Saturn Was a Man

We have brought the poets’ mysteries out into the open and traced Saturn’s parentage. Now let us go back to his virtues and his actions. He ruled justly, they say. To begin with, that very sentence shows he is not a god now, since he has ceased to be. And in fact he was not even just. He was an offender against his own blood — against his sons, whom he devoured, and against his father, whom he is said to have castrated. That last thing may actually have happened. [a]

People who have in mind the element we call the sky throw the whole story out as an idiotic invention. The Stoics, though — as they always do — try to shift it over into an account of the physical world. Cicero sets out their view in his book On the Nature of the Gods. They held, he says, that the highest and ethereal nature of the sky, that is, of fire, which produced all things out of itself, had no part of the body carrying the organs of generation. That theory might have suited Vesta, if Vesta were called male. It is exactly why they reckon Vesta a virgin: fire is an element that cannot be corrupted, and nothing can be born from it, since it consumes everything it takes hold of. Ovid says in the Fasti:

The same thing might just as well have been said of Vulcan, who is in fact supposed to be fire — and yet the poets did not castrate him. It might have been said of the sun too, in whom the whole nature and cause of generation lies. Nothing could be born or grow without the sun’s fiery heat. No element needs the organs of generation more than heat does, whose nourishment is how everything is conceived, brought out, and kept alive. And finally, even if the case were exactly as they want it, why should we suppose Caelus was castrated at all, rather than that he was born without those organs? If he produces on his own, plainly he had no need of them, since he gave birth to Saturn himself. And if he did have them, and was cut by his son, then the origin of everything — the whole of nature — would have died out on the spot.

Why bother pointing out that they strip Saturn not only of divine intelligence but of human intelligence as well? They say Saturn is the one who takes in the running and the turning of spaces and seasons, and that he carries that very name in Greek: he is called Kronos, which is the same as chronos, a stretch of time. In Latin he is called Saturn because he is full up with years. Those are Cicero’s words, following out the Stoics’ interpretation. Anyone can easily see how empty it all is. If Saturn is the son of Caelus, how could Time have been born from the Sky? How could the Sky have been castrated by Time? How could Time then be stripped of his rule by his son Jupiter? How was Jupiter born from Time? And what number of years could ever fill up eternity, which has no limit at all?

So if the philosophers’ speculations are worthless, what is left except to accept it as plain fact that he was a man, and that a man castrated him? Unless perhaps someone thinks a god is a being who was afraid of a co-heir. If Saturn had had any divine knowledge, he ought to have castrated himself and not his father, to keep Jupiter from ever being born — Jupiter, who took the kingdom away from him. He married his sister Rhea, whom we call Ops in Latin, and an oracle is said to have warned him not to raise his male children, because a son of his would drive him into exile. He was afraid of that. So it is clear he did not swallow his sons, as the fables report; he put them to death. Though the sacred history does say that Saturn and Ops and other people of that time were in the habit of eating human flesh, and that Jupiter, who gave men laws and civilized life, was the first to ban that food by an edict. If that is true, what justice can there ever have been in Saturn? But let us grant that Saturn’s devouring of his sons is a made-up story, true only in a manner of speaking. Are we then to take it the way ordinary people do, and say that a father who has had to carry his sons out for burial has eaten them? [g]

When Ops gave birth to Jupiter, she smuggled the baby away and sent him in secret to Crete to be raised. Here again I cannot help blaming Saturn’s want of foresight. Why did he get his oracle from someone else instead of from himself? He was set in the sky — why did he not see what was going on down on earth? How did the Corybantes and their cymbals get past him? And last of all, how did any force exist that was strong enough to beat his power? Obviously he was old, easily beaten by a young man, and stripped of his throne.

So he was banished and went into exile, and after wandering a long while he came to Italy by ship. Ovid tells it in the Fasti:

Janus took him in, a wanderer with nothing. The old coins prove it: on one side a picture of Janus with his two faces, on the other a ship. The same poet adds:

So it is not only all the poets. The writers of ancient history and events agree that he was a man, because they recorded what he did in Italy: among the Greeks, Diodorus and Thallus; among the Latins, Nepos, Cassius, and Varro. For men were living in Italy in a rough country way:

Does anyone imagine that a god was driven into banishment, that a god ran and hid? Nobody is that senseless. A man who runs, or who lies hidden, is a man afraid of violence and of death. Orpheus, who lived in more recent times than Saturn, says openly that Saturn ruled on earth and among men:

And our own Virgil says:

and in another place:

In the first passage the poet did not say that Saturn led this life in heaven, and in the second he did not say that Saturn reigned over the gods above. It is clear from this that he was a king on earth. And Virgil says so more plainly still in a third place:

Ennius, in his translation of Euhemerus, says that Saturn was not the first to reign; his father Uranus was. “In the beginning,” he says, “Caelus was the first to hold supreme power on the earth. He set that kingdom up and organized it together with his brothers.” There is no great dispute among the highest authorities about the father and the son, if there is any doubt at all. Both may in fact have happened: Uranus was the first to stand out in power above the rest and to hold the chief place, though not a kingdom; and afterwards Saturn built up greater resources and took the title of king.

Now the sacred history differs to some extent from what we have just set out, so let us open up what the true writings contain. Otherwise, while we are accusing superstitions, we may look as though we were following the poets’ nonsense and approving of it. These are Ennius’ words: “Afterwards Saturn married Ops. Titan, who was older than Saturn, demanded the kingdom for himself. At that their mother Vesta and their sisters Ceres and Ops advised Saturn not to give the kingdom up to his brother. Then Titan — who was the smaller man of the two, and who saw besides that his mother and sisters were working to have Saturn reign — yielded the kingdom to him. He then made an agreement with Saturn: if any male children were born to him, he would not bring them up. He did this so that the kingdom would come back to his own sons. So when a son was first born to Saturn, they killed him. Next twins were born, Jupiter and Juno. They showed Juno to Saturn, hid Jupiter away in secret, and handed him over to Vesta to be brought up without Saturn’s knowledge. Ops also gave birth to Neptune without Saturn’s knowledge, and hid him in secret. In the same way Ops bore twins at a third birth, Pluto and Glauca. Pluto in Latin is Dispater; others call him Orcus. They showed Saturn the daughter Glauca, and covered up and hid the son Pluto. Then Glauca died while she was still young.” That is the line of Jupiter and his brothers as it stands written, and that is how the family is handed down to us in the sacred narrative. A little further on Ennius brings in this as well: “Then Titan, when he found out that sons had been born to Saturn and were being raised in secret, quietly took his own sons with him — the ones called Titans — seized his brother Saturn and Ops, shut them inside a wall, and set a guard over them.” [o]

The truth of this history is confirmed by the Erythraean Sibyl, who says almost the same things, with a few differences that do not touch the substance. So Jupiter is cleared of the worst charge against him, that he is reported to have bound his own father in chains. That was his uncle Titan’s doing, because Saturn had broken his promise and his oath by bringing up male children. The rest of the history goes like this. When Jupiter had grown up and heard that his father and mother had been put under guard and imprisoned, he came with a great crowd of Cretans, defeated Titan and his sons in battle, rescued his parents from prison, restored the kingdom to his father, and went back home to Crete. Afterwards, they say, an oracle came to Saturn telling him to watch out in case his son threw him out of the kingdom. To weaken the oracle and get clear of the danger, Saturn laid an ambush to kill Jupiter. Jupiter learned of the plot, claimed the kingdom for himself all over again, and banished Saturn. And Saturn, tossed about over every land with armed men on his heels — men Jupiter had sent to seize him or put him to death — barely found a place to hide in Italy.