Apologetician

Tertullian's most outstanding apologetic work is Apologeticus (50 chapters). It was written in 197 in Carthage and addressed to the rulers of the Roman provinces. Tertullian destroys the legal and political basis for the religious intolerance of the Roman government in relation to the Christian faith. The introduction (chap. 1-6) states that the attitude of the Roman government towards Christianity is based on its ignorance and is a mockery of the laws. Tertullian focuses his attention on the state law, which declared the Christian faith an unlawful religion and was cited as the most important basis for the persecution and persecution of Christians. The apologist criticizes this - it is based on the imaginary right of the state to interfere in the internal individual life of every citizen. Tertullian demands its abolition. The apology then breaks down into two main parts. In the first of them (chap. 7-27), Tertullian rejects accusations of Christians of secret crimes (killing children, eating them, incest) and insulting the state religion. Having proved that accusations of this kind are unfounded, but rest on rumor and, most likely, are applicable to the pagans themselves, the apologist in the second part (chap. 28-45) dwells on defending Christians from accusations of obvious crimes, the main one of which is insult to the imperial majesty (Christians did not honor the emperor as God). He proves that Christians are not enemies of the emperor and the state and fulfill their duties towards them. Christians look to the emperor as a political ruler, showing him love, loyalty and devotion. In conclusion (chap. 46-50), Tertullian puts forward the absolute sublimity of Christianity as a revealed religion over human philosophy: Christians are superior to philosophers in self-sacrifice and firmness. *The title of the work in Latin is Apologeticum. See also another translation: Apologetic trans. N. Shcheglova [1910] Chapter I. Ignorance of the Pagans about Christians. Different behavior of Christians and criminals before trial 1. If you, the rulers of the Roman Empire, sitting in full view of everyone on an elevated place, almost at the very top of the state in order to administer justice, are not allowed to openly examine and publicly examine what is true in the case of Christians, if your government in only this one case is either afraid or ashamed to conduct an investigation in front of the people and not deviate one step from justice, if, finally, as happened quite recently, hostility towards this sect, revealing excessive zeal in family courts, hinders the defense, then let the truth be allowed to reach your ears, at least through the secret road of silent letters. 1 2. She does not ask for anything for herself, for she is not surprised at her fate. She knows that she leads the life of a foreigner on earth, easily finds enemies among strangers, raising her family to heaven, where she has a home, where she hopes to receive mercy and honor. 2 She strives for only one thing - not to be judged without recognizing her. 3. What will be lost from the laws that rule in their own autocracy if she is heard? Will not their power have more reason to be proud when they condemn even the truth they have heard? However, if they condemn her without listening, then, in addition to the reproach of injustice, they will also deserve suspicion of some kind of evil intent as they do not want to listen to what, having heard, they will not be able to condemn. 4. So this will be the first reason for your unjust hatred towards the Christian name. This injustice is aggravated and exposed by the same thing that seems to excuse it, namely ignorance. For what is more unjust than people hating what they do not know, even if it deserves to be hated? After all, then it deserves when it becomes known whether it deserves it. 5. When there is no knowledge about guilt, how will hatred be justified, the justice of which should be proven, relying not on chance, but on knowledge? Therefore, when people hate because they do not know what the thing they hate is, why should it not be such that they should not hate? Thus, we irrefutably prove one thing, relying on another: both that they do not know them while they hate them, and that they unjustly hate them while they do not know them. 6. Evidence of ignorance, which, while excusing injustice, condemns it, is that everyone who previously hated, because they did not know what they hated, as soon as they cease to remain ignorant, stop hating. They, having received accurate information, join the ranks of Christians and begin to hate what they were and confess what they hated; and their number is as great as the number of us who are branded with shame. 7. They shout about us that we have besieged the state, that Christians are in the fields, in fortresses, on the islands. They grieve, as if about a loss, that people of different sex, age, condition and rank take this name. 8. All this, strangely enough, does not prompt the pagans to recognize some hidden good here. It is not allowed to assume what is more correct, one does not want to find out what is more reliable. Only here does human curiosity become numb: people tend not to know, although others rejoice that they have comprehended. How much more would Anacharsis 3 brand them, the ignorant, judging the experts, than he branded the ignorant in music, judging the musicians! 4 9. They prefer not to know, because they already hate. So strongly are they convinced that what they do not know is such that, having known it, they could no longer hate, although if nothing is discovered that deserves hatred, of course it would be better to postpone unjust hatred. If the crime becomes known, she not only will not lose anything, but will be more justified due to the weight of justice itself. 10. “But,” says the pagan, “Christianity is not good because many are changed under its influence; how many people are inclined towards evil, how many of them go over to the side of depravity!” Who denies this? However, those who are carried away by it do not dare to pass off what is truly evil as good. Nature has covered every evil with fear or shame. 11. Villains try to hide, avoid showing themselves; when caught, they tremble, when accused, they deny their guilt, even under torture they do not easily and do not always confess; when convicted, they grieve. They count the impulses of evil will in the depths of their souls, attribute weakness to fate or the stars, because they do not want to own what they recognize as evil. 12. What does a Christian do that is similar? No one is ashamed, no one repents of anything, except that he was not a Christian before. If he is branded with disgrace, he is proud; if he is accused, he does not defend himself; when asked, confesses without any coercion; being condemned, he gives thanks. 13. What kind of evil is this that does not have what is inherent in evil - fear, shame, subterfuge, repentance, mourning? What kind of evil is this when the defendant to whom it is charged rejoices; when the accusation itself is desirable, and the punishment is happiness? You, who are accused of ignorance, cannot call it madness. Chapter II. Pagans treat Christians differently than criminals 1. If, finally, it is known that we are the greatest villains, why do you yourself treat us differently than our comrades, that is, other villains, although the same crime should be treated equally? 2. When everything that is said about us is imputed to others, they use both their own lips and hired defense to prove their innocence. They are given the opportunity to respond and object, because it is not allowed to condemn them without generally depriving them of protection and without listening. 3. But Christians alone are not allowed to say anything that would destroy their case, would defend the truth and would not make the judge unjust. Christians are expected to do only what is necessary to incite popular hatred: recognition of a name, not investigation of a crime. 4. After all, if you are conducting an investigation into the case of a criminal, then when he confesses to murder, sacrilege, incest or treason - I call those charges that are brought against us - you are not content with this to pass a sentence until you establish the accompanying circumstances, the nature of the crimes, their number, place, time, accomplices, accomplices. 5. Nothing of the kind is being undertaken regarding us, although it would behoove us to impartially investigate what we are wrongly accused of: how much everyone has already eaten from the meat of murdered children, how many incests they have committed in the dark, who prepared the food, what kind of dogs they were. 5 Oh, how great would be the glory of the ruler if he exposed the one who had already eaten a hundred babies! 6. But we discover that it is forbidden to search for us. After all, Pliny the Younger, during his administration of the province, having condemned some Christians and deprived others of the position in society that they occupied, was nevertheless confused by their multitude. Not knowing how to deal with them in the future, he asked the then Emperor Trajan for advice. 6 Pliny also wrote that, apart from the stubbornness of Christians in refusing sacrifices, he did not learn anything else about their sacraments, except that they gather before dawn in order to glorify Christ as God and strengthen themselves in their teaching, and that murder, adultery, deception, perfidy and other crimes are prohibited among them. 7. Then Trajan replied that these people should not be sought out, but those who were brought to trial should be punished. 8. Oh, the decision is willy-nilly contradictory! Forbids searching for Christians as if they were innocent, and orders them to be punished as criminals. He spares and rages, does not notice them and pays attention to them. Why are you, O sentence, deceiving yourself? If you judge, why don't you look for him? If you are not looking for it, why are you not justifying it? To search for robbers, military patrols are formed by lot in all provinces; in the fight against those guilty of lese majeste and against the enemies of society, every person becomes a warrior; the search extends to accomplices and accomplices. 9. Only Christians are not allowed to be searched; accusations are allowed, as if the purpose of the search is something other than bringing charges. So, you condemn the accused whom no one wanted to look for; who, I think, deserved punishment not because he was guilty, but because he was found, although he could not be looked for. 10. Also in that respect, you act towards us differently than during the trial of villains, as towards others who deny their guilt; you use torture to make them confess, but only to Christians so that they deny it, although if what we are accused of was evil, we would deny it, but you would force them to confess with torture. After all, you don’t think that crimes should not be investigated with the help of an inquiry on the basis that you are already aware of their commission by the very fact of recognizing the name. Knowing what murder is, you are nevertheless now trying to find out from the person who confessed to it how it was committed. 11. Even more vicious is that you, who judge our crimes in advance on the basis of the recognition of the name, force us by torture to renounce it, so that by denying the name, we also deny the crimes that you judge in advance on the basis of the recognition of the name. 12. But you, I think, do not want us, those whom you consider the worst of villains, to perish. After all, this is what you usually say to a murderer: “Deny it”; You order that the blasphemer be tormented if he persists in his confession. 7 If you act differently with criminals, therefore, you consider us completely innocent: it is as if you do not want the completely innocent to persist in that confession for which, as you know, condemnation is due by necessity, and not by justice. 13. A man exclaims: “I am a Christian.” Says what it is. You want to hear something that is not there. You, the champions of truth, seek to hear lies from us alone. “I am what you are asking if I am,” he says. Why are you forcing me through torture to tell lies? I confess, and you torture me; what would you do if I denied?” Others [accused] who deny [their guilt] you, of course, do not believe easily; But if we deny [that we are Christians], believe us right away. 14. Let this evil practice seem suspicious to you, lest some force go unnoticed which compels you to act contrary to the form and nature of the court, against the laws themselves. After all, if I’m not mistaken, the laws order to expose villains, and not to hide them; they order to condemn those who confess, and not to justify them. This is prescribed by the decrees of the Senate and the orders of the emperors. The power you serve is a civil power, not a tyrannical one. 15. For among tyrants torture is also used for punishment, but among you it should be used only during investigation. Obey your law, considering torture necessary only until a confession is obtained. If a confession is made before they are used, they will turn out to be unnecessary, and a sentence will be needed. The guilty person must suffer the punishment due to him, and not be released from it. No one is trying to justify him. 16. You cannot wish for this, so no one is forced to renounce their guilt. You consider a Christian guilty of all crimes, an enemy of gods, emperors, laws, morals, all nature, and you force him to deny [that he is a Christian] in order to justify someone whom you cannot justify if he does not deny. 17. You are acting illegally: you want him to deny his guilt in order to declare him, and against his will, innocent and no longer accused of previous crimes. Where does this depravity come from, because of which you are not able to even understand that one who voluntarily confesses is more to be believed than one who denies anything because of violence applied to him? Being forced, will he deny [his faith] sincerely and, being justified, immediately leaving the judgment seat, will he not laugh at your zeal by becoming a Christian again? 18. Since you treat us differently in everything than other criminals, insisting on one thing, that we renounce this name - after all, we refuse if we do something that Christians do not do - then you can understand that the whole point is not in some crime, but in the name, which is pursued by some force rivaling us, striving primarily to ensure that people do not want to know for certain things that they know for sure that they do not know. 19. That is why they think about us what is not confirmed, and do not want to investigate it, so that the absence of what they prefer to think about us is not discovered, so that a name hated by this force competing with us is condemned for alleged, and not proven crimes, on the basis of just one confession. Therefore, we who confess are tortured and those who persist are punished and those who renounce are acquitted, for there is a battle for the name. 20. Finally, why do you say “Christian” when reading the list of those arrested? Why not “murderer” if a Christian is a murderer? Why not “incestuous” or whatever else you think of us? Only when it comes to us, are you ashamed or unpleasant to pronounce the very names of the crimes when reading the verdict? If the word "Christian" is not the name of any crime, then it is completely absurd if the crime consists of a name alone. 8 Chapter III. Hatred of the pagans towards the Christian name 1. Why is it that most people, closing their eyes, are obsessed with such hatred of this name that, speaking well of someone, they add reproach to the name? “Good man Guy Sey, only a Christian.” Also another: “I marvel at Lucius Titius, a wise man, who suddenly became a Christian.” No one is trying to figure out whether Guy is kind and Lucius is reasonable because they are Christians, or whether they are Christians because one of them is reasonable and the other is kind. 2. They praise what they know, they blaspheme what they do not know, and they discredit what they know by what they do not know, although it would be fairer to judge the unknown by the obvious than to condemn the obvious because of the unknown. 3. Some people, who before taking this name were known as dissolute, insignificant, unscrupulous, are branded for what they are praised for. In the blindness of hatred they declare: “What a woman! How funny, how sweet! What a young man! How playful, how amiable! Became Christians." Thus the name is blamed on the correction. 4. Some, forgetting about their own benefit, make a deal with this hatred, quite happy with injustice, as long as they don’t have what they hate in their house. The wife, who had become bashful, was driven out by her husband, who was no longer jealous; the already obedient son was abandoned by the previously patient father; The formerly lenient master removed the slave who had become faithful from his sight. Anyone who has reformed through this name is displeased. Benefit is not valued as much as hatred of Christians. 5. So, if there is hatred of names, what guilt can names have, what accusation can be brought against words, except that some name sounds barbaric, portends evil, or is abusive or shameless? The word “Christian,” as can be seen from the translation, indicates anointing. 9 When you mistakenly pronounce it “Christian”—after all, you have no reliable knowledge about the name—it turns out to be composed of pleasantness or kindness. 10 So they hate the innocent name of innocent people. 6. But the sect is hated, of course, because of its founder. What's new if adherents of a philosophical school take their name from their teacher? Are not philosophers called Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans after their founders? Also by the place of meetings and by their location - the Stoics, the Academicians? Likewise, doctors are called after Erasistratus, and grammarians after Aristarchus, and also cooks after Apicius. 7. And, however, no one is annoyed that the name is transferred from the founder to the doctrine. Of course, if someone proves that the sect is bad and, therefore, its founder is bad, he will prove that its name is bad, worthy of hatred due to the fault of the sect and the founder. And therefore, before hating a name, one should recognize a sect by its founder, or a founder by a sect. 8. However, now, neglecting the investigation and search for the truth about them, people become attached to the name, attack it, and an unknown sect with its unknown founder is condemned in advance because of the mere sound of the word, because they are so called, and not because they are denounced. Chapter IV. On anti-Christian laws and the repeal of outdated laws 1. Having written this as an introduction to crush the unjust hatred of society towards us, I will now defend our innocence and not only refute what is charged against us, but also turn it against our accusers, so that from my words people will also learn that Christians do not have what they do not notice in themselves, so that at the same time they will be ashamed, accusing - I do not say, the worst of the best - but already equal, as they consider themselves, to themselves. 2. Let us consider one by one those deeds which we are said to commit in secret—which we find they do openly—crimes for which we are considered criminal and vain, deserving of condemnation and ridicule. 3. As soon as our truth rebuffs all accusations, the power of laws finally rises up against it, commanding us to speak about the inadmissibility of any revision of them, and to prefer to the truth, even against our will, the need to obey them. For this reason I will argue with you as defenders of laws first regarding laws. 4. First of all, when you categorically assert: “You must not exist,” and enjoin it without allowing any concessions or reservations, you declare the violence and injustice of your power, denying that we are allowed to live because you want it so, and not because it should be so. 5. And if you do not want to give permission for the reason that it is forbidden, then, without a doubt, what is forbidden is [what is bad, and what is permitted is] what is good. If I discover that what is prohibited by your law is good, can he, on the basis of the assumption expressed, forbid me what he would rightly prohibit if it were evil? If your law is wrong, I suppose it was made by man; after all, he didn’t fall from the sky. 6. Do you wonder how a person could make a mistake when issuing a law or come to his senses when rejecting it? Did not the laws of Lycurgus himself, corrected by the Lacedaemonians, cause so much grief to their creator that, having left people, he doomed himself to starvation? 11 7. In your daily practice, illuminating the darkness of antiquity, don’t you also cut down and cut down all these dilapidated, neglected jungles of laws with new axes of imperial decrees and edicts? 8. Didn’t Severus, 12 distinguished among all emperors for his constancy, quite recently, without looking at the greatest authority of antiquity, abolish the worthless Pappian laws, 13 forcing one to have children before the Julian laws 14 allowed marriage? 9. But there were also laws according to which creditors cut condemned debtors into pieces; However, by general consent, cruelty was subsequently removed, and the death penalty was replaced by a stigma. The current practice of advertising the sale of the debtor's property preferred to stain his face with shame rather than with blood. 10. How many forgotten laws you still have that need to be cleared out! Neither the number of years nor the dignity of legislators, but only justice, can give them honor. Therefore, when their injustice is revealed, they are deservedly condemned, although they themselves condemn. How can we talk about their injustice? 11. Moreover, if they punish for the name, we will also talk about their stupidity, but if for the deeds, then why do they punish for them on the basis of the name alone? Crimes, when it comes to other people, are recognized as being committed on the basis of a fact, not a name. I am an incestuous person: why don’t they ask? I am a child killer: why don’t they extract a confession from me under torture? I am doing something against the gods and Caesars: why don’t they listen to me, who is capable of defending myself? 12. No law prohibits investigating what it prohibits doing; after all, a judge, without knowing about the commission of an unlawful act, cannot punish fairly, and a citizen, without knowing what the law punishes, cannot properly obey it. 13. The law must seem fair not only to itself, but to those from whom it expects obedience. However, a law that does not want to be verified is suspicious; if it is valid, if it fails to pass the test, it is unfit. 15 Chapter V. Laws on the introduction of new gods. Emperors-Persecutors of Christians and Emperors-Protectors 1. Let us consider the origin of such laws. There was an old decree according to which the commander could not classify anyone as a god without the approval of the Senate. This affected M. Aemilius when it came to his god Alburn. This also speaks in favor of our cause, since among you divinity is distributed according to human discretion. If a person does not like God, he will not become a god; Man will already have to be merciful to God. 2. Therefore, Tiberius, during whose reign the Christian name entered the world, announced to the Senate, having expressed his approval in advance, about the news that had reached him from Syrian Palestine, according to which the truth about the very Deity of which we speak was revealed to the world there. The Senate, having no evidence of this fact, rejected Caesar's proposal; he remained unconvinced, threatening punishment for the accusers of Christians. 3. Check your archives; from them you will learn that Nero, in a frenzy, was the first to turn Caesar’s sword against this sect, which arose precisely then in Rome. But we are even proud to have such a culprit for our condemnation. After all, anyone who knows Nero will understand that he could only condemn some great good. 4. Нападал на нас и Домитиан, недалеко ушедший от Нерона в жестокости; but, being still a man, he easily stopped what he started, returning even those whom he had exiled. These are always our persecutors: unjust, wicked, vile, whom you yourself usually condemned and restored to the rights of those condemned by them. 5. However, out of so many rulers who have reigned since then until today, versed in the divine and human, show me some fighter against Christians! 6. On the contrary, we can present to you as a defender Marcus Aurelius, an emperor distinguished by his thoroughness, if his letter is found in which he confirms that the famous drought in Germany ended with a downpour sent through the prayer of Christian soldiers. The emperor freed these people from punishment both implicitly and explicitly abolished it in another way, turning condemnation and, moreover, more terrible condemnation on their accusers. 7. So, what are these laws that are used against us by the wicked, the unjust, the vile, the rude, the vain, the insane; laws that Trajan partially abolished, prohibiting the search for Christians, laws that were not confirmed either by Adrian, 16 although he examined everything curious, nor by Vespasian, 17 although he defeated the Jews, nor by Pius, 18 nor by Ver? 19 8. Of course, it is easier for the best to condemn the worst, their enemies, to extermination than for their comrades. Chapter VI. The pagans repealed the laws against luxury and drunkenness and the decrees of the consuls who expelled Liber and the Egyptian gods 1. Now I would like the most devout defenders of the laws and paternal institutions and those who are ready to take revenge for their violation, tell me about their devotion, reverence and obedience to the decisions of their ancestors, whether they did not deviate from at least one of these decisions, did not act contrary to them, did not cross out from them everything necessary and suitable for morality and order. 2. Where did those laws restraining extravagance and vanity go, which ordered that no more than a hundred asses be spent on dinner, and that no more than one chicken be served on the table, and not a fattened one at that; which the patrician, if he had ten pounds of silver, was expelled from the Senate on the charge of excessive ambition; which ordered the immediate destruction of theaters that appeared to corrupt morals; who did not allow the indiscriminate appropriation of signs indicating an honorable position and noble origin with impunity? 3. For I see dinners that should be called “hundreds” due to the fact that they cost hundreds of thousands of sesterces, and silver mines turned into bowls not only among senators, but also among freedmen, and among those who are still breaking their whips. 20 I see that one theater or an uncovered theater is no longer enough. And so that shameless pleasure would not freeze in winter, the Lacedaemonians were the first to invent a cloak for games. I see that there is no longer any difference in attire between matrons and prostitutes. 4. The ancestral regulations concerning women, which protected moderation and sobriety, were also abolished, when none of them knew gold except what was on her finger, which the groom put in a wedding ring as collateral. When women abstained from wine to such an extent that the matron was executed by starvation by her relatives for opening boxes in the wine cellar; and under Romulus, the one who touched the wine was killed with impunity by her husband Metennius. 5. That’s why women were supposed to kiss their loved ones, so that they could recognize the drunk by the smell. 6. Where now is the prosperity of morally successful marriages, thanks to which, for almost six hundred years from the founding of Rome, not a single family has had a divorce. But now, for women, not a single part of the body is devoid of gold jewelry, not a single kiss is free from the smell of wine, and divorce has already become an object of desire, like a long-awaited fruit of marriage. 