Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As for the men I mentioned earlier, once they had unfolded, right before me and to my sorrow, the impious pages they had drafted, something roused me: their haughty disrespect for religion, my own sense of what the truth actually was, and, I believe, God himself. So I undertook this task — to use every ounce of my mind's strength to answer those who accuse justice, and not merely to write against this handful, easily crushed in a few words, but to bring down, in one single onslaught, everyone anywhere engaged in or having finished that same undertaking. Plenty of others, no doubt — scattered across many places, writing not only in Greek but in Latin too — have erected their own monuments to injustice. Because answering each one individually was impossible, I decided to handle the whole matter so as to demolish the earlier authors along with everything they wrote, while also stripping later writers of any opening to write or reply. Let them simply listen: I am confident I can bring about that whoever learns these things will either accept what he once condemned or, failing that, at least stop mocking it eventually. Now Tertullian did plead this very case exhaustively in his book titled the Apology; and yet, answering one's accusers — a task confined to defense or denial — differs from the work of instruction, which is what I am doing here, a task that must necessarily hold the whole substance of doctrine within it. So I did not shy from this labor, meaning to complete what Cyprian left unfinished in the treatise where, as he himself puts it, he tries to answer Demetrianus's snarling and raging against the truth. He failed to handle that material as he should have: the man needed refutation not through scriptural testimony, which he regarded as empty invention and fabrication anyway, but through argument and rational proof. Given that Cyprian was dealing with someone ignorant of the truth, he should have set the divine readings aside briefly, to have shaped him from the beginning as one still raw, and shown him gradually the first beginnings of light, lest, the whole light being thrust upon him at once, he be blinded. For just as an infant cannot take the strength of solid, hardy food because of the tenderness of his stomach, but is nourished on the liquid softness of milk until, his strength grown firm, he can feed on sturdier fare, so too this man, since he could not yet grasp the divine, ought first to have been offered human testimonies — that is, those of philosophers and historians — so that he might be refuted above all by his own authorities. Because Cyprian did not do this, carried away by his outstanding learning in the divine scriptures, so that he was content with those alone on which faith rests, I came forward, with God's inspiration, to do this myself, and at the same time to prepare a path for others to follow. And if, urged on by us, learned and eloquent men should begin to turn themselves this way and choose rather to display their talents and their power of speech on this field of truth, no one could doubt that false religions would soon vanish and all philosophy would fall, once everyone were persuaded that this alone is religion, and this alone, likewise, is true wisdom. But I have wandered farther than I intended.
Now the discussion proposed concerning justice must be delivered. Justice is either itself the highest virtue, or is itself the source of virtue; and not only philosophers have sought her, but poets too, who came much earlier and, before the name of philosophy was even born, were regarded as wise men. These plainly understood that she was absent from human affairs, and they imagined that, offended by the vices of men, she had left the earth and migrated to heaven. And wanting to depict righteous living — since their habit is to deliver teachings wrapped in riddles — they reach back to Saturn's era, the one they name golden, drawing examples of justice from it and describing the state human life held while she still lingered on earth. And this indeed should be taken not as poetic fiction, but as truth. For while Saturn reigned, the worship of the gods had not yet been established, nor had that generation yet been consecrated to a belief in that divinity; God, in fact, was worshipped. And therefore there were neither quarrels nor enmities nor wars; wild madness had not yet bared the sword, as Germanicus Caesar says in his poem on Aratus; discord was unknown even between kin, let alone between strangers; no blade of any kind had yet been drawn. For who, with justice present and thriving, would think either of guarding himself, since no one plotted against him, or of another's ruin, since no one coveted anything? Men preferred to live content with meager fare, as Cicero relates in his own work — which is a mark proper to our own religion. Marking off or splitting a field with a boundary was not even permitted: people looked for their sustenance jointly, because God had granted the whole earth as shared property, meant for a shared existence — not so that wild, frenzied greed could seize everything for itself, leaving no one without what nature produced for everyone. This saying of the poets ought to be taken not as meaning that nothing at all was then private, but as figured in the poetic manner, so that we understand men were so generous that they did not shut away the crops that grew for them, nor brood alone over hidden stores, but admitted the poor to share in the fruit of their own labor. Rivers of milk, and rivers of nectar, already flowed. Nor is this strange, since the storehouses of the just stood open generously to all, and no greed, intercepting the gifts of heaven, made hunger and thirst common to the crowd, but all were equally abundant, since those who had gave freely and generously to those who had not. But once Saturn's son drove him out and he fled Jove's forces to Latium, stripped of his throne and exiled — because by that point people had, whether cowed by the new ruler or corrupted on their own initiative, given up worshipping God and taken instead to treating the king as God, since he himself, nearly a father-killer, set an example for others in trampling piety — justice, that most upright of maidens, quickly deserted the earth, but not, as Cicero says, to settle in Jove's kingdom and take a place in heaven. For how could she reside or dwell in the kingdom of one who drove his own father from his throne, hunted him down in war, and hurled him as an exile across the whole world? He it was who added deadly venom to the black serpents and bade the wolves prey — that is, he sowed hatred, envy, and deceit in men, so that they became as venomous as serpents, as rapacious as wolves. And indeed this is truly done by those who persecute the just and the faithful of God, and who give judges the power to rage against the innocent. Perhaps Jupiter did something of this sort to storm and overthrow justice, and for that reason he is said to have made serpents savage and to have sharpened the wolves. Then came the madness of war and the love of possession. Nor was this undeserved: with the worship of God gone, people forfeited their grasp of good and evil along with it. The shared life mankind once had fractured, and the bond holding human society together came apart. Then they began to raise their hands against one another, to lay ambushes, and to win glory for themselves from human blood.
