8. Tacitus, Annals, 1.7.3, 1.10-1.11, 1.10.2, 1.73, 3.6, 3.36.1-3.36.2, 3.58-3.59, 3.58.1, 3.61-3.62, 3.61.2, 4.56.1, 4.62, 14.42-14.45 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.10. On the other side it was argued that "filial duty and the critical position of the state had been used merely as a cloak: come to facts, and it was from the lust of dominion that he excited the veterans by his bounties, levied an army while yet a stripling and a subject, subdued the legions of a consul, and affected a leaning to the Pompeian side. Then, following his usurpation by senatorial decree of the symbols and powers of the praetorship, had come the deaths of Hirtius and Pansa, â whether they perished by the enemy's sword, or Pansa by poison sprinkled on his wound, and Hirtius by the hands of his own soldiery, with the Caesar to plan the treason. At all events, he had possessed himself of both their armies, wrung a consulate from the unwilling senate, and turned against the commonwealth the arms which he had received for the quelling of Antony. The proscription of citizens and the assignments of land had been approved not even by those who executed them. Grant that Cassius and the Bruti were sacrificed to inherited enmities â though the moral law required that private hatreds should give way to public utility â yet Pompey was betrayed by the simulacrum of a peace, Lepidus by the shadow of a friendship: then Antony, lured by the Tarentine and Brundisian treaties and a marriage with his sister, had paid with life the penalty of that delusive connexion. After that there had been undoubtedly peace, but peace with bloodshed â the disasters of Lollius and of Varus, the execution at Rome of a Varro, an Egnatius, an Iullus." His domestic adventures were not spared; the abduction of Nero's wife, and the farcical questions to the pontiffs, whether, with a child conceived but not yet born, she could legally wed; the debaucheries of Vedius Pollio; and, lastly, Livia, â as a mother, a curse to the realm; as a stepmother, a curse to the house of the Caesars. "He had left small room for the worship of heaven, when he claimed to be himself adored in temples and in the image of godhead by flamens and by priests! Even in the adoption of Tiberius to succeed him, his motive had been neither personal affection nor regard for the state: he had read the pride and cruelty of his heart, and had sought to heighten his own glory by the vilest of contrasts." For Augustus, a few years earlier, when requesting the Fathers to renew the grant of the tribunician power to Tiberius, had in the course of the speech, complimentary as it was, let fall a few remarks on his demeanour, dress, and habits which were offered as an apology and designed for reproaches. However, his funeral ran the ordinary course; and a decree followed, endowing him a temple and divine rites. 1.11. Then all prayers were directed towards Tiberius; who delivered a variety of reflections on the greatness of the empire and his own diffidence:â "Only the mind of the deified Augustus was equal to such a burden: he himself had found, when called by the sovereign to share his anxieties, how arduous, how dependent upon fortune, was the task of ruling a world! He thought, then, that, in a state which had the support of so many eminent men, they ought not to devolve the entire duties on any one person; the business of government would be more easily carried out by the joint efforts of a number." A speech in this tenor was more dignified than convincing. Besides, the diction of Tiberius, by habit or by nature, was always indirect and obscure, even when he had no wish to conceal his thought; and now, in the effort to bury every trace of his sentiments, it became more intricate, uncertain, and equivocal than ever. But the Fathers, whose one dread was that they might seem to comprehend him, melted in plaints, tears, and prayers. They were stretching their hands to heaven, to the effigy of Augustus, to his own knees, when he gave orders for a document to be produced and read. It contained a statement of the national resources â the strength of the burghers and allies under arms; the number of the fleets, protectorates, and provinces; the taxes direct and indirect; the needful disbursements and customary bounties catalogued by Augustus in his own hand, with a final clause (due to fear or jealousy?) advising the restriction of the empire within its present frontiers. 