CHAPTER XXIX.

Yet the gods are Caesar's creatures, and cannot have his welfare in their keeping.

LET it first then be shewn whether those to whom sacrifice is offered are able to bestow health upon the emperor or any man at all, and then by this proof adjudge us guilty. If angels or daemons, spirits of a most depraved nature act at all beneficently, if the lost save, if the condemned liberate, if finally, the dead (as they are in your own knowledge) guard the living, then let them first at all events guard their own statues and images and temples, which I believe the Caesars' soldiers preserve in safety with their guards. But I think that their very materials come [95] from the Caesars' mines, and the whole temples, as such, depend on Caesar's nod. Moreover many gods have had Caesar unpropitious to them. And it makes for my argument if some have found him propitious, when he confers upon them some bounty or privilege. How then shall those who are in Caesar's power, and are wholly dependent on him, have Caesar's welfare in their power, so as to appear able to grant what they themselves may more easily obtain from Caesar?

In this way, therefore, we sin against the majesty of the emperors, because we do not subject them to their own creatures, and because we do not play at the performances of a ceremony for their welfare, not believing it to be in hands soldered with lead. But you are the religious people ⁷⁷ who seek it where it is not, ask for it from those who cannot give it, passing over Him in Whose power it is! Moreover you persecute those who know how to ask for it, and who, in virtue of this knowledge, can obtain it.