7. Also, what your fathers had prudently decreed regarding your gods themselves, you, despite all your obedience, abolished. The consuls, by the power of the Senate, expelled Father Liber, along with his orgies, not only from Rome, but also from all of Italy. 8. Serapis, Isis and Harpocrates with his dog's head, who were denied access to the Capitol, that is, they were removed from the host of the gods, were expelled by the consuls Piso and Gabinius (of course, not Christians), also overthrowing the altars of these deities in order to curb the vices arising from disgusting and worthless superstitions. By restoring their rights, you have returned to them the greatest dignity. 9. Where is piety, where is the respect that you are obliged to show to your ancestors? You have renounced your ancestors by changing your attire, food, furniture, way of thinking, and, finally, your speech. You always glorify antiquity, but every day you live in a new way. From this it is clear that, deviating from the good institutions of your ancestors, you retain and preserve what should not have been done, and what should have been not preserved. 10. That which you seem to conscientiously preserve as handed down to you by your fathers, the neglect of which you accuse mainly Christians (I mean zeal in the worship of the gods, in which antiquity most erred), you, as I will show in my place, 21 despise, neglect and overthrow, contrary to the authority of the ancestors, although you restored the altars to Serapis, who had already become Roman, although you sacrifice your fury to Bacchus, who has already become Italian. 11. Now I will answer the notorious accusations of secret atrocities in order to pave the way for myself to something more obvious. 1. We are called terrible villains for the sacrament of infanticide, for the food prepared in this way, for the incest after the meal, which is facilitated by dogs, truly pimps of darkness, overturning lamps to calm the conscience of people obsessed with ungodly lust. 2. However, they always say this about us, but you do not strive to get to the bottom of the truth in this matter. So, either find out if you believe, or don’t believe if you haven’t found out! Considering this silence of yours, you can protest that there is nothing that you yourself do not dare to find out. You have assigned the executioner a completely different duty than usual in relation to Christians - to extract from them not a confession of what they have done, but to achieve a denial of who they are. 3. The origin of this doctrine, as we have already stated, goes back to the time of Tiberius. Truth arose simultaneously with hatred of it; as soon as she appeared, she immediately began to be viewed as an enemy. She has as many enemies as there are strangers; namely, the Jews are enemies in the proper sense of the word because of jealousy, the soldiers because of their tendency to extort, 22 our servants themselves are by nature. 4. Every day we are besieged, daily betrayed, often arrested in our very meetings and communities. Who has ever been able to come to the aid of a screaming baby because of this? 5. Who preserved the bloody mouths of the Cyclopes and Sirens just as he found them as evidence for the judge? Who has discovered any traces of debauchery on their wives? Who, having discovered such crimes, did not proceed with the case or gave the perpetrators the opportunity to pay off when dragging them to court? If we are always hiding, when was what we were doing discovered? 6. And who could have discovered this? Of course, not by the accused themselves, if only because in all mysteries it is necessary to take a vow of silence. The Samothrace and Eleusinian mysteries are not disclosed; how much more will those be kept secret which, if revealed, will also incur human punishment, while also threatening divine punishment! 7. So, if Christians themselves are not their own traitors, then strangers are. But where do they get this awareness, when even godly [from your point of view] mysteries always put a barrier in front of the uninitiated and are wary of witnesses? Do only the wicked have less fear? 8. Everyone knows the properties of word of mouth. This verse belongs to you: “Evil is rumor, there is nothing faster than it.” 23 Why is rumor evil? Because it's fast? Because she is an informer? Or because it is mostly false? Even when communicating something true, it is not free from lies, subtracting something from the truth, adding something to it or changing it. 9. Why? Because its property is such that it does not persist unless it lies, and lives until it convinces. Because, when he convinces, he ceases to exist and, as if having fulfilled the duty of a messenger, reports a fact, which after that is already perceived as such and is called a fact. 10. No one will say, for example: “This, they say, happened in Rome” or “there is a rumor that he received the province,” but “he received the province” and “it happened in Rome.” 11. Rumor is the name of something uncertain, has no place where there is certainty. Does anyone but the foolish trust rumor? For the prudent man does not believe the uncertain. Everyone should keep in mind that no matter how zealously it spreads, no matter how persistently it is created, it necessarily once arose from one source. 12. From there it crawls onto tongues and into ears, finding distributors. In this way, the error that arose from a small seed is obscured in rumors, 24 so that no one any longer thinks whether it was the same lips that first sowed deception. This often happens either because of the skill of jealousy, or because of the caprice of suspicion, or because of a passion for deception that is not acquired, but is inherent in some from birth. 13. It is also good that time, as your proverbs and sayings testify, reveals everything in accordance with the law of nature, which has decreed that nothing should be hidden for a long time, 25 even what rumor has not divulged. 14. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the crimes of Christians have been known for so long only by rumor. You are setting up against us such an informer who, to this day, has not been able to prove what he once expressed and with which, over such a long period of time, he has forced public opinion to become accustomed. Chapter VIII. Refutation of accusations of fiesta meals and incest 1. I will appeal to nature itself for evidence against those who are convinced in advance that such things should be believed: behold, we offer a reward for these atrocities - they promise eternal life. Believe it! I ask: will you, having believed this, consider the possession of it with such a conscience worthy of such a high price? 2. Come, plunge the sword into the child, who is not hated by anyone, who is not guilty of anything, and whom everyone treats as a son. Or, if it is the duty of another, you only be present next to the child dying before he began to live; wait until the newly emerged soul leaves the body, take fresh blood, saturate your bread with it, eat it with pleasure! 3. Meanwhile, taking a place at the table, calculate the places occupied by mother and sister; take a good look at them, so that when everything is plunged into darkness caused by the dogs, you won’t be mistaken! For you will commit a crime if you do not commit incest. 4. Having been initiated into such a sacrament and received a seal, 26 you will live forever. I wish you would answer whether eternity is worth it; if not, then you shouldn’t believe in it. Even if you believe it, I'm sure you won't want it. Even if you want to, I'm sure you won't be able to. Why can others if you can't? Why can't you if others can? 5. We, I believe, are creatures of a different nature, cinopenas or skiapods; 27 We have different rows of teeth, different veins for incestuous lust. If you think that people are capable of doing this, then you yourself are capable of it; You yourself are the same person as a Christian. If you can't do this, then you shouldn't believe it. After all, a Christian is a person just like you. 6. “But this is entrusted and suggested to the ignorant. After all, they did not know that they were saying things about Christians that they should pay attention to and find out with all vigilance.” 7. But, I believe, those who want to be initiated, as a rule, come to the father of the sacraments so that he can tell them what they should prepare. Then he: “You need a baby of such a tender age that he does not yet know about death and will laugh under your knife; you also need bread with which you will collect the blood gravy; In addition, they will need candlesticks, lamps, some dogs and pieces of food that will make them knock over the candles. First of all, you will have to come with your mother and sister.” 8. What if they don’t want to, or they simply don’t exist? What should single Christians finally do? I don’t think a real Christian can be made from someone who is not someone’s brother or son. 9. What if all this is prepared for those who do not know? Of course, later they learn and tolerate and forgive. 28 “They are afraid of being punished if they report it.” How can those who would deserve protection be afraid, preferring to voluntarily perish rather than live with such a conscience? Okay, let them be afraid; Why do they persist [remaining Christians]? For it is obvious that you do not want to be what you would not become if you knew about everything in advance. Chapter IX. The crimes mentioned are openly committed by the pagans themselves 1. In order for me to refute these accusations even better, I will show that the crimes mentioned are committed by you partly openly, partly secretly; that's probably why you suspect us of them. 2. Infants in Africa were openly sacrificed to Saturn until the governorship of Tiberius, who crucified the priests themselves on the same trees at their church that covered their crimes with their shadow, as on votive crosses. The witness is the army of our homeland, 29 of whose soldiers performed this very duty for the proconsul. 3. But even now this crime dedicated to God continues to be committed secretly. It is not only Christians who despise you, and no crime is forever eradicated, and no god changes his morals. 4. Since Saturn did not spare his own sons, 30 he was, of course, always merciless towards strangers, whom, moreover, their parents themselves sacrificed to him; and answered readily 31 and caressed the babies so that they would be sacrificed without crying. However, murder of immediate family members is very different from simple murder. 32 5. Among the Gauls, Mercury is slaughtered to death by adults. I’ll leave the Tauride fables to their theaters. Here in this city of pious descendants of Aeneas, distinguished by piety, there is a certain Jupiter, 33 who is washed in human blood at the games dedicated to him. “But this,” you say, “is the blood of criminals sentenced to be torn to pieces by wild beasts.” This, I believe, is less than human blood. Isn't it more disgusting because it is the blood of a villain? In any case, blood is shed during murder. O Jupiter, you are truly a Christian and the only son of your father in cruelty! 6. But since there is no difference in regard to infanticide, whether it is committed in the sacraments or arbitrarily, even though the murder of a relative differs from ordinary murder, I will appeal to the people. How many of these people standing around and thirsting for Christian blood, including you yourself, the fairest and most severe judges towards us, are ready for me to prick their conscience with the question of who kills their own children? 7. If the type of murder plays a role, then, of course, you act more inhumanely, drowning the child in water or leaving him in the cold, dooming him to starvation and torn to pieces by dogs; after all, even an adult would want to die by the sword. 8. Since we are once and for all prohibited from murder, we are not even allowed to poison the fetus when the blood is still being borrowed [from the mother] for the formation of a person. To hinder a birth means to accelerate murder, and it does not matter whether someone snatches away the born soul or destroys the born one. A man is one who will be one; likewise, every fruit is already present in the seed. 9. Read anywhere about eating blood and similar food that tragedies tell of (this is said, in my opinion, in Herodotus 34), that some peoples, when concluding a treaty, drink each other’s blood flowing from cuts on their hands. If I'm not mistaken, they drank blood even under Catalina. 35 They say that among some Scythian tribes, each deceased person is eaten by relatives. 10. Why go far. Today, here dedicated to Bellona 36, ​​the blood collected on the palm from the cut thigh and intended for consumption is a sign of initiation. 11. And where are those who scooped up fresh blood flowing from the throats of criminals stabbed in the arena for a fee with insatiable greed for healing from epilepsy? And those who eat game from the arena at dinner, trying to get a piece from both the wild boar and the deer? During the struggle, this boar wiped with itself the one it had wounded; This deer lay in the blood of the gladiator. 37 They want to taste the stomachs of the bears themselves, which have not yet digested human entrails; Therefore, a person regurgitates flesh that has been saturated with human flesh. 12. By eating this, how far are you from “Christian meals”? But do those who with wild lust open their mouths for human members do anything less, because they swallow the living? Are they less dedicated to defilement by human blood because they lick future blood? Indeed, they do not eat babies, but rather adults. 13. Let you and your sins be ashamed before Christians: among the foods we eat, we do not even have the blood of animals; therefore, we also abstain from strangulation 38 and carrion, so as not to be defiled by any blood, even if accidentally found in the meat. 14. In addition, among other tests for Christians, you also use sausages with blood, being, one must think, completely convinced that what you want to lead them astray is not allowed among them. Further, how can you think that those who thirst for human blood are those about whom you are sure that they fear the blood of cattle - unless you yourself have found that it tastes better? 15. This blood should be used as a means of testing Christians, along with the altar and the box of incense. After all, Christians would be identified by their thirst for human blood in the same way as by their rejection of sacrifice; otherwise it would be necessary to deny that they are Christians: both if they had not tasted blood and if they had made a sacrifice. You, of course, would not have a shortage of human blood both when interrogating prisoners and when executing them. 16. And who will be great incestuous men, if not those whom Jupiter himself taught? Ctesias reports that Persians marry their mothers. Yes, and the Macedonians are under suspicion, for as soon as they saw the tragedy “Oedipus,” ridiculing the grief of the title character due to incest, they said: “(ἤλαυνε εἰς τὴν μητέρα).” 39 17. Now consider how many opportunities for committing incest are given to people by their mistakes, since indiscriminate debauchery provides the material for this. Let's start with the fact that you drop off your sons so that some stranger passer-by, taking pity, will pick them up, or you hand them over for adoption to the best parents. The memory of alienated offspring inevitably disappears someday. And as soon as a mistake is made, carriers of incest immediately appear, when the race spreads 40 along with the crime. 18. Let us add that voluptuousness is [your] companion in any place, at home, in a foreign land, overseas; his disorderly impulses can easily lead anywhere to the appearance of sons unknown to [you] from any drop of semen, so that the offspring scattered throughout the world as a result of human communication encounter their relatives, but they are not recognized by the blood blinded by incest. 19. The most zealous and reliable chastity protects us from such an outcome; we are protected both from debauchery and any violation of marital fidelity, as well as from accidental incest. Some are in an even safer position: they are completely insured against committing such a mistake by abstaining from girls - elders [by age], youths [by innocence]. 20. If you saw such crimes among yourself, you would realize that Christians do not have them: the same eyes would report both. But the two types of blindness easily converge, so that those who do not see what is, seemed to see what is not. I will show this by examining all the charges one by one. Now I will talk about things that are more obvious. Chapter X. Christians do not honor the gods, since they are not gods. Proof of this using the example of Saturn 1. You tell us: “You do not honor the gods and do not make sacrifices for the emperors.” It is logical that we, rejecting the veneration of the gods and not making sacrifices for ourselves, for the same reason should not make sacrifices for others. Thus, we find ourselves sacrilegious and guilty of insulting the imperial majesty. This is the main thing, or rather the whole accusation, and it, of course, should be examined, unless this case is led by bias and injustice, one of which despairs of finding the truth, the other resists it. 2. We cease to honor your gods since we learn that they are not gods. So, you must demand that we prove that they are not gods, and therefore they should not be honored, because only then they should be honored if they were gods. Then Christians should also be punished if it were known that those whom they do not honor, without considering them gods, are gods. 3. “But for us,” you say, “they are gods.” We turn and appeal not to you yourself, but to your conscience. Let her judge us, let her find us guilty if she can refute that all these gods of yours were people. 4. If she denies it, she will be exposed by her own documents dating back to antiquity, from which she drew her knowledge of the gods; after all, evidence to this day is provided by both the cities where they were born and the countries in which they left traces of their activities, where they even show their burials. 5. Shall I list the gods one by one, so numerous and so great, new and old, barbarian and Greek, Roman and foreign, captive and adopted, private and general, male and female, rural and urban, gods for sailors and for soldiers? 6. It would be an idle exercise to list only their names. I will state the essence of the matter briefly, not to teach you, but to remind you - for you pretend to forget about this: before Saturn you had no gods. All deities, both more powerful and more famous, originate from him. So, what is known about the ancestor will also concern his offspring. 7. If we turn to literature, neither the Greek Diodorus, nor Thallus, nor Cassius Severus, 41 nor Cornelius Nepos, 42 nor anyone else who dealt with similar antiquities, declared anything more about Saturn than that he was a man. If we turn to material evidence, 43 I do not find it anywhere more true than in Italy itself, in which Saturn, after many wanderings and after visiting Attica, settled, accepted by Janus or Jan, as the Salii prefer to call him. 8. The hill on which he lived was named Saturn; the city, the borders of which he marked with pillars, is called Saturnia to this day; finally, all of Italy, formerly called Enotria, began to be called Saturnia. From him came the money changers and engraved coins, 44 and therefore he became the patron of the treasury. 9. However, if Saturn is a person, then he, of course, comes from a person, and since from a person, then, of course, not from Heaven and Earth. It was easy to call a man whose parents are unknown the son of those whose children we all may seem to be. For who would not declare heaven and earth to be mother and father, either for the sake of honor and respect, or according to human custom, according to which those unknown or unexpectedly appearing are called fallen from heaven? 10. Therefore also Saturn, to whom, after his sudden appearance, it fell to be called everywhere celestial; for the crowd calls those whose race is unknown children of the earth. 45 Not to mention the fact that people were then so ignorant that when they saw any stranger, they became extremely embarrassed, as if there was a deity in front of them. Indeed, even today, having already become educated, they dedicate into gods those whom a few days earlier they recognized as dead by popular mourning. 11. These few words are enough about Saturn. We will also prove that Jupiter is a man insofar as he originated from a man, and all his descendants are mortal because they are equal to their ancestor. Chapter XI. Analysis of the reasons why a supreme God would make people gods 1. Since you, not daring to deny that they were people, began to assert that they became gods after death, we will analyze the reasons that could cause this. 2. First of all, it is necessary that you admit that there is some higher god, some dispenser of divinity, who made gods out of people. For even those could not acquire divinity which they did not have, and no one else could provide it to those who did not have it, except the one who himself possessed it. 3. However, if there were no one who would make gods, then in the absence of a doer, your assumption that people are made gods would be meaningless. It is obvious that if they could make themselves gods, they would never have been people, having, of course, the right to a better fate. 4. So, if there is someone who creates gods, I will begin to find out the reasons for the creation of gods from people; and I find no other than the desire of that great god to receive assistance and assistance in the performance of his divine duties. Во-первых, не подобает богу нуждаться в услугах кого-либо, и притом смертного; after all, it would be more worthy if someone who needs the help of a mortal would make someone a god from the very beginning. 5. Но и нужды в этой помощи я не вижу. After all, this entire body of the world - either unborn and uncreated, according to Pythagoras, or born and created, according to Plato - turned out to be in this composition 46 times and forever distributed, arranged and ordered thanks to, undoubtedly, a rational guiding principle. 47 Не могло быть несовершенным то, что усовершенствовало все. 6. Ничто не ожидало появления Сатурна и Сатурнова рода. People will be the stupidest if they are not sure that initially rains fell from the sky, and the constellations shone, and the luminaries shone, and thunder roared, and that Jupiter himself was afraid of the lightning that you put in his hand; and that every fruit came from the earth before Liber, Ceres and Minerva, nay, before the very first man, for nothing provided for the preservation and maintenance of man could be introduced after him. 7. Finally, they say that they discovered these things necessary for life, and did not create them. But what is discovered existed, and what existed will be attributed not to the one who discovered, but to the one who created; for it existed before it was discovered. 8. However, if Liber became a god because he showed the vine, then Lucullus, who was the first to make the Pontic cherry famous in Italy, was treated poorly, because on this basis he was not counted among the gods as the creator of a new fruit, being its discoverer. 9. Therefore, if the universe, from the very beginning arranged and ordered according to certain principles for the performance of its duties, remains unchanged, then on this side there is no reason for endowing man with divinity, for those services and powers that you distribute among deified people existed from the beginning, so that they would have existed even if you had not created those gods. 10. But you give another reason [why the gods were made from men], answering that the conferring of divinity was a way of rewarding merit. At this point, I think you recognize that the god who creates gods is distinguished by special justice, distributing such rewards not blindly, not undeservedly, not wastefully. 11. So, I want to consider these merits, whether they are such as to be lifted up to heaven, and not rather plunged into the very bottom of Tartarus, about which you, whenever you please, claim that it is a prison of underworld punishments. 12. After all, all those who are wicked towards parents, incesters with sisters, adulterers, kidnappers of virgins, defilers of boys, and those who rage, kill, steal, deceive - all those who resemble some of your gods - are usually imprisoned there. You cannot prove that even one of them was free from crime or vice unless you deny that he was a man. 13. Since, however, you cannot deny that they were people, those stains of their shame are added that hinder the belief in their deification subsequently. After all, if you sit in court to punish people like them, if all the decent people among you do not enter into trade relations or conversations with the bad and vicious ones, do not participate in joint meals with them, and that god allows their equals to communicate with his greatness, [then the question arises] why do you condemn those whose comrades you worship? 14. Your justice becomes an insult to heaven. Make gods of everyone who is superior to others in crime, to please your gods. After all, you will honor them by deifying their equals. 15. But I will not investigate this vileness - even if they were honest, pure and kind! However, how many more worthy men have you left in the underworld! A certain Socrates, famous for wisdom, Aristides for justice, Themistocles for military skill, Alexander for greatness, Polycrates for luck, Croesus for wealth, Demosthenes for eloquence. 48 16. Which of your gods is more thorough and wiser than Cato, more just and valiant than Scipio, who is more majestic than Pompey, more successful than Sulla, richer than Crassus, more eloquent than Tullius? How much more worthy it would have been for that god to wait until these people were accepted into the number of gods, because he knew in advance about them as the best! He hurried, I think, closed the sky once and for all and now, of course, he is blushing, since the best are grumbling in the underworld. Chapter XII. About idols and their making 1. I will finish this already, being convinced that on the basis of truth itself I will be able to show what they are not when I indicate what they are. As for your gods, I only see the names of some ancient dead, I hear fairy tales and learn from them about sacred rites. 2. As for the images themselves, I do not discover anything else except that the materials from which they are made are sisters of ordinary vessels and tools, or are made from the same vessels and tools, as if changing their fate at the dedication thanks to the transformative arbitrariness of art, which does this in a very offensive way during the sacrilegious manufacture. So it is precisely for us, who are punished because of these very gods, that it can truly be the greatest consolation in punishments that they, in order to arise, undergo the same thing. 3. You hang Christians on crosses and pillars: what idol is not first given shape by clay spread on a cross or pillar? The body of your god is first consecrated on the gallows. 4. The sides of Christians are tormented with claws: but even among your gods, all the members are processed even more severely with axes, planes and files. We bow our necks before the executioner's axe: until lead, glue and staples are used, your gods stand without heads. We are thrown to the beasts: of course, to those whom you give as companions to Liber, Cybele 49 and the Heavenly Virgin. 5. They burn us with fire: this is also done to them when smelting ore. We are condemned to work in the mines: your gods come from there. We are exiled to islands: usually on an island one of your gods is born or dies. If some kind of divinity is based on all this, then those who are punished are deified, and the torment should be called a divine sign. 6. But, of course, your gods do not feel these insults and desecrations during their creation, just as they do not feel pleasing. Oh, ungodly words, oh, sacrilegious language! Grind your teeth and foam with anger! You are the same people who approve of a certain Seneca, who wrote much more and more acutely about your superstition. 