CHAPTER XXV.

You claim that Roman prosperity is due to Roman piety. Yet your chief deities are foreigners, who once reigned on earth, and therefore must some time have worshipped your earliest deities. Besides, your elaborate piety is of later growth than your prosperity, which has in reality been advanced by your impieties.

I FEEL satisfied that I have offered proof enough upon the question of false and true divinity, since I have shewn how the proof holds good, not only from reasonings and arguments, but also from the testimony of those very beings whom you believe to be gods; so that nothing now remains under this head to be considered.

Yet since a particular reference was made to the Roman name, I will not evade an engagement with you upon the point, since it is provoked by the presumption involved in the assertion that it is as a reward for their extreme diligence in religious matters that the Romans have been exalted to such a high degree of dignity as to govern the world; and that their gods really exist to such good purpose that those prosper above all others who above all others pay homage to them. So we are to understand that this reward was paid forsooth out of gratitude to the Romans by the gods: Sterculius and Mutinus and Larentina advanced the empire! For I cannot think that foreign gods would have wished a foreign nation to be favoured more than their own, and would have [87] surrendered to peoples who came from over the seas their native soil where they were born, grew up, were honoured, and buried. No matter that Cybele, a foreign deity, has loved the Roman city as the memorial of the Trojan race, her own native race indeed, which she protected against the arms of the Greeks; and had sufficient foresight to pass over to the avengers who she knew would subdue Greece, the vanquisher of Phrygia. And it is quite in keeping with this that she has proffered even in our own day a splendid proof of the majesty she conferred upon the city, when, on the death of Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium on the 17th of March, her most reverend chief priest, seven days later, made a libation of impure blood by gashing his arms, and issued just as before the accustomed directions on behalf of the health of the emperor Marcus, who was already dead. How lazy were the messengers, how sleepy the despatches, through whose fault Cybele did not know earlier of the emperor's decease, and then the Christians would not have ridiculed a goddess of such a kind as this!

But Jupiter, too, would never have at once allowed his own Crete to be shaken by the Roman fasces, forgetful of that Idaean cave, and the Corybantian cymbals, and the delicious odour of his own nurse there. Would he not have preferred his own tomb far before the Capitol, so that the land which covered the ashes of Jupiter should hold the pre-eminence in the world? Would Juno be willing for the Carthaginian city, which she loved to the neglect of Samos, [88] to be destroyed, and by the Trojan race, too, of all people? Whereas ⁷⁴  

                                                                     'Here were her arms,
Her chariot here, this kingdom even now, for universal sway,
Would but the Fates permit, the goddess hopes and strives indeed to found.'

This wretched wife and sister of Jupiter had no power against the Fates! Obviously

'by Fate stands Jupiter himself.'

And yet the Romans have not paid so much honour to the Fates who gave them Carthage in opposition to the appointment and vow of Juno, as to that most abandoned prostitute Larentina.

It is certain that many of your deities once reigned on earth. If, therefore, they possess the power of conferring empire, who gave them their empire when they reigned? Whom did Saturn and Jupiter worship? Some Sterculius, I suppose, whom they subsequently honoured at Rome along with their own native gods. And even if some of your gods did not reign yet others reigned, who were not yet their worshippers, since they were not yet accounted gods. Therefore it belongs to others to confer empire, since royal power was being exercised long before your gods were inscribed as such on their statues.

But how vain is it to attribute the grandeur of the Roman name to the merits of religious zeal, when your religion was elaborated after the establishment of the empire, or call it still the kingdom. For [89] although superstitious assiduity was inaugurated by Numa, yet the materials of religion amongst the Romans did not then consist in images or temples. Religion was frugal and its rites needy, and there were no Capitols vying with the sky, but the altars were built casually of turf, and the vessels were of Samian ware, and the fumes arose from these, and the god himself was nowhere to be seen. For at that time the talent of the Greeks and Tuscans in moulding images had not yet inundated the city. The Romans, therefore, were not religious before they were great; and consequently they are not great because they were religious.

Indeed how can they be great on account of their religion, when their greatness has proceeded from their irreligious conduct? For unless I am mistaken, every kingdom or empire is acquired by wars and extended by victories. Now wars and victories consist in the capture and overthrow of very many cities; and such operations are not effected without injury of the gods. The destruction of fortifications and the ruin of temples go together: the slaughter of citizens and the murder of priests proceed simultaneously : nor is there any difference between the robbery of sacred and profane treasures. The sacrileges of the Romans are as numerous as their victories; they can count as many triumphs over gods as over nations; their spoils in war are to be enumerated by the images of captive gods which remain to-day. These captive gods, then, tolerate the worship even of their enemies, and allot a boundless empire to those whose [90] injuries rather than adorations ⁷⁵, they ought to recompense. But those who feel nothing are as much insulted with impunity as worshipped vainly. It is certainly beyond the bounds of belief that a people should be supposed to have increased on account of their religious merits who, as we have reminded you, have either grown in power by insulting religion, or have insulted religion in the very process of their growth. Besides, those nations whose kingdoms have united to make up the sum of the Roman empire were not without religions at the time when they lost their kingdoms.