Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Therefore, above all in the matter where the whole course of life hangs in the balance, each person ought to trust himself, relying on his own judgment and his own perceptions to search out and weigh the truth—rather than be deceived through trust in the errors of others, as if he himself possessed no share of reason. God has given to all, in due measure, wisdom, so that they might both investigate what they have not heard and weigh what they have heard. Nor does it follow that those who came before us in time came before us in wisdom as well; nor that wisdom is somehow used up by those who came first, if indeed it is given equally to all; it cannot be seized and held, any more than the light and brightness of the sun can be, since as the sun is to the eyes, so wisdom is the light of the human heart. Since, then, to be wise—that is, to seek the truth—is innate in everyone, those strip themselves of wisdom who accept the discoveries of their forebears without any judgment of their own, and let themselves be led by others as cattle are led. But this is where they go wrong: once the name of 'ancestors' has been set up, they think it impossible either that they themselves should understand more, simply because they are called their juniors, or that those others should have erred, simply because they are called their elders. What, then, prevents us from taking our example from those very people—so that just as they handed down to later generations the falsehoods they had found, we, having found the truth, might hand down better things to those who come after us? There remains a great question, one whose treatment comes not from native wit but from learning, and it must be unfolded at length so that nothing at all is left in doubt. For perhaps someone will take refuge in the claim, handed down by many authors of unquestioned standing, that these very beings whom we have shown not to be gods have very often displayed their majesty through prodigies, dreams, auguries, and oracles. And indeed many things worthy of wonder can be listed. First, that when Attus Navius, the greatest of augurs, warned Tarquinius Priscus to undertake nothing new without first taking the auspices, and the king, making light of the credibility of his art, told him to announce, after consulting the birds, whether what he himself had conceived in his mind could be done, and Navius affirmed that it could—'Take, then,' said the king, 'this whetstone, and cut it in two with a razor.' And Navius took it without hesitation and cut it. Then there is the tale that Castor and Pollux were seen at the Lake of Juturna during the Latin war, washing the sweat from their horses, when the shrine dedicated to them, which stood next to the spring, opened of its own accord. That same pair, riding white horses, reportedly appeared during the war against Macedon to Publius Vatienus as he journeyed toward Rome by night, announcing that King Perseus had been defeated and taken captive that very day—a report a letter from Paulus confirmed as true a few days afterward. It is also told as marvelous that the statue of Fortuna Muliebris spoke more than once, and likewise that of Juno Moneta: when Veii had been captured and one of the soldiers, sent to move the statue, jokingly and in play asked her whether she wished to move to Rome, she answered that she wished it. Claudia too is put forward as an example of a wonder. For when, at the bidding of the Sibylline Books, the Idaean Mother was on her way to Rome, the vessel bearing her stuck fast among the shallows of the Tiber, resisting every effort to shift it; it is said that Claudia—a woman always suspected of unchastity because of her excessive care for her looks—knelt down and begged the goddess that, should she judge her pure, the ship would follow her sash; and so the craft, which the whole young manhood of the city had failed to stir, was drawn along by this one woman alone. Equally wondrous is the story that, when a plague raged, Aesculapius was summoned from Epidaurus and is said to have freed the city of Rome from a long-standing pestilence. Cases of sacrilege, too, can be counted, in which the gods are believed to have avenged their own wrong through punishments visited on the offenders in plain sight. Appius Claudius the censor, when he transferred the rites of Hercules to the public slaves, was struck blind, and the family of the Potitii, who had betrayed the rite, was wiped out within a single year. Likewise the censor Fulvius, when he stripped marble tiles from the temple of Juno Lacinia to roof the temple of Fortuna Equestris that he had built at Rome, both lost his mind and, after losing two sons serving in Illyricum, was consumed by the deepest grief of spirit. Turullius, prefect of the fleet under Mark Antony, when he cut timber for his fleet in the sacred grove of Aesculapius at Cos, was later killed by Caesar's soldiers on that very spot. To these examples is added Pyrrhus, who, after taking money from the treasury of Proserpina at Locri, was shipwrecked and dashed upon the shores near the goddess's temple, so that nothing survived intact except that money. Ceres of Miletus likewise grew greatly in the esteem men held for her: after Alexander's forces took the city and soldiers rushed in to plunder her temple, a sudden blaze of light struck every one of them blind. Dreams too are cited which seem to show forth the power of the gods. For Jupiter is said to have appeared in sleep to a plebeian named Tiberius Atinius and instructed him to report to the consuls and senate that the leader of the dance at the last Circus games had displeased him, because a certain Autronius Maximus had led a slave who had been flogged, yoked under the fork, through the middle of the circus to punishment, and that the games therefore ought to be held again; and when he neglected this, he lost his son that very day and was himself seized by a grave illness; and when the same vision came to him again, asking whether he had suffered punishment enough for scorning its bidding, men bore him on a litter into the presence of the consuls; and once the entire affair had been set before the senate, his body was restored to health and he walked home unaided. That dream, too, was no less wondrous, by which Caesar Augustus is said to have been saved. For when, caught up in the civil war against Brutus, he had decided, being gravely ill, to stay out of the battle, a vision of Minerva appeared to his physician Artorius, warning that Caesar ought not, on account of his bodily weakness, to remain in the camp. And so he was carried on a litter into the battle line, and that same day the camp was captured by Brutus. Many further examples of this kind might still be adduced, yet I worry that dwelling too long on laying out these opposing cases would make me seem to have strayed from my subject, or else open me to a charge of empty talkativeness.