The City of God, Volume I by Saint of Hippo Augustine
17. _Of the disasters which vexed the Roman republic after the
1759 words | Chapter 96
inauguration of the consulship, and of the non-intervention of
the gods of Rome._
After this, when their fears were gradually diminished,--not because
the wars ceased, but because they were not so furious,--that period in
which things were "ordered with justice and moderation" drew to an end,
and there followed that state of matters which Sallust thus briefly
sketches: "Then began the patricians to oppress the people as slaves,
to condemn them to death or scourging, as the kings had done, to drive
them from their holdings, and to tyrannize over those who had no
property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive measures,
and most of all by usury, and obliged to contribute both money and
personal service to the constant wars, at length took arms and seceded
to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus secured for themselves
tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the second Punic war that
put an end on both sides to discord and strife."[146] But why should I
spend time in writing such things, or make others spend it in reading
them? Let the terse summary of Sallust suffice to intimate the misery
of the republic through all that long period till the second Punic
war,--how it was distracted from without by unceasing wars, and torn
with civil broils and dissensions. So that those victories they boast
were not the substantial joys of the happy, but the empty comforts of
wretched men, and seductive incitements to turbulent men to concoct
disasters upon disasters. And let not the good and prudent Romans be
angry at our saying this; and indeed we need neither deprecate nor
denounce their anger, for we know they will harbour none. For we speak
no more severely than their own authors, and much less elaborately and
strikingly; yet they diligently read these authors, and compel their
children to learn them. But they who are angry, what would they do to
me were I to say what Sallust says? "Frequent mobs, seditions, and at
last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the
masses were dependent, affected supreme power under the seemly pretence
of seeking the good of senate and people; citizens were judged good
or bad, without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all
were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were
esteemed good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of
things." Now, if those historians judged that an honourable freedom of
speech required that they should not be silent regarding the blemishes
of their own state, which they have in many places loudly applauded in
their ignorance of that other and true city in which citizenship is an
everlasting dignity; what does it become us to do, whose liberty ought
to be so much greater, as our hope in God is better and more assured,
when they impute to our Christ the calamities of this age, in order
that men of the less instructed and weaker sort may be alienated from
that city in which alone eternal and blessed life can be enjoyed? Nor
do we utter against their gods anything more horrible than their own
authors do, whom they read and circulate. For, indeed, all that we have
said we have derived from them, and there is much more to say of a
worse kind which we are unable to say.
Where, then, were those gods who are supposed to be justly worshipped
for the slender and delusive prosperity of this world, when the
Romans, who were seduced to their service by lying wiles, were
harassed by such calamities? Where were they when Valerius the consul
was killed while defending the Capitol, that had been fired by
exiles and slaves? He was himself better able to defend the temple
of Jupiter, than that crowd of divinities with their most high and
mighty king, whose temple he came to the rescue of, were able to
defend him. Where were they when the city, worn out with unceasing
seditions, was waiting in some kind of calm for the return of the
ambassadors who had been sent to Athens to borrow laws, and was
desolated by dreadful famine and pestilence? Where were they when the
people, again distressed with famine, created for the first time a
prefect of the market; and when Spurius Melius, who, as the famine
increased, distributed corn to the famishing masses, was accused
of aspiring to royalty, and at the instance of this same prefect,
and on the authority of the superannuated dictator L. Quintius, was
put to death by Quintus Servilius, master of the horse,--an event
which occasioned a serious and dangerous riot? Where were they
when that very severe pestilence visited Rome, on account of which
the people, after long and wearisome and useless supplications of
the helpless gods, conceived the idea of celebrating Lectisternia,
which had never been done before; that is to say, they set couches
in honour of the gods, which accounts for the name of this sacred
rite, or rather sacrilege?[147] Where were they when, during ten
successive years of reverses, the Roman army suffered frequent and
great losses among the Veians, and would have been destroyed but
for the succour of Furius Camillus, who was afterwards banished by
an ungrateful country? Where were they when the Gauls took, sacked,
burned, and desolated Rome? Where were they when that memorable
pestilence wrought such destruction, in which Furius Camillus too
perished, who first defended the ungrateful republic from the Veians,
and afterwards saved it from the Gauls? Nay, during this plague they
introduced a new pestilence of scenic entertainments, which spread
its more fatal contagion, not to the bodies, but the morals of the
Romans? Where were they when another frightful pestilence visited
the city--I mean the poisonings imputed to an incredible number of
noble Roman matrons, whose characters were infected with a disease
more fatal than any plague? Or when both consuls at the head of the
army were beset by the Samnites in the Caudine Forks, and forced to
strike a shameful treaty, 600 Roman knights being kept as hostages;
while the troops, having laid down their arms, and being stripped of
everything, were made to pass under the yoke with one garment each?
