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After this, when their fears were gradually diminished, not because
the wars ceased, but because they were not so furious, that period in
which things were "ordered with justice and moderation" drew to an
end, and there followed that state of matters which Sallust thus
briefly sketches: "Then began the patricians to oppress the people as
slaves, to condemn them to death or scourging, as the kings had done,
to drive them from their holdings, and to tyrannize over those who had
no property to lose. The people, overwhelmed by these oppressive
measures, and most of all by usury, and obliged to contribute both
money and personal service to the constant wars, at length took arms
and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount Sacer, and thus secured for
themselves tribunes and protective laws. But it was only the second
Punic war that put an end on both sides to discord and strife." But
why should I spend time in writing such things, or make others spend
it in reading them? Let the terse summary of Sallust suffice to
intimate the misery of the republic through all that long period till
the second Punic war, how it was distracted from without by unceasing
wars, and tom with civil broils and dissensions. So that those
victories they boast were not the substantial joys of the happy, but
the empty comforts of wretched men, and seductive incitements to
turbulent men to concoct disasters upon disasters. And let not the
good and prudent Romans be angry at our saying this; and indeed we
need neither deprecate nor denounce their anger, for we know they will
harbor none. For we speak no more severely than their own authors,
and much less elaborately and strikingly; yet they diligently read
these authors, and compel their children to learn them. But they who
are angry, what would they do to me were I to say what Sallust says?
"Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common,
while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, affected
supreme power under the seemly pretence of seeking the good of senate
and people; citizens were judged good or bad without reference to their
loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the
wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens, because
they maintained the existing state of things." Now, if those
historians judged that an honorable freedom of speech required that they
should not be silent regarding the blemishes of their own state, which
they have in many places loudly applauded in their ignorance of that
other and true city in which citizenship is an everlasting dignity;
what does it become us to do, whose liberty ought to be so much
greater, as our hope in God is better and more assured, when they
impute to our Christ the calamities of this age, in order that men of
the less instructed and weaker sort may be alienated from that city in
which alone eternal and blessed life can be enjoyed? Nor do we utter
against their gods anything more horrible than their own authors do,
whom they read and circulate. For, indeed, all that we have said we
have derived from them, and there is much more to say of a worse kind
which we are unable to say.
Where, then, were those gods who are supposed to be justly worshipped
for the slender and delusive prosperity of this world, when the
Romans, who were seduced to their service by lying wiles, were
harassed by such calamities? Where were they when Valerius the consul
was killed while defending the Capitol, that had been fired by exiles
and slaves? He was himself better able to defend the temple of
Jupiter, than that crowd of divinities with their most high and mighty
king, whose temple he came to the rescue of were able to defend him.
Where were they when the city, worn out with unceasing seditions, was
waiting in some kind of calm for the return of the ambassadors who had
been sent to Athens to borrow laws, and was desolated by dreadful
famine and pestilence? Where were they when the people, again
distressed with famine, created for the first time a prefect of the
market; and when Spurius Melius, who, as the famine increased,
distributed corn to the furnishing masses, was accused of aspiring to
royalty, and at the instance of this same prefect, and on the
authority of the superannuated dictator L. Quintius, was put to
death by Quintus Servilius, master of the horse, an event which
occasioned a serious and dangerous riot? Where were they when that
very severe pestilence visited Rome, on account of which the people,
after long and wearisome and useless supplications of the helpless
gods, conceived the idea of celebrating Lectisternia, which had never
been done before; that is to say, they set couches in honor of the
gods, which accounts for the name of this sacred rite, or rather
sacrilege? Where were they when, during ten successive years of
reverses, the Roman army suffered frequent and great losses among the
Veians and would have been destroyed but for the succor of Furius
Camillus, who was afterwards banished by an ungrateful country?
