The injustice of judging Christians unheard
Octavius is replying to Caecilius and now turns the charge of ignorance back on the pagans, admitting that he and his friends once shared the same blind hatred of Christians.
But 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.
Latin
Quam autem inicum sit, de incognitis et inexploratis iudicare, quod facitis, nobis ipsis paenitentibus credite.
et nos enim idem fecimus et eadem uobiscum quondam adhuc caeci et hebetes sentiebamus, quasi Christiani monstra colerent, infantes uorarent, conuiuia incesta miscerent, nec intellegebamus ab his fabulas istas semper uentilari et numquam uel inuestigari uel probari, nec tanto tempore aliquem existere qui proderet, non tantum facti ueniam, uerum etiam indicii gratiam consecuturum : malum autem adeo non esse, ut Christianus reus nec erubesceret nec timeret, et unum solummodo, quod non ante fuerit, paeniteret.
nos tamen cum sacrilegos aliquos etincestos, parricidas etiam defendendos et tuendos suscipiebamus, hos nec audiendos in totum putabamus, nonnumquam etiam miserantes eorum crudelius saeuiebamus, ut torqueremus confitentes ad negandum, uidelicet ne perirent, exercentes in his peruersam quaestionem, non quae uerum erueret, sed quae mendacium cogeret.
et si qui infirmior malo pressus et uictus Christianum senegasset, fauebamus ei, quasi eierato nomine iam omnia facta sua illa negatione purgaret.
adgnoscitisne eadem nos sensisse et egisse, quae sentitis et geritis? cum si ratio, non instigatio daemonis iudicaret, urguendi magis, non ut diffiterentur se Christianos, sed ut de incestis stupris, de inpiatis sacris, de infantibus immolatis faterentur.
his enim et huiusmodi fabulis idem daemones ad execrationis horrorem imperitorum aures aduersus nos referserant. nec tamen mirum, quoniam fama, quae semper insparsis mendaciis alitur, ostensa ueritate consumitur.
sic est negotium daemonum; ab ipsis enim rumor falsus et seritur et fouetur. inde est quod audire te dicis, caput asini rem nobis esse diuinam. quis tam stultus, ut hoc colat? quis stultior, ut hoc coli credat? nisi quod uos et totos asinos in stabulis cum uestra uel sua Epona consecratis et eosdem asinos cum Iside religiose decoratis, item boum capita et capita ueruecum et immolatis et colitis, de capro etiam et homine mixtos deos et leonum et canum uultibus deos dedicatis.
nonne et Apim bouem cum Aegyptiis adoratis et pascitis? nec eorum sacra damnatis instituta serpentibus, crocodillis, beluis ceteris et auibus et piscibus, quorum aliquem deum si quis occiderit, etiam capite punitur.
idem Aegyptn cum plerisque uobis non magis Isidem quam ceparum acrimonias metuunt, nec Serapidem magis quam strepitus per pudenda corporis expressos contremescunt.
etiam ille, qui de adoratis sacerdotis uirilibus aduersum nos fabulatur, temptat in nos conferre quae sua sunt. ista enim inpudicitiae eorum forsitan sacra sint, apud quos sexus omnis membris omnibus prostat, apud quos tota inpudicitia uocatur urbanitas, qui scortorum licentiae inuident, qui medios uiros lambunt, libidinoso ore inguinibus inhaerescunt, homines malae linguae etiam si tacerent, quos prius taedescit impudicitiae suae quam pudescit.
pro nefas ! id in se mali facinoris admittunt, quod nec aetas potest pati mollior nec cogi seruitus durior.