to the prescriptive argument for brevity. The nature of the descendants is visible from the nature of the ancestors: the mortal comes from the mortal, the earthly - from the earthly. Descendants are born in order to in turn produce descendants. Weddings, conceptions, birthdays take place. Fatherland, residences, kingdoms, monuments are known. So, those who cannot deny the birth of gods must recognize them as people, should not consider them gods. But, they say, their strength is clearly present in them. Those about whom they cannot claim that from the beginning they were anything other than people are accepted among the gods, claiming that they became gods after death. Varro and his like-minded people think so. Therefore, I speak against this opinion. If your gods are elected to the host of gods, as if to the class of senators, then you, as thinking people, must admit that there is some kind of highest Lord who has the power to elect the gods, and, as it were, an emperor. No one can bestow on others what he himself does not have dominion over. But if they could make themselves gods after death, then why did they first want to have a lower nature? Or if there is no one who created gods, then why do they say that those who could only be made by another became gods? So, you have no reason to deny that there is some kind of possessor (manceps) of the deity. Therefore, we will consider the reasons for the election of people as gods. I believe that you will indicate the reasons for this. For the one who distributes this does it either in order to have helpers, or defenders, or adornments of his greatness, or in order to reward everyone according to his merits. It is impossible to imagine any other reason. Everyone, when rewarding someone, does it either for himself or for the one whom he rewards. But the first cause cannot go to God if there is such power in Him that He can make gods; Moreover, He acquires such humanity, as if He needs the work and help of others, and, moreover, the dead. This is all the more surprising since God, from the very beginning of existence, could have created immortal gods for Himself. And he who ascribed the human to the divine will not look for further evidence for this. But we should pay more attention to the second opinion, according to which God gave people deity for their merits. But if indeed deity was granted to them for this, if, that is, heaven was open to the ancient men for their merits; then it must be said that for this none of them was awarded this honor, unless no other place could accept them. Of course, perhaps the ancients deserved heaven with such privileges. So, let's talk about whether they really deserved it. Whoever says that they deserve it assumes their merit. If only in primitive times could misdeeds acquire a deity, then you quite rightly accepted the incestuous sister and brother, Opu and Saturn, among the gods. The stolen baby Jupiter was not worthy of a roof and human breasts and, growing up in Crete, he deservedly endured great disasters. Finally, having reached adulthood, Jupiter dethrones his own happiest father, the king of the golden age, during whose reign they knew neither labor nor poverty, enjoying complete peace, and then no one cultivated the fields, and the earth produced everything, without needing anyone’s help. Before, he hated his father because he was an incestuous man, because he wanted to imprison him, and because he castrated his grandfather. But he himself copulates with his sister, so I think that the following saying applies to him first: “like the father, like the son.” There is as much piety in the son as in the father. If even then they were governed by fair laws, then Jupiter would have to be divided into two bags. After Jupiter was established in incest, could he even think about committing any other kind of adultery? Poetry joked about him like almost no one else when, for example, it declared him a fugitive. And we, as a rule, sell his labor to someone else's buyer, sometimes depicting him as wasteful, since he paid an ox or the price of an ox and sent golden rain to the dissolute houses, that is, opened access to them with money, sometimes depicting him in the form of an eagle that stole, in the form of a swan that sang. Are these fables based on the most shameful abominations and the greatest crimes? Or perhaps they do not consider vile deeds and human inventions to be depraved? How demons, the offspring of evil angels, which had already appeared long ago, tried to turn them away from the faith through unbelief and similar fables, we should not talk about this at length here. For if the people are restrained by both emperors and leaders. and teachers, was not like that in this respect, then in other respects their authority demanded imitation. How much worse is the one that is not better? You simply call Jupiter Optimum Jupiter, depriving him of his honorary title. Virgil calls it aecus Iupiter. Therefore, all your gods are incestuous towards their own, shameless towards strangers, wicked, unjust. Whoever was not greatly disgraced by myth could not become a god. But since they separately represent other gods accepted from people into the host of gods, since they divide gods into those born and created according to Dionysius the Stoic, then I will also talk about this type of them. Our discussion will concern mainly Hercules: is he worthy of heaven and deity? They award deity, of