Octavius

1As I was thinking and going over in my mind the memory of Octavius, my good and most faithful companion, such sweetness and affection for the man clung to me that I seemed in some way to return to the past, not merely to call back by recollection things already finished and run their course.

His image, the more it has been withdrawn from my eyes, the more it is entwined with my heart and almost with my innermost feelings.

And not without reason did that extraordinary and holy man, when he departed, leave behind an immense longing for himself in us, since he himself always burned with so great a love for us that in both playful and serious matters he agreed with me in equal desire, wanting and not wanting the same things: you would have believed one mind had been divided in two.

He alone was the confidant in my loves, the companion in my errors; and when the fog was scattered and I was emerging from the depths of darkness into the light of wisdom and truth, he did not refuse to be my companion, but, what is more glorious, he ran on ahead.

And so, as my thought wandered through the whole span of our life together and our friendship, my mind's attention settled especially on that discourse of his by which he converted Caecilius, who was still clinging to superstitious vanities, to true religion by a most weighty disputation.

2He had hurried to Rome for business and to see me, leaving behind his home, his wife, his children, and what is more lovable in children: those still in their innocent years, still attempting half-formed words, a speech all the sweeter for its very stammering.

I cannot express in words how great and how impatient a joy I exulted in at his arrival, since the unexpected presence of my dearest friend increased my happiness above all.

And so after a day or two, when frequent time together had filled the eagerness of longing and we had learned through mutual report what we had not known about each other during our absence, we decided to seek Ostia, a most pleasant city, because it offered my body a soothing and suitable cure for drying the humors through sea baths; and indeed the judicial holiday had relaxed my professional cares for the vintage season. For at that time of year, after the summer heat, autumn was turning toward mildness.

And so when at dawn we were making our way to the sea, walking along the shore so that the gently breathing breeze might refresh our limbs and the yielding sand sink softly under our steps with exquisite pleasure, Caecilius noticed an idol of Serapis and, as the superstitious crowd is accustomed to do, moved his hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss with his lips.

3Then Octavius said: "It is not the mark of a good man, my brother Marcus, to abandon a friend who clings to your side at home and abroad in such blindness of vulgar ignorance, and on so bright a day to allow him to dash against stones—stones that are shaped into images and anointed and crowned—when you know that the disgrace of this error redounds no less to you than to him."

With this conversation we had traversed the middle stretch of the city and were now holding to the open shore. There the gentle wave was spreading over the outermost sands, as if it were spreading a carpet for walking, and since the sea is always restless even when the winds are still, even if it did not come out to the land with white and foaming waves, we nevertheless took great delight in its rippling and winding wanderings in that same place, as we dipped our feet at the very edge of the water—the wave now playfully dashing against our feet as it came in, now flowing back and drawing its traces into itself as it receded.

And so, advancing slowly and peacefully, we traced the path of the gently curving shore with stories beguiling the way. These stories were Octavius's account, as he discoursed about navigation. But when we had consumed a sufficiently proper stretch of walking with conversation, we turned our steps back and wore the same path in reverse, and when we came to the place where small boats had been drawn up and were resting on supporting timbers, lifted clear of the earth's stain, we saw boys eagerly competing in a game of throwing potsherds into the sea.

The game is this: they pick up from the shore a potsherd smoothed by the tossing of the waves, take hold of the potsherd flatwise with their fingers, and spin it as low and as close to the water as they can over the waves, so that the missile either skims the sea's back or swims along as it glides with gentle force, or leaps up as it clips the tops of the waves and emerges, lifted by its constant bouncing. The boy whose potsherd ran farthest and skipped most frequently claimed the victory among them.

4So while all of us were carried away by the pleasure of the spectacle, Caecilius was paying no attention and not laughing at the contest. Silent, anxious, standing apart, his face confessed that something was troubling him.

I said to him, "What is this? Why do I not recognize that liveliness of yours, Caecilius? I miss that cheerfulness you used to have even in your eyes during serious matters."

Then he said, "For some time now the speech of our friend Octavius has been sharply tormenting and biting at me, the speech in which he attacked you and reproached you for negligence, so that by pretending to address you he was more severely accusing me of ignorance. So I will go further: my business with Octavius is total and complete. If it pleases you, as a man of the very sect he faults, let me debate with him, and he will soon understand that it is easier to debate among companions than to join wisdom together. Only let us sit down on those rocks thrown out for the protection of the baths and rising upward, so that we can both rest from the journey and debate more intently."

And with his words we sat down, so that, being the middle of the three, I might be protected by their desire. This was not out of deference to rank or honor, since friendship always makes or receives equals, but so that as judge and nearest to both I could give my ears to each and, seated in the middle, keep the two disputants apart.

5Then Caecilius began: "Although for you, Marcus my brother, the question we are about to examine is not in doubt—since you have lived carefully in both ways of life and have rejected one and approved the other—still, for the present you must shape your mind so that you hold the balance of a most impartial judge and do not lean in favor of one side. Otherwise your verdict will seem to come not from our arguments but from your own prior feelings.

So if you sit with me as someone new and ignorant of both sides, it is no trouble to show that everything in human affairs is doubtful, uncertain, and hanging in suspense, and that all things are more probable than true.

That makes it less surprising that some people, weary of searching out truth to the bottom, surrender recklessly to whatever opinion comes along rather than persist with stubborn diligence in investigating.

And so everyone should be indignant and aggrieved that certain people—untaught in these studies, ignorant of literature, ignorant even of the lowliest crafts—dare to pronounce something certain about the highest reality and majesty, about which philosophy itself, through so many centuries and so many schools, is still deliberating.

And rightly so, since human smallness falls so far short of divine inquiry that we are not permitted to know or search out the things suspended above us in the sky, nor the things sunk deep beneath the earth, nor is it even religious to guess at them. We would rightly seem blessed enough, and wise enough, if according to that old saying of the wise man we came to know ourselves more intimately.

But insofar as we indulge this insane and foolish labor and wander beyond the limits of our lowliness, and though cast down upon the earth we reach beyond heaven itself and the very stars with audacious desire, let us at least not entangle this error with empty and fearful opinions.

Let the seeds of all things be, in the beginning, compressed by nature coming together on its own—what god is the author here? Let the parts of the whole world have coalesced, been arranged and shaped by random collisions—what god is the designer? Grant that fire lit the stars, that heaven hangs suspended by its own material, that earth is founded on its own weight and the sea has flowed together from liquid—where does this religion come from, where does this fear?

What superstition is this? Man and every animal that is born, breathes and is raised up is a voluntary coming together of the elements, and into those elements man and every animal is again divided, dissolved, and scattered. So all things flow back to their source and return into their own source, with no maker, no judge, no author.

Thus when the seeds of fire are gathered, different suns always shine, one after another; thus when vapors are exhaled from the earth, mists are always rising; when these are thickened and pressed together, clouds rise higher; as they glide along, rains flow, winds blow, hail rattles, or when storm clouds collide, thunder roars, lightning flashes, and thunderbolts blaze forth.

Indeed they fall everywhere, crash into mountains, strike trees, touch sacred and profane places without distinction, kill guilty men and often the religious.

Why should I speak of the varied and uncertain storms, by which the onrush of all things is tumbled about with no order or judgment? In shipwrecks the fates of good and bad men are mixed, their merits confused? In fires destruction falls upon innocent and guilty alike? And when the sky's region is infected with deadly plague, everyone perishes without distinction? And when war rages with fury, it is the better men who fall?

In peace too, wickedness is not only made equal to better men, but is even honored, so that in most cases you cannot tell whether their depravity should be detested or their good fortune desired.

But if the world were ruled by divine providence and the authority of some deity, Phalaris and Dionysius would never have met with a kingdom, Rutilius and Camillus would never have met with exile, Socrates would never have met with poison.

Look: fruit-bearing trees, look: the already whitening crop, the already drunken vintage is ruined by rain and cut down by hail. So either the truth is hidden from us and suppressed, or—what is more believable—fortune, loosed from all laws, rules by varied and slippery chances."

6Since blind fortune or uncertain nature rules, then, how much more reverent and better it is to accept the teaching of our ancestors as the priest of truth, to observe the religions handed down, to worship the gods whom you were steeped by your parents in fearing before you knew them more intimately, and not to pass judgment on deities but to believe those who came before us. In a still uncultivated age, at the very birth of the world, they deserved to have gods who were either easy to serve or their kings. That is why we see throughout all empires, provinces, and towns that each people has its own rites of worship and worships its own local gods: the Eleusinians worship Ceres, the Phrygians the Mother, the Epidaurians Aesculapius, the Chaldeans Belus, the Syrians Astarte, the Taurians Diana, the Gauls Mercury, and the Romans all deities.

Thus their power and authority has seized the circuit of the whole world; thus they have extended their empire beyond the paths of the sun and the very limits of Ocean. They exercise religious virtue in arms. They fortify their city with the religions of sacred rites, with chaste virgins, with many honors and titles of priests. When they were besieged and captured except for the Capitol alone, they worshiped gods whom anyone else would already have spurned in their anger. Through the Gauls' battle lines, who marveled at the audacity of such devotion, they advance unarmed against weapons but armed with the worship of religion. While victory still raged, they venerated the conquered deities from enemy walls. They seek foreign gods everywhere and make them their own. They build altars sometimes even to unknown deities and to the shades.

Thus while they take up the sacred rites of all nations, they have also earned their kingdoms. From this the unbroken continuity of veneration has remained, which is not weakened by long age but increased: indeed antiquity has always been accustomed to grant as much sanctity to ceremonies and shrines as age has accumulated.

