Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
22.
Concerning Neptune, Salacia, and Venilia
Neptune, we know, had a wife called Salacia,
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representing, they say, the lower waters of the sea. But why was Venilia
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added unless it was to multiply the invitations offered to demons by the gratuitous invention of unnecessary ceremonies at the whim of a corrupted soul?
But let us examine the interpretation offered by this splendid theology. It is intended to give an explanation to silence our criticism. ‘Venilia’, says Varro, ‘is the water which comes (venit) to the shore: Salacia is the water which returns to the open sea (
salum
).’ Why then are there two goddesses? It is the same water which comes up and then
returns. Here we have again that whimsical lunacy which boils up into a vapour of numerous divinities. The water which comes in and goes back is not duplicated; and yet the human soul makes this idle excuse to invite two demons for its greater defilement. And it is the soul that goes away; and it does not return.
Now I appeal to you, Varro, and to you readers of these works of those great scholars, who plume yourselves on receiving such valuable instruction. Please give your explanation of this point about those two goddesses. I do not ask for an explanation in terms of that eternal and immutable Being who is the only God; merely an explanation in reference to the Soul of the World and its parts, for they, in your eyes, are the true gods. That part of the World-Soul which permeates the sea, you have made into the god Neptune. That, to be sure, is a comparatively tolerable error. But what of the tide which comes in shore-wards, and goes out seawards? Are they, on this theory, two parts of the world, or two parts of the Soul of the World? Are any of you so foolish as to think that this makes sense? Why then have they become two goddesses for you? Unless it is that your wise ancestors made arrangements, not that you should be ruled by a plurality of gods, but that you should be possessed by a plurality of those demons who love this kind of nonsense and falsehood? Besides this, how is it that Salada has lost, according to this explanation, the lower part of the sea, where she was placed under her husband? For just now, in identifying her with the retreating waves, you have put her on the surface. Was she angry when her husband took Venilia as a paramour? Did she therefore exclude him from the upper waters of the sea?
23.
Concerning the earth, which Varro holds to be a deity
There is, to be sure, only one earth; and we observe it to be full of its own living creatures; but at the same time we see that in itself it is a great body among the natural elements and the lowest part of the universe. Why do they make it out to be a goddess? Because of its fecundity? In that case, have not men a better title to divinity, seeing that they increase its fecundity? And they do this not by a cult, but by cultivation. But, they say, the earth is made divine by a part of the World-Soul which permeates it. But surely the presence of a soul is more obvious in human beings? No one, in fact, questions its presence. Yet men are not held to be gods. Indeed (and here is the pity of it) under the compulsion of an astonishing and miserable deception
men are brought beneath the sway of beings who are not gods, who are inferior in worth to human beings; and men are constrained to worship and adore them. Varro himself, in the same treatise on the ‘select’gods, asserts that there are three degrees of soul
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in the whole universe of nature. The first is that which penetrates all living parts of a body; this does not confer sensibility but simply supplies the condition requisite for life; and this power, says Varro, is diffused in our bones, our nails, and our hair, in the same way that in the world in general the trees are nourished and grow, and are, in a certain sense, alive, though without having sensibility. The second degree of soul brings with it sensibility; this power extends to our eyes, our ears, our nostrils, our touch. The third and highest degree of soul is also called mind, and in this intelligence holds pre-eminent place; and intelligence is a faculty denied to all mortal beings except man. It is this part of the World-Soul which, according to Varro, is God; in man he calls it the genius.
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The stones and the earth which we see in the world, which are not permeated by sensibility, are as it were the bones and nails of God, while the sun, the moon, and the stars which we perceive by our senses and which are his means of sensibility, these represent God’s senses; the ether is his mind, and its power extends to the stars to make them deities; and the goddess Tellus (Earth) is constituted by that influence which penetrates to the earth through the mediation of the stars; and that which reaches to the sea and the ocean forms the god Neptune.
Such is Varro’s account. But now let him leave this reputedly ‘natural’ theology, to which he turned aside for a rest when wearied by all those circuitous detours. Let him come away, I say, and return to that ‘civil’theology. I still want to hold him to this, and this is what I am concerned with all the time. I could argue that if earth and stones are like our bones and nails, then, like them, they are without intelligence, just as they are devoid of sensibility; or, if our bones and nails are alleged to possess intelligence, just because they are part of man who is endowed with intellect even so it is as absurd to speak of those parts of the universe as gods as to speak of our bones and nails as men. But perhaps these are matters for discussion with the philosophers. For the moment I am still concerned with Varro the politician. It may well be that although he gives the impression of having wanted to raise his head for a little while into the freedom, as it were, of ‘natural’
theology, nevertheless, while still engaged on this book, and supposing himself to be concentrating on it, he has given a backward glance to the previous topic of ‘civil’theology, and has made this statement to avert the suspicion that the Romans of old, or other peoples, had no rational justification for the worship of Tellus and Neptune.
What I do say is this: there is only one world; why then does Varro not make one divinity of the part of the World-Soul which permeates the earth, the goddess he calls Tellus? But in that case what will happen to Orcus, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, who is called Dis Pater? And where will Proserpina be? For she, according to another belief put forward in the same books, represents not the fertility of the earth but the earth’s lower part. Now, if they say that a part of the World-Soul, when it permeates the upper part of the earth, makes Dis Pater a god, while it makes Proserpina a deity in penetrating the lower level, what will happen to Tellus? For the whole of what Tellus represented has now been divided into two parts, and assigned to two deities, leaving Tellus as a third, for whom neither a function nor a place can be found. A possible suggestion is that the two gods, Orcus and Proserpina, are together identical with one deity, namely Tellus; and thus there are not three of them, but either the one, or the two others. Yes, but it is three deities that are spoken of, three deities are thought of, three deities are worshipped with their own separate altars, ceremonies, images and priests; and by means of all this, their own deceitful demons join in defiling the prostituted soul.