1.73. It will not be unremunerative to recall the first, tentative charges brought in the case of Falanius and Rubrius, two Roman knights of modest position; if only to show from what beginnings, thanks to the art of Tiberius, the accursed thing crept in, and, after a temporary check, at last broke out, an all-devouring conflagration. Against Falanius the accuser alleged that he had admitted a certain Cassius, mime and catamite, among the "votaries of Augustus," who were maintained, after the fashion of fraternities, in all the great houses: also, that when selling his gardens, he had parted with a statue of Augustus as well. To Rubrius the crime imputed was violation of the deity of Augustus by perjury. When the facts came to the knowledge of Tiberius, he wrote to the consuls that place in heaven had not been decreed to his father in order that the honour might be turned to the destruction of his countrymen. Cassius, the actor, with others of his trade, had regularly taken part in the games which his own mother had consecrated to the memory of Augustus; nor was it an act of sacrilege, if the effigies of that sovereign, like other images of other gods, went with the property, whenever a house or garden was sold. As to the perjury, it was on the same footing as if the defendant had taken the name of Jupiter in vain: the gods must look to their own wrongs. 3.6. All this Tiberius knew; and, to repress the comments of the crowd, he reminded them in a manifesto that "many illustrious Romans had died for their country, but none had been honoured with such a fervour of regret: a compliment highly valued by himself and by all, if only moderation were observed. For the same conduct was not becoming to ordinary families or communities and to leaders of the state and to an imperial people. Mourning and the solace of tears had suited the first throes of their affliction; but now they must recall their minds to fortitude, as once the deified Julius at the loss of his only daughter, and the deified Augustus at the taking of his grandchildren, had thrust aside their anguish. There was no need to show by earlier instances how often the Roman people had borne unshaken the slaughter of armies, the death of generals, the complete annihilation of historic houses. Statesmen were mortal, the state eternal. Let them return, therefore, to their usual occupations and â as the Megalesian Games would soon be exhibited â resume even their pleasures! 3.36.1. Now came the disclosure of a practice whispered in the private complaints of many. There was a growing tendency of the rabble to cast insult and odium on citizens of repute, and to evade the penalty by grasping some object portraying the Caesar. The freedmen and slaves, even, were genuinely feared by the patron or the owner against whom they lifted their voices or their hands. Hence a speech of the senator, Gaius Cestius:â "Princes, he admitted, were equivalent to deities; but godhead itself listened only to the just petitions of the suppliant, and no man fled to the Capitol or other sanctuary of the city to make it a refuge subserving his crimes. The laws had been abolished â overturned from the foundations â when Annia Rufilla, whom he had proved guilty of fraud in a court of justice, could insult and threaten him in the Forum, upon the threshold of the curia; while he himself dared not try the legal remedy because of the portrait of the sovereign with which she confronted him." Similar and, in some cases, more serious experiences, were described by a din of voices around him; and appeals to Drusus, to set the example of punishment, lasted till he gave orders for her to be summoned and imprisoned, after conviction, in the public cells. 3.58. Meanwhile, after the governorship of Junius Blaesus in Africa had been extended, the Flamen Dialis, Servius Maluginensis, demanded the allotment of Asia to himself. "It was a common fallacy," he insisted, "that the flamens of Jove were not allowed to leave Italy; nor was his own legal status different from that of the flamens of Mars and Quirinus. If, then, they had had provinces allotted them, why was the right withheld from the priests of Jove? There was no national decree to be found on the point â nothing in the Books of Ceremonies. The pontiffs had often performed the rites of Jove, if the flamen was prevented by sickness or public business. For seventy-five years after the self-murder of Cornelius Merula no one had been appointed in his room, yet the rites had not been interrupted. But if so many years could elapse without a new creation, and without detriment to the cult, how much more easily could he absent himself for twelve months of proconsular authority? Personal rivalries had no doubt in former times led the pontiffs to prohibit his order from visiting the provinces: toâday, by the grace of Heaven, the chief pontiff was also the chief of men, beyond the reach of jealousy, rancour, or private inclinations. 