Where were they when the Gauls took sacked, burned, and desolated
Rome? Where were they when that memorable pestilence wrought such
destruction, in which Furius Camillus too perished, who first
defended the ungrateful republic from the Veians, and afterwards saved
it from the Gauls? Nay, during this plague, they introduced a new
pestilence of scenic entertainments, which spread its more fatal
contagion, not to the bodies, but the morals of the Romans? Where
were they when another frightful pestilence visited the city, I mean
the poisonings imputed to an incredible number of noble Roman matrons,
whose characters were infected with a disease more fatal than any
plague? Or when both consuls at the head of the army were beset by the
Samnites in the Caudine Forks, and forced to strike a shameful
treaty, 600 Roman knights being kept as hostages; while the
troops, having laid down their arms, and being stripped of
everything, were made to pass under the yoke with one garment each?
Or when, in the midst of a serious pestilence, lightning struck the
Roman camp and killed many? Or when Rome was driven, by the
violence of another intolerable plague, to send to Epidaurus for
Æsculapius as a god of medicine; since the frequent adulteries of
Jupiter in his youth had not perhaps left this king of all who so long
reigned in the Capitol, any leisure for the study of medicine?
Or when, at one time, the Lucanians, Brutians, Samnites,
Tuscans, and Senonian Gauls conspired against Rome, and first slew
her ambassadors, then overthrew an army under the praetor, putting to
the sword 13,000 men, besides the commander and seven tribunes?
Or when the people, after the serious and long-continued disturbances
at Rome, at last plundered the city and withdrew to Janiculus; a
danger so grave, that Hortensius was created dictator, an office
which they had recourse to only in extreme emergencies; and he, having
brought back the people, died while yet he retained his office, an
event without precedent in the case of any dictator, and which was a
shame to those gods who had now Æsculapius among them?
At that time, indeed, so many wars were everywhere engaged in, that
through scarcity of soldiers they enrolled for military service the
proletarii, who received this name, because, being too poor to equip
for military service, they had leisure to beget offspring. Pyrrhus,
king of Greece, and at that time of widespread renown, was invited by
the Tarentines to enlist himself against Rome. It was to him that
Apollo, when consulted regarding the issue of his enterprise, uttered
with some pleasantry so ambiguous an oracle, that whichever alternative
happened, the god himself should be counted divine. For he so worded
the oracle that whether Pyrrhus was conquered by the Romans, or the
Romans by Pyrrhus,the soothsaying god would securely await the
issue. And then what frightful massacres of both armies ensued! Yet
Pyrrhus remained conqueror, and would have been able now to proclaim
Apollo a true diviner, as he understood the oracle, had not the
Romans been the conquerors in the next engagement. And while such
disastrous wars were being waged, a terrible disease broke out among
the women. For the pregnant women died before delivery. And
Æsculapius, I fancy, excused himself in this matter on the ground
that he professed to be arch-physician, not midwife. Cattle, too,
similarly perished; so that it was believed that the whole race of
animals was destined to become extinct. Then what shall I say of that
memorable winter in which the weather was so incredibly severe, that in
the Forum frightfully deep snow lay for forty days together, and the
Tiber was frozen? Had such things happened in our time, what
accusations we should have heard from our enemies! And that other
great pestilence, which raged so long and carried off so many; what
shall I say of it? Spite of all the drugs of Æsculapius, it only
grew worse in its second year, till at last recourse was had to the
Sibylline books, a kind of oracle which, as Cicero says in his De
Divinatione, owes significance to its interpreters, who make doubtful
conjectures as they can or as they wish. In this instance, the cause
of the plague was said to be that so many temples had been used as
private residences. And thus Æsculapius for the present escaped the
charge of either ignominious negligence or want of skill. But why were
so many allowed to occupy sacred tenements without interference, unless
because supplication had long been addressed in vain to such a crowd of
gods, and so by degrees the sacred places were deserted of
worshippers, and being thus vacant, could without offence be put at
least to some human uses? And the temples, which were at that time
laboriously recognized and restored that the plague might be stayed,
fell afterwards into disuse, and were again devoted to the same human
uses. Had they not thus lapsed into obscurity, it could not have been
pointed to as proof of Varro's great erudition, that in his work on
sacred places he cites so many that were unknown. Meanwhile, the
restoration of the temples procured no cure of the plague, but only a
fine excuse for the gods.
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