Revenge as great as Atreus’ injury
Shall sink his soul and crown his misery.
XXVII. Did not Thyestes himself, not content with having defiled his brother’s bed (of which Atreus with great justice thus complains,
When faithless comforts, in the lewd embrace,
With vile adultery stain a royal race,
The blood thus mix’d in fouler currents flows,
Taints the rich soil, and breeds unnumber’d woes)—
343did he not, I say, by that adultery, aim at the possession of the crown? Atreus thus continues:
A lamb, fair gift of heaven, with golden fleece,
Promised in vain to fix my crown in peace;
But base Thyestes, eager for the prey,
Crept to my bed, and stole the gem away.
Do you not perceive that Thyestes must have had a share of reason proportionable to the greatness of his crimes—such crimes as are not only represented to us on the stage, but such as we see committed, nay, often exceeded, in the common course of life? The private houses of individual citizens, the public courts, the senate, the camp, our allies, our provinces, all agree that reason is the author of all the ill, as well as of all the good, which is done; that it makes few act well, and that but seldom, but many act ill, and that frequently; and that, in short, the Gods would have shown greater benevolence in denying us any reason at all than in sending us that which is accompanied with so much mischief; for as wine is seldom wholesome, but often hurtful in diseases, we think it more prudent to deny it to the patient than to run the risk of so uncertain a remedy; so I do not know whether it would not be better for mankind to be deprived of wit, thought, and penetration, or what we call reason, since it is a thing pernicious to many and very useful to few, than to have it bestowed upon them with so much liberality and in such abundance. But if the divine will has really consulted the good of man in this gift of reason, the good of those men only was consulted on whom a well-regulated one is bestowed: how few those are, if any, is very apparent. We cannot admit, therefore, that the Gods consulted the good of a few only; the conclusion must be that they consulted the good of none.
XXVIII. You answer that the ill use which a great part of mankind make of reason no more takes away the goodness of the Gods, who bestow it as a present of the greatest benefit to them, than the ill use which children make of their patrimony diminishes the obligation which they have to their parents for it. We grant you this; but where is the similitude? It was far from Deianira’s design to injure Hercules when she made him a present 344of the shirt dipped in the blood of the Centaurs. Nor was it a regard to the welfare of Jason of Pheræ that influenced the man who with his sword opened his imposthume, which the physicians had in vain attempted to cure. For it has often happened that people have served a man whom they intended to injure, and have injured one whom they designed to serve; so that the effect of the gift is by no means always a proof of the intention of the giver; neither does the benefit which may accrue from it prove that it came from the hands of a benefactor. For, in short, what debauchery, what avarice, what crime among men is there which does not owe its birth to thought and reflection, that is, to reason? For all opinion is reason: right reason, if men’s thoughts are conformable to truth; wrong reason, if they are not. The Gods only give us the mere faculty of reason, if we have any; the use or abuse of it depends entirely upon ourselves; so that the comparison is not just between the present of reason given us by the Gods, and a patrimony left to a son by his father; for, after all, if the injury of mankind had been the end proposed by the Gods, what could they have given them more pernicious than reason? for what seed could there be of injustice, intemperance, and cowardice, if reason were not laid as the foundation of these vices?
XXIX. I mentioned just now Medea and Atreus, persons celebrated in heroic poems, who had used this reason only for the contrivance and practice of the most flagitious crimes; but even the trifling characters which appear in comedies supply us with the like instances of this reasoning faculty; for example, does not he, in the Eunuch, reason with some subtlety?—
What, then, must I resolve upon?
She turn’d me out-of-doors; she sends for me back again;
Shall I go? no, not if she were to beg it of me.
Another, in the Twins, making no scruple of opposing a received maxim, after the manner of the Academics, asserts that when a man is in love and in want, it is pleasant
To have a father covetous, crabbed, and passionate,
Who has no love or affection for his children.
345This unaccountable opinion he strengthens thus:
You may defraud him of his profits, or forge letters in his name,
Or fright him by your servant into compliance;
And what you take from such an old hunks,
How much more pleasantly do you spend it!
