The Gods Were Once Kings

Salvation is given to those who believe, and it is given through Christ. This heading covers the three main divisions of the treatise. The writer shows first that the beings in whose honor temples were founded, statues modeled, victims sacrificed and festival days kept were kings and men, not gods; that worshiping them could therefore do no good, to foreigners or to Romans; and that the power of the Roman empire should be put down to fate rather than to them, since it arose by a piece of good luck and was ashamed of its own beginnings. He shows further that the treacherous outcomes of auspices and auguries made plain that nothing can be credited to them, and that even those who acknowledged both one God and the demons granted that these illusions were the demons’ work — as the poets themselves testify, and Socrates, Plato, Trismegistus and Hostanes. The second point, that God is one, he makes plain in a few words: partly from the greater dignity of a single rule over other forms of government, and partly from the very expressions used by pagans and by ordinary people, “O God!” and the like. Finally he treats Christ at greater length, from the Jewish prophets and from the history in the Gospels.

The gods that ordinary people worship are no gods at all, and this is how we know it. They were once kings. Because their people kept the memory of their reigns, they began after their deaths to be adored. That is where temples came from. That is where sculpted images came from — likenesses made to hold on to the faces of the dead. Men killed animals in sacrifice and kept festival days as a way of honoring them. So rites that had first been taken up as a consolation became sacred to the generations that followed. Now let us see whether this holds up case by case.

Melicertes and Leucothea are thrown headlong into the sea, and afterward become gods of the sea. The Castors die by turns so that they can live. Aesculapius is struck by lightning so that he can rise into a god. Hercules is burned up in the fires of Oeta so that he can put off the man. Apollo pastured the flocks of Admetus. Neptune built walls for Laomedon and — unlucky builder — got no wages for the work. Jupiter’s cave can still be visited in Crete, and his tomb is pointed out. It is plain that Saturn was driven out by him, and that Latium takes its name from Saturn, since it was his hiding place. [b]

Saturn was the first to teach the stamping of letters, and the first to teach the striking of coins in Italy — which is why the treasury is called the treasury of Saturn. He was also the one who worked the land, which is why he is painted as an old man carrying a sickle. Janus took him in as a guest when he was driven out; the Janiculum is named after Janus, and the month of January is appointed for him. Janus himself is shown with two faces, because, standing in the middle, he seems to look both ways at once — toward the year beginning and the year ending. The Moors, for their part, plainly worship kings and do not hide the fact under any other name.

This is why the worship of the gods varies from nation to nation and province to province: no one god is worshiped by everyone, but each people keeps to the worship of its own ancestors. Alexander the Great proves the point in that remarkable book addressed to his mother. He writes that a priest, afraid of his power, disclosed to him the doctrine that had been kept secret — that the gods were men, that what was really being kept up was the memory of ancestors and kings, and that the rites of worship and sacrifice grew out of that. But if gods were being born at one time, why are none born now? Unless perhaps Jupiter has grown too old, or Juno has lost the ability to bear children. [e]

And why do you suppose the gods can do anything for the Romans, when you can see that they could do nothing for their own worshipers against Roman weapons? For we know that the gods of the Romans are homegrown. Romulus was made a god by the perjury of Proculus; then Picus, and Tiberinus, and Pilumnus, and Consus — a god of treachery whom Romulus insisted on having worshiped as though he were a god of good counsel, when his treachery ended in the carrying off of the Sabine women. Tatius invented the goddess Cloacina and worshiped her; Hostilius invented Fear and Paleness. Later on somebody — I do not know who — dedicated Fever, and Acca and Flora, the prostitutes. These are the Roman gods. [f]

But Mars is a Thracian, Jupiter a Cretan, Juno either from Argos or Samos or Carthage, Diana from the Tauric land, and the mother of the gods from Ida. And there are the Egyptian monsters, which are not deities at all — and which, if they had had any power, would certainly have kept their own kingdoms and their peoples’ kingdoms safe. Among the Romans, too, there are of course the conquered Penates that Aeneas brought in with him when he ran. And there is bald Venus, far more dishonored by her baldness at Rome than by being wounded in Homer.