7And yet our ancestors did not devote their effort rashly to observing auguries, consulting entrails, instituting sacred rites, or dedicating shrines. For I would venture for now to concede this myself, and so to err on the better side.

Look at the record in the books. You will find that they initiated the rites of all religions, either so that divine indulgence might be rewarded, or to avert impending wrath, or to appease wrath already swelling and raging.

The Idaean Mother is a witness. By her arrival she both proved the chastity of a matron and freed the city from enemy fear. The statues of the equestrian brothers, consecrated in the lake just as they had shown themselves, are witnesses. Panting, with horses foaming and smoking, they announced the victory over Perses on the same day they had won it. The repetition of the games of offended Jupiter because of a plebeian man's dream is a witness, and the ratified devotion of the Decii is a witness. Curtius too is a witness, who by the bulk or the honor of his horse made level the gulf of the deep chasm.

Even more often than we wanted, despised auspices attested the presence of the gods. Thus the Allia got its unlucky name. Thus Claudius and Junius met not a battle against the Carthaginians but a deadly shipwreck. And so that Trasymene might be greater and discolored with Roman blood, Flaminius despised the auguries. And so that we might demand the standards back from the Parthians, Crassus both deserved and mocked the curses of the dire omens.

I pass over the many ancient stories, and I ignore the poets' songs about the births, gifts, and offerings of the gods. I also skip the fates predicted by oracles, lest antiquity seem too fabulous to you. Turn your attention to the temples and shrines of the gods, by which the Roman state is both protected and adorned. They are more august because of the deities who inhabit them, present as tenants, than they are wealthy because of worship, insignia, and gifts.

From there, prophets full of and mixed with god foretell the future. They give caution against dangers, healing for diseases, hope for the afflicted, help for the wretched, solace in calamities, relief from labors. Even in sleep we see, hear, and recognize the gods whom during the day we impiously deny, reject, and forswear.

8So then, although the reason or origin of the immortal gods may be uncertain among all nations, a firm agreement about them nevertheless remains. I cannot endure anyone swelling with such audacity and with such irreligious cunning, whatever it may be, who strives to dissolve or weaken this religion so ancient, so useful, so salutary.

Granted, he may be Theodorus of Cyrene, or the earlier Diagoras of Melos, to whom antiquity gave the surname atheos. Both of them, by asserting that there are no gods, utterly removed all the fear and veneration by which humanity is governed. Yet they will never prevail in this discipline of impiety under the name and authority of a pretended philosophy.

When the Athenians, acting with deliberation rather than profanity, expelled Protagoras of Abdera from their territory for disputing about divinity and burned his writings in the assembly, should we not groan that men, you will bear with me as I exercise the impulse of my undertaken action more freely, men, I say, of a deplorable, illicit, and desperate faction run riot against the gods?

They gather the more ignorant from the lowest dregs and credulous women, slipping through the weakness of their sex, and form a mob of a profane conspiracy. This mob is bound together by nocturnal gatherings, solemn fasts, and inhuman foods, not by any sacred rite, but by an expiation. A hidden and light-shunning nation, mute in public, garrulous in corners: they despise temples as tombs, despise the gods, ridicule sacred rites. Wretched themselves, they pity the priests, if it is lawful to say so, and despise the priests, honors and purple robes, though they themselves are half-naked.

What remarkable folly and incredible audacity! They scorn present torments while they fear uncertain and future ones, and while they fear dying after death, they do not fear dying in the meantime: so a deceptive hope soothes their fear with a returning solace.

9And now, as wicked things spring up more abundantly, with morals growing more corrupt day by day, those foulest shrines of an impious union are spreading throughout the whole world. This conspiracy must be utterly rooted out and cursed.

They recognize one another by secret marks and signs, and they love each other almost before they know each other. Everywhere among them a kind of religion of lust is mixed in, and they indiscriminately call each other brothers and sisters, so that even ordinary debauchery becomes incest through the intercession of the sacred name. So their empty and insane superstition boasts of crimes.

Nor would the most wicked and yet reputable rumor spread about them unless there were truth behind it. I hear that they venerate the consecrated head of a most vile beast, an ass, through some absurd persuasion: a religion worthy and born for such morals!

Others say that they worship the genitals of their own high priest and adore his nature as if he were their father. I do not know whether it is false, but it is certainly a suspicion attached to their hidden and nocturnal rites. And the one who tells of a man punished with the ultimate penalty for his crime and the funereal wood of the cross in their ceremonies assigns fitting altars to the depraved and criminal, so that they worship what they deserve.

Now about the initiation of novices, the story is as detestable as it is well known. An infant covered with grain, to deceive the unwary, is placed before the one being initiated into the rites. This infant is killed by the novice, with the surface of the grain struck as if to harmless blows, with wounds hidden and unseen. Of this infant—what wickedness!—they thirstily lick the blood, they divide the limbs in rivalry, by this victim they are bound together, by this consciousness of crime they pledge themselves to mutual silence. These rites are fouler than all sacrileges.

And about their banquet it is well known; everyone speaks of it everywhere, and the speech of our fellow citizen of Cirta testifies to it. On a solemn day they gather for a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of every sex and every age. There after much feasting, when the banquet has grown heated and the frenzy of incestuous lust has blazed up in the drunken, a dog tied to a lampstand is provoked to leap and spring by a morsel thrown beyond the length of the line by which it is bound.

So the conscious light is overturned and extinguished, and in shameless darkness they entangle themselves in the bonds of unspeakable desire by the uncertainty of chance, and even if not all in deed, nevertheless equally in consciousness of incest, since whatever can happen in the act of each is sought by the vow of all.

10I pass over much of this on purpose, for even these charges are too many, and the obscurity of this depraved religion itself proves that all or most of them are true. Why else do they strive so hard to hide and conceal whatever it is they worship, when what is honorable always rejoices in the open, and crimes are secret? Why do they have no altars, no temples, no known idols, never speak in public, never assemble freely, unless what they worship and suppress is either punishable or shameful?

And whence is he, who is he, and where is he? This one god, solitary, destitute, whom no free people, no kingdom, not even Roman superstition knows. Only the Jews, a single wretched nation, also worshiped one god, but openly, with temples, altars, victims, and ceremonies. Yet his power and might are so nonexistent that he is a captive, along with his own nation, to the Roman deities.

But what monsters, what portents the Christians invent! They claim that their god, whom they can neither show nor see, diligently investigates everyone's character, everyone's actions, and finally everyone's words and hidden thoughts. They want him, you see, to be a busybody, always running about and present everywhere, restless, shamelessly even curious, since he stands by every deed and wanders through every place, though he cannot attend to individuals while stretched thin across the universe, nor be sufficient for the universe while occupied with individuals.

11What about this? They threaten the whole world and the universe itself, stars and all, with fire, and plot its ruin. As if the eternal order established by nature's divine laws could be thrown into confusion, or the covenant binding all the elements could be broken, the heavenly frame torn apart, and this great mass that contains and encircles us could be overthrown.

Not content with this mad opinion, they pile on old wives' tales and attach them to it. They claim they will be born again after death, from ashes and embers, and with some kind of confidence they believe each other's lies. You would think they had already come back to life.

A double evil and twin madness: to announce destruction for heaven and the stars, which we leave behind just as we found them, while promising eternity to themselves, dead and extinguished, born and perishing just like the rest of us!

That is obviously why they curse funeral pyres and condemn burial by fire. As if every body, even if it is snatched from the flames, does not still dissolve into the earth over years and ages. What difference does it make whether wild beasts tear it apart, the sea consumes it, the ground covers it, or fire carries it away? For corpses, every form of burial is a punishment if they can feel, and if they cannot feel, the very speed of destruction is a remedy.

Deceived by this error, they promise themselves a blessed and everlasting life after death, as if they were good, and threaten everyone else with eternal punishment, as if they were wicked. Much more could be added to this, if my speech were not in a hurry. That they themselves are the wicked ones I have already shown, and I need not labor the point. And yet, even if I granted that they were good, most people hold that guilt or innocence is assigned by fate, and this is your own view as well.

For whatever we do, you attribute to God just as others attribute it to fate. So your sect desires not willing ones but chosen ones. You invent an unjust judge, then, who punishes the lot assigned to human beings, not their will.

Still, I would like to ask: do you rise again with bodies or without bodies, and with what kind of bodies, the same ones or new ones? Without a body? As far as I know, that is neither mind nor soul nor life. With the same body? But it has already fallen apart. With another body? Then a new human being is born, not the former one restored.

And yet so long an age has passed, countless centuries have flowed by. Has any single person ever returned from the dead, even by the lot of Protesilaus, the hero who was granted leave from the underworld for just a few hours, so that we might believe by example?

All these inventions of a diseased imagination and these foolish consolations were played out by lying poets in the sweetness of verse, and you, too credulous, have shamefully remolded them into your god.

12You do not even learn a lesson from what is before you, from how empty vows and hollow promises deceive you. Miserable people, while you are still alive, consider what hangs over you after death.

Look at a part of you—and the greater part, the better part, as you say. You are in need, you are cold, you labor in hunger, and God ignores it. He does not want to help his own, or he cannot. So he is either weak or unjust.

You who dream of immortality after death—when you are shaken by danger, when you burn with fever, when you are torn by pain, do you not yet feel your condition? Do you not yet recognize your fragility? Unwilling and miserable, you are convicted of weakness, and you will not admit it.

But I pass over what is common to everyone. Look at what awaits you: threats, punishments, tortures, and crosses now not to be adored but to be endured, and the fires you both predict and fear. Where is that God who can help those rising again but cannot help the living?