On the contrary, he says that an easy, generous father is an inconvenience to a son in love; for, says he,
I can’t tell how to abuse so good, so prudent a parent,
Who always foreruns my desires, and meets me purse in hand,
To support me in my pleasures: this easy goodness and generosity
Quite defeat all my frauds, tricks, and stratagems.273
What are these frauds, tricks, and stratagems but the effects of reason? O excellent gift of the Gods! Without this Phormio could not have said,
Find me out the old man: I have something hatching for him in my head.
XXX. But let us pass from the stage to the bar. The prætor274 takes his seat. To judge whom? The man who set fire to our archives. How secretly was that villany conducted! Q. Sosius, an illustrious Roman knight, of the Picene field,275 confessed the fact. Who else is to be tried? He who forged the public registers—Alenus, an artful fellow, who counterfeited the handwriting of the six officers.276 Let us call to mind other trials: that on the subject of the gold of Tolosa, or the conspiracy of Jugurtha. Let us trace back the informations laid against Tubulus for bribery in his judicial office; and, since that, the proceedings of the tribune Peduceus concerning the 346incest of the vestals. Let us reflect upon the trials which daily happen for assassinations, poisonings, embezzlement of public money, frauds in wills, against which we have a new law; then that action against the advisers or assisters of any theft; the many laws concerning frauds in guardianship, breaches of trust in partnerships and commissions in trade, and other violations of faith in buying, selling, borrowing, or lending; the public decree on a private affair by the Lætorian Law;277 and, lastly, that scourge of all dishonesty, the law against fraud, proposed by our friend Aquillius; that sort of fraud, he says, by which one thing is pretended and another done. Can we, then, think that this plentiful fountain of evil sprung from the immortal Gods? If they have given reason to man, they have likewise given him subtlety, for subtlety is only a deceitful manner of applying reason to do mischief. To them likewise we must owe deceit, and every other crime, which, without the help of reason, would neither have been thought of nor committed. As the old woman wished
That to the fir which on Mount Pelion grew
The axe had ne’er been laid,278
so we should wish that the Gods had never bestowed this ability on man, the abuse of which is so general that the small number of those who make a good use of it are often oppressed by those who make a bad use of it; so that it seems to be given rather to help vice than to promote virtue among us.
XXXI. This, you insist on it, is the fault of man, and not of the Gods. But should we not laugh at a physician or pilot, though they are weak mortals, if they were to lay the blame of their ill success on the violence of the disease or the fury of the tempest? Had there not been danger, 347we should say, who would have applied to you? This reasoning has still greater force against the Deity. The fault, you say, is in man, if he commits crimes. But why was not man endued with a reason incapable of producing any crimes? How could the Gods err? When we leave our effects to our children, it is in hopes that they may be well bestowed; in which we may be deceived, but how can the Deity be deceived? As Phœbus when he trusted his chariot to his son Phaëthon, or as Neptune when he indulged his son Theseus in granting him three wishes, the consequence of which was the destruction of Hippolitus? These are poetical fictions; but truth, and not fables, ought to proceed from philosophers. Yet if those poetical Deities had foreseen that their indulgence would have proved fatal to their sons, they must have been thought blamable for it.
Aristo of Chios used often to say that the philosophers do hurt to such of their disciples as take their good doctrine in a wrong sense; thus the lectures of Aristippus might produce debauchees, and those of Zeno pedants. If this be true, it were better that philosophers should be silent than that their disciples should be corrupted by a misapprehension of their master’s meaning; so if reason, which was bestowed on mankind by the Gods with a good design, tends only to make men more subtle and fraudulent, it had been better for them never to have received it. There could be no excuse for a physician who prescribes wine to a patient, knowing that he will drink it and immediately expire. Your Providence is no less blamable in giving reason to man, who, it foresaw, would make a bad use of it. Will you say that it did not foresee it? Nothing could please me more than such an acknowledgment. But you dare not. I know what a sublime idea you entertain of her.
