Rome's greatness came from crime, not religion

And 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.