Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Who, then, is so utterly senseless as to believe this fellow reigns in heaven, when by rights he should never even have reigned on earth? Not without some cleverness did a certain poet compose a triumph for Cupid, a work in which he portrays Cupid as not just the mightiest of the gods but as their conqueror too. Having listed the love affairs of each god, through which they fell under Cupid's sway and dominion, he stages a procession where Jupiter, bound in chains alongside the other deities, is marched before the triumphal chariot of the victor. This was a clever poetic invention, yet it is not so far removed from reality. Anyone lacking virtue, anyone overpowered by lust and wicked cravings, belongs not to Cupid, as the poet pictured it, but to death everlasting. Yet let us leave aside discussion of morals and turn instead to the substance of the matter, so that people may grasp the errors that entangle them so pitifully. The masses take it for granted that Jupiter rules in heaven; both the learned and the ignorant alike hold this conviction, a point proven by religion itself, by prayers, hymns, temples, and statues alike. Yet these same people also admit that this very Jupiter was born from Saturn and Rhea. How, then, can he be regarded as divine—or, in the poet's words, as the author of men and of things—when countless thousands of men had already existed before his birth? These, of course, are the men who lived under Saturn's reign and enjoyed daylight before Jupiter ever did. Evidently, then, one god held kingship in the earliest era, and a different one afterward. It follows that yet another could hold the throne in times to come. If the crown changed hands once before, why should we doubt it could change again later? Perhaps Saturn had the power to father a mightier son, yet Jupiter lacks it? But surely divine authority is either eternally fixed, or, granting that it could shift—which is impossible—then it must always remain subject to shifting. Could Jupiter, then, forfeit his throne just as his own father did? Quite obviously so. Though this same Jupiter spared no woman, married or unmarried, he nonetheless refrained from touching Thetis alone, since a prophecy warned that whatever child she bore would surpass his father in greatness. And note, first, that this reveals not divine foreknowledge on his part—for had Themis not warned him of what lay ahead, he would have remained ignorant himself; yet if he lacks divinity, he cannot properly be called a god either, given that the very word 'divinity' derives its name from 'god,' just as 'humanity' derives from 'man.' Second, it betrays an awareness of his own vulnerability in one who plainly dreaded something mightier than himself. Whoever acts this way surely recognizes that he does not hold the highest rank, since something greater than himself could exist. This same Jupiter swears his most binding oaths by the marsh of the Styx—a superstitious rite observed even by the gods above. What kind of superstition is this, and who first imposed it? Does some power exist, then, greater still, one that punishes gods guilty of false oaths? And why this immense terror of the underworld swamp, if the gods themselves cannot die? Why should they fear a thing they will never encounter, except those bound to perish? Why, then, do mortals raise their eyes toward heaven? Why swear oaths by gods above, when these very gods above are cast down again to the world beneath, finding there something they in turn revere and worship? And what of this — that there are fates which every god, Jupiter included, obeys? If the Fates hold power great enough to surpass all the gods of heaven combined, and even their own lord and ruler, why should these not rather be called the true rulers, given that necessity forces every god to submit to their laws and decrees? Can anyone doubt that whoever yields to something else is thereby not the greatest power? Were he truly supreme, he would shape fate rather than receive it. Let me return now to the point I had set aside. It was toward this one woman alone that he showed restraint in his desire—not from any virtue, but from dread of a rival heir. Such fear, plainly, belongs to a being who is mortal, feeble, and insignificant—since he himself might have perished at birth, just as his elder brother did before him; and had that brother survived, he would never have surrendered rule to his junior. Jupiter, rescued through cunning and raised in hiding, took the name Zeus or Zen—not, as some imagine, from the fire of heaven, nor because he grants life and breathes soul into living creatures (for that power is god's alone, and how could one who received his own soul elsewhere breathe soul into another?)