XXXII. But to conclude. If folly, by the unanimous consent of philosophers, is allowed to be the greatest of all evils, and if no one ever attained to true wisdom, we, whom they say the immortal Gods take care of, are consequently in a state of the utmost misery. For that nobody is well, or that nobody can be well, is in effect the same thing; and, in my opinion, that no man is truly wise, or that no 348man can be truly wise, is likewise the same thing. But I will insist no further on so self-evident a point. Telamon in one verse decides the question. If, says he, there is a Divine Providence,
Good men would be happy, bad men miserable.
But it is not so. If the Gods had regarded mankind, they should have made them all virtuous; but if they did not regard the welfare of all mankind, at least they ought to have provided for the happiness of the virtuous. Why, therefore, was the Carthaginian in Spain suffered to destroy those best and bravest men, the two Scipios? Why did Maximus279 lose his son, the consul? Why did Hannibal kill Marcellus? Why did Cannæ deprive us of Paulus? Why was the body of Regulus delivered up to the cruelty of the Carthaginians? Why was not Africanus protected from violence in his own house? To these, and many more ancient instances, let us add some of later date. Why is Rutilius, my uncle, a man of the greatest virtue and learning, now in banishment? Why was my own friend and companion Drusus assassinated in his own house? Why was Scævola, the high-priest, that pattern of moderation and prudence, massacred before the statue of Vesta? Why, before that, were so many illustrious citizens put to death by Cinna? Why had Marius, the most perfidious of men, the power to cause the death of Catulus, a man of the greatest dignity? But there would be no end of enumerating examples of good men made miserable and wicked men prosperous. Why did that Marius live to an old age, and die so happily at his own house in his seventh consulship? Why was that inhuman wretch Cinna permitted to enjoy so long a reign?
XXXIII. He, indeed, met with deserved punishment at last. But would it not have been better that these inhumanities had been prevented than that the author of them should be punished afterward? Varius, a most impious wretch, was tortured and put to death. If this was his punishment for the murdering Drusus by the sword, and Metellus by poison, would it not have been better to have preserved their lives than to have their deaths avenged on 349Varius? Dionysius was thirty-eight years a tyrant over the most opulent and flourishing city; and, before him, how many years did Pisistratus tyrannize in the very flower of Greece! Phalaris and Apollodorus met with the fate they deserved, but not till after they had tortured and put to death multitudes. Many robbers have been executed; but the number of those who have suffered for their crimes is short of those whom they have robbed and murdered. Anaxarchus,280 a scholar of Democritus, was cut to pieces by command of the tyrant of Cyprus; and Zeno of Elea281 ended his life in tortures. What shall I say of Socrates,282 whose death, as often as I read of it in Plato, draws fresh tears from my eyes? If, therefore, the Gods really see everything that happens to men, you must acknowledge they make no distinction between the good and the bad.
XXXIV. Diogenes the Cynic used to say of Harpalus, one of the most fortunate villains of his time, that the constant prosperity of such a man was a kind of witness against the Gods. Dionysius, of whom we have before spoken, after he had pillaged the temple of Proserpine at Locris, set sail for Syracuse, and, having a fair wind during his voyage, said, with a smile, “See, my friends, what favorable winds the immortal Gods bestow upon church-robbers.” Encouraged by this prosperous event, he proceeded in his impiety. When he landed at Peloponnesus, he went into the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and disrobed his statue of a golden mantle of great weight, an ornament which the tyrant Gelo283 had given out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and at the same time, in a jesting manner, he said “that a golden mantle was too heavy in summer and too cold in winter;” and then, throwing a woollen cloak over the statue, added, “This will serve for all seasons.” At another time, he ordered the golden beard of Æsculapius of Epidaurus to be taken away, saying that “it 350was absurd for the son to have a beard, when his father had none.” He likewise robbed the temples of the silver tables, which, according to the ancient custom of Greece, bore this inscription, “To the good Gods,” saying “he was willing to make use of their goodness;” and, without the least scruple, took away the little golden emblems of victory, the cups and coronets, which were in the stretched-out hands of the statues, saying “he did not take, but receive them; for it would be folly not to accept good things from the Gods, to whom we are constantly praying for favors, when they stretch out their hands towards us.” And, last of all, all the things which he had thus pillaged from the temples were, by his order, brought to the market-place and sold by the common crier; and, after he had received the money for them, he commanded every purchaser to restore what he had bought, within a limited time, to the temples from whence they came. Thus to his impiety towards the Gods he added injustice to man.
