Bringing Back the Golden Age

The source of all these evils was lust, and lust broke out of contempt for the true majesty of God. It was not only that people with more than enough refused to give anyone a share; they seized what belonged to others as well, drawing everything into their own private gain. Things that individuals had once worked hard to produce for the common use of everyone were now carted off to the houses of a few. For in order to hold others down in slavery, they set about withdrawing the necessities of life above all, and collecting them, and keeping them shut up tight, so as to make the bounty of heaven their own — not out of any fellow feeling, which had no existence in them, but so as to rake together every instrument of lust and greed. [a]

Under the name of justice they also passed the most unequal and unjust laws, laws by which they could defend their plunder and their greed against the force of the crowd. So they prevailed as much by authority as by strength, or resources, or malice. And since there was no trace of justice left in them — and the duties of justice are humanity, fairness and pity — they began to take pleasure in a proud, swollen inequality, and made themselves taller than other men by a train of attendants, by the sword, and by the dazzle of their clothes. That is why they invented honors for themselves, and purple robes, and the fasces: so that, propped up by the terror that axes and swords produce, they might rule people as if by a master’s right, people struck with fear and thoroughly alarmed.

This was the state into which human life was brought by that king who, when he had beaten his own father and put him to flight, did not simply take over his kingdom, but set up a godless tyranny by violence and armed men. He took away that golden age of justice, and forced people to become wicked and godless — and this by the very fact that he turned them away from God to the worship of himself. The terror of his overwhelming power had wrung it out of them.

For who would not fear a man belted about with weapons, ringed by the strange gleam of steel and swords? What stranger would he spare, who had not spared even his own father? Whom, in fact, was he to fear — a man who had won his war and destroyed by massacre the race of the Titans, strong and outstanding in might as they were? Is it any wonder if the whole crowd, pressed by a fear they had never known before, gave themselves up to flattering one man? They revered him; they paid him the highest honor. And since copying a king’s habits and vices is reckoned a kind of compliance, everyone laid piety aside, in case living devoutly should look like a reproach to the king’s wickedness. So, corrupted by constant imitation, they let go of the law of God, and by degrees the practice of living wickedly became a habit.

Now nothing was left of the devout and excellent condition of the age before. Justice was banished, and she dragged truth away with her, leaving people error, ignorance and blindness. The poets, then, did not know what they were saying when they sang that she fled to heaven, to the kingdom of Jupiter. For if justice was on the earth in the age they call golden, plainly she was driven out by Jupiter, who put an end to the golden age. But the change of the age and the expulsion of justice must be reckoned as nothing else, as I have said, than the laying aside of divine religion — the one thing that makes a person hold another person dear, and know that he is bound to him by the tie of brotherhood, since God is equally a Father to them all. It makes him share the gifts of the God and Father they have in common with people who do not have them; injure no one, oppress no one, shut his door against no stranger and his ear against no one begging for help, but be generous, kind and open-handed — qualities that Cicero thought were the praises that suit a king. This truly is justice, and this is the golden age. It was first spoiled when Jupiter reigned, and shortly afterward, when he himself and all his offspring had been consecrated as gods and the worship of many deities had been taken up, it was done away with altogether.

But God, like the most indulgent of parents, when the last age was drawing near, sent an ambassador to bring back that old age and the justice that had been put to flight, so that the human race would not be shaken about by enormous and unending mistakes. So the look of that golden time came back, and justice was restored to the earth — but assigned to a few. And this justice is nothing else than the devout and religious worship of the one God. [h]

But perhaps someone will want to ask: if this is justice, why is it not given to all people, and why does the whole crowd not agree to it? That is a large question — why God kept a difference in place when he gave justice to the earth. I have shown it elsewhere, and whenever a good opportunity comes it will be explained again. For now it is enough to point at it very briefly. Virtue cannot be recognized unless it has vices set against it, and it cannot be perfect unless it is put through hardship. For God meant there to be this distinction between good things and evil ones: that from what is evil we might know the quality of the good, and from the good the quality of the evil. The nature of the one cannot be understood if the other is taken away. God therefore did not shut evil out, so that the nature of virtue might be plain. For how could patient endurance keep its meaning and its name, if there were nothing we were compelled to endure? How could faith devoted to its God deserve any praise, unless there were someone who wanted to turn us away from God? It is on this account that he allowed the unjust to be the stronger, so that they would be able to force people toward evil; and on this account that he allowed them to be the more numerous, so that virtue would be precious, because it is rare.