course, to those who have earned it through their own free will. If he was given a deity for his bravery, since he constantly defeated animals, then what is surprising in this? Do involuntary and voluntary gladiators not even engage in battles with learned animals and defeat them? If he achieved divinity for wandering around the world, then how many rich people were forced to wander by pleasant freedom, and philosophers by humiliated poverty? Don't they remember that the cynic Asclepiades explored the whole world on a single cow, which carried him on his back and which sometimes fed him with her teats? If Hercules even went to hell, then who knows that the path there is open to everyone? If you idolized him for so many murders and battles, then the great Pompey committed much more murders and battles, defeating the sea robbers who did not leave Ostia itself intact. And how many thousands of people were exterminated even against one corner of Birsa of Carthage by Scipio? For the ego, Scipio should be included among the gods rather than Hercules. Quickly add to the glorious exploits of Hercules the molestation of virgins, the desecration of wives, the Omphale bandages and the shamefully abandoned war of the Argonauts due to the loss of a handsome youth. Add to glory after vile ignominy also his folly; honor those arrows that killed your sons and wife. Who then deservedly condemned himself to the stake as a result of repentance for parricide? Who, drunk with poison for being unfaithful to his wife, more deserved to die a shameful death? You raised him from the fire to heaven as easily as you lifted the other one, wretched by divine fire. who (another), having learned some medicine, raised the dead. This son of Jupiter, man and grandson of Jupiter, great-grandson of Saturn (or rather spurius, for his father is not known: he, according to the testimony of the Argive Socrates, no doubt thrown out, was found and fed more shamefully than Jupiter - with dog's teats), according to his deserts, was killed by lightning, which no one can deny. Here Jupiter Optimus is again angry, cruel to his grandson, envious of the doctor. But Pindar did not hide the guilt of Aesculapius: he was punished for self-interest and greed for acquisition, thanks to which he killed the living and did not resurrect the dead, abusing corrupt medicine. They say that his mother died for the same reason, and deservedly so, since she gave birth to such a destructive beast for the world; and they also say that it is as if they ascended to heaven along the same stairs. And yet the Athenians must know that they offer sacrifices to such gods; for they offer sacrifices to Aesculapius and his mother among the dead in honor of their parents. As if they themselves do not idolize their Theseus, truly a god. Why not idolize if he left his benefactress on a foreign shore due to the same oblivion or even madness that caused the death of his father? It would be a long time to talk about those gods whom you hid in the stars and whom you boldly deliver to the sky. I think that Castors, and Perseus, and Erigena deserve to be removed from the sky just as much as the enlarged Jupiter. But why should we be especially surprised? You even transferred dogs, scorpions, and crayfish to heaven. I do not compare with these gods those who, as you believe, predict the future through oracles: in this they have proof of divinity. What? You think that there are gods who control sadness, for example, there is Viduy, who separates the soul from the body, whom you do not allow to be confined within walls; there is also Caeculus, which takes away sensation from the eyes; there is Orbona, who deprives of offspring, and there is finally the goddess of death itself. Omitting other things, I will say that, in your opinion, there are gods and places of the city or gods - places: and Jan the father, and the goddess Jan for the arches, and the god of the seven mountains - Septemontius. Some of these gods have altars and churches in the same places, others - in other people's places and at other people's expense. I am silent about the Ascension, which takes its name from the ascent (a scansione), about Clivicola, which takes its name from the hill (a clivis). I am also silent about the gods Forculus, called from the doors (a forbius), about Cardeus, called from the hooks (a cardinibus), about Limentinus, called from the thresholds (a liminibus), or about others whom your neighbors worship under the name of the gods of the doorkeepers. For what is important when you have your gods in brothels, kitchens and prisons? So, with these countless, properly Roman gods, with whom the officia of all life are shared, the sky is filled, so that there is no longer any need for other gods. But since the Romans privatium venerate those gods about whom we spoke above, and since they are not easily recognized by outsiders, then how does everything that, in their opinion, they (the gods) protect, succeeds in every human race and in every people, when their praedes are deprived not only of honor, but even of knowledge itself. But they say that some gods discovered fruits and what is necessary for life. I ask you, when you say what they found, are you not openly declaring that what they found existed before? So, why do you not honor the Creator of these gifts, but instead honor those who found them? Before anyone found, of course, he thanked the Culprit, of