3.58.1. Meanwhile, after the governorship of Junius Blaesus in Africa had been extended, the Flamen Dialis, Servius Maluginensis, demanded the allotment of Asia to himself. "It was a common fallacy," he insisted, "that the flamens of Jove were not allowed to leave Italy; nor was his own legal status different from that of the flamens of Mars and Quirinus. If, then, they had had provinces allotted them, why was the right withheld from the priests of Jove? There was no national decree to be found on the point â nothing in the Books of Ceremonies. The pontiffs had often performed the rites of Jove, if the flamen was prevented by sickness or public business. For seventy-five years after the self-murder of Cornelius Merula no one had been appointed in his room, yet the rites had not been interrupted. But if so many years could elapse without a new creation, and without detriment to the cult, how much more easily could he absent himself for twelve months of proconsular authority? Personal rivalries had no doubt in former times led the pontiffs to prohibit his order from visiting the provinces: toâday, by the grace of Heaven, the chief pontiff was also the chief of men, beyond the reach of jealousy, rancour, or private inclinations. 3.59. Since various objections to the argument were raised by the augur Lentulus and others, it was determined, in the upshot, to wait for the verdict of the supreme pontiff himself. Tiberius postponed his inquiry into the legal standing of the flamen, but modified the ceremonies with which it had been resolved to celebrate the tribunician power of Drusus; criticizing specifically the unprecedented motion of Haterius and the gold lettering so repugt to Roman custom. A letter, too, from Drusus was read, which, though tuned to a modest key, left an impression of extreme arrogance. "So the world," men said, "had come to this, that even a mere boy, invested with such an honour, would not approach the divinities of Rome, set foot within the senate, or, at the least, take the auspices on his native soil. War, they must assume, or some remote quarter of the world detained him; though at that instant he was perambulating the lakes and beaches of Campania! Such was the initiation of the governor of the human race, these the first lessons derived from the paternal instruction! A grey-haired emperor might, if he pleased, recoil from the view of his fellow-citizens, and plead the fatigue of age and the labours he had accomplished: but, in the case of Drusus, what impediment could there be save pride? 3.61. The Ephesians were the first to appear. "Apollo and Diana," they stated, "were not, as commonly supposed, born at Delos. In Ephesus there was a river Cenchrius, with a grove Ortygia; where Latona, heavy-wombed and supporting herself by an olive-tree which remained to that day, gave birth to the heavenly twins. The grove had been hallowed by divine injunction; and there Apollo himself, after slaying the Cyclopes, had evaded the anger of Jove. Afterwards Father Liber, victor in the war, had pardoned the suppliant Amazons who had seated themselves at the altar. Then the sanctity of the temple had been enhanced, with the permission of Hercules, while he held the crown of Lydia; its privileges had not been diminished under the Persian empire; later, they had been preserved by the Macedonians â last by ourselves. 3.62. The Magnesians, who followed, rested their case on the rulings of Lucius Scipio and Lucius Sulla, who, after their defeats of Antiochus and Mithridates respectively, had honoured the loyalty and courage of Magnesia by making the shrine of Leucophryne Diana an inviolable refuge. Next, Aphrodisias and Stratonicea adduced a decree of the dictator Julius in return for their early services to his cause, together with a modern rescript of the deified Augustus, who praised the unchanging fidelity to the Roman nation with which they had sustained the Parthian inroad. Aphrodisias, however, was championing the cult of Venus; Stratonicea, that of Jove and Diana of the Crossways. The statement of Hierocaesarea went deeper into the past: the community owned a Persian Diana with a temple dedicated in the reign of Cyrus; and there were references to Perpenna, Isauricus, and many other commanders who had allowed the same sanctity not only to the temple but to the neighbourhood for two miles round. The Cypriotes followed with an appeal for three shrines â the oldest erected by their founder Aërias to the Paphian Venus; the second by his son Amathus to the Amathusian Venus; and a third by Teucer, exiled by the anger of his father Telamon, to Jove of Salamis. 