Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But what good does it do to declaim in this fashion to the common crowd and to unlearned men, when we see that even educated and prudent men, though they understand the emptiness of their religions, nevertheless persist, by some perversity, in worshipping those very things they condemn? Cicero understood that what men adored was false. For after saying much that tended toward the overthrow of religion, he still says such matters should not be argued before the public, lest such disputation extinguish the religions publicly received. What is to be done with a man who, though he perceives that he is in error, deliberately dashes himself against the rocks so that the whole people may stumble too, and gouges out his own eyes so that everyone may be blind? He does no good to the others whom he allows to err, none to himself who joins in the errors of others, nor does he finally put to use the good of his own wisdom, to fulfill in deeds what he has grasped in mind; rather, knowingly and deliberately, he puts his foot in the snare, so that he himself, along with the others whom, being wiser, he ought to have freed, is caught as well. Why not rather, Cicero, if you have any courage in you, put the people's wisdom to the test? Here is a cause worthy of exercising all your eloquence — there is no need to fear that your speech would fail you in so good a cause, you who have often defended bad causes copiously and boldly. But no doubt you fear the prison of Socrates, and so you dare not take up the defense of truth. Death itself, being a wise man, was owed your contempt; far nobler would it have been to die for noble words than for base ones, and no Philippic could have won you greater praise than dispelling humanity's error and calling men's minds back to sanity through your own argument. Let us grant, though, that timidity — something a wise man should never harbor: why then do you persist in this very same error? I see you venerating earthly things made by hand: you understand they are empty, and yet you do the same things as those you yourself confess to be utter fools. What good, then, was it that you saw the truth, which you would neither defend nor follow? But even those who perceive that they err, err willingly: how much more the unlearned crowd, which delights in empty pageantry and views everything with childish minds, is charmed by trifles and captivated by the appearance of images, and cannot weigh any single thing within itself so as to understand that nothing perceptible to mortal eyes deserves worship, mortality being its necessary condition. Small wonder, then, that such people fail to see God, when such people do not even see the man whom they believe they see. For what is presented to the eyes is not the man, but the man's receptacle; and its quality and shape are perceived not from the outline of the vessel that contains it, but from deeds and character. Those, then, who worship images are bodies lacking men, because they have given themselves over to bodily things and perceive no more through mind than through flesh, when in truth discerning subtler things beyond the reach of bodily sight belongs properly to the soul's task. That same philosopher and poet gravely accuses such men as base and abject, who, against the reason of their own nature, prostrate themselves before earthly things to be venerated. For he says: they make souls humble through dread of the gods, and press them down, weighed to the ground. When he said this, he certainly meant something else, namely that nothing at all ought to be worshipped, since the gods do not care for human affairs. Indeed, in another place he confesses that religion and the worship of the gods is an empty duty: nor is there any piety in being often seen veiled, turning oneself toward a stone, approaching every altar, falling prostrate on the ground, spreading the palms before the shrines of the gods, sprinkling the altars with the abundant blood of four-footed beasts, or binding vow to vow. If these things are indeed vain, lofty and exalted souls ought not to be called away and pressed down to earth, but should think of nothing but heavenly things. False religions, then, were attacked by the more prudent, because they perceived them to be false, yet nobody advanced the true religion, since its nature and location were alike unknown to them. And so they held it as though there were none at all, because they could not find the true one, and in that way they fell into an error much greater than that of those who held the false one. For those worshippers of frail things, however foolish they are — because they set heavenly things in things corruptible and earthly — nevertheless retain something of wisdom and can be excused, since they hold to the highest duty of man, if not in fact, at least in intention, seeing that the only, or at least the greatest, distinction between men and dumb beasts lies in religion. But these others, the wiser they were in understanding the error of false religion, the more foolish they became in not believing that any true religion existed. And so, since it is easier to judge others' affairs than one's own, while they saw the downfall of others they did not look ahead to what lay before their own feet. In both cases, then, the utmost folly is found, along with a certain whiff of wisdom, so that you might be at a loss which to call the more foolish — those who take up a false religion, or those who take up none. But as I said, indulgence can be granted to the unlearned, who confess that they are not wise; it cannot be granted to those who, professing wisdom, display folly instead. I am not indeed so unfair as to think they ought to have divined the truth by themselves — which I admit could not be done — but I do demand of them what by reason itself they could have provided. For they would have acted more prudently if, understanding that some true religion existed, and having openly attacked the false ones, they had plainly declared that the true one was not held by men. Perhaps, though, this notion swayed them — namely, that a genuine religion, were one to exist, would announce and defend itself, leaving room for nothing else. For they could by no means see why, or by whom, or in what manner the true religion was being suppressed, since that belongs to the divine mystery and heavenly secret; and unless this is taught, no one can know it by any means. Here is the sum of the matter. The unlearned and foolish hold false religions to be true, because they neither know the true one nor understand the false; the more prudent, on the other hand, because they do not know the true one, either persist in those they understand to be false, so as to seem to hold to something, or worship nothing at all, so as not to fall into error — though this very thing is the greatest error of all, to imitate the life of cattle under the shape of a man. Grasping falsehood, to be sure, does mark a kind of wisdom — yet only the human kind; past that point, no man can advance further. And so many philosophers, as I have shown, did away with religions altogether. But to know what is true belongs to divine wisdom; and man cannot reach this knowledge on his own, unless God himself imparts it to him. Hence the philosophers reached what stood as the summit of merely human wisdom: knowing what was not true, without ever managing to state what was true. There is a well-known saying of Cicero's: 'Would that I could find the truth as easily as I can refute what is false.' Since this exceeds the powers of the human condition, the capacity for this task has been given to us, to whom God has handed down the knowledge of truth. The four remaining books will serve to set this out; for now, as we have begun, let us go on exposing what is false.
As for majesty in images — what could they possess, given they existed wholly at the whim of some insignificant human, free either to fashion them or leave them unmade? Hence in Horace, Priapus speaks thus: 'Once I was a fig-wood trunk, useless timber, when the craftsman, uncertain whether to make a bench or a Priapus, chose that I be a god. A god I then became, the greatest terror of thieves and birds.' Who would not feel safe with so mighty a guardian? Thieves, foolishly enough, dread Priapus's rigid member, even though the very birds — which men suppose are driven off by the terror of his sickle or his member — land, build nests, and dirty these craftsman-made images, for all that they closely resemble men. But Horace, as a writer of satiric verse, mocked the vanity of men; yet those who make such things think they are doing something serious. Indeed the greatest of poets, a man prudent in other matters, is foolish in this alone, and foolish not in a poetic but in an old-womanish way, when in those most polished books he even bids this be done: 'and let the guardian of thieves and birds, with his willow sickle, keep watch as the protection of Hellespontine Priapus.' They worship, then, mortal things, or things made by mortals: for these can be broken, burned, or perish. Buildings crumbling with age often shatter them; consumed by fire they fall away into ash; and very often, unless their own great size protects them or careful guarding fences them in, they end up as loot for thieves. Fearing objects that themselves require protection from collapse, flame, or theft — what greater madness could there be? What vanity to hope for any protection from things that cannot protect even themselves? What perversity to run to the aid of things that, when violated, go unavenged unless their own worshippers step in to avenge them! So where does truth reside? It resides where religion faces no force, where nothing stands exposed to violation, where sacrilege has no foothold. But whatever is subject to eyes and hands is, because it is fragile, utterly alien to any reason of immortality. In vain, then, do men adorn and deck out gods with gold, ivory, and jewels, as if indeed they could take any pleasure from such things. What use are costly gifts to beings that feel nothing? Or is it like giving them to the dead? By the same reasoning, the bodies of the deceased are anointed with perfumes and costly garments and wrapped and buried in the ground — in this way men honor gods who neither felt anything when they were being made nor know anything now that they are worshipped; for they did not gain sensation through consecration. Persius did not approve of golden vessels being brought into temples, thinking it superfluous among religious rites, since it is an instrument not of holiness but of greed. It is far better, he says, to bring to a god whom you rightly worship, as an offering, justice and right composed in the mind, the sacred recesses of the soul, and a heart steeped in noble honor. He felt this excellently and wisely. He ridiculously went on to claim this 'temple gold' referred to dolls a young girl offers Venus — trinkets he likely scorned simply for being so small. What escaped his notice was this: those divine statues and figures, shaped in gold and ivory by Polyclitus, Euphranor, and Phidias, amount to nothing but oversized dolls — dedicated, moreover, not by girls, whose playthings deserve some leniency, but by grown, bearded men. Rightly, then, does Seneca also mock this same folly. 