Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] In short, <...> to their own founders and benefactors <...>, you do not deny it with regard to all those whom antiquity was willing to call gods, and whom posterity, following that same willingness, went on believing to be gods <...> and you go on granting them worship still <...> [2] Well, this is a towering presumption of superstitions -- one by which we are asked to believe <...> that it is for this very reason, namely, that the Romans have deserved so long-lasting a mastery over the whole world through their scrupulous, dutiful observance of religious rites, that they now prevail and go on prevailing over all the other nations who might otherwise rival or even surpass them in power <...> as though piety, and piety alone, had built their empire and kept it standing.
No doubt it was Sterculus and Mutunus and Larentina who advanced this empire, admitted into Roman law! [4] For I would not suppose that foreign gods favored a foreign people rather than their own, as though they became, so to speak, deserters and abandoners -- nay, betrayers -- of their native soil, where they were born, grew up, dwelt, and were buried. [5] Surely not even Jupiter would have allowed Crete to be crushed under the Roman rods, forgetting that cave of Ida, the Corybantic cymbals, and the most delightful fragrance of his nurse! Would he not have set his own tomb above the whole Capitol, that the land which covers Jupiter's ashes might rather hold the kingship? [6] Would Juno have wished her own city, "loved though Samos be set beneath it," to be burned by the fires of Aeneas's descendants? As far as I know:
here were her arms, here her chariot; that this should be a kingdom for the nations, if the fates in any way allow, even then she both aimed for it and cherished it.
Poor goddess -- she held no sway whatsoever over the fates! Yet even so, destiny granted Rome no greater distinction, when Carthage yielded herself to Rome, than it granted to Larentina!
[8] If these gods have the power to bestow empire -- <...> for after all Jupiter held sway in Crete, while Saturn ruled Italy, and Isis governed Egypt <...> where each reigned, and to whom, besides, many are recorded to have offered worship? [9] So then <...> makes men masters, and turns the surrendered subjects of Admetus into citizens whose empire he enlarges, all while cheating Croesus, his own generous worshipper, out of his kingdom by ambiguous oracles. Did the god fear to foretell plainly and steadily the truth about the ruin of that kingdom?
[10] <...> with power to reign <...> as though they could have guarded their own cities <...> If they had the power to grant it to the Romans, why did Minerva not defend Athens from Xerxes, or Apollo rescue Delphi from the hand of Pyrrhus?
Let those gods who lost their own cities go on protecting the city of Rome, if that is what Roman religion has earned! And yet was not superstition sought out only after supreme power was already won, once wealth had already increased? [12] Even though sacred rites were introduced by Numa, your affairs were not yet cheated by images or temples of the divine. [13] Frugal was their religion then, and poor their superstition; the altars were makeshift, the vessels plain, the smoke from them thin, and the god himself nowhere to be found. Therefore they were not religious before they were great; nor were they great because they were religious.
But how can it seem that empire came to the Romans on account of religion and the most profound care of the gods, when it was rather increased by wronging the gods? [15] Unless I am mistaken, every kingdom or empire is sought by wars and enlarged by wars. And in wars, <...> both cities and the gods of cities suffer alike. For the same devastation destroys both walls and temples, the same slaughter kills both citizens and priests, the same plunder seizes both the profane and the sacred. [16] There are as many sacrileges of the Romans as there are trophies, and as many gods as there are triumphs over nations. And their captive images do not love <...>. But since they feel nothing, harming them costs nothing, and because harming them costs nothing, they are worshipped all in vain. [17] And so those whose greatness has grown from sacrilege cannot be seen to have increased by the merits of religion, <...> but rather to have grown by their very wrongdoing.
Whole nations have held empire, each in its own time -- Assyrians, then Medes, then Persians, then Egyptians; some hold it still, and yet those who lost it did not lack religion, worship, and the propitiation of their gods while they held it, until almost the whole dominion passed to the Romans. [19] So the lot of the times has turned <...>. Ask who has ordered the changing of the times: the same one dispenses kingdoms, and now he has gathered into Roman hands that total sum, as if collecting into one strongbox money exacted from many accounts. What he has decided to do with it, those nearest to him know!