Ad Nationes.

 Book I.

 In this case you actually conduct trials contrary to the usual form of judicial process against criminals for when culprits are brought up for trial,

 Since, therefore, you who are in other cases most scrupulous and persevering in investigating charges of far less serious import, relinquish your care

 But the sect, you say, is punished in the name of its founder. Now in the first place it is, no doubt, a fair and usual custom that a sect should be m

 As to your saying of us that we are a most shameful set, and utterly steeped in luxury, avarice, and depravity, we will not deny that this is true of

 Whenever these statements and answers of ours, which truth suggests of its own accord, press and restrain your conscience, which is the witness of its

 Whence comes it to pass, you will say to us, that such a character could have been attributed to you, as to have justified the lawmakers perhaps by it

 We are indeed said to be the “third race” of men. What, a dog-faced race? Or broadly shadow-footed? bread

 But why should I be astonished at your vain imputations?  Under the same natural form, malice and folly have always been associated in one body and gr

 Pour out now all your venom fling against this name of ours all your shafts of calumny: I shall stay no longer to refute them but they shall by and

 In this matter we are (said to be) guilty not merely of forsaking the religion of the community, but of introducing a monstrous superstition for some

 As for him who affirms that we are “the priesthood of a cross,” we shall claim him all cross

 Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact

 Report has introduced a new calumny respecting our God. Not so long ago, a most abandoned wretch in that city of yours, a man who had deserted indeed

 Since we are on a par in respect of the gods, it follows that there is no difference between us on the point of sacrifice, or even of worship, if I ma

 I am now come to the hour for extinguishing the lamps, and for using the dogs, and practising the deeds of darkness. And on this point I am afraid I m

 As to your charges of obstinacy and presumption, whatever you allege against us, even in these respects, there are not wanting points in which you wil

 The rest of your charge of obstinacy against us you sum up in this indictment, that we boldly refuse neither your swords, nor your crosses, nor your w

 Here end, I suppose, your tremendous charges of obstinacy against the Christians. Now, since we are amenable to them in common with yourselves, it onl

 Chapter XX.—Truth and Reality Pertain to Christians Alone. The Heathen Counselled to Examine and Embrace It.

 Book II

 Chapter I.—The Heathen Gods from Heathen Authorities. Varro Has Written a Work on the Subject. His Threefold Classification. The Changeable Character

 Chapter II.—Philosophers Had Not Succeeded in Discovering God. The Uncertainty and Confusion of Their Speculations.

 Chapter III.—The Physical Philosophers Maintained the Divinity of the Elements The Absurdity of the Tenet Exposed.

 Chapter IV.—Wrong Derivation of the Word Θεός. The Name Indicative of the True Deity. God Without Shape and Immaterial. Anecdote of Thales.

 Chapter V.—The Physical Theory Continued. Further Reasons Advanced Against the Divinity of the Elements.

 Chapter VI.—The Changes of the Heavenly Bodies, Proof that They are Not Divine.  Transition from the Physical to the Mythic Class of Gods.

 Chapter VII.—The Gods of the Mythic Class. The Poets a Very Poor Authority in Such Matters. Homer and the Mythic Poets. Why Irreligious.

 Chapter VIII.—The Gods of the Different Nations. Varro’s Gentile Class. Their Inferiority. A Good Deal of This Perverse Theology Taken from Scripture.

 Chapter IX.—The Power of Rome. Romanized Aspect of All the Heathen Mythology. Varro’s Threefold Distribution Criticised. Roman Heroes (Æneas Included,

 Chapter X.—A Disgraceful Feature of the Roman Mythology. It Honours Such Infamous Characters as Larentina.

 Chapter XI.—The Romans Provided Gods for Birth, Nay, Even Before Birth, to Death. Much Indelicacy in This System.

 Now, how much further need I go in recounting your gods—because I want to descant on the character of such as you have adopted? It is quite uncertain

 Manifest cases, indeed, like these have a force peculiarly their own.  Men like Varro and his fellow-dreamers admit into the ranks of the divinity tho

 Chapter XIV.—Gods, Those Which Were Confessedly Elevated to the Divine Condition, What Pre-Eminent Right Had They to Such Honour? Hercules an Inferior

 Chapter XV.—The Constellations and the Genii Very Indifferent Gods. The Roman Monopoly of Gods Unsatisfactory. Other Nations Require Deities Quite as

 Chapter XVI.—Inventors of Useful Arts Unworthy of Deification. They Would Be the First to Acknowledge a Creator. The Arts Changeable from Time to Time

 In conclusion, without denying all those whom antiquity willed and posterity has believed to be gods, to be the guardians of your religion, there yet

Chapter VII.—The Gods of the Mythic Class. The Poets a Very Poor Authority in Such Matters. Homer and the Mythic Poets. Why Irreligious.