7. Therefore, if we do not honor cold statues and images, very reminiscent of the dead they depict, statues and images about which kites, mice and spiders know the truth, then did not the rejection of the perceived error deserve more praise than punishment? For can it seem that we are harming those whose absence we are sure of? The non-existent does not suffer anything from anyone, because it does not exist. 50 Chapter XIII. The pagans themselves are wicked towards their gods 1. “But for us,” you say, “they are gods.” Why then do you, on the contrary, turn out to be impious, sacrilegious and disrespectful towards your gods, despising those whom you consider to exist, ruining those whom you fear, dishonoring those for whom you avenge? 2. See if I'm lying. Firstly, since some of you honor some, others - others, then you, of course, insult those whom you do not honor. The preference of one cannot arise without offense to the other, just as the election of one without the rejection of the other. 3. Consequently, you despise those whom you reject, whom you are not afraid to irritate with your rejection. For, as we mentioned above, the position of each god depended on the opinion of the Senate. God was not the one whom man, being asked, did not want to consider as God and, not wanting to, condemned. 4. You deal with the household gods, whom you call Laramie, using family power, giving them as collateral, selling them, turning sometimes Saturn into a saucepan, sometimes Minerva into a ladle, after each of them has been worn out and broken during a long period of veneration, after each owner has felt a domestic need that surpasses the holiness of this god. 5. In the same way, you desecrate by public law the public gods, whom you consider in the auction inventory as profitable. People go to the Capitol as if they were going to a vegetable market. With the usual exclamation of the auctioneer, with a spear stuck, as always happens at auctions, with the quaestor making the mark accepted in such cases, the deity, handed over to the person who paid a high price, is taken over by him. 6. But land plots burdened with tax are cheaper; people subject to the poll tax are less respected (after all, these are signs of bondage); the gods, the more they are taxed, the more sacred they are. Moreover, those that are more sacred are more taxed. [Divine] greatness becomes an object of purchase and sale: begging religion bypasses the taverns; you charge for the land under the church, for entry into the sanctuary. It is not allowed to know the gods for nothing, they are corrupt. 7. In general, what do you do to honor them that you don’t do for your dead? Exactly the same churches, exactly the same altars. The same outfit and insignia on the statues; whatever age, craft, business the dead man had, such is God. How does a funeral meal differ from a feast dedicated to Jupiter, a libation cup for the dead from a libation ladle for the gods, a corpse washer from a haruspex? 51 After all, the haruspex also ministers to the dead. 8. However, you duly render divine honors to the deceased emperors, to whom you also render them to the living. Your gods will be pleased with this; moreover, they will thank you for making their masters equal to them. 9. But when you honor Larentina, a public woman (and why not Laida or Phryne?) along with the Junos, Ceres and Dianas, when you honor Simon Magus with a statue with the inscription “To the Holy God”, when you make, I don’t know who from the court school, the god of the [heavenly] synod, 52 then, although the ancient gods are not noble, they, however, will consider themselves offended by you, since what antiquity bestowed on them alone became available to others. Chapter XIV. Pagans sacrifice garbage to the gods. Mockery of the gods in pagan literature 1. I want to examine your rituals as well. I’m not talking about how you are during sacrifice, when you slaughter everything that is emaciated, emaciated and lousy, when you chop off everything unnecessary from the carcasses of fat and healthy animals - small heads and hooves, which at home you would give to slaves or dogs, when you do not place even a third of the tithe of Hercules on his altar. I would rather praise wisdom, because at least you save something from destruction. 2. But, turning to your writings, which instruct you in prudence and the fulfillment of noble duties, what ridicule I find there! The gods fought among themselves over the Trojans and Achaeans, coming together like pairs of gladiators. Venus was wounded by a human arrow because she wanted to save her son Aeneas, who was almost killed by the same 53 Diomedes. 54 3. Mars almost completely withered away during the thirteen months spent in chains. Jupiter, who, in order not to be subjected to the same violence from other celestials, took advantage of the help of a certain monster, 55 either mourns the death of Sarpedon, or disgustingly longs for copulation with his sister, while telling her about his less beloved former girlfriends. 56 4. After this, what poet did not find himself dishonoring the gods, relying on the authority of his head? 57 This one forces Apollo to graze cattle for King Admetus, 58 he takes Neptune into a contract for construction work from Laomedon. 59 5. There is also one of the lyric poets - I’m talking about Pindar - who tells how Aesculapius was punished by lightning for greed, because he turned his medical studies to harm. Jupiter is angry if the lightning belongs to him; he neglected his family feelings for his grandson and envied the artist! 6. God-fearing people should neither disclose such things if they are true, nor invent them if they are false. Both tragedians and comedians, in the prologues to their works, without any condescension, talk about misfortunes or errors in the family of some god. 7. I am already silent about philosophers, content with only Socrates, who, in order to insult the gods, swore by an oak tree, a goat and a dog. 60 “But Socrates was condemned because he overthrew the gods.” Of course, the truth was hated before, as always. 8. However, since the Athenians, having repented of their verdict, subsequently punished Socrates’ accusers and placed his golden image in the church, the canceled verdict gives evidence in favor of Socrates. 9. But Diogenes also ridicules something in Hercules, and the Roman cynic Varro brings [onto the stage] three hundred headless Jobs, who should be called Jupiters. Chapter XV. Mockery of the gods in the theater. Debauchery in churches. Their robberies 1. Other immoral inventions, while dishonoring the gods, also serve to amuse you. Consider the elegant things of the Lentuli and Hostilii - you ridicule the buffoons or your gods in jokes and buffoonery: “Adulterer Anubis”, “Man Moon”, “Diana Carved with a Lash”, “Reading the Will of Dead Jupiter”, “Three Hungry Laughed Hercules”. 61 2. But the works of the Histrions also depict all sorts of abominations of the gods. The sun mourns his son thrown from the sky, and you laugh; Cybele sighs for the arrogant shepherd, 62 and you do not blush and admit that the elogies 63 of Jupiter are sung, and Juno, Venus and Minerva commit themselves to the shepherd’s judgment. 3. The very fact that the mask of your god is placed on a despised and inglorious head, that an unclean body, cultivated for this art by effeminacy, represents a certain Minerva or Hercules, does not, with your approval, insult their greatness and dishonor their divinity? 4. Of course, you are more pious in the amphitheater, where your gods also dance over human blood, over the sewage remaining after execution, providing plots and stories to criminals, 64 unless the roles of your gods themselves are played by criminals. 5. We once saw the castration of Attis, the famous god from Pessinunta, and the one who was burned alive represented Hercules. During the cruel amusements with the gladiators fighting at noon, we laughed at Mercury, who tested the dead with a red-hot rod. We also saw brother Jupiter, 65 who, with the help of a hammer, removed the corpses of gladiators. 6. All this separately, and also what else could be found, - if it deprives divinity of honor, if it covers the traces of greatness with mud, then it owes its origin, of course, to contempt for the gods, both of those who perform such plays and of those for whom they are performed. 7. But let these be spectacles! And if I add what the conscience of everyone recognizes no less, namely, that in the churches adultery is agreed upon, pandering is started among the altars, often in the very tents of the church caretakers and priests, under the very priestly armbands, caps of flames and purple, lust is satisfied with burning incense, then it will not be clear whether your gods should complain about you rather than about Christians. Indeed, the desecrators of shrines caught red-handed are among your number. After all, Christians don’t go to churches during the day; They would also rob them if they prayed in them. 8. What do those who do not honor all this honor? It is already becoming obvious that people who do not worship deception are worshipers of truth, and that they no longer wander in what they left behind after realizing their error. First comprehend this and from this learn the entire order of our sacrament, first, however, discarding false opinions. Chapter XVI. About the veneration by Christians of a donkey's head, a cross, and the sun. (Ὀνοκοίτης) 1. For you, like some, imagine that our god is a donkey's head. This assumption was made by Cornelius Tacitus. 2. For he, in the fifth book of his History, 66 beginning to describe the Jewish war with the origin of this people and telling in accordance with his ideas about the origin, name and religion of the people, reports that the Jews, liberated or, as he thought, expelled from Egypt, when they were thirsty in the Arabian desert, in places completely deprived of water, used wild asses as guides to the source, which they probably found. They were considered to be heading from pasture to water, and for this service they deified the image of a similar animal. 3. From here, I think, the assumption arose that we, as close to the Jewish religion, devote ourselves to the same image. But the same Cornelius Tacitus, who truly surpasses all talkers in lies, in the same “History” reports that Gnaeus Pompey, when he captured Jerusalem and therefore entered the Church to discover the secrets of the Jewish religion, did not find any image there. 67 4. But if they revered what was represented by a certain image, then in no other place would it be exhibited rather than in their sanctuary, especially since there the veneration, however vain, was not afraid of outside witnesses. After all, only the priests were allowed to enter there, while the rest were prevented from looking by a stretched curtain. 5. You, however, will not deny that you honor all kinds of beasts of burden and entire geldings with their Epona. 68 We are probably blamed for the fact that among the worshipers of all domestic animals and beasts, we worship only donkeys. 6. But the one who thinks that we honor the cross will be our fellow believer. When trying to propitiate any product made of wood, its appearance does not matter, since the property of the material remains the same; the shape does not matter, since this [wooden product] itself is the body of the god. However, how different are the Attic Pallas and the Pharos Ceres from the tree of the cross, which are put up for sale in the form of an imageless, unprocessed pillar and a shapeless log? 7. Every tree that is strengthened in a vertical position is part of the cross. We, for that matter, honor an intact and whole god. We have already said that sculptors begin making your gods from the stage of the cross. Yes, and you worship Victories in trophies, although the insides of the trophies are crosses. 8. An integral and fundamental feature of the piety of Roman soldiers is the veneration of standards, the oath of standards, the preference of standards to all gods. All these piles of images on the crosses are necklaces of crosses; these pennants on standards and banners are the essence of the clothing of crosses. I praise your zeal: you did not want to consecrate the uncovered naked crosses. 9. Others, with a claim to greater enlightenment and credibility, of course, believe that our God is the sun. Perhaps we will be counted among the Persians, although we do not worship the sun depicted on the canvas, having it always on his [heavenly] shield. 10. And this suspicion arose because it became known that we pray facing the East. But many of you, because of the sometimes manifested tendency to venerate the heavenly bodies, move their lips [turning] in the direction where the sun rises. 11. Likewise, if we indulge in rejoicing on the day of the sun (for a completely different reason than because of the worship of the sun), then we occupy second place after those who reserve the day of Saturn for rest and food, departing, however, from the Jewish custom, which is unknown to them. 12. But recently in this city a new version of our God saw the light, when a certain criminal, 69 running from animals for money, 70 offered the public a picture with the following inscription: “God of Christians (ὀνοκοίτης).” He had donkey ears, a hoof on one leg, holding a book and wearing a toga. We laughed at both the name and the appearance. 13. But immediately those who accept hybrid gods with a dog 71 and a lion's head, 72 with the horns of a goat and a ram, with goat loins 73 and snake legs, 74 gods who are birds with their legs 75 or back, had to worship the two-formed deity immediately. 76 14. This is in addition to what has been said, so that none of the rumors [defaming us] would remain without refutation, as if with our knowledge. We will refute all this by turning to the statement of our faith. Chapter XVII. About the one God, about the testimony of the soul 1. The God we honor is one. To decorate His greatness, He sculpted out of nothing this vastness of the world in its entirety, together with all the decoration of the elements, bodies and spirits, through the word that He commanded, the mind with which He ordered, the power through which He was able to [do this]; That’s why the Greeks called the universe a word (κόσμος); 2. God is invisible, even if He is seen; incomprehensible, even if by grace He is discovered; invaluable, even if assessed through human feelings. Therefore He is true and great. However, what can generally be visible, what can be perceived, what can be evaluated, is smaller than the eyes with which it is comprehended, the hands with which it is felt, the senses with which it is discovered. That which is immeasurable is known only to oneself. 3. All this allows God to be appreciated, although He cannot be assessed. Thus the power of greatness makes Him both known to men and unknown. And this is the essence of the crime of those who do not want to know Him, about Whom they cannot remain ignorant. 77 4. Do you want us to prove this on the basis of His many and great works, which contain us, which support us, which delight us, and also frighten us, or do you want us to do this based on the testimony of the soul itself? 5. She, even if imprisoned in the body, 78 even if deceived by bad instructions, even if weakened by lusts and lusts, even if she slavishly serves false gods, when she nevertheless comes to her senses again, as after drunkenness, sleep or some illness, and feels her recovery, she remembers [simply] God for the sole reason that in the proper sense, He alone is true. 79 Everyone says: “God is good and great” and “whatever God will provide.” 6. The soul also testifies of Him as a judge: “God sees,” “I entrust to God,” “God will reward me.” Oh, the testimony of the soul, Christian by nature! 80 Finally, as she says this, she turns her gaze not to the Capitol, but to the sky. For she knows the throne of the living God, from Him and from there she descended. Chapter XVIII. About the Prophets and the Translation of Scripture into Greek 1. And so that we might more fully and better comprehend Him Himself, His institutions and will, He added to this the testimony of Scripture for those who want to seek God and find what they are looking for, and believe in what they have found, and, having believed, diligently serve Him. 2. For from the very beginning He sent into the world just men who, through their integrity, were found worthy to know and show God. They were filled with the divine spirit in order to preach with its help that God is the one who created the universe, created man from the earth (for He is the true Prometheus), and ordered the age with the help of an exact distribution of times and seasons. 3. [To declare] also what signs of His greatness He sent by means of showers and lightning in execution of His sentence, what rules He determined to please Himself, what reward He intended both for those who did not know and despised these rules, and for those who observed these rules, so that at the end of this age He would award His admirers the gift of eternal life, and the wicked - the same continuous and unceasing fire, when all those who died from the beginnings [of the world] will rise, return to their former appearance and will be appreciated in accordance with their merits. 4. We once laughed at this too. We came from your midst: Christians are made, not born. 5. Those whom we called preachers are called prophets according to their prophetic ministry. Their words and also the powers that they showed as proof of [their] divine gift are in the treasury of Scripture, and it is not hidden. The most enlightened of the Ptolemies (he is also called Philadelphus), more than anyone else versed in all kinds of literature, competing, I think, with Peisistratus in the assiduous collection of books, among other legends, which were given fame by antiquity or curious content, requested, on the advice of Demetrius of Falernus, the most respected of the then grammarians, who managed [the library] on his behalf, also books from the Jews - their special works, written in the local language, which only they had. 6. After all, the prophets came from the Jews and always addressed [only] them - to the people who, by the grace of their fathers, became God's property. Formerly those who are now called Jews were called Jews; so their scripture and language are Jewish. 7. And so that it could be understood, a translation was made for Ptolemy by seventy-two Jewish interpreters, whom Menedemos, the philosopher who also defended the existence of Providence, highly praised for the similarity of their thoughts [with his own]. You can find confirmation of all this in Aristaeus. 8. Thus, Ptolemy left writings that were revealed to the world in Greek; today they are in the Serapeum of the Ptolemaic Library, along with the Hebrew original. 9. But the Jews also read them openly. They pay taxes for this freedom. On all Saturdays these works are available to everyone. Whoever hears will find God; also the one who tries to understand will be forced to believe. Chapter XIX. On the Antiquity of Scripture 1. The greatest antiquity gives the highest authority to these documents; Likewise, your claims to truth are sacred if they are supported by reference to antiquity. Fulda fragment: 1. The authority of the Scriptures is given by [their] greatest antiquity. After all, the first prophet, Moses, thanks to his ability to prophesy, began the story from the long past, speaking about the creation of the world and the growth of the human race, then about a powerful flood punishing the sinfulness of that generation, and brought it [the story] to his era. Then, as far as it was in his power, he imagined images of future events. The order of times outlined by him from the very beginning represents a complete picture of the age. We discover that this Moses lived about three hundred years earlier than Danaus, your most ancient hero, arrived in Argos. 2. Moses lived a thousand years earlier than the Trojan War, and therefore earlier than Saturn himself. 81 After all, according to the “History” of Thallus, 82 which tells that Bel, the king of the Assyrians, and Saturn, the king of the Titans, fought with Jupiter, it turns out that Bel lived before the fall of Ilion by 322 years. 83 Through this Moses, God also gave the Jews their own law. 3. And other prophets are much older than your writings. After all, even the one who prophesied later than the others either anticipated it a little, or, in any case, coincides in time with your teachers of wisdom and legislators. 4. Zechariah lived during the reigns of Cyrus and Darius, during which Thales, the first natural scientist, was unable to answer Croesus, who questioned him, with anything reliable about the Divinity, being confused by the words of the prophets. Solon announced to the same king, echoing the prophets, that it was necessary to keep in mind the end of a long life. 5. Moreover, it can be seen that both your legal system and science come from the Mosaic law and divine teaching. Whatever is older will of necessity be a seed. Therefore, you have something either in common with ours, or similar to ours. 6. According to Sophia (i.e. Wisdom), love for her was called [by the pagans] philosophy. [Their] desire to acquire the gift of prophecy became the reason for the appearance of poetic predictions. Vainglorious people misappropriated and distorted everything they found. The same thing happens to fruits that have lost the properties of the seed from which they arose. 7. In many other ways I could assert the antiquity of the divine Scriptures, if their authority were not secured rather by the force of the truth contained in them, than by the chronicles of the era. For what will strengthen their testimony more strongly than daily observation of the entire universe, when the disposition of kingdoms, when the fall of cities, when the destruction of nations, when the order of times corresponds to everything that was predicted thousands of years before the events described? 8. This revives our hope, which you laugh at, and strengthens the confidence that you call perseverance. For consideration of the past easily gives confidence in the future. The same words declared both, the same writings expressed both. 9. For time, which seems to us divided [into past and future], is one in them. Thus, everything that awaits us is already proven for us, since it was announced along with what was then to come and has now already happened. You have, as I know, the Sibyl, for the name of the true prophetess of the true God was everywhere given to those who only seem to be soothsayers; just as your Sibyls took this name for themselves by deceit, so did your gods. 2. So, all the content and all the themes, primary sources, trends, characteristic features of any of your ancient literature, as well as very many peoples and cities, glorified in historical writings and white-haired in the annals, themselves, finally, images of letters, indicators and guardians of events, and - I think we haven’t said enough yet - your gods themselves, the churches themselves, oracles and sacred rites appeared centuries later than the screenshot 84 of one prophet, screen, in which the treasure of the entire Jewish religion, and therefore ours, seems to be placed. 3. Moses, if you have heard of him, is equal in age to the Argive Inachus, and by almost four hundred years (seven is missing) he lived before Danaus, your most ancient hero. He lived about a thousand years before the defeat of Priam. I might also say, by reference to those authors whose testimony I use, that he is another five hundred years older than Homer. 4. As for the other prophets, although they lived later than Moses, are not the most recent of them older than your first sages, legislators and historians? 5. The explanation of the calculations with which this can be proven is not as difficult as it is cumbersome, and not as difficult as it takes time. You will have to work diligently with numerous materials, bending your fingers while counting. We will also have to open the archives of the most ancient peoples - the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians; 6. It will be necessary to call on their fellow citizens, through whom knowledge came - certain Egyptian Manetho, 85 Chaldean Berossus, 86 King of Tire the Phoenician Hierome, as well as their followers: Ptolemy of Mendes, 87 Menander of Ephesus, 88 Demetrius of Falerno, 89 King Juba, 90 Apion, 91 Thallus and the one who confirms or refutes their words - the Jew Joseph, the native champion of Jewish antiquities. 7. You will also have to compare the Greek tax lists to find out what happened and when, so that a connection between times is revealed, thanks to which the number of years will become clearer. You will have to travel through the stories and literatures of the globe. And yet, having named what allows all this to be confirmed, we have already given, as it were, part of the proof. 8. But it is better to postpone [it] for the future, so that, on the one hand, we do not develop [it] in a hurry, and on the other hand, we do not deviate from the topic during a protracted presentation. Chapter XX. The Divinity of Scripture is Proven by the Fulfillment of What was Foretold Therein 1. If we are unable to confirm the divinity of Scripture by antiquity, if its antiquity is in doubt, then we offer more in place of the proof we have put aside - the greatness of Scripture. It won't take much time and won't require searching elsewhere. Teachers in full view: peace, age and fulfillment. 2. Everything that happens was predicted; everything we see has been previously heard. That the earth swallows cities, that seas cut off islands, that external and internal wars torment [peoples], that kingdoms fight with kingdoms, that famine, pestilence, all sorts of local disasters and high mortality devastate [states], that the humble are exalted and the majestic are humiliated, 92 3. that justice decreases and injustice expands, 93 care for any good education weakens, that the times and the elements shirk their duties, that the appearance of nature changes due to signs and wonders, 94 - all this has already been written prophetically. While we endure, we read about what we endure; when we remember it, it is confirmed. The fulfillment of what was predicted is, I believe, reliable evidence of divinity. 4. Thus, thanks to this, we gain complete confidence in the future, already, of course, confirmed, for it was predicted along with what is confirmed daily. The same words sound, the same writings testify, the same spirit motivates. In divination, which predicts the future, there is only one time. 5. In people, perhaps, it is divided when it passes, when from the future it becomes the present, and then is considered the past. 95 Tell me please, what are we doing wrong when we believe in the future, we who learned to believe in it in two steps? 96 Chapter XXI. About the Jews, about the coming of Christ, His suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. "We Honor God Through Christ" 1. But since we have declared that this sect, which the majority considers, with our consent, to be quite young, since its origin dates back to the time of Tiberius, is based on the most ancient Jewish documents, then because of this, doubt may arise as to its actual position, as if under the shadow of a wonderful religion, of course, permitted by law, it was hiding some of its own superstitions. 2. [Doubt may arise] also due to the fact that, apart from age, we have nothing in common with the Jews, neither in food restrictions, nor in holidays, nor in the very bodily sign [of circumcision], nor in the name, which, of course, would not be the case if we belonged to the same God. 3. But even the crowd already knows about Christ as a certain man, as the Jews declared Him, so that it would be all the easier to consider us admirers of man. But we do not blush because of Christ, rejoicing when we are called by His name and condemned [for Him], and we do not think of God differently [than the Jews]. So, it is necessary to say a few words about Christ as God. 4. The Jews received mercy from God in everything for their remarkable justice and fidelity to their first teachers. Therefore, they were famous for the multitude of people, the greatness of the kingdom and such great happiness that the words of God, who were their teachers, admonished them on how to gain mercy from Him and not provoke anger. 