The source of all these evils was greed, which of course burst forth from contempt of the true majesty. For they not only failed to share with others what flowed abundantly to them, but even seized what belonged to others, dragging everything into private gain; and things that individuals had once labored to produce for the use of all were now gathered into the households of the few. For in order to subject the rest to servitude, they began first to withdraw and gather up the necessities of life and to keep them shut up securely, so as to make the gifts of heaven their own — not out of any humanity, of which there was none in them, but so as to scrape together every instrument of greed and avarice. They even enacted for themselves, under the name of justice, laws most iniquitous and unjust, by which they might protect their plunder and greed against the force of the multitude. Thus their authority was measured only by how far they surpassed others in strength, in wealth, or in wickedness. And because not a shred of justice remained in them — whose functions are kindness, fairness, and compassion — they came to revel in a swollen, arrogant inequality, setting themselves above everyone else through armed escorts, weapons, and conspicuous clothing. From this they devised for themselves honors and purple robes and the fasces, so that, propped up by the terror of axes and swords, they might command, as if by the right of masters, men struck down and trembling before them. It was into this condition that that king set human life, who, having defeated and put his father to flight, seized not a kingdom but an impious tyranny by force and armed men, and abolished that golden and just age, and drove men into wickedness and impiety precisely by diverting their worship away from God onto himself — something the sheer terror of his overbearing power had extorted from them. For who would not fear a man girded with arms, surrounded by the unaccustomed flash of iron and swords? Or whom would he spare who belonged to another, when he had not spared even his own father? Whom indeed should he fear, who had defeated in war and destroyed by slaughter the Titans, a race strong and outstanding in might? What wonder, then, if the whole multitude, oppressed by unaccustomed fear, gave way to the flattery of one man? Him they revered, to him they paid the highest honor. And since the imitation of a king's habits and vices is judged a form of homage, all cast off piety, lest by living devoutly they should seem to reproach the king for his crime. Thus, corrupted by constant imitation, they abandoned the divine law, and little by little the habit of living wickedly became custom. Not a trace survived of that earlier era's devout, excellent state; justice, banished, hauled truth off with her and left men error, ignorance, and blindness in its place. The poets therefore spoke carelessly when they sang of her fleeing to Jove's realm. If justice truly stood on earth during the age they call golden, then Jove — who overturned that golden age — must indeed have been the one who drove her out. But this shift of ages and this banishing of justice amount, as I noted, to nothing more than turning away from divine religion, the one thing that makes a man cherish his fellow man and recognize the fraternal bond linking them, since God is father to all alike, so that he may share the common gifts of God, the common father, with those who do not have them, harm no one, oppress no one, shut the door neither to a guest nor his ear to one who begs, but be generous, kind, and open-handed — which Tully judged to be the praises proper to kings. That, in truth, is what justice means, and that is the golden age — corrupted first under Jove's reign, then wiped out entirely, both by Jove himself and by his whole line, once they were deified and the cults of many gods took hold.