Quintilian shows this very point admirably and briefly in The Muffled Head. “What virtue would there be in innocence, if its rarity had not supplied it with praise? But since it is provided by nature that hatred and desire and anger drive people blindly at whatever they have set themselves on, being free of fault looks like something beyond a man’s power. Otherwise, if nature had given all people equal feelings, piety would be nothing at all.”

How true this is, the necessity of the case itself teaches. For if it is virtue to stand up bravely against evils and vices, then plainly, without evil and vice, there is no finished virtue. And so that God might make virtue full and complete, he kept in place the thing set against it, for virtue to contend with. Shaken by the evils that harass it, virtue gains its footing; and the more often it is driven on, the more firmly it is strengthened. This is plainly the reason why, although justice has been sent to people, it still cannot be said that a golden age exists: because God has not taken evil away, so that he might keep that diversity which alone preserves the mystery of a divine religion.

So the people who think no one is just have justice right in front of their eyes and are unwilling to see it. What reason is there for them to describe her, in poems and in all their talk, complaining that she is gone, when it would be very easy for them to be good if they wanted to be? Why do you paint justice to yourselves as an empty thing, and wish that she would fall out of heaven, as though she were a figure in some picture? Look — she is in plain sight. Take her in, if you are able, and give her a home in your heart. And do not imagine that this is difficult, or out of keeping with the times. Be just and good, and the justice you are looking for will follow you of her own accord. Put every evil thought out of your hearts, and that golden age will come back to you at once, and there is no other way to reach it than by beginning to worship the true God. [l]

But you long for justice on the earth while the worship of false gods goes on, and that cannot possibly happen. It was not possible even in that age you imagine, because the gods you godlessly worship had not yet been produced, and the worship of the one God must have prevailed over the whole earth — the God, I say, who hates wickedness and requires goodness, whose temple is not stone or clay but man himself, who carries the image of God. And this temple is decorated not with perishable gifts of gold and jewels, but with the lasting duties of the virtues. Learn, then, if you have any sense left, that people are wicked and unjust because gods are worshipped; and that all these evils grow greater in human affairs by the day for this reason — because God, the Maker and Governor of this world, has been neglected; because, against all right, godless superstitions have been taken up; and finally, because you will not allow God to be worshipped even by a few.

But if God alone were worshipped, there would be no quarrels and no wars, since people would know that they are sons of one God. And so, among men joined by the sacred and unbreakable bond of a kinship that comes from God, there would be no plotting, since they would know what sort of punishments God has prepared for the destroyers of souls — God, who sees through hidden crimes and even the thoughts themselves. There would be no frauds and no robberies, if they had learned from God’s own instruction to be content with what was their own, however little, and so to prefer solid and everlasting things to frail and perishable ones. There would be no adulteries, no debaucheries, no prostitution of women, if it were known to everyone that whatever is sought beyond the desire to have children is condemned by God. Nor would necessity force a woman to give up her modesty and look for the most shameful way of keeping herself alive, since the men too would hold back their lust, and the devout and religious giving of the rich would come to the rescue of the destitute.

There would not, then, as I have said, be these evils on the earth, if by common consent everyone swore themselves into the law of God, and if the things our people alone do were done by all. How happy, how golden the condition of human affairs would be, if gentleness and piety and peace and innocence and fairness and self-control and faith took up residence throughout the world! In short, there would be no need of so many varied laws to govern people, since the law of God alone would be enough for perfect innocence. Nor would there be any need of prisons, or the swords of rulers, or the terror of punishments, since the wholesomeness of the divine commands, poured into people’s hearts, would of itself train them to works of justice. But as things are, people are wicked through ignorance of what is right and good.

Cicero saw this too. Discussing the subject of the laws, he says: “As the world coheres and depends on one and the same nature, all its parts agreeing with one another, so all people, run together by nature among themselves, are set at odds by their own corruption; and they do not understand that they are related by blood, and that they are all subject to one and the same guardianship. If this were kept in mind, men would surely live the life of gods.”

So it is the unjust and godless worship of the gods that has brought in all the evils by which mankind destroys itself, one man at another’s hands. For they could not keep their piety, who had thrown off the authority of God, the common parent of all, like wasteful and defiant sons.