4.56.1. The deputies from Smyrna, on the other hand, after retracing the antiquity of their town â whether founded by Tantalus, the seed of Jove; by Theseus, also of celestial stock; or by one of the Amazons â passed on to the arguments in which they rested most confidence: their good offices towards the Roman people, to whom they had sent their naval force to aid not merely in foreign wars but in those with which we had to cope in Italy, while they had also been the first to erect a temple to the City of Rome, at a period (the consulate of Marcus Porcius) when the Roman fortunes stood high indeed, but had not yet mounted to their zenith, as the Punic capital was yet standing and the kings were still powerful in Asia. At the same time, Sulla was called to witness that "with his army in a most critical position through the inclement winter and scarcity of clothing, the news had only to be announced at a public meeting in Smyrna, and the whole of the bystanders stripped the garments from their bodies and sent them to our legions." The Fathers accordingly, when their opinion was taken, gave Smyrna the preference. Vibius Marsus proposed that a supernumerary legate, to take responsibility for the temple, should be assigned to Manius Lepidus, to whom the province of Asia had fallen; and since Lepidus modestly declined to make the selection himself, Valerius Naso was chosen by lot among the ex-praetors and sent out. 4.62. In the consulate of Marcus Licinius and Lucius Calpurnius, the casualties of some great wars were equalled by an unexpected disaster. It began and ended in a moment. A certain Atilius, of the freedman class, who had begun an amphitheatre at Fidena, in order to give a gladiatorial show, failed both to lay the foundation in solid ground and to secure the fastenings of the wooden structure above; the reason being that he had embarked on the enterprise, not from a superabundance of wealth nor to court the favours of his townsmen, but with an eye to sordid gain. The amateurs of such amusements, debarred from their pleasures under the reign of Tiberius, poured to the place, men and women, old and young, the stream swollen because the town lay near. This increased the gravity of the catastrophe, as the unwieldy fabric was packed when it collapsed, breaking inward or sagging outward, and precipitating and burying a vast crowd of human beings, intent on the spectacle or standing around. Those, indeed, whom the first moment of havoc had dashed to death, escaped torture, so far as was possible in such a fate: more to be pitied were those whose mutilated bodies life had not yet abandoned, who by day recognized their wives or their children by sight, and at night by their shrieks and moans. The news brought the absent to the scene â one lamenting a brother, one a kinsman, another his parents. Even those whose friends or relatives had left home for a different reason still felt the alarm, and, as it was not yet known whom the catastrophe had destroyed, the uncertainty gave wider range for fear. 14.42. Shortly afterwards, the city prefect, Pedanius Secundus, was murdered by one of his own slaves; either because he had been refused emancipation after Pedanius had agreed to the price, or because he had contracted a passion for a catamite, and declined to tolerate the rivalry of his owner. Be that as it may, when the whole of the domestics who had been resident under the same roof ought, in accordance with the old custom, to have been led to execution, the rapid assembly of the populace, bent on protecting so many innocent lives, brought matters to the point of sedition, and the senate house was besieged. Even within its walls there was a party which protested against excessive harshness, though most members held that no change was advisable. Gaius Cassius, one of the majority, when his turn to speak arrived, argued in the following strain:â 14.43. "I have frequently, Conscript Fathers, made one of this body, when demands were being presented for new senatorial decrees in contravention of the principles and the legislation of our fathers. And from me there came no opposition â not because I doubted that, whatever the issue, the provision made for it in the past was the better conceived and the more correct, and that, where revision took place, the alteration was for the worse; but because I had no wish to seem to be exalting my own branch of study by an overstrained affection for ancient usage. At the same time, I considered that what little influence I may possess ought not to be frittered away in perpetual expressions of dissent: I preferred it to remain intact for an hour when the state had need of advice. And that hour is come toâday, when an ex-consul has been done to death in his own home by the treason of a slave â treason which none hindered or revealed, though as yet no attacks had shaken the senatorial decree which threatened the entire household with execution. By all means vote impunity! But whom shall his rank defend, when rank has not availed the prefect of Rome? Whom shall the number of his slaves protect, when four hundred could not shield Pedanius Secundus? Who shall find help in his domestics, when even fear for themselves cannot make them note our dangers? Or â as some can feign without a blush â did the killer avenge his personal wrongs because the contract touched his patrimony, or because he was losing a slave from his family establishment? Let us go the full way and pronounce the owner justly slain! 