Do not the Romans rule and reign without your God, enjoy the whole world, and lord it over you? But you, suspended meanwhile and anxious, abstain from honorable pleasures. You do not visit the shows, you do not attend the processions, public banquets go on without you, sacred games, foods snatched first and drinks tasted at the altars you abhor. So you dread the gods you deny.

You do not weave flowers around your head, you do not honor your body with perfumes. You reserve ointments for funerals, you even deny garlands to tombs, pale and trembling, worthy of pity from our gods. So you neither rise again, miserable ones, nor do you live in the meantime.

Therefore, if you have any wisdom or modesty, stop prying into the plagues of heaven, the fates of the world and its secrets. It is enough to look at what is before your feet, especially for the untaught, the uncultured, the rude, the rustic, who have not been given to understand civil matters, and much more have been denied the right to discuss divine ones.

13And yet, if you have a passion for philosophy, let any of you who is great enough imitate Socrates, the prince of wisdom, if you can. Whenever that man was asked about heavenly matters, his famous answer was: what is above us is nothing to us.

So he rightly earned from the oracle the testimony of singular prudence. He himself understood that oracle: he had been set above all men not because he had found out everything, but because he had learned that he knew nothing. Thus the highest prudence is confessed ignorance.

From this source flowed the safe doubt of Arcesilaus, and much later of Carneades and very many of the Academics, in the highest questions. It is a way of philosophizing in which the unlearned can proceed cautiously and the learned gloriously.

And what of Simonides the lyric poet? Is not his hesitation admirable to all and worthy of imitation? When the tyrant Hiero asked him what he thought the gods were and of what kind, Simonides first asked for a day to deliberate, the next day put it off for two more, and soon, when reminded, added another one. Finally, when the tyrant asked the reasons for such a long delay, he answered that the slower his inquiry proceeded, the more obscure the truth became.

In my opinion too, things that are doubtful should be left as they are, doubtful. And when so many and such great men are deliberating, one should not rashly and boldly cast a judgment for one side or the other, lest either old-womanish superstition be introduced or all religion be destroyed.

14So Caecilius smiled, for the flow of his speech had eased the swelling of his indignation, and said: "Does Octavius dare to answer this? He is a man of Plautus's family, and as he is the foremost of the Christians, so he is the last of the philosophers."

"Stop applauding him," I said. "You have no right to exult over the elegance of his speech before both sides have pleaded fully to the end, especially since your debate strives not for praise but for truth. And although your speech has delighted me greatly with its subtle variety, I am moved more deeply, not about the present case, but about the whole method of arguing, because the condition of even clear truth is often changed by the strength of the speakers and the power of their eloquence.

This happens, as everyone knows, through the indulgence of listeners, who are drawn away from the matters at hand by the allurement of words and assent to everything said without discrimination, not separating falsehoods from what is right, unaware that truth exists even in the incredible and falsehood in the plausible. So the more often they believe assertions, the more often they are refuted by those with greater skill. Thus, constantly deceived by their own rashness, they transfer the blame for their judgment to a complaint about uncertainty, so that, condemning everything, they prefer to suspend all matters rather than judge about deceptive things.

Therefore we must take care that we do not repeatedly suffer from hatred of all speech, so that many of the simpler sort are carried away into cursing and hating people. For the incautiously credulous are deceived by those whom they thought good; soon, by a similar error, they suspect everyone and fear as wicked even those whom they could have perceived as the best.

So let us be careful, since every matter is argued on both sides and on one side the truth is often obscure, while on the other there is remarkable subtlety, which sometimes imitates the credibility of confessed proof through richness of speaking. Let us weigh each point carefully, as much as we can, so that we may indeed praise clever arguments, but choose, approve, and take up those things which are right."

15"You are abandoning the duty of a conscientious judge," Caecilius said, "for it is a great injustice to break the strength of my case by the interruption of a very serious debate, since Octavius ought to refute each point whole and undamaged, if he can."

"What you criticize," I said, "I have offered, unless I am mistaken, as a shared shortcut, so that by careful examination we may weigh our judgment not by swelling of eloquence but by the solidity of the things themselves. And the attention you complain about need not be diverted any longer, since in complete silence we may hear the response of our Januarius, who is already eager to speak."

16Octavius replied: "I will speak as best I can, and you must strive with me to wash away the bitter stain of insults with a stream of truthful words. I will not conceal at the outset that my friend Natalis's opinion has wavered, wandering and slippery, so that we must ask whether it has been disturbed by cunning, or whether it has tottered through error. For he has varied between believing in the gods and freeing himself from fear, so that by the uncertainty of his proposition the intention of our response might be founded on even less certainty. But I do not want to see cunning in my Natalis, and I do not believe it: subtle urbanity is far from his simplicity. What then? As a man who does not know the right way, when, as happens, one road splits into several, because he does not know the way, sticks anxiously and dares neither to choose each one nor to approve them all: so it is with a man who has no stable judgment of truth, as unreliable suspicion scatters. Thus his doubtful opinion is dispersed. It is no wonder, then, if Caecilius is repeatedly tossed among contrary and conflicting positions, seething and wavering. To prevent this from happening any further, I will refute and disprove him. Although the things that have been said are diverse, once the one truth has been confirmed and proved, he must neither doubt nor wander any longer.

And since my brother's mind has burst out, saying that he is aggrieved, angry, indignant, and pained that uneducated, poor, and inexperienced people should debate about heavenly matters, let him know that all human beings, without distinction of age, sex, or rank, have been created capable and fit for reason and perception, and that wisdom has not been obtained by fortune, but implanted by nature. Indeed, even the philosophers themselves, or any others who have gone down in memory as discoverers of arts, before their mental skill produced the brilliance of their names, were considered common, untaught, half-naked: so true is it that the rich, entangled in their own resources, are accustomed to admire gold more than heaven, while our poor people have both devised wisdom and handed down learning to others. From this it is clear that talent is not given by wealth nor acquired by study, but is generated with the very formation of the mind.

So no one should be indignant or pained if anyone inquires about divine things and brings forward what he thinks, since what is required is not the authority of the speaker, but the truth of the argument itself. And indeed, the more unpolished the speech, the more brilliant the reason, because it is not colored by the pomp of eloquence and charm, but, as it is, is upheld by the rule of what is right."

17I do not refuse what Caecilius worked hard to establish among his chief points: that a human being must know himself and look around at what he is, where he comes from, and why he exists. Is he compounded of elements or fitted together from atoms? Or is he rather made, formed, and given life by God? But we cannot investigate and dig out that very question without examining the universe. All things are so joined, connected, and linked together that unless you have thoroughly examined the reason of divinity, you cannot know the reason of humanity. Nor can you manage civic affairs well unless you have come to know this common city of the whole world. This is especially true because we differ from wild beasts in this: they are bent down toward the earth and born to look at nothing but their food. But we, whose faces are upright, whose gaze is given toward heaven, who have speech and reason through which we recognize, perceive, and imitate God, must not and may not ignore the heavenly brightness that presses itself upon our eyes and senses. For it is the likeness of the very greatest sacrilege to search on the ground for what you ought to find on high.

For this reason, those who claim that this adornment of the whole world was not perfected by divine reason but lumped together from certain fragments clinging together at random seem to me to lack mind, sense, and even eyes themselves. For what can be so open, so acknowledged, and so clear, when you have lifted your eyes to heaven and surveyed what is below and around, than that there is some deity of the most excellent mind, by whom all nature is breathed into, moved, nourished, and governed?

Look at the sky itself: how widely it stretches, how swiftly it revolves, how it is marked with stars at night or illuminated by the sun by day. You will then know how wonderful and divine is the balancing of the highest governor within it. Look also at the year, how it is made by the sun's circuit, and look at the month, how the moon drives it around through increase, decline, and labor.

What shall I say of the returning alternations of darkness and light, so that we have a regular restoration of work and rest? A longer speech about the stars must be left to the astrologers, whether they guide the course of sailing or mark the time for plowing and harvesting. Each of these things not only required the highest craftsman and perfect reason to be created, made, and arranged, but they cannot even be perceived, discerned, and understood without the highest skill and reason.

What of the fact that the order of the seasons and crops is marked by stable variety? Does not spring with its flowers, summer with its harvests, the welcome ripeness of autumn, and the necessary olive-gathering of winter all testify to their author and parent? This order would easily be thrown into confusion unless it stood firm by the greatest reason.

Consider how much providence there is in inserting the moderate temperature of autumn and spring between winter and summer, so that winter alone would not burn with ice or summer alone scorch with heat, and so that the hidden and harmless transitions of the returning year might glide along their own tracks.

Look at the sea: it is bound by the law of the shore. See all the trees: how they are given life from the bowels of the earth. Gaze at the ocean: it flows back with alternating tides. See the springs: they pour out in never-failing veins. Observe the rivers: they always go with practiced glidings.

Why should I speak of the straight lines of mountains so fittingly arranged, the curves of hills, the stretches of plains? Or why should I speak of the many forms of protection living creatures have against one another, some armed with horns, others fenced with teeth and grounded on hooves, some spiked with stings, some freed by speed of foot or by the loftiness of wings?

Above all, the beauty of our own form confesses God as craftsman: the upright posture, the lifted face, the eyes placed on high as if in a watchtower, and all the other senses arranged as if in a citadel.

18It would take long to go through them one by one. There is no part of a human being that does not exist both for necessity and for beauty, and what is more remarkable, the shape is the same for everyone, yet certain features are bent aside in each person: so we all appear alike as a whole, and yet each of us is found to be unlike the others. What of the principle of birth? What of the desire to beget? Was it not given by God, both that the breasts should grow milky as the birth matures and that the tender offspring should grow by the richness of the milky dew?