But to pass to the mythic class of gods, which we attributed to the poets,423    See above, c. i. [Note 19, p. 129.] I hardly know whether I must only seek to put them on a par with our own human mediocrity, or whether they must be affirmed to be gods, with proofs of divinity, like the African Mopsus and the Bœotian Amphiaraus. I must now indeed but slightly touch on this class, of which a fuller view will be taken in the proper place.424    See The Apology, especially cc. xxii. and xxiii. Meanwhile, that these were only human beings, is clear from the fact that you do not consistently call them gods, but heroes. Why then discuss the point? Although divine honours had to be ascribed to dead men, it was not to them as such, of course. Look at your own practice, when with similar excess of presumption you sully heaven with the sepulchres of your kings: is it not such as are illustrious for justice, virtue, piety, and every excellence of this sort, that you honour with the blessedness of deification, contented even to incur contempt if you forswear yourselves425    Pejerantes. for such characters? And, on the other hand, do you not deprive the impious and disgraceful of even the old prizes of human glory, tear up426    Lancinatis. their decrees and titles, pull down their statues, and deface427    Repercutitus. their images on the current coin? Will He, however, who beholds all things, who approves, nay, rewards the good, prostitute before all men428    Vulgo. the attribute of His own inexhaustible grace and mercy? And shall men be allowed an especial mount of care and righteousness, that they may be wise429    Sapere. The infinitive of purpose is frequent in our author. in selecting and multiplying430    Distribuendis. their deities? Shall attendants on kings and princes be more pure than those who wait on the Supreme God?431    An allusion to Antinous, who is also referred to in The Apology, xiii. [“Court-page.” See, p. 29, Supra.] You turn your back in horror, indeed, on outcasts and exiles, on the poor and weak, on the obscurely born and the low-lived;432    Inhoneste institutos. but yet you honour, even by legal sanctions,433    By the “legibus” Tertullian refers to the divine honours ordered to be paid, by decrees of the Senate, to deceased emperors. Comp. Suetonius, Octav. 88; and Pliny, Paneg. 11 (Oehler). unchaste men, adulterers, robbers, and parricides. Must we regard it as a subject of ridicule or indignation, that such characters are believed to be gods who are not fit to be men? Then, again, in this mythic class of yours which the poets celebrate, how uncertain is your conduct as to purity of conscience and the maintenance thereof!  For whenever we hold up to execration the wretched, disgraceful and atrocious (examples) of your gods, you defend them as mere fables, on the pretence of poetic licence; whenever we volunteer a silent contempt434    Ultro siletur. of this said435    Ejusmodi. poetic licence, then you are not only troubled with no horror of it, but you go so far as436    Insuper. to show it respect, and to hold it as one of the indispensable (fine) arts; nay,437    Denique. you carry out the studies of your higher classes438    Ingenuitatis. by its means, as the very foundation439    Initiatricem. of your literature. Plato was of opinion that poets ought to be banished, as calumniators of the gods; (he would even have) Homer himself expelled from his republic, although, as you are aware,440    Sane. he was the crowned head of them all. But while you admit and retain them thus, why should you not believe them when they disclose such things respecting your gods? And if you do believe your poets, how is it that you worship such gods (as they describe)?  If you worship them simply because you do not believe the poets, why do you bestow praise on such lying authors, without any fear of giving offence to those whose calumniators you honour? A regard for truth441    Fides. is not, of course, to be expected of poets.  But when you say that they only make men into gods after their death, do you not admit that before death the said gods were merely human? Now what is there strange in the fact, that they who were once men are subject to the dishonour442    Polluuntur. of human casualties, or crimes, or fables?  Do you not, in fact, put faith in your poets, when it is in accordance with their rhapsodies443    Relationibus. that you have arranged in some instances your very rituals? How is it that the priestess of Ceres is ravished, if it is not because Ceres suffered a similar outrage? Why are the children of others sacrificed to Saturn,444    Comp. The Apology, ix. [See, p. 25, Supra.] if it is not because he spared not his own?  Why is a male mutilated in honour of the Idæan goddess Cybele, unless it be that the (unhappy) youth who was too disdainful of her advances was castrated, owing to her vexation at his daring to cross her love?445    Comp. Minucius Felix, Octav. xxi.; Arnobius, adv. Nat. v. 6, 7; Augustine, Civ. Dei, vi. 7. Why was not Hercules “a dainty dish” to the good ladies of Lanuvium, if it was not for the primeval offence which women gave to him? The poets, no doubt, are liars. Yet it is not because of their telling us that446    This is the force of the subjunctive verb. your gods did such things when they were human beings, nor because they predicated divine scandals447    By divine scandals, he means such as exceed in their atrocity even human scandals. of a divine state, since it seemed to you more credible that gods should exist, though not of such a character, than that there should be such characters, although not gods.