—but rather because he was the first male child of Saturn to survive. Men, then, might have had a wholly different ruler among the gods, had Saturn not been tricked by his own wife. But someone will object that the poets fabricated all of it. Whoever thinks so is mistaken. The poets were in fact describing men, yet to honor the memory of those they praised, they called them gods. Thus it is precisely those elements presented as though about gods that count as fiction, not the elements presented as though about men—a distinction that will become obvious from the following example. Intending to violate Danaë, Jupiter poured an abundance of gold coins into her lap; this was simply the price paid for her ruin. But the poets, casting it as a divine act so as not to undercut the majesty they attributed to him, invented the tale of a golden shower descending from him—using the same kind of figure by which they describe iron raining down, when picturing a mass of spears and arrows. He is said to have abducted Ganymede disguised as an eagle: this too is poetic embellishment. Either he captured the boy through a legion whose standard bore an eagle, or the vessel carrying him displayed an eagle emblem for protection—just as it was under the guise of a bull that he seized and transported Europa. Likewise, the story goes that Io, daughter of Inachus, was transformed into a heifer—she who, fleeing Juno's fury, had already grown bristles and already resembled a cow—and is said to have swum the sea and reached Egypt, where, recovering her original shape, she became the goddess now known as Isis. What proof, then, could establish that Europa never actually rode upon a bull, or that Io was never turned into a cow? The fact that calendars mark a fixed date for Isis's sailing-festival shows she did not swim across at all, but made the crossing by ship. Thus those who fancy themselves clever, reasoning that a living earthly body cannot exist in the sky, dismiss the entire Ganymede tale as fiction, failing to notice that the event happened on earth precisely because the deed and the lust behind it were themselves earthly. So the poets did not invent the deeds outright—had they done so, they would be nothing but frivolous—but rather dressed up real events with embellishment. Their purpose was not to slander but to glorify. This is precisely how people are misled: believing all such tales to be mere poetic invention, they end up worshipping what they fail to understand. They do not grasp where poetic license properly ends, how far invention may legitimately stretch, since a poet's task is to take things that genuinely occurred and, through indirect figures, reshape and present them in altered forms, adorned to some degree. But to fabricate an entire account from nothing—that is folly, marking one a liar rather than a poet. Yet someone may say that the poets invented the openly fabulous tales, but did they also invent the tales of goddesses and of divine marriages? Why, then, are such scenes depicted and worshipped in this manner? Unless, perhaps, not only poets but painters and sculptors also deceive us. For if this Jupiter, as you name him, is truly a god—if he is not the one born of Saturn and Ops—then no statue of him should have been erected in any temple but his own alone. What, then, do statues of women signify? What does the weaker sex represent here? For if this same Jupiter desired that sex, the very stone statues betray that he was a man. People claim the poets lied, and yet they believe them regardless; indeed, through their own conduct they demonstrate that the poets told the truth. For they craft images of the gods such that the very distinction of sex portrayed confirms what the poets recount. What else explains the statue of Ganymede alongside the eagle figure, placed at Jupiter's feet in the temples and honored equally with him, except to keep alive forever the memory of that shameful crime and violation? Nothing here, then, was purely fabricated by poets; rather, something has been shifted and veiled through indirect figuration, so that truth might be wrapped and hidden—just as in the tale of the kingdoms divided by lot. For it is said heaven fell to Jupiter by lot, the sea to Neptune, and the underworld to Pluto. Why did the earth not become a third share instead? Because, in truth, the event took place on the earth itself. The truth embedded here, then, is that they parceled out and assigned dominion over the world such that the East fell under Jove's rule, while the western share went to Pluto, who carried the surname Agesilaus—because the eastern region, source of light for mortals, seemed the superior share, while the West seemed the lesser. Thus they cloaked the truth in fiction, so the truth itself would not diminish popular belief. As for Neptune's portion, the matter is straightforward: we hold that his authority resembled the vast command once given to Marcus Antonius, to whom the senate granted power over the entire seacoast so he might hunt down pirates and bring peace to the whole sea. In this fashion, every coastal region, together with the islands, came under Neptune's authority. And how can this be demonstrated? Ancient records, naturally, teach us so. Euhemerus, an ancient writer from the city of Messene, compiled the deeds of Jupiter and the others believed to be gods, weaving together a history drawn