God takes thought not only for the whole but also for its parts. Britain is deprived of sun, but it is refreshed by the warmth of the surrounding sea. The river Nile tempers the dryness of Egypt, the Euphrates compensates Mesopotamia in place of rains, and the river Indus is said both to sow the East and to water it.

If you entered some house and saw everything cultivated, arranged, and adorned, you would certainly believe that a master presided over it and was far better than those good things. So in this house of the world, when you look closely at heaven and earth—text lost—and see providence, order, and law, believe that there is a lord of the universe and a parent more beautiful than the very stars and all the parts of the world.

Unless perhaps, since there is no doubt about providence, you think the question is whether the heavenly kingdom is governed by the command of one or by the judgment of many. That itself is not hard to open up for anyone who considers earthly empires, which certainly take their examples from heaven.

When did a partnership in kingship ever begin with trust or end without bloodshed? I pass over the Persians, who divined their ruler from the neighing of horses, and I skip the pair of Theban brothers—that story is dead. The story of the twins is very well known: a kingdom over shepherds and a hut. Wars between son-in-law and father-in-law were spread over the whole world, and fortune did not hold two men in so great an empire.

Look at the rest: there is one king for the bees, one leader among the flocks, one ruler in the herds. Would you believe that in heaven the highest majesty is divided and the whole power of that true and divine empire is split apart, when it is plain that God, the parent of all things, has neither beginning nor end, who grants birth to all things and perpetuity to himself, who was before the world and was to himself his own world? He commands all things that exist by his word, orders them by reason, and completes them by power.

He cannot be seen—he is too bright for sight. He cannot be grasped—he is too pure for touch. He cannot be measured—he is greater than the senses. He is infinite, immense, and known only to himself as great as he is. But our heart is too narrow for understanding, and so we measure him worthily when we call him immeasurable.

I will say what I feel: whoever thinks he knows the greatness of God diminishes it; whoever does not want to diminish it does not know it. Do not seek a name for God: God is his name. Words are needed when a multitude must be separated by the proper marks of individual names. For God, who alone exists, the word 'God' is the whole name. If I call him Father, you will think of him as fleshly; if I call him King, you will suspect him as earthly; if I call him Lord, you will certainly understand him as mortal. Take away the additions of names and you will see his brightness.

What of the fact that I have the agreement of all people about him? I hear the common crowd: when they stretch their hands to heaven, they say nothing other than 'God,' and 'God is great,' and 'God is true,' and 'if God grants it.' Is this the natural speech of the crowd or the prayer of a Christian confessing? And those who want Jupiter to be chief are mistaken in the name, but they agree about one power.

19Listen also to the poets, who proclaim one father of gods and of humans, and say that the mind of mortals is such as the parent of all things has brought the day. What about Vergil of Mantua? Does he not say, more openly, more closely, more truly, at the beginning: 'A spirit within nourishes heaven and earth and the other members of the world, and an infused mind stirs them; from this comes the race of humans and beasts and whatever other living things there are'? Elsewhere he calls that mind and spirit God. These are his words: 'For God passes through all lands and the stretches of the sea and the deep sky; from him come humans and beasts, from him rain and fires.' What else do we proclaim God to be than mind and reason and spirit?

Let us review, if you please, the teaching of the philosophers: you will find that, although their words vary, they nevertheless come together and agree into this one opinion in the things themselves. I pass over those rough and ancient thinkers who earned the name of wise men from their sayings. Let Thales of Miletus be first of all, since he was the first of all to discuss heavenly matters. This Thales of Miletus said that the beginning of things was water, but that God was the mind which formed all things from water: [a later gloss adds: the account of water and spirit is too lofty and sublime for a human being to have found it; it was handed down by God]. You see that the opinion of the first philosopher agrees deeply with ours.

Anaximenes next, and after him Diogenes of Apollonia, establish air as God, infinite and immeasurable: their agreement about divinity is similar as well. Anaxagoras's description and motion of an infinite mind is called God, and Pythagoras's God is a soul passing through and intent upon the whole nature of things, from which the life of all living things is taken. It is well known that Xenophanes handed down that God is everything infinite with mind, and that Antisthenes knew many popular gods but one natural God as chief, and that Speusippus knew God as a natural living force by which all things are governed.

What of Democritus? Although he was the first inventor of atoms, does he not often speak of nature, which pours out images, and intelligence as God? Straton too—does he not also call nature God? Even that Epicurus, who imagines gods either idle or nonexistent, nevertheless places nature above them. Aristotle varies, yet he assigns one power: for sometimes he calls mind God, sometimes the world, sometimes he places God over the world. Heraclides of Pontus also ascribes a divine mind to God, though in varying ways.

Theophrastus also varies, at one time giving the chief place to the world, at another to the divine mind. Zeno and Chrysippus and Cleanthes are themselves also of many forms, but they all return to the unity of providence. Cleanthes discussed God as mind, sometimes as soul, sometimes as aether, and most often as reason. Zeno, his teacher, wants natural and divine law, and aether, and sometimes reason, to be the beginning of all things; by interpreting Juno as air, Jupiter as heaven, Neptune as sea, Vulcan as fire, and by showing that the other gods of the crowd are similarly elements, he gravely argues against and refutes the public error.

Chrysippus holds almost the same view: he believes God to be divine force, rational nature, sometimes the world, and sometimes fatal necessity, and he imitates Zeno in the physiological interpretation of the poems of Hesiod, Homer, and Orpheus. Diogenes of Babylon also has a method of explaining and arguing that the birth of Jupiter and the origin of Minerva and other things of this kind are names of things, not of gods. For Xenophon the Socratic denies that the form of the true God can be seen and therefore says he should not be sought; Aristo the Stoic says he cannot be comprehended at all: both of them perceived the majesty of God through the despair of understanding him.

Plato's speech about God is more open, both in the things themselves and in the names, and it would be entirely heavenly if it were not sometimes soiled by the admixture of civic persuasion. In the Timaeus, then, Plato says that God is by his very name the parent of the world, the artisan of the soul, the maker of heavenly and earthly things, and he says beforehand that it is difficult to find him because of his excessive and incredible power, and that when you have found him, it is impossible to speak of him in public. These things are almost the same as ours: for we know God and call him the parent of all things, and we never proclaim him publicly unless we are asked.

20I have set out the opinions of nearly all the philosophers whose glory is most illustrious, showing that they have designated one God by many names, so that anyone may judge that either Christians are now philosophers, or philosophers were already Christians then. But if the world is ruled by providence and governed by the nod of one God, the antiquity of the unskilled should not delight us with its little fables, nor should it capture us and drag us to the error of mutual agreement, since it is refuted by the opinions of its own philosophers, whom the authority of both reason and age supports. For our ancestors had such an easy faith in lies that they rashly believed even such monstrous wonders as these: the many-formed Scylla, the multiform Chimaera, the Hydra reborn with fortunate wounds, and Centaurs, horses intertwined with their own humans. Whatever fame was allowed to invent, they were glad to hear. What of those old wives' tales about humans turned into birds and beasts, and humans turned into trees and flowers? If such things had happened, they would still happen; because they cannot happen, they were never done. In the same way, our ancestors were also improvident and credulous toward the gods in their rude simplicity: while they worshiped their kings religiously, while they longed to see them after death in images, while they eagerly preserved their memories in statues, what had been adopted as consolation became sacred rites. Finally, before the world was opened to commerce and before nations mixed their rites and customs, each nation venerated its own founder, or its renowned leader, or a chaste queen stronger than her sex, or the discoverer of some gift or art, as a citizen of good memory. In this way a reward was given to the dead and an example to those to come.

21Read the historians or the philosophers, and you will find the same facts I do. Euhemerus sets forth that men were considered gods for their merits of virtue or for their gifts, and he counts up their birthdays, their homelands, and their tombs, pointing them out province by province: Jupiter of Dicte, Apollo of Delphi, Isis of Pharos, Ceres of Eleusis.

Prodicus says that men were taken up as gods because in their wanderings they discovered new crops and benefited humanity. Persaeus philosophizes along the same lines, and adds that the crops that were discovered and the discoverers of those crops themselves received the same names. As the comic poet says, Venus without Liber and Ceres grows cold.

Alexander the Great wrote to his mother in a remarkable volume that a priest had disclosed to him, out of fear of his power, the secret that the gods were men. There he makes Vulcan the first of all, and after him the race of Jupiter.

For all the ancient writers, Greek and Roman, have handed down that Saturn, the first of this race and line, was a man. The historians Nepos and Cassius know this, and Thallus and Diodorus say the same.

So Saturn, a fugitive from Crete, came to Italy in fear of his raging son, and was received as a guest by Janus. He taught those rough and rustic men many things, as a polished Greekling would: how to stamp letters, how to mark coins, how to make tools.

And so he preferred his hiding place to be called Latium, because he had hidden there safely. Saturn gave his name to the city of Saturnia, and Janus gave his name to the Janiculum. Each left a memorial to posterity.

So he was certainly a man who fled, certainly a man who hid, and the father of a man and born from a man. He was called the son of Earth or Sky because among the Italians he was handed down with unknown parents. Just as today we call people of unknown and obscure origin sons of the earth when they are seen unexpectedly, as if sent from heaven.

His son Jupiter reigned in Crete after shutting out his father, died there, and had sons there. To this day the cave of Jupiter is visited and his tomb is pointed out, and by his own rites he is accused of being human.