5. But how much they sinned, arrogantly relying on the merits of their fathers while deviating from the true path and wickedly departing from their teaching, would be shown by their current state, even if they themselves did not admit it. Scattered across different countries, wanderers, expelled from their land and from under their sky, they wander around the world, having neither man nor God as their king, so that they are not allowed, even as strangers, to greet their father’s land even with their footprints. 6. All the holy sayings, threatening the Jews with the aforementioned misfortunes, always said that this is exactly what will happen to them: that during the last cycles of the century, God will choose Himself much more faithful admirers from every tribe, people and place, to whom He will transfer His mercy, which has become more complete thanks to their ability to accommodate the teachings of the Creator. 7. So, the One who was foreshadowed as coming from God for the transfiguration and explanation of this teaching came - that same Christ, the Son of God. He, the Lord and Administrator of this grace and teaching, the Giver of light and the Leader of the human race, was proclaimed the Son of God, not, indeed, born to blush because of the name of a son or the seed of a father. 8. God became His father not as a result of incest with a sister, debauchery with a daughter or someone else’s wife; it was not Danae's scaly, horned, feathered, or gold-turned lover. All these [incarnations] of Jupiter are your deities. 97 9. However, the Son of God does not have a mother who became such because of debauchery. And She, Who is considered His Mother, did not marry. But first I will speak in detail about His essence, so that the nature of His birth may become clear. 10. We have already declared that God created this entire universe by word, mind and power. It is known that among your sages (Λόγος), that is, the Word and Reason, is considered the architect of the universe. After all, Zeno defines Him as the Creator, who formed everything in due order, calling Him fate, God, the soul of Jupiter and the necessity of all things. Cleanthes gives all this to the spirit, which he claims to permeate the universe. 11. But we give the word, the understanding, and also the power, 98 by which, as we have declared, God created all things, a special essence, the Spirit, in whom, when He proclaims, the word is present, with whom, when He distributes, the understanding is, before Whom, when He executes, the power is present. We know that He came from God and was begotten at His procession; therefore He is called the Son of God and God according to the unity of essence, since the Spirit is also God. 99 12. And when a ray comes from the sun, it is part 100 of the whole; however, the sun will be in the ray, for it is a ray of the sun, and its essence is not divided, but extended, 101 like a lamp lit from a lamp. The mother trunk remains intact and unimpaired by the lack of substance, even if you take many cuttings from it. 13. So is what came from God: the Son of God is God, and both of them are one. God. So also from the Spirit the Spirit, and from God God, who became second in accordance with measure, formed number by degree, and not by state; He did not depart from the trunk, but came out. 14. So, the ray of God, as was always predicted before, descending on a certain Virgin and becoming flesh in Her womb, is born as a Man united with God. The animate flesh feeds, grows, speaks, teaches, works - and behold - Christ. Accept this myth for now, because it is similar to yours, until we show how the [divinity] of Christ is proven and who among you presented such imitative myths in advance to refute this truth. 15. The Jews, to whom the prophets had preached, also knew about the coming Christ. After all, they are still awaiting His coming, and the difference between us and them lies in nothing more than the fact that they do not believe that He has already come. For, although two of His comings were predicted, the first - the one that had already happened in the humility of the human condition, the second - the one that was to come at the end of the age in the greatness of undisguised divinity, they, not recognizing the first, considered the only second one, in which, more clearly predicted, they trusted. 16. For the fact that they did not understand the first thing, which they should have believed if they had understood, and should have received salvation if they had believed, was a punishment for sins. They themselves read in the Scriptures that they are deprived of wisdom, and understanding, and the fruit of eyes and ears. 102 17. It turned out that He whom they considered only a man because of His humility, they considered a magician because of His power, since He cast out demons from people with a word, gave sight to the blind again, cleansed lepers, healed the paralyzed, finally brought the dead back to life with a word, subjugated the elements themselves, taming storms and walking through the sea, showing that He is the Word of God, that is, (Λόγος), that original, first-born, accompanied by power and reason and supported by the Spirit, the Word, that He is the very One who creates and created everything with the Word. 18. The teachers and leaders of the Jews became so embittered by His teaching that denounced them, especially because a huge number of people were leaving them for Him, that in the end, with their cries demanding reprisals, they ensured that Christ, brought to trial before Pontius Pilate, who then ruled Syria on behalf of Rome, was handed over to him for crucifixion. Christ Himself predicted that they would do this. This would mean little if the prophets had not previously predicted this. 19. However, even when crucified, He showed numerous signs that were to accompany His death. For by His own will he gave up his spirit along with the word, forestalling the actions of the executioner. At the same moment the daylight went out, although the sun was at its zenith. Those who did not know that this was also predicted about Christ considered it an eclipse. In your secret archives you have an account of this phenomenon. 20. Then the Jews placed a large armed detachment of guards around the tomb in which the one taken down from the cross was laid with special care, so that His disciples, by stealing the corpse, would not deceive those whom the Jews considered suspicious, since Christ had predicted that He would rise on the third day. 21. But on the third day, when the earth suddenly shook, the rock that blocked the entrance to the tomb moved away, and the guards scattered in fear, nothing was found in the tomb except the burial clothes, and not one of the disciples was present. 22. Nevertheless, the elders, for whom it was important to disclose the alleged crime and to turn away the tax-paying people and the people devoted to them from the faith, began to say that He was abducted by the disciples. For He did not reveal Himself to the crowd, lest the wicked should be freed from error, and faith, for which there is no small reward, might stand in the face of difficulties. 23. He communicated with certain disciples for forty days in Galilee, a region of Judea, teaching them what they would have to teach. Then, having charged them with the duty of preaching in the world, He, surrounded by a cloud, was taken into heaven, which is much more plausible than what Proculi usually claims about Romulus. 103 24. Pilate, himself already a Christian in his conscience, reported all these events concerning Christ to the then Caesar Tiberius, but the Caesars would have believed in Christ if either Caesars were not necessary for this age, or if Christians could be Caesars. 25. His disciples, having obeyed the command of the divine Teacher, dispersed throughout the world. They, who also suffered a lot from the Jews who persecuted them, - of course, for their steadfastness in the truth, in the end in Rome, because of the ferocity of Nero, they readily shed, as if sowing seeds, their Christian blood. 26. But we will show you those whom you worship as reliable witnesses of Christ. It will cost a lot if, in order to make you believe Christians, I use those who make you not believe Christians. 27. Meanwhile, this is the history of our teaching; this sequence of events which we have related explains the origin of both our sect and its name, together with its Founder. Let no one dishonor us from now on, let no one assume anything different about us, for no one should lie about his religion. After all, when someone says that he honors something other than what he actually honors, he denies what he honors, and transfers worship and veneration to another, and as a result of this transfer no longer honors what he denies. 28. We speak and speak openly, and to you, the torturers, tormented and bloodied, we shout: “We honor God through Christ.” Consider Him as a man; God desires to be known and honored through Him and in Him. 29. Answering the Jews, I will say that they also learned to honor God through the man Moses; resisting the Greeks, I note that Orpheus 104 in Pieria, Musaeus 105 in Athens, Melampus 106 in Argos, Trophonius 107 in Boeotia obliged people to perform the sacraments. Addressing also you, rulers of nations, let me remind you that Numa Pompilius, who burdened the Romans with the most difficult superstitions to observe, was a man. 30. Let Christ also be allowed to explain the Divinity, His own essence, not in order to bring rude and still wild people to humanity, confusing them with a multitude of deities whose favor they had to gain, as Numa did, but to endow those already cultured and deceived by education itself with sight for the knowledge of the truth. 31. Therefore, inquire whether Christ has genuine divinity; if it is such, having learned which everyone is transformed into a good person, then one should renounce the false one, having first of all comprehended all that power which, hiding under the names and images of the dead, with the help of certain signs, wonders and predictions, evokes faith in one’s divinity. 1. We even claim that there are some spiritual entities. The name is not new. Philosophers know about demons, for Socrates himself turned to a demon for advice. Isn't it? They say that from childhood there was a demon with him, dissuading him, one must think, from the good. 2. All poets know about demons; even uneducated people often use this word when scolding. Indeed, in the same curses he also remembers Satan, the head of this evil family, obeying his inner voice in the same way. Plato also did not deny angels. 108 Yes, there are also magicians to be witnesses of both these names. 3. But how from certain angels who, by their own will, became vicious, arose an even more vicious race of demons, condemned by God together with the founders of this race and the head whom we mentioned, can be found out in the Holy Scriptures. 4. It will now be enough to say only about their activities. Their job is to overthrow man. Thus, the evil spiritual force from the very beginning had the goal of human destruction. Therefore, demons bring illnesses and various misfortunes to the body, and sudden and unusual attacks of insanity caused by violence [to it] to the soul. 5. They have their own lightness and subtlety for attacks on both of these human essences. Much is allowed to spiritual forces so that, invisible and imperceptible, they manifest themselves rather in their result than in their action - if [even] tree fruits and bread some hidden vice of the air current destroys in a flower, kills in a sprout, seriously wounds during ripening, if the air, infected with unknown means, spreads its noxious breath. 109 6. Acting as imperceptibly as an infection, the spirit of demons and angels produces a seduction of the mind, causing frenzy, disgusting madness and fierce lust with various delusions, of which the most powerful is the one with the help of which this demonic seduction entrusts to the captive and deceived human mind the well-known gods, in order to at the same time provide for itself the special nutrition from child and blood offered to the statues and images 7. And what better food serves him than to turn a person away from the thought of the true Divinity with false ghosts? What kind of ghosts these are and how it produces them, I will now explain. 8. Every spirit is impetuous: such are angels and demons. Therefore, at the same moment they are everywhere. The whole world is one place for them. They find out what is happening and where with the same ease with which they proclaim it. Agility is considered divinity, because the essence remains unknown. Thus, sometimes they want to seem to be the culprits of what they proclaim; and sometimes they are - the perpetrators of evil, of course, but never of good. 9. They even learned the plans of God from the prophets who had spoken earlier, and now they find out 110 them when the Scripture is read. Thus, borrowing some information from this source about the times and seasons established by [God], they compete with the Divine, appropriating the divine gift of divination. 111 10. With what ingenuity they adjust the ambiguity [of the answer] to the result in oracles, Croesus knows, Pyrrhus knows 112. However, the Pythian [found out and] announced that the turtle was boiled with sheep meat 113 in the manner that we said above: at that moment he was in Lydia. Demons, thanks to their presence in the air, their proximity to the constellations and proximity to the clouds, understand what is happening under the sky in order to announce the showers that they already feel. 11. Of course, they seem to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases. For first they amaze, then they prescribe unusual or contrary drugs to create the appearance of a miracle, after which, after taking them, they cease to harm and are considered to have healed. 12. What should I add about other abilities or even powers of the spirits of lies? - about the apparitions of the Castors, about how they brought water in a sieve, about how the ship was moved by a belt, 114 and how the beard turned red when touched: [all this was done so that] the stones would be considered deities, so that people would not seek the true God. Chapter XXIII. Demons and gods are one and the same. Exorcism 1. Further, if magicians also cause omens and desecrate the souls of the already dead, 115 if they induce boys to make predictions, 116 if, with the help of charlatan tricks, they perform numerous miracles, if they also send dreams, having at their disposal the power of once summoned angels and demons, through which they usually predict both goats and tables, 117 then how much greater is this power for its own discretion and for its own needs will try her best to produce what she does for someone else's cause! 2. And if angels and demons produce the same things as your gods, what then is the superiority of divinity, which, of course, should be considered superior to any other power? Therefore, would it not be more worthy to assume that those who pretend to be gods are gods, since they produce the same thing that causes belief in the gods, than to think that the gods are equal to angels and demons? 3. The difference of places, I think, leads to the fact that you consider as gods thanks to the churches those whom you do not call gods in another place; that in a different way the one who rushes along the sacred towers seems mad to you, in a different way the one who jumps on the neighboring roofs; that another power is declared in the one who cuts the genitals or hands, 118 another in the one who cuts his throat. The result of madness and the same motivating reason are the same. 4. But until now there were only words. From this point on, we will begin to present the facts themselves, with the help of which we will show that both names refer to the same entity. Let someone here in this very place be brought before your tribunal who is known to be possessed by a demon. Having received a command from any Christian to speak, that spirit recognizes itself as truly a demon as in another place - falsely as a god. 5. In the same way, let someone be brought from those who are considered to come into contact with God, who, breathing over the altars, absorb from the child of God, who are cured by belching, and predict by puffing. 6. This very Heavenly Virgin, the promise of rain, 119 this very Aesculapius, showing drugs, 120 prolonging the life of those who die the next day, with the help of Socordius, Thanatius and Asclepiodotus - if they do not recognize themselves as demons, not daring to lie to a Christian, then shed the blood of this most impudent Christian! 7. What is more obvious than this case, what is more reliable than this evidence? The simplicity of truth is in plain sight; she is helped by her own strength. You won't suspect anything here! You will say that magic or some other deception of this kind is involved here, if your eyes and ears allow you to do so. 8. What can be argued against something that shows itself openly and honestly? If it is true that they are gods, why do they lie about being demons? Is it really to serve us? Therefore, your deity is subject to Christians; but that which is subject to man should no longer be considered a deity, and if a man does something to dishonor him, then to his rival. 9. If they are demons or angels, why do they elsewhere claim to act as gods? After all, just as those who are considered gods would not want to say that they are demons if they really were gods, so as not to lose their greatness in this way, so those whom you know precisely as demons would not dare to act in another place on behalf of the gods, if those whose names they use were some kind of gods at all. For they would be wary of abusing the greatness of undoubtedly superior and fearsome beings. 10. Consequently, the divinity that you adhere to does not exist, for if it really existed, then neither the demons would have appropriated it by admitting it, nor the gods would have renounced it. Therefore, since the confessions of both agree in denying that they are gods, you will agree that there is only one kind, that is, that both are demons. I. Now you need to look for gods again, since you have learned that those whom you considered gods are just demons. Thanks to this same work of ours, 121 from these same gods of yours, who reveal that neither they themselves nor any other beings are gods, you will immediately learn about who really is God and whether this is the One and the only one about whom we, Christians, declare, and whether it is necessary to believe in Him and honor Him, as the Christian faith and teaching commands. 12. The demons will also say there about who this “Christ with His myth” is, whether He is an ordinary person, whether He is a magician, abducted after death from the tomb by the disciples, finally, whether He is now in the underworld, whether He is in heaven rather, and whether He is coming with the shaking of the whole world, with the trembling of the universe, with the weeping of everyone except Christians, as the Power and Spirit of God, the Word, Wisdom, Reason and the Son of God. 122 13. At everything that you laugh at, let the demons laugh with you; let them deny that Christ will judge all souls that have existed since the beginning of time, when their bodies are restored. Let the demons say that instead of this judgment there is one that was probably given to Minos and Rhadamanthus, according to the opinion of Plato 123 and the poets. 14. Let them only reject the sign of their shame and condemnation: let them deny that they are unclean spirits; the latter statement must have been evident from their food - blood, smoke, stinking fires where the bodies of animals were burned - and from the defiled tongues of their own prophets. Let them deny that because of their malice, they, along with all their admirers and deeds, are doomed to be convicted on that very day of judgment. 15. But all this dominion and power over them is ours thanks to the invocation of the name of Christ and the reminder of the punishment that threatens them, which they expect for themselves from God according to the sentence of Christ. Fearing Christ in God and God in Christ, they submit to the servants of God and Christ. 16. Thus, at our touch and breath, being struck by the contemplation and representation of that fire, they proceed from the bodies at our command against their will, grieving and ashamed of your presence. 17. If you believe them when they lie, believe them when they tell the truth about themselves! No one lies to his own shame instead of lying for his own glory. Those who testify against themselves are more worthy of trust than those who deny [something] in their favor. 18. These testimony of your gods usually turn people into Christians. How often, by trusting them, we begin to believe in God in Christ! 124 They themselves kindle faith in our Scriptures, they themselves strengthen confidence in the fulfillment of our hope. 19. You honor them, as I know, also by shedding Christian blood. They would not want to let you go, so useful, so helpful, so as not to be expelled from you, who will someday become Christians, if they were allowed to lie in front of a Christian who wants to prove the truth to you. Chapter XXIV. Only Christians are prohibited from having their own religion 1. This whole confession of theirs, in which they deny that they are gods, in which they declare that there is no other god but one to whom we are devoted, is quite suitable to reject the charge of the greatest insult to the Roman religion. For if gods definitely do not exist, then there is certainly no religion, and if there is no religion, for there are definitely no gods, then we, without a doubt, are not guilty of insulting religion. 2. But, on the contrary, the accusation will be directed at you, who worship lies; not only by despising the true religion of the true God, but even by fighting against it, you are truly committing the crime of true wickedness. 3. Now let's assume that those gods exist. Do you not recognize, on the basis of general opinion, a certain God, higher and more powerful, as if possessing perfect greatness as the leader of the world? After all, the majority of people distribute divinity in such a way that complete power is in the hands of one, while His duties are vested in many, just as Plato depicts the great Jupiter accompanied in the sky by an army of gods and demons; 125 Therefore, procurators, prefects and governors should be equally respected. 4. And, however, what crime does he commit who devotes his actions to gaining the favor of Caesar, on whom he places his hopes, and the name of God, like the name of emperor, does not recognize for anyone other than the ruler, since it is considered a crime worthy of the death penalty to call in this way someone other than Caesar, and hear that someone else does so? 5. Let one honor God, the other Jupiter; let one stretch out his hands to heaven in prayer, the other to the altar of Faithfulness; let one, praying, count the clouds (you think so), the other - the coffers on the ceiling; let one devote his soul to God, another the soul of a goat. 6. Be careful that this too does not result in an accusation of impiety - to take away freedom of religion and forbid a person to have his own idea of ​​\u200b\u200bdivinity, so that I am not allowed to honor whom I want, but I am ordered to honor whom I do not want. No one, not even a person, wants to be revered against his will. 7. Even the Egyptians are given the right to follow their very absurd superstition, deifying birds and animals, and condemn to death whoever kills any such god. 8. Each province and city has its own god, as in Syria - Atargatis, in Arabia - Dusars, in Norica - Belen, in Africa - the Heavenly Virgin, in Mauritania - her kings. I have named what seem to be Roman provinces, but the gods in them, however, are not Roman, for in Rome they are revered no more than those who, in Italy itself, are recognized as such by municipal dedication: among the inhabitants of Cacique - Delventin, among the inhabitants of Narnia - Visidian, among the inhabitants of Asculum - Ancharia, among the inhabitants of Volsinia - Nortia, among the inhabitants of Okriculum - Valentinus, among the inhabitants of Sutrium - Hostia; Juno of the Thalists took the name in honor of Curris's father. 126 9. But we alone are forbidden to have our own religion. We irritate the Romans and are not considered Romans because we honor a non-Roman God. It is good that God is the God of all, to whom, whether we like it or not, we all belong. But you are allowed to honor anything other than the true God, as if He to Whom we all belong was not more the God of all. Chapter XXV. Refuting the belief that the gods gave power to Rome 1. It seems to me that I have fully dealt with the matter of false and true divinity, showing that my proofs are supported not only by reasoning and inference, but also by the evidence of those whom you consider to be gods, so that nothing needs to be discussed again in this matter. 2. Since, however, we are talking here mainly about the Roman name, I will not remain silent about the controversy caused by the well-known assumption that the Romans, for the careful execution of religious rites, were exalted so highly that they captured the whole world, and that gods exist, if only because those who serve them better than everyone else do better than everyone else. 3. The Roman gods undoubtedly gave this reward to the Roman name in gratitude: Sterculus, 127 Mutun 128 and Larentina 129 increased the Empire. After all, I don’t think that foreign gods would want to do more good to a foreign people than to their own, and would give the paternal land in which they were born, raised, became famous and were buried to overseas aliens. 4. Okay - Cybele, if she loved the Roman city in memory of the Trojan tribe - of her compatriots, that is - which she defended from the weapons of the Achaeans, if, foreseeing the future, she went over to the avengers, having learned that they would subjugate Greece, the conqueror of Phrygia. 5. Therefore, she provided great proof of her greatness transferred to Rome already in our time: when the “most holy” archigallus, after M. Aurelius was snatched from the state 130 at Sirmium on the 16th day before the Kalends of April, 131 on the ninth day before the same Kalends, 132 having cut 133 his hands, poured out his unclean blood, he turned to the goddess the usual prayers for health already deceased Emperor Mark. 6. Oh, slow messengers, oh, drowsy dispatches, through whose fault Cybele did not learn in advance about the departure of the emperor, so that such a great goddess 134 would not be ridiculed by Christians! 7. But not immediately, and Jupiter would have allowed his Crete to be struck by the Roman fasces, forgetting about the famous Idean cave, the copper of the Corybantes and the most pleasant smell of his nurse there. 135 Wouldn’t he prefer that tombstone of his to any Capitol, so that the land that covered the ashes of Jupiter would rather dominate the world? 8. Would Juno have wanted the Punic city, “preferred to Samos,” to be destroyed precisely by the descendants of Aeneas? As I know, “...her weapons are here, / here was her chariot; The goddess sought to raise the kingdom, / if fate allowed, above the nations.” 136 This unfortunate “wife and sister of Jupiter” 137 could not resist fate! Of course! After all, “Jupiter himself depends on fate.” 138 9. And, however, the Romans did not show as much honor to fate, which gave them Carthage contrary to the intention and will of Juno, as they did to the harlot Larentina, who was distinguished by debauchery. 10. It is known that your gods in their majority reigned. So, if they have the ability to transfer power, then from whom did they receive this favor when they reigned themselves? Who did Saturn and Jupiter honor? Some kind of Sterkul, I suppose. But the Romans with indigitations 139 appeared later. 