from titles and sacred inscriptions preserved in the oldest temples, above all in the shrine of Jupiter Triphylius, where an inscription stated that Jupiter himself had erected a golden pillar, upon which he inscribed his own deeds, so that a record of his achievements might endure for those who came after. Ennius both translated and followed this history; here are his words: where Jupiter grants Neptune dominion over the sea, all its islands, and every place bordering the sea, that he might govern them entirely. What the poets say, then, is true, though veiled beneath some pretext or appearance. It may also be that Mount Olympus supplied the poets their figure of speech in claiming Jupiter drew heaven as his lot, since 'Olympus' is itself an ambiguous term, denoting both a mountain and the sky. That Jupiter made his home on Olympus, this same history confirms, stating: at that time Jupiter passed the greater portion of his life atop Mount Olympus, and men would travel there to seek his judgment whenever a dispute arose; likewise, whenever anyone discovered something new and useful for human existence, they would bring it there to show Jupiter. In this manner the poets transpose many details, not to lie about the gods they worship, but so that, through richly varied figures, they might lend their verses charm and grace. But those who fail to grasp how or why each thing is figured end up hounding the poets as liars and blasphemers. Misled by this very same error, even philosophers—finding what was told of Jupiter unfitting for a god—invented two Jupiters, one natural, one mythical. They glimpsed part of the truth, namely that the Jupiter the poets speak of was a man—but regarding this so-called natural Jupiter, swayed by common religious custom, they erred, transferring a man's name onto a god who, as noted above, being unique, requires no name at all. That the Jupiter born of Ops and Saturn is a man cannot be denied. Hollow, then, is the conviction of those who apply Jupiter's name to the supreme god. Some are known to shield their errors with this excuse: caught out regarding the one true god, unable to deny him, they insist it is this very god they worship, only preferring to call him Jupiter. Could anything be more absurd? For Jupiter is rarely worshipped apart from the company of his wife and daughter. From this alone it is clear who he really is, and it is improper to transfer his name to any place lacking both Minerva and Juno entirely. And consider further—the very meaning of this name conveys neither divine power nor even proper human power. Cicero explains that Jupiter and Juno derive their names from 'aiding' (iuuare), so that Jupiter is, so to speak, the 'aiding father.' Yet this title suits a god poorly, since aiding is the act of one who grants some assistance to another, a stranger, and only a modest benefit at that. No one prays to a god merely to be aided, but rather to be saved, to be granted life and safety—something far greater and far more significant than mere aid. And on the subject of a father: no father is described as merely 'aiding' his sons when he begets or raises them; the word is too feeble to capture the magnitude of a father's benefit. How much less fitting, then, is it applied to god, the true father, through whom we exist, to whom we belong entirely, by whom we are shaped, brought to life, and given light, who breathes life into us, grants us safety, and furnishes our varied sustenance. Whoever imagines himself merely 'aided' by god fails to grasp the divine benefits at all. Therefore, whoever belittles the power of the supreme majesty through Jupiter's name is not simply mistaken but sacrilegious. And so, having established both from his recorded deeds and from his character that Jupiter was a man who ruled upon the earth, it remains for us to examine his death as well. Ennius, in his Sacred History, having recounted everything Jupiter accomplished in life, concludes: then Jupiter, having circled the earth five times and distributed rule among all his friends and kin, having bequeathed to men laws, customs, and grain, and having done much else of value, endowed with undying glory and everlasting memory, left behind lasting monuments to himself. When at last his years ran their course, it was on Crete that he passed from mortal life into the company of the gods; there his sons, the Curetes, tended his remains and paid him honor, and there, in the city of Cnossus—said to have been founded by Vesta—his tomb can still be found, bearing an inscription in archaic Greek letters, ZAN KRONOU, which in Latin renders as Jupiter, son of Saturn. This account, certainly, comes not from poets but from writers of ancient history. And these matters hold true to such a degree that the Sibylline verses confirm them, which read thus: lifeless spirits, likenesses of dead men worn down by labor, whose vaunted tomb ill-omened Crete shall keep. Discussing divine nature in his own philosophical work, Cicero notes that the theologians reckoned three separate Jupiters existed, and that the third of these, a