It would be tedious to go through them one by one and unfold the whole line of that family, since once mortality has been proved in the first parents, it flows into the rest by the very order of succession. Unless, of course, you invent gods after death. Romulus became a god when he died, as Proculus testified, and Juba is a god because the Moors wanted it, and all the other deified kings, who are consecrated not for belief in their deity but to honor their earned power.

In fact, this name is given to them against their will. They wish to remain human. They fear being made gods, and even when they are old they refuse. So gods cannot come from the dead, because God cannot die, nor from the born, because everything that is born dies. What is divine is that which has neither beginning nor end.

For why, if they were born, are they not still being born today? Unless Jupiter has grown old and childbirth has failed in Juno, and Minerva went gray before she gave birth. Or has that generation ceased because no one gives any credence to such fables?

Besides, if gods could beget children, they could not perish. We would have more gods than men, so that the sky could not contain them, nor the air hold them, nor the earth bear them. From this it is clear that those whom we read were born and whom we know died were men.

And you despise Isis with her swallow and her sistrum, and at the empty tomb of your Serapis or Osiris, with limbs scattered.

22Consider, finally, the sacred rites and the mysteries themselves. You will find sad outcomes: deaths, funerals, griefs, and lamentations of wretched gods. Isis mourns her lost son with her dog-headed god and her bald priests. She wails, she searches, and the miserable worshippers of Isis beat their breasts and imitate the grief of that most unhappy mother. Then, when the little one is found, Isis rejoices, the priests exult, the dog-headed god boasts as the finder, and they do not stop losing what they find or finding what they lose year after year. Is it not ridiculous either to mourn what you worship or to worship what you mourn? Yet these rites, once Egyptian, are now also Roman.

Ceres, with torches lit and a serpent coiled around her, anxiously and restlessly tracks Libera, who was snatched away and defiled in her wandering. These are the Eleusinian rites. And what are the sacred rites of Jupiter? His nurse is a she-goat, and the infant is hidden from his greedy father so that he will not be devoured, and the ringing of the Corybantes' cymbals drowns out his wailing so that his father will not hear it.

I am ashamed to speak of Cybele on Mount Dindyma. She cut off her adulterer, who had pleased her only unhappily, because she herself, both ugly and old, as the mother of many gods, could not entice him to defilement. She did it, of course, to make him a eunuch god. Because of this story the Galli, her eunuch priests, worship her and punish their own bodies by castrating themselves. These are no longer sacred rites; they are tortures.

What of the forms and appearances themselves? Do they not expose the mockeries and disgraces of your gods? Vulcan is a lame and crippled god. Apollo is smooth-faced through so many ages. Aesculapius has a fine beard, though he is always the son of the youthful Apollo. Neptune has gray-green eyes, Minerva blue-gray, Juno ox-eyes, Mercury winged feet, Pan hoofed feet, Saturn shackled feet. Janus indeed wears two faces, as if he walked backwards. Diana, meanwhile, is a huntress girt up high, and the Ephesian Diana is built up with many breasts and teats, and Trivia, the three-formed goddess, is horrifying with three heads and many hands.

What of your Jupiter himself? Now he is set up beardless, now he is placed bearded. When he is called Hammon, he has horns. When he is called Capitoline, then he wields thunderbolts. When he is called Latiaris, he is drenched in blood. When he is called Feretrius, he does not hear. And not to go through many Jupiters at length, there are as many monstrosities of Jupiter as there are names.

Erigone is hung from a noose, so that as a virgin she may be set among the stars. The Castors die in turns so that they may live. Aesculapius is struck by lightning so that he may rise as a god. Hercules is burned in the fires of Oeta so that he may put off the man.

23We learn these fables and errors from unthinking parents. And what is worse, we work at them ourselves through our studies and learning, especially through the poems of the poets, who by their authority have harmed the truth as much as anyone could. That is why Plato rightly drove that famous, praised, and crowned Homer out of the city he was building in his discourse. For Homer, though he makes sport of the gods, still mixed them into human affairs and actions in the Trojan War. He set them on equal terms. He wounded Venus, bound Mars, struck him, and put him to flight. He tells how Jupiter was freed by Briareus so that he would not be bound by the other gods, and how he wept tears of blood for his son Sarpedon because he could not rescue him from death, and how, enticed by Venus's girdle more hotly than he usually is with adulteresses, he lay with his wife Juno. Elsewhere Hercules hauls dung and Apollo pastures cattle for Admetus. Neptune builds walls for Laomedon, and the unlucky builder receives no pay for his work. There Vulcan forges Jupiter's thunderbolt on the anvil along with the arms of Aeneas, though heaven and thunderbolts and lightning existed long before Jupiter was born in Crete, and neither could the Cyclopes imitate the flames of a real thunderbolt nor could Jupiter himself fail to fear them. Why should I speak of the adultery of Mars and Venus caught in the act, or Jupiter's rape of Ganymede consecrated in heaven? All these things were brought forward for this purpose: to give some authority to human vices. By these and similar fictions and lies that are rather sweet, the minds of boys are corrupted. As they cling to these same stories they grow up to the full strength of adulthood, and in these same opinions they grow old in misery, though the truth is available—but only to those who seek it.

Who then doubts that the common people pray to and publicly worship consecrated images of humans, while the opinion and mind of the ignorant is deceived by the elegance of the art, dazzled by the gleam of gold, dulled by the shine of silver and the whiteness of ivory? If anyone should consider with what torments and with what machines every idol is formed, he would blush to fear material that has been mocked by a craftsman so that he might make it a god. For a wooden god—perhaps a piece of a funeral pyre or an unlucky log—is hung up, cut, hewn, and planed. And a bronze or silver god is melted down from an unclean vessel, as we have heard was done for an Egyptian king, beaten with hammers and shaped on anvils. And a stone god is cut, carved, and smoothed by a defiled man, and it does not feel the injury of its own birth, just as it does not feel your veneration and worship afterward—unless perhaps the stone or wood or silver is not yet a god. When, then, is it born? Look: it is poured, forged, carved; it is not yet a god. Look: it is soldered, assembled, erected; it is still not a god. Look: it is adorned, consecrated, prayed to; then at last it is a god, when a human has willed it and dedicated it.

24How much more truly do mute animals judge your gods by nature! Mice, swallows, and kites know that the gods feel nothing: they gnaw them, trample them, sit on them, and unless you drive them away, they build nests in the very mouth of your god. Spiders weave over his face and hang their threads from his very head.

You wipe them, clean them, scrape them, and you protect the gods you make, and you fear them—while each of you does not think that he ought to know God before he worships him, while you are eager to obey your parents without thought, while you prefer to become an addition to another's error rather than trust yourselves, while you know nothing of the things you fear. So greed has been consecrated in gold and silver, so the form of empty statues has been sealed, so Roman superstition was born. If you review their rites, how many are laughable, how many are also pitiable!

Some run about naked in the raw winter, others walk wearing felt caps, carry old shields around, beat hides, and lead gods begging through the streets. Some shrines they allow to be entered once a year, some it is forbidden to visit at all. There is one where no man may go, some rites are closed to women, and for a slave even to be present at certain ceremonies is a crime requiring expiation. Other rites a one-husband woman crowns, others a many-husband woman, and with great religiosity the woman who can count more adulteries is sought out.

What of the man who pours a libation with his own blood and prays with his own wounds? Would he not be better off profane than religious in this way? Or the man whose testicles are cut off—how does he not violate the god whom he placates in this manner, since if God wanted eunuchs, he could create them, not make them? Who does not understand that the unsound and those of empty and ruined mind are raving in these practices, and that the crowd of the erring itself offers mutual defense to one another? Here the common defense of madness is the multitude of the mad.

25And yet this very superstition gave Rome its empire, enlarged it, and established it, since they were strong not so much by virtue as by religion and piety. Indeed, the famous and noble justice of Rome began from the very cradle of the rising empire.

Did they not grow from their origin in crime, gathered together and protected by the terror of their own savagery? For the first crowd was assembled in an asylum: the lost, the criminal, the incestuous, murderers, traitors had flocked there, and so that Romulus himself, their commander and ruler, might surpass his people in crime, he committed parricide. These are the first beginnings of the religious city.

Soon he seized, violated, and mocked foreign maidens already betrothed, already promised, and some married women, without any custom, and he stirred up war with their parents, that is, with his own fathers-in-law, and shed kindred blood. What is more irreligious, what is more reckless, what is more shameful than the very boldness of the crime?

Then to drive neighbors from their land, to overthrow nearby cities with their temples and altars, to force captives into bondage, to grow by the losses of others and by their own crimes: this has been the common practice of Romulus, the other kings, and the leaders who followed.

So whatever the Romans hold, worship, and possess is the plunder of their audacity: all their temples come from spoils, that is, from the ruins of cities, from the plunder of gods, from the slaughter of priests. This is to insult and mock: to enslave conquered religions and to worship them as captives after victories. For to worship what you have seized by force is sacrilege to consecrate, not deities.

Therefore the Romans have acted impiously as often as they have triumphed, and they have taken as many spoils from the gods as they have trophies from the nations. So the Romans are great not because they are religious, but because they are sacrilegious with impunity.

For they could not have had the gods as helpers in those very wars against whom they took up arms, but after overthrowing them, they began to worship the gods they had triumphed over. What can these gods do for the Romans, when they had no power for their own people against Roman arms? For we know the home-born gods of the Romans: Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, and Consus, and Pilumnus and Volumnus are gods.

Tatius both discovered and worshipped Cloacina, the goddess of the sewer. Hostilius dedicated Panic and Pallor, the gods of terror and fear, and soon Fever was dedicated by someone or other: this is the foster-child of that city, superstition, diseases and bad health. Indeed, Acca Larentia and Flora, shameless prostitutes, must be counted among the diseases and gods of the Romans.

