For even Augustus himself waged many civil wars;and in these wars many of the foremost men perished, among them that skilful manipulator of the republic, Cicero.Caius [Julius] Caesar, when he had conquered Pompey, though he used his victory with clemency, and granted to men of the opposite faction both life and honors, was suspected of aiming at royalty, and was assassinated in the curia by a party of noble senators, who had conspired to defend the liberty of the republic.
His power was then coveted by Antony, a man of very different character, polluted and debased by every kind of vice, who was strenuously resisted by Cicero on the same plea of defending the liberty of the republic.At this juncture that other Caesar, the adopted son of Caius, and afterwards, as I said, known by the name of Augustus, had made his dÈbut as a young man of remarkable genius.This youthful Caesar was favored by Cicero, in order that his influence might counteract that of Antony;for he hoped that Caesar would overthrow and blast the power of Antony, and establish a free state,--so blind and unaware of the future was he: for that very young man, whose advancement and influence he was fostering, allowed Cicero to be killed as the seal of an alliance with Antony, and subjected to his own rule the very liberty of the republic in defence of which he had made so many orations.
CHAP.31.--THAT IT IS EFFRONTERY TO IMPUTE THE PRESENT TROUBLES TO CHRISTAND THE
PROHIBITION OF POLYTHEISTIC WORSHIP SINCE EVEN WHEN THE GODS WERE WORSHIPPEDSUCH CALAMITIES BEFELL THE PEOPLE.
Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits, blame their own gods for these heavy disasters.For certainly when these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and there rose the mingled fragrance of "Sabaean incense and fresh garlands;"(1) the priests were clothed with honor, the shrines were maintained in splendor; sacrifices, games, sacred ecstasies, were common in the temples; while the blood of the citizens was being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the very altars of the gods.Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary in a temple, because Mucius had sought it there in vain.But they who most unpardonably calumniate this Christian era, are the very men who either themselves fled for asylum to the places specially dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians that they might be safe.In short, not to recapitulate the many instances I have cited, and not to add to their number others which it were tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am persuaded of, and this every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge, that if the human race had received Christianity before the Punic wars, and if the same desolating calamities which these wars brought upon Europe and Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, there is no one of those who now accuse us who would not have attributed them to our religion.
How intolerable would their accusations have been, at least so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had been received and diffused prior to the invasion of the Gauls, or to the ruinous floods and fires which desolated Rome, or to those most calamitous of all events, the civil wars! And those other disasters, which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies, had they happened since the Christian era, to whom but to the Christians would they have imputed these as crimes? I do not speak of those things which were rather surprising than hurtful,--oxen speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mothers' wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other ***; and other similar prodigies which, whether true or false, are recorded not in their imaginative, but in their historical works, and which do not injure, but only astonish men.But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stones--not hailstones, but real stones--this certainly was calculated to do serious damage.We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from the top of the mountain to the neighboring shore, caused the sea to boil, so that rocks were burnt up, and the pitch of ships began to run,--a phenomenon incredibly surprising, but at the same time no less hurtful.By the same violent heat, they relate that on another occasion Sicily was filled with cinders, so that the houses of the city Catina were destroyed and buried under them,--a calamity which moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their tribute for that year.One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts, which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was polluted, and so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a much greater number in the neighboring districts.At Utica they assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived only ten.Yet which of these disasters, suppose they happened now, would not be attributed to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own gods they attribute none of these things, though they worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were not preserved from these serious disasters.