140 11. In addition, even if some gods did not reign, they were, however, subject to others, those who were not yet their worshipers, since they were not yet considered gods. Therefore, it is the prerogative of others to give kingdoms, for [people] reigned much earlier than these gods appeared. 12. But how foolish it is to attribute the greatness of the Roman name to piety, when religion began to prosper only after the creation of an empire or kingdom! Religion, consider it, began to prosper thanks to the state. After all, even if Numa had conceived a superstitious pettiness, the Roman worship had not yet received images and churches. 13. Religion was thrifty, and rites modest, and no other Capitol rivaled heaven. There were altars made somehow from turf, 141 other Samian utensils, a little chad, but nowhere was there an [image of] the god himself. After all, then the talents of the Greeks and Etruscans had not yet flooded Rome with sculpting statues. Therefore, the Romans were not pious before they became great. So they didn't become great because they were pious. 14. But how could those whose power arose from their wickedness acquire greatness by their piety? After all, if I am not mistaken, every kingdom or empire is acquired by wars and expanded by victories. Further, wars and victories consist mostly of the capture and destruction of cities. All this does not happen without insulting the gods. City walls and churches collapse in the same way, citizens and priests die together, there is no difference between the plunder of sacred and secular wealth. 15. So, there are as many sacrileges among the Romans as there are trophies, as many triumphs over the gods as over nations, as many spoils of war as there are still images of the captured gods. 16. Consequently, they tolerate the worship of enemies and award an “empire without borders” 142 to those to whom they would have to repay rather for insults than for gratification. But those who feel nothing are insulted with impunity as much as they are venerated in vain. 17. It is impossible, of course, to believe that those who, as we have shown, either strengthened, harming religion, or harmed, strengthened, were strengthened thanks to religion. Also those whose kingdoms were included in the Roman Empire, when they were lost, were not deprived of religion. Chapter XXVI. Power is given by God 1. So, see if it is not He who distributes the kingdoms, to Whom belongs both the world over which they reign, and the man himself who reigns. Was it not He who established the transition of domination from one to another at the times allotted for this in [this] age, Who was before all time and created the age as a body of times? Is it not He who exalts or humiliates states, under Whom the human race once existed without states? 2. How can you be mistaken? Forest Rome existed before some of its gods. He began to dominate before he erected the Capitol, the enormous magnitude of which is realized when walking around it. And the Babylonians reigned before the pontiffs, and the Medes before the Quindecimviri, 143 and the Egyptians before the Salians, 144 and the Assyrians before the Luperci, 145 and the Amazons before the Vestal Virgins. 3. Finally, if the fulfillment of Roman religious rites bestows kingdoms, then Judea, who despises all these common deities, would never have reigned before, whose God you, the Romans, honored with sacrifices, the Church with gifts and the people with treaties of alliance, never would have conquered her if she had not ultimately sinned against Christ. Chapter XXVII. About the machinations of demons against Christians 1. This is sufficient to refute the charge of insulting divinity, so that we do not appear to be insulting one which we have shown does not exist. So, called for sacrifice, we refuse to perform it in accordance with the demands of our conscience, from which we know for whom this service is performed in the desecration of images and the sanctification of human names. 2. But some consider it madness that, although we can make a sacrifice on the spot and leave unharmed, keeping our convictions in our souls, we prefer stubbornness to preserving life. 3. You, therefore, are giving us advice on how to outwit you; but we know who gives such advice, who starts all this, and how, in order to deprive us of firmness, he acts either with crafty persuasion or with extreme cruelty. This is a spirit possessing demonic and angelic power, our rival because of the falling away from God and the envious because of God's grace, fighting against us from your thoughts, by secret indoctrination tuned [in the way it needs] and directed to all kinds of distortion of legal proceedings and ruthless injustice, which we said at the beginning. 5. For, although all the power of demons and similar spirits is subordinate to us, they, like worthless slaves, sometimes mix obstinacy with fear and strive to harm those whom they otherwise fear. After all, fear also breathes hatred. In addition, in their hopeless state due to deliberate condemnation, thanks to the reprieve of punishment, they find consolation, which consists in temporary enjoyment of their anger. And yet, being caught, they submit and yield to the demands of their condition, and, finding themselves nearby, beg those whom they attack from afar. 7. So, when, like rebels in strait houses, dungeons or mines, this race [of demons], sentenced to punitive forced labor, conscious of our superiority and the destruction approaching to themselves due to rebellion, makes attacks against us, in whose power it is, we oppose it against our will as an equal and resist, persisting in what it attacks, and never triumphing over it more than that the moment when we are condemned for our firmness in faith. Chapter XXVIII. On forced sacrifices 1. Since it is obvious that this state of affairs is incorrect in which free people are forced against their will to sacrifice, since in other cases the desire of the soul is necessary for the performance of religious rites, then, of course, it should be considered absurd if anyone were forced to worship the gods, whom he should have to propitiate voluntarily for himself, so that he would not have the opportunity to say by right of freedom: “I do not want Jupiter to be merciful to me; Who are you? Let an angry Janus come to me with whatever face he pleases. What do you care about me? 2. These same spirits, of course, instructed you to force us to sacrifice for the health of the emperor; just as you have a duty to force us, so we have a duty to be tested. 3. So, we have come to the second charge [addressed against us], the charge of insulting a more sacred majesty [than that of the gods], since you worship Caesar with greater fear and with more skillful timidity than Olympian Jupiter himself. And this is right, if only you are able to understand it. For who among the living is not more powerful than the dead? 4. But you do this not so much thanks to your sanity, but taking into account the power nearby. By showing more fear of human power, you are also disrespectful to your gods in this respect. Finally, among you people swear falsely by all the gods more often than by the genius of Caesar alone. Chapter XXIX. Refutation of lèse-majesté charge: gods are powerless 1. So, let us first find out whether those to whom sacrifices are made can bestow health on emperors or on any person whatsoever. Accuse us of a crime against greatness if angels or demons, the worst spirits in their essence, do any good, if, being lost, they save someone, if, being condemned, they free, if, finally, being dead - you yourself admit this - they protect the living. 2. After all, they, of course, would protect first of all their statues, images and churches, which, if I am not mistaken, are kept safe and sound by the soldiers of the Caesars, going around on guard. I think that these substances themselves [from which statues and churches are made] come from Caesar’s mines, and all churches exist only with the approval of Caesar. 3. In addition, many gods experienced the wrath of Caesar. If they manage to gain his favor when he gives them generous gifts or privileges, then this fact confirms that I am right. So, how can those who are in the power of Caesar and wholly belong to him have the power to dispose of his welfare in such a way that they seem to be able to give what they themselves would rather seek from Caesar? 4. Well, we commit a crime against the greatness of emperors because we do not subordinate them to their own property and do not play with prayer for their health, because we do not think that it is in hands soldered with lead! 5. But it is you who are wicked, 146 you, who seek imperial well-being where there is none, who ask for it from those from whom it cannot be obtained, who neglect Him in whose power it is. On top of everything else, you are also fighting with those who know how to ask for this well-being, and who can beg for it because they know how to ask! Chapter XXX. Christians pray to the true God for the emperor 1. After all, in prayer for the well-being of the emperors, we turn to the eternal God, the true God, the living God, whom the emperors themselves desire to win over more than all other gods. They know who gave them power; They know, being people, Who gave the soul. They feel that He is the only God in whose power they are, from whom they are second, after whom they are first, before all and above all gods. Isn't it? After all, they are higher than all people who, of course, live and are superior to the dead. 2. Emperors consider how far the power of their power extends, and thus comprehend God; they understand that they are strong thanks to Him against whom they cannot show strength. Let the emperor conquer heaven, let him lead heaven captive in his triumph, let him send guards to heaven, let heaven impose taxes! It can't. 3. He is great because he is smaller than the sky; after all, he himself belongs to the One to whom both heaven and all creation belong. Thanks to Him he became an emperor, thanks to Whom he became a man even before. This is where his power comes from, and where his breath comes from. 4. There we Christians look, with outstretched hands, for they are innocent, with bare heads, for we are not ashamed, without a prompter, for we pray from the heart; We always ask for all emperors a long life, a calm reign, a safe family, a brave army, a faithful Senate, a well-behaved people, a peaceful country and everything that is desired by both man and Caesar. 5. I cannot ask this from anyone else except Him from Whom I know what I will receive, for He is the One Who alone can give it, and I am the one to whom it should be asked - His servant, the only one who honors Him, who is killed for His teaching, who offers Him the fat sacrifice, surpassing [the sacrifices of the pagans], which He Himself commanded to be offered - a prayer coming from the shameful flesh, from an innocent soul, from a pious spirit, 147 6. and not particles of incense worth one ace, tears of an Arabian tree, not two drops of undiluted wine, not the blood of a worthless bull who wants to die, and after all this filth also a bad conscience. So, when you have the most vicious priests examining sacrificial animals, I can only wonder why the insides of the victims are examined, and not those who slaughter them. 7. Therefore, let us, who have stretched out our hands to God, be furrowed by [iron] claws, crosses raised, fire licked, let swords cut our throats, let beasts pounce on us: a Christian who has risen to pray is ready for any execution. Do this, good governors, pluck out the soul praying to God for the emperor. Our crime will be adherence to truth and devotion to God! Chapter XXXI. Scripture commands Christians to pray for the emperor 1. Have we flattered the emperor here and come up with the aforementioned well-wishes in order to get rid of violence? Of course, this deception is useful to us; because you allow us to prove everything that we defend. 148 So, you, who have decided that we do not care at all about the well-being of the emperor, look at the sayings of God contained in our Scriptures, which we ourselves do not hide, and many accidents convey them to outsiders. 2. Learn from them that we are commanded to pray to God in abundance of meekness, even for our enemies, and to ask for good for our persecutors. 149 Who is a greater enemy and persecutor of Christians than those of whom we are accused of insulting the greatness? 3. But even calling them by name, Scripture says openly: “Pray for kings, rulers and authorities, so that everything will be calm for you!” 150 For, during the upheavals of the Empire, when other parts of it are affected, we also, even though the crowd considers us strangers, 151 find ourselves in a certain place that has been touched by a general collapse. Chapter XXXII. Christians do not swear by the geniuses of emperors 1. We have another, even greater need to pray for the emperors, as well as for the entire structure of the Empire and for the Roman state: after all, we know that the greatest power threatening the whole world, and the very end of the century, threatening terrible disasters, is restrained by the respite [received] by the Roman power. So, we do not want to experience these disasters and, when we pray for their postponement, we contribute to Roman longevity. 2. But we do not swear by the geniuses of the Caesars, but by the well-being of the Caesars, which is more sacred than all geniuses. 152 Don’t you know that demons and, in the diminutive form of this word, demons are called geniuses? We respect in emperors the decision of God, who placed them over the nations. 3. We know that in them there is what God willed, and therefore we wish that what God willed should be unharmed, and we consider this a great oath. We are accustomed to conjuring demons, that is, geniuses, expelling them from people, and not swearing by them, showing them divine honor. Chapter XXXIII. The Emperor is not a god 1. But what more can I say about Christian reverence and devotion towards the emperor? We need to honor him as the one whom our Lord has chosen, so that I might justly say: “Caesar is more ours, having been appointed by our God.” 2. Therefore, as my own, I act more for his good, since I not only ask this well-being from the One who can give it, or ask, being one who is worthy to receive what he asks, but also, tempering the greatness of Caesar before God, I more entrust it to God, to whom alone I submit it: I submit it to the One with whom I do not equate it. 3. After all, I will not call the emperor a god, both because I do not know how to lie, and because I do not dare to ridicule him, and because he himself will not want to be called a god. If he is a man, then it is in man's interest to yield to God; let it be enough for him to be called emperor. Majestic is also the name given by God. Anyone who calls an emperor a god denies that he is an emperor, because if he is not a man, then he is not an emperor. 4. Even the triumphant on his highest chariot is reminded that he is a man; after all, [the slave standing] behind him says to him: “Look around! Remember that you are human!” And, of course, he rejoices all the more at the shining of his glory so great that he needs a reminder of his [human] condition. He would have been less if at that moment he had been called a god, because that would not have been true. Greater is the one who is prevented from considering himself a god. Chapter XXXIV. Calling the emperor a god is dangerous flattery 1. The founder of the Empire, Augustus, did not even want to be called dominant (dominus). After all, this is an epithet of God. I will, of course, call the emperor lord (dominus), but only keeping in mind the general meaning of this word and not being forced to call him lord instead of God. However, I am free in front; for my Lord is one, he is the omnipotent, eternal God, the same who is also his Lord. 2. How will the one who is considered the father of the fatherland be Lord? But a name given with love is sweeter than a name expressing power; Likewise, the heads of families are more readily called fathers than masters. 3. It is even more unacceptable to call the emperor a god - it is impossible to believe in this - since such flattery will be not only offensive, but also destructive. After all, if you call someone who is not the one who really is emperor, will you not inflict on the latter the greatest and indelible insult, the consequences of which should be feared by the one whom you called so? Be pious towards God, since you want Him to be merciful to the emperor! Stop believing in another god and thus calling someone who needs God a god! 4. If such flattery, calling a person a god, does not blush at the lie, let him at least be afraid of bringing misfortune upon him: calling Caesar a god before deification means cursing him. Chapter XXXV. Christians do not participate in obscene festivities in honor of the emperor. The Emperor's Enemies Are Not Christians 1. So, Christians turn out to be enemies of society because they do not pay empty, false and thoughtless honors to emperors; that, being adherents of the true religion, they celebrate celebrations dedicated to emperors more conscientiously than unbridled. 2. How great is the merit: dragging out [portable] hearths and mattresses for everyone to see, feasting through the streets, turning the city into a tavern, spilling puddles of wine, running around in crowds, causing offense, being shameless and inciting debauchery! Isn't this how public joy is expressed through public shame? Is it possible that the holidays dedicated to the princes are decorated with something that does not at all decorate other days? 3. People who observe decency out of respect for Caesar abandon it for Caesar's sake; indulgence in bad morals will be a manifestation of piety, 153 and the opportunity to enjoy luxury will be considered religion! 154 4. Yes, we are justly subject to condemnation! Why do we celebrate the joyful days in honor of the fulfillment of Caesar's vows, blameless, sober and pure? How dare we not cover the doorposts with laurel garlands on holidays and lighten the day with lamps? It is an honorable thing to give your home the appearance of a new brothel because of a public celebration! 5. I would, however, like to show your fidelity and sincerity also in this cult of the second [after the deity] greatness, in relation to which we Christians find ourselves guilty of a second sacrilege, not celebrating Caesar's feasts with you in a way that neither moderation, nor modesty, nor bashfulness is allowed to celebrate, but rather the desire for pleasure than prudence inclines us to this: will we not be worse here than Christians? those who prefer to consider us not Romans, but enemies of the Roman princes. 6. I turn to the Quirites themselves, 155 to the very natives of the seven hills from the common people: does this Roman language spare any of its Caesar? Witnesses are the Tiber and the schools of animals. 7. So, if nature covered the chest to make it translucent, with a certain transparent substance, then in whose hearts would not the pictures of more and more Caesars supervising the distribution of gifts be imprinted, even when people exclaim: “May Jupiter multiply your years from our years!” A Christian does not know how to say this, nor to dream of a new Caesar. 8. You will say: “This is the mob.” It may be a mob, but these are the Romans; and there is no greater accuser of Christians than the mob. Of course, other classes, according to their position, are sincerely pious; no one breathes hostility towards Caesar in the Senate itself, among the horsemen, in the military camp, in the palaces themselves! 9. Where then do the Cassias, 156 Nigers 157 and Albins come from? 158 Where do they come from who lie in wait for Caesar between the two laurels? Where do those who do gymnastics come from to strangle him? 159 Where do those who burst into the palace armed, 160 surpassing in audacity all the numerous Sigerians and Parthenians? 161 From the Romans, if I’m not mistaken, that is, not from Christians. 10. Moreover, all of them, until the moment of their treacherous attack, made sacrifices for the health of the emperor and swore by his genius - some in public, others privately - and probably called Christians enemies of society. 11. But even those who are now daily exposed as accomplices of criminal cliques or sympathizers with them - the squeezes preserved after the grape harvest of 162 villains - with how blooming and thick laurels they blocked the doorposts, with how high and bright lamps they smoked the areas in front of the house, with how elegant and proud boxes they divided the area for themselves - not in order to rejoice with by everyone, but in order to learn at someone else’s celebration prayers for the fulfillment of one’s own desires and to sanctify the example and image of one’s hope, changing the name of the princeps in the heart. 12. Those who inquire about the life of the Caesars, astrologers, fortune tellers by entrails, bird fortune tellers and magicians do the same; These arts, since they were transmitted to people by fallen angels 163 and prohibited by God, Christians do not use even in their affairs. 13. Who needs to know about the health of Caesar, except the one who is plotting something against him or wants [something similar], who pins hopes on his death and lives in dreams of it? After all, they do not learn about people dear to their hearts with the same thought as they do about gentlemen. Worried relatives and slaves display varying degrees of curiosity. Chapter XXXVI. Christians treat all people equally 1. If the situation is such that those who were called Romans are enemies, then why deny that we, who are considered enemies, are Romans? We cannot both not be Romans and be enemies, since those who were considered Romans turn out to be enemies. 2. Moreover, the piety, reverence and loyalty due to emperors do not consist in such duties as enemies can perform in order to hide their hostility, but in those actions that the Deity commands to be performed as sincerely as he considers them necessary in relation to everyone. 3. After all, we must do these deeds of a kind heart not only for emperors. We show kindness to everyone without exception, for in doing so, we show kindness to ourselves, since we do not seek to earn praise or reward from man, but from God, who demands and shows kindness to everyone without distinction. 164 4. We are the same for emperors as we are for our neighbors. After all, we are equally prohibited from wishing, doing, speaking and plotting harm to anyone. Whatever is not permitted in relation to the emperor is not permitted in relation to any other person. What is not permissible in relation to anyone, is even more so not permissible in relation to someone who has become so great thanks to God. Chapter XXXVII. About the hypothetical revenge of Christians 1. If we are commanded, as we said above, to love our enemies, whom can we hate? In the same way, if we, who have suffered harm, are forbidden to give back, so as not to become like [the offender] on the basis of what was done, then who can we harm? 2. See for yourself: how many times have you raged against Christians, following partly the impulses of your soul, partly the laws! How many times, when you stood aside, the hostile mob, exercising their right, attacked us with stones and torches for arson! Even dead Christians are not spared in the most bacchanalian frenzy; from the peace of the grave, from some kind of refuge of death, they, already changed, no longer whole, are torn out, dissected, torn to pieces. 3. What [suspicious], however, have you ever noticed in relation to so many conspirators that they suffered for their injustice from so many daredevils ready to sacrifice their lives, although even in one night with the help of a few burning torches it would have been possible to generously repay everything if we were allowed to repay evil for evil? But let not the divine sect be avenged by human fire, or grieve over the suffering that serves as confirmation of its truth! 4. After all, if we wanted to act as open enemies, and not just as secret avengers, wouldn’t we have enough power of military units and auxiliary units? The Moors, the Marcomanni, and the Parthians themselves, or any other tribes, no matter how great they may be, living, however, in one place and within their own borders, are, of course, more numerous [the people spread throughout] the whole world. 165 We have existed since yesterday, and we are already filling everything that belongs to you: cities, islands, forts, municipalities, 166 market squares, the military camp itself, tribes, 167 decuries, 168 palace, Senate, 169 forum; We leave only the churches to you. 5. What kind of war would we, who go to the slaughter with such readiness, even though we are not equal in number of troops to you, be able or not ready to wage, if our teaching did not prescribe to be killed rather than to kill? 6. We could, even without weapons, without starting a rebellion, but only if we come to disagreement, 170 fight you with just an unfriendly separation from you. For if we, being so numerous, were to separate from you into some distant corner of the world, then, of course, from the loss of so many citizens, whatever they may be, your power would be put to shame; Moreover, our departure would punish her. 7. Without a doubt, you would be horrified by your loneliness, the lull in business and a certain numbness of a seemingly extinct world; you would have to look for those to command; you would be left with more enemies than citizens. 8. Indeed, now you have fewer enemies because of the multitude of Christians, since in almost all cities almost all the citizens are Christians. But you prefer to call them enemies of the human race rather than enemies of human error. 9. Who would then deliver you from those secret enemies everywhere that take away your mind and health (I’m talking about the attacks of demons that we drive out of you without reward, without payment)? Our revenge would be satisfied by the fact that you would be open to unclean spirits as property ownerless after our departure. 171 10. Further, without thinking about rewarding [us] for such an important defense, you preferred to consider as enemies not only a family that is not burdensome for you, but even a necessary one; We, of course, are enemies, but not of the human race, but of delusion. Chapter XXXVIII. Christians are not dangerous to public peace 1. Therefore, this sect, which does not do anything that is usually feared from illicit groups (factiones), should not have been ranked [even] among them, [although such an identification] is somewhat milder [than declaring an enemy of the human race]. 2. After all, if I’m not mistaken, the reason for banning such groups is concern for public good, the purpose of which is to prevent society from being torn apart. Otherwise, due to the zealous struggle caused by various passions, comitia, assemblies, curiae, gatherings, as well as theaters can easily become restless after people have begun to consider the services sold and rendered for money in the cause of violence as a source of income. 3. But for us, chilly from all the heat of glory and honor, 172 there is no need for meetings, and there is no matter more alien to us than public affairs; We recognize one state - the world. 