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And these be the gods to whose protecting care the Romans were
delighted to entrust their city! 0 too, too piteous mistake! And
they are enraged at us when we speak thus about their gods, though, so
far from being enraged at their own writers, they part with money to
learn what they say; and, indeed, the very teachers of these authors
are reckoned worthy of a salary from the public purse, and of other
honors. There is Virgil, who is read by boys, in order that this
great poet, this most famous and approved of all poets, may impregnate
their virgin minds, and may not readily be forgotten by them,
according to that saying of Horace, "The fresh cask long keeps its
first tang."
Well, in this Virgil, I say, Juno is introduced as hostile to the
Trojans, and stirring up Æolus, the king of the winds, against them
in the words, "A race I hate now ploughs the sea, Transporting
Troy to Italy, And home-gods conquered" . . .
And ought prudent men to have entrusted the defence of Rome to these
conquered gods? But it will be said, this was only the saying of
Juno, who, like an angry woman, did not know what she was saying.
What, then, says Æneas himself, Æneas who is so often designated
"pious?" Does he not say, "Lo! Panthus, 'scaped from death by
flight, Priest of Apollo on the height, His conquered gods with
trembling hands He bears, and shelter swift demands?"
Is it not clear that the gods (whom he does not scruple to call
"conquered") were rather entrusted to Æneas than he to them, when
it is said to him, "The gods of her domestic shrines Your country to
your care consigns?"
If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and were
conquered, and that when conquered they could not escape except under
the protection of a man, what a madness is it to suppose that Rome had
been wisely entrusted to these guardians, and could not have been taken
unless it had lost them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods as
protectors and champions, what is this but to worship, not good
divinities, but evil omens? Would it not be wiser to believe, not
that Rome would never have fallen into so great a calamity had not they
first perished, but rather that they would have perished long since had
not Rome preserved them as long as she could? For who does not see,
when he thinks of it, what a foolish assumption it is that they could
not be vanquished under vanquished defenders, and that they only
perished because they had lost their guardian gods, when, indeed, the
only cause of their perishing was that they chose for their protectors
gods condemned to perish? The poets, therefore, when they composed
and sang these things about the conquered gods, had no intention to
invent falsehoods, but uttered, as honest men, what the truth
extorted from them. This, however, will be carefully and copiously
discussed in another and more fitting place. Meanwhile I will
briefly, and to the best of my ability, explain what I meant to say
about these ungrateful men who blasphemously impute to Christ the
calamities which they deservedly suffer in consequence of their own
wicked ways, while that which is for Christ's sake spared them in
spite of their wickedness they do not even take the trouble to notice;
and in their mad and blasphemous insolence, they use against His name
those very lips wherewith they falsely claimed that same name that their
lives might be spared. In the places consecrated to Christ, where
for His sake no enemy would injure them, they restrained their tongues
that they might be safe and protected; but no sooner do they emerge
from these sanctuaries, than they unbridle these tongues to hurl
against Him curses full of hate.
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