Or when, in the midst of a serious pestilence, lightning struck the
Roman camp and killed many? Or when Rome was driven, by the violence
of another intolerable plague, to send to Epidaurus for Æsculapius
as a god of medicine; since the frequent adulteries of Jupiter in
his youth had not perhaps left this king of all who so long reigned
in the Capitol, any leisure for the study of medicine? Or when, at
one time, the Lucanians, Brutians, Samnites, Tuscans, and Senonian
Gauls conspired against Rome, and first slew her ambassadors, then
overthrew an army under the prætor, putting to the sword 13,000
men, besides the commander and seven tribunes? Or when the people,
after the serious and long-continued disturbances at Rome, at last
plundered the city and withdrew to Janiculus; a danger so grave,
that Hortensius was created dictator,--an office which they had
recourse to only in extreme emergencies; and he, having brought back
the people, died while yet he retained his office,--an event without
precedent in the case of any dictator, and which was a shame to those
gods who had now Æsculapius among them?
At that time, indeed, so many wars were everywhere engaged in, that
through scarcity of soldiers they enrolled for military service the
_proletarii_, who received this name, because, being too poor to
equip for military service, they had leisure to beget offspring.[148]
Pyrrhus, king of Greece, and at that time of wide-spread renown, was
invited by the Tarentines to enlist himself against Rome. It was to
him that Apollo, when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise,
uttered with some pleasantry so ambiguous an oracle, that whichever
alternative happened, the god himself should be counted divine. For he
so worded the oracle,[149] that whether Pyrrhus was conquered by the
Romans, or the Romans by Pyrrhus, the soothsaying god would securely
await the issue. And then what frightful massacres of both armies
ensued! Yet Pyrrhus remained conqueror, and would have been able now
to proclaim Apollo a true diviner, as he understood the oracle, had
not the Romans been the conquerors in the next engagement. And while
such disastrous wars were being waged, a terrible disease broke out
among the women. For the pregnant women died before delivery. And
Æsculapius, I fancy, excused himself in this matter on the ground that
he professed to be arch-physician, not midwife. Cattle, too, similarly
perished; so that it was believed that the whole race of animals was
destined to become extinct. Then what shall I say of that memorable
winter in which the weather was so incredibly severe, that in the
Forum frightfully deep snow lay for forty days together, and the Tiber
was frozen? Had such things happened in our time, what accusations we
should have heard from our enemies! And that other great pestilence,
which raged so long and carried off so many; what shall I say of it?
Spite of all the drugs of Æsculapius, it only grew worse in its second
year, till at last recourse was had to the Sibylline books,--a kind of
oracle which, as Cicero says in his _De Divinatione_, owes significance
to its interpreters, who make doubtful conjectures as they can or as
they wish. In this instance, the cause of the plague was said to be
that so many temples had been used as private residences. And thus
Æsculapius for the present escaped the charge of either ignominious
negligence or want of skill. But why were so many allowed to occupy
sacred tenements without interference, unless because supplication had
long been addressed in vain to such a crowd of gods, and so by degrees
the sacred places were deserted of worshippers, and being thus vacant,
could without offence be put at least to some human uses? And the
temples, which were at that time laboriously recognised and restored
that the plague might be stayed, fell afterwards into disuse, and were
again devoted to the same human uses. Had they not thus lapsed into
obscurity, it could not have been pointed to as proof of Varro's great
erudition, that in his work on sacred places he cites so many that were
unknown. Meanwhile, the restoration of the temples procured no cure of
the plague, but only a fine excuse for the gods.
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