Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
24.
The acts of Sulla, in which the demons showed themselves his supporters
The state of things under Sulla was so appalling that the preceding period, which he was thought to have come to redress, seemed desirable by comparison. Yet according to Livy,
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when he first advanced his army to Rome againt Marius, the entrails at his sacrifice were so favourable that Fostumius the soothsayer was prepared to be kept in custody, on pain of death if Sulla did not succeed in his purpose with the help of the gods. Notice that the gods had not yet ‘deserted all their shrines and altars’ when they foretold the course of events without showing any concern for the moral improvement of Sulla. They promised him great good luck
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by their presages; but they did not try, by warning threats, to break down his wicked ambitions. Later, when he was at war with Mithridates in Asia, a messenger from Jupiter was sent him by Lucius Titius, promising him victory; and so it turned out. After that, when he was using every effort to return to Rome and avenge the injuries offered to himself and to his friends with the blood of fellow-citizens, another message from Jupiter was brought by a soldier of the Sixth Legion, saying that Jupiter had previously promised him victory over Mithridates, and now promised him the chance to regain control of the country from his enemies, at the price of much bloodshed. Sulla then asked in what shape the vision had appeared, and when the soldier described it, Sulla recalled that it was the same as that described by the bringer of the message about his victory over Mithridates. It might be asked why the gods were so careful to give Sulla news of this supposed good fortune when none of them cared to admonish Sulla and reform him, though he was on the point of doing such terrible harm by a monstrous civil war – which was not only to disgrace but utterly to destroy the com
monwealth. What answer can be given to that question? It is of course quite clear that devils are intent on their own ends, as I have often said, as we are informed in holy Scripture, and as the facts themselves sufficiently show. Their purpose is to be reckoned and worshipped as gods, so that ceremonies may be offered in their honour which will associate the givers with the receivers in the same hopeless plight at the Judgement of God.
Then again, when Sulla reached Tarentum and sacrificed to Mars, he saw at the top of the calf’s liver a shape like a golden crown. On this occasion the soothsayer Postumius interpreted it as a sign of a notable victory and ordered that Sulla alone should eat that part of the entrails. Very soon afterwards the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius cried out in a prophetic rapture, ‘I bear a message from Bellona! Sulla, the victory is yours!’ He added that the Capitol would be set on fire. After saying this, he left the camp immediately, and returned next day in an even more excited state, and shouted that the Capitol had been set on fire, which had in fact happened;
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‘ and it was easy for a demon to foresee it and bring the news with the greatest speed.
Notice carefully – and this is most relevant to our case – to what kind of deities those men wish to be subject who blaspheme the Saviour who sets free the wills of the faithful from the domination of devils. The man cried out in prophetic frenzy, ‘Sulla, victory is yours!’ And to ensure belief that the cry was inspired by a divine spirit, he gave notice of an event which was soon to happen, and which did happen in a place far away from his mouthpiece of the spirit. Yet he did not cry out, ‘Sulla, refrain from crimes!’ and Sulla committed monstrous crimes there, after he had been shown the golden crown in the calf’s liver as an extraordinary sign of victory.
Now if just gods, and not impious devils, had been in the habit of granting such signs, they would surely rather have shown in the entrails the criminal acts which were to come, and which were to bring serious harm to Sulla himself. And that victory increased his glory less than it advanced his ambition to his own hurt; its effect was to remove all restraint from his appetite for conquest. Success turned his head, and his plunge into moral degradation wrought in his own character a more grievous havoc than any he inflicted on the persons of his enemies. This was the really lamentable and depressing prospect; but those gods did not foretell this by entrails or auguries or by anyone’s dream or prophecy. They had more to fear from his correction than from his defeat. In fact they took pains to see that the
victor over his fellow-citizens should, in his moment of glory, be a captive conquered by unspeakable vices, and should thereby become more closely bound in slavery to their own demonic power.
25.