XXXV. Yet neither did Olympian Jove strike him with his thunder, nor did Æsculapius cause him to die by tedious diseases and a lingering death. He died in his bed, had funeral honors284 paid to him, and left his power, which he had wickedly obtained, as a just and lawful inheritance to his son.
It is not without concern that I maintain a doctrine which seems to authorize evil, and which might probably give a sanction to it, if conscience, without any divine assistance, did not point out, in the clearest manner, the difference between virtue and vice. Without conscience man is contemptible. For as no family or state can be supposed to be formed with any reason or discipline if there are no rewards for good actions nor punishment for crimes, so we cannot believe that a Divine Providence regulates the world if there is no distinction between the honest and the wicked.
351But the Gods, you say, neglect trifling things: the little fields or vineyards of particular men are not worthy their attention; and if blasts or hail destroy their product, Jupiter does not regard it, nor do kings extend their care to the lower offices of government. This argument might have some weight if, in bringing Rutilius as an instance, I had only complained of the loss of his farm at Formiæ; but I spoke of a personal misfortune, his banishment.285
XXXVI. All men agree that external benefits, such as vineyards, corn, olives, plenty of fruit and grain, and, in short, every convenience and property of life, are derived from the Gods; and, indeed, with reason, since by our virtue we claim applause, and in virtue we justly glory, which we could have no right to do if it was the gift of the Gods, and not a personal merit. When we are honored with new dignities, or blessed with increase of riches; when we are favored by fortune beyond our expectation, or luckily delivered from any approaching evil, we return thanks for it to the Gods, and assume no praise to ourselves. But who ever thanked the Gods that he was a good man? We thank them, indeed, for riches, health, and honor. For these we invoke the all-good and all-powerful Jupiter; but not for wisdom, temperance, and justice. No one ever offered a tenth of his estate to Hercules to be made wise. It is reported, indeed, of Pythagoras that he sacrificed an ox to the Muses upon having made some new discovery in geometry;286 but, for my part, I cannot believe it, because he refused to sacrifice even to Apollo at Delos, lest he should defile the altar with blood. But to return. It is universally agreed that good fortune we must ask of the Gods, but wisdom must arise from ourselves; and though temples have been consecrated to the Mind, to Virtue, and to Faith, yet that does not contradict their being 352inherent in us. In regard to hope, safety, assistance, and victory, we must rely upon the Gods for them; from whence it follows, as Diogenes said, that the prosperity of the wicked destroys the idea of a Divine Providence.
XXXVII. But good men have sometimes success. They have so; but we cannot, with any show of reason, attribute that success to the Gods. Diagoras, who is called the atheist, being at Samothrace, one of his friends showed him several pictures287 of people who had endured very dangerous storms; “See,” says he, “you who deny a providence, how many have been saved by their prayers to the Gods.” “Ay,” says Diagoras, “I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?” At another time, he himself was in a storm, when the sailors, being greatly alarmed, told him they justly deserved that misfortune for admitting him into their ship; when he, pointing to others under the like distress, asked them “if they believed Diagoras was also aboard those ships?” In short, with regard to good or bad fortune, it matters not what you are, or how you have lived. The Gods, like kings, regard not everything. What similitude is there between them? If kings neglect anything, want of knowledge may be pleaded in their defence; but ignorance cannot be brought as an excuse for the Gods.