But God, like a most indulgent father, as the last age drew near, sent a messenger to bring back that ancient age and the justice that had fled, lest the human race be tossed about forever by the worst errors. So that golden era's likeness came back, with justice truly given back to the earth, though granted only to a small number — for justice is simply devoted, reverent worship of the single God, nothing more. But someone may perhaps be troubled as to why, if this is justice, it was not given to the whole human race, nor did the whole multitude agree to it. This is a matter for a longer discussion — why God, in giving justice to the earth, kept back a diversity of response — which I have explained elsewhere, and will explain again wherever it fittingly comes up. For now it is enough to note this briefly: that virtue either cannot be perceived unless it has opposing vices, or is not perfect unless it is exercised against adversities. For God willed there to be this distance between good and evil, so that we might know the quality of the good from the evil, and likewise of the evil from the good; neither can be understood once the other is removed. God, therefore, did not shut out evil, so that the very rationale of virtue might stand. For how could patience keep its force and its name, if there were nothing that compelled us to suffer? How could faith devoted to its God earn praise, unless there were someone who wished to turn it away from God? For this reason he allowed the unjust to be more powerful, so that they might have the means to compel toward evil; for this reason he allowed them to be more numerous, so that virtue might be precious, being rare. This very point Quintilian showed admirably and briefly in the speech on the Covered Head: for, he says, what virtue would innocence be, if its rarity had not given it its praise? But since nature is so ordered that hatred, greed, and anger drive blind whatever they fix upon, a fault seems to be beyond the reach of man. Otherwise, if nature had given equal feelings to all, piety would be nothing at all. How true this is, the very necessity of reason teaches. If virtue's role is to battle courageously against evils and vices, then plainly there can be no virtue at all in a world stripped of evil and vice. So that virtue might be made whole and complete, God preserved the very opposite force it needed as an adversary to fight: shaken by trials that test its footing, it takes hold, and the more often it is struck, the more firmly it grows strong. This, no doubt, is the reason why, although justice has been sent to men, that age is still not called golden — because it did not remove evil, so as to keep that diversity which alone contains the mystery of the divine religion.
Those, then, who think no one just have justice before their very eyes, but refuse to see her. For why is it that they describe her, whether in poems or in every kind of speech, lamenting her absence, when it would be the easiest thing in the world to be good, if only they wished it? Why do you paint for us an empty justice and wish her to fall from heaven as though shaped in some statue? Behold, she is in your sight: take her up, if you can, and set her in the dwelling of your own breast, and do not think it a difficult thing or foreign to the times. Be just and good yourselves, and the justice you are searching for will come after you unbidden. Cast every wicked thought out of your hearts, and at once that golden age will return to you — something achievable only once you take up worship of the one true God. Yet you, keeping the gods' cults intact, still long for justice on earth — an outcome that simply cannot occur. Nor indeed could it happen even then, in the time you suppose, since — those gods you impiously worship not yet being born — it must have been the worship of the one God alone that prevailed across the earth: the God, that is, who curses wickedness and demands goodness, whose shrine is not made of stone or clay but is man himself, carrying as he does the very likeness of God — a shrine decorated not with gold and jewels that decay, but with the everlasting gifts the virtues bring. Learn, then, if there is anything left of your reason, that men are wicked and unjust for this reason, that gods are worshipped; and that for this reason all evils grow daily heavier upon human affairs — because people have forsaken the one who made and rules this world, because irreverent cults contrary to right conduct have been embraced, and finally because you do not even allow God to be worshipped, even by the few. But if the one God alone were worshipped, there would be no quarrels and wars, since men would know themselves to be sons of the one God, and therefore bound together by the sacred and inviolable tie of a divine kinship; there would be no plots laid, since men would know what punishments God prepares for those who kill souls — he who sees through hidden crimes and even thoughts themselves; there would be no frauds and robberies, if men had learned, at God's bidding, to be content with their own and with little, preferring solid and eternal things to the fragile and the fleeting; adultery, debauchery, and the selling of women's bodies would vanish, if everyone understood that God condemns any desire pursued beyond the aim of producing children; nor would a woman ever be forced by need to defile her own modesty chasing the most disgraceful means of living, since men would restrain their lust, and the devout and religious generosity of those who have would come to the aid of those who have not. There would not, then, as I have said, be all these evils on earth, if all swore themselves to the law of God, if all did what our one people alone does. Human affairs would be so blessed, so golden in state, were gentleness, devotion, peace, innocence, fairness, restraint, and faith to reside across the entire globe! Governing men would then require none of these countless, varied laws, since a single divine law would be enough to secure flawless innocence, nor would there be need of prisons or the swords of magistrates or the terror of punishments, since the wholesome force of the heavenly precepts, poured into human hearts, would of itself train men to the works of justice. As things stand now, though, men do evil simply because they do not grasp what is right and good. This indeed Cicero saw: for, disputing on the laws, he says that just as the world, in one and the same nature, holds together and is sustained by all its parts agreeing with one another, so all men, though joined together by nature, are set at odds by depravity, and fail to grasp that they share one blood and answer to the very same guardianship — a truth that, if firmly grasped, would let men live as the gods do. It is, therefore, this unjust and irreverent worship of the gods that has introduced every evil by which humanity destroys itself, one against another. For those who denied God, the common father of all, like faithless and rebellious children, could not possibly hold on to piety.