The evil spirits encourage crime by giving it the authority of their supposedly divine example
Can anyone fail to see and understand (unless he is one of those who prefer to copy such gods than to be kept free from their society by the grace of God) what efforts these malignant spirits use, to give by their example a presumed divine authority to criminal acts? They were, indeed, seen joining battle among themselves, in a wide plain in Campania, shortly before the citizen armies fought their shameful battle in that very place. For first a terrible din was heard there, and before long many people reported that they had seen two armies fighting for several days. And when the fighting stopped men found what looked like the tracks of men and horses, such as could have been left on the ground as a result of that encounter. Thus a battle among divinities, if it really happened, gives excuse for civil wars between men – and one may notice the malice, or the misery, of gods like these. While if it was a mere pretence of a battle, the only purpose was to gloss over the crime of civil war by giving it a divine precedent. Civil war was already under way, and a number of loathsome battles had already been fought, with frightful bloodshed. Many had been touched by the tale of a soldier who stripped the spoils from one of the slain, and recognized his own brother, when the corpse was bare; moved to abhorrence of such civil strife, he killed himself on the spot, and fell on his brother’s lifeless body.
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To mitigate the disgust caused by such tragedies, and to inflame the ardour for this abominable warfare, the malign devils (whom the Romans thought of as gods, and the proper objects of worship and veneration) decided to show themselves to men as fighting among themselves, so that the natural affection between citizens should not shrink to imitate such battles, but that the gods’ example might rather excuse the crimes of men.
With the same astuteness the evil spirits also commanded theatrical shows (I have already said a good deal about this
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) to be dedicated and consecrated to them, in which the enormities of the gods were celebrated on the stage in song and in acted narrative. A man might believe or disbelieve the actual stories; but he could see that the gods were delighted to have such acts represented, and thus he would feel
free to imitate them. And so, to prevent the idea that whenever the poets record fighting among the gods they are libelling them by inventing discreditable stories, the gods have themselves given confirmation to the poets’ songs, to deceive mankind, by displaying their battles before men’s eyes not only in stage-plays but even by enacting them in person on the field of battle.
I have been forced to say this because the Roman writers have no hesitation in saying that the Roman commonwealth had been ruined by moral degradation, and had in fact ceased to exist at all, long before the coming of our Lord Christ Jesus. They did not blame their own gods for this ruin; yet they blame our Lord for the transitory disasters, which cannot bring a good man to extinction, whether he lives or dies. Yet Christ’s teaching is full of instructions for the promotion of the highest morality and the reproof of wickedness, while those gods of theirs never took the trouble to impress such commands on their worshippers so as to save that commonwealth from utter ruin – in fact they were more concerned to ensure its ruin by corrupting morality through the baneful authority of their example. I do not suppose that anyone will after this have the face to assert that the commonwealth perished because those gods ‘then deserted all the shrines and altars’
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like friends of virtue, disgusted at the vices of men, since they used their efforts, by all those signs in the shape of entrails, auguries, and prophecies, to boast and commend themselves as foreseen of the future and as assistants in battle, and thus are proved to have been present. If they had absented themselves, the Romans’ own ambitions would have fired them with less ardour for civil war than did the prompting of the gods.
26.
The moral instruction allegedly given in secret by demons to devotees, in contrast with the open depravity of their rites
This, then, is the state of affairs. On certain appointed festivals, scenes of shame, accompanied with cruelty, acts of dishonour and crime, attributed (whether truly or falsely) to the divine beings, were plainly and openly represented, consecrated and dedicated to those gods at their own request and under pain of their displeasure if omitted. These acts were presented before all men’s eyes for imitation, and put forward for them to gaze at. Those demons admit that they are unclean by delighting in such things. They avouch themselves as the promoters
of lives of crime and indecency, by their crimes and misdemeanours, real or pretended, and by the public presentation of them which is demanded from the shameless, and extorted from the modest. How is it then that, as we are told, they give to a select few of their devotees, in their shrines, in secret chambers, some salutary moral instruction? If this is true, it must be observed as a proof of the subtler malignity of these baneful spirits. For such is the power of decency and chastity that it excites the admiration of human nature all but universally, for human nature is never so perverted in its degradation as to lose all feeling for what is honourable. That is why the malignity of these demons cannot fully succeed in its deception without sometimes, as we know from our Bible, ‘transforming itself into angels of light’.
