Traduction Masquer
The City of God

Chapter 18.--What the History of Sallust Reveals Regarding the Life of the Romans, Either When Straitened by Anxiety or Relaxed in Security.

I will therefore pause, and adduce the testimony of Sallust himself, whose words in praise of the Romans (that "equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of laws than of nature") have given occasion to this discussion. He was referring to that period immediately after the expulsion of the kings, in which the city became great in an incredibly short space of time. And yet this same writer acknowledges in the first book of his history, in the very exordium of his work, that even at that time, when a very brief interval had elapsed after the government had passed from kings to consuls, the more powerful men began to act unjustly, and occasioned the defection of the people from the patricians, and other disorders in the city. For after Sallust had stated that the Romans enjoyed greater harmony and a purer state of society between the second and third Punic wars than at any other time, and that the cause of this was not their love of good order, but their fear lest the peace they had with Carthage might be broken (this also, as we mentioned, Nasica contemplated when he opposed the destruction of Carthage, for he supposed that fear would tend to repress wickedness, and to preserve wholesome ways of living), he then goes on to say: "Yet, after the destruction of Carthage, discord, avarice, ambition, and the other vices which are commonly generated by prosperity, more than ever increased." If they "increased," and that "more than ever," then already they had appeared, and had been increasing. And so Sallust adds this reason for what he said. "For," he says, "the oppressive measures of the powerful, and the consequent secessions of the plebs from the patricians, and other civil dissensions, had existed from the first, and affairs were administered with equity and well-tempered justice for no longer a period than the short time after the expulsion of the kings, while the city was occupied with the serious Tuscan war and Tarquin's vengeance." You see how, even in that brief period after the expulsion of the kings, fear, he acknowledges, was the cause of the interval of equity and good order. They were afraid, in fact, of the war which Tarquin waged against them, after he had been driven from the throne and the city, and had allied himself with the Tuscans. But observe what he adds: "After that, the patricians treated the people as their slaves, ordering them to be scourged or beheaded just as the kings had done, driving them from their holdings, and harshly tyrannizing over those who had no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive measures, and most of all by exorbitant usury, and obliged to contribute both money and personal service to the constant wars, at length took arms and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus obtained for themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the second Punic war that put an end on both sides to discord and strife." You see what kind of men the Romans were, even so early as a few years after the expulsion of the kings; and it is of these men he says, that "equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of law than of nature."

Now, if these were the days in which the Roman republic shows fairest and best, what are we to say or think of the succeeding age, when, to use the words of the same historian, "changing little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was, it became utterly wicked and dissolute?" This was, as he mentions, after the destruction of Carthage. Sallust's brief sum and sketch of this period may be read in his own history, in which he shows how the profligate manners which were propagated by prosperity resulted at last even in civil wars. He says: "And from this time the primitive manners, instead of undergoing an insensible alteration as hitherto they had done, were swept away as by a torrent: the young men were so depraved by luxury and avarice, that it may justly be said that no father had a son who could either preserve his own patrimony, or keep his hands off other men's." Sallust adds a number of particulars about the vices of Sylla, and the debased condition of the republic in general; and other writers make similar observations, though in much less striking language.

However, I suppose you now see, or at least any one who gives his attention has the means of seeing, in what a sink of iniquity that city was plunged before the advent of our heavenly King. For these things happened not only before Christ had begun to teach, but before He was even born of the Virgin. If, then, they dare not impute to their gods the grievous evils of those former times, more tolerable before the destruction of Carthage, but intolerable and dreadful after it, although it was the gods who by their malign craft instilled into the minds of men the conceptions from which such dreadful vices branched out on all sides, why do they impute these present calamities to Christ, who teaches life-giving truth, and forbids us to worship false and deceitful gods, and who, abominating and condemning with His divine authority those wicked and hurtful lusts of men, gradually withdraws His own people from a world that is corrupted by these vices, and is falling into ruins, to make of them an eternal city, whose glory rests not on the acclamations of vanity, but on the judgment of truth?

Edition Masquer
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XVIII: Quae de moribus Romanorum aut metu conpressis aut securitate resolutis Sallustii prodat historia.