These, of course, extended the Roman empire against the others who were worshipped among the nations: for neither Thracian Mars nor Cretan Jupiter nor Juno, now Argive, now Samian, now Carthaginian, nor Tauric Diana nor the Idaean Mother nor those Egyptian nothings, not deities but portents, helped their own people against Roman arms.

Unless perhaps among these there is greater chastity of virgins or holier religion of priests, when in nearly the majority of virgins, but those who had mingled with men too thoughtlessly, Vesta surely not knowing, incest was punished, while in the rest impunity did not make chastity safer, but made shamelessness more fortunate.

Where, moreover, are debaucheries hired out, pimping conducted, adulteries plotted more by priests than among altars and shrines? Finally, burning lust is satisfied more often in the cells of temple keepers than in the brothels themselves.

And yet before them, by God's dispensation, the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and even Egyptians held kingdoms for a long time, though they had no Pontiffs, Arval Brothers, Salii, Vestals, or Augurs, nor sacred chickens shut in a cage, by whose appetite or disgust the highest affairs of state were governed.

26Now I come to those Roman auspices and auguries which you said were gathered with enormous effort, regretfully abandoned, and happily observed. Clodius, Flaminius, and one army lost for this reason: they did not think they should wait for the most favorable sacred-chicken omen. What about Regulus? Did he not keep the auguries, and was captured? Mancinus held to religion, and he was sent under the yoke and handed over. Paulus had greedy chickens, and at Cannae he was laid low along with the greater part of the Roman people. Gaius Caesar scorned auguries and auspices that resisted his sending ships to Africa before the winter solstice; thus he both sailed and conquered.

What should I say about oracles, and how much? After his death Amphiaraus answered what was to come, though he did not know he would be betrayed by his wife for a necklace. Tiresias, blind, saw the future, though he could not see the present. Ennius invented the responses of Pythian Apollo for Pyrrhus, since Apollo had by then stopped making verses; that cautious and ambiguous oracle failed when people became more refined and less credulous. Demosthenes too, because he knew the responses were faked, complained that the Pythia was speaking for Philip.

But sometimes, however, auspices or oracles have touched the truth. Although among many lies it may seem that chance imitated diligence, I will still approach the very source of error and depravity, from which all this darkness has flowed, and dig it out more deeply and reveal it more clearly. They are deceitful spirits, wandering, weighed down from heavenly vigor by earthly stains and desires. These spirits, then, burdened and immersed in vices, having lost the simplicity of their substance, though already ruined, do not cease to ruin others, as comfort for their calamity; already depraved, they pour in the error of their depravity and, alienated from God, they separate people from God by introducing depraved religions.

The poets know that these spirits are demons; the philosophers discuss them; Socrates knew them, who at the nod and judgment of the demon attending him would either decline undertakings or seek them. The magi too not only know demons, but whatever miracle they perform, they do it through demons: with those spirits inspiring and pouring in, they produce illusions, either making things that are not appear to be, or making things that are appear not to be. Hostanes, first among those magi in both eloquence and practice, honors the true God with the majesty He deserves, and knows that angels, that is, ministers and messengers of the true God, stand in attendance on His worship, so that at the very nod and face of the Lord they tremble with terror. He also exposed demons as earthly, wandering, enemies of humanity.

What about Plato, who thought finding God was a task? Does he not easily speak of angels and demons too? And in his Symposium does he not try to express the nature of demons? He wants there to be a substance midway between mortal and immortal, that is, between body and spirit, compounded by the mixture of earthly weight and heavenly lightness. From this, he warns, comes even for us the desire of love; and says it is formed and slips into human hearts, moves the senses, fashions emotions, and pours in the ardor of desire.

27These impure spirits, then, are demons, as the magi, the philosophers, and Plato have shown. They hide beneath consecrated statues and images, and by their breath they gain the authority of a deity who seems to be present. Meanwhile they inspire prophets, linger in shrines, sometimes animate the fibers of entrails, guide the flight of birds, control lots, and produce oracles wrapped in many falsehoods.

For they are both deceived and deceive. They do not know the pure truth, and what truth they do know they do not confess, to their own destruction. So they weigh us down from heaven and call us away from the true God to material things. They disturb life, trouble sleep, and creeping secretly into bodies as fine spirits, they feign diseases, terrify minds, and twist limbs. They do this to force people to worship them, so that, fattened by the smell of altars or by sacrifices of cattle, they may seem to have cured what they themselves had bound.

From these same demons come also the madmen you see running through public places, prophets themselves even without a temple. That is how they rave, how they revel like Bacchants, how they whirl about. The demon's goading is the same in them, but the display of madness is different.

From these same demons come the stories I told you a little earlier: that Jupiter demanded games through a dream, that Castor and Pollux were seen with their horses, that a matron's girdle followed a little boat.

Most of you know that the demons themselves confess all this about themselves, whenever they are driven out of bodies by our torments of words and the fire of prayer. Saturn himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship, overcome by pain, speak out what they are. They do not lie to their own shame, especially when some of you are standing by.

Believe their own testimony, when they admit they are demons. For when they are adjured by the one true God, they shudder unwillingly in their wretched bodies, and either leap out at once or vanish gradually, as the faith of the sufferer helps or the grace of the healer breathes upon them. That is why they flee Christians at close range, though from a distance they attack them through you in your assemblies.

For this reason they creep into the minds of the ignorant and secretly sow hatred of us through fear. It is natural to hate someone you fear, and to attack someone you dread, if you can. So they seize souls and block hearts, so that people begin to hate us before they know us, lest, once they know us, they might either imitate us or be unable to condemn us.

28But how unjust it is to judge things unknown and unexamined—and this is what you do—believe us, who have repented of it ourselves.

We too once did the same and felt the same as you, when we were still blind and dull: we thought Christians worshipped monsters, devoured infants, mixed incestuous banquets. We did not understand that these tales were always being spread about and never investigated or proven, and that in all that time no one ever came forward to betray them—though he would have gained not only pardon for the deed, but even gratitude for the information. The evil was so far from real that a Christian on trial did not blush or fear, and regretted only one thing: that he had not been a Christian earlier.

Yet when we took up the defense of some sacrilegious and incestuous men, even parricides, to protect and shield them, we thought they should not be heard at all. Sometimes, even pitying them, we raged more cruelly against them, torturing those who confessed to make them deny—so that they would not perish, of course—practicing on them a perverted inquiry, not one that would drag out truth, but one that would force a lie.

And if someone weaker, crushed and overcome by the evil, denied that he was a Christian, we favored him, as if by renouncing the name he had now cleansed all his deeds through that denial.

Do you not recognize that we felt and did the same things you feel and do? Yet if reason, not the instigation of a demon, were judging, the pressure should have been not to make them deny they were Christians, but to make them confess to incestuous debauchery, to impious rites, to slaughtered infants.

With these and similar tales the demons had stuffed the ears of the ignorant against us, to the horror of execration. Nor is it surprising, since rumor, which is always nourished by scattered lies, is consumed when truth is shown.

This is the business of demons: by them the false rumor is both sown and fostered. That is why you say you hear that an ass's head is a divine thing for us. Who is so foolish as to worship that? Who is more foolish as to believe it is worshipped? Except that you consecrate whole asses in stables with your—or their—Epona, and you religiously adorn those same asses with Isis. Likewise you both sacrifice and worship heads of oxen and heads of rams, and you dedicate gods mixed from goat and man, and gods with the faces of lions and dogs.

Do you not also worship and feed Apis the ox along with the Egyptians? Nor do you condemn their rites instituted for serpents, crocodiles, other beasts, birds, and fish—and if anyone kills one of these as a god, he is punished even with death.

These same Egyptians, along with most of you, fear Isis no more than they fear the sharpness of onions, and tremble before Serapis no more than before noises pressed out through the body's private parts.

Even the man who tells tales about us worshipping male priests tries to transfer to us what belongs to him. For these things may perhaps be sacred rites among those whose every sex prostitutes itself with every limb, among whom all shamelessness is called wit, who envy the license of whores, who lick men in the middle, who cling with lustful mouth to groins—men of evil tongue even if they kept silent, who grow weary of their own shamelessness before they grow ashamed of it.

What wickedness! They admit into themselves an evil deed that no softer age could endure and no harsher slavery could be forced to do.

29We are not permitted even to hear of such shameful acts as these, and it is disgraceful for many to defend them. You invent stories about people who are chaste and modest that we would never believe happened, unless you proved them true of yourselves.

As for your charge that you ascribe a criminal and his cross to our religion, you wander far from the neighborhood of truth when you think that God could be believed either to have deserved punishment as a criminal or to have been capable of earthly existence.

How pitiable is the man whose whole hope rests on a mortal human being! All his help comes to an end when that human being dies.

The Egyptians, to be sure, choose a man for themselves to worship. They propitiate him alone, consult him above all others, and slaughter victims for him. But he who is a god to everyone else is certainly a man to himself, whether he wishes or not. He does not deceive his own conscience, even if he deceives someone else's.

Even princes and kings are shamefully courted with false flattery—not as great and chosen men, as is proper, but as gods. Yet honor is more truly given to a distinguished man, and love is more sweetly offered to a good one. So people call their deity by name, kneel before their images, and implore their genius, that is, their demon. And they think it safer to swear falsely by the genius of Jupiter than by the king.

