The City of God, Volume I by Saint of Hippo Augustine
9. _Concerning the special offices of the gods._
1726 words | Chapter 179
And as to those very offices of the gods, so meanly and so minutely
portioned out, so that they say that they ought to be supplicated,
each one according to his special function,--about which we have
spoken much already, though not all that is to be said concerning
it,--are they not more consistent with mimic buffoonery than divine
majesty? If any one should use two nurses for his infant, one of whom
should give nothing but food, the other nothing but drink, as these
make use of two goddesses for this purpose, Educa and Potina, he
should certainly seem to be foolish, and to do in his house a thing
worthy of a mimic. They would have Liber to have been named from
"liberation," because through him males at the time of copulation
are liberated by the emission of the seed. They also say that Libera
(the same in their opinion as Venus) exercises the same function in
the case of women, because they say that they also emit seed; and
they also say that on this account the same part of the male and
of the female is placed in the temple, that of the male to Liber,
and that of the female to Libera. To these things they add the
women assigned to Liber, and the wine for exciting lust. Thus the
Bacchanalia are celebrated with the utmost insanity, with respect to
which Varro himself confesses that such things would not be done by
the Bacchanals except their minds were highly excited. These things,
however, afterwards displeased a saner senate, and it ordered them
to be discontinued. Here, at length, they perhaps perceived how
much power unclean spirits, when held to be gods, exercise over the
minds of men. These things, certainly, were not to be done in the
theatres; for there they play, not rave, although to have gods who
are delighted with such plays is very like raving.
But what kind of distinction is this which he makes between the
religious and the superstitious man, saying that the gods are
feared[238] by the superstitious man, but are reverenced[239] as
parents by the religious man, not feared as enemies; and that they are
all so good that they will more readily spare those who are impious
than hurt one who is innocent? And yet he tells us that three gods are
assigned as guardians to a woman after she has been delivered, lest
the god Silvanus come in and molest her; and that in order to signify
the presence of these protectors, three men go round the house during
the night, and first strike the threshold with a hatchet, next with a
pestle, and the third time sweep it with a brush, in order that these
symbols of agriculture having been exhibited, the god Silvanus might be
hindered from entering, because neither are trees cut down or pruned
without a hatchet, neither is grain ground without a pestle, nor corn
heaped up without a besom. Now from these three things three gods
have been named: Intercidona, from the cut[240] made by the hatchet;
Pilumnus, from the pestle; Diverra, from the besom;--by which guardian
gods the woman who has been delivered is preserved against the power of
the god Silvanus. Thus the guardianship of kindly-disposed gods would
not avail against the malice of a mischievous god, unless they were
three to one, and fought against him, as it were, with the opposing
emblems of cultivation, who, being an inhabitant of the woods, is
rough, horrible, and uncultivated. Is this the innocence of the gods?
Is this their concord? Are these the health-giving deities of the
cities, more ridiculous than the things which are laughed at in the
theatres?
When a male and a female are united, the god Jugatinus presides.
Well, let this be borne with. But the married woman must be brought
home: the god Domiducus also is invoked. That she may be in the
house, the god Domitius is introduced. That she may remain with her
husband, the goddess Manturnæ is used. What more is required? Let
human modesty be spared. Let the lust of flesh and blood go on with
the rest, the secret of shame being respected. Why is the bedchamber
filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen[241] have
departed? And, moreover, it is so filled, not that in consideration
of their presence more regard may be paid to chastity, but that by
their help the woman, naturally of the weaker sex, and trembling
with the novelty of her situation, may the more readily yield her
virginity. For there are the goddess Virginiensis, and the god-father
Subigus, and the goddess-mother Prema, and the goddess Pertunda,
and Venus, and Priapus.[242] What is this? If it was absolutely
necessary that a man, labouring at this work, should be helped by
the gods, might not some one god or goddess have been sufficient?
Was Venus not sufficient alone, who is even said to be named from
this, that without her power a woman does not cease to be a virgin?
If there is any shame in men, which is not in the deities, is it not
the case that, when the married couple believe that so many gods
of either sex are present, and busy at this work, they are so much
affected with shame, that the man is less moved, and the woman more
reluctant? And certainly, if the goddess Virginiensis is present
to loose the virgin's zone, if the god Subigus is present that the
virgin may be got under the man, if the goddess Prema is present
that, having been got under him, she may be kept down, and may not
move herself, what has the goddess Pertunda to do there? Let her
blush; let her go forth. Let the husband himself do something. It is
disgraceful that any one but himself should do that from which she
gets her name. But perhaps she is tolerated because she is said to
be a goddess, and not a god. For if she were believed to be a male,
and were called Pertundus, the husband would demand more help against
him for the chastity of his wife than the newly-delivered woman
against Silvanus. But why am I saying this, when Priapus, too, is
there, a male to excess, upon whose immense and most unsightly member
the newly-married bride is commanded to sit, according to the most
honourable and most religious custom of matrons?
Let them go on, and let them attempt with all the subtlety they can
to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous, the cities from
the theatres, the temples from the stages, the sacred things of the
priests from the songs of the poets, as honourable things from base
things, truthful things from fallacious, grave from light, serious
from ludicrous, desirable things from things to be rejected, we
understand what they do. They are aware that that theatrical and
fabulous theology hangs by the civil, and is reflected back upon it
from the songs of the poets as from a mirror; and thus, that theology
having been exposed to view which they do not dare to condemn, they
more freely assail and censure that picture of it, in order that
those who perceive what they mean may detest this very face itself of
which that is the picture,--which, however, the gods themselves, as
though seeing themselves in the same mirror, love so much, that it is
better seen in both of them who and what they are. Whence, also, they
have compelled their worshippers, with terrible commands, to dedicate
to them the uncleanness of the fabulous theology, to put them among
their solemnities, and reckon them among divine things; and thus they
have both shown themselves more manifestly to be most impure spirits,
and have made that rejected and reprobated theatrical theology a
member and a part of this, as it were, chosen and approved theology
of the city, so that, though the whole is disgraceful and false, and
contains in it fictitious gods, one part of it is in the literature
of the priests, the other in the songs of the poets. Whether it may
have other parts is another question. At present, I think, I have
sufficiently shown, on account of the division of Varro, that the
theology of the city and that of the theatre belong to one civil
theology. Wherefore, because they are both equally disgraceful,
absurd, shameful, false, far be it from religious men to hope for
eternal life from either the one or the other.
In fine, even Varro himself, in his account and enumeration of the
gods, starts from the moment of a man's conception. He commences
the series of those gods who take charge of man with Janus, carries
it on to the death of the man decrepit with age, and terminates
it with the goddess Nænia, who is sung at the funerals of the
aged. After that, he begins to give an account of the other gods,
whose province is not man himself, but man's belongings, as food,
clothing, and all that is necessary for this life; and, in the case
of all these, he explains what is the special office of each, and
for what each ought to be supplicated. But with all this scrupulous
and comprehensive diligence, he has neither proved the existence,
nor so much as mentioned the name, of any god from whom eternal life
is to be sought,--the one object for which we are Christians. Who,
then, is so stupid as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth
and opening up so diligently the civil theology, and by exhibiting
its likeness to that fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful theology,
and also by teaching that that fabulous sort is also a part of this
other, was labouring to obtain a place in the minds of men for none
but that natural theology which he says pertains to philosophers,
with such subtlety that he censures the fabulous, and, not daring
openly to censure the civil, shows its censurable character by simply
exhibiting it; and thus, both being reprobated by the judgment of men
of right understanding, the natural alone remains to be chosen? But
concerning this in its own place, by the help of the true God, we
have to discuss more diligently.
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