4. In the same way, we reject your spectacles as well as their sources, which, as we know, arose from superstition: after all, we shun even that thanks to which [these spectacles] exist. Our speech, sight and hearing have nothing to do with the madness of the circus, or the shamelessness of the theater, or the cruelty of the arena, or the vanity of the xist. 173 5. In another, namely, in the equanimity of the soul, the Epicureans are allowed to see true pleasure; In what way do we insult you, if otherwise [than you] we imagine pleasure? If we don't want to have fun, we hurt ourselves, not you. But we reject what you like, and ours does not give you pleasure. Chapter XXXIX. Christian life and morals in comparison with pagan ones: Christians, coming together, form not a group (factio), but a council (curia) 1. Now I myself will talk about the affairs of the Christian group, so that, after I have refuted the evil [attributed to it], I will show the good. We are one body through a common understanding of godliness, unity of doctrine, and covenant of hope. 2. We gather in a general meeting to, by calling out, surround God with prayers, like a military detachment. These armed forces are pleasing to God. We also pray for the emperors, for their servants and authorities, for the well-being of the century, for peace in society, for the postponement of the end. 3. We come together to refresh our memory of the Divine Scriptures if, under the influence of current events, the need for exhortation or warning arises. Of course, with holy words we nourish faith, awaken hope, strengthen confidence, and, under the influence of instructions, maintain order in our ranks, no matter what. 4. There are also encouragements and reproaches, and a sentence coming from God. After all, [Christians] judge with great responsibility, being confident that God sees them; and if someone has been so guilty that he is excommunicated from prayerful communication, expelled from the congregation and deprived of all connections with the Christian environment, then this will be the highest preliminary verdict of the future court. 5. Only experienced, senior people in age preside, who have achieved this honor not for payment, but for testimony, for no gift of God is given for payment. If we have something like a box, 174 the money is collected into it not from the sum of contributions for the honors of a supposedly purchased religion. Everyone adds a modest donation once a month or whenever they want, if they want and if they can. 175 For no one is forced to do this, but brings it freely. 176 6. This is a peculiar contribution of piety, because these funds are spent not on feasts, not on drinking bouts and not on worthless taverns, but on the feeding and burial of the needy, on boys and girls left without means and parents, on aged household members, as well as on shipwrecked people and those who, in the mines, on the islands or in custody, because of belonging to the sect of God, become the pet of their confession. 177 7. But the manifestation of even such love contributes to our shame among some. “Look,” they say, “how they love each other,” because they themselves hate each other; “and how they are ready to die for each other,” because they themselves will be more likely to kill each other. 8. Regarding the fact that we call each other brothers, [the pagans] are furious, I think, because with them any word denoting blood relationship and expressing heartfelt affection is feigned. We are also your brothers by right of nature, our one mother, even if you, being evil brothers, are not human enough. 9. But how much more worthy to be called and considered brothers are those who have known one Father, God, who have drunk of the same spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of the same ignorance burst out in fear into the same light of truth! 10. But, probably, we are considered illegitimate brothers because not a single tragedy shouts about our brotherhood, that we are brothers in household property, which among you usually separates brothers. 11. Therefore, we, united in spirit and soul, have no doubts regarding the community of property. 178 Everything with us is indivisible, except for our wives. 12. We only refuse commonality in what other people allow it: they not only appropriate the wives of their friends, but also with exceptional patience lend their wives to friends, in accordance, I believe, with the well-known teaching of the wisest ancestors (Greeks - Socrates, Romans - Cato), who shared their wives with friends, whom they took as wives so that they would also bear children on the side; Moreover, I don’t know whether the wives themselves objected to this. 13. For why should they care about chastity, which was so easily given away by their husbands? Oh, example of Attic wisdom! Oh, an example of Roman severity: the philosopher and the censor are pimps! 14. Is it surprising if, with such great friendship, 179 people eat together? After all, you vilify our small dinners not only as disgraced by crime, but also as wasteful. About us, one must think, Diogenes said: “The Megarians give feasts as if they were going to die tomorrow, and build houses as if they would never die.” 180 15. But people more easily notice the straw in someone else’s eye than the log in their own. 181 The air turns sour from the belching tribes, curiae and decuriae; for the Salii who are going to dine, a lender will be needed; the expenses of Herculean tithes and sacrificial meals will be calculated by accountants; for the Apaturia, 182 Dionysius 183 and the Attic mysteries 184 they announce a set of cooks; Firemen rise to the smoke of the Serapis dinner, and again and again there is talk about the triclinium of 185 Christians alone. 16. Our dinner shows its essence by its name. It sounds like what the Greeks call love. 186 Whatever expenses it may cost, spending for the sake of piety is profit, since we help all the poor, strengthening their strength, not for the reason that [something similar happens] among you, [when] hangers-on strive to gain the glory of people who sacrificed freedom for the sake of gaining the opportunity to fill their bellies in the midst of humiliation, but for the reason that God has more attention to the poor. 17. If the reason for the feast is plausible, judge by it everything else that happens at it in accordance with the established order! What is associated with the fulfillment of duty in relation to religion does not allow anything base, nothing immoderate. [Christians] will not lie down before they have tasted prayer to God; they eat as much as hunger dictates; drink as much as is beneficial for the shy. 187 18. They are satisfied, remembering that even at night they need to pray to God; they talk, knowing that the Lord hears them. After bringing] water to wash the hands and [lighting] the lamps, everyone is called to the middle [of the meeting] to sing the praises of God as best he can, [using words] from the Holy Scriptures or improvising - this is how they check how much he has drunk. In the same way [as it began], the meal ends with prayer. 19. Then [the Christians] disperse, not forming murderous crowds or riot-loving groups, and not eager to debauch, but still caring for modesty and bashfulness, like those who have tasted not so much of dinner as of learning. 20. Of course, this gathering of Christians will deservedly [be considered] unlawful if it is the same as those that are unlawful; she should be judged according to her merits if anyone files the same complaints against her as are filed against [illegal] groups. 21. To whose destruction have we ever met? We are the same in the congregation as we are in the scattering; such, being in the aggregate, as each one is individually: we harm no one, we do not upset anyone. When the honest and good come together, when the pious and chaste gather, we should speak not of a group (factio), but of a council (curia). Chapter XL. Natural disasters as God's punishment have struck humanity before; with the advent of Christians their strength weakened 1. On the contrary, the name of the group should be assigned to those who conspire to hate the good and honest, who with their cries demand the shedding of the blood of the innocent, justifying this hatred also with the idle talk according to which Christians are guilty of all kinds of social disasters, of all national misfortunes. 2. If the Tiber has risen to the city walls, if the Nile has not risen to the arable land, if there is a drought, if the earth is stirred up, 188 if there is famine, if there is a pestilence, they immediately shout: “Christians to the lion!” Many to one? 3. Listen, before Tiberius, that is, before the coming of Christ, how great disasters struck the world and [individual] cities! We read that the islands of Hiera, 189 Anatha, 190 Delos, Rhodes and Kos perished along with many thousands of people. 191 4. Plato also mentions a land larger than Asia or Africa, stolen by the Atlantic Sea. 192 But the Sea of ​​Corinth was also swallowed up by an earthquake, and the force of the waves turned the separated part of Lucania into Sicily. This, of course, could not happen without harm to the residents. 5. Where then were your gods themselves, not to mention the Christians who despised them, when the flood swallowed up the whole world or, as Plato believed, only the plains? 193 6. The fact that the gods lived after this disastrous flood is evidenced by the very cities in which they were born and died, and those that they founded: after all, these cities would not have survived to this day if they had not appeared after that disaster. 7. Palestine had not yet received the host of Jews from Egypt, [the tribe that became] the ancestor of the Christian sect had not yet settled there, when the neighboring regions, Sodom and Gomorrah, were burned out by a fiery shower. 194 To this day this land smells of fire, and if somehow tree fruits [ripen] there, they can only be tasted with the eyes; if you touch them, they turn to ashes. 195 8. Neither Etruria nor Campania had yet complained about Christians, when Volsinia was flooded with fire from the sky, and Pompeii from its own mountain. No one else in Rome worshiped the true God when Hannibal at Cannae measured the massacre he had committed with the modia of 196 Roman rings. All your gods were revered by all when the Senones 197 occupied the Capitol itself. 9. The fact that when misfortunes happen to cities, the same disasters that affect the city walls also affect the churches will help me prove that the misfortunes do not come from the gods, for they also concern them. 10. The human race has always suffered the divine punishments it deserves, as having failed to fulfill its duty to Him, Whom, having partially recognized, it did not try to find, and as having invented, in addition to itself, other gods to worship. Secondly, he, without looking for the Teacher of innocence, the Judge and Punisher of guilt, took root in all sorts of vices and crimes. 11. However, if he had found it, he would have known the one found and would have honored the one recognized and would have experienced the mercy of the one being honored, and not His wrath. 12. So, people must understand that now the same one is angry who was constantly angry in the past, before those calling themselves Christians appeared. Why shouldn’t the human race realize that punishments come from Him, Whose benefits, bestowed before the gods were invented, they enjoyed, without ever understanding Whose these benefits were? He is guilty before the Same, in relation to Whom and is ungrateful. 13. However, if we compare the previous disasters [with the present ones, we will see that] they have become less serious since the moment the world received Christians from God. Indeed, from that time on, innocence weakened the injustices of the age, and intercessors began to appear before God. 14. Finally, when the summer heat delays the onset of winter with its downpours and the fate of the harvest begins to inspire alarm, you, having eaten your fill every day, not missing the opportunity to eat again immediately after, working in baths, inns and brothels, sacrifice offerings to Jupiter designed to bring about rain, order the people to walk barefoot, look for the sky in the Capitol, wait from the coffers on the ceiling clouds, turning away from God and heaven itself. 15. We, exhausted by fasting, weakened by all kinds of abstinence, having abandoned all the pleasures of life, finding ourselves in sackcloth and ashes, pester heaven with reproaches, 198 we touch God, but when we achieve mercy, Jupiter is glorified. Chapter XLI. Disasters happen due to pagans, reinforcing Christian hope 1. So, you bring misfortune to human affairs, you are guilty of social disasters, always attracting them to yourself, since you, despising God, worship the statue. For it must be considered more likely that He who is neglected is angry, and not those who are honoured. 2. Otherwise, won’t they turn out to be extremely unjust, harming their admirers because of Christians, who should have been freed from the punishments deserved by Christians! “These words,” you say, “should also be turned against your God, since He allows His admirers to suffer because of the uninitiated.” Find out His plans first, then you will not make counter-accusations. 3. For He Who once appointed eternal judgment after the end of the age does not hasten to separate [the good from the evil] (this separation is a condition of judgment) before the end of the age. He is still the same in relation to every kind of people, both in His condescension and in His censure. He wished that happiness should come equally to the uninitiated, and grief to His own servants, so that we would all experience His kindness and severity equally. 4. Since we learned about this from Himself, we value affection and fear severity. You, on the contrary, despise both; From this it follows that all the disasters of the century are sent from God to us, obviously, for instruction, and for you - as punishment. 5. But they do not harm us at all, firstly, because in this century we are not interested in anything except a speedy departure from it; secondly, because the misfortunes that happen are explained by your faults. If we, as those in contact with you, are affected by something similar, we only rejoice more, looking at the divine predictions, strengthening the confidence in the fulfillment of our hope. If all the troubles come to you from those whom you honor, because of us, why do you continue to honor such ungrateful, so unjust [gods], who should rather help you and protect you in times of trials befalling Christians? Chapter XLII. Christians are not useless for trade 1. But another accusation is brought against us, they say that we are useless for trade. How can this be if we live with you, we have the same food as you, the same clothes, property, living needs? After all, we are not Brahmins, not the gymnosophists of the Indians who live in the forests and run away from life. 2. We remember that we must give thanks to God, our Lord and Creator; we do not reject any fruit from His works; Of course, we restrain ourselves from using it excessively or improperly. Therefore, we spend our lives in this century with you, without giving up either the market place, or the meat stalls, or the baths, or the shops, or the workshops, or the inns, or your nundins 199 and everything else that concerns the turnover of goods. 3. We sail with you on ships, serve in the army, are peasants, and therefore we take part in trade and put our crafts and products at your disposal. How we can seem useless to your trade, near which and through which we live, I do not know. 4. Even if I do not take part in your sacred ceremonies, I remain a person on the day on which it takes place. I do not bathe at dawn at Saturnalia, 200 so as not to waste both night and day; but I wash myself at a proper and healthy hour to maintain warmth and blush; Even if I am dead, I can become numb and pale after bathing. 5. I do not recline in front of everyone in Liberalia, 201 as fighters with animals usually do when dining before death. However, where I dine, [I eat food bought from you] from your supplies. 6. I don't buy a wreath for my head; Why do you care how I dispose of the flowers that I bought anyway? I think they're nicer to look at when they're loose, untied, and randomly arranged. But even if they are woven into a wreath, we [do not put it on our heads, but] perceive it with our nostrils; let those who smell with hair do as they please! We do not attend spectacles, and what is sold at these gatherings, if I want, it will be easier for me to purchase in the places designated for this. We don't buy incense, of course; if Arabia complains, let the inhabitants of Saba 202 bear in mind that their goods in larger quantities and more expensive are used for Christian burials than for the fumigation of the gods. 8. “In any case,” you say, “church fees are decreasing every day; who gives up alms now?” We are unable to help both people and your begging gods. We don’t think that it is necessary to give to anyone other than those who ask. Let only Jupiter extend his hand and receive, for sometimes our charity spends more on the streets than your piety in churches. 9. But other taxes will be appreciated by Christians who pay their due in good conscience, since we refrain from appropriating the property of others, so that when you consider how much taxes the state is missing due to the deceit and lies contained in your statements, balancing will be easy, since the complaint for non-payment of one type of tax is balanced by the receipts on other items. Chapter XLIII. Christians are useless for pimps, murderers, magicians, fortune tellers, astrologers 1. I admit, of course, that there are people who may indeed complain about the uselessness of Christians. The first will be brothel owners, pimps, pimps, then hired killers, poison compilers, magicians, as well as viscera fortune tellers, soothsayers, and astrologers. 2. Being useless is of great benefit to them. And, however, whatever damage this sect may cause to your cause, it can be balanced by some kind of protection. How many of you have those - not to mention those who cast out demons from you, not to mention those who offer prayers to the true God for you, because you may not believe this - from whom you can not fear anything? Chapter XLIV. All criminals are from among the pagans 1. And no one notices the damage, as great as it is genuine, not a single person appreciates the harm to society when so many of us, the just, are wasted, when so many of us, the innocent, are wasted. 2. For we are now referring to the evidence of the documents that you yourself draw up, every day conducting trials in the case of those arrested and putting an end to the protocols after the verdict was passed. How many criminals are you judging on the basis of different indictments: who is a murderer, who is a purse-cutting thief, who is a blasphemer or a molester, or a bathhouse robber - which of them is also designated as a Christian? Or when Christians go about their business, which of them turns out to be like those criminals? 3. From your number are taken those with whom the dungeon is constantly seething, from your number - those whose lamentations constantly resound in the mines, from your number - those on whom the animals always feed, from your number - those villains whose herds are always grazed by the organizers of gladiatorial fights. There is no Christian there, unless, of course, he [got there] only as a Christian; or, if [he got there] on another charge, then he is no longer a Christian. Chapter XLV. Christians are taught integrity by God 1. Therefore, we alone are innocent! What is surprising about this, if it cannot be otherwise? In fact, it cannot be any other way. Taught innocence by God, we know it perfectly as revealed by a perfect Teacher and conscientiously guard it as handed over by a Guardian 203 Who cannot be despised. 2. Your ideas about innocence are based on human judgment, and human power has ordered you to preserve it; therefore you do not have access to the full extent of the awe-inspiring doctrine of true innocence. Human prudence can just as successfully demonstrate a good as human power can demand it: just as it is easier to deceive one, so it is easier to neglect this one. 3. And in general, what is more complete: to say “don’t kill” or to teach “and don’t even be angry”? 204 Which is more perfect: to prohibit adultery or to keep your eyes from even a single lust? 205 What is more enlightened: to impose a ban on evil deeds or even on slander? 206 What is more important: not allowing injustice or not allowing retribution for injustice? 4. Meanwhile, however, you need to know that your very laws, which seem aimed at protecting morality, are borrowed from the Divine Law as more ancient in form. We have already spoken about the age of Moses. 5. But what authority can human laws have when a person who has hidden his crimes often manages to evade these laws, and whoever has broken them voluntarily or out of necessity sometimes happens to [openly] despise them? 6. Consider this, also taking into account the short duration of any punishment, which in any case does not continue after death. 207 Likewise, Epicurus devalues ​​all torment and suffering, declaring that little is tolerable, but great is short-lived. 7. In fact, only we, who stand before God, Who watches over everyone, and who know in advance about the eternal punishment that He has prepared [for sinners], are not without reason struggling in the field of innocence, in accordance with the fullness of our knowledge [of the upcoming punishments], the difficulty of concealing [crimes] and the power of not just prolonged, but eternal torment, fearing Him, Whom even the one who judges those who fear him will have to fear, - fearing God, not the proconsul. Chapter XLVI. Christians and philosophers 1. We have resisted, it seems, all kinds of accusations brought against us, according to which the blood of Christians is usually demanded. We have shown who we are and how the veracity of our words can be proven: this can be done by referring to the reliability and antiquity of the Divine Scriptures, as well as to the confessions of spiritual powers. Who will dare to refute us - without resorting to verbal art, but based on the same thing on which we built our proof - on truth? 2. But while our truth is revealed to everyone, unbelief, retreating before the good of this sect, which has become known through communication and various connections with us, considers it not a divine work, at any rate, but rather a kind of philosophy. “The same,” he says, “is what philosophers teach and profess: innocence, justice, patience, temperance, modesty.” 3. Why, then, are we not given the same freedom and impunity to follow our teachings as are given to those whose teachings are declared to be the same as ours? Or in other words: why are those who are equal to us not forced to perform duties, without fulfilling which we are exposed to danger. 4. For who forces a philosopher to make sacrifices, to swear, or to take unnecessary lamps out into the street at midday? Moreover, they openly overthrow your gods, and condemn your superstitions in their writings, thereby deserving your praise. Very many even criticize the princeps 208 with your connivance and are rather rewarded with statues and contents than condemned to be torn to pieces by beasts. 5. But that's how it should be. After all, they are called philosophers, not Christians. The name of philosophers does not put demons to flight. Isn't it? After all, philosophers consider demons second only to gods. Socrates said: “If the demon allows it.” Although Socrates had some idea of ​​​​the truth - after all, he denied the gods - however, before his death, he ordered the sacrifice of a rooster to Aesculapius, 209 I think, in honor of his father, for Apollo announced that Socrates was the wisest of all. 210 O reckless Apollo! Witnessed the wisdom of the one who denied the existence of gods. 6. How strong is the hatred of the truth, so great is the irritation caused by a person who sincerely defends it. The one who distorts and falsifies it, thanks to this, most of all gains the favor of its persecutors. 7. Philosophers, like evil scoffers and falsifiers, forge it and, by forging it, spoil it, gaining fame for themselves; Christians, of necessity, seek and honestly defend, caring for their salvation. 8. Contrary to your opinion, we are not equal to philosophers in anything - neither in knowledge nor in actions. In fact, what did Thales, the head of natural scientists, announce to Croesus, who questioned him about the Divinity, deceiving him with the help of constantly asking for delays for reflection? 211 9. Any Christian artisan finds and shows God, and then through his deeds expresses everything that they are trying to find out about God, although Plato claims that the Creator of the universe is not easy to find, and it is difficult to tell everyone about what is found. 212 10. However, if we are encouraged to talk about modesty, I read part of the Attic verdict against Socrates, who was declared a molester of young men. A Christian does not cheat on a woman. I know that Diogenes, who lay with the harlot Phryne, inflamed her lust; I hear that a certain Speusippus, who belonged to the Platonic school, died in adultery. A Christian is born a man only for his wife. 11. Democritus, having blinded himself because he could not look at women without lust and suffered if he did not take possession of [them], admits to intemperance when he punishes himself for the sake of correction. But a Christian does not even see women with his whole eyes; he is blind in soul to lust. 12. If I try to prove the modesty of Christians, Diogenes tramples the proud bed of Plato with his dirty feet, being possessed by a different pride. 214 A Christian does not show himself proud to the poor. 215 13. If a dispute arises about moderation, behold, Pythagoras among the Turians, Zeno among the Prienians, sought tyranny; a Christian does not aspire to the position of aedile. 216 14. If I have to defend the equanimity of Christians, Lycurgus wished for starvation, for the Laconians corrected his laws; a Christian, even when condemned, gives thanks. If we compare reliability, Anaxagoras refused to the guests what was given to him for safekeeping; Even strangers call a Christian reliable. 15. If we are talking about simple-heartedness, Aristotle kicked his friend Hermia out of his place in an unworthy manner; a Christian does not harm his enemy. The same Aristotle flatters Alexander, whom he should rather rule, just as unworthily as Plato, out of gluttony, is sold into slavery by Dionysius. 217 16. Aristippus in a scarlet robe, pretending to be a man of very strict morals, drowns himself in luxury; 218 Iktias is killed when he was plotting against [his] city. Not a single Christian has ever tried to follow the example of Iktias, [to avenge] his [co-religionists], who were scattered with all possible severity. 17. But someone will say that some of our people violate our accepted standards of behavior. However, we cease to consider such Christians; the aforementioned philosophers, having committed similar acts, continue to be called by the name of the sages and enjoy the honor due to them. 18. And in general, what is similar between the philosopher and the Christian, the student of Greece and the student of heaven, the acquirer of glory and the acquirer of life, the master of words and the master of deeds, the destroyer and the builder, the friend and foe of error, the distorter of the truth and the one who restores and expresses it, the one who steals it and the one who preserves it? Chapter XLVII. Philosophers and poets borrowed the truth from Scripture and twisted it 1. The truth, if I am not mistaken, is the most ancient of all: the previously substantiated [by me] antiquity of the Divine Scripture makes the assertion more reliable that it became a treasury for all later wisdom. And if I had not tried to limit the weight of the scroll, 219 I would have set about this proof. 2. Which of the poets, which of the sophists did not drink at all from the source of the prophets? From it the philosophers quenched the thirst of their genius, so that what they took from us makes us equal to them. Therefore, I believe, philosophy was also rejected by some, I mean the Thebans, Spartans and Argives. 3. Since our [works] are addressed by vain people, as we said, and desiring only eloquence, if they came across something in the holy digests, 220 as happens with the curious, they adjusted it to their own works, not believing in the divinity of these digests (faith would not allow them to distort them) and not sufficiently understanding them, then still very dark, unclear even to the Jews themselves, to whom they seemed to belong. 