We neither worship crosses nor wish for them. You, however, who consecrate wooden gods, perhaps adore wooden crosses as parts of your gods. For what else are your standards, banners, and camp flags but crosses gilded and decorated? Your victorious trophies imitate not only the shape of a simple cross, but also of a man nailed to it.

We certainly see the sign of the cross naturally in a ship when it sails with swelling sails and glides along with outspread oar-blades. And when a yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of the cross; and when a man worships God with pure mind and outstretched hands. Thus either natural reason rests upon the sign of the cross, or your own religion is shaped by it.

30Now I would like to meet the man who says or believes that we are initiated with the slaughter of an infant and with its blood. Do you think it possible that so soft, so tiny a body could receive the blows of wounds? That anyone could kill, pour out, and drain the fresh blood of a new and scarcely yet human being? No one can believe this except one who could dare to do it.

For I see that you expose your own children to wild beasts and birds, or strangle them and crush them out with a wretched kind of death. There are women who, by drinking drugs, extinguish the origin of a future human being in their very womb, and commit parricide before they give birth.

And these practices certainly descend from the teaching of your gods: for Saturn did not expose his sons, but devoured them. Rightly were infants sacrificed to him by parents in some parts of Africa, with caresses and a kiss suppressing their crying, so that a weeping victim might not be sacrificed.

The Taurians of Pontus and the Egyptian king Busiris had the rite of sacrificing guests; the Gauls slaughtered human or inhuman victims to Mercury; the Romans crushed alive a Greek man and a Greek woman, a Gallic man and a Gallic woman, in place of sacrifice; and to this day Jupiter Latiaris is worshipped by them with homicide, and, what is worthy of Saturn's son, he is fed with the blood of a wicked and criminal man.

I believe this same superstition taught Catiline the practice of conspiring under a covenant of blood, and taught Bellona to steep her sacred rite in a draught of human gore, and how to cure epilepsy with human blood, that is, with a heavier disease.

Not unlike them are those who devour wild beasts from the arena, smeared and stained with blood or with the limbs and entrails of a human being. For us it is not lawful even to see or hear of homicide, and so far do we keep away from human blood that we do not even know the blood of animals among our food.

31And about the incestuous banquet, the gathering of demons has invented a great story against us. They wanted to stain the glory of our chastity by sprinkling it with shameful infamy, and to turn people away from us through terror of an unspeakable rumor before the truth could be examined.

So about this matter your Fronto too did not give testimony as one who affirms the charge. Rather, as an orator he sprinkled abuse. For these things were born rather from your own nations.

Among the Persians it is lawful to have intercourse with mothers. Among the Egyptians and Athenians marriages with sisters are legitimate. Your histories and tragedies glory in incests, which you gladly both read and hear. So you also worship incestuous gods, joined with mother, with daughter, with sister.

Rightly therefore incest is often detected among you, and always committed. Even without knowing it, wretched people, you can rush headlong into forbidden acts. While you scatter your lust for Venus promiscuously, while you sow children everywhere, while you frequently expose even children born at home to the mercy of strangers, you must of necessity run back upon your own, and stray into your own children. So you weave the story of incest even when you are unaware of it.

But we display modesty not by face but by mind. We gladly cling to the bond of one marriage. For the desire of procreation we know either one wife or none. We cultivate banquets that are not only chaste but also sober, for we do not indulge in feasts or prolong the banquet with wine, but we temper cheerfulness with seriousness. With chaste speech and a body more chaste still, many of us enjoy rather than boast of the perpetual virginity of an inviolate body. So far is the desire of incest from us that for some even a chaste union is a cause of shame.

And we do not consist of the lowest dregs of the people if we refuse your honors and purple robes. Nor are we seditious if we all understand one good, gathered together in the same quiet as individuals. Nor are we chatterers in corners if you are either ashamed or afraid to hear us publicly.

And that our number grows daily is not a crime of error but a testimony of praise. For in a beautiful manner of living, the native both stands firm and perseveres, and the outsider grows.

So finally we easily recognize one another not by a mark on the body, as you think, but by the sign of innocence and modesty. So we love one another with mutual love, which you resent, because we have not learned to hate. So we call one another brothers, which you begrudge, as people of one God the parent, as sharers in faith, as co-heirs of hope. For you do not recognize one another, and you rage in mutual hatreds, and you only acknowledge brothers indeed for parricide.

32But do you think we hide what we worship because we have no shrines and altars? What idol could I fashion for God, when, if you judge rightly, man himself is God's idol? What temple could I build for him, when this whole world, made by his work, cannot contain him? And when I, a man, live in a wide space, should I confine the power of such majesty within one little shrine?

Is it not better to dedicate him in our mind? No, to consecrate him in our heart? Should I offer God victims and sacrifices, which he brought forth for my use, so that I throw his own gift back at him? That is ungrateful, when a good spirit and a pure mind and a sincere conscience are a pleasing victim.

So whoever cultivates innocence prays to God; whoever cultivates justice offers to God; whoever refrains from fraud appeases God; whoever rescues a person from danger slaughters a rich victim. These are our sacrifices, these are God's sacred rites: among us, the more just a person is, the more religious he is.

But the God we worship, you say, we neither show nor see. On the contrary, we believe God for this very reason: that we can perceive him, but cannot see him. For in his works and in all the movements of the world we behold his power always present, when it thunders, lightens, flashes lightning, when it clears.

Do not be surprised if you do not see God: wind and blasts drive, shake, and stir everything, and yet wind and blast do not come before the eyes. Even the sun, which is the cause of seeing for everyone, we cannot look at: our gaze is driven back by its rays, the viewer's sight is dulled, and if you look too long, all vision is extinguished.

What then? Could you endure the very maker of the sun, that source of light, when you turn away from his brilliance and hide from his lightning bolts? You want to see God with fleshly eyes, when you cannot even look at or grasp your own soul, by which you are given life and speech.

But, you say, God does not know human action, and established in heaven he cannot either visit everyone or know individuals. You err, O man, and you are deceived: for how is God far away, when all things heavenly and earthly, and those beyond this province of the world, are full of God? Everywhere he is not only near to us, but poured into us.

Look again at the sun: it is fixed in the sky, but it is spread over all lands; equally present everywhere, it is involved in and mingled with all things, and nowhere is its brightness violated.

How much more God, the author of all and watcher of all, from whom nothing can be hidden, is present in darkness, present in our thoughts, which are like another darkness! We do not merely act under him, but, I might almost say, we live with him.

33Nor should we flatter ourselves about our numbers. We seem many to ourselves, but to God we are quite few. We divide the world into peoples and nations, but to God this whole world is one house. Kings learn the state of their kingdom through the varied services of their ministers, but God has no need of informers, for we live not only in his sight but in his bosom.

Yet it did the Jews no good that they too worshipped one God with altars and temples and the greatest superstition. You slip into ignorance if you remember only their earlier history and forget or never knew their later one.

For they too experienced our God, and he is the God of all. As long as they worshipped him purely, innocently, and religiously, as long as they obeyed his wholesome commands, from a few they became countless, from poor they became rich, from slaves they became kings. A small band overwhelmed many, unarmed men overwhelmed armed ones, fleeing men overwhelmed their pursuers, by God's command and with the elements assisting them.

Read their writings again, or if you prefer Roman authors, to pass over the ancients, consult Flavius Josephus or Antonius Julianus on the Jews. Then you will learn that their own wickedness earned them this fate, and that nothing happened to them that had not been foretold, if they persisted in their defiance.

So you will understand that they abandoned God before they were abandoned, and that they were not, as you impiously say, captured along with their God, but handed over by God as deserters from discipline.

34As for the burning of the world, to refuse to believe that fire falls either unforeseen or with difficulty is a common error. Who among the wise doubts, who does not know, that everything which has arisen passes away, and everything which has been made is destroyed? The Stoics hold it as a settled opinion that the sky too, with everything contained in the sky, will pass into the force of fire just as it began, if the sweet water of the springs should cease to nourish the seas; because when the moisture is consumed, this whole world catches fire. The Epicureans hold the same view about the burning up of the elements and the ruin of the world. Plato speaks: he says that parts of the world are now flooded, now burn in alternating turns, and although he said that the world itself was made perpetual and indissoluble, he nevertheless added that for God its maker alone it is both dissoluble and mortal. So it is no wonder if this mass is destroyed by the one by whom it was built. You notice that the philosophers discuss the same things we say, not because we have followed in their footsteps, but because they have imitated the shadow of interpolated truth from the divine predictions of the prophets.

So also the more distinguished of the wise, Pythagoras first and chiefly Plato, handed down the condition of being reborn with a corrupted and halved faith: for when bodies are dissolved, they claim that souls alone remain forever and often pass over into other new bodies. To twist the truth, they add this too: that the souls of humans return into cattle, birds, and beasts. That view deserves not the serious study of a philosopher but the mockery of a mime. But for our purpose it is enough that even in this your wise men agree with us in some measure.

For who is so foolish or brutish as to dare to deny that a human being, since he could first be formed by God, can also be formed again? That there is nothing after death, and that there was nothing before birth? Just as it was possible to be born from nothing, so it is possible to be restored from nothing. Indeed, it is more difficult for what does not exist to begin than for what has existed to be repeated. Do you believe that anything is lost to God if it is withdrawn from our dull eyes? Every body, whether it dries into dust or dissolves into moisture or is pressed into ash or thinned into vapor, is withdrawn from us, but it is preserved for God, the guardian of the elements. Nor do we fear, as you believe, any loss from burial; rather, we practice the old and better custom of interment.