'We are not,' he says, 'children twice, as the common saying goes, but always children; the only difference is that we play at bigger games.' So to these playthings, decked out and grown large, men bring perfumes, incense, and spices; to these they sacrifice rich and fat victims, though these have a mouth but lack the function of teeth; to these they present cloaks and expensive apparel, despite their having no need whatsoever for clothing; to these they consecrate gold and silver, which those who receive possess no more than those who gave them. Nor undeservedly did Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, having gained mastery of Greece by victory, hold such gods in contempt, plunder them, and mock them, seeing that he even accompanied his acts of sacrilege with jesting words. For when he had stripped the golden cloak from Olympian Jupiter, he ordered a woolen one put in its place, claiming gold weighed heavy in the summer heat and chilled in winter's cold, whereas wool suited both seasons equally well. The same man, removing the golden beard from Aesculapius, said it was incongruous and unfair that, while his father Apollo was still beardless and smooth, the son should be seen bearded before the father. Likewise he took away the bowls, ornaments, and small figures held out in the images' outstretched hands, saying he was receiving them, not stealing them; since refusing gifts freely offered by those from whom men sought blessings would be both foolish and thankless in the extreme. All this he did with impunity, because he was king and victor; indeed his usual good fortune followed him — for he lived to old age and passed the kingdom on to his son by his own hand. In his case, then, since men could not avenge the sacrileges, the gods themselves should have been their own avengers. Yet if some humble man had done any such thing, whips, fires, racks, crosses, and whatever else angry and raging men could devise stand ready for him. Yet in punishing those caught committing sacrilege, they betray their own doubt in their gods' power. For why do they not leave to the gods themselves, above all, the task of avenging themselves, if they think the gods capable of anything? Indeed they even suppose it happened by the gods' own power that plunderers of sacred things were caught and held, and they rage not so much out of anger as out of fear that, if they do not avenge the wrong done to the gods, the penalty will be sought from themselves — an incredible vanity indeed, to think that the gods will harm them for the crimes of others, when those very gods, by whom they were violated and despoiled, could do nothing to harm the wrongdoers themselves. But, it will be said, often the gods themselves too have taken vengeance on the sacrilegious. This could have happened by chance, as sometimes, though not always, occurs; but I shall show shortly how it happened. For now I ask why the gods did not avenge on Dionysius so many and so great sacrileges, when he held the gods up to mockery not secretly but openly. Why did they not keep this man, so powerful a despoiler of the sacred, away from their temples, their rites, their images? Why, even after sacred objects had been carried off, did he sail prosperously? A fact he himself, jesting as was his habit, testified to: To his fellow travelers, anxious about shipwreck, he remarked: 'Notice, would you, just how fair a crossing the immortal gods grant to plunderers of temples?' But perhaps he had learned from Plato that the gods are nothing. What of Gaius Verres, whom Cicero, prosecuting him, likens to this very Dionysius, to Phalaris, and to tyrants generally? Did Verres not strip Sicily bare, hauling off divine images together with the shrines' ornaments? It would be tedious to go through every instance; let one be recalled, in which the accuser, with all the powers of his eloquence, with every effort of voice and body, lamented over Ceres — whether of Catina or of Enna: of the one, so great was the religious awe that it was forbidden for men even to enter the secret inner sanctuary of her temple; of the other, so great the antiquity that all histories say the goddess herself first discovered grain on the soil of Enna, and that her virgin daughter was carried off from that very place. Indeed, in the Gracchan period, when the republic was disturbed by seditions and portents, and it was found in the Sibylline verses that the most ancient Ceres must be appeased, envoys were sent to Enna. This Ceres, then — either most sacred, whom it was not even lawful for men to see for the sake of worship, or most ancient, whom the Roman senate and people had propitiated with sacrifices and gifts — was carried off with impunity from her secret and ancient inner shrine by slave brigands sent in by Gaius Verres. And when this same man, asserting that the Sicilians had begged him to take up the cause of the province, used these words: that they no longer even had gods in their own cities to whom they might flee for refuge, since Gaius Verres had carried off their most sacred images from their most revered shrines — as though stripping these gods from their cities and temples somehow banished them from the heavens too. From which it is clear that these gods have nothing more in them than the material out of which they were fashioned. Nor undeservedly did the Sicilians take refuge with you, Marcus Tullius — that is, with a man — since for three years they had learned by experience that those gods were worth nothing; for they would have been most foolish to flee for the defense of human wrongs to gods who could not even be angry on their own behalf against Gaius Verres. But, it will be said, Verres was condemned for these crimes. It was not the gods, then, who took vengeance, but the diligence of Cicero, by which he either crushed Verres's defenders or withstood their influence. What of the fact that for Verres himself this amounted less to a conviction than to a reprieve, so that, just as the immortal gods had granted Dionysius, carrying off the spoils of the gods, a good voyage, so too they seem to have granted Verres a good rest, in which he could enjoy his sacrileges in tranquility? For afterward, amid the burning civil wars, sheltered under the pretext of his condemnation from all danger and fear, he heard of the grave and pitiable ends of others, and he who alone seemed to have fallen while all others stood, in fact stood alone while all others fell, until the triumviral proscription — the very same that carried off Cicero, the avenger of the gods' violated majesty — carried him off too, glutted with plunder wrung from sacrilege, and by then worn down with age and long living. Indeed he was fortunate in this one respect: news reached him, before his own death, of his accuser's brutal end — the gods, no doubt, providentially arranging that this sacrilegious plunderer of their own religion should not die before he had taken the comfort of that vengeance.