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The power delegated to the demons at certain appointed and
well-adjusted seasons, that they may give expression to their
hostility to the city of God by stirring up against it the men who are
under their influence, and may not only receive sacrifice from those
who willingly offer it, but may also extort it from the unwilling by
violent persecution;, this power is found to be not merely harmless,
but even useful to the Church, completing as it does the number of
martyrs, whom the city of God esteems as all the more illustrious and
honored citizens, because they have striven even to blood against the
sin of impiety. If the ordinary language of the Church allowed it,
we might more elegantly call these men our heroes. For this name is
said to be derived from Juno, who in Greek is called Here, and
hence, according to the Greek myths, one of her sons was called
Heros. And these fables mystically signified that Juno was mistress
of the air, which they suppose to be inhabited by the demons and the
heroes, understanding by heroes the souls of the well-deserving dead.
But for a quite opposite reason would we call our martyrs heroes,
supposing, as I said, that the usage of ecclesiastical language would
admit of it, not because they lived along with the demons in the air,
but because they conquered these demons or powers of the air, and among
them Juno herself, be she what she may, not unsuitably represented,
as she commonly is by the poets, as hostile to virtue, and jealous of
men of mark aspiring to the heavens.
Virgil, however, unhappily gives way, and yields to her; for,
though he represents her as saying, "I am conquered by Æneas,"
Helenus gives. Æneas himself this religious advice: "Pay vows to
Juno: overbear Her queenly soul with gift and prayer."
In conformity with this opinion, Porphyry- expressing, however,
not so much his own views as other people's, says that a good god or
genius cannot come to a man unless the evil genius has been first of all
propitiated, implying that the evil deities had greater power than the
good; for, until they have been appeased and give place, the good can
give no assistance; and if the evil deities oppose, the good can give
no help; whereas the evil can do injury without the good being able to
prevent them. This is not the way of the true and truly holy
religion; not thus do our martyrs conquer Juno, that is to say, the
powers of the air, who envy the virtues of the pious. Our heroes, if
we could so call them, overcome Here, not by suppliant gifts, but by
divine virtues. As Scipio, who conquered Africa by his valor, is
more suitably styled Africanus than if he had appeased his enemies by
gifts, and so won their mercy.
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