5 Plane.
6 Traditum.
7 Vel.
8 Perinde a vobis.
9 Quibus est.
CHAP. X.]
AD NATIONES.
a vow to the god Alburnus. Now is it not confessedly the greatest impiety, nay, the greatest insult, to place the honour of the Deity at the will and pleasure of human judg- ment, so that there cannot be a god except the senate permit him? Many times have the censors destroyed ' (a god) without consulting the people. Father Bacchus, with all his ritual, was certainly by the consuls, on tlie seate's authority, cast not only out of the city, but out of all Italy; whilst Varro informs us that Serapis also, and Isis, and Arpocrates, and Anubis, were excluded from the Capitol, and that their altars which the senate had thrown down were only restored by the popu- lar violence. The Consul Gabinius, however, on the first day of the ensuing January, al- though he gave a tardy consent to some sacri- fices, in deference to the crowd which assem- bled, because he had failed to decide about Serapis and Isis, yet held the judgment of the senate to be more potent than the clamour of the multitude, and forbade the altars to be built. Here, then, you have amongst your own forefathers, if not the name, at all events the procedure,^ of the Christians, which de- spises the gods. If, however, you were even innocent of the charge of treason against them in the honour you pay them, I still find that you have made a consistent advance in super- stition as well as impiety. For how much more irreligious are you found to be! There are your household gods, the Lares and the Penates, which you possess ^ by a family con- secration:* you even tread them profanely under foot, you and your domestics, by hawk- ing and pawning them for your wants or your whims. Such insolent sacrilege might be ex- cusable, if it were not practised against your humbler deities; as it is, the case is only the more insolent. There is, however, some con- solation for your private household gods under these affronts, that you treat your public deities with still greater indignity and inso- lence. First of all, you advertise them for auction, submit them to public sale, knock them down to the highest bidder, when you every five years bring them to the hammer among your revenues. For this purpose you frequent the temple of Serapis or the Capitol, hold your sales there, s conclude your con- tracts,* as if they were markets, with the wellknown 7 voice of the crier, (and) the self-same levy^ of the quaestor. Now lands become ' Adsolaverunt, " thrown to the ground;" " floored."
2 Sectam. [Rather — "A Christian secession."]
3 Perhibetis.
* Domestica consecratione, i.e., " for family worship." 5 Addicitur.
* Conducitur. 7 Eadem.
8Exactione, "as excise duty for the treasury."
cheaper when burdened with tribute, and men by the capitation tax diminish in value (these are the well-known marks of slavery). But the gods, the more tribute they pay, become more holy; or rather,' the more holy they are, the more tribute do they pay. Their majesty is converted into an article of traffic; men drive a business with their religion; the sanc- tity of the gods is beggared with sales and contracts. You make merchandise of the ground of your temples, of the approach to your altars, of your offerings,'" of your sacri- fices." You sell the whole divinity (of your gods). You will not permit their gratuitous worship. The auctioneers necessitate more repairs '"^ than the priests. It was not enough that you had insolently made a profit of your gods, if we would test the amount of your con- tempt; and you are not content to have with- held honour from them, you must also depre- ciate 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 '^ as equal with the gods? Even to your princes there are assigned the services of priests and sacred ceremonies, and chariots,'* and cars, and the honours of the solisternia and the lectisteniia, holidays and games. Rightly enough, '5 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 num- bered with them, even if it has been given to them to become divine after their birth; in the second place, because the witness who be- held the man caught up into heaven '^ would not forswear himself so freely and palpably before the people, if it were not for the con- 9 Immo.
'° " In money," stipibus.
" " Victims.''
'2 Plus refigitur.
'3 Utut mortuos.
«4 Tensae.
'5 Plane.
'6 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.
AD NATIONES.
[book I.
tempt felt about the objects sworn to both by himself and those* who allow the perjury. For these feel of themselves, that what is sworn to is nothing; and more than that, they y-o 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 Caesar carries with it more influential scruples, which very circumstance indeed tends to the deg- radation of your gods; for those who perjure themselves when swearing by Caesar 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 conscious- ness, or a natural loftiness of mind. Derision, however, is a more wanton feeling, and so far it points more directly ^ 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 ^ of the vulgar and profane to have constituted the re- ligion < of your forefathers; but then the most learned and serious classes (for seriousness and wisdom to some extent ^ profess* 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 in- vention of follies and falsehoods about their gods. I will begin with that enthusiastic fond- ness 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 ^ and the passions of men; who has pitted them against each other ■ Oehler reads " ei " (of course for " ii "); Rigalt. reads " ii."
» Denotatior ad.
3Gulae, " Depraved taste.''