4. After all, even where the truth was revealed in all its simplicity, human meticulousness, having rejected faith, came into even greater doubt; because of this, [philosophers] turned what they found reliable into unreliable. 5. For they, as soon as they found God, began to reason about Him, not in accordance with what they found, [but only in order] to argue about His quality, nature and abode. 6. Some claim that He is incorporeal, others that He is corporeal, we are talking about the Platonists and Stoics; others - that He is made of atoms, others - that He is made of numbers, we are talking about Epicurus and Pythagoras; some are made of fire, as it seemed to Heraclitus. Platonists [believe] that He cares about the world; the Epicureans, on the contrary, that He is idle and serene and, so to speak, non-existent for human affairs; 7. Stoics - that He, who rotates this block [of the universe] from the outside, like a potter, is located outside the world; Platonists - that He, being, like a helmsman, inside what he controls, is within the world. 8. So about the world itself - whether it was born or not, whether it will perish or endure - they disagree; so about the properties of the soul, about which some claim that it is divine and eternal, others that it is subject to decay; everyone supplemented and remade [what he found] in accordance with his ideas. 9. It is not surprising if the ingenuity of philosophers distorted an ancient document. 221 Certain men, who arose from their seed, distorted this recent acquisition of ours 222 with their opinions in accordance with the provisions of the philosophers and diverted many roundabout, intricate paths from one path. I will add this so that the well-known diversity of our sect does not seem to equate us with philosophers on this point, and so that the truth is not condemned because of the diversity of its evidence. 10. We have no difficulty in objecting to the falsifiers of our doctrine, that that by which the truth is verified comes from Christ, having been transmitted through His companions, who [lived] much earlier than [the heretics] began to prove the existence of these various interpreters. 11. Everything that is turned against the truth is made up of the truth itself, and the culprits of this rivalry are the spirits of error. They create such counterfeits of saving teachings and also introduce certain myths so that, due to their similarity with the truth, they weaken faith in it or turn it to their own advantage, so that people think that Christians should not be believed for the reason that poets and philosophers should not be believed, or they believe that poets and philosophers should be more believed for the reason that Christians should not be believed. 12. Therefore they ridicule us who proclaim that God will judge. After all, even poets and philosophers place their judgment seat in the underworld. And if we threaten Gehenna, which is a storehouse of secret fire for underground punishment, we also serve as a subject of ridicule. After all, Pyriphlegethon is a stream in the kingdom of the dead. 13. And if we mention paradise, a place of divine pleasure, intended for the reception of the souls of saints, inaccessible to knowledge in the ordinary world because of a certain fence, which is a well-known belt of fire, 223 then this faith has already been appropriated by the Champs Elysees. 14. Where did these ideas, so similar [to what we believe in], come from, I ask you, philosophers or poets? Only from our sacraments. If from our sacraments as earlier, then, therefore, they are more reliable, and they should be relied on more, since their images also deserve faith. If from our own ideas, then, consequently, our sacraments will already be considered images of a later one, which the nature of things does not allow; for the shadow never precedes the body or the image the original. Chapter XLVIII. On metempsychosis and resurrection 1. Well, if some philosopher asserts, like Laberius, who proceeds from the Pythagorean teaching, that man arises from a mule, and a snake from a woman, and, defending this opinion, distorts all the facts with the power of eloquence, then will he not convince and achieve faith in himself? Who would not agree for this reason to abstain from eating animals, so as not to accidentally buy beef from some of his ancestors? But if a Christian promises that from a man a man is made, and from Guy - this same Guy, then the people for the most part expel such a Christian with stones and, in any case, do not [allow him to attend] meetings. 2. If there is any reason for the return of human souls to bodies, then why should they not return to their former nature, since to be restored means to become what they were before? They are no longer what they were, for they could not become what they were not unless they ceased to be what they were. 3. It will be necessary to sort out many questions at our leisure if we want to joke on this topic, [guessing] who will be transformed into which animal. But let's get back to our defense. We declare that, without a doubt, it is more worthy to believe in the return of man from man, any man from any man, as long as he remains a man, so that the soul in its former quality returns to its former state, if not to its former image. 4. Indeed, since the reason for restoration is the judgment established by God, then, of necessity, a person must appear the same as he was in order to hear from God an acquittal or a guilty verdict. The bodies will also be restored, because the soul alone without solid matter, that is, without flesh, cannot endure anything; and what souls must endure in general according to God’s judgment, they deserved not without the flesh, within which they did everything. 5. “But how,” you say, “can decayed matter manifest itself?” Consider yourself, O man, and you will have faith in this. Think about what you were before you were born. Of course, nothing. After all, you would remember if you were something. You, who before you appeared were nothing, having become nothing when you cease to exist, why cannot you arise again from nothing by the will of the same Creator Who wished for you to arise from nothing? What new will happen to you? 6. You, who were not, have appeared; when you are gone a second time, you will appear again. Explain, if you can, how you came into being, and then explore how you come into being! However, it is easier for you, no doubt, to become what you once were, for it was not difficult for you to become what you have never been before. 7. Doubt arises, I think, about the power of God, who from what did not exist, as if from formless and empty death 224, erected this such a great body of the world, animated by the Spirit, giving life to all souls and serving as a shining example of human resurrection as a testimony to you. 8. Every day the dying light shines again, and the darkness, leaving in its turn, returns; dead constellations come to life, and the seasons begin when they end; the fruits ripen and appear again, the seeds, undoubtedly, only having died and decomposed, sprout, 225 bringing a more abundant harvest than the previous one; everything is preserved by perishing, everything is restored through death. 9. You, man, such a great name, if you know yourself, learning at least from the Pythian inscription, 226 you, the lord of everything that dies and rises, will you die in order to perish? Wherever you are scattered, no matter what substance destroys you, absorbs you, destroys you, wastes you into nothingness, it will return you. To him belongs nothingness itself, to whom everything belongs. 10. “Therefore,” you say, “one will always have to die and always be resurrected?” If the Lord of things had so determined, you would have learned, against your will, the law by which you were created. But now He has not otherwise predestined than He foretold. 11. The same Reason, which composed the universe from opposites, so that everything, subject to unity, consisted of rival essences: from empty and solid, from animate and inanimate, from comprehensible and incomprehensible, from light and darkness, from life and death itself - the same Reason united all times, 227 so distributing and dividing creation so that this first part, in which we live from the beginning of the world, came to naught in a passing age, but the next after it, which we expect, extended in endless eternity. 12. Therefore, when the final boundary yawning between [these two parts] approaches, so that even the image, also transient, of the world itself is transformed, the image that is stretched before this world of eternity like a curtain, then the entire human race will be restored to pay for the good or bad that [everyone] deserved in this age, and then to receive what they deserve in the immeasurable continuity of eternity. 13. Therefore, there will be no more death, no repeated resurrections, but we will be the same as we are now, and not those who later became different; worshipers of God are always with God, covered with a special substance of eternity; the uninitiated and those who are not blameless before God - in also inexhaustible punitive fire, receiving incorruptibility from its very nature, of course, divine. 14. Philosophers 228 also know about the difference between secret and ordinary fire. The one that people use is completely different from the one that consists of God’s judgment, either shooting lightning from the sky, or breaking out of the earth through the tops of mountains. After all, it does not destroy what it burns, but while it destroys, it renews. 229 15. Thus, the flaming mountains are always preserved, and the person who is struck by lightning remains whole, so as not to be incinerated by any fire. 230 And this will be the evidence of the eternal fire, the image of the judgment that feeds the inexhaustible punishment: the mountains burn and are preserved. What about evildoers and God's enemies? Chapter XLIX. Since Christian teaching is useful, it cannot be false 1. These provisions are called preconceived opinions only when we express them, but when philosophers and poets call them the highest knowledge and guesses distinguished by wit. They are wise, we are foolish; They are worthy of glorification, we are worthy of laughter, nay, even punishment. 2. Now let us grant that what Christians hold is false, and is considered a preconceived opinion on merit, but it is necessary; Even if it is stupid, it is nevertheless useful, since those who believe in it are forced by the fear of eternal punishment and the hope of eternal consolation to become better. Therefore, it is unprofitable to call false and consider absurd that which it is useful to consider in advance as true. It is not allowed to condemn on any basis what is beneficial. So, it is you who are characterized by this very bias, because of which you condemn what is useful. Therefore, what [Christians adhere to] cannot be absurd. 3. In any case, even if it is false and absurd, it does not harm anyone. After all, it is similar to many other [teachings], to which, empty and rich in fiction, you do not impose any punishment. No one blames or punishes anyone for belonging to them, which are considered harmless. But such a [teaching], for that matter, should be condemned to ridicule, and not condemned to the sword, fire, cross and to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. 4. Not only the blind mob rejoices and rejoices over this unjust cruelty, but some of yours also boast about it, who through injustice gain the favor of the crowd, as if everything that you can do against us did not depend on ourselves. 5. Indeed, I [will be] a Christian if I want [it]. This means that you will condemn me if I want to be condemned. If what you can do against me, you cannot do if I don’t want it, then it already depends on my will and is not in your power. Therefore, the mob rejoices in vain because of our torment, because the joy that they appropriate belongs to us, who prefer to be condemned than to fall away from God. On the contrary, those who hate us should have mourned and not rejoiced, since we get what we ourselves have chosen. Chapter L. Comparison of martyrs with soldiers. Examples of contempt for suffering and death among the pagans. "When you condemn us, God justifies us" 1. “Why,” you say, “do you complain that we are persecuting you if you yourself want to suffer, while you should love those who cause you the desired suffering?” Of course, we desire suffering, but just as a soldier desires war. No one willingly goes to her, since she brings horror and danger. 2. However, the one who complained about the battle fights with all his might and, winning it, rejoices, for he receives both glory and spoils. Our battle begins when we are called before the judgment seat to risk our lives to fight for the truth. Victory is getting what you fought for. This victory brings both the glory of pleasing God and the reward of eternal life. 3. But [you will say that] we are being led [to death]. Of course, when we survived. Therefore, we are victorious when we are killed, we are delivered when we are led [to execution]. Now call us “brushwood” and “half-axle”, - after all, we are burned, tied to a pole, which is half a wheel axle, and surrounded by brushwood - this is the outfit of our victory, this is a toga decorated with palm trees; on this chariot we celebrate our triumph. 4. It is not without reason that the vanquished do not favor us; That is why we are considered desperate and lost. But among you, such desperation and willingness to die for the sake of gaining glory and fame is extolled as valor. 5. Mucius 231 voluntarily laid his right hand on the flaming altar: oh, sublimity of the soul! Empedocles 232 devoted himself entirely to the fire of Etna: oh, strength of spirit! A certain founder of Carthage 233 married a second time at the stake: oh, glorification of chastity! 6. Regulus, so that his one life would not bring benefit to many enemies, endures the agony of the cross with his whole body 234: oh, brave man and conqueror in captivity! Anaxarchus, 235 when he was beaten to death with a pestle for grinding barley, said: “Push, pound the shell of Anaxarchus, because you are not pounding Anaxarchus himself!” - oh, the greatness of the soul of the philosopher who found the strength to joke even about his end. 7. I pass over those who secured their [posthumous] glory with the help of their own sword or another easier death. Look, after all, battles with instruments of torture are awarded to you with a wreath. 8. The Attic harlot, 236 when the executioner who was torturing her was already tired, finally spat out her bitten off tongue in the face of the raging tyrant, 237 in order to lose her speech and not betray the conspirators, even if she, being broken, wanted to do so. 9. When the Elean Zeno, 238 being asked by Dionysius what philosophy gives, answered: “Contempt for death,” the fearless, being given over to the whips of the tyrant, reinforced his thought with death. In fact, the severe scourging of the Spartans in front of encouraging relatives brings as much honor to the family for their patience as there is bloodshed. 10. Oh, permissible glory, for it is human! In her contempt for death and all kinds of cruelty, neither disastrous dreams nor desperate stubbornness are attributed to her; how much she is allowed to suffer for her homeland, for the Empire, for friendship, how much she is not allowed to suffer for God! 11. But for all these [people named above] you cast statues, and sign their images, and, perpetuating their names, carve inscriptions in their honor. That is, you, to the best of your ability, with the help of monuments, in some way, grant resurrection to the dead. And the one who expects a true resurrection from God if he accepts torture for God is insane! 12. But do this, good governors, becoming much more amiable to the people by sacrificing Christians to them 239; crucify, torture, condemn, exterminate us: after all, your injustice serves as proof of our innocence. Therefore, God allows us to endure this. For, having recently condemned a Christian woman to be given to a pimp, and not to a lion, 240 you admitted that the loss of modesty among us is considered worse than any punishment and any death. 13. And yet your cruelty, which becomes more and more refined over and over again, gives you nothing. She rather plays the role of bait, attracting people to our sect. We become more numerous after every mowing you do: the blood of Christians is the seed. 14. Many of yours call for patient enduring of pain and death, such as Cicero in the Tusculan Discourses, like Seneca in the Accidents, like Diogenes, 241 like Pyrrho, 242 like Callinicus; however, their words do not find as many disciples as Christians do when they teach through deeds. 15. This very stubbornness, for which you reproach us, is a teacher. For who, seeing it, would not want to find out what lies behind it? Who, having found out, does not come to us? Who, having come, does not want to suffer in order to redeem all God's grace in order to secure His condescension at the cost of his blood? 16. For for this all sins are forgiven. Therefore, we immediately give thanks to your verdicts. Since the divine is contrary to the human, when you condemn us, God justifies us. Theodor Mommsen writes about Tertullian's style as characterized by “pompous pettiness,” “torn sentences,” “pretentiousness and leaps of thought” [Mommsen T. History of Rome / Trans. with him. St. Petersburg, 1995. T. 5. P. 479]. A. Amman characterizes Tertullian this way: “If a word is missing, he creates it. If syntax gets in the way, he subjugates it [...]. Swift, violent, unbridled, he tramples language as an enemy, presses on words, twists a phrase so that sometimes it obscures its meaning. He abuses thought and verbal tricks, he has absolutely no taste or sense of proportion. At every step, a person seems to stick out from the text, threatening to smash it. A phrase that carries bubbling words and daring images seems to be about to suffocate under the pressure of thought and feeling, torn into pieces, attacking and exhausting, never giving respite. It drives translators into despair” [Amman A. The Path of the Fathers. Brief introduction to patristics / Transl. from fr. M., 1994. P. 49]. ceterum genus, sedem, spem, gratiam, dignitatem in caelis habere. Anacharsis is one of the “seven wise men”, Scythian by origin. Diogenes Laertius writes about Anacharsis: “It’s amazing, he said, how in Hellas skilled people take part in competitions, but unskilled people judge them” (Diog, I 103; trans. M. L. Gasparov). Plutarch says the following: “Having visited the People’s Assembly, Anacharsis expressed surprise that among the Hellenes smart people speak, but fools decide matters” (Plut. Sol., 5; trans. by S. I. Sobolevsky). See: Plin. Jun., X 96; cf.: Eus., III33. Tertullian says this ironically, implying the opposite. Lit.: “If “Christian” is not the name of any crime (nullius criminis nomen), then it is completely absurd if there is a crime of mere name (solius nominis crimen).” Greek (χρίειν) “to smear, anoint.” Greek (χρηστός) “good, kind”, (χρηστότης) “kindness, good-heartedness”. Lucius Septimius Severus (146–211), emperor from 193. M. Papias - consul of the 9th year after Christ. We are talking about lex Papia Poppaea. Tacitus writes: “[...] the question of softening the law of Papias and Poppaea, introduced by the elderly Augustus in addition to the Julian law on limiting the rights of unmarried people and also aimed at increasing the flow of funds into the state treasury, was considered” (Tas. Ann., III 25; trans. A. S. Bobovich). Wed: Suet. Aug., 34. Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus - law of 18 BC. Play on words: improba autem, si non probata dominetur (“if the law rules without being approved, it is not good” or “if the law rules without being tested, it is unworthy”). Publius Aelius Hadrian (76–138), emperor from 117. Titus Flavius ​​Vespasian (9–79), emperor since 69. Suppressed the uprising in Judea. Antoninus Pius (86–161), emperor from 138. Lucius Aurelius Verus (130–169), co-emperor of Marcus Aurelius from 161 to 169. Wed: Luke. 3:14. See: Tert. Ad Scap., 5, 3. Fama malum, qua non aliud velocius ullum. Compare: “Isn’t this rumor an evil, faster than which there is nothing (nonne haec est fama malum, quo non aliud velocius ullum)” (Ad nat., I 7, 2). Before us is a verse from the Aeneid: “Rumour, evil, faster than which there is nothing (Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum)” (Verg. Aen., IV 174). Wilhelm Krause believes that Tertullian [in Ad nat., I 7, 2] “changes Virgil in only one point: from personified Rumor he makes an abstract concept” [Krause W. Die Stellung der frühchristlichen Autoren zur heidnischen Literatur. Wien: Herder, 1958. S. 153]. et ita modici seminis vitium cetera rumoris obscurat. See: Matthew 10:26; Mark 4:22; Luke 8:17; 12:2; cp.: Ad nat., I 7, 6: “nature is designed in such a way that nothing is hidden.” Worshipers of some gods bore a certain mark or imprint on themselves. Clement of Alexandria describes the Christian sacraments in this way: “Oh, truly holy mysteries, oh pure light! [...] being dedicated, I become sinless, but the Lord performs the sacred act and, leading him to the light, marks the one dedicated with a seal [...]” (C/. Protr., 12, 120, l;cp.: Om/cp. 13:16–17). Cynopenns and skiapods are fabulous creatures. Pun: cognoscunt [...] ignoscunt. – cp.: Apul. Apol., 65. According to another reading: “our (i.e. my) father.” According to Jerome (Hier. Vir. ill., 53), Tertullian was the son of a proconsular centurion. See: Barnes T. D. Tertullian: a historical and literary study. 2nd edition. Oxford, 1985, pp. 13–21. According to myth, Saturn devoured his own children. To the questions of the priest enshrined in the ritual. We are talking about Jupiter Latiara in Rome. Bellona is the Roman goddess of war. See, for example: luv.14,123; Apul. Met., VIII 25. Compare, for example: Mart.Spect., 7; 8, etc. See: Acts. 15:20, 29; 21:25. Tertullian mistakenly calls Cassius Gemina Cassius Severus. See: Barnes T. D. Tertullian: a historical and literary study. 2nd edition. Oxford, 1985. P. 105. Elsewhere in Tertullian, among the authors who wrote about Saturn as a person, Cassius Severus, Cornelius Nepos, Cornelius Tacitus, and the Greek Diodorus are mentioned (Adnat., II 12, 26). Minucius Felix mentions Nepos, Cassius, Thallus and Diodorus in the same context (Min. Oct., 21 [23, 9]). Lactantius (Lact.Div. Inst., I 13) lists the Greeks Diodorus and Tallus, the Latins Nepos, Cassius and Varro. All three listed apologists, who report practically the same thing, probably used a common source: by calling Cassius Severus, Tertullian shows that he did not read Minucius, who corrected this error with the words Cassius in historia; Lactantius, having written “the Latins Nepos and Cassius,” makes the latter younger than the former, arguing, in essence, the same thing as Tertullian (see: Agahd R. M. Terenti Varronis Antiquitatum rerum divinarum libri I, XIV, XV, XVI / Praemissae sunt quaestiones Varronianae auctore R. Agahd. Lipsiae, 1898. P. 51). However, unlike Minucius and Lactantius, Tertullian added to Nepos another Cornelius - Tacitus (R. Agad drew attention to this, [Agahd.Op. cit. R. 50]), with whom he replaced Thallus, a lesser-known author. This fact suggests that our apologist, borrowing information from his source, supplemented it with information obtained from his own experience. In Ad. nat. (II 12, 26) Tertullian probably had in mind the following words of Tacitus about Saturn (Tas. Hist., V 2): “One of the legends says that the Jews fled from the island of Crete and settled on the far outskirts of Libya back in the days when Saturn, defeated by Jupiter, left his kingdom” (Trans. G.S. Knabe, ed. M.E. Grabar-Pasek). rerum argumenta. Tertullian, unlike the Greek apologists, pays more attention not to scriptural evidence, but to “archaeological” evidence. See: Ov.Fast., I 229–232. "Linguistic" argument. According to another reading: “at its very origin.” See: Plat.Tim., 32bc – about the birth of the cosmic body; cf.: Theoph., Ill16, where there are no words about the “body of the world.” Probably Tertullian, who believed that everything that exists is corporeal, having once read in Timaeus about the birth of the cosmic body, remembered this idea close to him when writing Apologetics. Cybele was accompanied by lions. According to another reading, “what does not exist suffers nothing from the one who exists.” Haruspex - a diviner using the entrails of sacrificial animals. We are talking about Adrian's favorite Antinous. Wed: Myth., II 39, 1; Lat., 454–469. Compare: “We still remember Homer: he, I think, is the one who endowed divine greatness with human properties, making the gods subject to chance and human passions; which of them, having different preferences, formed something like gladiatorial pairs. He wounds Venus with a human arrow (sagitta; in Il., V 335 ff. it speaks of a spear, (δόρυ), Mars, who was probably already completely threatened with death, is kept in chains for thirteen months (cf.: Il., V 385–391), also shows Jupiter or almost suppressed by a crowd of celestials (cf.: Il., I 401–406), or makes [him] cry about Sarpedon (cf.: Il., XVI 433–434; 459–461), or makes [him] lustful towards Juno in the most disgusting way, when he tries to strengthen his lustful desire by mentioning and listing his girlfriends (cf.: Il., XIV, 313–328) [...]" (Ad nat., I 10,38-39). Minucius Felix says: "For first of all, he [Homer] depicted your gods during the Trojan War, albeit in jest, as being involved in human stories and affairs. He divided them into pairs, wounded Venus, tied up Mars, wounded them, and put them to flight. He says that Jupiter, freed by Briareus, so as not to be bound by other gods, mourns his son Sarpedon with a bloody shower, for he could not save him from death, and, seduced by the belt of Venus, enters into a relationship with his wife Juno more ardently than he was accustomed to in adultery” (Min. Oct., 23, 3-4). Clement of Alexandria says almost the same thing: “Homer says that this god [Ares] was bound for thirteen months” (Cl. Protr., 2, 29, 3); “For they have a mortal body,” Homer testifies, diligently depicting Aphrodite shrilly and loudly screaming because of the wound [...]” (Cl. Protr., 2, 36, 1); “The will of Zeus has been overcome, and he, defeated, grieves over Sarpedon” (Cl. Protr., 4, 55, 4); “Homer, you make Zeus venerable and ascribe to him awe-inspiring anointing. But as soon as you tell about Aphrodite’s belt, Zeus is exposed, and his curls are covered with shame” (Cl. Protr., 2, 33, 2). Compare: Cl., II 766–767; Eur. A1s., 1–9. The similarity of Tertullian's story about the wounding of Venus by Diomedes, about Jupiter's mourning of Sarpedon and about Apollo's service with Admetus with a fairly detailed description of the “passions of the gods” in Athen., 21 N. Shcheglov explains the influence of the Greek apologist on the Latin. See: Shcheglov N. Apologetic of Tertullian. Kyiv, 1888. P. 93, 110–111. R. Agahd believes that in this place the Greek and Latin apologists used a common source [Agahd. Op. cit. R. 45]. Haggad, apparently, is closer to the truth, since Tertullian in Apol., 14 mentions, unlike Athenagoras, the shackles of Mars, Neptune in Laomedon, but does not speak, for example, about the castration of Heaven (Uranus) and the overthrow of Saturn (Cronos) into Tartarus. Compare: Cl., VII 452–453; XXI 441–457; Pind. Olymp., VIII 31 ff. See, for example: Plat. Phaedr., 228b. According to V. Krause, these mimes were written a hundred years before Tertullian. Krause W. Die Stellung der frühchristlichen Autoren zur heidnischen Literatur. Wien, 1958. S. 157. Cp.: Tert. Adnat., I 10, 45, 47; II 7, 16; “It is a shame to talk about Cybele of Dindym, who, being already, like the mother of many gods, ugly and old, could not persuade her lover, who had the misfortune of liking her, to debauchery, [and therefore] emasculated, in order, so to speak, to make a eunuch a god” (Min., 22, 4). The myth of the Phrygian Cybele, the Great Mother of the gods, is reflected in the writings of Christian authors. Theophilus of Antioch, “out of modesty,” generally refused to talk about the actions of this goddess and her servants (Theoph., 110). Athenagoras, arguing that demons appropriated the names of dead people, and proving this by reference to their deeds, decided to cite Rhea (i.e. Cybele), whose adherents cut off their reproductive members (Athen., 26, 1). Elogy - a legal document, a will. In accordance with which they will be executed. Tacitus is one of Tertullian’s sources, which he could use from memory when writing one of his works, and have at hand when writing another. In Adnat. (I 11, 2) Tertullian, refuting the message of Tacitus about the Jews (Tas. Hist., V 4), erroneously refers to the fourth book of his History. Regarding this Tertullian reference to Tacitus, N. Shcheglov writes: “Here our Tertullian shows himself as we have never met him before, and we will never meet him again. He not only names the author and his work, but also indicates the book of this work [...]” [Shcheglov. Decree. Op. pp. 187–188]. In Apol. (16, 2) he probably corrected this mistake of his: the Fulden Code speaks of the fourth book of the History, and the so-called codices Vulgatae recensionis and early editions speak of the fifth. Epona is the goddess, patroness of donkeys and horses. See: luv., Ill. 8, 157. According to Adnat. (I 14, 1), this was a certain Jew who betrayed his own religion. Probably around the amphitheater arena to tease them. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, had the head of a dog. Dionysus turned into a lion. See: Hymn., 7, 44–57. Pan looked like this. See: Hymn., XIX 37. Probably means Erichthonium. Wed: Tert. De spect., 9, 3. Mercury had golden winged sandals. See: Od., V 44–46. Cupid had wings behind his back. See: Aristoph. Av., 1738–1742; Apul. Met., V 22. Wed: Plat. Gorg., 493a; Plat. Crat., 400c; Plat. Phaedr., 250c. According to another reading: “calls God by this name alone as the proper name of the true God.” Tertullian also writes in another work that Moses is nine hundred years older than Saturn and “much more divine,” since he described the origin of the human race from the very beginning (De an., 28, 1). Thallus is a historian of the 1st century after Christ, the author of the Syrian History, from which excerpts have been preserved. The fact that, according to Thall, Bel lived three hundred and twenty-two years before the Trojan War and was a contemporary of Kronos, writes Theophilus of Antioch (Theoph., III 29). Round box for storing books. Manetho - ancient Egyptian historian of the 1st half. III century BC, author of the “Egyptian History”, from which excerpts have survived. Berossus, a Babylonian historian of the 3rd century BC, wrote a Babylonian history, from which excerpts have survived. Mendes Ptolemy is the priest who wrote the Egyptian History. Ephesian Menander - historian who wrote about Greek and barbarian kings; excerpts from his writings have been preserved thanks to Josephus. Demetrius of Falernus - Greek author of the 2nd half. IV – beginning III century BC; Fragments have survived from his works on history, philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric. King Yuba - Yuba II, son of Yuba I, king of Numidia. He was married to the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and the author of geographical and historical works. Apion - Alexandrian grammarian of the 1st half. I century after R. X., author of a complaint against the Jews sent to Emperor Caligula. His writings survive in fragments. Wed: Matthew 23:12; OK. 14:11. Authors from different eras described their perception of time differently. However, there are some similarities in their words. Wed: “Everything present is a moment of eternity”; “pay attention to how quickly everything falls into oblivion, to the chaos of time, limitless in both directions” (M. Aur., VI 36 and IV 3, 3; trans. S. M. Rogovin). “The present can only be called that moment in time that cannot be divided even into the smallest parts, but it is so rapidly carried away from the future to the past!” (Aug.Conf., XI 15, 20; trans. M. E. Sergeenko). “Muffling out the whisper of inspired superstitions, common sense tells us that life is just a crack of weak light between two ideally black eternities” (Nabokov V.V. Other Shores, 1, 1). Those. Christians are as confident in the future as they are in the past. According to another reading, “this is, according to your opinion, what is human in Jupiter.” See: In. 4:24; cf.: Tat., A. In the original there is a play on words: porrigitur, portio (cf.: “the share is extended”). Here is a later insert excluded by the publishers: “even so the Spirit is from the Spirit, and God is from God.” More details about the corresponding place from Isa. 6:9–10 (cf. Matt. 13:14–15) was presented in an earlier work of Tertullian Ad nat.: “The eyes are open, but do not see, the ears are open, but do not hear, the beating heart is numb, and the soul does not know what it perceives (patent oculi nec uident; hiant aures nec audiunt, cor stupet saliens; nescit animus quod agnoscit)" (Ad nat., II 1, 3). Let us note that a similar thought is expressed by the title character of Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound: “People looked before and did not see, / And heard without hearing (οἱ πρῶτα μὲν βλέποντες ἔβλεπον μάτην, κλύοντες οὐκ ἤκουον)” (447–448; trans. by A. I. Piotrovsky). In Apol. Tertullian is even more stingy with biblical quotations than in Ad nat., where they are also very rare. Thus, a direct quote “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God (initium [...] sapientiae [metus] in Deum" (Ad nat., II 2, 3 - Proverbs 1:7) was not transferred from an earlier treatise. Orpheus is a mythical Greek singer, originally from Thrace, the son of the muse Calliope and the river god Eager (or Apollo). Musaeus is a mythical singer and poet, a student of Orpheus. Melampus - Herodotus (II 49) tells that Melampus (= Melampodes) introduced the cult of Dionysus among the Hellenes. Trophonius - mythical soothsayer, Boeotian hero. Wed: Plat. Apol., 27d; Plat. Symp., 202d. Lit. “pinch” (carpunt). Game of words: “aemulantur divinitatem, dum furantur divinationem.” Cp.: “[...] when the richest king of Asia, Croesus, was given an oracle: Croesus, penetrating through Halys, will destroy a great kingdom, then this king considered that he was destined to destroy the enemy kingdom, but he destroyed his own. [...] And who will believe that Pyrrhus was given the following answer by the oracle of Apollo: Know, Aeacides, Rome can defeat [...]" (Cic. De div., II 56, 115–116; trans. M.I. Rizhsky). We are talking about the ship on which in 204 BC the image of the Great Mother of the Gods was transported to Rome from the East. Titus Livy writes the following about this: “When the ship approached the mouth of the Tiber, Cornelius, as ordered, went out to sea on another ship, received the goddess from the priests and carried her to land. She was received by the first matrons of the city; among them was the famous Claudia Quinta. Before that, different things were said about her, but such service to the goddess glorified her chastity in posterity" (Liv., XXIX 14, 11–12, trans. M.E. Sergeenko.) According to Suetonius, Claudia from the Claudian family “[...] refloated on the Tiber Ford a ship with the shrines of the Idean Mother of the gods, praying in front of everyone that he would then only follow her, if she really pure [...]" (Suet. Tib., 2, 3, trans. M. L. Gasparov). Appian describes the delivery of the image of the Mother of the Gods to Rome in the following way: “They say that the ship that carried it [the image of the goddess], stuck in the mud of the Tiber River, could not be moved by any means until, after the soothsayers said that it would go only if it was dragged by a woman clean from intercourse with other people’s husbands, Claudia Quintus, who was accused of adultery, but who had not yet was put on trial, although her luxurious life seemed to fully confirm it, did not turn to the goddess with a big prayer regarding her innocence and did not tie the ribbon of her headdress to the ship. And the goddess followed” (App. Nann., 9, 56, trans. S. P. Kondratyev). Wed: Tas. Ann., IV 64; Valer., 18, 11. Ovid says about Claudius Quintus that after the prayer “she only slightly pulled the rope [...] The Mother of the Gods moved, responding with prayer [...]” (Ov. Fast., IV 325 and 327, trans. F. Petrovsky). From the above examples it is clear how famous this legend was in Rome. Tertullian, not daring to deny the “obvious,” attributes the “miracle” to the actions of demons. See also note to Arol., 25, 6. See: lust. Apol., I 17; cp.: Apul. Apol., 42 ff. According to another understanding, they tell fortunes by reading the entrails of murdered boys; cf.: Eus.,VII 10, 4. Compare: “the prophetic goats point to the Phrygians as the most ancient people” (Cl. Protr., 1, 6, 4). “The tricks of unscrupulous people are truly insane - outright deception of gambling houses. The companions of this deception are goats trained for divination, and ravens taught by people to give oracles” (Cl. Protr., 2, 11, 3). Like the priests of Cybele. Wed: 25, 5. There are different explanations for this name of the goddess. Waltzing interprets it as follows: The Heavenly Virgin, as the mistress of the sky in times of drought, predicts rain through her prophets (Waltzing J. R. Tertullien. Apologétique. II: Commentaire analytique, grammatical et historique par J. P. Waltzing // Bibliothèque de la faculté de philosophic et lettres de l’université de Liège. Liège, Paris, 1919. P. 112). Marcel Legley establishes a connection between the name "promiser of rains" given to this goddess (whose emblem was the crescent moon) and the fact that for the Bedouins of the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa, the rarity of rain makes the night dew valuable, and the moon on this basis acquires power over vegetation. The scientist also notes that such different peoples as the Eskimos and Indians of Peru associate rain and the moon. (Leglay M. Saturne Africain. Histoire. Thèse... par M. Leglay. Paris: de Boccard, 1966. P. 171. n. 6). The Heavenly Virgin turns out to be the goddess of rain, which fertilizes the earth, just like Atargatis in Syria - the goddess of life-giving water (Leglay. Op. cit. R. 218). According to Marcel Benabou, one of the differences between Juno and the Heavenly Virgin is the latter's connection with water, which brings the goddess closer to African traditions. As a heavenly goddess she had, among other roles, the role of promising and bestowing rain. (B é nabou M. La résistance africaine à la romanisation. Paris, 1976. P. 368). Aelius Aristides talks about very interesting medical prescriptions that Asclepius gave him. See about this: Festugier A.-J. Personal religion of the Greeks. St. Petersburg, 2000, pp. 150–156. According to the conjectures, “as the Power of God and the Spirit of God and the Mind of God, as the Son of God and all that is of God (et Deiomnia).” Or: “through Christ and into God.” See: Plat. Phaedr., 246e; cf.: Athen., 23; Ps.-Iust., 31. In this place Tertullian gives more names of Italic deities than in the corresponding place in Ad. nat. (II 8, 6). The gods are named there: 1) Delventin among the inhabitants of Casinus, 2) Visidian among the inhabitants of Narnia, 3) Numitern among the inhabitants of Atina, 4) Ancharia among the inhabitants of Asculum, and 5) Nortia among the inhabitants of Volsinia. In the earlier work, Valentia, Hostia, and Juno are not mentioned; in the later work, only Numertine is mentioned. According to R. Haggad, both of these passages are borrowed from Varro. See: Agahd. Op. cit. R. 161–162. Sterculus is the god of soil fertilization (stercus - “manure”). Mutun is the Italian god of fertility. Identified with Priapus. Larentina - see: Plut. Rom., 4–5. The form castrando is used because the priests of Cybele were eunuchs. Wed: 23, 3. Vermander believes that Tertullian's innovation is manifested in this place. The reproach for the lack of the gift of foresight is addressed not to all gods in general, but to Cybele, to whom this particular property was attributed, since it was believed that, having arrived in Rome in 204, she predicted that he would take revenge on Greece for Ilion. “To the argument based on Roman history, Tertullian objects, therefore, with the help of argumentation of the same nature. It was as skillful as it was original (C’était aussi habile qu’original)” (Vermander J.-M. La polemique de Tertullien contre les dieux du paganisme // Revue des sciences religieuses. 1979. T. 53. P. 118–119). Here are more examples that expose the gods based on historical facts: “[...] why didn’t Minerva protect Athens from Xerxes, or why didn’t Apollo save Delphi from the hand of Pyrrhus?” (Ad nat., II 17, 10). “Would Juno want her city, preferred to Samos, to be burned, and even by the tribe of the descendants of Aeneas?” (Ad nat., II 17, 6; cf.: Apol., 25, 8). Before Tertullian, apologists turned to myths like the myth of Apollo and Daphne for examples of the ignorance of the gods. With Tertullian, “the concrete is put in the place of the legendary, and this concreteness is connected with the world of Romanitas” (Vermander. Op. cit. P. 119). E. Heck believes that this anecdote about Cybele as a victim of the slow transmission of information does not prove anything, appearing only in Tertullian (Heck E. bei Tertullian, Cyprian und Lactanz / / Studien zur klassischen Philologie. Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, 1987. Bd. 65 u. 55. Anm. So, on the one hand, the miracle of Cybele with the ship and the belt is attributed to demons (Arok, 22, 12), on the other hand, this goddess is denied the ability to know not only the future, but also the past (Arok, 25, 4-6). Meanwhile, above (Apol, 22, 8) the apologist claims that every spirit is impetuous, such are both angels and demons (omnis spiritus ales est: hoc et angeli et daemones); As a result, they instantly know what is happening and where. The contradiction between chapters 22 and 25 is obviously explained by the fact that in the first case Tertullian wants to show the danger of paganism, in the second, where we are talking about gods who could contribute to the greatness of Rome, he draws attention to their insignificance. The case of Cybele, whom Tertullian considers almost a Roman goddess (like Serapis and Bacchus: Apol, 6, 10), shows us an example of how, depending on the goal, pagan gods can be considered either as demons or as incapable idols. We are talking about the goat Amalthea. Wed: Ad nat. (II 17, 6), which also contains verses from Verg. Aen. (I 16–18). As we see, our apologist was somewhat different from Eugene Onegin in terms of knowledge of Virgil’s work. He addressed this poet not only in his works addressed to the pagans. In Despect. (9, 3) to prove the pagan origin of the games, Tertullian cites verses from the Georgics: “Erichthonius was the first to dare to harness four horses to a chariot and stand on wheels as a quick winner (Primus Erichthonius currus et quattuor ausus / iungere equos rapidusque rotis insistere victor)” (Verg. Georg., III 113). In addition to the direct quotes from this poet, Tertullian repeatedly contains Virgilian allusions. So, in Adv. Marc. (I 5, 1) he says that the heretic Valentine, having conceived two gods, Biphon and Sige, then released a whole string of deities - thirty offspring of aeons, like the Aenean pig (tamquam Aeneiae scrofae). See: Verg. Aen., III 388–393; cp.: Prop., IV 1, 35; luv., II 6, 177. Cp.: Tat., 34. Krause compares this epithet of Juno with words from Verg. Aen. (I 46): “[...] Iovisque et soror et coniunx” [Krause W. Die Stellung der frühchristlichen Autoren zur heidnischen Literatur. Wien: Herder, 1958. P. 158]. Regarding this quote, V. Krause notes that its literary source cannot be determined. He offers the following understanding of it: “thanks to fate, Jupiter himself stands (durch das Schicksal steht selbst Iuppiter)” [Krause. Op. cit. P. 158]. Indications are part of the so-called “books of the pontiffs”, where domestic gods were listed and instructions were given on how they should be venerated/ According to another reading: “But [Sterculus] with his indigitaments [appeared] in Rome later.” Cp.: Ov. Fast., I 197–204. imperium sine fine decernunt. Krause compares this phrase with Verg. Aen. (I 279), where Jupiter says “I gave power without end (imperium sine fine dedi)” [Krause.Op. cit. P. 158]. Eberhard Heck writes that Tertullian, who probably considered these words of Jupiter to be known, hints that in § 7 of this chapter he classified Jupiter among the “foreign gods” [Heck. Op. cit. R. 61]. The Quindekimvirs were a priestly college of fifteen people who kept the Sibylline books. The Salii were a priestly college of twelve people who, during the annual festivals in honor of Mars, made a solemn procession through Rome with singing and dancing. See: Liv., I 20, 4. Luperci are priests who, during the festival of Lupercalia (February 15), ran around Rome with belts made from the skins of sacrificed animals and whipped married women with these belts who specially came out to meet them, since it was believed that this ritual brings happiness to marriage. See: Ov. Fast., II 267–452. According to another reading, "pious." Said obviously with irony. Compare: Apol., 2, 3. Perhaps the point is that in reality Christians would not be able to take advantage of such a deception in any case. According to another reading, "though we shun the crowd." Or: “piety will justify bad morals.” Or: “religion will be considered a reason for luxury.” Quirites are the solemn name of Roman citizens. Cassius - Avidius Cassius, who proclaimed himself emperor in 175 after R. X. Niger - Guy Pescennius Niger, rival of the Emperor Severus, defeated by him in 193. Albinus - Clodius Albinus, a rival of the Emperor Severus, whom he defeated in 197. Emperor Commodus (180–192) was strangled by the gladiator Narcissus. This is what Claudius Pompeian did during the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Commodus. Emperor Pertinac was killed in his palace (January 1 – March 28, 193). Sigerius and Parthenius - slaves who killed Emperor Domitian. Wed: Suet. Dorn., 16, 2–17, 2; see also: Mart. Epigr., IV 78, 8. In Apologetics the number of comparisons, metaphors and rhetorical examples (exempla) of agrarian content increases compared to the two books of To the Gentiles. On the one hand, comparisons that are far from agricultural themes with a birthmark, a wart, freckles, a cloud in a clear sky (Ad nat., I5, 2 ​​and 3), with an artist, doctors, an enemy, robbers, dilapidation, a storm (II 5, 9–11) are not transferred from the earlier work to the Apologetic. On the other hand, in “Apologetics” comparisons that were absent in the previous work appear, for example, with the degeneration of fruits (19, 6), with the trunk and layers (21, 12), with fruits, seeds, flowers, sprouts (22, 5), with the harvest of grapes (35, 11), with herds (44, 3). It is difficult to explain this selection of examples by mere coincidence. In Apologetics there are, of course, comparisons not related to agriculture, for example, with a potter and a helmsman (47, 7), with a ray and a lamp (21, 12): in the first case, Tertullian follows the Stoics and Platonists (47, 7), and the second passage ends with words about the mother trunk and layering (21, 12). The comparison with an olive and peach pit and a grain of pepper, present in the work “To the Gentiles” (I 12, 10-13), is greatly modified in Apologetics, being placed in a different context (21, 12-13): Tertullian, getting rid of a somewhat awkward expression, does not want to lose along with it the comparison that seemed to him successful. How can we explain the apologist's penchant for agricultural examples? In fact, in ancient times, handicraft examples, for example, were in widespread use. Plato often refers to helmsmen, ships and other craftsmen. Tertullian himself repeatedly encounters the image of a ship, for example, in the treatises “On the Soul” (2, 1 and 52, 4, cf.: Apul. Flor., 23), “On Idolatry” (24). “Ship” allegories were very popular in antiquity. To answer the question posed, we should consider the literary context in which “Apologetic” was created. Agrarian examples, as well as others, are quite rare among the majority of Greek apologists, despite the fact that their writings are replete with biblical quotations. Meanwhile, it is in the Bible that we find an abundance of parables with “agrarian” themes. Ancient literature provides many similar examples. Probably, Tertullian, using agrarian examples common in ancient literature in Apologetics, on the one hand, was looking for images that could attract the attention of a pagan audience to his text. On the other hand, he, having practically abandoned the use of direct biblical quotations in his works intended for a pagan audience, obviously tried to compensate for the lack of references to the original source and convey the New Testament flavor not only with the help of various biblical allusions and reminiscences, but also with the help of agricultural comparisons that abounded in the Gospels. Wed: Tert. De cult., I 2. Wed: Matt. 5:45; OK. 6:35. A statement that, according to Tertullian, contradicts the actual state of affairs. Cities in Italy that had self-government. Tribes are administrative districts. Decuria is a group of ten people. The decuria were divided into curiae of patricians, equestrians, senators, as well as judges and many collegiums. discords. An allusion to the plebeians, who during the conflict with the patricians retired to the Sacred Mountain (494 BC). See: Liv., II 32, 2–5. Wed: Matt. 12:43–45; OK. 11:24–26. Oxymoron, cf.: “the areas in front of the house were filled with smoke with bright lamps” (Apol., 35, 11). Xist is a tiled covered colonnade for gymnastic exercises. Compare: Luc. Peregr., 12–13. We are talking about Christian “agapes”. According to Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles said: “The Akragants eat as if they would die tomorrow, and build houses as if they would live forever” (Diog., VIII 63; trans. M. L. Gasparov). Attic-Ionian festival, during which citizens included their children in the lists of phratries. Dionysia is an Athenian festival in honor of Dionysus. There were Small (Rural) Dionysia, Leney, Anthesteria, Large (City) Dionysia. The feast that takes place on the second day of the Anthesterium is colorfully described by Aristophanes in the comedy “The Acharnians” (960 ff.). Triclinium - three beds placed on three sides of a square dining table, as well as a refectory. Lit.: “if the sky stopped, if the earth moved.” One of the Licar Islands, now Vulcano. One of the Sporades Islands, now Anafi. One of the Sporades Islands. See: Plat. Tim., 24e–25d. In Apologetics, references to passages from Plato’s works occur five times: 11.5 – Plat. Tim., 32b; 24, 3 – Plat. Phaedr., 246e; 40, 4 – Plat. Tim., 24e–25d; 40, 5 – Plat. Leg., III 677bc; 46, 9 – Plat. Tim., 28c. However, all the indicated passages from Plato (except for the passage about the absorption of Atlantis by the ocean, Plat. Tim., 24e–25d) are also found among Greek apologists preceding Tertullian. Nikolai Shcheglov also draws attention to the fact that the Platonic quotations of the Greek apologists are closer in form to the original than those of Tertullian. According to the Russian scientist, it is impossible to say with complete certainty whether the latter borrowed these passages from the works of the philosopher himself or from Greek apologies [Shcheglov. Decree. Op. pp. 191–192]. A passage reminiscent of Apol. (40, 4), we find in Depall. (2.3): “Even now the appearance [of the earth] is changing in places, when the stable state is disrupted, when among the islands there is no longer any Delos, Samos [turns into] sands, and the Sibyl did not lie; when [an island] in the Atlantic Ocean, equal to Libya or (aut) Asia, is already [in vain] being sought [...].” According to Bullhart, the subject of the quaeritur is “wanted” – insula “island”, as can be seen from the words inter insulas “among the islands”. This scholar, on the basis of Plato's words "Libya and Asia" (Plat. Tim., 24e), believes that aut "or" in De pall. (2,3) means “and” [Bulhart V. Tertullian-Studien / / Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sitzungsberichte. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. 1957. Bd. 231. Abh. 5. S. 53]. However, Tertullian may simply have inaccurately conveyed the content of Plato's thought. In Apol. (40.4) it is said: “Asia or (vel) Africa.” As can be seen from the two passages cited, Tertullian believed in Plato's myth of Atlantis, either retold here from memory or read in a compendium, which was not used by the Greek apologists. See: Plat. Leg., III 677bc; cp.: Theoph., III 18. According to N. Shcheglov, Tertullian borrowed information about Judea from Josephus [Shcheglov. Decree. Op. P. 208]. The scholar is referring to the passage Ios. Bell. (IV 8, 4). Modium is a Roman measure of bulk solids, equal to 8.75 l. The Senones are a Celtic tribe. We are talking about the capture of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC. Tertullian obviously does not take into account the story of the rescue of the Capitol by geese. See: Liv.,V 47.1–6. Invidia caelum tundimus. See: Matt. 7:7, Luke. 11:9 “knock and it will be opened to you”; cf.: Luke. 18:1–7: “But since this widow does not give me peace, I will protect her so that she will not come to bother me anymore.” Saturnalia is a celebration in Rome after the end of the harvest during the winter solstice. Liberalia is a holiday in honor of Bacchus and Ceres on March 17. See: Ov. Fast., III 713–790. ut ab incontemptibili dispectore mandatam; compare: Tert. De an., 15, 4: “After all, if we read about God as a searching and observing heart (scrutatorem et dispectorem cordis deum legimus)” (Wis. 1:6). Wed: James 4:11; Turn. 3:2. See: Plat. Phaedr., 118. Asclepius (Aesculapius) was sacrificed a rooster by the one whom God had healed. For Socrates, death was the recovery of his soul. According to Cicero (Cic. De nat., I 22, 60) and Minucius Felix (Min., 13), Simonides acted in a similar way when asked by the tyrant Hiero. See: Plat. Tim., 28c; compare: Cl. Protr., 6, 68, 1. nec in pauperem superbit. Aediles are officials in Rome. They were in charge of city improvement, distribution of bread, etc. Digests are legal collections, here is the Bible. De morte vacationis et inanitatis; cf.: Gen. 1:2 “the earth was formless and empty” (according to the Vulgate: “the earth was empty and empty, terra autem erat inanis et vacua”). The Latin text uses the word aevum - “infinity of time.” The corpses of people struck by lightning were not burned. Gaius Mucius Scaevola (Left-handed), according to legend, snuck into the enemy camp to kill King Porsena. After an unsuccessful assassination attempt, he was captured and brought before the king. Wanting to show his contempt for pain, Mucius extended his right hand into the fire and calmly held it there. The delighted Porsena released the hero. See: Liv.,II 12, 1–13, 1. According to legend, the ancient Greek philosopher of the 5th century Empedocles threw himself into Etna so that people would believe that he had become a god. See: Diog., VIII 69. Marcus Atilius Regulus, consul of 267 and 256, commander of the First Punic War. During the Roman military operations in Africa he was captured. The Carthaginians released him, taking an oath that he would return if the Romans did not release the noble captives. Regulus, having convinced his compatriots not to hand over the captured Punics, returned to Carthage, where he was executed in a box with nails protruding inside. See, for example: Liv. Er., 18; Cic. De off., III 26, 99–27, 100; App. Lyb., 1.4. We are talking about the tyrant Hippias. Zeno of Elea, according to Hermippus, was beaten to death in a mortar (see: Diog., IX 27) when he planned to overthrow the tyrant Nearchus (or Diomedon) (IX 26). That is, the people. Anacoluthon. Pun: ad leonem... ad leonem... Diogenes – Diogenes of Sinope, ancient Greek philosopher of the 4th century. BC, Cynic. Pyrrho - ancient Greek philosopher (c. 360 - c. 270 BC), founder of skepticism. According to his teaching, one should remain in absolute spiritual independence from the surrounding world, achieving equanimity (ἀταραξία) and dispassion (ἀπάθεια).