14.44. "Is it your pleasure to muster arguments upon a point which has been considered by wiser minds than ours? But even if we had now for the first time to frame a decision, do you believe that a slave took the resolution of killing his master without an ominous phrase escaping him, without one word uttered in rashness? Assume, however, that he kept his counsel, that he procured his weapon in an unsuspecting household. Could he pass the watch, carry in his light, and perpetrate his murder without the knowledge of a soul? A crime has many antecedent symptoms. So long as our slaves disclose them, we may live solitary amid their numbers, secure amid their anxieties, and finally â if die we must â certain of our vengeance amid the guilty crowd. To our ancestors the temper of their slaves was always suspect, even when they were born on the same estate or under the same roof, and drew in affection for their owners with their earliest breath. But now that our households comprise nations â with customs the reverse of our own, with foreign cults or with none, you will never coerce such a medley of humanity except by terror. â 'But some innocent lives will be lost!' â Even so; for when every tenth man of the routed army drops beneath the club, the lot falls on the brave as well. All great examples carry with them something of injustice â injustice compensated, as against individual suffering, by the advantage of the community. 14.45. While no one member ventured to controvert the opinion of Cassius, he was answered by a din of voices, expressing pity for the numbers, the age, or the sex of the victims, and for the undoubted innocence of the majority. In spite of all, the party advocating execution prevailed; but the decision could not be complied with, as a dense crowd gathered and threatened to resort to stones and firebrands. The Caesar then reprimanded the populace by edict, and lined the whole length of road, by which the condemned were being marched to punishment, with detachments of soldiers. Cingonius Varro had moved that even the freedmen, who had been present under the same roof, should be deported from Italy. The measure was vetoed by the emperor, lest gratuitous cruelty should aggravate a primitive custom which mercy had failed to temper. |
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15. Augustine, The City of God, 8.23 (4th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)
| 8.23. The Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Trismegistus, had a different opinion concerning those demons. Apuleius, indeed, denies that they are gods; but when he says that they hold a middle place between the gods and men, so that they seem to be necessary for men as mediators between them and the gods, he does not distinguish between the worship due to them and the religious homage due to the supernal gods. This Egyptian, however, says that there are some gods made by the supreme God, and some made by men. Any one who hears this, as I have stated it, no doubt supposes that it has reference to images, because they are the works of the hands of men; but he asserts that visible and tangible images are, as it were, only the bodies of the gods, and that there dwell in them certain spirits, which have been invited to come into them, and which have power to inflict harm, or to fulfil the desires of those by whom divine honors and services are rendered to them. To unite, therefore, by a certain art, those invisible spirits to visible and material things, so as to make, as it were, animated bodies, dedicated and given up to those spirits who inhabit them - this, he says, is to make gods, adding that men have received this great and wonderful power. I will give the words of this Egyptian as they have been translated into our tongue: And, since we have undertaken to discourse concerning the relationship and fellowship between men and the gods, know, O Æsculapius, the power and strength of man. As the Lord and Father, or that which is highest, even God, is the maker of the celestial gods, so man is the maker of the gods who are in the temples, content to dwell near to men. And a little after he says, Thus humanity, always mindful of its nature and origin, perseveres in the imitation of divinity; and as the Lord and Father made eternal gods, that they should be like Himself, so humanity fashioned its own gods according to the likeness of its own countece. When this Æsculapius, to whom especially he was speaking, had answered him, and had said, Do you mean the statues, O Trismegistus? - Yes, the statues, replied he, however unbelieving you are, O Æsculapius - the statues, animated and full of sensation and spirit, and who do such great and wonderful things - the statues prescient of future things, and foretelling them by lot, by prophet, by dreams, and many other things, who bring diseases on men and cure them again, giving