Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II:
City of God: Chapter 10

Chapter 10.—Concerning the Liberty of Seneca, Who More Vehemently Censured the Civil Theology Than Varro Did the Fabulous.

That liberty, in truth, which this man wanted, so that he did not dare to censure that theology of the city, which is very similar to the theatrical, so openly as he did the theatrical itself, was, though not fully, yet in part possessed by Annæus Seneca, whom we have some evidence to show to have flourished in the times of our apostles.  It was in part possessed by him, I say, for he possessed it in writing, but not in living.  For in that book which he wrote against superstition, 248 he more copiously and vehemently censured that civil and urban theology than Varro the theatrical and fabulous.  For, when speaking concerning images, he says, “They dedicate images of the sacred and inviolable immortals in most worthless and motionless matter.  They give them the appearance of man, beasts, and fishes, and some make them of mixed sex, and heterogeneous bodies.  They call them deities, when they are such that if they should get breath and should suddenly meet them, they would be held to be monsters.”  Then, a while afterwards, when extolling the natural theology, he had expounded the sentiments of certain philosophers, he opposes to himself a question, and says, “Here some one says, Shall I believe that the heavens and the earth are gods, and that some are above the moon and some below it?  Shall I bring forward either Plato or the peripatetic Strato, one of whom made God to be without a body, the other without a mind?”  In answer to which he says, “And, really, what truer do the dreams of Titus Tatius, or Romulus, or Tullus Hostilius appear to thee?  Tatius declared the divinity of the goddess Cloacina; Romulus that of Picus and Tiberinus; Tullus Hostilius that of Pavor and Pallor, the most disagreeable affections of men, the one of which is the agitation of the mind under fright, the other that of the body, not a disease, indeed, but a change of color.”  Wilt thou rather believe that these are deities, and receive them into heaven?  But with what freedom he has written concerning the rites themselves, cruel and shameful!  “One,” he says, “castrates himself, another cuts his arms.  Where will they find room for the fear of these gods when angry, who use such means of gaining their favor when propitious?  But gods who wish to be worshipped in this fashion should be worshipped in none.  So great is the frenzy of the mind when perturbed and driven from its seat, that the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of the greatest ferocity and fable-renowned cruelty vent their rage.  Tyrants have lacerated the limbs of some; they never ordered any one to lacerate his own.  For the gratification of royal lust, some have been castrated; but no one ever, by the command of his lord, laid violent hands on himself to emasculate himself.  They kill themselves in the temples.  They supplicate with their wounds and with their blood.  If any one has time to see the things they do and the things they suffer, he will find so many things unseemly for men of respectability, so unworthy of freemen, so unlike the doings of sane men, that no one would doubt that they are mad, had they been mad with the minority; but now the multitude of the insane is the defence of their sanity.”

 He next relates those things which are wont p. 120 to be done in the Capitol, and with the utmost intrepidity insists that they are such things as one could only believe to be done by men making sport, or by madmen.  For having spoken with derision of this, that in the Egyptian sacred rites Osiris, being lost, is lamented for, but straightway, when found, is the occasion of great joy by his reappearance, because both the losing and the finding of him are feigned; and yet that grief and that joy which are elicited thereby from those who have lost nothing and found nothing are real;—having I say, so spoken of this, he says, “Still there is a fixed time for this frenzy.  It is tolerable to go mad once in the year.  Go into the Capitol.  One is suggesting divine commands 249 to a god; another is telling the hours to Jupiter; one is a lictor; another is an anointer, who with the mere movement of his arms imitates one anointing.  There are women who arrange the hair of Juno and Minerva, standing far away not only from her image, but even from her temple.  These move their fingers in the manner of hairdressers.  There are some women who hold a mirror.  There are some who are calling the gods to assist them in court.  There are some who are holding up documents to them, and are explaining to them their cases.  A learned and distinguished comedian, now old and decrepit, was daily playing the mimic in the Capitol, as though the gods would gladly be spectators of that which men had ceased to care about.  Every kind of artificers working for the immortal gods is dwelling there in idleness.”  And a little after he says, “Nevertheless these, though they give themselves up to the gods for purposes superflous enough, do not do so for any abominable or infamous purpose.  There sit certain women in the Capitol who think they are beloved by Jupiter; nor are they frightened even by the look of the, if you will believe the poets, most wrathful Juno.”

This liberty Varro did not enjoy.  It was only the poetical theology he seemed to censure.  The civil, which this man cuts to pieces, he was not bold enough to impugn.  But if we attend to the truth, the temples where these things are performed are far worse than the theatres where they are represented.  Whence, with respect to these sacred rites of the civil theology, Seneca preferred, as the best course to be followed by a wise man, to feign respect for them in act, but to have no real regard for them at heart.  “All which things,” he says, “a wise man will observe as being commanded by the laws, but not as being pleasing to the gods.”  And a little after he says, “And what of this, that we unite the gods in marriage, and that not even naturally, for we join brothers and sisters?  We marry Bellona to Mars, Venus to Vulcan, Salacia to Neptune.  Some of them we leave unmarried, as though there were no match for them, which is surely needless, especially when there are certain unmarried goddesses, as Populonia, or Fulgora, or the goddess Rumina, for whom I am not astonished that suitors have been awanting.  All this ignoble crowd of gods, which the superstition of ages has amassed, we ought,” he says, “to adore in such a way as to remember all the while that its worship belongs rather to custom than to reality.”  Wherefore, neither those laws nor customs instituted in the civil theology that which was pleasing to the gods, or which pertained to reality.  But this man, whom philosophy had made, as it were, free, nevertheless, because he was an illustrious senator of the Roman people, worshipped what he censured, did what he condemned, adored what he reproached, because, forsooth, philosophy had taught him something great,—namely, not to be superstitious in the world, but, on account of the laws of cities and the customs of men, to be an actor, not on the stage, but in the temples,—conduct the more to be condemned, that those things which he was deceitfully acting he so acted that the people thought he was acting sincerely.  But a stage-actor would rather delight people by acting plays than take them in by false pretences.

Footnotes

Mentioned also by Tertullian, Apol. 12, but not extant.

Numina.  Another reading is nomina; and with either reading another translation is admissible; “One is announcing to a god the names (or gods) who salute him.”