XXXVIII. Your manner of justifying them is somewhat extraordinary, when you say that if a wicked man dies without suffering for his crimes, the Gods inflict a punishment on his children, his children’s children, and all his posterity. O wonderful equity of the Gods! What city would endure the maker of a law which should condemn a son or a grandson for a crime committed by the father or the grandfather?
Shall Tantalus’ unhappy offspring know
No end, no close, of this long scene of woe?
When will the dire reward of guilt be o’er,
And Myrtilus demand revenge no more?288
Whether the poets have corrupted the Stoics, or the Stoics given authority to the poets, I cannot easily determine. Both alike are to be condemned. If those persons 353whose names have been branded in the satires of Hipponax or Archilochus289 were driven to despair, it did not proceed from the Gods, but had its origin in their own minds. When we see Ægistus and Paris lost in the heat of an impure passion, why are we to attribute it to a Deity, when the crime, as it were, speaks for itself? I believe that those who recover from illness are more indebted to the care of Hippocrates than to the power of Æsculapius; that Sparta received her laws from Lycurgus290 rather than from Apollo; that those eyes of the maritime coast, Corinth and Carthage, were plucked out, the one by Critolaus, the other by Hasdrubal, without the assistance of any divine anger, since you yourselves confess that a Deity cannot possibly be angry on any provocation.
XXXIX. But could not the Deity have assisted and preserved those eminent cities? Undoubtedly he could; for, according to your doctrine, his power is infinite, and without the least labor; and as nothing but the will is necessary to the motion of our bodies, so the divine will of the Gods, with the like ease, can create, move, and change all things. This you hold, not from a mere phantom of superstition, but on natural and settled principles of reason; for matter, you say, of which all things are composed and consist, is susceptible of all forms and changes, and there is nothing which cannot be, or cease to be, in an instant; and that Divine Providence has the command and disposal of this universal matter, and consequently can, in any part of the universe, do whatever she pleases: from whence I conclude that this Providence either knows not the extent of her power, or neglects human affairs, or cannot judge what is best for us. Providence, you say, does not extend her care to particular men; there 354is no wonder in that, since she does not extend it to cities, or even to nations, or people. If, therefore, she neglects whole nations, is it not very probable that she neglects all mankind? But how can you assert that the Gods do not enter into all the little circumstances of life, and yet hold that they distribute dreams among men? Since you believe in dreams, it is your part to solve this difficulty. Besides, you say we ought to call upon the Gods. Those who call upon the Gods are individuals. Divine Providence, therefore, regards individuals, which consequently proves that they are more at leisure than you imagine. Let us suppose the Divine Providence to be greatly busied; that it causes the revolutions of the heavens, supports the earth, and rules the seas; why does it suffer so many Gods to be unemployed? Why is not the superintendence of human affairs given to some of those idle Deities which you say are innumerable?
This is the purport of what I had to say concerning “the Nature of the Gods;” not with a design to destroy their existence, but merely to show what an obscure point it is, and with what difficulties an explanation of it is attended.
XL. Balbus, observing that Cotta had finished his discourse—You have been very severe, says he, against a Divine Providence, a doctrine established by the Stoics with piety and wisdom; but, as it grows too late, I shall defer my answer to another day. Our argument is of the greatest importance; it concerns our altars,291 our hearths, our temples, nay, even the walls of our city, which you priests hold sacred; you, who by religion defend Rome better than she is defended by her ramparts. This is a cause which, while I have life, I think I cannot abandon without impiety.
There is nothing, replied Cotta, which I desire more than to be confuted. I have not pretended to decide this point, but to give you my private sentiments upon it; and am very sensible of your great superiority in argument. 355No doubt of it, says Velleius; we have much to fear from one who believes that our dreams are sent from Jupiter, which, though they are of little weight, are yet of more importance than the discourse of the Stoics concerning the nature of the Gods. The conversation ended here, and we parted. Velleius judged that the arguments of Cotta were truest; but those of Balbus seemed to me to have the greater probability.292