4 Prope religionem convenire, " to have approximated to."
5 Quatenus.
^ Credunt, one would expect "creduntur" ("are supposed "), which is actually read by Gothofredus. 7 Or, " circiimsttnces " (casibus).
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 perish- ing;* he parades 9 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 incestu- ous passion for her by a description and enu- meration 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 false- hood? Have the dramatists also, whether in tragedy or comedy, refrained from making the gods the authors " of the calamities and retributions (of their plays)? I say nothing of your philosophers, whom a certain inspira- tion of truth itself elevates against the gods, and secures from all fear in their proud se- verity and stern discipline. Take, for exam- ple," 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 re- pented 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 approba- tion 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," introduces to our view some three hundred Joves, or, as they ought to be called, Jupiters,'^ (and all) without heads. Your other wanton wits ^ like- wise minister to your pleasures by disgracing the gods. Examine carefully the sacrilegious '^ 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 maj- esty is defiled in your presence in some un- chaste body. The mask of some deity, at your will,'* covers some infamous paltry head. The Sun mourns for the death of his son by a lightning-flash amid your rude rejoicing.
8 Fortasse periturum.
9 Traducit, perhaps "degrades."
10 Ut dei prajfarentur. Oehler explains the verb " prxfari " to mean " auctorem esse et tanquam caput."
" Denique. "Stili.
'STertulIian gives the comic p\ural '''' Juppiteres." '4 Ingenia.
15 Because appropriating tu themselres the admirettoo which was due to th^ Kods. '6 Cujiislibet dei.
CHAP. XII.]
AD NATIONES.
Cybele sighs for a shepherd who disdains her, without raising a blush on your cheek; and you quietly endure songs which celebrate ' the gallantries of Jove. You are, of course, pos- sessed 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 them- selves.= We have often witnessed in a muti- lated 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 maj- esty? They all, indeed, have their origin ^ in a contempt (of the gods), on the part both of those who practise ■* these personations, as well as of those ' who are susceptible of being so represented.* I hardly know, therefore, whether your gods have more reason to com- plain 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;^ 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.
CHAP. XI. ^ THE ABSURD CAVIL OF THE ASS S HEAD DISPOSED OF.
In this matter we are (said to be) guilty not ' Sustinetis modulari.
2 It is best to add the original of this almost unintelligible pas- sage: " Plane religiosiores estis in gladiatorum cavea, ubi super sanguinem humanum, super inquinamenta pcenarum proinde sal- tant dei vestri argumenta et kistorias nocentibus erogandis, aut in ipsis deis nocentes puniuntur." Some little light may be de- rived 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 ssepe 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 Scae- vola. It will be observed that these executions were with infa- mous perv'erseness set off with scenic show, wherein the criminal enacted some violent death m yielding up his own life. The indig- nant irony of the whole passage, led off by the " plane religiosi- ores estis, is evident.
3 Censentur. ♦ Factitant.
5 i.e., the gods themselves.
6 Redimitis.
7 Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
merely of forsaking the religion of the com- munity, but of introducing a monstrous su- perstition; for some among you have dreamed that our god is an ass's head, — an absurdity which Cornelius Tacitus first suggested. In the fourth book of his histories,^ where he is treating of the Jewish war, he begins his de- scription with the origin of that nation, and gives his own views respecting both the origin and the name of their religion. He relates that the Jews, in their migration in the desert, when suffering for want of water, escaped by following for guides some wild asses, which they supposed to be going in quest of water after pasture, and that on this account the image of one of these animals was worshipped by the Jews. From this, I sup- pose, it was presumed that we, too, from our close connection with the Jewish religion, have ours consecrated under the same emblematic form. The same Cornelius Tacitus, however, — who, to say the truth, is most loquacious in falsehood — forgetting his later statement, re- lates how Pompey the Great, after conquering the Jews and capturing Jerusalem, entered the temple, but found nothing in the shape of an image, though he examined the place care- fully. Where, then, should their God have been found? Nowhere else, of course than in so memorable a temple which was carefully shut to all but the priests, and into which there could be no fear of a stranger entering. But what apology must I here offer for what I am going to say, when I have no other object at the moment than to make apassing remark or two in a general way which shall be equally applicable to yourselves? 9 Suppose that our God, then, be an asinine person, will you at all events deny that you possess the same char- acteristics with ourselves in that matter? (Not their heads only, but) entire asses, are, to be sure, objects of adoration to you, along with their tutelar Epona; and all herds, and cattle, and beasts you consecrate, and their stables into the bargain! This, perhaps, is your grievance against us, that, when sur- rounded by cattle-worshippers of every kind we are simply devoted to asses!