Kingdoms do not rise to the top by merit; they shift by chance. Empire was once held by the Assyrians, and by the Medes, and by the Persians; and we know the Greeks and the Egyptians have ruled too. So, in the turning of power, the empire’s turn has come round to the Romans as it came to the others. But go back to how Rome began, and you will have to blush. A people is scraped together out of degenerates and criminals; an asylum is founded, and immunity from prosecution swells the numbers. Then, so that the king himself should outdo them all in crime, Romulus becomes his brother’s murderer; and to get his people married, he begins that business of concord with discord. They steal, they use force, they lie, all to increase the population of the state. Their marriage is made out of broken guest-agreements and cruel wars against their fathers-in-law. [j]

The consulship is the highest of Roman honors — and yet we see that the consulship began exactly as the kingship did. Brutus puts his own sons to death, so that praise for his office may grow by the approval of his wickedness. So the Roman state did not grow out of holy rites, or out of auspices and auguries; it keeps its appointed time within a fixed limit. Besides, Regulus took the auspices, and was taken prisoner anyway. Mancinus kept his religious obligation, and was sent under the yoke anyway. Paulus had chickens that fed, and was killed at Cannae anyway. Gaius Caesar treated with contempt the auguries and auspices that told him not to send ships to Africa before winter — and sailed, and won, all the more easily for it.

Behind all of this, though, one principle is at work, misleading and deceiving, and with tricks that darken the truth it leads a gullible and foolish crowd astray. They are unclean, wandering spirits. Once they had steeped themselves in earthly vices, the contagion of earth cost them their heavenly strength; and now, ruined themselves, they never stop working the ruin of others, and, degraded themselves, they never stop pouring the error of their own degradation into others. Even the poets admit that these demons exist, and Socrates said he was taught and governed at the will of a demon. That is where the Magi get their power to do harm or to put on a show — although Hostanes, their chief, both says that the form of the true God cannot be seen and declares that true angels stand around his throne. Plato agrees on the same ground: he holds that God is one and calls the rest angels or demons. Hermes Trismegistus, too, speaks of one God and admits that he cannot be grasped or measured by us. [l]

So these are the spirits lurking under the statues and the consecrated images. These are the ones who breathe into the chests of their prophets and inspire them, who animate the fibers of the entrails, steer the flight of birds, control the drawing of lots, make oracles work, and are forever mixing falsehood with truth — for they are deceived themselves and they deceive. They upset people’s lives and break their sleep. Their spirits creep into people’s bodies as well, secretly terrifying the mind, twisting the limbs, wrecking the health, bringing on diseases to force people into worshiping them — so that once they have gorged on the smoke of the altars and the heaps of slaughtered cattle, they can loosen what they had tied and look as though they have healed it. The only cure they give is the ending of the harm they were doing. They want nothing except to call people away from God and turn them from understanding the true worship into a superstition about themselves; and since they are under punishment themselves, they look for companions in punishment, whom they can make partners in their crime by misleading them. [m]

Yet when we put these spirits under oath by the true God, they give way at once, they confess, and they are forced out of the bodies they had taken. You can see them at the sound of our voice, and by the working of a hidden majesty: beaten with lashes, burned with fire, stretched out as the punishment grows, howling, groaning, begging, admitting where they came from and when they are leaving — and admitting it in the hearing of the very people who worship them. Some spring out all at once and some fade away by degrees, depending on how far the sufferer’s faith comes to help and how far the grace of the healer works. This is why they push ordinary people to detest our name: so that people begin to hate us before they know us, in case they should copy us if they knew us, or find that they cannot condemn us.

So the one Lord of all is God. That height cannot possibly have an equal, since it alone holds all power. And let us borrow a picture of the divine government from the earth. When has a partnership in a throne ever begun in good faith, or ended without bloodshed? That is how the brotherhood of the Thebans was broken, and their quarrel lasted past death in ashes that would not mingle. One kingdom could not hold the Roman twins, though the shelter of one womb had held them. Pompey and Caesar were relatives, and even so they did not keep the bond of that relationship once power made them jealous. And you should not be surprised at this in human beings, since all of nature agrees with it. Bees have one king; a flock has one leader; a herd has one master. How much more, then, is the Ruler of the world one — who commands everything there is with his word, arranges it by his wisdom, and carries it out by his power. [n]

He cannot be seen: he is too bright for sight. He cannot be grasped: he is too pure for our understanding. He cannot be measured: he is too great for our perception. So we are only estimating him worthily when we say that he cannot be conceived. And what temple can God have, whose temple is the whole world? While human beings live spread out far and wide, am I to shut the power of so great a majesty inside one small building? He must be dedicated in our mind; he must be consecrated in our heart. And you must not ask for the name of God. God is his name. Names are needed where a crowd has to be told apart by the marks that belong to each. To the God who alone is, the whole name “God” belongs; so he is one, and he is spread everywhere in his entirety. Even ordinary people naturally confess God in many things, when their mind and soul are reminded of their maker and their origin. We hear it said over and over: “O God,” and “God sees,” and “I leave it to God,” and “God give you,” and “as God wills,” and “if God grants it.” And this is the very height of sinfulness — to refuse to acknowledge the one you cannot help knowing.