May we be told what part of the earth is permeated by part of the World-Soul to produce the god Tellumo?
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‘It is not like that,’says Varro:
The fact is that one and the same earth possesses a double quality, a masculine and a feminine property. The masculine property produces the seeds; the feminine receives and nurtures them. Thus the name Tellus derives from the feminine property; the name Tellumo from the masculine.
Why then do the pontiffs, as Varro himself informs us, add two further deities and perform divine ceremonies in honour of four gods, Tellus, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor?
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We have already touched on the first two. But why the sacrifices to Altor?‘Because’, says Varro, ‘all that comes to birth is nourished (
aluntur
) from the earth.’And
Rusor?‘Because’, he says, ‘everything comes back again (
rursus
) to the same place.’
24.
The titles of the god Tellus, and their meanings
Since the earth is one entity, this fourfold property should have given rise to four titles, not to four gods. This is what happened to Jupiter and Juno. They have many epithets, but remain single deities, since all those titles describe the multifarious properties connected with a single god or goddess, and the multiplicity of names does not constitute a multiplicity of deities.
The fact is that there comes a time when the vilest of women grow tired of the crowds of lovers they have acquired to gratify their sensuality; and in the same way the debauched soul which has prostituted itself to filthy spirits takes the greatest delight in the multiplication of gods before whom to fall and offer itself for defilement; but in the end comes disgust – Varro himself seems ashamed of this collection of divinities, and would like to have Tellus as a single goddess.‘The Great Mother’, he says,
is another name for the same goddess. She carries a tambour, signifying that she is the earth’s disc: and she has towers on her head, to represent the towns; and she is portrayed seated, to show that she remains motionless, while all things move round her. The appointment of
Galli
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as her attendants tells us that those who are without seed should devote themselves to the earth, since all seeds are to be found there. Those
Galli
hurl themselves about in her presence: and the lesson of this is that those who cultivate the land should not sit still; there is always something for them to do. The noise of their cymbals stands for the rattling of implements in vigorous use, and for all the noise of agricultural activity: and the cymbals are made of bronze, because that metal was used in ancient agriculture, before the invention of iron. The addition of a lion, unchained and tame, is meant to show that no kind of land is so remote, or so utterly wild, as to be incapable of being brought under cultivation.
Varro goes on to add that the numerous titles and epithets attached to Mother Tellus have lead to the belief in a plurality of deities.‘They think of Tellus’, he says, ‘under the name of Ops, because the land (
tellus
) is improved by work (
opus
); as Mother, because she is so productive; as Great, because she produces food; as Proserpina, because the crops come forth (
proscrpant
)
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from her; as Vesta because of her
vestment of vegetation.
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In this way other goddesses are, with good reason, reduced to Tellus.’If, then, she is a single deity (but, to be sure, she is no such thing, if we have regard for the truth) why go on to make many of her? One goddess may enjoy a number of divine powers; but those are names, not deities. However, Varro is weighed down by the authority of ancient tradition, which causes him to have qualms after uttering this opinion. In fact he adds, ‘My theory is not at variance with the traditional view of those goddesses, which considers them a plurality.’How can it help being at variance? There is a vast difference between a single goddess with many titles and a plurality of goddesses.’But‘, says Varro, ‘it is possible for a thing to be a unity, and yet contain a plurality.’I agree that one man contains a multiplicity; but that does not mean that there is in him a plurality of men. Similarly, a goddess may contain a multiplicity, but that does not entail a plurality of deities. But let them have all they want, in the way of divisions, conflations, multiplications, reduplications and complications.
Such are the noble mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, in which everything has reference to mortal seeds and to the pursuit of agriculture. Such is the reference and the purpose of the tambour, the towers, the
Galli
, the frenzied gesticulations, the clashing cymbals, and the fantasy of the lions. Is there any promise here of life eternal? The Great Mother has for servants the mutilated
Galli
, to signify that those who lack seed should devote themselves to the earth. Is that so? Was it not rather the devotion to her service that robbed them of seed? Do they acquire seed by attending on this goddess because they lack it? Or do they rather lose the seed they have by reason of that attendance? Is this interpretation? Or is it deprecation? It is not observed how great is the ascendancy gained by the malign demons. They did not venture to make any great promises in return for those ceremonies; but they were able to exact such cruel sacrifices. If the earth had not been a goddess, men would have laid hands on her in their labour to get seed from her; they would not have laid violent hands on themselves, to rob themselves of seed for her sake. Had she not been a goddess, she would have been made fertile by the hands of others; she would not have compelled men to make themselves sterile by their own hands. In the rites of Liber a respectable matron used to crown the male genitals in front of a crowd of spectators, among whom her husband would be blushing and sweating as he stood there, if there is
any modesty in men. At marriage celebrations the new bride was bidden to sit on the tool of Priapus. But those are negligible and trivial indecencies compared with that other savage depravity, or depraved savagery. In those devils’rites both sexes were treated with mockery; but neither sex was destroyed by a self-inflicted wound. In the one kind of ceremony there was the fear of an evil spell on the land; in the other the mutilation of the body was no cause for dread. In the one ceremony the modesty of the new bride was dishonoured, but there was no loss of fecundity, or even of virginity; while in the other there was amputation of virility, and the sufferer was neither changed into a woman nor allowed to remain a man.