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The City of God

Chapter 30.--What Kind of Things Even Their Worshippers Have Owned They Have Thought About the Gods of the Nations.

Cicero the augur laughs at auguries, and reproves men for regulating the purposes of life by the cries of crows and jackdaws. ¹ But it will be said that an academic philosopher, who argues that all things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these matters. In the second book of his De Natura Deorum, ² he introduces Lucilius Balbus, who, after showing that superstitions have their origin in physical and philosophical truths, expresses his indignation at the setting up of images and fabulous notions, speaking thus: "Do you not therefore see that from true and useful physical discoveries the reason may be drawn away to fabulous and imaginary gods? This gives birth to false opinions and turbulent errors, and superstitions well-nigh old-wifeish. For both the forms of the gods, and their ages, and clothing, and ornaments, are made familiar to us; their genealogies, too, their marriages, kinships, and all things about them, are debased to the likeness of human weakness. They are even introduced as having perturbed minds; for we have accounts of the lusts, cares, and angers of the gods. Nor, indeed, as the fables go, have the gods been without their wars and battles. And that not only when, as in Homer, some gods on either side have defended two opposing armies, but they have even carried on wars on their own account, as with the Titans or with the Giants. Such things it is quite absurd either to say or to believe: they are utterly frivolous and groundless." Behold, now, what is confessed by those who defend the gods of the nations. Afterwards he goes on to say that some things belong to superstition, but others to religion, which he thinks good to teach according to the Stoics. "For not only the philosophers," he says, "but also our forefathers, have made a distinction between superstition and religion. For those," he says, "who spent whole days in prayer, and offered sacrifice, that their children might outlive them, are called superstitious." ³ Who does not see that he is trying, while he fears the public prejudice, to praise the religion of the ancients, and that he wishes to disjoin it from superstition, but cannot find out how to do so? For if those who prayed and sacrificed all day were called superstitious by the ancients, were those also called so who instituted (what he blames) the images of the gods of diverse age and distinct clothing, and invented the genealogies of gods, their marriages, and kinships? When, therefore, these things are found fault with as superstitious, he implicates in that fault the ancients who instituted and worshipped such images. Nay, he implicates himself, who, with whatever eloquence he may strive to extricate himself and be free, was yet under the necessity of venerating these images; nor dared he so much as whisper in a discourse to the people what in this disputation he plainly sounds forth. Let us Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our God--not to heaven and earth, as that author argues, but to Him who has made heaven and earth; because these superstitions, which that Balbus, like a babbler, ⁴ scarcely reprehends, He, by the most deep lowliness of Christ, by the preaching of the apostles, by the faith of the martyrs dying for the truth and living with the truth, has overthrown, not only in the hearts of the religious, but even in the temples of the superstitious, by their own free service.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXX: Qualia de dis gentium etiam cultores eorum se sentire fateantur.

Cicero augur inridet auguria et inridet homines corui et corniculae uocibus uitae consilia moderantes. sed iste Academicus, qui omnia esse contendit incerta, indignus est qui habeat ullam in his rebus auctoritatem. disputat apud eum Quintus Lucilius Balbus in secundo de deorum natura libro, et cum ipse superstitiones ex natura rerum uelut physicas et philosophicas inserat, indignatur tamen institutioni simulacrorum et opinionibus fabulosis ita loquens: uidetis ne igitur, ut a physicis rebus bene atque utiliter inuentis ratio sit tracta ad commenticios et fictos deos? quae res genuit falsas opiniones erroresque turbulentos et superstitiones paene aniles. et formae enim nobis deorum et aetates et uestitus ornatusque noti sunt, genera praeterea, coniugia, cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem inbecillitatis humanae. nam et perturbatis animis inducuntur; accepimus enim deorum cupiditates aegritudines iracundias. nec uero, ut fabulae ferunt, di bellis proeliisque caruerunt; nec solum, ut apud Homerum, cum duos exercitus contrarios alii di ex alia parte defenderent, sed etiam - ut cum Titanis aut cum gigantibus - sua propria bella gesserunt. haec et dicuntur et creduntur stultissime et plena sunt uanitatis summaeque leuitatis. ecce interim quae confitentur qui defendunt deos gentium. deinde cum haec ad superstitionem pertinere dicat, ad religionem uero, quae ipse secundum Stoicos uidetur docere: non enim philosophi solum, inquit, uerum etiam maiores nostri superstitionem a religione separauerunt; nam qui totos dies precabantur, inquit, et immolabant, ut sibi sui liberi superstites essent, superstitiosi sunt appellati. quis non intellegat eum conari, dum consuetudinem ciuitatis timet, religionem laudare maiorum eamque a superstitione uelle seiungere, sed quomodo id possit non inuenire? si enim a maioribus illi sunt appellati superstitiosi, qui totos dies precabantur et immolabant, numquid et illi, qui instituerunt - quod iste reprehendit - deorum simulacra diuersa aetate et ueste distincta, deorum genera coniugia cognationes? haec utique cum tamquam superstitiosa culpantur, inplicat ista culpa maiores talium simulacrorum institutores atque cultores; inplicat et ipsum, qui, quantolibet eloquio se in libertatem nitatur euoluere, necesse habebat ista uenerari; nec quod in hac disputatione disertus insonat, muttire auderet in populi contione. agamus itaque Christiani domino deo nostro gratias, non caelo et terrae, sicut iste disputat, sed ei qui fecit caelum et terram, qui has superstitiones, quas iste Balbus uelut balbutiens uix reprehendit, per altissimam Christi humilitatem, per apostolorum praedicationem, per fidem martyrum pro ueritate morientium et cum ueritate uiuentium non solum in cordibus religiosis uerum etiam in aedibus superstitiosis libera suorum seruitute subuertit.