Edition Masquer
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput VII: Quod Platonici figmentis poetarum infamatos adserant deos de contrariorum studiorum certamine, cum hae partes daemonum, non deorum sint.

Quodsi quisquam dicit, non ex omnium, sed ex malorum daemonum numero esse, quos poetae quorundam hominum osores et amatores deos non procul a ueritate confingunt - hos enim dixit Apuleius salo mentis per omnes cogitationum aestus fluctuare - : quomodo istud intellegere poterimus, quando, cum hoc diceret, non quorundam, id est malorum, sed omnium daemonum medietatem propter aeria corpora inter deos et homines describebat? hoc enim ait fingere poetas, quod ex istorum daemonum numero deos faciunt et eis deorum nomina inponunt et quibus uoluerint hominibus ex his amicos inimicos que distribuunt ficti carminis inpunita licentia, cum deos ab his daemonum moribus et caelesti loco et beatitudinis opulentia remotos esse perhibeat. haec est ergo fictio poetarum deos dicere, qui di non sunt, eosque sub deorum nominibus inter se decertare propter homines, quos pro studio partium diligunt uel oderunt. non procul autem a ueritate dicit hanc esse fictionem, quoniam deorum appellati uocabulis, qui di non sunt, tales tamen describuntur daemones, quales sunt. denique hinc esse dicit Homericam illam Mineruam, quae mediis coetibus Graium cohibendo Achilli interuenit. quod ergo Minerua illa fuerit, poeticum uult esse figmentum, eo quod Mineruam deam putat eamque inter deos, quos omnes bonos beatosque credit, in alta aetheria sede conlocat, procul a conuersatione mortalium; quod autem aliquis daemon fuerit Graecis fauens Troianisque contrarius, sicut alius aduersus Graecos Troianorum opitulator, quem Veneris seu Martis nomine idem poeta commemorat, quos deos iste talia non agentes in habitationibus caelestibus ponit, et hi daemones pro eis, quos amabant, contra eos, quos oderant, inter se decertauerint, hoc non procul a ueritate poetas dixisse confessus est. de his quippe ista dixerunt, quos hominibus simili motu cordis et salo mentis per omnes cogitationum aestus fluctuare testatur, ut possint amores et odia non pro iustitia, sed sicut populus similis eorum in uenatoribus et aurigis secundum suarum studia partium pro aliis aduersus alios exercere. id enim uidetur philosophus curasse Platonicus, ne, cum haec a poetis canerentur, non a daemonibus mediis, sed ab ipsis dis, quorum nomina poetae fingendo ponunt, fieri crederentur.

Traduction Masquer
The City of God

Chapter 7.--That the Platonists Maintain that the Poets Wrong the Gods by Representing Them as Distracted by Party Feeling, to Which the Demons and Not the Gods, are Subject.

But if any one says that it is not of all the demons, but only of the wicked, that the poets, not without truth, say that they violently love or hate certain men,--for it was of them Apuleius said that they were driven about by strong currents of emotion,--how can we accept this interpretation, when Apuleius, in the very same connection, represents all the demons, and not only the wicked, as intermediate between gods and men by their aerial bodies? The fiction of the poets, according to him, consists in their making gods of demons, and giving them the names of gods, and assigning them as allies or enemies to individual men, using this poetical license, though they profess that the gods are very different in character from the demons, and far exalted above them by their celestial abode and wealth of beatitude. This, I say, is the poets' fiction, to say that these are gods who are not gods, and that, under the names of gods, they fight among themselves about the men whom they love or hate with keen partisan feeling. Apuleius says that this is not far from the truth, since, though they are wrongfully called by the names of the gods, they are described in their own proper character as demons. To this category, he says, belongs the Minerva of Homer, "who interposed in the ranks of the Greeks to restrain Achilles." ¹ For that this was Minerva he supposes to be poetical fiction; for he thinks that Minerva is a goddess, and he places her among the gods whom he believes to be all good and blessed in the sublime ethereal region, remote from intercourse with men. But that there was a demon favorable to the Greeks and adverse to the Trojans, as another, whom the same poet mentions under the name of Venus or Mars (gods exalted above earthly affairs in their heavenly habitations), was the Trojans' ally and the foe of the Greeks, and that these demons fought for those they loved against those they hated,--in all this he owned that the poets stated something very like the truth. For they made these statements about beings to whom he ascribes the same violent and tempestuous passions as disturb men, and who are therefore capable of loves and hatreds not justly formed, but formed in a party spirit, as the spectators in races or hunts take fancies and prejudices. It seems to have been the great fear of this Platonist that the poetical fictions should be believed of the gods, and not of the demons who bore their names.