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| The Gods Human at First. Who Had the Authority to Make Them Divine? Jupiter Not Only Human, But Immoral.
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Chapter
XIII.1011
| 1011 Comp. The
Apology, c. xi. [p. 27. Supra.] | —The Gods Human at First. Who Had the
Authority to Make Them Divine? Jupiter Not Only Human, But
Immoral.
Manifest cases, indeed, like these have a force
peculiarly their own. Men like Varro and his fellow-dreamers
admit into the ranks of the divinity those whom they cannot assert to
have been in their primitive condition anything but men; (and this they
do) by affirming that they became gods after their death. Here, then, I
take my stand. If your gods were elected1012
to
this dignity and deity,1013
| 1013 This is not so terse
as Tertullian’s “nomen et numen.” | just as you recruit
the ranks of your senate, you cannot help conceding, in your wisdom,
that there must be some one supreme sovereign who has the power of
selecting, and is a kind of Cæsar; and nobody is able to
confer1014
on others a thing
over which he has not absolute control. Besides, if they were able to
make gods of themselves after their death, pray tell me why they chose
to be in an inferior condition at first? Or, again, if there is no one
who made them gods, how can they be said to have been made such, if
they could only have been made by some one else? There is therefore no
ground afforded you for denying that there is a certain wholesale
distributor1015
of divinity. Let us
accordingly examine the reasons for despatching mortal beings to
heaven. I suppose you will produce a pair of them. Whoever, then, is
the awarder (of the divine honours), exercises his function, either
that he may have some supports, or defences, or it may be even
ornaments to his own dignity; or from the pressing claims of the
meritorious, that he may reward all the deserving. No other cause is it
permitted us to conjecture. Now there is no one who, when bestowing a
gift on another, does not act with a view to his own interest or the
other’s. This conduct, however, cannot be worthy of the Divine
Being, inasmuch as His power is so great that He can make gods
outright; whilst His bringing man into such request, on the pretence
that he requires the aid and support of certain, even dead persons, is
a strange conceit, since He was able from the very first to create for
Himself immortal beings. He who has compared human things with divine
will require no further arguments on these points. And yet the latter
opinion ought to be discussed, that God conferred divine honours in
consideration of meritorious claims. Well, then, if the award was made
on such grounds, if heaven was opened to men of the primitive age
because of their deserts, we must reflect that after that time no one
was worthy of such honour; except it be, that there is now no longer
such a place for any one to attain to. Let us grant that anciently men
may have deserved heaven by reason of their great merits. Then let us
consider whether there really was such merit. Let the man who alleges
that it did exist declare his own view of merit. Since the
actions of men done in the very infancy of time1016
| 1016 In cunabulis
temporalitatis. |
are a valid claim for their deification, you consistently admitted to
the honour the brother and sister who were stained with the sin of
incest—Ops and Saturn. Your Jupiter too, stolen in his infancy,
was unworthy of both the home and the nutriment accorded to human
beings; and, as he deserved for so bad a child, he had to live in
Crete.1017
Afterwards, when
full-grown, he dethrones his own father, who, whatever his parental
character may have been, was most prosperous in his reign, king as he
was of the golden age. Under him, a stranger to toil and want,
peace maintained its joyous and
gentle sway; under him—
“Nulli subigebant arva
coloni;”1018
| 1018 Virgil,
Georg. i. 125. |
“No swains would bring the fields beneath
their sway;”1019
and without the importunity of any one the earth would bear
all crops spontaneously.1020
But he hated a
father who had been guilty of incest, and had once mutilated
his1021
grandfather. And yet, behold, he himself
marries his own sister; so that I should suppose the old adage was made
for him: Τοῦ
πατρὸς τὸ
παιδίον—“Father’s
own child.” There was “not a pin to choose” between
the father’s piety and the son’s. If the laws had been just
even at that early time,1022
| 1022 The law which
prescribed the penalty of the paracide, that he be sewed up in a
sack with an ape, a serpent, and a cock, and be thrown into the
sea. | Jupiter ought to
have been “sewed up in both sacks.”1023
| 1023 In duos culleos
dividi. |
After this corroboration of his lust with incestuous gratification, why
should he hesitate to indulge himself lavishly in the lighter excesses
of adultery and debauchery? Ever since1024
poetry sported thus with his character, in some such way as is usual
when a runaway slave1025
is posted up in
public, we have been in the habit of gossiping without
restraint1026
of his
tricks1027
| 1027 The “operam
ejus”=ingenia et artificia (Oehler). | in our chat with
passers-by;1028
| 1028 Percontationi
alienæ. | sometimes sketching
him out in the form of the very money which was the fee of his
debauchery—as when (he personated) a bull, or rather paid the
money’s worth of one,1029
| 1029 In the case of
Europa. | and showered (gold)
into the maiden’s chamber, or rather forced his way in with a
bribe;1030
| 1030 In the case of
Danäe. | sometimes (figuring
him) in the very likenesses of the parts which were acted1031
| 1031 Similitudines actuum
ipsas. | —as the eagle which ravished (the
beautiful youth),1032
| 1032 In the case of
Ganymede. | and the swan which
sang (the enchanting song).1033
| 1033 In the case of
Leda. | Well now, are not
such fables as these made up of the most disgusting intrigues and the
worst of scandals? or would not the morals and tempers of men be likely
to become wanton from such examples? In what manner demons, the
offspring of evil angels who have been long engaged in their mission,
have laboured to turn men1034
aside from the
faith to unbelief and to such fables, we must not in this place speak
of to any extent. As indeed the general body1035
(of your gods), which took their cue1036
from their
kings, and princes, and instructors,1037
was not of the
self-same nature, it was in some other way1038
that similarity of character was exacted by their authority. But how
much the worst of them was he who (ought to have been, but) was not,
the best of them? By a title peculiar to him, you are indeed in the
habit of calling Jupiter “the Best,”1039
whilst in Virgil he is “Æquus
Jupiter.”1040
| 1040 There would seem to be
a jest here; “æquus” is not only just but
equal, i.e., “on a par with” others—in
evil, of course, as well as good. | All therefore were
like him—incestuous towards their own kith and kin,
unchaste to strangers, impious, unjust! Now he whom mythic story left
untainted with no conspicuous infamy, was not worthy to be made a
god.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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