son of Saturn, was the Cretan Jupiter—the one whose tomb visitors are still shown on that island. How, then, can a god be living in one location and dead in another, possess a temple here and a tomb there? Let the Romans, then, understand that their Capitol—the very pinnacle of their state religion—amounts to nothing more than a hollow tomb marker. Let us turn now to his own father, the one who held the throne earlier and who perhaps has a stronger claim to divinity, given that he is said to have sprung from the union of such mighty elements. Let us examine what quality he possessed that would befit a god. First, there is the tradition that he presided over a golden age, that justice governed the earth under his rule. I concede there is something here absent from his son's reign. For what suits a god better than just governance and a righteous era? Yet when I reflect that he too was born through the same process, I cannot regard him as the supreme god, seeing there exists something older than he is—namely, sky and earth. But I am searching for a god beyond whom nothing whatsoever exists, one who serves as the wellspring and origin of all things: this must be the one who established the sky itself and founded the earth. Yet if Saturn was born of these, as is claimed, how could he be the first and highest god, when he owes his very origin to others—or who governed the world before Saturn's birth? But this, as I noted a little earlier, is poetic invention. It could hardly be that senseless elements, separated by such vast distance, joined together to produce a son; nor that the offspring would fail to resemble his parents above all, instead bearing a form his own begetters lacked. Let us ask, then, what truth hides beneath this figure. Minucius Felix, in his work titled the Octavius, argued as follows: that Saturn, driven out by his son and arriving in Italy, was called son of Caelus (Sky), since we customarily say of those whose virtue we admire, or of those who arrive unexpectedly, that they 'fell from the sky'; and that he was called son of Terra (Earth), since we call people of unknown origin 'sons of the earth.' These claims bear some resemblance to truth, yet are untrue, since it is agreed he was already regarded this way even while he still reigned. One might argue instead that Saturn, a most powerful king, bestowed his own parents' names upon sky and earth to preserve their memory, whereas these had previously borne different names entirely—just as we know mountains and rivers have been named after people. When poets refer to those descended from Atlas, or from the river-god Inachus, they surely do not mean that men could be born of senseless things, but rather that they mean those born from men who, alive or dead, lent their names to mountains or rivers. This was common practice among the ancients, the Greeks especially. Thus certain seas, we are told, took their names from those who drowned in them—the Aegean, the Icarian, the Hellespont—and in Latium, Aventinus lent his name to the hill where he was buried, and Tiberinus, or Thybris, to the river where he drowned. It is no surprise, then, that these men's names were bestowed upon sky and earth, since they had fathered exceptionally powerful kings. It follows, then, that Jupiter's father was not born from the sky—an impossibility—but from a man named Uranus. Trismegistus attests to this truth: he stated that very few men ever possessed complete wisdom, and among them he named his own kinsmen Uranus, Saturn, and Mercury. Because our critic knew nothing of this, he carried the story off in a different direction. I have shown how his account could be explained. Now let me relate how, where, and by whom this naming actually occurred—for it was Jupiter, not Saturn, who did this. In the Sacred History, Ennius tells it this way: then Pan brought him up onto the mountain called the Pillar of Heaven. Having climbed it, he gazed out broadly over the lands, and there upon the mountain he raised an altar to Caelus (Heaven), and Jupiter was the very first to offer sacrifice on it. There he looked upward at what we now term the sky, and to what lay above the world—called the aether—he gave the name 'sky,' honoring his grandfather's name; and Jupiter, in propitiating what is termed the aether, was first to name it 'sky,' burning the whole of the victim he sacrificed there. Nor is this the only occasion on which Jupiter is recorded as having sacrificed. There is a further episode Caesar preserves in his commentary on Aratus, drawn from Aglaosthenes: while Jupiter was performing rites on the shore before leaving Naxos to fight the Titans, an eagle swept down toward him; reading this as a favorable sign, he later claimed the bird as his own protective emblem once victory was won. The Sacred History further attests that even earlier an eagle had perched upon his head, foretelling his future rule. Since Euhemerus records that Caelus, Jupiter's grandfather, ended his days in Oceania and lies buried at the town of Aulacia, no one else could have been the object of that sacrifice.