course, he felt that He is God, to whom truly belongs the work of the Creator, who was created and the one who found, and the very thing that was found. No one in Rome knew the green African fig until Cato brought it to the Senate to squeeze the juice out of it, since that province was already hostile, the conquest of which he always insisted on. Gnaeus Pompey was the first to bring cherries from Pontus to Italy. Those who found new apples could earn a deity from the Romans in gratitude. All this is as untenable as the idea that the divine nature is acquired through the invention of the arts. If we compare modern artists with ancient artists, we should rather idolize the former than the latter. I ask you: is not antiquity outdated in all arts, since new works of art appear everywhere every day? And therefore, those who are idolized for their arts, you insult them in their very arts and challenge them to a competition with invincible rivals. Finally, you do not deny to the guardians of your religion all those whom antiquity recognized as gods and posterity believed. Therefore, we are left with the most ancient Roman religious superstition, with which we have to enter into debate, fighting against you, pagans. They say that the Romans became lords and rulers of the whole world because they were unusually religious. Of course, world domination was granted to them by Sterkul, Mutun and Larentina. The Roman people alone were chosen by their gods to rule. For I cannot even think that foreign gods would wish to do this to a foreign people rather than to their own, that they would neglect, abandon and betray the country where they were born, raised, glorified and buried. Therefore, even Jupiter would not allow Roman weapons to conquer his Crete, forgetting his Idean cave, and the Corybantian copper plates, and the most pleasant smell of his nurse. Would he not prefer his own grave to any Capitol, so that the country that hid his ashes would rather dominate? Would Juno really wish that Carthage, which she loved and which she preferred to Samos, and, moreover, the descendants of Aeneas, should be burned? What do I know? “Here was her weapon, here was her chariot, even then the goddess takes care and patronizes that the people have this kingdom, if somehow fate allows it.” The unfortunate woman had no strength to resist fate! And yet the Romans did not give as much honor to the fate that gave Carthage into their hands as they gave to Larentina. But royal power should not depend on your gods. For Jupiter reigned in Crete, Saturn in Italy, Isis in Egypt, and the people who reigned were entrusted to many who performed sacred rites. So, whoever is a slave makes a ruler, and he who surrenders gives power to the citizens of Admetus, the Romans having killed a free inhabitant, their Croesus, with a false promise of dubious property. Why was God afraid to constantly proclaim that He was removed from this kingdom? As if the gods, endowed with royal power, could ever guard their cities! If they have the power to protect the Romans, then why didn't Minerva protect the Athenians from Xerxes? Or why didn’t Apollo wrest Delphi from the hands of Xerxes? Let those who have lost their cities guard the city of Rome, if Roman religiosity deserves it. Was it not after the acquisition of the greatest power that the religion of the Romans, with its extensive rites, was acquired? Although worship was introduced by Numa, religion did not yet steal your property through deception for idols and churches. Religion was frugal, the rituals were poor, the altars were random, the vessels were dirty, the smoke from them was small, and God himself was nowhere to be found. So, the Romans did not become religious before they became great, and they are not great because they are religious. On the contrary, how could the Romans acquire power through religiosity and the greatest concern for the gods, when they acquired this power by insulting the gods? For, if I am not mistaken, every kingdom and power is acquired through wars and expanded through wars. The winners also insult the gods of the city. For fortresses and churches are equally destroyed, non-sacred and sacred things are equally plundered, citizens and priests are beaten equally. There are as many sacrileges of the Romans as there are trophies; There are as many of their triumphs over the gods as there are over the nations. Idols are also captured and, of course, if they sense the winners, they do not love them. But since the gods do not feel anything, they are insulted with impunity, and since they are insulted with impunity, they are worshiped in vain. So, whose greatness was acquired by victories, they cannot expand it with religious affairs, or as they expand it they insult religion, or as they insult them they expand it. All peoples, each in their time, had kingdoms, such as the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians. Some of them reign to this day, and yet those who lost their kingdoms did not remain without religion and veneration even of the unmerciful gods, until finally almost all dominion passed to the Romans. So, the fate of times controls the kingdoms. Look for who established the change of times. He rules the kingdoms, and now he has concentrated in the hands of the Romans the power that was taken from many peoples, like money. That she depends on Him, those who are closest to Him know this. You might be interested in: