The secret crimes of the Christians
Caecilius is attacking Christianity, describing its spread as a depraved secret society and detailing the alleged crimes of its initiation and feasts.
And 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.
Latin
Ac iam, ut fecundius nequiora proueniunt, serpentibus in dies perditis moribus per uniuersum orbem sacraria ista taeterrima impiae coitionis adolescunt. eruenda prorsus haec et execranda consensio.
occultis se notis et insignibus noscunt et amant mutuo paene antequam nouerint: passim etiam inter eos uelut quaedam libidinum religio miscetur, ac se promisce appellant fratres et sorores, ut etiam non insolens stuprum intercessione sacri nominis fiat incestum. ita eorum uana et demens superstitio sceleribus gloriatur.
nec de ipsis, nisi subsisteret ueritas, maxime nefaria et honore praefanda sagax fama loqueretur. audio eos turpissimae pecudis caput [asini] consecratum inepta nescio qua persuasione uenerari: digna et nata religio talibus moribus!
alii eos ferunt ipsius antistitis ac sacerdotis colere genitalia et quasi parentis sui adorare naturam: nescio an falsa, certe occultis ac nocturnis sacris adposita suspicio! et qui hominem summo supplicio pro facinore punitum et crucis ligna feralia eorum caerimonias fabulatur, congruentia perditis sceleratisque tribuit altaria, ut id colant quod merentur.
iam de initiandis tirunculis fabula tam detestanda quam nota est. infans farre contectus, ut decipiat incautos, adponitur ei qui sacris inbuatur. is infans a tirunculo fanis superficie quasi ad innoxios ictus prouocato caecis occultisque uulneribus occiditur. huius, pro nefas! sitienter sanguinem lambunt, huius certatim membra dispertiunt, hac foederantur hostia, hac conscientia sceleris ad silentium mutuum pignerantur. haec sacra sacrilegiis omnibus taetriora.
et de conuiuio notum est; passim omnes locuntur, id etiam Cirtensis nostri testatur oratio. ad epulas sollemni die coeunt cum omnibus liberis, sororibus, matribus, sexus omnis homines et omnis aetatis. illic post multas epulas, ubi conuiuium caluit et incestae libidinis ebriatis feruor exarsit, canis, qui candelabro nexus est, iactu offulae ultra spatium lineae, qua uinctus est, ad impetum et saltum prouocatur.
sic euerso et extincto conscio lumine mpudentibus tenebris nexus infandae cupiditatis inuoluunt per incertum sortis, etsi non omnes opera, conscientia tamen pariter incesti, quoniam uoto uniuersorum adpetitur quicquid accidere potest in actu singulorum.