CHAPTER XXIV.

Your charge of Sacrilege thus falls to the ground, for there can be no religious duties towards gods that have no existence. In any case, we claim the civil right of religious liberty, which you grant to every one but us.

Now all this confession of theirs, by which they deny their own divinity and assert that there is no other God but the One Whom we serve, is quite sufficient to repel the charge brought against us of injury to religion, and especially to the Roman religion. For if it be certain that there are no gods, it is equally certain that there can be no religion belonging to them; and if there is no religion, in consequence of there certainly being no gods, then certainly neither can we be guilty of injury to that religion. But on the contrary, the reproach will recoil upon yourselves who, as the worshippers of a lie, commit the crime of true irreligion against the Truth, not merely by your neglect of the true worship of the True God, but also by your attack upon it.

Now even if the existence of these gods were granted, do you not yet admit in common belief that there is One still higher and more powerful, as it were the Ruler of the world, perfect in power and [84] majesty? For indeed most persons theorize about the distribution of divinity in such a way as to wish the sway of highest rule to belong to One, and its various duties to be discharged by many; like Plato describes the great Jupiter in heaven attended by a host of gods and of daemons alike. Consequently procurators and praefects and provincial governors ought also to be looked up to alike ⁷². And yet what crime does he commit who transfers his toil and expectation from these to win the favour rather of Caesar himself, and who will not allow the title of god, any more than that of emperor, to any one other than the chief; especially as it is adjudged a capital crime to call any one, or hear any one called Caesar, except Caesar himself? Let one worship God, another Jupiter; let one stretch forth his suppliant hands to Heaven, another to the altar of Fides; let one (if you so regard the action) count the clouds as he prays, another the panels of the ceiling; let one dedicate his own soul to his own god, another to a goat. For beware lest this action also of yours do not better accord with the criminal charge of irreligion, since you take away liberty of religion and forbid a choice of deity, and do not allow me to worship whom I wish, but compel me to worship whom I wish not. No one, not even a man, desires to be worshipped by an unwilling worshipper; [85] and so even to the Aegyptians the right has been allowed to indulge so vain a superstition as the consecration of birds and beasts, and to inflict capital punishment on any one who should kill a god of this kind. Every province also and state has its own god; as Syria has Atargatis, Arabia Dusares, the Norici have Belenus, Africa has Caelestis, Mauritania its own Princes. I have named, I believe, Roman provinces, and yet I have not mentioned Roman gods as being worshipped in them; for at Rome these gods are no more worshipped than those which throughout Italy itself also are created gods by municipal consecration; such as Delventinus, the god of the Casinienses, Visidianus of the Narnienses, Ancharia of the Aesculani, Nortia of the Volsinienses, Valentia of the Ocriculani, Hostia of the Sutrini, Juno of the Falisci, in honour of her father Curis, whence she received her cognomen ⁷³. It is only we who are excluded from a right of possession in a religion of our own. We offend the Romans, and are not regarded as Romans, because we do not worship a god of the Romans. Well is it that He is the God of all, Whose we all are, whether we wish it or no. But with you a right exists to worship whatever you wish except the True God, as if He were not especially the God of all, Whose we all are. [86]