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And so, while in the streets the incessant clamour of indecent impiety rings in the ears of the public, behind closed doors the voice of pretended chastity is only just heard by the chosen few. Full publicity is given where shame would be appropriate; close secrecy is imposed where praise would be in order. Decency is veiled from sight; indecency is exposed to view. Scenes of evil attract packed audiences; good words scarcely find any listeners. It is as if purity should provoke a blush, and corruption give ground for pride. But where else should this happen but in devils’ temples, in the resorts of delusion? The object is, by the one device to ensure the capture of the honourable minority, and by the other to prevent the reformation of the corrupt majority.
I do not know where or when the devotees of the Heavenly Virgin
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heard any counsels of chastity. But we had a good view of her image standing in front of her temple; there were crowds converging from all directions, everyone taking the best position he could find, and we watched the acted shows with the closest interest. We divided our gaze between the procession of harlots on one side, and the virgin goddess on the other. I saw prayerful worship offered to her, and indecent performances enacted before her. I saw no sense of shame in the mimes, no trace of modesty in any actress – all the duly prescribed obscenities were punctiliously performed. It was well known what would please the maiden goddess; and the exhibitions would enable the matron to leave the temple for home enriched by her experiences. Some of the more modest women averted their eyes from the indecent postures of the actors, and yet by furtive glances they made themselves familiar with the techniques of vice. In the company of men they were ashamed to pluck up the courage to observe those
indecorous gestures with open eyes, but they had still less courage to condemn, in the purity of their hearts, the rites offered to the deity they revered. There was teaching publicly presented at that temple which no one would have put into practice without at least first seeking out a secret room in his house: though a person of human decency (had any such been there) might have been vastly surprised that men should have any reserve in their human misconduct, when they learned of these enormities in a religious setting, and in the presence of gods who would be enraged if men neglected such exhibitions.
There is an evil spirit which drives men’s minds to wickedness by a secret compulsion, which goads men on to commit adultery and finds satisfaction when they do so; it is this same evil spirit which rejoices in such rites as these. He it is who erects the images of demons in the temples, who delights in the representation of immorality in those spectacles, and who whispers in secret the words of righteousness to deceive the few decent people, while in public he makes the incitements to corruption freely available, for by these he proposes to get into his clutches the countless multitudes of the depraved.
27.
The obscene performances in propitiation of the gods had a disastrous effect on the moral standards of the republic
Cicero was a serious-minded man and by way of being a philosopher. When he was entering on the aedileship he shouted out, in the hearing of the whole citizen body, that among the other duties of his office it fell to him to propitiate Mother Flora
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by the holding of games; and it was usual to measure the devotion of the celebration by the obscenities of the shows. In another context
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(when he had become consul) he says that in a time of extreme peril
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to the country, games were put on for ten days, and nothing was omitted which might help to propitiate the gods. As if it were not better to annoy such gods by restraint than to appease them by licentiousness, and to provoke their enmity by decency than to soothe them by such infamy. Whatever the inhuman brutality of the men on whose account the propitiation was offered, the harm they were likely to inflict could not have been more serious than that inflicted by the gods themselves in being propitiated by such disgusting enormities. To ward off the dreaded assaults of the enemy upon their bodies, men tried to win the gods’ favour by means which utterly overthrew virtue in their
minds. For the gods would not drive off those who assailed the walls of Rome from outside unless they themselves first drove out all morality from within the city.