Itaque habebo modum et ipsum Sallustium testem potius adhibebo, qui cum in laude Romanorum dixisset, unde nobis iste sermo ortus est: ius bonumque apud eos non legibus magis quam natura ualebat, praedicans illud tempus, quo expulsis regibus incredibiliter ciuitas breui aetatis spatio plurimum creuit, idem tamen in primo historiae suae libro atque ipso eius exordio fatetur etiam tunc, cum ad consules a regibus esset translata respublica, post paruum interuallum iniurias ualidiorum et ob eas discessionem plebis a patribus aliasque in urbe dissensiones fuisse. nam cum optimis moribus et maxima concordia populum Romanum inter secundum et postremum bellum Carthaginiense commemorasset egisse causam que huius boni non amorem iustitiae, sed stante Carthagine metum pacis infidae fuisse dixisset - unde et Nasica ille ad reprimendam nequitiam seruandosque istos mores optimos, ut metu uitia cohiberentur, Carthaginem nolebat euerti - , continuo subiecit idem Sallustius et ait: at discordia et auaritia atque ambitio et cetera secundis rebus oriri sueta mala post Carthaginis excidium maxime aucta sunt, ut intellegeremus etiam ante oriri solere et augeri. unde subnectens cur hoc dixerit: nam iniuriae, inquit, ualidiorum et ob eas discessio plebis a patribus aliaeque dissensiones domi fuere iam inde a principio, neque amplius quam regibus exactis, dum metus a Tarquinio et bellum graue cum Etruria positum est, aequo et modesto iure agitatum. uides quemadmodum etiam illo breui tempore, ut regibus exactis, id est eiectis, aliquantum aequo et modesto iure ageretur, metum dixit fuisse causam, quoniam metuebatur bellum, quod rex Tarquinius regno atque urbe pulsus Etruscis sociatus contra Romanos gerebat. adtende itaque quid deinde contexat: dein, inquit, seruili imperio patres plebem exercere, de uita atque tergo regio more consulere, agro pellere et ceteris expertibus soli in imperio agere. quibus saeuitiis et maxime faenore obpressa plebes cum adsiduis bellis tributum et militiam simul toleraret, armata montem sacrum atque Auentinum insedit, tumque tribunos plebis et alia iura sibi parauit. discordiarum et certaminis utrimque finis fuit secundum Punicum bellum. cernis ex quo tempore, id est paruo interuallo post reges exactos, quales Romani fuerint, de quibus ait: ius bonumque apud eos non legibus magis quam natura ualebat. porro si illa tempora talia reperiuntur, quibus pulcherrima atque optima fuisse praedicatur Romana respublica, quid iam de consequenti aetate dicendum aut cogitandum arbitramur, cum paulatim mutata, ut eiusdem historici uerbis utar, ex pulcherrima atque optima pessima ac flagitiosissima facta est, post Carthaginis uidelicet, ut commemorauit, excidium? quae tempora ipse Sallustius quemadmodum breuiter recolat et describat, in eius historia legi potest; quantis malis morum, quae secundis rebus exorta sunt, usque ad bella ciuilia demonstret esse peruentum. ex quo tempore, ut ait, maiorum mores non paulatim ut antea, sed torrentis modo praecipitati, adeo iuuentus luxu atque auaritia corrupta, ut merito dicatur genitos esse, qui neque ipsi habere possent res familiares neque alios pati. dicit deinde plura Sallustius de Sullae uitiis ceteraque foeditate reipublicae, et alii scriptores in haec consentiunt, quamuis eloquio multum inpari. cernis tamen, ut opinor, et quisquis aduerterit, facillime perspicit, conluuie morum pessimorum quo illa ciuitas prolapsa fuerit ante nostri superni regis aduentum. haec enim gesta sunt non solum antequam Christus in carne praesens docere coepisset, uerum etiam antequam de uirgine natus esset. cum igitur tot et tanta mala temporum illorum uel tolerabiliora superius, uel post euersam Carthaginem intoleranda et horrenda dis suis inputare non audeant, opiniones humanis mentibus, unde talia uitia siluescerent, astutia maligna inserentibus: cur mala praesentia Christo inputant, qui doctrina saluberrima et falsos ac fallaces deos coli uetat et istas hominum noxias flagitiosasque cupiditates diuina auctoritate detestans atque condemnans his malis tabescenti ac labenti mundo ubique familiam suam sensim subtrahit, qua condat aeternam et non plausu uanitatis, sed iudicio ueritatis gloriosissimam ciuitatem?