See, indeed, how all nature meditates on the resurrection that will be for our comfort. The sun sinks and is born again, the stars glide away and return, flowers die and revive, trees grow green again after old age, seeds do not grow green again unless they are corrupted: so the body in the tomb is like trees in winter: they hide their greenness with a pretended dryness. Why are you in a hurry for it to revive and return while winter is still raw? We must wait for the spring of the body as well. Nor am I unaware that many, conscious of their deserts, prefer to be nothing after death rather than to believe: they would rather be utterly extinguished than restored for punishment. Their error is increased both by the license allowed in this world and by God's great patience, whose judgment is the more just the slower it is.

35And yet people are warned by the books of the most learned men and by the poems of the poets about that river of fire and the burning heat that constantly surrounds the Stygian marsh. They have handed down that this fire is prepared for eternal torments, known both from the testimony of demons and from the oracles of the prophets.

That is why among them even King Jupiter himself swears religiously by the torrential banks and the black abyss. Foreknowing the punishment appointed for himself and his worshippers, he shudders at it.

Nor is there any limit or end to the torments. There the wise fire burns the limbs and restores them, tears them away and feeds them. Just as the fires of lightning touch bodies without consuming them, just as the fires of Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius and of burning lands everywhere blaze without being spent, so that penal fire is not fed by the loss of what burns, but is nourished by the unending tearing of bodies.

But that those who do not know God are tormented as impious and unjust, no one deliberates unless he is profane, since to be ignorant of the parent and lord of all is no less a crime than to harm him.

And although ignorance of God is enough for punishment, just as knowledge avails for pardon, still if we Christians are compared with you, even though our discipline is inferior in some respects, we will nevertheless be found much better than you.

For you prohibit adulteries and commit them; we are born husbands solely for our wives. You punish crimes once committed; among us even to think of sin is to sin. You fear witnesses; we fear even our conscience alone, without which we cannot exist. Finally, the prison swarms with your number; no Christian is there unless he is accused of his religion or a fugitive.

36No one should seek comfort or excuse for his conduct in fate. Let a person's lot be whatever fortune wills, but the mind remains free, and so it is a man's action that is judged, not his station.

For what else is fate than what God has spoken concerning each one of us? Since he can know the material beforehand, he determines our fates according to the merits and qualities of each individual. Thus it is not our birth that is punished in us, but the nature of our character. And enough about fate, even if briefly for the present; we will discuss it more fully and completely another time.

As for the fact that most of us are called poor, that is not our disgrace but our glory. The mind is loosened by luxury, just as it is strengthened by frugality. And yet who can be poor if he lacks nothing, does not gape after another's goods, and is rich in God? That man is poorer who, though he has much, desires more.

I will tell you what I think: no one can be as poor as he was when he was born. Birds live without an inheritance and are fed day by day; and all these things were made for us, and if we do not covet them, we possess them.

Therefore, just as a man who travels a road is happier the lighter he walks, so in this journey of life the man is more blessed who lifts himself up by poverty and does not sigh under the burden of riches.

And yet if we thought wealth useful, we would ask it from God. Surely he to whom the whole belongs could grant us some portion. But we prefer to despise riches rather than to grasp them; we desire innocence more, we more urgently seek patience; we prefer to be good rather than extravagant.

And the human weaknesses of the body that we feel and suffer are not punishment; it is service as soldiers. For courage is strengthened in infirmities, and calamity is often the training ground of virtue. In fact, the powers of both mind and body grow sluggish without the exercise of labor. All your brave men, whom you praise as examples, flourished and became famous through their hardships.

So God both can help us and does not despise us, since he is the ruler of all things and the lover of his own. But in adversity he tests and examines each one; he weighs the character of individuals through dangers; he inquires into a man's will even to his final death, certain that nothing of his can perish. Therefore, as gold is proved by fire, so we are proved by critical moments.

37What a beautiful sight for God when a Christian grapples with pain, when he stands arrayed against threats, punishments, and tortures, when, laughing, he drives home the din of death and the executioner's horror, when he raises his freedom against kings and rulers and yields only to God, whose he is, when he taunts the very man who pronounced sentence against him as a conqueror and victor! For he has won who has obtained what he fought for.

What soldier would not court danger more boldly under his commander's eyes? No one receives a reward before the test. And yet a commander cannot give what he does not have: he cannot prolong life, but he can honor military service.

But God's soldier is neither abandoned in pain nor ended by death. So a Christian can seem wretched, but he cannot be found wretched. You yourselves carry calamitous men to heaven: Mucius Scaevola, who, having missed the king, would have perished among the enemy, had he not lost his right hand.

And how many of our people have endured not only their right hand but their whole body being burned and cremated without any wailings, especially when they had it in their own power to be released!

Do I compare men with Mucius or with Aquilius or Regulus? Our boys and little women mock crosses and tortures, wild beasts and all the terrors of punishment, with inspired endurance of pain.

Do you not understand, you wretched people, that no one either wants to undergo punishment without reason or can endure tortures without God?

Unless perhaps you are deceived because those who do not know God overflow with riches, flourish with honors, and are strong in positions of power. Wretched people are lifted higher for this reason: so that they may fall from higher. For they are fattened like victims for punishment, crowned like sacrificial animals for the penalty. Indeed, some are raised to commands and dominions for this purpose: so that their ruined minds may freely traffic in the license of power.

For without knowledge of God, what happiness can be solid, since death exists? Like a dream, it slips away before it is grasped. Are you a king? You fear as much as you are feared, and however much you are surrounded by a large retinue, you are still alone when danger comes. Are you rich? Fortune is badly trusted, and the short journey of life is not equipped but weighed down by a large travel allowance.

Do you glory in fasces and purple? It is the empty error of a human being and the hollow cultivation of rank to gleam in purple while the mind is filthy. Are you noble by birth? Do you praise your parents? We are all born with equal lot; we are distinguished by virtue alone.

We, therefore, who are judged by our character and modesty, rightly abstain from your evil pleasures, your processions, and your spectacles. We know the origin of these things from your sacred rites, and we condemn their harmful allurements. For in chariot races, who would not shudder at the madness of the people fighting among themselves? In gladiatorial games, at the training in homicide?

In the theater there is no less frenzy and more prolonged shame. Now the mime either exposes or demonstrates adulteries; now the effeminate actor inflicts love while he feigns it. The same man disgraces your gods by dressing them in debauchery, sighs, and hatreds; the same man provokes your tears with feigned grief and empty gestures and nods. So you demand homicide in reality, and you weep over it in fiction.

38As for our contempt for the remnants of sacrifices and the cups that have been libated, this is not a confession of fear but an assertion of true freedom. For although everything that is born is an inviolable gift of God and is corrupted by no work of ours, we still abstain, lest anyone think that we either yield to the demons to whom the offering was made or are ashamed of our religion.

Who, after all, is there who doubts that we indulge ourselves in the flowers of spring, when we pluck the rose of spring and the lily and whatever else among the flowers has pleasing color and scent? For we use them both scattered, soft and loose, and woven into garlands around our necks. Indeed, forgive us for not crowning our heads: we are accustomed to draw the good breath of a flower with our nostrils, not to drink it in through the back of the head or the hair.

Nor do we crown the dead. In this matter I wonder at you all the more: how can you give the dead a torch if they can feel, or a crown if they feel nothing, when the blessed person has no need and the wretched person takes no joy in flowers?

But we adorn our funerals with the same tranquility with which we live, and we do not attach a withering crown, but from God we bear a living crown of eternal flowers. Quiet and modest, made secure by the generosity of our God, we animate our hope of future happiness by faith in his present majesty. Thus we both rise again in blessedness and already live by the contemplation of the future.

So let Socrates, the Atticus jester, look to it—he who confessed he knew nothing, yet boasted in the testimony of a most deceitful demon. Let Arcesilas too, and Carneades and Pyrrho and the whole crowd of Academics deliberate; let Simonides also postpone forever. We despise the arrogance of the philosophers, whom we know as corrupters and adulterers and tyrants, always eloquent against their own vices.

We, who display wisdom not in our dress but in our mind, do not speak great things but live them, and we glory that we have attained what they sought with the utmost effort and could not find. Why are we ungrateful? Why do we begrudge ourselves, if the truth of divinity has matured in the age of our time? Let us enjoy our good and temper our judgment of what is right: let superstition be restrained, let impiety be atoned for, let true religion be preserved.

39When Octavius had finished speaking, we sat stunned for some time, our faces fixed in silence. As for me, I was overcome by the sheer force of admiration. He had adorned what is easier to feel than to say with arguments, examples, and the authority of texts. He had turned back the malicious with the very weapons of the philosophers with which they arm themselves. And he had shown that truth is not only easy but also favorable.

40While I was turning these things over in silence, Caecilius burst out: "I congratulate my friend Octavius as much as I possibly can, and myself as well, and I do not wait for a verdict. We have won, and in this way: even shamelessly I claim the victory. For just as he is the victor over me, so I am the triumpher over error. And so, as far as the main question goes, I confess providence, I yield about God, and I agree about the sincerity of the sect, now ours. Even now, however, some things remain that do not obstruct the truth but are necessary for perfect instruction. Since the sun is already sinking toward evening, we will inquire into them more readily tomorrow, so that, being in agreement about the whole, we may inquire more promptly."

Then I said, "On behalf of all of us, I rejoice more fully that Octavius has also won for me, since the greatest envy of judging has been taken away from me. Yet I cannot repay his merit with words of praise: the testimony both of a man and of one man is weak. He has an extraordinary gift from God, by whom he was inspired to plead his case and, being helped, obtained it."

After this we parted, joyful and cheerful: Caecilius because he had believed, Octavius because he had won, and I because the one had believed and the other had won.