7. Caeterum cui res examinabitur, verisimilius utique dicet elementa ista ab aliquo regi, quam ultro . . . igitur non deos, quae sub aliquo. At si in isto erratur, melius est simpliciter, quam ut physici, diligenter. Sed enim si ad mythic . . . tes , melius jam 0594B in physico mortalitas errat, eis divinitatem adscribendo, quae super hominem putat situ et vi et magnitudine et divinitate sentiri; quod enim super hominem, credas Deo proximum. Caeterum ut ad mythicum transeamus, quod poetis deputatur, nescio an tantum . . . . . . . . . mediocritati nostrae, an tanti de documentis divinitatis conf . . . . . . . . ut Mopsus Africanus et Boeotus Amphiaraus . Delibanda enim nunc est species ista, cujus suo loco ratio reddetur. Interim hos certe homines fuisse vel eo palam est, quod non constanter deos illos, sed heroas appellatis. Quid ergo contendimus? Si addicenda mortuis divinitas erat, non utique talibus? Ecce vos cum eadem licentia praesumptionis sepulcris regum vestrorum coelum infamatis, nonne probatos quosque justitia, virtute, 0594C pietate et omni bono ejusmodi consecrationis solatio honestatis contenti pro talibus etiam irrideri pejerantes. At e contrario impios, turpes etiam pristinis humanae gloriae praemiis aufertis, decreta eorum et titulos lancinatis, imagines detrahitis, monetam repercutitis. Ille autem conspector omnium, comprobator, imo largitor bonorum, tantae indulgentiae suae ordinationem vulgo prostituet et plus diligentiae atque justitiae hominibus licebit in distribuendis divinitatibus sapere? Mundiores erunt regum et principum comites quam summi Dei? Atquin horretis et aversamini, vagos, exsules, . . . . . . debiles, sordide natos, 0595A inhoneste institutos; contra incestos, adulteros, raptores, parricidas etiam legibus exserendis. Ridendum an irascendum sit, tales deos credi, quales homines esse non debeant? Sed enim in isto mythico genere, quod poetae ferunt, quam incerti agitis circa conscientiae pudorem et pudoris defensionem! Nam quotiens mise . . . . , turpia, vel atrocia deorum exprobramus; allegationem poeti . . . . . . e ut fabulosa defenditis! quotiens ultro siletur de ejusmodi poetica, non modo non horretis, sed insuper honoratis, utque in necessariis artibus habetis. Denique per hanc initiatricem litteraturae ingenuitatis studia producitis. Criminatores deorum poetas eliminari Plato censuit, ipsum Homerum sane coronatum civitate pellendum. At cum excipiatis illos et retineatis, cur non credatis talia retexentibus de deis vestris? Igitur si creditis poetis, 0595B cur laudem mendacibus fertis, nec cavetis ne offendatis eos, quorum detrectatores honoratis? Sane fides a poetis non exigenda. Nonne qui dicitis deos post mortem factos, homines confitemini ante mortem? Quid ergo novi, si, qui homines fuerint, humanis aut casibus aut criminibus aut fabulis polluuntur? Non creditis poetis, cum de relationibus eorum etiam sacra quaenam disposueritis? Cur rapitur sacerdos Cereris, si non tale Ceres passa est? Cur Saturno alieni liberi immolantur, si ille suis pepercit? Cur Ideae masculus amputatur, si nullus illi fastidiosior adolescens libidinis frustatae dolore castratus est? Cur Herculeum polluctum mulieres Lanuvinae non gustant, si non mulierum caussa p . . . . . . Mentiuntur 0595C sane poetae! sed non ideo quod talia gesserint . . . homines quas defuerint nec quod divinas adscripserint fo . . . . divinitatis, cum interim vobis credibilius visum est deos fuisse, sed non tales, quam tales, sed non deos.