But as for what Christ is, and the way salvation came to us through him — this is the plan, this is the means. First of all, God’s favor was given to the Jews. That is how they were righteous long ago; that is how their ancestors kept faith with what they had promised in worship. That is why the height of their rule flourished and the greatness of their people advanced. But afterward they became careless about discipline, proud, puffed up with confidence in their fathers; they despised the divine commands and lost the favor that had been given to them. And as for how unholy their life became, and what offense they incurred by violating their own worship, they testify to it themselves: their voices may be silent, but their end confesses it. Scattered and straggling, they wander about; cast out of their own soil and climate, they are thrown on the hospitality of strangers. [o]

God had also foretold beforehand that this would happen: that as the ages went on, and the end of the world came near, God would gather to himself, out of every nation and people and place, worshipers better in obedience and stronger in faith, who would draw from the divine gift the mercy the Jews had received and then lost by despising the ordinances of their worship. So the Word and Son of God is sent as the steward and teacher of this mercy and grace — the one whom all the prophets of old announced as the enlightener and teacher of the human race. He is the power of God, he is the reason, he is God’s wisdom and glory. He enters into a virgin; being the holy Spirit, he is clothed with flesh; God is mingled with man. This is our God, this is Christ, who, as the mediator between the two, puts on man so that he may lead man to the Father. Christ was willing to be what man is, so that man might also be what Christ is. [p]

The Jews knew that Christ was coming, because he was announced to them again and again by the warnings of the prophets. But his coming was signified to them as twofold: one coming that would carry out the role and the example of a man, and another that would declare him God. They did not understand the first coming, the one that came first, because it was hidden in his suffering; they believe only in the one that will be plain in power. That the Jewish people could not understand this was what their sins deserved. They were punished with such blindness of wisdom and understanding that men who were unworthy of life had life in front of their eyes and did not see it.

So when Christ Jesus, exactly as the prophets had foretold, drove the demons out of people by his word — when at the command of his voice he put the strength back into the paralyzed, cleansed the leprous, gave light to the blind, gave the lame the power to move, raised the dead again, made the elements obey him like servants, the winds serve him, the seas obey him, the world below give way to him — the Jews, who from the lowliness of his flesh and body had believed him to be only a man, took him for a sorcerer because of the authority of his power. Their masters and leaders, the very men he had beaten in learning and wisdom, were inflamed with rage and stung with indignation; and at last they seized him and handed him over to Pontius Pilate, who was then governing Syria on behalf of the Romans, demanding with violent and stubborn insistence that he be crucified and killed. [r]

He had foretold himself that they would do this, and the testimony of all the prophets had likewise gone before him: that he had to suffer — not so that he would feel death, but so that he would conquer death — and that once he had suffered he would return again into heaven, to show the power of the divine majesty. So the course of events fulfilled the promise. When he was crucified, he forestalled the executioner’s work and gave up his spirit himself, of his own will; and on the third day he freely rose again from the dead. He appeared to his disciples as he had been. He gave himself to be recognized by those who saw him and kept company with him; and being plainly there in the substance of his bodily existence, he waited forty days, so that they could be taught by him the rules of life and learn what they were to teach. [s]

Then, with a cloud spread around him, he was lifted up into heaven, so that as a conqueror he might bring to the Father the Man he had loved, whom he had put on, whom he had shielded from death. He is soon to come from heaven for the punishment of the devil and for the judgment of the human race, with the force of an avenger and the power of a judge. Meanwhile the disciples, scattered over the world, at the bidding of their Master and God, gave out his rules for salvation, guided people out of their wandering in the dark and onto the road of light, and gave eyes to the blind and the ignorant for recognizing the truth.

And so that the proof might not be any less solid, and so that confessing Christ might not be an agreeable thing, they are tried by tortures, by crucifixions, by many kinds of punishment. Pain, which is the test of truth, is brought to bear, so that Christ the Son of God, who is trusted in as the one given to men for their life, should be announced not only by the heralding of the voice but by the witness of suffering. So we go with him, we follow him, we have him as the guide of our road, the source of light, the author of salvation, promising both the Father and heaven to those who seek and believe. What Christ is, we Christians will be — if we imitate Christ. [t]