It was not enough that you had insolently made a profit of your gods, if we would test the amount of your contempt; and you are not content to have withheld honour from them, you must also depreciate the little you do render to them by some indignity or other. What, indeed, do you do by way of honouring your gods, which you do not equally offer to your dead? You build temples for the gods, you erect temples also to the dead; you build altars for the gods, you build them also for the dead; you inscribe the same superscription over both; you sketch out the same lineaments for their statues--as best suits their genius, or profession, or age; you make an old man of Saturn, a beardless youth of Apollo; you form a virgin from Diana; in Mars you consecrate a soldier, a blacksmith in Vulcan. No wonder, therefore, if you slay the same victims and burn the same odours for your dead as you do for your gods. What excuse can be found for that insolence which classes the dead of whatever sort [624] as equal with the gods? Even to your princes there are assigned the services of priests and sacred ceremonies, and chariots, [625] and cars, and the honours of the solisternia and the lectisternia, holidays and games. Rightly enough, [626] since heaven is open to them; still it is none the less contumelious to the gods: in the first place, because it could not possibly be decent that other beings should be numbered with them, even if it has been given to them to become divine after their birth; in the second place, because the witness who beheld the man caught up into heaven [627] would not forswear himself so freely and palpably before the people, if it were not for the contempt felt about the objects sworn to both by himself and those [628] who allow the perjury. For these feel of themselves, that what is sworn to is nothing; and more than that, they go so far as to fee the witness, because he had the courage to publicly despise the avengers of perjury. Now, as to that, who among you is pure of the charge of perjury? By this time, indeed, there is an end to all danger in swearing by the gods, since the oath by Cæsar carries with it more influential scruples, which very circumstance indeed tends to the degradation of your gods; for those who perjure themselves when swearing by Cæsar are more readily punished than those who violate an oath to a Jupiter. But, of the two kindred feelings of contempt and derision, contempt is the more honourable, having a certain glory in its arrogance; for it sometimes proceeds from confidence, or the security of consciousness, or a natural loftiness of mind. Derision, however, is a more wanton feeling, and so far it points more directly [629] to a carping insolence. Now only consider what great deriders of your gods you show yourselves to be! I say nothing of your indulgence of this feeling during your sacrificial acts, how you offer for your victims the poorest and most emaciated creatures; or else of the sound and healthy animals only the portions which are useless for food, such as the heads and hoofs, or the plucked feathers and hair, and whatever at home you would have thrown away. I pass over whatever may seem to the taste [630] of the vulgar and profane to have constituted the religion [631] of your forefathers; but then the most learned and serious classes (for seriousness and wisdom to some extent [632] profess [633] to be derived from learning) are always, in fact, the most irreverent towards your gods; and if their learning ever halts, it is only to make up for the remissness by a more shameful invention of follies and falsehoods about their gods. I will begin with that enthusiastic fondness which you show for him from whom every depraved writer gets his dreams, to whom you ascribe as much honour as you derogate from your gods, by magnifying him who has made such sport of them. I mean Homer by this description. He it is, in my opinion, who has treated the majesty of the Divine Being on the low level of human condition, imbuing the gods with the falls [634] and the passions of men; who has pitted them against each other with varying success, like pairs of gladiators: he wounds Venus with an arrow from a human hand; he keeps Mars a prisoner in chains for thirteen months, with the prospect of perishing; [635] he parades [636] Jupiter as suffering a like indignity from a crowd of celestial (rebels;) or he draws from him tears for Sarpedon; or he represents him wantoning with Juno in the most disgraceful way, advocating his incestuous passion for her by a description and enumeration of his various amours. Since then, which of the poets has not, on the authority of their great prince, calumniated the gods, by either betraying truth or feigning falsehood? Have the dramatists also, whether in tragedy or comedy, refrained from making the gods the authors [637] of the calamities and retributions (of their plays)? I say nothing of your philosophers, whom a certain inspiration of truth itself elevates against the gods, and secures from all fear in their proud severity and stern discipline. Take, for example, [638] Socrates. In contempt of your gods, he swears by an oak, and a dog, and a goat. Now, although he was condemned to die for this very reason, the Athenians afterwards repented of that condemnation, and even put to death his accusers. By this conduct of theirs the testimony of Socrates is replaced at its full value, and I am enabled to meet you with this retort, that in his case you have approbation