them joy or sorrow according to their merits. Do you not know, O Æsculapius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, more truly, a translation and descent of all things which are ordered and transacted there, that it is, in truth, if we may say so, to be the temple of the whole world? And yet, as it becomes the prudent man to know all things beforehand, you ought not to be ignorant of this, that there is a time coming when it shall appear that the Egyptians have all in vain, with pious mind, and with most scrupulous diligence, waited on the divinity, and when all their holy worship shall come to nought, and be found to be in vain. Hermes then follows out at great length the statements of this passage, in which he seems to predict the present time, in which the Christian religion is overthrowing all lying figments with a vehemence and liberty proportioned to its superior truth and holiness, in order that the grace of the true Saviour may deliver men from those gods which man has made, and subject them to that God by whom man was made. But when Hermes predicts these things, he speaks as one who is a friend to these same mockeries of demons, and does not clearly express the name of Christ. On the contrary, he deplores, as if it had already taken place, the future abolition of those things by the observance of which there was maintained in Egypt a resemblance of heaven, - he bears witness to Christianity by a kind of mournful prophecy. Now it was with reference to such that the apostle said, that knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, Romans 1:21 and so on, for the whole passage is too long to quote. For Hermes makes many such statements agreeable to the truth concerning the one true God who fashioned this world. And I know not how he has become so bewildered by that darkening of the heart as to stumble into the expression of a desire that men should always continue in subjection to those gods which he confesses to be made by men, and to bewail their future removal; as if there could be anything more wretched than mankind tyrannized over by the work of his own hands, since man, by worshipping the works of his own hands, may more easily cease to be man, than the works of his hands can, through his worship of them, become gods. For it can sooner happen that man, who has received an honorable position, may, through lack of understanding, become comparable to the beasts, than that the works of man may become preferable to the work of God, made in His own image, that is, to man himself. Wherefore deservedly is man left to fall away from Him who made Him, when he prefers to himself that which he himself has made. For these vain, deceitful, pernicious, sacrilegious things did the Egyptian Hermes sorrow, because he knew that the time was coming when they should be removed. But his sorrow was as impudently expressed as his knowledge was imprudently obtained; for it was not the Holy Spirit who revealed these things to him, as He had done to the holy prophets, who, foreseeing these things, said with exultation, If a man shall make gods, lo, they are no gods; Jeremiah 16:10 and in another place, And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered. Zechariah 13:2 But the holy Isaiah prophesies expressly concerning Egypt in reference to this matter, saying, And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at His presence, and their heart shall be overcome in them, Isaiah 19:1 and other things to the same effect. And with the prophet are to be classed those who rejoiced that that which they knew was to come had actually come - as Simeon, or Anna, who immediately recognized Jesus when He was born, or Elisabeth, who in the Spirit recognized Him when He was conceived, or Peter, who said by the revelation of the Father, You are Christ, the Son of the living God. Matthew 16:16 But to this Egyptian those spirits indicated the time of their own destruction, who also, when the Lord was present in the flesh, said with trembling, Have You come here to destroy us before the time? Matthew 8:29 meaning by destruction before the time, either that very destruction which they expected to come, but which they did not think would come so suddenly as it appeared to have done, or only that destruction which consisted in their being brought into contempt by being made known. And, indeed, this was a destruction before the time, that is, before the time of judgment, when they are to be punished with eternal damnation, together with all men who are implicated in their wickedness, as the true religion declares, which neither errs nor leads into error; for it is not like him who, blown here and there by every wind of doctrine, and mixing true things with things which are false, bewails as about to perish a religion, which he afterwards confesses to be error. |
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