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La cité de dieu

CHAPITRE XIII.

DES SUPERSTITIONS RÉPANDUES PARMI LES GENTILS A L’ÉPOQUE DES JUGES.

Après la mort de Jésus Navé, le peuple de Dieu fut gouverné par des Juges, et éprouva tour à tour la bonne et la mauvaise fortune, selon qu’il était digne de grâces ou de châtiments. Il faut rapporter à cette époque l’invention d’un grand nombre de fables célèbres: Triptolème, porté sur des serpents ailés et distribuant du blé, par ordre de Cérès, dans les pays affligés de la famine; le Minotaure et ce labyrinthe inextricable d’où il était impossible de sortir; les Centaures, moitié hommes et moitié chevaux; Cerbère, chien à trois têtes, qui gardait l’entrée des enfers; Phryxus et Hellé, sa soeur, s’envolant sur un bélier ; la Gorgone, à la chevelure de serpents, qui changeait en pierres ceux qui la regardaient; Bellérophon, porté sur un cheval ailé; Amphion, qui attirait les arbres et les rochers au son de sa lyre; Dédale et son fils, qui se firent des ailes pour traverser les airs ; OEdipe, qui résolut l’énigme de Sphinx, monstre à quatre pieds et à visage humain, et le força de se jeter dans son propre abîme; Antée enfin, qu’Hercule étouffa en le soulevant de terre, parce que ce fils de la terre se relevait plus fort toutes les fois qu’il la touchait. Ces fables et autres semblables, jusqu’à la guerre de Troie, où Varron finit son second livre des Antiquités romaines, ont été inventées à l’occasion de quelques événements véritables, et ne sont point honteuses aux dieux. Mais quant à ceux qui ont imaginé que Jupiter enleva Ganymède (crime qui fut commis en effet par le roi Tantalus) et qu’il abusa de Danaé en se changeant en pluie d’or, par où l’on a voulu figurer la séduction d’une femme intéressée, il faut qu’ils aient eu bien mauvaise opinion des hommes pour les avoir crus capables d’ajouter foi à ces rêveries. Cependant ceux qui honorent le plus Jupiter sont les premiers à les soutenir ; et, bien loin de s’indigner contre des inventions pareilles, ils appréhenderaient la colère des dieux, si l’on ne les représentait (393) sur le théâtre. En ce même temps, Latone accoucha d’Apollon, non de celui dont on consultait les oracles, mais d’un autre¹ qui fut berger d’Admète du temps d’Hercule, et qui néanmoins a tellement passé pour un dieu que presque tout le monde le confond avec l’autre. Ce fut aussi alors que Bacchus fil la guerre aux Indiens, accompagné d’une troupe de femmes appelées Bacchantes, plus célèbres par leur fureur que par leur courage. Quelques-uns écrivent qu’il fut vaincu et fait prisonnier; et d’autres, qu’il fut même tué dans le combat par Persée, sans oublier le lieu où il fut enseveli ; et toutefois les démons ont fait instituer des fêtes en son honneur, qu’on appelle Bacchanales, dont le sénat a eu tant de honte après plusieurs siècles, qu’il les a bannies de Rome². Persée et sa femme Andromède vivaient vers le même temps, et, après leur mort, ils furent si constamment réputés pour dieux qu’on ne rougit point d’appeler quelques étoiles de leur nom.

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The City of God

Chapter 13.--What Fables Were Invented at the Time When Judges Began to Rule the Hebrews.

After the death of Joshua the son of Nun, the people of God had judges, in whose times they were alternately humbled by afflictions on account of their sins, and consoled by prosperity through the compassion of God. In those times were invented the fables about Triptolemus, who, at the command of Ceres, borne by winged snakes, bestowed corn on the needy lands in flying over them; about that beast the Minotaur, which was shut up in the Labyrinth, from which men who entered its inextricable mazes could find no exit; about the Centaurs, whose form was a compound of horse and man; about Cerberus, the three-headed dog of hell; about Phryxus and his sister Hellas, who fled, borne by a winged ram; about the Gorgon, whose hair was composed of serpents, and who turned those who looked on her into stone; about Bellerophon, who was carried by a winged horse called Pegasus; about Amphion, who charmed and attracted the stones by the sweetness of his harp; about the artificer Daedalus and his son Icarus, who flew on wings they had fitted on; about OEdipus, who compelled a certain four-footed monster with a human face, called a sphynx, to destroy herself by casting herself headlong, having solved the riddle she was wont to propose as insoluble; about Antaeus, who was the son of the earth, for which reason, on falling on the earth, he was wont to rise up stronger, whom Hercules slew; and perhaps there are others which I have forgotten. These fables, easily found in histories containing a true account of events, bring us down to the Trojan war, at which Marcus Varro has closed his second book about the race of the Roman people; and they are so skillfully invented by men as to involve no scandal to the gods. But whoever have pretended as to Jupiter's rape of Ganymede, a very beautiful boy, that king Tantalus committed the crime, and the fable ascribed it to Jupiter; or as to his impregnating Danäe as a golden shower, that it means that the woman's virtue was corrupted by gold: whether these things were really done or only fabled in those days, or were really done by others and falsely ascribed to Jupiter, it is impossible to tell how much wickedness must have been taken for granted in men's hearts that they should be thought able to listen to such lies with patience. And yet they willingly accepted them, when, indeed, the more devotedly they worshipped Jupiter, they ought the more severely to have punished those who durst say such things of him. But they not only were not angry at those who invented these things, but were afraid that the gods would be angry at them if they did not act such fictions even in the theatres. In those times Latona bore Apollo, not him of whose oracle we have spoken above as so often consulted, but him who is said, along with Hercules, to have fed the flocks of king Admetus; yet he was so believed to be a god, that very many, indeed almost all, have believed him to be the selfsame Apollo. Then also Father Liber made war in India, and led in his army many women called Bacchae, who were notable not so much for valor as for fury. Some, indeed, write that this Liber was both conquered and bound and some that he was slain in Persia, even telling where he was buried; and yet in his name, as that of a god, the unclean demons have instituted the sacred, or rather the sacrilegious, Bacchanalia, of the outrageous vileness of which the senate, after many years, became so much ashamed as to prohibit them in the city of Rome. Men believed that in those times Perseus and his wife Andromeda were raised into heaven after their death, so that they were not ashamed or afraid to mark out their images by constellations, and call them by their names.