bestowed on that which is now-a-days reprobated in us. But besides this instance there is Diogenes, who, I know not to what extent, made sport of Hercules; whilst Varro, that Diogenes of the Roman cut, [639] introduces to our view some three hundred Joves, or, as they ought to be called, Jupiters, [640] (and all) without heads. Your other wanton wits [641] likewise minister to your pleasures by disgracing the gods. Examine carefully the sacrilegious [642] beauties of your Lentuli and Hostii; now, is it the players or your gods who become the objects of your mirth in their tricks and jokes? Then, again, with what pleasure do you take up the literature of the stage, which describes all the foul conduct of the gods! Their majesty is defiled in your presence in some unchaste body. The mask of some deity, at your will, [643] covers some infamous paltry head. The Sun mourns for the death of his son by a lightning-flash amid your rude rejoicing. Cybele sighs for a shepherd who disdains her, without raising a blush on your cheek; and you quietly endure songs which celebrate [644] the gallantries of Jove. You are, of course, possessed of a more religious spirit in the show of your gladiators, when your gods dance, with equal zest, over the spilling of human blood, (and) over those filthy penalties which are at once their proof and plot for executing your criminals, or else (when) your criminals are punished personating the gods themselves. [645] We have often witnessed in a mutilated criminal your god of Pessinum, Attis; a wretch burnt alive has personated Hercules. We have laughed at the sport of your mid-day game of the gods, when Father Pluto, Jove's own brother, drags away, hammer in hand, the remains of the gladiators; when Mercury, with his winged cap and heated wand, tests with his cautery whether the bodies were really lifeless, or only feigning death. Who now can investigate every particular of this sort although so destructive of the honour of the Divine Being, and so humiliating to His majesty? They all, indeed, have their origin [646] in a contempt (of the gods), on the part both of those who practise [647] these personations, as well as of those [648] who are susceptible of being so represented. [649] I hardly know, therefore, whether your gods have more reason to complain of yourselves or of us. After despising them on the one hand, you flatter them on the other; if you fail in any duty towards them, you appease them with a fee; [650] in short, you allow yourselves to act towards them in any way you please. We, however, live in a consistent and entire aversion to them.
[604] Comp. The Apology, cc. xii. xiii. xiv. xv.
[605] See The Apology (passim), especially cc. xvi.-xxiv., xxx.-xxxvi., and xxxix.
[606] Admentationibus.
[607] Plane.
[608] Traditum.
[609] Vel.
[610] Perinde a vobis.
[611] Quibus est.
[612] Adsolaverunt, "thrown to the ground;" "floored."
[613] Sectam. [Rather--"A Christian secession."]
[614] Perhibetis.
[615] Domestica consecratione, i.e., "for family worship."
[616] Addicitur.
[617] Conducitur.
[618] Eadem.
[619] Exactione, "as excise duty for the treasury."
[620] Immo.
[621] "In money," stipibus.
[622] " Victims. "
[623] Plus refigitur.
[624] Utut mortuos.
[625] Tensæ.
[626] Plane.
[627] Rigaltius has the name Proculus in his text; but Tertullian refers not merely to that case but to a usual functionary, necessary in all cases of deification.
[628] Oehler reads "ei" (of course for "ii"); Rigalt. reads "ii."
[629] Denotatior ad.
[630] Gulæ, "Depraved taste."
[631] Prope religionem convenire, "to have approximated to."
[632] Quatenus.
[633] Credunt, one would expect "creduntur" ("are supposed"), which is actually read by Gothofredus.
[634] Or, "circumstances" (casibus).
[635] Fortasse periturum.
[636] Traducit, perhaps "degrades."
[637] Ut dei præfarentur. Oehler explains the verb "præfari" to mean "auctorem esse et tanquam caput."
[638] Denique.
[639] Stili.
[640] Tertullian gives the comic plural "Juppiteres."
[641] Ingenia.
[642] Because appropriating to themselves the admiration which was due to the gods.
[643] Cujuslibet dei.
[644] Sustinetis modulari.
[645] It is best to add the original of this almost unintelligible passage: "Plane religiosiores estis in gladiatorum cavea, ubi super sanguinem humanum, supra inquinamenta poenarum proinde saltant dei vestri argumenta et historias nocentibus erogandis, aut in ipsis deis nocentes puniuntur." Some little light may be derived from the parallel passage of the Apology (c. xv.), which is expressed somewhat less obscurely. Instead of the words in italics, Tertullian there substitutes these: "Argumenta et historias noxiis ministrantes, nisi quod et ipsos deos vestros sæpe noxii induunt"--"whilst furnishing the proofs and the plots for (executing) criminals, only that the said criminals often act the part of your gods themselves." Oehler refers, in illustration of the last clause, to the instance of the notorious robber Laureolus, who personated Prometheus; others, again, personated Laureolus himself: some criminals had to play the part of Orpheus; others of Mutius Scævola. It will be observed that these executions were with infamous perverseness set off with scenic show, wherein the criminal enacted some violent death in yielding up his own life. The indignant irony of the whole passage, led off by the "plane religiosiores estis," is evident.
[646] Censentur.
[647] Factitant.
[648] i.e., the gods themselves.
[649] Redimitis.
[650] Redimitis.