CHAP. XII. '° THE CHARGE OF WORSHIPPING A CROSS. THE HEATHENS THEMSELVES MADE MUCH OF CROSSES IN SACRED THINGS; NAY, THEIR VERY IDOLS WERE FORMED ON A CRUCIAL FRAME.
As for him who affirms that we are "the 8 In Tke Apology (c. xvi.) the reference is to " the fifth book.* This is correct. Book v. c. 3, is meant.
9 In vobis, for " in vo.^ " ex pari transferendorum. 10 Comp. The Apology c. xvi.
AD NATIONES.
[book I priesthood of a cross," ' we shall claim him^ as our co-religionist. 3 A cross is, in its ma- terial, a sign of wood; amongst yourselves also the object of worship is a wooden figure. Only, whilst with you the figure is a human one, with us the wood is its own figure. Never mind * for th^ present what is the shape, provided the material is the same: the form, too, is of no importance,^ if so be it be the actual body of a god. If, however, there arises a question of difference on this point, what, (let me ask,) is the difference between the Athenian Pallas, or the Pharian Ceres, and wood formed into a cross,* when each is represented by a rough stock, without form, and by the merest rudiment of a statue ^ of un- formed wood? Every piece of timber ^ which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is a part of a cross, and indeed the greater por- tion of its mass. But an entire cross is at- tributed to us, with its transverse beam,^ of course, and its projecting seat. Now you have the less to excuse you, for you dedicate to religion only a mutilated imperfect piece of wood, while others consecrate to the sacred purpose a complete structure. The truth, however, after all is, that your religion is a// cross, as I shall show. You are indeed unaware that your gods in their origin have pro- ceeded from this hated cross.'" Now, every image, whether carved out of wood or stone, or molten in metal, or produced out of any other richer material, must needs have had plastic hands engaged in its formation. Well, then, this modeller," before he did anything else," hit upon the form of a wooden cross, because even our own body assumes as its natural position the latent and concealed out- line of a cross. Since the head rises upwards, and the back takes a straight direction, and the shoulders project laterally, if you simply place a man with his arms and hands out- stretched, you will make the general outline of a cross. Starting, then, from this rudimental form and prop, '^ as it were, he applies a cover- ing of clay, and so gradually completes the limbs, and forms the body, and covers the cross within with the shape which he meant to impress upon the clay; then from this de- sign, with the help of compasses and leaden " Crucis antistites, 2Erit.
3 Consacraneus.
4 Viderint.
5 Viderit.
* Stipite cnicis.
7 Solo staticulo. The use of wood in the construction of an idol is mentioned afterward.
* Omne robur.
9 Antemna. See our yl nti-Marcion, p. 156. Ed. Edinburgh. '° De isto patibulo. " Plasta. " In primo. '3 Statumini.
moulds, he has got all ready for his image which is to be brought out into marble, or clay, or whatever the material be of which he has determined to make his god. (This, then, is the process:) after the cross-shaped frame, the clay; after the clay, the god. In a well- understood routine, the cross passes into a god through the clayey medium. The cross then you consecrate, and from it the consecrated (deity) begins to derive his origin."* By way of example, let us take the case of a tree which grows up into a system of branches and foliage, and is a reproduction of its own kind, whether it springs from the kernel of an olive, or the stone of a peach, or a grain of pepper which has been duly tempered under ground. Now, if you transplant it, or take a cutting off its branches for another plant, to what will you attribute what is produced by the propagation? Will it not be to the grain, or the stone, or the kernel? Because, as the third stage is attributable to the second, and the second in like manner to the first, so the third will have to be referred to the first, through the second as the mean. We need not stay any longer in the discussion of this point, since by a nat- ural law every kind of produce throughout nature refers back its growth to its original source; and just as the product is comprised in its primal cause, so does that cause agree in character with the thing produced. Since, then, in the production of your gods, you worship the cross which originates them, here will be the original kernel and grain, from which are propagated the wooden materials of your idolatrous images. Examples are not far to seek. Your victories you celebrate with religious ceremony '^ as deities; and they are the more august in proportion to the joy they bring you. The frames on which you hang up your trophies must be crosses: these are, as it were, the very core of your pageants.'* Thus, in your victories, the religion of your camp makes even crosses objects of worship; your standards it adores, your standards are the sanction of its oaths; your standards it prefers before Jupiter himself. But all that parade'' of images, and that display of pure gold, are (as so many) necklaces of the crosses. In like manner also, in the banners and ensigns, which your soldiers guard with no less sacred care, you have the streamers (and) vestments of your crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses.