THE FATHERS

OF THE CHURCH
A NEW TRANSLATION

VOLUME 49
 THE FATHERS
OF THE CHURCH
A NEW TRANSLATION

Editorial Director
Roy JOSEPH DEFERRARI
The Catholic University of America

EDITORIAL BOARD
MSGR. JAMES A. MAGNER BERNARD M. PEEBLES
The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America

MARTIN R. P. MCGUIRE REV. THOMAS HALTON

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America

ROBERT P. RUSSELL, O.S.A. WILLIAM R. TONGUE

Villanova University The Catholic University of America

HERMIGILD DRESSLER, O.F.M. REV. PETER J. RAHILL

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America

SISTER M. JOSEPHINE BRENNAN, I.H.M.

Marywood College
 LACTANTIUS
THE DIVINE
INSTITUTES
BOOKS I-VII

Translated by
SISTER MARY FRANCIS McDONALD, O.P.

Mount Saint Mary-on-the-Hudson

Newburgh, New York

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS

Washington, D. C. 20017
NIHIL OBSTAT:

REVEREND HARRY A. ECHLE

Censor LibTOrum

IMPRIMATUR:
~PATRICK A. O'BOYLE, D.D.
Archbishop of Washington

February 10, 1964

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or
pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained
therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and the imprimatur
agree with the content, opinions, or statements expressed.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 64·18669

ISBN·13: 978·0-8132·1567·9 (pbk)

Copyright © 1964 by
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSIlY OF AMERICA PRESS, INC.
All rights reserved

First paperback reprint 2008

 IN MEMORY OF

MY

FATHER AND MOTHER

 CONTENTS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION IX

THE DIVINE INSTITUTES

INTRODUCTION 3
Book I: On False Religion . 15
Book II: The Origin of Error 94
Book III: On False Philosophy 164
Book IV: True Wisdom and Religion 245
Book V: Concerning Justice . 326
Book VI: On True Worship . 391
Book VII: On The Blessed Life 470

INDICES 545

vii
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

UCIUS CAELIUS (CAECILIUS) FIRMIANUSJ or Lactantius, as

he is generally called, lived through one of the great-
est turning points in the history of Europe. It has
aptly described as the moment when the old world of
paganism was in travail, when against its will it gave birth to
the Christian Empire'! The writings of this author are, togeth-
er with those of Eusebius,2 the principal sources for the period
of the great persecution of Diocletian and for the first years
of the peace of the Church after the Edict of Milan. For the
period of the Council of Nicaea there is somewhat more
abundant source material,s but for the years 312 to 324 re-
liance must be made upon Eusebius and Lactantius. Both
may be considered to have written with considerable bias.
They are too extravagant in praise of Constantine; Lactantius
especially manifested an odium theologicum toward Galerius
and the persecutors. Their works are still of high value, how-
ever, as historical sources. From the time of the studies of

1 Cf. N. H. Baynes, 'The Great Persecution,' Cambridge Ancient History

12,646.
2 Eusebius of Caesaraea (265-340) wrote a Chronicle up until the year
324. This was continued for the years 324-379 by St. Jerome. The
Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius also stops at 324. He also wrote a
Panegyric and Life of Constantine. Cf. trans. of Eusebius, Vol. 19, this
series.
3 St. Augustine and St. Athanasius from a slightly later period; St. Jerome
and the later Church historians, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret; and
by pagans, numerous panegyrics of the period, orations, and poetic
compositions eulogizing emperors and members of their families. Cf.
also the fragments of the New History by the Byzantine Zosimus,. a
pagan very hostile to the Christian emperors.
ix
x LACTANTIUS

Maurice,4 moreover, the evidence of numismatics has verified

the historical accounts of these contemporary sources.
The writings of Lactantius, therefore, were composed in one
of the most eventful epochs of ecclesiastical history. The
Church, after suffering the most severe of despotic persecutions,
was suddenly received under state protection and began to
enjoy, not merely tranquility and legal status, but even a con-
siderable portion of political influence. The fourth century
saw the great fusion of the Christian Church with the Roman
state and Hellenistic culture, the fusion which was to spell
out Western civilization and determine its achievements.
The decline of paganism paved the way for the reception
into the Church of doctors, lawyers, rhetors, and the men of
culture of the day. Many, however, were still repelled by the
simplicity of Christian writings. For those who so highly
valued literary form and elaborate style Lactantius wrote his
apologetic works. Their permanent importance rests on the
fact that one versed in the style and thought of Cicero made
his appeal through this style and thought to men of culture.
Lactantius selected for his apologetics the discussion of those
problems with which the pagans of his day were struggling.
He vindicated for them their own philosophic bases, cham-
pioned an alliance of reason and faith, and made reason state
the cause for the monotheism of the Christians.
Perhaps no other writer is more completely revealing of his
own times. As pagan rhetoricians were abandoning the schools
and the philosophers, the culture of the old world was being
saved in the very Church that was charged with its destruction.
Lactantius is a sharer of Minucius Felix' attitude toward the
traditional culture. 5 He believed that it possessed a vitality,

4 Cf. Jules Maurice, 'La veracite-historique de Lactance,' Academie des

Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres: Comptes Rendus des Seances (March
1908).
5 Cf. Gerard Eldspermann, The Attitude at the Early Christian Writers
toward Pagan Literature and Learning, C.D.A. Patristic Studies, Vol. 82
(Washington 1949).
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION Xl

that its treasure should be preserved, that the 'spoils of the

Egyptians could become the pride of the despised Galilaeans: 6
In the very act of despoiling them, however, he assigned him-
self the task of addressing those Egyptians and, in a number
of essential features, accepted their own literature and learning.
In this way he saved much of their culture for the Church and
became thereby one of the founders of Christian humanism. 7
Thus, the traditional and only true humanism seeks the
completion of man while it regards that completion as ul-
timately supernatural. The glorious ages of revival, the fourth
and fifth centuries, the thirteenth, the most important of all
intellectually, the sixteenth with its counter-reformation, and
today's stalwart support of liberal studies by the Church have
reaffirmed the sound conviction of Lactantius that humanism
has its strongest ally in the truths of the Church, the new
religion at the time of the African rhetor.
Little is known of the life of Lucius Caelius Firmianus, Lac-
tantius. From the brief account by St. Jerome in De viris il-
lustribus 80, the major outlines of his career have been con-
structed.
Because his floruit is assigned to the reign of Diocletian,
under whose patronage he held a chair of rhetoric at Nic-
omedia, and because as an old man he enjoyed the familiarity
of Constantine and served as tutor to his son, Crisp us, it is
believed that he was born some time around 250-260, very
probably in Numidia, Africa. S After he had completed the
ordinary classical studies of the time, he attended the lectures
of Arnobius at Sicca.

6 Cf. Baynes, ap. cit. 647.

7 Cf. especially on this point M. R. P. McGuire, 'Medieval Humanism,'
Catholic Historical Review Vol. 38 (January 1953) 397-409, where
truly Christian humanism is accurately presented as a synthesis and
one that has been achieved through the normal historical processes of
development.
8 Firmium in Italy has been suggested as his birthplace because of his
name Firmianus, but epigraphical evidences of Latin and Italian names
in Africa and African names elsewhere reject the suggestion. Further-
more, his being the pupil of Arnobius points to his African origin.
XlI LACTANTIUS

This teacher-pupil contact remains one of the great un-

knowns in the history of literary influence. The careers of the
two men which crossed in the last half of the third century
and before the accession of Diocletian in 284, although sim-
ilar in some respects, were very different in others. Both were
pagans; both were rhetoricians; both were probably converted
through the influence of Christian fortitude under persecution.
Arnobius practiced his profession in his native Sicca Veneria,
Africa. In order to give to his bishop, who was suspicious of
the one-time vigorous opponent of Christianity, proof of his
loyalty to the new faith, he wrote his Adversus nationes.9 The
seven books filled a need for the time in which they were
written; they also fill a place in the grand tradition of literary
Christian apologies.
That Lactantius nowhere in his writings refers to his teacher
should not seem strange. By 290, Lactantius was a professor
of Latin rhetoric at Nicomedia in Bithynia on the Propontis,lO
an official appointee of Dioc1etian. He probably never heard
of the conversion of Arnobius some few years later, nor of his
novel apology written around 303 during the persecution of
Dioc1etian.H Perhaps Lactantius never realized that he was
following the steps of his master in turning to Christianity and
in bringing his pagan erudition and rhetoric to its service in
the writing of literary defense, in which field he superseded his
teacher.
Lactantius remained at Nicomedia for some time, but there
were few pupils in a town comprising Greeks, Orientals, and
barbarians with little respect for the language of Cicero. As a
diversion, as well as a means of perfecting his style, he decided
to turn to writing. St. Jerome lists several works of this period
which are no longer extant.1 2 There was a Symposium in im-
9 Cf. G. E. McCracken, Arnobius ot Sicca, the Case against the Pagans,
Ancient Christian Writers, 7 and 8 (Westminster, Md. 1949).
10 From 285 on, that town was the residence of Diocletian.
11 Cambridge Ancient History 12, 607.
12 These were lost by the time of St. Robert Bellarmine, who notes the
fact in his De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, de Lactantio Firmiano 290
(Cologne 1622) 68-69.
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xiii

itation of Plato; a Hodoiporicon a description of his journey

J

from Africa to his new home written in hexameters; a Gram-

maticus two books to Asclepiades;13 and collections of letters;
J

four books to Probus, two to Severus, and two to Demetrianus.

Pope St. Damasus knew these books of letters, and he regretted
that they dealt only with profane subjects. 14
The conversion of Lactantius occurred about 300. He re-
tained his position and continued to live in Nicomedia for a
while longer. After Diocletian's abdication, however, and the
closing of the schools by Galerius in 305 and 306, Lactantius
lost his chair, was reduced to poverty, and forced to leave the
city. Although he was never in the hands of torturers, he did
suffer greatly and often was destitute. 15
Perhaps it was after the Toleration Edict of Gaierius 16 that
he returned to Nicomedia. At any rate, there was a definite
change in his affairs after 313, the date of the Edict of Milan.
About 316 his friendship with Constantine (Constantine had
been at Diocletian's court in Nicomedia, at least from 296
until 305, when he realized that the court of Galerius was no
place for him) secured for him the position of tutor for the
young Crispus, son of Constantine, born in 307.17 So the im-
poverished master was summoned in extreme old age to Treves
in Gaul. He devoted himself to his task with such earnestness
that he barely gave time to the editing of his works. Thus it is
that nothing is known of his last years and death.
His chief works were written after his conversion, between
300 and 317. These have been preserved and they are respon-
13 This is probably the Asclepiades who addressed a work on Providence
to Lactantius. Lactantius mentions him and quotes from him in the
Institutes 7.4.17.
14 This is noted by Bardy in Christian Literature of the First Six
Centuries 58-63.
15 The persecution was marked in the East by unlimited brutality and in-
justice under the coarse Calerius and the licentious Maximin, his Caesar.
16 This was published in Nicomedia on April 30, 311, perhaps caused by
the terrible disease from which Calerius suffered. Cf. Lactantius, De
mortibus persecutorum 34; Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 8.17; and
Zosimus, Historiae 2.1l.
17 On Constantine's early stay in Nicomedia, d. bibliography, Holsapple,
106ff.
xiv LACTANTIUS

sible for his reputation. The De oPificio Dei (The Workman-

ship of God), written during 303-305, is a graceful and pleas-
ing exposition of the providence of God manifested in the
creation of man, body as well as soul, and a refutation of
Epicurean notions that man is a creature unworthy of God.
His greatest apologetical work is contained in the seven
books entitled Divinae institutiones, dedicated to Constantine
and intended as a Christian counterpart of those 'Institutes'
which lay down the principles of civil law. The titles of the
seven books show the grandeur and originality of conception
of the treatise. The entire work forms a summary of Christian
teaching.
The work was further summarized by the author himself
in the Epitome,18 a sixty-seven chapter abridgement addressed
to a certain Pentadius and written after 314. Even in St.
jerome's time this work was considered mutilated (he calls
it a title-less work, librum acephalum), but the quotation of
Sacred Scripture is more frequent in it than in the Institutes,
the reliance on the sibyls has been laid aside, and moral
prescriptions are more detailed. Lactantius' purpose was, no
doubt, to make the work more useable for Christians. His pur-
pose in writing previously had been to convince the educated
pagan; hence, his use of their sources exceeds that of Christian
works.
The Divine Institutes will be translated and treated in the
present volume. The De oPificio Dei and the other works as
listed below will form the content of a second volume.
The De ira Dei (The Anger of God), announced in the
Divinae institutiones,19 develops the thesis popular in phil-
osophical circles of his time: whether God, immutable and
sovereignly perfect, can be subject to anger, a passion. The
proof is offered that in God anger is a perfection because it
serves to manifest His power. The work was not written, or

18 Because of its nature as a summary, the Epitome has not been trans-
lated for this collection of the works of Lactantius.
19 Cf. Divinae lnstitutiones 2.17.4.
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xv

published, until after 313. It is associated with the next work

in celebration of the triumph of God's punishment of per-
secutors.
De mortibus persecutorum (The Deaths ot the Persecutors),
written very probably between 314 and 317, is historical as
well as apologetical. In it Lactantius serves with Eusebius of
Caesarea to provide us with contemporary Christian sources
for the period of 303-313, the last and most dreadful years of
Roman persecution of Christianity. Though the work comes
down in a single manuscript, of Paris, eleventh century, the
Lactantian authorship is no longer questioned. The work is
pamphlet-like in style. Lactantius possessed too much first-hand
acquaintance with his subject matter to be impartial or im-
personal in his recounting. It has been said that no more
terrible picture has been drawn than that left us by Lactantius
of 'this murderous strife between the hungry treasury and the
worn-out people, who could suffer and die, but not pay.'20
Besides these, there are a fragmentary piece and some other
works which are attributed to Lactantius. The little portion,
De motibus animi (The Affections ot the Soul), could well be
a part of a lost work on the passions or emotions, perhaps an
outgrowth of the De oPificio Dei.
The poem, De ave phoenice, tells the familiar story of the
phoenix. This ancient myth of the phoenix, the narration in
Herodotus (11.73) being the earliest extant, received its first
Christian treatment by Clement of Rome. He made it a symbol
of the resurrection. Lactantius (and the weight of evidence
is in favor of his authorship of the poem) presents the fable in
eighty-five distichs and adds a number of features that are
Christian in origin.
Some of the manuscripts attribute the poems De resurrec-
tione and De pasch a to Lactantius, but the oldest testify to the
authorship of Venantius Fortunatus. And the poem, De pas-
sione Domini, may not be by Lactantius, but, since a more
20 Michelet, History of France I, 3, quoted by Louis Duchesne, II, 44 (see
bibliography).
XVI LACTANTIUS

probable author has not yet been supplied for it, it has been
included with the translations of the present series.
E. K. Rand, so deservedly well known and respected in the
field of late Latin and early Christian writers, has stated that
Lactantius laid the foundations of Christian humanism. 21 Cer-
tainly this was the feeling of the humanists of the Renaissance.
From that period on he has been known as the Christian
Cicero. In that period he enjoyed his greatest popularity. The
manuscript copies of his works are most numerous for the
period of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, though the
earliest are from the ninth, and Dufresnoy22 enumerates eighty-
six editions of his entire works from 1461 to 1739. Etymology-
loving litterateurs liked to think that his name was derived
from lactea eloquentia, 'of milky-rich eloquence,' and Gibbon
rated him as 'the most eloquent of the Christians.' Typical of
the period is Pica de la Mirandola's praise: 'Who does not
know that Lactantius has equaled Cicero and perhaps sur-
passed him in eloquence?'23
This reputation of Lactantius, however, rests not solely upon
the superficialities of discernment of the Renaissance human-
ists. The elegance of his style and its closeness to that of Cicero
received acclamation from no less a critic than St. Jerome,24
whose statement that Lactantius approached Cicero in el-
oquence has been reiterated through the ages. Bossuet read
him thoughtfully and owed to him several of his profound
thoughts in their magnificent expression. Many of the great
orators and writers of the ages appreciated his style;25 it is
sufficient to know that the greatest thought well of him.

21 Cf. his 'Latin Literature in the West from the Antonines to Constan-
tine,' Cambridge Ancient History 12.609; also his Founders of the
Middle Ages.
22 Dufresnoy is the editor of Lactantius, who was followed by the Migne
ed.; cf. his Praefatio in Lactantium (PL 6.57-88).
23 Cf. 'Liber de studio divinae et humanae philosophiae,' ch. 7, Opera
(Basle 1601).
24 Cf. Jerome, Epistle 58.16.
25 Cf. Kathleen E. Hartwell, Lactantius and Milton (Cambridge, Mass.
1929).
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xvii

Eusebius, his contemporary, bore witness to his merit as the

most eloquent writer of his age,26 and he was honorably and
approvingly cited by St. Augustine. 27 And if on the whole he
has fared badly at the hands of historians of Christian Latin
literature, it is perhaps due to the unfairness of comparing him
with writers of other periods and backgrounds. From a con-
sideration of his own time (he is the last of the Latin Fathers
before the Council of Nicaea, and in his day pagan Latin
literature was practically nil), he is eminent. Bardenhewer
seems most fair to him when he says: 'He is more compre-
hensive and versatile than Arnobius in his literary work, while
his style is more chaste, natural, and pleasing than that of any
of his contemporaries.'28
His role is an interesting one in the field of Christian Latin
apologetics. He sawall around him multitudes of the simple
and ignorant crowding the Church, yet the intellectuals were
turning away with contempt. He suffered intensely at this 29
and determined to do something about it.
He was a man of learning himself, a philosopher too, of
ability though not of originality (this was no disgrace; for
neither was Cicero an original thinker). He knew that if there
was much in Christianity to repel the aristocratic and literary
classes, there was much also to attract them. There were, how-
ever, no writings as yet to appeal to their tastes. The apologists
of the third century had been African, had had little of the
traditional Roman style to offer, had written for the masses,
had used not the finest Latin, and had been wanting in phil-
osophical method. Hence, there was need for a method suited
to the age and the classes. Lactantius attempted to supply that
need. He wrote pure Ciceronian Latin. He was expert in all
its varieties, from the quiet, tranquil philosophical deism of

26 Cf. Eusebius, Chron. ann. 2330.

27 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.23.
28 Bardenhewer, Patrology p. 203.
29 In spite of the length and the naivete of much of his arguments, one
must admit the evident sincerity of the new convert attempting to con-
vince others.
xviii LACTANTIUS

the De oPificio Dei to the wild, vigorous, burning accents of

the De mortibus persecutorum. He knew that the minds he
was striving to reach were sensitive to the charm of fine lan-
guage, and he employed the purest style that circumstances
permitted. His vocabulary, his syntax, the artful rounding out
of his periods, the careful adherence to the strict rules of the
cursus for completing his phrases, all were redolent of Cicero.
And in spite of his African origin and Christian belief, he was
Roman to the core. In this, too, he was the new or Christian
Cicero, giving expression to the new or Christian culture. 'As
Cicero had done so much to create the moulds of Romanitas,
so his spirit served to influence if not to dominate the forms
of Christian culture by which Romanitas was superseded.'30
And after Rome became Christian, or when Constantine
gave Christians legal status, and Lactantius had been promoted
to the office of tutor to the emperor's son, the Christian orator
needed no longer to appeal for mercy. Now he became the
emperor's spokesman for the change in policy which would so
affect the welfare of the times. In this capacity we see Lactan-
tius in the new empire of Constantine, compared in so many
more obvious ways with that of the founder Augustus, fulfill-
ing the role of Vergil and Horace. 31
As has already been indicated, Lactantius is very sparing in
his use of Christian sources. He wrote for those who refused
to be impressed by the simple style of the Scriptures. Proofs
derived from Scripture implied faith and, therefore, were valid
only for Christians. His work abounds in quotations, but these
are from classical authors, chiefly Cicero and Vergil. In Brandt's
edition, the list of his quotations from classical authors fills
twenty pages and quotations from the Bible, four. Stoic and
Epicurean sources provided him with material for answers
to the problems of evil and the divine wrath. Many of these
he quotes; others he uses with but an implied acknowledg-

30 Cf. bibliography, Cochrane, 39.

31 Cf. Rand, Cambridge Ancient History 8, 609.
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xix

ment. He makes generous use of the Sibylline Oracles and also

of the Hermes Trismegistus source. An exhaustive study of
Lactantius' sources was made by the editors of the text in the
Vienna Corpus, Brandt and Laubmann, and is published as a
prolegomenon to their text. 32
He makes no reference to Greek Christian authors, and when
he speaks of his predecessors in the field of defending the
faith, he mentions as 'those who are known to him' (Inst. 5.1)
only Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian. It has already
been mentioned that he was very probably unaware of both
the conversion to the faith and the apologetic work of his
teacher of rhetoric, Arnobius of Sicca.
His great erudition in the field of pagan mythology and
false philosophies and his deliberate choice of a method of
apologetics which he believed would be effective with the
pagan audience have made his works in themselves a good
source for ancient culture (fragments of authors that would
otherwise have perished are preserved in them); moreover, they
are a good introduction to the thought of the chief pagan
writers. His evaluation, too, of Greek and Roman thinking on
philosophical and religious matters is worth consideration. He
knew his sources well; whatever the weaknesses of his defense
of the new faith, he was strong in his attack on the shams and
false foundations of the old doctrines.
Theologians are in general very severe in their judgment of
Lactantius. 33 They have dismissed him as a Christian humanist,
with neither originality nor depth. It seems, however, that a
restudy of his writings should be made. Even with reference
to their doctrinal content, the same indulgence should be
shown him that all breakers of new ground claim. We must
ever bear in mind the epoch in which he lived and wrote. It
was still the age of apologists. The end of the third century
32 CSEL 19, xcii-cix. The indices of authors and sources are in Vol.
27.2.241-278.
33 Le Nourry says that some critics have judged so harshly of him that
scarcely any other writer seems ever to have erred so often in so few
writings. Cf. E. S. Ffoulkes in bibliography.
xx LACTANTIUS

was a time of supreme crisis: established religion joined with

philosophic deism to make an end of the common enemy,
Christianity. True, Lactantius, a witness to Christianity at
the end of pagan society, is quite ignorant of theology because
it scarcely existed, especially in Latin. Yet from the apologetic
treatments of the new doctrine he attempted to form a syn-
thesis. He was the first in the vVest to do this, a whole century
before Augustine. His work, therefore, must necessarily suffer
from the dual defects of an initial effort as well as from his
own obvious lack of theological preparation. Since he was a
philosopher and a layman who, moreover, was converted late
in life, his theology could scarcely have embodied the full-
ness of the Christian tradition. In fact, although he pur-
posed to present theological treatises, he is first, last, and al-
ways an apologist. The apologetic aspects of the theology of
the times had certain fundamental questions forced upon its
attention by the missionary status of early Christianity. The
refutation of false doctrines was one such major concern. In
this Lactantius was at his best. Jerome had recognized this. 'If
only,' he lamented, 'he could have affirmed our teachings as
easily as he destroyed those of other sects!,34
But Lactantius lacked the knowledge and the capacity to
handle the theological problems inherent in the subjects he
discussed. We must always remember, though, that he was a
pioneer, and we have grown perhaps too accustomed to our
present-day presentations of doctrine, the precise formulation
of which has been gained only through centuries of maturing
insight, supported by the infallible apologetic pronouncements
and declarations of the Church. His emphasis is moral rather
than dogmatic. He is enthusiastic about martyrdom, Christian
charity, humility, and chastity, but he hardly mentions the gift
of grace (he antedates Augustine!) , and while he dwells on the
transformation wrought by the new faith, he does not stress
the redeeming role of the Savior of mankind. The one central
doctrine that permeates all his writing is that of divine prov-
34 Cf. Jerome, Epistle 58.10.
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxi

idence. It is the quiet theme of his first Christian work, the

De oPificio Dei; it is the exultant paean of the De mortibus
persecutorum.
The converted rhetor, imbued with strong classical culture,
rich in personal reflections on Christian doctrine rather than
a sure theological knowledge, and with only a brief acquaint-
ance with Sacred Scripture, was above all a religious philos-
opher. He attempted an alliance of Christian dogma with
his philosophy. In this he laid the foundations for the 'fourth-
century renaissance.'35 But in this philosophical strain, too,
can be detected the seat of those errors with which he is
charged.
The chief points of his doctrine as discussed by scholars36
may be put briefly as follows:
The Trinity. He conceives of the Son's role as cosmological.
The Holy Spirit almost disappears from his discussion. St.
Jerome testifies 37 that he denied, especially in the two books of
Letters to Demetrianus, now lost, the existence or divine per-
sonality of the third member of the Trinity. His identifying
Him sometimes with the Father and sometimes with the Son
was to some extent due to the lack of precise terminology and
understanding on the part of many of the rank and file of
early Christians. The great heresies against the Trinity were
not yet refuted by the Nicene pronouncements (325), nor
was it until 381 that the Council of Constantinople asserted
the Godhood of the Holy Spirit as a matter of faith.
Angelology. He assigns special works and powers to the
angels, and to the demons as well. 3s His is one of the earliest

35 Cf. Paul Allard, 'Lactance et Ie De mortibus persecutorum,' Revues

des questions historiques, n. s. Vol. 30 (Paris 1903).
36 Cf. E. Amann, 'Lactance,' DTC 82 (Paris 1925) cols. 2425-2444; H.
Lietzmann, 'Laktantius,' RE 12 (1924) 351-356; B. Altaner, Patrologie
(Freiburg i. B. 1950) 153-157; J. Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 2 (West-
minster, Md. 1953) 392-410.
37 Cf. Jerome, Epistle 84.7; Commentary in Gal. ad 4.6.
38 Cf. E. Schneweis, Angels and Demons According to Lactantius, CUA
Studies in Christian Antiquity. No.3 (Washington 1942).
xxii LACTANTIUS

Christian treatments of the subject, and it is much confused

with mythological concepts.
Dualism. The devil is considered as an antigod (Inst. 2.8,
9) , and Lactantius speaks, therefore, of two principles (6.6).
The opposition between the two found expression in creation,
and continues in the conflict between spirit and flesh, right
and wrong, and the ordinary topics of contrariety.
The problem of evil. This is connected with his concept of
dualism, which seems to be of Stoic derivation. He sees in the
enmity between God and the devil the origin of all morality
and immorality. Lactantius shows that the Christian religion
restates the affinity of God with man, and he is not ashamed
to dwell almost exclusively on the anthropomorphic concep-
tion. To an age which reverenced the unapproachable majesty
of God, he proclaimed that He is very near and that His
providence is very minute. His purpose in building the world
was to put before rational beings the prize of immortality as
worth the price of toil and probation. For this He established
man with a free will in a world of contraries. Again comes
Lactantius' dualism. 39 Thus it follows that there can be no
virtue unless there be vice, just as there is no light without
the possibility of darkness.
Psychology. He holds strongly to the spirituality and im-
mortality of the soul. His originality lies in his forceful affirma-
tion of the immediate creation of all souls by God. Tertullian's
theory was grosser, and Lactantius differs from Arnobius also
on immortality. Arnobius, his teacher, held that the soul was
not of itself deathless, but could become so by a Christian life.
Lactantius' view is that the soul by nature is immortal. He be-
lieves, therefore, that the wicked are not annihilated but are
subject to eternal punishment (Inst. 2.12) and the souls of the

39 Cf. F. W. Bussell, 'The Purpose of the '''''arid-Process and the Problem

of Evil as Explained in the Clementine and Lactantian Writings in a
System of Subordinate Dualism,' Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica 4 (Ox-
ford 1896) 133-188 (especially 178ff); also Ermin F. Micka, O.F.M.,
The Problem of Divine Anger in Arnabius and Lactantius, CVA Studies
in Christian Antiquity, No.4 (Washington 1943).
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxiii

saved remain blessed forever because they seek and love the
God who is eternal (7.9).
Eschatology. Lactantius makes no advance over his pre-
decessors but is definitely archaistic. In Institutes 7 there is a
highly chiliastic eschatology. For this he was probably steeped
in the apocryphal apocalypses (7.20), but this notion of the
ages of the world and the nearness of the end of time was
shared by many enlightened men of his own and later days.
Lactantius was convinced that there were left only about 200
years. In medieval times, too, men were quite certain of an
imminent end of the world. St. Vincent Ferrer, the very pop-
ular Dominican preacher of the fourteenth century, was called
'the Angel of the Judgment' because of his insistence upon the
proximity of the day of doom.
Despite imperfections in his theology, the writings of Lac-
tantius do not merit the disdain they have received. They gave
glory to the reign of Constantine and were accepted eagerly
for study and correction by minds like Jerome, Augustine,
Prudentius, and Cassiodorus. Through a steady stream they
became part of the vast supply of Christian humanism. His
apologetics must be judged by the public he addressed.
Though much of his demonstration reposes on literary falsi-
fication (the Sibylline Oracles and Hermes Trismegistus), he
is not the first nor the last to use the method. His performance
must be accepted as an honest attempt to approach speculation
from the practical point of view. He had a zeal for purity and
discipline and strove to make others share his firm convictions.
Since charity covers a multitude of sins, the fervor of his
purpose must more than make up for his theological defects.
For the present translation the Brandt-Laubmann text in
the Vienna Corpus has been used throughout. For the Deaths
of the Persecutors supplementary use was made of Moreau's
text in Sources chretiennes 39. Citations of sources and refer-
ences to uses made of Lactantius by other writers are also
taken from the Brandt-Laubmann text. For the most part these
are given as independent translations. No attempt has been
XXIV LACTANTIUS

made to use the standard English translation of the ancient au-

thors whom Lactantius quotes. For biblical quotations, as far
as it seemed not inconsistent with the Lactantian version, the
Confraternity translation was used for the New Testament, the
Pentateuch, and the Psalms, and the Challoner revision of the
Rheims-Douay translation for the other portions of the Old
Testament.
Some portions of the text appear in some manuscripts and
not in others. The Brandt-Laubmann text does not incorporate
these sections, a discussion of which will be given subsequent-
ly,40 but provides the readings in the critical apparatus. The
most recent authoritative scholarship, however, considers the
small group of manuscripts which provide the readings as a
valuable tradition. They are the ninth-century Paris Codex
Regius, 1663, the twelfth-century Paris, 1664, and the four-
teenth/fifteenth-century Codex Gothanus I n. 55-R, S, and g
respectively according to the Brandt-Laubmann sigla. In this
translation the two panegyrical sections, I nst. 1.1.12 (p. 3b)
and 7.27.2 (p. 7Ib), have been included. The short invocations
appearing in each of the other books of the Institutes have not
been included, nor have the two long passages of heavily
dualistic content 2.8.6 (p. 130 of the Vienna Corpus text) and
7.5.27 (p. 602). It has seemed wise to omit the material of so
disputed a nature; enough attention has been drawn to the
dualistic tendencies in the writings of Lactantius. On the
other hand, the panegyrical sections have been included as
being in full accord with his spirit and policies.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Texts and Translations:

Brandt, S, and G, Laubmann, eds, L. Caeli Firmiani Lactantii Opera
Omnia, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 19 and
27 (Vienna 1890-1897).
Fletcher, William, trans. Writings of Lactantius in The Ante-Nicene

40 Cf. below, pp. 8-10.

 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxv

Fathers 7. American reprint of the Edinburgh edition (New York

1925).
LeBrun, J. B. and N. Lenglet-Dufresnoy, eds. L. Caelii Firmiani
Lactantii Opera Omnia (Paris 1748); reprinted by J. P. Migne,
Patrologia latina 6-7 (Paris 1844).
Moreau, J., ed. Lactance: De la mort des persecuteurs in Sources
chretiennes 39 (Paris 1954), by far the best text and general study
of The Deaths of the Persecutors. In addition to the translation
and commentary, it provides a general introduction to the work
of Lactantius on the whole and an extensive bibliography.

Secondary Sources:
AlfOldi, Andrew. The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome.
Trans. by Harold Mattingly (Oxford 1948).
Altaner, Berthold. Patrologie (Freiburg in Breisgau 1950).
Amann, E. 'Lactance,' Dictionnaire de theologie catholique 8 (Paris
1925) cols. 2425-2444.
BatifIol, Pierre. La paix constantinienne et la catholicisme (5th ed.
rev. Paris 1929).
Cambridge Ancient History 12 (Cambridge 1939).
Cochrane, Charles Norris. Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford
1944).
Duchesne, Louis. Early History of the Christian Church from Its
Foundation to the End of the Fifth Century 2 (New York 1922).
Ffoulkes, Edmund S. 'Lactantius,' Dictionary of Christian Biography
3 (London 1882) cols. 613-617.
Holsapple, Lloyd B. Constantine the Great (New York 1942).
Jones, Arnold H. M. Constantine and the Conversion of Europe
(London 1948).
Leclercq, H. 'Lactance,' Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne et de
liturgie 8 (Paris 1928) cols. 1018-1041.
Lietzmann, Hans. From Constantine to Julian. A History of the Early
Church 3. Trans. by Bertran Lee Woolf (London 1953).
Mason, Arthur James. The Persecutions of Diocletian (Cambridge
1876).
Monceaux, Paul. Histoire litteraire de l'Afrique chretienne 3 (Paris
1905) 287-359.
Palanque, J. R., G. Bardy and others. The Church in the Roman
Empire: the Church and the Arian Crisis. Trans. by Ernest C.
Messenger (London 1949).
Pichon, Rene. Lactance (Paris 1901).
Piganiol, A. 'L'etat actuel de la question constantinienne, 1930-1949,'
Historia 1 (Wiesbaden 1950) 82-96.
Poulet, Dom Charles. Histoire du christianisme: antiquite (Paris 1932)
Quasten, Johannes. Patrology 2 (Westminster, Md. 1953).
Rand, Edward K. Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.
1941).
- - - , . The Building of Eternal Rome (Cambridge, Mass. 1943).
 INTRODUCTION

O RE PRINCIPAL WORK OF LACTANTIUS} the Divine Instruc-

tions} might be entitled An Introduction to the True
Rellgzon. ThIs apology for ChnstIanity, dIrected to
pagan intellectuals or to those recently converted, consists of
two parts: the one polemical, which is very short; the other,
dogmatic, which considers the substance of the whole system
of Christian doctrine. Although at times the work lacks exact-
ness and depth, a study of it is essential for forming an ade-
quate concept of the state of religious thought in the early
years of the fourth century. For the historian it offers a wealth
of information on the philosophical and religious problems
which faced thinkers of the age and it presents arguments for
and against Christianity which had weight for cultured men of
that time.
In the winter of 302-303 when Diocletian and his Caesar,
Galerius, were both at Nicomedia, and when Galerius pressed
the necessity for persecution,! Diocletian was won over from
his policy of resisting him by a circle of N eoplatonist philos-
ophers. Among them was Hierocles, 2 a man of consular rank,
the governor of Bithynia, formerly of Phoenicia, a disciple of
Celsus and Porphyry, and a notable antagonist of the Chris-
tians. He published two books on The Discourse of a Lover
of Truth Against the Christians 3 in which he was intent on

1 Cf. Lactantius, De mortibus penecutorum 10, II, Vol. 2.

2 This Hierocles has been identified by Seeck in an article in RE 8
(1913) col. 1477. Cf. Lactantius, Institutes 5.2, De mortibus 10-11.
Arnobius, Euscbius, and Methodius of Olympus all wrote against him.
Cf. references passim, N. H. Baynes, n. 1 (General Introduction).
3 The title is Philalethes or The Truth-Lover. Cf. Lactantius, Institutes
5.3.23. On the doctrine of Hierccles, cf. P. de Labriolle, La reaction
paienne (Paris 1942) 306ft
3
4 LACTANTIUS

showing the 'contradictions' in Scripture. Thus, not content

in his official capacity with condemning Christians to torture
and death, he determined to destroy their beliefs by his writ-
ings. So exact was his knowledge of Sacred Scripture, in fact,
that Lactantius wondered if he may not have been a Christian.
It was the refutation of the writings of Hierocles and of
three books of sophistic attack by another pagan apologist
whose name is not known, that may be considered the im-
mediate occasion of the writing of the Divine Instructions,
commonly called the Institutes. At the same time, Lactantius
aimed at the refutation of all past and future opponents of
Christianity. The work which resulted is the first systematic
presentation in Latin of the main teachings of the Christian
faith.
On the side of reason the argument consists largely of com-
monplaces lifted from Cicero and the Stoics. These serve to
indicate the affiliations between Christianity and classical ideal-
ism as against the materialism of Epicurean thought. In the
matter of authority, Lactantius is not unlike Cicero himself
in citing texts without discrimination. On the same point he
quotes from Sacred Scripture and from pagan poets. He relies
heavily on the Sibylline utterances, Hermes Trismegistus, Ver-
gil, Ovid, and other writers, especially Cicero. He seems to
share in the as-yet-unexpressed conviction of an Augustine or
an Aquinas that wherever truth is to be found it may be con-
sidered as a participation in the Divine Truth and, therefore,
validly used. From an erroneous first premise, prevalent in the
philosophy of his opponents, namely, the separation of reason
from faith, Lactantius traces all that vanity of their false philos-
ophy discovered in his examination of it. This is the burden
of his first three books. In the next four he undertakes the
task of harmonizing the two founts of knowledge, for true
wisdom and true religion are one and inseparable. In his de-
fense of the faith, then, Lactantius becomes a champion of
human reason as well. This is a distinct contribution to human
thought, and a most necessary one.
 INTRODUCTION

The apologist has a magnificent thesis, in spite of the

looseness of some of his argumentation and the shallowness
of some of his thinking. His vindication of reason and faith,
of culture and Christianity, was to serve as a De officiis for the
'new' commonwealth. 4 In the new order the Romanitas of the
ideals of the old will be justified only in its ministry to the
superior demands of humanitas. One finds herein Christian
principles of brotherly love, the law of charity attainable only
through accepting the principles of the Fatherhood and ab-
solute mastery of the one God.
The seven books of the Divine Institutes may be briefly out-
lined as follows:

Book I: On the False Worship of the Gods.

Ch. 1. Prefatory remarks on the value of knowledge of the
truth and a dedication (to Constantine); the alliance of
wisdom and religion.
2-8. The evidence of Providence in the affairs of men and
the reasonable arguments that God is one; divine testimonies
to this truth; the witnesses of the poets and philosophers.
9-23. The pagan theogonies; an account of the origins, life
stories, and evil influences of the traditional and anthro-
pomorphic cults of the Greeks and Romans.

Book II: On the Origin of Error.

Ch. 1. Man's forgetfulness of reasonable worship of God.
2-4. The origin and errors of anthropomorphism.
5-7. The heavenly bodies, the elements, human ancestors,
mere creatures of God and not to be worshiped.
8. Auguries and portents.
9-14. The devil, the world and its creatures; intemperate
use of material creation as an origin of false religions.
15-18. The angels, their fall, the demons and their arts; the
worship of demons.
19. Worship of images.
4 Cf. Cochrane (bibliography) 191ff.
6 LACTANTIUS

20. Transition from previous types of errors to the discus-

sion of philosophy.

Book III: On the False Wisdom of Philosophers.

Ch. 1. A comparison of truth and eloquence, of the simple
style of the Scriptures and the external splendor of empty
eloquence.
2-6. Philosophy; its contents; some of the chief sects and their
tenets of an epistemological nature; Socrates, the Stoics.
7-9. Ethics and some concepts of moral philosophy of some
of the ancients; the Stoics, Cyrenaics, the Academy.
10-13. Virtue as the soul's object here for the attaining of
immortality, the chief good.
14-16. The teachings of the great philosophers on this point
of the origin of wisdom: Lucretius, Seneca, Cicero.
17-25. Epicurus, Leucippus, Democritus, as originators of
error; the Pythagoreans and Stoics who upheld immortality
but have faulty notions of suicide; Cicero and other very
wise men: Socrates, the wisest, and Plato, perhaps the great-
est, who propound great truths with a mixture of error or
in an unbelieving manner.
26-30, A summarizing discussion on the great powers of
divine wisdom, conferred on men by revelation only and
which is in no way aided by the precepts of the false
philosophers, by nature or by fortune.

Book IV: On True Wisdom and Religion.

Chs. 1-2. The errors of former religions, perpetrated even
the wise; for example, the Seven Sages, Plato, and Pythagor-
as.
3-5. The identical source of true wisdom and true religion.
6-21, The true idea of divinity brought to men by Christ in
the Incarnation; the waiting for the Messias; His birth, life,

the prophecies of each and their fulfillment; witness of the

Old the Sibyls, and Hermes Trismegistuso
 INTRODUCTION 7

22-30. The objections of the unbelievers; hope and faith;

avoidance of heresy and superstition.

Book V: On Justice.
Chs. 1-4. Remarks addressed to the emperor on why the
work was published.
5-6. The justice of Saturn's reign and its banishment by
Jupiter.
7. The true justice that came with Jesus Christ and its fruit.
8-23. The knowledge of justice by all men but its rejection
by most; the sufferings of the Christians at the hands of
criminal persecutors; false piety and the weaknesses and fool-
ishness of Christians; their equity and fortitude and patience.
24. Divine vengeance, the act of God's justice.

Book VI: On True Worship.

Chs. 1-8. The two ways of true and false worship, of virtue
and vice, truth and error and their rewards.
9-13. The law of God; religion toward God and charitable-
ness toward men, the prerequisites of justice and, therefore,
of true worship.
14-19. The passions; the opinions of the Stoics and Peripa-
tetics on the passions; right and wrong use of them.
20-23. The senses and their pleasures; the proper or con-
trolled enjoyment of them.
24-25. Conversion to God; sacrifice and praise; a plea for
sincerity of worship.

Book VII: On the Happy Life.

Chs. 1-8. An introduction to the study of eschatology, the
nature of the world; its inhabitants; censures of the opinions
some have held with reference to the world and the enjoy-
ment of it by creatures; the creation of man and his position
in the world.
9-13. The immortality of the soul; rewards and punishments
of life and death; union, separation, and return to union of
soul and body.
8 LACTANTIUS

14-27. The end of the world; the proximity of its occurrence;

the destruction of empires and chaos; prophecies of such
doom in Scripture, the Sibylline Oracles, Hermes, and the
poets; the coming of the false prophet, the AntiChrist; the
judgment of Christ; the punishment of souls; the Resurrec-
tion.
28. A conclusion: the encouragement and confirmation of
those who have adored God with true worship; the reward
of which will be the vision of Him, even as the penalty of
the unrighteous is to be the deprivation of that blessedness.

The writing of the Divine Institutes must have been begun

about 304, shortly after The Workmanship of God to which
he made reference (2.10.15) as recently written and not long
after the publication of the attacks of Hierocles and the other
pagan sophist. Book VI must have been compiled before the
Edict of Toleration of Galerius in 311, because the references
are to the endurance of present (or very recent) trials and the
circumstances of persecution (6.17.18). The two dedications to
Constantine (l.l; 7.26), however, certainly imply that the
Edict of Milan of 313 had been promulgated. In the first he
addresses Constantine as 'the first of Roman princes to re-
pudiate errors and acknowledge and honor the majesty of the
one, only, true God.'5 In the second he gives thanks that all
stress is now at an end 'since the time when God raised you
up, most holy Emperor, to restore the house of justice and pro-
tect the human race. For, while you rule the Roman state, we,
the worshipers of God, are no longer considered as nefarious
and impious.'6

5 This dedicatory statement qualifies Constantine as 'Imperator Max-

imus: a title conferred by the Senate on the morrow of Constantine's
victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. It also supposes that
Constantine has been emperor for some time. Still, the persecution is
not over throughout the Empire. It raged under Maximin Daia and
his government until he was overthrown by Licinius in 313.
6 This dedication refers to the benefit to the Christians from Constantine's
government. The author of the two dedications is in full accord with
the author of the Panegyric of 313.
 INTRODUCTION 9

These two dedications to Constantine have been the subject

of much scholarly investigation and controversy. For some
time, it has been held that they were interpolations 7 made by
Christians who were obsessed with the idea of the glorification
of Constantine the Great. At present, the weight of authority
favors the authorship of Lactantius.
The question was complicated still more by the fact that
these dedications are missing from an entire family of uncial
manuscripts, more ancient and generally better than those
which present the sections in question. The manuscripts which
contain the dedications also contain some short theological
discussions on the origin of evil, which are strongly dualistic,
almost Manichaean, in tone. The five sections must stand or
fall together. Actually, the presence of the unorthodox dis-
cussions is a strong plea for their genuineness. They would
not have been added by the author himself in a later rendition,
for he would have taken note of the errors. Certainly, an
editor with Christian formation would not have added them,
but it is highly probable that they were removed by an editor.
An orthodox admirer would have deleted the dualistic pas-
sages as offensive and the panegyrical ones as superfluous. s It
seems best, therefore, to reject the interpolation theory and to
consider these portions as constituting an integral part of the
primitive text. Besides, the ideas expressed in these dualistic
passages (2.8.6 and 7.5.27, that God intended and created
evil) are in full accord with those which Lactantius expounds
in other parts of his work: in The Workmanship of God 19.8
and throughout The Wrath of God. 9
Together with the two major Constantin ian dedications (1.
1.12 and 7.27.2) some lesser panegyrical sections may be con-
7 This interpolation theory was defended by S. Brandt (ed., Vienna text)
in 'Ueber die Dualistichen Zusatze und die Kaiseranreden bei
Lactantius,' Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften
CXVIII (1889).
8 Cf. H. Emonds, 'Zweite Auflage im Altertum,' Klassische-Philologische
Studien 14 (Leipzig 1941) 55ff.
9 Cf. Pichon (bibliography) 13ff.; also H. J. Lawlor, 'Notes on Lactantius,'
Hermathena 12 (Dublin 1903) 447-469.
10 LACTANTIUS

sidered: 2.1.2; 3.1.1; 4.1.1; 5.1.1; 6.3.1. If one accepts the most
likely solution of the authenticity problem, namely, that the
manuscripts which contain the portions in question actually
are witness to an earlier text tradition than that of the others,
there remains but one further problem. That concerns the
matter of dating the dedications and thereby permitting us to
fix the dates of the editing of the Institutes. It is obvious that
Lactantius himself added prefatory sections and transitions,
and it is very probable, too, that he attached the panegyrical
sections as events warranted him to do so.
Piganiol has provided an acceptable solution for the question
of the Constantinian dedications. 1o The first does not mention
Licinius, but does speak of a son of Constantine. This Piganiol
took as a terminus post quem, since the second son was born
about 317. And the dedication of Book VII and its allusion
to Constantine's victory over the persecutors Piganiol takes as
a song of triumph after the defeat of Licinius, rejecting the
possibility of reference to Maxentius or Maximin Daia. He,
therefore, would date the editing of the Institutes between
321 and 323. In spite of what seem like very convincing argu-
ments, it is not possible to place the composition of the In-
stitutes during the years of the struggle between Constantine
and Licinius. The internal evidence of many sections of the
work is too strong against this hypothesis. The work must have
been written during the years of persecution, between 305 and
313, since it is a response to the works of such writers as
Hierocles which fell into oblivion after the peace of the
Church. The dedications, however, would have been added by
the author when he published his definitive edition, prepared
during the period of his tutorship of Crispus. Perhaps at that
time, too, he made an adjustment in his text in order to intro-
duce an allusion to the contemporary status of Licinius.
Book V presents special problems. Parts of it describe the
persecution as present; other parts treat of it as past. The com-
position of the major portion of this book, however, may have
10 Cf. A. Piganiol, 'Dates constantiniennes,' Revue Rist. et Philos. ReT. 12.
 INTRODUCTION 11

occurred earlier than that of the remainder and perhaps of

the other books.
Allusions point to this, and an argument from fitness or ar-
rangement can be used as well. It is evident that Lactantius
tried to make his books of uniform length. Occasionally, per-
haps as a means of transition, he mentions that he has set a
gauge for himself, an approximate number of words or chap-
ters, the mensura libri of 1.1.13, 6.20.1, and 7.25.1, for example.
Note here, too, that the three other works: The Workmanship
of God, The Anger of God, and The Deaths of the Persecutors,
are of nearly equal size, about two-thirds the length of the
books of the Institutes.
Book V is the shortest of its series. It consists of two parts
which scarcely have anything in common. The first could well
be an introduction to the entire work, giving the circumstances
which led to his undertaking it (5.2.3); a statement of his aim
and purpose (5.1.1-20, 4.1.2); and a criticism of labors of
previous apologists (5.1.21-28, 4.3-8). Then follows the dis-
cussion on Justice (5-23), the title of Book V. Moreover, the
transition to this section is awkward. 'I have wandered farther
than I meant to. Now let us go back to the proposed discussion
on justice: These chapters (5-23) form a treatise complete in
itself, and in length they are like the other three single-book
works. All the passages which point to an early date for this
book occur in this part. The hypothesis,H therefore, is most
interesting and highly probable that perhaps around 306, after
he left Nicomedia and followed Constantine to Gaul, Lac-
tantius wrote a little tract, De iustitia. Some years later, when
he reached the point of writing a fifth book for the Institutes,
he may have made use of the earlier work instead of writing
a fresh treatise, and to this he may have affixed the prefatory
remarks.
There are features which point to an earlier date for Chap-
ters 5 to 23. It has been noted that there is not much evidence
of the usual care and skill in the arrangement of arguments
11 Cf. Lawlor, op. cit.
12 LACTANTIUS

whereon Lactantius shows himself the true Ciceronian. Such

criticism Book V can share with his earliest work, The Work-
manship of God. Perhaps Lactantius himself was conscious
of the lack, because the summary in the Epitome is changed.
Another common element-namely, a proneness to exaggerated
statements-is marked in both The Workmanship of God and
Institutes 5.5-23. Still the two are different. The latter is the
most outspoken, most anti-pagan portion of his works (save
for the pamphlet, De mortibus); the former, on the other hand,
is the least Christian of Lactantius' extant writings. The Work-
manship was written in 303 when the Christians were in very
great danger, while Book V of the Institutes was written
around 306 when he was in Gaul and under the protection of
Constantine, the Caesar, who had made an Edict of Toleration,
or who had at least been showing favor to the Christians from
the outset of his official career. 12
In the Institutes Lactantius both interests us and moves us.
Here we do not find the rough, bitter, aggressive dialectic of a
Tertullian, nor do we meet the sometimes almost despondent
language of a Cyprian. There are fine intuitions, the clair-
voyance of a delicate soul which feels the truth of Christianity
and strives earnestly to make it appeal to the heart. He has a
profound sense of the moral efficaciousness of Christianity in
a world sadly in need of a moral regeneration and he becomes
a stirring preacher of the 'renewing' which it has brought to
the soul of mankind. In giving this message the man trained
in the schools addresses those of his own world. He will meet
the violence of the pagans with the arguments of Christian
certainty.
In opposition to the externalism of a religion of cultus and
bodily acts, Lactantius can assert that it is not how man wor-
ships but what he worships that really matters. No one up to
his time had better seized upon the differences between the
two religions (see 4.3.9 and 5.19.29, for example). The one
insists upon reform of the will to its doctrines of the father-
12 Cf. Holsapple (bibliography) 126.
 INTRODUCTION 13

hood and mastery of God. The other consists of rites in which

the fingers alone have a part. Because of this intuition, though
the major emphasis of his work remained moral, he was able
to effect at the very beginning of the fourth century, a real
summa of the Christian doctrines, containing the cardinal
articles of faith: God, Christ, the Incarnation, miracles, the
Church, and heresies. In places he reached the real foundation
of the spirit of Christianity.
What gives great interest to the study of the Institutes is that
we find in the work very different tendencies intermingled and
confused. For example, his notion of a 'summus deus' is seem-
ingly a commonplace shared with the pagan philosophers. It is
at times almost as if the legitimacy on polytheism were accepted,
and that he believed that an evolution had occurred toward
the recognition of a deus primus or a deus summus. 13 On the
other hand, very often he seems to become almost fanatical in
his ridicule of pagan cults and even the philosophical concepts
of divinity. In some matters he seems to hold on to the legacy
of the past and at the same time to give indications of a new
spirit.
He is severe, too. He condemned art, perfumes, power, kill-
ing (even the death penalty). If God created these objects of
his condemnation, it was so that man might exercise restraint.
Still, he is not sour or bitter in his asceticism. He has no mis-
givings on the lawfulness and the good of marriage, on the
wisdom of flight during persecution (see 6.20). He is a man
of tradition and also of his own times. In the light of this we
must interpret his millennianism, his horror of war, his dis-
dain for business. He was aware of the times, that it was the
moment when the Church was soon to seal the pact with the
Empire. His good sense realized that the system would have
to become more supple and give place to moderation, but his
traditional rigorism resented the idea. Something of this con-
tradiction remained in all of his theological reasonings in the

13 Cf. Pierre Battifol (bibliography) 196ff.

14 LACTANTIUS

Institutes. The work was destined, nevertheless, because of its

pretensions and the authority of its author, to have influence.
In his time it must have aided new converts and strengthened
the faith of waverers, and for all time it reflects the spirit of a
noble age of Christian apologetics.
 BOOK ONE

ON FALSE RELIGION

Chapter 1

m4 HENEVER MEN OF GREAT AND EXCELLENT character gave

themselves completely to a doctrine, they bore what-
ever labor could be expended in despising all things,
even private and public concerns, for the pursuit of searching
after truth. It was their belief that to investigate and learn the
reason of things human and divine was much more splendid
than to cling to the amassing of wealth and the accumulation
of honors; for by these things, since they are fragile and earth-
ly and pertain solely to the cultivation of the body, no one
can be made better; no one can become more just. Those men
truly were most worthy of a knowledge of truth, since they
desired to know a thing of such great worth and in such a
fashion that they might prefer it to all things-for it is known
that certain of them despised their personal concerns and
renounced all pleasures in order that naked and unimpeded
they might pursue virtue alone and uncloaked. And with them
the name and authority of virtue had such great avail that
they judged the reward of the highest good to be in virtue
itself, but they never arrived at that which they wished. At
the same time they spent labor and industry, because truth,
that is, the secret of the supreme God who made all things,
is not able to be comprehended by [human] ability and its
proper senses. Otherwise, there would be no distance between
God and man if human thought could attain to the counsels
15
16 LACTANTIUS

and dispositions of that eternal majesty. But, since it could

not be that the divine plan should become known to man of
himself, God did not allow man seeking the light of wisdom
to be in error any longer and to wander without any effect of
his labor through inextricable darkness. He opened his eyes
then and made the knowledge of truth His gift, so that He
might show that even human wisdom was nothing, and He
pointed out the way of gaining immortality to the erring and
wandering one.
Since few, however, make use of this heavenly benefit and
gift because truth is hidden, wrapped in obscurity, and it is
either despised by the learned because it is in need of suitable
defenders or it is hated by the unlearned because of the
austerity innate in it, which the nature of men, prone to vice, is
not able to endure-for, since bitterness is mingled with vir-
tues, whereas vices are steeped in pleasure, blocked by the
former and beguiled by the latter they are borne headlong,
and deceived by the appearance of good they embrace evils in
place of goods-I thought aid ought to be at hand for these
errors, so that the learned might be directed to true wisdom
and the unlearned to true religion. And this profession ought
to be considered much better, much more useful, more glorious
than that oratory in which we engaged for a long time, and in
which we instructed youth not toward virtue but plainly
toward 'argued' evil. Now we will speak with eloquence much
more rightly about the heavenly precepts with which we may
be able to instruct the minds of men for the worship of the
true majesty, for he does not merit so much from human affairs
who imparts the science of speaking well as he who teaches to
live reverently and innocently. For this reason, philosophers
were held in greater glory among the Greeks than orators. For
they were considered teachers of living rightly, which is far
the more excellent, since to speak well pertains to the few,
but to live well to all.
However, that exercise in imaginary lawsuits did much for
us that with greater eloquence and ease of speaking we now
 BOOK ONE 17

might plead the cause of truth. 1 And although this may be

defended without eloquence, as it has often been defended by
many, it ought to be illustrated and in a certain way asserted
by clarity and splendor of speech so that, both equipped with
its force and adorned by the light of oratory, it may more
potently seep into minds. 2 And so, for this reason we have
arranged this disputation about religion and about divine
things. For, if certain of the great orators-veterans, as it were,
of their profession-have at last, after completing the phases
of their careers, given themselves to philosophy and considered
it the most just rest from labors for them; if they tortured their
minds in the probing of those things which cannot be dis·
covered, so that they seem to have sought for themselves not
so much leisure as its denial and, indeed, to be much more
upset than in the occupation in which they had before been
engaged; by how much more just a right shall I conduct my·
self, as if to some very safe port, to that sacred, true, divine
wisdom in which all things are ready to say, sweet to hear,
easy to understand, and worthy to accept? And if certain pru-
dent men and judges of equity have put forth institutes of
civil law which they have composed, by which suits and con·
tentions of disagreeing citizens are quelled, how much better
and right for us to set divine institutes in writing, in which
we speak not of leaks, or of water to be checked, or of hands
to be joined, but of hope, of life, of salvation, of immortality,
of God, that we may put to rest deadly superstitions and the
basest errors?3
This work we are now beginning under the auspices of your
name, Constantine, 0 greatest of emperors. You are the first of
the Roman princes to have repudiated errors and to have
Here Lactantius states his firm belief in the necessary and propaideutic
role of pagan learning for Christian scholars. It is appropriately placed
in his opening passages of a work in which his intention is the pre·
senting of Christian doctrine to the learned pagan audience in a man-
ner which will be appreciated and understood.
2 Cf. St. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 4.
3 The first address to Constantine, the official dedication of his work,
follows here.
18 LACTANTIUS

come to know and honor the majesty of the one true God.
When that most happy of days dawned for the world, the day
on which the most high God carried you up to the summit of
power, you set forth with a most favorable introduction upon
a princedom salutary and desirable to all, when you brought
back justice which had been overthrown and taken away and
expiated the most foul crime of the other emperors. Because of
this, God will grant you happiness, virtue, and length of days,
so that, even when you are an old man, you may hold the
helm of state with that same justice with which you began to
direct it as a young man, and hand over to your children the
government of the Roman name which you yourself received
from your father.
With the wicked, who are still raging against the just in
other parts of the world,4 the same omnipotent God will make
settlement. He will exact punishment for their crimes so much
the more vehemently as it is the more delayed. For just as He
is the most indulgent Father toward the just, so He is a most
severe judge against the wicked.
In my desire to defend His religion and the divine worship
upon whom should I rather call, before whom should I make
address, if not him through whom justice and wisdom have
been restored to human affairs?
Omitting, then, the authors of this worldly philosophy who
offer nothing of certainty, let us advance upon the right way.
Indeed, if I thought that these were sufficiently fit to be leaders
of living rightly, I myself would follow them, and I would
urge others to follow them. But, since they differ among them-
selves in great disputation and are generally in discord with
themselves, it is apparent that their way is not at all direct,
since they have marked out individual ways for themselves,
each one as he pleased, and they have left great confusion for
those seeking truth. But, since truth has been divinely re-

4 The persecution was still raging under Maximin Daia in the East.
 BOOK ONE 19

vealed to us who have received the pledge 5 of the true religion,

since we follow God as our Teacher of wisdom and Leader of
truth, we summon all without any discrimination either of
sex or of age to heavenly nourishment. For what food is
sweeter to the mind than the knowledge of truth?
For spreading this and for explaining it we have planned
seven volumes, although it is a matter of so immense and al-
most infinite toil that if anyone should wish to expand the
points and investigate them most completely, such a great
supply of material would abound for him that his discussion
would meet neither measure nor end of a book. Therefore, we
will gather everything together briefly, because those things
which we are going to bring forward are so clear and lucid
that it seems to be very strange that truth seems so obscure
to men, and to those men especially who are commonly reck-
oned as wise, or because men are simply going to be instructed
by us, that is, called back from the error in which they are
involved to the straighter way. And if we shall, as I hope, attain
this, we will send them to that richest and fullest source of
doctrine, by the draining and drinking of which they may settle
thirst born of the flesh and extinguish its burning, and every-
thing will be easy for them, ready at hand, and manifest, in a
way that they may not be ashamed for the acquiring of wisdom
to apply the discipline of reading or the patience of hearing.
For many, clinging fast to vain superstitions, grow hard against
manifest truth, not so much because of their religions which
they spread distortedly, though meriting well, as because of
themselves and evilly. Although these possess the right way,
they follow devious turnings; they forsake the level places to
fall through those that are precipitous; they abandon the light
that they may lie blinded and weak in darkness. These ought
5 The word is sacramentum, one of the most interesting in Christian
Latin literature. In classical usage the word was a technical one, with
juridical or military significance. In Christian and later use it came
to mean 'secret: 'mystery: 'doctrine: and finally 'sacrament.' There
is no such theological meaning here. Cf. A. Souter, Glossary of Later
Latin, and A. Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-franrais des aucteurs chretiennes,
s.v. 'sacramentum.'
20 LACTANTIUS

to try not to fight against themselves and to want to liberate

themselves finally from inveterate errors; this they surely will
do once they have examined why they have been born. For
this is the cause of the perversity, ignorance of the self; if a
person shatters this by having come to know the truth, he will
know whither his life ought to be directed and how he should
spend it. I will briefly put together a summary of this knowl-
edge, since no religion ought to be undertaken without philos-
ophy,6 nor should any philosophy be approved without re-
ligion.

Chapter 2

Since the office of explaining the truth has been accepted, I

did not think it so necessary to maintain a principle from that
question which seems to be primary by nature, whether it is
providence which takes care of all things, or whether they have
been made and are carried on fortuitously. The author of this
opinion is Democritus; its establisher, Epicurus. 1 But even
before Protagoras, who called the gods into doubt, and after-
wards Diagoras,2 who later excluded them, and some others
who did not think that the gods existed, what else did they
effect except that there was thought to be no providence? How-
ever, other philosophers, especially the Stoics,3 very sharply
restrained those by teaching that the world could neither have
been made without the divine plan, nor stand unless it were
ruled by the highest reason. Even Marcus Tullius, although
he was a defender of the teaching of the Academics,4 dis-
6 Lactantius uses the word sapientia (wisdom); d. sources in preceding
note.
1 Epicurus, frg. 368.
2 Protagoras of Abdera was one of the earliest and most successful of the
Sophists. His is supposed to be the theory that man is the measure of
all things. Diagoras, a lyric poet of Melos, flourished c. 466 B.C.
3 The Stoics were a Hellenistic sect which stressed duty and believed in
a world soul.
4 This name was given to the major school of philosophers claiming
descent from Plato. His teaching became associated with the place of
the lecture, the Academy in Athens.
 BOOK ONE 21

coursed much and often about providence as the governor of

things, confirming the arguments of the Stoics and adding
many new ones of his own; he did this in all the books of his
philosophical writing, especially those on the nature of the
gods. Nor was it difficult actually to refute the lies of a few
men agreeing in perverseness by the testimony of peoples and
nations not disagreeing in this one thing. For there is no one
so unformed, so untouched by civilized custom, who, when he
raises his eyes toward the sky, even though he does not know
by the providence of what god all this which he beholds is
governed, does not understand that there is something, how-
ever, from the very magnitude, motion, arrangement, con-
stancy, utility, beauty, and proportion of nature, and that
this could not be possible if it were not for the fact that it is
established in a marvelous manner and has been fashioned
by some greater plan. And for us, certainly, it is exceedingly
easy to follow this side as fully as we please. Since the matter
has been much discussed, however, by philosophers, and since
those who would do away with providence seem to have been
sufficiently answered by artful and eloquent men, and since
it is necessary for us to treat of the skill of divine providence
in a scattered fashion throughout this work which we have
undertaken, let us pass over for the present this question which
so coheres to the others that there is nothing which we can
discuss that is not at the same time a discussion of providence.

Chapter 3

Let the beginning of our work, therefore, be that consequent

topic which follows as a second question: whether the world
is ruled by the power of one god or of many? No one who
truly has a relish for reason and reflects within himself would
think that it is not one who has both established all things
and who governs them with that same power with which He
22 LACTANTIUS

established them. For what need is there of many for sustaining

the government of the world? Unless, perhaps, we will think,
if there are many, that each single one will have less of strength
and power. Actually, this is what they do who maintain that
there are many; because it is necessary for them to be weak,
inasmuch as each individual one is not able to sustain the
governance of such a great mass without the aid of the others.
However, God, who is eternal Mind, is by all means in every
way perfect and consummate in power. Since this is true, it is
necessary that He be one.
Power or absolute excellence retains its own proper strength.
This, however, must be considered as complete, from which
nothing can withdraw; it is perfect, to which nothing can
accrue. Who would doubt that that king is most powerful
who has dominion of the whole world? Nor is it without cause;
since all things which are everywhere are his, since to him
alone all forces are collected from all sides. But, if several
should share the world, each certainly will have less wealth
and less strength, since each one contains himself within a
prescribed portion. In the same manner the gods, if there be
many, will be less powerful, some having just so much in them-
selves, and others having just so much. The nature of power,
however, is to be perfect in that in which it resides as a whole,
rather than in that in which there is a small part of the whole.
God, then, if He is perfect, as He ought to be, cannot be unless
He is one, that everything might be in Him. Virtues and
powers of gods, therefore, must necessarily be weaker, because
as much will be lacking to each one as there will be in the
others. Hence, the more there are, so much the lesser will
they be.
What of the fact that the greatest power of things and the
divine strength cannot be divided even once? Whatever par-
ticipates in division must of necessity take destruction, also.
And, since destruction is far from God, because He is incor-
ruptible and eternal, it follows that the divine power cannot
be divided.
 BOOK ONE 23

God is One, therefore, since it is possible for there to be

nothing else which may receive so much power; yet, those who
think that there are many gods say that they have shared their
functions among themselves. About all of these we will have a
discussion in proper places. Meanwhile, I devote myself to
that which pertains to the present place. If they have arranged
their duties among themselves, the thing is revolved to the
same place, that not one of them is able to suffice for all. There-
fore, he will not be perfect who is unable, with the others
ceasing, to govern all. So it is that for ruling the world there
is need of one with perfect power rather than of many with
weakness. He who thinks that this so great a magnitude cannot
be ruled by One is mistaken; nor does he understand how
great is the force and power of the divine majesty, if he be-
lieves that the single God who could make the world could
not rule the same world which He made. But, if he conceives
in his mind how great is the immensity of this divine work,
and if he considers that this immensity, although it was
nothing before, has been conflated, however, from nothing by
the power and plan of God, a work which could not be begun
and completed except by One, then he will understand that
it is much easier for what has been established by One to be
ruled by One.
Perhaps someone may say that a work so immense as that of
the world could not even be fashioned unless by many. How-
ever many he may make them, however great he may consider
them, whatever of magnitude, of power, of strength, and of
majesty he should have posited in the many, I confer all this
upon One, and I say that it all rests in One, so that there is
in Him as much of those things as it is possible neither to say
nor to fathom. And since in this matter we fail both in per-
ception and in speech, because the human soul is not capable
of such great light of intelligence, and because a mortal tongue
is not capable of the explanation of such great things, it is
necessary for us to understand and also to explain this very
inability.
24 LACTANTIUS

Again I see what may be said to the contrary, that those

several are such as we would have the One. But this can in
no way be, because the power of each separate one cannot
progress farther than to the powers of the others coming to
meet it. It is necessary that each one be not able to transgress
its own limits or, if there should have been a transgression,
to expel the other from its territory. They who think that
there are many gods do not see that it can happen that they
might wish for different things, whence an argument and
quarrel might arise among them, as Homer has depicted the
gods warring among themselves, since some wished Troy to
be taken and others opposed it.
So, it is necessary for the world to be governed by the will
of One. Unless the power of the separate parts were referred
to one providence, the whole itself could not stand, each one
having no care beyond what pertains to him properly; just
as not even the military system could stand unless it had one
leader and ruler. If in one army there were as many generals
as there are legions, cohorts, wedges, and wings, in the first
place, a battle line could not be drawn up, with each one re-
fusing the danger; nor could it be ruled or restrained easily,
since all could make use of their own plans and do more harm
than good by their diversity. Thus in this empire of the nature
of things, unless there were One to whom the care of the sum
of all were referred, all things would be destroyed and fall to
pieces.
Moreover, to say that the world is governed by the rule of
many is comparable to someone's saying that there are many
minds in one body; since there are many and varied functions
of the members, in order that separate minds may be believed
to rule the separate senses of the body. Likewise, there are
many affections whereby we are accustomed to be moved either
to anger or to desire or to joy or to fear or to pity, that just
as many minds may be thought to operate in all of these.
Certainly, if anyone should say this, he would seem to have
not even that [mind] which is one. But if in one body of such
 BOOK ONE 25

great component parts one mind possesses control and is intent

upon all the operations at the same time, why should anyone
think that the world could not be ruled by one, that it could
be ruled by several? And because those advocates of the gods
understand this, they so claim that they are in charge of the
separate parts that there may be one outstanding ruler. Now,
then, the others will not be gods, but satellites and ministers
whom that one, the greatest and most powerful of all, shall
have put in charge of those duties that they may serve his com-
mand and his approvals. If all are not equal, they are not,
therefore, all gods, for it is not possible for that which obeys
and that which rules to be the one same thing. If God is the
name of supreme power, He ought to be incorruptible, perfect,
impassible, subject to nothing. So they are not gods whom
necessity forces to obey the one greatest God. Since they who
think thus are deceived not without reason, we will reveal the
cause of this error a little later. Now we will prove the unity of
divine power by testimonies.

Chapter 4

The prophets, who in former times were many, preached

one God; they declared the One, indeed, those who, filled with
the spirit of the one God, uttered things that were to be with
equal and agreeable voice. Still, those who have no part with
truth do not think that these ought to be believed; they say
that those voices were not divine but human. Of course, since
they were making a heralding about the one God, they were
either insane or deceitful. But we see that their prophecies
have been fulfilled or are being fulfilled daily, and divination,
harmonizing into one thought, shows that they were not mad.
For who of disturbed mind would be able to not only foretell
future things, but even utter coherent things? Were they de-
ceitful, then, who uttered such things? What would be so far
removed from them as the technique of deceiving, since they
26 LACTANTIUS

restrained others from every fraud? They were sent by God for
this reason, that they might be both heralds of His majesty
and correctors of human distortion. Besides, the desire of
feigning and lying belongs to those who seek wealth, who
desire gains-something far removed from those holy men. For
they so performed the duty delegated to them that they labored
bereft of all things necessary for the safeguarding of life, not
only in regard to the future, but even as far as the present was
concerned, being content with the food that should exist at
the moment, food which God had supplied. And these had
not only no gain, but actually torture and death. The precepts
of justice are bitter to the vicious and those who live evilly.
And so they whose sins were rebuked and forbidden killed
them after they had tortured them most cruelly. Therefore,
from those from whom the desire of gain was absent there was
absent, also, the desire and cause of deceit. What of the fact
that some of them were leaders or even kings, upon whom
suspicion of cupidity and evil cannot fall, yet through inspira-
tion they made the proclamation of the single God the same
as the others?l

Chapter 5

But let us pass by forthwith the testimonies of the prophets,

lest the proof should seem to be not appropriate, since it is
from those who are not credited anyway. Let us come to the
writers, and let us cite as witnesses to the proof of the truth
the very same writers whom they are accustomed to use against
us-I speak of the poets and the philosophers. From these it is
necessary that we prove one God, not because they have
possessed a knowledge of the truth, but because the power of
truth itself is so great that no one can be so blind but that he
sees the divine brightness directing or inspiring him with
lights. The poets, therefore, even though they honored the
I The allusion is to David and Solomon, who are acclaimed as Israel's
greatest leaders, even from a purely secular standpoint.
 BOOK ONE 27

gods with their songs and extolled their exploits with the high-
est praises, confessed very often, nonetheless, that all things
were contained and ruled by one spirit or mind. Orpheus,1 who
is the oldest of the poets and an equal of the gods themselves,
since it is handed down that he sailed among the Argonauts
with the Sons of Tyndarus 2 and Hercules, calls the true and
great god 'the first-born,' because before him nothing was
made, but by him all things are generated. He names this same
one 'the Appearer,' because, when there was as yet nothing, he
first appeared and arose from infinity. And since he was not
able to conceive of his origin and nature in his mind, he said
that he was born of the immense air: 'The first-born, Phaethon,
son of the extended air,' for he did not have anything more
which he could say. This one, he says, is the parent of all the
gods, for whose sake he established the heavens and looked
ahead for their children so that they would have a common
dwelling place and abode: 'He built for mortals an imperish-
able home.'3 So, with nature and reason as guides, he under-
stood that power to be most pre-eminent, the establisher of
heaven and earth. He was not able to say that Jove was the
principle of all things, who was begotten of Saturn, nor
Saturn himself who was regarded as born of the sky; he did
not dare, though, to constitute the sky as though the first god,
because he saw it to be an element of the world, which itself
lacked an author. This reasoning led him to that prime-
begotten god to whom he assigned and attributed principality.
Homer could give us nothing which pertains to the truth; he
described human things rather than divine. Hesiod could, who
encompassed the generation of the gods in the work of one
book, but he gave nothing, nonetheless, taking his 'beginning
of things' not from a god-establisher, but from chaos, which is
1 Orpheus, the founder of Orphism, is generally believed to have been a
Thracian. His fame is due to the poems in which the Orphic doctrines
are set forth; cf. fragments 57 and 75 of Orphica, ed. E. Abel (1885).
This work is superseded by Fragmenta Orphicorum, ed. O. Kern (1922).
2 Castor and Pullux, the Dioscuri. Their cult among the Romans was
an ancient one.
3 Cf. Kern, op. cit.
28 LACTANTIUS

a confused mass of rude and formless matter. He ought to have

explained before chaos itself, whence, when, how it had begun
to be or to be determined. 4 Just as all things have been dis-
posed, arranged, and produced by some artificer, so it is cer-
tainly necessary for the very matter to have been made by
someone. Who, then, made this but God to whose power all
things are subject? But that writer avoided this conclusion
while he shuddered at unlearned truth. He did not pour forth
that song on Helicon by the inspiration of the Muses, as he
wished it to seem; it came after he had meditated and prepared
for it.
Maro, the foremost of our own poets, was not far from the
truth; his words about the supreme God whom he named
"Mind and Spirit" are these:
Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,
The moon's pale orb, the starry train,
Are nourished by a Soul
A Spirit, whose celestial flame
Glows in each member of the frame,
And stirs the mighty whole. 5
and lest anyone should be unaware, perhaps as to who the
'Spirit' was who had so much power, in another place he said:
'For the Deity pervades all lands, the tracts of sea and depth
of heaven; the flocks, the birds and men, and all the race of
beasts, each at its birth derive their slender lives from Him.'6
Ovid, too, at the beginning of an exceptional work acknowl-
edges without any dissimulation that the world was fashioned
by God, whom he calls 'the Maker of the world, the Artisan of
things.'7 And if Orpheus or these poets of ours had defended
what they felt under the direction of nature constantly, they
would have held the same doctrine which we follow with the
comprehension of truth.
4 Cf. Hesiod, Theogony, 116 1.22.35.
5 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid 6.724·727; Sa1vian, De gubernatione Dei 1.1.4;
Isidore, Origines 8.16.9.
6 Vergi1, Georgics 4.221-224.
7 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.57-79.
 BOOK ONE 29

But so much for the poets. Let us come to the philosophers,

whose authority is weightier and judgment more certain, since
they are believed to have applied themselves not to imaginary
matters but to the investigation of truth. Thales of Miletus,
who was one of the Seven Sages and who is considered the first
of all to have inquired into natural causes, said that it was
water from which all things were born, but that God was the
mind which formed everything from water. s Thus he posited
the matter of things in moisture, but he established the prin-
ciple and cause of their coming to be in God.
Pythagoras9 thus defined what God is: the mind diffused
through all the parts of the world and visiting every nature
from which all the living things which are born take life.
Anaxagoras 10 says that God is an infinite mind which is
moved of itself alone. Antisthenes l l says that there are many
popular gods, indeed, but that there is only one natural One,
that is, the Artificer of the entire whole. Cleanthes and An-
aximenes 12 say that air is the supreme God to whose opinion
our poet Vergil gives assent: 'Then air, the omnipotent father,
with fecund rains descended into the bosom of the joyful
spouse and the great one mixed with the great body nourishes
all offspring.'13
Chrysippus 14 holds that God is 'natural Force' endowed
with divine reason; sometimes he holds that He is 'divine

8 Cf. Cicero, De natUTa deorurn 1.lO.25. Thales of Miletus (c. 624 B.C.)
was the founder of the fIrst Grcck school of philosophy.
9 Cf. Cicero, ibid. 11.27; also Salvian, 1.1.2. Pythagoras, born at Samos
(c. 580 B.C.), taught the transmigration of souls and discovered im-
portant numerical relations.
lO Ibid. 11.26. Anaxagoras, an Ionian of the sixth century B.C., taught
that there was a supreme directing Intelligence over all things.
11 Ibid. 13.32. Antisthenes, a pupil and friend of Socrates, founded the
Cynic school of philosophy at Athens.
12 Ibid. 14.37, lO.26. Cleanthes succeeded Zen a as head of the Stoics (who
flourished from 330 to 231 B.C.); Anaximencs was of the school of
Mi1etus in the sixth century B.C.
13 Georgics 2.325·327.
14 Cicero, De natura deorurn 1.15.39. Chrysippus was another immediate
successor of Zeno in the Stoic school.
30 LACTANTIUS

Necessity'; Zeno I5 also holds that He is 'divine and natural

Law.' Although the opinion of all these is uncertain, it tends,
nevertheless, to the same point: namely, that they agree that
Providence is one. For, whether it be nature, or air, or reason
or mind, or fatal necessity, or divine law, or whatever else
you might term it, it is the same thing as that which we call
God. Nor does any diversity of names stand in the way, since
all things are revolved to one by that very signification.
Aristotle,16 although he disagrees with himself and may both
declare and affirm things contradictory to themselves, on the
whole testifies that there is one mind in charge of the universe.
Plato,!7 who is judged the wisest of them all, plainly and
clearly defends a monarchiaJ and he does not name it 'air' or
'reason' or 'nature,' but he names it, as it is, God. By Him
this perfect and wonderful world has been fashioned. Cicero,
following him and imitating him in many works, frequently
acknowledges a god, and calls Him 'supreme' in those books
which he wrote on laws. IS He argues that the world is gov-
erned by him, when he discourses on the nature of the gods in
this way: 'Nothing is more excellent than God. By Him, there-
fore, it is necessary that the world be ruled. To no nature, then,
is God obedient or subject. He Himself governs every nature.'
Now, what this God is he defines in the Consolatio: 'Nor, in-
deed, can God Himself whom we understand be understood in
another manner, unless the mind were loose, as one might
say, and freed, segregated from all mortal substance, observing
and moving all things.'19
Annaeus Seneca, also, who of the Romans, at any rate, was
the keenest Stoic, often speaks of the highest God with meet

15 Ibid. 1.14.36. Zeno, regarded as a Phoenician, founded the Stoic school

and became the inspiration for many thinkers of Graeco-Roman times.
16 Ibid. 13.33.
17 Ibid. 12.30. Plato was supreme among ancient thinkers during the
early stages of Christianity. At the time of Lactantius, there was the
full flowering of the Neo-Platonic teachings of Porphyry. The Institutes
have been compared with the latter's work.
18 Cf. Cicero, De Zegibus 1.7.22.
19 Ibid. 2.30.77; cf. also Salvian 1.1.3,4.
 BOOK ONE 31

praise! 'Vhen he was discoursing on untimely death, he said:

'Do you not understand the authority and majesty of your
judge, ruler of the world and of heaven, God of all the gods,
from whom those very powers which we adore and cherish
singly are suspended?'20 And in the Exhortations he similarly
says: '''When he combined the first fundaments of the most
beautiful mass, and arranged this, than which nature knew
nothing greater, nothing better, so that all things might be
with their own leaders, although He Himself had extended
Himself through the whole body, however God begot min-
isters of His power.'21 And how many other things, similar to
our way of thinking, he uttered about God! I am postponing
them now because they are more suitable for other sections.
It now is sufficient to show that men of the highest genius have
touched upon truth and have almost possessed it, except that
custom, smeared with evil opinions, has twisted and seized
them, whereby they believed that there also were other gods,
and those things which God made for the use of man, as though
they had been endowed with sense, they believed should be
regarded and worshiped as gods.

Chapter 6

Now let us pass on to the divine testimonies. First I will

bring forth one which is like the divine, both because of its
very great antiquity, and because he whom I will mention
has been raised among the gods. In Cicero, Gaius Cotta,1 the
pontifex, disputing with the Stoics on religious points and
on the variety of opinions which they usually have about the
gods, in order, after the custom of the Academicians, to make
20 Cf. Seneca, Consolatio frg. 13; d. also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations
1.27.66: Isidore, Origines 8.6.19.
21 Cf. Seneca, frg. 26.16. Lucius Annacus Seneca (4 B.C ... A.D. 65) was the
mentor of Nero's early days.
A great orator in Cicero's De natura deorum and De oratore who
served as consul in 75 B.C. and later as proconsul in Gaul.
32 LACTANTIUS

all things uncertain, says that there are five Mercuries. After
having numbered four in order, he shows that 'the fifth was
that one by whom Argus was slain and for that reason he had
escaped into Egypt and had bestowed laws and letters upon
the Egyptians. The Egyptians call him "Thoyth," from whom
the first month of their year, September, received its name.'2
This is he who founded the town which even now is called
in Greek the 'city of Mercury; and the Pheneatans cherish him
in a religious manner. And even though he was a man, he was
most ancient and well instructed in every kind of learning-
to such a degree that his knowledge of the arts and of all
other things gave to him the cognomen or epithet Trismegis-
tus. 3 He wrote books-many, indeed, pertaining to the knowl-
edge of divine things-in which he vouches for the majesty of
the supreme and single God and he calls Him by the same
names which we use: Lord and Father. 4 Lest anyone should
seek His name, he says that He is 'without a name; since He
does not need the proper signification of a name because of
His very unity, so to speak. These words are his: 'the one God;
'the One not needing a name,' 'He is the One without a name.'
God, therefore, has no name because He is the only one,5 and
there is no need of particular designation except when a
multitude requires distinction so that you may designate each
one character by his own mark and appellation. For God,
though, because He is always one, the proper name is God.
It remains to present the testimonies of the oracles and the
sacred verses, which are much more specific. Perhaps those
against whom we are taking this stand think that poets and
philosophers, as though fashioning vain deceits, should not be
believed because they could be mistaken and because they
were men themselves. Marcus Varro-and there was no one
among the Greeks more learned than he-when he spoke about
the quindecimviri in Divine Things, which he wrote to Caius
2 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 3.22.56; Isidore, Origines 5.1.2.
3 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.49.
4 Cf. Pseudo-Apuleius, Asclepius 20.
5 Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 18.9,10.
 BOOK ONE 33

Caesar, says: 'The Sibylline Books were not the work of one
Sibyl, but are called by the name, Sibylline, because all women
seers of the Sibyl have been called by the ancients, either from
the name of the one at Delphi, or from the announcing of the
counsels of the gods.'6 In the Aeolic dialect they say siolls for
gods, not theolls, and counsel is not bOlllen but bOllliin. So it
has been said to be Sibylla) as though theobollle. And there
have been ten Sibyls, and he has enumerated these under the
authors who have written about each one. The first was of the
Persae; Nicanor makes mention of her, he who wrote the ex-
ploits of Alexander of Macedon. The second was the Libyssan,
whom Euripides recalled in the prologue to Lamia. The third
was the Delphic, of whom Chrysippus speaks in that book
which he composed on divination. The fourth was the Cim-
merian Sibyl in Italy, whom Naevius in the books on the Punic
War and Pi so in his Annals mention. The Erythraean is the
fifth, and Apollodorus of Erythraea affirms that she was its
citizen and that she had prophesied to Greeks seeking Ilium
both that Troy would perish and that Homer would write
falsehoods. The sixth is the Samian Sibyl, of whom Eratosthe-
nes records that he had found written mention in the ancient
annals of the Samians. The seventh, the Cumaean, by name
Amalthea (called by others Heraphile or Demophile), is she
who brought the nine books to King Tarquinius Priscus. She
demanded for them 300 philippei, and when the king, spurn-
ing the high price, ridiculed the woman's madness, she burned
three books in his sight and demanded the same price for the
remaining ones. Tarquin thought the woman was becoming
more and more insane. Finally, when she persevered in her
demand for the same price after three others had been de-
stroyed, the king relented and bought the three that were
left for the 300 gold pieces. Their number was afterwards in-
creased, when the Capitol was rebuilt, because from all the
cities both Italic and Greek, especially the Erythraean ones,
6 Cf. St. Jerome, Advenus Iovinianum 1; Isidore, Origines 8.18; St.
Augustine, De civitate Dei 13.23.
34 LACTANTIUS

whatever existed in relation to the name of any Sibyl was col-

lected and brought to Rome. The eighth was the Hellespon-
tian, born in Troy, in the village of Marmessos near the town
of Gergithium, who, Heraclides of Pontus writes, lived in the
time of Solon and Cyrus. The ninth was a Phrygian who
prophesied at Ancyra. The tenth, Albunea by name, was the
Tiburtine who is reverenced at Tibur as a goddess, near the
banks of the river Anienis, in whose depths her image is said
to have been found, holding a book in her hand. 7
The songs of all of these Sibyls are reported to be and are
regarded to be (especially those of the Cumean Sibyl, whose
books are hidden from the Romans and may not be beheld
by anyone except the quindecimvirs), and, in fact, are the in-
dividual books of individual seers. These, because they are in-
scribed with the name Sibyl, are believed to be the utterance
of one; they are confused and not distinct, and it is impossible
to assign individuality, except to the Erythraean one who has
inserted her own real name in her song and has declared that
she is to be called Erythraea-although she came from Baby-
10n. S We, too, say 'Sibyl' without distinction, wherever we have
to make use of their testimonies.
All these Sibyls, however, proclaim one God. This is especial-
ly so of the Erythraean one, who is held to be more renowned
and more noble than the others. That very careful writer,
Fenestella,9 speaking about the quindecimvirs, says that 'when
the Capitol was restored, Gaius Curio, the consul, made a
motion to the Senate that envoys be sent to Erythras to bring
back to Rome the songs of the Sibyl gained by conquest. P.
Gabinius, M. Otacilius, and L. Valerius were, therefore, sent
out and brought to Rome about a thousand verses written
down by private citizens.' We have shown above that Varro

7 This section of Lactantius is one of the earliest sources on the whole

question of the Sibyls. Cf. also St. Augustine's treatment in the City of
God and Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Sibyl, Cumaea, etc.
8 Oracula Sibylla 3.808-813.
9 A Roman historical writer, whose Annales had a high reputation as
authoritative and documentary; he died in A.D. 20.
 BOOK ONE 35

said the same. Among these verses which the ambassadors

brought to Rome are these testimonies about one God: 'The
one God, who alone rules, exceedingly great, unbegotten.'lO
This is the one supreme God who made the sky and marked
it with lights: 'But God alone, the one ruler of all, who has
made the sky, the sun, and the stars, the metal-bearing earth,
and waves of the water of the sea.'ll Since He alone is the
Maker of the world and the Fashioner of its parts, both those
on whom it rests or which are in it, this provides testimony
that He alone ought to be worshiped. 'Himself alone is the one
being to be worshiped, He who is the only everlasting One and
established from eternity.'12
Another Sibyl, whichever one it is, when she stated that she
bore the voice of God to men, said this: 'For I am the one
only God, and there is no other.'13
Now, I would follow out the testimonies of the others if
these were not sufficient and if I were not saving them for
more opportune sections. But, since we are defending the cause
of truth among those who in their aberrations from the truth
serve false religions, what kind of proof against them should
we apply rather than that we vanquish them with the testimon-
ies of their own gods?

Chapter 7

Apollo, whom they consider more divine than the others and
especially oracular, when residing at Colophon, where I be-
lieve he had migrated from Delphi, drawn by the delightful-
ness of Asia, to someone inquiring who or what 'God' was,
made answer in twenty-one verses, beginning: 'Self-produced,
untaught, without a mother, unshaken, a name not even to be

10 Frg. 1.7; d. Theophi1us, Ad Autolycum ll2C.

11 Frg. 2.3ff.; cf. ibid. ll3E.
12 Frg. 1.15,16; cf. ibid. 112D.
13 Frg.7.377.
36 LACTANTIUS

comprised in word, dwelling in fire-this is God; and we his

messengers are a slight portion of God.'!
Who can imagine that this is said of Jupiter, who had both
a mother and a name? What of the fact that that Mercurius
Termaximus, whom I mentioned above, not only calls God
'ametora' [without a mother], as Apollo does, but even calls
him 'apatora' [without a father], because there is no origin of
any kind for him? For He cannot have been generated from
anyone who Himself has generated everything.
I have explained sufficiently, I believe, by proofs and have
strengthened by testimonies that which is clear enough of
itself, that there is one ruler of the world: one Father, one
Lord-God. But perhaps someone may ask us that very same
thing which Cicero's Hortensius asks: 'If god is one only, what
solitude can be blessed?'2 as though we, because we say that
God is one, should say that He is deserted and solitary. He has
ministers, of course, whom we call angels. And it is true, as
I related above, and which Seneca has said in his Exhortations.
that 'God had produced ministers of His power.'3 Now, these
are neither gods, nor do they wish to be called or to be wor-
shiped [as gods], inasmuch as they do nothing except the com-
mand of God. Nor, however, are they those who are com-
monly worshiped as gods, the number of whom is both slight
and definite, but if those worshipers of god think that they
are worshiping those very same beings whom we call the
ministers, there is no cause why they should hold envy toward
us who say that there is one God and deny many. If a multi-
tude delights them, we do not say that these are twelve or 365,
as Orpheus did,4 but we say that they are innumerable. We
disclose their errors in a different way, those who would
make their gods so few. Let them discover, however, by what
name they ought to be called, lest they violate the true God
whose name they set forth while they attribute it to several.
1 Aglaopha (ed. Lobeck) 1.458.
2 Cicero, frg. 30.
3 Seneca, frg. 26.
4 Cf. Theophilus, Ad Autolycum 117E; Lobeck, op. cit. 1.364.
 BOOK ONE 37

Let them have faith in their own Apollo, who by that same
response whereby he took away the chief power from Jupiter,
also took away from the other gods their name. His third
verse shows that the ministers of God ought not to be called
gods, but angels. Of himself, indeed, he lied, because, although
he was one of the daimons} he included himself among the
angels of God. Then, in other responses, he acknowledged that
he was a demon. For, when he was asked how he wished to be
besought, he answered: '0, all-wise one, all-learned, versed in
many skills, hear, 0 demon.' At another time, when upon re-
quest he uttered an imprecation against the Sminthian Apollo,
he began with this verse: '0 harmony of the world, light-
bearer, all-wise demon.' What, then, remains, except that by
his own confession he lies subject to the stripes and punish-
ment of the true and everlasting God? For, in still another
response he has spoken thus: 'The demons who go about the
earth and about the sea without weariness are subdued beneath
the divine scourge.'6
We will discuss both kinds in Book 2.7 In the meantime, it
is enough for us that, while he wishes to honor himself and
place himself in heaven, he has declared, that which the matter
at hand holds, how they ought to be called who always stand
before God.
Let men, then, recall themselves from errors, and when these
depraved religions have been cast aside, let them recognize
their Father and Lord, whose strength cannot be gauged, whose
magnitude cannot be perceived, whose beginning cannot be
comprehended. When to Him the intention and acumen and
memory of the human mind shall have advanced, all ways, as
it were, reduced and consumed, it stops, it holds fast, it is
eclipsed, and there is nothing farther to which it can advance.
But, because it is not possible for anything to become except
5 Plutarch discusses daimona in his Moralia; they were powers or in-
dwelling spirits, originally associated with the gods, and later used to
refer to man's fate or guiding spirit.
6 These are Delphic responses; d. Lobeck, op. cit.
7 Cf. he low, 2.14-16.
38 LACTANTIUS

that which at sometime began to exist, it is a consequence that,

since there was nothing before Him, He Himself was produced
of Himself before all things; and, therefore, He is called by
Apollo 'autophues: by the Sibyl 'autogenes' and 'agenetos' and
'apoietos.'s Seneca, a clever man, saw this in the Exhortations.
'We,' he said, 'are dependent on someone else. Therefore we
look to someone to whom we owe what is best in us. Another
brought us into being, another instructed us: God Himself
made Himself.'9

Chapter 8

By these testimonies, therefore, so many and so significant,

there is proof that the world is governed by the power and
providence of one God, and 'His strength and majesty are so
great,' Plato says in the Timaeus, 'that no one can either con-
ceive of it in his mind or express it in words, since the power
is so exceeding and inestimable.'! Now, may anyone question
whether anything is difficult or impossible to a God who has
devised such great and such magnificent works in His prov-
idence, who has established them by His strength, who has
perfected them in plan, who even now, moreover, sustains
them by His spirit and governs them by His power, who is un-
fathomable, ineffable and sufficiently known to no one other
than Himself? Whence, when thinking and meditating so often
about such great majesty, those people who cultivate gods
sometimes appear to me to be so blind, so unreasonable, so
senseless, so little different from the dumb animals in imagin-
ing that those born of the union of a man and a woman could
have possessed something of majesty and divine strength, since
the Erythraean Sibyl says: 'It is not possible for a god to be
8 The power or effect of the Greek cannot be secured in translation:
'self-produced, self·begotten, unbegotten, unmade.' This section is a
beautiful expression of sound philosophical and theological principles.
9 Seneca, frg. 15.
1 Minucius Felix, Octavius 6.19.14; cf. Plato, Timaeus.
 BOOK ONE 39

fashioned from the parts of a man and a woman.'2 And if this

is true-as it is-then it is clear that Hercules, Apollo, Liber,
Mercury, and Jupiter himself were men like the rest, since
they were born of the two sexes. But what, indeed, is so far
removed from God as that work which He Himself assigned
to mortals for the propagation of offspring, and which, without
corporal substance, cannot exist at all?
If the gods, therefore, are immortal and eternal, what need
have they of another sex? That they might have offspring, I
suppose. 'Vhat need have they, even, of offspring, since those
who are always going to be do not need any succession? For,
certainly in men and in other animals, the diversity of sex and
coition and generation have no reason other than that all
species of living things (since by the condition of their mor-
tality they will perish) may be preserved by succession in turn.
But for God, who is everlasting, neither sex nor succession is
necessary.
Someone will say that this is so 'in order that He may have
ministers or those over whom He may exert sway!' But what
need is there of the female sex, since God, who is omnipotent,
as He is called, can procreate sons without the employment and
operation of woman? For, if He has granted this to certain
tiny animals, that 'They should gather offspring for them-
selves with their mouths from leaves and sweet herbs,'3 why
should anyone think that God Himself could not beget off-
spring except through union with another sex? No one is so
lacking in awareness but that he knows that those whom the
unskilled and foolish consider and adore as gods were mortals.
'How then,' someone will say, 'were they believed to be gods?'
No doubt because they were very great kings and extremely
powerful; and because of the merits of their virtues or gifts or
the arts they discovered, since they were dear to those whom
they ruled, they were enshrined in memory. If anyone doubts

2 Frg. 2.1.2; Theophilus. Ad Autolycum 113B.

3 Vergil, Georgics 4.200,201.
40 LACTANTIUS

this, let him consider their exploits and the things they did; all
these both the poets and historians of old have handed down.

Chapter 9

Hercules, who because of his strength is regarded as the

most famous and as a sort of Africanus among the gods, has
befouled with outrages, adulteries, and lusts (has he not?)
the whole earth which he is said to have passed through and
cleansed. This is not surprising, since he was born of the
adultery of Alcmena. 1 What traces of divine nature could there
have been in one who, himself enslaved by his own vices,
marred males and females alike with infamy, corruption, and
disregard of all laws? Certainly the deeds which he performed
should not be judged great and marvelous, so that they would
seem to be attributed to divine powers. Why is it so mag-
nificent if he overcame a lion and a boar, if he shot birds with
arrows, if he removed a royal stable, if he conquered a virago
and took away her belt, if he killed wild horses along with
their master? They are deeds of a strong man, but still of a
man. Whatever he overcame was fragile and mortal. 'For there
is no power so great: as the orator says, 'which cannot be
weakened and broken by iron and strength. To conquer the
spirit and to restrain wrath are the marks of the most strong.
These he did not do, nor could he ever. I do not compare the
one who does these with the greatest men; I judge him very
much like a god.'2
I would wish that he had added instances of his lust, luxury,
desire, and insolence, so that he might complete the excellence
of him whom he judged like a god. Surely, he who subdues a
lion is not to be considered stronger than he who subdues

1 Zeus had disguised himself as Amphitryon when he defiled Alcmena.

the mother of Hercules.
2 Cicero, Pro Marcello 3.8.
 BOOK ONE 41

anger, the wild beast shut up within himself; nor is he who

has felled the most rapacious birds stronger than he who curbs
the most avid desires; nor he who conquers the warrior-
Amazon than he who conquers lust which vanquishes shame
and fame; nor he who has cleaned the filth from a stable than
he who has driven vices out of his heart, which are the more
pernicious because they are one's own peculiar evils, rather
than those which could be escaped from or avoided. 3 From
this we conclude that that man alone ought to be judged
strong who is temperate and controlled and just.
If anyone considers what are the works of God, he will re-
gard as ridiculous all these things which the silliest of men
marvel at. Those things are measured not by divine powers,
of which they are ignorant, but by the weakness of their own
resources. No one has denied the point that Hercules was a
servant, not only of Eurystheus, a king, which may seem hon-
orable to a certain extent, but also to an unchaste woman,
Omphala, who used to bid him sit at her feet, clothed in her
garments, performing appointed tasks. Detestable baseness!
But pleasure was considered of value. '""\!\That,' someone will
say, 'do you think that you should believe in the poets?' Why
should I not think so? For it is not Lucilius who relates such
things, or Lucian, who has not spared gods and men, but those
poets who sang the praises of the gods most powerfully. \'\Thom
shall we believe, if we do not have faith in those who praise
them? Let him who thinks that these lie present other authors
whom we may believe, who may teach us who these gods are,
how they are gods, whence they have sprung, what their force
is, what their number, what their power, what is admirable in
them, what worthy of devotion, what mystery-in short, what
is more certain and more true. He will give none. Therefore,
let us believe those who have spoken, not that they might
blame, but that they might praise. So he sailed with the Ar-
gonauts, and he stormed Troy, enraged at Laomedon because
he had been denied a reward from the latter for his daughter's
3 Cf. Pseudo-Seneca, De moribus 81; Proverbia 49.
42 LACTANTIUS

safety. From this the time that he lived is apparent. Excited by

rage and madness, this same figure slew his wife together with
his children-and men think him a god! Philoctetes, his heir,
did not think so, indeed, for he placed a torch under him as
he was about to be burned, and he saw his limbs and sinews
seared and scattered. He buried his bones and ashes on the
Oetean Mount, and for this service he received his arrows.

Chapter 10

Take Aesculapius, too, himself born of Apollo, but not with-

out disgrace. What else worthy of divine honors did he do
except that he healed Hippolytus? He certainly achieved a
rather famous death, because he merited to be struck by a
god's lightning. In his Famous Men, Tarquitius, discussing
him, says that he was 'born of uncertain parents, exposed and
found by hunters, nourished on dog's milk, and given to
Chiron, that he learned medicine, and, although he was a
Messenian, dwelt at Epidarus.'l Cicero also adds that he was
buried at Cynosurae.
What about his father, Apollo? Was it not because of a
passion which inflamed him that he most shamefully pastured
the flock of another and constructed walls for Laomedon, led
on by a reward which could have been refused with impunity?2
And did not the perfidious king learn from him first how to
deny what he had pledged with the gods? The same Apollo,
while he was in love with a beautiful boy, violated him, and
killed him while he played.
Mars was a homicide, and, freed from the charge of murder
by the favoring Athenians, so as not to seem too wild and fierce,
he committed adultery with Venus. Castor and Pollux, while
they were carrying off the wives of others, ceased to be twin
brothers, for Idas, infuriated by the pain of the injury, killed
1 Cicero, De natura deorum 3.22.57.
2 Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 6.23.5; Tertullian, Apologia 14.
 BOOK ONE 43

one of the two with a sword. The poets relate that they live
and die alternately and that they are now, not only the most
wretched of the gods, but also of all mortals, for they are not
permitted to die but once. Homer, however, differing from the
tradition of the other poets, simply states that they both died.
For, when he sat Helen beside Priam on the walls of Troy, she
recognized all the chiefs of Greece, but she was seeking only
for her brothers. And to her speech he added this verse: 'Thus
she spoke, but their land held them fast in burial.'s
What did Mercury, a thief and scamp, ever leave for his
fame except the memory of his frauds? He is worthy of heaven,
I suppose, because he taught wrestling and first discovered the
lyre!
It is necessary for Father Liber to be of highest authority
and foremost opinion in the senate of the gods, because he
alone of all, except Jupiter, triumphed, led an army, and
warred against the Indians! But that Indian commander, their
greatest and unconquered, was conquered most shamefully by
lust and passion. Borne to Crete 'with his retinue of semi-men,'4
he found on the shore an unchaste woman, and in the con-
fidence of his Indian victory he wished to be a man, lest he
seem too effeminate, and so he took to himself in wedlock
that betrayer of her father, slayer of her brother, who had been
abandoned and repudiated by another. He made her Libera
and ascended together with her into the sky.
What about the father of all these, Jupiter, who in solemn
prayer formula is called Optimus [best] and Maximus [great-
est]? Is he not discovered as impious and almost a parricide
from his early childhood, since he expelled his father from
his kingdom, put him to flight, and did not wait for the death
of the decrepit old man in his eagerness to secure the reign?
And when he had taken the throne of his father through
force of arms, he was harassed by war with the Titans, which
was the beginning of evils for the human race. When these
3 Homer, Iliad 3.243.
4 VergiI, Aeneid 4.215.
44 LACTANTIUS

were overcome and lasting peace was arranged, he spent the

rest of his life in debauchery and adultery. I make no men-
tion of the virgins whom he defiled; this is usually judged
tolerably. But I cannot pass over Amphitryon and Tyndarus,
whose homes he spoiled with dishonor and infamy. That was
a deed of consummate impiety and wickedness, his rape and
outrage of the royal son. For it seemed of small account if he
were corrupt and base in defiling the honor of women, unless
also he did injury to his own sex. Indeed, this is true spoilage
which is committed against nature. We shall see whether he
who does these things is maximus; at any rate, he is not
optimus. Such a name is far removed from those who are
guilty of corruption of adultery, of incest; unless, perhaps, we
men are mistaken when we call those who do such deeds
wicked and lost and when we judge them most worthy of all
punishment. Marcus Tullius, then, was a fool in charging
Gaius Verres with his adulterous crimes,5 because Jupiter,
whom he worshiped, committed the same actions; and he was
a fool to charge Publius Clodius with the incest of his sister,!l
for the same woman was 'both sister and wife'7 to that Optimus
and Maximus.

Chapter 11

Who, therefore, is so senseless as to think that such a one

reigns in heaven, one who ought not to have been even on
earth? It was not without wit that a certain poet1 wrote of the
triumph of Cupid. In his book he makes Cupid not only the
most powerful of gods but also their victor. Having enumer-
ated the loves of each one, by which they have come under
Cupid's power and sway, he described a procession in which
Jupiter, with the other gods, is led in chains before the car-
5 Cf. Cicero, In Verrem 1.24.
6 Cf. Cicero, De haruspicum responsis 20.42; Pro Milone 27.73.
7 Vergil, Aeneid 1.47.
1 Cf. Fragmenta poetarum romanorum (ed. Baehrens) 407.
 BOOK ONE 45

riage of the triumphant Cupid. All this was depicted elegantly

by the poet, but it is not far from the truth. For one who so
free of virtue, who is conquered by desire and evil lusts, is
not subject to Cupid, as the poet pictured, but to everlasting
death.
But let us omit a discussion of morals, let us consider the
matter so that men may know in what errors they wretchedly
abide. The masses believe that Jupiter reigns in heaven; both
learned and unlearned alike are convinced of this;2 religion
itself, prayer, hymns, shrines, and statues all demonstrate this.
Yet they confess that he was born of Saturn and Rhea. How
can he seem a god or, as the poet says, 'the author of men
and things,'3 before whose beginning there were infinite
thousands of men-those, for instance, who lived under
Saturn's rule and who enjoyed the light before Jupiter? I see
that there was one god-king in earliest times and another in
those times that followed. It is possible, then, that there may
be another one afterwards for times to come. If the earlier
kingdom was changed, why should he despair that there can be
change still to follow? Unless, perhaps, Saturn was able to
produce one stronger than himself, but Jupiter is unable to?
But the divine command either is always immutable or, if it
is mutable (which cannot be), it certainly is always mutable.
Therefore, can Jupiter lose his kingdom as his father lost
his? Clearly, this is so. For, although Jupiter had never spared
virgins or married women, he did restrain himself from
Thetis alone, because there was an oracle that whoever was
born of her would be greater than his father. First of all, there
was a lack of prudence not in keeping with a god; for, unless
Thetis had foretold what things would happen, he himself
would not know. If, then, he is not divine in character, he is
not even a god-whence divinity is named, as humanity is
from man. 4 Next, there was a consciousness of weakness, for he
2 Cf. Horace, Odes 3.5.1,2.
3 Vergil, Aeneid 12.829.
4 The effect is in the Latin: divinus and divinitas from deus, and
humanitas from homo.
46 LACTANTIUS

who has feared, fears something greater than himself. He who

does this knows certainly that he is not the greatest, since it
is not possible that something greater exists. Jupiter swears
most solemnly by the Stygian swamp. 'The one act of dread
superstition which is rendered to the gods above.'5 What kind
of superstition is that or by whom is it rendered? Is it, then,
some very great power which may punish the gods who com-
mit perjury? Why their very great fear of the infernal swamp,
if they are immortal? Why do they fear that which only those
who must die are going to see? Why, therefore, do men raise
their eyes toward heaven? Why do they swear by the gods
above, when those very gods above are forced back to the gods
of the lower regions and have there what they may reverence
and adore? vVhat sort of a thing, then, is the fact that there
are fates which all the gods and Jupiter himself obeys? If the
might of the Par cae is so great that they are more powerful
than all the celestial beings and the ruler and master himself,
why are not they said to reign whose laws and statutes neces-
sity forces all the gods to observe? It is not a matter of doubt
to anyone, is it, that he who submits to anything is not the
greatest? If he were, he would not accept fate; he would make
it.
Now I go back to a point I passed over. In the case of one
goddess and one alone was Jupiter restrained, although he
was impassioned by her, not through any virtue, but because
of fear of a successor. This fear surely is the mark of him who
is mortal and weak and of no avail; indeed, of one who
could have been done away with when he was born, as his
older brother had been before he was born, who if he could
have lived would never have yielded the power to the younger
one. Jupiter himself, however, preserved by stealth and
stealthily nourished, was called Zeus or Zan, not as they think
from the fervor of celestial fire or because he is the giver of
life and breathes souls into living things,6 which, indeed, is
5 Vergi1. Aeneid 12.817.
6 The meaning of Zeus is 'Sky-god' or 'Fire-god.'
 BOOK ONE 47

the power of God alone-for how can he inspire life who

himself has received it from another?-but because he was the
first of the male children of Saturn who lived. Therefore, men
could have had another god as the ruler, perhaps, if Saturn
had not been deluded by his wife. Anyway, the poets fashioned
such tales. Whoever thinks this is mistaken. For the poets
spoke about men and, in order to adorn those whose memory
they were celebrating with praise, they said that they were gods.
And so those things which they said of them as though they
were gods were feigned, not those things which they said of
them as men. This will become clear by an example. When
Jupiter was about to violate Danae, he poured golden coins
lavishly into her lap.7 This was payment for the outrage. But
the poets who spoke of him as a god, in order not to infringe
upon the authority of the majesty credited to him, imagined
that he himself fell in a golden rain by using the same figure as
that whereby they say 'golden showers's when they describe a
multitude of weapons and arrows. He is said to have carried
Ganymede off on an eagle; that is a poetic figure. He either
carried him off by a legion whose symbol the eagle is, or a
ship on which he was placed had its protecting deity shaped
as an eagle, just as it had a bull's image when he seized and
carried Europa across the sea. In the same manner he is related
to have changed 10, daughter of Inachus, into a heifer. And
so that she might escape the wrath of Juno, as she was then,
'covered with hairs, for she was now a heifer,'9 she is said to
have swum across the sea and to have come into Egypt, and
there, when her former appearance was recovered, she became
the goddess who is now called Isis. By what argument, then,
can it be proved that Europa did not sit on a bull and that
10 was not changed into a heifer? The fact that a certain day
is kept among the feasts on which the voyage of Isis is cele-
brated. This teaches that she did not swim across, but

7 Cf. St. Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.13; Isidore, Origines, 8.11.35.

8 Cf. Ennius, Annales 287; Vergil, Aeneid 12.284.
9 Vergil, Aeneid 7.790.
48 LACTANTIUS

sailed.lO So, those who seem to themselves to be wise, since

they know that a living and earthly body cannot be in heaven,
repudiate the whole Ganymede story as false and do not realize
that it took place on earth, since the matter and the lust itself
are earthly.
The poets, then, have not fabricated the exploits-if they
did they were most foolish-but they added a certain color of
poetic fancy to the deeds. They said these things not to de-
tract but because they desired to embellish their heroes. In
this way men are deceived, especially because, while they
think that all these things are feigned by the poets, they
reverence that of which they are ignorant. They do not know
what the measure of poetic license is, to what extent it is
permissible to proceed in fictionizing, since the poet's function
consists in this,u that those things which were actually per-
formed he may transfer with some graceful converse into
other appearances by means of figurative language. But to
feign the whole account which you relate-that is to be a
fool and a liar instead of a poet.
Then they have made up those things which are believed
to be fabulous. Is it the case, also, with those things which
have been said about female divinities and the marriages of
the gods? Why are they so depicted and so worshiped-unless,
perhaps, not only the poets, but also painters and makers of
images lie? If this is the Jupiter who is called a god by you,
if he is not the one who was born of Saturn and Ops, no
image except his alone ought to have been placed in all the
temples. What do the likenesses of the women mean? What
does the weak sex [indicate]? If this Jupiter is portrayed in
this, the stones confess him a man. They say the poets have
lied, yet they believe these. Rather, they prove by this very
thing that they have not lied. For they so fashion statues of
the gods that from the very diversity of sex it is apparent that
the things which the poets say are true. What other evidence
10 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.7.10.
11 Cf. Cicero, In Verrem 2.3.8.
 BOOK ONE 49

has the image of Ganymede and the likeness of the eagle when
they are placed before the feet of Jupiter in the temples and
are adored together with him, except that the memory of the
wicked crime and outrage might remain forever?
Nothing, therefore, was feigned by the poets in its entirety;
something, perhaps, has been transferred and obscured by the
figurative language by which the enfolded truth was covered,
as in the story of the dividing of the kingdoms by lot. They
say that the heaven fell to the lot of Jupiter, the sea to Nep-
tune, and the lower world to Pluto. Why did not the earth
come into the third lot? Only because the choice took place
on the earth. Thus, it appears that they so partitioned and
allotted the kingdom of the earth that to Jupiter went the
command of the east; to Pluto, whose surname was Agesilaus,
part of the west fell, since the district of the east, from which
light is given to mortals, is the superior, whereas that of the
west seems to be inferior. Thus they veiled the truth by false-
hood, so that the truth itself withdrew nothing from public
persuasion. The lot of Neptune is manifest. We say that his
kingdom was of such a sort as that limitless command of
Mark Anthony's was,12 for the Senate had decreed to him power
over the whole sea coast so that he might pursue the pirates
and pacify the whole sea. So to Neptune fell all the maritime
regions, with the islands. How can this be proved? Why, the
old histories show it. The ancient author, Euhemerus, who
was of the city of Messene, gathered the deeds of Jupiter and
of the others who were regarded as gods and he wove a history
from the titles and sacred inscriptions which were found in
very old temples, and especially in the sanctuary of Triplylian
Jove, when a legend indicated that the golden column had
been placed there by Jupiter himself, and on this column he
had inscribed his own deeds so that it might serve as a mon-
ument of his deeds for posterity. Ennius translated and fol-
lowed this history; these are his words: 'When Jupiter gives
command of the sea to Neptune [he does so that] he might
12 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 1.42.119.
50 LACTANTIUS

rule over all the islands and all the [regions] which are placed
near the sea.'
The accounts of the poets, then, are true but veiled with
some covering and appearance. It is possible that even Mount
Olympus may have given the figure to the poets for their
saying that Jupiter had been allotted the kingdom of the
sky, because Olympus is an ambiguous name meaning both
mountain and sky. Euhemerus' history says that Jupiter had
dwelt on Olympus: 'At that time Jupiter dwelt for the greater
part of his life on Mount Olympus, and thither they came
to him for justice, if any matters were in controversy. Like-
wise, if anyone had discovered something new which would
be profitable for human life, he would come there and show
it to Jupiter.'13 The poets transfer many things in this fashion,
not to lie against the gods whom they worship, but to add
loveliness and charm to their songs by various figures and
devices. Those who do not understand how or why anything
is depicted figuratively attack the poets as deceitful and
sacrilegious.
Even the philosophers have been taken in by what seemed
error; because those things related about Jupiter seemed to
be most ill-befitting a god they made two Jupiters: one na-
tural, the other fabulous. They saw, on the one hand, that
which was true, that he of whom the poets speak was a man;
but in regard to that natural Jupiter they were mistaken,
being influenced by the common custom of religion, because
they transferred the name of a man to God who, as we said
above,14 because He is one only, does not need a name. For
it is not possible for that Jupiter who was born of Saturn and
Ops to be denied. Therefore, it is a foolish persuasion on the
part of those who attribute the name of Jupiter to the supreme
God.
Some are accustomed to defend their errors with this excuse.
Those who are convinced that there is only one god, since
13 Euhemerus, frg. 8,9.
14 Cf. Ch. 6, n. 4.
 BOOK ONE 51

they cannot deny it, affirm that they worship him, but that it
suits their pleasure that he be called Jupiter. vVhat is more
absurd than this? Jupiter is not usually worshiped without
the accompanying worship of his wife and daughter. Hence,
who he is is clear; nor is it right for that name to be transferred
where there is no Minerva or Juno. Why is it that the proper
meaning of this name expresses not divine, but human,
nature? Cicero interprets the names '.Jove and Juno as being
derived from helping and Jupiter as meaning a father giving
help.'15 This name poorly fits God, because to help is an attri-
bute of a man conferring help upon one who is a stranger,
and as a slight benefit. No one thus prays to God, that He
'help' him, but that He preserve him, that He grant him life
and salvation. This is much more, far greater, than merely
'to help.'
And since we are speaking of a father, no father is said to
'help' his sons when he begets or educates them. It is too
meaningless for the magnitude of fatherly benefit to be ex-
pressed by that word. How much the more ill-fitting is it
when applied to God who is true Father, through whom we
are, and whose we wholly are; by whom we are fashioned,
vivified, enlightened; who imparts life to us, grants health,
and provides a variety of foods. He does not understand the
divine benefits who thinks that he is merely 'helped' by God.
Therefore, he is not only unversed and ignorant, but even
impious, who defiles the virtue of supreme power with the
name of Jupiter. So, if we have grasped both from his deeds
and from his character that Jupiter was a man and reigned
on the earth, it remains for us to investigate his death. Ennius
in his Sacred History, after describing all the deeds which he
performed in his life, thus writes at the end: Then Jupiter,
after he had circled the lands five times and divided the
command among all his friends and relatives, and left to men
laws and customs, and prepared grain, and had done many
15 De natura deorum 2.25.64. 26.66. The etymology is lost in the English:
iuvare, 'to help'; Jupiter, a pate-, iuvans.
52 LACTANTIVS

other good things for them, affected by immortal glory and

memory left lasting memorials of himself. When his age
was completely spent in Crete, he exchanged this life and
passed to the gods. The Curetes, his sons, took care of him
and honored him. His sepulchre is in Crete, in the town of
Cnossos (Vesta is said to have founded this city) and on his
sepulchre is inscribed in ancient Greek characters, ZAN
KPONOY; in Latin, Jupiter son of Saturn.'16 This, indeed,
the poets do not hand down, but the ancient chroniclers. And
these things are so true that they are confirmed by the Sibylline
verses; for instance, these: 'Demons without life, images of
those who be dead, whose tombs the ill-fated Crete holds as a
prize.'17 Cicero in The Nature at the Gods, after mentioning
that 'three Jupiters' have been enumerated by theologians,
says the third was the Cretan son of Saturn and that his tomb
is shown on that island.1 8 How, then, can a god be living in
one place and dead in another? How can he have a temple
here and a sepulchre there? Let the Romans know, therefore,
that their Capitol, that is, the greatest memorial of their
public religion, is nothing other than an empty monument.
Let us come now to his father who reigned before him and
who, perhaps, had more power in himself because he is said
to have been born from the juncture of especially great ele-
ments. Let us see what there was in him worthy of a god.
First of all, there is that golden age which he is said to have
ruled, because under him there was justice on the earth. I see
something in him which was not in his son. For what is so
fitting to a god than that his rule be just and his age revered?
But when I also realize that he was born, I cannot consider
him as the supreme god, inasmuch as I see something more
ancient than he, namely, heaven and earth. I seek a God be-
yond whom there is nothing whatsoever, who is the Fount
and Origin of things. Of necessity this One must exist, who

16 Ennius, frg. 12.

17 Oracula Sihylla 8.47,48.
18 De natura deoru1ll 3.21.53.
 BOOK ONE 53

established heaven itself and founded the earth. But if Saturn

was born of these, as it is supposed, how can he, who owes his
being to others, be the principal god? Who was in charge of
the world before Saturn was begotten? But this is, as I said
a short while ago, a poetic figure. Nor could it happen that
elements, insensible and separated by such a great interval,
should come together into one and bring a son into being,
or that he who should be born would be not at all similar to
his parents, but would have that form which his own parents
did not have.
Let us see, then, what particle of truth might be hidden
under this figure. Minucius Felix, in his Octavius, has con-
cluded thus: 'Saturn, when he had been put to flight by his son
and had come into Italy, was called the son of heaven [Coelus],
because we are accustomed to speak of those whose virtue we
admire or those who have come upon us suddenly, as fallen
from heaven. He was called the son of Earth, however, because
we call those born of unknown parents the sons of earth.'19
These things, indeed, have resemblance to the truth, but they
are not truths, because it is agreed that even when he was
reigning he was so regarded. He could have argued this way:
'Saturn, since he was a very powerful king, to perpetuate the
memory of his parents, endowed heaven and earth with their
names, although these were first called by other names.' We
know that names are applied to mountains and rivers in this
way. When the poets speak of the progeny of Atlas or of the
river Inachus, they do not mean that men could be generated
of things deprived of sense; they do mean those who were born
of such men as, either living or dead, have given their names
to mountains and rivers. That was a customary practice among
the ancients, especially the Greeks. Thus, we have heard that
seas took the names of those who had fallen into them, as
the Aegean, and Icarian, and the Hellespont. In Latium, also,
Aventinus gave his name to the mountain in which he was
buried, and Tiberinus or Tybris to the river in which he was
19 Minucius Felix, Octavius 21.5-7.
54 LACTANTIUS

drowned. So it must not be wondered at if the names of those

who gave birth to exceedingly powerful kings were assigned to
heaven and earth. It is clear, then, that he was born not of
heaven, which is impossible, but from a man whose name was
Uranus. That this is true Trismegistus is a witness: for, when
he said that there were very few in whom there was perfect
learning, he named among these his relatives: Uranus, Saturn,
Mercury. Because he was ignorant of these matters, he gave the
story differently. I have shown how he could have argued.
Now I will tell how, when, and by whom this was done.
Saturn did not do this; it was Jupiter. In the Sacred History
Ennius relates: 'Then Pan leads him up into the mountain
which is called Pillar of Sky. After he had ascended he gazed
upon the widespread lands, and there on that mountain he
built an altar to the Sky, and Jupiter first offered sacrifice on
that altar. In that place he looked up to the sky, as we call it
now, and upon that which was above the world, which was
called aether, he bestowed the name sky from the name of
his grandfather. Jupiter placatingly first called that sky which
was called aether, and the victim which he sacrificed there he
burned completely.'2o
Nor is Jupiter found to have offered sacrifice here only.
Caesar in Aratus relates that 'when Aglaosthenes was setting
out against the Titans from the island of Naxos, he said that
an eagle flew to him [Jupiter] as an omen, who took it as a
good omen of victory and placed it under his own protection.'
But the Sacred History testifies: 'even previously the eagle
had settled on his head and portended the power for him.'21
Could Jupiter, then, have offered sacrifices to anyone but his
grandparent the sky, who Euhemerus says was born in the
ocean and buried in the town of Aulatia?

20 Ennius, frg. 7.
21 Ennius, frg. 2.24.64.
 BOOK ONE 55

Chapter 12

Since we have uncovered the secrets of the poets and have

discovered the parents of Saturn, let us return to his virtues
and deeds. He was just in his rule. First, from this very fact,
he is not now a god, though because of that he was so called.
There is the additional fact that he was not even just, but
impious: not only toward his sons whom he killed, but also
toward his father whose organs he is said to have mutilated,
which, perhaps, might really have happened. 1 But men, in
regard to the element which is called the sky, explode the
whole tale as though imaginary, and most foolishly so. The
Stoics, however, as is their custom, try to reduce the matter to
a physical system; their opinion Cicero has presented in his
Nature of the Gods: 'The highest and ethereal nature of
heaven: he said, 'that is, of fire, which by itself produced all
things, they held to be without that part of the body which
required union with another for procreation.'2 This theory
could have been appropriate for Vesta, if she were said to be
a male. It is for this that they think Vesta a virgin,3 because
fire is an incorruptible element and nothing can be born from
it, inasmuch as it consumes all things which it seizes upon.
On this, Ovid says in the Fasti: 'Nor do you think Vesta to be
anything else but a living flame, and you see no bodies pro-
duced from flame. Therefore, she is rightly a virgin; she sends
forth no seeds nor does she receive any, and she loves the
attendants of virginity.'4
To Vulcan, also, this could have been ascribed, he who is
truly thought to be fire, yet the poets have not mutilated him.
It could also have been ascribed to the sun, in which is the
nature and the cause of production. For without the fiery
heat of the sun it is not possible for anything to be either born

1 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.32.

2 De natura. deorum 2.24.64.
3 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.67,68.
4 Fasti 6.29-32.
56 LACTANTIUS

or increased, so that to no other element would there be less

need of the productive organs than to heat, by the nourish-
ment of which all things are conceived, produced, and sus-
tained. Finally, even if the case were such as they would want,
why should we rather believe that Sky was mutilated, rather
than that he was produced without any productive organs?
If he produces of himself, he has no need of productive or-
gans, surely, since he begot Saturn. But, if he had them
and suffered mutilation by his son, the origin of things and
all nature would have perished. 5 Why, then, do they take
away from Saturn himself, not only divine understanding, but
also human, when they affirm that 'he is Saturn who contains
the course and change of space and time and that he has that
very name in Greek? For he is called Kronos which is the
same as chronos, meaning a space of time; and he has been
called Saturn because he is sated with years.'6 These are words
of Cicero expounding an opinion of the Stoics. How foolish
the opinion is very easy for anyone to see. For, if Saturn is
the son of Sky, how could Time have been born of Sky, or
how could Sky have been mutilated by Time, or how could
Time have been later despoiled of his power by his son
Jupiter? Or how was Jupiter born from Time? Or by what
years could eternity be sated, since there is no limit to it?

Chapter 13

If, therefore, those speculations of the philosophers are

pointless, what is left except for us to believe that it actually
happened that a man was mutilated by a man? Unless per-
haps, someone may believe him a god who feared a co-heir,
when, if he had possessed any divinity, he ought not to have
mutilated his father, but himself, so that Jupiter would not be
born who deprived him of the possession of sovereignty. When
5 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.30,31.
6 Cicero, De natura deorum 2.25.64.
 BOOK ONE 57

Jupiter took as a wife his sister Rhea, whom we call Ops in

Latin, he is said to have been forbidden by an oracle to bring
up his male children, because it would happen that he would
be expelled by a son. Fearing this event, he certainly did not
devour the sons born to him, but he killed them, although it
is written in the Sacred History that 'Saturn and Ops and the
rest of men were at that time accustomed to eat human flesh,
but that Jupiter in establishing laws and customs for men had
prohibited by an edict the lawful use of that food.'! 1£ this is
true, what justice can there have been in him? But let us
believe it to be an imagined story that Saturn devoured his
sons, though with some foundation. Is it on this account that
the popular legend says that he ate his sons, he who carried
them out and consigned them to burial? Ops, however, when
she had brought forth Jupiter, slipped the infant out of the
way and stealthily sent him to Crete to be nursed. Again I
must reprehend a lack of foresight. Why did he receive a
response from another oracle? Why, if he were stationed in
the sky, did he not see what was going on on the land? Why
did the Corybantes with their cymbals deceive him? Lastly,
why did some greater force exist which would conquer his
power? To be sure, as an old man he was easily overcome by
a youth and despoiled of his sovereignty. So, driven out, he
fled and came to Italy by boat when he had wandered a long
time, as Ovid relates2 in the Fasti: 'The course of this ship
remains to be told. The scythe-bearing god came to the Tuscan
river in a ship, after having traversed the world.' Janus re-
ceived him a wanderer and in need. The ancient coins are
witnesses of this, on which Janus appears with his double face
and on the reverse a ship, as the same poet continues: 'Pious
posterity represented a ship on the brass coin, testifying to
the arrival of the stranger-god.'
Not only all the poets, but also the writers of histories and
ancient affairs agree that he was a man when they handed
1 Ennins, frg. 9.
2 Cf. Fasti 1.233-240.
58 LACTANTIUS

down the memory of his actions in Italy.3 Such writers are the
Greeks, Diodorus and Thallus, and the Latins, Nepos, Cassius,
and Varro. When men lived in Italy in a rustic manner, 'He
brought together a race indocile and scattered on high moun-
tains; he gave them laws and willed that the place be called
Latium, since he had lain safely concealed on these shores.'4
Does anyone think that he was a god who was driven out,
who fled, who lay hidden? No one is so foolish. He who flees
and lies in hiding must necessarily fear both force and death.
Orpheus, who was less removed from his times, relates that
Saturn openly reigned in the land and among men: 'Cronos
first ruled over men on earth and from Cronos there sprang
the mighty lord himself, far-sounding Zeus.'5 And our own
Maro says: 'Golden Saturn spent this life on earth'; and in
another place: 'Those were golden ages which they say passed
by under that king: thus he ruled the people in placid peace-
fulness.'6 He did not say in the first quotation that he spent
his life in heaven, nor in the second that he ruled the gods
in peace. Hence, it is clear that the king was an earthly one,
and this fact he states more openly elsewhere: 'And he will
restore again to Latium the golden ages throughout the fields
once ruled by Saturn.'7
Ennius even in the Euhemerus says that Saturn was not the
first to have ruled, but his father Uranus. 'In the beginning,'
he says, 'first Coelus held supreme command on the lands. He
drew up and prepared that kingdom for himself along with
his brothers.'8 There is not great dissension inasmuch as there
is doubt on the part of the greatest authors concerning the
son and the father. However, it is possible that each took
place: that Uranus first began to excel in power among the
others and to have a principate, not a kingdom; and that,
3 Cf. Minucius Felix 21.4.
4 Vergil, Aeneid 8.321·324. The word play is achieved only in Latin:
latere is 'to lie hidden'; hence. Latium.
5 Frg. 243 (Abel).
6 Vergil, Georgics 2.538; Aeneid 8.324,325.
7 Ibid. 6.793,794.
8 Ennius, frg. 1.
 BOOK ONE 59

later, Saturn gained greater resources for himself and acquired

the royal name.

Chapter 14

Now, because the Sacred History differs somewhat from

those accounts which I have noted, let us unfold those things
which are contained in genuine books, lest in accusing these
religious notions or scruples we seem to follow and approve
of the follies of the poets. These are the words of Ennius:
'Next Saturn took Ops as wife. The Titan, who was the older,
demanded that he himself should reign. Then Vesta, their
mother, and the sisters, Ceres and Ops, persuade Saturn not
to yield to his brother about the kingdom. Then the Titan,
who was of a less favorable appearance than Saturn, for this
reason and because he saw that his mother and sisters were
urging that Saturn rule, yielded to him that he reign over
them. So it was arranged with Saturn that, if any child of the
male sex should be born to him, he should not bring him up.
He did this for this reason, that the kingdom was to return to
the Titan's sons. Then, when the first son was born to Saturn,
they killed him. Later, there were born the twins, Jupiter
and Juno. They presented Juno to Saturn's sight, but they
secretly hid Jupiter, and those who concealed him gave him
to Vesta to be reared. Likewise, Ops secretly bore Neptune,
Saturn's son, and concealed him in private. In the same way
Ops gave birth a third time, to the twins Pluto and Glauca.
Pluto in Latin is Father Dis; others call him Orcus. Then
they show the daughter Glauca to Saturn, but they conceal
the son Pluto in hiding. Next the daughter Glauca dies. 1 This,
as the accounts have been written, is the progeny and the line
of Jupiter and his brothers: in this way it has been handed
down to us from the sacred writings: And a little later he adds
this: Then the Titan, after he had discovered that sons had

1 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.42.

60 LACTANTIVS

been born to Saturn and secretly brought up, he led apart

with him his own sons who were called Titans, and he seized
his brother Saturn and Ops, surrounded them with a wall
and placed a guard over them. 2
How true this account is we gather from the Erythraean
Sibyl who declares almost the same things herself, except for a
discrepancy in a few points which do not relate to the heart of
the matter.s Jupiter then is freed from the charge of the great-
est crime, the fact that he is reported to have bound his father
in shackles and then overcome him. His paternal uncle, the
Titan, did this because he had brought up sons contrary to
the agreement and oath. The rest of the history is fashioned
thus: Jupiter, now grown, when he heard that his father and
mother had been surrounded with guards and hurled into
chains, came with a great multitude of Cretans and overcame
the Titan and his sons in a battle. He freed his parents from
their chains, restored the kingdom to his father, and thus he
returned to Crete. After these things the warning was given
to Saturn to beware lest his son drive him from power. Then
for lessening the power of the warning and dissipating the
danger due to him because of the treachery of Jupiter he was
to kill his son. But Jupiter, learning of the plot, finally gained
the kingdom for himself and put Saturn to flight. The latter,
when he was pursued even in exile by armed men whom
Jupiter had sent to seize him or kill him, scarcely found a
spot in Italy where he might hide. 4

Chapter 15

Since it is established from these things that these were men,

it is not obscure by what way they began to be called gods.
If there were no kings before Saturn or Uranus because of the
2 Ennius, frg. 3,4.
3 Oracula Sibylla 3.110-153; 190-201.
4 Ennius, frg. 6.
 BOOK ONE 61

fewness of men l who were living a wild life without any ruler,
there is no doubt but that in those times men began to extol
the king himself and the whole race with the highest praises
and with new honors, so that they also called them gods,
whether because of their marvelous strength-they truly
thought this, though still rude and simple; or, as often hap-
pens, with adulation of manifest power (in the individual in
question); or because of the benefits to humanity wherewith
they had been associated. Then the kings themselves, since
they had been dear to those whose life they had arranged, left
[to their survivors] a great longing for them after they died.
So men fashioned representations of them, in order to draw
some solace from looking at their images, and going even
further in their love, they began to reverence the memory of
the departed to such an extent that they seemed to render
thanks to those who merited well and aroused in their suc-
cessors the desire to rule well.
Cicero teaches this about the nature of the gods when he
says: 'The life of man and common customs have accepted
that by fame and will they should exalt to the sky men ex-
celling in kind deeds. Hence we have Hercules, Castor, Pollux,
Aesculapius, Liber.' And in another place he states this fact:
'In most states it can be understood that for the sake of in-
creasing virtue or that all the best may approach danger more
willingly for the sake of the republic, the memory of brave
men is consecrated by the honor due the immortal gods.'2
Surely, the Romans consecrated their Caesars and the Moors
their kings for this reason. So, little by little, such religions
began to exist, when those first who knew them imbued their
children and grandchildren with that ceremonial respect, and
then all their posterity, and finally these greatest kings, be-
cause of the celebrity of their name, came to be worshiped in
every province. In a private capacity the individual peoples
reverenced with the highest veneration the founders of their
1 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.1-5.
2 De natUTa deorum 2.24.62; 3.19.50.
62 LACTANTIUS

tribe or city, whether they were men distinguished for brav-

ery or women remarkable for chastity; so Egypt honored Isis;
the Moors, Juba; the Macedonians, Cabirus; the Phoenicians,
Urania; the Latins, Faunus; the Sabines, Sancus; the Romans,
Quirinus. Indeed, in the same way Athens came to honor
Minerva; Samos, Juno; Pamphos, Venus; Lemnos, Vulcan;
N axos, Liber; and Delos, Apollo.
Thus, among many peoples and in many regions, various
sacred rites have been undertaken, while men desire to be
pleasing to their princes, and are unable to determine upon
other honors to confer upon the dead. Moreover, the piety
or sense of duty of those who succeeded added much to the
error: in the case of those who seemed born of divine stock,
they bestowed divine honors on their parents and ordered
them bestowed. Can anyone doubt how religious beliefs in the
gods were instituted when he reads in Vergil 3 the words of
Aeneas giving commands to his followers: 'Now pour the
libation to Jove and with prayers call upon Anchises our
father'? He attributes to him not only immortality, but power
over the winds, as well. 'Let us beg for winds and may he
vouchsafe when the city is founded, to bear these sacred offer-
ings made year by year in temples dedicated to him.' Liber,
Pan, Mercury, and Apollo did the same thing with regard
to Jupiter, and their successors did the same afterwards in
their regard. The poets came on, also, and with songs composed
for pleasure extolled them to the sky, just as they do who
make adulation with deceitful panegyrics in the presence of
even bad kings. 4 This evil was started by the Greeks, and it
is incredible what great masses of lies their levity, filled out
by competence and richness of speech, has erected. So, admir-
ing them, the first ones received these sacred ceremonies and
passed them on to all nations. For this vanity the Sibyl re-
bukes them thus: 'Hellas, why have you trusted in human
leaders? ,,y-hy do you offer empty gifts to the dead? You make
3 Aeneid 7.133,134; 5.59,60.
4 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.2; 6.8.7.
 BOOK ONE 63

offerings to idols. Who put this error into your mind, to leave
the mighty God and perform such rites?'5
Marcus Tullius, who was not only the perfect orator but
also a philosopher-if, indeed, there ever was a single im-
itator of Plato-in that book in which he consoled himself
on the death of his daughter did not hesitate to say that the
gods who were publicly venerated were men. And this testi-
mony of his ought to be judged the most weighty for this
reason, that he held also an augural priesthood and testifies
to the fact that he himself reverenced and worshiped the same
gods. Within a few phrases he gives us two points. While he
admits that he will dedicate an image of his daughter in a
way in which those [of the gods] were dedicated by the an-
cients, he taught also that they were dead and he showed
the origin of the vain superstition. 'In truth; he said, 'when
we see a great many men and women, human beings, to be
numbered as the gods, and when we venerate their most
august shrines in cities and fields, let us approve of their wis-
dom by whose ingenuity and invention of laws and institu-
tions we have our whole life adorned and arranged. If any
living creature ever should have been consecrated, surely it
was that one. If the progeny of Cadmus or Amphitryon or
Tyndarus should have been exalted by fame into the skies,
then the same honor certainly ought to be paid to this one.
This, indeed, I will do, and I will consecrate you, the best and
most learned of all, and I will place you, the immortal gods
themselves approving my act, in their company for the re-
spect of all mortals.'6
Perhaps someone may say that Cicero was delirious through
excessive grief. That entire oration in regard to teaching, and
examples, and the very perfect type of expression itself was
the work not of a sick mind, but of a constant mind and
judgment; this way of thinking itself exhibits no indication
of such grief. Nor do I think that he could have written in
5 Dracula Sibylla 3.545-548.
6 Cicero, Consolatio, frg. 14.
64 LACTANTIUS

so varied a manner, so fluently, so ornately, unless reason

itself, and the consolation of friends, and the passage of time
had assuaged his grief. ·What of the fact that he says the same
thing in his books, The Republic and Glory?7 In his Laws, in
which, following Plato, he intends to set down laws which he
thought a just and wise state would use, he thus ordained
about religion: 'Let them cherish the gods and those who have
always been regarded as celestial beings and those whom their
merits have placed in heaven: Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius,
Castor, Pollux, Quirinus.'8 Likewise in the Tusculans, when
he said that the entire heavens were almost filled with human·
kind, he wrote: 'If, indeed, I should attempt to search the
old books and to dig out from them those things which the
writers of Greece have revealed, those very ones of the greater
nations who are regarded as gods will be found setting out
from here, from among us, into the heavens. Wherefore, since
their sepulchres are displayed in Greece, remember, since you
have been initiated, what things are handed down in the
mystery cults: then, finally, you will understand how widely
this stretches open.'9 Obviously, he appealed to the knowledge
of Atticus, that it could be known from the mysteries them-
selves that those were men who were worshiped, and, although
he incessantly admitted it about Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius,
Castor, and Pollux, he feared to confess it openly about Apollo
and Jupiter, their fathers, and also about Neptune, Vulcan,
Mars, and Mercury, whom he called the gods of the greater
nations. It is for this reason that he says: 'This opens out
clearly,' that we may understand the same thing about Jupiter
and the other more ancient gods. If the ancients consecrated
their memory in the same way as he says that he was 'going
to consecrate the image and name of his daughter,' they can
be forgiven for their grieving, but not for believing. For who
is so demented as to think that heaven is opened to the dead

7 Cf. De republica 6.13; De gloria, frg. 14.

8 De legibus 2.8.19.
9 Tusculanae disputationes 1.13.29.
 BOOK ONE 65

by the consent and agreement of innumerable fools, or that

someone could give to another what he himself does not have?
Among the Romans, Julius is a god because the nefarious man
Antony took a fancy to this; Quirinus is a god because this
seemed a good thing to the shepherds. Yet, one lorded it over
his twin brother and the other was a parricide to the state.
If Antony had not been consul, Gaius Caesar would have
lacked even the honor due any dead man for his services to
the republic; this, indeed, could have been at the advice
of Piso, his father-in-law, and Lucius Caesar, a kinsman, who
forbade funeral rites to be performed for him, and of Dola-
bella, the consul, who overturned his column, that is, his
mound, in the Forum and cleansed that place. Ennius declares
that Romulus had been the desire of his own people, and the
people, mourning the king they had lost, spoke these words
before him: '0, Romulus, Romulus, what a guard for the
fatherland have the gods made thee today! You have led us
forth into the shores of light, 0 Father, 0 Producer, 0 Stock
of godS.'10 Because of this longing the people more easily be-
lieved Julius Proculius, who was suborned by the fathers to
announce to the people that he had seen the king, in an aspect
more august than human, and that he had given him a
mandate for the people to the effect that a shrine should be
erected for him, that he was a god, and that he be called
Quirinus.1 1 This was done, and he persuaded the people them-
selves that Romulus had departed to the gods, and he freed
the Senate from the suspicion of murder of the king.

Chapter 16

I could be content with these accounts which I have re-

lated, but many things necessary to the task that has been
undertaken still remain. Even though, with the source of the
10 Ennius, Annales 1I5-118; cf. Cicero, De republica 1.41.64.
II Cf. Cicero, De republica 2.10.20; Livy 1.8; Florus 1.1.18.
66 LACTANTIUS

religious superstitions itself destroyed, I might have removed

all of them, one may pursue other lines of argument and
refute the inveterate persuasion more fully, so that men finally
may become ashamed and repent of their errors. This is a
great work and one worthy of man.
I go on to loosen minds from the knots of religion,1 as
Lucretius says, but he could not indeed accomplish this, since
he brought to his task nothing of the truth. This is the duty
of us who claim the true God and refute the false ones. Those,
then, who believe that the poets feigned the stories of the
gods, yet believe that there are goddesses and worship them,
are unwarily thrown back upon that which they had denied,
that the gods unite in marriage and give birth to offspring.
For it is not possible that two sexes are established except for
the purpose of generation. They do not understand that, once
the diversity of sex has been accepted, conception is a con-
sequence, but this cannot apply to a god. Yet they think so,
for they say that there are sons of Jupiter and the other gods.
Therefore, new gods are born, and these daily, indeed; nor
are they surpassed by men in fecundity. All things are full,
then, of innumerable gods; no one, of course, ever dying. For,
while the strength of men is incredible and their number
inestimable-yet just as these are born so must they die-
what may we think of the gods who have been born in so
many ages and have remained immortal? Why, then, are so
few worshiped? Unless, perchance, we think that it is not for
the sake of generation, but only for securing pleasure that
there are two sexes of gods. But to act and suffer thus for the
sake of pleasure is a shame for mere man. When some are
said to be born from others, it is a consequence that they are
always being born, if, indeed, they have been born at any
time; or, if they have ceased to be born, it is fitting for us to
know why or at what time they ceased. Not without charm
does Seneca in his books of moral philosophy ask: 'Why, then,
or for what reason is it that among the poets most lustful
1 Cf. Lucretius, De rerum natura 1.32.
 BOOK ONE 67

Jupiter has ceased to raise children? Is it because he has be-

come a sexagenarian and the Lex Papia 2 has placed a buckle
on him? Or has he obtained the "legal right of the three
children"? ... Or, finally, has there come into his mind "that
you may expect from another what you have done to another"
and does he fear that someone may do to him what he did to
Saturn?'3
Let those who claim the gods see how they may answer this
argument which we infer. If there are two sexes of gods, it
follows that there is concubinage. If they come together, it is
necessary that they also have homes, for they do not lack
virtue and modesty and they would not act promiscuously and
openly, as we see the dumb animals do. If they have homes,
they consequently have cities; indeed, Naso is the author who
refers to this: 'The people dwell in different places, the power-
ful ones before others, and the bright dwellers in the heavens
have set up their own household gods.'4 If they have cities,
they will have fields, also. Now, who does not see what may
follow? They plow them and cultivate them, which is done for
the sake of food; therefore, they are mortals. Reversing this
argument, the same effect is achieved. If they do not have
fields, they do not have any cities; if they have no cities, then
no homes; if they lack homes, then there is no concubinage;
and if there is no concubinage among them, then neither is
the female sex. But among these gods we see that there are
women, too; therefore, they are not gods. Let him who can
shatter this argument. For condition so follows condition that
it is necessary to admit the conclusion. And no one can
shatter this argument: of the two sexes one is stronger, one
weaker, for the males are more robust, the females more weak.
Weakness, however, does not apply to divinity; therefore,
there is no female sex. To this is added the final conclusion of

2 The Lex Papia controlled the number of children in a family.

3 Frg. 119.59.
4 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.173,174.
68 LACTANTIUS

the previous argument, that they are not gods, since there are
women among them.

Chapter 17

For these reasons the Stoics interpret the gods very differ-
ently and, because they do not see through what there is in
truth, they try to join them with the reason of natural things.
Cicero, following these, has offered this opinion about the
gods and their religious beliefs: 'Do you see, therefore, how
from physical things well and usefully discovered the reason
has been drawn to fabricated and feigned gods? This thing
has begotten false opinions and turbulent errors and almost
old-womanish superstitions: for the forms of the gods are
known to us, and their ages and clothing and ornaments, and
besides, their stock, their marriages, and relations have all
been translated into the likeness of human weakness.'l What
can be more plainly, more truly, said? The prince of Roman
philosophy and a man endowed with the fullest powers of
priesthood claims that the gods are fabricated and feigned; he
bears witness that their cults are almost old-womanish super-
stitions; and he complains that men are implicated in false
opinions and turbulent errors. The entire third book of The
Nature of the Gods overturns and destroys all the foundations
of [such] religion. What more, then, is expected of us? Can we
surpass Cicero in eloquence? That, by no means. But he lacked
confidence because he was ignorant of the truth, as he him-
self admits simply in the same work. For he says that he can
say more easily that which is not than that which is; that is,
that he knows the false but he does not know the true. 2
It is clear, therefore, that they were men who are con-
sidered gods and that their memory was hallowed after their
deaths. On that account, their ages are different and there are

1 De natura deorum 2.28.70.

2 Cf. De natura deorum 1.21.60.
 BOOK ONE 69

certain or fixed representations for the different ones, be-

cause the statues were fashioned in that habit and age in
which death took each one. Let us consider, if you will, the
tribulations of the unhappy gods. Isis lost her son; Ceres, her
daughter; and Latona, driven out and tossed about the whole
earth, found scarcely a small island on which to give birth.
The mother of the gods loved a beautiful youth, but, having
discovered him with a mistress, she emasculated him and
rendered him a half-man; for this reason her sacred rites now
are celebrated by Gallic priests. 3 Juno persecuted concubines
most bitterly, because she herself was not able to give birth
as her brother's mistress. Varro writes4 that 'the island of
Samos was before named Parthenia, because there Juno grew
to maturity and even wedded Jove: So her noblest and most
ancient temple is at Samos, and her statue is fashioned in the
attire of a bride, and the sacred anniversaries of her nuptials
are celebrated with rites. 1£ then, she grew to maturity-if
she was a maiden first and later a woman-he who does not
understand that she was human admits himself a beast.
What shall I say of the obscenity of Venus, a prostitute to
the lusts of all, not of gods only, but of men as well? For she
gave birth to Harmonia after the infamous outrage of Mars;
of Mercury, to Hermaphrodite, who was born Androgynus;5
of Jupiter, to Cupid; of Anchises, to Aeneas; of Butes, to
Eryx; of her union with Adonis, of course, she could have
given birth to no one, because the boy was killed, struck by
a wild boar. She was the first, as is held in the Sacred History,6
who instituted the prostitute's art, and she was the authority
for the women in Cyprus to make profit by prostituting their
bodies. She authorized this so that she would not seem alone,
3 Schwartz (CSEL) thinks that St. Augustine used this section for his
De civitate Dei 1.7 and 6.7.
4 Varro, the most learned of the ancient Latins, quoted by most ancient
writers, was perhaps so well known that it is difficult to find precise
sources. St. Augustine used Varro on this subject, too; cf. De civitate
Dei 1.7; 6.7.
5 The word means 'a man-woman:
6 Ennius, frg. 13.
70 LACTANTIUS

different from other women, in her unchaste pursuit of men.

Does even she whose adulteries are reckoned more than her
offspring have some divine power?
Not even the virgins [among the gods] could have pre-
served chastity unimpaired. How do we think that Erichthon-
ius was born? Was it of the earth, as the poets would have it
seem? The deed itself cries out its details. For when Vulcan
had made the armor for the gods and Jupiter had given him
choice of asking for the reward which he wished, swearing, as
was his custom, by the infernal swamp that he would refuse
nothing, the lame smith demanded the hand of Minerva.
Jupiter, Optimus Maximus, bound by such a great oath,7
could not have refused this, but he warned Minerva to resist
and to defend her chastity. During that contest, they say,
Vulcan spilled his seed upon the earth, whence Erichthonius
was born, and thus this name was imposed upon him: (17ro
T~' fpt8o. Ka~ xOov6., 'from struggle and the soil.' Why did she,
a maiden-deity, commend to the three Cecropian virgins that
boy who had been shut up and sealed with a dragon? In my
opinion it was evident incest, which can in no way be colored
over. Another, when she had almost lost her lover, 'who had
been torn apart by aroused horses,'s called upon that out-
standing physician, Aesculapius, to cure the youth and make
him whole.
The kindly one [Trivia] hides him [Hippolytus] in secret
dwellings and sends him to the grove of the nymph Egeria,
where alone the ignoble one may live out his time and where
he may be Virbius, making a change in his name. What does
she wish for herself so diligently? Why such solicitous care?
Why the secret abodes? Why is the relegation or dispatch so
far away, or to a woman, or into solitude? Why, then, the
change of name? Why, finally, such an unyielding hatred of
horses?9 What do all these things signify except consciousness

7 Cf. De civitate Dei 18.12.

8 Vergil, Aeneid 7.767.
9 Cf. ibid. 774-780.
 BOOK ONE 71

of guilt and a love not at all virginal? It is clear why she was
undertaking such great labor for so faithful a youth who had
refused obedience to a loving stepmother.

Chapter 18

At this point those also must be refuted who confess, not

only that the gods have been made of men, but that they
praise them, even take pride in them, as in Hercules by reason
of his strength, or in Ceres and Liber for their gifts, or in
Aesculapius and Minerva for the arts they have discovered.
How foolish these things are and how unworthy, by which
men contaminate themselves with inexpiable crime and be-
come enemies of the true God when they undertake rites in
honor of the dead in contempt of Him, I will point out by
specific instances. They say that it is virtue which raises a man
to heaven, not that which the philosophers talk about which
is placed among the goods of the soul, but a corporal virtue
which is called strength. Since this was outstanding in Her-
cules, he is said to have merited heaven. Who is so foolish or
silly as to judge that the strength of the body is a divine or
even a human good, when a greater amount of it is attributed
to beasts, and when it is often broken in one sickness, or
diminishes and rusts away with old age itself? And so Hercules,
when he saw his flesh being deformed with ulcers, did not
wish to be healed or to become an old man, lest he should
ever seem slighter or more deformed than himself. They
thought that he had mounted to the sky from the pyre where
he had set himself afire, and those very details which they
have most foolishly marveled at they have put in the statues
and representations they fashioned and consecrated, so that
monuments might stand forever of the vanity of those who
believed that gods were made because of the slaughter of
beasts.
72 LACTANTIUS

But this may be the fault of the Greeks who always regarded
very light matters instead of very great ones. What of our-
selves? Are we wiser? There are those who despise athletic
prowess because it has no worth, but regal strength, because
it can work widespread harm, they admire to such a degree
that they think that brave and warlike leaders are placed in
the company of the gods; that there is no other way to im-
mortality except to lead armies, to lay waste foreign lands, to
destroy cities, to burn towns, to stamp out free peoples or to
subject them to slavery. To be sure, the more men they have
afflicted, despoiled, slain, the more they think themselves
noble and famous; captivated by the appearance of an inane
glory, they give the semblance of virtue to their crimes. I
should prefer that they invent gods for themselves by slaugh-
tering wild beasts than by approving so bloody an immortal-
ity. If anyone strangles one man, he is held as an evil-doer and
criminal, and it is not considered fitting that he be admitted
to even the earthly dwelling place of the gods. But he who has
cut down infinite thousands of men, who has flooded fields
with blood, and infected rivers, he is admitted, not only to the
temple, but even to heaven. In Ennius, Africanus speaks thus:
'If it is right for anyone to ascend the heavens in wounds, then
to me alone the greatest gate of heaven lies open.'! This was
because he did away with and destroyed a great part of the
human race. Oh, in what great darkness you moved, Afri-
canus; rather, you, 0 poet, who believed that an ascent to
heaven was opened to men through killing and bloodshed!
Even Cicero assented to this vanity. 'It is true,' he says,
'Africanus, for to Hercules, too, the same gate was open,'2 just
as though he himself were, when this took place, the door-
keeper of heaven. Indeed, I am not able to decide whether I
should grieve, or whether I should think it laughable, when
I see serious men, learned and wise, as they seem to them-
selves, tumbling in such miserable waves of error.
1 Epigrammata 3.9,10 (from Cicero, De republica).
2 De republica (incert. frg.)
 BOOK ONE 73

If this is the virtue which makes us immortal, then I should

prefer to die than to be a cause of destruction to as many as
possible. If immortality can be produced in no other manner
except through bloodshed, how could it take place if all should
agree upon peace? This could certainly happen if, casting
out pernicious and impious rage, men should desire to be
innocent and just. Would no one then be worthy of heaven?
Would virtue perish, since men would no longer rage against
other men? But those who regard overturnings of cities and
peoples the greatest glory will not endure public leisure; they
will seize, rage, and, insolently bearing injuries, they will
break social relationships in order to have an enemy to destroy
as wickedly as they have harassed him.
Now let us continue on to the rest. The bestowal of gifts
gave the name of gods to Ceres and Liber. I can explain by
divine Scriptures that wine and grain were used by men before
the time of the offspring of Caelus and Saturn, but let us pre-
tend, anyway, that they were discovered by these two. Is it a
greater thing to seem to have collected more grains and, by
crushing them to have taught the making of bread, and to
have squeezed out the juices of choice vines and to have made
wine, or to have generated the grains and vines themselves
and to have brought them forth from the earth? God left these
things, in fact, to be worked out by human ingenuity. Still,
it is not possible for it to be otherwise than that all things are
His who granted the wisdom to man to discover those things
and who made those very things which could be discovered.
The arts also are said to have bestowed immortality upon
their inventors, as medicine has upon Aesculapius; and crafts,
Vulcan. Therefore, let us also worship those who taught
laundering or sewing. Why is honor not paid to the discoverer
of pottery? Is it because those who are rich despise Samian
ware? There are also other arts whose discoverers were very
beneficial to human life. Why have temples not been assigned
to them, also? But, of course, it is Minerva who discovered
all of them, and, therefore, the workmen supplicate her. Be-
74 LACTANTIUS

cause of such ordinary things Minerva ascended the heavens!

That is why, in truth, people abandon Him who has produced
the earth with all living creatures and the sky with its stars
and lights, in order to venerate her who taught the method
of weaving. 'What about that one who taught how to heal
wounds in bodies? Can he be more outstanding than He who
formed the bodies themselves, who gave the system of feeling
and living, and, finally, who thought of and produced the very
herbs and other aids on which the art of healing rests?

Chapter 19

But someone may say that his veneration ought to be given

both to this supreme God who made all things and to those
who have been of benefit in a measure. First, it has never
happened that one who has worshiped these [deities] should
worship God also, nor is it possible, because, if the same
honor is granted to those others, then He Himself is not
worshiped absolutely whose religion requires belief that He
is the one and only God. Our greatest poet declares that all
those who have improved life through the arts they have dis-
covered are in the lower regions and that the very discoverer
of the art of medicine was hurled into the Stygian waters by
a thunderbolt. 1 Thus may we understand how great is the
power of the father omnipotent, who wipes out even the gods
by his destructive power. Perhaps ingenious men held this
reasoning with themselves. Because that god could not be
struck by lightning, it is clear that he has not been made.
Rather, because he has been made, it is clear that he was a
man, not God. The deceit of the poets was not in fact, but in
name: they feared evil if they should admit, contrary to public
persuasion, that which was true. Now, if this is agreed among
themselves, that the gods have been made of men, why, then,

1 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid 6.663; 7.772,773.

 BOOK ONE 75

do they not believe the poets whenever they describe their

flights and wounds and deaths and battles and adulteries?2
It is to be understood from these actions that the gods could
not have been made in any way, because not even the men
were good, and they performed during their lives those things
which produced everlasting death.

Chapter 20

I come now to the religious beliefs proper to the Romans;

up to this point I have been speaking of general ones. Lupa,
the nurse of Romulus, has had divine honors given her, and
I could accept this if she were the animal itself whose aspect
she wears. But Livy is the author of the statement that the
effigy is of Larentina,l and, indeed, not of her body, but of her
mind and customs. She was the wife of Faustulus, and be-
cause of the use of her prostitute body she was called a she-
wolf, that is, a prostitute, among the shepherds; so, also, we
have the name lupanar for a house of ill-repute. 2 The Romans
followed the example of the Athenians in representing her;
for among them, when a certain prostitute by the name
Leaena had killed a tyrant, since it was wrong for a statue
of a prostitute to be set up in the temple, they placed there
an effigy of the animal whose name she bore. And just as the
Greeks made a monument of the name, so do the Romans of
the profession. A feast day also was dedicated to her name and
the Larentinalia established. Nor do the Romans worship this
prostitute only, but Faula also, who, Verrius writes, was the
harlot of Hercules. How great must that immortality be con-
sidered which even harlots attain? When Flora had gained
great wealth through her prostitute's ways, she named the
populace her heir and left a certain amount of money, from
. 2 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 1.16.42.
1 Cf. Livy 1.4.
2 Cf. St. Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.21; Isidore, Origines 18.42.2.
76 LACTANTIUS

the annual interest of which her birthday was to be celebrated

by the display of games which they called the Floralia. Be-
cause this seemed evil to the Senate, it was decided that the
purpose should be related more closely to the name itself, so
that a certain dignity might be added to the shameful sit-
uation. They, then, imagined her as the goddess who presided
over the flowers and said that it was necessary to placate her,
so as to have trees bear fruit and vines flourish well and pros-
perously. The poet of the Fasti, following that imposture,
wrote that there was a not ignoble nymph called Chlore and
that when she was betrothed to Zephyr, she received from her
spouse in place of a dowry this gift, that she should have
power over all flowers. 3 Those things are said honestly, but
they are dishonestly and disgracefully believed; coverings of
poetic language ought not to deceive us when truth is being
sought. Those games, therefore, are merely celebrated with
all wantonness to the memory of a prostitute. For, besides the
license of words with which every obscenity is poured forth,
the harlots also take off their garments at the insistence of the
people; then they perform the part of mimic actresses and in
the sight of the people and to the satiety of their impure eyes
display abominable motions.
Tatius consecrated an image of Cloacina found in the
Cloaca Maxima and, because he did not know whose likeness
it was, placed on it a name from the place. Tullus Hostilius
made the likeness of Fear and Terror and worshiped it. What
shall I say of this except that he received his deserts who
wanted always to have his gods present as men desired them.
The action of Marcus Marcellus in consecrating Honor and
Virtue differs only in the dignity of the names used, but it is
the same thing in fact. vVith the same vanity the Senate en-
rolled Mind among the gods; if it actually had had any of this
[mind], it would never have adopted religious rites of such
a sort. Cicero says that Greece undertook a great and bold
plan because it had consecrated statues of Cupids and Loves in
3 Fasti 5.195ff.
 BOOK ONE 77
the gymnasia;4 it may be seen that he flattered Atticus and joked
with the man who was his familiar friend. For this was not
great, nor should it be called a plan at all, but the depraved
and deplorable will of shameless men who prostituted their
children, whom they should have been educating, to the libidi-
nous passion of youth. They wanted the gods of wantonness to
be cherished by these children both in the most effective places,
where naked bodies are exposed to the eyes of the corrupt,
and at an age when, simple and unwary, they can be snared
and caught before they are aware. Why is it strange if from
this nation all excesses have streamed, a nation where vices
themselves are called religious, and such practices are not only
avoided, but even cultivated? And therefore, to this opinion,
as though he surpassed the Greeks in precedence, he added:
'But it was fitting for virtues to be consecrated, not vices.' If
you accept this, 0 Marcus Tullius, do you not see what will
happen, that the vices will rush in with the virtues, because
evils adhere to the good and are more powerful in the minds
of men? If you forbid these to be consecrated, that same Greece
will answer you that she cultivates some gods that they may
be propitious; others, that they may not be harmful. This is
always the excuse of those who have regarded their evils as
gods, as the Romans do Rust and Fever. If, therefore, vices
ought not to be consecrated (in this I agree with you), neither
should virtues. For not of themselves are they wise or do they
feel, nor are they to be placed within walls or temples made
of clay, but within hearts. They are to be grasped the more
interiorly lest they be false, [as they would be] if they should
be placed outside of man. So I mock that famous law of
yours which you lay down in these words: 'But those qualities,
through which ascent to the heavens is given to man, Mind,
Virtue, Piety, Faith; let there be shrines for these and their
praises.'5 These qualities cannot be separated from man. If
they are to be worshiped, then it is necessary that they be
4 De legibus, frg. 2; 2.11.28.
5 Ibid. 2.8.19; cf. also Lactantius 1.15.23.
78 LACTANTIUS

worshiped in man himself. If they are outside of man, what

need is there to worship those things which you lack? For
virtue must be reverenced, but not the image of virtue, and
it must be reverenced, not by some sacrifice or incense or
solemn imprecation, but by the will alone and intention. What
else is it to reverence or cultivate virtue but to grasp it with
the mind and hold it? As soon as anyone begins to wish for
it, he attains it. This alone is the cultivation of virtue: re-
ligious worship and no other veneration must be kept except
that of the one God.
What need is there, 0 eminently wise man, to occupy with
superfluous structures places which may serve human uses?
Why should priests establish vain rites and cultivate insensible
objects? Why immolate victims? Why expend such great
amounts on fashioning and honoring images? A much stronger
and much more incorrupt temple is the human heart. Let
this be adorned, instead; let this be filled with those true
powers. For these false consecrations, therefore, there follows
what must. Those who so cultivate, that is, those who pursue
the shadows and phantoms of virtues, are not able to embrace
those things which are true. So there is no virtue in anyone,
vices in mastery everywhere; no faith, each one seizing every-
thing for himself; no piety toward relatives or parents when
one is niggardly, with avarice and greed and rushing into evils
and the sword; there is no peace, no concord, when wars rage
publicly, and even private enmities are infuriated unto blood-
shed; there is no shame when pleasures are unchecked and
contaminate each sex and all parts of the body. Yet men do
not cease to reverence those things which they flee from and
despise. They worship with incense and to the highest degree
things which they ought to shrink from with their inmost
feelings; this whole error springs from ignorance of that
principal and supreme Good.
When the city was under siege by the Gauls, and the
Romans, hemmed in on the Capitol, made war engines from
women's hair, they consecrated a temple to Venus Calva. They
 BOOK ONE 79

do not understand, however, how empty their religious no-

tions are, even from the very fact that they mock them with
their foolishnesses. Perhaps they had learned from the Lac-
edaemonians to fashion gods for themselves from events. When
they were besieging the Messenians and the enemy had secret-
ly escaped from their deceived beseigers and had advanced to
plunder Lacedaemon, they were routed and put to flight by
Spartan women. When the tricks of the enemy were learned,
the Lacedaemonians pursued them. The armed women came
quite a distance to meet these on their way. When the women
saw their men preparing themselves for a battle, because they
believed them to be Messenians, they exposed their bodies.
But the men, inflamed with passion at the sight and recog-
nition of their wives, mated with them just as they were,
armed, and even promiscuously-they took no time for de-
termination-just as the youths previously sent out by those
same people had mated with maidens, from whom were born
the Parthenians. In memory of this act they set up a temple
and shrine to Venus Armata, which, even though it originated
from a disgraceful cause, however, it seemed more honorable
to consecrate an armed Venus than a base one.
At the same time an altar was set up to Jupiter Pistor, also,
because he had warned them in quiet that they should make
bread from all the grain which they had and hurl it into the
camp of the enemy, and it was due to this that the siege had
been lifted-the Gauls despairing that the Romans could be
subjected by a scarcity. What sort of mockery of religion is
that? If I were a defender of those religions, what could I do
but seriously complain that the power of the gods had fallen
into such great contempt, was regarded as a laughing stock
and was given the basest names? Who does not laugh at the
Oven-Goddess Forma or, rather, at those learned men who
perform the Fornacalian celebrations? Who, when he hears
the name of the goddess Muta, can contain his laughter? They
say that she is the one of whom the Lares have been born,
and they name her Lara or Larunda. What is she, who can-
80 LACTANTIUS

not speak, able to grant to a worshiper? Caca also is cherished,

she who gave indication to Hercules of the theft of the oxen;
she secured divinity because she betrayed her brother. 6 Then
there is Cunina who protects infants in cradles and removes
enchantments; and Stercutus who first introduced the method
of fertilizing fields with dung; and Tutinus, on whose chaste
bosom brides watch, so that the god may seem to have first
plucked their modesty.7 There are a thousand other trans-
formations, so that we may say that those who have taken
them up as objects of worship are more vain than the Egyp-
tians who venerate certain monstrous and ridiculous images.
Still, these have some sort of representation. What about
those who worship the shapeless and rough stone that is called
Terminus? This it is which Saturn is said to have devoured
in place of Jove, and not undeservedly is honor paid to him.
When Tarquin wished to make the Capitol and there were
chapels of many gods there, he consulted them through augury
whether they would yield to Jove. ·When all the rest yielded,
Terminus alone remained; whence the poet calls that 'the
immobile rock of the Capitol.'s As mighty Jupiter, to whom
the stone did not yield, was discovered from that object, so,
perhaps, came that confidence because it freed him from
paternal jaws. So, when the Capitol was built, an opening
was left in the roof above that very Terminus, that, since it
had not yielded, it might enjoy the free sky, which they them-
selves did not even enjoy who thought the stone enjoyed it.
And to this stone, therefore, supplication is made publicly as
to a guardian god of the boundaries, a god who is not only a
stone, but at times also a poet. \!\That can you say of those
who worship such things except that they themselves are
stones and blocks of wood-with strongest right to those titles?

6 Cacus was a robber slain by Hercules.

7 The names have their meaning from the Latin: the word for 'cradle'
is cuna; stercus is 'dung'; tutus, 'safe:
8 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid 9.446.
 BOOK ONE 81

Chapter 21

'!\Te have spoken of the gods themselves who are worshiped;

now a few words must be said about their acts of worship
and mysteries. Among the Cypriotes, Teucrus immolated a
human sacrifice to Jupiter, and handed that kind of sacrifice
down to posterity which was only later lifted under Hadrian's
rule. There was a law among the Tauri, a wild and inhuman
nation, that guests should be offered to Diana, and that sac-
rifice was celebrated many times. The Gauls placated Esus
and Teutates with human blood. Not even the Latins were
free from this depravity, inasmuch as Jupiter Latiaris is even
now honored with human blood. '!\That good do those who so
sacrifice ask for from these? Or how can such gods provide for
men by whose punishment they are propitiated? This is not
so strange a thing about the barbarians whose religion is in
accord with their customs, but for us, who have always
claimed the glory of meekness and humanity, ours are more
enormous violations of sacred law than these rites, are they
not? Rather are they to be regarded as criminal who, although
they have been trained in the study of liberal disciplines, fall
away from humanity, than are those who, rude and inexperi-
enced, fall into evil deeds through ignorance of the good. It
is clear, however, that this rite of immolating men is an
ancient one, since Saturn was worshiped in Latium with the
same kind of sacrifice-not, indeed, that a man was immolated
at an altar, but that one was thrown into the Tiber from the
Mulvian bridge. That this was done consistently, and with a
certain oracular authority, Varro is our source. The last verse
of the oracle was something like: 'They seemed to throw
heads and torches to Aida and to the Father.'1 Since that
seems ambiguous, both a torch and a man were customarily
thrown to him. But that kind of sacrifice is said to have been
This passage is not clear; d. Brandt-Laubmann text, p. cxii. The dif-
ficulty originates perhaps from the fact that the word .pws=man and
rpws=light.
82 LACTANTIUS

removed by Hercules when he returned from Spain, the rite,

however, remaining insofar as images of rush should be thrown
in place of real men, as Ovid shows in the Fasti: 'As long as
the Tirynthian [Hercules] comes into these fields, the sad
ri tes are performed each year in the Leucadian fashion. He
threw men of straw into the water; imitation bodies are
thrown after the example of Hercules.'2 These rites the Vestal
Virgins perform, as the same poet tells: 'Then, also, the virgin
customarily hurls images of ancient men made of bulrushes,
from the sturdy bridge.'3
Concerning the infants who were immolated to the same
Saturn out of hatred of Jupiter, I find it difficult to speak.
They were such barbarians, such depraved men, in calling
parricide-a foul and horrible crime against the human
race-a sacrifice, when they deprived of life tender and
innocent souls, at the age which is by far the dearest to parents,
without any regard for piety, and when they surpassed in
wildness the cruelty of all the beasts. which at least love their
offspring! a incurable madness! What more could the gods
do for them, since they were so angered, than if they were
well-disposed? They defiled their worshipers with parricide,
glorified them with childlessness, and despoiled them of
human feelings. ·What holiness can there be for these men?
Or what will they do in profane places who commit the most
extreme crimes around the altars of the gods? Pescennius
Festus in his books of history recounts fully how 'the Car-
thaginians were accustomed to immolate human victims to
Saturn, and when they were conquered by Agathocles, King
of the Sicilians, they thought the god was angry with them;
and so, that they might more diligently make atonement, they
immolated 200 of the sons of the nobles.'4
'Their religion could urge so much evil. It evoked deeds
often abominable and wicked.'" '!\Tith whom, then, did those
2 Fasti 5.629-631.
3 Ibid. 621,622
4 Historica romana, frg. (ed. Peter) 375.
5 Lucretius, De rerum natura 1.101; 83.
 BOOK ONE 83

extremely demented men take counsel for that sacrifice, when

they killed so large a part of the state, as great a number, per-
haps, as not even the victorious Agathocles had slain? Those
public rites ought to be judged of no lesser insanity than that
kind of religious function, one example of which is that of
the [Great] Mother, whereby men themselves make propitia-
tion with their own sex organs-for with such mutilation
they make themselves neither men nor women; another is
that of virtue, the same one they call Bellona, in which the
priests themselves sacrifice, not with another's, but with their
own blood. "With their shoulders cut and flashing drawn swords
in each hand, they run about, are carried out, and lapse into
insanity. Quintilian in Fanaticus says very well: 'If a god
demands that, he is mad.'G Are these things, too, sacred rites?
Is it not more satisfying to live in the manner of beasts than
to reverence gods so impious, so profane, so bloody? But where
those errors and this so great wantonness originated, we shall
discuss in its proper place. 7 In the meantime, let us take a
look at others which are lacking in crime, lest we seem in the
zeal of our attack to select only the worst ones. There are
sacred rites associated with Egyptian Isis to the extent of her
having lost or found her little son. At first, her priests, eunuchs
in the flesh, strike their breasts and lament just as she herself
had done when she lost him; then a child is produced as
though found again, and the mourning is changed into glad-
ness. So Lucan: 'Never is there enough of seeking for Osiris.'8
Always they lose him; always they find him. So in these sacred
rites an incident is re-enacted of an event which really hap-
pened, which certainly, if we have any sense, indicates that
the woman was mortal and almost beside herself until she
found her only son. And this fact did not escape that very
poet in whose work the young Pompey, hearing of the death
of his father, speaks: 'I will reveal now to the nations Isis, deity

6 Cf. Quintiliani Declamationes (ed. Ritter) 1 and note.

7 Cf. below, p. 94ff:.
8 The quotation is from Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.693; d. also Lucan 8.831.
84 LACTANTIUS

of the pyre, and I will sprinkle Osiris wrapped in linen among

the crowd.'9 This is the Osiris whom the common people call
Serapis, for they are accustomed to change the names of their
consecrated dead, I believe, so that no one may think that
they were men. Romulus, too, after his death became Quir-
inus; and Leda, Nemesis; and Circe, Marica; and Ina, after
she threw herself headlong, was called Leucothea; her mother
became Matuta; and Melicertes, her son, Palaemon and also
Portumnus.
The sacred rites of Eleusinian Ceres are not unlike these.
Just as there the child Osiris is sought by his weeping mother,
here Proserpina is in tears, having been carried off to in-
cestuous marriage with an uncle. 10 And because Ceres is said
to have sought her with flaming torches from the peak of
Aetna, for this reason her rites are celebrated by the waving
of burning wands.
At Lampsacus the sacrificial victim to Priapus is a little ass.
The following reason is given in the Fasti for its sacrifice.
When all the gods had assembled for the feast of the Great
Mother, and when, sated with banqueting, they were passing
the night in games, Vesta rested on the ground and went to
sleep. There Priapus stealthily violated her sleep and her
modesty, but she was awakened by the incessant cry of the
little ass upon which Silenus was carried, and the passion of
the attacker was discovered,!l For this reason the inhabitants
of Lampsacus are accustomed to slaughter the ass as though
to avenge Priapus, but among the Romans the same animal
is crowned with biscuits at the Vestal rites in honor of the
chastity which was preserved. What is more disgraceful, what
more revolting, than if Vesta is a virgin through the benefit
of an ass? But the poet invented the tale. It is no more true,
then, is it, than the story told by those who have written the
Phenomena}2 when speaking about the two stars of Cancer
9 Lucan 9.158,l59.
10 Cf. Cicero, In Verrem 4.48.106.
11 Ovid, Fasti 6.309-348.
12 Cf. the Scholiasts of the Aratus of Caesar Germanicus p. 70 (Beysig).
 BOOK ONE 85

which the Greeks call anaus, that they were little asses which
had carried their father Liber across, when he could not cross
the river, and to one of whom he had given this reward, to
speak with human voice? So between him and Priapus there
arose a contest of obscene magnitude. Priapus was conquered
and he slew his irate victor. This, however, is much more fool-
ish, but the poets may say what they wish. I do not omit such
a deformed mystery nor do I expose Priapus, lest anything
worthy of ridicule appear.
These things the poets have surely feigned, but of necessity
they were invented for the sake of covering up some greater
disgrace. Let us inquire what this is, therefore. Certainly, it is
manifest. For, as a bull was sacrificed to Luna because it had
similar horns and 'She placates Hyperion bound with Persian
rays with a steed lest a tardy victim be given to the swift god,'13
so in this case, since the magnitude of his virile frame is
enormous, a more fitting victim could not be found for him
than that which could imitate the very one to whom it was
offered. At Lindos, which is a town on Rhodes, sacred acts are
performed in honor of Hercules, the rites of which are very
different from the others, insofar as they are celebrated, not
with euphemia, as the Greeks say, but with maledictions and
execration, and they consider it a violation if ever amid their
solemn rites a good word should happen to fall from anyone
not on his guard. The following is the reason alleged for this,
if, however, there can be any reason in the completely inane.
When Hercules had been taken there and suffered hunger, he
saw a plowman working and he asked him to sell him one of
his heifers. The plowman, however, said that it could not be
done, since his every hope of tilling his land rested on the
two beasts. Hercules, using his customary violence, since he
could not get the one, killed the two. When the unhappy
man saw his cows being slaughtered, he took vengeance on
his injury with evil words, which was most gratifying to the
elegant and urbane man. For, while he was preparing the meal
13 Ovid, Fasti 1.395,396.
86 LACTANTIUS

for his companions and devouring the other man's cattle, he

listened to the plowman reviling him most sharply and was
loud in laughter and jeering. But after it was agreed that
divine honors be conferred upon Hercules out of admiration
for his strength, an altar was erected to him by the citizens,
which they named from the action, bouzugon, at which two
tied heifers were immolated, like those which he had taken
from the plowman. And Hercules appointed and commanded
the plowman himself to be his priest so that he might always
use the same maledictions in the celebration of the rites, for
he said that he had never dined more pleasantly. Now, these
things are not sacred actions, but sacrilegious, in which that is
considered holy which, if it were performed in other functions,
would be most severely punished.
What else do the sacred rites of Cretic Jove himself show,
except how nourishment is drawn away from or given to the
Father? There is a chapel of the nymph Amalthea, who
nursed the infant at her breasts, and about her Germanicus
Caesar speaks thus in the poem Aratus: 'She is thought to be
the nurse of Jupiter, if indeed the infant Jupiter took milk
from the trusty udders of the Cretan goat, who declares her
pleasing fostering by a brilliant star.'14 Jupiter used the skin
of this goat as a shield in his struggle against the Titans, for
which reason he is called aegis-bearer15 by the poets. So what-
ever was done in absconding the child, that very act is re-
peated through representation in the sacred rites. The same
mystery exists in relation to his mother, as Ovid says in the
Fasti: 'Steep Ida resounds long since with turmoil as the safe
child screams with infant mouth. Some strike shields with
sticks, some strike at empty helmets; the Curetes and the
Corybantes follow this practice. The thing lay hidden and
imitations of the early deed remain; companion goddesses
move their airy and hollow backs. They strike cymbals in

14 Caesar Germanicus, Amtus 165ft

15 Aegis means 'goat-skin:
 BOOK ONE 87

place of helmets and beat tympanies for shields; the flute gives
Phrygian melodies as it did of yore.'16
This whole notion, as imagined by the poets, Sallust re-
jected and sought an ingenious explanation why the Curetes
are said to have been foster fathers of Jove, and thus he says:
'Because they were princes of divine understanding, long ex-
istence had celebrated them as the foster parents of Jove, just
as happened in fitting the other things into a larger frame-
work.'17 How much the learned man was mistaken the story
itself reveals. For if Jupiter is the chief of gods and religions,
if before him no gods could be worshiped widely, because
those who are worshiped had not yet been born, it is clear
that the Curetes were princes of a sort different from that of
divine understanding, through whom every error has been
introduced and the memory of the true God has been removed.
And so from these very mysteries and ceremonies they ought
to understand that they supplicate dead men. I do not ask
that anyone believe the fictions of the poets. Let him who
thinks that these are lies consider the writings of the priests
themselves, and let him unfold whatever in the sacred works
pertains to religious rites; perhaps he will find out more than
we relate, and let him learn from these that all those things
which are regarded as sacred are inane, foolish, and fab-
ricated. If, moreover, anyone has laid aside error at the per-
ception of wisdom, he certainly will smile at the fuolishness
of men almost demented; I mean those who even leap about
in ignoble dances or who run about nude, anointed, crowned,
masked, or heedless of the mire. What shall I say of shields
now rotten with age? When they carry these, they think that
they are bearing the gods themselves on their shoulders.
Furius Bibaculus is reckoned among exceptional examples of
piety.Is When he was praetor, he carried the shield, although
lictors went before him and although he enjoyed by grace of

16 Fasti 4.2071f.
17 Sallust, Historia 3.60.
18 Cf. Valerius Maximus 1.1.9.
88 LACTANTIUS

his magistracy freedom from this duty. He, however, was not
Furius, but obviously was furious, who thought that he could
adorn the praetorship by this ministry. Rightly, therefore,
when things are done by men who are not untrained and
uneducated, does Lucretius exclaim: '0 foolish minds of men,
o blind hearts! In such great shadows of life and in excep-
tional perils is passed this time of life, whatever there may
be of itP9 Who would not smile at these mockeries who has
any sanity whatever, when he sees men, as though captive in
mind, do those things seriously which, if anyone should per-
form them in fun, he would seem to be excessively lascivious
and foolish?

Chapter 22

The author and establisher of these vanities among the

Romans was Sabinus, that king who especially involved the
rude and inexperienced minds of men in new superstitions.!
In order that he might do this with some authority, he pre-
tended that he had nocturnal meetings with the goddess
Egeria. There was a certain very shady cave in the Aricine
grove from which a stream flowed with a perennial spray. He
had been accustomed to retire there, without witnesses, so that
he could lie to this effect, that he was handing over to the
people, upon the advice of his goddess-wife, sacred practices
which were acceptable to the gods. It may be seen that he
wished to imitate the astuteness of Minos, who hid himself in
a cave of Jupiter and, delaying there for some time, promul-
gated laws as though they had been given to him by Jupiter,
so that he might bind men to obedience, not only by his
power, but also by religious influence. Of course, it was not
difficult to persuade shepherds. So Sabinus created the pontiffs,
19 Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.14.16.
1 Cf. Florus 1.2.1-4; 8.3. Perhaps Florus and Lactantius had a common
source here and perhaps they used the 'histories' of the father of
Seneca.
 BOOK ONE 89

the fiamen-priests, the Salii, and the augurs. He arranged the

gods by families. Thus, he softened the fierce minds of the
new people and recalled them from war-like matters to pur-
suits of peace.2 But although he deceived others, he did not
deceive himself. For many years after, during the consulship
of Cornelius and Baebius, in the field of the scribe Petilius at
the foot of the Janiculum Hill, two stone chests were found
by diggers, in one of which was the body of Numa, in the
other seven Latin books about pontifical law in which he dis-
tilled, not only the religious practices which he had himself
instituted, but all others besides. When this matter was
brought to the Senate, it was decreed that these books be
destroyed. So Quintus Petilius, the urban praetor, burned
them before a gathering of the people. That was done foolish-
ly, indeed, for to what advantage were the books burned when
this very action, namely, that they were burned because they
were derogatory to religion, was memorialized? There was no
one in the Senate at that time who was not very foolish, how-
ever; because the books could be destroyed, yet the affair itself
could not be erased from memory. So, while they wished to
prove to posterity with what great piety they defended re-
ligion, they lessened the authority of that very religion by
their testimony.
As Pompilius was among the Romans a founder of religious
nonsense, so before Pompilius there was Faunus in Latium,
who established evil rites even in honor of his grandfather Sa-
turn, and who extolled his father Picus among the gods and
consecrated his sister Fenta, the same as Fauna, his wife. Gavius
Bassus holds that 'she was named Fatua because she was in
the habit of predicting fortune for women as Faunus did for
men.' Varro writes that this same woman was of such great
modesty that for as long as she lived no male except her hus-
band ever saw her or heard her name.s For this reason women
sacrifice to her in secret and call her the Good Goddess. And
2 Cf. Valerius Maximus 1.1.12 (Livy 40.29).
3 Cf. Arnobius 5.18.
90 LACTANTIUS

Sextus Clodius in that book which he wrote in Greek relates

that she was the wife of Faunus, and that she had, contrary
to custom and royal decorum, secretly drunk a pot of wine
and become intoxicated. She had been beaten to death by her
husband with myrtle rods; but afterwards, when he repented
of his deed and could not endure his longing for her, he had
conferred divine honors upon her. For this reason, an over-
turned jar of wine is set up during her rites. So Faunus also
left to posterity no small error, which, however, prudent peo-
ple perceive. For Lucilius derides the folly of those who
think that the statues are gods in these verses: 'Those Lamian
bugbears, which Faunuses and Pompiliuses and Numas have
originated, these he trembles at; here he places all things. As
infant boys believe that all brass symbols are alive and are
men, so these think all fictions are true; they believe that a
heart resides in bronze figures. Projections of painters, nothing
of truth, everything feigned!'4
The poet actually compared foolish men to infants, but I
say that they are much more imprudent. Children think that
the images are men;" men think them gods. Age makes chil-
dren think what is not so; foolishness prevails among men.
Children will shortly cease to be deceived, but the vanity of
men hardens increasingly.
Orpheus first introduced in Greece the sacred worship of
Father Bacchus, first celebrated on the mountain near Boeo-
tian Thebes where Liber was born. Since he frequently acted
to the song of the cithara, he was called Cithaeron. Those
sacred rites are even now called Orphic, in which he himself
was afterwards torn apart and destroyed, and it was generally
during the same times as those in which Faunus existed. But
who preceded in age can be a matter of question, since Latinus
and Priam reigned during the same years; likewise, their
fathers, Faunus and Laomedon, in whose reign Orpheus with
the Argonauts came to the Ilian shore.
4 Lucilius, Bk. 15, frg. 2.
5 Cf. Isidore, Origines 11.2.27.
 BOOK ONE 91

Let us proceed further, then, and ask who actually was the
first originator of the worship of the gods. Didymus in his
books of Pindaric Narration says: 'Melisseus, the first King of
the Cretans, offered sacrifice to the gods and introduced new
rites and pomps for sacred worship. He had two daughters,
Amalthea and Melissa, who nursed the child Jupiter with
goat's milk and honey.'6 From this the poetic story that the
bees had flown to him and filled the child's mouth with honey
took its origin. Melissa was appointed by her father as the
first priestess of the Great Mother, which is why those in
charge of the Great Mother cult are still called Melissas. But
the Sacred History attests that: 'Jupiter himself, after he
secured control of affairs, had come into such great insolence
that he himself set up shrines to himself in many places.'7
When he was going through the world, as he had come into
each region, the kings and princes of the people joined in
showing hospitality and friendship to him. When he de-
parted from each, he ordered a fane to be erected to himself
in the name of his host, so that the memory of the friendship
and alliance might be preserved. Thus were constituted the
temples to Jupiter Ataburius and Jupiter Labryandius, for
Ataburius and Labryandius were his hosts and his helpers in
war; similarly, the temples to Jupiter Laprius, Jupiter Molion-
ius, Jupiter Casius, and others were erected in the same way.
Jupiter concluded most cleverly that he would gain divine
honor for himself and a perpetual name for his hosts in such
religious union. Moreover, they rejoiced and willingly obeyed
his command and celebrated yearly rites and feasts in honor
of his name. Aeneas followed a similar plan in Sicily, when
he bestowed upon the city he founded the name of his host,
Acestes, so that afterwards Acestes happily and gladly would
love it, enlarge it, and adorn it. In this manner Jupiter sowed
the practice of his own cult throughout all lands and gave
an example for imitation to the others. \Vhether, therefore,
6 Cf. Schmidt, op. cit. 220.
7 Ennius, frg. 11.
92 LACTANTIUS

the method of religious worship of the gods flowed from

Melisseus, as Didymus handed down, or from Jove himself,
as Euhemerus has it, there is agreement, however, about the
time when the gods began to be worshiped. Melisseus had
great precedence by age, for it is he who brought Jupiter up
as a nephew. So, it is possible that he instituted the worship
of the gods either before or while Jupiter still was a child;
that is, he would have advanced the mother, Ops, and grand-
mother, Tellus, of his ward, she who was wife of Uranus, and
his father Saturn. And he himself by this example and train-
ing would have advanced Jupiter to such great pride that he
afterwards would dare to assume divine honors to himself.

Chapter 23

Now, since we have brought to earth the ongm of these

empty religious beliefs, it remains for us to gather together
the times during which those whose memory is cherished
existed. Theophilus, in his De temporibus, written to Au-
tolycus, says in his account: 'Thallus says that Belus,! whom
the Babylonians and Assyrians worship, is found to have been
322 years more ancient than the Trojan War, that Baal, more-
over, was a contemporary of Saturn, and that the two grew
up at the same time.'2 This is true to the extent that it can
be gathered from reason itself. Agamemnon, who waged the
Trojan War, was the grandson of Jupiter, and Achilles and
Ajax were his great-grandsons; Ulysses was nearest by the same
relationship, and Priam, indeed, by a long time. But certain
authors have it that Dardanus and Iasius were sons of Cory-
thus, not of Jupiter, and, if this were so, he could not have
had his own great-grandson Ganymede for shameful uses. If
you divide the years suited to the parents of those whom I
1 The more usual rendering is Baal; cf. interpolation of the Codex
Fuldensis of Tertullian, Apologia 19.
2 Cf. Servius on Aeneid 3.167.
 BOOK ONE 93

named above, the number will agree. From the destruction

of the city of Troy 1,470 years are taken. From this reckoning
of the times it is clear that Saturn, who was the begetter of
all the gods, was born not more than 1,800 years before. There-
fore, let not the glory of the age of sacred beings be given to
those whose origin and reason and times have been analyzed.
There still remain some points which have much value for
the refutation of false religions, but I have determined al-
ready to end this book, lest it exceed the norm. Those points,
in fact, ought to be more fully investigated, so that, after each
detail has been refuted which seems to stand in the way of
truth, we may be able to direct and inspire those men who
still wander in uncertainty as to the true religion. The first
step of wisdom in this regard is to recognize the false;3 the
second is to come to know the true. Therefore, in the case
of the person whom this first introduction of ours, in which
we uncovered false doctrines, has benefited, he shall be sum-
moned to a knowledge of the true, than which there is no
more delightful pleasure for man, and he will be already
worthy of the wisdom of heavenly learning who has advanced
willing and ready to the learning of the others.

3 Cf. St. Jerome, Epistola 58.10.

 BOOK TWO

THE ORIGIN OF ERROR

Chapter 1

LTHOUGH I HAVE SHOWN IN BOOK I that the religions of

the gods are false, because those, whose varied and
dissimilar cults men have adopted by custom, con-
sent, and foolish conviction throughout the world, were mor-
tal and, having discharged their lot in life, were molded to
divine usage at their death; however, lest any doubt should
remain, I will reveal these errors in this second book at their
very source. It will explain all the causes by which men were
deceived and believed in the beginning that such were gods,
and then, later on with inveterate persuasion, continued in
the most depravedly adopted religions. I long to declare the
majesty of the one God by exposing these empty rites and
uncovering the impious vanity of men, and by undertaking
the more useful and greater task of recalling men from evil
paths and restoring them in their own regard. My purpose in
this is that they may not despise themselves so vehemently, as
certain philosophers do, who regard themselves as infirm, un-
necessary, and of no value, and even to have been born in
vain. This opinion usually forces many to vice!
While they hold that we are an object of care to no god, or
that after death we shall be nothing, they yield themselves
wholly to license; and, while they think it is permissible for
them, they thirstily strain after the imbibing of pleasures,
through which they imprudently rush into the snares of death.
94
 BOOK TWO 95

They do not know what the reason of man is. If they chose
to uphold it, they would in the first place acknowledge their
master; they would follow virtue and justice; they would not
surrender their souls to figments of the earth; they would not
seek after the death-bearing delights of passion; and finally,
they would value themselves of great worth and would under-
stand that there is more in man than what is seen; man
whose strength and condition cannot otherwise be retained
unless they lay aside deformity and take up the worship of
their true Parent.
Indeed, as is fitting, often thinking about the highest things,
I marvel that the majesty of the one God which holds and
rules all things has fallen into such great oblivion, and that
that which alone ought to be worshiped is alone most neg-
lected. I wonder that men themselves have been brought to
such great blindness that they prefer dead gods to the true
and living God, and earthly beings and those buried in the
earth to Him who was the Founder of the earth itself. Pardon
for this impiety of men could be granted if it were absolutely
from ignorance of the divine Name that this error came. But,
since we often see that those very worshipers of the gods
acknowledge and praise the highest God, what pardon for
their impiety can they hope for themselves who do not ac-
knowledge the worship of Him whom it is wrong for man not
to know at all? Whey they swear, when they make a wish, and
when they give thanks, they do not name Jupiter or the many
gods, but God. Thus does truth itself under the very force of
nature burst forth even from unwiIling hearts.
This is not, indeed, the case in prosperity. For then especial-
ly does the thought of God slip out of the memory of men,
when, enjoying His benefits, they ought to give honor to divine
indulgence. But whenever serious necessity should fall upon
them, then they remember God. If the terror of war has raged,
if the pestiferous blight of sickness has touched them, if a long
period of drought has prevented their crops from nutritious
yield, if harsh storms or hail has attacked them, they rush to
96 LACTANTIUS

God; they seek His help; they pray that He come to their
aid. 1£ anyone is tossed on the sea by a raging wind, he calls
upon Him; if anyone is afflicted by any force whatever, he
implores Him the more; if one is driven to the extreme neces-
sity of begging, he appeals to the one God by prayers asking
for his food; yes, in His divine and unique name He is asked
to show mercy to Himself among men. Thus, they never re-
member God except when they are up against evil. After the
fear has dissipated and the dangers have receded, then, to be
sure, they eagerly rush to the temples of the gods, and to these
they pour libations, and to these they make sacrifices, and
these they wreathe. But the God whom they implored in
their very necessity, they thank with not even a word! So
from prosperity springs luxury, and from luxury, as from all
vices, springs impiety toward God.
From what cause may we suppose that this arises, unless
there be some perverse power who is always inimical to truth,
who rejoices in human errors, and whose one everlasting work
is to spread darkness and blind the minds of men, that they
may not see the light or look up to heaven and preserve the
nature of their own bodies? Whereas other living creatures
look down upon the earth, with their bodies prone, because
they have not received reason and wisdom, and inasmuch as
ours is an upright stature and since a raised countenance has
been given us by the God who made us, it is clear that those
religions of many gods are not humanly reasonable since they
reduce a heaven-directed being to the worship of earthly ones.!
For, when that one and only Parent of ours fashioned man,
that is, an animal, intelligent and capable of reason, He raised
him up from the ground and made him stand erect for the
contemplation of his Maker. That especially clever poet has
noted this:
Although the other animals, prone, look at the earth,
----
1 This is a favorite argument with Lactantius. Cf. his entire treatise on
The Workmanship of God; also cf. Cicero, De natura deorwn 2.56.140;
De legibus 1.9.26; Sallust, Catiline 1.1; Minucius Felix, Octavius 17.2;
Cyprian, Ad Demetrianum 16.
 BOOK TWO 97

The face of man He lifted high and ordered him to

behold
The sky and to raise an upright gaze unto the stars.2
For this reason, surely, the Greeks called him anthropon 3
because he looks upward. Thus, they renounce themselves and
rob themselves of the name of man who do not look above
but below, unless, perhaps, they think that the very quality of
upright stature has been given to man without cause. 4 Cer-
tainly, God has willed us to look to heaven, and not uselessly.
The birds and nearly all the dumb beasts can 'see' the sky,
but to us has been given the ability to 'behold' the heavens
as we stand erect so that there we may seek religion, so that al-
though we cannot see with our eyes the God whose abode the
heavens are, we may contemplate Him with our minds. But
this is by no means what the man who venerates bronze or
stone, which are earthly things, does. It is, therefore, most
perverse, when the form of the body, which is temporal, is up-
right, that the mind itself, which is eternal, become base, for
our shape and stature signify nothing else but that the mind
of man ought to look there where his countenance is directed,
and that his soul ought to be as upright as his body, so that
it may imitate that which it ought to dominate. Men are, in
truth, forgetful of both their name and their purpose when
they cast their eyes down from the height and fix them upon
the earth. They fear the works of their own hands, as if it were
possible for anything to be greater than its fashioner.

Chapter 2

What sort of folly is it, therefore, either to fashion those

things which they may fear after a while or to fear those
things which they have fashioned? 'We do not fear those
2 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.84-86.
3 The Greek word anthropon literally means 'one looking to or upward.'
4 Cf. Isidore, Origines 11.1.5£.
98 LACTANTIUS

things,' they tell us, 'but those to whose image they have been
made and to whose names they have been consecrated.' Of
course, you are afraid, therefore, because you think that they
are in heaven; and, if they are gods, it is not possible that it
be otherwise. Why, then, do you not raise your eyes to heaven
and make sacrifices in the open after calling upon their names?
Why do you look to walls and wood and stones rather than
toward where you believe them to be? What do the temples
mean? The altars? What of those very images which are mon-
uments either of the dead or of the absent? Actually, the very
scheme of fashioning likenesses was invented by men so that
those who had been withdrawn by death or separated by
absence could be retained in the memory. Shall we place the
gods among their number? If they are among the dead, who
is so foolish as to worship them? If they are among the absent,
they ought not to be worshiped, since they do not see what
we do or hear our prayers. If gods, then they cannot be
classed as absent, for, because they are divine, in whatever
part of the world they may be, they see and hear all things.
Then images are superfluous for those who are everywhere
present, since it is enough to call with prayers upon the names
of those listening. 'But those presences are not there except
in their own images.' Of course, this is so, just as people
believe that the souls of the dead wander about their tombs
and their corpses. However, after that god has come to be
near at hand, there is no longer need for an image of him.
Now, I ask you, if anyone gazes often at the picture of a
man who is away so that he may take comfort from it for
sustaining the absence, he would not seem sane, would he, if,
when the other has returned and is present, he should con-
tinue to gaze at the picture rather than wish to enjoy the
sight of the man himself? Certainly, not at all sane. Still, the
image of the man seems necessary when he is far away, but it
will be superfluous when he is near at hand. The image of
God, however, whose power and spirit, everywhere diffused,
can never be absent, is certainly always superfluous.
 BOOK TWO 99

But they fear that their entire religion may be empty and
vain if they see nothing before them to adore. So they set up
likenesses, which, because they are images of the dead, are
very much like the dead: they lack all the senses. There ought
to be a living sensible likeness of a god living to eternity. If
this word takes its name from its quality of likeness, how can
those images which neither feel nor are moved be considered
like to GOd?l Hence, the likeness of God is not that which is
made by the hands of man from stone or bronze or any ma-
terial whatever; it is man himself who feels, and is moved,
and does many great actions. Men who are most foolish and
absurd do not understand that, if likenesses could feel and
be moved, they would willingly adore the man by whom
they were fashioned, for they would be unfashioned and rough
stone or unformed and raw material unless they had been put
into shape by that man. Man, therefore, must be reckoned the
parent, as it were, of those things which have come to be
through his hands; it is through man that they have come to
have form, shape, and beauty, and, therefore, he who made
them is better than those things which were made. Yet no
one looks up to and fears the very Maker; they are afraid of
what He made, as though it were possible for the work to be
of more avail than the workman. Rightly does Seneca in his
moral books say that men venerate the likenesses of gods. 'They
supplicate them with bended knee; they adore them; through
the whole day they sit or stand near them; they throw offer-
ings to them and slay victims for them; and while they look
up to these so much they contemn the laborers who made
them.'2 What is so self-contradictory as to despise a statue
maker, to adore the statue, and not even to admit to social
intercourse the man who makes your gods for you?
What strength, then, what power can they have, when he

1 The effect in the Latin is obtained by the use of words: simulacrum

for sensible likeness, similitudo for quality of likeness, and similis for
like.
2 Frg. 120.
100 LACTANTIUS

who made them does not have any? But not even those powers
which he possessed-sight, hearing, speech, movement-could
he give to them. Is there anyone, therefore, so foolish that he
thinks that there is something of a god in an image in which
there is not even anything of man except a shadow? But no
one considers these things. Men are infected with a vain and
stupid persuasion, and their minds have drunk in fully the
juice of folly. So they who are themselves sensible adore in-
sensible things; they who are wise adore irrational things; they
who live adore lifeless things; with an origin from heaven
they adore earthly things. It is fitting to proclaim that verse
of Persius, as though from some lofty tower where all might
hear: '0 minds bent upon the earth and empty of heavenly
things!,3
You look directly upon the heavens to the sight of which
that Artificer, your God, has aroused you. He gave you an
erect bearing; you bend yourselves down to the earth. Your
lofty minds, directed with your bodies high unto their Maker,
you press down to lower things, as though you were ashamed
not to be born four-footed beasts.4 It is not right for a heaven-
directed being to be leveled with earthly ones inclining to the
ground. Why do you deprive yourselves of celestial benefits
and of your own will fall prone to the ground? For you are
turned into miserable ones of the earth when you seek below
that which you ought to have sought on high. Those ludicrous
and fragile figments of human fingers, formed from whatever
material they may be, what else are they but the earth from
which they have come? Why, then, are you subjecting your-
selves to inferior things? Why do you place earth upon your
heads? When you submit yourselves to the earth and make
yourselves lowlier, you sink beyond to the infernal regions
and condemn yourselves to death because there is nothing
inferior to and more lowly than the earth except death and
hell. If you wished to avoid these, you would despise the earth
3 Persius, 2.61.
4 Cf. Cyprian, Ad Demetrianum 16.
 BOOK TWO 101

placed under your feet by preserving the normal stature of

your body, an upright one, which you received for this reason
-that you might be able to unite your eyes and your mind
with Him who made them. 5 Therefore, to despise and tread
upon the earth is nothing else than not to adore images be-
cause they are made of earth; and, likewise, it is not to desire
riches and to spurn the delights of the body, since wealth and
the body itself, whose hospitality we make use of, is of the
earth. Cherish the living, that you may live. It is necessary that
he die who has assigned himself and his soul to the dead.

Chapter 3

But what advantage is there in a discussion of this sort made

public and common, and delivered to unlettered men, when
we see even learned and wise men, although they understand
the vanity of the false religions, persisting, nevertheless, by I
know not what depravity, in cultivating those very cults which
they despise? Cicero understood that those gods which men
adore were false. When he had said many things which were
strong enough for the overturning of the religions, he said,
however, that those things ought not to be discussed openly
lest such a 'discussion extinguish the religious beliefs that
have been publicly accepted.'l What can you do in a case like
that, for instance, when one who, even though he realizes that
he is wrong, willingly dashes against rocks so that all people
may stumble, and willingly plucks out his own eye that all
may be blind? He would not merit well of the others whom
he permits to err, nor of himself who accedes to the errors of
others, nor finally, does he make use of the good of his own
5 This notion of the position of the body and the 'location' of the
spiritual part of man in it is almost a fetish with Lactantius, but it is
interesting to note how he is able to return solidly to the point at
issue and make a strong apologetic conclusion.

1 De natura deorum frg. 1.

102 LACTANTIUS

wisdom so as to fulfill with deeds what he has perceived with

his mind, but willingly and knowingly he catches his foot in
a snare so that he himself is captured along with the others
whom he should have, as one more wise, set free. It is far
better, Cicero, if there is in you any virtue, to strive to make
the people wise. It is a worthy thing whereby you might ex-
pend all the strength of your eloquence. You must not fear
that in such a good cause oratorical skill will fail, you, who
have often defended even bad causes fluently and strongly.
But, to be sure, you fear the prison of Socrates, and, therefore,
you do not dare to take up the patronage of truth. Still as a
wise man you ought to contemn death, and it would be much
more beautiful if you had died on account of uttering bene-
dictions rather than maledictions.2 Nor could The Philippics
have brought you more praise than would have been yours
from a discussion of the error of the human race and a recall
of the minds of men to sanity. But let us assign it to timidity,
which ought not to be found in a wise man.
Why, then, are you yourself engaged in the same error? I
see that you venerate things that are earthly and made by
human hands. You know that these things are empty, and still
you do the very same things which they do whom you your-
self acknowledge to be consummate fools. What good was
there, then, in your seeing the truth which you would neither
defend nor follow? Willingly do they err, even those who re-
alize that they err. How much more is the uninstructed crowd,
which rejoices in empty displays and gazes at all things with
childish minds, delighted with frivolities and captivated by the
appearance of the statues! For it is not able to ponder anyone
thing within itself that it may understand that nothing ought
to be worshiped which is perceived by mortal eyes, since it is
necessarily mortal. Nor is it to be wondered at if they do not
see God since they themselves do not even see the man whom
2 Cicero's death was demanded by Antony when he rose to power with
Octavian as punishment for the orator's attacks against him in the
orations called The Philippics, which Cicero modeled on those of
Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon.
 BOOK TWO 103

they think they see. For this, which is subjected to the eyes, is
not man, but it is the receptacle of a man, whose quality and
form are perceived, not from the features of the vessel in
which he is contained, but from deeds and behavior. Those
who worship statues, therefore, are bodies without men be-
cause they have surrendered themselves to bodily things.
They do not see anything more with their minds than with
their bodies, although it is the duty of the mind to discern
more subtly those things which corporal vision is not able to
observe. The philosopher-poet severely accuses those men as
low and abject who, contrary to the plan of their own nature,
prostrate themselves to venerate earthly objects. For he says:
'And they make their minds craven with the fear of the gods
and they press them in subjection down to the earth.'3 When
he said this, of course, Lucretius had quite another meaning,
namely, that nothing ought to be worshiped because the gods
have no care for human things. In another place he avers
that the religious cults and worship of the gods are an inane
duty: 'It is no piety often to be seen veiled and to face a stone,
to make visits to all the altars, and to fall prostrate on the
ground or to stretch one's palms out before the shrines of the
gods; and neither is it piety to sprinkle the altars with much
blood of sacrificial animals, nor to bind vows with VOWS.'4
Certainly, if these things are empty, it is not reasonable for
sublime and lofty minds to be called down from their heights
and pressed to the earth, but rather, they ought to dwell upon
heavenly matters. False religions, therefore, have been im-
pugned by the wiser writers, because they felt that they were
false, but the true one has not been championed, because they
did not know just what kind it was or where it might be.
And so they held the opinion, as it were, that there was no
religion at all, since they could not find the true one. In
this way, they fell into error, much greater than the error of
those who held a false religion. For those worshipers of
3 Lucretius, 6.52£.
4 Ibid. 5.1198·1200.
104 LACTANTIUS

fragile images, even though they were foolish, since they put
celestial powers in corporal and earthly things, retain, never-
theless, a certain amount of wisdom, and they can obtain
pardon who hold, even though not in actual practice of the
thing, in intention, at any rate, that the highest function of
man (in fact, it is the greatest if not the only distinction be-
tween men and beasts) is in religion. To the extent that they
were the wiser, in that they understood the error of false
religion, they have become just so much the more foolish
because they did not think that there was some true one. So,
because it is easier to pass judgment on the thinking of others
than on our own, while they saw the headlong falling of
others, they did not look at what was in the way of their own
feet. On each side is found the height of foolishness along with
a certain trace of wisdom; therefore, you might hesitate about
which you would call the greater fools, whether it be those
who take up the false religion or those who have none.
But, as I said, excuse can be found for the unlearned and
those who do not profess to be wise, whereas for those who
professing wisdom display rather foolishness, no excuse can
be found. I am not so unfair, certainly, as to think that they
should have divined that they might come upon the truth
by themselves. I admit that this could not be. However, I do
exact this from them, that they could have proved it from
reason itself. They would have acted more wisely if they had
recognized that there was some true religion, and if they had
impugned the false ones openly and proclaimed that the true
one was not that held by men.
Perhaps they were moved by the argument that, if there
were any true religion, it would assert and vindicate itself
and would not allow any other to exist. They could in no way
see how, or by whom, or to what an extent true religion was
being oppressed, because it is a matter of divine pledge and
heavenly secret. Therefore, unless this is taught, no one can
know it in any way. This is the summary of the argument.
The unskilled and unwise hold false religions as true, because
 BOOK TWO 105

they neither know the true nor understand the false. Those
more wise, lest they fall into error, do the same thing, either
because they do not know the true, or because they continue
in those which they know to be false so that they may seem
to hold to something, or because they worship nothing at all,
when this very thing is the greatest error-to imitate the life
of beasts under the form of man. Now to understand the false
is, indeed, a property of wisdom-but of human wisdom. It is
not possible for this step to be passed over by man, and
so many of the philosophers took up the religions, as I have
explained. To know the true, on the other hand, belongs to
divine wisdom, but man through himself is not able to arrive
at this knowledge, unless he be taught by God. So the philos-
ophers attained to what was the height of human wisdom, that
they might understand what it is not; they were not able to
attain to this point, that they might say what it is. The state-
ment of Cicero is well known: 'Would that I might be able to
discover the true as easily as to refute the false.'5 But because
it exceeds the capability of the human condition, the faculty
of this office has been assigned to us to whom God has granted
the knowledge of truth. The last four books shall serve to
explain this; meanwhile, let us now uncover the false teachings
as we began to do.

Chapter 4

How much majesty can statues or images possess, when it

rested in the power of a mere man as to whether they be made
something else or that they be made at alI? Priapus in Horace
speaks thus about this: 'Once I was a fig-tree trunk, useless
wood, when the carpenter did not know whether to make a
bench or a Priapus. He decided on the god. Then, a god I
became, the greatest dread of thieves and birdsJ'1 Who would
5 De natura deorum 1.32.91.
1 Satires 1.8.1-4.
106 LACTANTIUS

not be secure with so great a guardian? The thieves are so

foolish that they fear the lust of Priapus, while the very birds,
that they think are driven away by the terror of his scythe or
groin, settle upon and build nests in and defile the statues
made skillfully so very similar to men. But Flaccus as a
writer of satiric verse, mocked the vanity of men, whereas,
those who act in such a way are of the opinion that they are
doing something serious. Finally, the greatest poet, a man wise
in other matters, in this alone did not act as a poet, but raved
like a foolish old woman when he orders even in those most
faultless books of his that this should be done: 'Let the
guardian against thieves and birds, the watchful Priapus,
Hellespontic lord, protect them with his willow scythe.'2
They adore these mortal things or things made by mortals;
they can be broken, burned, and come to nought. They are
wont often to be broken by buildings falling with age, they
fall to ashes consumed with fire, and generally, unless their
very size aids them or a diligent guard watches, they become
the prey of thieves. What insanity is it, therefore, to fear those
things for which either ruin or fire or theft is feared! What
emptiness to hope for some protection from those things
which cannot protect themselves! What perversity to run to
their protection which, when they are violated, are unavenged
themselves unless they are vindicated by their worshipers!3
Where then is truth? Why, there where no force can be applied
to the religion, where nothing which can be violated appears,
and where sacrilege cannot be perpetrated. Whatever is sub-
ject to the eye and hand, because in truth it is fragile, is for-
eign to the whole realm of immortality. In vain, however, do
men worship and adorn gods with gold, ivory, and gems, as if
in truth they were able to take any delight from these things.
What is the use of precious gifts to things which sense nothing,
or what is that to those who are dead? With like reason they
bury the bodies of the dead in the earth, smeared with oint-
2 Vergil, Georgics 4.110f.
3 Cf. Cyprian, Ad Demetrianum 14.
 BOOK TWO 107

mel1t and wrapped in precious garments, in the way that they

honor the gods, who neither feel when these things are done
nor know when they are being worshiped, for they did not
take on senses with a consecration rite. It did not please
Persius that golden vessels were brought into temples, for he
regarded as a superfluity in religious practices that which
is an instrument of avarice, not holiness. It is much more
satisfying to a god whom you worship rightly to bring in
place of a gift 'ordered justice and rightness of soul, and
holy recesses of the mind, and a heart filled with noble gen-
erosity,'4 and Persius realized this well and wisely. He sub-
jected to ridicule the fact that there is 'gold in temples, that
puppets are donated by a maiden to Venus.'5 These things
Persius despised perhaps for their minuteness. He did not see
that the statues themselves and the likenesses of the gods,
made by the hands of Polycleitus, Euphanor, and Phidias 6
from gold and ivory, were nothing other than grand puppets,
not given by maids to whose play pardon can be given, but
dedicated by bearded men. Rightly, therefore, does Seneca
deride even the foolishness of old men. 'We are not,' he says
'boys twice as the saying goes, but always, with this difference,
however, that we play bigger games (as old men).'7 So at these
games they bring ointments to the ornate and grand puppets,
and incense, and spices; they immolate to them rich and costly
victims. Indeed, the puppets have a mouth, but they lack teeth;
theirs is a peplos and precious cloak, but they have no use
for a veil; men consecrate gold and silver to them, and those
who accept do not possess as much as those who make the
donation.

4 Persius, 2.73-74.
5 Ibid. 69,70.
() Great names in the history of Greek sculpture: Polycleitus, native of
Argos, and a reputed pupil of Ageladas of Argos; a younger con-
temporary of the great Phidias; Euphranor, a sculptor and painter who
settled in Athens, dated by Pliny around 364 .B.C.; Phidias, the great
Athenian sculptor of the Age of Pericles, creator of huge bronze
statues, the Athena Pmmachus of the Acropolis being the most noted.
7 Frg. 121.
108 LACTANTIUS

Not without reason did Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, when

he had gained possession of Greece after the victory, despise,
despoil, and deride such gods, if he really did follow his
sacrilegious acts with jokes and jeers. For when he had torn
off the golden cloaks from Olympian Jupiter, he ordered one
of wool to be placed on him, saying that the gold was heavy
for the summer and cold for the winter, but that the wool
would be suitable for both seasons. Likewise, when he took the
gold beard from Aesculapius, he said it was unfitting and un-
fair (since Apollo, the god's father, was still unbearded and
smooth), for the son to be seen bearded before the father.
Likewise, he took off the cups, and spoils, and certain small
trinkets which were held in the outstretched hands of the
images, and said that he would accept them from them, not
take them away from them, for it would be extremely foolish
and ungrateful not to want to accept the offer from those will-
ingly making the offer, to whom men were praying for favors
for themselves. He did these things with impunity because he
was a king and conqueror, but, in addition, customary good
fortune followed him, for he lived until he reached old age
and passed the kingdom from his hands to those of his son. 9
In this, however, because men were not able to avenge the
crimes of a tyrant, it was fitting for the gods to be vindicators
of themselves. But if a low born man should commit a crime
of any sort, there are always at hand for him clubs, stakes,
racks, crosses, and whatever it may please those angered and
raging to think up.
Now when men punish those caught in sacrilege, they them-
selves have no confidence in the power of their gods. I ask
why do they not leave the principal task of avenging to them,
if they think they have any power? Rather do they think that
it is by the divine power of the gods that the plunderers of
the sacred things were seized and held, and they rage not so

8 Evidently the statues were clothed with robes of precious materials and
the beard referred to in the next sentence may have been of gold braid.
9 Cf. Cicero, De natura deomm 3.34.83.
 BOOK TWO 109

much with wrath as with fear that, if they do not vindicate

the injured honor of the gods, the punishment will fall upon
themselves. Surely, they are incredibly foolish to think that
the gods will harm them for the crimes of others, gods who
through themselves could bring no harm to those by whom
they were violated and despoiled. But often, indeed, these
gods themselves also have had claims against sacrilegious acts.
It is possible that this happened by chance, which is the case
sometimes, but not always; a little later,lo however, I will show
how this happened.
Meanwhile, now I ask why men did not make claims against
so many and such great sacrilegious acts of Dionysius who,
not stealthily, but openly, mocked the gods? Why did they not
keep this one, so forward in his irreverences, away from the
temples, away from the ceremonies, and away from their own
images? Why, moreover, did he sail away prosperously after
having taken the sacred objects? Because, of course, he was
testifying to the joke as was his wont. 'Do you see,' he said to
his companions in fear of shipwreck, 'how prosperous the
voyage is rendered for those who commit sacrilege by the im-
mortal gods themselves?'l1 Perhaps he had learned from Plato
that the gods are nothing. 12
What about Gaius Verres, whom Cicero, his accuser, com-
pares to this same Dionysius and to Phalaris and to all ty-
rants?13 Did not Verres pillage all of Sicily by taking away the
images of the gods and the ornaments of shrines? It is useless
to go over the single incidents; it is enough to recall one in
which the accuser, with all the powers of his eloquence, and
with every effort of his voice and body, deplored the de-
struction done to a Ceres, either of Catina or Henna.14 The

10 Cf. ch. 7.
11 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 3.34.83; Valerius Maximus 1.1 ext. 3.
12 Cf. Cicero, ibid. 1.12.30-13.34.
13 Cicero's prosecution of Verres for his extortion as provincial governor
revealed many of that one's acts of violence against religious objects.
Cf. especially In Verrem 5.56.145.
14 Cicero, In Verrem 4.45; 48-51. Catina and Henna were towns in Sicily.
llO LACTANTIUS

religious significance of the first of these I5 was so great that

it was a crime for men to approach the secret portions of its
temple, and such was the antiquity of the other I6 that all the
annalists say that the goddess herself first discovered grains
on the soil of Henna, and that it was from this place that her
maiden daughter was stolen,17 Finally, in Gracchan times,IS
when the republic was disturbed by seditions and portents,
when it was discovered from the Sibylline Books I9 that the
most ancient Ceres was to be placated, envoys were sent to
Henna! This Ceres, therefore, either the most religious one,
to see whom was not permitted to men even for purposes of
adoration, or the most ancient one, whom the Senate and
Roman people had placated with sacrifices and gifts, was re-
moved from its secret and ancient inner shrine by robber-slaves
sent in with impunity by Gaius Verres. And when the same
author was affirming that he had been begged by the Sicilians
to take the case of the province, he used these words: 'They
did not have even their gods in their cities to whom they
might flee, because Gaius Verres had taken their most sacred
images from their holiest shrines.'2v Indeed, it was just as
though when Verres bad taken the gods from their cities and
shrines, he had taken them from heaven also. Whence, it is
evident that those gods have nothing in themselves more than
the material of which they have been made.
Not without reason, Marcus Tullius, did the Sicilians run
to you, that is, to a man, since for three years they had ex-
perienced that the gods were of no avail. They would have
been utter fools if they had fled to gods for defense against
the injuries of men, those very gods who could not be angry
against Gaius Verres for themselves. But Verres was con-
15 Cicero, ibid. 4.45.99.
16 Ibid. 4.48.106.
17 The rape of Proserpina, daughter of Ceres, by Hades or Pluto, god of
the underworld, was a commonplace in ancient mythology.
18 Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, each of whom led agrarian reform
movements, were assassinated in 133 and 122 B.C.
19 Cf. Bk. I, chs. 6, 7, for Lactantius' theories of the Sibyls.
20 Cicero, De divinatione 1.3.
 BOOK TWO III

demned for these crimes. Yes, but the gods did not claim
vindication; it was the industry of Cicero which either over-
whelmed the one's defenders or blocked their prestige. vVhy is
it that, in the case of Verres, a condemnation was not given
to him but rather an exemption? It is the same act as Dionysius
bearing off the spoils of the gods and receiving from the im-
mortal gods a fair voyage. ~Why do they seem to have granted
to Verres, too, a good sojurn in which to enjoy in tranquillity
the benefits of his sacrileges? For afterwards, while civil wars
were raging, under pretext of condemnation and removed
from all danger and fear, he heard of the grave misfortunes
and miserable outcomes of others. And he who alone seemed
to have fallen when all others stood, that one in reality stood
alone when all others were falling. He stood, until satiated
with the wealth gained from his sacrilege, with life, and worn
out with age, the proscription of the triumvirate 21 removed
him from life; the very same proscription, incidentally, which
removed Cicero, the avenger of the violated majesty of the
gods. In fact, even in that he was happy, because before his
death he had heard of the most cruel end of his accusor. The
gods, it would seem, saw to it that that perpetrator of sacrilege
and robber of their religious trappings would not die before
he had taken solace from revenge. 22

Chapter 5

How much more correct it is, therefore, to disregard in-

sensible and vain images and to turn the eyes to where is the
seat, to where is the abode of the trne God! He is the God who
supports the earth, who has adorned the sky with gleaming
stars, who has illuminated the sun-a most brilliant light for
human affairs and a singular witness unto His one majesty-
who has spread the seas about the lands, who has charged
2lProscription carried on by Antony, Octavian, and Lepidns.
22 Cf. Cicero, In Verrem 4.34.75; 43.9.'5.
112 LACTANTIUS

the rivers to flow with everlasting roll, and who 'did order the
plains to stretch out and the valleys to subside, the woods to
be covered with foliage and the rocky mountains to arise.'!
Surely not Jupiter, he who was born one thousand seven
hundred years ago, did all these things, but rather 'That maker
of things, cause of a better world,'2 who is called God, whose
beginning since it cannot be comprehended ought not to be
even sought. It is enough for man, unto full and perfect wis-
dom, if he understand that that maker is God. Of this under-
standing the highest power is this, that it look up to and
honor the common parent of the human race and the maker of
wonderful things.
Whence do certain people of blunt and dull heart adore
the elements, things which have been made and which lack
sensibility, as though they were gods? It is because, when
they gazed in wonder at the works of God, namely: the sky
with its various lights, the earth with its plains and moun-
tains, the sea and rivers, lakes, and springs, struck dumb with
admiration at these things, and forgetting their very Maker
whom they were not able to see, they began to venerate and
worship His works. Nor could they ever understand how much
greater and more wonderful is He who made those works
out of nothing. Although they see that these things, following
divine laws, serve the convenience and uses of man with per-
petual necessity, they still think that they are gods. They who
prefer His works to God, the most indulgent Father Himself,
are ungrateful toward the divine benefits.
But why is it strange if barbarians or uncultured men are
in error, when even philosophers of the Stoic school are of the
same error, since they hold that all the heavenly bodies which
move ought to be counted in the number of the gods? For
example, according to Cicero, Lucilius the Stoic speaks thus:
'This constancy of the stars, this so accurate coming together
of seasons and times in so varied courses throughout all
1 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.43,44.
2 Ibid. 79.
 BOOK TWO 113

eternity I cannot understand apart from mind, reason, plan.

Since we see that these are present in the stars, we cannot but
place them in the number of the gods.'3 Just a little before
this he said: 'It remains that the motion of the stars is vol-
untary; and he who sees these and yet denies that they are
gods acts not only ignorantly but impiously as we11.'4
We, however, deny it and we do so constantly. And we
prove, 0 philosophers, that you are not only uninstructed and
impious, but even blind, foolish, and mad, for you have over-
come the ignorance of the unlettered with emptiness. Whereas
they considered as gods the sun and moon, you think even the
stars are gods. Confide to us, then, the mysterious workings of
the stars, so that we might erect altars and temples to each
one, so that we might know by what rite and on what day we
should worship them, by what names and with what prayers
we should call upon them, unless, perhaps, we should worship
such innumerable and minute gods all together without any
distinction. What strength against opposition has this argu-
ment, by which they gather that all celestial beings are gods?
For if they think that stars are gods for this reason, because
they have certain and reasonable courses, they are mistaken.
It is clear that they are not gods, because it is not possible to
deprive them of their pre-determined paths. If stars were gods,
they would be borne now here and now there, without any
necessity, just as living things on the earth-because they are
free as to their wills or desires--move about as they please;
wherever their mind or purpose directs, there they go. The
motion of the stars, then, is not a voluntary but a necessary
one, because they observe pre-established laws and functions.
But when Lucilius was discussing the courses of the stars,
which he knew from the very congruence of events and seasons
were not fortuitous, he believed them to be voluntary, reason-
ing that they could not, as it were, be moved with such pre-

3 Cicero, De natura deorum 2.21.54.

4 Ibid. 2.16.44.
114 LACTANTIUS

cision and order unless there were present in them a sense of

their duty or function.
o how difficult is truth to the ignorant and how easy to
those who know! 'If the motions of the stars,' he says, 'are not
fortuitous, there remains nothing else but that they be vol-
untary.' Rather, however, as it is manifest that they are not
fortuitous, so is it that they are not voluntary either. 'How,
then, do they keep their constancy in completing their paths?'
In truth, God, the Fashioner of the universe, so disposed
them; thus He fixed it that they should course through the
divine vaults of heaven in admirable systems in order to effect
the various seasons which follow one upon the other. Could
Archimedes the Sicilian5 have devised from hollowed metal
a likeness and figure of the world, in which he so arranged
the sun and moon that they should effect unequal motions
and those like to the celestial changes for each day, as it were,
and display or exhibit, not only the risings and settings of
the sun and the waxings and wanings of the moon, but even
the unequal courses of revolutions and the wanderings of the
stars as that sphere turned, and yet God Himself be unable to
fashion and accomplish what the skill of a man could simulate
by imitation? Which answer, therefore, would a Stoic give if
he had seen the forms of stars painted and reproduced in
that sphere? Would he say that they were moved by their own
purpose or would he not rather say by the skill of the designer?
There is in the stars, therefore, a plan, arranged for the com-
pleting of their courses of motion, but it is the plan of God
who made and directs all things; it does not belong to the
stars which are moved. If the sun wished to stand,6 there would

5 A celebrated mathematician of Syracuse to whom mankind is indebted

for the ratio between a cylinder and a sphere, the invention of the
water-screw, and several principles on balances or levers. His planetar-
ium (sphere) was taken to Rome where it was seen by Cicero (Rep.
1.22.22) and probably by Ovid (Fasti 6.277).
6 It was not until after the time of Copernicus and Galileo that the cor-
rect notions as to the movements of the planets about the sun were
accepted or generally known. Lactantius is no better informed sci-
entifically than men of his day could be.
 BOOK TWO ll5

be perpetual daylight. Likewise, if the stars did not have

motions, who doubts that there would have been everlasting
night? But as there are turns of day and night, God wished
them to be moved, and moved so variously that there were
made, not only alternations of light and darkness, but also of
cold and heat, so that the force and power needed for generat-
ing and maturing crops might unite. Since the philosophers did
not see this 'cleverness' of the divine power in devising the
course of the stars, they thought of the stars as living beings,
animals that advanced on foot and of their own accord, not
by divine plan. Now who does not know why God thought
such courses up? Certainly, lest night, when the light of the
sun departs, should grow increasingly black, and with its
loathsome horrible darkness harm living beings. At the same
time, as He adorned the sky with marvelous variety, He tem-
pered the very darkness with many minute lights. How much
more wise, then, was Nasa, who felt that those lamps were
set there by God to dispel the horror of darkness, than those
who rate themselves as pursuers of wisdom. In his book called
the Phaenomena, he shows a grasp of this and with these
three verses he concluded:
So many and such a number of images God placed
with design in the sky; and sprinkled through the
black darkness, He ordered them to give clear light
to the frosty night. 7
But if it is not possible for the stars to be gods, then, indeed,
the sun and the moon cannot be gods either, since they only
differ from the lights of the stars in magnitude, but not in
quality. And if these are not gods, therefore, neither is the sky
in which they are all contained. In a similar manner,s if the
ground which we tread upon, which we dig up, and which we
cultivate for a living is not a god, then neither will the plains
and mountains be gods; if these are not, then not even the

7 Ovid. Cf. Baehrens, Fragmenta Poetarum Romanormlt p. 349.

8 In the Migne edition Chapter 6 begins here, and, therefore, there is a
discrepancy in chapter numbering of the two texts from here on.
116 LACTANTIUS

entire earth can seem to be a god. Likewise, if water which is

at the service of living creatures for drinking and washing is
not a god, neither, indeed, are the springs from which the
water flows forth; if the springs are not, the streams which
are gathered from the springs are not; if the streams also are
not gods, then the sea, too, which forms from the streams
cannot be regarded as a god. So if neither sky nor land nor sea,
which are the parts of the world, cannot be gods, not even
the entire universe, therefore, is a god; yet this very universe,
the Stoics maintain, is living and knowing and, therefore, a
god.
In this belief they have been so inconsistent that there is
nothing which has been said by them which has not been
turned about by themselves. They argue thus: It is not possible
for something to lack sense which generates sensible objects
from itself. The world generates man, who is endowed with
sense, and is himself, therefore, sensible. Likewise, it is not
possible for that to be without sense, a part of which has
sense. Therefore, because man is sensible, in the world of
which man is a part, there is sense. Indeed, these propositions
are true. That thing is sensible which begets something en-
dowed with sense; and that has sense, a part of which is in-
creased with sense. But they are false assumptions with which
they conclude the arguments, because neither does the world
generate man, nor is man a part of the world. For from the
beginning the same God made man who made also the world,
and man is not part of the world as a member of the body.
It is possible for the world to be without man, just as it is
for a city and a house to be without a man. But as a house
is the habitation of one man and the city the dwelling place
of one people, so the world is the domicile of the entire human
race; that which is inhabited is one thing and that which
inhabits is another. While they were eager to confirm, how-
ever, that which they had falsely undertaken, that the world
was sensible and a god, they did not see the consequence of
their arguments. For if man is part of the world, and if the
 BOOK TWO 117

world is sensible because man is sensible, then, because man

is mortal, it is necessary that the world be mortal, too, and
not only mortal, but subject to all ills and sufferings. And,
contrariwise, if the world is a god, and its parts surely im-
mortal, then man is a god, too, because he is part of the world,
as you say. If man, then beasts of burden and cattle and the
other kinds of beasts and birds and fishes, since these, too,
feel or sense in the same way and are parts of the world. This
is tolerable; for the Egyptians worship even these things. But
the matter reaches such a point that frogs and mosquitoes and
ants seem to be gods, because there is in these, too, a sense
and they are part of the world.
So always arguments sought from falsity have foolish and
absurd outcomes. Why is it that they say that the same world,
because of both men and gods, has been constructed as though
a common home? The world, therefore, is neither god nor
animal. If it has been fashioned or constructed (for an animal
is not constructed, but born), and if it has been built, then it
is as a house or a ship. There is, therefore, some designer or
fashioner of the world who is God, and He will be apart from
the world which He made, and the world which has been
made will be separate. Now how repulsive and absurd is the
fact that when they affirm the celestial fires and the other
elements of the world to be gods, they say that the same world
is a very god! How is it possible for one god to be made from
a pile of many gods? If the stars are gods, the universe cannot
be a god, but the domicile of gods. But if the universe is a god,
then all those things which are in it are not gods, but members
of a god, and certainly they cannot receive the name of god
alone. No one can say rightly that the members of one man are
many men. But there is no similar comparison of animals and
the universe, for because the animal is endowed with sense,
his members also have sense, nor do they lose this state of
sensibility unless they are severed from the body. To what
thing, then, does the universe show similarity? To be sure,
those who do not deny that it has been made, teach that it is
118 LACTANTIUS

the common home, as it were, of gods and men. If it is con-

structed as a home, then, it itself is not a god, nor are its
elements which are its parts, because a home is not able to
have dominion over itself nor of those parts of which it con-
sists. Therefore, not only by the truth, but by their own words,
are they convicted. For just as a house, made for the purpose
of habitation, feels nothing of itself and is subjected to its
master, the one who made it or who dwells in it, so the
universe, feeling nothing of itself, lies su bject to God its Maker,
who made it for His own use.

Chapter 6

In a double way, therefore, sin is committed by those foolish

ones, first, because they prefer the elements, that is, works of
God, to God, and next, because they worship images of those
very elements conceived in human form. They form represen-
tations of the sun and moon in human fashion; also of the
fire, and earth, and sea, which they call Vulcan, Vesta, and
Neptune, and they do not sacrifice to these elements in the
open. Such great cupidity of images holds men that those
which are true are considered of less worth, for men are
delighted with gold, gems, and ivory. The beauty and charm
of these bind the eyes, and they do not think that there is
any religion where they do not shine. So under the cloak of
the gods, it is greed and avarice which they worship. Men
believe that the gods love whatever they desire strongly, what-
ever it is for which thefts, murders, and crimes rage daily, and
on account of which wars overthrow peoples and cities
throughout the world. They consecrate, therefore, to these
gods their booty and rapine who, of necessity, are feeble and
unpossessed of great virtue if they are subject to these desires.
"Why should we think them celestial if they desire something
of earth, or blessed if they have need of anything, or incorrupt
 BOOK TWO 119

if they have a passion for those things in seeking which the

cupidity of men is rightly condemned? They come to the gods,
then, not so much by reason of religion, which can be no
religion in things badly gained and corruptible, but that they
may take in gold with their eyes, behold the gleam of smooth
marble or ivory, and handle with insatiable contemplation
garments studded with stones or brilliant with colors and
goblets adorned with shining jewels. And the more ornate the
temples and the more beautiful the statues, so much the more
the majesty with which they are credited. Their religion is
nothing else than that which human cupidity admires. These
are the religions which, handed down to them from their
ancestors, they persist in protecting and defending; they do
not consider what sort they are, but they trust that they are
true and approved from the fact that their ancestors handed
them down. So great is the authority of antiquity that it is
regarded as a crime to search into it. And so there is trust put
in it here and there as though it were understood truth. In
fine, in Cicero, Cotta speaks thus to Lucilius: 'You have,
Balbus, what Cotta, what the pontifex thinks. Now make me
understand what you think: for I ought to receive a reason
for religion from you, a philosopher, but in our ancestors I
ought to place trust, even though no reason is rendered.'1
If you believe, why, then, do you seek a reason which may
cause you not to believe? If you think that a reason ought to
be sought then you do not believe. You so seek, then, that you
may follow it when you have found it. The reason shows you
that the religions of the gods are not true, so what will you do?
Will you follow your ancestors, or reason, which, indeed, has
not been insinuated into you by another, but has been dis-
covered and raised up by you yourself, when you dug out all
the religious principles from their roots (in your searching
for reasons)? If you choose reason, it is necessary for you to de-
part from the institutions and authority of your ancestors,

I De natum deorum 3.2.6.

120 LACTANTIUS

since that alone is right which reason prescribes. But if devo-

tion persuades you to follow the ancestors, then confess that
they were fools who served contrived religions that were
against reason, and that you are silly who worship this because
you are convinced that it is false. However, since the name of
our ancestors is placed before us in so great a manner, let us
see finally who those ancestors were from whose authority it
is a crime to depart.
Romulus, when he was about to found his city, called to-
gether the shepherds among whom he had grown up, and
when the number seemed much too inadequate for the found-
ing of a city, he arranged an asylum. To this there rushed from
here and there in the neighboring regions all the worst people
without any distinction of condition. From all this conglom-
eration he formed a people and picked for the Senate those
who preceded in age, and he called them Fathers, by whose
counsel he would carryon all matters.2 Of this Senate, Pro-
pertius, the writer of elegies, has this to say:
The shepherd's horn summoned the early Quirites
to the words; that hundred often in the meadow was the
senate. The curia, which now ranks high, a bordered-
togaed senate, had skins then, rustic hearts, those
Fathers. 3
These are the fathers whose decrees erudite and wise men very
devoutly observe, and all posterity judges as true and immu-
table-that which a hundred old men clad in skins wished to
be a statute. However, these were seduced by Pompilius, as
was mentioned in the first book,4 so that they believed the
sacred rites which he himself handed down were true. It is a
fact, however, that their posterity regard with such great value
the authority of men whom, when they lived, no one, high or
low, judged worthy of relationship.

2 Cf. Livy, 1.8.

3 5.1.11-13.
4 Bk. I, ch. 22.
 BOOK TWO 121

Chapter 7

Wherefore, in that matter especially, in which the purpose

of life is concerned, it is necessary for each one to have con-
fidence in himself and rely upon his own judgment and per-
sonal opinions for investigating and weighing out the truth,
rather than believe in the errors of others and as though utter-
ly gullible and lacking in wisdom, to be deceived. To all,
according to their capacity as men, God gave wisdom in order
that they might seek out things not heard of and weigh out
things heard of. Those who have gone before us in time have
not (because of their superiority in age) gone before us also
in wisdom; for if wisdom is given _to all fairly and proportion-
ally, it is not possible for it to be laid hold of by those going
before. It is intangible and inexhaustible as though it were
the light and brightness of the sun, because as the sun is of
the eyes, so is wisdom the light of the human heart. So since
being wise, that is, seeking the truth, is innate in all, they
snatch wisdom away from themselves who, without any ex-
ercise of judgment, accept with approval the findings of their
ancestors and those who are led by others in the manner of
the beasts. Their error lies in this, that once the name of the
ancestors has been posited, they think that it is impossible
either for themselves to have any more of understanding of
the matter because they are named the descendants, or for
those to have been lacking in any understanding of the matter
because they are named the ancestors. What, then, impedes us
from taking the example from them-that just as they handed
down to posterity the false things which they had come upon,
so we who have found the truth should pass on better things
to our posterity?
There remains a mighty question,l the discussion of which
comes not from natural genius but from science. It will have
to be explained several ways lest any doubt remain what-

1 Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 7.3.

122 LACTANTIUS

soever. Perhaps ~omeollc may run for refuge to those tales

which are handed down by many authors. reputable ones at
that, that those very ones which we have shown are not gods
at all have very often displayed their majesty by prodigies,
dreams, auguries, and oracles. Many things, in fact, worthy of
the term 'miraculous' can be enumerated. First, there is the
case of Attus Navius, the chief augur who warned Tarquin
the Proud to undertake nothing new unless the augur had
been first consulted. The king, making light of the truth of
his art, said to him that, after the birds were consulted, he
should report to him as to whether what he had conceived in
his mind could be done. \I\Then Navius affirmed that it could,
he said: 'Take this flint stone then, and cut it apart with a
knife.' Without the slightest delay that one took the flint and
split it. 2
Then, we have the story that Castor and Pollux in the Latin
War were seen near the Lake of Juturna washing the sweat
off their horses, when their temple, which had been connected
with the spring, opened of its own accord. 3 The same two,
during the Macedonian \Var riding on white horses, are said 4
to have appeared to Publius Vatienus on his way to Rome at
night, telling him that on that day the Persian king had been
conquered and taken. A few days later letters from Paulus
confirmed that this was true.
It is also a marvelous thing that the image of Fortuna
Muliebris is reputed 5 to have spoken, and not once. Likewise,
the image of Juno Moneta, after the Veii were captured, when
one of the soldiers sent to carry it jokingly and playfully asked
her whether she wished to go to Rome, answered in the affirm-
ative.
The story of Claudia also is set forth as an example of the
miraculous. For when, as is in the Sibylline Books, the Idaean

2 Cf. Livy, 1.36.

3 Cf. Valerius Maximus. Ul.!.
4 Ibid. 1.8.4.
!l Ibid. 1.8.3 (from Livy. !l.22).
 BOOK TWO 123

Mother had been summoned, and the ship in which she was
carried was stuck in the shallows of the Tiber and was not
being moved by any force, they said that Claudia, who had
always been regarded as shameless because of excessive adorn-
ment of the body, prayed to the Great Mother goddess on
bended knees, that if she judged her to be chaste, to follow
her girdle. And so the ship, which was not able to be moved
by all the youths, was moved by one woman. There is an
equally marvelous story,6 that when the plague was raging,
Aesculapius, summoned from Epidaurus, is claimed to have
freed Rome from a long-lasting plague.
Sacrileges also can be enumerated by the evident punish.
ments by which the gods are believed to have avenged their
injury. When Appius Claudius, the censor,7 transferred the
sacred functions of Hercules to the public slaves, he was de-
prived of his eyes, and the tribe of the Potitii, which pro-
claimed him, became extinct within the space of one year.
When Fulvius,8 also a censor, removed the marble tiles from
the temple of Juno Lacinia to cover the statue of Equestrian
Fortuna which he had made at Rome, his mind was affected,
and losing two sons in the Illyrian War, he was consumed with
extreme grief of heart. Similarly, Turullius, who, when he was
prefect of Mark Antony, had built a fleet at Coos by demolish·
ing the grove of Aesculapius, was killed later in the same spot
by the soldiers of Caesar.9 To these examples is added that of
Pyrrhus, who, after he had taken money from the treasury
of Proserpina Locrensis, suffered shipwreck and was dashed
upon the shores of the goddess nearby, with the result that
nothing except that money was found unharmed.1° Milesian
Ceres also gained much veneration for herself with men.H
When the city was captured by Alexander and the men had

6 Ibid. 1.8.2 (cf. the Epitome of Livy, Bk. II).

7 Ibid. 1.1.17 (from Livy, 9.29).
8 Ibid. 1.1.20 (from Livy, 42.3).
9 Ibid. 1.1.19.
10 Ibid. 1.1 ext. 1 (from Livy, 29.18).
II Ibid. 1.1 ext. 5.
124 LACTANTIUS

rushed in to despoil it, a sudden flash of lightning blinded the

eyes of all.
There are also found dreams which seem to show the power
of the gods. To Tiberius Atinius, a man of plebeian status,
Jupiter is said to have presented himself during sleep and
charged him to announce to the consuls and the Senate at the
next circus games that the dance leader was displeasing to the
god, because a certain Autronius Maximus had led a whipped
slave to torture under the yoke through the midst of the circus,
and, therefore, it would be necessary for the games to be
started anew. When that one had neglected to do this, on the
next day his son died and he himself was seized with a serious
sickness. ''\Then he again beheld the same vision, it asked him
whether he had paid enough of a penalty for neglecting a
command. So borne on his litter to the consuls, he exposed the
whole matter to the Senate, and then recovered his health and
returned home on his own feet.1 2 The dream by which Augus-
tus Caesar is said to have been saved is also no less worthy of
wonder. 13 During the Civil vVar with Brutus, on an occasion
when he decided to refrain from battle because he was afflicted
with a serious sickness, a vision of Minerva came before his
physician, Artorius, warning him that Caesar should not re-
main in camp because of his sickness. So he was carried to the
front on his couch, and that same day the camp was taken by
Brutus. Many like instances besides can be brought forth, but
I am afraid that if I delay any longer in the setting forth of
contrary things, I shall seem to be forgetful of my purpose
or I shall incur the charge of loquacity.

Chapter 8

I shall set forth now, therefore, the plan or arrangement of

those things whereby difficult and obscure things may be
12 Ibid.I.7.4 (Livy 2.36).
13 Ibid. 1.7.1.
 nOOK TWO 125

understood more easily, and I will reveal all these baffling

confusions of simulated divine power by which men have been
drawn to recede too far from the way of truth. I shall also go
far back over ground already covered and quite deeply, so that
if anyone devoid of the truth and ignorant should come to
read, he may be instructed to understand what finally is the
'head and cause of these evils,'l and with the light thus gained,
he may perceive his errors and those of the whole human race.
Since God was most provident for planning and most skill-
ful for making, even before He began the work of this world,
and since the fount of full and consummate goodness was in
Himself as it is always, in order that goodness, as though a
stream, might spring from that fount and flow far, He pro-
duced a Spirit like to Himself which was endowed with the
virtues of God the Father. How He meant this we shall try
to explain in the fourth book. 2 Then He made another in
whom the nature of the divine origin did not remain. And
so this creation was infected as though by poison with envy
of its own fashioning. The latter one passed from goodness
to evil by its own will, and that which had been given it
free by God, took up a name contrary to itself.3 Whence it is
clear that ill will (or envy) is the source of all evils. There was
in that one envy of his predecessor, who by persevering was
then approved of by God the Father and is still dear to Him.
The Greeks call this one, who became evil from good through
himself, the devil. We call him the Criminator (Blamer),
because the evils and reproaches into which he himself seduces,
he blames on God. God, then commencing the making of the
world, placed that first and greatest son over the whole work,
and at the same time used him as His counselor and artificer
in planning, ordering, and completing things, since he was
perfected with foresight and reason and power. This will be
1 Vergil, Aeneid 11.36l.
2 Bk. IV, ehs. 6,8.
3 God's creation of the angelic natures who rebelled is referred to here.
The refereuce is to the etymological significance of the name used for
devil. The word is diabolon.
126 LACTANTIUS

touched upon now but slightly, because in another place 4 we

will have to expound his virtue and his name and his reason.
No one questions from what materials God made those
works so great and so magnificent, for He made all things from
nothing. The poets are not to be listened to who say that in
the beginning there was chaos, that is, confusion of things
and elements, that later on God divided all that mass, and that
when the single parts had been separated from the heap of
confusion and arranged in order, He fashioned the world and
ornamented it in like manner.5 It is easy to answer these who
have no understanding of the power of a God whom they be-
lieve unable to do anything unless there is material lying at
hand and prepared. Even the philosophers shared this error.
Cicero, discussing the nature of the gods, speaks thus: 'Firstly,
therefore, it is not probable that the matter of things whence
all things have sprung was effected by divine providence, but
that it has and had its own nature and power. For when a
carpenter is going to make anything, he does not himself make
the material, but he uses that which is prepared, and the
moulder likewise uses wax; so for that divine providence it
was necessary for the material to be at hand, not that which
providence itself made, but that which it had ready at hand.
Now if the material was not made by God, then even the
earth and water and air and fire have not been made by God.'6
o how many are the faults in these ten lines! In the first
place, he who in other discussions and in nearly all his books
was an assertor of providence and who with the keenest argu-
ments impugned those who said that there was not providence,
the same man is now some betrayer or deserter, as it were, try-
ing to do away with providence. If you wish to oppose him on
this point, there is need for neither thought nor labor. His
own words ought to be recited to him; for Cicero is not re-
futed more vehemently by anyone than by Cicero. But let us

4 Bk. IV, ch. 6ff.

5 Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.7,8; 21; 32-34.
6 Frg. 2.
 BOOK TWO 127

concede this to the custom and institution of the Academics,

that very free men may say and feel what they please: we will
consider the opinions themselves. 'It is not,' he says, 'probable
that the material of things was made by God.' By what proofs
do you explain this, for you have said nothing whereby this
may be probable? It seems to be the contrary or especially
probable, and not at all rash, indeed, to one thinking that
there is something more in God, whom you reduce certainly
to the weakness of man, and to whom you grant nothing other
than His workmanship. I ask from what man, then, will that
divine power differ, if, as man, so also God needs the work of
another? He needs it, indeed, if He can fashion nothing un-
less the material be supplied Him by another. And if this is
the case, He is surely of imperfect virtue, and the fashioner
of the material must be judged the more powerful now. By
what name, then, will he be called who surpasses God in
power, inasmuch as it is certainly a greater thing to fashion
one's own product than to arrange another's? If, however, it
is not possible for anything to be more powerful than God,
who must be of perfect virtue, power, and reason, He is,
therefore, the same moulder of the material as of the things
fashioned from the material, and there could not be, nor
should there be, anything not made or wanted by God.
'But it is probable,' Cicero says, 'for the material of things
both to have and to have had its own nature and power.' What
power could it have, no one granting it? What nature, no one
operating it? If it had power, it took it from someone. From
whom could it take it, but from God? If it had nature, which
is certainly named from being born, it was born. By whom,
then, except by God, could it be procreated? For nature, by
which you say that all things have arisen, if it has no plan or
purpose, can effect nothing. If, however, it has the potency
of generating and making, then it has plan and purpose, and,
therefore, it is, of necessity, God. Nor can that power be called
by any other name in which there is both the providence of
planning and the skill and power of doing. Hence, better is
128 LACTANTIUS

Seneca, the most acute of all the Stoics, who saw nature to be
nothing else than God. 'Therefore; he says, 'will we not praise
God to whom virtue is natural. Neither did He learn it from
anyone. Indeed, we will praise Him the more. For although
it is natural to Him, He gave it to Himself, since God Himself
is nature.'7
Since, therefore, you attribute the origin of things to nature
and take it away from God, 'sticking in the same mire, Geta,
you pay by borrowing.'8 For you deny that this can be done
by the very same one by whom you acknowledge that it is
patently done, changing the name. A most inept comparison
follows: 'Just as a carpenter,' Cicero says, 'when he is going to
build anything, does not himself make the material, but uses
that which is ready, and a moulder likewise uses wax; so it
was necessary for material to be at hand for that divine prov-
idence, not that which it itself made but that which it had
ready.' But not at all, in truth, was it necessary. For God will
be of less power, if He makes anything from something pre-
pared, which is within the province of men. A carpenter will
build nothing without wood because he is not able to make the
wood itself; the 'not being able to' is a sign of human weak-
ness. God makes the material for Himself, because He is able
to: the 'being able to' is of God, for if He is not able, He is
not God. Man makes from that which is, because he is weak
through his mortality and through the weakness of a limited
and moderate power. God, however, makes from that which
is not, because He is strong through His eternity and through
the strength of an immense power which lacks limit and meas-
ure, just as does the life of the Maker. Why, then, is it strange
if God should intend to make the world before He prepared
the material from which He made it and if He prepared it
from that which is not? It would not be right for God to
borrow anything from anything or any place, since from Him

7 Frg. 122.
8 Terence, Phormia 5.2.15£.
 BOOK TWO 129

or in Him all things are. 9 If anything existed before Him, if

anything was made and not by Him, it will lose the power
and name of God. But no material has ever been made as God,
who from material has made this world.
Thus, two principles are established, eternal and even con-
trary one to the other. Such cannot be the case without dis-
cord and destruction, for those things whose force and reason
are diverse must collide. So the two could not be eternal if
they are opposed, for it is necessary that one overcome the
other. Therefore, it is not possible for the nature of the eternal
to be otherwise than simple, so that from it all things may
emanate as from a source. Thus, either God sprang from
matter, or matter from God. Which of these is true is easily
comprehended. Of these two one is sensible; the other lacks
sense. It is not possible for the power of making something to
exist except in that which is sensible, which discerns, which
thinks, and which is moved. Nor is it possible for anything to
be begun, or to become, or to be consummated, unless it has
been foreseen by reason, both in what way it should come to
be before it is,' and in what way it should remain after it has
been effected.
Finally, he makes something who has the will to make and
the might for fulfilling that which he wished. That which is
insensible lies always inactive and torpid; nothing can arise
from where there is no voluntary motion. If every living
thing exists by a reason or plan, certainly it cannot arise from
that which is not endowed with reason; nor can that be re-
ceived from any place which is not there whence it is sought.
It should not move anyone, however, that certain animals
seem to spring from the earth. For it is not this earth which
of itself produces them, but the spirit of God, without which
nothing is produced. God, therefore, is not from matter, since
it is never possible for something endowed with sense to arise
from the insensible, that wisdom should come from the brute,
the impassible from the passible, and the spiritual from the
9 Cf. Rom. 11.36.
130 LACTANTIUS

bodily; but, rather, matter is from God, Anythillg with a ~olid

and tangible body receives power from an external force, Be-
cause it received its strength, it is dissoluble; because it is
dissolved, it will decay; because it dies, it is necessary that it
have been sprung; because it began, it had a fount whence it
arose, that is, some maker with sense, foresight, and the skill
of making. That maker is certainly no other than God. Since
He possesses sense, reason, providence, power, and virtue, He
is able to create and effect animate and inanimate things
because He knows how each thing ought to be made.
Matter, on the other hand, cannot always have been, be-
cause it would not have suffered change if it had been. For
what has always been, does not cease to always be, and whence
there was no beginning, it is also necessary that there be no
end. Why, it would be easier for that which had a beginning
to lack an end than that which lacked a beginning to have an
end. If matter, therefore, has not been made, it is not possible
for anything to be made from it; if it is not possible for any-
thing to be made from it, there will not even be matter, for
matter is that from which something is made. Everything,
however, from the time that it is made, since it receives the
hand or power of the workman, is destroyed and begins to
be something else. Therefore, since matter had an end when
the world was made from it, it had a beginning also. For what
is destroyed was built; what is dissolved was bound together;
what is ended was begun. If matter, then, is gathered to have
had a beginning from its commutation and end, from whom
else could it have been, except from God?
It is God alone, therefore, who has not been made, and
for this reason He can destroy other things, and He Himself
cannot be destroyed. That which He was will remain always in
Him, because He was not generated from another, nor does
His beginning and origin depend on any other thing, which
being changed might dissolve Him. He exists of Himself, as we
said in the first book 1o and, therefore, He is such as He wishes
10 Bk, I, ehs, 7,]3,
 BOOK TWO 131

to be, impassible, immutable, incorrupt, blesseu, anu eternal.

Now, in truth, that conclusion by which Cicero ended his
remarks is much more absurd. 'For if the material,' he said,
'was not made by God not even have the earth and water and
air and fire been made by God.' How cleverly he has sped past
the danger. For thus did he assume that earlier statement (that
of the protasis in the conditional sentence) as if it did not need
proof, when that was much more uncertain, than that on ac-
count of which it was assumed. 'If matter,' he said, 'was not
made by God, neither was the world made by God.' He pre-
ferred to gather from falsity what is false than what is true
from truth; and, although uncertain things ought to be proved
from certainties, this one took his proof from an uncertainty
to overturn what was certain. The world was made by Divine
Providence. Though I may be silent about Trismegistus,1l who
declares this, and though I make no mention of the songs of
the Sibyls which tell the same thing, and though I pass over
the prophets who testify to the work of the world and the
workmanship of God with one voice and like spirit, such is
agreed on by nearly all philosophers. The Pythagoreans, Stoics,
and Peripatetics hold it, and these are the principal schools
of philosophy. Finally, it was held as an acknowledged and
indubitable fact by those first seven wise men up to Socrates
and Plato even, until the mad Epicurus arose many ages after,
and dared to deny that which is most evident, with a zeal and
desire of inventing new beliefs, so that he might set up a
system under his own name. 12 Although he could find nothing
new, yet, in order that he might disagree with the others, he
wanted to overthrow the old, and in this all the philosophers
barking around him took up the argument.
It is more certain, therefore, that the world was fashioned
by providence than that matter was piled together by prov-
idence. vVherefore, it was not necessary to reckon on this
II These pagan and mythological witnesses have he en treated in detail
in Bk. I.
12 Cf. F. C. Copleston, S.]., A Histmy of PhilosoPhy Vol. I, for a full dis-
cussion of Epicurus and his tenets.
132 LACTANTIUS

account that the world was not made by Divine Providence

because its material has not been made by Divine Providence,
but because the world has been effected by Divine Providence,
so also has its material been divinely made. For it is more
credible that the matter was made by God, since God can do
all things, rather than that the world was not made by God,
since without mind, reason, and plan nothing can be made.
This is not the fault of Cicero but of the sect. For when he
undertook the discussion whereby he was to exalt the nature of
the gods about which the philosophers were prating, he
thought that all divinity should be lifted from ignorance of the
truth. Now, since the gods were not, he could take them away.
When he attempted, however, to overthrow with failing argu-
ments the divine providence which is in the one God, because
he had begun to lean against truth, he fell of necessity into the
pit whence he could not extricate himself. Here, in clinging to
this point then, I believe that he was fixed, since Lucilius, who
was on the opposite side of the discussion, remained silent.
This is a hinge; here all questions are turned. Cotta will un-
ravel himself from this maze if he can. He may put forth the
arguments by which he may teach that matter always was,
which no providence brought about. He may put forth how
anything weighty or heavy, either could be without an author
or would have the ability to remain unchanged, and cease to
be what it always was, in order that it might begin to be what
it never was. If he should show this, then at last, I would
agree that not even the world was arranged by Divine Prov-
idence and yet, I would agree in such a way that I would
catch him in other snares; for he will be thrown back on the
same point which he does not want. He would say that both
the matter of which the world is, and the world which is of
matter, have existed by nature, while I hold that nature itself
is God.
Now it is not possible to make wondrous works, that is, those
consisting of the greatest purpose and plan, unless one possess
mind, providence, and power. Thus it shall be that, as God
 BOOK TWO 133

made all things, it is not possible for anything to be at all

which has not drawn its origin from God. But as often as the
same one is an Epicurean and claims that the world was not
made by God, he is wont to question by what hands, by what
machines, by what levers, and by what means of building, He
did this so great work. 13 He would see perhaps if he could
have been around at the time in which God did it. But lest
man should watch the works of God, He did not want to bring
him into this world until all things were perfected. Moreover,
he could not even be brought in; for how would he exist with
the sky being made above and the earth being established
below, when, perhaps, moist things, stiffening with excessive
cold, were congealing or were hardening by being cooked and
roasted with the heat of fire? Or how would he live if the sun
was not yet established, or if fruits and animals had not yet
begun? It was necessary, therefore, for man to be made last of
all, since now his highest power has been placed over the
world and the other things. Finally, the holy writings show
that man was the last work of God, and that he was so brought
into this world as into a house already prepared and fur-
nished; for it was for his sake that all things were made. The
poets also tell the same thing. Ovid, when in his account of
how the world had already been finished and all the animals
formed added this:
A more sacred animal than these, and one more capable
of deep thought was still missing, and because he was
to be able to lord over the others, man was born,14
So it must be considered wrong to investigate those matters
which God wished to keep concealed. But that one was not
searching with a desire of hearing or learning but of refuting,
since he was confident that no one was able to say this, just as
though it should be believed from this [kind of argument] that
these things were not divinely made, since it cannot be
fathomed how they were made. Now if you had been led into
13 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 1.8.19f.
14 Metamorphoses 1.76ff.
134 LACTANTIUS

a house, built and furnished, and had scell no building ma·

terials, would you have thought that that house was not built
by man, since you do not know in what way it is built? You
would ask the same thing of the house, I suppose, which you
now require of the world: by what hands, with what imple-
ments did man construct such great works? And you would ask
this especially if you saw huge stones, immense cement blocks,
vast columns, the entire work reaching high above. 'Would not
these things seem to you to exceed the measure of human
strength, inasmuch as you would not know that they were not
done so much by strength as by reason, plan, and skilled
workmanship? But if man, in whom nothing is perfect, ac-
complishes more by reason than his slight strength allows, for
what reason should it seem incredible to you when the world
is said to have been made by God, in whom, because He is
perfect, wisdom can have no limit nor fortitude a measure?
His works are seen by the eyes, but how He did them is seen
not even by the mind, because as Hermes says, it is not pos-
sible for mortal to approach the immortal, temporal the per-
petual, corruptible the incorrupt, that is, to go near and to
follow with the intelligence. 15 Therefore, a still earthly being
does not grasp the perception of heavenly things, because it is
held walled in by the body as though by a guard; it but be-
holds all things with the senses not loosed and free. Let him
know, then, how foolishly he acts who seeks out inexplainable
matters. For this is the measure of his condition-to pass over
and not to understand but to the point that it is permitted
to man to approach. Finally, when God revealed the truth to
man, He wished us to know those things alone which it was
of benefit for man to know for attaining life. The things which
pertained to curiosity and profane desires, He held back, that
they might be secrets. Why, then, do you seek what you are not
able to know, and what, if you knew it, would not make you
any happier? \'\Tisdom in man is perfect if it knows both that
God is one and that all things were made by Him.
III Cf. Cyril, C. lnlianttllt I, 6.31C-32A.
 BOOK TWO 135

Chapter 9

Now, since we have refuted those who hold Opll11OnS con-

trary to the truth conceruing the world and God, its Maker,
we shall return to the divine workmanship of the world
which is handed down in the hidden writings of holy religion.
God made the heavens first of all and suspended them high
above because His abode, the throne of God the Creator, was
there. Then He established the earth and placed it under the
sky, as the habitation of man with the other kinds of animals.
He wished it to be surrounded and held in by moisture. He
adorned His dwelling place and filled it with bright lights,
the brilliant ornaments that are the sun, the gleaming disc
of the moon, and the shining stars.l Darkness, however, the
opposite of these, He settled upon the earth; for it contains
nothing of light of itself except what it received from the
heavens where He put perennial light, the heavenly spirits, and
perpetual life. Then again, in the earth He placed darkness
and the infernal beings and death, and these are as far removed
from those higher ones as evil is from good and vices from
virtues.
Of the earth itself He also made two parts contrary to and
different from one another, the Orient and the Occident. Of
these, the Orient is ascribed to God, because He Himself is the
fount of light and illuminator of things, and because He causes
us to arise to everlasting life; while the Occident is ascribed to
that twisted and depraved mind, because it takes away the
light, always induces darkness, and because it makes men fa1l 2
and perish in sins. As the light is of the Orient, and the pur-
pose of life is concerned with the light, so is the darkness of the
Occident, and death and destruction are involved in darkness.
He then measured the other parts, south and north, with the
same plan, and these parts are joined in association with the
first two. That which is more warmed by the heat of the sun
1 Cf. Isidore, 01'igines 13.4.1.
2 Cf. ibid. 13.1.4. In the Latin the word occidere is used for 'to fall.'
136 LACTANTIUS

is nearest to and united with its rising, but that which is stiff
with cold and perpetual ice is the extreme setting of it. As
the darkness is opposed to the light, so is the cold to the heat.
And as heat is next to light, so is the south to the east; as
cold is to darkness, so is the north to the west. He assigned to
these directions each its season: spring to the east, and summer
to the southern zone; autumn is the western season, and winter
that of the north. In these two parts also, the southern and
northern, is contained a figure of life and death, because there
is life in heat, death in cold. As heat is from fire, so is cold
from water.
According to the measuring of these parts He made day and
night also, which periods complete the perpetual, revolving
circles of the times, which we call years, by their regular alter-
nating changes. The day, which the rising sun first supplies,
must of necessity be of God, as are all the better things, but
the night which the final or setting sun brings on is, of course,
his whom we have named the rival of God. 3 Even in this, God
made these two foreknowing the future, so that from them a
certain image of true religion and false superstitions might be
shown. For just as the sun, which rises into the day, though
it be one (whence Cicero holds that it seems to have been
named the sun, because it appears alone when the stars are
obscured),4 because it is a true light and of perfect plenitude,
shines upon all things with most strong heat and most brilliant
light, so it is in God, though He be One, that majesty and
power and clarity are perfect. Night, however, which we say
is attributed to that depraved antithesis, shows many and
various religious practices through a likeness to that very self.
For although innumerable stars seem to shine and spread their
rays, they do not put forth any heat nor do they overcome
darkness by their number, because they are not full and solid
lights. So, too, there are found to be two principal ones, heat

3 Cf. Bk. II, ch. 8, n. 3.

4 Cf. De natura deorum 2.27.68. The etymology is tempting, sol and
salus. Cf. Isidore, Origines 3.71.1; De natura rerum 24.1.
 BOOK TWO 137

and moisture, which have faculties different from and opposed

to each other, which God has marvelously devised for sustain-
ing and supporting all things. For since the virtue of God is in
heat and fire, if He had not tempered its ardor and strength
by a mixture of moisture and coldness, it would not have been
possible for anything to be born or to cohere, and whatever
had begun to be would immediately perish by the conflagra.
tion. \!\Thence certain philosophers and poets have said that
'the world corresponds with discord by concord'5 but they did
not see the plan very thoroughly.
Heraclitus said that all things came from fire; Thales said
from water. Each saw something, but still each one erred. If
there were only either of those two things, water could never
start from fire, nor again could fire come from water. But it
is more true at the same time that all things are generated
from a mixture of both. Now fire cannot be mixed with water
because both are not congenial, and if they should come
together, it would necessarily be that the one which was
superior would consume the other. However, their substances
can be mingled, for the substance of fire is heat, and of water,
moisture. Rightly then, did Ovid say:
Forsooth when heat and moisture assume the proper
mixture,
they conceive and from these two arise all things. And
although fire is opposed to water, a moist vapor creates
all things and a discordant concord is endowed with
offspring. 6
One element is masculine, as it were, and the other feminine;
one is active, the other passive.
And, therefore, from olden times it was an institution that
the bonds of wedlock be ratified by a pledge or sign of fire and
water,7 because the offspring of living beings receive bodily
form and are enlivened with heat amI moisture. Since ever)

5 Cf. Horace, Epistles 1.12.19.

6 ]1;Ietamorphoses 1.430-432.
7 Cf. Yarra, De lingua latina 5.61.
138 LACTANTlUS

living creature consists of soul and body, the matter of the

body is in moisture, that of the soul in heat. It is given to
know this from the fetuses of birds. Unless the forming heat
has swathed them and kept them full of thick moisture, neither
will the moisture be able to be formed into a body, nor will
the body be given life.
It was also customary for exiles to receive the penalty of
being 'interdicted from fire and water,' for it seemed so very
wrong hitherto to afflict men, however evil, with capital
punishment. Therefore, by using the interdict of those things
of which the life of man consists, he who had received that
sentence was considered to be charged, as it were, by death.
Those two elements were regarded as so primal that without
them they believed neither the origin of man nor his life
could even be.
Of these two elements, one we have in common with the
other animals, the other is given to man alone. Because we
are a celestial and immortal species of animals, we use fire
which has been given to us as a proof of immortality, because
fire is from heaven. The nature of fire, because it is mobile and
tends to rise upwards, contains the plan (reason, purpose) of
life. Since the other animals are completely mortal, they make
use of water only, which is the corporal and earthly element,
and the nature of water, because it is mobile and flows down-
ward, shows the likeness of death. The beasts, therefore,
neither look up toward heaven nor do they experience any
religious sentiments, because the use of fire is foreign to them.
These two principles, then, fire and water, whence or in what
way God enkindled the one or liquified the other, He alone
can know who made them.

Chapter 10

When the world was completed, He commanded the animals

 BOOK TWO 139

of various kinds and different species to come to being, both

great and small. And two of each were made, that is, one of
each sex, from the offspring of which the air and land and
seas were filled up. To all of these according to their kind
God gave sustenance from the earth, that they might be of use
to man; some for food, others for clothing, and those of great-
est strength for help in tilling the soil whence they are called
beasts of burden.1 And thus, when all things were disposed
in a marvelous arrangement, He decided to prepare an eternal
kingdom for Himself and to procreate innumerable souls to
whom to give immortality. He made a sensible and intelligent
likeness to Himself, that is, according to the form of His
image,2 than which nothing can be more perfect. He fashioned
man from the slime of the earth, whence he has been given
the name man which means made from the earth. 3 So Plato
says that the human form is of the divine image,4 and it is
the Sibyl who says: 'An image is man, not having a correct
word: 5
With regard to this making of man, the poets also, though
in a corrupt way, have nonetheless handed down the same;
for they have said that man was made from clay by Prometheus.
They were not deceived as to the act, but as to the name of
the Maker. For they had not hit upon any of the writings of
the truth; but those matters revealed in the teaching of the
prophets which were contained in the sacred storehouse of
God, gathered from stories and weakened in reliability by
obscure opinions (as truth spread among the people is ac-
customed to be corrupted by various handlings and interpreta-
tions, even though no one adds anything to that which he has

1 Cf. Cicero, De legibus 1.8.25. The word play is lost in English. Lactantius
relates iumenta (beasts of burden) to iuvare (to help).
2 Gen. 1.27.
3 Cf. Isidore, Origines 11.1.4; De difJerentiis rerum 17.47. Lactantius
is but one of the ancient authors who were fond of the etymological
connection fancied between homo and humus. Cf. also the Hebrew; the
word Adam means 'of the (red) earth.'
4 Republic 50lB, theoeide.
5 I<'rg. 8.402.
140 LACTANTIUS

heard), they incorporated in their verses. And this, indeed,

ineptly, because they gave to man such a marvelous accom-
plishment as the divine workmanship. For why was it necessary
for man to be fashioned from the earth, since he could be
begotten in the same way in which Prometheus himself was
born of Iapetus?6 He who if he was man could beget man,
could not make him; but that he was not of the gods, his
punishment on the Caucasus Mountain declares. Nor has any-
one labeled his father, Iapetus, or the paternal Titan as gods,
because the sublimity of power belonged to the house of
Saturn alone, through which he attained divine honors for
himself and all his posterity.
By many arguments this can be proved to be a fiction of the
poets. It is generally accepted that there was a flood for the
destruction and removal of evil from the face of the earth.
Now the philosophers, poets, and writers of antiquities all
speak of this, and in this matter they are quite in accord with
the words of the prophets. If, then, a cataclysm thus occurred,
so that the evil which had increased among too many might
be destroyed, how was Prometheus the maker of man, whose
very son, Deucalion, they say was the only one saved on
account of his justice? How could one stage and one gen-
eration have filled the earth with men so quickly? But, to be
sure, they have in such a way corrupted this fact also, as they
have that former one since they did not know when or at what
time the cataclysm took place on the earth, who for his just-
ness merited to be saved when the human race was perishing,
and how or with whom he was saved: all of which the prophets
teach. It is clear, therefore, that what they say of the work-
manship of Prometheus is false. But since I have said7 that
the poets were not accustomed to lie outright, but to wrap and
obscure what they say with figures, I do not mean that they
lied, but that Prometheus formed, first of all, a likeness of
6 Prometheus was one of the Titans in Greek mythology, the son of
Iapetus and the ocean nymph Clymene. He is famous as a benefactOl'
of mankind for whom he stole fire from heaven.
7 Cf. Bk. I,ll.
 BOOK TWO 141

man from soft and rich clay,S and from that first formation
was born the art of fashioning statues and images, if, indeed,
it was in the time of Jupiter that temples first began to be
erected and new cults of the gods to arise. Thus, truth was
colored with falsehood, and that which was considered as made
by God, began to be ascribed to man who imitated the divine
work.
But the making of a real and living man from the slime of
the earth is the work of God. This Hermes also holds, who
not only said that 'man was made to the image of God by
God; but also tried to explain how by subtile plan He formed
each single member in the body of man, since there is not one
of these which is not as well arranged for its necessary useful-
ness as for its beauty.9 Even the Stoics, when they discuss
providence try to do this, and in certain places Cicero follows
them;lO this material so abundant and so rich, however, he
touches but cursorily. I pass over this matter now because
lately I wrote a special book on the subject to Demetrianus,
my auditor.
In this place, however, I am not able to pass by that point
which certain erring philosophers make, in saying that men
and the other animals sprang from the earth without any
Maker. Whence that line of Vergil: 'And the earthly race of
man raised its head from the hard fields.'ll And they especially
who denied the existence of providence were of that opinion.
The Stoics assign the making of living beings to a divine
skillfulness. Aristotle freed himself from this labor and an-
noyance by saying that 'the world always was, and that the
human race and other kinds which are in the world had no
beginning but always were and always will be.'12 But when
we see all the living things, that heretofore were not, begin
8 Isidore, Origines 8.11.8.
9 Cf. The Workmanship of God for Lactantius' full treatment of this
theme.
10 Cf. De republica 4; De legibus 1.9; De natura deorum 2.54f.
11 Georgics 2.340.
12 Cf. Aristotle, de caelo 1.10; Cicero, Academici 2.38.1 19; Disputationes
Tusculanae 1.28.70.
142 LACTANTIUS

to exist and cease to be, it necessarily follows that the whole

genus began to exist at some time, and at some time it will
cease to be, since it had a beginning. All things must be held
within three phases, past, present, and future. Of the past is
origin; of the present is existence; of the future is dissolution.
Each is evident in the case of individual men; for we begin
when we are born, and we are while we live, and we cease to
be when we die. 13 From this, too, the ancients had it that there
were three Fates: one who lays the warp for the fabric of
man's life, the second who weaves, and the third who snaps the
thread and finishes it. In the case of the entire race of men,
however, because only the present time is apparent, both the
past, that is the origin, and the future, that is the dissolution,
are implied or gathered from that. For because it is, it is
clear that at some time it began-for nothing can be without
a beginning-and because it began, it is clear that at some
time it will come to an end; for it is not possible for that to
be wholly immortal which takes from mortals its existence.
Just as we all die individually, or one by one, as it were, it is
possible that by some chance we might all perish together.
This could be through sterility of the land, which happens in
particular instances, or by pestilence spread abroad every-
where, which generally devastates single cities or regions, or
from fire cast upon the earth of the sort that is said to have
happened under Phaethon,14 or by means of a flood, such as
they relate in the story of Deucalion,15 when the entire human
race save one man was destroyed. If a flood did perchance take
place, certainly it could have happened that that one who
survived should also perish. But if by the Will of Divine Prov-
idence, which cannot be denied, he was preserved for renew-
ing men, it is clear that either the life or the extinction of the
human race rests in the power of God. But if the human race
13 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.93.
14 Phaethon is an epithet of the sun.
15 The story of Deucalion is a mythological parallel of that of Noe. In
this case. as in many others, we must attribute Lactantius' preference
for the myth to the fact that his apology is written for pagans.
 BOOK TWO 143

can perish in entirety, since it perishes in parts, it is dear

that at some time it began, and fragility thus declares its end
also as it likewise shows its beginning. And if these things are
true, Aristotle will not be able to defend the point he held,
namely, that whereby the world itself had not a beginning. If
Plato and Epicurus obtain this from Aristotle, then from Plato
and Aristotle, who thought that the world will always be, al-
though they are eloquent, the same Epicurus will force from
them, unwilling however, the same point; since it follows that
it has also an end. But more of this in the last book,16 Let us
return now to the origin of man.

Chapter 11

They say! that by fixed turnings of the heaven and move-

ments of the stars there came to be a certain maturation or
stage for producing living things, and that the new earth re-
taining genital seed put forth from itself certain follicles in
the likeness of wombs, concerning which Lucretius said:
'Fitted by the roots to the earth the wombs increased.'2 When
these had in turn come to maturity, burst by the force of
nature, they brought forth young living things. Then the earth
itself abounded with a moisture like to milk, and with this
aliment the living things were nourished. In what manner,
then, could these things bear or avoid the force of cold or
heat or be born at all, since the sun burned and the cold
froze? 'But, in the beginning of the world,' they say, 'there was
neither winter nor summer, but a perpetual temperate climate
and equable spring.'3 Why, then, do we see nothing of the sort
happening even now? 'Because once it was necessary in order
that the living things might be produced; but, after they had
16 Cf. Bk. 7, ch. 14.
1 Cf. Cicero, De legibus 1.8.24; also Lucretius, 5.783-820.
2 Lucretius, 5.808.
3 Ibid. 806,818f.
144 LACTANTIUS

begun to exist, the faculty of generating was granted to them,

and the earth ceased to bring forth living beings and the
condition of climate was changed.'4
0, how easy it is to refute lies! First, nothing can be in
the world which does not remain such as it began. For the
sun and the moon and the stars were not non-existent then, or
since they were existent, it was not that they had no move-
ments, or that no divine moderation which tempered and
guided their courses had begun together with themselves.
Then, if it is as they say, there must be providence, and thus
they fall into the very conclusion that they are especially
avoiding. For surely Someone provided for those living beings
not yet born, so that they should be born, lest the earth be a
desert and remain barren and uncultivated. [But in order
that they might be born from the earth without the function
of parents, it is necessary that there was a foreseeing with
great purpose. Next, in order that moisture, being made solid
from the earth, might be formed into the various likenesses
of bodies, there was likewise a marvelous and inextricable
foreseeing so that from the follicles, by which the likenesses
were covered, they would be poured forth as though from the
womb of mothers, according to a certain accepted plan of
living and sensing.] But let us suppose that this also happened
by chance: certainly those things which follow-that the
earth flowed continuously with milk, and that the temperature
of the air was even-cannot be fortuitous. 5 If it is established
that these things were done on this account, that the recently
produced animals might have food or might not be in danger,
it must be, by I know not what divine plan, that Someone
made the provision. But who is able to effect this provision
except God?
Let us see, however, whether this very thing, which they
keep saying happened, could have happened, namely, that
men were born of the earth. If anyone should consider how
4 Ibid. 793-796; 826-836.
5 Ibid. 809-819.
 BOOK TWO 145

long and in what ways an infant is brought up and trained,

he will see at once that those earth-born children could not
have been reared without any trainer; for it would have been
necessary for them to lie prone for several months until with
strengthened limbs they could move themselves and change
their position. This can be accomplished scarcely within the
space of one year. Now, see whether a child could lie in the
same place and in the same manner in which it was placed
for many months, and not die, overwhelmed and corrupted
by that moisture of the earth which it was supplying for ali-
ment and the excrement of its own body mixed into one? And
so nothing else is possible but that a child be brought up by
someone; unless, perchance, all animals were not born as
young, but fully grown: saying this, however, has never come
into their minds.
Therefore, all that reckoning is impossible and empty, if,
indeed, it can be called a reckoning by which it is considered
that there is no reckoning or plan. For he who says that all
things are born of their own accord attributes nothing to
Divine Providence; such a one certainly does not make claim
for any reckoning but overturns it. If it is possible that not
anything can be made without plan, it is clear that there is a
Divine Providence, and that which is called plan is proper to
it.
God, therefore, the Maker of all things, has made man.
Cicero, although inexperienced in divine writings, saw this
fact, however, and handed down to us the same principle that
the prophets proclaimed in the first book of his work On
Laws. His words I subjoin: 'This animal, provident, wise,
versatile, keen, mindful, full of reason and prudence, which
we call man, was created in a certain exceptional condition by
the Supreme God. For he alone of so many kinds of animals
and natures is a sharer of reason and thought, while all the
rest are deprived of these.'6 Do you see that a man, however
far removed from a knowledge of the truth, still, because he
6 De legibus 1.7.22.
146 LACTANTIUS

beheld the image of wisdom, understood that man could not

have been created except by God? Still there is need of divine
testimonies lest the human ones be not sufficient. The Sibyl
also bears witness that man is the work of God:
It is God alone, the founder, who has absolute existence;
He himself established the type of form or kind of men,
He himself compounded the spirit of all, the begetting of
living things. 7
The sacred writings contain the same things. God, then,
performed the office of a real father. He Himself fashioned
the body; He Himself breathed in the life by which we breathe
and whatever we are is entirely His. How He did this, if it
were necessary for us to know, He would have taught us, just
as He taught us the other things which brought us knowledge
of pristine error and the true light.

Chapter 12

When He had made the male first unto His likeness, He

then also formed the woman for a counterpart for the man,
so that the union of the two sexes might be able to propagate
offspring and people the whole earth. In making man of
those two materials, which we said were contrary to each other
-fire and water-He concluded and perfected a plan. And
when the body was made, He breathed into it a soul of the
living source of His spirit which is everlasting, so that it
might bear a likeness of the world itself from the contrary un-
changing elements. Man, then, consists of a soul and a body,
of heaven and earth, as it were, inasmuch as the soul by which
we live has its origin from God as though from heaven, and
the body from the earth of whose slime we said 1 it was formed.
Empedocles, whom you would not know whether to place
7 Frg. 1; 3.27.
I Cf. ch. 10.
 ROOK TWO 147

among philosophers or poets because he wrote on the nature

of things in verse, as did Lucrcti llS and Yarra ,tmong the
Romans,~ set down four elements: fire, ail', water, and earth.
Perhaps he followed Trismegistus who said: 'Our bodies are
constituted by God of these four elements; for they have in
them something of fire, something of air, something of water,
something of earth, and yet they are not fire nor air nor water
nor earth: 3
This is not, indeed, untrue: for in the flesh there is the prin-
ciple (ratio) of the earth, in the blood that of water or mois-
ture, in the breath that of air, and in the vital heat of the
body that of fire. 4 But neither can the blood be separated from
the body as moisture from the earth, nor can living heat be
separated from the breath as fire from the air; therefore, in
all things are found two elements alone, the whole principle
of which is embraced in the making of our bodies.
From diverse and repugnant principles, therefore, man has
been made as the world itself from light and darkness and
from life and death. The Creator charged these two principles
to struggle with each other in man, so that if the soul should
win, which is of God, he may be immortal and live in per-
petual light; but if the body wins and subjects the soul to
its sway, he wiII live in everlasting shadows and in death. And
that power of death is not to extinguish the unjust souls
utterly, but to punish them for all eternity. 'I\Te name that
punishment a second death, which is itself, just as immortality
is, also perpetual. We define the first death this way: death is
the dissolution of the nature of living things, or in this man-
ner: death is the separation of body and soul. Of the second
death, we say that it is the enduring of eternal pain, or we
hold this: death is the condemnation to eternal punishments
of souls according to their merits. This type does not befall

2 Cf. Quintilian, 1.4.4.

3 Trismegistus in Stoboeus, Florilegia 11.23.
4 Cf. Isidore, Origines 11.1.16; De differentiis renltn 17.48.
148 LACTANTIUS

dumb beasts whose souls which do not 'consist' of God but

of common air are dissolved by death.
In this association of heaven and earth, whose likeness has
been expressed in man, the things which are of God hold the
superior place. As plainly seen, the soul has dominion over
the body. The lower part, however, is held by those things
which are of the devil. The body, of course, which, because
it is earthly, ought to be subject to the soul, as earth is to
heaven, serves as a vessel, as it were, which the heavenly
spirit uses here as a temporal dwelling place. Each has its
duties, that which is of heaven and God should rule and that
which is of earth and the devil should obey. This did not
escape that rogue of a Sallust who said: "All our power is
placed in our souls and bodies; we use commanding of our
souls and obeying rather of our bodies.'5 That one would have
lived very rightly if he had lived according to this statement
of his, but he served the most shameful passions and annulled
that very statement by the depravity of his life. If the soul is
a fire, as we showed, it ought to ascend toward heaven; as a
fire, that is, it should tend toward immortality which is in
heaven, lest it be extinguished. And as fire cannot burn and
live unless it is contained by some rich material in which it
has its nourishment, so the matter and food of the soul is
justice alone which is held for life.
After this, God placed man, begotten in the manner I have
described, in Paradise, that is, in the most fertile and most
pleasant garden, which He planted in all parts with every
kind of wood and tree in the orient, so that from their various
fruits he might be nourished, and that free from all labors
he might serve God the Father with the highest devotion.
Then He gave him certain commands; if he observed these,
he would remain immortal; and if he transgressed them, he
would be punished with death. This was a precept; that of
one tree which was in the midst of Paradise he should not eat.
On that tree He had placed knowledge of good and evil. Then
5 Catiline 1.2.
 BOOK TWO 149

that evil one, envying the works of God, applied all his fal-
lacies and clever deceits for the downfall of man that he might
rob him of immortality. First, he enticed the woman with his
trickery to eat the forbidden food, and through her he per-
suaded the man himself also to transgress the law of God.
Then, when the knowledge of good and evil was experienced,
man began to be ashamed of his nudity and he hid himself
from the face of God, something which he was not in the habit
of doing before. Then God passed sentence upon the sinners
and drove man out of Paradise so that he would have to gain
his living by his own labor. He surrounded Paradise itself with
a wall of fire, so that man could not approach until God
holds upon the earth the final judgment and calls back to the
same place the just, those who worship Him, when death has
been taken away.6 Just so the sacred books teach, and also the
Erythraean Sibyl when she says:
Those who honor God will inherit real and everlasting
life; these for all time will dwell together in Para-
dise, the all-abounding garden. 7
But since these matters are the 'last things,' we will treat of
them in the last part of this work.
Now let us explain those things which are 'firsts.' Death,
therefore, followed man according to the decree of God. This
even the Sibyl in her song teaches, saying:
Man, formed by the holy skill of God, whom the serpent
deceived by his guile, took up death for himself beyond
what was fated and chose knowledge of good and evil. 8
Thus, the life of man was made a temporary thing, but long,
for it lasted for a thousand years. Although Varro was not
unaware of the fact that this was given out in the divine
writings and published through the knowledge of all, he was
inclined to argue 'why the ancients were thought to have lived
a thousand years.' 'For,' he said, 'among the Egyptians, months

6 Cf. Theophilus, Ad Alltolycllm 103A.

7 Frg. 2,46ff.
8 Frg. 8.260ff.
150 LACTANTIUS

were counted in place of years, so that not the turning of the

sun through the twelve signs makes a year, but the moon
which passes over that sign-bearing cycle in the space of thirty
days.'9 This argument is clearly false; for no one then passed
the thousandth year, but now, those who reach the hundredth,
which happens quite often, certainly live 1,200 months. And
certain authors relate that 'some were accustomed to attain
to the age of 120 years.' But because Varro did not know why
or when the life of man was shortened, he himself shortened
it, although he knew that a man could live 1,400 months.

Chapter 13

Now when God saw afterwards that the world was filled
with evil and crimes, He determined to destroy the human
race by a flood. However, He chose one man for the reparation
of the multitude, because in the face of the corruption of all
he remained a singular example of justice. When he was
six hundred years old, this man built an ark, just as God had
commissioned him, and in it, he himself, with his wife and
three sons together with their wives were saved when the
waters had covered all the highest mountains. Then, when
the earth had dried, God cursed the injustice of the previous
generations, and lest the length of life should again be a
cause of the fashioning of evils, He lessened the age of man
a little with each succeeding progeny, and placed the term or
measure at one hundred and twenty years, a limit which is
not permitted to be passed.
When that man had left the ark, as the holy books teach,
he worked the earth zealously and planted the vine with his
hands. Whence they are refuted who think that Libel' is the
author of wine, for he preceded not only Liber but even
Saturn and Uranus by many ages. When he had taken the
9Lactantius states that his source here is Varro, but it has not been
identified more precisely.
 BOOK TWO 151

first fruit of the vine, becoming happy, he drank of it until

he was drunk and lay down naked. \'\Then one of his sons,
whose name was Cham, saw this, he did not cover his father's
nudity but went out and even made it known to his brothers.
But they, taking a cloth, entered, and turning away their
eyes, covered their father. \'\Then the father learned what had
been done, he cursed his son and sent him away. That one,
exiled, settled in a part of that land which is now called
Arabia, and the land was called Chanaan from his name and
his descendants were called Chanaanites.
This was the first people which did not know God because
its leader and founder did not receive the worship of God
from his father when he was cursed by him, and so he be-
queathed an ignorance of the divinity to his posterity. From
this nation all the nearby peoples spread with increasing mul-
titude. The descendants of the father of this one himself were
called Hebrews, among whom the religion of God resided.
But from these too, afterwards, when their number had in-
creased immeasurably, and since the narrow confines of their
territory could not hold them, young people (either sent by
their parents or of their own accord when poverty compelled)
scattered as wanderers here and there to seek new abodes for
themselves. They filled up all the islands and the whole earth,
and torn from the stock of a holy root, they established for
themselves new customs and institutions arbitrarily. But of
all of them, those who had occupied Egypt began to look up
to the heavenly bodies and adore them. And because they were
not covered with dwelling places, because of the type of clim-
ate, and because the sky is not hidden by any clouds in that
region, they noted the courses and effects of the stars, often
venerating them rather curiously and willingly while they
beheld them. Later, led on by certain prodigies, they devised
monstrous representations of animals, and we will soon 1 dis-
close the authors of these. Others, though, who had been dis-
persed throughout the land, while they marveled at the ele-
1 Cf. ch. 16.
152 LACTANTIUS

ments of the universe, gave veneration to the heavens, sun,

earth, and sea without any images and temples, and celebrated
sacrifices to them in the open; until as the times passed along,
they made temples and shrines for very powerful kings and
began to worship them with victims and incenses. Thus, the
peoples began to wander astray from the knowledge of God.
They are in error, therefore, who contend that there have
been cults of the gods from the beginning of things, and that
there was an earlier type of religion than that of the one God
which they think was discovered later in time; in error because
they are ignorant of the font and origin of truth. Now let us
return to the beginning of the world.

Chapter 14

When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase,

God, seeing to it that the devil, to whom from the beginning
He had given power over the earth, should not corrupt or
destroy men by his deceits (as he had done in the beginning),
sent messengers for the protection and care of the human
race. 1 He charged these before all things else not to lose the
dignity of their celestial substance through contagion with
the stain of earth. Plainly He prohibited them from doing that
which He knew they would do, from which they could not
hope for pardon. So, while they were dwelling with men, that
most astute master of the earth coaxed them little by little
according to the same custom to vices, and he stained them by
contacts with women. Then, not being received into heaven
because of the sins in which they had immersed themselves,
they fell to the earth. Thus, the devil made them from angels
of God into his satellites and ministers. Those who were
sprung from these, because they were neither angels nor men,
but having a certain middle nature, were not received into the
1 In connection with this and the following chapter, d. Minucius Felix,
Octavius Chs. 26,27.
 BOOK TWO 153

lower world as their parents were not received into heaven.

Thus, there were made two classes of spirits, one heavenly,
the other earthly. The latter are the unclean spirits, the
authors of the evils which are done, and of these the same
devil is the chief. From this Trismegistus 2 calls him the
daemoniarch.
The grammarians3 say that these were called spirits, like
indwelling powers (daemonas),4 that is, skilled and knowing
of things; for they think that these are gods. They do, indeed,
know many future events, but not all, for it is not permitted
to them to know the hidden plan of God, and, therefore, they
are accustomed to arrange their responses into ambiguom
terms. The poets also know them to be daemonas and speak
of them as such. Thus Hesiod says: 'These are the spirits ot
great Zeus, through counsels good, living on earth, and the
guardians of living men.'5 This was written because God had
sent those guardians to the human race. But these very ones,
since they are pervertors of men, want themselves to seem
guardians so that they might be worshiped and that God might
not be worshiped. The philosophers also discuss these matters.6
For Plato even in The Symposium 7 tried to explain their
natures, and Socrates said that there was a deity (daimon)
residing within him, who had been with him since he was a
child and by whose control and will his life was directed. All
the art of the Magi and their power also rests in the aspirations
of these, and when men's powers of sight have been invoked
by them, they are deceived so that they do not see the things
which are, but think that they see those things which are not.
These spirits, contaminated and lost, as I say, wander over all

2 Source unknown.
3 Cf. e.g., Plato, Cratylus 398B.
4 Cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.15. In Homer a daimon was equivalent to a
god. By Plato's time the term meant the strange, incomprehensible, and
divine power, the 'presence' or tutelary nature of a deity.
5 Works and Days 122f.
6 Cf. Minucius Felix, 26.9; 12.
7 Cf. 202 Ef.
154 I,ACTANTIUS

the eanh, and they work toward a solace of their own per-
dition by deotroying men.
'Thus, they fill all things with trickeries, frauds, deceits, and
errors. They cling to individual men and they seize all homes,
indeed, every last doorway. They take to themselves the name
of gell ii} for thus they translate the word daihnollas into Latin.
Men honor them in their inner chambers, and daily for them
do they pour out wines. Knowing these demons, they venerate
them as though they were terrestrial gods and dispellers of
the evils which they themselves make and bring upon them.
Since these spirits are light and incomprehensible, they in-
sinuate themselves into the bodies of men, and secretly work-
ing upon the inner organs, they vitiate the health, incite
sicknesses, terrify the thoughts by dreams, and disturb the
minds with madness, so they might force men through these
evils to run for their help.

Chapter 15

The scheme or plan of all these fallacies is obscure to those

devoid of truth; for they think that those spirits, who can do
nothing other than harm, are of advantage when they cease
to harm. Someone may say perhaps that they ought to be
honored for this, that they may not harm, if, indeed, they are
able to harm. They harm, indeed, but they harm those by
whom they are feared, whom the powerful and high hand of
God does not protect, and who are not initiated by the pledge
of truth. They fear the just, that is, those who worship God;
and adjured by His name, they depart from their bodies. And
at their words, as if beaten by rods, they not only confess that
they are demons, but they also give out their names, those
which are adored in the temples. Generally, they do this in

8 The genius was the personal residing deity for each man according to
ancient Roman religious thought as the Juno was for each woman.
 BOOK TWO 155

the presence of their worshipers, not, to be sure, for the

opprobrium of religion, but for their honor, because neither
to God by whom they are adjured, nor to the just by whose
voice they are tortured are they able to lie. So often with
mighty wailings do they proclaim that they are beaten and
that they burn and that they are already going out: the knowl-
edge of God and the justice of His power has so much hold
over them. W'hom, then, can they harm if not those whom
they have in their power?
In fine, Hermes affirms that those who know God are not
only safe from attacks of the demons, but also they are not
even held by fate. 'Piety,' he said, 'is the one guardian. For a
reverent man neither the evil demon nor fate controls. God
rescues the rever~lIt one from all evil. For the one and only
good among m':lI is piety.'! vVhat this piety or reverence is,
he shows in another place in these words: 'Reverence is the
knowledge of God_'2 Asclepius, his hearer, also expressed the
same opinion more fully in that perfect speech which he wrote
to the King. 3 Each of them in truth affirms that demons are
enemies and annoyers of men. Trismegistus calls them 'harm-
ing angels.'4 Therefore, he was not unaware that from celestial
beings they had begun to be depraved earthly ones.

Chapter 16

Through demons have been discovered astrology, divina-

tion, the practice of augury, and those very practices which
are called oracle-giving, necromancy, magic, and whatever
other evils that men practice either openly or secretly. All
these are false of themselves as the Erythraean Sibyl testifies:

1 Cf. Cyrillus, Contra Iulian/wl IV.Ci.130E (ct. Patricius, p. 51a £.)0

2 Ibid.
3 Cf. Pseudo-Apuleius, Asclepius, c.25.
4 angelous ponerous (noeentes angeli).
156 LACTANTIUS

'Because all these things are deceiving, just as foolish men are
finding out this day.'!
Yet those same authors themselves work on their own pres-
ences, in order that they may be believed to be true; thus they
delude the credulity of men through a feigned or lying divinity
because it is not profitable to disclose the truth to them.
These are they who taught how to feign images and appear-
ances, who in order to turn men's minds away from the wor-
ship of the true God, fashioned likenesses of dead kings and
adorned them with exquisite beauty and then caused them
to be set up and consecrated, and they put their names upon
themselves as though they put on other personalities.
But the Magi and those whom the people actually call evil-
doers, since they ply their execrable arts, summon those celes-
tial ones which are read of in the holy books by their own real
names. 2 These outright incestuous and horrid spirits, in order
to confuse all things and overwhelm human hearts with errors,
sow and mix the false with the true. For they themselves have
pretended that there are many celestial beings, and that there
is one king of all, Jupiter, seeing that there are many spirits of
angels in heaven and one God is Master and Father of all.
But they have taken away the truth from the eyes of men
because they wrapped it in deceptive names.
For God, just as I explained in the beginning,3 does not
need a name, since He is the only One, nor do the angels,
because they are immortal, either allow themselves to be
called gods or wish to be. Their one and only duty is to serve
the wishes of God and to do nothing but what He orders.
Thus we say that the world is ruled by God as a province is
by a governor. No one says that his assistants are his equals or
colleagues in ruling the province, although the business is
performed by their ministry. Still, these are able to do things
besides the commands of the governor, because of his ignor-

1 Frg. 3.228.
2 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.9; Isidore, Origines 8.9.9.
3 Bk. I, ch. 6.
 BOOK TWO 157

ance which is a condition of being human. That Ruler and

Governor of the Universe, however, who knows all things and
from whose divine eyes nothing is shielded, alone has the
power over all things, and there is not anything in the angels
except the necessity of obeying. So they wish no honor to be
attributed to themselves whose whole honor is in God. But
those who swerved from the ministry of God, because they are
enemies of the truth and prevaricators of God, try to vindicate
their name and take unto themselves the worship of gods, not
because they desire any honor-for what is honor to the lost?-
nor because they might do harm to God who cannot be
harmed, but that they might harm men, whom they strive to
turn away from the worship and knowledge of the true
majesty lest they be able to gain immortality which they them-
selves have lost through their malice.
Thus, they spread darkness and cover the truth with a cloud
of smoke, so that men may not know the Lord, may not know
their Father. In order that they might easily ensnare people,
they hide themselves in temples, are present at all the sac-
rifices, and often give forth prodigies. Startled by these, men
apply the faith due to divinity and divine power to images.
Thence it is that a stone was incised by a novice-augur; that
Juno Veiens responded that she wished to migrate to Rome;
that Fortuna Muliebris reported danger; that a ship followed
the hand of Claudia; that Juno Nudata, and Locrensian
Proserpina, and Milesian Ceres performed vindications against
sacrileges; and Hercules made vindication concerning Appius,
and Jupiter of Atinius, and Minerva of Caesar; and hence it
is that the serpent when summoned from Epidaurus liberated
Rome from pestilence,4 for to that place the demoniarch him-
self was brought in his own form without any dissimulation,
since the legates sent for that purpose carried with them a
dragon of wondrous magnitude.
By means of oracles, however, they deceive especially, for the
4 For these references refer to ch. 7. Also d. Augustine, De civitate Dei
10.16; Valerius Maximus 1.8.2.
158 LACTANTIUS

uninitiated are unable to distinguish their deviations from

and meddlings with the truth, and they think that empires
and victories and wealth and prosperous outcomes are granted
by them. In fact, they think that the state has been freed
from imminent perils by their will, perils which they an-
nounced in their responses and averted because they were
placated with sacrifices. But all those things are fallacies. For
where they presage the dispositions of God, to be sure, those
who were His ministers interpose themselves in these matters,
so that whatever things were done by God or are being done
by Him, they themselves seem especially to do them or to have
done them. And whenever to some people or a particular city
there is something good impending, according to the deter-
mination of God, they promise that they will do it either by
prodigies or dreams or oracles, provided that temples or
honors or sacrifices be granted to them. After these honors
have been paid, when that happens which is a necessity, they
acquire for themselves supreme veneration. Hence, temples
are vowed and new images consecrated and flocks of beasts
are sacrificed. And when these things are done, still nonethe-
less is the life and salvation of those who have done them
immolated.
Whenever dangers are impending, they declare that they are
angered for some foolish and light cause, as Juno was with
Varro because he had placed a beautiful child in the chariot
of Jupiter which was for holding the equipment. It was for
this reason that this Roman name was almost destroyed at
Cannae!5 But if Juno feared another Ganymede,6 why did a
Roman youth have to pay the penalty? Or if the gods only care
for the leaders and neglect the other multitude, why did Varro
alone escape, and why was Paulus, who deserved nothing,
slain? Certainly, then, nothing befell the Roman 'by the doom

5 Cf. Valerius Maximus, 1. l.l 6.

6 Ganymede, a son of Tros, carried off by the gods to be a cup-bearer of
Zeus. This also was a cause of Juno's proverbial hatred of the Trojan
race.
 BOOK TWO 159

of cruel Juno,'7 since Hannibal wiped out the two armies of

the Roman people by his own cleverness and valor. Juno
could not dare either to defend Carthage 'where her arms
and chariot were's or to harm the Romans, because 'she had
heard that a race was springing from Trojan blood which
would one day overturn her citadels.'9
These are the mockeries or games of those who, lurking
under the names of the dead, hold out wounds for the living.
Thus, if that danger which threatens can be avoided, they
want to seem to have averted it because they were placated;
or, if it cannot be avoided, they do it so that it may seem to
have happened because of some contempt shown to them.
With this guile and these arts they tear away the knowledge
of the one true God in all peoples. Destroyed by their own
vices, they rage and go about that they may destroy. For this
reason also they have contrived human victims, themselves
enemies of the human race,lO so that they may devour as many
souls as possible!

Chapter 17

Someone will say: 'Why then does God allow this to happen,
and why does He not relieve such evil errors?' I answer, in
order that evils may struggle with the good, in order that vices
may be opposed by virtues, and in order that He may have
some whom He may punish and some whom He may re-
ward; for He has determined at the end of time to pass judg-
ment on the living and the dead. (Of this judgment I will
have a discussion in the last book of this present work.)! He
defers it, however, until the end of time, when He will pour
forth His wrath in power and heavenly might, just as 'The pre-
7 Vergil, Aeneid 8.292.
8 Ibid. 1.16.
9 Ibid. 1.19,20.
10 The word play is lost in English; victim and enemy are not related as
in Latin-hostia and hostis.
--eeL Bk. 7, ch. 20.
160 LACTANTIUS

dictions of the holy seers with their terrible warnings cause

dread.'2 Now, though, He allows men to wander and to act
impiously against Him, while He Himself is just and mild
and patient. Nor is it possible that patience should not be
perfect in Him in whom is perfect virtue; whence certain ones
think that God is not even angered at all, because He is not
subject to the emotions which are disturbances of the soul,
and since every creature which is affected and moved (by
these emotions) is weak. This kind of thinking does away
with truth and religion completely. Meanwhile, let us put
aside this topic on the wrath of God, because it is a very rich
and full subject which should be handled more fully in a
work solely devoted to the subject. 3 Now whoever has ven-
erated and followed those most evil spirits will obtain posses-
sion of neither the heaven nor the light which are of God, but
he will fall into those regions which in the distribution of
things we showed 4 were assigned to the prince of evil, namely,
into darkness and hell and everlasting punishment.
I have explained that the religions of the false gods are vain
in a triple manner. Firstly, because those images which are
worshiped are representations of dead men, it is verily a
perversion and an incongruity that the likeness of a man be
worshiped by a likeness of God, for then he worships what is
lower and weaker; then it is an inexpiable crime to desert
the living that you might serve memorials of the dead, who
can give neither life nor light which they themselves lack to
anyone; nor is there any other God but the one to whose judg-
ment and power every living creature is subject. In the second
place, they are vain because those very sacred images which
utterly foolish men serve are without all sense, since they are
but earth. Who does not understand that it is wrong for an
upright animal to be bent over to adore the earth? It is for
this reason that the earth is under our feet, that it might be

2 Vergil, Aeneid 4.464.

3 Cf. Lactantius' complete work on this topic-The Wrath of God.
4 Cf. chs. 9, II.
 BOOK TWO 161

trodden on, not adored by us who have been lifted up from

it and who have received a lofty bearing beyond all other
living creatures. It is not that we should grovel beneath, nor
that we should turn this heavenly countenance of ours to the
earth, but rather that we should direct our eyes where their
natural condition has directed them, that we should adore
nothing and worship nothing except the unique Name of our
only Maker and Father, who for this reason formed man in
an upright position that we might know that we are called to
the supernal heavenly regions. Thirdly, they are vain because
the spirits which are in charge of those religions, condemned
and cast out by God, are tossed about over the earth. These
are not only able to provide nothing for their worshipers
(since power over things resides with One), but, moreover,
they also destroy them with deadly enticements and errors.
And this is their daily work, to overwhelm men with darkness
so that the true God be not sought by them. Those spirits,
therefore, should not be honored, since they lie under the
sentence of God. It is a very great means of expiation to
abandon oneself to the power of those over whom, if you fol-
low justice, you can be more powerful and to expel them and
put them to flight by calling upon the divine name. But if it
is clear that those religions are vain and false in so many ways
by which I have explained why, then it is manifest that those
who supplicate the dead or venerate the earth or who sell their
souls to impure spirits do not hold fast to the reason of men,
and that those who, rebelling against God, the Father of the
human race, have violated all justice by entering upon in-
expiable sacred rites or sacrileges, will pay the penalty of their
impiety and crime.

Chapter 18

\Vhoever, therefore, strives to regard the guaranty of man

and to hold to the reason and plan of his nature, let him
162 LACTANTIUS

rai~e himself from the ground and with upright mind direct
his eyes toward heaven. Let him not seek God under his feet
nor take from his footsteps that which he may adore, for it
must needs be that whatever lies beneath man is subject to
man, but rather let him seek Him alone; let him seek in the
heights, because nothing can be greater than man except what
is above man. God is greater than man; therefore, He is above,
not below, and He must not be sought in the lowest regions,
but rather in the highest. Wherefore there is no doubt
that there is no religion wherever there is a statue or image.
For if religion consists of divine things, and if there is nothing
divine except in things that are heavenly, images lack religion,
since there can be nothing heavenly in that which is made of
earth.
This can be clear, indeed, to a wise man from the very name
of the image (simulacrum). Whatever is simulated is neces-
sarily false; nor can it ever receive the name of something true
because it cheats or deceives the truth by disguise and imita-
tion. Now if every imitation is not especially a serious matter,
but a game and sport, as it were, there is no religion in the
images but a mockery of religion. Therefore, truth must be
preferred to all false things; earthly things must be trodden
underfoot that we may attain to heavenly ones. Thus the
matter stands, that whoever has prostrated his soul (whose
origin is from heaven) before infernal and low things, he him-
self falls where he has cast himself; yet, it is necessary for man,
mindful of his purpose and plan and status, to always strive
and tend toward nothing except the higher things. He who has
done this is surely wise, is just, is a man, and, finally, he will
be judged worthy of heaven, a man whom his Father will
recognize as not base and lowly, not abject upon the earth in
the manner of the beasts, but rather standing and upright as
He made him.
 BOOK TWO 163

Chapter 19

Unless I am mistaken, a great and difficult portion of the

task that was undertaken is now finished and with the op-
portunity of speaking being granted us through the prompt-
ings of His heavenly Majesty, we have expelled some invet-
erate errors. Now truly a far greater and more difficult strug-
gle, this time with the philosophers, faces us, and their ex-
cellent teaching and eloquence looms before me as if it were
some great mass. As I was beset formerly with the multitude
and consensus of nearly all nations, now I am faced with the
influence of men who are outstanding and hold every kind of
honor. vVho does not know that it is of more importance to
deal with a few learned men than with the many who are un-
skilled? But it ought not to be despaired of that those also
can be drawn from their opinion by God and the truth and
leaders, and I do not think that they will be so stubborn
that they will deny that they see the very brilliant sun with
clear and open eyes. Provided that only be true which they
are wont to profess, that they are held by the desire of in-
vestigating the truth, I will surely bring it about that they will
believe that the truth long sought after has been found, and
that they will acknowledge that it could not have been found
through human skill.
 BOOK THREE

ON FALSE PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 1

~
INCE TRUTH IS THOUGHT to be still lying in obscurity,
, either through the error and inexperience of the com-
mon people in subservience to varied and foolish
superstitions, or through the philosophers who are distorting
it rather than making it clear by the depravity of their
abilities (although Marcus Tullius was not such, for his was
outstanding and admirable), I would wish that some power
very close to eloquence were mine. Then, as much as the
truth is strong by its own proper strength, it might somehow
function just so much, relying on the strength of genius also,
and bring most clear light to the human race by discussing
and overcoming those public errors, as it were, of those who
are regarded as wise. I wish this could be for two reasons:
either for the reason that men would be able to believe more
in adorned truth who, captivated by the ornamentation of
speech and the charm of words, even believe lies, or that the
philosophers themselves might be most powerfully attacked
by us with their own arms, in which they are wont to take
pleasure and to trust. But since God has wished this to be
the nature of the case, namely, that simple and bare truth
should be more gleaming because it is ornamented enough
of itself and would, therefore, be spoiled and corrupted by
adornments added extrinsically, but that lying should be
pleasing only under a false guise, since corrupt of itself it
164
 BOOK THREE 165

vanishes and disintegrates unless it be smeared about and

polished with some attractive ornament, I accept with a calm
mind that mediocre ability which has been granted to me.
With confidence then, not in eloquence, but in truth, I under-
took this work, a greater work perhaps than is possible to be
sustained by my powers. Even though I should fail, the truth
itself, with the help of God whose work this is, will complete
it.
For since I know that some of the greatest orators have often
been defeated by mediocre pleaders, because so great is the
power of the truth that it defends itself with its own brilliance,
although in slight matters, why should I think that in this, the
greatest cause, it will be oppressed by those ingenious and
skilled men, to be sure, who, however, speak falsehoods? And
why should I not think that, even if not from my oratory
which flows still weakly from a scant spring, the truth will
appear as clear and brilliant by its own light? If the philos-
ophers did not stand out as marvelous in the teaching of
literature, I would yield to them (even) the knowledge and
science of truth which no one can attain by thinking and dis-
puting. Neither do I reprehend now the zeal of those who
wished to know the truth, because God made the nature of
man most desirous of attaining the truth. But this I maintain
and this I charge: that the e[ect has not followed their honest
and noble desire, since they knew neither what the truth itself
was, nor how or where or with what mind it was to be sought.
Thus, while they desired to aid human errors, they rather
plunged themselves into the greatest holes and errors.
To this task, therefore, of refuting philosophy, the very
order of the matter undertaken has led me. For when every
error arises, either from a false religion or from philosophy,
it is necessary to overturn both in conquering it. Since it has
been given to us in the divine writings that the thoughts of
the philosophers are foolish, it must be taught by the matter
and by arguments, lest anyone influenced by the honorable
name of wisdom and deceived by the splendor of empty
166 LACTANTIUS

eloquence prefer to believe human thillg~ rather than divine.

Indeed, these divine writings have been given to us briefly
and without any covering. Nor was it fitting that when God
spoke to man, He should apply His words to argument, as
though faith could not be put in Him otherwise, but it was
fitting that He spoke as the mighty Judge of all things to
whom it belongs not to plead but to pronounce. That is for
Him as God. But when we apply the testimony of the divine
word to single matters, surely we will show by how much more
certain arguments the truths can be defended, as even false
things are so defended, so that the truth may be seen. "Where-
fore, it is not that we have so much regard for the philos-
ophers, but that we have reverence for their eloquence. They
were able to speak well as erudite men, but they were in no
way able to speak truly, since they had not learned truth from
Him who is its source. Nor shall we accomplish anything great
at all because we charge them of an ignorance which they
themselves acknowledge most wisely. Since in that ignorance
alone credence is not given to these in which alone it ought
to be given, I shall attempt to show that never were they such
speakers of truth as when they pronounced opinions about
their own ignorance.

Chapter 2

Now, since in the two previous books the falsity of the re .

ligions has been demonstrated and also the very origin of all
error has been exposed, it is the duty of this book to show how
empty and false philosophy is also, that when all error has
been removed, the truth may shine forth revealed. Let us
begin, therefore, from the common name of philosophy, so
that when the head itself is destroyed, an easier way may lie
open to us for tearing apart the whole body, if that may be
called a body whose parts and members are so disunited and
 BOOK THREE 167

do not cohere in any alliance among themselves, but as though

scattered and dissipated, seem rather to palpitate than to live.
Philosophy is, as the name indicates and as they them-
selves define it, a study of wisdom. ';\Thence, therefore, should
I prove philosophy not to be the wisdom which is of the
signification of its very name? He who is eager for wisdom is
surely not yet wise, but he is eager that he may be able to be
wise. In the other arts the study is apparently what it effects
and whither it tends. When by learning one has attained
these, he is not now called the student or the one eager for
the craft, but the craftsman. But for modesty's sake in philos-
ophy, they called themselves students of wisdom, not wise men.
In fact, Pythagoras, who first came upon this name when he
was a little wiser than those before him who thought them-
selves wise, knew that it was possible by no human study to
arrive at wisdom, and, therefore, that it was not fitting for a
perfect name to be put upon an incomprehended and im-
perfect thing. And so when it was asked of him what he would
declare himself, he answered: 'A philosopher,' that is, a seeker
of wisdom.
If, then, philosophy seeks wisdom, and is not itself wisdom,
for it is necessary that it be other than what it seeks and other
than what is sought, neither is the seeking itself right, be-
cause it is not possible to find anything. Therefore, I would
concede that the philosophers are not even students of
wisdom, because wisdom is not arrived at by that study. For
if the chance of coming upon truth were subject to this study,
if this study were the path to wisdom, as it were, then it would
be found at some time. But since it has not been compre-
hended, although in so many periods of time so many geniuses
have been spent on its search, it is clear that there is no
wisdom there. Those who philosophize, therefore, do not pur-
sue or study wisdom, but think that they study it, because
that which they seek they do not know where or what it may
be. Therefore, whether they study wisdom or whether they do
not study it, they are not wise, because never can there be
168 LACTANTIUS

found that which is either sought not rightly or not sought at

all. However, let us see this-whether it is possible by this
study for something or for nothing to be discovered.

Chapter 3

Philosophy seems to consist of two things: knowledge and

thought, and in no other.! Knowledge cannot come from in-
geniousness, nor can it be grasped by cogitation, because it is
not of man to have in himself proper knowledge, but it is of
God. 2 A mortal nature does not have knowledge except that
knowledge which comes from without. For this reason the
divine wisdom placed the eyes and ears and other sense organs
plainly in the body, so that through those entrances knowl-
edge might come to the mind. To seek the causes of natural
things, to wish to know whether the sun is as great as it seems
or whether it is many times greater than this whole earth;
whether the moon is globular or concave, and whether the
stars adhere in the sky or are carried about through the air in
a free course; of the sky itself-of what magnitude and of
what material it is, whether it is quiet and immobile or
whether it revolves with incredible speed; how great is the
thickness of the earth or on what fundaments it is poised
and suspended, to wish to comprehend these things by dis-
putation and conjecture is, I say, surely such a feat that it is
like discussing what sort of city we would think a city of the
most remote people to be, one which we have never seen and
of which we have heard nothing other than the name. If we
judge that for us there is a knowledge in that matter that can-
not be known, do we not seem to be mad who dare to affirm
that in which we can be vanquished? How much more should
those be judged wild and demented who think that they know
the natural things which cannot be known by man! Rightly,
1 Cf. Isidore, Origines 2.24.1.
2 For similar treatment of the material of this section, d. Arnobius 2.51.
 BOOK THREE 169

therefore, did Socrates and the Academicians following him

extol knowledge, which is the mark not of one discussing and
disputing but of one divining.
It remains that speculation alone is in philosophy: for
whereas knowledge is absent, speculation possesses it totally.
Each one speculates on that which he does not know. 3 Those,
moreover, who discuss natural phenomena speculate that
things are as they discourse. Therefore, they do not know the
truth, since truth is knowledge of something certain; their
speculation is of an uncertainty.4 Let us return to that ex-
ample above. Come, let us speculate about the status and
quality of that city which is unknown to us in all things
except its name. It is very likely situated on level ground,
with stone walls, high buildings, many streets, and magnifi-
cently ornamented shrines. Let us describe if you wish, the
customs and dress of the citizens. But when we have said
these things, another will speak contrary opinions, and when
this one has concluded, a third will rise, and then others, and
they will put forth opinions very different from the one which
we held. Which, therefore, of all the opinions will be the most
true? Perhaps none. 'But all things which fall into the nature
of things have been said, so that something of them must be
true.'5 Still it will not be known who has said the true some-
thing. It is possible that all have erred in some part and in
some part attained the truth. Vve would be fools, then, if we
should seek this by disputation. Someone may arise who may
deride our opinions and hold us as insane men who wish to
speculate on that of which we do not know what sort of thing
it is. But there is no need to seek for things placed at a dis-
tance, whereby no one may come perhaps to refute us. Let us
now speculate on what is being done here and now in the
market place or in the government chamber. That also is far.
Let us speak of what is being done where there is only one
3 Cf. Cicero, Tusculans 4.11.26.
4 Cf. Isidore, Origines 2.24.2.
5 The source of this statement is not given, yet it is treated as a quotation
by the editors.
170 LACTANTIUS

wall placed between us: yet no one can know that except one
who hears or sees it. Therefore, no one dares to say it, because
immediately he will be refuted not by words but by the very
thing itself present. Nevertheless, the philosophers do this
same thing who discuss about what is going on in the heavens,
and they think that they do this with impunity because no one
arises who will make charges against their errors. If they
thought that someone would advance to show that they are
raging and lying, they would never discuss anyone of those
things which they are not able to know. Their impudence and
audacity should not be considered the more fortunate, there-
fore, because they are not convicted. God has convicted them,
to whom alone is the truth known, and though He seems to
pass on it, He reckons that wisdom of men as supreme fool-
ishness. 6

Chapter 4

Rightly then did Zeno and the Stoics repudiate speculation.

For to speculate that you know what you do not know is
not the mark of a wise man, but rather of a rash and foolish
one. If, then, it is not possible for anything to be known, as
Socrates taught, and if speculation is not fitting either, as
Zeno held, then all philosophy is taken away. What of the fact
that it is overturned, not only by these two who were princes
of philosophy, but by all, so that now it seems already to have
been exhausted by its own arms? Philosophy has been divided
into many sects and all hold varied beliefs. In which do we
place the truth? Certainly, it is not possible to place it in all.
Let us designate in which we will; then, surely, wisdom will
not be in all the others. Let us pass over to the individual
points. In the same way, whatever we will give to one we will
take away from the others. Each single sect overturns all the
others, so that it may confirm itself and its principles, nor

6 Cf. 1 Cor. 3.19. 'For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.'
 BOOK THREE 171

does it grant that any other may be wise lest it confess itself
to be unwise. But just as it lifts up others, it is itself also lifted
up by all the others. Nevertheless, the philosophers are those
who accuse it of foolishness. Whatever you might praise and
call true is vituperated by the philosophers as false. There-
fore, shall we believe the one praising himself and his own
doctrine or the many who are blaming the ignorance of that
other one? It must be that what many think is more right
than what one thinks. For no one is able to judge rightly
about himself, as the noble poet testifies: 'The nature of all
men is so arranged that they see and judge what concerns
others better than what concerns themselves.'l
Therefore, since all things are uncertain, men ought to
trust either everybody or nobody. If nobody, then they are not
wise, since individuals think that they are wise; if everybody,
then equally they are not wise, since the individuals are
denied by all to be wise. All, therefore, perish all together in
this manner, and they thus throttle one another just as those
Spartans of the poets, so that not one of all remains. It happens
for this reason: since they have a sword, they do not have
a shield.
If, then, the individual sects are convicted of foolishness by
the judgment of many sects, all are, therefore, found to be
vain and empty; thus philosophy itself consumes and exhausts
itself. When Arcesilas, the founder of the Academy, learned
this, he collected the reprehensions of all among themselves
and the confession of ignorance of the famous philosophers,
and armed himself against them all. Thus he set up a new
philosophy of not philosophizing. So, under his authorship,
there began to be two kinds of philosophy: the one, that old
kind which ascribes wisdom to itself; the other, a new kind,
repugnant to wisdom because it draws away. In these two
kinds I see conflict and, as it were, a civil war. In what place
shall we put wisdom which cannot be drawn apart? If the
nature of things can be known, this crowd of recruits will
1 Terence. Self- TonnenteT 3.1.94ff.
172 LACTANTIUS

perish; if it cannot be known, the old ones will be done

away with; if they should be equal, nevertheless the leader
of all, philosophy, will perish because it is distracted, for
nothing can be contrary to itself without destruction. But
if, as I have shown, there can be no internal and proper
knowledge in man on account of the frailty of human con-
dition, the side of Arcesilas conquers. But not even that will
stand, because it is not possible that absolutely nothing be
known.

Chapter 5

There are many things which nature itself, constant use,

and the necessity of life force us to know. And so you must
perish, unless you know what things are useful for life that
you might seek them, and what things are dangerous that
you might escape and avoid them. Besides, there are many
things which experience has discovered. The various courses
of the sun and moon and the movements of the stars and
the plan of the seasons have been grasped, and the nature
of bodies and the powers of herbs have been acquired by
doctors, and by farmers the nature of the lands and the signs
also of future storms and weather have been gathered. In
short, there is no art which does not stand upon knowledge.
Arcesilas, therefore, if he were wise about anything, ought to
have distinguished what things can be known from what
things cannot. But if he had done this, he would have reduced
himself to the level of the people. For the crowd is some-
times more wise, because it is wise only so far as it is necessary
to be wise. If you ask the common people whether they know
something or nothing, they will say that they know what they
know, and they will admit ignorance of what they do not
know. Rightly, then, did he remove the disciplines of the
others, but he did not rightly establish his own. Ignorance of
all things cannot be wisdom, the very property of which is to
 BOOK THREE 173

know. When, therefore, he expugned the philosophers and

taught that they knew nothing, he himself also lost the name
of philosopher, because his teaching is that nothing is known.
He who reprehends others because they do not know ought
to be a knowing one himself, but, when he knows nothing,
what perversity is it or what insolence to establish himself as
a philosopher for the very reason for which he takes away
the others from the field? They are able to respond in this
wise: 'If you prove that we know nothing, and are, therefore,
not wise because we know nothing, then not even you are
wise, because you admit that you too know nothing: What,
therefore, did Arcesilas promote, except that when all philos-
ophers had been wiped out, he pierced himself with the same
sword?

Chapter 6

Is there wisdom nowhere then? It was, in fact, among those

very men, but no one saw it. Some thought that all things
could be known; these surely were not wise. Others thought
that nothing could be known; nor were these wise either. The
former attributed too much to man, the latter too little; to
both and in each part measure was lacking. ''''here, there-
fore, is wisdom? That you may not think that you know all
things, which is characteristic of God, nor that you do not
know all things, which is characteristic of the beasts. There
is a middle state which belongs to man, that is, a knowledge
joined with and tempered by ignorance. Since knowledge in
us is from the soul, which arises from heaven; ignorance is of
the body which is from the earth, whence there is in us some
sharing both with God and with the animals. Thus, since we
consist of these two elements, one of which is endowed with
light, the other with darkness, a part of knowledge is given
to us and a part of ignorance. It is permitted to pass over this
bridge, as it were, without the danger of falling; for all those
174 LACTANTIUS

who have inclined themselves to one or the other side, either

to the right or the left, have fallen.
I will tell how each group has erred in some way. The
Academicians have argued against the physicists from obscure
matters that there is no knowledge, and, content with ex-
amples of a few incomprehensible things, they have embraced
ignorance, as though they had removed all knowledge because
they had removed it in part. The physicists, on the contrary,
drew their argument from those things which are plain and
evident that all things could be known, and, content with
perspicuous examples, they held on to knowledge as though
they had defended it in entirety because they had defended it
in part. So the one group did not see the clear things and
the other did not see the obscure things, but while both sides
with concerted strength either retained or broke away from
knowledge alone, they did not see that it would be set up in a
middle position which would transmit them to wisdom. But
when Arcesilas, the master of ignorance, charged Zeno, the
prince of Stoics, with overturning all of philosophy, he took
up this opinion under the authority of Socrates, namely, that
he affirmed that nothing could be known. And thus he argued
against the belief of philosophers who had thought that by
their ability the truth had been probed and discovered. For
inasmuch as that wisdom had been mortal, and had been in-
stituted just a few generations before, it had come to its
greatest increase, so that now of necessity it was growing old
and perishing; suddenly the Academy now has appeared, just
as though it were the old age of philosophy, to complete it
in its deflorescent stage, and Arcesilas rightly saw that those
ascribing to this belief were rather fools to think that the
knowledge of the truth could be comprehended by conjecture.
But it is not possible except for one who has known be-
forehand what is true to convince one speaking false things.
Arcesilas, not knowing the truth, and attempting to do this,
introduced an a-systatic kind of philosophy which we can call
in our language unstable or inconstant. For in order that
 BOOK THREE 175

nothing should be known, it is necessary that something be

known; for if you know nothing at all, that itself, that nothing
can be known, will be removed. Thus, he who pronounces as
if in the place of a sentence that nothing is known, he will
profess it as perceived and known; therefore, something can
be known. Similar to this is that which is accustomed to be
proposed in the schools as an example of an a-systatic kind,
for a certain one to have dreamed lest he believe in dreams.
For if he has believed, then it will follow that it ought not to
be believed, but if he has not believed, then it will follow that
it should be believed. Thus, if nothing can be known, it is
necessary that that itself be known, namely, that nothing is
known. If, however, it is known that it is not possible to be
known, then that is false which is said, that nothing can be
known. So there is induced a dogma which is repugnant to
itself and which dissolves itself.
But a man versed in the theories of the other philosophers
has wished to snatch away knowledge, that he might hide it
at home-for surely he does not take that from himself who
affirms something, in order to take from others, but he does
nothing; and this is apparent and he betrays his theft. How
much more wisely and truly he would act, if, making an ex-
ception, he would say that the causes and reasons of heavenly
or natural things, because they are hidden, neither can be
known, since no one may teach them, nor ought they to be
sought for, since they may not be discovered by seeking. When
such an exception as this had been made, he would have
warned the physicists not to seek those things which exceed
the measure of human thought, and he would have freed
himself from the envy of calumny, and he would have given
us something certain to follow. But now, since he has drawn
us back from following others, so that we do not wish to know
more than we can, he has drawn us back no less from him-
self also. For who would want to labor so as not to know any·
thing, or who would want to undertake a doctrine of that
sort so as to lose even common knowledge? If this is a doctrine,
176 LACTANTIUS

then it is necessary that knowledge exist; if it is not, who is

so foolish that he would think that ought to be learned in
which either nothing is learned or it is even unlearned? Where-
fore, if neither all things can be known, as the physicists
thought, nor if nothing, as the Academicians, then all philos-
ophy is extinct.

Chapter 7

Let us pass now to another division of philosophy which is

termed moral, in which the plan of all of philosophy is con-
tained, since in that physical philosophy there is merely de-
light, but in this utility as well. And since in disposing the
condition of life and in forming customs there is greater
danger of sinning, it is necessary that greater diligence be
applied in order that we may know how we ought to live. In
the one area (that of physical philosophy) pardon can be
granted because if they say something, they are of no service;
if they rage wildly, they do no harm. But in this branch there
is no place for discord, no place for error. It is necessary that
all think the one way and give forth the same philosophy as
with one mouth, because if there should be any mistake made,
all life is overturned. In that former division of philosophy,
as there is less of danger, so there is more of difficulty because
the obscure system and plan of things forces men to have
varied and diverse thoughts. Here, as there is more of danger,
so there is less of difficulty because the very use of things and
daily experiences can teach what is better and more true.
Let us see, therefore, whether they (the moral philosophers)
agree or what they may bring to us by which our life may be
more rightly spent. It is not necessary to go over everything.
Let us select one thing, a very strong one which is the chief
and principal point on which the hinge of all philosophy
turns.
Epicurus thinks that the highest good is in the pleasure of
 BOOK THREE 177

the mind.! Aristippus holds that it is in the pleasure of the

body; Callipho and Dinomachus have joined honorableness
with pleasure. Diodorus put the greatest good in the privation
of pain, Hieronymus in not grieving, the Peripatetics in the
goods of the mind, of body, and of fortune. Knowledge was the
highest good for Herillus, for Zeno, to live according to
nature, for certain Stoics, to follow virtue. Aristotle placed it
in honor and virtue. These are the opinions of almost all the
philosophers. 2 In such diversity whom are we to follow? Whom
believe? Authority is equal in all. If we can choose what is
better, philosophy is no longer necessary for us because we
are now the wise ones who judge about the sentences of the
wise. Since, however, we come for the sake of learning wisdom,
how are we able to judge, we who have not yet begun to be
wise, especially since an Academician is at hand, who may
draw us back with the pallium and forbid us to believe any-
one, yet not bring forth himself what we may follow?

Chapter 8

What, therefore, remains except that putting aside furious

and obstinate litigations we should come to the judge, namely,
that giver of simple and quiet wisdom, which is able not only
to form us and lead us into the way, but also to bear sentence
concerning the controversies of those philosophers? This
teaches us what is the true and highest good of man. Before I
begin to speak about this, all of those opinions ought to be
refuted so that it may be apparent that no one of those
philosophers was wise.
Since the discussion is about the office of man, it is neces-
sary that the highest good of the highest animal be constituted
in that which cannot be common with the other animals.
1 Epicurus, frg. 452.
2 For these opinions, d. Cicero, Academics 2.42.129,131; Tusculans 5.30.
84ff.
178 LACTANTIUS

But as teeth are proper to wild beasts, horns to cattle, feathers

to birds, so something of his own ought to be ascribed to man
without which he would lose the reason of his own condition.
For what is given for the sake of living or generating is to all;
it is, indeed, a natural good; however, it is not the highest
except that which is proper to each one kind. That man l
was not wise, then, who believed that pleasure of the mind
was the highest good, since whether that is security or joy it is
common to all. I do not think that Aristippus should be even
answered, since there is doubt in no one's mind that he was
not a man who was always rushing toward the pleasures of
the body and cared for nothing other than food and sex. For
he lived in such a way that there was no difference between
him and the beast save this one, that he spoke. But if to an ass
or a sow or a dog the faculty of speaking should be given and
you were to ask them what they wish for themselves when
they so rabidly attack the females that they can scarcely be
torn apart and even neglect food and drink, why they either
violently drive away other males or do not even stop for food,
but often being attacked by stronger ones they press on the
more, why they fear neither storms nor cold, why they under-
take labor and do not refuse danger, what else will they
answer except that pleasure of the body is the highest good?
It is for them to attain that pleasure, in order to be affected
with the most enjoyable sensations, and they are of such worth
that they think no labor nor wounds nor death itself should
be avoided by them in order to pursue them. Shall we seek
from these, then, the precepts of living, from men who feel
the same way as the beasts who have no rational soul?
The Cyrenaics say that virtue itself ought to be praised
for this, that it is productive of pleasure. 'But,' that obscene
cur or that filthy sow may say,2 'I struggle indeed with an
adversary with the greatest contest of strength, in order that
my power may bring forth pleasure for me, of which I am
1 Cf. Epicurus, frg. 452.
2 Cf. Vergil, Georgics 1.470; Horace, Epist. 2.2.75.
 BOOK THREE 179

necessarily deprived if I should depart conquered.' Shall we

learn to be wise from these, therefore, who are separated from
the beasts not by judgment but by speech?
To think that the highest good is the privation of pain is
surely not characteristic of the Peripatetics or Stoics but of
the clinical philosophers. 3 For who would not understand that
this is the point discussed by the sick and those placed in some
state of pain? What is so ridiculous as to consider that which
a physician can give as the highest good? We must grieve, then,
seriously and often, that we enjoy a good thing in order that
afterwards it may not be more pleasant to grieve. He is most
wretched who has never grieved, since he lacks a good, and
we thought him most fortunate because he lacked evil. He
was not far from this vanity who said that the highest good
was to sorrow for nothing whatsoever. For beside the fact
that every animal is an escaper of pain, who can put forth this
good for himself which, in order that it may come to us, we
can do nothing other than wish?
The highest good cannot make anyone blessed unless it has
always been in his power; this, however, not virtue supplies
to man, not doctrine, not labor, but nature itself grants it to
all living beings. Those who have joined pleasure with honor
have wished to escape this communion, but they have effected
a repugnant good, since he who is given to pleasure must be
lacking in honorableness, and he who desires honor must lack
pleasure. The good of the Peripatetics is too manifold, and,
excepting the goods of the soul (and what these are is a matter
of great contention), can be seen as common with that of the
beasts. For the goods of the body, freedom from harm, freedom
from pain, good health are no less necessary for the dumb
animals than for man, and I am not certain that they are not
more so, because man can be aided by remedies and minis.
trations, but the animals cannot. The same holds true in
regard to those things which they call the goods of fortune:
[or just as there is need for wealth for man to protect life, so
3 Cf. Epicurns, frg. 419; also Cyprian, Ej)is/. 69.16.
180 LACTANTIUS

animals need prey and fodder. So by bringing on a good which

may not be in the power of man they have reduced the whole
man to an alien dominion.
Let us hear Zeno also, for he sometimes dreams of virtue.
He says it is the highest good to live properly with nature.
Therefore, we must live according to the custom of the beasts.
For all things which ought to be away from man are held in
these: they seek pleasures, they fear, they are deceived, they
lie in ambush, they kill and are slain, and what mostly con-
cerns our discussion, they do not know God. Why, therefore,
does he teach me to live according to nature which is itself
prone to the worse things and instructs unto vices with cer-
tain smooth blandishments? Or if he says that nature in man
is one thing and is another in beasts because man is begotten
according to virtue, there is something in this, but it will not
be a definition of the highest good, however, because there is
no animal which does not live according to his nature.
He who made knowledge the highest good, made it some-
thing proper to man, but men seek knowledge for the sake
of something else, not for itself. For who is content just to
know and not seek some fruit of knowledge? Therefore, the
arts are learned that they may be exercised, and they are
exercised either for the help of life or for pleasure or for
glory. That is not, then, the highest good which is not sought
on account of itself. What difference is there whether we
think that knowledge is the highest good or those things which
knowledge brings forth from itself, namely, food, glory,
pleasure? But these things are not proper to man and, there-
fore, are indeed not the highest goods, for the seeking of
pleasure and food does not belong to man alone but is also
of the beasts. What of the desire of glory? Is it not found in
horses who exult when they are victors and grieve when they
are overcome?
'So great is the love of praise; victory is such care,'4 and
not without merit does the supreme poet say that it must be
4 Vergil, Georgics 3.112.
 BOOK THREE 181

experienced, 'Both what sorrow there is for each loser and

what glory for the palm.'5 But if those things which knowl·
edge brings forth are common with the other animals, then
knowledge is not the highest good. Besides, the fault of this
definition is not a slight one because of the fact that knowl-
edge without qualification is posited or considered absolutely.
For all those happy ones will begin to be seen who have known
some art, but not in truth those who have also known evil
things, so that he is so happy who has learned to govern evils
rather than he who has learned to amend or cure them. I
ask, then, to which thing knowledge is to be referred. If it is
to the causes of natural things, what beatitude will there be in
store for me if I know whence the Nile rises or whatever the
physicists prate about the heavens? Why is it that there is
not knowledge of those things, but speculation, which varies
according to the ability of the holders?
It remains that knowledge of good and evil is the highest
good. Why, therefore, did he prefer to say that knowledge
rather than wisdom itself was the highest good, since the
signification and force of each is the same? No one, however,
up to this time has said that wisdom is the highest good, a
thing which could have been said better. For knowledge is too
little for undertaking good and avoiding evil, unless there is
virtue present also. For although many philosophers discussed
goods and evils, they spoke, however, differently from the
way they lived under nature's forcing, because they lacked
virtue. But virtue joined with knowledge is wisdom.
There remains that we also refute those who thought that
virtue itself was the highest good; even Marcus Tullius was
of this opinion. However, they greatly failed in this consider-
ation. For virtue itself is not the highest good but the maker
and mother of the highest good, since it is not possible to
arrive at that without virtue. It is easy to understand both
views. I ask whether they think that good is easily come to,
or whether it is reached with difficulty and labor? They may
5 Ibid. 102.
182 LACTANTIUS

let loose their acumen and defend error. If it is possible to

come to that easily and without any labor, it is not the
highest good. Why do we torture ourselves, what do we
accomplish by striving day and night, since that which we
seek lies so ready at hand that anyone may lay hold of it with-
out any effort of mind? But if any ordinary or mediocre good
whatsoever cannot be attained without labor on our part,
since the nature of goods is set in loftiness or difficulty and
of evils in ease, it is necessary for the greatest labor, therefore,
to be expended on the attainment of the highest good. And
if this is quite true, there is need, then, of other virtue that
we might come to that virtue which is called the highest good,
which is incongruous and absurd, namely, that virtue might
come through itself to itself. If it is not possible to reach any
good except through labor, it appears that it is virtue through
which it is reached, since the power and office of virtue con-
sists in undertaking and enduring labors. Therefore, the high-
est good cannot be that through which it is necessary to come
to something else. But since they did not know what virtue
accomplished or whither it tended, and, therefore, discovered
nothing honestly, they substituted in the name of virtue itself
that which they said ought to be sought, even though no
reward be proposed, so that they set up for themselves a good
which needed a good.
Aristotle did not depart far from these when he held that
virtue with honor was the highest good. As if there could be
any dishonorable virtue, and as if virtue would not cease to
exist if it had anything of baseness in it! But he saw that it
was possible for a man with a depraved judgment to think
wrongly about virtue, and, therefore, he thought that we ought
to be governed by the thinking of men. But he who would do
this will depart from the right and the good, since it is not in
our power that virtue be honored for its own merits. For what
is honorableness except perpetual honor conferred upon some-
one according to the report of the people? What, therefore,
shall happen if evil thinking follow because of the error and
 BOOK THREE 183

wickedness of men? Shall we cast aside virtue because it is

judged wicked and base by the unwise? Since this envy can be
pressed and shaken, so that it itself might be a proper and
perpetual good, it ought to need no aid extrinsically, but it
may rely on its own strength and stand of itself. And, there-
fore, not any good from man should be hoped for, nor should
any evil be rejected.

Chapter 9

I come now to the highest good of true religion. Its nature

must be determined in this way: first, that it belongs to man
alone and not fall to any other animal; then, that it be of the
soul alone and not be able to be shared with the body; finally,
that it be not able to come to anyone without knowledge and
virtue. This circumscription excludes and resolves all the
opinions of those philosophers, for it is nothing like those
things which they said. I will tell now what it is, in order
that I may show that which I have resolved upon, namely,
that all the philosophers were blind and foolish who were not
able at some time or other to see or to understand or even
to suspect what had been constituted the highest good for
man. When Anaxagoras was asked what was the reason that
he had been born, he answered that it was for the sake of
seeing the sky and the sun. All marvel at this speech and
judge it worthy of a philosopher. But I think that not having
at hand what to answer, he sputtered this out at random so
as not to be silent; whereas, if he had been wise, he ought
to have had indeed studied and pondered this within himself,
since, if anyone does not know the reason for himself, he is
not even a man. Hut let us not think that that statement was
poured out extemporaneously. Let us see in three words how
many errors and how great ones he committed. Firstly, he put
the whole function of man in the eyes alone, referring nothing
to the mind but all to the body. \Vhat about this? If one
184 LACTANTIUS

should be blind, will he lose the function of man? But this

cannot take place without the loss of the soul. What of the
other parts of the body? "Vill each of these be deprived of its
offices? What of the fact that there is more situated in the
ears than in the eyes since doctrine and wisdom can be per-
ceived by the ears alone and cannot by the eyes alone? You
have been born for the sake of seeing the sky and the sun:
who has led you to this spectacle, or what does your vision
confer to heaven and the nature of things? To be sure, it is
that you may praise this immense and marvelous work. Con-
fess, then, that God is the establisher of all things who has
brought you into this world a witness, as it were, and a
praiser of His work so mighty. You believe it is great to see
the sky and the sun. Why, therefore, do you not thank Him
who is the Author of this benefit? Why do you not estimate
with your mind the virtue, providence, power of Him whose
works you admire?
Of necessity must He be more wondrous who has done
wondrous things. If someone had invited you to a banquet
and you had been treated at it in an excellent manner, would
you seem sane if you considered that pleasure itself of more
worth than the author of the pleasure? So do the philosophers
refer all things to the body, absolutely nothing to the mind,
nor do they see any more than what comes under the eyes.
But, nevertheless, when all the functions of the body are re-
moved, the reason of man must be placed in the mind alone.
Therefore, we are not so born that we may see those things
which have been done, but that we may contemplate the
Maker of all things Himself, that is, that we may discern Him
with our minds. So, if anyone should ask a man who is truly
wise for what reason he was born, he will answer fearlessly
and be ready to adhere to it, that he has been born of the
favor of God who has generated us so that we may serve Him.
Now to serve God is nothing other than to behold how good
are His works and to observe justice. But that one,l as a man
1 Anaxagoras.
 BOOK THREE 185

inexperienced in divine things, reduced the greatest matter

to the least by choosing only two things which he said he
ought to behold. But if he had said that he was born to behold
the world, although he should comprehend all things and
use greater speech, however, he would not have fulfilled the
function of man, because the soul is of as much more worth
than the body as God is greater than the world, since God
both made the world and rules it. The world, then, ought not
to be beheld by our eyes, because both are bodies, but God
ought to be contemplated by our souls, because God, as He
is Himself immortal, has thus intended the soul to last for-
ever. Now the contemplation of God is to venerate and
worship the common Father of the human race. But if He
were far removed from the philosophers, and if they were cast
upon the earth in not knowing divine things, Anaxagoras
must be judged to have seen neither the sky nor the sun, those
things which he said he was born to see. Unencumbered and
free, then, is the reason of man if he is wise, and his property
is his humanity. But that very humanity, what is it if not
justice? And what is justice if not piety? And piety is nothing
other than the acknowledgement of God as parent.

Chapter 10

The highest good of man, therefore, is in religion alone.

For the other things, even those which are thought to be
proper to man, are found in other animals also. For when
they discern and distinguish their own voices among them-
selves by proper notes, they seem to speak together. Some type
of laughing also appears in these, since by a stroking of the
ears and a contraction of the mouth and a movement of the
eyes unto frolicsomeness, they either 'laugh' at men or at
each other. 1 'Vhat of their mates and their own offspring? Do

I These observations reflect the scientific interpretations of the period.

186 LACTANTIUS

they not bestow on them something like mutual love and

indulgence? They surely have a providence, for they look out
for things for themselves for the future and they layaway
foods. Signs of 'reason' also are caught in many. For when
they seek useful things for themselves, beware evil, avoid
danger, and prepare hiding places for themselves opening out
to several exists, certainly they manifest an 'understanding'
of something. 2 Can anyone deny that there is reason in them
when often they delude man himself? For them the work of
generating is pleasant, and when they dwell in fixed abodes,
fortify camps, arrange domiciles with indescribable skill, serve
their king-leader, I know not whether there is in them a
thorough prudence. 3 It is uncertain, therefore, whether or
not those things which are attributed to man are shared in
common with other living animals, but, certainly, the animals
are without experience of religion. In fact, I am inclined to
believe that reason has been given to all the animals, but to
the dumb beasts only for the guarding of life, while to man
for propagating it also. And since in man that reason itself is
perfect, it is called wisdom,4 which makes man exceptional
in this, that to him alone it is given to understand divine
things.
On this point the statement of Cicero is true. 'Of all kinds,
there is no animal besides man which has some knowledge
of God, and among men themselves there is no class, neither
so meek nor so fierce, which, even though it may not know
what kind of a god ought to be revered, does not know, none-
theless, that he ought to be revered. From this it is effected that
he discerns God who recalls, as it were, whence he has
originated.'5 The philosophers, therefore, who wish to set
minds free from fear, take away religion also and deprive man
of his own proper and singular good. And this is disjoined
2 Lactantius docs not have the technical distinctions of inSiinct, sense,
cognition, ctc.
3 Cf. Vcrgil, Georgics 4.149-221; also Isidore, Origines 12.8.1.
4 Cf. Cicero, The Laws 1.7.22.
5 Ibid. 1.8.24.
 BOOK THREE 187

from living rightly and from all humanity, because as God

subjected all living things to man, so he subjected man to
Himself. Why should those same philosophers 6 dispute that
the mind ought to be directed there where the countenance
is raised aloft? For if we are to look toward heaven, surely it
is for nothing else but religion; and if religion is taken away,
there is no connection with heaven for us. And so we ought to
look toward there, or else grovel upon the ground. 7 Not even
if we wished are we able to bend down to the ground since
our stature is upright. Therefore, we must look toward heaven
where the nature of our body directs. If it is agreed that this
ought to be done, then it ought to be done for this reason,
that we serve religion, or for this, that we learn the reason
or plan of heavenly bodies. But we can in no way learn the
plan of heavenly things, because nothing of this sort can be
discovered by speculation, as I pointed out above. s Religion
must be observed, therefore, and he who does not undertake
this obligation prostrates himself upon the earth, and, follow-
ing the life of the beasts, cuts himself off from humanity. The
ignorant and unversed, then, are the wiser who, even though
they err in choosing religion, have still remained mindful of
their nature and condition.

Chapter 11

It is settled, therefore, by the consent of the entire human

race that religion ought to be embraced. But it ought to be ex-
plained how there may be error in the embracing. God
wished this to be the nature of man, that he should be desirous
of and seeking after two things, religion and wisdom. But men
are deceived for this reason, that they either take up religion

6 Ibid. 1.9.26; On the Nature of the Gods 2.56.140.

7 This is a favorite topic with Lactantius. Cf. The Workmanship of God,
chs. 5 and 10 especially.
8 c. 3.
188 LACTANTIUS

neglecting wisdom, or they are zealous for wisdom alone to

the neglect of religion, although one without the other can-
not be true. So they turn to many religions, false ones, for
the reason that they have abandoned wisdom which was able
to teach them that there could not be many gods; or on the
other hand, they eagerly pursue wisdom, but that is false, too,
because they have omitted the religion of the supreme God
who could enlighten them unto the knowledge of the truth.
Thus, men who take up one or the other follow a devious way
of life and one full of the greatest errors, since both the
function of man and all truth have been enclosed in these two
which are inseparably connected. I wonder, therefore, that
no one of those philosophers ever came forth who discovered
the abode and domicile of the highest good. For thus they
could seek: that whatever is the highest good is of necessity
to be placed before all. Pleasure is that which is sought by all.
But this is also common with the beasts; and it does not have
the strength of something honorable; and it brings satiety,
and harms too much; and it lessens with the advance of age;
and it does not come to many, for those who lack wealth, and
these are the majority, must of necessity lack pleasure also.
Pleasure, therefore, is not the highest good, not even a good.!
What of riches? It is much more obvious in this example.
For they fall to the lot of very few and generally by chance,
and often they come to the lazy, and sometimes they come with
crime, and they are desired by those who hold them already.
'!\That of power itself? Not even is that the answer: for not all
men are able to rule, and it is necessary that all be capable of
the highest good. Let us seek something, then, which is pro-
posed to all. Is it virtue? It cannot be denied that that is a
good and surely a good of all. But if it cannot be blessed,
since the strength and nature of it are placed in the en-
durance of evils, then, certainly, it is not the highest good.
Let us seek another. But there is nothing more beautiful than
virtue, nothing more worthy of a wise man can be found.
1 Cf. Seneca, On the Happy Life 10.3.
 BOOK THREE 189

If vices are to be shunned on account of their baseness, virtue

ought to be sought on account of its loveliness. Well, then?
Is it possible for that good, which is agreed to be honorable,
to lack gain and reward and be so sterile that it brings forth
nothing worthwhile from itself? There is great labor and
there is difficulty and struggling against the evils with which
this life is full, so it is necessary that it bring forth something
of great good. What shall we say this is, then? Is it pleasure?
Nothing base can be born from something honorable. Is it
riches? Powerfulness? Those things are, indeed, frail and
feeble. Is it glory? Honor? The memory of a name? But all
these things are not in virtue itself, but they are placed in the
consideration and judgment of others. Often virtue is detested
and is afflicted with evil. Therefore, that good which is born
of it ought to so cohere that it is unable to be torn apart and
separated; nor can the highest good seem otherwise than if it
were the property of virtue, and such that it cannot be added
to or taken away from. Why is it that the duties of virtue
consist in contemning all these? For not to desire, not to seek,
not to love-as others do who are conquered by greed-the
pleasures, wealth, powers, honors, and all those things which
are regarded as goods, this is certainly the part of virtue.
It brings about, therefore, something else more sublime and
more outstanding, nor is there a vain resistance to these pres-
ent goods, but only that one desires greater and more true
ones. Let us not despair of being able to come upon it, but
now let thought turn itself upon all, for the rewards sought
are not light or foolish.

Chapter 12

If it is asked why it is that we are born, what virtue ac-

complishes, we can thus make investigation. There are two
parts of which man consists, soul and body. There are many
things proper to the soul; many proper to the body; many
190 LACTANTIUS

common to both, such as is virtue itself. Whenever this is

referred to the body, for the sake of distinction it is named
strength. Since, then, strength lies beneath each (part of man)
to each a contest is proposed, and for each a victory as a
result of the contest. The body, inasmuch as it is solid and
comprehensible, must fight with solid and comprehensible
things; but the soul, since it is tenuous and invisible, engages
with those enemies which cannot be seen or touched. What
are the enemies of the soul if not desires, vices, and sins? If
virtue conquers and puts these to flight, the soul will be
immaculate and pure. Whence, then, can it be ascertained
what strength of soul effects? To be sure, this is from a con-
joined and like fortitude of the body, because when it comes
against some conflict and struggle, what else does it seek from
victory than life? For whether you struggle with man or with
beast, the struggle is for preservation. Therefore, as the body
attains this by overcoming, so that it may not perish, so does
the soul, too, that it may endure; and just as the body, over-
come by its enemies, is punished with death, so it is necessary
that the soul, overcome by vices, die. What, then, will be the
difference between the struggle of the soul and that of the
body except that the body seeks temporal life and the soul
eternal? If, therefore, virtue through itself alone is not happy,
since its whole power consists, as I said,l in enduring evils; if
it neglects all things which are desired as goods; if its supreme
step opens unto death, inasmuch as it often scorns the life
which is desired by the rest and bravely accepts the death
which others fear; if it is necessary that it bring forth some-
thing of great good from itself, since labors undertaken and
overcome even unto death cannot be without reward; if no
reward which is worthy of it is found in life, since it spurns
all things which are fragile and faltering, what else remains
except that it effect something heavenly because it despises
the earthly, and that it advance toward the higher things be-

1 c. 11, p. 188.
 BOOK THREE 191

cause it despises the lowly? That, in truth, can be nothing

other than immortality.
Rightly, therefore, did Euclides, not an obscure figure
among the philosophers, who was the founder of the discipline
of the Megaricians, disagreeing with the others say that that
is the highest good which is always alike and the same. 2 He
knew, surely, the nature of the highest good, although he did
not explain it. What is it? It is immortality and not anything
else whatsoever, because that alone is able to be neither less-
ened nor increased nor changed. Seneca also unwarily fell
upon it when he acknowledged that there is no other reward
of virtue than immortality. For praising virtue in that book
which he wrote on unnatural death, he said: 'Virtue is the
one thing which can give us immortality and make us equals
of the gods.'3 The Stoics also whom he followed deny that
anyone can become happy without virtue. Therefore, the
reward of virtue is a happy life, if virtue, as is rightly said,
makes life happy.
Virtue should not, then, as some say, be sought on account
of itself, but on account of the happy life which necessarily
follows virtue. This argument could have taught them what
was the highest good. This life, present, therefore, and corpo-
ral, cannot be happy, because it is subject through the body
to evils. Epicurus calls a god happy and incorrupt because he
is everlasting. Beatitude ought to be perfect so that there be
nothing which can vex or lessen or change it, nor can anything
thought to be blessed unless through its being incorrupt. And
nothing is incorrupt save what is immorta1. 4 Therefore, im-
mortality alone is blessed, since it cannot be corrupted and
dissolved. Now if virtue falls to the lot of man, which no one
can deny, beatitude also comes to him, for it cannot happen
that he who is endowed with virtue be miserable. If beatitude
comes to man, then immortality also comes, and this is to be

2 Cf. Cicero, Academics 2.42.129.

3 Seneca, frg. 27.
4 Cf. Epicurus. frg. 360.
192 LACTANTIUS

happy. Therefore, the highest good is found to be immor-

tality alone, because it comes to no other animal or body;
neither can it be reached by anyone without knowledge and
virtue, that is, without a knowledge of God and justice.
How right is the seeking of this, how true it is, the very
desire of this life indicates; for, although it is temporal and
very full of labor, still it is sought and desired by all. And
this the old as well as the young desire, kings as well as lowly
men, and finally, the wise as well as the foolish. The con-
templation of heaven and its light is of such great worth, as
it seemed to Anaxagoras, that he would be glad to sustain
any labors whatsoever. Although this life is laborious and
brief, since not only by the consent of men, but also of other
living things it is considered a great good, it is manifest that
the same becomes the highest and perfect good if it lacks both
an end and all evil. Finally, no one would have ever existed
who despised this very same brief life or who underwent death
unless it were with the hope of a longer life. Those who
voluntarily offered themselves to be slain for the safety of the
citizens, as Menoeceus of Thebes,5 Codrus of Athens,S and
Curtius 7 and the two Mures S of Rome, would never have pre-
ferred death to the advantage of life, unless they had thought
that they would gain immortality in the minds of their people.
Although these did not know the way of immortality, they
were not deceived as to the thing itself.
If virtue, therefore, despises riches and wealth, because
they are fragile, pleasures because they are short, then it also
contemns a short and fragile life in order that it may attain
5 A young Theban, son of Creon. He offered himself to death because
the gods required a sacrifice to ensure victory to his country's forces.
6 The last king of Athens. Victory was to be granted to the nation
whose king was killed in battle, so Codrus disguised himself and attacked
one of the enemy by whom he was killed.
7 Mettius Curtius threw himself into a cleft in the forum so that the gods
might close up the opening.
8 These are Decius Mus, a celebrated Roman consul who devoted him·
self to the gods to save his country in a battle against the Latins in
338 B.C., and his son Decius who imitated his example when fighting
against the Gauls and Samnites in 296 B.C.
 BOOK THREE 193

a sure and lasting one. Thought itself, advancing in an orderly

way and considering all things brings us to that exceptional
and singular good for the sake of which we are born.
1£ the philosophers had done this, they would have pre-
ferred to gaze upon with pertinacity, that which they had
once apprehended, and surely they would have arrived at
this truth, as I have just shown. But if this were not the part
of those who would extinguish the celestial souls of men along
with their bodies, still those who discuss the immortality of
the soul ought to understand that virtue has been proposed to
us for the reason that, quelling our passions and overcoming
the desire of earthly things, our pure and victorious souls
might return to God, that is, to their origin. And for this
reason, we alone of all living beings have been made erect with
an outlook toward heaven so that we might believe our high-
est good to be in the highest realm. And, therefore, we alone
take up religion so that we might know from this that the
human spirit is not mortal because it knows and desires God
who is immortal. Therefore, of all the philosophers, those
who embraced either knowledge or virtue for the highest good
held, indeed, the way of truth, but they did not arrive at the
highest. For these are two which effect at the same time that
which is sought: knowledge grants this, that we know how
and where it might be reached, virtue that we might reach it.
The one without the other is of no value: for of knowledge
virtue is born, and of virtue the highest good. Therefore, there
is no blessed life which the philosophers always sought and
which they seek either in the worship of the gods or in philos-
ophy, and so it could not be found by them, because they
sought the highest good, not in the highest, but in the lowest.
vVhat is the highest if not heaven and God whence the soul
has its origin? What is the lowest if not the earth, from which
the body comes? And even though certain philosophers have
given the highest good, not to the body, but to the soul, how-
ever, because they referred that to this life which terminates
with the body, they were thrown back upon the body whose
194 LACTANTIUS

entire span of time is spent on earth. Wherefore, not un-

deservedly, did they not comprehend the highest good, be-
cause whatever looks to the body and is wanting in immor-
tality must necessarily be lowest. Therefore, beatitude does
not fall to man in that manner in which the philosophers
believed it did, but it so comes, not that he be happy then
while he lives in the body which surely must become corrupt
when it is dissolved, but then when his soul lives in spirit
alone, liberated from the society of the body.9 In this alone
we can be happy in this life, if we seem to be least happy; if
fleeing the enticements of pleasures and serving virtue alone,
we live in all trials and labors, which are the exercises and
strengtheners of virtue; if, finally, we hold to that rough and
difficult way which opens unto beatitude for us. Therefore, the
highest good which makes men blessed cannot be except in
religion and doctrine to which the hope of immortality has
been joined.

Chapter 13

The matter seems to require that in this place, since we

have taught immortality to be the highest good, we prove
this very point, namely, that the soul is immortal. This is a
matter of great debate among the philosophers, and yet those
who perceived the truth about the soul were not able to ex-
plain or to prove anything. For they were without this divine
instruction nor did they bring true arguments with which
they might win or testimonies by which they might offer proof.
We shall treat this question more suitably in the last book,!
when we must discuss the happy life.
There remains that third part of philosophy which they
9 This is not a truly Catholic opinion. Our faith teaches the resurrection
of the body and there will be complete fruition in heaven only when
our bodies, with which we worked out our salvation, are reunited to
the souls.

I Bk. VII, chs. 8-12,13.

 BOOK THREE 195

call logic2 in which the whole of dialectics and the entire

method of speaking is contained. Divine instruction does not
desire this because wisdom is not in the tongue but in the
heart and it is not concerned with what sort of speech to use.
For things, not words are sought. And we are discussing not
grammar, not oratory, the knowledge of which is how it is
fitting to speak, but we are concerned with wisdom whose
doctrine is how it is necessary to live. But if that necessary plan
is not physics, nor this logic either, because they cannot make
one happy, it remains that the whole strength of philosophy
is contained in ethics alone. Socrates is said to have devoted
himself to this branch, casting the others aside. Since I have
explained that the philosophers have erred in this division
also, those who did not comprehend the highest good for the
sake of which we were born, it appears that all philosophy is
false and empty, since it does not instruct unto the functions
of justice nor does it bring about the office and purpose of
man. Let them know, therefore, that they err who think that
philosophy is wisdom; let them not be drawn by the authority
of anyone, but let them rather favor and approach the truth.
This is no place for rashness; the penalty for foolishness must
be undergone unto eternity, if either an inane person or a
false opinion has deceived. A man, however, of whatever sort,
if he believes himself, that is, if he trusts man, (that I might
not speak as a fool who does not see his own error), is cer-
tainly arrogant who would dare to appropriate to himself
that which the very condition of being human does not
warrant. How much is the master wielder of the Latin lan-
guage himself deceived, you may see from that sentence, when
he said in his work On Duties that, 'Philosophy is nothing
other than the study of wisdom, but that wisdom itself is the
knowledge of divine and human things.' Then he added: 'He
who vituperates this study, certainly I know not whether there
is anything which he thinks should be praised. For if delight
2 Up to now he has discussed metaphysics (called physics among the
ancients) and ethics.
196 LACTANTIUS

of the mind is sought and rest from cares, what can be com-
pared with the studies of those who are always anxiously
seeking for something which looks forward and has value for
living well and happily? If a system of constancy and virtue
is considered, either this is the art or there is none whatsoever
through which we attain to these. To say that there is no art
of these very great things, when of the least things there is
nothing without art, is characteristic of men speaking with
very little deliberation and erring in the most important
matters. But if there is some discipline of virtue, where will
that be sought, since you have departed from that kind of
learning?'3
Indeed, although I have given heed to the acquiring of some
slight facility of speaking on account of the desire of teaching,
yet I have never been eloquent, so that I have not even ap-
proached the forum; yet it is necessary that the very goodness
of the cause should make me eloquent, a cause for the fluent
and copious defending of which knowledge of the divinity and
the truth itself suffices. I would wish, then, that Cicero might
rise for a little while from the dead so that that most eloquent
man might be taught by a small man, one not skilled in
speaking. First, I would teach him whether there is anything
which one who vituperates philosophy should think ought to
be praised; then, that neither is that an art by which virtue
and justice are learned, nor is there any other, as he thought;
finally, since there is a discipline of virtue, where it should be
sought for when you have departed from that kind of learning,
because that one was not seeking for the sake of hearing and
learning. For from whom could he hear it since no one knew
it? But as he was wont to do in cases, he wanted to urge on
by questioning and to lead to confession, just as though he
were confident that nothing could be answered directly that
would prevent philosophy from being the mistress of virtue_
In fact, in the Tusculan Disputations he openly made profes-
sion to philosophy herself by a turn of speech, as though he
3 Cicero, On Duties 2.2.5f. (Cf. 1.43.153.)
 BOOK THREE 197

were hurling himself by means of the declamatory style of

speaking. '0 philosophy, leader of life,' he said, '0 searcher of
virtue and router of vices! What could not only our own, but
the life of all men have been without you? You are the in-
ventrix of laws; you have been the mistress of moral customs
and of discipline: 4 It was as though she perceived something
of herself in truth, and not that He should rather be praised
who bestowed her. For he could have given thanks in the
same manner for food and drink, because life cannot last
without these things, in which as they are of the senses there
is thus nothing beneficial, but as those are nourishments of
the body so is wisdom of the soul.

Chapter 14

Very rightly, therefore, did Lucretius, when he praised him

who first discovered wisdom, but this ineptly, because he
thought it was discovered by man, just as though that man
whom he praised had found her lying somewhere, 'legs toward
the source'! as the poets say. But if he praised the discoverer
of wisdom as a god-for thus he says: 'No one, as I think,
will be produced from a mortal body. For if as the majesty
itself seeks the knowledge of things, it must be said that he
was a god, a very god, noble Memmius,'2 however, God should
not thus have been praised because He discovered wisdom,
but because He made man who could receive wisdom, for he
lessens the praise who praises a part away from the whole. But
that one gave him praise as man who on that account ought
to have been regarded as a god, because he discovered how
to be wise, for thus he says: 'Will it not be fitting for this man
to be made worthy of the number of the gods?'3 Whence it is
4 Cicero, Tusculans 5.2.5.
1 Cf. Ovid, Fasti 6.710-713.
2 Lucretius, 5.6ff.
3 Ibid. 5.50f.
198 LACTANTIUS

clear that he wished to praise either Pythagoras 4 who first

named himself a philosopher, as I said, or Thales 5 of Miletus
who is said to have first discussed the nature of things. Thus,
while he seeks to extol the man,6 he pressed down the thing
itself, for that is not great if it could have been discovered by
man. However, pardon can be given to the poet. But that
same perfect orator, that supreme philosopher-may I not
insult the Greeks whose levity he always accuses and yet fol-
lows-praises wisdom itself, which sometimes he calls a gift
and at others an invention of the gods, poetically shaped into
likeness. 7 Gravely, too, he complains that some have arisen
who vituperated it. 'Does anyone dare,' he says, 'to vituperate
the parent of life, and stain himself with this parricide, and
be so impiously ungrateful?'S Marcus Tullius, we are par-
ricides, and according to your judgment we ought to be sewed
up in the sack,9 we who deny that philosophy is the parent
of life. Or is it you who are 'so impiously ungrateful' to God?
You do not venerate this one whose image is seated in the
Capitol, but you venerate Him who made the world and
produced man who has also bestowed wisdom itself among
His other heavenly benefits. Do you call philosophy 'the
mistress of virtue' or 'the parent of life'? If anyone approaches
her, he is necessarily much more uncertain than he was before.
Of what virtue do you speak? As to where that itself is situated
the philosophers are still not unconfused. Of what life is it
the parent? Why, those doctors themselves have been worn
out by old age and death before they have decided how it is
fitting for life to be lived. Of what truth are you able to
4 Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher and mathematician of the 6th century
B.C. He taught the transmigration of souls and harmony of the
spheres.
5 Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages who died around 548 B.C.
The axiom, 'Who hateth suretyship is sure: is associated with him.
6 It is generally accepted now that Lucretius was giving honor to Epicurus,
for it is his system of philosophy that is expounded in Lucretian
hexameters.
7 Cicero, Tusculans 1.26.64. (Cf. Academics 1.2.7.)
8 Ibid. 5.2.6.
9 Parricides were sewed up in sacks and drowned.
 BOOK THREE 199

acknowledge the 'searcher,' you who often bear witness that

although the multitude of philosophers is so great, still no
wise man has yet arisen?10 What, then, did that 'mistress of
life' teach you? Or was it so that you thus assailed that most
powerful consul with maledictions and made him an enemy
of the fatherland with poisoned oratory? Let us omit those
things which can be excused in the name of fortune. For cer-
tainly, you studied philosophy and, indeed, to such an extent
that no one ever did more diligently than you who know all
discipline, to be sure, as you yourself are accustomed to
boast.!1 And you bring the same matters to light in Latin I2
and show yourself an imitator of Plato. Tell us, therefore, that
which you have learned or in what sect you have seized upon
truth; surely it was the Academy, which you followed, of
which you approved. But this teaches nothing except that you
know that you know nothing. Therefore, your books betray
you, how nothing can be learned from philosophy for life. 13
These are your own words: 'To me, however, we seem blind,
not only as regards wisdom, but even as to those things which
seem to be discerned in some part, we seem sluggish and
dull.'14 If philosophy is the mistress or guide of life, why, then,
did you seem blind and sluggish and dull to yourself, for it was
fitting for you, under her teaching, to think and be wise and
to engage in the most brilliant light? How confident you have
been in the truth of philosophy the precepts you arranged for
your son show, in which you advise that the precepts of philos-
ophy ought to be learned, indeed, but that he should live
civilly.!5 What so contradictory can be said? If the precepts
of philosophy are to be learned, then, surely, they are to be

lO This must be a reference made from memory. Cf. Orator 5.18; On

Oratory 1.21.94.
11 Cf. On the Nature of the Gods 1.3.5,6; also On Divination 2.1.
12 Cf. Academics 1.1.3; Tusculans 1.1.1.
13 Cf. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.7.17.
14 Posterior Academics frg. 32.
15 Letter to his son Marcus, from the incomplete book, frg. 2. The word
'civilly' has the connotation 'in the manner of a private citizen, not
of a philosopher:
200 LACTANTIUS

learned for this reason, that we may live rightly and wisely;
but, if we are to live civilly (or as becomes a private citizen),
then philosophy is not wisdom since it is better to live civilly
than philosophically. For if wisdom is that which is called
philosophy, he will certainly live foolishly who will not live
according to philosophy; but, if he does not live foolishly who
lives in the manner of a plain citizen, it follows that he lives
foolishly who lives in the manner of a philosopher. Therefore,
according to your judgment, philosophy is condemned of
foolishness and emptiness. You presented the same thing in
the Consolation, that is, in a serious work you gave this
opinion about philosophy: 'I know not what error and a
miserable ignorance of truth holds US.'16 Where, then, is the
magisterium of philosophy, or what did the parent of life teach
you, if you are so miserably ignorant of the truth? But if this
confession of error and ignorance has been wrung from the
depths of your heart almost against your will, why do you
not confess what is somehow true to you, that philosophy,
which you extolled to the heavens with your praises while it
teaches nothing, is not able to be the mistress of virtue?

Chapter 15

Seneca, influenced by the same error-for who would hold

a true way when Cicero was in error?-said: 'Philosophy is
nothing other than a right plan of living or the knowledge
of living honorably or the art of spending a right life. We will
not err if we should say that philosophy is the law of living
well and honorably, and he who has spoken that rule of life
has given his substance to it.'l This one certainly did not look
to the common name of philosophy. Since this 'philosophy' is
diffused among many sects and disciplines and holds nothing
16 Consolation, frg. 12.
1 Seneca, frg. 17.
 BOOK THREE 201

of certitude, nothing, in fine, about which all agree with one

mind and voice, what can be so false as to have philosophy
named the rule of life? For in it the diversity of precepts
would impede the right way and disturb either the law of
living well, whose chief points are in great disharmony, or the
knowledge of a way of spending life, so that nothing else is
effected in it by much contrary talk but that no one knows
anything. I ask, therefore, whether he thinks that the Acad-
emy2 was a philosophy or not. I do not think he would deny
it. But if it is, then nothing of those things falls into philos-
ophy; namely, that it renders all things uncertain, that it
abrogates law, that it considers no art, that it distorts a rule,
and completely removes knowledge. All those claims are false,
therefore, since they cannot fall upon a thing always uncer-
tain and still explaining nothing. And so there is no plan or
science or law of living well unless it is constituted in this
one and true and heavenly wisdom which had not been known
to the philosophers. For since that earthly wisdom is false, it
is varied and multiple and entirely contrary to itself. And
just as one God is the establisher and ruler of this world, as
the truth is one, so it is necessary that wisdom be one and
simple, since whatever is true and good cannot be perfect
unless it be one.
If philosophy could instruct life, no others except the
philosophers would be good, and all those who had not
learned it would always be evil. Since there exist innumerable
people, and since there have always been those who are or
have been good without any learning, while, on the other
hand, since among the philosophers he has been extremely rare
who has done something worthy of praise in life, who is there
who does not see that those men are not learned doctors of
virtue which they themselves lack? For if one were to diligent-
ly search out their morals, he will find them wrathful, grasp-
ing, lustful, arrogant, violent, and concealing their vices under
cover of their wisdom, and doing at home those things which
2 The school of followers of Plato.
202 LACTANTIUS

they had protested in the schools. Perhaps I am lying for the

sake of making my accusation. But does not Tullius confess
this very thing and make the same complaint? He says: 'How
rarely is anyone of the philosophers found to have so delayed,
to be so constituted in soul and life as reason demands? Who
would think his own discipline not a display of knowledge,
but a law of life? Who would obey himself and submit to his
own decrees? And you may see some with such great levity and
agitation, that it would have been better for them not to have
had the learning. And you see some desirous of money, others
of glory, and many the slaves of their passions so that their
speech is in strange opposition to their vices.'3
Cornelius Nepos also writes thus to the same Cicero: 'I am
so far away from thinking that philosophy is the mistress of
life and the perfectrix of a happy life, that I think that teach-
ers of living are necessary to none more than to most of those
who are engaged in discussing those matters. For I see that
a great portion of those who in school give instructions and
precepts most eloquently about modesty and continence them-
selves live in the passionate fulfillment of all their desires.'4
Likewise, Seneca in his Exhortations says: 'The general run
of philosophers is such that they are eloquent unto their own
undoing. If you should hear them perorating against avarice,
licentiousness, ambition, you would think them confessed or
avowed of the disclosures: to such an extent do the maledic-
tions hurled against the public redound to themselves. It is
fitting to regard these not otherwise than physicians whose
labels declare remedies but whose bottles hold poison. In
truth, the shame of vices does not hold certain ones, but they
feign protections for their baseness, so that they might seem
to sin "honorably" also.'5
The same Seneca said that: 'a wise man will even do that
which he will not approve, in order that he may come upon

3 Cicero, Tusculans 2.4.11.

4 Nepos, frg. 46.
5 Seneca, frg. 18.
 BOOK THREE 203

a passage to greater things also, nor will he abandon good

customs but he will fit them to the time, and those things
which others use unto glory and pleasure he will use for the
sake of doing the thing.'6 Then a little later: 'All the things
which the luxury-loving do, and whatever the unskilled do,
the wise man will do also, but not in the same way and for
the same purpose.'7
But it matters nothing with what mind you do what it is
vicious to have done, because deeds are perceived; the mind
is not seen. For example, Aristippus, the master of the Cyre-
naics, had the custom of being with Lais, a noble prostitute.
That serious doctor of philosophy so defended this crime that
he said there was much difference between himself and the
other lovers of Lais, because he himself possessed Lais, but the
others were possessed by her.s Outstanding wisdom, this, and
such as ought to be imitated by the good! Would you give your
children to this man for training so that they might learn to
keep a harlot? He said that there was some difference between
himself and the profligate, namely, that they squandered their
own goods, whereas he reveled without paying for it. In this,
however, the prostitute was the more wise: she had the
philosopher for a pander, that by the example and corrupt
influence of the doctor, all the young men might flock to her
without any disgrace. What difference did it make, then, with
what intention the philosopher consorted with the renowned
harlot, when the people and his rivals saw him as worse than
the profligate? Nor was it sufficient so to live, but he even
began to teach lustful abandon, and he transferred his own
customs of the brothel to the school, expounding that pleasure
of the body is the highest good. This execrable and shameful
doctrine was born, not in the heart of the philosopher, but
in the embrace of the prostitute. What should I say of the
Cynics for whom it was a custom to hold intercourse with

6 Ibid. frg. 19.

7 Frg. 20.
8 Cf. Pseudo-Seneca, On Customs 3; Proverbs 10.11.
204 LACTANTIUS

their wives publicly?9 There is no magisterium of virtue,

therefore, in this training, when even those who give forth
honorable precepts, either do not themsleves do the things
which they persuade, or if they do them, which happens rarely,
it is not their training but nature which leads them on. And
this very often drives even the unlearned to renown.

Chapter 16

In truth, when they give themselves to perpetual idleness

and strive to reach no virtue and pass all their lives in nothing
but eloquence, what should they be considered other than
worthless? For unless wisdom exists in some act by which it
may exercise its power, it is empty and false, and rightly does
Tullius! prefer those civil leaders who govern the state, who
establish new cities or protect with equity those already set up,
who preserve the safety and liberty of the citizens with good
laws or sound counsels or wise judgments to doctors of philos-
ophy. For it is necessary for the good to act rather than shut
up in corners to tell what ought to be done, precepts which
those who talk do not carry out themselves. And since they
have removed themselves from true acts, it is clear that they
have devised the art of philosophy for the sake of exercising
their tongues or providing a hobby for their minds. Those
who teach only and do not act draw weight away from their
own precepts. For who would obey when the instructors them-
selves teach not to obey? It is good to give right and honorable
precepts, but unless you do them as well, it is a lie, and it is
incongruent and inept to have goodness on the lips but not
in the heart.
They do not seek utility, therefore, from philosophy, but
delight. Cicero, indeed, testified to this. He said: 'Certainly
9 Cf. Isidore, OTigines 8.6.14.

1 Cf. Cicero, On OmtoTY 1.8.33,34; 5.12.19; On Duties 1.43.44.

 BOOK THREE 205

every disputation of theirs, although it contains the richest

sources of virtue and knowledge, however, when compared
with their deeds and accomplishments, I fear that it may seem
to have brought not so much utility to the affairs of men as
great delight for their leisure.'2 He should not have feared,
however, when he spoke the truth, but as though he feared
lest he be cited by the philosophers guilty of a betrayed
mystery, he did not dare to confidently proclaim what was
true, namely, that they do not carryon disputations in order
to teach, but in order to amuse themselves in leisure. Since
they are the authors of things which are to be done and do
not themselves do anything, they must be regarded as mere
talkers. But surely, because they brought nothing good to life,
neither did they themselves obey their decrees, nor was any-
one found in all ages who lived by their laws. All philosophy
ought to be cast aside, therefore, since there ought not to be a
study of wisdom which lacks end and mode. But there must
be a gaining of wisdom, and that speedily. For another life
is not granted to us, that when we seek wisdom in this life,
we may be able to be wise in that: it is necessary that both
take place in this one. It ought to be come upon quickly,
that it may be quickly taken up, lest anything be lost of a life
whose end is uncertain. Cicero's Hortensius, waxing strongly
against philosophy, is circumvented in an eloquent conclusion,
because when he said that the study of philosophy ought not
to be, he seemed to be playing the philosopher, since it is the
part of a philosopher to discuss what ought or ought not to
be done in life. s
We who exalt philosophy, because it is an invention of
human thought, are immune and free from this calumny. We
defend wisdom, because it is a divine bestowal, and we bear
witness that it ought to be accepted by all. When that one
exalted philosophy, and he presented nothing better, he was
thought to exalt wisdom, and so from this the more easily was
2 Cicero, The Republic 1, frg. 5; cf. also the Hortensius frg. 32.
3 Frg. 19.
206 LACTANTIUS

he driven out according to purpose, since it is agreed that

man was born not unto foolishness, but for wisdom. Besides,
that argument also has much weight against philosophy which
the same Hortensius used: 'From this it can be understood
that philosophy is not wisdom, because its beginning and
origin is apparent. When did philosophers begin to be? Thales
was first, I think. Indeed, this time is recent. When, then,
among the more ancient peoples did that love of investigating
the truth lie hidden?'4
Lucretius says the same thing: 'Finally, this nature and plan
of things was discovered, but lately; and now I myself am dis-
covered a first among the first, since I am able to turn this
into the tongue of our fatherland.'5 And Seneca said: 'There
are not a thousand years since the beginnings of wisdom
were felt.'G Therefore, for many ages the human race lived
without the exercise of reason. But Persius mocks this saying:
'Afterwards there came to the city wisdom with pepper and
palms.'7 As though wisdom were carried in with wares of taste!
But if this wisdom is according to the nature of man, then
it must have begun with man himself, but if it is not, then
human nature could not even grasp it. Since it does not receive
it, then it is necessary that there was wisdom from the be-
ginning. Philosophy, therefore, because it was not from the
beginning, is not the same thing as true wisdom. But ob-
viously the Greeks, since they had not come upon the sacred
writings of truth, did not know to what extent 'wisdom' was
depraved; and, therefore, when they thought that human
life was without wisdom, they devised philosophy, that is, they
wished to draw out the truth hidden from and unknown to
themselves by discussion. And this study, through their ig-
norance of the true, they reckoned as wisdom.

4 Frg.20.
5 Lucretius, 5.335/T. He refers to his work of putting Epicurus' doctrine
into Latin verse.
6 Seneca, frg. 21.
7 Persius, 6.38f.
 BOOK THREE 207

Chapter 17

I have spoken of philosophy itself as briefly as I could. Now

let us come to the philosophers, not that we might strive with
those who are not able to stand, but that we might pursue
them fleeing and ejected from our field. The teaching of
Epicurus 1 was always much more celebrated than that of the
others, not because it offers something true, but because the
popularity of the name of pleasure invites many. No one is
inclined directly toward vices. Besides, in order to draw the
multitude, he speaks his propositions according to the natural
bent of each individual. He forbids the slothful to learn
letters; he frees the avaricious from popular donation; he pro-
hibits the cowardly from an advance to public life, the lazy
from exercise, the timid from engaging in military service.
The irreligious man hears that the gods care for nothing;
the inhuman man, serving his own interests, is ordered to be-
stow nothing on any man, for all things that are his own con-
cerns make him wise. 2 For one fleeing the crowd solitude is
praised;3 one who is too sparing learns that life can be en-
dured on water and barley.4 One who hates women has en-
numerated for him the benefits of celibacy, and childlessness
is proclaimed to one who has bad children. 5 For one who is
irreverent toward his parents there is the idea that there is
no bond of nature. 6 To the impatient and delicate it is said
that pain is the greatest of all evils; to the strong, that the
wise man is blessed even in torments. 7 He who is eager for
fame and power is instructed to cultivate kings and royal
acquaintances; he who cannot bear annoyance to shun the
I Consult a reliable history of philosophy for an account of the systems
of the ancients mentioned by Lactantius in this section. For the
fragments of Epicurus, cf. Usencr, Epicurea (edition of 1887).
2 Cf. frg. 581.
3 Cf. frg. 571.
4 Cf. frg. 467.
5 Cf. frg. 526.
6 Cf. frg. 529.
7 Cf. frg. 401.
208 LACTANTIUS

palace. 8 Thus, a clever man collects a group from various and

diverse habits of living, and while he desired to please them
all, he fought with himself with greater discord than all those
did among themselves. Whence his whole teaching descends,
therefore, and what origin it has must be explained.
Epicurus saw that adversities were always befalling the
good: poverty, labors, exiles, loss of dear ones; that the evil
on the contrary were happy, were gaining in wealth, were
given honors. He saw that innocence was not safe, that crimes
were committed with impunity; he saw that death raged with-
out concern for morals, without any order or regard for years,
but that some reached old age, while others were snatched
away in childhood; some still robust reach the end, but others
are cut off by untimely deaths in the first flower of adolescence;
and in wars the better ones are conquered and die. 9 It was
especially disturbing, however, that religious men were among
the first to be afflicted with the more serious evils, but upon
those who either neglected the gods entirely or who did not
piously reverence them, either lesser disadvantages came or
none at all. Often, also, the very temples were struck with
lightning. Lucretius is complaining of this, when he says of
the god: 'Then he may send his thunderbolts, and himself
disturb his shrines, and withdrawing into desert places, he
rages as he brandishes his weapon which often passes by the
guilty and strikes life from those unworthy and undeserving of
death.'l0 But if he had been able to catch a faint breath of
truth, he would never have said that that one 'was disturbing
his own abodes,' since he disturbs them for this reason, that
they are not his. The Capitol, which is the supreme head of
the city of Rome and of religion, not once but very often was
burned, having been struck by lightning. What ingenious men
thought of this is clear from a quotation from Cicero, who
said that the flame 'had arisen divinely, not to destroy that

8 Cf. frg. 557.

9 Frg. 370.
10 Lucretius 2.1101-1103.
 BOOK THREE 209

earthly home of Jupiter, but to demand one more sublime

and magnificent.'ll Concerning this he also said in the books
On His Consulship the same things which Lucretius said: 'For
the deep-thundering father leaning from starry Olympus
sought his own citadels and noble temples and injected fire
into the shrines of the Capitol.'12
With pertinacious foolishness, then, not only did they not
understand the power and majesty of the true God, but they
even increased the impiety of their error who strove to re-
store against every right the temple often condemned by
heavenly judgment. When, therefore, Epicurus thought on
these matters, as if influenced by the iniquity of those things,
for so it seemed to one not knowing the cause and reason, he
believed that there was no providence. When he had per-
suaded himself of this theory, he even undertook that it should
be defended.1 3 Thus he cast himself into inextricable errors.
For if there is no providence, how was the world effected so
orderly, in such arrangement? 'There is no arrangement: he
says, 'for many things have been done differently from the way
they should have been.'14 And a godlike man discovered what
he should reprehend. If there were time to refute each single
thing, I would show easily that this man was neither wise nor
sane. Likewise, if there is no providence, how are the bodies
of animals so ordered that each of the members disposed in
a marvelous arrangement preserves its own functions? He says:
'The plan of providence has done nothing in the procreating
of animals. Neither were the eyes made for seeing, nor the
ears for hearing, nor the tongue for speaking, nor the feet for
walking, since these were in existence before there was seeing,
hearing, speaking, walking. So these things were not produced
for use, but the use came from them.'15
If there is no providence, why do the rains fall, grains rise,
II Cicero, Against Verres 4.31.69.
12 Cf. Cicero, On Divination 1.12.19.
13 Cf. frg. 370.
14 Cf. Lucretius, 5.195-234.
15 Cf. Lucretius, 4.822·857.
210 LACTANTIUS

trees flower? He says that those are not for the sake of living
things, since they are of no profit to providence, but all things
must happen of their own accord. 16 ';\Thence, therefore, are
they born, or how do all things which happen come to be? He
says that it is not the work of providence. There are seeds
flying about through the void, and when these have massed
together at random among themselves, all things are born
and grow. 17 ';\Thy, then, do we not feel them or perceive them?
Because they have neither color, nor heat, nor odor. They are
free of taste also and moisture, and they are so minute that
they cannot be cut and divided. 18 Thus, the necessity of con-
sequent things led him to wild ravings because he had under-
taken falsehood in the beginning. For where or whence are
those little bodies? Why did nobody save that one Leucippus
dream them up, by whom Democritus was instructed, he who
left the inheritance of foolishness to Epicurus? If these little
bodies are indeed solid, as they say, certainly they can come
under the eyes. If the nature of all of them is the same, how
do they effect various things? They come together, he tells us,
in varied order and position just as letters do: although they
are few, yet variously arranged, they bring about innumerable
words. 19 But letters have various forms. So do these have com-
mencements themselves, he says, for there are rough ones, there
are hooked ones, there are smooth ones. 20 Therefore, they can
be cut and divided if there is in them something which pro-
jects. But if they are smooth and in need of hooks or projec-
tions, they cannot cohere. They must be hooked bodies, then,
for a concatenation of them to take place. But since they are
said to be so minute, that they are able to be severed by no
sharp blade, how do they have hooks or corners? It is neces-
sary for them, since they exist, to be torn apart. Then, by

16 Cf. ibid. 5.156-194.

17 Cf. Lucretius. especially 2.1018-1066; 5.187-194; 5.416-431. Cf. also
Epicurus, frg-. 287.
18 Cf. Lucretius, 2.737ff.; 842-864; 1.528ff.; 599ff.
19 Cf. ibid 2.478ff.; 660ff.; 688-699.
20 Cf. ibid. 2.333ff.; 381-477.
 BOOK THREE 211

what pact, by what agreement do they come together among

themselves that something may be formed of them? If they lack
sense, they are not able to come together with such order, for
it is not possible for anything but reason to bring about any-
thing rational. With how many proofs is this vanity able to be
refuted! But the harangue hastens on. This is that one who
overcame humankind by his genius and eclipsed all, as the
sun risen in the sky does the stars.21 Actually, I am never able
to read these verses without a smile. For he was not saying
this of Socrates, or at least of Plato, who are regarded as kings
of philosophers, but about a man who, if sane and sound, raved
more foolishly than any sick person ever did in a delirium.
And the most inane of poets did not only adorn his mouse
with the praises of a lion, but he overwhelmed and trampled
him with them. 22
But Epicurus sets us free from the fear of death, expressed
in these words: 'Inasmuch as we are, death is not; inasmuch
as death is, we are not. Death, therefore, is nothing to US.'23
How skillfully he deceives us! As though death that has hap-
pened, by which our senses are already destroyed, should be
feared, and not the very dying in which the senses are taken
away. For there is some time in which, on the one hand, we
are no longer, and death, on the other, is not yet, and this
itself seems to be miserable, because death begins to be and
we cease to be. Not in vain has it been said: 'Death is not
miserable; it is the approach to death which is miserable,"24
that is, to grow weak with sickness, to endure blows, to re-
ceive a sword thrust in the body, to burn in fire, to be torn
by fangs. These are the things that are feared, not because
they bring death, but great pain. Rather, attempt to bring
21 Ibid. 3.l043,lOH.
22 Perhaps this lengthy disccuning on Epicurean tenets has seemed ex-
cessively naIve, but in this sentence Lactantius achieves a high degree
of flavor; it is an unparalled criticism of the system and its greatest
Latin poet.
23 Diogenes Laertes, 10.125
24 The editor of the Latin text assigns this statement to Seneca. Cf.
Epistle 30.9.
212 LACTANTIUS

it about that pain may not be evil. For he says it is the greatest
of all evils. 25 How, then, am I able not to fear, if that which
antecedes or brings about death is evil? What of the fact that
that argument is completely false, since souls do not perish?
But, by no means, says he, for it is necessary that that which is
born with the body perish with the body.26 I have mentioned
above 27 that I am putting off this topic and reserving it for
the last book, so that I may refute with divine testimony and
proofs this claim of Epicurus, whether it was that of Democri-
tus or of Dicaearchus.
That one perhaps pledged impunity for his vices, for he
was an assertor of the basest pleasure, for the sake of enjoying
which he claimed that man was born. Who would refrain
from vices and crimes when he would hear this affirmed? For
if souls are to perish, let us seek riches that we may be able
to get all delights. If these are lacking to us, let us take them
away from those who have them secretly, or by trickery, or by
force; and this with all the more reason, if no god cares about
human affairs. And inasmuch as the hope of impunity smiles
upon us, let us steal, let llS kill. For it is the part of a wise
man to act evilly if it is both useful and safe, because, if there
is any god in heaven, he does not get angry with anyone. It is
the part of a fool to act in a good manner, since just as that
god is not moved by wrath, so is he not touched by favor. Let
us serve pleasure, then, in whatever way we can, for in a
short time we will be nothing whatsoever. Let us suffer no
day, therefore, no point of time to flow by for us without
pleasure, lest, since we ourselves are at sometime to perish,
the very fact that we live may perish. Although he does not
say this in so many words, however, he teaches it in fact. 28 For
when he holds that a wise man does all things for his own
sake, he refers to his own utility all the things which he does.
Thus, he who hears these infamous things, will not think
25 Cf. Epicurus, frg. 401; also frg. 336.
26 Cf. Lucretius 3.445-458; 634-639.
27 c. 13.
28 Cf. Epicurus, frg. 491.
 BOOK THREE 213

that anything good should be done, since to do good looks

to another's good. Nor will he think that he should abstain
from evil, because reward or booty is joined with evil doing. 29
When an archpirate or leader of robbers is encouraging his
men to plundering, what other speech can he use but say the
same things which Epicurus says? The gods care for nothing;
they are not touched by wrath or by favor; the punishments
of hell do not have to be feared, because souls die after
death; nor is there any hell at all;30 pleasure is the greatest
good; there is no human society; each one takes thought for
himself;31 there is no one who loves another but for his own
sake;32 death should not be feared by a strong man, nor any
pain, because even if he is tortured, if he burns, he may say
that he cares not at all about it. 33 It is evident why anyone
would think this is the voice of a wise man which can be
adapted most fittingly to robbers.

Chapter 18

Others, however, hold opinions contrary to these, that souls

do remain after death. These are chiefly Pythagoreans and
Stoics; and, although they are to be forgiven because they
think what is true, yet I cannot but censure them, because they
have fallen upon the truth by chance, not by knowledge. And
so, on that very point which they hold rightly, they have erred.
For because they feared that argument from which it might
be gathered that it is necessary that souls die with the bodies,
since they are born with them, they said that souls are not
born but rather are put into bodies and migrate from one to
another. They did not think it could be otherwise that souls
should remain after the bodies unless they should seem to
29 Cf. frg. 581.
30 Cf. frg. 341.
31 fOrgo 523.
32 Cf. frg. 540.
33 Cf. frg. 601.
214 LACTANTIUS

have existed before the bodies. Therefore, the error of each

group is equal and almost similar. But this one is false in
regard to the past, and the other in regard to the future
(of souls). No one saw what is very true, that souls are born
and yet do not die, since they did not know why this would
happen or what was the reason of man. Many of those, there-
fore, who suspected that souls were eternal, as though they
would pass into heaven, actually, of themselves brought forces
against themselves. These are such examples: Cleanthes,
Chrysippus, Zeno, and Empedocles, who cast himself on a
stormy night into a cave of burning Aetna, and since he did
not appear suddenly, he was believed to have gone to the gods.
And among the Romans there was Cato, who was in all his
life an imitator of the Stoic folly.l Now Democritus was of
another persuasion; still, 'of his own accord he put his head
in the way of death,'2 than which nothing more shameful can
be done.
For if homicide is wicked because it is a destroyer of a man,
he who kills himself is fettered by the same guilt because he
kills a man. In fact, this ought to be judged a greater crime,
the punishment of which belongs to God alone. For, just as
we came into this life not of our own accord, so departure
from this domicile of the body which was assigned to our
protection must be made at the order of the same One who
put us into this body, to dwell therein until He should order
us to leave. And if some violence is exercised against us, it
must be suffered with a calm mind, since the taking of life
of an innocent man cannot be unavenged, and we have a
great Judge to whom alone punishment in its entirety always
belongs. They were homicides, therefore, all those philos-
ophers and that prince of Roman wisdom himself, Cato, who
before he took his life, is said to have read Plato's book on
the eternity of souls. He was driven to the greatest crime by

1 In connection with this reference to Cato and with this entire chapter,
cf. St. Augustine, City of God, especially 1.23,24; 19.4; 1.17.
2 Lucretius, 3.1041.
 BOOK THREE 215

the authority of the philosopher. Still, this man seems to

have had some cause for dying; it was a hatred of slavery.
What of that Ambraciotes (Theombrotus),3 who, when he had
read the same book, gave himself to death precipitately for no
other cause except that he believed Plato? Certainly, it is an
execrable teaching and one to be shunned if it drives men
from life. But if Plato had known and had taught from whom,
and how, and for whom, and for what reasons, and at what
time immortality is granted, he would not have driven Theom-
brotus into voluntary death, nor Cato either, but he would
have instructed them rather unto life and justice. For it seems
to me that Cato sought a cause of dying, not so much to flee
Caesar as to obey the teachings of the Stoics whom he was
following, and to make his name famous by some grand deed.
I do not see what evil could have befallen him if he lived.
For Gaius Caesar, as he was clement, wished to accomplish
nothing else, even in the very heat of civil war, than to seem
to merit well of the republic by saving the two finest citizens,
Cicero and Cato.4
But let us return to those who praise death as a good. You
complain of life, as if you have lived, or as if reason ever
determined for you why you were born at all. Has not, there-
fore, that true and common father of all rightly charged you
with that line of Terence: 'Learn first what it is to live. If
life displeases you, then it uses that.'5 You take it hard that
you are subject to evils, as though you deserved anything
good, you who do not know your Father, your Lord, your
King; and, although you behold with your eyes the brightest
light, yet your 'mind is blind and lies in the deep shadows of

3 Cf. St. Augustine, City of God 1.22.

4 The clemency of Caesar toward his opponents did much to make him
the idol both feared and loved after his rise to power and defeat of
Pompey. The suicide of Cato who refused this clemency had long been
used as symbolic of the 'old' Roman hatred of tyranny. Hence, it is
interesting to read this contrary opinion from the days of Rome's
greatness.
5 Terence, Self-Tormentor 5.2.18,19.
216 LACTANTIUS

ignorance.'6 This ignorance brought it about that there was no

shame for certain ones to say that it was for this that we were
born, that we should pay the penalties of the crimes. I do
not see how anything more wild than this could be said. For
where or what crimes could we admit who did not exist at
all? Unless, perhaps, we will believe that foolish old man who
lied that he had been Euphorbus in a former life. 7 This one,
I believe, because he was born of ignoble stock, adopted for
himself a family from the Homeric poems. 0 strange and
marvelously singular memory of Pythagoras, and, 0, the
wretched memory of all of us, who do not know who we were
before! Or perhaps it was brought about through some error
or a favor that he alone did not touch the whirlpool of Lethe
and never tasted the water of oblivion. No doubt that silly old
man, just as idle old women are wont, made up stories, as it
were, for credulous children. If he had considered well those
to whom he said these things, if he had realized that they were
men, he would never have claimed for himself the license of
lying so petulantly. The vanity of this most light-headed man
ought to be derided. But what shall we do with Cicero? Al-
though in the beginning of his Consolation, he had said that
men were 'born for the sake of atoning for crimes,'s he re-
iterated the same thing afterwards as if chiding him who
might think that life was not a punishment. Rightly, there-
fore, he declared that he was 'held by error and a miserable
ignorance of the truth.'9

Chapter 19

Those who treat of the good of death because they know

nothing of the truth thus conclude: if there is nothing after
6 Cf. Lucretius 2.14.15.
7 Euphorbus, son of Pan thus, a Trojan who wounded Patroclus and was
afterwards killed by Menelaus. Cf. Iliad 16.8061f.; 17.45ff.
8 Cf. frg. 10.
g Cf. frg. 12; cf. above, ch. 14, n.l5.
 BOOK THREE 217

death, death is not an evil; for it takes away the sense of evil.
If, on the other hand, souls remain after death, it is even a
good, for immortality follows. Cicero explained this opinion
in this way in his work On Laws: 'Let us congratulate our-
selves because death is going to bring either a better state or
certainly no worse a one than that which is now ours in life,
for it is divine life when the soul lives on without the body,
and being deprived of the senses is certainly nothing evil.'l
These are cleverly put, as they seem to themselves, just as if
it could be nothing else. But both opinions are false. For the
sacred writings teach that souls are not destroyed, but are
either rewarded for justice or afflicted with everlasting punish-
ment for sins. For it is not right that he who has been for-
tunate in life, though a scoundrel, escape what he deserves,
nor for him who has been wretched, on account of justice, to
be defrauded of his reward. Which is, indeed, so true that
the same Tullius in the Consolation proclaimed that the just
and the wicked do not inhabit the same abodes. 'For those
wise men believed that not the same course to heaven opened
out to all,' he said. 'They taught that those contaminated
with vices and crimes were thrust into darkness and lie in
mire, but that the holy souls, pure, unmarred, incorrupt, em-
bellished also with good studies and the arts, by a certain
gentle and easy passage fly to the gods, that is, to a nature like
to their own.'2
This sentiment is repugnant to that earlier argument. For
that is so taken, that it is necessary that every man born be
endowed with immortality. What difference, then, will there
be between virtue and crime, if it makes no difference whether
someone is Aristides or Phalaris, whether he is a Cato or a
Catiline?3 But only he who holds the truth discerns this

1 Frg. 3, Vahlen would have this supply the lacuna in Laws 2.21.53,54.
2 Consolation frg. 15.
3 The names recall striking contrasts. Phalaris was a tyrant; Aristides
was an Athenian renowned for his integrity. In Roman politics Catiline
was a fifth columnist, a gangster; whereas, Cato referred to above
(c. 18, n. 4) is a symbol of adherence to old Roman ideals of honor.
218 LACTANTIUS

repugnance of things and sentiments. If someone asks us, then,

whether death is good or evil, we will answer that its quality
depends on the purpose or reason of life. For, as life itself is
a good if lived with virtue, and an evil if lived with crime, so
also must death be weighed according to the actions of the
life that has gone before it. Thus it happens that, if a life
has been spent in the religion of God, death is not an evil,
because it is a carrying across to immortality; but, if it has
been otherwise, then it must be evil, since, as I said, it con-
signs one to eternal punishment.
What, then, shall we say except that they err who either
seek death as a good or avoid life as an evil? Only that they
are most unjust who do not weigh fewer evils by more goods.
For when they pass an entire life in exquisite and varied
pleasures, they desire to die if by chance anything of bitterness
comes upon them, and they so consider life as though it had
never been well with them, if things should at some time go
badly. Therefore, they condemn all of life and think that it
is full of nothing other than evils. Hence, arose that foolish
opinion that this is death which we think is life, and that that
which we fear as death is life: thus, the first good is not to be
born; the second, to die quickly.4 In order that this statement
might be of greater authority, it is attributed to Silenus. 5
Cicero in his Consolation says it is 'best by far not to be born,
and not to come up against these rocks of life, but, if you are
born, it is next best to escape as it were from the fire of fortune
as quickly as possible.'6 It is clear that he believed that very
foolish saying, because he added something of his own that he
might adorn it. I wonder, therefore, for whom he thinks it is
best not to be born, since there is no one at all who may be
sensible of it, for the senses effect that something be good or
bad. Then, why did he think that all life was nothing else
than rocks and burning? As if it were in our power either

4 Cf. Cicero, Republic 6.14.

5 Cf. Cicero, Tusculans 1.48.114.
6 Consolation frg. 11.
 BOOK THREE 219

not to be born, or that chance bestowed life on us, not God,

or that the plan of living might seem to have some similarity
to a burning.
That theory of Plato's is not dissimilar, because he said
that he was thankful to nature, first, because he was born a
man rather than a dumb beast; then, because he was a man
rather than a woman, a Greek rather than a foreigner; and,
finally, because he was an Athenian and of the time of
Socrates. 7 It cannot be said how great the blindness for minds,
how many the errors to which ignorance of the truth gives
birth. I would certainly contend that never in human affairs
was anything more foolishly said. Indeed, had he been born,
for example, a foreigner or a woman or an ass, would he
have been Plato himself and not that very thing or person
which he had been born? But he believed Pythagoras, of
course, who, as he forbade men to feed on animals, said that
souls from bodies were going about and moving into the
bodies of animals. This is both stupid and impossible: stupid,
because it was not necessary to bring old souls into new bodies,
since the same Artificer who had made the first at one time
could always make new ones, and impossible, because a soul
of right reason is not able so to change the nature of its state,
as fire is able to pour forth its flame in the manner of a river,
now downwards, now across. Therefore, a wise man believed
that it could happen that the soul which was then in Plato
was enclosed within some dumb beast and was endowed with
human sense so that it understood and grieved that it was
burdened with an unsuitable body. How much more sanely
he would have acted if he said that he gave thanks that he
had been born docile, that in those resources he was liberally
educated! But because he was born at Athens, what benefit
was there in that? Did not many men rise up in other states
of excellent ability and training who were better individually
than all the Athenians? How many thousands of men may we
believe that there were born at Athens and in the time of
7 Cf. Plutarch, Lite of Marius, c. 46.
220 LACTANTIUS

Socrates who were, however, foolish and unlearned? For it is

not the walls or the place in which a man leaves the womb
that confers wisdom upon him. What was the point of his
congratulating himself that he was born in Socrates' time?
Could Socrates impart genius to his pupils? It did not come
into the mind of Plato that Alcibiades 8 and Critias9 had been
assiduous hearers of the same Socrates, one of whom was the
most bitter enemy of his fatherland, and the other the cruelest
of all tyrants,lo

Chapter 20

Let us see now what there was so great in Socrates himself

that a wise man deservedly gave thanks that he had been born
in his time. I do not deny that he was a little more prudent
than the others who thought that the nature of things could
be grasped by their ability. In this I do not think that they
were only imprudent but also impious, because they wanted
to thrust their curious eyes! into the secrets of that heavenly
providence. At Rome and in many cities, we know that there
are certain sacred things which it is not right for a man to
behold. They refrain, therefore, from the sight of those objects
which it is not lawful for them to contaminate, and if by
chance or error or some accident a man has beheld them, the
crime is expiated first by his punishment, then by starting the
sacrifice again. What would you do with these who wish to
investigate the unfathomable secrets? Surely, those who seek
to profane the hidden things of the world and its heavenly
temple by their unholy disputations are much more wicked
than one who has entered the temple of the Bona Dea, or
Vesta, or Ceres. Although it is not right for men to enter these
8 Alcibiades was guilty of many rash and irreverent acts against Athens
and her gods.
9 Critias. a Sophistic pupil of Socrates, became one of the thirty tyrants
responsible for a reign of terror.
lO Cf. Cicero, On Oratory 3.34.139.
I Cf. Cicero, On the Responses of Soothsayers 17.37.
 BOOK THREE 221

shrines, still they were made by men. These, however, not

only escape the charge of impiety, but what is much less
worthy, they attain the fame of eloquence and the glory of
genius. Suppose they were able to investigate something? They
are as foolish in sticking at it as they are wicked in seeking,
since they are not able to find anything, nor to defend it, even
if they should find something. For if they should seek the
truth, even fortuitously, which happens quite often, they incur
fault, so that it is refuted as false by others. For someone does
not descend from heaven to bring sentence on the opinions of
individuals. Wherefore, no one doubts that those who hunt up
those things are fools, mad, and insane. Therefore, Socrates
had something of a human heart, who, when he understood
that these things could not be found out, removed himself
from questions of that sort, and I am afraid that it is so in
that regard only. For there are many things about him not
only not worthy of praise, but even most worthy of censure,
in which he was most like his own. From his words I will
select one which is approved by all. Socrates had this famous
proverb: 'What is above us, is nothing to US.'2 Let us fall upon
the earth, therefore, and let us change into feet the hands
given to us for brilliant works; heaven means nothing to us,
to the contemplation of which we have been raised up; finally,
the very light itself pertains to us not a bit. But certainly
the cause of our way of life is from heaven. If he perceived
this, he was not able to understand that there should be no
discussion about heavenly things, nor could he even grasp the
reason of those things which he had under his feet. ~What then?
He did not err in words, did he? It is not very probable, but
he realized, to be sure, that which he spoke, that we should
not have regard for religion. If he said this openly, no one
would allow it.
For who does not realize that this world, perfected in so
marvelous a way, is governed by some providence, since there
is nothing which is able to exist without some moderator? So
2 Minucius Felix, c. 13.1.
222 LACTANTIUS

a house, deserted by an inhabitant, will fall to ruin; a ship

without a pilot is wrecked; and a body left by the soul dis-
integrates. Much less may we believe that such a great mass
as that could be constructed without an artificer or stand
without a ruler. But if he meant to overturn those state
religions, I do not disapprove; rather, I will even praise him
if he has come upon what is better. But the same man swore
by a dog and a goose. '0 idler of a man,' as Epicurean Zeno
says, 'foolish, lost, and desperate if he wanted religion mocked;
he was demented if he did this seriously, to hold the lowest
animal in the place of a god!,3 Who would dare to reprehend
now the superstitions of the Egyptians which Athenian Soc-
rates confirmed on his own authority? Was not that the highest
vanity which he asked of his intimate friends before his
death, that they offer a cock to Aesculapius which he had
vowed? He was afraid, of course, that in the presence of
Rhadamanthus, the receptor or receptionist, he would be made
guilty of that vow by Aesculapius. 4 I would think the man
demented, if he had died as a result of sickness. But since a
sane man did this, then he is insane who thinks that that one
was wise. And a wise man would congratulate himself for
having been born in his time!

Chapter 21

Let us see, then, what Socrates taught that one, who, when
he had repudiated the whole of physics,! presented himself
there that he might make inquiry about virtue and duty. So, I
do not doubt that he instructed his hearers with the precepts
3 Cf. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.34.93; Tertullian, Apology c.
14; Minucius Felix, c. 38.5.
4 Cf. Tertullian, Apology c. 46.
I Here is meant the natural philosophy of the ancients. For chapter 21
and also chapter 22 cf. Book 4 of Cicero's Republic. Lactantius very
probably made use of this. Cf. also Salvian, The Governance of God
7.101-105.
 BOOK THREE 223

of justice. Under the teaching of Socrates, therefore, it did

not escape Plato that the strength of justice consists in equity,
if, indeed, all are born in an equal condition. 'Therefore,' he
said, 'let them have nothing private and personal, but that all
may be equal, which the system of justice desires, let them
possess all things in common.'2 This can be taken, as long as
it seems to be money that is under discussion. And this, itself,
I was able to show in many ways how impossible and how
unjust it is. Still, let us grant that it can be done, for all will
be wise men and despise money. Where, then, did that idea
of community lead him? 'Marriages also ought to be common,'a
he said, meaning that many men, as though dogs, might come
upon the same woman, and that he, of course, might obtain
the prize who has overcome with his strength; or, if they are
patient, as philosophers, they may wait and go in turn as if to
a house of ill-repute. Marvelous equity of Plato! But where
is the virtue of chastity? Where conjugal faith? If you remove
these, all justice is taken away.
But the same man said that the states would be happy if
either philosophers would rule or if kings would become
philosophers. 4 Would you give the ruling power to this man
so just, in truth, so fair, who would have taken away their
goods from some, who would have bestowed on others posses-
sions not their own, who would have prostituted the virtue
of women, things which not only no king ever did, but not
even any tyrant? ''\That reason, therefore, for this most base
advice did he offer? 'In this way,' he said, 'the state will be in
concord and bound with the chains of a mutual love, if all arc
the husbands and fathers and wives and children of all.'"
What a confusion of humankind this is! How can charity be
preserved where there is nothing certain which may be loved?
What man may love a woman or what woman a man unless
they have lived always together, unless a devoted mind and
2 Plato, Republic 416D.
3 Ibid 457C.
4 Ibid. 473D.
5 Ibid. 463Cff.
224 LACTANTIUS

faith kept by and for one another has built up individual

charity? This virtue does not have place in that promiscuous
pleasure. Likewise, if all are the children of all, who will be
able to love sons as his own, since ei ther he does not know
his own or he is doubtful of them? Who will bring honor to
his father, as it were, since he does not know of whom he
has been born? From this it happens that, not only does he
take another for his father, but he may even hold his father
as a stranger. Because a wife may be common, why cannot a
son be so? But it must needs be that he be conceived from
one. Therefore, the idea of community perishes for that one
through nature herself as the reclaimer. There remains, then,
that it is only for the reason of concord that he wishes that
wives be common. But there is no more vehement cause of
discord than the seeking of one woman by many husbands.
If Plato could not be advised of this by reason, surely he
could by the examples both of the dumb animals which fight
most bitterly on account of this, and also of men who have
always waged most severe wars among themselves for the same
reason.

Chapter 22

It remains that that community of wives holds nothing else

but adultery and lusts, for the complete uprooting of which
virtue is especially necessary. Therefore, he does not find tha t
concord which he sought, because he did not see whence it
comes. For justice in things placed outside has no worth; it
is not even concerned with the body, but it is engaged entirely
in the mind of man. He who wishes to make men equal, then,
ought to withdraw not matrimony, not wealth, but arrogance,
pride, boastfulness, so that those powerful and elated men may
know that they are the equals of even the most beggarly. For
when insolence and iniquity are removed from wealth, it will
make no difference whether some are rich and some are poor,
 BOOK THREE 225

since their spirits will be equal, and nothing besides the re-
ligion of God can effect this. He thought that he had dis-
covered justice when he was turning it over absolutely, be-
cause community ought to be not of fragile things but of
minds. For if justice is the mother of all virtues, when those
single ones are taken away, she herself is subverted. Plato put
frugality before all things, but surely there is no frugality
where nothing of one's own property is had. He advocated
abstinence, if only there were nothing of another's from which
to abstain. He presented temperance, and he offered chastity,
virtues which are very great in both sexes; he upheld rever-
ence, shame, modesty, if things can begin to be honorable and
legitimate which are accustomed to be judged wicked and
base. Thus, while he wishes to give virtue to all, from all he
takes it away.
For ownership of things contains the matter of virtues and
vices, but community holds nothing other than the license
of vices. Nothing else can be said of the men who have many
wives than that they are wanton and prodigal. Likewise, the
women who are possessed by many, are, to be sure, not adulter-
esses, since there is no certain matrimony, but it is necessary
that they be prostitutes and harlots. He reduced human life,
therefore, to a likeness, I will not say of dumb animals, but
of beasts and cattle. For almost all the birds make and form
equal marriages and they defend their nests as though nuptial
chambers with unified feeling, and they love their offspring
because they are certainly their own, and they drive out any
others if you should slip them into the nest. But a 'wise' man,
against the custom of men and against nature, chose for him-
self more foolish things to imitate, and because he saw that
in other animals the functions and duties of males and females
were not different, he thought it was necessary also for women
to engage in military service, to take part in public businesses,
to hold magistracies, and to undertake commands. So he as-
signed to them arms and horses. The consequence is that
spinning and weaving and the feeding of infants would belong
226 LACTANTIUS

to men. Nor did he see that the things he said were impossible,
and for this reason, that up to now upon the earth no race
so foolish nor one so wise ever existed which lived in this
manner.

Chapter 23

Since the leaders of the philosophers are themselves caught

in such great vanity, what are we to think of those lesser
figures? They are accustomed to seem to themselves never so
wise as when they glory in a contempt of money. 'A strong
spirit: But I dread what they are doing and whither that
contempt may lead. The patrimony bequeathed to them by
their parents they shun and give up as if it were an evil, and
lest they suffer shipwreck in a storm, they willingly hurl
themselves into the deep, not with courage, but strong in a
perverse fear, just as those, who when they fear that they will
be strangled by an enemy, strangle themselves so as to avoid
death with death.! Thus, such as those, whence they could
acquire the glory of liberality, lose it without honor and
without grace. Democritus is praised because he relinquished
his fields and allowed them to become public pasturage. I
would approve if he had made the gift. For nothing is done
wisely, which, if it is done by all, is not useful and is an evil.
But this negligence is tolerable. What of that one who poured
into the sea his patrimony which he had reduced to coins?2
I am doubtful whether or not he was sane, or whether he was
demented. 'Go away: he said, 'into the sea, ye evil desires. I
will submerge you, lest I myself be submerged by you: If the
contempt of money is so great, make that a benefit, make it
a kindness, bestow it upon the poor: you can succor many
with this which you are about to lose, lest they die of hunger

1 Cf. Martial, 2.80.

2 The reference here is to Crates, a Theban, and a Cynic philosopher,
pupil of Diogenes. The account is given also by Jerome, Against
Jovinian 2.
 BOOK THREE 227

or thirst or exposure. Imitate the madness at least and the fury

Tuditanus. 3 Scatter to the people what is to be taken away.
You can both escape money and yet lay it up well, since what-
ever is of service to many is safe. But who approves of the
comparable sins of Zeno?4 Let us pass over that which has
always been laughed at by all. That is enough for exposing
the error of a wild man, the fact that between vices and ill-
nesses he places pity. He takes away from us affection in
which almost the entire reason of human life is contained.
For although the nature of man is weaker than that of the
other animals which a heavenly providence has strengthened
with natural protections, either for enduring the force of the
seasons or for warding off attacks from their bodies, because
none of those has been given to man, in place of all these he
has received the affection of pity which is usually called
humanity, by which we ourselves protect each other. For if a
man were made savage at the sight of another man, which we
see in the case of animals whose nature is a roving or wild
one, there would be no society of men, no care or plan of
founding cities, so not even life itself would be safe enough,
since the weakness of men would be exposed to the other
animals on the one hand, and they would rage among them-
selves according to the manner of wild beasts.
The madness is not less in others. ~What can be said of him
who said that snow was black? In consequence of that he
would also say that pitch was white! This is that one who
said that he was born for this reason, that he might see the
sky and the sun," who, although the sun was shining, saw
nothing on the earth. Xenophanes very foolishly believed the
mathematicians who said that the circle of the moon was
eighteen times greater than the earth, and what was in accord
with this foolishness, he said that within the concave bosom
3 Cf. Cicero, Philippics 3.6.
4 The reference here is very probably to Zeno of Cyprus (335-263 B.C.),
the founder of the Stoic school. According to his ethical teachings the
only real good is virtue.
5 Cf. ch. 9.
228 LACTANTIUS

of the moon there was another earth, and that there another
kind of men lived in a way similar to that in which we live
on this earth. 6 Those moon-dwelling men have, then, another
moon which puts forth for them a nocturnal light as this one
does for us, and perhaps this world of ours is the moon of
another lesser earth. Seneca said that there was one among
the Stoics who deliberated whether or not people were on
the sun also. 7 He acted foolishly, indeed, who questioned this.
For what would he lose, if he had assigned men to dwelling
there? But I suppose the heat deterred him lest he commit
such a great multitude to danger, so that if they had perished
from too much heat, such a great calamity might not be said
to have come about through his fault.

Chapter 24

Well, then, those who think that the antipodes are placed
directly opposite us do not say anything at all, do they? Or
is there anyone so foolish as to believe that there are men
whose footprints are higher than their heads? Or that the
things which lie straight out with us hang upside down there;
that grains and trees grow downwards; that rain and snow
and hail fall upwards upon the earth? Does anyone wonder
that hanging gardens are related among the seven wonders,
when philosophers make fields and cities and seas and moun-
tains 'hanging'? We must open out the origin of this error. l
For men are always deceived in the same way. Since, led on
by a likeness of the truth, they have taken hold of something
false in the beginning, it is necessary for them to run into
those errors which follow. Thus, they fall into many ridiculous

6 Cf. Cicero, Academics 2.26.82; 39.123.

7 Seneca, frg. 22.

1 For comment on the material of Chapter 24 refer to St. Augustine, The

City of God 16.9; Isidore, Origines 9.2.133.
 BOOK THREE 229

things because those things which are congruent with false

things must be false. Although they have put faith in the
first, they do not perceive what sort are those which follow,
but they defend them in every way, even though they ought
to judge whether the first things are true or false from those
that follow. What reason, therefore, led them to the antipodes?
They saw the courses of the stars wandering into the decline
or setting, and they saw the sun and moon always setting into
the same direction and rising from the same direction. But
when they did not perceive what machination directed their
courses or how they returned from setting to rising, and since
they thought that the sky itself was sloping into all directions
(it is necessary for it to seem so on account of its immense
expanse), they believed that the world was round like a pillar;
and they thought that the heavens revolved from the motion
of the stars; and, thus, the stars and the sun, when they set,
were brought back to their rising by the very whirling of the
world. And so they fabricated aerial orbs, as it were, according
to the form of the world, and they adorned them with certain
portent-like images which they said were stars. That followed
this roundness of the sky, therefore, so that the earth might be
enclosed in the depths of its center. But if this were so, that
the earth itself also is like a globe, neither could it be possible
that what was held enclosed by roundness should not be
round. If, however, the earth were also round, it is necessary
that it bear the same appearance into all the parts of the sky,
that is, that it put up mountains, stretch forth plains, spread
out seas. If this were so, then that last point also would fol-
low, that there is no part of the earth which is not inhabited
by men and other animals. Thus, the roundness of the heavens
comes up against those hanging antipodes. But if you ask
those who defend these portents how, then, all things do not
fall into that lower part of the sky, they will answer that this
is the nature of things, that weights be borne into the middle
and that all things be connected at the center, just as we see
the spokes in a wheel; things which are light, however, as
230 LACTANTIUS

clouds, smoke, and fire, are scattered from the center, so that
they might seek the sky.2
I do not know what to say about those who, when once
they have gone astray, constantly remain in their foolishness
and defend their empty theses with empty prattling, except
that sometimes I think that they philosophize for the sake of
a joke, or that cleverly and knowingly they take up lies to
defend them, so that they might, as it were, exercise or dem-
onstrate their abilities in evil things. But I could prove by
many arguments that it is in no way possible for the sky to be
below the earth, except that this book must be concluded
now and there still remain some points which are more
necessary to the present task. And since to run through the
errors of individuals is not within the scope of one book, let
it be enough to have enumerated a few, from which it can be
understood of what sort the others are.

Chapter 25

Now we must say a few things about philosophy in general

in order that after establishing our case we may conclude.
That greatest writer of ours, an imitator of Plato, believed
that philosophy was not ordinary because none except learned
men can attain to it. He says: 'Philosophy is content with few
connoisseurs and flees the crowd of her own choice,'l It is not
wisdom, therefore, if it shrinks from the company of men, be-
cause wisdom, if it is given to men, is given without dis-
crimination to all, so that there is no one absolutely who can-
2 Lactantius seems especially primitive and naive when he sets about
explaining natural phenomena that are part of our scientific inheritance
for long ages now. It may be pertinent here to note that Lactantius
may have been attempting to show that for the true Christian there was
no conflict between faith and reason even in the fourth century before
the strengthening of motives of credibility through real scientific
progress.

Cicero, Tusculans 2.1.4.

 BOOK THREE 231

not receive it. But they so embrace the virtue given to the
human race. that they alone of all seem to enjoy a public
good; they are as envious as if they wished to blind the eyes
of others or dig them out lest they see the sun. For what else
is it to deny wisdom to men than to take away from their
minds the true and divine light?2 But if the nature of man
is capable of wisdom, it is necessary that workmen and rustics
and women and all who have human form be taught, that
they might be wise, and that a people of sages be raised up
from every tongue and condition and sex and age. So it is the
greatest argument that philosophy neither tends to wisdom
nor is itself wisdom, because its mystery is celebrated only by
the beard and the pallium. 3 So the Stoics realized this, for
they said that slaves and women ought to engage in philos-
ophy; Epicurus, also, who called those without any training
in letters to philosophy; and likewise Plato, who wished to
compose a state of wise men. Indeed, they tried to do what
truth exacted, but it was not possible to get beyond the words,
first, because there is need of many arts to be able to arrive at
philosophy. Those common letters must be learned because
of the need of reading, since such a great variety of things
can neither be learned by hearing nor contained in the mem-
ory. Not a little attention has to be given to grammar, too,
that you may know the correct manner of speaking; for this
many years are necessary. Oratory should not be neglected
either, so that you may be able to profess and give out those
things which you have learned. Geometry, also, and music
and astronomy are necessary, because these arts have some
alliance with philosophy. Women are not able to learn all
these arts because during their growing years they have to
learn the duties that will soon come with homemaking; neither
can slaves learn them, for these must do service during the
years in which it is possible for them to learn; nor can the
2 Cf. Epicurus. frg. 227a.
3 Horace states that philosophers cultivated beards to study the Stoic
philosophy (d. Satires 2.3.35), and the pallium is still regarded as a
symbol of a revered and holy office.
232 LACTANTIUS

poor or workmen or rustics, by whom a living must be sought

by labor day by day. For this reason Tullius says that philos-
ophy 'shrinks from the crowd.'4
Still, Epicurus will accept the untutored. How, therefore,
will they understand those things which are said about the be-
ginnings of things, perplexing and involved things which even
educated men scarcely grasp? In matters involved with obscur-
ity, then, and spread over by the variety of abilities and colored
with the exquisite oratory of eloquent men, what place is there
for the inexperienced and unlearned? Finally, they never
taught any women to be philosophers except one, from all
memory, Themistis,5 nor any slaves except one Phaedon,6
whom, though a poor slave, they are said to have redeemed and
taught. They enumerate also Plato and Diogenes. These were
not slaves, however, but slavery had come upon them, for
they were captured. A certain Anniceris is said, indeed, to have
redeemed Plato for eight sesterces. And so Seneca railed at
that very redeemer with reproach, because he estimated Plato
at a small price. 7 He was crazy, as it seems to me, who was
angered at the man because he did not lose much money. Or,
I suppose, he ought to have weighed out his gold as if for the
dead HectorS or to have piled on as many coins as the seller
did not even demand. Of the barbarians, however, they had
no one except one Anacharsis, of Scythia,9 who would not even
have dreamed of philosophy except that he had learned
language and letters before.

4 Cicero, Tusculans 2.1.4.

5 This is the same as Themis or Themista, the goddess of justice and
prophecy.
6 A disciple of Socrates, bought by him from pirates.
7 Seneca, frg. 23; d. also Gellius, Attic Nights 2.18.
8 The dead body of Hector was ransomed by his aged father, Priam.
9 Called one of the seven wise men. He spent time in Athens with
Solon. When he retumed to Scythia he attempted to introduce Athenian
laws and was killed by his brother who was then king (c. 592 B.C.).
 BOOK THREE 233

Chapter 26

What those men realized under the demand of nature ought

to be done, but which they themselves, however, were not able
to do, and which they saw could not be done by the philos-
ophers, this heavenly doctrine alone accomplishes, because it
alone is wisdom. Were those men able to persuade anyone who
do not persuade even themselves of anything? Or will they
check the desires of anyone, will they temper wrath, will they
restrain passion, when they themselves yield to vices and admit
that nature is the stronger? But daily experience shows how
much the commands of God, since they are simple and true,
accomplish in the hearts of men. Give me a man who is wrath-
ful, evil speaking, uncontrolled; with very few words of God
I will render him 'as gentle as a lamb.'l Give me one who is
avaricious, grasping, and I will soon give him to you liberal
and bestowing his money with bountiful hands. Give me one
fearful of pain and death; now he will despise the cross and
fire and the bull of Perillus. 2 Give me one lustful, an adulterer,
a debauche; then you will see him sober, chaste, continent.
Give one cruel and seeking blood, and that fury will be
changed into real clemency. Give an unjust, foolish sinner,
and immediately he will be just and prudent and innocent,
for with one washing all malice will be wiped out. 3 So great
is the power of divine wisdom that, once infused into the
breast of man, it expels folly, the mother of transgressions, at
one blow, and there is no need of pay, of books, or of night
work and long study to accomplish this. Those results are
effected freely, easily, quickly; only let the ears be opened and
let the heart thirst for wisdom. No one need fear. We do not

1 Terence, The Brothers 4.1.18

2 This is the name used of a usurer in Horace.
3 It is interesting to note that in referring to the sacrament of baptism
heTe Lactantius uses a Latin term, lavacTum. Evidently the translitera-
tion of the Greek, baptismus had not become established as the only
term. Cf. the article on this word in Blaise, Dictionnaire Latin-Franr;:aise
des Auteurs C/m;tiennes, Paris, 1954.
234 LACTANTIUS

sell water, nor do we hold forth the sun as a reward. The font
of God, very rich and exceedingly full, lies open to all, and
this celestial light arises for all men who have eyes. Has any
one of the philosophers ever offered this, or is he able to
make the offer if he wished? Although they may wear out their
lives in the study of philosophy, they can make neither any-
one else nor themselves even any better if nature presents the
least obstacle. And so their wisdom, although it may accom-
plish very much, does not wipe out vices, but it covers them
over. But the few commands of God so change the whole man
and render him new when the old has been put off that you
do not recognize him to be the same. 4

Chapter 27

But, do they give nothing similar, then, in the way of in-

struction? In fact, they give very many precepts, and frequently
they approach to the truth, but those precepts have no weight,
since they are human and lack the greater authority that is
divine. No one believes, therefore, since he thinks that he who
is listening is a man just as is he who gives the precept. Be-
sides, there is nothing certain about them, nothing which may
come from knowledge; but, when all things are a matter of
conjecture and many things even diverse and varied are put
forth, it is the mark of a very foolish man to want to obey
their precepts, precepts of which it may be doubted whether
they are true or false. No one obeys, therefore, since no one
wishes to labor at the uncertain. The Stoics say that it is virtue
which alone effects the happy life. Nothing can be more true.
But what if one will be tortured or afflicted with pain? '!\Till
anyone be able to be happy among executioners? Rather, in-
deed, is pain brought upon the body the matter of virtue,
and so not even in tonnents is he miserable. Epicurus was
-4 Cf. St. Paul, Ephes. 4.22f. Cf. also Cyprian, Testimonies 3.11; Tertullian,
The Resurrection c. 45.
 nOOK THREE 235

much more strong ill saying: 'The wise man is always happy,
and even enclosed in the bull of Phalaris, he will utter this
word: "It is pleasant and I care nothing." '1 ''''ho would not
mock him, especially because a voluptuary placed upon him-
self the character of a strong man, and even beyond measure?2
For it cannot be that someone would consider the tortures of
the body as pleasures, since it is enough for fulfilling the duties
of virtue to endure and sustain them. '!\That are you saying,
you Stoics? What do you say, Epicurus? 'The wise man is
happy even when he is tortured.' If it is on account of the
glory of patience, he will not enjoy it for perhaps he will die
in torments; if it is on account of memory, either he will not
perceive it if souls die, or if he will know it, nothing will fol-
low from it. 3
What other fruit is there in virtue, then? What is the blessed-
ness of life? 'That one may die with an undisturbed mind.'
You offer to me a good of one hour or perhaps of a moment,
for which it is not expedient to be afflicted with miseries and
labors throughout all of life. How much time does death take?
When it comes, whether you undergo it with an even or a
disturbed mind makes no difference now. So it comes about
that nothing else is seized from virtue except glory. But this
is either fleeting and brief, or it will not follow upon the
wicked judgments of men. There is no fruit of virtue, then,
when virtue is mortal and frail. Those who said these things
saw a certain shadow of virtue; they did not see virtue itself.
For they were fastened upon the earth, nor did they raise their
countenances aloft so that they might behold her who was
showing herself 'from the regions of heaven.'4
This is the reason why no one obeys their precepts, since
they either instruct unto vices if they defend pleasure; or, if
they lay claim to virtue, they neither threaten penalty for
sin except that of disgrace alone, nor do they promise any
I Cf. Cicero, Tusculans 2.7.17; 5.10.31; 26.75.
2 Cf. Epicurus, frg. 601; also Cicero, Tusculans 2.7.18; 5.31.88.
3 Ibid. 2.7.18; 5.26.73,74.
4 Lucretius, 1.64.
236 LACTANTIUS

reward for virtue except that of honor and praise, although

they say that virtue ought to be sought after, not on account of
something else, but on account of itself. The wise man is happy
in torments, therefore, but when he is tortured for the faith,
for justice, for God, that patience under pain will make him
most happy. For it is God who alone can honor virtue whose
reward is immortality alone. Those who do not seek it and
who do not hold to religion, to which eternal life is subject,
certainly neither know the power of virtue (of the rewards
of which they are ignorant), nor do they look into the heavens
(which they think they are doing when they seek into things
not able to be investigated), for there is no reason for looking
into heaven other than to accept religion or to believe that
one's own soul is immortal. Whoever knows that God is to be
worshiped or who has the hope of immortality set before him-
self, has his mind in heaven; and, although he may not behold
it with his eyes, however, he does behold it with the light of
his soul. Those who do not accept religion are earthly, since
religion is of heaven; and those who think that the soul
perishes with the body, look out upon the earth evenly, be-
cause beyond the body, which is earth, they see nothing more
which is immortal. It is of no advantage, therefore, that man
is so fashioned that he gaze into the heavens with an erect
body, unless he discern God with an upright mind and unless
his whole thought be engaged in the hope of perpetual life.

Chapter 28

Wherefore, there is nothing else in life on which our reason,

our condition depends, except the knowledge of the God who
produced us and religious and devoted worship. And since
this is whence the philosophers went astray, they were surely
not wise. They sought wisdom, of course, but because they did
not seek rightly, they fell too far and came into such great
 BOOK THREE 237

errors that they held on to not even common wisdom. For

not only did they not want to claim religion, but they re-
moved it also, while induced by the appearance of false virtue
they tried to set minds free from all fear. This overturning of
religion hit upon the name of nature. For since they either
do not know by whom the world was effected or wished to
persuade men that nothing was accomplished by the Divine
Mind, they said that nature was the mother of all things, as
if they were saying that all things were born of their own
accord. In this they openly acknowledge their imprudence.
For nature, when divine providence and power are removed,
is absolutely nothing. And if they call God 'Nature,' what
perversity is it to name him Nature rather than God? If, how-
ever, nature is the plan or necessity or condition of being born,
it is not something sensible of itself, but it is necessary that
the mind be divine which by its own providence endows all
things with the principle of being born. Or if nature is the
sky and the earth and everything which has been born, then
nature is not God but the work of God.
With a similar error they believe that fortune is a certain
goddess, as it were, making sport of human affairs by various
accidents, because they do not know whence good things and
evil things come to them. Although they think that they have
been arranged by this [fortune] for doing battle, still they do
not give any reason by whom and on account of what cause,
but they only glory that they struggle with fortune at every
moment. Now whoever have consoled others on account of
the death or loss of their dear ones have reviled the name of
fortune with bitterest accusations, nor is there any disputa-
tion of theirs at all concerning virtue in which fortune is not
attacked. Marcus Tullius in his Consolation tells that he has
always fought against fortune, and that she had been overcome
by him when he had bravely beaten back the attacks of
enemies, and not even had he been broken by her then, when
expelled from home, he was deprived of his fatherland. But,
however, when he lost his dearest daughter, then, he confesses,
238 LACTANTIUS

was he shamefully conquered by fortune. 'I yield,' he said,

'and I throw up my hand.'! What is more wretched than this
man who so lies prostrate?
He talks unwisely, he who professed himself a wise man.
What, therefore, does the assumption of a name mean? Why
that contempt of things which is held forth in magnificent
words? Why the condition or mien different from the others?
Or why do you give precepts of wisdom to all, if no one has
been found up to this point who is wise? And does anyone
bear ill-will to us because we deny that the philosophers are
wise, when they themselves confess that they do not know any-
thing and that they are not wise? For if ever they should so
fail that they might not even be able to pretend something,
which they do in other matters, then, indeed, they are warned
of ignorance, and they jump about raving mad, as it were, and
they shout that they are blind and without intelligence. An-
axagoras declares that all things are surrounded with dark-
ness; Empedocles complains that the paths of the senses are
narrow, as though he had need of a carriage and team for
thinking; Democritus, as though the truth were lying sub-
merged in a certain well so deep that there is no bottom,
speaks too foolishly also, as the others do. 2 For truth is not as
though submerged in a well whither it was permitted him to
descend or even to fall, but it is as though on the highest peak
of a lofty mountain, or rather in heaven, which is most true.
Why is it that he said it was pressed down to the depths rather
than raised unto the heights? Unless, perhaps, he preferred
to have his mind also reside in his feet or in his heels rather
than in his breast or head. They were so very far removed from
the truth itself that not even the state of their body advised
them that they must seek truth in the heights. From this
despair was that confession of Socrates born, in which he said
that he knew nothing but this one thing, that he knew nothing.
Hence arose that discipline of the Academy, if, however, it
can be called a discipline or a school in which ignorance is
1 Cicero, Consolation frg. 16.
2 Cf. Cicero, Posterior Academics 1.12.44.
 BOOK THREE 239

learned and taught. 3 But not even those who assumed knowl-
edge for themselves could consistently defend that fact itself,
namely, that they thought that they knew. Since the plan or
reason did not square for them through ignorance of divine
things, they were so varied, so uncertain, and often discussing
things opposed to themselves and their own theories, that you
would not be able to decide and judge what they believed,
what they meant. Why, then, do you fight against those men
who ruin themselves with their own weapons? vVhy do you
labor to destroy those whom their own speech punishes and
destroys?
'Aristotle: says Cicero, 'accusing the old philosophers, says
that they were either extremely foolish or exceedingly glorious,
who thought that philosophy was perfected by their own abil-
ities: but they saw, because a great advance was made in a
few years, that in a short time philosophy would be obviously
completed.'4
What time was that, however? When has it been completed,
or by whom? As to his saying that they were most foolish who
thought that wisdom had been perfected by their abilities, it
is true, but not even he judged prudently enough, who
thought either that it had been begun by the ancients or
increased by the recent philosophers, or that it would be
perfected soon by those to follow. For never can that be
investigated which is sought not through its own way.

Chapter 29

But let us take up again that which we passed by. Fortune,

therefore, of itself is nothing;1 nor must it be so regarded as
though it exists in some sense, if, indeed, fortune is the sudden
3 Cf. ibid. 1.12.45.
4 Cicero, Tusculans 3.28.69.
Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I,1l6, a discussion on fate
and chance. The definition of Boethius is given: 'Fate is a disposition
inherent to changeable things by which Providence connects each one
with its proper order:
240 LACTANTIUS

and unexpected outcome of accidental things. But the philos-

ophers, lest at some time they should not err, wish to be wise
in a foolish matter; they change the sex of fortune and say
that it is not a goddess, as the crowd believes, but that it is a
god. Sometimes, however, they call the same thing nature, and
sometimes fortune, and Cicero said that this very thing brings
about much that is unexpected by us because of obscurity and
ignorance of causes. 2 'When they do not know the causes on
account of which something is done, then it is necessary that
they do not know him who does it. In a very serious work, in
which he was giving to his son precepts of life culled from
philosophy, the same man said: 'Who does not know that the
power of fortune is great in both directions, for when we use
its prosperous blowing, we come to desired outcomes, and
when it blows back, we are afflicted.'3
First, he who denies that anything can be known said this in
such a way as if he himself and all men knew. Then, he who
also tries to make things which are clear dubious, thought that
this was clear which to him ought to be especially doubtful,
for it is absolutely false to the wise man. 'Who does not
know?' he said. Indeed, I do not know. Let him teach me, if
he can, what is that power, what is that blowing and blowing
back. It is disgraceful, therefore, for an intelligent man to say
that which he is not able to prove if you deny it. Finally,
because he said: 'Assents ought to be held back, because it is
the mark of a foolish man to rashly assent to unknown
things,'4 he openly gave credence to the opinions of the mob
and the unskilled who think that it is fortune who assigns
goods and evils to men. They make her image with horn of
plenty and rudder, as though this one assigns wealth and
holds the direction of human affairs. Even Vergil assents to
this opinion. He calls fortune 'omnipotent,'5 and the historian

2 Cicero, Posterior Academics 1.7.29.

3 Cicero, On Duties 2.6.19.
4 Cf. Cicero, Posterior Academics 1.12.45; The Nature of the Gods 1.1.L
5 Vergil, Aeneid 8.334.
 BOOK THREE 241

says: 'Surely, fortune rules in all things.'6 What place remains,

then, for the other gods? Why is not she herself said to reign
if she is more powerful, or why is not she alone worshiped if
she rules all things? Or if she sends evils only, let them put
forward some cause why, if she is a goddess, she envies men
and wishes them destroyed, since she is religiously cherished
by them; why she is kinder to the evil, but more unkind to
the good; why she attacks, afflicts, deceives, and exterminates;
who established her as the perpetual troubler of men; why,
finally, she has been allotted such evil power that 'she cele-
brates and obscures all things from passion more than from
true worth.'7 The philosophers should have looked into these
questions, I say, rather than rashly accuse innocent fortune.
Even if this is something, still nothing can be drawn from
those, why she is as unfriendly toward men as she is thought.
And so all those speeches which rail against the iniquity of
fortune are nothing else but the ravings of inconsiderate levity.
'Wherefore, let them not envy us to whom God has disclosed
the truth, for just as we know that fortune is nothing, so we
know that it is a wicked and crafty spirit which is an enemy
to the good and to justice, which does contrary things as a
god, the cause of whose envy we discussed in the second book. 8
This lies in wait for all, but it impedes with error those
who know not God; it smothers them with foolishness; it
wraps them in darkness, lest anyone be able to arrive at the
knowledge of the divine name in which alone is contained
wisdom and perpetual life. Those who know God, however,
it attacks with trickery and cleverness so that it might ensnare
them with desire or passion, so that depraved with flattering
sins it might drive them to death; or, if it accomplishes
nothing by guile, it attempts to cast them away by force and
violence. For this reason, therefore, it was not immediately
cast to punishment by God at the beginnings of transgression,

6 Sallust, Catiline 8.1.

7 Ibid.
8 Cf. ch. 8.
242 LACTANTIUS

in order that it might through its malice exercise men unto

virtue. 9 For unless this is practiced, unless it is strengthened by
assiduous trouble, it cannot be perfect (if, indeed, the virtue
of enduring evils is a strong and unconquered patience). From
this it comes about that there is no virtue if an adversary is
lacking,lo When they did not know the name of this perverse
power, although they felt its strength repugnant to virtue,
they made for themselves the inane name of fortune, and
how far this is removed from wisdom Juvenal declares in these
verses: 'You have no divine power, if prudence exists: we make
you a goddess, fortune, and we place you in heaven.'l1
Folly, therefore, and error, and blindness, and, as Cicero
says: 'the ignorance of things and their causes,'12 has brought
on the names of nature and fortune. But as they do not know
their adversary, so they do not know virtue even, the knowl-
edge of which descends from the notion of an adversary. If
this is joined with wisdom, or, as they say, is itself the same
thing as wisdom, then they must not know in what things it
is situated. For no one can be fitted with true arms if he does
not know the enemy against whom he must be armed, nor can
he conquer an adversary who in fighting does not seek a real
enemy but a shadow. He will be laid low who, intent upon
another, has not seen in advance the blow coming toward him
and has not avoided its attack upon his vital organs.

Chapter 30

I have explained as much as my mediocre talents allowed,

that the philosophers have long held a path away from the
truth. However, I realize how many things I have passed over,
9 This is the traditional acceptance of the problem of pain and evil in
the world. Cf. SI. Thomas S.T. I, 48, 49 for the nature of evil and its
cause.
10 Cf. Seneca, On Providence 2.4; 2.7; 4.16.
11 Juvenal, 10.365,366.
12 Cicero, Posterior Academics 1.7.29.
 BOOK THREE 243

since a disputation against the philosophers was not properly

my concern. But there had to be a diversion here, that I might
show that so many and such great geniuses were wasted in
false things, lest someone, perhaps, shut out from the evil
religions, might want to go to them, as though he might find
something certain there. The one hope of man, therefore, and
his one safety, has been put in this doctrine which we are
defending, and the whole wisdom of man is in this one thing
alone, that he know and worship God. This is our dogma,
this our determination. And so with as much voice as I can,
I testify to it, I proclaim it, I announce it. Here, here is that
which all the philosophers sought in their whole life, and yet
were never able to investigate, to comprehend, to hold, be-
cause either they retained a depraved religion, or they did
away with religion altogether. Let all those depart, therefore,
who do not build up human life but disturb it. For what do
they teach or whom do they instruct who have not yet in-
structed themselves? Whom can the sick heal? Whom can the
blind lead? Hither, therefore, let us all go to those whose care
is wisdom. Shall we wait until Socrates knows something, or
until Anaxagoras finds a light in the darkness, or until
Democritus extracts the truth from a well, or until Empedocles
dilates the paths of his mind, or until Arcesilas and Carneades
see, feel, perceive? Lo, a voice from heaven teaching the truth
and showing us a light more brilliant than the sun itself! Why
are we unjust to ourselves and delay to take up wisdom, which
learned men by wasting their years in seeking could never
find? He who wishes to be wise and happy, let him hear the
voice of God, let him learn justice, let him know the sacra-
ment of his nativity, let him despise human things, let him
take up the divine, in order that he may be able to attain
that good for which he was born.
·When all religious rites have been dissolved, and when all
things which were accustomed or were able to be said in
their defense have been refuted, then, overcoming the teach-
ings of philosophy, we must come to the true religion and
244 LACTANTIVS

wisdom. Because the two are joined, as I will show, so that

we may assert by arguments or examples or suitable witnesses
that that is folly which those worshipers of false gods do not
cease to throw up to us, and that we may show that as far as
we are concerned it is nothing, just as with them it is all. And
although both in the previous books when I was refuting
false religions, and in this when I tore down false wisdom,
I showed where the truth is, the next book will indicate more
clearly, however, what religion is true and what wisdom is
the true one.
 BOOK FOUR

TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION

Chapter 1

as I think about it and often reconsider

IllliI:""JIlil'lRT SEEMS TO ME)

it in my mind, that that former state of the human

race is equally strange and unbecoming, because,
through the foolishness of one age or generation taking up
various religions and believing that there are many gods, man
has suddenly come into such great ignorance of himself that
when truth was removed from the sight, neither the religion
of the true God nor the reason of humanity was held by men
seeking their highest good, not in heaven but on earth. And
for this reason, of course, the happiness of olden times has
been changed. For, abandoning God as the parent and ruler
of all things, men began to venerate the insensible products
of their own handiwork. What this perverseness accomplished
or what evil it brought about the thing itself makes known.
For turned away from the highest good which is, therefore,
blessed and everlasting, since it is not able to be seen, touched,
or grasped, and also from the virtues which are in accord with
that good, slipping to these corrupt and fragile gods and
desiring those things with which only the body is adorned,
nourished, and delighted, they have sought perpetual death
for themselves with their gods and bodily goods, because every
body is subject to death. There followed upon religions of
this sort injustice and impiety, just as was necessary. For they
ceased to raise their gaze to the heavens, and as the minds of
245
246 LACTANTIUS

men were pressed down by earthly religions, so also did they

cling to goods of earth. There followed a severing, a crisis of
the human race, and fraud and every crime,! because, spurning
eternal and incorruptible goods which alone ought to be de-
sired by man, they preferred temporal and short-lived ones,
and the greater faith was toward evil for men who preferred
the wicked to the upright because it was more present or
immediate to them.
Thus mist and darkness seized human life which had been
in the clearest light in earlier ages; and, what was fitting to
this depravity, after wisdom had been removed, then at length
men began to claim for themselves the name of wise men.
Then, however, no one was called wise, when everyone was.
Would that that name, however, at one time so general, al-
though reduced now in application to a few, retained its force!
For those few, perhaps, would be able by their genius or in-
fluence or assiduous exhortation to set the people free from
vices and errors. But wisdom has so entirely fallen, that from
the very arrogance of the name, it appears that no one of
those who were called wise was wise. 2 Yet before this philos-
ophy, which it is said to be, was discovered, there are said to
have been seven who, first of all, deserved to be considered and
to be named wise men,3 since they dared to make inquiry and
to hold discussion about natural things. 0 miserable and
disastrous time in which throughout the whole world there
were only seven who were called by the name of men! For no
one can rightly be called a man except the one who is wise.
But if all the rest besides those men were fools, then not
even were they wise, since no one can be truly wise according
to the judgment of fools. Wisdom was to such a degree absent
from them that not even afterwards, with the increase of
I Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.128.
2 Cf. Cicero, Tusculans 5.3.7.
3 The traditional list of the Seven Sages included: Solon of Athens (c.
638-555 B.C.), Chilo of Sparta (d. 597 B.C,), Thales of Miletus (d.
548 B.C.), Bias of Priene (fl. 6th C. B.C.), Cleobulus of Lindos (d.
564 B.C.), Pittacus of Mitylene (d. 570 B.C.), and Periander of Corinth
(d. !l58 B.C.).
 BOOK FOUR 247

teaching and many and great geniuses being always intent

upon this very pursuit, could truth be perfected and compre-
hended. For after the glory of those seven wise men, it is
incredible with how much zeal for searching out the truth all
Greece burned. And as soon as they thought the very name of
wisdom arrogant, they called themselves, not wise men, but
eager for wisdom. With this move they condemned of error
and folly those who rashly ascribed the name of 'the wise' to
themselves, and they charged themselves also with ignorance,
which, indeed, they did not deny. For whenever the nature of
things had stood in the way of their genius, a force as it were,
lest they might be able to render some reason, they were
accustomed to testify that they knew nothing, that they dis-
cerned nothing. vVhence there are found much wiser men
(who saw that they were not wise in some respect) than those
who had believed themselves to be wise.

Chapter 2

So, if those who were called wise were not, and if those later
ones were not either, who did not hesitate to admit their non-
wisdom, what remains except that wisdom should be sought
some place else, since it has not been found where it was
sought? What cause may we think that there was why it was
not found, though sought by so many geniuses and in so many
times and with the greatest zeal and labor, unless it be that
the philosophers sought it outside their own territory? Since
they never grasped any wisdom, though all areas were plowed
over and explored, and it is necessary for it to be somewhere,
it is clear that it ought to be sought most surely there where
the label of folly appears, under the veil of which God has
hidden the treasure of wisdom and truth, lest the secret of
His divine work be exposed to public display. For this reason,
indeed, I am wont to marvel that, although Pythagoras and
248 LACTANTIUS

afterwards Plato, inflamed with a love of seeking out the

truth, had penetrated as far as the Egyptians and Magians and
Persians in order to learn the practices and rites of those
nations-for they suspected that wisdom was concerned with
religion-did not, however, get to the Jews; and among the
Jews only was it found at that time, and they could have gone
to them more easily. But I think that they were turned away
by divine providence, lest they might be able to know the
truth, for it was not yet right for strange men to know the
religion of the true God and justice. For God had decided to
send a great leader from heaven at the approach of the last
agel to reveal to outside nations that wisdom taken from a
perfidious and ungrateful people. 2 I will come to the discus-
sion of this in this present book when I shall have first shown
that wisdom is so connected with religion that the two can-
not be separated.

Chapter 3

The worship of false gods, as I showed in the first book,

does not possess wisdom, not only because it lays the 'divine'
animal, man, below fragile and earthly things, but because
nothing is discussed or carried on there which might be of
advantage to cultivating good habits and forming a way of
life. Neither does it hold any inquisition of truth, but only
the rite of worshiping which consists, not in a function of the
mind, but in ministry of the body. Therefore, that is not to
be judged true religion because it does not instruct and make
people better with any precepts of virtue and justice. So
philosophy, since it does not have religion, that is, the greatest
piety, is not true wisdom. For if the divinity which governs
this world sustains the race of men with incredible beneficence,
1 The ancients were much concerned with chronological periods and the
'ages' of man. Cf. St. Augustine, City of God. The History of Orosius
(380-418) is a development of this idea also.
2 This is also the typical early Christian attitude to the Jews. Later in
this book (Chapter 10 if.) Lactantius treats the matter more fully.
 BOOK FOUR 249

and cherishes it with paternal indulgence, as it were, surely it

wants thanks to be rendered and honor given to itself, nor is
the reason of piety able to make a stand for man if he comes
to be ungrateful for heavenly benefits, which is certainly not
the part of a wise man. Since, therefore, as I said, philosophy
and the religion of the false gods are disjoined and far sep-
arated, inasmuch as there are some professors of wisdom
through whom, of course, no approach is made to the gods,
and others, overseers of religions through whom wisdom is not
learned; it is clear that the one is not true wisdom and the
other not true religion. For this reason neither was philosophy
able to comprehend truth, nor could the religion of the gods
render a reason for itself which it lacked. But where wisdom is
joined with religion by an inseparable connection, it is
necessary that both be true, because in worshiping we ought
to be wise, that is, we ought to know what we ought to worship
and how; and in being wise we ought to give worship, that is,
to fulfill in actuality what we have come to know.
Where, therefore, is wisdom joined with religion? There,
namely, where one God is adored, where life and every act is
referred to one head and the Supreme Being, and, finally, the
same ones are the doctors of wisdom who are also the priests
of God. Let it not, however, disturb anyone, that which has
often happened and can take place, that some philosophers
undertake the priesthood of the false gods. For when that
happens, philosophy is not then joined with religion, but
both the philosophy will cease among the sacred things, and
the religion, when philosophy will be treated. For that religion
is mute, not only because it is of the mute, but because its
rite rests upon the hand or in the fingers, not in the heart or
tongue, as does ours which is true. Therefore, in wisdom there
is religion and in religion wisdom. A separation is not possible,
however, because to be wise is nothing else except to honor
the true God with just and holy worship. That the worship of
many gods is not according to nature can be gathered and
grasped even from this argument: every god which is worshiped
250 LACTANTIUS

by man must be named 'Father' during solemn rites and in

prayers, not only because of honor, but also from reason, be-
cause he is older than man and because he grants life, health,
and living as a father. And so Jupiter is called father by
those who pray to him, and so is Saturn, also Janus, and Liber,
and the others, too. Lucilius makes fun of this in his council
of the gods: 'That there may be no one of us but that he be
either the best father of gods; or Father Neptune, Liber, or
Saturn is father; Mars, Janus, Quirinus may be father, and
the name may be addressed to each one.'1 But if nature does
not allow that there be many fathers of one man-for he is
begotten from one-then it is against nature also and against
piety to worship many gods. One, therefore, is to be worshiped
who can truly be named Father. It is necessary that the same
one also be Lord, because just as He can pardon so also He
can coerce. He must be called 'Father' because He bestows on
us many great gifts, and 'Lord' because He has the greatest
power of castigating and punishing. The reason of civil law
shows that the same one is lord who is father also. For who
will be able to educate his sons unless he has the power of a
lord over them? Not un deservedly is he called the father of
the family,2 although he may have only sons, for certainly the
name of father embraces the slaves also, since 'of the family or
household' follows, and the name of family or household em-
braces the children also, since 'father' goes before it. Whence
it is clear that the same one is father of the slaves and lord of
the children. And finally, a son is sent off (i.e., given in pledge,
or marriage, or bond) by the hand, as though a slave, and a
freed slave receives the name of the patron, as though he were
a son. But if he is named father of the household for this
reason, that it might be apparent that he is endowed with a
twofold power, since he ought to pardon because he is a
1 Lucilius, Satires, Bk. I, frg. 9.
2 This term pater familias is a fundamental one in Roman law and social
institutions. The Roman 'household' was the unit of society. The
orthography is indicative of its ancient use, familias being an old
genitive form.
 BOOK FOUR 251

father and coerce because he is a lord, therefore, the one who

is a slave is a son also, and the same one is both his father
and lord.
Just as by the necessity of nature it is not possible that
there be any father but one, so neither can there be any lord
but the one. For what will the slave do, if many masters give
him different commands? Therefore, the religions of many
gods are against reason and against nature, for there cannot
be many fathers or lords, but it is necessary that gods be called
fathers and lords. Truth, therefore, cannot be held where the
same man is subjected to many fathers and lords; where the
soul, spread into many directions, is torn now here, now
there. Neither can religion hold any firmness since it lacks a
certain and stable dwelling-place. Therefore, the worshipings
of the gods cannot be true in the same way that marriage
cannot be said to be true when one woman has many hus-
bands. She will be called either a harlot or an adulteress, for
she from whom shame, chastity, and loyalty are absent must
also lack virtue. So also the religion of the gods is unchaste
and unlawful because it lacks faith, since that unstable and
uncertain honor does not have a head and an origin.

Chapter 4

From these things it is clear how wisdom and religion are

connected one with the other. Wisdom looks toward children;
it exacts love. Religion looks toward slaves; it exacts fear. For
just as the former ought to love and honor their father, so
the latter should serve and fear their master. Since God, how-
ever, who is one, embraces the character both of a father and
a master, we ought to love Him because we are His children,
and we ought to fear Him because we are His slaves. It is
not possible, therefore, for religion to be separated from wis-
dom or for wisdom to be severed from religion because it is
252 LACTANTIUS

the same God who ought to be known, which is the part of

wisdom, and to be honored, which is the part of religion. But
wisdom precedes, religion follows, because to know God is first,
to serve Him is consequent. Thus in the two names is the one
force, although they seem to be different: one is placed in the
understanding and the other in act, but they are similar to two
streams flowing from one source. Now the source of wisdom
and religion is God; and, if these two streams should wander
off from Him, of necessity they dry up and those who do not
know Him can be neither wise men nor religious. Thus it
happens that the philosophers and those who worship false
gods are like either children who have been disowned or
fugitive slaves, because they are seeking neither their father
nor their master. And just as disowned children do not attain
to the inheritance of their father and as fugitives do not gain
impunity, so neither will the philosophers receive immortality,
which is the inheritance of the celestial kingdom, that is, the
highest good which they are especially seeking, nor will those
worshipers of the gods escape the penalty of everlasting death,
which is the turning away of the true God against those who
shun His majesty and name. For neither recognized that God
in truth was a Father and at the same time Lord and Master,
the worshipers of the false gods just as much as those profes-
sors of wisdom, because either they thought that nothing at
all should be worshiped or they approved the false religions;
or, even if they did recognize the power and might of the
supreme God, as Plato did, who said that there was one God,
the maker of the world,l and also Marcus Tullius, who ac-
knowledges that man is created of a certain exceptional nature
by a supreme God,2 however, they did not render to Him
the worship due as to the supreme Father, which was a neces-
sary consequence.
Now, not only the multitude of them, as I showed above,
but even reason declares that the gods cannot be either fathers
1 In Timaeus 28 C (cf. Minucius Felix c. 19.14).
2 Cf. Cicero, The Laws 1.7.22.
 BOOK FOUR 253

or lords and masters, since it is neither handed down that man

was made by these gods nor is it found that the gods them-
selves antecede the origin of man, inasmuch as it appears that
there were men on the earth before Vulcan and Liber (Bac-
chus) and Apollo and Jupiter himself were born. Besides, the
making of man is customarily attributed neither to Saturn nor
to his father Caelus (Heaven). But if no one of those who
are worshiped is said to have formed and instituted man from
the beginning, then no one of these can be called the father
of man, and so, not even a god. Therefore, it is not right for
them by whom man was not created to be venerated, because
neither is it possible for him to be created by those before
whom he was himself in existence, nor is it possible for him
to be created by many. One, therefore, and only One ought to
be adored, who preceded Jupiter, who preceded Saturn, who
preceded even heaven and earth itself. It is of necessity that
He formed man who, before man was, perfected heaven and
earth. He alone must be called Father who created; He alone
must be named Lord who rules, who holds the real and ever-
lasting power of life and death. And he who does not adore
Him is, on the one hand, a foolish slave who either avoids his
Master or who does not know Him, and, on the other, an
irreverent son who either hates his true Father or ignores Him.

Chapter 5

Now, since I have explained that wisdom and religion can-

not be drawn apart, it remains for us to have a discussion on
religion itself and wisdom. I realize, to be sure, how difficult
is a discussion on heavenly things, but still it must be dared so
that truth may be exposed in all its shining clarity, and that
many may be set free from error and destruction, who are
spurning it and ejecting it because it now lies hidden under a
veil of foolish simplicity. Before I begin to speak of God and
254 LACTANTIUS

His works, however, I must say a few things about the prophets
whose testimonies it is now necessary to make use of, which in
the earlier books I tried not to do. 1
He who desires to grasp the truth above all things, ought
to devote his attention, not only to an understanding of the
words of the prophets, but also to a very diligent study of the
times through which each one of them lived, so that he may
know both what future they predicted and after how many
years their predictions were fulfilled. 2 There is not any diffi-
culty in collecting these. For they have testified under which
ruler each one of them received the inspiration of the Divine
Spirit, and many writers have put out books on the times
beginning from the prophet Moses, who antedated the Trojan
War by about nine hundred years. 3 However, when that one
had ruled the people for forty years, he had a successor,
Josue,4 who held the leadership for twenty-seven years. Then
they were under the Judges" for three hundred seventy years,
and then, after change in organization and condition, they
began to have kings. '!\Then the kings held power for four
hundred fifty years up until the reign of Sedecias,6 the Jews,
stormed and captured by the Babylonian king,1 endured a
long-lasting servitude, until in the seventieth year afterwards
Cyrus the Elders returned them to their own land and homes. 9
1 Here is the answer given by our author himself to those who have
felt an impatience with Lactantius for his neglect to use the strong argu-
ments of Sacred Scripture on many topics discussed heretofore.
2 Lactantius again shows forth the historical sense that is such a necessary
qualification for a good apologist.
3 We make no apology for Lactantius' acceptance of chronological stand-
ards and data since attempts at scientific accuracy in such matters are
possible only as the result of centuries of scholarship and modern
methods of research.
4 Cf. Exod. 17.9-14; Num. 14.6,30; Deut. 3.28, etc.
5 Cf. Judges; it contains the history of Israel under the judges who ruled
the people before the period of kings.
6 Last King of Juda, perished in Babylon. Cf. 4 Kings 24.17; 2 Par. 36.10;
Jer. 39.7; 53.11.
7 Nabuchodonoser. Cf. 4 Kings 24.12; I Par. 6.15; Jer. 39.1; Dan. 1.1.
8 King of the Persians and Conquel'cr of Babylon. Cf. 2 Par. 36.22; I Esd.
6.3; Isa. 44.28; 45.1.
9 For this digest of Hebrew history cf. Theophilus Ad Autolycum 131 C
(139A). Cf. also A Guide to the Bible, a translation by McGuire and
Arbez of Robert-Tricot Initiation biblique, in two volumes, Newman
Press, Westminster, Md. 1951-1954, revised edition.
 BOOK FOUR 255

He took up command among the Persians during the same

time in which Tarquin the Proud ruled at Rome.lO So when
the whole series of events is collected from the Jewish and
Roman histories, even the times of the single prophets can be
gathered. The last of these was, of course, Zacharia; it is
agreed that he prophesied when Darius was king in the eighth
month of the second year of his reign. l l For this reason, then,
the prophets are found to be older even than the Greek writers.
I put forward all these points so that those may realize their
error who strive to label Sacred Scripture as though some-
thing new and recently made up, not knowing from what font
the origin of our holy religion has flowed forth. But if anyone
subjects the foundation of doctrine soundly to the scrutiny of
comparing and studying dates and periods, then he will surely
and deeply see the truth, and he will lay aside his error upon
the recognition of truth.

Chapter 6

God, who is the Fashioner and Establisher of things, as we

said in the second book, before He undertook this work of
the world, generated the holy and incorruptible spirit which
He named His Son.1 And although He afterwards created in-
numerable others, whom we call angels, this one alone is His
First-begotten Son,2 worthy of the appellation of the Divine
Name, that is, He possesses the power and majesty of the
Father. That there is a Son of the Most High God who is
endowed with supreme power, not only the teachings of all
the prophets in agreement show, but also the prophecy of
10 Tarquin the Proud is considered as the last king of Rome, expelled by
Brutus and Collatinus when the Republic was set up in 509 B.C. Cf.
Livy, Book 1.
11 Darius became king of the Persians in 522 B.C. Cf. Theophilus l32D;
Zach. 1.1.

1 Lactantius wrote before the formulae of the Athanasian and Nicene

Creeds became familiar to Christians.
2 Cf. Cyprian, Testimonies 2.1.
256 LACTANTIUS

Trismegistus 3 and the oracles and foretellings of the Sibyls.

Hermes, in that book which is entitled, Logos Teleios) used
these words: 'The Lord and Maker of all things whom we
rightly call god, since He made a second god, visible and
sensible-but I do not say that the same one was sensible
from the fact that he himself senses (for concerning this,
whether he himself senses or not, will be spoken of at another
time) but because he is sent to those sensing and seeing-since
therefore he made this one, the first and only and one, he
appeared good to him and exceedingly full of all good, he
was delighted with him, and loved him perfectly as his own
son.'4
The Erythraean Sibyl in the beginning of her song, because
she starts from the highest god, declares that there is a son
of god, a leader and commander of all, with these verses: 'The
all-nourishing creator who put the sweet spirit into all things
made him the commander-god of all things,'5 and again at
the end: 'God gave another to honor faithful men.'6 Another
Sibyl charges that this one ought to be known: 'Know this
god who is the son of God.'7 Plainly it is the very Son of God
who through Solomon, that wisest of kings, spoke those words
which follow: 'The Lord set me up as the beginning of his
ways in his works; before the world he established me. In
the beginning before he made the earth and before he con-
stituted the depths; before the fountains of water sprang
forth, and before all the hills, he brought me forth. The lord
made the regions and the inhabitable places under the sky.
''''hen he prepared the heavens, I was present to him, and
,vhen he marked off his abode, when he put strong clouds over
3 Cf. The Pseudo-Augustine, Against Fi'ue Heresies, in Vol. 8, Appendix
of the Maurist Edition of Augustine's works. Hermes, who is called
Mercury in Latin, wrote a book called Logos Teleios, that is, The
Perfect World, and there are several statements given describing the
word as the only son of God.
4 Hermes. Cf. p. 51a of Patricius' edition; d. Pseudo-Apuleius Asclepius
c.8.
5 Frg. 1.5 f.; cf. also Sedulius, (Montefalconius, Paleographi graeei p. 245),
6 Sibylline Oracles III.774.
7 VIII.329.
 ROOK FOUR 257

the winds and when he poised the fountains established uneler

the sky, when he balanced the strong foundations of the earth,
I was with him arranging things. There I was for whom it
was a joy. For I was delighted every day before his face when
he rejoiced at the completion of the world.'s
For this reason, Trismegistus calls him the 'world-maker
of God'9 and the Sibyl the 'Arranger' or 'PIanner'lO because He
was endowed with such great wisdom and power by Gael the
Father that He might use this counsel anel strength in the
making of the world.

Chapter 7

Perhaps someone may ask at this point, who is that one so

mighty, so dear to God, and what name does He have whose
first beginning not only anteceeled the world, but who even
arranged it by His wisdom and constructed it by His power.
Firstly, it is well for us to know that His name is known,
not even by the angels who dwell in heaven, but to Himself
alone and to God the Father, nor will it be published, as has
been handed down in the sacred writings, before the disposi-
tion of God shall have been fulfilled. Then, it is not able
to be pronounced by the mouth of man, as Hermes teaches,
saying this: 'Guilty (is he) of this guilt which is the will of the
good God, that His name cannot be said by the mouth of
men.'l And a little afterwards, as to the son: 'There is, 0 son,
this one unutterable word of wisdom, holy, and before the
only Lord of all things, and of the God-ruler of all, to speak
which is beyond men.'2 But although His name, which the
Highest Father bestowed upon Him, from the beginning is
8 Cf. Provo 8.31,32.
9 See the fragment given by Lactantius in Book 8.4: demiourgon tou
theou.
10 Frg. VIII.264: Symboulon.

I Cf. Patricius, p. 51a. After the word God in the quotation, the editors
before Brandt-Laubmann added he theon pmenegken.
2 Ibid.
258 LACTANTIUS

known to no one other than Himself, still He has another

name among the angels and another with men. He is named
Jesus among men. For Christ is not His proper name but
the name of power and dominion: this, indeed, the Jews
named their kings.
The reason of this name ought to be explained on account
of the error of those ignorant people who are accustomed to
pronounce it Chrestus by the change of a letter. In times past
a precept had been given to the Jews that they confect a
sacred ointment whereby those who were called to the priest-
hood or kingship could be anointed; and, just as now for the
Romans the garment of purple is a mark of the assumption
of royal dignity, so among them the anointing with the sacred
ointment conferred the royal name and power. 3 But since the
ancient Greeks said chriesthai for the word which means 'to
be anointed,' and which they now say is aleiphesthai, as that
verse of Homer indicates: 'Now when the maidens had bathed
them and anointed (chrisan) them with olive oil.'4 For this
reason we call Him Christ, that is, 'the anointed,' which is
Messias in Hebrew. Whence, in certain Greek writings 5 which
have been poorly translated from the Hebrew, eleimmenos
is found written as from the verb aleiphesthai (to be anointed).
But by either name king is signified, not because He has
gained this earthly kingdom, the time of whose taking has
not yet come, but because His kingdom is celestial and ever-
lasting. We will discuss this in the last book. 6 Now, however,
let us speak of His first nativity.

Chapter 8

In the first place we testify that He was born twice; first, in

3 Cf. Isidore, Origines 7.2.2.

4 Odyssey 4.49.
5 Cf. 1 Kings 2.35; Ps. 83.10; 88.39; Dan. 9.26.
6 Bk. 7, c. 20,24.
 BOOK FOUR 259

the spirit, later, in the flesh. Whence, it is said in Jeremia:

'Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee.'1 And again:
'who was blessed before he was born,'2 which happened to no
other besides Christ.s Since He was from the beginning4 the
Son of God, He was re-generated or born a second time accord-
ing to the flesh. 5 This twofold nativity of His has occasioned
great error for human minds and has poured darkness around
even those who retained the sacraments of the true religion. 6
But we will show this plainly and very clearly, that the lovers
of wisdom may be instructed more easily and more diligently.
He who hears the Son of God spoken of ought not to con-
ceive in his mind such gross wickedness as to think that God
(the Father) procreated (Him) from wedlock and union
with some woman, which is done only by a corporal animal
and one subject to death. Since, however, God was still alone
then, with whom could He have united Himself? Or, since He
was of such great power that He accomplished whatever He
wished, surely He was not in need of the society of another
for creating. Unless, perhaps, we think, as Orpheus believed,
that God is both male and female, because He could not gen-
erate otherwise unless He had the power of both sexes, as
though He came together with Himself or without coition He
could not have procreated!7 But Hermes also was of the same
opinion when he called Him 'self-fathered' (autopatora) and

1 Jer. 1.5.
2 Cf. Jer. 1.5: 'Before thou earnest forth out of the womb, I sanctified
thee.' Lactantius was probably using one of the numerous Old Latin
versions of the Bible or even a Greek copy.
3 The meaning is that the eternal blessedness and sanctity of Christ
was neither interrupted nor begun by His birth as Man. The state-
ment as made by Lactantius needs commentary, especially in the light
of Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception and, likewise, in
light of tradition that both John the Baptist and Jeremia were sanc-
tified in the womb.
4 Cf. John 1.1.
5 Cf. Cyprian's Testimonies (p.73.3 in CSEL text) for similar statement
on the second birth.
6 The great heresies of the early Church (e.g., Arianism, Nestorianism)
were concerned with the natures of Christ.
7 Cf. frg. 62 (Abel edition); cf. also frg. 123, verse 3.
260 LACTANTIUS

'self-mothered' (autometora).8 If this were so, as the Father is

spoken of by the prophets, then the mother would be so
spoken of. How, then, did He beget? First of all, the divine
works can neither be known about nor talked about by any-
one. However, the holy writings show, and in these there is
surety, that that Son is the word of God, and that the other
angels are the spirits (or breathings) of God. 9 However, since
breath and the word are produced from different parts (the
breath from the nostrils, the word proceeding from the mouth),
there is a great difference between the Son of God and the
angels. For the word is breath given forth with the voice
signifying something. They went out, the silent breaths of God,
because they were created, not for giving forth the knowledge
of God, but for ministry. But that One, since He is also spirit,
proceeded with voice and sound from the mouth of God as
a word, for this purpose, namely, that He would use His voice
for the people, that is, that He would be the teacher of the
knowledge of God and of bringing the heavenly secret to men.
First of all, He spoke Himself (that is, the Word), so that
through Him He might speak to us, and that He might reveal
to us the voice of God and His wiII. Rightly, therefore, He is
called the speech and Word of God, since God comprehends
the vocal spirit proceeding from His mouth which He had
conceived, not in the womb, but in the mind by a certain
unfathomable strength and power of His majesty into an
Image, which has life and power by Its own proper knowledge
and wisdom. And likewise He created His other spirits (or
breathings) into angels. Our breathings are dissoluble, because
we are mortal, but the breaths of God live and remain and
perceive, because He Himself is immortal and the giver of
life and sensation. Our words may mingle with air and vanish;
however, generally they endure when they have been caught
in letters or writings. How mnch more must the word of God
be believed to endure unto eternity and to be associated with
8 Cf. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.22.56; also Tertullian, Apology,
c. 21.
9 Cf. Ps. 103.4; cf. also Tertullian, Against Praxeas c. 7.
 BOOK FOUR 261

sense and power, which He has traduced from God the Father
in the manner of a river from its source po
But if anyone wonders that God could have been generated
from God l l by the giving forth of the word and the breath, if
he learns the sacred writings of the prophets, he will cease to
wonder. That Solomon and his father, David, were very
mighty kings and that these same were prophets is perhaps
known to those who have never handled the divine Scriptures.
The former of these, who reigned later, antedated the fall of
the city of Troy by a hundred forty years.1 2 His father, the
writer of the divine hymns, speaks thus in Psalm 32: 'By the
word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the
power of them by the spirit of His mouth.'13 And again in
Psalm 44: 'My heart uttered a good word: I speak my works
to the king,'14 attesting herewith that to no other have the
works of the Lord been made known except to His Only Son,
who is the Word of God and who must reign forever. Solomon,
too, shows Him to be the Word of God, by ,vhose hands those
works of the world have been fashioned. '1 came out of the
mouth of the Most High,' he says, 'the first born before all
creatures. I made that in the heavens there should arise light
that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth. I
dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a
cloud.'15 John also gives it thus: 'In the beginning was the
word: and the word was with God: and the word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. All things were

10 In this section we note the difficulty of expressing the qualities of

God in ordinary language. Lactantius appears to have some grossly
anthropomorphic concepts of God. iVe must remember, however, that
at this period Greek, not Latin, was the language of speculation. Not
until the birth of Scholasticism did Latin achieve a facileness in ex·
pressing philosophical and theological speculations.
11 Ex dea deum. The phrase has since become commonplace: Deum de
dca, lumen de lumine, etc.
12 The fall of Troy is now considered to have taken place c. 1184 B.C.
The reign of Solomon was from c. 965 to 922 B.C.
13 Ps. 32.6.
14 Ps.44.2.
15 Cf. Sir, (Ecclus.) 24.3-5.
262 LACTANTIUS

made by Him and without Him was made nothing that was
made: l6

Chapter 9

But the Greeks have a better way of expressing it with

logos than we do with word or speech. For logos signifies both
speech and reason,l since He is both the voice and the wisdom
of God. Not even the philosophers were ignorant of this
divine speech, inasmuch as Zeno declares that the Disposer
of the nature of things and the Maker of the universe is the
word. He calls him the word spoken) and the necessity of
things) and god) and the mind of Jupiter)2 according to that
custom, of course, by which they are wont to take Jupiter for
God. But the words offer no obstacle when the thought is
congruent with truth. For there is the spirit of God, which
that one named the mind (or spirit) of Jupiter. Trismegistus,
who investigated nearly all truth, I know not how, often
described the majesty of the word as that example we gave
previously declares, in which he acknowledges that there is
a certain 'ineffable and holy word, the speaking of which is
beyond the measure of man: 3
I have spoken of this first nativity (of the Son of God)
briefly, as much as I was able. Now about the second, since
there is controversy about that especially, we must have a
fuller discussion, so that we may display the light of under-
standing to those wishing to know the truth.

16 John 1.1-3.

I Cf. The Pseudo-Augustine for this same notion and almost the same
manner of expressing it in Against Five Heresies (Benedictine Edition,
Vol. 8, Appendix p. 8D).
2 Cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.134,135.1-17; also d. TertuIlian, Against Praxeas
c. 5; Apologeticum c. 21.
3 Cf. ch. 7, n. 2.
 BOOK FOUR 263

Chapter 10

In the first place, therefore, men must know that thus from
the beginning had the disposition of the Supreme God gone
forth, that it would be necessary, as the end of time was ap-
proaching,I for the Son of God to descend upon the earth
in order to erect a temple for God and teach justice; but He
was to come, however, not in the strength or heavenly power
of an angel, but in the form and mortal condition of man.
And when He had performed His magisterial function, He
would be delivered into the hands of the wick('d and would
undergo death, so that when that, too, was conquered by His
power, He might rise again, and that to man whom He had
put on, whose nature He was wearing,2 He might offer the
hope of conquering death, and that He might admit him to
the rewards of immortality. So that no one may be unaware
of this disposition, we will show that all those things which we
see fulfilled in Christ were foretold. 3 No one need apply cre-
dence to our claim or assertion unless I shall have shown that
the prophets had predicted that there would be a great series
of events to take place before the time when the Son of God
should be born as man, and that He would do wonderful
things, and spread the worship of God throughout the land,
and that He would be at length fastened to a gibbet and rise
again on the third day. ·When I have proved all these things
from the writings of those very ones who have denied their
God making use of a mortal body, what else will stand in the

1 For a treatment of the ideas of the early Christians on the end of the
world see Origen's De principiis, Tertullian De earn is resurreetione;
De anima; Adversus Marcionem, etc., and St. Augustine De eivitate
Dei, the last 4 books. A summary of the question may be found in
Addis-Arnold-Scannell, A Catholic Dictionary, London, 1951 s.v. 'Last
things,' 'Judgment,' etc.
2 This section is typical of the heights reached by early Christian
writers in their descriptions of the abasement of the vVord made
flesh for us.
3 This is one of the traditional topoi of the apologists, the evidence of
prophecies fulfilled.
264 LACTANTIUS

way of an admission that is clear, that true wisdom exists in

this religion alone?
Now the origin of the whole sacrament4 must be related
from the beginning. Our ancestors,5 who were the leaders of
the Hebrews, when they were laboring under barrenness and
want, moved into Egypt for grain, and delaying there for too
long a while, they were oppressed with the intolerable yoke
of slavery. Then God had compassion on them and led them
out and liberated them from the hands of the king of the
Egyptians after four hundred and thirty years, under the
leadership of Moses, through whom the Law was later given
to them. In this leading out of bondage God showed the
strength of His majesty. For He brought the people across
the middle of the Red Sea, His angel going before and sep-
arating the water so that the people could walk through dry
shod, for whom very truly, as the poet says: 'The curved wave
stood around in form like a mountain.'6 When this was heard
the king of the Egyptians with a great band of his soldiers
followed after, and, rashly entering into the sea which was
still open, he was destroyed together with all his army as the
waters came together. 7 The Hebrews, however, setting forth
into the desert, saw many wonders. For whenever they suffered
thirst, a fountain of water burst forth from the rock struck
with a blow of the rod, and this refreshed them. s And again,
a dew (the manna) of celestial nourishment descended upon
them when they were hungry; nay, more, it even came to pass
that quails came upon their camp, so that not only with
celestial bread but also with more elaborate feastings they

4 The word Sacramentum in early Christian Latin had lost the technical
significance which it had in Classical Latin. The Fathers gave the name
to everything which conveyed one signification to unaided reason and
another to faith. Cf. A. Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin; also J.
deGhellinck, 'Pour l'histoire du mot sacramentum,' in Spicilegium
Sacrum Lovaniense 3, Paris 1924.
5 I.e., our spiritual or religious ancestors.
6 Vergil, Georgics 4.361.
7 Cf. Exod. 14.
8 Cf. Exod. 17.5,6.
 [lOOK FOlJR 265

might be filled. 9 Nevertheless, for these divine benefits they

did not render honor to God, but now that their slavery had
been removed and now that their thirst and hunger had been
banished, they fell into luxury and brought their minds back
to the profane rites of the Egyptians. For when their leader,
Moses, had ascended the mountain and was there for forty
days, they fashioned a golden calf's head, which they called
Apis,lo so that it might go before them for a symbol. God was
offended against the impious and ungrateful people for this
sin and disgraceful deed and afflicted them justly with grave
punishment and subjected them to the Law which He had
given to Moses,11 Later, when they had settled in a certain
part of the desert of Syria, they lost the ancient name of
Hebrews, and because the leader of their contest was Judas,
they were called Jews and the land which they inhabited
Judea. 12 At first, indeed, they were not subjected to the do-
minion of kings, but civil judges presided over the people
and the Law. These were not appointed yearly as were the
Roman consuls, however, but they had perpetual jurisdiction.
Then, when the name of the Judges was removed, regal power
was brought in. 13 In truth, while the Judges were still holding
sway over them, they had often embraced false religions, and
because God was offended by them He subjected them often to
foreign peoples, until, appeased again by the repentance of
the people, He would set them free from their slavery. In like
manner under the kings they were harassed by wars with their
neighbors on account of their defections. At length, captured
and removed to Babylon, they paid the penalty of their im-
piety with a harsh servitude until Cyrus came into power, who
by an edict restored once again the Jews. From then on they
had tetrarchs, even up to the time of Herod who was under
the command of Tiberius Caesar, in the fifteenth year of
9 Cf. Exod. 16.12-16.
10 The name of an Egyptian calf-god; cf. Isidore, Origines 8.11.86.
II Cf. Exod. 32.
12 Cf. Mach. 3.
13 Cf. 1 Kings 8,9.
266 LACTANTIUS

whose reign, that is, in the consulship of the two Gemini,

on the tenth day before the Kalends of April, the Jews put
Christ on the cross. This chronicle of events, this order is
contained in the secrets of the holy writings. But first I will
show why Christ came upon earth so that the foundation and
the plan of our divine religion may be clear.

Chapter 11

Often when the Jews rejected salutary precepts and turned

aside from the divine law in their aberrations toward the
impious worship of false gods, then God filled with the Holy
Spirit just and chosen men, the prophets; and placing them
in the midst of the people, He would through them chide the
ungrateful people for their sins with threatening words, and
He would nonetheless urge them to do penance for their evil.
And unless they did this and returned to their God after cast-
ing aside their vanities, He would change His testament, that
is, the inheritance of eternal life, and He would turn to for-
eign nations and would gather to Himself another people
from among strangers. However, those people, who were ad-
monished by the prophets, not only spurned their words, but,
offended that they had rebuked them for their sins, also
killed them with exquisite tortures. Of all these things the
sacred books keep account. For the prophet Jeremia says:
'I have sent to you my servants, the prophets. I sent them be-
fore light and you hearkened not to me, nor inclined your
ears to hear. When I said to you: Return ye, everyone from
his evil way, and from your wicked devices, and you shall
dwell in that land, which I have given to you and to your
fathers forever and ever. Do not go after strange gods to serve
them, and do not provoke me to wrath by the works of yom
hands for afflicting YOU.'1

1 Jer. 25.4-6_
 nOOK FOUR 267

The prophet btlras, also, who lived in the times of that

same Cyrus by whom the Jews were restored spoke thus:
'They departed from thee and threw thy law behind their
backs. And they killed thy prophets who admonished them to
return to thee.'2 And in the same strain we hear Elias in the
third Book of Kings: ""'ith zeal I have been zealous for the
Lord God Almighty; for the children of Israel have forsaken
thee. They have thrown down thy altars, they have slain thy
prophets with the sword: and I alone am left and they seek
my life to take it away.'3 On account of these impieties of that
people, He turned away from them forever, and ceased to send
the prophets to them. But His only begotten Son, that Maker
of things, and His Counselor,4 He ordered to come down from
heaven that He might transfer the holy religion of God to the
nations, that is, to those who knew not God, and teach them
the justice which the perfidious people had cast aside.
He had already, indeed, declared that He would do that
as the prophet Malachia makes clear when he says: 'I have no
pleasure in you, saith the Lord, and I will not receive a gift
from your hands. For from the rising of the sun even to the
going down, my name will be great among the Gentiles.'"
David also in the Psalm 17 declares: Thou wilt make me the
head of the Gentiles: A people which I know not shall serve
me.'6 And Isaia speaks thus: 'I come that I may gather together
all nations and tongues, and they shall come and shall see my
glory. And I will send down a sign upon them and I will
send of them that shall be saved to the Gentiles afar off, to
those that have not heard of my glory. And they shall declare
my glory to the Gentiles.'7
God, however, wishing to send the 'measurer of His temple's
upon the earth, did not wish to send Him in the power and
2 2 Esd. 9.26.
3 3 Kings 19.10.
4 Cf. the Sibylline Fragments 8.264; also Isa. 9.6; 11.2; 40.13.
5 Mal. 1.10 f.
6 Cf. Ps. 17.44 f.
7 Isa. 66.18 f.
8 Cf. Ezech. 40.
268 LACTANTIUS

brightness of heaven, so that people ungrateful to God might

be led into great error and pay the penalty for their crimes,
those who had not received the Lord and their God, which
the prophets had once foretold would thus take place. For
Isaia, whom the Jews themselves killed most cruelly with a
saw, said this: 'Hear, 0 ye heavens, and give ear, 0 earth, for
the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children and have
exalted them, but they have despised me. The ox knoweth his
owner and the ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not known
me and my people hath not understood me.'9 And Jeremia
also speaks in a similar manner: 'The turtle-dove hath known
her time and the swallow, and the sparrows of the country
side have observed the times of their coming, but my people
have not known the judgment of the Lord. How do you say:
We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Indeed, the
lying pen of the scribe has wrought falsehood. The wise men
are confounded; they are dismayed and taken, for they have
cast away the word of the Lord.'lo
Therefore, as I had begun to say, when God had decided to
send the Teacher of Virtue to men, He enjoined that He be
born again, this time in flesh, and that He become like to man
himself, for whom He would be the Leader and Companion
and Master. Nevertheless, since God is clement and loving
toward His children, He sent Him to those very ones with
whom He was displeased, lest He close against them forever
the way of salvation, and that He might give them the free
opportunity of following God, so that they might gain the
reward of life if they followed (which many of them are doing
and have done), and that they might incur this punishment of
death through their own fault if they rejected their king.
Among that people, therefore, and of their stock He ordered
Him to be born, lest, if He had come of a foreign race, they
could hold out a just excuse concerning the law for the reason
that they had not received Him; and at the same time, that
9 Isa. 1.2-4.
10 Jer. 8.7-9.
 BOOK FOUR 269

there might be no people whatsoever upon the earth to whom

the hope of immortali ty would be denied.

Chapter 12

And so, that Holy Spirit of God coming down from heaven
chose the holy virgin by means of whose womb He would
make His way among us. She, filled completely with the divine
Spirit, conceived Him, and without any contact with a man,
her virginal womb was suddenly fruitful. Now if it is known
to all that certain animals are wont to conceive 'by the wind
and air,'! why should anyone think it strange when we say that
the Virgin was made pregnant by the Spirit of God to whom
whatever He wishes is easy? But surely this could seem in-
credible, except that the prophets had declared many ages
before that it would take place. Solomon in the Psalm 19
says: 'The womb of a virgin is impaired and has received a
child; and the virgin has become pregnant and she is become
a mother in much misery.'2 Likewise the prophet Isaia, whose
words are these: 'Therefore the Lord himself will give you
this sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and
you shall call his name Emmanuel.'3
\;\That can be more plainly said than this? The Jews who
killed Him read those very words. If anyone thinks that we are
making them up, let him ask them. They may take the strong-
est proof from them. It is firm enough testimony for proving
the truth because it is presented by those who are our enemies.
He has not been called Emmanuel habitually, however, but
Jesus, which in Latin means salvation or Savior, because He
came as the bearer of salvation to all peoples. 4 But the prophet
declared by this name that God would come to men in flesh.
let. Vergil, Georgics 3.274.
2 This place has not been found in the apocryphal Psalms of Solomon
which are extant.
3 Isa. 7.14.
4 Cf. St. Augustine, Cit)' of God 17.18; Isidore, Origines 7.2; 7; 10.
270 LACTANTIUS

For Emmanuel means 'God with us,' and since that one has
been born of a virgin, men must confess that God is with
them, that is, in the world and in mortal flesh. Whence David
in Psalm 84 says: 'Truth has sprung out of the earth,'5 because
God, in whom is truth, took an earthly body in order that He
might open the way of salvation to earthlings. Isaia himself
says: 'They however did not believe, and they provoked to
wrath the Holy Spirit, and he was turned to be their enemy,
and he fought against them and he remembered the days of
old, who raised the shepherd of his flock from the earth.'6 Who
that shepherd would be he declared in another place, when
he said: 'Let the heavens exult from above, and let the clouds
rain the just. Let the earth be opened and bud forth a savior. I
the Lord have created him.'7 But the Savior is, as we said
above, jesus. In still another place the same prophet spoke
thus: 'For, 10, a child is born to us, and a son is given to us,
whose government is upon his shoulders, and his name has
been called the angel of great counsel.'8
For this reason, therefore, He was sent by God the Father
that He might reveal to all peoples which are under heaven
the holy mystery of the single and true God, which was taken
away from that perfidious people who by turning away often
abandoned God. Daniel also made similar pronouncements:
'I beheld in the vision of the night,' he says, 'and 10, one like
the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven. And he came
even to the Ancient of Days. And those who stood near pre-
sented him. And there was given to him power and glory and
a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve
him. And his power is an everlasting power which shall never
pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.'o How,
then, do the Jews both confess the Christ of God and hope
for Him who have rejected Him for this reason, that He was
5 Ps. 84.12.
6 Isa. 63.10 f.
7 Isa. 45.8.
S Isa. 9.6.
9 Dan. 7.13,14.
 BOOK FOUR 271

born of man? For since it has been thus determined by God

that the same Christ should come upon the earth twice--once,
to announce the one God to all peoples, and then again to
reign-how do they believe in His second coming who have
not believed in the first? The prophet,. though, has embraced
both of His comings in these few words: 'Lo,' he said, 'one
like the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven.' He did
not say 'as the Son of God,' but 'as the Son of Man' so that
he might show that which He would have clothed with flesh
on earth, that with the assumed form of man and his mortal
condition He might teach men justice. And, when performing
the charges of God He had revealed truth to the peoples. He
would suffer even death, to conquer hell also and to return,
and so at length rising again and lifted up on high, to go
back to His Father in heaven. For the prophet had made this
additional note and said: 'And he came even up to the Ancient
of Days and was presented before him.' He called the Supreme
God the Ancient of Days, the age and origin of whom cannot
be comprehended, since He has existed alone from all eternity,
as He will be always unto ages and ages. That Christ would
ascend to God the Father after His Passion and Resurrection
David testified in Psalm 109 in these words: 'The Lord said
to my Lord: sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thy
enemies the footstool for Thy feet.'l0 Since this prophet was
king, whom could he call his lord who was to sit at the right
hand of God except Christ, the Son of God, who is the 'King
of kings and Lord of 10rds'?11
Isaia put this more clearly saying: 'Thus saith the Lord God
to my anointed (Christ) lord, whose right hand I have taken
hold of, to subdue nations before him, and I will break the
might of kings. I will open before him the doors and the gates
of cities shall not be shut. I will go before thee and will
level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of iron
and will burst the bars of iron. And I will give thee hidden
10 Ps. 109.1.
11 Cf. St. Paul; 1 Tim. 6.15.
272 LACTANTIUS

treasures and concealed riches, that you may know that I

am the Lord God who calls thee by thy name.'12 Finally,
on account of the virtue and faith which he presented to
God on earth: 'There was given him honor and power and a
kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him.
And his power is everlasting which shall not be taken away,
and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.'13 This, indeed, is
understood in two ways. He has even now everlasting power
since all nations and all tongues venerate His name, confess
His majesty, follow His teaching, imitate His virtue; He has
kingdom and glory since all tribes of the earth obey His pre-
cepts. And afterwards, when He shall come again in power
and glory to judge each soul and restore the just to life, then
truly, He will hold the dominion of the whole earth. Then,
when all evil has been removed from human affairs, will that
golden age, as the poets call it, arise, that is, that just and
peaceful time. But we shall discuss this more fully in the last
book14 when we speak of the second coming. Now let us
explain about the first as we have begun.

Chapter 13

The Supreme God and Parent of all, then, when He wished

to transfer His religious worship, sent from heaven the
Teacher of justice, so that by new practices He might give a
new law in Him or through Him, not as He had done before
through a man; yet He wished Him to be born as though a
man, however, that He might live through all details like to
the Father Almighty. For God the Father Himself, the Origin
and Principle of all things, since He is without parents, is very
truly named 'The Unfathered' (u7rdT<up) and 'The Unmothered'
(ap,-qrwp) by Trismegistus, because He has beginning from no
12 Isa. 45.1-3.
13 Dan. 7.14.
14 Cf. Bk. 7, ch. 20.
 BOOK FOUR 273

one. Therefore, it was necessary for the Son to be born twice

that He too might be 'Unfathered' and 'Unmothered.' For in
the first spiritual nativity He was without a mother (ap.~T(vp),
since He was begotten by God the Father alone without the
function of a mother. In the second, that according to the
flesh, He was without a father (a71+Wp) , since He was formed
in a virginal womb without the function of a father, so that
bearing a substance midway between God and man He could
carry up this weak and fragile nature of ours in His hand, as
it were, to immortality. He became both Son of God through
the spirit and Son of Man through the flesh, that is, He is
both God and man. The power of God appeared in Him from
the works which He performed; the weakness of man from the
passion which He endured. '!\Thy He underwent this I will
show a little later. Meanwhile, that He was both God and
man, a person in whom the two natures are united, we learn
from the exhortations of the prophets.
Isaia testifies that He was God with these words: 'The labor
of Egypt and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and of Sabaim men
of stature shall come over to thee and shall be thy servants.
They shall walk after thee, they shall go bound with manacles.
And they shall worship thee and make supplication to thee:
only in thee is God; and there is no god besides thee. For
thou art God, and we did not know thee, the God of Israel,
the Savior. They shall be confounded and put to shame, all
who are opposed to thee, and they shall fall into acknowledge-
ment.'l
Likewise did the prophet Jeremia speak thus: 'This is our
God and there shall be no other accounted of in comparison
of Him. He found out all the way of knowledge and gave it to
Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterwards He
was seen upon earth and conversed with men.'2 And David
in Psalm 44: 'Thy throne, 0 God, is forever and ever: the
lIsa. 45.14-16. The Brandt-Laubmann text provides confessionem here
for the Vulgate confusionem which is also in PL.
2 Bar. 3.36-38. Baruch was Jeremia's secretary and disciple, and the
ancient fathers considered his work as part of the prophecy of Jeremia.
274 LACTANTIUS

scepter of Thy Kingdom is a scepter of upnghtness. Thou

hast loved justice, Thou hast hated injustice. Therefore the
Lord Thy God has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness.'3
With this word He even showed His name, since, as I have
explained above,4 He was called 'Christ' from the anointing.
Then, that the same one was man Jeremia shows, saying: 'And
he is man, and who has known him?'5 And Isaia: 'And the
Lord shall send them a man, who shall save them, and judg-
ing them he will heal them.'6 Moses, too, in Numbers speaks
thus: 'A star shall rise out of Jacob and a man (scepter in the
Vulgate) shall spring up from Israel.'7
For this reason when the Milesian Apollo was consulted as
to whether he were a god or man, the response was in this wise:
'Mortal according to the flesh, wise in portent-bearing works,
but convicted by Chaldean judges, doomed to endure a bitter
end... .'8
In the first verse, indeed, he spoke the truth, but he subtly
deceived his consultor who was thoroughly ignorant of the
security of truth, for he seems to have denied that that one
was a god. But when he confesses to have been mortal accord-
ing to the flesh, which we also declare, the consequence is that
according to the spirit he was a god, which we affirm. vVhy
had it been necessary to make mention of the flesh when it
was enough to say that he was mortal? But, pressed by truth,
he could not deny how the matter stood, just as in the case
of that statement which made him wise. What do you answer
to this, Apollo? If he was wise, then his doctrine is wisdom
and nothing else, and those who follow it are none other than
the wise. Why, then, are we taken by the crowd for fools and
empty, witless men who follow a Master who is wise by the
confession of their own gods? For because he said that that
3 Ps. 44.7,8.
4 Ch. 7.
5 JeL 17.9.
6 Isa. 19.20.
7 NUll. 24.17.
8 Cf. Sedulius. (Montcfalconius, Palaeographi graeci, p. 245); C. Wolff,
On the Philosophy of Porphyrius, 184.
 ROOK FOUR 275

one had performed portentous works whereby he merited

especially the faith of divinity, he seems now to agree with us
since he says the same things in which we glory. Then he
gathers himself together and returns to demoniac deceits. For
when he had spoken the truth of necessity, he seemed, then, a
betrayer of the gods and of himself, if he had not obscured
what truth had expressed by him with the deceit of a lie.
Therefore, he says that that one performed marvelous works,
indeed, but not by divine power but by magic. Why is it
strange, since Apollo persuaded this as truth to the ignorant,
'when the Jews also, worshipers as they seemed of the supreme
God, thought this same thing, when before their eyes those
marvels were daily performed? But they could not have been
impelled, however, by the contemplation of such great powers
to believe him a god whom they saw. For this reason, David,
whom before all others they read especially, thus condemns
them in Psalm 27: 'Render to them for their deeds, because
they have not understood the works of the Lord.'9
Both David himself and the other prophets announced that
Christ would be generated according to the flesh from the
house of this very David. In Isaia it is written thus: 'And
there shall come to pass in that day the root of Jesse and he
who shall rise up to be lorded among the peoples. In him the
gentiles shall hope and his rest shall be in honor.'lo And in
another place: 'And there shall come forth a rod out of the
root of Jesse and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And
the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom
and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of fortitude,
the spirit of knowledge and of godliness, and the spirit of the
fear of the Lord shall fill him.'ll
Now Jesse was the father of David, from whose root he fore-
told that a flower would spring, that one, namely, of whom the
Sibyl said: 'A fair Hower shall rise Up.'12
9 Ps. 27.4 f.
10 Isa. 11.10.
11 lsa. 1Ll·3.
12 }'\g. 6.8.
276 LACTANTIUS

Likewise, in the second Book of Kings, the prophet Nathan

was sent to David who was desirous of building a temple to
God. 'And it came to pass that the word of the Lord came to
Nathan saying: Go and say to my servant David: Thus saith
the Lord God Almighty: Thou shalt not build me a house to
dwell in, but when thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shall
sleep with thy fathers, I will raise up thy seed after thee, and
I will prepare his kingdom. He shall build a house for me in
my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for-
ever. And I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a
son. And his house shall be faithful and his kingdom shall be
forever.'13
But that the Jews might not understand these words, that
was the reason that Solomon, David's son, built the temple
to God and the city which he named Jerusalem after himself.
So they referred to him the things which had been said by the
prophet. Solomon, however, received the power of command
from his father himself. The prophets, however, were speaking
of him who was then to be born after David had gone to rest
with his fathers. Besides, the command of Solomon was not
perpetual, for he reigned forty years. Then, because he is
never called the Son of God but the son of David, and because
the house which he built was not faithful (i.e., did not attain
unto faith), as the Church which is the true temple of God,
since it does not consist in walls but in the hearts and faith-
fulness of the men who believe in Him and are called the faith-
ful, that temple of Solomon'S, therefore, since it was made
with hands, fell to hands. Finally, his father in Psalm 126
prophesied in this manner concerning the works of his son:
'If the Lord does not build the house, they have labored in
vain who have built it. And unless the Lord guard the city,
in vain hath the guard kept vigil.'14

13 2 Kings 7.4.5; 12-14; 16.

14 Ps. 126.1.
 BOOK FOUR 277

Chapter 14

From these things it is clear that all the prophets made fore-
tellings about Christ, that he would be born someday of the
line of David according to the flesh and establish an eternal
temple unto God, which is called the Church, and that He
would call all peoples to the true religion of God. This is the
faithful house, this the immortal temple, in which anyone who
does not sacrifice will not have the reward of immortality.
Since Christ was the maker of this great and everlasting temple,
it must be that the same have within it an everlasting priest-
hood, nor can there be any coming to the entrance of the
temple and to the sight of God except through Him who
established t..lJ.e temple.
David shows this same truth in Psalm 109 saying: 'Before
the days tar I begot thee. The Lord has sworn and he will not
repent: Thou art a priest forever.'! And in the first Book of
Kings we read: 'And I will raise me up a faithful priest, who
shall do all things according to my heart, and I will build him
a faithful house; and he shall walk in my sight all days.'2
N ow who this one would be to whom God promised an
eternal priesthood Zacharia has taught, even giving his name
most clearly. For thus he spoke: 'And the Lord God showed
me Jesus the high priest standing before the face of the angel
of the Lord, and the devil stood at his right hand to be his
adversary. And the Lord said to the devil: May the Lord
that chose Jerusalem rule over thee, and behold the brand
plucked out of the fire! And Jesus was clothed with filthy
garments: and he stood before the face of the angel. And he
answered and said to them that stood around before his face,
saying: Take away the filthy garments from him, and put on
him a tunic and sandals, and put a clean mitre upon his head.
And they clothed him with garments and put a clean mitre
upon his head. And the angel of the Lord stood and testified
1 Cf. Ps. 109.3 f.
2 Cf. 1 Kings 2.35.
278 LACTANTIUS

before Jesus, saying: Thus saith the Lord Almighty: if thou

wilt walk in my ways and keep my charges, thou shalt judge
my house. And I will give thee some of them that are now
present to walk with thee. Hear, then, a Jesus, thou high
priest.'3
Therefore, who would not believe that the Jews, then, were
captives in their minds who, when they read these prophecies
and heard them, inflicted criminal hands upon their God? But
from that time in which Zacharia lived until the fifteenth year
of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Christ was crucified,
almost five hundred years are numbered, inasmuch as he grew
up in the age of Darius and Alexander, who lived not long
after Tarquin the Proud was expelled. But they are again
false and deceived in the same manner thinking that these
things were spoken of concerning Jesus, the son of Nave
(Nun), who was the successor of Moses, or about the priest-
hood of Jesus, the son of Josedech; but nothing of those things
which the prophet told fits these. For they were never in filthy
clothing, since one of them was a most powerful prince and
the other a priest; nor did they ever suffer adversity that they
should be thought of as a brand snatched from the fire; nor
did they ever stand in the presence of God and the angels,
or else the prophet was speaking of past events rather than of
future ones.
He spoke, therefore, of Jesus, the Son of God, in order to
show that He would come first in humility and in the flesh.
For this is the sordid vestment so that He might prepare a
temple for God, and as a brand that He might be burned
with fire, that is, He endured the tortures from men and was
extinguished at last. For they commonly call a brand a rod
which has been extracted from the hearth, half-burned and
extinguished. But in what way and with what commands He
was sent by God upon the earth, the spirit of God declared,
speaking through the prophet, what would take place, so that
when He had fulfilled the will of the Almighty Father faith-
3 Cf. Zach. 3.1-8.
 BOOK FOUR 279

fully and constantly, He received judgment and everlasting

power. 'If you walk in my ways: He said, 'and keep my
charges, you will judge my house.'4
'!\That these ways of God were and what His precepts were
is neither doubtful nor obscure. For when God saw that malice
and the worship of false gods had become so strong throughout
the world that His name had been almost removed from the
memory of men-inasmuch as the Jews also, to whom alone
the secret of God had been entrusted, abandoning the living
God, had gone astray to the worship of idols, being ensnared
by the deceits of the devils, nor were they willing to return to
God at the instigation of the prophets-He appointed His Son,
the Prince of Angels, for men, to convert them from impious
and vain cults to a knowledge and worship of the true God,
and also to draw their minds from folly to wisdom, from
iniquity to works of justice. These are the ways of God in
which He charged Him to walk; these are the precepts which
He commanded to be kept. That One, indeed, put faith in
God: He taught that God is one and that He alone ought to
be adored, nor did He ever call Himself God, because He
would not have kept faith, if, sent to remove false gods and
make claim for the one, He should bring in another besides
that One. 5 This was not to perform the heralding of the one
God and not of Him who had sent Him, but it was doing His
own proper work and the separating of Himself (as a person)
from Him whom He had come to make manifest. On this
account, because He is so faithful, because He assumed nothing
unto Himself outrightly, in order to fulfill the commands of
His Sender, He has received both the dignity of a perpetual
priesthood and the honor of the Supreme King and the power
of the Judge and the Name of God.

4 Cf. Zach. 3.7.

5 The Hebrews of old were not capable of explicit and detailed teach-
ings on the Trinity, and this passage shows us that Lactantius has not
an accurate grasp of this sublime dogma. His efforts, strained as they
are, at conscientious explanation, however, are laudable.
280 LACTANTIUS

Chapter 15

Since we have spoken of His second nativity by which He

showed Himself to men in the flesh, let us come now to those
wondrous works which, because they were indices of celestial
power, the Jews thought were the works of magic. As soon
as He began manhood, He was baptized in the river Jordan by
the prophet John, that by this spiritual washing He might
put aside, not His sins, which He certainly did not have, but
sins of the flesh or human nature which He was bearing; so
that, just as He saved the Jews by their undergoing of circum-
cision, thus also He might save the Gentiles through baptism,
that is, through the pouring of the purifying dew. Then a
voice was heard from heaven: 'Thou art My beloved son, this
day have I begotten thee.'l This word is found predicted in
David. And there descended upon Him the Spirit of God
formed in the likeness of a white dove. 2
From then on He began to work the greatest powers, not
through the trickery of magic, which shows nothing true and
solid, but by the strength and power of heaven. And these
works were long since declared by the announcements of the
prophets. They are so many that one book would not be
enough to include the accounts of them all. I will list them
briefly, therefore, and according to their type without any
designation of persons or places, so that I may arrive at the
point of recounting His Passion and cross, toward which this
account has been hurrying now for a long time. His were
powers which Apollo called 'portent-bearing,'3 because
wherever He made His way, the sick and weak and those labor-
ing under every kind of infirmity He made whole in a moment
and with a word, so much so that those who were taken, all
their members afflicted, suddenly invigorated with new

1 Cf. Luke 3.23; Ps. 2.7. This union of the quotations is not unique.
2 Luke mentions the dove. The idea of the 'white dove' Lactantius may
have taken from the Sibylline Oracie, VI.7.
3 Cf. ch. 13, n. 8.
 BOOK FOUR 281

strength, would themselves carry back the stretchers on which

they had been borne to Him a little while before. 4
To those who were lame and afflicted with disease of the
feet, He gave the faculty, not only of walking, but even of
running. Those whose blinded eyes kept them in deepest
darkness He restored to their pristine vision. The tongues of
the dumb also He loosed unto speech and eloquence. Likewise,
He opened the ears of the deaf and breathed hearing into
them; those polluted and covered with sores He cleansed. 5
And He did all these things, not with His hands or with some
charm, but by a word and a command, just as the Sibyl had
foretold: 'Doing all things with a word and healing all sick-
ness.'6 Certainly, it is not strange that He did marvelous works
with a word, since He Himself was the word of God sustained
with the power and virtue of heaven. Nor was it enough that
He gave strength to the weak, soundness to the debilitated,
health to the sick and infirm, unless He also raised the dead
and recalled them to life, just as though they had been released
from sleep. Seeing these things, the Jews then claimed that
they were performed by demoniacal power, although their
secret writings contained all these things that would be done
as though they were done. For they read surely both the words
of the other prophets and also those of Isaia, saying: 'Be
strengthened, ye feeble hands, and be consoled, weak knees.
You who are faint-hearted, do not fear, do not be afraid. Our
God will bring judgment; He Himself will come and save us.
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the
deaf shall hear. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and
the tongue of the dumb shall be free. For waters are broken
out in the desert and streams in the wilderness.'7 But the Sibyl
chanted the same things in these verses: 'There will be the
raising up of the dead and a swifter running of the lame, and

4 Cf. Matt. 9.6.

5 Cf. Isa. 35.5,6.
6 VII1.272. Cf. Montefalconius, Palaeographi graeci, p. 245.
7 Cf. Isa. 35.3-6.
282 LACTANTIUS

the deaf will hear, and the blind will see, and those without
speech will talk: s
'When a great multitude followed Him on account of these
powers and His divine works, a multitude of sick or weak or
of those who wished to present their ailments to be cured,
He went up into a certain deserted mountain place to worship
there. When He had stayed for three days and because the
people were suffering hunger, He called His disciples and
asked them how many loaves they were carrying with them.
They said that they had five loaves and two fishes in a basket.
He ordered them brought to Him and had the multitude re-
cline after having been arranged in groups of fifty. While His
disciples were doing this, He broke the bread and the meat of
the fishes into small pieces, and both foods were increased in
His hands. And when He had ordered His disciples to place
it before the people, five thousand men were filled, and be-
sides, twelve baskets were filled with the fragments that
remained. 9 vVhat more marvelous can be said or done? But
the Sibyl had once foretold that such would be. Verses such
as these are related by her: 'From five loaves of bread and
some fishes of the sea he will fill five thousand men in the
desert, and taking up all the fragments left around, he will
fill twelve baskets in the hope of the people.'l0 I ask, therefore,
what magic art could accomplish here the skill which has no
other power than that of circumventing the eyes, that is,
causing an illusion.
When He was about to go apart into the mountain to pray,
as was His wont, He charged His disciples to take the boat
and to go before Him. And as evening approached, they began
to struggle, being carried by an unfavorable wind. And now
when they were holding their course in the middle of the sea,
He, walking upon the water, followed them, just as though
He were stepping on the ground,11 not as the poets deceitfully
8 VIII.205-207.
9 Cf. Matt. 14.13 II.
10 VIII.275-277.
11 Cf. Matt. 14.22 II.
 BOOK FOUR 283

tell us that Orion walks upon the sea who, though part of his
body is submerged, 'overtops the waves with his shoulders.'12
Again, when He had gone to sleep in the boat, and the wind
had begun to rage to the point of extreme danger, awakened
from sleep He straightway ordered the wind to be silent and
the waves which were being borne very high to be still. And
immediately at His word there followed a calm. 13 Perhaps
the holy writings lie when they teach that such great power
was in Him, that He compelled the winds to obey His com-
mand, the seas to serve, sicknesses to depart, and the powers
of hell to comply. What of the fact that the Sibyls taught
the same things in their chants long before? One of these,
mention of whom we made above,14 speaks thus: 'The winds
he will stop with a word; he will smooth the maddened sea
and entrust it with an abiding peace.'15 And again, there is
another Sibyl who says: 'He will travel the waves; he will put
a stop to sicknesses of men; he will raise the dead; he will
drive away much pain; from one penny worth of bread, a
band of men will be fed.'16 Convinced by these testimonies
certain men are accustomed to take refuge with this argu-
ment: they say that those are not Sibylline chants, but that
they were fashioned and arranged by our own people. But
certainly one will not think this who has read Cicero 17 and
Varro18 and the other ancient writers who make mention of
the Erythraean Sibyl and the others from whose books we
drew those examples. These authors died before Christ was
born according to the flesh. But I do not doubt that those
chants were regarded in former times as the ravings of de-
lirium, since no one understood them. For they denounced
certain monstrous and remarkable happenings of which neither
12 Vergil, Aeneid 10.764.
13 Cf. Matt. S.23 If.
14 Cf. n. S.
15 VIIl.273,274.
IG VI.J3-15.
17 Cf. On Divination l.lS.34.
IS Cf. Book 1.6. Cf. also Jerome, Against Jovinian 1.306D; St. Augustine,
City of God lS.23.
284 LACTANTIUS

the plan nor the time nor the author was designated. In
conclusion, Erythraea said that she would be called insane
and a liar. Note these verses: 'They will say that the Sibyl
is lying, deceitful. When all things shall come to pass, then
no one shall make mention of me and no one will say that
I lie, the prophetess of the great GOd.'19 They have lain as
secrets for many ages, but they were noticed after the Na-
tivity of Christ and His Passion made clear their secret mean-
ing, as did the words of the prophets also. Since these things
had been read for a thousand five hundred years and more,
but were not understood until after Christ had interpreted
them by His words and works-for the prophets had an-
nounced Him-neither could those things which they spoke
be understood in any way, unless they had all been fulfilled.

Chapter 16

I come now to the Passion itself which is ordinarily pre-

sented to us as an opprobrium, because we revere Him also
as man and a man afflicted with extreme punishment and tor-
tured by men, so that I may show that that very Passion had
been so undergone with His great divine purpose, and that
in it alone are contained virtue and truth and wisdom. For if
He had been most happy upon the earth and had reigned
throughout His whole life in supreme felicity, not any wise
man would have believed Him God or judged Him worthy
of divine honor. Those devoid of true divinity do this. They
not only look up to transitory riches and frail power and
the goods of an alien benefice, but they even consecrate them.
With full knowledge they serve the memory of the dead, cul-
tivating a fortune already extinct, which the wise have ever
thought should not be cultivated by them even if it were liv-
ing and present. For not anything in earthly matters can be

19 111.814 ff.
 BOOK FOUR 285

venerable and worthy of heaven, but it is virtue alone, justice

alone, which can be judged a true good, both heavenly and
perpetual, since it is neither given to anyone or taken away.!
Since Christ came upon the earth endowed with this virtue
and justice; rather, in fact, since He is Himself virtue and
since He is Himself justice, He came down in order to teach
it and instruct men. Performing this magisterium and ambas-
sadorship of God on account of that same virtue which He
both taught and made at the same time, He merited to be and
could be believed God by all peoples. Therefore, when a great
number of the people surged toward Him in eagerness, be-
cause of the justice which He taught or the miracles which
He performed, and when they heard His instructions and be-
lieved that He was sent by God and was the Son of God, then
the leaders of the Jews and their priests, goaded by anger be-
cause they were charged by Him as though they were sinners,
and depraved by envy because they saw themselves contemned
and deserted as the multitude swayed toward Him, and (and
this was the source of their crime!) blinded by foolishness and
error, and unmindful of the heavenly precepts and the proph-
ets, they banded together against Him and formed an impious
plan for taking Him and crucifying Him. Long before the
prophets had described this. For David, in the beginning of
his Psalms, foreseeing in spirit how great a crime they were
going to adopt, said: 'Blessed is the man who hath not walked
in the counsel of the ungodly.'2 And Solomon in the Book of
Wisdom used these words: 'Let us therefore lie in wait for
the just because he is not sweet to us and upbraideth us with
transgressions of the law. He boasteth that he hath the knowl-
edge of God and calleth himself the son of God. He has be-
come unto us a censurer of our thoughts. He is grievous unto
us, even to behold, for his life is not like other men's, and
his ways are very different vVe are esteemed by him as triflers:
and he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and he
1 Cf. Sallust, Jugurtha 1.3.
2 Cf. Ps. 1.1.
286 LACTANTIUS

prcferreth the latter end o[ the just, and glorieth that he hath
God [or his father. Let us see, then, if his words be true, and
let us prove what shall happen to him, Let us examine him
by outrages and tortures that we may know his meekness and
try his patience. Let liS condemn him to a most shameful
death. These things they thought and were deceived: for their
own malice blinded them, and they knew not the secrets of
God.'3
Did he not so describe that nefarious plan entered into by
the ungodly against God that he would seem to have been
there? But from Solomon, who said this, until that time at
which the events took place, one thousand and ten years
passed. We make up nothing. vVe add nothing. Those who
did these things had the books. Those against whom these
things were spoken read them. But now the heirs also of their
name and crime have them. And in their daily readings they
sound forth their own damnation predicted by the words of
the prophets, nor do they ever admit into their hearts what
this very part is of their damnation. The Jews, therefore,
charged by Christ who often reproved them for their sins and
injustice, and almost deserted by the people, were aroused to
kill Him. His humility gave them the daring for this crime.
For when they read with what great majesty and brightness
the Son of God would come from heaven, and they beheld
Jesus lowly, poor, and unsightly, they did not believe Him
to be the Son of God. They were not aware that His two
comings had been spoken of by the prophets: the first, obscure
in the humility of the flesh; the second, manifested in the
power of majesty. Of the first David speaks thus in the seventy-
first psalm: 'He shall come down like rain upon the fleece, and
in his days shall justice spring up and abundance of peace,
till the moon be taken away.'4 For just as the rain, if it de-
scends upon fleece, cannot be noticed because it does not make
a noise, so he said that Christ would come upon the earth
3 Cf. Wisd. 2.12-17; 19-22.
4 Cf. Ps. 71.6,7.
 BOOK FOUR 287

without anyone's suspecting it, so that He might teach justice

and peace.
Isaia also gave it forth in this manner: '0 Lord, who hath
believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed? We have spoken in his presence as of a child, and
as a root in thirsty ground. There was no beauty in him nor
comeliness and we have seen him, and he had no sightliness
nor grace, but his look was without honor and lacking beyond
the rest of men. A man placed in a trap and knowing how to
bear weakness, because he was turned aside and was not
reckoned. This one bears our sins and grieves for us, and we
have thought him to be in pain and a snare and in vexation.
But he was wounded for our iniquities and he was bruised
for our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone
astray, and God has handed him over for our sins.'5
And the Sibyl in the same strain: 'Pitiable, without honor,
unsightly, in order to give hope to the pitiable.'6 On account
of this lowliness, they did not recognize their God and entered
upon a detestable plan to deprive of life Him who had come
to give them life.

Chapter 17

Of the wrath and ill-will which they bore enclosed in their

hearts, they put forward other causes: that He was breaking
the law of God given through Moses, that is, He did not ab-
stain on the Sabbath from working for the salvation of men;
or that He made circumcision as of no account; or that He
did away with abstinence from the meat of swine. The sacra-
ments of the Jewish religion consist in these things. On ac-
count of these things, then, the other part of the people, which
had not yet gone over to Christ, was incited by the priests to
judge Him as wicked because He broke the law of God, al-
5 Cf. Isa. 53.1-6.
6 VIII.257.
288 LACTANTIUS

though He was doing this, not according to His own deter-

mination, but by the will of God, and according to the pre-
dictions of the prophets. For Michea announced that the
New Law would be given in this way: The law shall go forth
out of Sion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. And
he shall judge among many people and he shall vanquish and
rebuke nations.'l For that prior law which was given through
Moses was given, not on Mount Sion, but on Mount Horeb.
And the Sibyl showed that this would be destroyed by the Son
of God. 'But when all these things have been fulfilled which
he spoke, at that time then the whole law is destroyed.'2
But even Moses himself (and while they tenaciously cling
to their argument that the law was given to them through
him, they have fallen away from God and have not known
him) had foretold that the greatest prophet would be sent from
God. He would be One who is above the law, who presents the
will of God to men. s In Deuteronomy he left it written thus:
'And the Lord said to me: I will raise them up a prophet out
of the midst of their brethren like to thee. And I will put my
words in his mouth: And he shall speak to them all that I
shall command him. And he that will not hear the words
which that prophet shall speak in my name, I will be the
revenger.'4 God, then, declared through His lawbearer himself
that He would send His Son, that is, the present law and life,
and that He would destroy the old law that had been given
through a mortal, so that at last through Him who was eternal
He might sanction the eternal law.
About the abolishing of circumcision, too, Isaia prophesied
in this manner: 'For thus saith the Lord to the men of Juda
and those who inhabit Jerusalem: Make renovation among
yourselves and be renewed, and sow not upon thorns. Be
circumcised to your God, and take away the foreskins of your

1 Cf. Mich. 4.2,3.

2 VIII.299,300.
3 He and the Giver of the Decalogue are one. Cf. John 10.30.
4 Cf. Deut. 18.17-19.
 BOOK FOUR 289

hearts, lest my indignation come forth like fire, and there be

none that can quench it.'·)
Also Moses himself: 'In the last days the Lord God will
circumcise thy heart that thou mayest love the Lord thy God.'6
And in like manner in Jesus, the son of Nun, the successor
of Moses, we note: 'And the Lord said to Jesus: Make thee
knives of stone exceedingly sharp and sit and circumcise a
second time the children of Israel.'7 He said that this second
circumcision would not be of the flesh as was the first, which
the Jews stilI practice, but of the heart and spirit, which
Christ, who was the true Jesus, gave. 8
For the prophet does not speak this way: 'And the Lord
said to me; but to Jesus, in order to show that he was not
speaking of himself but of Christ to whom God was then
speaking. For that Jesus was a figure of Christ. Although he
was first called Osee, Moses, foreseeing the future, ordered him
to be called Josue (or Jesus), so that, since he was selected
leader of the soldiery against Amalec who was attacking the
children of Israel, he might overcome the adversary through
the figure of his name and lead the people into the land of
promise.!} And for this reason also he succeeded Moses, to show
that the New Law given through Jesus Christ would succeed
the Old Law which was given through Moses.
That circumcision of the flesh surely is without reason,
because, if God wished it, He would have formed men thus
from the beginning, not having the foreskin. But it was a
figure of this second circumcision, signifying that the heart
should be bared, that is, that we ought to live with an open
and simple heart, because that part of the body which is cir-

5 The quotation is actually from Jer. (not Isa.) 4.3,4.

6 Cf. Deut. 30.6.
7 Cf. Jos. 5.2.
8 The Greeks called Josue 'Jesus' for the two names are the same in
Hebrew. The meaning is 'savior.' It was not without significance.
Moses by his law could only bring the people within sight of the
promised inheritance, but our Savior, Jesus (prefigured by Josue), was
to bring us into it.
9 Cf. Num. 13.9,17.
290 LACTANTIUS

cmncised has a certain likeness to the heart and it is shame-

causing. For this reason God ordered it to have its skin re-
moved or be uncovered to warn us by this lesson that we
should keep an uncovered heart, that is, that we should not
veil any shameful deed within the secrets of conscience. This
is the circumcision of the heart, of which the prophets speak,
which God transferred from mortal flesh to the soul, which
alone will last. In that circumcision He had placed before us
penance, wishing us to look out for our life and salvation in
accord with His everlasting affection, so that if we strip our
hearts, that is, if we make to God satisfactory confession of
our sins, we may attain pardon which is denied to those
concealing their faults by Him who beholds not the face, as
man does, but the hidden recesses of the heart.
The interdict on the eaiing of pork meat looks also to the
same end. When God ordered them to abstain from pork,
He meant this to be understood especially that they should
abstain from their sins and impurities. For this animal is filthy
and unclean and never looks up to the sky, but thrust upon
the earth with its whole body and face, it ever lives for its
belly and food. Nor is it able, while it lives, to perform any
other use, as do the other animals, which furnish a means of
riding, or help in the cultivation of the fields, or drag the
wagons yoked to their necks, or carry packs on their backs, or
provide clothing from their skins, or give forth a supply of
milk, or watch as guardians of homes. Therefore, He com-
manded that they should not use the flesh of swine, that is,
that they should not imitate the life of pigs who are nourished
only unto death, lest serving their stomachs and pleasures
they would be useless for the work of justice and would be
afflicted with death. He commanded, likewise, that they should
not plunge themselves into foul licentiousness, just as a sow
which is absorbed in the mire, nor should they serve earthly
images and stain themselves with mud. For those who venerate
false gods, that is, idols of clay and earth, smear themselves
with mud. Thus all the precepts of the Jewish law look toward
 BOOK FOUR 291

the working of justice, because they were given enigmatically,

so that through the figure of carnal things the spiritual things
might be understood.

Chapter 18

When Christ fulfilled, therefore, those things which God

wished to be done and which He had spoken many ages before
through His prophets, stirred up by those things and in ig-
norance of the divine writings, the Jews came together to
condemn their God. Since He knew that this would be and
said that hence it was necessary for Him to suffer and to be put
to death for the salvation of many, He went apart, however,
with His disciples, not to avoid what He must suffer and
undergo, but to show that it would be necessary to act in
this way in every persecution, lest anyone should seem to have
fallen through his own fault. 1 And He announced also that He
would be betrayed by one of them. So Judas, enticed by a
reward, gave Him over to the Jews. They had Him seized
and brought to Pontius Pilate, who was then ruling Syria as
legate, and they demanded of him that Jesus be crucified,
charging Him with nothing other than that He said He was
Son of God, the King of the Jews. Also because He had said:
'If you destroy this temple which was six and forty years in
building, I will raise it up in three days without hands.'2
He meant that His Passion would be brief and that when
He was put to death by the Jews He would raise Himself up
on the third day. For He Himself was the true temple of God.
They fastened upon these words of His as though ill-omened
and impious. When Pilate heard them and, when He said
nothing in His own defense, he declared that nothing in Him
seemed worthy of condemnation. But those most unjust
accusers began to raise a tumult with the people whom they
1 Cf. Tertullian, Apology c. 21; Cyprian, That the Idols Are Not Gods,
c. 13.
2 The reference is a combination of John 2.19,20, and Mark 14.58.
292 LACTANTIUS

had aroused and to demand His crucifixion with violent cries.

Then Pilate was conquered by their clamors and by the instiga-
tion of the tetrarch, Herod, fearing that he would be torn
from power; but he would not deliver the sentence himself,
however, and handed Him over to the Jews that they might
judge Him according to their law.
They led Him away, then, to be scourged with whips and,
before they fastened Him to the cross, they mocked Him.
They clothed Him with a purple garment and with His head
crowned with thorns they mockingly hailed Him as a King.
They gave Him gall for food and mixed a drink of vinegar for
Him. After this they spit in His face and slapped Him with
their hands. And when those executioners were struggling over
His garments, they cast lots among themselves for His tunic
and pallium. While all these things were being done, He let
not a word pass from His mouth, as though He were dumb.
Then they suspended Him between two malefactors who were
condemned for robbery, and they crucified Him.
What do I deplore here in so great a crime, or with what
words shall I complain for such great evil? For we are not
describing the Gavian cross which Marcus Tullius prosecuted
with every fiber and all the strength of his eloquence, as though
poured forth from the fountains of all his genius, proclaim-
ing it an 'unworthy crime for a Roman citizen to be raised
upon a cross against alllaws.'3 That one, although he was in-
nocent and undeserving of that punishment, was mortal, how-
ever, and he was afflicted by an evil man who did not know
justice. What shall we say about the indignity of this cross
on which God was fastened and hung by worshipers of God?
Who so eloquent and endowed with such great abundance of
material and words exists? What speech is there running over
with the richness of such great wealth as to rightly deplore
that cross which the world itself and all the elements of the
world mourned? That these things would take place, however,

3 Cf. Cicero, Against Vel"TeS 5.61.150,151.

 BOOK FOUR 293

was announced beforehand by both the words of the prophets

and the Sibylline chants.
The following is found in Isaia: 'I am not stubborn and I
do not resist. I have given my body to the strikers, and my
cheeks to them that plucked them: I have not turned away
my face from the foulness of them that spit upon me.'4 And
David in Psalm 34 speaks in a similar strain: 'Scourgers were
gathered together upon me and they knew it not. They were
separated and repented not: they tempted me, they scoffed
at me with scorn, they gnashed upon me with their teeth.'5
The Sibyl also pointed out that those same things would
happen: 'Into wicked hands and those of the unfaithful he
will afterwards come. They will heap upon God blows from
unclean hands, and from impure mouths they will expel de-
filed sputum. But he will give for their blows simply a holy
back.'6
Likewise of His silence, which He kept tenaciously even
unto death, Isaia spoke again thus: 'He was led as a sheep
to the slaughter, and he was as a lamb before his shearers,
without a word, and thus he did not open his mouth.'7 And
the above-mentioned Sibyl: 'And receiving the blows he will
be silent, so that no one may know what the word is or whence
he comes, in order that he might address the lowly and wear a
crown of thorns.'8
Of the food and drink, however, which they offered Him
before they put Him on the cross,9 David says in Psalm 68:
'And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they
gave me vinegar to drink.'l0 And the Sibyl, too, sang of this
same thing that would come to be: 'For food, however, they
4 Cf. Isa. 50.5,6.
5 Cf. Ps. 34.15,16.
6 Sibylline Oracles VIII.287 If.; d. also St. Augustine, City of God 18.23.
7 Cf. Isa. 53.7.
8 VIII.292 If. Cf. St. Augustine, loco cit.
9 Evidently this is the order of events Lactantius wishes to insist upon,
Matthew (27.34,35) and Mark (15.23,24) give the presentation of the
food and drink before the crucifixion, but Luke (23.36) and John
(19.28,29) relate the presentation as being made to Jesus on the cross.
10 Ps. 68.22.
294 LACTANTIUS

gave him gall and for his thirst they gave him vinegar; they
will offer this table of inhospitality,'l1 Another Sibyl chides
the country of Judea with these verses: 'Foolish one, thou
hast not known thy God playing with the minds of mortals,
but you crowned him with thorns and mixed for him horrid
gall.'12
That the Jews were going to lay hands on their God and
kill Him, these testimonies of the prophets gave witness before-
hand. In Esdras there is this passage: 'And Esdras spoke to
the people: This pasch is our saviour and our refuge. Con-
sider and let it ascend into your hearts that we intend to
humiliate him with a sign. And after this we shall hope in
him, lest this place be deserted for all times, saith the Lord
of hosts. If you do not believe him nor hear his message, you
'V/ill be for a derision among the peoples.'13 From this it is
clear that the Jews have no other hope unless they wash them-
selves of the blood and put their hope in the very one whom
they killed.
Isaia also marks their crime and says: 'In humility was his
judgment taken away. Who shall declare his generation?
Since his life will be taken away from the land, he has been
led away to death by the wickedness of my people. And I
shall give the ungodly for his burial and the rich for his death:
because he hath done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in
his mouth. Therefore he shall win very many, and he shall
divide the spoils of the strong, because he hath been delivered
to death, and he was reputed among the wicked. And he hath
borne the sins of many, and he was delivered up because of
their transgressions.'14
And David in Psalm 93: 'They will hunt after the soul of
the just and will condemn innocent blood, but the Lord has
become my refuge.'15 Jeremia, too, said: 'Show me, 0 Lord,
II VIII.303,304.
12 VI.22,23.
13 The passage is not found in the Book of Esdras, but d. Justin'S Dialogue
with Trypho 297D where the same reference is given.
14 Cf. Isa. 53.8,9,12.
15 Cf. Ps. 93.21,22.
 BOOK FOUR 295

and I shall know. Then I saw their plottings. And I was

carried as a meek lamb to be the victim. They devised counsels
against me, saying: Let us put wood on his bread and cut him
off from the land of the living, and his name shall be re-
membered no more.'16 Now the wood signifies the cross and the
bread His body, because He is Himself the food and life of
all who believe in the flesh which He put on and by which
He hung upon the cross.
But of this Moses himself spoke more plainly in Deuteron-
omy as follows: 'And thy life shall be hanging before thee.
Thou shalt fear night and day: neither shalt thou trust thy
life.'17 And, likewise, again in Numbers: 'And the Lord is not
suspended as though a man, neither does he suffer threats as
though a son of man.'18 Zacharia, too, gave them this: 'And
they shall look upon me whom they have pierced.'19 And in
like manner David spoke in Psalm 21: 'They have dug my
hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. They
have looked and stared upon me. They parted my garments
amongst them, and upon my vesture they cast 10ts.'20 Surely
the prophet did not speak these things of himself. For he was
king, and he never endured those indignities, but the Spirit
of God was speaking through him, and He would have suffered
those things a thousand and fifty years hence. For that many
years are reckoned from the reign of King David to the death
of Christ on the cross.
His son Solomon, too, who established Jerusalem, proph-
esied that she herself would perish unto the avenging of the
holy cross: 'But if you turn away from me, saith the Lord, and
will not keep my truth, I will cast away Israel from the land
which I have given to them. And this house which I have built
for them in my name, I will cast it forth from all, and Israel
shall be for the ruin and disgrace for the people. And this
16 Cf. Jer. 11.18; and 19 (Douay).
17 Cf. Deu t. 28.66.
18 Cf. NUll. 23.l9.
J9 Cf. Zach. 12.10
20 Cf. Ps. 21.17-19.
296 LACTANTIUS

house shall be deserted, and everyone who shall pass by shall

be astonished and shall say: '\!\Thy hath the Lord done these
evils to this land and this house? And they shall say: Because
they forsook the Lord their God, and they persecuted their
king, most beloved of God, and they crucified him in much
humiliation. Therefore hath the Lord brought upon them all
this evil.' 21

Chapter 19

What more can be said now about the crime of the Jews
than that they were then blinded and seized with incurable
madness who, reading these prophecies daily, neither under-
stood them nor were able to avoid what they were doing?
Suspended, then, and fastened to His cross Christ cried out to
God the Father in a loud voice and willingly laid down His
life. 1 In that same hour there was an earthquake, and the
veil of the temple which separated the two tabernacles was
cut in two, and the sun was suddenly withdrawn, and from
the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness. 2 The
prophet Amos bears witness to this. 'And it shall come to
pass in that day, saith the Lord, that the sun shall go down
at midday, and the day shall be darkened of light. And I will
turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamen-
tation.'3
And Jeremia said: 'She is become terrified who giveth birth,
and her soul hath fainted away. Her sun is gone down while
it was yet day: she is confounded and ashamed. And the rest
of them I will give up to the sword in the sight of their
enemies.'4
Note the Sibylline prophecy, too: 'The veil of the temple
21 Cf. 3 Kings 9.6·9.
1 Cf. Terullian, Apology c. 21.
2 Cf. Mark 15.33.
3 Cf. Amos 8.9,10.
4 Cf. Jer. 15.9.
 BOOK FOUR 297

shall be split, and in the middle of the day there will be

night with its darkness exceeding great for three hours.'5
When these things took place, they were not able to under-
stand their crime even then by the celestial prodigies, but
because He had foretold that He would rise again from the
dead on the third day, fearing that, if His body were stolen
and removed by His disciples, all would believe that He had
arisen and that there would be a much greater confusion
among the people, they took His body down from the cross,
and enclosing it safely in a tomb, they surrounded it with a
military guard. But on the third day, before light, there was
a sudden quaking of the earth by which the sepulchre was
suddenly opened up, and although the guards whom fright
had astonished and stupified did not behold anything, He,
coming forth from the tomb uncorrupted and alive, departed
to Galilee to seek His disciples. Nothing was found in the
sepulchre except the winding sheet with which they had bound
and wrapped His body. The prophets had foretold, however,
that He would not remain among the dead but would rise on
the third day.
Hear David in Psalm 15: 'Thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell: nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption.'6 And
also in the third psalm: '1 have slept and have taken my rest:
and 1 have risen up because the Lord hath protected me.'7
Osee also, the first of the twelve prophets, testified concern-
ing His Resurrection: 'This my son is wise: therefore now he
shall not resist in the breach of his children. And I will deliver
him out of the hand of death. 0 death, where is thy judgment,
or where is thy sting?'8 And the same prophet says in another
place: 'He will revive us after two days on the third day.'9
And the Sibyl, too, said that he would impose a terminus
on death after a sleep of three days: 'And the sleep of death

5 VIII.305; cf. St. Augustine, City of God 18.23.

6 Cf. Ps. 15.10.
7 Cf. Ps. 3.6.
8 Cf. Osee 13.13,14.
9 Cf. Osee. 6.2.
298 LACTANTIUS

having been undergone, he shall be dead for three days. And

then coming back from the dead he shall come to light, the
first of the resurrection, showing the beginning to those
caIled.'l0 For He gained life for us by conquering death. No
other hope of gaining immortality, therefore, is given to man,
unless he believe in Him and take up that cross which must
be carried and suffered.

Chapter 20

Setting out, therefore, into Galilee-for He was unwilling

to present Himself to the Jews,l lest He bring them to repent-
ance and cure those impious ones-He opened up to His dis-
ciples, who had again gathered together, the meanings of the
Sacred Scripture, that is, the secret messages of the prophets,
which were not able to be understood in any way at all before
they were opened up, since they were foretelling Him and His
Passion. It is for this that Moses and the very same prophets
call the law which was given to the Jews, 'The Testament: 2
because unless the testator shall have died, it is not possible
for the testament to be known; nor can it be known what is
written in it, since it is closed and sealed. And so, unless Christ
had undergone death, the testament could not have been
opened, that is, the mystery of God could not have been
revealed and understood.
The whole Scripture is divided into two testaments. That
which preceded the coming of Christ and His Passion, that is,
the law and the prophets, is called the Old Testament; those
things which were written after His Resurrection are called
the New Testament. The Jews use the Old; we the New. They
10 VIII.312-314; d. St. Augustine, lac. cit.
1 For a comparable treatment of this point, and one which also con-
tains the same attitude toward the Jews, d. Tertullian's Apology c. 2l.
2 We are more used to the term 'Covenant' from the Vulgate pactum
and toed us, but testamentum is an Old Latin rendering, and the
Septuagint uses diatheke. Cf. Exod. 19.5; Deut. 5.2, etc.
 BOOK FOUR 299

are not opposed, however, because the New is the fulfillment

of the Old, and in both the testator is Christ, who by the
death He underwent for tiS makes us heirs of the eternal
kingdom from which the Jewish people have been debarred
and disinherited, as the prophet Jeremia declares when he
speaks such words as these: 'Behold the days are coming, saith
the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel and with the house of J ucla. Not according to the cov-
enant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt,
because they did not persevere in my covenant, and I have
neglected them, saith the Lord.'3
The same prophet speaks similarly in another place: 'I have
forsaken my house, I have placed my inheritance into the
hands of her enemies. My inheritance is become to me like a
lion in the wood: it hath cried out against me. Therefore
have I hated it.'4
Since His inheritance is the celestial kingdom, surely He
does not mean to say He hates the inheritance itself, but the
heirs who have risen up against Him ungraciously and im-
piously. 'My inheritance,' He said, 'is become to me as a lion';
in other words, 'I am become the prey and the prize to be
devoured by my heirs who have immolated me as a beast.'
'It hath cried out against me,' that is, they have passed against
me the sentence of death and the cross. That which He spoke
above: 'that He would make a new covenant with the house
of Juda: shows that the Old Testament that was given through
Moses was not perfect, and that that which would have to be
given through Christ would be its consummation. The "house
of Juda and of Israel" surely does not mean the Jews whom
He has rejected, but us, who, called by Him from the Gentiles,
have succeeded by adoption into their place, and we are called,
'The sons of the Jews.' The Sibyl declared this when she said:

3 Cf. Jer. 31.31-33.

4 Cf. Jer. 12.7,8.
300 LACTANTIUS

'Of the blessed Jews a God-appointed nation of heavenly

people.'5
That that people would come was taught by Isaia in whose
prophecy the Almighty Father addresses His Son saying: 'I
the Lord God have called thee unto justice, and 1 will take
thee by the hand and will strengthen thee. And 1 have given
thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles:
that thou mightst open the eyes of the blind, and bring forth
the prisoner out of prison, and them that sit in darkness out
of the prison house.'6
Since, therefore, we were as though blind before, and when
we sat as though enclosed by the prison house of foolishness
in the darkness, not knowing God and His truth, we were
enlightened by Him who adopted us by His testament (His
will in our favor), and when He had freed us as from evils
and bonds and brought us into the light of wisdom, He
recognized us as the heirs of His heavenly kingdom.

Chapter 21

After His preaching of the Gospel and His Name to the

disciples was completed,! He withdrew Himself suddenly, and
the clouds took Him into heaven on the fortieth day after His
Passion, just as Daniel had showed would happen when he
said: 'Lo, one like the son of man coming in the clouds of
heaven. And he came even to the Ancient of days.'2
His disciples, however, dispersing through the provinces,
made foundations of the Church everywhere, themselves per-
forming great and almost incredible miracles in the name of
God, their Master. For as He was departing, He had instructed
them in the virtue and power, whereby the plan of the new
5 V.249.
6 Cf. Isa. 42.6-8.
1 Cf. Tertullian, Apology c. 21.
2 Cf. Dan. 7.13.
 BOOK FOUR 301

message might be established and confirmed. But He also made

known to them all that would take place. Peter and Paul
preached these things at Rome, and that preaching has re-
mained in writing unto their memory. In this they have told
'both many other marvels and that this also would take place,
that after a short time God would send a king who would
attack the Jews and raze their cities to the ground and lay seige
to them after they had been consumed with hunger and thirst.
Then it would happen that they would feed on their own
bodies and consume one another, and, at length captured, they
would come into the hands of the enemy. And before their
very eyes they would behold their wives most bitterly attacked,
virgins violated and prostituted, boys snatched up, little ones
torn from them and marred, and everything finally destroyed
by fire and sword, the captives being taken away from their
land forever. This, because they have exulted over the most
loving and most noble son of God.'3 And so, after their death,
when Nero had despatched them, Vespasian brought to nought
the name and race of the Jews, and he did all the things which
those two had foretold would come to pass.

Chapter 22

Those things which are regarded as false and incredible by

those who have not been imbued with the true teaching of the
divine scripture have been, I believe, affirmed. But in order
that we may refute those who, not without their own evil,
are too wise and take away faith from divine things, let us
convince them of their error also with proofs, so that they
may finally see how it was necessary for it so to be done, as
we explain that it was done. And even though testimonies
without proofs, or proofs without testimonies, have enough
strength with good judges, we are not content, however, with
3 Cf. The Preaching of Peter and Paul (Helgenfeld edition of New
Testament Apocrypha, 2, fasicle 4.58).
302 LACTANTIUS

one or the other, when the two are at hand for us, lest we leave
to any perversely ingenious person the chance of not under-
standing or of making a contrary interpretation. They deny
that it could be possible for anything to withdraw from an
immortal nature; they say, in fine, that it is not worthy of God
to wish to become man and to burden Himself with the in-
firmity of flesh, to subject Himself to the passions, to grief, to
death, just as though it would not be easy for Him to show
Himself to men and teach them justice apart from the weak-
ness of a body, if He wished that, and with the greater author-
ity as of an acknowledged God. Then, they deny that all things
would have been produced by divine commands, if the power
and strength of a commanding God acceded to those things.
'Why, then,' they say, 'did He not come as God to teach
men? Why did He make Himself so lowly and weak that He
could be contemned by men and afflicted with punishment?
Why did He suffer violence at the hands of weak, mortal men?
Why did He not crush the forces of men with His power or
avoid them by His divinity? Why did He not expose His
majesty at least on the threshold of His death? And why was
He led to judgment as a weakling, condemned as guilty, and
slain as though mortal?' I will carefully refute these objections,
and I will not suffer anyone to be in error. For those things
were done according to a great and wondrous plan. Whoever
perceives this plan will not only cease to wonder that God
was crucified by man, but he will also clearly see that not even
God could have been believed, if those very things of which
He complained were not done.

Chapter 23

Whoever gives instructions for living to men and feigns the

customs of others, I ask whether he himself ought to do those
things which he charges or whether he ought not do them.
 BOOK FOUR 303

If he does not do them, the precepts are not binding. If those

things which are commanded are good, if they place the life
of man in an excellent state, then the preceptor himself should
not separate himself from the numerous gathering of men
with whom he is dealing. And he ought to live in the same
manner in which he instructs others to live, lest, if he act
otherwise, he should take away faith from his own precepts
and make his teaching of lesser value, since he looses in very
deed that which he strives by his words to bind fast.
And whenever anyone hears another giving commands, he
does not want the necessity of obeying to be imposed upon
him, as though the right of liberty were being taken away
from him. So he answers the instructor in this way: 'I cannot
do the things which you order since they are impossible. You
forbid me to be angry, you forbid fie to covet, to be moved
by lust; you forbid grief, you forbid me to fear death. But this
is so contrary to nature; all living creatures are subject to
these passions. Or, if you think that nature can be resisted to
such a degree, then you yourself, who command this, do it, so
that I may know it can be done. But, when you yourself do
not do it, what insolence is it to wish to impose on a free man
laws which you yourself do not obey? You who teach, learn
first, yourself; and before you correct the manners of others,
correct your own.'
Who would deny that this answer is a just one? Nay, an
instructor of this sort will rather come into contempt, and
he will be mocked or deceived in turn, because he will be seen
to deceive himself. 'What will such an instructor do, then, if
he is confronted with these arguments? In what way will he
deprive the unyielding insult-givers of their excuse, unless he
shows by present deeds that he teaches possible things?
Thus it comes about that no one obeys the precepts of the
philosophers. Men prefer examples to words, because to talk
is easy, but to perform is difficult. 'Would that as many acted
well as there are who speak well! But faith is not with those
who preach and practice not. If they be men, they will be
304 LACTANTIUS

contemned as of slight importance; if a god, people will ob-

ject to the excuse of human frailty for him.
It remains that words be strengthened by works. This the
philosophers were not able to do. So when the teachers them-
selves are mastered by the passions which they teach ought to
be mastered, they can instruct no one unto that virtue which
they teach falsely. And for that reason they think that up to
now no one perfectly wise has ever existed, that is, one in
whom the highest power of the greatest learning and knowl-
edge and perfect justice are in accord, which was, indeed, true.
For no one such as this has existed since the beginning of the
world except Christ who both handed down wisdom by His
words and strengthened His teaching by His immediate virtue.

Chapter 24

Let us consider now whether a teacher sent from heaven is

able not to be perfect. I am not yet speaking of this One who
they say did not come from God. Let us imagine that someone
is to be sent from heaven to establish the life of men on the
fundaments of virtue and to form it according to justice. There
can be no doubt in anyone's mind that that teacher who is
sent from heaven is so endowed with the knowledge of all
things as he is perfect in virtue, so that there is no difference
in him between the heavenly and the earthly. Now in man
there can be no internal and proper doctrine by any means,
for the mind, enclosed in the earthly organs of man and
impeded by the gradual decline of the body, is not able either
to comprehend of itself or to grasp truth unless it be taught by
someone. Even if this should be possible to an exceptional
degree for one, he would not be able, however, to embrace
the highest virtue and to resist all vices, the matter of which
is contained in the inner parts of the body. From this it
happens that an earthly teacher cannot be perfect. A heavenly
 BOOK FOUR 305

one, on the other hand, to whom divinity has granted knowl-

edge, and immortality virtue, must of necessity be perfect and
consummate in teaching as well as in other matters. But
this is not altogether possible unless he takes on himself a
human body. The reason is clear, however, why this is not
possible. For if He should come to men as God (and I will
omit mention of the fact that mortal eyes cannot behold or
endure the brilliance of His Majesty), then God Himself
would certainly not be able to teach virtue, because without a
body He would not do those things which He would be teach-
ing, and because of this, His teaching would not be perfect.
But, on the other hand, if the highest virtue is to patiently
endure sorrow for the sake of justice and duty; if virtue is not
to fear death itself, even impending death, and to bravely
withstand it when it has been inflicted, then that perfect
teacher ought to teach those things by instructing and confirm
them by doing, because he who gives the precepts of living
ought to cut off the avenues of all excuses, in order to impose
upon men the necessity of obeying, not from force but from
honor, and still to leave them liberty so that a reward might
be appointed even for those obeying, since they were able not
to obey if they wished, and a punishment for those not obey-
ing, since they were able to obey if they wished.
Now, how will excuse be able to be done away with, unless
it be that he who teaches practices what he teaches and be,
as it were, an ideal going before, and stretch out his hand to
the one who will follow? But how can he do what he teaches,
unless he be like to him whom he teaches? For if he is subject
to no passion, man can answer to the teaching thus: 'Indeed,
I wish not to sin, but I am overcome. For I am clothed with
weak and fragile flesh; it is here that concupiscence resides;
it is the flesh which grows angry, which grieves, which fears
to die. So I am led against my will and I sin, not because I
wish to, but because I am driven. I realize that I myself sin,
but the necessity of weakness drives me and I am not able to re-
sist it: What will that preceptor of justice answer to this? How
306 LACTANTIUS

will he refute and convince the man who will hold forth the
flesh as an excuse for his sins, unless he himself be endowed
with flesh to show that the flesh, too, can embrace virtue?
For defiance cannot be convinced except by example. If those
things which you teach cannot have strength unless you have
done them first, because the nature of men, prone to evil,
wants to seem to sin, not only with excuse but also with
reason, it is necessary that the master and teacher of virtue
become very similar to man, in order to teach man by conquer-
ing sin that sin is able to be conquered by him.
But if He should be not human, He can in no way propose
an example to man. For, then, someone will instantly rise up
and say: 'You, indeed, do not sin, because you are free from
this body. You do not suffer concupiscence, because nothing
is necessary to immortality; but to me there is need of many
things to protect this life. You do not fear death, because it
can be of no avail in you; you contemn sorrow, because you
can suffer no violence. But I, a mortal, fear both, because
they bring the gravest tortures upon me which the weakness
of my flesh cannot bear: And so the teacher of virtue ought
to take even this excuse away from men, so that no one may
ascribe the fact that he sins to necessity rather than to his
fault. Therefore, that He may be perfect, nothing ought to be
cast up to Him by him who is to be taught, so that if he
should say perhaps, 'You advise the impossible: He may
answer, 'Lo, I myself do them: 'But I am covered with flesh
whose proper act is sinning: 'And I bear that same flesh, and
still sin does not dominate in Me: 'For me it is difficult to
despise riches, because one cannot live otherwise in conjunc-
tion with this body: 'Behold, I have a body too, and I fight
against all cupidity: 'I cannot bear for justice'S sake either
pain or death, because I am weak: 'Behold, even over Me
pain and death have power, and, yet, those very things which
you fear I conquer so that I may make you a victor over pain
and death. I go before through those things which you pre-
tend cannot be withstood: if you cannot follow one telling you
 BOOK FOUR 307

how to do it, follow one who shows you how by going before
you on the way.' In this way every excuse is removed, and
man must confess that he is through his own fault unjustified
who does not follow the Teacher of virtue and that same
Leader.
You see, therefore, how much more perfect is an earthly
or mortal teacher, because he can be a leader for a mortal
man, than an immortal one who is not subject to the passions.
However, that I prefer man to God is not the point here at
all, but that I may show that neither is a man able to be of
perfect teaching, unless he is at the same time God in order
to impose the necessity of obeying on men by His authority,
nor is God, unless He be clothed with a mortal body in order
to constrain others with the necessity of obeying by carrying
out His own precepts by His deeds. It is clearly evident, then,
that He who is the Guide of Life and the Master of Justice
must have a body, and that in no other way is it possible
that His doctrine be complete and perfect, and having root
and foundation remain fixed and stable with men. And it is
necessary, too, that He Himself undergo the weakness of flesh
and a body and possess within Himself the virtue of which
He is the teacher, so that He may teach by both word and
action. Besides, He must be subject to death and all the pas-
sions, since the exercise of virtue consists in enduring and
undergoing death. All these things, as I have said, the most
perfect of teachers ought to endure in order to show that they
can be endured.

Chapter 25

Let men learn, therefore, and let them understand why Al-
mighty God, when He sent His Ambassador and Messenger to
teach mankind the precepts of His justice, wished Him to be
clothed with mortal flesh and to be afflicted with torture and
to be condemned to death. For when there was no justice on
308 LACTANTIUS

the earth, He sent a teacher, a living law, as it were, to estab-

lish His Name and a new temple, to sow the seeds of true and
loving worship throughout the whole earth by His words and
example. But, in order that it might be certain that He was
sent from God, it was not necessary for Him to be born in
just such a way as man is born from the union of two mortals,
but that He might appear heavenly even in the form of man,
He was formed without the operation of a human father. He
had a spiritual Father, God, and just as the Father of His
Spirit is God, there being no mother, so the mother of His
Body is a virgin and there is no father. He was, therefore,
both God and man, constituted midway between God and
man (whence the Greeks call Him Mediator), to be able to
lead man to God, that is, to immortality. Because if He had
been just God, as was said above, He could not have offered
an example of virtue to man. If He were only man, He could
not compel men to justice, unless authority and power greater
than man's were added. For since man consists of flesh and
spirit, and since it is necessary for the spirit to merit by works
of justice to become eternal, the flesh, because it is earthly and,
therefore, mortal, draws the spirit joined to it along with it,
and leads it away from immortality to death. Therefore, a
spirit, free of the flesh, was not able to be a leader unto im-
mortality for man under any condition since the flesh impedes
the spirit from following God. For it is weak and subject to
sin, and sin is the food of death.
For this reason, therefore, a Mediator came, that is, God in
flesh, so that the flesh could follow Him, and that He might
save man from death whose mastery is according to the flesh.
And He clothed Himself with humanity, the flesh, so as to
show by subduing the desires of the flesh that sin was not of
necessity, but of purpose and free will. We do have one great,
outstanding struggle with the flesh, whose limitless desires
press against the soul and do not allow it to retain the mastery,
but manacled by pleasures and sweet enticements, they afflict
it with everlasting death. But that we might be able to resist
 BOOK FOUR 309

these also, God has opened up and shown to us the way of

overcoming the flesh. This perfect virtue, and absolute by every
reckoning, imparts the crown and reward of immortality to
the victors.

Chapter 26

I have spoken of lowliness and weakness and passion and

why God should have preferred to undergo these. Now an
account of the cross itself must be rendered and we must tell
of its power. Why the Almighty Father decided it from the
beginning, and how He ordained all things which were done,
not only the prediction of the prophets which came true in
Christ, but also the plan of the Passion itself shows. For what-
ever things He suffered were not meaningless, but they had
the meaning of a figure and great significance, as did also those
divine works which He performed. The force and power of
these had value, indeed, at the time of their occurrence, but
they also declared something for future reference.
He opened the eyes of the blind. A heavenly power opened
the eyes of the blind and restored light to those who did not
see. But by this act He signified that turning toward the peo-
ples that knew not God, He would enlighten the minds of
those not learned with the light of wisdom, and He would
open the eyes of their hearts for the contemplation of truth.
For, truly, they are blind who, not seeing the things of heaven
and overwhelmed with the darkness of ignorance, venerate
fragile idols of earth.
He opened up the ears of the deaf. That heavenly power
was certainly not functioning only up to this point, but He
was declaring that in a short time those who were without
the truth would both hear and understand the divine words
of God. For, truly, you would admit that they are deaf who
do not hear the true heavenly instruction which must be
carried out.
310 LACTANTIUS

He loosened the tongues of the dumb so that they spoke.

Marvelous power, even when this alone was being done! But
there was another signification in this power which showed
that soon those, lately ignorant of heavenly things, would be
sowing abroad lessons learned of wisdom about God and His
truth. For he who is ignorant of the nature and existence of
the divinity is truly speechless and dumb, although he be the
most eloquent of all men. '\!\Then the tongue begins to speak
the truth, that is, virtue, and to interpret the majesty of the
one God, then, at last, it is performing the function of its
nature. But as long as it speaks false things, it is not working
according to its own usefulness, and, therefore, of necessity
he is but an infant1 who is not able to speak of divine things.
The limbs and feet of the lame, also, He reformed so that
they might exercise the power of walking. This strength of the
divine work is laudable. The figure contained in the act is
this, that the way of truth would be opened to those restrained
by the errors of a worldly and devious life over which men
might walk to attain the grace of God. For that one is to be
considered lame, indeed, who, involved in the mist and
shadows of foolishness and ignorant of where he is tending,
with stumbling and falling steps advances over the road of
death.
He, likewise, cleansed the sores and spots of polluted bodies.
This was no mean exercise of His immortal power, and in
truth it portended this, that His doctrine, by the instruction
it has unto justice, would purify those defiled by the sores of
sin and the stains of vices. For they, indeed, ought to be
regarded as leprous and afflicted with elephantiasis whom
limitless desires for crime or insatiable delights for wanton-
ness drive and leave branded with a lasting sore because of the
stains of their disgraces.
He raised up the bodies of those lying dead, and calling
upon them by name He brought them back from death. What
more befitted God? What more worthy miracle of all ages
1 The word in/ans means 'not speaking.'
 BOOK FOUR 311

than this, namely, to have allotted again a life that was run,
to have added to the completed years of men, to have unveiled
the secrets of death? But this unspeakable power was the image
of a greater. It showed that His teaching would have such
great force that all nations in the world, which were strangers
to God and subject to death, revivified by a knowledge of the
true light would come to the rewards of immortality. For you
would rightly consider as dead those who, not knowing God
as the giver of life and turning aside their souls from heaven
to earth, rush headlong into the snares of eternal death.
Therefore, the things which He did then in the actual time
of their performance were images of future events; the powers
He displayed on diseased and afflicted bodies carried a figure
of spiritual effects, so that in the present action He showed
works of no earthly power, and He also made clear the power
of His celestial majesty that would come to be revealed.
Just as His works had also a significance of even greater
power, so His Passion, too, was not without hidden meaning;
nor was it in vain, nor did it happen fortuitously. But as those
things which He did signified the great power and strength
of His doctrine, so those things which He suffered announced
that His wisdom would be hated. For the drink of vinegar
and food of gall promised sharpness and bitterness in this life
for the followers of His truth. And although the very Passion,
sharp and bitter of itself, gave us an indication of future
torments, which virtue proposes to those remaining in this
world, still, food and drink of this sort coming into the mouth
of our Teacher, furnished us with an impulse and an example
for labors and sorrows. It is necessary for those who follow
truth to bear and endure all these things, since truth is bitter
and hateful to all who, without truth, give their lives to
death-bearing pleasures.
The crown of thorns placed on His head indicated that He
would gather unto Himself a divine people from those hurting
Him. 2 For the people surrounding the earth are said to be
2 Cf. Sibylline Oracles VIII.294,295.
312 LACTANTIUS

a crown. We who were unjustified before our knowledge of

God were thorns, that is, evil and harmful, not knowing what
was good, and, removed from the notion and works of justice,
we defiled everything with crime and wickedness. Then, picked
from the thickets and briars, we surround the sacred Head of
God, because, having been called by Him and coming around
to Him from all sides, we stand by our Master and Teacher,
our God, and crown Him King of the world and Lord of all
the living.
With regard to the cross, moreover, there is great strength
and purpose in that which I will now attempt to present.
For God, as I have explained above,3 when He had determined
to set man free, appointed a Master of virtue from the earth
who would form men by salutary precepts unto innocence
and by His present works and deeds would disclose the way
of justice; and man by walking on this way and following
his Teacher would arrive unto eternal life. He was 'bodied,'
therefore, and clothed with the garment of flesh, in order that
He might furnish man whom He had come to teach the ex-
ample and inspiration of virtue. But when He had furnished
the specimen of justice in all the functions of life, in order
that He might give man patience in trial, also, and contempt
of death (for in these two virtue is made perfect and con-
summated), He came into the hands of a wicked people, al-
though He could have avoided this by His knowledge of the
future, and He could have repelled it by the same power with
which He was performing miracles. So He underwent the
torture, the scourges, the thorns. Lastly, He did not refuse to
undertake even death, so that man would triumph, under His
leadership, over exacting and unremitting death with all of
its terrors.
This is the reason the Father Almighty selected that extreme
kind of death with which He allowed Him to be afflicted.
Someone may say: 'Why, if He were God and wanted to die,
was He not visited with some honorable kind of death, at
3 In chs. 23-25.
 BOOK FOUR 313

least? \!\Thy the extreme of the cross? vVhy this infamous kind
of punishment which seems unworthy of a free man even,
although he be dangerous?' First, because He who had come
in a lowly state to bring help to the lowly and weak and to
hold out hope of salvation to all was afflicted with that type
which is customary for the weak and downtrodden, lest there
be anyone at all who could not imitate Him. Then, in order
that His body be preserved entire which He was to raise from
the dead on the third day. For not anyone was to be ignorant
of this, because He Himself, speaking beforehand about His
Passion, also made it known that He had the power of laying
down and of taking His life up again when He wished. So He
was taken down from the cross after He had laid down His
life. His murderers did not think it necessary to break His
bones, as was their custom, but they only pierced His side.
Thus His whole body was removed from the gibbet, and it was
carefully enclosed in a sepulchre. All these things were done
for this reason, that a broken and diminished body might
not be rendered unfit for His Resurrection. That was also a
special reason why God preferred the cross, because it was
necessary for Him to be exalted by it and for the Passion of
God to be known to all peoples. For since He who is suspended
on a gibbet is conspicuous to all and is higher than others, a
cross was rather chosen, which signified that He would be so
conspicuous and so exalted, that all the nations throughout
the world would run together to know and serve Him. Finally,
no nation is so inhuman, no region so remote, that His
Passion or the sublimity of His Majesty is not known by it.
Therefore, He extended His arms in the Passion and embraced
the world, so as to show them that from the rising to the
setting of the sun a great people gathered from every tribe
and tongue would come, and would take up that greatest
symbol of all and bear it high on their foreheads. The Jews
even today practice the figure of this when they mark their
doorposts with the blood of the lamb. For when God was
about to strike the Egyptians, in order to keep the Hebrews
314 LACTANTIUS

unharmed by that plague, He had ordered them to immolate

a white lamb without blemish and to put the mark of its blood
on their dOOl'posts. And so, when every first-born among the
Egyptians perished that one night, the Hebrews alone were
safe because of the sign of the blood, not because the blood
of an animal had such great power in itself to be salvation for
men, but it had been an image of future events. For the white
lamb without a blemish was (a symbol of) Christ, that is,
innocent, and just, and holy, who was immolated by those
same Jews for the salvation of all who have written the sign
of the blood, that is, of the cross on which He shed it, on their
foreheads. For the forehead is the very high 'doorpost' of man,
and the wood sprinkled with blood is the signification of the
cross. Lastly, the immolation of the animal by those very
people who carry out the feast is called the Pasch, because it is
a figure of the Passion which God in His foreknowledge of
the future gave through Moses to be celebrated by His people. 4
But then the figure had value for dispelling the danger there
present, so that it might be clear how much the truth itself
would be able to accomplish for protecting the people of God
in the extreme necessity of the whole world. How or in what
stroke all those in the future would be safe who shall have
marked this sign of the true and divine Blood on the highest
part of their bodies, I will explain in the last book. 5

Chapter 27

Now it is sufficient to explain how much the power of this

sign can accomplish. 1 How much terror this sign causes
demons he will know who has seen how far they flee from
the bodies they have obsessed when commanded in the name
4 The name of the feast comes from przschein, the Greek word 'to suffer.'
5 The editors of the Vienna text, Brandt and Laubmann, indicate that
this place is not found in Book VII; d. ch. 16, however.
1 Cf. Tertullian's Apology c. 23.
 BOOK FOUR 315

of Christ. 2 For just as He Himself put all demons to flight by

a word when He was living among men, and as He put back
into their former sensibilities the disturbed minds of men and
those raging from the evil incursions, so now His followers
by the name of their Master and by the sign of His Passion
exclude those same defiled spirits from men. The proof of this
is not difficult. For if someone is present having a signed fore-
head when they make sacrifices to their false gods, the sacred
rites cannot be acceptable in any way, 'Nor can this consulted
seer render any response.'3 And this was often a special reason
for the persecuting of justice on the part of evil kings. For
when certain ones of our attendants were present with their
masters who would be offering false sacrifices, they put their
gods to flight by making the sign on their foreheads, lest they
would be able to indicate the future in the entrails of the
victims. When the soothsayers realized this, at the instigation
of those same demons to whom they were making the sacrifice,
by complaining that profane men were present at the sacred
rites, th~y drove their chiefs into a rage so that they violated
the temple of the god and contaminated themselves by real
sacrilege which was expiated by the most serious punishments
of the persecutors. And yet blind men cannot understand,
however, from this very thing, either that this is the true
religion in which such great power for conquering resides, or
that one that is false is not able to make a stand or to hold
out in contention. But they say that the gods do this, not in
fear, but in hatred, as if it were possible for anyone to hate
anyone except him who harms him or who can harm him.
Indeed, it would be more fitting to majesties to afflict those
whom they hate with present punishments rather than to flee
them. But since they can neither approach those in whom
they have seen the heavenly mark, nor harm those whom the
immortal sign has fortified as though by an impregnable wall,
2 It is said that this is true even in the case of more recent possessions
and obsessions by the devil. Though such phenomena were more
frequent in the early days, they caused no less terror.
S Vergil, Georgics 3.491.
316 LACTANTIUS

they harass them through men, and they persecute them at

the hands of others. Certainly, if they admit them to be these,
we have conquered.
It is necessary that this religion be true which knows the
plan of the demons and understands their astuteness and
frustrates their power and forces them, quelled and subjected
by spiritual arms, to yield. If they deny this, they will be
disproved by the testimonies of the poets and philosophers.
But if they do not deny that they are evil, what remains for
them except to say that some are gods and others are demons?
Then, let them explain to us the difference between the two
kinds that we may know what ought to be worshiped and
what execrated, and whether there is any alliance between
them, or whether, in fact, they are enemies. If they have been
joined by some connection, how far shall we separate them,
or how will we not mingle the cult and honor of each type?
If they are enemies, why do the demons not fear the gods, or
why can the gods not put the demons to flight?
Now, take someone struck by an impulse of a demon: he
rages; he is carried outside himself; he is insane. Let us take
this one into a temple of Jupiter, the Great, the Mighty, or,
because Jupiter does not know how to cure men, into a
shrine of Aesculapius or Apollo. Let the priest of whichever
one of them you please order in the name of his god that the
harming spirit leave the man. This cannot happen in any way
at all. '!\That sort of power have the gods, then, if they do not
hold the demons subject to them? But the same demons, how-
ever, when adjured by the name of the true God, leave at
once. What is the reason that they fear Christ and do not fear
Jupiter, unless it is that they are the same demons who the
mob thinks are gods? Finally, if they are set up in a central
place, both he who is generally known to be enduring an
attack from the demons, and a seer of Delphic Apollo, they
will shudder at the name of God in the same way; and Apollo
will depart from his seer as quickly as the demoniacal spirit
from the other man, and when his god has been adjured and
 BOOK FOUR 317

put to flight, the seer will be at rest thenceforth. Those are the
same demons, therefore, who they acknowledge ought to
be execrated, and they are the very same gods whom they
supplicate.
If they do not think that we ought to be believed, let them
believe Homer, who has associated that supreme Jupiter with
the demons;! Let them believe the other poets and philos-
ophers, too, who call the same ones now demons, now gods,
the one time true, and the other false. For those most evil
spirits, when they are adjured, then confess that they are
demons; when they are cultivated, then they lie that they are
gods, in order to fill men with errors and call them away from
the notion of the true God, through which alone can eternal
death be avoided. They are the same who, for the sake of
casting down man, established for themselves various cults
throughout various regions, but the names have been lied
about and assumed so that they might carryon the deception.
Because they were not able to affect divinity through them-
selves, they applied to themselves the names of powerful kings,
under whose titles they claimed for themselves the honors of
gods. This error can be discussed and brought into the light
of truth.
If anyone is eager to delve into this more deeply, let him
summon those who have the skill of summoning spirits from
the nether regions. Let them call Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan,
Mercury, Apollo, and Saturn, the father of them all. They will
all answer from the depths, and when questioned they will
speak and will make confession both about themselves and
about Goel. After these let them call upon Christ. He will not
be present; He will not appear, because He was not more than
two days in the earth. What more certain than this proof can
be brought forth? And I have no doubt that Trismegistus by
this method somehow arrived at the truth, for he said every-
thing about God the Father and many things about Gael the
Son which are contained in the divine secrets.
4 Cf. Homer, Iliad A 222.
318 LACTANTIUS

Chapter 28

Since things are as I have showed, it appears that no other

hope of life has been proposed to man except that, rejecting
vanities and miserable error, he come to know God and serve
Him, and that he renounce this temporal life and instruct
himself by the rudiments of justice for the practice of true
religion. For we come to be under this condition, that we pay
the just debt of service to the God who brings us into being,
that we know Him alone, that we follow Him. We are fastened
and bound to God by this bond of piety, whence religion itself
takes its name. 1 The word is not as Cicero interpreted it from
're-reading: or 'choosing again' (relegendo). For in his second
book, On the Nature of the Gods, he spoke thus: 'Not only
the philosophers but also our ancestors separated superstition
from religion. For those who prayed and sacrificed entire days
that their children might be survivors (superstites) of them,
were called superstitious. But those who performed all things
which pertained to the worship of the gods, who went back
over them and gathered them up again, as it were, were called
religious from that word regathering (religendo) just as people
are called select (elegantes) from selecting (eligendo), esteemed
(diligentes) from esteeming (diligendo), and intelligent from
comprehending (intellegendo).2 In all of these words there is
the same force of the word "choosing" or "gathering" (legendi)
as in religious (religioso). So it happened in the case of super-
stitious and religious, that the one word became descriptive
of a vice, the other of praiseworthiness.'3
We can know from the matter itself how inept this interpre-
tation is. For if superstition and religion are engaged in wor-
1 This etymology still delights. Religio, a binding again or refastening
is perhaps from re and ligo, to tie or fasten. Some have found Cicero's
meaning acceptable, taking it from re and lego. Religion as a virtue
may perhaps be considered as a re-choosing of the service of God
whom we have left through willfulness.
2 The English equivalents fall far short of the meaning of the original,
but the temptation is to affect a word play if possible.
3 Cicero, The Nature of the Gods 2.28.71,72. Cf. St. Augustine, On True
Religion c. 113; Isidore, Origines 8.2.2.
 BOOK FOUR 319

shiping the same gods, there is slight or rather no difference.

What reason can it show me why praying for the safety of
one's children once is thought to be religious, and to do the
same thing ten times is the mark of a superstitious man? For
if it is a fine thing to do once, how much more so the more
often it is done? If fine at the first hour, then also during the
whole day; if one victim is placable, then many are surely
more so, because multiplied obsequies oblige rather than
offend. Those servants who have been dutiful and ready to
obey do not seem hateful to us, but rather dear. Why, then,
is he at fault, or why does he receive a reprehensible name
who loves his children more, or who honors the gods more,
while he who does so less is praised? This argument has
strength even from the contrary. If it is a crime to pray and
offer sacrifice all the day long, then it is to do so once; if it
is wrong to desire to have one's children as survivors, then
that one is superstitious who has only rarely wished for that.
Or why has the name of a vice been drawn from that act than
which nothing more honorable, nothing more just, can be
desired? For because he says that the 'religious people are
named that from regathering (relegendo), and they are
those who diligently go over those things which pertain to the
worship of the gods,' why, then, do those who do this often
in a day lose the name of religious, when certainly they take
up again more diligently from their very carefulness those
things by which the gods are worshiped? Why, then, is it?
Surely, because religion is a worship of the true; superstition
of the false. And it is important, really, why you worship, not
how you worship, or what you pray for. But because the wor-
shipers of the gods think that they are religious, though they
are superstitious, they can neither distinguish religion from
superstition, nor can they explain the significance of the names.
We have said that the name of religion is taken from the
bond of piety,4 because God has bound and fastened man to
Himself by piety, since it is necessary for us to serve Him as
4 The deep significance of the Latin pietas, duty and devotion to God,
to home, to country, has not been preserved in the English piety.
320 LACTANTIUS

Lord and obey Him as Father. Therefore, much better is the

way in which Lucretius interpreted the name when he spoke
of 'loosening the knots of religions.'5 Not those who desire
their children to survive them are called superstitious, for we
all desire that, but either those who cherish the surviving
memory of the dead, or those who as survivors of their parents
honored their images in the home as though they were house-
hold gods. Those who took unto themselves new rites, so that
they honored, in the place of gods, the dead who they thought
were taken from among men into heaven, were called super-
stitious, but those who reverenced the public and ancient gods
were called religious. Whence Vergil: 'Empty superstition, and
ignorant of the old gods.'6 But when we discover that the
ancient gods also were consecrated in the same manner after
their death, then they are superstitious who worship many
and false gods; but we, who supplicate the one true God, are
religious.

Chapter 29

Perhaps someone may ask how, when we say that we worship

one God, we may confidently speak of the two, God the Father
and God the Son.! This assertion plunges many into the great-
est error. Since those things which we say seem probable, they
think that we fall in this one point, that we confess both the
one God and a mortal one. We have already spoken about
that mortality (or human nature) of God: now let us explain
about the unity. When we say that the Father is God and the
Son is God, we do not speak of a different God, nor do we
separate the two, for the Father cannot be separated from the
Son nor the Son from the Father, inasmuch as the Father
cannot be named without the Son, nor can the Son be be-
5 On the Nature of Things 1.932.
6 Aeneid 8.187.
1 It is curious that our author does not seem conceTned to emphasize the
Third Person. But at his time the chief heresies were concerned with
the Person of Christ and His Natures.
 BOOK FOUR 321

gotten without the Father. Since, therefore, the Father makes

the Son and the Son the Father, there is one mind in each, one
spirit, one subsistence; but, the one is as though an over-
flowing fount or source, the other as though a stream flowing
from that, the one a sun, the other a direct ray from the sun. 2
Since He is both faithful and dear to the Father, He is not
separated, just as a stream is not separated from its source nor
a ray from the sun, because the water of the source is in the
stream and the light of the sun in the ray. Equally, neither
can the voice be separated from the mouth, nor the power and
the hand be sundered from the body. Therefore, when the
hand of God and the power of God and the word of God
are mentioned by the prophets, surely no distinction is in-
tended, because both the tongue, the instrument of speech,
and the hand, in which strength resides, are individual parts
of the body. We may use a particular example. When some-
one has a son whom he loves uniquely, who although he is at
home and under the power of his father, he may grant him
the name and power of master, but by civil law, however, only
one home and one master are recognized. So this world is the
one home of God; and the Son and Father, who inhabit the
world together and in accord, are the one God, because the
one is as though two and the two are as one. 3 Nor is this
strange, since the Son is in the Father because the Father loves
the Son, and the Father is in the Son because He faithfully
obeys the will of the Father, and He never does nor has He
ever done anything but what the Father wished or ordered.
Finally, that the one God is both Father and Son, Isaia
showed in that reference which we quoted above when he
said: 'They shall worship thee and shall make supplication to
thee, because God is in thee, and there is no God besides thee.'4
In another place he says in a similar way: 'Thus saith the
2 Attention must be called to the fact that Lactantius wrote before the
Golden Age of Patristic writing when so many of our theological
problems received expression both lucidly accurate and exquisitely
beautiful. Cf. Tertullian, Apology c. 21.
3 Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 33.1.
4 Cf. Isa. 45.14.
322 LACTANTIUS

Lord, the King of Israel and the eternal God who raised Him
up: I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is
no God: 5 Although He mentioned the two Persons, that of
God the King, that is, Christ, and of God the Father, who
raised Him from the dead after His Passion-just as we have
said that the prophet Osee made clear who said: 'I will deliver
him from the hand of death,'6 referring, however, to each
Person he continued: 'And besides me there is no God: Al-
though he could have said, 'besides us'; but it was not right
that a separation of such a great closeness of relationship be
made by using the plural number. For there is only one, free,
supreme God, lacking an origin, since He Himself is the
origin of things, and in Him at the same time both His Son
and all things are contained. Wherefore, since the mind and
will of the One Person are in the Other, or rather, since the
one is in both, rightly the two Persons are called One God,
because whatever is in the Father flows to the Son, and what-
ever is in the Son descends from the Father.
It is not possible, therefore, for that supreme and only
God to be worshiped except through the Son. He who thinks
that he worships the Father alone, just as he does not worship
the Son, he does not even worship the Father. But he who
accepts the Son and bears His Name, he worships truly the
Father together with the Son, because the Son is the Ambas-
sador and Messenger and Priest of the Almighty Father. This
One is the Gate of the mighty temple; He is the Way of light;
He is the Leader of salvation; He is the Port of life.

Chapter 30

But since many heresies have arisen, and since the people
of God have been sundered by the instigations of the demons,
the truth must be accurately determined by us and placed in
5 Cf. Isa. 44.6.
6 Cf. Osee 13.14. Cf. ch. 19.
 BOOK FOUR 323

its own proper dwelling place, so that if anyone wishes to

'drink of the water of life,'l he will not be drawn aside 'to
broken cisterns'2 that have no water course of supply, but he
will come to know the richest fountain of God Himself, and
watered there, he may gain everlasting life. Before all things
we should know that He Himself and His legates had fore-
told that many sects would have existence which should break
the concord of His holy body, and they warned that we should
be wary with extreme prudence, lest we should ever fall into
the snares and deceits of that adversary of ours with whom
God has wished us to be in conflict. These they gave certain
injunctions which we ought to keep forever. Many people,
unmindful of these commands, deserting the path to heaven,
have founded for themselves erroneous paths over widening
and steep places, through which they might lead astray to
darkness and death a cautionless and simple part of the people.
I will explain just how far this has come about. There were
certain ones among us, either of not very strong faith, or
less well-instructed, or careless, who caused a break in the
unity and dispersed or scattered the Church. Those whose
faith was slippery (tottering and insecure), although they pre-
tended that they knew and worshiped God, increasing their
resources and eager for honor, took unto themselves the great
priesthood. And overcome by the more powerful, they pre-
ferred to secede with their supporters rather than to endure
those who had been placed over them, over whom they them-
selves before had desired to be placed. Some, however, not
informed enough with heavenly science, since they could not
answer to the accusers of the truth who objected that it was
impossible or not fitting for a God to enclose Himself in the
womb of a woman, and that heavenly Majesty could not have
been brought to such infirmity as to be the contempt, derision,
object of insult, and mockery of men, and, finally, to endure
tortures and be fastened upon an infamous gibbet; since they
I Cf. John 4.13.
2 Cf. Jer. 2.13.
324 LACTANTIUS

could not defend all these points with skill and doctrine nor
make any refutation of them-for they did not see through
their force and purpose deeply-they were perverted, and
they corrupted the sacred teachings so that they composed a
new doctrine for themselves, one without any root or stability.
Some others, however, ensnared by the preaching of false
prophets, of whom the true prophets and Christ Himself had
spoken, fell away from the teaching of God and abandoned
the true tradi tion.
But all of them, trapped by the frauds of the devil which
they ought to have foreseen and avoided, lost the divine name
and worship through imprudence. For whether they are
Phrygians,3 or Novatians,4 or Valentinians,5 or Marcionites,6
or Anthropians,7 or any others that might be named, they
3 This is the first name for the Montanists, schismatics of the second
century. The sect was founded by Montanus and two prophetesses in
Phrygia. In the beginning there were no particular false doctrines
(though the prophetesses went to excess, perhaps influenced by the
Phrygian cult of Cybele), but later they taught that the Holy Spirit
did not proceed from the Father and the Son and that He was sent
first to Montanus. Tertullian joined the sect and is known as their
greatest member.
4 Novatian was a schismatic of the third century and founder of the sect
which bears his name. He was a Roman priest who made himself
antipope. His errors on idolatry and the treatment of the lapsed which
were refuted by Cyprian are not too important, but the case of his
illegitimate consecration is a strong witness for the authority and
primacy of Rome even at that time.
3 This is the sect founded by Valentinus, the best known of the Gnostics.
He was an Egyptian who separated from communion with Rome.
His errors are largely philosophical, being tainted with pantheism and
dualism. His Christology is extremely confusing. He maintained the
redeeming work of three redeeming beings, but held that Christ's body
was not real.
6 The Mardonites were established at Rome in l44 by Mardon and
continued there for some 300 years but longer in the East. Christ
was taught to be not the Son of the God of the Jews (they rejected
the Old Testament), but the Son of the Good God who was different.
They possessed the Manichaeistic notion of dualism also.
7 Anthropians. No doubt by this term Lactantius is referring collectively
to all those anthropomorphisers who, like the pagans, represented God
in human form. He may, however, have reference to the particular sect
founded by Audius in the fourth century in Syria. These took the text
of Genesis 1.27 literally and held that God has a human form. Most
of the Fathers dismiss them almost contemptuously. This attack by
Lactantius should be enough to free him from the label of anthropo-
morphism which is sometimes attached to him.
 BOOK FOUR 325

have ceased to be Christians who, having lost the name of

Christ, have put on human and external names. Therefore,
the Catholic Church alone is the one which retains true wor-
ship. This is the fount of truth; this is the domicile of faith;
this is the temple of God. And if one does not enter this and
go out from it, he is cut away from the hope of life and sal-
vation. No one ought to coax himself with pertinacious
wrangling. The question is of life and salvation. And unless
this is diligently and carefully considered, it will be lost and
become extinct.
But because the individual groups of heretics think that
they are the strongest Christians and that theirs is the Catholic
Church, it must be learned that that is the true one in which
there is confession and penance which healthfully cares for
the sins and wounds to which the weakness of the flesh is sub-
ject. Meanwhile, I have presented these matters in a few
words for the sake of warning, lest anyone wishing to escape
from error be involved in greater error, while he is ignorant
of the innermost shrine of truth. Afterwards, we shall more
fully and elaborately fight against all those sects of lies in a
special and separate work.
It follows that, since we have spoken sufficiently about true
religion and wisdom, in the next book we shall discuss justice.
 BOOK FIVE

CONCERNING JUSTICE

Chapter 1

II HERE IS NO DOUBT in my mind that if anyone of those

foolishly religious persons, as they are exceedingly
intolerant of superstition, should come upon this
work of ours in which claim is made for that singular Creator
of all things and the Ruler of this immense universe, he would
rail against it even with maledictions, and after scarcely read-
ing the beginning perhaps, he would attack it, reject it, and
curse it, and think himself contaminated and bound up with
crime if he should read these chapters patiently or listen to
them being read.1 However, of this one we ask, by right of
humanity if it is possible, that he should not condemn the
work before he has come to know it entirely. For if to sac-
rilegious persons and traitors and sorcerers the chance of de-
fending themselves is given, and if it is not permitted to pre-
condemn anyone for an unknown reason, we do not seem to
make the request unjustly, that if anyone happen upon this
work, if he reads it, let him read it through; if he hears it
read, let him put off his opinion until it is completed. But I
know the obstinacy of men; we will never obtain what we
request. For they fear that vanquished by us they might be
forced sometime to yield when truth itself clamors. They
become troublesome, therefore, and they protest, so they will

1 Cf. Tertullian, Apology c. 1; Minucius Felix, c. 27.8, and Salvian, The

Governance of God, 5.20.
326
 BOOK FIVE 327

not hear, and they cover their eyes, lest they behold the light
which we present to them. Certainly, they show by this the
want of confidence in their own depraved reason when they
do not dare to learn or join issue, because they are easily
overcome. And for this reason, when discussion is done away
with, 'Wisdom is driven from the midst, the matter is con-
ducted by force,' as Ennius says.2 And because they are eager
to condemn as harmful those whom they know to be surely
innocent, they do not wish to be consistent about innocence
itself, as if it were, in fact, a greater iniquity to have con-
demned a proved innocence than an unheard one.
But, as I said, they are afraid that if they heard it they
might not be able to condemn, and therefore, they torture,
kill, and get rid of the worshipers of the supreme God, that
is, the just. Nor can those who hate so vehemently render the
causes of their hatred. Because they themselves are in error,
they are angry with those who follow the true way. And al-
though they are able to correct themselves, they add to the
pile of their errors with cruel deeds; they are defiled with the
blood of the innocent, and they torture the minds of those
dedicated to God by the mangling of their bodies. Now we
strive to contend and dispute with such; we are trying to lead
away from their foolish persuasion to the truth those who
have seized upon blood more easily than upon the words of the
just. What, then? Shall we give up the work? Not at all. For
if we shall not have been able to gain these from death toward
which they are tending most eagerly, or to recall them from
that devious path to life and light, since they themselves are
repugnant to their salvation, we shall, however, strengthen
our own whose purpose is not steadfast and fixed and estab-
lished upon firm roots.
For very many are wavering, especially those who have had
some acquaintance with literature. In this also the philos-
ophers and orators and poets are pernicious, because they can
easily ensnare minds that are not careful by suave speech and
2 Ennius, Annals 272.
328 LACTANTIUS

by the pleasant modulation of their verses as they run along.

And for this reason I have wanted to join wisdom with re-
ligion, lest that teaching might be able to hinder anything for
those studying vain things, and that the study of letters might
now, not only not harm religion and justice, but even be of
as much value to it as possible, if he who studies letters be
the more instructed in virtues and wiser in truth. Besides, even
if it were of value to no other person, this will certainly
benefit me: my conscience will delight itself, and my mind
will rejoice to be engaged in the light of truth, which is the
food of the soul filled with a certain incredible pleasure.
But we must not lose hope. Perhaps 'we do not sing to deaf
ears.'3 For things are not in such a bad condition that sane
minds are lacking which delight in the truth and which see
and follow the way pointed out to them as the right one.
Only let the cup be smeared with the honey of heavenly wis-
dom, so that bitter remedies may be drunk by the imprudent
without any offense, while the first sweetness in its attractive-
ness conceals the sharpness of the bitter taste under the cover
of pleasantness. 4 This reason is one of the first why the wise
and learned people and the princes of this world do not place
any sacred trust in the Scriptures; the fact that the prophets
spoke the common and simple speech, as though they were
speaking to the people. So they are despised by those who
wish to hear nothing or to read nothing except what is polished
and eloquent, nor can anything adhere to their minds unless
it charms the ears with its very soothing sound. But those
things which seem humble are thought to be old-womanish,
foolish, vulgar. So they think nothing true except what is
sweet to hear, nothing credible except that which can produce
delight; no one weighs anything by its truth, but by its em-
bellishment. They do not believe divine things, therefore, be-
cause they are without dye, but they do not believe even those
who interpret these matters for them, because they, too, are
3 Vergil, Eclogues 10.8.
4 Cf. Lucretius, 1.936 If.
 BOOK FIVE 329

either altogether unpolished and ignorant or, certainly, poorly

instructed. For it hardly ever happens that they are quite
eloquent, and the reason for this is evident. Eloquence serves
the world; it flaunts itself before the people and strives to
please even in evil things, since very often it attempts to
attack the truth that it might show its strength; it seeks after
wealth; it desires honors; and, finally, it demands the highest
rank of dignity. It despises these things, therefore, as though
lowly and base; it shrinks from the secrets as though opposed
to itself, things which it would surely enjoy in public and
desire in abundance. From this it comes about that wisdom
and truth need suitable heralds.
And if by chance any of the erudite were converted to that
truth, they did not measure up for its defense. Among those
who are known to me, Minucius Felix5 was not of mean repute
among the case-pleaders of the place. His book, which has the
title Octavius, shows how suitable a defender of the truth he
could have been if he had devoted himself entirely to that
pursuit. Septimius Tertullian 6 also was an expert in every
sort of learning, but he had little ease in eloquence, was not
polished, and was quite obscure. So, not even here did he come
upon enough of renown. There was, however, one exceptional
and brilliant one, Cyprian,7 because he had acquired great
glory for himself in the profession of the art of oratory, and
he wrote very many wonderful works in his own manner. For
he had an ability in speaking, easy, fluent, pleasant, and, what
is of prime importance in speech, it was clear, so that you
cannot distinguish whether he was more ornate in eloquence,
or more successful in explanation, or more powerful in per-
suasion. Still, he is not able to please beyond the words spoken
5 Minucius Felix is sometimes regarded as the first of the Christian Latin
apologists because his Octavius is so slightly flavored with Christian
arguments and allusions.
6 Tertullian is the great Father of Western Apologists even though he
himself left the Church. Some authorities hold that he wrote before
Minucius Felix.
7 St. Cyprian, another forerunner of Lactantius, a Christian, an African,
a Latin apologist, died a martyr's death in 257.
330 LACTANTIUS

to those who do not know the mystery, since the things which
he spoke are mystical matters and were prepared for the pur-
pose of being heard by the faithful alone. In fact, he is usually
derided by the learned ones of this age to whom his writings
have become known. I heard a certain man, quite well-spoken,
too, who called him Coprian, changing one letter, just as
though he had conferred that exquisite ability, one suited for
better things, upon old-womanish fables. Now if this happens
to him whose eloquence is not unpleasant, what shall we think
is to befall those whose speech is lean and unpleasing? They
have been able to possess no force of persuasiveness, nor
subtlety in argument, nor any sharpness at all for refutation.

Chapter 2

Therefore, because there have been wanting among us

suitable trained and skilled teachers who would vehemently
and keenly refute public errors, who would defend the whole
cause of truth in a dignified way and fluently, this very penury
has called forth certain people to dare to write against the
truth that is not known to them. I do not mean those who in
former times have railed against it to no avail. "'-\Then I was
invited to teach oratory in Bithynia, and it so happened that
at the same time the temple of God was overthrown, there
arose in the same place two men who insulted truth thus
prostrated and abject, and I know not whether it was more
scornfully or more importunately done. One of these 1 pro-
fessed to be a leading figure in philosophy, but he was so full
of vice that, as a master of continence, he burned no less with
avarice than with wanton desires; he was so sumptuous in
food that the assertor of virtue in school, the lauder of par-
simony and poverty, dined worse in the palace than at home.
l I t seems that the name is not known. Baronius in his Annales Ecclesi-
astici 11.853 thought that Lactantius meant Porphyrius here, but this
opinion has been refuted by HoIstenius, De vila et scriptis Porphyrii
(1630) p. 89.
 BOOK FIVE 331

He covered over his vices, however, by hair and the pallium

and, that which is the most effective veiling, by riches; and
in order to increase these he gained access by a strange manner
of canvassing to the friendship of judges, and he quickly
obligated them to himself by the influence of a false name,
not only to sell or betray their judgments, but also to retard
by their power their neighbors and relatives from seeking
back their own. But this man who destroyed the value of his
disputations by his mode of life, or who censured his morals
by his discussions, was himself a grave censor and a very severe
accuser against himself. And at the very same time in which
a just people were being harassed, he spewed forth three books
against the Christian religion and name.
He professed that 'before all things the duty of a philosopher
was to undermine the errors of men and to recall them to the
true way, that is, to the worship of the gods by whose power
and majesty the world is governed, and not to allow unskilled
men to be ensnared by the deceits of certain others, lest their
simplicity be a prize and grist for the mill of clever men. So
he had undertaken this duty worthy of philosophy, to hold
forth the light of wisdom to those not seeing it, not only that
they might grow sound again by undertaking the worship of
the gods, but also to avoid with strong obstinacy the fixed
tortures of the body and not to want to endure the severe
lacerations of their members in vain.' But in order that it
might be clear that he had put forth that work for this reason,
he was used up on the praises of princes whose piety and
providence, as, indeed, he himself used to say, 'has shone forth
brightly both in other respects and especially in defending the
religions of the gods, and finally it was for the good of human
interests that all men, laying aside and restraining impious
and old-womanish superstition, should be free for legitimate
practices and should experience the propitiousness of the gods
toward them: 2
2 The editors of the text consider this material as a quotation; still, the
source has not been discovered as yet.
332 LACTANTIUS

However, when he wished to weaken the reasonableness of

that religion against which he was making a harangue, he
appeared foolish, empty, ridiculous, because that serious con-
sultor of the utility of another's practice did not know, not
only what he was opposing, but even what he was saying_ For
if any of ours were present, although they were drowsy because
of the time, they mocked him in spirit, however, as is natural,
when they saw the man professing that he would illumine
others, although he himself was blind; that he would lead
others back from error, although he himself did not know
where he was placing his own feet; that he would instruct
others unto truth, not even a spark of which he had ever
seen, although, in fact, as professor of wisdom he was making
an effort to conquer wisdom. However, all were complaining
of that, because at that time, especially, he was advancing
toward that part of the work where hateful cruelty was raging.
What a philosophical flatterer and time-server! Truly, this
one was despised for his own emptiness; he was one who
hoped for glory which he did acquire, and the glory which
he did take hold of was changed into blame and reprehension.
Another one,s of a stinging manner, wrote the same kind
of material. He was, then, of the number of the judges and
was one of the first instigators of persecution. Not content with
that crime, he also pursued those whom he had afflicted with
his writings. He composed two pamphlets, not against the
Christians, lest he seem to inveigh against them in the manner
of an enemy, but for the Christians, that he might be thought
to show human regard for them and in a kindly way. In these
he tried so to reveal falsity in Sacred Scripture that it seemed
as though it were entirely contrary to itself. For certain chap-
ters or topics which seemed to contradict themselves, he ex-
posed, enumerating so many and such internal points of detail
that, at times, he seems to have been of the same training.
If this were the case, what Demosthenes will be able to defend
him from a charge of impiety who became the betrayer of the
3 This is very probably Hierocles. Cf. The Deaths of the Persecutors 16.4.
 BOOK FIVE 333

religion for which he had been enkindled, and of the faith

whose name he had put on, and of the sacrament which he
had received? Unless, we say by chance, the sacred writings
fell into his hands. ~What rashness was it, then, to dare to
explain that which no one had interpreted for him? It is well,
because either he learned nothing, or he understood nothing.
Repugnance or contradiction is as far away from the sacred
writings as he was away from faith and truth. He especially
railed at 'Peter and Paul and the other disciples as though
they were disseminators of fallacy, and he charged that they
were rude and unlearned because certain ones of them had
made a living from fishing,'4 just as though he took it hard
that some Aristophanes or Aristarchus did not comment on
that religion. 5

Chapter 3

The desire of pretending and cleverness, then, were missing

from these writers because they were untrained. 'Vhat un-
educated person can feign things apt and coherent with each
other, when the most learned of the philosophers, Plato and
Aristotle and Epicurus and Zeno, themselves, have said things
that were repugnant and contrary to each other? This is the
nature of liars, that they cannot agree. But the tradition of
those, because it is true, stands four-square, and completely
harmonizes with itself on all sides, and, therefore, it is per-
suasive since it is based upon constant reason. Not, then, for
the sake of inquiry or of usefulness have they commented
upon that religion; men who have, in fact, followed that way
of life, both by precepts and by the very pl'actice of it (a life
which lacks pleasures and spurns all those things which are
regarded as goods), and who have not only undergone death
for the faith, but have even known that they would die and
4 Again this is an apparent quotation from the works discussed.
5 Ironically, Lactantius indicates that such empty charge-makers would
accept references in comic writers as preferable to Christian sources.
334 LACTANTIUS

have foretold that, afterwards, all who followed their training

would suffer harsh and wicked treatment.
He asserted that 'Christ Himself, put to flight by the Jews,
had carried on robberies by collecting a force of nine hundred
men.' Who would dare to refute such great authority? Let us
believe this surely, for perhaps in his dreams some Apollo
announced it to him. Always so many robbers have perished
and do daily perish-indeed, you yourself have condemned
many; who of them after his death was called, I shall not say
a god, but a man? But you, perhaps, believed it from this,
since you have come to consider Mars, the homicide, holy, a
god. You would not have done this, however, if the Areopagites
had suspended him on a cross. When that same writer was
destroying the marvelousness of His deeds, but yet was not
denying them, he wanted to show that 'Appollonius had done
like works or even greater.' Strange that he passed by Apuleius
whose many marvelous deeds are accustomed to be related.
\'\Thy, then, 0 madman, does no one reverence Appollonius
as a god? Unless, perhaps, it is you alone, worthy of that god,
to be sure, with whom the true God will punish you ever-
lastingly.
If Christ was a magician because He performed miracles,
then, surely, Appollonius, who, as you relate, 'when Domitian
wished to punish him, did not appear at the trial all of a
sudden,' was more skilled than He who was arrested and fas-
tened to a cross. But from this very matter, perhaps, he wanted
to make the charge of the insolence of Christ, the fact that He
set Himself up as God, and that that one seems to have been
the more reverent who, although he did the greater things, as
this one thinks, still did not arrogate that dignity to himself.
I am not going to take time now to compare those very works,
since I have spoken in the second book! and in the preceding
book 2 about the fraud and sleight-of-hand tricks of magic art.
I hold that there is not anyone who does not desire that
1 c. 16.
2 ce. 13,27.
 BOOK FIVE 335

there will befall him after death, first of all, that which even
the mightiest kings long for. For why do men prepare great
sepulchres for themselves, why statues, images? Why do they
desire to gain renown in the minds of men by some famous
deeds or even death undergone for the people? Why did you
yourself wish to set up this detestable monument of your
genius, fashioned from folly as though from the mire, unless
it be because you hope for immortality from the memory of
your name? It is foolish to think that Appollonius did not
want that which he was desiring certainly, if it were possible,
since there is no one who would refuse immortality, especially
when you say that 'he was adored by certain people as a god,
and that his shrine under the name of Hercules Alexicacus
was set up by the Ephesians and is even now honored: He
could not, then, be believed a god after his death, since it was
certain that he was a man and a magician, and, therefore, he
affected divinity by the title of the name of another, since he
was not able to, nor did he dare to by his own. But our Lord
was able to be believed a God, since He was not a magician,
and He was believed, since He truly was God. 'I do not say
this,' he says, 'that on this account Appollonius is not re-
garded as a god, because he did not wish it, but that it might
be apparent that we, who have not immediately joined to
marvelous deeds the faith of divinity, are wiser than you who
have believed in a god on the strength of slight portents."
It is not strange if you, who are far removed from the wis-
dom of God, understand nothing of the materials which you
have read, when the Jews, who from the beginning perused
the prophets to whom the mystery3 of God had been entrusted,
were, nevertheless, ignorant of what they were reading. Get
to know, then, and understand, if you have any mind at all,
that He is believed a God by us, not for this reason, that He
performed miracles, but that we have seen that in Him were
fulfilled all the things that were foretold to us by the preach-
3 The word is again sacramentum, and here it means the secret or hidden
teachings about God.
336 LACTANTIUS

ing of the prophets. He did miraculous things: we would have

thought Him a magician, just as you think now and as the
Jews thought then, if all the prophets had not foretold those
very deeds in the one strain. And so we believe Him God, not
more because of His marvelous deeds and works than because
of that very cross which you touch like dogs, since that, too,
was foretold at the same time. Not, therefore, by His own
testimony-for who can be believed when he is speaking of
himself?-but by the testimony of the prophets, who told
about all the things which He did and suffered long before-
hand, did He receive the acknowledgment of faith in His
divinity which could not happen to Appollonius or Apuleius
or any of the magicians, nor can it ever happen to anyone.
Then, when he had poured out such mad ravings of his
ignorance, when he had endeavored with all his might to
completely destroy the truth, he dared to label his nefarious
books and enemies of God as Philaletheis (truth-loving). Blind
heart! Mind, blacker than the Cimmerian shadows,4 as they
say! Perhaps this one should have been a disciple of Anaxagor-
as to whom the snows were darkness. It is the same blindness
to put the name of falsity on the true and that of truth on the
false. A crafty man, of course, may wish to conceal his wolf
nature under a sheep skin so as to be able to ensnare a reader
with a fallacious title. But let it be that you have done this
through ignorance, not malice. What truth did you finally
bring to us, except that as an assertor of the gods, you betrayed
them to the last? For pursuing the praises of the 'Supreme
God' whom you admitted to be 'the King, the Greatest, the
Maker of things, the Source of good, the Parent of all, the
Maker and Sustainer of all the living,' you took the kingdom
from your Jupiter, and when he was thus removed from
supreme power, you reduced him into the number of ministers.
So your epilogue convicts you of folly and vanity and error.
For you affirm that there are gods, and yet you subject them

4 The Cimmerioi were a fabulous people who lived in caves between

Baiae and Cumae, the home of sleep.
 BOOK FIVE 337

and put them in bondage to the God whose religion YOll are
attempting to overthrow.

Chapter 4

When these men about whom I have been speaking reo

leased their sacrilegious writings in my presence and to my
grief, spurred on by their proud impiety and by a knowledge
of the truth itself and, as I believe, by God, I undertook this
duty of refuting, with all the powers of my ability, the be-
trayers of justice. I would write not against those who would
be crushed by a few words, but I would strike down all who
anywhere and everywhere perform or have performed the same
kind of work with one attack. For I do not doubt that many
others in many areas, and not only in Greek but also in Latin,
have devised monuments of their injustice. Since I could not
answer each one of these individually, I thought I should
press this cause, so as to overthrow the earlier ones with their
works on the one hand, and remove from those to come all
chance of writing or making an answer. Let them just lend
an ear: I will surely bring it about that whoever learns those
things will either take up what he condemned before, or, what
is next best, he will, at any rate, cease to deride.
Although Tertullian handled the same material fully in
that book called The Apology; however, because it is one thing
to make answer to accusers, which consists in defense or nega-
tion alone, and another to give instruction (which we are
doing) which must contain the substance of all of doctrine,l
I did not shrink from this task, so that I might complete the
material which Cyprian did not reach in that work 2 in which,
as he himself says, he tries to refute Demetrianus' 'barking
and roaring against' the truth.
He did not use his material as he should have, for not by
1 Cf. Isidore, Origines VI.S.6.
~ Cyprian, Ad DemetrianwII, c. 1.
338 LACTANTIUS

the testimonies of the Scriptures which that one thought of

as empty, fictitious, deceitful, was he to have been refuted,
but by argumentation and reason. Since he was arguing with a
man without knowledge of the truth, he should have put aside
the sacred writings for a little while, and he ought to have
trained him from the beginning as though he were untutored,
and then shown him the principles of the Light, little by
little, lest he become blinded by being confronted with all
the Light at once. For just as an infant is not to take the
strength of solid, heavy food because of the tenderness of its
stomach, and is nourished on soft food and milk until his
organs are strengthened and he is able to feed on stronger
foods, so it was necessary for him, too, because he was not yet
capable of understanding the divine teachings, to be presented
first with human testimonies, namely, those of the philosophers
and writers of histories, so that he might receive very com-
pelling refutation from his own authorities. Since Cyprian in
his exceeding fluency in the Scriptures did not act that way,
and since he was content in their authority alone on which the
faith rests, I have attempted, with God's inspiration, to do
just that, and at the same time to prepare the way for others
to imitate the plan. And if by our encouragement, learned
and cultured men should begin to come our way and want to
cast their genius and power of speaking on this field of the
truth, no one should doubt that the false religions will vanish
in a short time and all philosophy fall, if all are persuaded of
the fact that this is the only religion and that it is also the
only true wisdom. But I have digressed longer than I intended.

Chapter 5

Now we must set forth our proposed discussion about jus-

tice: whether this is itself the greatest virtue or whether it is
the very source of virtue. Not only the philosophers have
 BOOK FIVE 339

sought this out, but the poets also who were much earlier and
were regarded as wise men before the name of philosophy
originated. They clearly understood that this justice was far
removed from human matters, and they depicted it as, offended
with the vices of men, having left the earth and passed into
the heavens. And in order to teach what it means to live
justly-for they used to give instructions in the round-about
manner of poetical disguise-they sought examples of justice
from the age of Saturn which they call 'golden,' and they de-
scribed the condition of human life when the world was in
that age. Indeed, this must not be regarded as poetical fiction,
but as truth. For while Saturn was reigning, and the cults of
the false gods had not yet been begun, and that people had
not as yet been given over to the idea of divinity, surely God
was worshiped. For this reason, then, there were no dissen-
sions, nor hatreds, nor wars. 'Fury had not yet unsheathed
the maddened swords,' as Caesar Germanicus says in the
Aratean poem, 'nor had discord among relatives become
known.'1 In fact, there was not any even among strangers, nor
were there any swords which would be bared. vVho would have
to take consideration about his own protection, as long as
justice were present and flourishing, since no one would make
any encroachments; or who would contrive for the ruin of
another, since no one would covet anything?
'They preferred to live content with slight worship,'2 as
Cicero tells us in his poem of the same title which belongs to
our religious literature. 'It was not right even to mark off
or divide the fields with a measure; they sought from a central
source,'s for God had given the land in common to all, so
that they might live a common life, not that grasping and
raging greed might claim everything for itself, and that
nothing would be lacking to anyone which came into existence
for all. It is necessary that this saying of the poet be taken

1 Germanicus, Aratus 112,113.

2 Cicero, Aratus frg. 21.
3 Vergil, Georgics 1.126-127.
340 LACTANTIUS

in such a way that we should not think that there was ab-
solutely no private ownership at that time. Rather, we should
interpret it as a poetic figure, that we may understand that
men were so liberal that they did not exclude others from
profits gained for themselves, nor did they in solitude brood
upon hidden wealth, but they freely admitted the poor to a
share of their proper work.
'Then the rivers were flowing with milk and with nectar.'4
And neither was this strange, since the facilities of the just
were manifestly laid open to all; nor did avarice, intercepting
the divine benefits, bring hunger and thirst upon the com-
mon people, but all enjoyed abundance equally, since those
who had, gave bountifully and generously to those who had not.
But after Saturn was expelled by his son and brought into
Latium, 'Fleeing the arms of Jove, and an exile deprived of
his realm,'5 when the people had already ceased to worship
God, either from fear of the new king, or depraved through
their own fault, and had begun to regard the king as a god,
although he himself, a near-parricide, was an example to the
others for violating piety, 'The most just virgin speedily
abandoned the earth,'6 but, it did not happen as Cicero says,
that 'she tarried in the realm of Jupiter and in part of heaven.'7
For how could she tarry or reside in the kingdom of him who
drove his father from his realm, persecuted him in war, and
cast him out as an exile from the earth? 'That one added evil
poison to the black snakes and bade the wolves to take prey,'8
that is, he inspired men with hatred and envy and deceit, so
that they were as envenomed as snakes and rapacious as wolves.
This is, indeed, what those people truly do who persecute those
who are just and faithful to God, and who give to judges the
power of raging furiously against the guiltless. Perhaps Jupiter
did something of this sort for attacking and removing justice,
4 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.3.
5 Vergi1, Aeneid 8.320.
6 Germanicus, Aratus 137.
7 Cicero, Aratus frg. 23.
8 Vergil, Georgics 1.129·130.
 BOOK FIVE 341

and for this he is said to have made snakes savage and to have
incited wolves to brutality. 'Then the fury of war and the
love of possessing followed,'o and not without cause. For when
the religion of God was taken away, they lost also the knowl-
edge of good and evil. Thus community living perished
among men, and the compact of human society was broken.
Then, forces began to struggle against each other, and to plot,
and gain glory for themselves at the price of human blood.

Chapter 6

The source of all of these evils was cupidity, and this cer-
tainly burst forth from the contempt of the true Majesty. For
not only did they for whom there was some abundance not
share with others, but they even took away the goods of
others, drawing in all things unto their own private gain,
and the things which individuals were working on before for
the use of all were conferred upon the homes of the few. In
order to subject the rest to slavery, firstly, they began to steal
away and pile up the necessities of life and keep them tightly
closed up, so that they might keep the celestial benefits their
own, not on account of their kindly human nature which
was not in them at all, but to rake up all things as instruments
of their greed and avarice. They also passed laws for them-
selves and sanctioned, under the name of justice, those most
unfair and unjust measures by which they protected their
thefts and avarice against the strength of the multitude. There-
fore, they availed as much by authority as by strength or
resources or evil.
Since there was in them not a vestige of justice, the offices
of which are humanity, fairness, pity, now they were rejoicing
in proud and swollen unfairness, and they put themselves
higher than the rest of men because of the train of their

9 Ibid., Aeneid 8.327.

342 LACTANTIUS

satellites and weapons and distinctive garb. Hence, they dis-

covered for themselves honors, and the purple and axes,! so
that they might rule over those they would strike with terror
and fear, relying on the terrorizing power of their axes and
swords as though upon the right of masters.
In this condition did that king2 constitute human life, who,
after his sire had been defeated and put to flight, seized not a
kingdom but an impious tyranny by force of armed men. He
took away that golden and just age and forced men to become
evil and wicked from this very fact, that he turned them from
God to adoring himself, which terror of most overweening
power had wrung out from them. For who would not fear
him whom arms encircled? Him whom the unusual flash of
iron and swords surrounded? Or what stranger would he spare
who had not even spared his own father? Whom would he
fear who had overcome the strong, outstanding race of Titans
in war, and had destroyed them by slaughtering them? Why is
it strange if a whole multitude, oppressed with new fear, had
yielded to the adulation of one? They venerated him. They
conferred the greatest honor upon him. And since imitating
the manners and vices of a king is judged to be a kind of
flattery, they all cast aside reverence, lest they seem to reproach
the king for his crimes if they lived reverently.
Thus, corrupted by this constant imitation, they abandoned
the divine right and, little by little, the habit of evil living
became the custom. And now nothing of the preceding age
remained in its reverent and very fine condition, but justice
having been exploded, took truth with it and left for men
error, ignorance, and blindness. Not wisely, therefore, did the
poets act who sang that justice fled to the kingdom of Jupiter.
If justice was on the earth in that age which they call golden,
then, surely, it was driven out by Jupiter who changed the
golden age. Now the change of the golden age and the expul-

I Senators and magistrates wore a purple-bordered toga. and the axes

borne by Iictors signified the power of certain magistrates.
2 Cf. Bk. I, ch. 10.
 BOOK FIVE 343

sion of justice must be considered, as I said, as nothing else

than the desertion of the divine religion. For this alone brings
it about that a man may hold his fellowman dear and know
that he is bound to him with the bond of brotherhood, in-
asmuch as 'the same Father is God of all,'3 and that he may
share the benefits of God, the common Father, with those who
do not have them; that he may harm no one, oppress no one,
not close his door to a guest-stranger, nor his ear to one
entreating him; but that he may be 'bountiful, generous,
liberal,' which Tully believed were 'kingly praises.'4 Actually,
this is justice, and this the golden age, which was first cor-
rupted in the reign of Jupiter, and then soon after, when he
himself and all his progeny were consecrated by the worship of
many gods which was then taken up, it had been entirely re-
moved.

Chapter 7

But God, most indulgent parent that He is, when the end
of time was drawing near, sent a messenger to lead back that
old age and the justice that had been routed, so that the
human race would not be thrown about by great and ever-
lasting errors. The likeness of that golden time returned,
therefore, and was given back to the earth, but justice was
assigned only to a few. This justice is nothing else but a
devoted and religious worship of the one God. Perhaps some-
one may be moved to ask why, if this is justice, it has not been
given to the entire human race, and why all the people are
not agreed upon it. This is a matter of great discussion; why
separate selection was retained by God when He gave justice
to the earth. I have brought this out in another place,! and
wherever it shall come up opportunely, it will be explained.
Now it is sufficient to note this very briefly, that virtue is not
3 Lucretius 2.992.
4 Cicero, Speech for King Deiotams 9.26.
1 Cf. Bk. II, ch. 17; III, ch. 29.
344 LACTANTIUS

able to be discerned unless there be contrary vices, nor is it

perfected unless it be exercised by adversity. God wished this
distinction of good and evil to exist, that we might know the
quality of the good from evil, and, likewise, that of evil from
good; and, if one is removed, the reason of the other cannot
be understood.
So God did not exclude evil in order that the condition of
virtue might be able to stand firm. For how could patience
retain its force or its name, if there were nothing which we
were forced to suffer? How could faith vowed to its God
merit praise, unless there were someone who wished to turn
it aside from God? Therefore, He permitted the unjust to be
more powerful, that they could force men unto evil; and for
this reason they are the more numerous, so that virtue would
be precious because it is rare. Even Quintilian put this very
briefly and in an outstanding manner in an obscure chapter:
'For what virtue would innocence be,' he said, 'unless its rare
occurrence had given it praise? But since it has been so worked
out by nature that hatred, desire, wrath toward something
which they have come upon should drive men blind, it seems
to be beyond man's nature to be free from fault. But if nature
had given equal emotions to all, piety would be nothing.'2
How trne this is the very demand of reason teaches. For if it is
virtue to bravely resist evils and vices, it is clear that without
evil and vice there is no virtue. And in order that God might
make this absolute and perfect, He kept that which was con-
trary to it, with which it could contend. For shaken by
shattering evils it acquires stability, and as often as it is struck
against, so much does it gain in strength. \!\Tithout a doubt,
then, this cause brings it about that, although justice has
been conferred upon men, yet it is not said to be a golden age,
for it has not endured evil to retain the opposite which alone
holds the guaranty of a divine religion.

2 Cf. Quintilian's Declamatio according to Ritter's recension p. III note.

This section is treated as a direct quotation from Quintilian by the
Vienna editors.
 BOOK FIVE 345

Chapter 8

Those who think that no one is just have justice before

their eyes, but they do not want to perceive her. Why is it
that they describe her in songs or in every speech, complaining
of her absence, although it would be very easy for them to be
good if they should wish? Why do you depict justice to your-
selves as something inane, and why do you wish it to drop
from the sky as though fashioned in some likeness? Behold, it
is present before you. Take it up, if you can, and place it in
the dwelling place of your heart, and do not think it difficult
or foreign to these times. Be fair and good, and the justice
which you seek will follow you of its own accord. Put aside
from your hearts all evil designs, and immediately that golden
time will return for you, which you cannot attain in any
other way than by beginning to worship the true God. Your
desire for justice on earth can in no way be realized as long
as the cult of false gods remains. It could not have been even
then, when you think, that when those gods did not exist
whom you worship impiously, there must have been the wor-
ship of one God throughout the earth. It was the worship of
Him, to be sure, who punishes evil and demands goodness;
whose temple is not of stones or clay, but man himself who
bears a likeness of God; and this temple is adorned, not with
corruptible presents of gold and gems, but with the everlasting
gifts of virtues.
Learn, then, if there is any mind left in you, that men are
bad and unjust for this reason, that the false gods are wor-
shiped. And, therefore, all the evils in human affairs grow
daily more serious, because God, the Maker and Governor of
this world, has been abandoned; because unholy religions
have been embraced against that which is right; and, finally,
because you allow God to be not worshiped at all even, or
only by a few. For if God alone were worshiped, there would
not be dissensions and wars. When men would know that
they were sons of the one God and, therefore, bound together
346 LACTANTIUS

by a sacred, inviolable bond of divine relationship, no in-

sidious plots would take place. ·When they knew what sort of
punishments God was preparing for killers of souls, the God
who sees through clandestine crimes and even thoughts them-
selves, there would not be frauds and rapine. If according to
God's precept they had learned how to be content with what
is their own and with a little,l so that they might prefer firm
and eternal things to those fragile and falling, there would
not be crimes of adultery, and incest, and prostitution. If it
were known to all that whatever is sought after beyond the
desire of procreating is condemned by God, necessity would
not force woman to violate her honor to seek a most disgrace-
ful living for herself, when men also would restrain passion,
and a loving and religious coming together of those who have
would come to the aid of those who have not. There would
not be, therefore, as I said, all these evils upon the earth if
all were pledged to the law of God; if there were done by all
men what this one people of ours does.
How blessed and how golden would be the condition of
human affairs if, throughout the whole world, meekness and
devotion and peace and innocence and fairness and temper-
ance and faith should tarry! Finally, then there would not
be need of so many and such various laws for ruling men,
when the one law of God would suffice unto perfect innocence.
N or would there be need of prisons or the swords of guards
and the terror of punishments, when the healthfulness of the
heavenly precepts infused into human hearts would instruct
men willingly to the works of justice.
N ow the evil are those who are in ignorance of the right
and the good. Indeed, Cicero saw this. vVhen he was treating
of law, he said: 'Just as by one and the same nature the world
coheres and supports itself, all its parts fitting among them-
selves, so all men, confused by nature, disagree among them-
selves through depravity. And they do not understand that
they are relatives and subjected under the one same tutelage.
But if this were grasped, men would surely live the life of
1 Cf. Cicero, On Duties 1.21.70.
 BOOK FIVE 347

the gods.'2 Therefore, all the evils with which the human
race weakens itself in turn, have been brought on by the un-
just and unholy worship of the false gods. For they could not
retain piety who had denied as perfidious and rebel children
the common Father of us all, God.

Chapter 9

Sometimes, however, they realize that they are evil, and

they praise the condition of former times and infer that jus-
tice is not present because of their conduct and deserts. But
even though it is before their eyes, they not only do not take
it up, but they do not even acknowledge it; in fact, they even
hate it violently and persecute it and strive to exterminate it.
For a while now let us pretend that this is not justice which
we seek. How, if that should come which they think is true,
shall they receive it? Since, if the torturers and killers of men
whom they confess to be imitators of the just, just because
they do good and just works, killed only the evil, they would
be worthy men to whom justice would not be coming, there
was no other cause for justice to leave the earth than the
shedding of human blood. How much more should this be so
when they kill the reverent, and regard the very followers of
justice as enemies, as more than enemies, I should say? Al-
though they seek after their souls and their resources and
their children with fire and sword, still they spare them when
they are conquered, and there is place for clemency among
their arms. Or if it please them to be merciless, then nothing
more is done to them except that they are killed or carried
off into slavery. This is unrecountable, however, because it
is done against those who do not know how to do evil, and
none are regarded as more harmful than those who are in-
nocent of all harm.
The most wicked men, therefore, who surpass the wild beasts

2 Cicero, On Laws frg. 1.

348 LACTANTlUS

in their fierceness, who ravage the most placid flock of lhe

Lord, 'wolves, or prowlers in the black darkness, who are
driven blind by a wicked craving of their belly,'l dare to make
mention of justice. But, in truth, not a craving of the belly
but of the heart has made them wild. They do not go about in
the black darkness but in open plundering. Nor does a con-
sciousness of crime ever call them back, lest they violate the
sacred and holy name of justice with that mouth which drips,
as if it were the gaping jaws of wild beasts, with the blood of
the innocent.
Should we say most strongly that there is a cause for this
hatred which is so great and so persistent? Is it that 'truth be-
gets hatred,'2 as the poet says, filled as though with a divine
inspiration? Or do they blush to be vile before the good and
just? Or is it for both reasons? The truth is always hated for
this reason, that he who sins wishes to have a free place for
sinning, and he thinks that he can enjoy this delight of evil-
doers more securely in no other way than if there is no one
to whom his crimes are not pleasing. Therefore, they strive to
extirpate completely those witnesses of their crimes and malice
and to remove those whom they think opposed to themselves
as though their lives were proved guilty. For why are some
good people unsuitable who make a loud outcry against cor-
rupt public morals by living well? Why are not all equally
evil, grasping, unchaste, adulterous, perjurious, greedy, fraudu-
lent? Rather, let those be removed from us before whom it is
a shame to live badly, men who strike the face of those who
sin even though not with words, because they are silent, yet
still reprove them by their dissimilar kind of life. For whoever
does not agree seems to chastize. And this is not to be greatly
wondered at if they do those things against men, since even
against God Himself for the same reason the people rose up,
a people also established in hope and not ignorant of God.
The same inevitableness which violated the very author of
1 Vergil, Aeneid 2,355.
2 Cf. Terence, Andria 1.1.40.
 BOOK FIVE 349

justice follows the just. They harass, therefore, and torture

with exquisite kinds of punishments, and hold it a slight thing
to kill those whom they hate, except that the cruelty also ridi-
cules and wastes their bodies. If there are some who through
fear of pain or death, or through their own perfidy, turn away
from the heavenly promise and show approval of those deadly
sacrificial acts, they praise them and load them with honors,
so that they might entice others by their example. But they
overwhelm with all the powers of their murderousness, those
who have valued their faith highly and have not denied that
they were worshipers of God, just as though they thirst for
blood, and they call them desperate because they do not spare
their bodies at all, as though anything could be more desperate
than to torture and hack him whom you know to be innocent.
So there is no shame left in those from whom all humanity has
gone, and arguments that fit themselves they twist against just
men.
For they call impious those who are certainly pious and who
keep away from human blood. If, however, they should con-
sider their own actions and the actions which they condemn
as impious, they would understand how deceitful their own
are and how much more deserving of all those things which
they say and do against the good. For not from our number,
but from theirs, do those always arise who with arms block
the roads; practice piracy on the seas; and if not permitted to
go about openly, they mix poisons secretly; who kill their
wives to gain their dowries, or their husbands to wed adulter-
ers; who strangle their children when they are born, or if they
are overly 'pious,' they expose them; who do not refrain from
lust or incest either with a daughter or a sister or mother or a
priestess; who conspire against their fellow-citizens and their
country; who do not fear the sack; who, finally, commit sacri-
leges and despoil the temples of the gods whom they worship.
And, that we may mention the deeds which are trivial and
usual, they take inheritances, forge wills, take away or exclude
just heirs. They are those who prostitute their bodies for
350 LACTANTIUS

pleasure; who, unmindful of why they have been born, con-

tend with woman in submission to lust; who defile and pro-
fane the most sacred part of their bodies against all right; who
measure their manliness with a sword; and what is more dis-
graceful that they may be high-priests of religion, they do not
spare even their life, but sell their souls to be publicly ex-
tinguished. If they sit as judges, either they destroy the guilt-
less because they have been corrupted by bribe, or they let
the guilty go unpunished. They also reach for the sky itself
by their magic, as though the earth might not contain their
malice. These crimes, I tell you, and more than these are done
by those who worship the gods.
~What is the place of justice among these, so many and such
great crimes? And I gathered together a few from the many,
not to make an accusation of them, but to illustrate my point.
~Whoever wishes to know them all may take in hand the books
of Seneca, who was a very true describer and a very sharp railer
of public habits and vices. But even Lucilius as well has cir-
cumscriptly and briefly depicted that shady life in these verses:
Now in truth from morning until night, on feast day
and the days before, the entire populace, and equally the
patricians every day, all display themselves in the market
place and never leave it. And they all devote themselves
to the one same desire and skill: that they may give words
cautiously, fight guilefully, strive with flattery, simulate
that they are good men, and perform trickery, as if all
were enemies to alP
What one of these can be cast against our people, whose
whole religion is to live without crime and stain? ~When, there-
fore, they see that they and their own associates are doing
those things which we mentioned, and that our people prac-
tice nothing else but what is fair and good, they would be
able, if they had any sense, to learn from this that those who
do these things are the pious, and that those who commit the
crimes are the impious. For it is not possible that those who

3 J'rom an uncertain work of Lucilius, frg. 4.

 BOOK FIVE 351

do not err in all the actions of their life should be mistaken

in that which is most important, that is, in religion, which is
the head of all. Impiety taken up in that which is the greatest
concern would follow in all the rest. And it cannot justly be
that those who err in all of life should not be deceived in
religion also, since piety, keeping the rule in the highest
matter, would preserve its tenor in the others. So it happens
that in each way it is learned from the condition of the things
which are done what sort of highest concern there is.

Chapter 10

It is worth attention to learn of their piety, that from those

who act mercifully and reverently, it may be understood what
kind of things are they which are done by them against the
rights of piety. And so that I may not seem to be inclement in
railing against anyone, I will take some poetic character, which
may be even a very great example of piety. According to Mara,
'that king, than whom no other was more just, nor was anyone
greater in piety, in war, and in arms,'1 showed us what ex-
amples of justice? 'He had bound behind their backs the hands
of those whom he was to send to the shades below, about to
sprinkle the flames wi th the blood of the slain.'2
'!\That can be more holy than this piety; what more clement
than to immolate human victims to the dead and to feed the
flame with the blood of men as though with oil?
But perhaps this was not his own vice, but that of the
poet who defiled 'a man signed with piety'3 with the mark of
crime. Where, then, poet, is that piety which you very often
praise? La, reverent Aeneas 'seizes the four youths begotten
of Sulmo, and just as many of those whom Ufens is bringing
up; he takes them alive that he may immolate them to the
1 Vergil, Aeneid 1.544-545.
2 Ibid., 11.81-82.
3 Ibid., 1.10.
352 LACTANTIUS

shades and sprinkle the flames of the funeral pile with captive
blood.'4 Why, then, did he say at that very same time in which
he was sending bound men to immolation: 'Indeed, I would
want to be yielding to the living,'" when the living, whom he
had in his power, he ordered to be slain in place of beasts?
But this, as I said, was not his fault, who perhaps had not
learned letters, but yours. For although you had been trained,
you did not know what piety was, and that very thing which
that hero did nefariously, detestably, you believed to be the
function of piety. Of course, on this one score he is called
'pious,' that he loved his father. What of the fact that 'good
Aeneas destroyed those praying for what was not to be des-
pised'?6 Swearing by that same father and the 'hope of Iulus
then growing Up,'7 he spared not at all when 'stirred up by
fury and wrath.'s \!\Till anyone think, therefore, that this man
had any virtue in him, who burned with fury as though he were
stubble, and who, forgetting the shade of his father through
whom he was besought, could not bridle his wrath? He was
'pious,' then, in no way who killed not only those not resenting
it, but even those making supplication to him.
Someone will say at this point: 'What, therefore, is piety,
or where is it, or what sort of quality is it?'9 Surely, it rests
with those who know not wars, who preserve harmony with
all, who are friendly even to the unfriendly, who love all men
as brothers, who know how to restrain wrath and to quell all
fury of mind with tranquil moderation. How much smoke,
and the clouds of how much darkness and error have darkened
how many hearts of men who, when they think themselves
especially pious, then, especially, cIo they become impious? The
more religiously they cIo reverence to those earthly shrines, so
much the more crime-laden do they rise up against the name
4 Ibid., 10.516-519.
5 Ibid., lLlll.
6 Ibid., 11.l06.
7 Ibid., 10.523.
8 Ibid., 12.946.
9 It is difficult to find a good English word for pietas. Piety, especially
in its usual meaning, is not adequate.
 BOOK FIVE 353

of true Divinity. And so often in payment of their impiety

they are vexed with even graver evils. Because they are not
aware of their cause, the whole blame is ascribed to fortune,
and the philosophy of EpicurllS finds place, that nothing affects
the gods as judges, that they arc nei tIler touched by favor nor
moved by wrath, because they see their despisers are often
the happy ones and their worshipers are miserable. 10
And this happens, since, when they seem to be religious and
good by nature, they are believed to merit nothing compar-
able to what they often suffer. They console themselves, then,
with the accusation against fortune, but they do not believe
that, because if there were any fortune, she would never harm
those devoted to her.
Rightly, therefore, does punishment follow piety of this
sort, and divinity, offended with the evil crimes of falsely
religious men, pursues them with dire calamity. Though these
may live lives morally sound in the greatest faith and inno-
cence, because, however, they worship false gods whose impious
and profane rites the true God hates, they are alien to justice
and the name of true piety.
Nor is it difficult to show why those worshipers of the gods
cannot be good and just. For how will they abstain from blood
who cherish those bloody gods, Mars and Bellona? How will
they spare their parents who worship Jupiter, the expeller of
his father; or how will they care for infants born of them who
revere Saturn? How will they protect modesty who worship
a nude goddess, an adulteress, and the prostitute, as it were,
among the gods? How will they abstain from rapine and fraud
who know that those who teach that the thefts of Mercury are
not acts of fraud but of cleverness are deceiving? How will they
restrain their concupiscence who venerate Jupiter, Hercules,
Libel', Apollo, and the others whose adulteries and outrages
upon men and women are known, not only to the learned, but
are portrayed even in the theaters and sung about, so that they
might become more known to all? Are men able to be just in
10 -ct. Selected Opinions of Epicurus, edited by Usener, Vol. I, p. 71,394.
354 LACTANTIUS

the presence of these things, who, although they are good by

nature, are, however, instructed unto injustice by the very
gods? For it is necessary to please the god you worship with
those things in which you know he takes joy and delight. Thus
it happens that a god forms the life of his devotees according
to the quality of his own deity, since imitation is the most
religious form of worship.

Chapter 11

To those men, therefore, who conform to the customs of their

gods, because it is serious and bitter justice, and who violently
exercise against the just the same 'piety' which they use in
other matters, not without reason has the name beasts been
given by the prophets. 1 Thus Marcus Tullius in an outstanding
passage says: 'If there is no one who would not prefer to die
rather than to be turned into some form of beast, even though
he would hold the mind of man, how much more wretched
is it to be in the shape of man with a mind that is wild? Indeed,
it seems to me to be as much the worse evil as the soul is more
noble than the body.'2 And so the bodies of beasts are spurned,
by which those are more wild, and yet they are pleasing to
themselves because they have been born men of whom they
have nothing except the external features and the figure in
general. For what Caucasus, what India, what Hyrcanian
region ever sustained beasts so wild, so bloody?3 Because the
madness of all the wild beasts rages only up to the satiety of
their hunger, and when that has been abated, then immedi-
ately there is rest. That one, that is the true beast by whose
one command 'Black blood is everywhere spilled, and every-
where cruel mourning, everywhere dread, and many an image
of death.'4
1 Cf. Ezech. 34.25,28.
2 From an uncertain work, frg. 66. Cf. however, The Republic 4.1.1.
3 Cf. Vergil, Aeneid 4.366-367.
4 Ibid., 11.646; 2.368-369.
 BOOK FIVE 355

No one is able to describe rightly the wantonness of this so

great monster which rages with its fierce fangs over the whole
world though it lies in one place, and which not only scatters
the limbs of men, but even reduces the very bones and grinds
them to ashes, lest there be any place of burial. Just as though
those who confess God were striving for this, that He should
come to their sepulchres, and not that they come to God. What
fierceness, then, is that, what fury, what madness to deny light
to the living and earth to the dead? I say, therefore, that there
is nothing more miserable than those men whom necessity has
found or has made the ministers of another's fury, the satel-
lites of an impious order. For that was not honor nor an ad-
vance in dignity, but the condemnation of a man to the work
of execution, in fact, to the everlasting punishment of God.
What those individuals have done throughout the whole
world it is impossible to tell. What number of volumes will
hold such infinite, such varied kinds of cruelty? For once power
was gained, each one raged according to his own habits. Some,
in the presence of excessive timidity, dared more than they
were ordered; others gave vent to a personal hatred against
the just; certain ones acted according to a natural wildness of
spirit; some, to show favor and to fortify the way for themselves
to higher offices by means of this one. Some stood out with a
leaning to slaughter, as did the one in Phrygia who burned
up an entire people along with the assembly itself.
But the more bitter one is, so much the more clement is he
found: that is truly the worst kind which a false species of
clemency flatters, and that one is the more severe; that one is
the crueler executioner who has decided to kill no one. And
so it cannot be said how great and what serious kinds of
torments judges of this sort have contrived in order to attain
an effect of their purpose. But they do these things, however,
not only that they may boast that they have destroyed no in-
nocent person-for I myself have heard some glorying in the
fact that their ministry was bloodless in this regard-but also
for the sake of envy, so that they themselves may not be over-
356 LACTANTlUS

come, or that the others may not attain to the glory of their
virtue. So in thinking out the kinds of punishments, they
think of nothing other than victory, for they know that it is
a struggle and a fight. I saw in Bithynia a guard, marvelously
elated with joy, as though he had subjected some barbarous
nation, because one who had resisted with great courage for
a period of two years seemed at last to be giving in.
They strive, therefore, to conquer, and they inflict exquisite
pains on bodies, and they shun nothing other than that the tor-
tured must not die, as though, indeed, the death alone would
make them blessed and not the torments also, which the more
serious they bring forth so much the greater glory of virtue.
But they, stubborn in their foolishness, order care to be dili-
gently applied to the tortured, so that their manners may be
renewed for other torments and that new blood may be pre-
pared for punishment. ''\That can be done so pious, so bene-
ficial, so human? They would not have cared so solicitously
for those whom they loved. This is the training of their gods;
for these works they instruct their worshipers; they desire these
sacred rites. Why, even the most defiled homicides have heaped
impious rights against the pious: for sacrilegious constitutions
also and the disputations of those skilled in the law are read
as unjust. Domitius, in the seventh book on the office of pro-
consul, collected the nefarious rescripts of princes in order to
show with what punishments those who professed that they
were worshipers of God should be punished. 5

Cha1Jter 12

What would you do to those v'lho call the butcheries of those

ancient tyrants, raging madly against innocent people, a right?
And although they are teachers of injustice and cruelty, yet
they wish to seem just and prudent. They are blind and dull
-sCf:Rudorff, "Uber den liber de officio procollsulis" Acta Academiae
Berol. 1865 (ed. 1866) p. 259 II.
 BOOK FIVE 357

and ignorant of the truth of things. Is justice, then, so hateful

to you, 0 depraved minds, that you equate it with the worst
crime? Is innocence so lost among you that you judge it worthy,
not even of a simple death, but that it is regarded beyond all
crimes to admit no crime and to show a heart free from all
contagion of evil? And since we are speaking in common with
the worshipers of the false gods, it may be permitted by you
to do something well with you. This is our law, this our work,
this our religion. If we seem wise to you, imitate us; if fools,
contemn us, or even ridicule if you wish. But our folly is of
advantage to you. \'\Thy do you torture us, why afflict us? We
do not envy your wisdom. We prefer this folly; we embrace it.
We believe that this is for our benefit, that we love you and
bestow all things upon you who hate. There is a place in Cicero
not averse to the truth in that discussion which is delivered
by Furius against justice: 'Suppose there are two, one of whom,
a very fine man, very fair, of the highest justice, and singular
faith, but the other of marked evil and daring, and that the
state is in this error that it considers that good man evil, crime-
laden, wicked; but on the other hand, he who is most evil
it thinks possesses the most upright probity of morals and faith.
And according to this opinion of all the citizens is that good
man bothered and attacked, his hands taken from him, his
eyes dug out. And it is thus that he is condemned, bound, con-
sumed and left destitute and finally made to seem most
wretched in the eyes of all even by strict right. And, then
that evil man is praised, cultivated, loved by all. They confer
all honors upon him, full commands, all resources, troops from
all sides. Then shall he be judged by the opinion of all as the
best man and most worthy of all good fortune. vVho, then,
will be so mad who would hestitate as to which of these he
would prefer to be?'! Surely, as though he were divining what
evils were going to come about for us and in what way, he
set forth this example. For our people suffer all these things
because of the evil of those who are in error.
1 Cicero, Republic 3.17.27.
358 LACTANTIUS

Indeed, the state, rather the whole world, is in the error to

such a degree that it persecutes, tortures, condemns, and kills
just men as though they were evil and impious. As to his
saying that no one is so mad as to doubt what he prefers him-
self to be, indeed, that one, who was disputing about justice,
realized this, that a wise man would prefer to be evil with a
good reputation than good with an evil one. May this mad-
ness be far from us, to prefer the false to the true! Will the
quality of our goodness depend on the errors of the people
rather than upon our own consciences and the judgment of
God? Or will any good fortune ever inveigle us into not choos-
ing goodness with all evils rather than falsity with all its pros-
perity? 'Let kings have their realms and the rich their
wealth,'2 as Plautus says, and let the prudent keep their
prudence. Let them leave us our folly which, from the very
fact that they envy us for it, is manifestly wisdom. vVho would
envy a fool unless he himself were a consummate fool? They,
however, are not such fools as to envy fools, but from the
fact that they carefully, zealously carryon the persecutions,
they grant that we are not fools. Why would they rage so
fiercely unless it were that they fear that, with justice growing
stronger every day, they might be left with their precious gods?
If, then, the adherents of those gods are wise and we the fools,
why do they fear that the wise will be seduced by the fools?

Chapter 13

And since, then, our number is always increased from the

worshipers of the false gods, never lessened, however, not even
in persecution itself-because men can sin and be defiled by
false worship, but cannot be turned away from God: for truth
avails by its own power-who is so stupid and so blind but
that he sees there is wisdom in each aspect? They are blinded

2 PIau tus, Curculio 1.3.22.

 BOOK FIVE 359

by malice and fury, though, lest they see, and they think those
fools who. although they have it in their power to escape
punishments, prefer to be tortured and to die, when they are
able to see from this very fact that that is no folly upon
which so many thousands of men throughout the whole world
are of unanimous opinion. For if women fall because of the
weakness of their sex-sometimes they call it a 'womanly' or
'old womanish' superstition-certainly the men know what
they are about. If children, if the young are improvident be-
cause of their age, surely the mature and the old have stable
judgment. If one city loses sensibleness, innumerable others
cannot certainly play the fool. If one province, one nation
lacks prudence, all the rest of necessity must have knowledge
of the right. Since, therefore, from the rising of the sun unto
its going down, the divine law has been taken up and both
sexes, every age and tribe and region serve God with one like
spirit; and since everywhere there is the same patience, the
same contempt of death, they had better understand that there
is something of reason in that which is defended even unto
death not without cause. They should realize that there is
something of firmness and solidity which not only does not
free that religion from injuries and vexation, but even in-
creases it and makes it stronger by them. In this, too, their
malice is refuted, because they think that they have completely
overturned the religion of God if they have defiled men, al-
though it is possible to make satisfaction to God and there is
no one so bad a worshiper of God that, when the chance is
given, he does not return to God's grace, and, indeed, with
greater devotion. For the consciousness of sin and the fear of
punishment make one more religious, and faith is always much
stronger which repentance has recovered. If, then, they be-
lieve that their gods are placated by sacrifices and pleasant
odors, when they think they are angry with them, why is it
that they think our God so unyielding, so implacable, that one
who has been forced against his will to offer sacrifices to their
gods could no longer be a Christian? Unless, perhaps, they
360 LACTANTIUS

think that once men have been contaminated they will change
their very souls so that they begin now to do of their own
accord what they made them do under torments. Who would
willingly execute that duty which started from an injury?
When one sees the scars of his side, will he not hate the more
those gods on account of whom he will bear everlasting marks
of his punishments and scars branded on his body?
So it comes about that, when peace has been divinely re-
stored, all those who have fled return and, on account of the
miracle of virtue, another new people comes to the fold. For
when the crowd sees men lacerated by various kinds of tor-
ments holding on to unconquered patience before execu-
tioners, they know that which is the fact, that the harmony and
the patience of so many dying people is not vain, nor could
the patience itself overcome such great suffering without God.
Robbers and men of robust strength cannot endure lacera-
tions of this sort; they cry out and groan; they are overcome
with pain, because inspired patience is lacking to them. But
among us-and I will not speak of the men-children even and
frail women silently vanquish their torturers, nor was fire able
to extract a groan from them. Let the Romans go and glory in
a Mucius 1 or a Regulus. 2 The one handed himself over to the
enemy to be killed because he was ashamed to live as a captive.
The other, seized by the enemy, when he saw that he could not
avoid death put his hand into the fire to satisfy for his crime
to the enemy whom he wished to kill, and he gained thereby
the pardon which he had not merited. Lo, the weak sex and
fragile age suffer laceration of the whole body and burning,
not of necessity, because they could avoid it if they wished,
but of will, because they trust in God. 3
This is real courage which the philosophers also, glorying
1 Mucius Scaevola (left-handed) boldly held his right hand in the fire
to show his courage to the enemy.
2 Regulus returned to Rome on a Carthaginian embassy and did not
hesitate to go back to Carthage and certain death, that he might keep
his word.
3 Many early Christian apologists treat of these topics. Cf. for instance,
Minucius Felix, c. 37.3-5.
 BOOK FIVE 361

not in the thing but in vain words, boast of, prating that there
is nothing so befitting the gravity and constancy of a wise man
as to be able to be driven from his opinion and purpose by
no terrors, and that it is of such great worth to be tortured
and to die so as not to betray faith or leave a duty or do any-
thing unjust through compulsion by fear of death or bitter
pain. Or, perhaps, Flaccus seems to rant deliriously in those
verses where he says: 'The just man and one tenacious of pur-
pose not the ardor of the people ordering wicked things, not
the expression of an insisting tyrant shakes from his firm be-
lief.'4 Nothing truer than this can be said, if this refers to those
who refuse no tortures, no death, so that they may not
swerve from faith and justice, who do not tremble at tyran-
nical orders, nor prison, nor the sword, provided that they
keep true and lasting liberty in a constant mind, and it must
be regarded by a wise man in this way alone. Who is so inso-
lent, so lofty as to forbid me to raise my eyes to heaven, to
impose on me the necessity either of worshiping what I do not
want to or of not worshiping what I wish? What would be
left to us further, if even this which must be done by will the
desire of another wrenches from us? No one will bring about
that if there is any virtue in us for despising death and pain.
If we hold this constancy, why are we judged fools who do
those things which the philosophers praise? Rightly, then,
does Seneca, throwing the charge of incongruence up to men,
say: 'The highest virtue seems to them to be a great soul, and
the same ones consider him who despises death as a lunatic,
which is certainly an indication of the greatest perversity.'5
But these adherents of false sects cast this up to us with the
same folly with which they do not know the true God, people
whom the Erythraean Sibyl calls 'light-minded' and 'unintel-
ligent,' that is, thick and stupid, who neither hear nor per-

4 Horace, Odes 3.3.1.

5 Seneca, frg. 69. Some place it in the book, On an Untimely Death
(cf. Lactantius 1.5.26; 3.12.11); others comparing with Tertullian,
Apology 50 take it from his work on The Remedies ot Chance.
362 LACTANTIUS

ceive divine things, but who fear and adore the earth fashioned
into images by their own fingers. 6

Chapter 14

There is a great reason-for they are not deceived in vain-

why they consider those who are wise to be foolish, and we
must carefully explain this, so that they may at last recognize
their errors, if this is possible. Justice by its very nature bears
a certain likeness to folly, and I can confirm this by both
divine and human testimony. But perhaps we would do
nothing wi th them unless we should show them from their own
authors that it is not possible for anyone to be just, which is
joined to true wisdom, unless the same man seem to be a fool.
Carneades was a philosopher of the sect of Academicians. 1
One who does not know the man's very work would under-
stand what force, what eloquence, and what acumen in dis-
putation was his from the praise of Cicero or Lucilius. In the
latter, Neptune, discussing a very difficult point, shows that
it cannot be explained, 'not if Orcus should send back Car-
neades himself,'2 who, when he had been sent by the Athe-
nians to Rome, discussed justice fluently in the hearing of
Calba and the censorious Cato, then very great orators. But
the same man on the next day subverted his disputation by a
contrary one, and the justice which he had praised the day
before, he took away, not even with the gravity of a philos-
opher, whose opinions ought to be firm and stable, but as
though in a kind of oratorical exercise of taking both sides
of a debate. He was accustomed to do that, to be able to refute
others by taking any particular stand. That discussion in
which justice was overturned is recalled by Lucius Furius in
Cicero. I suppose it was because he was discussing the re-
-6SiiJYYline Oracles VIII.399.
1 Cicero, The Republic 3.6.9 must be Lactantius' source for this section.
2 Lucilius Bk. J, frg. 10.
 BOOK FIVE 363

public that he might bring in its defense and praise, without

which he believed the republic could not be ruled. For Car-
neades, in order to disproye Aristotle and Plato as patrons of
justice, in the first disputation gathered all those things which
were said in behalf of justice, so that he might be able to
overturn it, as he did. For it was very easy for justice to be
made to fall since it did not have any base, because, then, there
was none on the earth, so that what it was, or of what sort,
was discerned by the philosophers. And would that so many
and such men had as much knowledge for fulfilling the de-
fense of the greatest virtue as of eloquence and spirit! The
origin of this virtue is in religion; its reason is in equity.
Those who do not know that first part could not even grasp
the second.
Now I want to first show what it is carefully and briefly,
so that it might be understood that the philosopher did not
know justice, and that they could not defend that which they
did not know.
Although justice embraces all the virtues at the same time,
there are two, the most important of all, which cannot be re-
moved or separated from it: piety and equity. For faith, tem-
perance, probity, innocence, integrity, and others of this sort
can either by nature or by training of parents be in those
men who do not know justice, just as they always have been.
The old Romans who used to glory in justice, gloried cer-
tainly in those virtues which, as I said, can set out from
justice and be separated from their very source. But piety and
equity are its veins, as it were. In these two sources all justice
rests: its head and origin in the first, in the second all its
strength and reason.
Piety is nothing other than a getting acquainted with God,
as Trismegistus defined it very truly, as we said before. 3 If it
is piety to know God, and this is the highest form of this ac-
quaintance that you may cultivate, certainly he does not know
justice who does not hold to the religion of God. For how
3 Cf. Bk. III, ch. 15.
364 LACTANTIUS

can he know that itself who is ignorant of whence it comes

to be? Plato said many things about the one God by whom he
said the world was formed, but he said nothing about religion.
He had dreamed about that God; he did not know Him. And
if he or anyone else had wished to make a complete defense
of justice, in the first place he ought to have overturned the
religions of the false gods, because they are opposed to piety.
Because Socrates tried to do just that, he was thrown into
prison, so that it might then be clear what was going to happen
to those men who began to defend true justice and serve the
one God.
The other part of justice is equity. I do not speak of the
equity of judging well, which is itself laudable in a just man,
but I mean that of equalizing self with fellow-men, which
Cicero calls equability.4 God who creates and inspires men
wished them all to be fair, that is, equal. He set the same con-
dition of living for all; He begot all unto wisdom; He prom-
ised immortality to all. No one is segregated from His
heavenly benefits. Just as He divides His one light equally for
all, lets His showers fall upon all, supplies food, grants the
sweetest rest of sleep, so He bestows the virtue of equity upon
all. With Him, no one is master, no one slave. For if He is the
same Father to all,5 we are all free by equal right. No one is a
pauper with God except him who is in need of justice; no one
rich, but him who is filled with the virtues; no one, finally, is
distinguished except the one who has been good and inno-
cent; no one very illustrious, unless he has done the works
of mercy with largesse; no one quite perfect, unless he has
completed all the steps of virtue. Wherefore, neither the
Romans nor the Greeks could hold justice, because they had
men distinguished by many grades, from the poor to the
rich, from the lowly to the powerful, from private citizens
even to the most sublime heights of kings. For when all are

4 Cf. Cicero, The Republic 1.27.43; On Duties 1.25.88; On Oratory

1.42.188; 2.52.209.
5 Cf. Lucretius 2.992.
 BOOK FIVE 365

not equal, there is no equity, and inequality itself excludes

justice, whose whole power is in this, that it makes equal those
who came to the condition of this life by an equal lot.

Chapter 15

If those two sources of justice, then, are altered, all virtue

and all truth is removed, and justice itself goes back into
heaven. Therefore, it is not true that the good has been dis-
covered by philosophers, since they did not know whence it
came or what it accomplished. This has been revealed to our
people and to no others. Someone will say: 'Are there not
among you some poor, some rich, some slaves, some masters?
Is there not something of concern to individuals?' Nothing.
Nor is there any other reason why we take for ourselves the
name of brother one to another, unless it is that we believe
that we are equal. For since we measure all human things, not
by the body, but by the spirit, and although the condition of
the bodies may be diversified, there are not slaves among us,
but we regard them and we speak of them as brothers in spirit
and as fellow-slaves in religion. Riches do not make their
possessors distinguished, except that they can make them
more illustrious in good works. For they are rich, not because
they have riches, but because they use them for works of
justice. And those who seem poor are, however, rich in this,
that they are not in need and they desire nothing. Since we
who are free are equal to the slaves and the rich to the poor
in lowliness of spirit, however, we are noted according to
virtue in God's sight. One is the higher as he is more just. If
it is justice to make oneself equal even with inferiors, al-
though he excels in this very thing, that he coequates himself
with inferiors; however, if he conducts himself, not only as an
equal, but as an inferior, surely he will attain a much higher
grade of dignity in the judgment of God.
366 LACTANTIUS

Since in this wordly life all things are short and faltering,
and men prefer themselves to others and strive over dignity,
than which there is nothing more shameful, nothing more
arrogant, nothing more removed from the way of wisdom, all
those earthly things are opposed to those that are of heaven.
Just as the wisdom of men is the height of foolishness with
God,! foolishness, as I explained, is the greatest wisdom, so
he is lowly and despised with God who was conspicuous and
lofty upon earth. But that I may be silent about the fact that
these present goods of earth to which great honor is attributed
are contrary to virtue and enervate the vigor of the mind,
what nobility, then, can be firm, what wealth, what power,
since God is able to make the very kings also inferior even to
the lowest? And so, taking thought of us God especially fixed
among the divine commands this one: 'Whoever exalts him-
self shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be
exalted.'2 The healthfulness of this teaching shows that he
who has made himself low among men and practiced humility
will be regarded as outstanding and marked before God. Nor
is that sentence in Euripides false which goes like this: 'What
things are considered evil here, these are good in heaven.'3

Chapter 16

I have set forth the reason why the philosophers could not
discover justice nor defend it. Now I go back to that which
I had intended. Carneades, therefore, because those things
which were asserted by the philosophers were weak, took upon
himself the boldness of refuting them, since he knew they
could be refuted. This was the summation of his discussion:
'Men have sanctioned laws for themselves for utility, varied,
obviously, according to customs, and often changed among the
1 Cf. 1 Cor. 3.19.
2 Matt. 23.12.
3 Euripides, frg. lIOO (from the d.oubtful and spurious lines).
 BOOK FIVE 367

same people for a time. There is, however, no natural law.

All men and other living creatures arc driven toward their
own advantage by the lead of nature. Accordingly, then, there
is either no justice, or if there is some, it is the highest foolish-
ness, since one would be hanning himself by having consid-
eration for another's advantage.'l And he introduced these
arguments. All people who flourished with power, even the
Romans themselves, who 'were possessors of the whole world,
if they should wish to be just, that is, if they make restitution
of other people's goods, they would have to meet misfortune
and be thrown in need and misery. Then, omitting the com-
monplaces, he came to individual things. 'A good man,' he
said, 'if he have a fugitive slave, or an unwholesome and
pestilential house, which fault he alone knows, and therefore
advertizes their sale, shall he declare that he is selling a
fugitive slave or a pestilential house, or shall he conceal this
from his buyer? If he acknowledges it, he is indeed good be-
cause he does not deceive, but, however, he will be judged a
fool, since he will sell at but a small price or not at all. If he
conceals it, he will be indeed wise because he considers the
matter, but the same man will be evil because he deceives.
Again if one finds someone who thinks that he sells yellow
copper, although that is gold, or lead, when it is silver, will
he be silent so that he may purchase it at a small price, or will
he make it known that it may cost him more? Surely it seems
to be foolish to prefer the large price.'2 From this he wished
it understood that both he who is just and good is a fool,
and he who is wise, evil, and yet that this could be done with-
out ruin, that men might be content with poverty.
Then, he passed on to greater matters in which no one
could be just without peril of life. For he said: 'Surely, it is
justice not to kill a man, absolutely, not to touch a stranger.
What, then, shall a just man do, jf perhaps he has suffered
shipwreck and someone weaker in strength has taken his plank?
1 Cicero, The Republic 3.12.2L
2 Ibid., 3.19.29,30.
368 LACTANTIUS

Will not the plank overthrow that one so that he himself

climbs up and leaning on it escapes, especially since there is
no witness in the middle of the sea? If he is wise, he will do
this; he must perish unless he does. But if that just man pre-
fers to die now rather than bring force against another, he is
a very fool who does not spare his own life while he spares
another's. Likewise, if the enemy should begin to pursue, the
battle line of their own side routed, and if a just man should
come upon someone wounded on a horse, will he spare him
and have himself killed, or will he throw him down from the
horse, so that he himself may have a way to escape the enemy?
If he does this, he is wise, but the same one is evil; if he does
not do it, he is just, but at the same time he must be a foo1.'3
Thus, when he divided justice into two parts, saying that
one was civil, the other natural, he subverted both, since there
is a civil wisdom, indeed, but not justice; and that justice is,
indeed, natural, but not wisdom. These are clearly sharp and
envenomed points which Marcus Tullius could not refute.
For when he makes Laelius answer Furius and speak for
justice, he passed over these and left them unrefuted, as though
they were a pit, so that the same Laelius seems to have de-
fended, not natural justice which had come into the crime of
foolishness, but that civil justice which Furius had conceded
was wisdom, indeed, but injustice.

Chapter 17

Because it was pertinent to the previous discussion, I have

showed how justice bears a resemblance to foolishness, in order
that it may be clear that not without cause are they deceived
who think that men of our faith are fools who are seen to do
such things as that one proposed. Now I believe that it is
further required of me to show why God has wished to take

3 Ibid., 30,31.
 BOOK FIVE 369

justice, enveloped in the likeness of folly, away from the eyes

of men, if I shall have first answered Furius, because Laelius
replied not at all fully. Though it be granted, surely, that he
was wise, as he was called, however, he was not in any way
able to uphold true justice, since he did not hold to the very
head and source of justice. That defense is easier for us,
though, to whom through the kindness of heaven justice is
familiar and thoroughly understood, and who know it not
merely by name but in actuality. Plato and Aristotle desired,
truly with honest intention, to defend justice, and they
would have accomplished something if the teachings of divine
truths had aided their good attempts, their eloquence, the
quality of their genius.! So their work has lain vain and use-
less, nor have they been able to persuade any man to live by
their prescription, because that teaching did not have a
foundation from heaven.
It is necessary that our work be more certain, for God has
taught us. They played around with words and imagined a
justice which was not in sight, and they could not confirm
with present examples the things which they asserted. For it
could be answered by their hearers that it was not possible
in the way they were prescribing in their discussion, for the
reason that up to that time none had existed who followed
that kind of life. vVe, however, show not merely by words, but
by examples drawn from reality, that those things which we
say are true. Carneades realized, therefore, what the nature of
justice is, except that he did not perceive deeply that it was
not folly, although I think I understand with what mind he
did this. For he did not really believe that the man who is
just is a fool, but although he knew that he was not, and yet
did not grasp the reason why he seemed such, he wanted to
show that the truth lay in hiding, in order that the principle
of his teaching might be preserved. Its chief notion is that
nothing can be perceived.
Let us see, then, whether or not justice can have any alIi-
I Cf. Cicero, Republic 3.8,
370 LACTANTIUS

ance with folly. He says that if a just man does not take away
a horse from a wounded man or a plank from one shipwrecked
in order to save his own life, he is a foo1.2 First of all, I say
that a chance of this sort can in no way befall a man who is,
indeed, truly just, because a just man is not an enemy to
anyone nor does he desire anything whatsoever that belongs
to another. Why would he be sailing or what would he seek
from another land whose own satisfies him? Why would he be
waging war or involving himself in the rage of others in
whose mind perpetual peace with men dwells? Actually, will
he be delighted with foreign prizes and human blood who does
not know how to acquire gain, whose manner of living suffices
him, and who considers it wrong, not only for himself to com-
mit murder, but even to be present and look on when others
do it?3 But I pass by those things, because it can happen that
even against his will a person may be forced to attend these
affairs. Do you think, then, 0 Furius, or rather, you Carneades,
for that whole speech was yours, that justice such as that is
so inane, so superficial, and so contemptible to God, that it
is of no avail and has nothing within itself which may be of
value for its own protection? But, of course, those who do not
know the pledge of man and, therefore, refer all things to
this temporal life, are not able to know how much power
there is in justice. For when they treat of virtue, although
they know that it is very full of trials and miseries, they still
say that it must be sought for its own sake, and its rewards,
however, which are eternal and immortal, they see in no way.
So, when all things are referred to this present life, clearly they
reduce virtue to folly, inasmuch as it undertakes such great
labors of this life in vain and inanely. But we will take this
up more fully in another place;4 meanwhile, let us get back
to justice as we began. Its power is so great that, when it raises

2 Cf. ch. 16.

3 This may refer to many of the public spectacles and entertainments
which Christians considered it sinful to attend.
4 Cf. ch. 18.
 BOOK FIVE 371

its eyes to heaven, it merits all rewards from God. 5 Rightly,

then, did Flaccus say that the power of innocence was so great
that it would need neither arms nor strength for its protection,
wherever it might be. 'The man who is whole in life and free
from crime has need of no Moorish darts, nor a quiver, no,
Fuscus, nor of a case heavy with poisoned arrows, whether his
way be through the burning Syrtes, or whether he will journey
to the inhospitable Caucasus or the places which the fabulous
Hydaspes washes.'6 It cannot but happen that amid the crises
of tempests and battles heavenly protection will be with the
just man, and also, even though he travel along with parricides
and criminals, that he will be spared evils, so that one just and
innocent soul may be freed, or certainly, that his alone will be
saved, though others perish under them.
Let us grant that what the philosopher proposes can happen.
What, then, will the just man do if he should find a wounded
man on a horse or a shipwrecked one on a plank or raft? Not
unwillingly I declare it. He will die rather than kill. And,
therefore, justice, because it is the singular good of man, will
not receive the name of folly. For what is better, what ought
to be dearer to man than innocence? Surely, this must be so
much the more perfect, as you have brought it to the extremity
and have preferred to die lest anything of the purpose of in-
nocence be lessened. It is foolishness, he says, to spare another's
life at the ruin of one's own.7 Surely, you will not judge him
a fool who dies for friendship, will you? Why, then, are those
familiar Pythagorean philosophers praised by you, one of
whom gave himself to the tyrant as death bail for the other,
and that one at the appointed time, when his sponsor was
already being led forth, made presentation of himself and by
his intervention set him free? Their virtue, whereby one
wished to die for his friend and the other for loyalty, would
not be held in such great honor if they were thought fools.

5 Cf. Matt. 5.3-10.

6 Horace, Odes 1.22.1-8.
7 Cf. ch. 16.
372 LACTANTIUS

Finally, because of this very virtue the tyrant showed favor

to them by saving them both, and the nature of a very cruel
man was changed. It is said that he even besought them to
receive him as the third into that friendship.8 He approached
them, not as though they were fools, but as good and wise
men. And so I do not see why, since it is thought to be the
highest glory to die for friendship and faith, it is not also
glorious for a man to die for innocence. Therefore, they are
very foolish who charge us with crime for wishing to die for
God, when those same people exalt to the sky with the highest
praises him who wanted to die for a man.
And to conclude this discussion, then, reason itself shows
that it is not possible for the same man to be just and a fool,
for the same one to be wise and unjust. He who is a fool
knows not what is just and good and, therefore, he always
sins. He is led as though a captive by vices, and he is not able
to resist in any way, since he lacks virtue which he does not
know. The just man, however, restrains himself from sin, and
he cannot act otherwise if he has the knowledge of right and
wrong. But who can distinguish right from wrong unless he
be wise? Thus it happens that he can never be just who is a
fool, nor one who shall have been unjust ever wise. And if
this is quite true, it is clear that he who has not taken a plank
from a shipwrecked man or a horse from a wounded one is
not a fool, since to do these things is a sin from which the wise
man restrains himself. Still, he seems to be one, and I myself
admit it, because of the error of those who are ignorant of
the peculiar nature of each thing. So this whole question is
solved not so much by arguments as by definition. Foolishness,
therefore, is an erring in deeds and words through an ignor-
ance of the right and good. So the foolish man is not he who
does not spare himself even, so long as he does no harm to
another, which is evil. This, in fact, both reason and truth
itself prescribes for us. 'il\Te see in all the animals who are
without wisdom that nature is the cause of itself. They harm
8 Cf. Valerius Maximus IV.7, ext. 1.
 BOOK FIVE 373

others, then, that they may advantage themselves, but they

do not know that it is evil to do harm. Man, however, since
he has the knowledge of good and evil, restrains himself from
harming, even with inconvenience to himself, which an ir-
rational animal is not able to do, and for this reason, innocence
is numbered among the highest virtues of man.
From these things it is clear that he is very wise who pre-
fers to die in order not to do harm, so that this may serve as
the function by which he is distinguished from the dumb
beasts. He who does not contradict the error of the salesman
so that he may buy gold cheap, or the one who does not admit
that the slave is a fugitive, or that he is selling a ruined house,
because he is taking his own gain and advantage into con-
sideration, is not wise, as Carneades wanted him to seem, but
he is cunning and astute. Cunning and astuteness, though,
are also present in the dumb animals, either when they lie in
wait for others and take them by trickery in order to devour
them, or when they mock the trickery of the others in various
manners. Wisdom, however, applies to man alone. For wisdom
is knowledge either for the doing of good and the right or for
the refraining from wicked words and deeds. The wise man
never desires gain, since he despises these earthly goods; nor
does he suffer anyone to be deceived, because it is the duty
of a good man to correct men's errors and to lead them back
to the way of right, inasmuch as man's nature is social and
kindly, by which means alone he has a relationship with God.

Chapter 18

But certainly this cause brings it about that he seems to be

a fool who prefers to be in want or to die rather than to
do harm or to take something from another, because they
think that man is destroyed by death. From this conviction
all errors arise, both those of the rank and file and those of the
374 LACTANTIUS

philosophers. If we are nothing after death, surely, only a

very foolish man does not concern himself with this life, that
it may last as long as possible and be full of all advantages.
He who will be so concerned will necessarily depart from the
rule of justice. But if there remains a life of man, better and
longer, and we learn this from the arguments of the great
philosophers and the responses of the seers and the divine
words of the prophets, then it is the mark of a wise man to
despise this present life with all its goods, every sacrifice of
which is compensated for by immortality. In Cicero that same
defender of justice, Laelius, says that 'virtue almost demands
honor, and there is no other revvard of virtne.'! It is plainly
and, indeed, most worthy of virtue, which you, Laelius, were
never able to imagine, for you knew nothing of the divine
writings. Then he continues: 'She easily, therefore, accepts
this but does not bitterly exact it.' You are yery much in error
if you think that a reward could be paid to virtue by man,
although you yourself said very truly in another place: 'What
riches will you cast upon this man? VVhat powers? What
realms? He thinks those things human; he considers his own
goods divine.' vVho, then, would think you a wise man,
Laelius, when you contradict yourself, and a little while later
take away from virtue that which you haye just given it? But,
of course, it is ignorance of the truth with an uncertain and
wavering opinion. Then, what do you add? 'But if all the
ungrateful or the many envious, or the unkind powerful ones
despoil virtue of its rewards ... .' How fragile, how empty a
virtue you have brought in, if it can be despoiled of its own
reward! If 'he judges his own goods as divine,' as you said,
who can there be so ungrateful, so envions, so powerful as to
be able to despoil virtue of those goods which were divinely
conferred upon it?-'lest,' he says, 'she might delight herself
with much solace and especially sllstain herself with her
beauty.' \Vith what solace? vVhat beauty? When she often
comes into the charge of being crime, and when that beauty
1 The source for all of this section was Cicero's Repltblic 3,28.40.
 ROOK FIVE 375

IS turned into punishment. What if, as Furius said, she is

'seized, harassed, exterminated, put in want, her hands taken
away, eyes dug out, condemned, bound, consumed, killed also
in wretched ways,'2 shall virtue lose its reward then, or rather
will she herself perish? By no means. She will still receive her
reward, with God as judge, and she will live and will always
flourish.
If you take this away, nothing in the life of men can seem
to be so useless, so foolish as virtue, the natural goodness and
uprightness of which can teach us that the soul is not mortal
and that a divine reward has been constituted for it by God.
For this reason God wished virtue itself to be concealed under
the mask of folly, so that the mystery of His truth and religion
might be secret; so that He might condemn of vanity and error
these religions and that earthly wisdom which exalts itself too
high and which gives much pleasure to itself; and so that,
finally, when the difficulty has been determined, a very narrow
path might lead the way to the reward of immortality on high.
I have disclosed, I think, why our people are regarded as
foolish among fools. For to prefer to be tortured and killed
rather than to put upon the fire the incense held by three
finger ti pS3 seems as senseless as to care more for the life of
another than for one's own. They do not know how wrong
it is to adore anything else besides God, who established
heaven and earth, who made human nature, inspired it, and
gave it light. And if the most wicked of slaves, who abandoned
his master by running away, is held, and that one is judged
worthy of beatings and chains and the work-house and the
cross and all evil, and if a son is believed in the same way
depraved and impious, who has left his father so as not to
obey him, and on account of this same reason is thought
worthy to be disinherited and have his name blotted out from
the family forever, how much more worthy of all this is he
----
2 Cf. ch. 12.
3 Christians were required to sprinkle just a few grains of incense over a
fire before the statue or image of the emperor or some state god to be
absolved from their charge.
376 LACTANTIUS

who deserts God to whom the two names of Lord and Father
apply and are equally venerable? Does the man who buys a
slave at a price confer any benefit upon him besides food,
which he supplies to him for the sake of his own good? And
he who begets a son does not have it in his own power that
he be conceived, that he be born, that he live. From this
it is clear that he is not a father but only a minister of gen-
eration. Of what punishments, then, is he deserving, who is a
deserter of Him who is true Lord and Father except those
which God Himself determined, who prepared eternal fire for
the unjust spirits, because He Himself threatens the impious
and rebellious through His prophets?

Chapter 19

Let those destroyers of souls, their own and those of others,

learn, therefore, and admit how inexpiable is their crime;
first, because they destroy themselves by serving the most de-
praved demons whom God has condemned to eternal punish-
ments; then, because they do not allow God to be worshiped
by others, but strive to avert men to deadly rites, and strain
with the utmost diligence lest there be any soul unharmed on
the earth which may gaze toward heaven, its condition being
unimpaired. What else shall I say except that they are
wretches who obey the instigations of their plunderers, whom
they consider gods? They know neither their condition nor
their origin nor their names nor their purpose, but by a
common, inherent conviction, they gladly go astray with them
and favor their folly. If you ask them the plan or purpose of
this conviction, they can give none, but they take shelter in
the decisions of their ancestors because they were wise, they
approved of them, they knew what was best, and they despoil
themselves of their senses, swear away from reason, while they
believe the errors of others. Thus they are implicated by ig-
 BOOK FIVE 377

norance of all things, and they do not know themselves nor

their gods. Would that they alone were in error, that they
wished to be unwise by themselves! They drag others into
the alliance of their evil, as though they would have comfort
from the perdition of many. This very ignorance causes them
to be so evil in following up the wise and to pretend that
they are taking thought of them, that they wish to call them
back to a good mind. They do not insist, do they, by this
speech or some plan to cause those admissions? Never. But by
force and torments. Strange, blind madness! An evil mind is
thought to be in those who try to keep faith, but a good mind
in torturers! Is an evil mind in those who are torn and
lacerated against the right of humanity, against all justice, or
is it rather in those who do those things to the bodies of the
innocent, which the most ravenous thieves have never done,
nor the most angered enemies, nor the most savage barbarians?
Do they not, therefore, lie to themselves, so that the names of
good and evil are transferred and interchanged? Why, then,
do they not call day, night, and the sunlight, darkness? Why,
it is the same shamelessness to impose the name of the evil
upon the good, that of fools upon the wise, that of the im-
pious upon those who are just. And, furthermore, if they have
any confidence either in philosophy or in eloquence, let them
arm themselves and refute these tenets of ours, if they can. Let
them come together and discuss the points singly.
It is fitting that they take up the defense of their gods, lest,
if our arguments should become strengthened, as they are
growing stronger daily, they be deserted along with their
shrines and mockeries. And since they can effect nothing by
force-for the religion of God is increased the more it is
oppressed-they may succeed rather by speech and exhorta-
tions. Let their pontiffs come to the center, either the lesser
ones or the greater, their ftamens and augurers, likewise their
sacrificial kings and those who are the priests and overseers
of their religion. Let them invite us to the assembly. Let them
urge the acceptance of the cults of their gods; let them per-
378 LACTANTIUS

wade that there are many by whose power ,old providence all
things are ruled; let them show the origins and the beginnings
of their sacred rites and their gods and how these were handed
down to mortals. Let them explain the source, what the reason
is; let them put forth what gain there is in the religion, what
penalty there is for its contempt; why they wish themselves
to be reverenced by men; what human piety will confer upon
them if they are blessed. Let them confirm all these points, not
by their own personal assertion, for the authority of mortal
man avails nothing, but by some divine testimony, just as we
do. There is no need of force and injury, because religion
cannot be forced. 1 It is a matter that must be managed by
words rather than by blows, so that it may be voluntary. Let
them display a battle line of their geniuses. If their reason is
true, it ,vill be claimed. liVe are prepared to listen, if they
should teach. Certainly, we believe nothing of those who are
silent, just as we do not yield even to those who are in a rage.
Let them imitate us, that they may expose the plan of the
whole matter; for we do not entice that they may object to it,
but we teach, we prove, we explain. And, therefore, no one
is retained by us against his will-for he is useless to God who
is without devotion and faith 2-and so no one departs while
the truth itself is compelling.
Let them teach in this way if they have any assurance of
truth. Let them speak, let them open their mouths; let them
dare, I say, to discuss with us something of this sort, and then,
indeed, their error and foolishness will be ridiculed by our
'little old women and children' whom they despise. For since
they are very skilled and know the progeny of the gods and
their deeds and powers and deaths and burials from books,
and since they know that the very rites by which they were
initiated came to be from the actions of men or by chance
or from the dead, it is incredible madness to think that they,
1 Cf. Tertullian, Ad Scapulam c. 2.
2 It is not that we are ever really of use to God. It is necessary, though,
to use human language and ideas even in discussing divine matters
and there our human words can but fail.
 BOOK FIVE 379

who they do not dare to deny were mortals, are gods. Or if

they should be so rash as to deny this, their writings and those
of their own people would refute them; and finally, the very
initiations of their sacred beliefs would convince them. They
would know from this very fact how much difference there is
between the true and the false, when they themselves, al-
though they are eloquent, are not able to persuade, and the
unskilled and untrained are able to, because the matter itself
and the truth speaks.
Why, then, do they rage? That they may augment foolish-
ness while they wish to lessen it. Poles apart are execution
and piety, and truth cannot be joined with force nor justice
with cruelty. But rightly do they not dare to teach anything
about divine matters, lest they be mocked by our people and
deserted by their own. For usually the common people whose
judgment is simple and uncorrupted, if they should find out
that those mysteries were established unto the memory of the
dead, would condemn them and seek something else more
true which they may revere. Hence, 'faithful silences in
religious matters'3 have been instituted by clever men, so that
the people may not know what they worship. But, since we
are familiar with their teachings, why do they not believe us
who know both, or why do they envy us who have preferred
true ones to false? 'But the sacred rites which have been
publicly embraced must be defended,' they say. How the poor
things err, though their intention is honest! For they think
that there is nothing in human affairs more important than
religion and that it ought to be defended with the utmost
strength, but as they are deceived in the very religion, so also
are they in the manner of its defense. Religion ought to be
defended, not by killing but by dying, not by fury but by
patience, not by crime but by faith. The former action each
time belongs to evil, the latter to good, and it is necessary
that good be the practice of religion, not evil. If you wish,
indeed, to defend religion by blood, if by torments, if by evil,
3 Vergil, Aeneid 3.112.
380 LACTANTIUS

then, it will not be defended, but it will be polluted and

violated. There is nothing so voluntary as religion, and if the
mind of the one sacrificing in a religious rite is turned aside,
the act is now removed; there is no act of religion.
It is right reason, then, to defend religion by patience or
death in which faith is preserved and is pleasing to God Him-
self, and it adds authority to religion. If someone, who in
this earthly military service keeps faith toward his king by
some outstanding deed, becomes more acceptable and dearer
if he should live afterwards, and, if he should die, attains
supreme glory because he met his death for his leader, how
much more ought faith to be kept with the Commander of all,
who is able to pay the reward of virtue, not only to the living,
but also to the dead? Therefore, the worship of God, since it
is a kind of heavenly military service, desires devotion and
the greatest faith. For how will God love the one worshiping
Him if He Himself is not loved by that man; or how will He
grant whatever one praying should ask, when he comes to
pray neither from his heart nor in a proper manner? When
those others, however, come to do sacrifice, they offer nothing
intimate, nothing personal to their gods; they have no up-
rightness of mind, no reverence, no fear. And when the empty
sacrifices have been gone through, they leave all their religion
in the temple and with the temple, just as they had found it,
and they do not bring or take back with them anything from
it.
Thence it is that religions of this sort cannot make people
good, nor can these religions be firm and immutable. Men
can easily be led astray by these, because in them nothing is
learned for life, nothing for wisdom, nothing for faith. What,
then, is the superstition of those gods? What is their power?
What is their discipline? 'Vhat origin have they? "What reason?
What foundation? What substance to their religion? Where
does it tend, or what does it promise, so that it can be faith-
fully preserved and strongly defended by man? I see nothing
else in it than a ritualistic act which pertains only to the
 BOOK FIVE 381

fingers. Our religion, however, is firm and solid and immutable

in this, that it teaches justice, that it is always with us, that
it abides in one entire soul of the worshiper, that it has the
mind itself for a sacrifice. In theirs, nothing else is required
but the blood of beasts and smoke and a senseless libation;
but in ours, a good mind, a pure heart, an innocent life. To
the former there come without any love shameless adulteresses,
wanton bawds, indecent harlots; there come gladiators, thieves,
robbers, poisoners, and they pray for nothing else but that
they may commit their crimes with impunity. What would a
sacrificing gladiator or highwayman ask for except that they
might kill? What would a poisoner or wizard want except to
deceive? What a harlot but to sin more? What an adulteress
except the death of her husband or that she might conceal
her impurities? What a seductress but that she might divest
many of their goods? What would a thief desire except to
pile up more? Here, however, there is no place for false and
common sin, and if anyone comes to the sacrifice with a con-
science not clear, he hears what God threatens, that God who
sees the hidden places of the heart, who is ever hostile to
sins, who exacts justice, who demands faith. What place is
there here for an evil mind or an evil prayer? But those un-
happy souls do not understand from their crimes how that
which they worship is evil, inasmuch as, defiled with all
manner of outrages, they come to pray and think that they
have piously offered sacrifice if they wash their skin, as if any
rivers might wash or any seas purify the wantonness enclosed
in their hearts. How much more wise it is rather to cleanse
the mind which is defiled by evil and to dispel all vices by the
one washing4 of virtue and faith! And whoever has done this,
4 No doubt the sacrament of baptism is being referred to here. The Latin
word lavacrum might have become the usual term, except that the
transliteration of the Greek word, baptism us, perhaps on the au-
thority of the great Tertullian, gained acceptance and consecrated
usage. However, the sacrament of penance might have been meant, but
the significance of the other, and the fact that in Lactantius' time it
was received more usually in adulthood, seem to warrant our interpre-
tation of this section as a reference to baptism.
382 LACTANTIUS

although he may have a stained and sordid body, is sufficiently

pure.

Chapter 20

Because they do not know either what or how they should

worship, blind and imprudent they fall into the contrary. So
they adore their enemies; they placate robbers and their
murderers with victims; and they place their own souls to
be cremated with the very incense on their detestable altars.
And the wretches are angry, too, because others do not perish
at the same time with incredible blindness of mind. What
would they see who do not see the sun? If they were in truth
gods, as it were, they would need the help of men against
their despisers. Why, then, are they angry with us if they have
no power? Unless it be because they themselves are destroying
their own gods of whose power they are diffident. They are
more irreligious than those who do not worship at all. Cicero
in his Laws, when he was instructing on the chaste approach
to religious sacrifices, said: 'Bring piety; keep wealth away.
He who does otherwise will have the god himself for judge.'l
Indeed, this he said rightly. For it is not right not to have
hope in the god whom you worship, since you think him
powerful. How, then, is he able to vindicate an adherent of
an injury if he cannot do so for himself? It may be asked of
them, therefore, to whom they think they show themselves
very powerful by forcing the unwilling to sacrifice. 2 To those
same ones whom they force? What is done to one rejecting
the favor is not a favor. But they must take thought even for
those not wanting it, since they do not know what is good.
Why, then, do they so cruelly harass them, and torture and
weaken them, if they want them safe? Or whence is piety so
impious that they should destroy them in wretched ways or
make them useless, those of whom they mean to have been
1 Cicero, Laws 2.8.19.
2 Cf. Tertullian, Ad Scapulam c. 2.
 BOOK FIVE 383

considerate? Or, in fact, do they surpass the gods? That is not

a sacrifice which is wrested from one against his will. For
unless it is one spontaneous and from the heart, it is an ex-
ecration, when men do it driven by proscription or injuries
or prison or torments. If those are gods who are thus wor-
shiped, assuredly, on account of this alone, they ought not to
be worshiped because they wish to be worshiped in this way.
They are truly deserving of the detestation of men to whom
libation is offered with tears, with groans, with blood pouring
from all the members.
We, however, do not ask that anyone against his will should
worship our God,3 who is the God of all whether they wish
it or not, nor are we angry if he does not worship Him. But
we confide in the majesty of Him who can punish one so
despising of Himself as also the labors and injuries of His
servants. Therefore, when we endure wickedness, we make
opposition by not even a word, but refer vengeance to God,4
not as those do who wish to seem defenders of their gods and
rage savagely against those who do not worship them. From
this it can be understood how it is not good to worship the
gods, since men would have been drawn to good by good
rather than by evil; but, because that is evil, then its duty
also lacks the good.
But those who destroy religions ought to be punished. The
fact of our destroying is not anything worse, is it, than what
the nation of the Egyptians do who worship the most dis-
graceful images of beasts and cattle and who adore, as though
gods, certain things disgraceful to mention? Is there anything
worse than that those very same ones who, although they say
that they worship the gods, yet deride them publicly and
shamefully; about whom they even allow mimes to be per-
formed with laughter and pleasure?5 What sort of religion is
this, or how great must this majesty be considered which is
3 Ibid., Apology c. 24.
4 Cf. Heb. 10.30; Isa. 47.3; Sir. (Ecclus.) 12.4, etc.
5 Often the mimes and mime dialogues were lewd caricatures of stories
of the gods.
384 LACTANTIUS

adored in the temples and mocked in the theaters? And those

who do these things do not pay the price for violating a
divinity, but they are honored even and praised when they
depart. And is it worse that we destroy than that certain
philosophers say outright that there are no gods, but that all
things come to be of their own accord, and that everything
which happens is by chance? Are we worse than the Epicureans
who, although they grant that there are gods, deny that they
care for anything, and they say that they are neither angered
nor moved by any favor? By these words, certainly, they teach
that they ought not to be worshiped at all, since they do not
regard with pleasure those who worship them, nor are they
angered at those who do not. Furthermore, since they harangue
against fear, they are trying to bring about nothing else but
that no one should fear the gods. Yet these things are freely
listened to by men, and they are discussed with impunity.

Chapter 21

They are not violent toward us, therefore, because the gods
are not worshiped by us-for they are not worshiped by many
-but because the truth is with us, which, as it is quite truly
said, begets hatred. 1 What, then, shall we think except that
they do not know what they suffer? For not those very ones
persecute men who do not have a reason for being angry with
the innocent, but those who are contaminated in spirit and
depraved, to whom the truth is both known and hateful,
insinuate themselves in their minds and instigate the unwary
into fury.2 These, as long as there is peace among the people
of God, avoid the just and quake with terror, and when they
seize the bodies of men and violate their souls, they are called
to witness by them and are put to flight by the name of the
true God. When this is heard, they tremble and cry out and
1 Cf. Terence, Andria 1.1.41.
2 Cf. Cyprian, To Demetrianus 15.
 BOOK FIVE 385

testify that they are burned and beaten, and when asked
who they are, whence they came, and how they crept upon
the man, they confess. Thus, wrenched and tortured by the
power of the Divine Name, they are banished. On account of
these beatings and threats, they always hate the holy and just
men. And since they are able to harm them not at all by them-
selves, they persecute with public hatreds those whom they
think a burden to themselves, and they give vent to a rage as
violently as they can, in order that they may lessen their faith
through pain, or, if they cannot do this, that they might re-
move them altogether from the earth lest there be any who
can restrain their malice.
It does not escape me what answer can be made in reply
to this. Why does that one only God, that great God whom
you confess the Ruler and Lord of all things, allow these
things to be done, and why does He not vindicate or protect
His worshipers? Why, too, are those who do not worship Him
wealthy and powerful and happy, and why do they get posses-
sion of honors and realm and have subject to their sway those
same people of His? The reason of this, too, must be given
lest any error remain. In the first place, this is the reason why
religion is thought not to possess the power of God, because
men are influenced by the appearance of earthly and present
goods which in no way pertain to the care of the mind. And
because they see that the just lack these and that the unjust
abound in them, they think that the worship of God is vain
in which they do not perceive those goods, and they judge the
rites of the false gods true since their worshipers enjoy riches
and honors and kingdoms. But those who are of this opinion
do not understand very deeply the strength and reason of
man which is not entirely in the body but in the mind. They
see nothing more than what appears to the eyes, namely, the
body. Because it is visible to the eyes and touchable by the
hand, it is weak, frail, mortal. To it belong all those goods
which are wonderful to desire: wealth, honors, powers, since
they bring pleasure to the body, and, therefore, they are as
386 LACTANTIUS

transitory as the body itself. But the soul (and in this alone
is man's rationality), since it is not subject to the eyes, and
since its goods cannot be beheld, for they are placed in virtue
alone, must necessarily, therefore, be as stable and constant
and lasting as is virtue itself, in which is the soul's good.

Chapter 22

It would take long to give forth all the species of virtue

that I might show from each one how necessary it is for a
wise and just man to keep far away from those goods which the
unjust enjoy, and because they do, the cults of the gods are
believed to be true and efficacious. As far as concerns the
present question, it is enough if we prove from one virtue
what we intend. A great and exceptional virtue, to be sure, is
patience, which the popular voices of the crowd and philos-
ophers and orators equally celebrate with the greatest praises.
And if it cannot be denied that this is a very high virtue, it is
necessary that the just and wise man be in the power of the
unjust man so that he may possess patience. Patience is an
enduring with equanimity the evils which are inflicted or fall
upon one. Therefore, the just and wise man, since he possesses
virtue, has patience within him; and he will lack this absolute-
ly if he suffers nothing of adverse circumstances. On the con-
trary, he who enjoys prosperity is impatient and is lacking a
very great virtue. I say he is impatient because he suffers
nothing. Innocence also he is not able to preserve which is
itself a virtue proper to a just and wise man, but he often does
harm and desires the goods of others and seizes what he had
desired through injury, because not having virtue he is sub-
ject to vice and sin, and forgetful of his weakness he is in-
solent and puffed up with exalted ideas.
Thence it comes about that the unjust and those not know-
ing God flourish with wealth and power and honors. For all
 BOOK FIVE 387

these are the rewards of injustice since they cannot be lasting

and they are sought for with greed and violence. The just
and wise man, however, since 'he judges all those things
human; as was said by Laelius, 'but his goods divine;! does
not desire anything of anybody else's, lest he hurt him against
the law of human nature somehow. Neither does he desire any
power or honor, lest he do someone an injury, for he knows
that all have been created by the same God and constituted
in the same condition and joined by the tie of fraternity. He
is content with his own and with little,2 since, mindful of his
frailty, he does not seek for more than whereby he may sus-
tain life, and from that which he has he gives a share also
to him who has not, because he is pious, and piety is the
highest virtue. There is, moreover, the fact that he despises
transitory and vice-laden pleasures for the sake of which wealth
is sought, because he is self-controlled and the conqueror of
his passions. The same one, having no boastfulness or in-
solence, does not exalt himself too high nor raise a proud head,
but he is placid and agreeable and ordinary, because he knows
his own condition. Since, therefore, he does injury to no one
and does not desire what is another's, nor defends what is his
own if it be taken from him by force; and since he also knows
how to bear with moderation injury that has been brought
upon him, because he is endowed with virtue; then, it must be
that the just man should be subjected to the unjust, and that
the wise be afflicted with contumely by the unwise, so that the
one may have sin, because he is unjust, and the other possess
virtue, because he is just.
If anyone wishes to know more fully why it is that God
allows the evil and unjust to become powerful, happy, and
rich, whereas He suffers the pious to be lowly, despised, and
poor, let him take up the book of Seneca entitled, Why Many
Evils Befall the Good) since There Is a Providence. In this
book he said many things clearly, not from worldly inex-
1 Cf. Cicero, Republic 3.28.40.
2 Cicero, On Duties 1.21.70.
388 LACTANTIUS

perience, but wisely and almost divinely. 'God has men as his
children: he says, 'but he allows them to become corrupted
and full of vice, to live luxuriously and delicately, because he
does not think them worthy of his correction. The good, how-
ever, whom he loves, he often chastises, and with constant
labors he trains them to the practice of virtue, nor does he
allow them to be corrupted and depraved by passing mortal
goods.'3
From this it ought to seem strange to no one if we are often
punished by God for our misdeeds. Rather, indeed, when we
are troubled and oppressed, then especially do we give thanks
to our most indulgent Father because He does not allow our
corruption to proceed too far, but He corrects us with wounds
and stripes. From this we know that we are God's care with
whom He gets angry because we sin. For although He could
bestow wealth and kingdoms on His people (just as He had
given them before to the Jews, whose successors and posterity
we are), He wanted it to be under another's rule and power,
lest, corrupted by the joy of prosperous circumstances, it might
slip into luxury and despise the precepts of God, just as our
ancestors did who, often enervated by these frail goods of
earth, wandered from discipline and broke the chains of the
law. Therefore, He saw in advance to what extent He should
bestow rest upon His devoted ones if they had kept His com-
mands, and yet He would correct them if they should not have
obeyed His precepts. And so, lest they be as corrupted with
leisure as their fathers were with license, He wished them to
be oppressed by those in whose hands He put them, so that
He might strengthen them when falling, restore them to
strength when they had been corrupted, test and try them
when loyal. How can a commander prove the valor of his
soldiers unless he have an enemy? And although an adversary
rise up against that one and against his will, and though he
may be conquered because he is mortal, since it is not possible
3 The quotation is probably from a lost portion of Seneca's On Prov-
idence.
 BOOK FIVE 389

to resist God, He Himself arouses adversaries to His Name,

not to fight against God, Himself, but against His soldiers,
so that He may prove or strengthen their devotion and faith
until He shall reestablish abandoned discipline by the blows
of oppression.
There is also another reason why He allows persecutions to
be carried on against us. It is that the people of God might
be increased, and it is not difficult to show how and why this
is done. First, very many people are put to flight from the
cults of the false gods by a hatred of cruelty. Who would not
shrink from such sacrifices? Then, virtue and the fai th itself
are attractive to certain ones. Some suspect that not without
cause is the worship of the gods thought to be evil by so many
that they would prefer to die rather than do that which others
do that they may live. Someone wishes to know what that good
is which is defended even to death, which is preferred to all
things that are pleasing or dear in this life, and from which
neither loss of possessions, nor of light, nor pain of body, nor
torture of its members deter. 4 These are very strong, but those
causes have always increased our number. The people standing
around hear them saying in the very midst of torments that
they do not sacrifice to stone statues made by human hands,
but to the living God who is in heaven. Many know that this
is true and admit it in their hearts. Then, as is accustomed to
happen in uncertain matters, while they question each other
as to the cause of this perseverance, many things which per-
tain to religion, being noised abroad and caught in turn, are
learned. Since these things are good, they must please them.
Besides vengeance gained, as it always happens, strongly im-
pels to belief. This is not a slight cause, either, the fact that
unclean spirits of demons inhabit the bodies of many people,
permission having been granted. 'When these have been
ejected afterwards, all who have been cleansed adhere to the
religion whose power they have felt. These many reasons,
gathered together, marvelously gain a great multitude for God.
4 Cf. Tertullian, Ad Scapulam c. 5.
390 LACTANTIUS

Chapter 23

Whatever, then, the evil princes contrive against us God

Himself allows to be done. Still, let not those most unjust
persecutors, to whom the Name of God has been a reproach
and mockery, think that they will go unpunished because
they have been the ministers, so to speak, of His indignation
against us. 1 They will be punished by a judgment of God,
those who, when they had gained power beyond human
measure, have abused and insulted God overweeningly and
have impiously and nefariously cast down His eternal Name
and trampled upon it. On that account He promises that He
will quickly avenge Himself against them and 'will drive the
evil beasts from the face of the earth.'2 But although the same
God is accustomed to vindicate the distresses of His people,
even here in the present life, however, He orders us to await
patiently that day of heavenly judgment on which He Him-
self will honor or punish each one according to his meri ts.
Therefore, let not sacrilegious souls hope that those whom
they thus trample will be despised and unavenged then. His
pay will come to the furious and voracious wolves who have
torn to pieces just and simple souls even though they have ad-
mitted no crimes. Let us strive only that nothing else may be
punished in us by men save justice alone. Let us put forth all
our strength to be rewarded by God with the revenge and
reward of suffering at the same time.

1 Cf. Tertullian, Ad Scapulam 3.

2 Cf. Lev. 26.6; Ezech. 34.25.
 BOOK SIX

ON TRUE WORSHIP

Chapter 1

NDER THE INSTRUCTION of the Divine Spirit and with

the aid of Truth Itself, we have completed the duty
of the work which we undertook. Science and the
and Our Lord Himself imposed upon me the cause of
investigating and revealing the truth. Without Him it is not
possible for anything either to be known or to be explained. I
come now to that topic which is the highest and most essential
of this work, namely, to show by what rite or by what sacrifice
God is to be fittingly worshiped. For that is the duty of man
and in it alone consists the highest purpose of things and the
whole way of the blessed life, especially since we have been
fashioned and inspired by Him, not that we might behold the
heavens and the sun, as Anaxagoras thought, but that we might
worship with a pure and untarnished mind the Maker of
the sky and the God of heaven. Although in the preceding
books I defended the truth as much as my slight ability
granted, still it can be quite clearly drawn out from a consider-
ation of the rite itself that holy and singular Majesty desires
nothing else from man other than innocence alone. If anyone
offers this to God, he will fulfill his duties piously enough
and religiously enough. But since men, through the neglect
of justice, have become defiled with all manner of wickedness
and crime, they think themselves religious if they have stained
temples and altars with the blood of sacrificial victims, if they
391
392 LACTANTIUS

have spilled upon fires a libation of fragrant old wine. Why,

they even prepare sacred feasts and offer exquisite banquets,
as if there will be some benefit from this to those making the
libations. Whatever is rare to behold or precious in workman-
ship or fragrance, these things are judged to be pleasing to
their gods, not from some knowledge of the divinity which
they do not have, but from their own desires, and they do not
understand that God does not need earthly riches.
For they have knowledge of nothing except the earth, and
goods and evils depend upon the sensation and pleasure of the
body alone. As they weigh religion from this standpoint, so
do they arrange the actions of their whole lives. And because
they have once diverted themselves from the contemplation
of heaven, and have bound that heavenly perceptiveness to
the body, they give rein to their passions, just as though they
were to carry away with them the pleasure which they hasten
to take at every moment, although the mind ought to use the
service of the body, not the body use the service of the mind. 1
The same ones judge wealth as the greatest good. If they
are not able to acquire this by fair means, they get it by foul.
They deceive, steal, plunder, entrap, lie;2 they consider nothing
of moderation or seriousness, as long as they shine with gold
and gleam with silver and jeweled dothing; they load del-
icacies upon a most avid stomach; and, equipped with a
retinue of personal attendants, they always strut among the
people who have been moved aside for them. So, as addicts
and slaves of pleasure, they black out the vigor and strength
of their minds, and when they think that they are enjoying
life to the full, they are hastening most furiously to death.
As we explained in the second book,s the purpose or plan
of heaven is in the soul, and that of earth is in the body.
Those who neglect the goods of the soul and seek those of the
body are involved in darkness and in death, which are of
the earth and the body; whereas life and light are from heaven.
Those who are without these, through their serving of the
1 Cf. Sallust, Catiline 1.2.
2 Cf. ibid. 12.2.
3 Cf. Bk. II, ch. 12.
 BOOK SIX 393

body, are far away from an understanding of divine things.

The same blindness everywhere presses down the wretched.
For just as they do not know who the true God is, so they are
ignorant of what is the true religion.

Chapter 2

Let them, therefore, immolate fat rich victims to a hungry

god, as it were; let them pour out wines as though for one
thirsty; let them enkindle lamps as though for one passing his
time in darkness. But if they can imagine or conceive in their
minds what those heavenly goods are, whose magnitude we
cannot grasp because we are still subjected to bodily sense,
then, they may know that they are most foolish with these
inane practices. Or if they wish to contemplate the celestial
light which we call the sun, then, they will realize how God
does not need their lamps, who Himself gave for man's use a
light so brilliant, so bright. And yet, when there is in this so
small a circle (for on account of its great distance it seems to
have no greater measure than a human head) so much of
brilliance that the sight of mortal eyes cannot gaze upon it,
and if you look for a little while, a blur and darkness come
upon blinded eyes, what are we to think, then, of that light
and that brightness in the presence of God Himself with whom
there is no night? He so moderated this very light that
it should not harm living beings by excessive brightness or
vehement heat, and He gave to it as much of those qualities
as mortal bodies could suffer or as the ripening of fruits would
need. Is that man, then, to be considered of sound mind who
offers the light of waxen candles as a gift to the Author and
Giver of light?l He demands from us another light, not a smok-
ing one, to be sure, but as the poet says, 'shining and clear,'

1 Lactantius would seem to decry the use of candles in religious worship.

The Church has consecrated this use. The objects of Lactantius'
scathing remarks could not discern between the symbol and the spirit-
ual reality for which such a symbol might stand.
394 LACTANTIUS

the light of the mind, of course, on account of which we are

named mortals by the poets. 2 But only the one who knows
God can display this quality.
Their gods, however, because they are earthly, need lights
so as not to be in darkness. Their worshipers, since they savor
nothing heavenly, even call down to the earth the religions
which they observe. There is need of light there since its
purpose and nature is darksome. So they do not assign to their
gods a heavenly sense, but a human one, rather; and, therefore,
they believe that those things are necessary and pleasing to
them, the food which is ours when hungry, or the drink when
thirsty, or the clothing when cold, or the light, when the
sun has departed, so that we may see.
From nothing, however, can it be so proved and understood
that those gods, although they may have once lived, are dead,
as from the very rite itself which is entirely of the earth. What
of heavenly goodness can the spilled blood of beasts with
which they stain altars have in itself? Perhaps they believe
that the gods feed on that which men spurn to touch. And
whoever bestows this gorey feast upon them, though he be a
thief, an adulterer, a poisoner, a parricide, he will be blessed
and happy. They love him, they regard him, they grant him
whatever he should ask. Rightly, therefore, does Persius deride
in his own manner superstitions of this kind. 'With which
boon', he says, 'do you buy the ears of the gods? With a lung
and milky ointments?'3
He realized, of course, that there is no need of flesh meat
for placating celestial majesty, but of a holy mind and just
soul and heart, as he himself says, 'which is noble with natural
uprightness.'4 This is heavenly religion, which does not consist
of corrupt things, but in the virtues of the soul which orig-
inates in heaven. This is true worship in which the mind of

2 Perhaps this is a reference to Lucretius .~.28) and 3.1. The etymology

is phates, from phas, light.
3 Persius 2.29,30.
4 Ibid. 2.74; cf. Lactantius 2.4.11.
 BOOK SIX 395

the one paying worship offers itself an immaculate victim to

God.
Now how this must come about, how it must be bestowed,
the matter discussed in this book will bring out. Nothing can
be so outstanding or so suitable to man than to instruct men
unto justice. 5 According to Cicero, Catulus in the Hortensius J

preferring philosophy to all things, says that he would 'rather

have only one small book on duty than a lengthy oration in
behalf of the seditious man Cornelius.'6 This sentiment is
surely not to be ascribed to Catulus who, perhaps, did not say
it, but to Cicero who wrote it, I suppose, in order to recom-
mend the books which he was going to write about duties in
which he testifies that 'in all philosophy there is nothing better
and more fruitful than to give the precepts of life.'7 If those
to whom the truth is not known do this, how much more
should we do it who have been enlightened and instructed
by God and who are able to give true precepts! Neither shall
we teach, however, as though we were passing on the first
elements of virtue which is infinite, but as though we have
undertaken the teaching of him who seems to be already per-
fect in those elements. Letting their precepts which give right
instruction unto probity remain, we will superimpose upon
them for the perfection and consummation of justice those
principles which they do not yet know or hold. I will pass by,
therefore, the things which can be accepted by them and
us in common, lest I seem to change in any point to those
whose errors I have determined to refute and to open up.

Chapter 3

There are two ways over which it is necessary that human

5 Cf. Dan. 12.3: They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of
the firmament: and they that instruct many unto justice as stars for
all eterni ty.
6 Cicero, Hortensills frg. 47.
7 Ibid., On Duties 1.2.4; 3.2.5.
396 LACTANTIUS

life progress; one which leads to heaven, the other which

presses down to hell, and both the poets in their verses and the
philosophers in their disputations have opened up these ways
to men. 1 Indeed, the philosophers intended that the one
should be understood as a way of virtues, the other of vices.
They knew, too, that the way marked by virtues was arduous
and difficult at the first approach, but that if anyone should
come to its summit after overcoming the difficulty, he would
have a smooth way for the rest of the journey, and that he
would gain a light and pleasant field and rich and delightful
rewards of all his labors. Those, however, whom the difficulty
of the first approach deterred, would fall and be detoured to
the way of vices which, at the first, is pleasant, so to speak,
and much more traveled. Then, when they have advanced on
it a little farther, the appearance of that pleasantness is sudden-
ly withdrawn, the road rises as precipitous, now rough with
rocks and blocked with briars, now interrupted with pools
and lakes or rapid with floods and torrents, so that they
must strain and cling and slip and fall. All these things are
brought out for this, that it might seem that the labors in
getting virtues are very great, but that there are the greatest
rewards and solid and incorrupt pleasures in the possession
or actuality of them. Vices, on the other hand, with certain
natural enticements ensnare the minds of men and then lead
them, captured by the appearance of empty delights, to sharp
bitterness and misery. Their disputation would be certainly
wise, if they knew the forms and limits of the virtues them-
selves.
They had not learned either what they are or what reward
from God remains for them. This we will show in these two
books. Such men, because they did not know, or doubted that
the souls of men are immortal, estimated both virtues and
vices in terms of earthly honors or punishments. This whole
disputation, therefore, about the two ways looks to frugality
1 For this chapter and the ones following d. The Teachings of the
Twelve Apostles c. 1.5, and the Epistle of Barnabas c. 18 If.
 BOOK SIX 397

and luxury. For they say that the course of human life is like
the letter y2 because each man, when he has touched the
threshold of his first youth and has come into that place,
'where the way separates itself into two parts,'3 may cling
waveringly and not know toward which direction he should
rather incline. If he find a leader to direct him hesitating
to the better things, that is, if he should learn philosophy or
eloquence or some honorable art by which he may pass to
good success (and this is not possible without very great
labor), they claim that he will spend an honorable and abun-
dant life. But if he should not come upon a teacher of frugal-
ity, he falls upon the evil path which imitates the appearance
of a better one, that is, he gives himself over to sloth, idleness,
and luxury. These, of course, seem sweet for a time to one
not knowing true goods, but afterwards, however, when he has
lost all dignity and personal esteem, he will live in complete
misery and disgrace. To the body, therefore, and to this life
which we spend on earth, the ends of these were referred. Per-
haps the poets did better who meant it to be a crossroads with
reference to the nether world; but they are deceived in this,
that they proposed those ways to the dead. Both groups, then,
interpreted truly, but both were incorrect, because it is neces-
sary that the ways themselves be referred to life, their ends
to death.
We, however, do better and we speak more truly who say
that those two ways are of heaven and of the lower regions,
because immortality has been determined for the just, punish-
ment for the unjust. How these ways rise toward heaven or
drop to hell I will explain, and I will disclose what the virtues
are which the philosophers did not know. Then, I will show
the rewards of these virtues and at the same time also the
vices and their punishments. Someone perhaps may expect that
I will speak separately about the vices and virtues, although
while we are discussing good or evil, that also which is its

2 Cf. Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes c. 10.

3 Vergil, Aeneid 6.540.
398 LACTANTIUS

opposite can be understood. Should you implant virtues, the

vices will depart of their own accord; or, if you should root
out vices, the virtues will freely crop up. Thus is the nature
of goods and evils constituted that the one always fights against,
always drives out the other. And so it happens that the vices
cannot be removed without the implanting of the virtues nor
can the virtues be implanted without a removal of the vices.
'Ve represent these ways, therefore, far otherwise than they
were wont to be represented by the philosophers; first, because
we say that a guide has been set over each and that each guide
is immortal, but that the one is honored who is in charge of
virtues and goods, and the other condemned, who oversees
vices and evils. They place a leader on the right way only,
and he is neither one nor everlasting, since they depict him
as any teacher of a good art, who may recall men from sloth
and teach them to be proper. But they do not have any but
children and youths enter upon this road, simply because the
arts are learned in these ages. 'Ve, on the other hand, place
men of every class and kind and age upon this heavenly road,
because God, who is the Leader of that road, denies im-
mortality to no man born. The form also of those ways is not
as they believed. Why is there need of the letter Y in opposite
and diverse things? That one road, the better one, is turned
toward the rising sun; the other, the worse, toward its setting,
since he who follows truth and justice will secure possession
of the accepted reward of immortality, perennial light; but he
who has preferred vice to virtue, falsehood to truth, ensnared
by that evil guide, must be borne to the west and to eternal
darkness. I will describe each, therefore, and I will show
their properties and conditions.

Chapter 4

So the one way is that of virtue and the good, which con-
ducts, not to the Elysian fields, as the poets say, but to the very
 BOOK SIX 399

vault or citadel of the world, 'but the left exacts the punish-
ments of evil and consiglls to impious Tartarus.'l For it belongs
to that incriminator who, by depraved religious customs, turns,
men away from the heavenly mute and leads them on to the
way of perdition. The appearance and figure of this road is
so arranged with sightliness that it seems to be smooth and
open and delightful with all manner of flowers and fruits. On
it God has placed all the things which are considered as good
upon earth; I mean wealth, honor, rest, pleasure, all delights.
But along with these are injustice, cruelty, pride, perfidy,
license, cupidity, discord, ignorance, deceit, folly, and other
vices. Such is the exit of this road. When one has come to the
end, whence there is no way back, then, it is so suddenly cut
off from all its beauty that anyone who cannot see the fraud
beforehand falls headlong into profound depths. Whoever,
captivated by the appearance of these present goods and en-
gaged in gaining and enjoying them, does not look ahead at
those things which will follow death and turns away from
God is cast down, therefore, to hell and will be damned in
eternal punishment.
The way that is heaven-bound, however, has been set up to
be difficult and steep, rough with shaggy thorns or impeded
by jutting rocks, so that it is climbed by a man only with the
greatest labor and hard treading and with great danger of
falling. On this God has put justice, temperance, faith, pa-
tience, chastity, abstinence, concord, knowledge, truth, wisdom,
and the other virtues; but along with these, poverty, disgrace,
labor, pain, and all bitterness. 'Whoever stretches his hope far
and prefers the better things will lack the goods of earth,
so that unencumbered and free he may overcome the difficulty
of the road. Nor is it possible for him who has surrounded
himself with regal paraphernalia or hardened himself with
riches to enter upon those narrow passes or hold to the way.2
It is understood from this, then, that the things which they
desire come about more easily for the evil and unjust, because
1 Vergil, Aeneid 6.542 f.
2 Cf. Matt. 7.13,14; 19.23 If.
400 LACTANTIVS

their road is downhill and sloping, but the good arrive at the
things which they desire with difficulty, because they are ad-
vancing by a hard and steep route. The just man, therefore,
since he has entered on a rough and hard path, must be an
object of contempt, derision, and hatred. For all, whom cupid-
ity or desire drags headlong, envy him who could have seized
virtue and they take it hard that someone has that which they
themselves do not have. So he will be poor, lowly, ignoble,
subject to injury, and yet enduring all things which are bitter,
but if he holds patience fast and brings it to the last step and
the end, there will be given to him the crown of virtue, and
from God, for the labors which he bore in life for justice sake,
he will receive immortality.3
These are the paths which God has assigned for human life.
On each He has put good and evil, but in a distorted and
inverted order. On His own way He showed, first, temporal
evils with eternal goods which is the better order, and on
the other, temporary goods first with eternal evils which is
worse, so that whoever should choose present evils with justice
would attain to greater and more certain goods than those
were which he spurned; but, whoever put present goods before
justice would fall upon greater and longer-lasting evils than
were those which he fled. For since this life of the body is
short, it is necessary, therefore, that its goods and evils be
short. The spiritual life, though, which is opposed to this
earthly one, is everlasting; and because it is, its goods and
evils are everlasting. Thus it happens that eternal evils follow
upon short goods, and eternal goods follow upon short evils.
So, when goods and evils are set before a man at the same
time, it is fitting that each one should think within himself
how much more satisfying it is to exchange short evils for
perpetual goods than to endure perpetual evils for some
short and failing goods.

3 It sounds as though Lactantius holds that virtue is its own reward,

and that there is the additional one of merited glory. Cf. Matt. 5
for the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount.
 BOOK SIX 401

Just as in this world when a contest has been entered upon

with a foe, you must labor first that you may afterwards be in
leisure; you must hunger and thirst, endure heat and cold,
rest on the ground, keep vigil, and struggle, so that with
property secured and home and household safe, you may be
able to enjoy all the blessings of peace and victory. But if you
desire present leisure rather than labor, of necessity you do
yourself very great evil. For the adversary will seize upon you
who do not make any resistance; your fields will be destroyed,
your home plundered; your wife and children will come out
as booty; you yourself will be killed or captured. Lest all these
things happen, present convenience must be put aside so that
a greater and more lasting one may be gained. So in all this
life, since God has preserved adversity for us so that we might
be able to get virtue, present delight ought to be put aside
so that the enemy might not overwhelm us. We have to keep
watch, stations must be managed, we must go on military
expeditions, shed blood to the last drop, and, finally, endure
patiently all bitter and heavy trials; and, indeed, the more
willingly because God, our Commander, has arranged for us
eternal rewards for these labors. And since in this earthly
military service, men endure so much labor to gain those things
which may perish in the same manner whereby they were
gained, certainly, no labor ought to be refused by us who are
acquiring that which can in no way be lost.
God, who brought man forth unto this 'military service,'
wanted us to stand in battle array, unencumbered, and to
watch keenly with intent minds for the treachery of the one
enemy or for his open attacks who snatches at us, just as
skilled and trained leaders are accustomed to do, furious in
various skills according to the nature and customs of each one.
In some he injects insatiable cupidity so that he may drive
them, bound as if by their own shackles, from the way of
truth. Others he arouses with goads of wrath so that he may
turn them, intent rather upon doing harm, away from the
contemplation of God. Some he sinks in immoderate desires
402 LACTANTIUS

so that serving pleasure and their bodies they may not be able
to look toward virtue. Some he inspires with envy so that
occupied with their own torments they think of nothing else
but the good fortune of those whom they hate. Others he puffs
up with ambitions; these are they who devote all the time and
care of their lives to holding offices so that they may mark the
calendar days and give their names to the years. The cupidity
of certain people reaches too high, not that they may rule
provinces with a temporal sword, but that with infinite and
perpetual power they may have themselves called lords of all
mankind. Those whom he would have seem as 'pious,' how-
ever, he would involve in various religious observances, that
he might make them impious. But he casts philosophy into
the eyes of those who seek wisdom so that he may blind them
with the likeness of light, lest anyone comprehend and hold
the truth. Thus he blocked for men all the approaches and,
rejoicing in the public errors, he walled up the roads. In order
that we may dispel these errors and overcome the author of
evils himself, God has enlightened us and armed us with true,
heavenly virtue. It is about this that I must now speak.

Chapter 5

But before I begin to explain the single virtues, virtue itself

must be determined. The philosophers have not correctly de-
fined it; what it is or in what things it exists, what function
it has, or what duty. They have kept only its name, but its
power and reason and effect they have lost. Whatever things
they were accustomed to say in defining virtue, Lucilius gathers
together and gives in a few verses. I wish to quote these verses
so that, while I refute the opinions of many. I will not be
longer than necessary. 'It is virtne, Albinus, to be able to
release the precious truth, matters in which we are engaged,
in which we live. It is virtue to know that which each thing
 BOOK SIX 403

possesses for man, virtue to know what is right for man, what
is useful, what noble, what things are good and likewise what
are evil, what is not useful, base, and ignoble. It is virtue to
know the end and measure of the thing to be sought; virtue,
to be able to release the precious from riches, virtue to give
that which is due to honor by the very nature of the thing. It
is to be the enemy and foe of men of evil habits, but the
defender of men of good habits; to value these highly, to wish
them well, to live as their friend. Besides, it is, first of all, to
think of the country's advantage, then, of our parents', and,
thirdly and last of all, of our own.'l
From these definitions which the poet summarized and gave
briefly, Marcus Tullius, following Panaetius the Stoic,2 drew
the duties of living and gave them to us in three volumes. 3
But we shall soon see how false these are, that it may be clear
how much the divine condescension has conferred upon us
which opened up the truth to us. 'Virtue,' he said, 'is to know
what is good and evil, what is base, what noble, what is use-
ful, what is not.' He could have said this more briefly if he
mentioned only good and evil, because nothing can be useful
or noble which is not good at the same time, nothing useless
or base which is not evil as well. This is seen by the philos-
ophers, and Cicero showed the same thing in the third book
of his work mentioned just now. 4
Knowledge, however, cannot be virtue, because it is not
within us, but comes to us from without. That which can pass
from one to another is not virtue, because virtue is each one's
own. Knowledge is of another's benefit, then, because it is
placed in hearing; virtue is wholly our own, because it is
placed in the will of doing good. Therefore, just as in under-
taking a journey, it is of no avail to know the way, unless
there are at hand attempts at and strength for walking; so
1 Lucilius, from an uncertain work, frg. 1.
2 Panaetius was a celebrated leader of the Stoic sect. He was a native of
Rhodes and a friend and teacher of Scipio Africanus.
3 Cicero, On Duties.
4 Ibid. 3.2.7 ff.
404 LACTANTIUS

knowledge avails nothing if one is without any proper virtue.

Generally, also, those who sin realize what is good and bad,
even though not perfectly, and as often as they do something
wrong, they know that they sin and, therefore, wish to conceal
it. And although they are not deceived as to the nature of good
and evil, they are overcome by evil cupidity, so that they sin
because virtue, that is, the desire of doing right and nobly, is
lacking to them.
From this, then, it is clear that the knowledge of good and
evil is one thing, and virtue another, because knowledge can
exist without virtue, as was the case in many of the philos-
ophers. Therefore, since it rightly pertains to blame not to
have done what you knew (was right), then, rightly, a de-
praved will and vicious mind which ignorance cannot excuse
will be punished. And just as virtue is not the knowing of
good and evil, so virtue is the doing of good and the not doing
of evil. Still, knowledge is so joined with virtue that knowl-
edge precedes virtue, and virtue follows upon knowledge,
since simple cognition is of no worth unless action follows.
Horace put this a little better, stating: 'It is virtue to flee vice,
and it is the first wisdom to have lacked folly,'5 but he spoke
ineptly, because he finished it contrariwise. It is as if he were
saying: 'It is good because it is not evil. But since I do not
know what virtue is, I do not even know what vice is. Each,
therefore, needs definition, since the nature of the thing is
such that it is necessary that each be either understood or not
understood.'
Let us do, however, what he should have done. It is virtue
to restrain anger, to quell desire, to check passion, that is,
'to flee vice.' For nearly all the things which are done unjustly
and wickedly arise from these movements (adfectus). If the
impetus of this movement (commotio) which is called anger
be held down, all the evil contentions of men will be lulled;
no one will plot and connive; no one will rise up to harm.
Likewise, if cupidity is tempered, no one will riot about on
5 Horace, Epistles 1.1.41.
 BOOK SIX 405

land and seas; no one will lead an army to plunder and de-
stroy the goods of others. And if the fire of concupiscence is
restrained, every age and sex will retain its sanctity; no one
will suffer or commit anything shameful. Therefore, when
these movements are quieted by virtue, all crimes and disgraces
will be removed from the life and practices of men. This
quieting of the movements and passions has this purpose, that
we may do all things rightly. So the whole duty or office of
virtue is not to sin. Certainly, he who does not know God
cannot perform this, because of necessity his ignorance of Him
from whom good springs thrusts him into vices. Therefore,
that I may quite briefly and significantly mark off the greatest
duties of each: it is knowledge to know God, virtue to worship
Him. Wisdom is contained in the former, justice in the latter.

Chapter 6

I have said that knowledge of the good is not virtue; this

was of primary importance. Then, I have explained what
virtue is and in what it exists. It follows that I should briefly
show this point also, that the philosophers did not know what
good and evil is, because it was almost made clear in the
third book1 when I was treating of the highest good. Those
who did not know what was the highest good erred necessarily
about the other goods and evils which are not the greatest.
For he is not able to examine those with true judgment who
does not comprehend the source from which they spring. Now,
the source of good is God; the source of evil is, to be sure, the
ever-enemy of the Divine Name of whom we have often spoken.
From these two beginnings goods and evils arise. Those which
come from God have this purpose, that they prepare for im-
mortality which is the highest good. Those which are from
that other have this function, to call one away from heavenly

1 Ch.7.
406 LACTANTIUS

things and submerge him in those of earth that they may kill
him with everlasting punishment which is the greatest evil. Is
there any doubt, then, that those who do not know God nor
His adversary should be ignorant as to what is good and what
evil? Thus, they referred the end of goods to the body and to
this brief life, which, of course, must be dissolved and come
to its end. They did not continue farther, but all their pre-
cepts and all the things which they hold as goods cling to
the earth and grovel on the ground, since they die along with
the body which is of earth.
They pertain not to setting in order the life of man, but to
seeking or increasing wealth, honors, glory, power; all of
which are mortal things, just as mortal as he who labored that
they might befall him. Hence, that statement: 'Virtue is to
know the end and measure of the thing to be sought.'2 They
give instructions as to what ways and with what skills a famil-
iar thing is to be sought, since they see that it is accustomed
to be sought after badly. But virtue of this sort has not been
proposed to the wise men. Neither is it virtue to seek wealth,
nor is its finding or possession in our power. So the seeking
and obtaining are easier in respect to evils than to goods.
Virtue, therefore, cannot be in seeking things in contempt of
which the force and reason of virtue appear, nor will it sink
to those very things which it strives with high and noble spirit
to tread upon and trample. 3 And it is not right for a soul
intent upon heavenly goods to be called away from its im-
mortal riches to gain these fragile things for itself. Rather, the
plan and reason of virtue consists most of all in getting ready
those things which no man nor death itself can take away
from us.
Since this is the case, that is a true line which follows in
Lucilius: 'It is virtue to be able to release the precious from
riches.'4 This verse signifies almost the same thing as the first

2 Cf. Lucilius, IDe. cit., ch. 5, n. 1.

3 Cf. Cicero, On Duties 3.5.24.
4 Cf. ch. 5, n. 1.
 BOOK SIX 407

two. But not anyone of the philosophers could himself know

the value itself or its preciousness or worth, nor of what
nature, nor exactly what it is. The poet and all those who
followed him thought that it was to use wealth rightly, that
is, to be careful, not to layout banquets sumptuously, not to
bestow gifts rashly, not to waste one's private fortune on
superfluous or shameful things. Someone will say perhaps:
'What about you? Do you deny that this is virtue?' I do not,
indeed, deny it, for I would seem to approve of the contrary
if I should deny it. But I deny that it is true, because that is
not heavenly but entirely earthly, since it accomplishes nothing
except that it remains on earth. What it is, however, to use
wealth rightly, and what fruit ought to be sought from riches,
I will declare more openly when I begin to speak about the
office of piety.5
Now the other things which follow 6 are in no way true. For
to display enmity toward the wicked or to undertake the de-
fense of the good can be shared with those who are evil. Cer-
tain people by a feigned probity fortify a road to power for
themselves, and they do many things which the good are wont
to do, and even the more eagerly because they do them for
the sake of deceiving. Would that it were as easy to excel as
it is to simulate goodness! But when these begin to be masters
of their purpose and desires, and when they have seized the
highest grade of power, then, they lay aside the simulation
and uncover their morals; they seize all things, they violate
and harass; and those very good people whose case they had
taken up they now press against; and they cut off or do away
with the grades or ranks through which they ascended, lest
anyone be able to imitate them in opposition to themselves.
However, let us think that this office, to defend the good,
is only that of a good man. It is easy to undertake this, but
difficult to fulfill it, because, when you engage in a contest
or conflict, the victory is placed in God's will, not your own;
5 Cf. ch. 11 ff.
o The remainder of the Lncilins fragment. eh. 5. n. 1.
408 LACTANTIUS

and, generally, the wicked are more powerful in number and

conspiracy than the good, so that for conquering them virtue
is not so necessary as good luck. Who does not know how
often the better and juster side is vanquished? Always from
this reason have bitter dominations risen against the citizens.
All history is full of examples, but we will be content with
one. Gnaeus Pompey7 wished to be a 'defender of the good,'
since he took up arms for the republic, for the Senate, for
liberty. The same man, however, was conquered and slain
with liberty itself, and by Egyptian eunuchs was beheaded and
cast aside without burial. It is not virtue, therefore, to be 'an
enemy of the evil' or a 'defender of the good,' because virtue
cannot be subject to uncertain accidents.
'Furthermore, to think first of the advantages of the father-
land's means nothing at all when the discord of men has been
removed. For what are the 'advantages of the fatherland'
except the disadvantages of another state or tribe, that is, to
spread territories violently seized from others, to increase
empire, to get greater tax-paying dominions? All these are
surely not virtues, but the reversals of virtues. In the first
place, the union of human society is removed, innocence is
taken away, abstinence from another's property is destroyed,
and, finally, justice herself is done away with. For justice is
not able to bear the division of the human race, and wherever
arms flash, it is necessary that she be put to flight and ex-
terminated. That statement of Cicero's is true: 'Those who
say that the purpose of the citizens must be upheld deny that
of the aliens. These break asunder the common society of the
human race; and, when this is removed, beneficence, liberality,
goodness, and justice are utterly taken away.'9 For how can he
be just who does harm, who hates, who despoils, who kills?
7 The 'Great' Pompey, who saved Rome against the pirates and won
her supremacy in the East, and who fought against and was defeated
by Julius Caesar in the Civil V.rar. While fleeing Caesar into Egypt,
he was captured and brutally slain. Caesar, however, punished his
murderers and gave his body decent burial.
8 Cf. Lucilius, loco cit., eh. 5, n. 1.
9 On Duties 3.6.28.
 BOOK SIX 409

Those who strive to be of advantage to the fatherland do all

these things. Those who think that there is nothing useful,
nothing advantageous, except that which can be held in the
hand (which is the only thing that cannot be held, because
it can be snatched away), do not know what that very ad-
vantage itself is. And so whoever has gained these things, goods,
as they call them, for the fatherland, that is, he who has over-
turned states and destroyed peoples and made the treasury
swell with money, he who has taken lands and made his fellow-
citizens richer, is raised to the heavens; highest and perfect
virtue is thought to be in him. This is an error, not only of
the people and the untrained, but also of the philosophers
who give instructions also for injustice, lest discipline and
authority be lacking to folly and evil.
Thus, when they discuss duties pertaining to military affairs,
that entire speech is accommodated neither to justice nor to
true virtue, but to this life and to civic custom. That this is
not justice both the matter itself indicates on one hand, and
Cicero himself has testified on the other. 'But we,' he says,
'hold no solid and clearly wrought image of true law and its
sister justice; we use shades and images. Would that we were
following those themselves! They are raised by the best ex-
amples of nature and of truth.'lO Therefore, it is but a shade
and image of justice which they thought was justice. Why is it?
Does not the same writer confess that there is no wisdom in
philosophy? 'When either Fabricius or Aristides is called just,'
he says, 'an example is sought, as it were, by a wise man of
fortitude from the one, or of justice from the other. No one
of these is wise in such a way as we wish a man to be thought
wise; nor were those who were held to be and called wise,
Marcus Cato and Gaius Laelius; and, indeed, not even were
those seven, but from the frequent association of their pro-
found duties, they bore a certain semblance and appearance
of wise men.'ll If, then, wisdom has been taken away from
10 Ibid. 3.17.69.
11 Ibid. 3.4.16.
410 LACTANTIUS

philosophers by their own admission, and justice from those

who have been regarded as just, it is necessary that all those
descriptions of virtue be false, since no one but a just and wise
person can know what true virtue is. No one, however, is just
and wise except the one whom God has instructed with
heavenly precepts.

Chapter 7

All those who through the acknowledged folly of others are

believed to be wise, led on by the appearance of virtue, grasp
shadows and images, but nothing real. This comes about in
this way, because that deceitful road which leads to a fall has
many by-paths on account of the variety of studies and dis-
ciplines which are varied and diverse in the life of men. Just as
the way of wisdom holds something of folly (and we brought
this out in the preceding book),l so this way, although it is
entirely one of folly, has some likeness of wisdom which those
who understand the general folly snatch at. And as it holds
manifest vices, so it holds something which seems like virtue;
and as it holds open crime, so it holds a certain image and
species of justice. For how could the precursor of that way,
whose entire force and power are in deceiving, lead all into
fraud, unless he were showing men likenesses of the truth? In
order that that immortal secret of His might be in hiding,
God placed on the way those things of His which men would
spurn as evils and disgraces, so that turned away from wisdom
and truth which they were seeking without any guide, they
might fall upon that very thing itself which they were desiring
to escape and avoid.
So He shows the way of perdition and death to be manifold,
either because there are many kinds of life, or because the
gods which are worshiped are many. The leader of this way, a
prevaricator, and crafty, in order that there may seem to be

1 Bk. V, ch. 14.

 BOOK SIX 411

some distinction of false and true, of evil and good, leads the
luxurious by one path and by another those who are called
economical, the unskilled by one and the learned by another,
the inactive by one and the energetic by another, the fools by
one and the philosophers by another, and those even not all
by the one path. For those who do not escape from pleasures
or riches, he slightly separates from this public and crowded
road, but those who either wish to follow virtue or who pro-
fess a contempt for possessions, he draws along certatin rocky
precipices. StilI, all those routes which show the appearance
of good are not other roads, but by-ways and paths, which
seem, indeed, to be separated from that common road, toward
the right, but all, however, go to the same one and are re-
turned at the end to the one goal. There that leader joins them
all, where there had been need for the good to be separated
from the bad, the strong from the inert, the wise from the fools,
in the matter of the worship of the gods, of course, in which
that one foils them all with one blow, because they have been
fools without any distinction, and he drives them headlong
into death.
This road, however, which is one of truth and wisdom and
virtue and justice, of all of which there is one source, one
power, one abode, and that is simple (by which we all follow
with like minds and greatest harmony the one God, and we
worship Him), is both narrow because virtue has been given
to very few, and steep because it is not possible to get to the
good which is highest Good except with the greatest difficulty
and labor.

Chapter 8

This is the way which the philosophers seek, but they do

not find it for this reason, that they seek rather upon the earth
where it is not possible for it to appear. They wander, there-
fore, as if on a vast sea, nor do they know where they are being
412 LACTANTIUS

borne, since they nei ther discern any way nor follow any
leader. By the same token it is as fitting for this way of life
to be sought as for a way on the sea to be sought by ships; for,
unless these watch some light of heaven, they wander in un-
certain courses. Whoever strives to hold the right course of
life ought not to look at the earth, but at heaven. To speak
more plainly, he ought to follow not man but God, not to serve
these earthly idols but the God of heaven, not to refer all
things to the body but to the soul, not to give his attention
to this life but to eternal life. So, if you always raise your eyes
toward heaven and watch the sun, how it rises, and keep it
the guide of your life as though of a ship, your feet will of their
own accord be directed onto the road; and that celestial light,
which is for sound minds a much brighter sun than that which
We see here with the eyes of the body, will so rule, will so
direct that it will conduct to the supreme harbor of virtue and
wisdom without any error.
The law of God must, therefore, be taken up, the law
which directs us to this way, that holy law, that heavenly law,
which Marcus Tullius depicted in the third book of his Re-
public with almost divine words. I have added his words, lest
I say more. 'There is, indeed, a true law, right reason, con-
gruent to nature, diffused among all, constant, lasting, which
calls to duty by ordering and keeps away from crime by for-
bidding, which, however, neither orders nor forbids the good
in vain, nor moves the evil by ordering or forbidding. It is not
right for anything to be opposed to this law nor may anything
be removed from it, nor can it be wholly abrogated. Nor, in
truth, can we be absolved from this law by the senate or by
the people. No Sextus Aelius 1 should be sought as an ex-
plainer or interpreter. There will not be one law at Rome
and another at Athens, one now and another afterwards, but
this one law, everlasting and unchangeable, will hold all peo-
ples and be for all times, and there will be one common Master,
A consul of the year A.D. 4 whose law contained regulations on the
limitations of manumission.
 BOOK SIX 413

as it were, and Commander of all, God. That one is the In-

ventor, Arbitrator, and Proposer of this law. Whoever will not
obey Him will himself flee himself, and spurning the nature of
man he will pay the greatest penalty by this very fact, even if
he should escape the other punishments which are reckoned.'2
Who, with a knowledge of the revelation of God, could so
significantly express the law of God as that man, far removed
from the knowledge of the truth, expressed it? Truly, I think
that those who speak truths, though unaware that they do so,
ought to be considered in this way, as though they were
divining, having been inspired with some spirit. 3 But if, when
he saw through the force and reason of the holy law, he had
thus understood or explained that also, namely, in which pre-
cepts the law itself consisted, he would not have performed
the duty of a philosopher but that of a prophet. Since he was
not able to do this, we must, for to us the law itself has been
handed down by that one Master and Commander of all, God.

Chapter 9

The first dogma of this law is to know God, to serve Him

alone, to worship only I-lim. It is not possible to get at the
reason of a man who does not know God as the parent of his
life. This is the worst wrong. This ignorance causes him to
serve other gods, than which nothing more criminal can be
committed. Hence, his steps are inclined toward evil through
his ignorance of the true and only good, since God, whom
he has avoided knowing, is the very source of goodness. Or if
he wishes to follow justice, ignorant as he is of the divine
law, he embraces the laws of his nation as though they were
the true law, but not justice, but utility has discovered these.
2 Cicero, The Republic 3.22.33. A better classical and pagan description
of the natural law could not have been selected.
3 Cf. the explanation of the gift of prophecy, a grace or power conferred
for the general good. The prophet need not be marked by sanctity; in
fact, he might not even be aware of his prophecy-making.
414 LACTANTIUS

\Vhy is it that laws are found different and varied among all
peoples, except that each nation has sanctioned for itself that
which it judged useful [or its own atTairs? How much utility
recedes from justice, however, the Roman people themselves
show who, through their Fetiales,l by declaring wars and
'legitimately' doing injustices and always taking and seizing
the property of others, gained for themselves possession of the
entire world. 2 Hut these men think themselves just if they do
nothing against their laws. This can also be ascribed to fear,
since they refrain from crimes from fear of punishment. Let
us grant that surely they do that by nature, or, as the philos-
opher says, 'of their own accord,'3 which they are forced to do
by laws. They will not, then, be just, will they, since they obey
the instructions of men who were themselves able to err or be
unjust-as were those establishers of the Twelve Tables 4-
or who certainly served public utility for the condition of the
time? Civil law is one thing which varies everywhere according
to customs, and true justice is another, which God has set
down as uniform and simple for all. And whoever does not
know Him must, of necessity, be ignorant of justice itself also.
Hut let us consider that it may be possible for someone to
get true virtues through natural and inbred goodness, of such
sort as we have learned that Cimon was at Athens. 5 He gave
alms to the needy, took the poor in, and clothed the naked;
however, since that one thing which is greatest was lacking,
a knowledge of God, all those good acts are empty and vain,
so that he labored in vain in performing them. All his justice
will be like a human body not having a head; for, although
all the members are in it and in their places and have beauty
and shapeliness, because that is lacking which is the principle
1 A group of priestly ambassadors who sanctioned treaties and demanded
satisfaction and declared wars.
2 Cf. Cicero, The Republic 3.12.20.
3 Ibid. 1.2.3; The Laws 1.18.49.
4 The Laws of the Twelve Tables, the first codification and publishing
of Roman Law in 494 B.C. are here referred to.
5 Cimon was a son of Miltiades, a distinguished Athenian general. Cf.
his life by Nepos.
 BOOK SIX 415

of all, it lacks also both life and all sensation. So those mem-
bers have only the shape of members, not their use. Such a
case, too, would be a head without a body. Similar to this is
he who, although he knows God, lives unjustly. He has that
alone which is greatest, but in vain, since he is in need of
virtues as though of members. So, that the body may be alive
and sensible, both the knowledge of God is necessary, which
is, as it were, the head, and also all the virtues, as though the
body. Thus will man become perfect and living, but the high-
est perfection is in the head, however; because, although the
head cannot exist without all the members, still it can exist
without certain ones. He will, indeed, be a vicious and weak
animal, but he will still live, just as he who knows God and
sins in some regard, for God gives pardon for sins. Thus, with-
out some of the members there can be life, but without the
head, none at all.
This is the reason that philosophers, although they have
natural goodness, yet have no knowledge, have no wisdom.
All their doctrine and virtues are without a head, since they
do not know God who is the Head of virtue and doctrine.
Whoever does not know Him, though he sees, is blind; though
he hears, he is deaf; though he speaks, he is dumb. When,
however, he comes to know the Creator and Father of all
things, then he will see and hear and speak. For he begins,
then, to have a head in which all the senses are located, that
is, the eyes and ears and tongue. He truly sees who has beheld
with the eyes of his heart the truth in which God is, or the
God in whom truth is. He hears who has applied to his
heart the divine words and life-giving precepts. He speaks who,
discoursing on heavenly things, declares the virtue and
majesty of the one God.
Wherefore, there is no doubt that whoever does not know
God is impious, and all his virtues, which he thinks he holds
or possesses, are found in that death-bearing way which is full
of darkness. For this reason, there is nothing on which one
may congratulate himself, if he has acquired these empty
416 LACTANTIUS

virtues, since he must be not only wretched who lacks present

goods, but he must be a fool as well who undertakes the great-
est labors in his life to no purpose. For when the hope of
immortality is removed, which God promises to those who
practice His worship, and for the sake of attaining which
virtue is to be sought, and whatever evil occurs must be en-
dured, surely, it will be the greatest vanity to want to pursue
virtues which bring calamities and labors to man in vain. If it
is virtue to suffer bravely and to undergo want, exile, pain, and
death which are feared by the rest of men, what good, then,
does it possess in itself that the philosophers should say that
it ought to be sought on its own account? They are delighted,
indeed, with superficial and vain punishments who may en-
gage in tranquil pursuits. If souls are mortal, if virtue is
going to be nothing when the body is dissolved, why do we
shun the goods attributed to us, as if we were ungrateful or
unworthy to enjoy the divine gifts? In order to possess those
goods we have to live shamefully and impiously, since poverty
follows virtue, that is, justice. He is not sane, then, who,
having no greater hope set before him, places labors and
tortures and misery before those goods which others use in
life. But if virtue must be gone after, as it is rightly said by
them, since it is agreed that man was born for this, there ought
to be at hand some greater hope which may apply great and
exceptional comfort for the evils and labors, which it is the
part of virtue to endure. In no other way can virtue, since it
is hard in itself, be regarded as a good, than if it compares
its bitterness with the greatest good. And in no other way
is it right that these present goods should be abstained from
than if there are other greater ones on account of which it
would be worthwhile to do without pleasures and to sustain
all evils. And as I showed in the third book, 6 those are none
other than the joys of eternal life.
Who can grant this, though, but God who has proposed
virtue itself? Therefore, in the knowledge and worship of
6 Bk. III, ch. 12.
 BOOK SIX 417

God the highest of all things consists. In this is all hope and
salvation for man. This is the first step of wisdom, that we
may know who is our true Father, that we many honor Him
alone with due piety, that we may obey Him and most de-
voutly serve Him, that all our acts and care and attention be
placed in that accomplishment.

Chapter 10

I have spoken about what is owed to God. Now I will tell

what ought to be bestowed upon man, although that which
you bestow upon man is bestowed upon God, for man is the
image of God. The first work of justice is to be joined with
God; the second, with man. The first is called religion; the
second is named mercy or humanity. It is a proper virtue of
the just and of those who worship God, because it alone holds
the reason of common life. For God, who has not given wisdom
to the other animals, made them safe by natural protections
from danger and attack; but, because He made man uncovered
and weak that He might instruct him rather by wisdom, He
gave him, besides the others, this affection of piety, in order
that man might kindly regard his fellowman and love him
and cherish him and take him in against all dangers and
furnish him help. Therefore, the greatest bond of men among
themselves is humanity or kindness, and whoever destroys
this must be regarded as nefarious and a parricide.
If we have all sprung from one man whom God made, then,
surely, we are relatives, and for this reason it must be con-
sidered the greatest crime to hate a man or to do him harm.
Therefore, God has charged that enmities should never be
practiced by us but always removed, so that we should remind
those who are unfriendly to us of their relationship and miti-
gate their anger. Likewise, if we have all been vivified and
inspired by the one God, what else are we than brothers, and,
418 LACTANTIUS

indeed, the more closely joined because of our souls than by

our bodies? So, Lucretius is not wrong when he says: 'Finally,
we are all sprung from heavenly seed, To all that same one is
Father:!
Therefore, those who harm a man must be considered as
fierce beasts who against the right of human kindness and
every right spoil, torture, kill, exterminate, Because of this
bond of brotherhood, God teaches us never to do evil, always
good. The same one Himself prescribes what it is to do that
very thing well: to give assistance to the depressed and those
laboring, to furnish food to those who have it not. Since God is
kind, He wanted man to be a social animal,2 and, therefore,
in other men we ought to consider ourselves. vVe do not
deserve to be set free in danger if we do not help others; we
do not deserve aid if we refuse it. On this matter there are
no teachings of philosophers, for, in truth, taken in by an
appearance of false virtue, they have taken pity away from
man; and, while they mean to make him whole, they have
corrupted him. And although the same ones generally confess
that the union of human society must be retained, they plainly
dissociate themselves from it by the rigor of their inhuman
justice.
This error of those who think that nothing should be shared
with anyone must also be refuted. They have inferred that
there is not one origin and cause of the founding of a city,
but some relate that those men who were first born from the
earth, since they spent a wandering life through forests and
woods and did not cling together by any bond of speech or
law, but had leaves and grass for their beds and caves and
caverns for homes, were prey for the beasts and other animals. 3
Then those who had escaped laceration or who had seen their
neighbors hacked to pieces, warned of their own danger, ran
to other men. implored protection and made known their

1 Lucretius 2,991,992.
2 Cf. Seneca, On Benefits 7.1.7; Aristotle, Politics 1.2.
3 For this whole section, d. Cicero, Republic 1.2GAO; Lucretius 5.805 If.
 BOOK SIX 419

wish first by gestures; then they attempted the beginnings of

speech, and little by little perfected the system of speech by
putting names on individual things. When, however, they saw
that the multitude itself was to be fortified against the beasts,
then, they began to fortify towns also, so that they might make
the quiet of the night safe for themselves, or ward off attacks
and onrushes of the wild beasts, not by fighting, but by
throwing up embankments.
Such ability, unworthy of men, which contrived this foolish-
ness! Such wretched and miserable men who entrusted their
folly to the memory of literature! Although they saw that,
even in the dumb animals, there was an innate plan of coming
together, or of seeking each other, or of avoiding danger, or
of shunning evil, or of preparing beds and lairs for them-
selves, yet they believed that they themselves could not be
advised or learn what they should fear, or avoid, or do except
by examples, and that they would never have come together
or have discovered the method of speaking, unless the beasts
would have devoured them.
To others these notions seemed mad,4 as they really were,
and these said that not the ravages of wild beasts were the
cause of coming together, but rather humaneness itself, and so
they congregated with each other, because the nature of man
was one of fleeing solitude and seeking union and companion-
ship. There is not a great discrepancy among those, because,
even though they give different causes, the thing itself is the
same. Each was possible, then, since they do not contradict;
yet each is true in no way at all because men were not born
from the earth throughout all the land, as though sowed from
the teeth of some dragon, as the poets hold,5 but one man was
made by God, and from him alone the whole earth was filled
with humankind. And by the very same plan, indeed, it
happened again after the flood, which they certainly cannot

4 Cf. Cicero, The Refmulic 1.25.39.

5 Cf. especially Ovid~ Metamorphoses 3.105; 4.573; 5.647; 7.122 for this
usual treatment of the poets of the origin of man.
420 LACTANTIUS

deny. No gathering together of this sort was made in the be-

ginning, and he who is not deprived of reason will understand
that there never were men on the earth who did not speak
beyond infancy.
However, let us pretend that those things are true which
idle and foolish old men relate so that we may refute them by
proofs from their own senses and reasons. If men gathered
together for this reason, to protect their weakness by mutual
assistance, then help must be given to the one who needs it.
Since men have entered upon and sanctioned alliances with
other men for the sake of protection, it must be considered
exceedingly evil either to violate or not to keep safe that con-
tract preserved from the beginning of its origin among men.
He who removes himself from the furnishing of aid also must
remove himself from receiving it, since he thinks that he needs
the help of no one who denies his help to another. This man,
therefore, who dissociates and severs himself, must live, not
according to the practice of man, but according to the mode of
the beasts. If this cannot be, the bond of human society must
be retained in every way, since man cannot live without man
in any way at all. The retention of this society is community,
that is, to offer aid, so that one may receive it. But if, as those
others dispute, the congregating of men was done for the sake
of humanity itself, man certainly ought to acknowledge man.
If those uncultured men did this, and if those still wild did
it when the manner of speaking had not yet been established,
what should we think ought to be done by those polished men,
joined together by an exchange of speech and of all things;
men who, accustomed to other men, cannot endure solitude?

Chapter 11

Humanity must be preserved, therefore, if we wish to be

rightly called men. That very thing, to preserve humanity or
 BOOK SIX 421

humaneness, what else is it than to love a man because he is a

man and the same thing which we are? Discord, then, and dis-
sension are not according to the nature of man, and that
statement of Cicero's is true which says, 'A man obedient to
nature is not able to harm a man.'l If, then, to harm a man
is against nature, to be of advantage to man must be, therefore,
according to nature. Who does not do this robs himself of
the name of man, since it is the duty of humaneness to come
to the aid of man in necessity and danger. I ask those, there-
fore, who do not think it the part of a wise man to be moved
and show pity, if a man, seized by some beast, should ask aid
for himself of an armed man, and whether they think the aid
ought to be given. They are not so bold as to deny that
what humaneness exacts and demands ought to be done.
Likewise, if someone should be caught in a fire, be over-
whelmed with ruin, be drowning in the sea, or be caught
in a river torrent, do they think that to bring aid is not
the part of man? They themselves cannot be men if they
think so-for no one is able not to be subjected to dangers of
this sort-rather, in truth, they will say that it is the part of
a man, and of a brave hero, to save one about to perish. If,
then, in cases of this sort, since they bring danger to the life
of man, they grant that it is humane to give succor, what is
the reason why they do not think that help should be given if
a man be hungry, thirsty, or cold? Although they desire the
one same humaneness, yet they distinguish those, because all
things are measured, not by true reality itself, but by present
utility. Those whom they rescue from danger they hope will
render favors to them, but since they do not entertain this hope
in the case of the needy, they think that whatever they give to
men of this sort is lost. Thus, that detestable sentiment in
Plautus: 'He deserves ill who gives a beggar something to eat,
for he loses that which he gives, and he prolongs for him a
life of misery.'2 But the poet, perhaps, spoke according to the
1 On Duties 3.5.25.
2 Trinummus 2.2.58,59.
422 LACTANTIUS

character in the play. Still, docs not Marcus Tullius in his

official writings urge this same thing-that bountiful giving is
not to be practiced absolutely? He spoke in this way: Bounti-
fulness which is practiced customarily exhausts the very source
of kindness. Thus, kindness is removed by kindness. The more
people you use it upon, so much the less are you able to use
it upon many.'3 And just a little later he continued: 'What
is more foolish than not to be able to take care that you may
do for a longer time that which you do freely?'4
The professor of wisdom, to be sure, checks men from the
practice of humaneness, and he warns them to carefully guard
their private possessions and prefer to keep a strong box rather
than justice. Because he realized that this was inhuman and
wicked, soon, in another chapter, as if driven by repentance,
he speaks thus: 'Sometimes, however, bountifulness must be
bestowed, and this kind of generosity is not to be completely
rejected; often, too, with suitable needy men you ought to
share what you possess.'5 What does he me,m by 'the suitable'?
Of course, those who are able to repay the favor and give in
turn. If Cicero were living now, I would surely declare to him:
'Here, at this point, Marcus Tullius, you have strayed from
true justice, and you have taken it away by one word, when
you measured the duties of piety and humanity by utility. For
bountifulness must be bestowed not on "suitable" men, but as
far as possible on those not suitable. That is done justly, that
is done piously, and that is done humanly which you do with-
out hope of receiving. This is that "true and genuine justice"
of which you say that you hold "no solid and clearly wrought
image." '6
You yourself cry out in many places7 that virtue is 'not
mercenary,' and you admit in your books On Laws that liber-
ality is gratuitous with these words: 'There is no doubt that
3 Cicero, On Duties 2.15.52.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid. 2.15.54.
6 Cf. ibid. 3.17.69.
7 Cf. Cicero, The Laws 1.18.48; Archias 11.28; Milo 35.96, etc.
 BOOK SIX 423

he who is called liberal and kind follows duty, not profit.'s

vVhy, then, should you bestow bounty on the 'suitable' rather,
unless it is that you might receive a reward later? Then, accord-
ing to your own authority and teaching on justice, whoever
will not be 'suitable' will be afflicted with nakedness, thirst,
and hunger, nor will men who are affluent and abounding with
delicacies come to aid their ultimate necessity. But if virtue
does not exact pay, if it is to be sought after 'for its own sake,'
as you say, then, estimate justice, the mother and chief of the
virtues at its own value, not by your advantage, and bestow
liberality chiefly upon him from whom you hope for nothing.
\Vhy do you select persons; why look into the members? You
must regard whoever asks of you as a man, since he thinks
that you are a man. Throw aside those 'shades and images of
justice,' and hold on to the real, that fashioned by itself. Give
to the blind, the weak, the lame, the destitute. These must
die unless you help them. They are useless to men, but useful
to God who keeps them in life, who gives them breath, who
vouchsafes light to them. Cherish, as much as you can, and
support the souls of men with humaneness lest they be ex-
tinguished. He who is able to succor one about to perish kills
him if he does not give him succor.
Those, however (since they neither retain nature nor know
the reward which exists in that) , while they fear to lose, lose.
And they fall upon that which they especially guard against,
so that whatever they bestow either is lost absolutely, or else it
is of advantage to them for a very short time. Those who refuse
a slight support to the wretched, because they do not want to
preserve humaneness at any detriment to themselves, pour out
their patrimony to gain for themselves perishable or fragile
goods, or certainly to acquire nothing, their own losses being
very great.
vVhat ought to be said about those who, influenced by pop-
ular levity, spend wealth that would suffice even great cities
on spectacles and trinkets to be displayed, except that they are
8 Cicero, On Laws 1.18.48.
424 LACTANTIUS

demented and mad to present to the people that which they

themselves are losing, and which no one of them to whom
it is presented may receive? And so, as every pleasure is un-
steady and brief, those of the eyes and cars especially, either
men forget and consider the loss of another in place of dis-
agreeable things, or they are also offended if the desire of
the mob has not been satisfied, so that even the most foolish
men might have gained evil for themselves through evil; or,
if they had so pleased, they might gain nothing more than
inane favor and the headline reports of a few days. Thus,
daily the patrimonies of very foolish men are wasted on
superficial things.
Do those act more wisely, therefore, who present more use-
ful and longer-lasting boons to their citizens; I mean those who
seek a memorial for their own name by erecting public struc-
tures? Not even they act rightly. They bury their goods in the
earth, because on the one hand memory does not confer any-
thing upon the dead, nor on the other their works are not
everlasting, inasmuch as they are shattered by one tremor of
the earth and fall to the ground, or they are consnmed by
chance fire, or they are destroyed by some hostile force, or they
certainly fall, wasted by old age itself. 'There is nothing,' says
the orator, 'made by work of hands which old age does not
waste and consume. Hut this justice and leniency flourish more
day by day.'9
So, those who are bountiful to their underlings and clients,
do better, for they grant something to men and they benefit-
but that is not true and just bountifulness. There is no benef-
icence wherever there is not necessity. Therefore, whatever
is done for the sake of thanks to those not in need of favor
perishes, or it is returned with interest, and it will not be benef-
icence. Although it may be pleasing to those to whom it is
given, it is not, however, just, since no evil follows if it should
not be given. The one certain and true office of liberality, then,
is to care for the needy and the useless.
9 Cicero, Marcellus 4.11.
 BOOK SIX 425

Cha1Jter 12

This is that perfect justice of which the philosophers speak

which guards the human society; this is the greatest and truest
fruit of riches, not to use wealth for the personal enjoyment
of one, but for the safety of many; not for one's own present
profit, but for justice which alone does not perish. It must be
held, therefore, in every way that hope of getting in return
be absolutely removed from the discharge of mercy, for the
reward of this work and office must be sought from God alone.
For if you expect it from man, it will no longer be humane-
ness, but a lending of kindness at interest; nor can he seem
to have merited well who performed an action, not for
another's, but for his own benefit. However, the act returns to
the same one, since that which anyone does for another,
hoping to get no personal advantage from it, truly benefits
himself, because he will receive a reward from God. So God
instructs that, if ever we prepare a banquet, we should invite
to the dinner those who cannot invite and repay us in turn,l
so that every act of our life may not be lacking the function of
mercy. And not anyone should think that he has been for-
bidden or stopped from either communion with friends or
from charity toward his relatives, but God has made known
to us what work is true and just. Thus, it is fitting for us to
live with our relatives and associates, as long as we know that
the one act pertains to man, the other to God.
Especially, then, is this so with the virtue of hospitality, and
the philosophers say this, too, but they twist it from real
justice and seize upon advantage. 'Rightly,' says Cicero, 'has
hospitality been praised by Theophrastu5. It is, as it seems,
indeed, to me, extremely becoming for the homes of illustrious
men to be open to illustrious guests.'2 In the same manner did
he again err when he said that bounty should be bestowed

1 Cf. Luke 14.12.

2 On Duties 2.18.64.
426 LACTANTIUS

upon the 'suitable.'3 Now the home of a just and wise man
ought to be open, not to the illustrious, but to the lowly and
abject, for the illustrious and powerful can be in need of
nothing. Their opulence equips and honors them. Nothing,
however, ought to be done by a just man except that which is
a kindness. But if a kindness is paid back, it is lost and ended.
Nor can we hold that as intact whose value has been paid to
us. So in those benefits which have remained sound and un·
corrupt, the plan of justice is reversed; they remain not other·
wise than if they should be bestowed upon men who can in
no way be of profit. But that one, in mentioning receiving
'illustrious men,' looked to nothing else but utility, nor did the
clever man dissimulate what advantage he hoped to get from
it. For he said, 'He who does this will be strong among out-
siders through the favor of princes whom he has bound to
himself by the pledge of hospitality and friendship.'4
0, with how many arguments could the inconsistency of
Cicero be refuted, if I would do it! He would be disproved, not
so much by my words as by his own. The same man says, in
fact, that in order for each one to refer to his own advantage
especially whatever he is doing, he is to be by no means a
good man. 5 Then, he also denies that 'it belongs to a simple
and open man to go about and canvass, to simulate and pre-
tend something, to seem to do one thing while he does another,
to pretend that he does for another what he is doing for him-
self, but it rather belongs to one who is malicious and schem-
ing and deceitful and crafty.'6 How, then, would one defend
that hospitality from being ambitious and malicious? You
would run about through all the gates so that you might invite
to your house the leaders of the people and the cities who
would come your way, that through them you might gain
power among their citizens. And would you want to seem just
and kind and hospitable, when you would be eager for your
3 Cf. Cicero, On Duties 2.15.52,51.
4 Ibid., 2.18.64.
5 Cf. The Laws 1.18.49.
6 Cf. On Duties 1.30.lO9; The Republic 3.16.26.
 BOOK SIX 427

own utility? Truly, he himself, not very incautiously-what is

less fitting in Cicero?-but consciously and knowingly, though
in ignorance of the true law, sets one against these snares. That
he may be forgiven, he testified that he was not giving pre-
cepts for true justice, which he did not have, but for a 'shade
and image of justice.'7 The shady and imaginary instructor,
then, must be pardoned, and truth must not be exacted from
him who admits that he does not know it.
The redemption of captives is a great and outstanding work
of justice, which the same Tullius himself approved. 'This
kindness: he said, 'is also useful to the republic; for captives
to be redeemed from slavery, for the very poor to be enriched.
This custom of kindness I place far before the bestowal of
gifts; this is the work of serious and great men.'8 It is a proper
work for the just, then, to care for the poor and to redeem
captives, since those who do this are called serious and great
even among the unjust. To do well to those who had no hope
of receiving the favor is especially praiseworthy. For he who
does a good for a relative or neighbor or friend merits, cer-
tainly, no great reward, because he ought to do it and would
be impious and hateful unless he did that which nature itself
and necessity demand from him; and if he does it, he does it,
not so much for the sake of gaining glory as for avoiding
blame. But he who does it for a stranger, one unknown, is,
in truth, worthy of praise because he has been led to do it by
humaneness alone. He should not have placed this function
of kindness even before the bestowal of gifts. It is a task of
comparing and of choosing from two goods what is the better.
That bountifulness of men throwing their patrimony into their
gifts is inane and foolish and very far removed from all justice.
And so they should not even be called gifts in which no one
receives except him who does not deserve to receive.
It is no less a great work of justice to protect destitute chil-
dren and widows and to defend those needing help which the
7 Cf. On Duties 3.17.69.
8 Ibid. 2.18.63.
428 LACTANTIUS

divine law so prescribes to all, since all the best judges think
it pertains to their office to favor them with natural humane-
ness and to strive to be of help to them. Indeed, these works
are proper to us who have received the law, the words of God
Himself instructing us. 9 They realize, indeed, that to protect
those who lack protection is to be just naturally, but they do
not perceive why it is so. God, whose clemency is perpetual,
orders widows and children to be protected and cherished for
this reason, lest anyone be hindered by respect and pity for his
own dear pledges from embracing death for the sake of justice
and faith, but he should unhesitatingly and bravely go to
meet it, since he knows that he is leaving his dear ones to God
and that His protection will never fail them.
To take up also the work of caring for and cherishing the
sick who have no one to assist them is a great work of the
highest sort of humaneness. Whoever will have done this will
bring a living victim to God, and what he has given another
in time, he will receive from God in eternity.
The last and greatest work of piety is the burial of strangers
and the poor, a work which those teachers of virtues and
justice did not touch upon even. They, who measured all
duties by utility, were not able to see that. In other matters
which have been mentioned above, although they did not
attain to the real point at issue, however, because they caught
some advantage in them, they wandered, but held on closely,
as though by a certain faint odor of the truth. This point,
however, they disregarded, because they could see no advantage
in it. Why, there were even not lacking some who made burial
an unnecessary thing, and said it was not anything wrong to
leave a body unburied and cast aside. The impious 'wisdom' of
these has been scorned by the whole human race and also by
the divine words, which order this act of burial to be per-
formed. Those do not dare to say that it ought not to be
done, but if, by chance, it is not done, there is no harm. So in
that matter they prefer the office, not so much of preceptors
9 Cf. James 1.27.
 BOOK SIX 429

as of consolers, so that if by chance such a fate as lack of

burial should befall a wise man, he should not think himself
wretched on account of it. "\'\Te, however, do not say what a
wise man ought to bear, but what he ought to do. And so we
do not ask now whether the whole matter of burying is useful
or not; but, even if it is inane, as they think, still it must be
done, even for this alone, that among men it seems good and
humane to do it. The intention is questioned and the proposi-
tion is weighed. We will not, therefore, allow the image and
workmanship of God to lie as prey for beasts and birds, but
we shall return it to the earth, whence it sprang. Although we
will fulfill this duty of kinsmen on an unknown man, humane-
ness will take over and fill the place of kinsmen who are lack-
ing, and wherever a man shall be longed for, there we shall
think that our office is performed. In what does the plan of
justice consist more than in that whereby we perform for
strangers through humaneness what we do for our own through
affection? And this is more certain and more just, since it is
now not offered to the man who realizes nothing, but to God
alone to whom a just work is the most precious sacrifice.
Someone will say perhaps: 'If I do all these things, I will
have nothing. What then? If a great number of men is in need,
if cold, if captured, and dead, so that in caring for these it is
necessary to spend my fortune in one day, shall I lose the
wealth gained by my labor or that of my ancestors, so that I
will have to live on the pity of others? What? Do you fear
poverty with so weak a spirit, which even your own philos-
ophers praise and bear witness that nothing is safer, nothing
more tranquil than this? This which you fear is the port of
cares. Are you ignorant of how many dangers, how many
misfortunes you cast aside with this wealth?lO These may do
well by you if they pass along without your blood. You advance
burdened with booty and you bear spoils which goad the
spirits of even your own people. \'\Thy, then, do you hesitate
to put to a good use that which perhaps one robbery will
10 Cf. Cyprian, On Works and Almsgiving cc. 9,10.
430 LACTANTIUS

snatch away from you, or one suddenly ansmg proscription,

or some hostile attack? Why do you fear to make a passing and
fragile good everlasting, or to entrust your treasures to the
guardianship of God, where you may fear no thief and robber,
no moth-destruction, no tyranny?l1 He who is rich with God
can never be poor.
If you think justice is so great, follow it, casting aside the
burdens which oppress you; free yourself from shackles and
chains, so that unimpeded you may run to God. It is the part
of a great and lofty soul to despise and tread upon mortal
things. 12 But if you do not seize this virtue, in order that you
may bring your riches to the altar of God, that you may ex-
change your frail things for stronger ones, I will free you from
fear. All these precepts are not given to you alone, but to all
the people who are joined in mind and who stick together as
one man. If alone, you are not sufficient for great works;
however, to practice justice in a manly way, as much as pos-
sible by riches among the others, so much do you excel in work.
And you must not think that you will be persuaded now to
lessen or use up your private property, but to convert to better
things what you had been spending on unnecessary things.
vVith that wherewith you have been buying beasts, redeem
captives; whence you now feed the beasts, from now on
nourish the poor; whence you equip men for the sword, now
bury the innocent dead. 'What is the good of a depraved sense
of evil? To make bestial men rich and to instruct unto crime?
Transfer to a great sacrifice the things which are to badly
perish, so that for these real gifts you may have an eternal
reward from God. Great is the reward of mercy for which God
promises that He will forgive all sins. 'If you shall hear the
prayers of thy suppliant; He says, 'I also will hear yours. 1£
you have been compassionate toward those in labor, I will
have pity upon you in your labor. But if you cIa not show

II Cf. Matt. 6.19,20; Luke 12.33.

12 Cf. Cicero, On Duties 3.5.24; d. also Pseudo·Seneca, On Customs 44.
 BOOK SIX 431

consideration and give aid I will take account of your soul

against you, and I will judge you by your own laws.'13

Chapter 13

As often as you are asked for help, therefore, believe that

you are being tested by God, perhaps that you may be worthy
to be heard. Examine your conscience, and as far as you are
able, heal its wounds. And although sins are taken away by
exercising bountifulness, do not think, however, that a license
of sinning is given to you. For they are wiped out, if you show
bounty to God, because you have sinned. For if you sin, relying
on giving bounty, they are not wiped out. God wishes man
to be purged from his sins especially, and, therefore, He orders
penance to be done. Now to do penance is nothing else but
to profess and affirm that one will not sin anymore. So there
is forgiveness for those who imprudently and cautionlessly fall
into sin, but he who sins knowingly has not pardon.
If someone should be purified from all stain of sin, he would
not, however, think that he should moderate his practice of
showing kindness because he does not have the sins which he
may thereby destroy. Rather, indeed, he ought to then prac-
tice justice the more, since he has become just, so that what he
had done previously unto the healing of his wounds, he might
do henceforth unto the praise and glory of virtue. He accedes
to this point because no one can be without fault as long as
he is burdened with the covering of the flesh. Its infirmity lies
subject to the dominion of sins in the threefold manner: by
deeds, by words, by thought. Through these steps justice
advances to the highest point.
The first step of justice is to refrain from evil deeds; the
second, from evil words; and the third, from the consideration
or thinking of evil things. He who shall have ascended the
13 The editors treat this as a quotation, though they can claim no
source except that it may be a paraphrasing of Luke 6.36 If.
432 LACTANTIUS

first step is just in a sufficient or moderate degree; he who

makes the second is already of perfect virtue, since he fails in
neither deeds nor words; but he who reaches the third seems,
in truth, to have attained a likeness to God. For it is almost
beyond human nature to not even admit into one's thoughts
what is evil in act or wicked in speech. And so even just men
who are able to bridle themselves from every unjust work are
sometimes, however, overcome by this very frailty, so that they
speak evil in anger, or in the sight of desirable things covet
them with silent consideration.
So if our mortal condition does not allow man to be pure
of all stain, the sins of the flesh, then, ought to be checked by
the constant practice of kindness. It is the one work, indeed,
of a wise and just and truly alive man to place all his riches
in justice alone. And, certainly, one who is in need of this,
though he surpass Croesus and Crassus 1 in riches, he must be
regarded as poor, naked, and a beggar. Therefore, we must put
forth effort that we may be covered with the garment of
justice and piety, which no one may strip from us, because it
provides us with everlasting adornment. If the worshipers of
false gods adorn senseless images and pile upon them what-
ever precious possessions they have, for which they can have
no use nor give thanks because they have received them, how
much more just and more true is it to adorn living images of
God, to merit the reward of living? Just as these have use for
and give thanks for whatever they receive, so God, in whose
sight you do the good work, will approve and will pay the
reward of piety.

Chapter 14

If, then, in man mercy is an outstanding and excellent good,

and if that is judged the highest good by divine testimonies
1 Croesus was the legendary king of Lydia who had such wealth that
he was believed to have possessed the 'golden touch.' Crassus was a
wealthy financier of the last days of the Roman Republic.
 BOOK SIX 433

and by the agreement of both good and bad men, it appears

that the philosophers were far away from human good who
neither instructed in anything of this sort nor performed any-
thing like it, but they always held as a vice the virtue which
is almost singular in man.
Here, we may interpose one topic from philosophy so that
we may more fully refute the errors of those who call pity,
desire, fear, diseases of the soul. They are trying, indeed, to
distinguish virtues from vices, and this is by all means very
easy. For who cannot separate a liberal man from a wasteful
one, as they do? Or a thrifty one from a mean one? Or a quiet
one from a lazy one? Or a cautious one from a timid one?
Because they have as their ends those things which are good. If
they exceed these ends, they fall into vices, so that constancy
thus becomes boldness unless it is undertaken for truth. In the
same way fortitude, if there is no necessity forcing it, or if
one undergoes certain danger for no good cause, is converted
into rashness. Liberty, too, if it pursues and censures others,
rather than resists those who rail, is arrogance. Severity, unless
it restrains itself in meting out fit punishment to those who
are harmful, becomes harsh cruelty.l Therefore, they say that
those who seem evil do not sin of their own accord, nor do
they preferably choose evils, but that they fall into evils, de-
ceived by the appearance of good,2 while they are ignorant of
the distinction between good and evil. These goods, in fact,
are not false, but they are all referred to the body. For to be
sparing, or constant, or careful, or quiet, or strong, or severe
are virtues, to be sure, but they are of this temporal life. We,
however, who despise this life, have other virtues proposed
to us, about which the philosophers were not even able to make
a conjecture in any way.s
And so they held certain virtues as vices and certain vices
1 This is sound Aristotelian teaching on the virtues as means between
two vices. Cf. Aristotle's Ethics 2: Virtue in its essence is a mean state.
Cf. also St. Thomas, lao Hae, q. 64.
2 The will necessarily (by natural necessity) chooses good. Cf. St. Thomas
I. q. 82, a.I.
3 The distinction is between the natural and infused moral virtues.
434 LACTANTIUS

as virtues. The Stoics remove from man all the emotions by

the impulse of which the mind is aroused: cupidity, gladness,
fear, sadness. The first two of these are of goods, either future
or present; the last two are of evils.4 In the same manner, they
call these four, as I said, 'sicknesses,' not so much implanted
by nature as received from a depraved opinion; and, for this
reason, they think that they can be extirpated by their roots
if the false judgment of goods and evils is taken away. 1£ a wise
man thinks nothing is good, nothing evil, he will not burn
with desire, nor exult with joy, nor be terrified with fear, nor
be torn with grief. Soon we shall see whether they accomplish
what they wish or what they do accomplish. Meanwhile, we
are concerned with the arrogant and almost wild proposition
of those who think that they are sound and able to struggle
against the power and plan of nature.

Chapter 15

That these are natural movements, not voluntary, the reason

of all living men shows, for it is moved by these same four
emotions. The Peripatetics, then, are more correct who deny
that these can be taken away, since they are innate in us. And
they try to show how providently and how necessarily God, or
nature-for thus they speak-has armed us with these emo-
tions. However, because these are generally vicious, if they are
excessive, they can be healthfully tempered by man if measure
is applied, so that there is left for man as much as is enough
for nature. It would not be an unwise disputation, if, as I
said, everything were not referred to this life. The Stoics,
then, are mad who do not regulate emotions but tear them
away, and intend to castrate a man from things implanted in
him by nature. It is just as if they should wish to withdraw
4 Cf. CiecTa, Tuscllians 4.6.11. The traditional treatment is of five pas-
sions: joy, sorrow, desire, fear, and anger. Cf. St. Thomas: la.llae,
qq. 22-25.
 BOOK SIX 435

fear from the stags or poison from snakes or fierceness from

wild beasts or contentedness from cattle. These have been
given as individual characteristics to the particular animals,
but they have all been given together to man. But if, as physi-
cians affirm, the passion of joy is in the spleen, that of anger
in the bile, that of desire in the liver, and that of fear in the
heart, it is easier to kill the animal itself than to take some-
thing from its body, which is to want to change the nature of
the animal.
Still, prudent men do not understand that, when they re-
move vices from man, they take away virtue also for which
alone they are making place. For if it is virtue in the middle
of an attack of anger to restrain and repress oneself, which
they cannot deny, then whoever lacks the anger lacks the virtue
also. If it is virtue to control the lust of the body, then he must
lack virtue who does not have the lust which he may temper.
If it is virtue to check desire from seeking what is another's,
certainly, he can have no virtue who is without the yearning
for the restraint of which the practice of virtue is used. Where
there are no vices, therefore, there is not even place for virtue,
just as there is not even a victory where there is no adversary.
Thus it is that there can be no good in this life without evil.
The passion is, therefore, a sort of natural richness of souls.
Just as a field which is highly productive by nature is rich
even in the midst of briars; so a soul, untilled of vices, is
overspread by the thistles growing strong of their own accord.
But when the true cultivator draws near, immediately the vices
will depart and the fruits of virtue will appear. So when God
made the first man, He implanted in him, first, those emotions
of the soul so that it might take virtue just as the land takes
cultivation, and He put the material of the vices in the emo-
tions and that of virtue in the vices. This matter, surely, will be
either nothing at all, or it will not be able to be of use, if
those things are lacking through which its force appears or
exists.
Let us see now what those who completely cut away vices
436 LACTANTIUS

have brought about. They supplant those four movements or

emotions, which they think are born from the opinion of good
and evil, and upon whose uprooting they think the soul of a
wise man is to be saved, because they know that they are im-
planted by nature and that without them nothing can be
moved, nothing done, and they put certain others in their
place. 1 For cupidity or desire they substitute free willing or
choice, as if, in truth, it were not much more excellent to
desire the good than to want an evil. And in like manner in
place of gladness they put joy, and for fear, caution. But in
the fourth, a reason for changing the name fails them. So
they have suffered grief deeply, that is, sadness and pain of
spirit. But this is not at all possible. For who is able not to
grieve if pestilence has exhausted the country, or if an enemy
overthrows it or a tyrant oppresses it? Can anyone not grieve
if he sees his liberty taken away, if his children, his friends; or
if good men are done away with or most cruelly tortured?
Only one whose mind is so hardened that all sense has been
torn from him. ·Wherefore, either they ought to have removed
all things, or this curtailed and weak disputation should have
been filled out, that is, something should have been put in
place of sadness, too, since this was a consequence to those
earlier things so ordered. For, as we rejoice in present goods,
so we suffer and grieve over evils. If, then, they put another
name on gladness, since they thought it vicious, so it was
fitting for another term to be applied to sadness, since they
think that is vicious also. Whence it is clear that the experience
had not been lacking to them, but the word. Because of this
lack, they wanted to take away the whole affection or emotion
which is, indeed, the greatest, but against this nature stood
forth.
I could have refuted those changes of names by several
arguments and showed, for the sake of adorning the speech
or increasing its abundance, that many names have been im-
posed on the same things, or, certainly, that there is not much
1 Cf. Cicero, Tuswlans 4.6.12-14.
 BOOK SIX 437

difference between them. For cupidity begins from the will,

and caution rises from fear, and gladness is nothing other than
a professed joy. But let us think, as they wish us to, that they
are different. Surely, therefore, they will say that cupidity is
a persevering and perpetual will-choice; that joy giving itself
forth immoderately is gladness; that excessive caution, that
kind which is beyond measure, is fear. So it happens that they
do not remove those things which they think ought to be
removed, but they moderate them, inasmuch as they only
change the names; the things themselves remain. Therefore,
unaware, they are thrown back to that point which the Per-
ipatetics reach by reason: that since vices cannot be removed,
they are to be tempered by moderation. They err, therefore,
because they do not effect what they wish, and by a long and
rough detour they return to the same road.

Chapter 16

I think that not even the Peripatetics have come to the truth.
They grant that there are vices, but they temper them with
moderation. We must be without even moderate vices. Rather,
it should have been first brought about that vices should not
exist. Nor can anything vicious be born; but vices come to be
if we make bad use of our emotions; virtues, if we use them
well. Then, it must be shown that, not the emotions them-
selves, but their causes ought to be moderated.
They say that we should not exult in gladness too much, but
only moderately and temperately. This is just as if they were
to say that running ought not to be done quickly, but by
stepping quietly. But it is possible for both him who walks
to err and for him who runs to hold the right path. Why is
this? If I show that there is a condition where to rejoice, not
only moderately but even just a bit, is vicious; and that there is
another, on the other hand, where to give full vent to gladness
438 LACTANTIUS

even is not at all bad, what will that moderation avail us? I
ask whether they think a wise man ought to rejoice if he
sees any evil befall his enemy, or whether he should restrain
his joy if, when the enemy have been conquered and the
tyrant oppressed, liberty and safety have been secured for the
citizens. No one doubts that, in the first case, there should be
some rejoicing; and, in the second, to rejoice but a little would
be the greatest crime.
The same things can be said about the other emotions. But,
as I said, the reason of wisdom is engaged, not in moderating
these, but in their causes, since they are moved from without.
And it would not be necessary for reins to be imposed upon
these very strongly, because they can exist in both a slight crisis
and an exceptionally great one; and they can be very great
without any crisis at all, but they ought to have been assigned
to certain times and things and places, lest those things which
it is all right to use become vices. Just as to walk properly is a
good, but to go astray is an evil, so to be moved by the passions
toward the right is good, but toward wickedness, evil. If pas-
sionate desire does not escape beyond its lawful elevation,
even though it be vehement, it is still free from fault; but if
it seeks something outside that limit, another person, or his
domain, even though it be moderate, it is, however, a very
great vice. 1 And so it is not a sickness to be angry, or to desire,
or to be moved by passion; but to be irascible or violently
angry, vehemently and passionately desirous and libidinous is a
sickness. He who is irascible is angry also with him with whom
he should not be angry or when he should not be. He who is
covetous or strongly desirous desires even that which there is
no need to desire. He who is libidinous even strains after that
which is forbidden by the laws. All reason, therefore, ought to
be concerned with this, that, since the drive or impetus of
these powers is not able to be inhibited, nor should it be,
because it is necessarily implanted for protecting the functions

1 Cf. Salvian, The GoveTnance of God 7.100.

 BOOK SIX 439

oElife, it should be directed rather to the right way where even

its course of action may be without offense and danger.

Chapter 17

But I have been carried too far afield by zest for arguing,
since it has been proposed to me to show that, not only are
those things which the philosophers thought vices not vices,
but that they are even great virtues. From these I will draw
those which I think especially pertain to the matter, for the
sake of instruction. They place dread or fear as the greatest
vice, and they hold that it is the greatest weakness of mind.
Its opposite is fortitude, and if this is in man, there is no
place for fear. Does anyone believe, then, that it is possible
for the same fear to be very great fortitude? Not at all. For
nature does not seem to accept that something should fall back
upon its opposite. But now I will show, not with some bright
conclusion, as did Socrates in Plato's works, who forced those
with whom he was arguing to admit those things which they
had denied, but simply that the greatest fear is the greatest
virtue.
No one doubts that it is the sign of a timid and weak soul
to fear pain, or want, or exile, or prison, or death. 'Whoever
does not shrink from all of these is judged very strong. 1 He
who fears God, however, has no fear of all those things. For
proving this there is no need for arguments. For the punish-
ments of the worshipers of God have always been witnessed,
and they are still being witnessed throughout the world, and
new and unusual torments have been thought up for the
torturing of them. In consideration of the various kinds of
death, the soul shudders to recall when butchery raged beyond
the very manner of death for wild beasts. A happy and un-
conquered patience endured these horrible lacerations of

1 Cf. Pseudo-Seneca, On Customs 99.

440 LACTANTIUS

bodies without any groan. This virtue furnished to all peoples

and provinces and the very torturers themselves the greatest
miracle, when the cruelty was overcome by patience. Still,
nothing other than fear of God caused this virtue. And so,
as I said, fear should not be torn away, as the Stoics wish, nor
tempered, as the Peripatetics hold, but it should be directed
unto the true way, and fears should be taken away but only
in this way, that this fear alone should be left. Since this is
legitimate and true, it alone brings it about that all the rest
are not feared.
Cupidity also is numbered among the vices. If this desires
things which are earthly, it is a vice; but it is a virtue if it
longs for heavenly goods. He who desires to attain to justice,
to God, to perpetual life, to everlasting light, and to all those
things which God promises man, will despise those riches and
honors and powers and kingdoms. Perhaps a Stoic will say
that you need will-choice, not desire, for attaining to these. No,
in fact, it is to wish little. 2 For many wish, but when pain
attacks their organs, the wishing fails, but the desire remains.
If this brings it about that all things which are sought after
by others are treated with contempt, it is the highest virtue,
inasmuch as it is mother to continency.
For this reason, we ought to bring it about rather that we
direct the passions, which it is a vice to use evilly, into the
right channels. Those quick movements of souls are like to a
connected car. The greatest work of the driver in properly
steering this is to know the road. If he holds to this, though
he go extremely fast, he will not bump into an obstruction;
but if he goes off the road, even though he go gently and
smoothly, he will be knocked about on rocky places or he will
fall into steep gullies, or certainly, he will be borne where it
is not necessary for him to gO.3 If that car of life, which is
drawn by the passions as though by pernicious horses, holds
to the right road, it will perform its function. Therefore, if

2 Cf. Ovid, EjJistles from Pantus 3.1.35.

3 Cf. Cicero, The Republic 2.41.68.
 BOOK SIX 441

fear and desire are cast unto the earth, they become vices; but
if they are referred to divine things they become virtues.
On the contrary, they hold parsimony in the place of virtue.
If this is a desire of possessing, it cannot be a virtue, because it
is wholly concerned with increasing or guarding earthly goods.
We do not refer the highest good to the body, but we measure
all duty by the saving of the soul alone. But if, as I showed
above, we should not be sparing of patrimony so that we
might uphold humaneness and justice, it is not a virtue to be
frugal, a fact which the name deceives by its likeness to that
virtue. Indeed, abstinence from pleasures is frugality, but it
is a vice in this, because it flows from love of possessing, al-
though pleasures must be refrained from and checked very
slightly by money. For to use money sparingly, that is, moder-
ately, is, as it were, a certain smallness of mind or a mark of
one overfearful that it may fail him, or of one despairing that
he can recover it, or of one not having contempt of earthly
things.
Again, they call him who is not sparing of his personal
wealth, prodigal. Thus, they distinguish a liberal man from a
prodigal one: he is liberal who bestows bounty both well and
to the deserving, and when it is fitting, and as much as is
enough, but the prodigal pours forth on those who are not
deserving, and when there is no need, and without regard to
his personal wealth. What then? Shall we call him a prodigal
who bestows food on the needy for the sake of mercy? But it
matters much whether you are bountiful to harlots because
of lust or to the wretched on account of humaneness; whether
panderers or gamesters or procurers take your money, or
whether you offer it to works of piety and to God; whether
you spend it on your stomach in gluttony, or whether you lay
it away in the treasury of justice. As it is a vice to spend it
lavishly on evil ends, so it is a virtue to use it on good. If it is
a virtue not to be sparing of wealth which can be recovered,
that you may sustain the life of a man which cannot be re-
covered, then parsimony is a vice.
442 LACTANTIUS

Therefore, I would say nothing else but that they are insane
who deprive man, a gentle and social animal, of his name, and
who, by tearing out those passions on which all humanity rests,
want to lead him to an immobile stupor of mind, while they
desire to free his spirit from disturbance, and, as they say, to
make it quiet and tranquil. This is not only impossible, be-
cause his power and reason exist in movement, but it is not
even necessary. For just as water which is always still and quiet
is unhealthful and more disordered, so a mind unmoved and
torpid is useless even to itself. Neither will it be able to protect
life itself, because it will not do anything nor think anything,
since thought itself is nothing other than the agitation of
the mind.
Finally, those who lay claim for this immobility of soul wish
to deprive the soul of life, since life is full of activity, and
death is quiet. Certain things also they rightly hold as virtues,
but they do not keep their measure. Constancy in virtue, not
that we should resist those bringing injury upon us-for we
must yield to them, and I will soon explain why this should
be done-but that we should be deterred by no threats or
punishments from those ordering us to go against the law of
God and against justice [rom preferring the order of God to
the order of man. It is, likewise, virtue to despise death, not
that we should seek it and bring it upon ourselves willingly,
as many of the greatest philosophers did, which is criminal
and wicked, but that, when forced to abandon God and betray
the faith, we should prefer to undergo death and defend
liberty against the foolish and heartless violence of the im-
potent, and that we should provoke all the threats and terrors
of the world with fortitude of mind. Thus, those things which
others fear, pain and death, we should trample under foot
with lofty and insuperable mind. This is virtue, this true
constancy, to be protected and preserved in this way alone, so
that no terror, no power may be able to turn us away from
God. Therefore, that statement of Cicero's is true: 'No one can
be just who fears death, pain, exile, or want.'4 So also is that
4 On Duties 2.11.38.
 BOOK SIX 443

of Seneca in his works on moral philosophy: 'This is that hon-

orable man, not distinguished by the cap or the purple or by
the attendance of lictors, but by no means insignificant, who,
when he saw death near him, was not so disturbed as though
it were a new thing he saw, and whether torments had to be
suffered in his whole body, or whether a flame was to be
swallowed in his mouth, or his hands to be extended on a
gibbet, he does not seek to know why he suffers but how well
he may suffer.'5
He who worships God suffers these things, and he is not
afraid. Therefore, he is just. From these things it is effected
that whoever is a stranger to the religion of the one God is
not able either to know the virtues at all or to grasp their very
exact limi ts.

Chapter 18

But let us dismiss the philosophers who either knew nothing

at all and hold that itself up as the highest knowledge, or who
do not perceive even the things which they know, or who are
ineptly and arrogantly foolish since they think that they know
what they do not know. Therefore, that we may return to the
proposed topic (for to us alone has the truth been revealed by
God and wisdom sent from heaven), let us do what God, our
Enlightener, orders. Let us support one another, and let us
endure the labors of this life with mutual assistance, and let
us not, however, if we do any good work, take any glory from
it. For God warns that the worker of justice ought not to be
boastful, lest he seem to have performed the work of mercy, not
so much from a desire of obeying the heavenly commands as
from one of pleasing, and lest he have already the price of
glory which he has gained and so not receive the prize of that
heavenly and divine reward.
The other things which the worshiper of God ought to
observe are easy when those virtues have been attained. For

5 Frg. 124.
444 LACTANTlUS

he would never lie for the sake of deceiving or harming. It is

wrong for him who is eager for the truth to be false in any
respect and to depart from that very truth which he follows. In
this way of justice and of all the virtues, there is no place for a
lie. And so that true and just wayfarer will not speak that
sentiment of Lucilius: 'It is not my policy to lie to a friend
and a close associate.'l But he will also consider that it is not
for him to lie to an enemy or to one whom he does not know,
nor will he ever commit the crime of having his tongue, 'the
interpreter of the mind: 2 at variance with his feeling and
intention.
If he lends money, he should not exact usury, so that the
benefit also which he brings to a necessity may be unharmed,
and that he may keep himself away from what is another's.
In this kind of office, he ought to be content with his own, for
whom it would be fitting that he should not be sparing of his
possessions even in other matters, so that he may do a good.
But to receive back more than he might have given is unjust.
\,yhoever does this plots in a certain way so that he may be
enriched by another's necessity. But the just man will never
pass over a chance of doing something merciful, nor will he
stain himself with a complaint of this sort, but he will bring it
about that without any loss of his own that very thing which he
bestows will be numbered among good works.
Let him not take a gift from a poor man, so that if he him-
self has done anything, it may be a good act in this respect, that
it was done gratuitously.
Let him answer with a blessing one who curses him; he him-
self should never curse, lest an evil word should proceed from
the mouth of a man who worships the Good Word.
In fact, let him also be very careful not to ever make an
enemy through his own fault; and if anyone should rise up so
perverse as to do any injury to a good and just man, let him

1 Frg. 140.
2 Lucretius 6.1149.
 BOOK SIX 445

bear it with clemency and moderation and not claim vengeance

for himself, but reserve that to the judgment of God.
Let him always and everywhere guard innocence. This pre-
cept avails not to this only, that he himself should not inflict
injury, but that if it is brought upon him, he should not
vindicate himself. For there is the greatest and most fair Judge
who sits in judgment, the 'Watcher and Witness of all things.
Let him place Him before man; let him prefer Him to pro-
nounce on his cause. No one can escape His sentence, neither
by the pleading nor the favor of anyone.
Thus it happens that the just man is held in contempt by
all, and since it will be thought that he cannot defend himself,
he will be regarded as dull and inactive. But he who will get
revenge on an enemy is judged strong; he is alert; all fear
him; they revere him. However, even though that good man
can be of help to many, they will yet look up to him who
can harm rather than him vvho can help. But the depravity
of men will not be able to make the just man depraved, from
being eager to obey God and preferring to be despised, pro-
vided he always performs the office of good, never of evil.
Cicero, in that same work On Duties, said: 'If anyone should
wish to unravel the complicated notion of his soul let him
teach himself that he is a good man who is of help to whom-
ever he can, and who harms no one unless he himself is
harassed by injury.'3 How he corrupts a true and simple state-
ment by the addition of two words! For what had been the
need of adding that 'unless harassed by injury'? "Vas it that
he might attach vice to a good man as though it were a most
disgraceful tail, and to cause him to have no part with pa-
tience, which is the greatest of all virtues? He said that a good
man would harm if he had been harassed. Now from this very
act, if he should do harm, he would of necessity lose the name
of a good man. For it is no less an evil to pay back an injury
than to inflict one. Whence come struggles among men;
whence arise fights and contentions, unless it is the fact that
3 Cicero, On Duties 3.19.76.
446 LACTANTIUS

impatience set against wickedness often stirs up the greatest

tempests? But if you place against wickedness patience, and
nothing truer can be found than this virtue, nothing worthier
of man, it will be straightway extinguished, just as if you were
to throw water on fire. If, however, that provocatrix, iniquity,
has found an impatience comparable to herself, just as though
dripping with oil, she will enkindle such a great fire that, not
only some river, but an effusion of blood must extinguish it.
So there is great reason for the patience which the 'wise
man' takes away from the good man. This alone brings it
about that nothting of evil be done. If it is given to all, there
will be no crime, no fraud in human affairs. ·What, then, is
able to be so calamitous and so opposed to a good man as to
give a curb to his anger which despoils him, not only of the
name of a good man, but even a man, since to harm another,
as he himself very truly says, is not according to the nature of
man?4 If you bother cattle, they fight back with hoof or horn;
and serpents and wild beasts, unless you pursue them to slay
them, exhibit no concern; and to return to the examples of
men, the unskilled and foolish also, whenever they receive an
injury, are driven by blind and irrational fury and try to repay
in turn those who harm them. In what respect, therefore, does
a wise and good man differ from the foolish, unless it be
because he possesses unconquered patience, which fools lack;
unless it be because he knows how to rule himself and mitigate
his wrath, which they cannot bridle because they need virtue?
Certainly, in this matter he was mistaken because, when he
spoke of virtue, he thought that it was the part of virtue to
conquer in any contention, nor could he see man succumbing
in any way to grief and wrath, and indulging those emotions
which he ought rather to resist, and rushing wherever iniquity
provoked not to hold on to the office of virtue. He who strives
to repay an injury throws himself out of the way to imitate the
very one by whom he has been wounded. Thus, he who im-
itates evil can in no way be good. Therefore, by those two
4 Ibid. 3.5.25.
 BOOK SIX 447
words he took away from a good and wise man the two
greatest virtues: innocence and patience. But because he him-
self practiced that 'canine eloquence: a term that Sallust re-
lates was used by Appius, he wished man to live in a canine
manner, that when harassed he might bite back. 5 Where can
a more fitting example be sought of how pernicious this pay-
ing back of insult is, and what great confusion it is wont to
bring forth, than from that very sad case of the preceptor
himself? For while he exulted in obeying these precepts of the
philosophers, he lost himself. But if, although harassed by in-
jury, he had held on to patience; if he had learned how to
dissimulate; and that to bear contumely was the work of a good
man; and if his impatience, levity, and insanity had not poured
forth those noble orations inscribed with a foreign title,6 he
would never have reddened the rostra, where he had been so
flourishing before, with his head's blood, nor would that pro·
scription have so utterly destroyed the republic.
Therefore, it is not the part of a wise and good man to wish
to struggle and to give himself to danger, since, on the one
hand, to win is not in our power, and on the other, every
struggle is two-sided. It is the part of a wise and excellent man,
however, not to wish to remove the adversary, which cannot
be done without crime and danger, but the struggle itself,
which can be done profitably and justly. Patience, then, must
be regarded as the highest virtue, and in order that the just
man gain this, God wished him, as was said above, to be
despised as an inert or insipid man. For unless he shall have
been afflicted with contumelies, it will not be known how
much fortitude he possesses within him for restraining him-
self. But if, when harassed by injury, he begin to pursue the
one who is hurting him, he has been conquered; but he who
represses that movement by reason, clearly he is master of
himself, he is able to rule himself. This withholding of one-

5 Cf. Sallust, Histories 2.37.

6 Cicero's speeches against Antony were called Philippics because of a
similarity to those of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon.
448 LACTANTIUS

self is rightly called patience which is one virtue opposed to

all vices and passions. This recalls a disturbed and wavering
soul to its tranquility; this mitigates, this brings a man back
to himself. And so, since it is impossible and useless to fight
against nature, in order not to be upset at all, before that
disturbance leaps forth unto harming which can happen very
quickly, let it be put to rest. God charges us 'not to have the
sun go down on our anger,'7 lest the witness of our madness
depart.
Lastly, Marcus Tullius, contrary to his own teaching of
which 1 spoke a little while ago,S treated forgetfulness of in-
juries with greatest praise when he said to Caesar, 'I hope that
you who are accustomed to forget nothing except injuries... .'9
If that one did this, a man very far removed, not only from
heavenly, but even from common and civic justice, how much
more ought we to do it, who are candidates, as it were, for
immortality?

Chapter 19

'W'hile the Stoics try to root the passions out of man as

though they were sicknesses, the Peripatetics oppose these and
not only keep them, but even defend them and say that there is
nothing innate in man which is not according to great wisdom
and providence. 1 That would be right, indeed, if they knew
the real terminuses of the individual things. And so they say
that very wrath is the flint-stone of virtue, as though no one
could bravely struggle against an enemy, against a foe, unless
he should be stirred up by anger. By this they show plainly
that they know neither what virtue is nor why God gave
anger to man. If this has been so given to us by God, that we
use it for killing men, what should be thought more savage
7 Cf. Eph. 4.26.
8 Cf. On Duties 3.19.76.
9 Cicero, Ligarius 12.35.
1 Cf. Cicero, The Prior Academics 2.44.135; Tusculans 4.19.43.
 BOOK SIX 449

than man; what more like the wild beasts than that animal
which God made for communion and innocence?
There are three emotions which drive men headlong into
all crimes: anger, desire, passion (or lust) . For this reason the
poets said that there were three Furies which attack the minds
of men: anger seeks for revenge; desire riches; passion pleas-
ures. 2 But for all of these God has set fixed limits. If they over-
step these and begin to be too great, it is necessary that they
deprave their nature and be turned into sicknesses and vices.
What these limits are, however, it is not a great task to
show. Desire has been given to us for procuring those things
which are necessary for life. Passion has been given for the
propagation of the race. The emotion of anger is for checking
the sins of those who are under our authority, that is, so
that with stricter discipline the younger age might be formed
to justice and probity. And unless it be restrained by fear,
licence will bring forth boldness which goes out to all evil and
crime. And so, as it is just and necessary to use anger toward
the young, so it is pernicious and impious to use it toward
equals. It is impious because humaneness is violated; because
it is necessary to lose to those fighting back or to perish. That
this, however, which I said, is the reason why the emotion of
anger has been given to man can be known from the precepts
of God Himself who commands that we be not angered at
those who curse and harm US,3 but that we should always keep
our hands upon the young,4 that is, that we should correct
those who sin with constant chastisements, lest they be
brought up to evil ways and nourished unto vice by useless
love and too much indulgence.
But those teachers, inexperienced in these matters and ig-
norant of reason, did away with those emotions which were
given to man for good uses, and they digress farther than
reason demands. So they live unjustly and impiously. They
2 Cf. Cicero, The Republic 2.41.68; Tusculans 3.11.25. Cf. also Isidore,
Origins 8.11.95.
3 Cf. Matt. 5.11; 5.44.
4 Cf. especially Eccles. 7.25; 30.1; Eph. 6.1; Col. 3.20.
450 LACTANTIUS

use anger against their equals. From this are born disagree-
ments, expulsions, wars against justice. They use desire for
piling up wealth. Hence, frauds, robberies, all kinds of crimes
have arisen. They use passion only for securing pleasure; in
this way, then, disgraces, adulteries, all defilements have come
about. Whoever, therefore, has kept these emotions within
their bounds (and those who know not God are not able
to do this) is patient; he is strong; he is just.

Chapter 20

It remains for me to speak briefly against the pleasures of

the five senses. The size of the book itself is now demanding
moderation. Since all of these pleasures are vicious and deadly,
they ought to be conquered and oppressed by virtue, or,
what I said awhile ago about the emotions, recalled to their
reason or purpose. The other living creatures feel nothing
except the one pleasure which pertains to generation. There-
fore, they use senses according to the necessity of their nature.
They see to it that they seek after those things which are
necessary for protecting life. They hear each other and learn
to recognize and tell themselves apart so that they may be
able to congregate. They find out what things are useful for
food from their odor, or they learn it from their taste. What
is unfit for use they spit out and reject. They measure the
function of eating and drinking by the fullness of their
stomachs. But to man the Providence of the most inventive
Artificer has given infinite pleasure, falling even into vice,
because he proposed virtue to him which always would fight
with pleasure as with a domestic foe. Cicero, in the Cato
Major, says this: 'Violations of honor and adulteries and all
disgraces are excited by no other enticements save that of
pleasure. And although nature or some god had given man
nothing more outstanding than his mind, to this divine gift
 BOOK SIX 451

and power nothing is so inimical as pleasure. 'When passion

dominates, there is no place for temperance, and in the king-
dom of pleasure virtue cannot stand.'l On the contrary, God
has given virtue for this reason, that it might attack and con-
quer pleasure and encompass it within a prescribed limit as
it goes out from its assigned boundaries, lest it subject man
weakened by its delights, and hold him captive to its sway, and
punish him with everlasting death.
The pleasure of the eyes is varied and manifold. It is derived
from the sight of things which are delectable in the use of
men or in nature or in work. The philosophers supported this
most rightly. For they say that to be an engraver is much more
noble and worthy of man than to regard engravings, and to
admire this work as very beautiful which is adorned with the
gleaming lights of stars as though with flowers, rather than
painted imitations and things marked with jewels. But when
they have encouraged us eloquently to despise earthly things
and aroused us to the sight of heaven, however, they do not
despise the public spectacles. So they are delighted with them
and freely take part in them. Since these are very great
inciters of the vices and are very powerful for the corrupting
of the mind, they ought to be removed by us because they not
only add nothing to the happy life, but also cause much
harm. For, although a man be condemned deservedly, whoever
reckons it a pleasure for him to be strangled in his sight de-
files his own conscience, just as surely as if he were a spectator
and participant of a murder which is performed secretly. They
call these games, however, in which human blood is spilled.
So far has humanity departed from men that, when they kill
the very life of men, they think that they are playing, but they
are more harmful than all those whose blood they use for their
pleasure.
I ask now whether they can be pious and just men who,
not only allow those who are set up under the mark of death
and who plead for mercy to be killed, but who even demand
I Cicero, On Old Age 12.40 f.
452 LACTANTIUS

it; and who, neither sated with wounds nor content with
blood, bring to the death cruel and inhuman assent. Why,
they even order those struck and lying prostrate to be sought
again and have their bodies toru apart by blows lest anyone
delude them by feigning death. They are angry, too, with
those who fight in the arena, unless one of the two is quickly
slain; and, as if they were thirsting for human blood, they
hate delays. They demand that others, more recent and equal
to them be given, so that they may feast their eyes as soon
as possible. Steeped in this practice they have lost humaneness.
So they spare not even the innocent, but they practice upon all
what they have learned in the butchering of the evil. Of this
public homicide, therefore, it is not fitting for those who
strive to hold the way of justice to be sharers and accomplices.
For when God forbids killing, He not only prohibits us from
free-booting, which is not permitted even by public laws, but
He also advises that those things also, which are regarded as
lawful among men, should not be done. So, neither will it be
permitted a just man, whose service is justice herself, to enter
military service,2 nor can he accuse anyone of a capital crime,
because there is no difference whether you kill a man with a
sword or a word, since the killing itself is prohibited.
Therefore, in this command of God, no exception whatso-
ever must be made. It is always wrong to kill a man whom
God has intended to be a sacrosanct creature. Let no one,
then, think that it is to be conceded even, that newly born
children may be done away with, an especially great impiety!
God breathes souls into them for life, not for death. Yet men,
lest they stain their hands with that which is a crime, deny
light not given by them to souls still fresh and simple. Does
someone think that they will be sparing of a stranger's blood
who are not of their own? These are without any question
criminal and unjust.
vVhat of those whom a false piety forces to expose? Are
-20ne of the greatest reasons for which Christianity was considered a
civil offense was this, that the Christians refused to take part in state
wars.
 BOOK SIX 453

they able to be judged innocent who cast their own members

as prey for dogs and kill whatever is in them more cruelly
than if they had strangled it? Who would doubt that he is
impious who gives place to alien pity? Who, although there
happens to him what he wished, that he be nourished, has
made over his blood to servitude or to a house of ill-repute?
Who does not understand or who is ignorant of what things
can happen and are accustomed to happen to both sexes on
account of mistakes? The example of even one, Oedipus, con-
founded by a double crime, makes this known. 3 It is as
nefarious to explain as to kill. Parricides complain of the
narrowness of their opportunities and pretend that they are
not able to provide for bringing up several children, as if
in truth, the opportunities are in the power of those possessing
them, or as if God does not daily make the rich poor and the
poor rich. So, if someone is not able to bring up children on
account of poverty, it is more satisfactory that he refrain from
intercourse with his wife rather than that he corrupt the works
of God with defiled hands.
Therefore, if to commit homicide is in nowise permitted,
it is not by any means allowed to be present at it, lest any
blood stain the conscience, since that blood is manifested to
the people. In plays, too, I know not whether there is more
vicious corruption. Even the comedies speak of the defiling of
virgins or the love affairs of harlots, and the more eloquent
are those who have fashioned those tales of crime, the more
do they persuade by the elegance of their sentences, and the
more easily will their numerous ornate verses stick in the
memory of their hearers. Likewise, the tragic histories put
before the eyes the murders and incests of evil kings and
present 'elevated' crimes. The shameless motions of the actors
also; what else do they teach and arouse but the passions?
Their enervated bodies, softened to womanish step and ap-
parel, belie shameless women with their dishonorable gestures. 4
3 Oedipus was guilty of killing his father and marrying his mother.
4 All the actors of ancient plays were males, and some of these were
trained to play women's roles.
454 LACTANTIUS

What shall I say of the mimes which put forward the

training of seducers, which teach adulteries, while they pre-
sent the fiction, and draw out from images to the real things?
What do youths or maidens do when they see that these
things are done and willingly watched without shame by all?5
They are certainly advised as to what they can do, and they
are inflamed with passion which is especially aroused by the
sight, and each one, according to sex, puts himself or herself
in those imaginary circumstances, and they approve of them
while they laugh. So more corrupt through the vices that
adhere, they return to their chambers. And not boys only who
should not be imbued with premature vices, but even old men
for whom sinning at this age is not fitting.
The purpose of circus games also aims at what else but
levity, vanity, and madness? Minds are stirred into fury with
as great an impetus as people rush there, so that those who
come for the sake of watching exhibit more of a spectacle when
they begin to shout and get carried away and leap about.
All spectacles, then, ought to be avoided, not only lest any
of their vices seep into hearts which ought to be quiet and
peaceful, but lest the customariness of this pleasure charm us
and turn us away from God and good works. For the celebra-
tion of the games are feasts of the gods since they have been
established on account of their birthdays or the dedications of
new temples. Originally, indeed, the hunting parks, which
are called gifts, were attributed to Saturn; the theater plays to
Liber; the circuses to Neptune. Little by little, however, the
same honor began to be attributed to the other gods, and the
individual games were consecrated by their names, as Sinnius
Capito explains in his book on Spectacles. 6 If, therefore, any-
one takes part in the spectacles which are attended for a
religious purpose, he has departed from the worship of God
5 For similar treatment of these topics and like stress on the ill effect of
such entertainments, d. Minucius Felix c. 37.11,12; Cyprian, To
Donatus c. 8.
6 Sinnius Capito was a Roman grammarian. Gellius, in his Attic Nights,
quotes him.
 BOOK SIX 455

and has gone over to the gods whose birthdays and feasts he
celebrated.

Chapter 21

The pleasure of the ears is drawn from the sweetness of

voices and songs. This is, indeed, as vicious as is that delight
of the eyes of which we have spoken. Who would not think
him who practices arts at home luxurious and evil? But it
makes no difference whether you practice the luxuriousness
alone at home or in the theater with everybody. The spectacles
have been mentioned already. One thing remains to be re-
futed by us, that we be not taken by those things which pen-
etrate to the inner sense. For all those things which lack
words, that is, the sweet sounds of air and bowstrings, can
be easily despised because they do not remain nor can they be
written. But the well composed song, or an oration running
along with smoothness, seizes the minds and impels them
where it wilJ.1 Thus, men of letters who have approached the
religion of God, being confounded by some unskilled in-
structor, believe the less. For accustomed to sweet and polished
speeches and songs, they spurn the simple and direct speech
of the divine writings as mean. 2 They seek that which may
please the sense of hearing, for whatever is sweet persuades,
and settles deep within the mind while it delights.
Is God, then, the Artificer of mind and voice and tongue,
not able to speak eloquently? No, in fact, in His supreme
Providence He wished those things which are divine to be
without alloy, so that all men might understand what He
was speaking to all. Therefore, let him who desires the truth,
who does not wish to cast himself aside from it, throwaway
all inimical and harmful pleasures, which vitiate the soul as
do sweet foods the body. Let true things be preferred to false,
1 Cf. Cicero, On Oratory 1.8.30.
2 Cf. the reaction of St. Augustine to the plain style of the Scriptures in
Confessions 3.5; also his On Christian Doctrine 4.5,6; 20.
456 LACTANTIUS

eternal ones to those that are short, useful to pleasant. Let

nothing, therefore, be pleasant to sight except that which is
just, which you see is done piously; and let nothing be sweet
to the hearing except that which nourishes the soul and makes
you better. This sense, especially, must not be twisted to vice
which was given to us for this reason, that we might perceive
the teaching of God.
And so if it is a pleasure to hear chants and songs, let it be
a joy to hear and sing the praises of God. This is the true
pleasure which is the companion and associate of virtue; this
is not faltering and short, as are those pleasures which are
sought by those who serve the body like the beasts, but it is
perpetual and gives delight without any interruption. If any-
one goes beyond its limits and seeks from pleasure nothing
other than pleasure itself, he plots death, because as perpetual
life rests in virtue, so is death in pleasure. For whoever prefers
temporal things will lack those which are eternal, and whoever
places earthly things first will not possess those which are
eternal.

Chapter 22

As to the pleasure of taste and smell, which two senses per-

tain to the body only, there is nothing which is to be disputed
by us; unless, perhaps someone exacts us to say that it is base
for a wise and good man to serve his stomach and appetite,
to go along dripping with perfumed ointments or wreathed
with flowers. Surely, one who does these things is foolish and
silly and worthless, for not even the odor of virtue has touched
him. Perhaps someone might say, 'Why, then, have those things
been made except that we might enjoy them?' Now it has been
said often! that there would be no virtue unless one had what
might oppress it. So God made all things for the arrangement
of the struggle between the two.
1 Cf. for example Bk. II, 17.1; III, 29.13-20; V, 7.3-10; 22.11-17; VI, 3.4;
5.12; 15.5-9.
 BOOK SIX 457

Therefore, those attractions are the arms of pleasures of

that one whose one work is to attack virtue and to shut out
virtue from men. With these blandishments and delights he
tickles souls, for he knows that pleasure is the fashioner of
death. As God calls man to life only through the labor of
virtue, so he calls to death through the charms of pleasure;
and as we arrive at the true good through deceiving evils, so
true evil is reached through deceiving goods. Therefore, those
charms must be avoided as though snares and nets, lest, taken
by the wantonness of the pleasures, we might be reduced under
the sway of death with the body itself to which we have
delivered ourselves.

Chapter 23

I come now to that pleasure which is received from touch,

which is a sense of the whole body, in fact. But I do not think
that I ought to speak about ornaments and clothing but
about passion alone, which must be especially restrained since
it especially harms. When God invented the plan of the two
sexes, He placed in them the desire of each other and joy in
union. So He put in bodies the most ardent desire of all
living things, so that they might rush most avidly into these
emotions and be able by this means to propagate and increase
their kind. This desire and longing is found more vehement
and more keen in man, either because He wished the number
of men to be greater, or because He gave the power to man
alone, so that it might be to his praise and glory in refraining
from pleasures and in self-restraint.
That adversary of ours knows how great is the force of this
desire, which certain ones preferred to call a necessity, and
he transfers it from a right and good use to one depraved and
evil. He puts in illicit desires, so that the foreign ones con-
taminate those which are proper, which it is all right to have
without any fault. He casts before the eyes forms by which
458 LACTANTIUS

they can easily be enraged, and he suggests fomentations, and

applies food for vice. Then, in our innermost parts, he sets
going and incites stimuli, and he arouses and inflames that
natural ardor, until he deceives man so caught and implicated.
And lest there be anyone who through fear of punishments
would keep away from another, he has established also houses
of ill-repute and made public the shame of unfortunate
women, so that he might hold in mockery those who do it as
much as those who have to suffer it.! He has plunged in these
obscenities, as in a whirlpool of filth, souls destined for
sanctity; he has extinguished shame; he has berated modesty.
The same one has even joined males and has contrived
abominable intercourse against nature and against the institute
of God. Thus, he has imbued men and armed them for all
crime. What can be holy to those men who supplied their
passion with those of tender age, souls needing protection,
and who destroyed and defiled them? This crime because of
its magnitude cannot be discussed. I can call those nothing
more than impious and parricides, men whom sex as given
by God does not suffice, but who also profanely and wantonly
abuse their own sex. Yet these practices among them are
regarded as light and sort of honorable.
What shall I say of those who practice, not abominable
passion, but rather insanity? I am ashamed to mention it, but
what should we believe will happen to those who are not
ashamed to do it? Yet it should be mentioned, because it is
done. I speak of those whose most loathsome passion and
execrable madness spares not even the head. With what
words shall I attack this, and with what indignation inveigh
against such a foul crime? The magnitude of the crime over-
comes the function of the tongue.
When, therefore, passion brings forth these works and de-
signs these crimes, we ought to be armed against it with the
greatest virtue. Whoever is not able to restrain those emotions
should hold them within the prescribed rights of lawful
1 Cf. Isidore, Origins 18.42.2.
 BOOK SIX 459

marriage, so that he may attain that which he avidly seeks

and yet not fall into sin. For why do men wish themselves
lost? Surely, pleasure follows honorable works. If they seek
this of themselves, they may have just and legitimate enjoy-
ment. But if some necessity prohibits, then, in truth, must
virtue be especially applied, so that continency may struggle
with desire. And not only is it not lawful to touch what belongs
to another's marriage bed, but God also charges us and
teaches us that we must abstain from public and common
bodies, for when two bodies have been joined together, they
are made one. 2 Thus, he who has immersed himself in the
mire must be smeared with filth. Indeed, the body can be
quickly washed; the mind, however, stained by the contagion
of a shameless body, cannot be purged from that defilement
which clings to it except by the penance of a long time and
many good works.
It is necessary, therefore, for each one to propose to himself
that the union of the two sexes has been given for the sake
of generation, and that this law has been set in these living
powers that they may prepare for succession. Just as God gave
us eyes, not that we might look at and seize pleasure, but
that we might see on account of them the actions which pertain
to the necessity of life, so the genital parts of the body, which
their very name teaches, have been received by us for no
other reason than the procreation of offspring. We must obey
this divine law with the greatest devotion. Let all who will
profess to be the disci pIes of God be so checked and so trained
that they can control themselves. But those who indulge in
pleasures, who are subservient to passion, make over their
souls to their bodies and condemn them to death, because
they have devoted themselves to the body, and death has
power over this. Let each one, then, as far as he is able, train
himself to modesty, cultivate shame, protect chastity of both
conscience and mind. Let him not only obey the public laws,
but let him who follows the law of God be above all laws. If
2 Cf. 1 Cor. 6.16.
460 LACTANTIUS

he gets accustomed to these goods, then, he will be ashamed

to deviate to worse things. Let only the right and good things
please, for these are more pleasant to the better people than
depraved and ignoble things are to the worse.
I have not yet gone through all the offices of chastity. God
limits them, not only within private walls, but even by the
precepts of the marriage bed, so that when anyone has a wife,
he may not wish to have besides a slave or free concubine, but
he must keep the faith of his marriage contract. For such is not
the case, as is the interpretation of public law, that she alone
is the adulteress who has another man, while the male is free
from the charge of adultery, though he have many mistresses.
The divine law so joins two with equal right into a marriage,
which is two in one flesh,s that whoever breaks apart the join-
ing of the body is regarded as an adulterer. And it was not
for any other reason that God, although He made the other
animals fight away the males when the fetus was conceived,
made the woman alone of them all submissive to her husband.
Surely, it was lest passion should force the husbands away from
pregnant women to seek other satisfaction, and they would
not, then, keep the honor of chastity.
Neither would a woman have the virtue of chastity if she
were not able to sin, for who would say that a dumb animal is
chaste because, when the fetus is conceived, she keeps off the
male?4 She acts thus for this reason, that she must necessarily
come into pain and danger if she admits him. It is no praise,
therefore, not to do what you are not able to do. 5 So modesty
is praised in man because it is not natural, but voluntary.
Faith, then, must be kept with the other by each party in
a marriage; in fact, the wife is to be taught by the example
of continence to act chastely. It is evil to exact that which
you yourself are not able to exhibit. This iniquity assuredly
brought it about that there were adulteries, women bearing
it ill that they were keeping faith with men not exhibiting
3 Cf. Matt. 19.4-6.
4 Cf. Isidore, Origins 11.2.19.
5 Cf. Pseudo-Seneca, On Customs 4.
 BOOK SIX 461

mutual love. FinaIIy, there is no adulteress of such a lost sense

of shame that she does not hold forth this reason for her vices,
that by sinning she is not doing an injury but repaying one.
Quintilian expressed this very weII when he said, 'A man who
does not keep away from another's marriage is not a guardian
of his own either.'6 They are connected by nature. For a man
concerned about violating the wives of others cannot be free
to attend to his own domestic sanctity; and, when a wife falls
into such a marriage, aroused by the very example, she thinks
that she should either imitate it or get revenge.
We must take care, therefore, not to give opportunity for
vices by our intemperance, but let the customs of the two get
used to each other and bear the yoke wi th like minds. Let
us consider ourselves in the other's place. For the height of
justice almost consists in this: that you do not do to another
what you yourself would not want to suffer from another. 7
These are the things which are prescribed by God for
continency. But, however, lest anyone think that he is able
to circumscribe the divine precepts, there are added these
points, that all calumny and chance for fraud be removed;
he is an adulterer who takes a wife who has been sent away
by her husband; and so is he who has, aside from the crime
of adultery, put a wife away that he may take another. God
did not intend for that 'one flesh' to be separated and torn
apart. Furthermore, not only adultery must be avoided, but
even the very consideration of it, lest anyone look upon
another woman and desire her in his heart. 8 The mind becomes
adulterous if it has fashioned for itself even an image of this
pleasure. For it is truly the mind which sins, which embraces
in thought the fruit of immoderate passion; in it is the crime,
in it all fault. Even though the body be smeared with no
stain, the condition of purity does not exist, however, if the

6 Cf. The Declamations of Quintilian (ed. by Ritter) Preface, p. iii.

7 Cf. Matt. 7.12; also Publilius Syrus 2; The Teachings of the Twelve
Apostles 1.2.
8 Cf. Matt. 5.28.
462 LACTANTIUS

soul is defiled; nor can chastity seem unmarred when desire

has spoiled the conscience.
In truth, no one should think it difficult to impose a bridle
on pleasure and to enclose a roaming and wandering spirit,
as it were, within the bounds of chastity and purity, since it
has been proposed to men to conquer it; and since very many
have retained a blessed and uncorrupted integrity of body;
and since there are many who now enjoy most happily this
heavenly kind of life. But God does not command that this be
done as though it were binding, since it is necessary that men
be born, but it is as though He allows it to be done. For He
knows how much necessity He has put upon the emotions.
'If anyone will be able to do this; He says, 'he will have an
exceeding and incomparable reward.'9 This kind of continency
is, as it were, the peak and consummation of all the virtues.
1£ anyone can lean toward this and strive after it, the Lord will
own him as His servant; the Master will recognize this man as
His disciple. This man will triumph over the earth. He will be
very like to God who has caught the virtue of God. Truly,
these things seem difficult, but we are speaking about him for
whom a way is being prepared to heaven by the treading under
foot of earthly things. For because virtue consists in the
knowledge of God, all things are burdensome while you do
not know Him; when you know Him, they are easy. We who
are tending toward the supreme good must go through these
difficul ties.

Chapter 24

Let not anyone fail, however, or lose hope in himself, if

conquered by desire, or driven by passion, or deceived by
error, or compelled by force, he has fallen into the way of
injustice. For he can be led back and set free if he repents of
his deeds and, turning toward better things, makes satisfaction

9 Cf. 1 Cor. 7.7,8; Matt. 19.12.

 BOOK SIX 463

to God. Cicero did not think that this could be done. These
are his words in the third book of the Academics: 'If it were
permitted to those who have erred on the way, thus following
a devious route, to correct their error by penance, the emen-
dation of rashness would be very easy.'l It is certainly per-
mitted. If we take up our children again, and cherish and
embrace them when we see them repent of their faults, and
when we think that they have corrected them and cast them
from them, why should we not hope that the clemency of our
true Father can be won by repentance? The same Lord and
most indulgent Father, therefore, promises that He will remit
the sins of those repenting of them, and that He will wipe
away all the iniquities of him who will begin at length to
work justice. Just as the probity of a past life is of no avail
to one living badly, because the supervening injustice has
destroyed the works of justice, so former sins do not stand in
the way of one who has been corrected, because supervening
justice has abolished the stain of previous life.
Therefore, he who repents of his deed understands his
earlier mistake, and so the Greeks use a better and more sig-
nificant term in metanoian than we can express in the Latin
with resipiscentiam. 2 For he repents and recovers his mind,
as it were, from insanity, who is ashamed of his error and
chastises himself for his folly, and confirms his soul for living
more rightly. Then, he is especially watchful of this, that he
should not be entangled in the same snares again. The dumb
animals, too, are taken by fraud. If they have extricated them-
selves somehow and gained escape, they become more cautious
afterwards, and they always avoid all those things in which
they perceived guiles and treachery. Thus, penance makes
man cautious and diligent for avoiding the sins into which
he has once fallen by fraud. For no one can be so prudent, so
circumspect as not to fall sometime. For this reason, God,

1 Posterior Academics frg. 16.

2 The Greek word metanoian signifies literally a 'change of mind,' more
meaningful surely than the Latin resipiscentia for our word, repentance.
464 LACTANTIUS

knowing our frailty, has on account of his loving kindness

opened to man the port of salvation, so that the medicine of
penance might come to the help of this necessity to which our
frailty is subject. Therefore, let whoever has wandered astray,
retrace his path, and as soon as possible recover and reform
himself. 'But to retrace one's steps and to escape to the upper
air, this is toil, this is labor.'3
For though these delightful pleasures are but slightly
touched upon, men can scarcely be torn away from them. They
would follow the right more easily if they had not touched
upon their sweetness. But let them withdraw from this evil
service. All error will be forgiven them if they correct their
error with a better life. Nor should anyone think that he is
gaining if he has no consciousness of crime. For He in whose
sight we live knows all things, and even if we are able to hide
from all men, we cannot shut out God, to whom nothing can
be hidden, nothing secret. Seneca terminated his Exhortations
with a marvelous statement: 'There is a great power,' he said,
'and I know not what greater one can be imagined to whom
we bestow attention by living. Let us prove ourselves to him.
It is of no value to have a closed up conscience. We are open
unto god.'4
What more true could be said by him who knows God
than was said by that man ignorant of the true religion? For
he expressed the majesty of God by saying something greater
than the thought of human mind could take. And he touched
upon the very font of truth by realizing that the life of men
was not idle and superficial, as the Epicureans hold, but that
service was rendered by them to God by their living, if they
lived justly and piously. He could have been a true worshiper
of God if someone had shown him the way, and he would
surely have despised Zeno and his master, Sotio, if he had
found a guide of true wisdom. 'Let us prove ourselves to him,'
he says-actually, a heavenly prayer except that a confession
3 Vergil, Aeneid 6.128,129.
4 Frg. 24.
 BOOK SIX 465

of his ignorance went before it. 'There is no advantage in

having a closed up conscience; we are open to God.' There-
fore, there is no place for lying, no place for dissimulation.
The eyes of men are held off by walls, but the divine glance of
God cannot be kept away even from the innermost regions of
the heart, but, on the contrary, He beholds and knows the
whole man.
In the beginning of that same work Seneca says: 'vVhat are
you doing? ''\That do you contrive? ·What are you hiding? Your
guard follows you. Travel draws one away from you; death,
another; ill health, a third. This one stays fast, whom you can
never be without. vVhy select a hiding place and remove
witnesses? If you think that it has happened to you that you
escape the eyes of all, you are mad. v'\That good is it for you not
to have a witness since you have a conscience?'5
No less wonderfully about conscience and God did Tullius
write. 'He was to be mindful,' he said, 'that he had god as a
witness, that is, as I believe, his own mind, than which god
himself has given nothing more divine to man.'6 Likewise,
when he spoke of the just and good man, he said: 'Such a man
will dare not only not to do, but not even to think of any-
thing which he would not dare to publicize.'7
Let us, then, cleanse our conscience which is pervious to
the eyes of God, and, as the same writer says, 'Let us always
so live as if we thought we were to render an account.'S And
let us think that at every moment, as he said, we are not 'in
some theater of this world'9 watched by men, but that we are
being observed from above by Him who will be both judge
and witness. Nor will it be permitted anyone to deny his
deed to Him when He demands an account of our lives.
Therefore, it is more satisfying either to avoid conscience or
to open our minds willingly and pour out the evil from
5 Frg. 14.
6 Cicero, On Duties 3.10.44.
7 Ibid. 3.19.77.
8 Ibid. 2 Verrine 11.28.
9 Ibid. On Duties 5.14.35.
466 LACTANTIUS

opened wounds. For no one else can cure them but only that
One who restored the power to walk to the lame and sight to
the blind, who cleansed leprous bodies and raised the dead. 10
He will extinguish the fire of desire; He will extirpate
passion; He will withdraw envy, mitigate wrath, and give
true and lasting soundness. All must seek after this medicine,
since the soul is beset with greater perils than the body, and
cure must be applied to its latent sickness as quickly as pos-
sible. For, even if someone does enjoy the clear vision of the
eyes, though his members are all whole and the health of his
entire body very strong, still I would not say that he is sound
if he is carried away by anger, puffed up and swollen with
pride; if he serves passion and is inflamed with desires. Rather,
the one who does not set his eyes on another's felicity; who
does not admire wealth; who regards another's wife sacredly;
who covets nothing whatsoever, yearns after no one else's
things, envies no one; who does not disdain anyone; who is
humble, merciful, kindly, meek, humane, keeps perpetual
peace in his soul, is a sound man; he is just; he is perfect.
W'hoever, then, obeys all these heavenly commands is the
true worshiper of God. His sacrifices are meekness of soul, an
innocent life, and good deeds. He who displays all of these
makes a sacrifice as often as he does something good and pious.
For God does not desire a victim neither of a dumb animal
nor of blood and death, but that of a man and his life. For
this sacrifice there is no need of sacred boughs nor of purify-
ing heat, nor of clumps of earth which are truly very empty,
but of that which is produced from the depths of the soul. And
so upon the altar of God which is truly very great, and which,
placed in the heart of man, cannot be stained with blood,
there is placed justice, patience, faith, innocence, chastity, and
abstinence.!1 This is the truest rite, this is 'that law of God,' as
it was said by Cicero, 'outstanding and divine, which always
orders right and noble things and forbids the depraved and
lO Cf. Matt. 11.5.
II Cf. Sibylline Oracles 8.481-498; d. also VergiI, Aeneid 8.271-272.
 BOOK SIX 467

base.'12 One who obeys this most holy and most certain law
must live justly and lawfully. I have set down a few headings
of this law, because I promised that I would say only those
things which would place the climax on virtue and justice. If
anyone wishes to comprehend all of these matters, let him
seek from the font itself whence that stream has flowed to us.

Chapter 25

Now let us say a few things about sacrifice itself. 'Ivory,'

says Plato, 'is not a chaste gift for God.'1 What is, then? Is
some precious material, painted or woven? No, indeed; what-
ever can be corrupted, whatever can be taken away is no
chaste gift for God. But, as he saw this, that is not fitting
for something which is from a dead body to be offered to the
living, why did he not see also this, that a corruptible gift
should not be offered to the Incorruptible? How much better
and more truly Seneca put it when he said the following: 'Do
you wish to think of a god great and calm, fearful, with g'entle
majesty, friendly and always nearby, not to be worshiped with
immolations nor with much blood-for what pleasure is there
in the slaughter of undeserving victims?-but with pure mind,
with good and upright intention? For temples are not to be
raised unto his honor by the piling of rocks to great height.
Worship must be paid in each one's heart.'2 Garments, then,
and gems, and other things which are valued at a price, if
anyone thinks them dear to God, he has clearly no idea of
what God is. He thinks that the very things, for the despising
of which a man will be properly praised, are a source of
pleasure to Him. What is chaste, therefore, what worthy of
God except what He has demanded as His own in the divine
law?
f2FiDiIlthe Incomplete Works, frg. 13; cf. also The Laws 1.6.18; 2.4.8.
I Laws XII, 956 A; d. Cicero, On Laws 2.18.45.
2 Frg. 123.
468 LACTANTIUS

There are two things which ought to be offered: the gift

and the sacrifice; gift in perpetuity, sacrifice for a time. But
among those who in no way understand the notion of divinity,
a gift is whatever is made of gold and silver; also, whatever is
woven of purple and silk, and the sacrifice is the victim and
whatever things are burned on the altar. God, however, does
not use either, since He is incorruptible, and those things are
wholly corruptible. There, the two which are to be offered to
God and which He is to use (the gift and sacrifice) are inco-
ruptible. The gift is the integrity of the mind; the sacrifice,
praise and a hymn. For if God is not seen, He is to be wor-
shiped by those things which are not seen. No other religion,
therefore, is true, except that which consists of virtue and
justice.
Now how God makes use of the justice of man is easy to
understand. If a man is just when he gains immortality, he will
serve God forever. Both the old philosophers and also Cicero
suspect that men are born only for justice. Discoursing on law
Cicero said: 'Of all things which are treated in the discussions
of learned men, surely nothing is more outstanding than that
it is clearly understood that we were born for justice.'3 We
ought, therefore, to present and to offer to God this alone
for the acquiring of which He gave us life. How very true
is this double kind of sacrifice Hermes Trismegistus is a suit-
able witness, for his word is not incongruous with ours, that is,
with the prophets in matter as well as in words. Concerning
justice he spoke thus: 'Adore and worship this word, son. The
one worship of god is not to be evil.'4 Also in that completed
speech, when he had heard Asclepius seeking from his son
whether it pleases his father to be offered incense and other
perfumes used for the worship of the god, he cried out: 'Be
well advised, 0 Asclepius. It is the greater impiety to bring
into the mind any such thing about that one and singular
good. These things and things like to them are not appropriate
3 On Laws 1.10.28.
4 Poemander, c. 12.23.
 BOOK SIX 469

for him. For he is full of all things which are and he needs
nothing of all that is. Giving thanks, then, let us adore him.
Benediction alone is his sacrifice.'5
Therefore, sacrifice must be made to God by the word, since
'The word is God,'6 as He Himself says. So the highest rite of
worshiping God is praise from the mouth of the just man
directed to God. In order, however, that it may be acceptable
to God, this must be done with humility and fear and the
greatest devotion, lest anyone flaunting confidence in integrity
and innocence might incur the crime of pride and arrogance,
and thereby lose the grace of virtue. But in order that he may
be dear to God and lack all stain, let him always implore the
mercy of God and pray for nothing else than the forgiveness
of his sins, even though there be none. If he desires something
else, there is no need of words for One who knows what we
wish. If anything good happens to him, let him give thanks;
if anything evil, let him make satisfaction and acknowledge
that it has happened to him on account of his sins. And, never-
theless, let him give thanks even in evils, and in prosperity
make reparation, that he may remain the same, stable, im-
mutable, and unshaken. 7 And let him not think that he must
do this only in a temple, but also at home and even in his very
bedroom. Finally, let him have God always with him, hon-
ored in his heart, since he himself is a temple of God. And if
he serves God, his Father and Lord, with this assiduousness,
with this attention, with this devotion, then, his justice is
consummate and perfect. \,Vhoever will have held to this, he,
as we have claimed before, has yielded to God; he has fulfilled
religion and his duty.

5 Cf. Pseudo-Apulcius, Asclepills c. 41.

6 Cf. John 1.1.
7 Cf. Oracle of Apollo given above in Bk. I, ch. 7.
 BOOK SEVEN

ON THE BLESSED LIFE

Chapter 1

-~-T HOLDS WELL; the foundations have been laid,'l as the

distinguished orator says. ''\Te have not only laid the
foundations which were firm and suitable for com-
pleting the work, but we have brought the entire structure
almost up to its conclusion by great and vigorous efforts. There
remains that which is much easier, either to cover it, or adorn
it. Without this part of the work, however, the earlier efforts
are not useful and are unpleasant. ''\That is the good of being
set free from false religions or of understanding the true one?
What advantage to see through the vanity of false wisdom or
to learn which is true? ''\That, I say, is the point in defending
that heavenly justice? Why hold on to the worship of God
in great difficulties? '''That is the use of the highest virtue
unless the divine reward of perpetual beatitude follows it?
We must treat of this reward in this book so that all the
topics previously discussed will not seem ineffectual and fruit-
less, if we leave as uncertain that for which those subjects are
undertaken. And we write this book also so that no one may
think that such labors are for no purpose, because he may
have lost confidence in their heavenly reward which God has
determined for him who will have despised the good, sweet
things of life for the sake of virtue alone and unadorued. Let
us work enough for this topic, too, both with testimony from
Cicero, Pro Murena 6.14; d. also Salvian, The Governance of God 3.1.1.
470
 BOOK SEVEN 471

the divine wntmgs and also with probable proofs, so that

it may be fairly clear that future goods ought to be preferred
to present ones, the divine to the earthly, and everlasting ones
to those of short duration, since the rewards of vices are tem-
poral, those of virtue, everlasting.
I wiII explain, therefore, the plan of the world, so that it
may be easily understood both when and how it was brought
about by God, which Plato, when he discussed the making of
the world, was able neither to know nor to explain. 2 For,
indeed, he did not know the heavenly mystery, which is not
learned except from the prophets and from God as teacher,
and, therefore, he said it was 'made forever.' This is far re-
moved from the true explanation, because whatever is of a
solid and heavy consistency, as it took beginning at some time,
must so receive an end. Now Aristotle, since he did not see
how such a great magnitude of things could perish and
wished to escape this prescription, said that the world had
always been and always would be. 3 Then he straightway saw
nothing, since it is necessary that whatever is have a begin-
ning at some time, and nothing at all could be unless it began.
For when we see the earth, water, and fire, which are parts
of the world, to be sure, disappear, become consumed, and
extinguished, it is understood that the whole is mortal whose
members are mortal. Thus it is that whatever can come to an
end has been born or begun.
Everything which comes under the sight of the eyes must
be both a body, as Plato said,4 and soluble. Epicurus, then,
on the authority of Democritus, was truly versed on this point.
He said that it had begun at one time and would come to
extinction at some time. However, he was not able to render
any account either for what causes or at what time this such
great work would be resolved. 5 Because God has revealed
this to us, we do not get to it by conjectures but by heavenly
2 Cf. Cicero, Prior Academics 2.37.118.
3 Ibid. 38.119.
4 Phaedo 80 C.
5 Cf. Epicurus, frg. 304.
472 LACTANTIUS

tradition. vVe will seriously try to teach, so that it may finally

appear to those zealous for the truth, that the philosophers
neither saw nor comprehended truth, and that they were so
slightly fragrant that they in no way whatever realized whence
that odor, so sweet and so pleasant, of wisdom flowed to them.
Meanwhile, I think it necessary to give advice to those who
will read, because depraved and vicious minds will not un-
derstand at all these teachings of ours which we pass on, for
their keenness is dulled by their earthly desires which weigh
down their senses and render them weak. Or even if they do
understand, they will dissimulate, however, and will not
want these things to be true, because they are being thereby
drawn from vices; and with awareness they favor evils by
whose sweetness they are enticed, and they desert the path of
virtue by whose bitterness they are offended. For because they
burn with avarice and a certain unquenchable thirst for
riches; because they cannot spend their lives in the tenuous
cult of sellings and lavish givings which they love, without
doubt they prefer that to be feigned by which they are forced
to renounce their desires. Likewise, those who, aroused by the
stimuli of the passions, rush as the poet says, 'into fury and
fire,'6 say, of course, that we advance incredible ideas, because
the precepts of continence wound their ears, precepts which
keep them away from their pleasures to which they have
committed both souls and bodies. Those who, puffed up by
ambition or inflamed with the love of power, have devoted
all their zeal to acquiring honors, will not, even if we bear the
sun itself in our hands, apply credence to that doctrine which
orders them to live humbly, despising all 'power and honor,
and to be so humble that they can accept injury and not want
to pay it back if they should have received it. These are men
who bark at the truth in a certain manner with closed eyes.
However, those who will be safe, that is, not so immersed in
vices as to be incurable, will both believe these things and
will accede to them readily. 'Whatever we say that is open,
6 Vergil, Georgies 3.244.
 BOOK SEVEN 473

plain, and simple, and, what is especially necessary, will seem

true and irrefutable to them.
No one favors virtue except the one who can follow it.
To follow it, however, is not easy for all. Those can whom
poverty and want of possession has exercised and made capa-
cious of virtue. For if virtue is tolerance of evils, they do not
receive virtue who have always been in good circumstances,
because they have not experienced evils, nor can they endure
them through the acquaintance and longing of the goods
which alone they know. So it happens that the poor and
lowly who are unimpeded believe in God more easily than the
rich who are surrounded with many impediments. Rather,
indeed, they are chained and shackled in their service to the
wish of their mistress, desire, which has them caught in inex-
tricable bonds. Nor can they look toward heaven, because
their mind is turned toward earth and fastened on the gound.
The way of virtue does not take those bearing great burdens.
The path is very narrow over which justice leads men to
heaven. One cannot hold this unless he be untrammeled
and lightly-clad. Those rich ones, burdened with many huge
packs, advance upon the way of death which is very broad,
because perdition rules widely. The matters which God
charges for justice, and the things which we discuss about
virtue and truth under the magisterium of God, are bitter to
them; they are poisonous to them. And if they dare to refute
these, it is necessary that they admit themselves to be enemies
of virtue and justice.
N ow I will come to that which is left, so that an end can be
made to this work. The task facing us now is the discussion
of the judgment of God, because it will be determined, then,
when our Lord returns to the earth, how He will render to
each one according to his merits, either reward or punish-
ment. And so, as in the fourth book 7 we spoke about His first
coming, we will in this one refer to His second coming which
the Jews also confess and hope for, but in vain, since it is neces-
7 Ch. 12.
474 LACTANTIUS

sary that He come to console those whom He had come at first

to call together. Those who impiously violated Him in His
lowly condition will perceive a Victor in power; and all those
things which they read and do not understand they will suffer,
God making recompense; for, truly, those defiled by all sins
and stained with the sacred blood of Him upon whom they
laid wicked hands are destined for eternal punishments. But
there will be for us a section separated away from the Jews,
in which we will convict them of error and crime.

Chapter 2

Now we must give instruction to those ignorant of the

truth. It has been so ordained by the disposition of the Most
High God that this unjust world receive its limit when the
space of time has run its course, and forthwith all evil will
be extinguished. The souls of the just having been called
to the blessed life, there will flourish quiet, tranquility, and
peace; in short, a 'golden age,' as the poets say, under the
reign of God Himself. In the first place, the cause of all the
errors of philosophers was this, that they did not compre-
hend the plan of the world which holds all wisdom. That,
in fact, in a proper sense and by interior understanding can-
not be comprehended, a thing which they wanted to accom-
plish of themselves without any teacher. For this reason, they
fell into various opinions, often contradictory to themselves,
from which they had no way out, and they stuck in the same
mire, as the comic writer says.1 Reason, to be sure, did not
respond to their assumptions, although they assumed some
true things, indeed, but these could not be affirmed or proved
without knowledge of the truth and of heavenly things, which,
as I have often said, cannot be in man unless God teaches
its perception. Now if a man can understand the divine teach-

I Terence, Phormio 5.2.15.

 BOOK SEVEN 475

ings, he will also be able to do them, for to understand is to

follow from a trace, as it were. He cannot do the things which
God does because he is clothed with a mortal body; there-
fore, he cannot even understand what God does. If this were
possible, it would be easy for each one to be measured from
the immensity of things and of the divine works.
If you wish to contemplate the world with all the things
that are in it, you would understand, surely, how much the
work of God exceeds human works. Thus, there is as much
difference between divine and human works as there must be
between the wisdom of God and man. Since God is incorrupt
and immortal and, therefore, perfect because He is everlasting,
His wisdom also is perfect as He is Himself, nor can anything
obstruct it because God Himself is subject to no one. Since
man, however, is subject to passion, his wisdom also is sub-
ject to error; and, as many things hinder the life of man from
being perpetual, so it is necessary that his wisdom be im-
peded by many things from being perfect in thoroughly
grasping the truth. Therefore, there is no human wisdom if
it strives of itself toward a notion and knowledge of what is
true, since the mind of man is wrapped in a fragile case and
enclosed in a shade-like domicile; nor can it wander abroad
very freely or perceive the truth quite clearly, the knowledge
of which belongs to the divine condition. For to God alone
are His works known. Man, therefore, can attain to this, not
by thinking or disputing, but by learning and hearing it
from Him who alone can know and teach it. For this reason,
Marcus Tullius, taking from Plato the sentiment of Socrates
who said that the time had come for him to pass from this
life, has him say to those before whom he was finishing his
case: 'Which way is better to spend life, the immortal gods
know, but I do not believe that any man knows.'2 Wherefore,
it is necessary that all the sects of philosophy be removed
from the truth, because they were men who established them;

2 Cicero, Tusculans 1.41.99; cf. Plato, Apology 42 A.

476 LACTANTIUS

nor can those systems have any prop or foundation which are
not supported on the pronouncements of the divine voice.

Chapter 3

Since we are speaking about the errors of the philosophers,

the Stoics divide nature into two parts; one which brings about
an effect, the other which makes itself tractable so as to be
effected. In the former is the power of sensing; in the latter,
the matter. And one cannot be without the other. How can
the same thing act and be acted upon? If someone should say
that the potter is the same as the clay or the clay the same as
the potter, would he not clearly seem to be insane? Yet, those
have taken hold of two very different things by the one
name of nature: God and the world, the Artificer and the
work; and they say that one can do nothing without the other,
as if God were mixed with the world by nature. Sometimes,
they get so confused that they hold God Himself as the mind
of the world, and the world as the body of God, as if, indeed,
they began to be simultaneously, and that God Himself did
not make the world. They themselves acknowledge that this
is not so, when they declare that the world was made for the
sake of men, and that God can exist without the world, if He
wish, since He is a divine and eternal Mind, separated and
free from a body.! Because they could not understand His
power and majesty, they confused Him or mixed Him with
the world, that is, His work; whence that line of Vergil: 'The
mind infused through the members stirs the whole mass and
mixes itself with the great body.'2
Where, then, is that which they say is the same thing, and
that it was made by divine providence and is ruled by it? If
God made the world, then He existed without it. If He rules
it, surely, it is not as the mind rules the body, but as a lord
1 Cf. Bk. I, ch. 5.
2 Aeneid 6.726,727.
 BOOK SEVEN 477

directs a household, a pilot a ship, a charioteer a chariot.

These, however, are not mixed in those things which they
rule. And if all these things which we see are members of
God, then an insensible God is set up by them, since the
members lack sense, and a mortal God, since we see that the
members are mortal. I can enumerate how often the lands
shaken by sudden movements have gaped open or receded
into an abyss; how often cities and islands submerged by
water have gone into the depths of the sea; how often swamps
have overwashed fruitful fields; how often rivers and lakes
have dried up; how even mountains have abruptly fallen or
been leveled with plains; and how inner fire, lying concealed,
has consumed many regions and the foundations of many
mountains. This is slight if God does not spare His own
members, except that it is also permitted to man to do some-
thing to the body of God; seas are filled up, mountains are
cut down, and the interior parts of the earth are dug up for
extracting wealth. s What of the fact that plowing cannot be
done even without laceration of the divine body? As a result,
we are now criminal and impious who violate the members of
God.
Does God, then, allow His body to be molested, or does He
make Himself weak, or does He allow this to be done by
man? Perhaps, though, that divine sense, which was mixed
with the world and with all its parts, left just the first layer
of earth and merged with its depths, so that it would not
feel any pain from the constant tearing! Now, if this is fool-
ish and absurd, they themselves have been as much in want
of sense as these notions are. For they did not perceive that
the divine spirit is everywhere diffused, and that all things
are contained thereby, not, however, in such a way that God
Himself, who is incorrupt, should be mingled with heavy
and corruptible elements.
That which they took from Plato, then, was more correct,
that the world was made by God, and that it is governed by
3 Cf. Sallust, Catiline 20.11; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.138-140.
478 LACTANTIUS

the same God's providence. It was necessary, however, for

Plato and those who thought the same way, to teach and
explain what was the cause, what was the plan of making
such a great work, why He did this, or for whose sake. The
same Stoics say that the world was made for the sake of men.
I hear this argument. But Epicurus does not know the men
themselves, or why, or who made them. 4 For Lucretius, say-
ing that the world was not established by the gods, spoke
thus: 'To say, of course, that it was for the sake of men that
they (i.e., the gods) wished to prepare the wonderful nature
of the world.'5 And then he added: 'That is foolish. For what
can be bestowed by immortal and blessed beings for the sake
of our enrichment, so that they might be approached to do
something for our sakes?'6
And rightly. For they brought on no reason why the human
race was created or instituted by God. This is our duty, to
put forth the claim and the mystery7 of the world and of man.
Those who had no acquaintance with this could neither
touch upon nor see the treasure of truth.
As I just said a little while ago, although they had assumed
that which was true, namely, that the world was made by
God and made for the sake of men; however, because reason
failed them in the consequences of that assumption, they
could not defend that which they had assumed. Finally, Plato,
so as not to make the work of God weak and ruinous, said
that it would last forever. 8 If it has been made for men, and
if it is so made that it is eternal, why, then, are they, for whose
sake it was made, not eternal? If they are mortal on whose
account it was made, then it, too, is mortal and soluble. For
4 Cf. frg. 371.
5 Lucretius 5.156,157.
6 Ibid. 165-167.
7 Lactantius uses but one word here. It is sacramentum which did not
by his time have the consecrated or theological significance it gained
later. Cf. A. Souter, A Glossary ot Later Latin s.v. sacramentum. Still
more complete is the treatment given the word in Albert Blaise,
Dictionnaire Latin-Fran,aise des Auteurs Chretiennes (Paris 1954)
pp. 729-731.
8 Cf. Cicero, Prior Academics 2.37.118.
 BOOK SEVEN 479

it is not of more value than they for whom it was made. If

reason were properly functioning for him, he would under-
stand that it would perish, because it has been made, and
that nothing can remain forever except what cannot be
touched.
However, he who denies that it was made for the sake of
men has no reason. For if he says that the Maker fashioned
these so great works for His own sake, why, then, were we
born? Why do we enjoy this very world? ''\That does the fiction
of the human race and of other living creatures mean? 1;\Thy
do we intercept the advantages of others? 1;\Thy, then, do we
grow, decline, die? What reason has generation itself? Why
the perpetual succession? To be sure, God wished to see and
to fashion by His various images, as it were, little figures by
which He might delight Himself. Nevertheless, then, if this
were so, He would have care for the living creatures, especially
man, to whose dominion He made all things subject.
But to those who say that the world always was-I pass by
this point, the fact that it itself cannot be without some begin-
ning; whence they cannot extricate themselves-I say this: if
the world always was, it can have no plan. For how could a
plan be fashioned in that which never took a start? Before
anything is done or erected, there is need of a purpose, a plan,
so that it can be arranged how it may be done, nor can any-
thing be undertaken without the foresight of a plan. So plan
precedes every work. That does not have a plan, therefore,
which has not been made. But the world has a plan, for it
exists and it is directed. Therefore, it was made. And if it
was made, it will be unmade or destroyed. Let them render
the account, if they can, either why it was made in the begin-
ning or should afterwards be destroyed. Since Epicurus, or
Democritus, was not able to show this, he said that it was
begun of its own accord, seeds coming together here and there.
And when these were again loosened, separation and dissolu-
tion would follow. 9 Therefore, he corrupted what he had
9 Cf. Epicurus, frg. 382.
480 LACTANTIUS

rightly seen, and completely overturned the whole plan by

his ignorance of the plan; and he reduced the world and all
things which go on in it to the likeness of a certain very
empty dream since no plan subsists in human affairs.
But, since, as we see, a marvelous plan does govern the
world and all its parts; since there is order in the heavens
and an even course of stars and heavenly lights in their very
variety; since the marking of seasons is constant and won-
drous; since the varied fecundity of the earth, the evenness
of the fields, the foundations and ramparts of the mountains,
the green richness of forests, the very bountiful overflow of
waters, the timely flooding of rivers, the opulent and rich
content of the sea, the various and useful blowing of the
winds, and all things else are according to the highest plan,
who is so blind as to think that these things were done with-
out cause, in which the wonderful arangement of a most
provident reason gleams forth? If, therefore, anything at all
is or is done without reason; if the providence of the Most
High God is manifest from the disposition of things, and His
virtue from their magnitude, and His power from their gov-
ernance, they were dull and mad who said there was no
providence. I would not condemn them if they said there
were no gods on this account, that they might say there was
one. Anyone, however, who would not think that they were
delirious when they said that there were none is himself
delirious.

ChajJter 4

We treated providence sufficiently in the first book. If there

is providence, as is clear from the wonderfulness of its works,
it is necessary also that God created man and the other living
creatures by the same providence. Let us see, then, what was
the reason of making the human race, since what the Stoics
say is accepted, that the world was made for the sake of men.
 BOOK SEVEN 481

Now, they err not a little on this very point, that they do not
say for the sake of man, but of men. The term 'man,' one,
singular, embraces the whole human race. But this is so, in
fact, because they do not know that one man was made by
God, and they think that men have been generated in all lands
and territories as though merely animal cells. Yet, Hermes
was not ignorant of the fact that man was made by God and
according to the likeness of God. 1 I must go back, though,
to the topic. There is nothing, I believe, which is made on
account of itself, but anything at all which is made, must be
made for some purpose. Who is there either so foolish or so
idle that he should set out to make something to no purpose,
from which he would hope for no usefulness, no advantage?
He who builds a house does not build it that it may be just
a house, but that it may be able to be lived in. He who makes
a boat, not only that it may appear to be a boat, but that it
may be sailed in. Likewise, he who fashions and forms some
vessel does it, not so that he may seem to have made it merely,
but that the vessel when completed may hold something
necessary. Similarly for any other things whatsoever which are
made; surely, they are not worked upon for no purpose at all,
but for some worthwhile purposes.
The world, therefore, was certainly not made by God for
its own sake, for it does not need the heat of the sun or the
light of the moon or the blowing of the winds or the water
of the rains or the nourishment of the crops, since it is without
sense. This cannot be said, either, that God made the world
on account of Himself, since He can exist without the world,
as He was before, and because God Himself does not use all
those things which are in it and which are generated in it.
It is clear, then, that the world was made for the sake of
the living creatures in it, since these enjoy those things of
which it consists. In order that these may live, that they may
exist, all necessities are provided for them at fixed times.
Again, that the other animals were made for the sake of man
1 Hermes Trismegistus (Poemander) c. 1.12.
482 LACTANTIUS

is clear from this, that they serve man and have been given to
his care and use, since, whether they are of the land or of
the water, they do not sense the plan and purpose of the
world as man does.
An answer must be made at this place to the philosophers,
especially to Cicero, who asks: 'vVhy, since god made all things
for our sake, did he put such great power in serpents and
vipers? Why did he spread so many destruction-bearing ani-
mals over land and sea?'2 It is a very large topic for discus-
sion, but we must try to do it briefly in passing. Since man
is composed of diverse and opposing notions, body and soul,
that is, of heaven and of earth, and since he is tenuous and
comprehensible, eternal and temporal, sensible and brute,
endowed with light and darkness, reason itself and necessity
demand that both goods and evils be set before him; goods
which he may use, evils which he may shun and avoid. It is
for this that wisdom has been given to man, so that the nature
of goods and evils having been learned, he may exercise the
power of his reason in seeking the goods and avoiding the
evils. Because wisdom was not given to the other animals, they
were endowed and fortified with natural protections; but, to
man, however, in preference to all these, He gave reason
alone, which was exceptional. So He made man bare and
unarmed, so that He might fortify and cover him with wisdom.
This protection and covering H<t placed not on the outside,
but within; not in his body, but in his heart. Unless there
were evils, however, for him to avoid, and for him to dis-
tinguish from the good and the useful, wisdom would not be
necessary for him. Let Marcus Tullius know, then, either
that reason was given to man for this, that he should catch
fish for his use and avoid snakes and vipers for his safety; or,
that both goods and evils have been set before him for the
reason that he had received wisdom, the whole power of which
deals in discerning goods and evils.
Great and direct and admirable is the strength and reason
2 Prior Academics 2.38.120.
 BOOK SEVEN 483

and power of man, on account of whom God made the world

itself and all things which are, and to whom He gave so much
honor that He placed him in charge of all, because he alone
could marvel at the works of God. Very well, therefore, did
our Asclepiades, discussing the providence of the Most High
God in the book which he wrote to me, say: 'Who would
think, and so rightly, then, that Divine Providence had given
the place nearest to Himself to him who would be able to
understand His arrangement? That, for instance, is the sun.
Who sees it thus, so that he may understand, because it is the
sun, how much of grace it may bring to the other things
established? This is the sky. Who looks at it? This, the earth.
Who cultivates it? This is the sea. \'\Tho navigates it? This is
fire. Who uses it?'3 The Most High God has instituted all
things, then, not on account of Himself, since He needs noth-
ing, but on account of man who might use them fitly.

Chapter 5

Let us get back now to the reason why God made man
himself. If the philosophers had known this, or if they had
defended those things which they had found out, they would
not have fallen into the greatest errors. For this is the prin-
ciple, this is the hinge of things; from the grasp of him who
does not hold this, all truth will slip away. It is this, finally,
which may happen to them, that reason be not properly estab-
lished. If this had shone forth upon them, if they had learned
of the whole sublime dignity of man, the Academy would
never have confused their discussions and upset all philosophy.
Therefore, just as God did not make the world for Himself,
because He does not need its advantages; but because of man
who uses it, so He made man on account of Himself. 'What
usefulness is there in man for god that he should make him
3 This is printed as a quotation in the text, but no source has been given
for it.
484 LACTANTIUS

for himself?'! asks Epicurus. Surely, it was so that he might

understand His works; that he might be able to admire with
his senses and declare with his voice the providence of His
arrangement, the plan of His accomplishment, and the virtue
of His completion of the work. This is the summation of all
these acts, that he worships God. For he worships who under-
stands these things; he attends the Maker of all things, his
true Father, with due veneration who measures the power of
His majesty from the invention, inception, and perfection
of his own works.
What argument can be brought forward more plainly that
God made the world for man and man for Himself than the
fact that man alone of all living creatures has been so formed;
that with his eyes directed toward heaven and his face look-
ing at God, his countenance should be like to that of God his
Father; and that God should seem to have lifted man from
the earth and to have raised him in His right hand to the
contemplation of Himself.2
'What, then,' he says, 'does the worship on the part of man
confer upon a god who is blessed and in need of nothing?
If he had so much regard for man that he made the world
on account of him, that he equipped him with wisdom, that
he made him master of living things, and that he loved him
as a son, why did he make him mortal and frail? Why did
he put him whom he loved up against all evils, when man
should have been both happy, as though joined and near to
god, and everlasting, as he is himself, for the worshiping and
contemplation of whom he was made?'3
While we have treated these matters here and there in
nearly all the preceding books, however, since the matter now
demands a proper handling, where it has been proposed to
discuss the happy life, those points must be explained more
carefully and more fully so that the disposition of God and

I Frg. 371; cf. Lucretius 5.165-167.

2 This is the theme of The Workmanship of God.
3 Epicurus, frg. 371.
 BOOK SEVEN 485

His work and will may be known. Although He could create

innumerable souls for His immortal spirits, just as He made
the angels for whom immortality exists without any danger
and fear of evils, yet He thought up this unspeakable work:
how to create an infinite multitude of souls, which He would
place at first in frail and weak bodies, bound in the midst
of good and evil, so that before those consisting by nature of
both parts He might put virtue, lest they follow after im-
mortality in a delicate and soft way, but that they might come
upon that unspeakable reward of eternal life with the greatest
difficulty and great labors. Then, in order that He might put
on them heavy and bothersome members, since they could
not exist in the middle of empty space, the weight and heavi-
ness of the body pressing them down, He determined that,
first of all, an abode and dwelling place would have to be
set up for these souls. So, with ineffable virtue and power, He
fashioned the wonderful works of the world. The light
elements being suspended on high, and the heavy ones pressed
downward, He erected the heavenly bodies and established
the earthly ones. It is not necessary now to go into individual
details, since we touched upon all of them in the second
book. Therefore, He put lights in the sky, the moderation
and brightness and motion of which was most fittingly tem-
pered to the use of living beings. To the earth, which He in-
tended for their abode, He gave the fruitfulness of producing
and giving forth various crops, so that by the richness of its
crops and green grasses it might furnish nourishment accord-
ing to the nature and use of each kind. Then, when all things
which pertained to the condition of the world were com-
pleted, He formed man from the earth itself, which He pre-
pared from the beginning as a habitation for him. In other
words, He clothed and wrapped his spirit in an earthly body,
so that compounded of different and opposing parts, he might
lay hold of good and evil. And just as the earth itself is
fecund for the producing of crops, so the body of man, which
has been taken from the earth, received the source of genera-
486 LACTANTIUS

ting and the faculty of bringing forth offspring in order that,

since that which was made from frail matter could not en-
dure forever, when the course of a temporal life had been
spent, it might yield and renew that fragile and weak element
which it possessed by a perpetual succession.
Why, then, did He make him mortal and frail when He
had made the world for his sake? First, that an infinite force
of souls might spring up and fill the whole world with its
number; and then, that He might set virtue before man, that
is, endurance of evils and labors, through which he might be
able to gain the reward of immortality. For, since man con-
sists of two parts, body and soul; one of which is earthly, the
other heavenly, two lives have been assigned to man. One
is temporal which is assigned to the body; the other is eternal
which belongs to the soul. We receive the first by being born;
we gain the latter by laboring, lest immortality for man be
determined without any difficulty as we just said. That earthly
life is as the body and is ended, therefore, but this heavenly
one is like the soul and, for this reason, it does not have an
end. The first one we receive unknowingly; this second one,
with full awareness, for it is given to virtue, not nature, be-
cause God wished us to prepare life for ourselves during life.
He gave this present life for this reason, that we might lose
that true and everlasting life by vices or merit it by virtue.
The highest good is not in this corporal life, since, as it has
been given to us by divine necessity, so will it be dissolved
again by divine necessity. So that which has an end does not
have the highest good. 4 It is in that spiritual life, however,
which we ourselves gain of ourselves that the highest good is
contained, because it can have neither evil nor an end.
The nature and the plan of the body furnish a proof for
this. The other animals turn towards the ground because they
are earthly, and they do not get immortality which is of
heaven. Man, however, upright, looks toward heaven because
immortality has been proposed for him. But it does not come,
4 Cf. Orientius, Commonitorium 1.43-58.
 BOOK SEVEN 487

however, unless it be granted to man by God, for there would

be no difference between just and unjust if every man were
born immortal. So, immortality is not the sequel of nature,
but it is the reward and boon of virtue. Then, too, man does
not immediately walk upright as soon as he is born, but on all
fours at first, because the condition of the body and of this
present life is one we have in common with the dumb ani-
mals. Then, after its powers are strengthened, it is straight-
ened up, and the tongue is loosened unto speech, and man
ceases to be a dumb beast. This arrangement shows that man
is born mortal, but that he later becomes immortal, when he
begins to live of God, that is, to follow justice which is con-
tained in the worship of God; when God shall have raised
man up to the sight of heaven and of Himself. This takes
place at the time when man, purified by the heavenly washing,
lays off infancy with all the stain of former life and, having
received the increment of divine strength, becomes a full and
perfect man. 5
Therefore, because God has proposed virtue to man, though
the soul and body be joined, they are contrary, however, and
fight against each other. The goods of the soul are evils to the
body, namely, flight from wealth, ban on pleasure, contempt
of pain and death. In the same way the goods of the body are
evils to the soul, desire and passion, with which both riches
and the delights of various pleasures are sought after, and by
which the soul is enervated and its life extinguished. It is
necessary, then, for the good and wise man to be in all evils,
since the conqueress of evils is fortitude; whereas, the unjust
are in riches, honor, power, which are corporal and earthly
goods. They pass an earthly existence, nor can they attain
immortality, since they have given themselves to pleasures
which are enemies of virtue. So this temporal life ought to be
subject to that eternal one, as the body is to the soul.
Whoever, then, prefers the life of the soul must contemn
the life of the body, and in no way will he be able to strive
5 Cf. 1 Cor. I3.II; Eph. 4.13.
488 LACTANTIUS

after the highest unless he despises those which are lowest. But
he who embraces the life of the body and casts his desires
upon earth cannot gain that higher life. He who prefers to
live well in eternity will live badly in time and will be af-
flicted with all grievances and labors as long as he will be on
earth, so that he may obtain divine heavenly solace. And he
who prefers to live well in time will live badly in eternity.
For by the sentence of God, he will be condemned to eternal
punishment because he has placed earthly goods before
heavenly ones. It is for this reason, therefore, that God de-
sires Himself to be worshiped and honored as a Father by
man, so that he may cling to virtue and wisdom which alone
brings forth immortality. Since no one else but Himself can
give this, because He alone possesses it, He adorns the piety of
man, by which he honors God with this reward, that he might
be blessed forever and be with God in His presence forever.

Chapter 6

Now let us go over the whole plan with a brief recapitula-

tion. The world was made for this reason, that we should be
born. We are born, therefore, that we should know the Maker
of the world and our God. We know Him that we may worship
Him. We worship Him that we may gain immortality as a re-
ward for our labors, since the worship of God rests on very
great labors. Therefore, we are rewarded with immortality
that, made like the angels, we may serve the Father and Lord
Most High forever and be an everlasting kingdom for God.
This is the sum of everything; this the secret of God; this the
mystery of the world, from which they are estranged who,
following present pleasure, have given themselves to frail,
earthly goods, and who have submerged their souls, born for
heavenly things in the death-bearing joys of time as though in
mire or slime.
 BOOK SEVEN 489

Let us seek now, in turn, whether any plan underlies the

worship of the false gods. First, whether there are many of
them; then, if they are worshiped so much by men that they
present them with wealth, victories, honors, and anything else
which has no value except for the present. If we have come
to exist without a cause; if there is no providence at work
in the procreation of men; if we are born by chance, and for
ourselves and for the sake of our own pleasure? If we are
nothing after death, what can be so superficial, so inane, so
empty as human affairs and as the world itself which, although
it is constructed of incredible magnitude and with marvelous
plan, is yet full of concern for inept things? Why should the
blowing of winds stir up clouds? Why does lightning flash,
thunder roar, rain fall? Why does the land produce crops, and
feed the young of various kinds? Why, finally, does the whole
nature of things labor lest any of those things on which the
life of man is sustained be lacking, if it is idle, if we come to
nothing, if nothing in us is of greater worth to God? But if
it is wrong to say this, and if it should not be thought possible
that what you see rests on a very great plan not constructed on
account of some great purpose, what can be the reason in
these errors of depraved religions and in this persuasion of the
philosophers that they think souls perish? Surely, there is none.
What have they to say about why the gods so diligently supply
to men the things which are for the seasons? Or, is it that we
may give them grain and pure wine and the odor of incense
and the blood of cattle? These things cannot be pleasing to
the immortals because they are perishable; nor can they be of
use to those free of bodies because these things were given for
bodily use; furthermore, they could provide them for them-
selves, if they wished.
Therefore, whether souls perish, or whether they remain
forever, what purpose has the worship of the gods, or by whom
was the world arranged? ",,\Thy, or when, or until what time,
to what extent, or on account of what were men created? Why
are they born; why do they die, succeed, and renew the race?
490 LACTANTlUS

What do the gods attain from the cults of those who after
death are going to be nothing? What do they grant; what do
they promise; what do they threaten worthy of either men
or gods? Or if souls do remain after death, what do they do
about them, or what are they going to do? What need have
they of the treasure of souls? From what source do they them-
selves arise? How or wherefore or whence are they many?
So, it happens that, if you wander astray from that principal
teaching or summary of things which we have at the beginning
of this chapter, all reason is done away with and all things
are resolved to nothing.

Chapter 7

Because the philosophers did not comprehend this digest,

they could not comprehend the truth, although those things
on which the summary or digest itself rests, they both saw
and explained. But different ones of them brought out all those
points and in different ways, not connecting the causes of
things, nor their consequences nor reasons, so that they might
put together and complete that whole summary which con-
tains all the parts. It is easy to show that almost all the truth
has been divided by the philosophers and sects. We do not,
thus, overturn philosophy as the Academicians are wont to, to
whom it has been proposed to give an answer to all tenets
(which is, rather, to satirize and make sport) , but we show that
there was no sect so far wrong or no one of the philosophers
so inane who did not see something of the truth.
While they rage with the desire of contradicting, and while
they even defend their false doctrines, they also subvert the
truths of others, and not only has the truth which they pre-
tended that they were seeking slipped away from them, but
they themselves have most surely lost it through their own
evil. But if someone had arisen who would collect the truth
scattered and dispersed among the individual philosophers
 BOOK SEVEN 491

and sects and reduce it into one body, that one, certainly,
would not disagree with us. But no one can do this unless he
be well trained and have a knowledge of the truth. Neither can
he do anything but reject the false and select and approve of
what is true. If he did this even by chance, he would be most
certainly philosophizing; and, although he could not defend
his tenets by divine testimonies, the truth itself would en-
lighten him by its own light.
Therefore, it is an unbelievable error on the part of those
who, when they have approved of some sect and given them-
selves over to it, condemn the others as though false and
inane and arm themselves to do battle, not knowing either
what they ought to defend or what to refute. And they make
attacks here and there without selection and disagree with
everything which anyone brings forward. On account of these
most stubborn contentions of theirs, no philosophy has arisen
which came very close to the truth, but the whole truth was
comprehended by them in piecemeal fashion.
Plato said that the world was made by God. The prophets
said the same thing, and the same thing is clear from the
Sibylline verses. They are mistaken, therefore, who said either
that all things were born of their own accord, or from minute
globules, because so great is the matter (namely, the universe,
all creation), so equipped and so mighty that it could not
have been disposed and arranged without some exceedingly
wise author; and the very plan by which all things are per-
ceived to exist and to be ruled acknowledges an Artificer of
most ingenious mind.
The Stoics say that the world and all things which are in it
were made for man. The Sacred Writings teach us the same
thing. 1 Therefore, Democritus was wrong who thought that
they were effused from the earth in the manner of little worms,
with no author and no plan. Why man was formed, then, is a
matter of divine mystery, and since he was not able to know
that, he reduced human life to nothing.
1 Cf. Orientiu8, loco cit. 1.59-64.
492 LACTANTIUS

Aristotle held that men were born to acquire virtue. \lVe

are warned and taught the same lesson by the prophets.
Aristippus, then, was false who subjected man, as if he were a
beast, to pleasure, that is, to evil.
Pherecydes2 and Plato taught that souls were immortal. This
is a proper doctrine in our religion. Dicaearchus,3 then, erred
with Democritus who argued that it perished with the body.
Zeno, the Stoic, taught that there was a hell, and that the
abodes of the just were separated from the wicked, and that
the former inhabited quiet and delightful regions, while the
latter paid their penalty in dark places and horrible caverns
of mud. The prophets made the same thing clear to us. There-
fore, Epicurus was in error who thought that this was a fig-
ment of the poet's imagination, and took those punishments
of hell to be those which are borne in this life. 4
So we see that the philosophers touched upon all truth and
upon every secret of divine religion, but they could not defend
that which they had found in the face of those others who
refuted it, because plan and purpose did not squarely fit the
individual matters. And they were not able to reduce to a
summation those things which they had felt as true, as we did
above (at the beginning of chapter 6) .

Chapter 8

The one greatest good, then, is immortality, for the attain-

ment of which we have been made from the beginning and
for which we were born. We tend toward this. Human nature
looks to this. Virtue carries us forward to it. Since we have
2 A celebrated philosopher from Syros. He was an instructor of Pythag-
oras. Cf. Cicero, Tusculans 1.16.38; On Divination 1.50.112. He is
reputed, too (according to Pliny, Natural History 7.56.57) to be the
inventor of prose.
3 A pupil of Aristotle; famous also as a geographer; founder of Dicac-
archia, now Puteoli. Cf. Pliny, Natural History 3.5.9; Cicero, Tusculans
1.10.31; Duties 2.5.
4 Cf. Lucretius 3.978,979.
 BOOK SEVEN 493

grasped this good, there remains that we speak also about

immortality itself. Although the arguments of Plato bring
much to the matter at hand, however, they have little strength
for proving and fulfilling the tru th, since he had not finished
the plan of the whole great mystery, nor gathered it together;
neither had he comprehended the greatest good. For although
he perceived the truth about the immortality of the soul, he
did not, however, so consider it as though the highest good.
We, however, are able to pick out the truth by surer signs;
we who gather it, not from fluctuating suspicion, but who
know it from divine tradition.
Plato argued thus: 'Whatever perceives itself through itself
and is always moved by itself is immortal; that which has no
beginning of motion, and which will have no end, since it
cannot be separated from itself.'l This argument would give
eternity even to dumb animals, unless he had distinguished
men from them by the added requirement of wisdom. So, to
escape this danger of a common application, there followed:
'It is not possible for the human soul to be other than im-
mortal whose marvelous adroitness in coming upon facts, and
quickness of thinking, and ease in perceiving and learning,
and memory of past things, and foresight for the future, and
knowledge of the innumerable arts and skills, which the other
animals lack appears divine and heavenly; since, also, the
origin of the mind which embraces and holds such great
things is not discovered on earth, inasmuch as it has nothing
mixed from an earthly mass. However, that which is ponderous
and dissolvable in man must be resolved into the earth, but
that part which is tenuous and subtle, that, in truth, is in-
dividual, and must be freed from the dwelling place of the
body as from a prison, and it must soar to heaven according
to its nature.'2
These teachings of Plato have been briefly put together, and
they are explained in his own works at great length. Pythag-
I Phaedrus 245 C II.; cf. Cicero, Tusculans 1.23.53; The Republic 6.25.27.
2 Cicero, Tusculans 1.27.66.
494 LACTANTlUS

oras was of the same opinion before him and his teacher
Pherecydes, too, who Cicero says was the first to discuss the
eternity of souls. 3 Though all these excelled in eloquence,
still, in this contention those who opposed them held no less
of influence: Dicaearchus, at first; then, Democritus; finally,
Epicurus. To such a degree was this the case that the very
matter on which they were disputing was called into doubt.
At last, Tullius, when he had expressed the opinions of all
these on immortality and death, declared that he did not
know what was true.
'Which is true of these opinions,' he said, 'some god might
see.'4 Again, someplace he said: 'Since each of these opinions
had most learned authors, it cannot be divined which is
certain.'5 But we have no need of divination. Divinity Itself
has revealed the truth to us.

Chapter 9

And so by other proofs, which neither Plato nor anyone

else came upon, the eternity of souls can be proved and under-
stood. We will gather these together briefly, because the work
is hurrying on to a declaring of the great judgment of God,
which will be celebrated on earth as the end of time ap-
proaches. Before all things, since God cannot be seen by man
(lest anyone think, however, from this very fact that there is
not a God because He is not seen with mortal eyes), among
the other miracles of His making, He caused many also the
power of which at least is apparent, though their substance is
not seen, such as, the voice, odor, winds. He worked these
miracles so that from the proof and example of these things
we might discern God also; for, although He does not come

3 Ibid. 1.16.38.
4 Ibid. 1.11.23.
5 From an uncertain work, frg. II.
 BOOK SEVEN 495

under the gaze of our eyes, still we learn of His power and
effects and works.
What is clearer than the voice, or stronger than wind, or
more compelling than odor? Although these are borne through
the air and come to our senses and impel them by their power,
still they are not discerned by the sight of the eyes, but they
are felt by other parts of the body. Similarly, God is not to
be comprehended by us by sight or by any other fragile sense,
but He is to be intued with the eyes of the mind when we
behold His wonderful and admirable works. I would say that
those who have said there was no God were not only not
philosophers, but not even men. For very similar to the
beasts, they seem to have consisted of body alone, discerning
nothing with their minds and referring all things to a sense
of the body, for they thought that there was nothing save
that which was beheld by the eyes
And because they saw either that adversity befell the good
or that prosperity was the lot of the evil, they believed that all
things were done fortuitously and that the world was set up
by nature, not by providence. From this point on they fell
to mad ravings which necessarily followed such an opinion.
But if God is without a body and invisible and eternal, on
this account, it is not credible that the soul is dead because
it is not seen after it has departed from the body, since it is
certain that there exists something thinking and alive which
does not come under the sight of the eyes.
Yet, it is difficult to comprehend with the mind how it is
possible for the soul to retain knowledge (sensum) without
those parts of the body in which the function of sensing resides.
What about God? It is not easy, is it, to understand how He
lives without a body? But if they believe there are gods (and
if there are, surely, they are souls without bodies) , it is neces-
sary for human souls to subsist in the same way, since from
reason itself and prudence a certain likeness is understood to
be in man and God. Finally, that proof which Marcus Tullius
saw is strong enough. From it the eternity of the soul can be
496 LACTANTIUS

learned, because 'there is no other animal which has some

knowledge of god, and religion is almost the only thing which
distinguishes man from the beasts.'l Since this occurs in man
alone, surely, it bears witness that we effect that, we desire
that, we cherish that which is familiar to us, that which is
going to be closest. Or, when someone has considered the
nature of the other animals which the providence of the Most
High God has made abject with lowered bodies, prostrate
upon the ground, so that it might be able to be understood
from this that heaven has no purpose for them, can he not
understand that man alone of all is a celestial and god-like
animal; that his body has been lifted from the earth; that his
face is raised on high; that his upright stature seeks its origin;
and that he is one who, despising, so to speak, the lowliness
of the earth, strains toward heaven because he realizes that the
highest good is to be sought by him on high; that he is one
who is mindful of his condition by which God made him
noble, by which he looks to his Maker?2 Trismegistus very
rightly named this 'looking to' a God-gazing. 3 There is nothing
like this in the dumb animals. Since wisdom, moreover, which
is given to man alone, is nothing other than a knowledge of
God, it is clear that the soul does not die and is not dissolved,
but remains forever, because it seeks and loves God who is
everlasting, being compelled by its very nature which realizes
either whence it has arisen or where it will return.
Besides, it is no slight proof of immortality that man alone
uses the heavenly element. 4 For although nature consists of
these two elements, fire and water, which are repugnant and
inimical to each other, the one of which is ascribed to heaven
and the other to earth, the other animals, because they are
earthly and mortal, use the earthly and heavy element. Man

1 Cicero, Laws 1.8.24.

2 Again, this is the theme of Lactantius' The Workmanship of God.
3 The text-editor gives no source for this reference. The Greek is
Theoptian.
4 A return to this primitive or naive scientific basis seems like more of an
anti-climax than a clinching argument.
 BOOK SEVEN 497

alone makes use of fire, which is a light, sublime, heavenly

element. Those things, in truth, which are weighty press
toward death, and those which are light lift up toward life,
because life is in the heights, death in the depths. And as
there cannot be light without fire, so there is no life without
light. Fire, therefore, is the element of light and life. From
this it is clear that man who uses it has been allotted an im-
mortal condition, because that which causes life is familiar
to him.
Virtue, also given to man alone, is a great proof that souls
are immortal. There will not be this virtue according to nature
if the soul is extinguished. It does harm to this present life.
For that earthly life, which we lead in common with the
brutes, both seeks after pleasure whose various fruits and
charms delight it, and shuns pain whose harshness hurts the
nature of living things in their keen senses and strives to bring
them to death which dissolves life. If virtue keeps man from
those goods which are naturally sought and drives him to
undergo those which are naturally avoided, then, virtue is an
evil and inimical to nature; and he must be judged a fool who
follows it, since he harms himself by fleeing present goods and
by, likewise, seeking after evils without hope of more ample
reward. For when it should be permitted to us to enjoy the
most delightful pleasures, would we not seem lacking in sense
if we preferred to live in humility, need, contempt, and ig-
nominy; or not even to live, but to be tortured with pain and
to die, from which evils we would gain nothing more than
that whereby the foregone pleasure might be repaid? If, on the
other hand, virtue is not an evil, and acts nobly because it
despises base and vicious pleasures, and strongly because it
fears neither pain nor death to observe its duty, then, it must
be that some greater good is gained than are those which it
spurns. But, indeed, when death has been accepted, what
further good can be hoped for but eternity?
498 LACTANTIUS

Chapter 10

Let us pass on now, in turn, to those things which are re-

pugnant to virtue, so that the immortality of the soul may
be gathered also from these. All vices are temporal, for they
are put in motion for the present time. The impetus of anger
is quieted when revenge has been gained. The delight of pas-
sion is the end of the body. Either the satiety of those things
which it seeks, or the excitements of the other emotions, do
away with cupidity. After ambition has gained the honors
which it wished, it becomes weak and dies out. Likewise, the
other vices are not able to hold and endure, but they are
finished by the very fruition which they seek. Therefore, they
recede and go away. Virtue, however, is perpetual without any
interruption, nor can it depart from him who has once seized
it. For if it should have an interval, if at some time we can
be without it, then straightway will those vices return which
always fight against virtue. It has not, then, been really laid
hold of if it leaves, if it departs at any time. In fact, when it
has established a stable dwelling place for itself, it is necessary
for it to take part in every action, and it is not able to repel
vices and put them to flight unless it has fortified the heart
which it inhabits by constant settlement. This very lasting-
ness of virtue indicates that the human soul, if it has seized
virtue, endures because virtue itself is perpetual and the
human soul alone holds virtue.
Because, then, the vices are contrary to virtue, it is neces-
sary that the whole plan and reason be diverse and contrary.
Since vices are commotions and disturbances of the soul, virtue
is, on the other hand, the quietude and tranquility of the soul;
since vices are temporary and brief, virtue is perpetual and
constant and always equal to itself; since the fruits of vices,
that is, pleasures, are temporal and brief, just as vices them-
selves are, the fruit and reward of virtue, then, is everlasting;
and whereas the advantage of vices rests in the present, that of
 BOOK SEVEN 499

virtue is settled in the future. So it happens that in this life

there is no reward of virtue because virtue is still itself. And
just as when vices are finished in their act, their pleasure and
rewards follow; so when virtue is ended, its reward follows.
But virtue is never finished, except at death, because it is in
the acceptance of death even that its greatest office lies. There-
fore, the reward of virtue is after death.
Lastly, in the Tusculans, Cicero carne to realize, although
hesitatingly, however, that the highest good did not befall
man except after death. 'For the trusting soul,' he says, 'if
it so bears the affairs of life, there will be a passage to death
in which we know that there is either the highest good, or, at
any rate, no evil.'!
Death, then, does not put an end to man, but it admits him
to the reward of virtue. But he who has contaminated himself
with vices and crimes, as the same writer tells US,2 and has
served pleasure, will be condemned to pay eternal penalty
which the Sacred Writings name a second death,3 and this is
both everlasting and full of most dire tortures. And just as
two lives have been proposed to man, one of which is of the
soul, the other of the body, so have two deaths been set before
him; one pertaining to the body, through which all must
pass according to nature, and the other pertaining to the soul
which is acquired by crime, avoided by virtue. As this life is
temporal and has fixed limits because it is of the body, so, also,
death is equally temporal and has a fixed end since it happens
to the body.

Chapter 11

The time being fulfilled, then, which God has set for death,
death itself will be terminated. And because temporal death
follows temporal life, it is a consequence that souls will rise
1 Cicero, Tusculans 1.46.1 10.
2 Ibid. 1.30.72; cf. also The Republic 6.25.29.
3 Cf. Apoc. 20.6; 20.14; 21.8.
500 LACTANTIVS

again to never-ending life, since temporal death has come to

an end. Again, as the life of the soul is everlasting, in which
it receives the divine and unspeakable fruits of its immortality,
so its death must be also perpetual in which it pays the ever-
lasting punishment and infinite torments due to its sins. So
the matter rests on this condition: that those who are blessed
in this corporal and earthly life are going to be always mis-
erable, because they have already secured possession of the
goods which they preferred (which happens to those who adore
the false gods and neglect God) ; and then those who following
justice will have been wretched, and despised, and poor in
this life, and often harassed by disgraces and injuries on ac-
count of that very justice, since virtue cannot be held in any
other way, are going to be blessed forever. And, as they have
now endured evils, they will then enjoy goods. 1 This, certainly,
happens to those who, despising earthly gods and perishable
goods, follow the sublime religion of God whose goods are
everlasting, just as is He Himself who bestows them.
Do not the works of the body and soul, therefore, indicate
that the soul has no part with death? Because the body is
perishable and mortal, whatever works it performs are equally
frail. Tullius said: 'There is nothing which has been worked
by human hands which is not at some time reduced to de-
struction, either by the injury of men or by the very destroyer
of all things, old age.'2 "\'Ve see, though, that the works of the
soul are eternal. For whoever have been zealous in their con-
tempt of present things and have left memorials of their
genius and great deeds, these have, surely, sought the indelible
name of their mind and virtue. If, then, the works of the
body are mortal from the fact that it is itself mortal, it follm-vs
that the soul is clearly immortal from this, because we see that
its works are not mortal.
In the same manner, the desires of the body and soul show
that one is mortal, the other everlasting. For the body desires
1 Cf. the Beatitudes, Matt. 5.
2 Cicero, Pro Marcello 4.ll.
 BOOK SEVEN 501

nothing except what is temporal, that is, food, drink, covering,

rest, desire; and, still, it is not possible to wish for or to attain
these things themselves without the consent and the support of
the soul. The soul, however, desires many things of itself
which do not redound to the office or the profit of the body,
and they are not perishable, but eternal, for example, the
reputation of virtue, or the memory of a name. The soul also
desires, and even against the body, the worship of God which
consists in abstinence from desires and passions, patience in
pain, contempt of death. Whence it can be believed that the
soul does not die, but is dissociated from the body, because
the body without the soul can do nothing; whereas, the soul
has much and great power without the body. '!\That of the fact
that those things which are visible to the eyes and tangible to
the hand, because they can suffer external force, are not able
to be eternal; while those things which do not come into the
realm of sight or touch, but through their power and reason
and effects, are apparent only, are eternal, since they suffer
no external violence? The body, therefore, if it is mortal from
this reason, that it is subject to sight and touch equally; then,
the soul is immortal for this reason, that it can neither be
touched nor seen.

Chapter 12

Now let us refute the arguments of those who set forth con-
trary opinions. Lucretius worked them into his third book.
'Since the soul is born with the body,' he said, 'it needs must
perish with the body.'! But the plan of each is not the same;
for the body is solid and comprehensible to eye and hand,
while the soul is subtle, escaping both touch and sight. The
body is made of earth and is made solid; the soul has nothing
of the concrete in it, nothing of earthly weight, as Plato held. 2
1 Lucretius 3.417.
2 Cf. Phaedo 80 D; Phaedms 245 C IT.; also Cicero's discussion of the
same matter in Tusculans 1.23.53; The Republic 6.25.27.
502 LACTANTIUS

Nor could it have such great ability, such great power, such
great swiftness unless it drew its origin from heaven. The
body, because it is made of a weighty and corruptible element
and because it is tangible and visible, is corrupted and dies;
neither can it repel force since it comes under the power of
sight and touch. The soul, however, since it avoids all con-
tact by its subtleness, can be dissolved by no blow. There-
fore, although they are born joined and associated with one
another; and although the one, that formed from an earthly
mass, is, as it were, the vessel of the other, which is drawn from
heavenly subtleness; and when some force has severed them
both (and this severing is called death) , each returns to its
own nature, that which was of the earth is resolved into
earth; that which was of heavenly breath remains and flourishes
forever, since the divine breath or spirit is everlasting. In fact,
even the same Lucretius, forgetting what he was upholding
and what doctrine he was defending, put down these verses:
'Likewise it goes back again into the earth, that which came
from the earth before; but that which was sent from heavenly
regions, the gleaming temples of heaven again receive it back.'3
This was not for him to say who was teaching that souls
perished with bodies, but he was overcome by truth, and the
true reason stole upon him unawares. Besides, that very point
which he makes, namely, that the soul is dissolved, that is,
that it dies together with the body, since they are born at the
same time, is false, and it can be changed into the contrary.
For the body does not disintegrate at once, but at the de-
parture of the soul, it remains whole for many days; and gen-
erally, when it has been embalmed, it lasts for a very long
time. If they perished at the same time, as they are born at the
same time, the soul would not depart suddenly and leave the
body; but, at the one instant of time, they would both be
equally dissipated. Just so quickly would the body, too, melt
away and perish (the breath still remaining in it), as the
soul quickly departs; or, rather, in truth, with the body dis-
S Lucretius 2.999·1001.
 BOOK SEVEN 503

solved, the soul would disappear, just as spilled liquid vanishes

when a vase has been broken. For if the earthly and perishable
body does not immediately disintegrate and disappear into
the earth from which it has origin, then, the soul which is
not perishable remains forever, since its origin is eterna1. 4
'Because the mind increases in children and grows strong in
young men and weakens in old, it is clear that it is mortal,'5
he says. In the first place, the mind and the soul are not the
same. One is that by which we live, and the other is that by
which we think. The mind of a sleeping man sleeps, not his
soul; and in those who are mad, the mind is gone, but the
soul remains. For this reason the mad are not called lifeless,
but demented. 6 The mind, therefore, that is, the intelligence
is either increased or diminished according to age. But the
soul is always in its condition, and from the time that it re-
ceives the faculty of inspiring, it remains the same to the end,
until, let out from the cloister of the body, it flies back to its
own abode. Then, there is the fact that the soul, although it
has been inspired by God, yet, since it is enclosed in the
darkened domicile of earthly flesh, does not have knowledge
which is of divinity. It hears, therefore, and learns all things,
and by learning and hearing takes in wisdom. And old age
does not lessen wisdom, but it increases it if, however, the
early age has been passed in virtue. Even if very great old age
should overcome the members, it is not a vice of the soul, but
a weakness of the body, if sight has gone, if the tongue be-
comes inactive, if ears grow deaf.7 'But memory fails.'8 Why is
it strange if the mind is overwhelmed by the ruin of its failing
4 Cf. ibid. 3.434-450.
5 Ibid. 445,446.
6 Ordinarily, the first word is used of frightened people in the sense of
'breathless,' but here Lactantius is putting his fondness for etymologies
to play, having the word for 'soul' (anima) as the root of the one
(exanimes), the word that is used for the scared, but not the mad, who
still have souls, and he uses the word for 'mind' (mens) as the root of
that word which describes the mad (dementes), i.e., those out of their
mind.
7 Cf. Cicero, On Old Age 8.26; Lucretius 3.451,452.
8 Lucretius 3.453; d. also Cicero, On Old Age 7.21.
504 LACTANTIUS

house and forgets past events, since in no other way will it

attain divine things than by escaping from the prison in which
it is restrained?
'But, in truth,' he says, 'the same mind is revolted by pain
and grief and it becomes mad with drunkenness, whence it is
clear that it is perishable and mortal.'9 Therefore, virtue is
necessary, and so is wisdom, so that grief which is effected by
suffering and by beholding indignities may be repelled by
fortitude; and also that the pleasure, not only of drink, but of
other things also, may be overcome by abstinence. For if the
soul lacks virtue, if devoted to pleasures it grows soft, it will
become punishable by death, because virtue is, as we have
explained, the fabricator of immortality and the delight of
death. Death, however, as I have indicated, does not com-
pletely bring to an end and destroy, but it afflicts with eternal
punishments. The soul is not able to perish straightway, be-
cause it has taken origin from the breath of God which is
eternal.
'The soul also feels the sickness of the body, and suffers
forgetfulness of itself, and as it becomes sick, so it is also often
healed,' says Lucretius. 10 This is the reason, therefore, why
virtue should be especially worked after, lest by any pain of
the body, the mind, not the soul, be broken and suffer forget-
fulness of itself. Because this exists in a certain region of the
bodyll when some force of sickness has vitiated this part, it
is moved from its place and, with its abode as though shaken,
it wanders out, to return, certainly, when health and sanity
have refashioned its dwelling place. For, since the soul is
joined with the body, if it lacks virtue, contact with it weakens
and sickness from the association of weakness redounds to the
mind. But when it is dissociated from the body, it will be
strong of itself, nor will it be tried by any condition of weak-
ness because it has cast off its fragile garment.

9 Lucretius 3.459-46l.
10 Ibid. 3.472.
11 Cf. Lucretius 3.486-522; 610-620.
 BOOK SEVEN 505

'Just as an eye dug out and separated from a body is able to

see nothing, so the separated soul feels nothing, since it is
itself part of the body.'12 This is a false and unlikely statement.
The soul is not part of the body, but it is in the body. Just
as that which is contained in a vessel is not part of the vessel,
and as those things which are in the house are not said to be
parts of the house, so neither is the soul part of the body,
since the body is the vessel or the receptacle of the soul.
But that argument is much more inane which says that the
soul seems to be mortal because it is not very quickly dis-
missed from the body, but it will disentangle itself from all
the members of the body little by little, beginning from the
bottom of the feet.13 Just as though it would be eternal if it
should burst forth in one single moment, which happens in
the case of those who die by the sword. Those, however, who
die from sickness breathe forth their spirit gradually, over a
long time, so that the soul 'is blown forth' as the limbs stiffen
and become cold. Since this material of the blood is contained
just as oil in a lamp, it is necessary for that material to be
consumed by the heat of fevers and the extremities of the
members to stiffen with cold, because the poorer veins are
directed to the extremities of the body, and the extreme and
slenderer streams dry up when the source-vein fails. It must
not be thought, however, that, because the sense of the body
fails, the sense of the soul is extinguished and dies. For it is
not the soul which becomes brutish when the body fails, but
the body becomes brutish when the soul departs, because it
draws all sense with it.
When the soul here and now bestows sense on the body
and brings it about that it lives, it is not possible that it
should itself not be living and sensing of itself, since it itself
is sense and life. Listen to this Lucretianism: 'But if our mind
were immortal, it would not complain so at being dissolved
in death, but it would rejoice rather to go out and leave its
12 Ibid. 3.548,549.
13 Cf. ibid. 3.526-547.
506 LACTANTIUS

garment (of the body) behind, as a snake.'14 Indeed, I have

never seen anyone who complained at being dissolved in
death, but perhaps that one had heard and seen some Epicur-
ean philosophizing, even while he was dying, and discoursing
on his dissolution even with his last breath. How can it be
known whether one feels that he is being dissolved or liberated
from the body, since the tongue becomes mute at the end?
For while he can feel and speak, he is not yet dissolved; when
he has been dissolved, he can no longer feel nor speak. Thus,
to complain about the dissolution he is not yet able, or he
is no longer able. 'But before he is dissolved, he knows that
he will be dissolved.' "What of the fact that we see most of those
who die, not complaining that they are being dissolved, as
he says, but testifying that they are going out, departing, ad-
vancing, and they signify this either by gesture, or if they are
still able, they declare it with their voice? ·Whence it is clear
that, not a dissolution takes place, but a separation, which
shows that the soul endures.
The other arguments of Epicurean teaching are repugnant
to Pythagoras discoursing on how souls migrate from bodies
worn out with age and death and get into new ones and re-
cently born bodies; and how the same souls are ever being
reborn now in man, now in cattle, now in beast, and now in
bird; and that in this way they are immortal, because they
often change their abodes of various and dissimilar bodies.
This notion of a crazy man, since it was ridiculous and more
worthy of the mime than the school, ought not even be re-
futed seriously. One who does so seems to fear that someone
might believe that. Therefore, those arguments which were
put forward as false against false ones ought to be passed
over by us. It is enough to have refuted those which were made
against the truth.

14 Ibid. 3.612 . 614.

 BOOK SEVEN 507

Chapter 13

I have made clear, as I believe, that the soul is not soluble.

It remains to cite witnesses on whose authority the arguments
may be confirmed. Still, I will not now call the prophets to
witness, for the whole point of their prophecies and foretell-
ings rests in this alone, that they may show that man was
created for the worship of God and for receiving immortality
from Him. Rather, I will summon those witnesses who do not
accept the necessity of believing the truth.
Hermes, describing the nature of man, in order to show how
he was made by God stated this: 'And this same thing, con-
sisting of both natures, the immortal and the mortal, he made
the one nature of man; making the same one somehow im-
mortal, somehow mortal; and bearing this one situated in the
midst of the divine and immortal nature and the changeable
mortal one, so that seeing all things he may marvel at them.'l
But perhaps someone may reckon this one in the number of
philosophers (although carried back among the gods he is
honored by the Egyptians with the name of Mercury), and
not attribute any more honor to him than to Plato or Pythag-
oras. Let us seek for greater testimony, therefore.
A certain Polites2 consulted the Apollo of the Milesians
about whether the soul remains after death or is dissolved, and
the response came in these verses: 'The soul, then, as far as it
exercises power over the body by its connection, knowing all
deadly things by the experience of its mortality, feels pain,
whenever it finds itself separated from the mortal element;
when the body dies, it is forthwith borne to the air above;
being ever ageless, it is altogether apart. The divine fore-
knowledge of the First-born established this.'3
1 Hermes Trismegistus, p. 45 b. (Patricius); cf. Pseudo-Apuleius Asclepius
C. 31 and c. 8; cf. also Sedulius (Montefalconius, Paeleographi Graeci,
p.246).
2 A son of Priam. Cf. Vergil, Aeneid 2.526; 5.564.
3 Cf. G. Wolffius, Porphyrii de philosophia ex oraculis haurienda
librorum reliquiae p. 177; cf. also Sedulius, as given above, n. 1.
508 LACTANTIUS

What else? Do not the Sibylline verses show that this is

so when they declare that at some time there will take place
a judgment of the living and the dead by God? We will give
examples of these a little later.
The opinion of Democritus and Epicurus and Dicaearchus
about the dissolution of the soul is false then. These, certainly,
would not dare discuss the end of souls in the presence of
some magician who might know how to call souls from the
world below with certain songs or incantations. He would
have them come forth and present themselves to human eyes
to be seen, and he would have them speak and. predict the
future. So if those men should dare to advance their opinion
on dissolution, they would be conquered by the thing itself
and present proof. But, because they did see through to the
planning and work of the soul, which is so subtle that it escapes
the survey of the human mind, they said that it perished.
What of Aristoxemus who denied that there is any soul at
all, even while it lives in the body?4 Just as in lyres a pleasing
sound and melody is effected by a straining of the strings
which musicians call harmony, so in bodies the power of
sensing comes to be from the union of the inward parts and
the strength of the members. Nothing can be more foolish
than this. Truly, that one had unimpaired eyes, but a blind
heart, with which he did not 'see' that he was living and had
a mind whereby he had thought that out. But this generally
happens to philosophers, that they think whatever does not
appear to the eyes does not exist at all, although the sight of
the mind ought to be much clearer than that of the body for
perceiving those things whose power and reason or plan are
felt rather than seen.

Chapter 14

Since we have spoken about the immortality of the soul,

4 Cf. Cicero, Tusculans l.lO.l9; 22.51.

 BOOK SEVEN 509

it follows that we should show how far and when it is granted

to man, so that in this also they may perceive the errors of
their folly and wickedness who hold that the gods are mortals
made by the decrees and wish of mortals, either because they
had come upon arts, or because they had taught the use of
certain fruits, or because they had discovered things useful
for the life of men, or because they had destroyed wild and
dangerous beasts. How far removed from immortality these
meritorious deeds are I have showed in the former books and
I will show now, so that it may be clear, that only justice
brings forth eternal life for man, and that it is God alone who
bestows the reward of eternal life.
Those who are said to have become immortal by their own
merits, although there was neither justice nor any true virtue
in them, did not seek immortality for themselves, but death,
by their sins and desires; nor did they merit heavenly reward
but infernal punishments which will last together with all
those who have worshiped them. I will show that the time
of this judgment is approaching; that both a worthy reward
be paid to the just, and meet punishment exacted from the
wicked. Plato, and many others of the philosophers, although
they were ignorant of the origin of things and of that supreme
time when the world was made, said that many thousands of
ages had gone by from which this most beautiful ornamenta-
tion of the world has come to be. They were following the
Chaldaeans perhaps who, as Cicero relates in his first book On
Divination, madly claim that they have four hundred seventy
thousand years comprehended in records and monuments'!
Because they thought they could not be refuted in this, they
believed they were free to lie. \l\Te, however, whom the Sacred
Writings instruct unto a knowledge of the truth, know the
beginning and the end of the world. Now, at the end of this
work, we will discuss the latter, since we treated the beginning
of the world in the second book. Let the philosophers, there-
fore, who enumerate thousands of years from the beginning
I Cf. Cicero, On Divination 1.19.36.
510 LACTANTIUS

of the world, know that the six thousandth year has not yet
been concluded. When this number has been completed, it is
necessary that the consummation take place and the condition
of human affairs be changed for the better. 2 First, we must
make known the proof of this, in which the reason may shine
clearly forth.
God completed the world and this admirable work of the
nature of things in the space of six days, as the story is con-
tained in the secrets of Sacred Scripture, and the seventh day,
on which He rested from His labors, He sanctified. This, how-
ever, is the Sabbath Day, which in Hebrew took its name from
the number, whence the sevenfold number is legitimate and
full. 3 For there are the seven days through the revolutions of
which, in turn, the cycles of the years are completed; and there
are seven stars which do not fall; and seven constellations
which are called wandering whose disparate courses and un-
equal movements are believed to effect the changes of things
and varieties of seasons. Therefore, since all the works of God
were completed in six days, it is necessary that the world
remain in this state for six ages, that is, for six thousand years.
The great day of God is terminated by the circle of a thousand
years, as the prophet indicates who says: 'In thine eyes, 0 Lord,
a thousand years are as one day.'4 And as God labored six
days in building such great works, so His religion and the
truth must labor during these six thousand years, while malice
prevails and dominates. And again, since He rested on the
seventh day from His completed labors and blessed that day,
so it is necessary that, at the end of the six thousandth year,
all evil be abolished from the earth, and that justice reign
for a thousand years, and that there be tranquility and rest
from the labors which the world is now enduring for so long.
To what extent this may come about I will explain by its
2 It is unnecessary to comment on Lactantius' erroneous notions on this
point. The beliefs, however, were prevalent in his age.
3 Cf. Irenaeus, Against A II Heresies 5.28.3; 33.2. Cf. also Aulus Gellius
3.10.
4 Cf. Ps. 89 (90).4.
 BOOK SEVEN IHI

own order. Often we have said that lesser and slight things
are figures and fore showings of great things, so that this day
of ours, which is marked by the rising and the setting of the
sun, bears the likeness of the great day which the passage of
a thousand years determines. In the same manner also, the
figure of the earthly man anticipates that fiction of the
heavenly man which is to follow. For just as God made man
himself last on the sixth day, after He had completed all the
things which He fashioned for man's use and, then, led him
into this world as into a carefully prepared house, so now
on this great sixth day, a true man is made by the word of
God, that is, a holy people is fashioned unto justice by doctrine
and the precepts of God. And just as then, he was made mortal
and imperfect from the earth, so that he might live a thousand
years in this world; so now, a perfect man is made from this
earthly age, so that having been vivified by God he might
exercise mastery in this same world for a thousand years. How
this consummation is going to take place and what sort of end
impends for human affairs, one will find out if he examines
the Sacred Scriptures.
The voices of secular prophets agreeing with heavenly
ones announce the end and setting of things after a short
time, describing the extreme old age, as it were, of a tired and
tottering world. 5 The things which both prophets and seers say
are going to happen before the final conclusion comes upon us,
I will add here, having gathered them from all sources and
put them together.

Chapter 15

In the secrets of the Sacred Scriptures, we find that a leader

of the Hebrews crossed over into Egypt with all his household
and kinsmen because a lack of grain supply was pressing him
on. When his posterity, having stayed too long in Egypt, had

5 Cf. Lucretius 2.1144 if.

512 LACTANTIUS

increased unto a mighty people, and since they were being

oppressed by the heavy and intolerable yoke of servitude, God
struck Egypt with an incurable plague and set His people
free by leading them across the middle of the sea, where they
could walk dryshod because He separated the waves and
moved them to either side. The king of the Egyptians, trying
to follow the escaping Hebrews, was cut off with all his forces
as the sea returned to its normal state. This deed, so clear
and so wonderful, though it showed the actual and present
power of God to men, was, however, a pre-signification and
figure of a greater thing which the same God is going to do
at the final consummation of time. For He will free His people
from the heavy servitude of the world. But because, then,
there was one people of God, and that people dwelt within
one nation, Egypt alone was struck. Now, however, since the
people of God have been congregated from all tongues and
live among all nations and are being oppressed by all these
masters, it is necessary that all nations, that is, the whole
world, be smitten with plagues directed from heaven, so that
the just people, worshiping God, may be liberated. And as
then, signs were made by which their future disaster was
shown to the Egyptians, so, at the last, there will occur strange
prodigies throughout all the elements of the world, by which
the imminent end may be known to all peoples.
As the end of this age is drawing near, therefore, it is neces-
sary that the state of human affairs be changed and fall to a
worse one, evil growing stronger, so that these present times
of ours, in which iniquity and malice have advanced to a very
high peak, can be judged, however, happy and almost golden
in comparison with that irremediable evil. Thus, then, justice
will become rare; so will impiety and avarice and cupidity
and passion increase, so that if there will be any good ones
then by chance, they may become the prey of the wicked, and
be harassed on all sides by the unjust. And the evil alone will
be the opulent, for the good are to be thrown about in all
disgraces and in want. All justice will be confounded and laws
will perish. Then, each one will have nothing, unless it be to
 BOOK SEVEN 513

be sought or defended with his hands; daring and violence will

get hold of all things. There will be no faith in men, no
peace, no humanity, no shame, no truth, and so neither will
there be security nor control, nor any rest from evil. Every
land will be upset; wars will press everywhere; all nations will
be in arms and will fight with each other; neighboring states
will go to battle one with the other. Egypt, first of all, the fool-
ishly superstitious, will pay the penalty and will be covered
with blood as with a river. 1 Then, the sword will plough
through the whole world, moving everywhere, and cutting
down all as though reaping a harvest. 2
This will be the cause of the destruction and confusion,
that the Roman name, by which the world is now ruled-the
mind shudders to say it, but I will say it, because it is going
to be-will be taken from the earth, and power will be re-
turned to Asia, and again the Orient will dominate and the
West will serve. s It should not seem strange to anyone, if a
kingdom founded by such great effort and increased over so
long a time and through the efforts of so many and such men,
and confirmed at length by such great wealth, should at some
time fall to ruin. There is nothing done by human strength
which cannot equally be destroyed by human strength, since
the works of mortal men are mortal. So also other kingdoms
before, although they had flourished for a very long time,
nevertheless, fell. For it has been handed down that the
Egyptians and Persians and Greeks and Assyrians held control
of the earth. When all these had been destroyed, the supreme
control came to the Romans also. The more these stand out
against all the other kingdoms in greatness, so much the greater
will be their fall, for those things which are higher than others
have more weight to bring to ruin.4
Not unsoundly did Seneca distribute the times of the Roman

1 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 5.54 ff.; 77-85; 180.

2 Cf. ibid. 3.316,317.
3 Cf. ibid. Cf. Toynbee's warning about the crisis of the present in A
Study of History, V, C (Vol. VI) pp. 298 If.; IX, n (Vol. VIII) pp. 126
II.; and especially V, C (Vol. V) pp. 152 if.
4 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 3.159-161; 8,6 If.
514 LACTANTIUS

city into ages: 'The first was infancy, under King Romulus,
by whom Rome was begotten, and brought up, as it were.
Then came childhood, under the other kings, by whom she
was increased and trained in many disciplines and institutions.
But, when under the rule of Tarquin, she had already begun
to grow up, so to speak, she did not bear the servitude, and,
throwing off the yoke of proud domination, she preferred to
obey laws rather than kings. And when the end of the Punic
war came with that of her adolescence, then, finally with
established strength, she began to flourish.'5 When Carthage
was removed, which for so long had been Rome's rival for
empire, she stretched forth her hands toward the whole world
on land and sea, until, with all kings and nations subjugated
to her dominion, when material of wars began now to fail, she
used her own strength and resources badly, and with these
she exhausted herself.6 This was her first old age, when, torn
with civil wars and oppressed with intestinal evil, she fell back
upon rule by a single command, as though she had been
revolved to another infancy. For when the liberty was lost
which she had defended under the leadership and authority
of Brutus, she grew so old that she was, as it were, not able
to support herself without leaning upon the prop of those
ruling.
If this is so, what remains except for death to follow old
age? The speeches of the prophets tell that this will happen in
a short while, but they use the circumlocution of other names,
lest they be understood too easily. The Sibyls, however, say
openly that Rome will come to an end and, indeed, 'by a
judgment of God,' because she has held His name 'hateful'
and has been inimical to justice and has put to torture the
cherished people of the truth. 7 Hystaspes also, who was a very
ancient king of the Medes, from whom the river which is now

5 Seneca, frg. 99.

6 Either Seneca or Lactantius has closely followed Sallust here; cf. his
Catiline c. 10.
7 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 8.9-159; 165; 171-173.
 BOOK SEVEN 515

called Hydaspes took its name,s handed down to his posterity

as worth remembering an admirable dream which contained
the interpretation of a prophesying child, 'that the Roman
Empire and name would be taken from the world.' And he
foretold this much before the Trojan race was founded.

Chapter 16

Now how this is going to take place, lest anyone believe it

impossible, I will show. In the first place, the dominion will
be multiplied, and the highest power of all states, cut up and
scattered among many functionaries, will be lessened. Then,
civil discords will be sown perpetually, nor will there be any
rest from deadly wars, until ten kings rise up on an equal basis
who will share the world-not for ruling it, but for consuming
it. These, having increased their armies to an immense size by
leaving the fields destitute of tillers, which is the beginning
of an overthrow and disaster, will lose everything, and will
break up and destroy, and will greedily devour. Then sudden-
ly, there will rise up against them a very powerful enemy from
the farthest regions of the North who, destroying three tribes
of that number which will then hold Asia, will be taken into
alliance by the others and will be set up as chief of all of them.
This one will pillage the earth with insupportable domina-
tion; he will mingle the divine and human; he will contrive
execrable things, wicked to mention; he will stir up in his
breast new plans so that he may establish for himself a proper
empire, change the laws and sanction his own; he will con-
taminate, plunder, despoil, kill. Finally, changing his name
and transferring the seat of empire, he will bring about the
confusion and disturbance of the human race. 1
That, in truth, will be an abominable and detestable time,
8 Isidore, Origines 13.21.12.
1 Cf. Dan. 7.2 fr.
516 LACTANTIUS

when life will be pleasant for no man. Cities shall be torn up

from their foundations, and men will perish, not only by fire
and sword, but also by the constant earthquakes and floods,
frequent sicknesses, and prevailing hunger. 2 The air will be
vitiated and become corrupt and pestilential; now from un-
seasonable rains, again from unusual dryness. At one time it
will be too hot, at another too cold. Nor will the earth give
any profit to man: no plant, no tree, no vine will bear any-
thing, and although they will have given very great hope in
flower, they will deceive in fruit. 3 The springs also, along with
rivers, will grow dry, so that there will not even be a supply
of drinking water on hand, and the waters will be changed
into blood or bitterness. On account of this, the animals on
the land will fail and so will the birds in the aIr and the fish
in the sea_ 4 Then, too, strange prodigies in the sky will con-
found the minds of men with the greatest terror: the tails of
comets, the eclipses of the sun, the color of the moon, and
the faIlings of stars. 5 These things, however, will not happen in
their customary manner, but there will suddenly arise un-
known stars and those not seen by the eyes. The sun will be
perpetually blackened, so that there will be scarcely any dis-
tinction between day and night. The moon will not then
wane in three hours, but will make extraordinary meanderings
and will be overspread with ever-present blood, so that a man
may not readily recognize either the course of the stars or the
pattern of the seasons, because summer may be in winter or
winter in summer.6 Then, the year will be shortened and the
month lessened and the day reduced to a narrow compass. Very
many stars will fall so that the whole sky will appear black,
darkened, without any lights. 7 The highest mountains will also
fall and be leveled with the plains; an unnavigable sea will

2 For this section d. Apoc. 6.

3 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 8.178-181.
4 Cf. ibid. 8.342-344.
5 Cf. ibid. 8.190-194; 341; also Matt. 24.29.
6 Cf. ibid. 8.214 f.
7 Cf. ibid. 5.531; 8.204.
 BOOK SEVEN 517

be set up.s And lest anything be lacking to the evils of men and
of the earth, the trumpet from heaven will be heard, which the
Sibyl announces in this manner: 'The heavenly trumpet will
blow its sound of many notes.'U And so all will tremble and
will shudder for fear at that dreadful sound.
Then, in very truth, through the wrath of God against men
who have not known justice, there will rage the sword, fire,
sickness, famine, and fear always hanging over everything.
They will pray God at that time, and He will not listen; death
will be desired, and it will not come. Not even night will give
rest to fear, nor will sleep come to their eyes; but worry and
wakefulness will wear the minds of men; they will weep and
groan and grind their teeth; they will congratulate the dead
and mourn the living. 10 From these and many other evils
solitude will come upon the earth and the world will be
deformed and deserted. This is given in the Sibylline verses
thus: 'The world will be un-world ed, unpeopled of men."ll
For the human race will be so exhausted that scarcely a
tenth part of the population will be left; and, when a
thousand years have gone by, there will be barely a hundred
men. Even of the worshipers of God two parts will perish, and
the third, which will have been approved, will remain.12

Chapter 17

I will explain more fully how this will come about. Now,
when the end of these times is imminent, a great prophet will
be sent by God to convert men to a recognition of God, and he
will have the power of working miracles. 'Wherever men will
not hear him, he will close heaven and will hold back the rains;
he will change water into blood and will torture them with
8 Cf. ibid. 8.234-237.
9 Sibylline Oracles 8.239.
10 Cf. ibid. 8.352-356; 2.306-311; also Apoc. 9.6.
11 Sibylline Oracles 7.123.
12 Cf. ibid. 3.544; also Apoc. 9.15,18.
518 LACTANTIUS

thirst and hunger; and fire will proceed from his mouth and
burn whoever will attempt to hurt him. By these prodigies
and powers, he will convert many to the worship of God. \\Then
these works of his have been carried out, another king will
rise from Syria, born of the evil spirit, the overthrower and
destroyer of the human race, who will destroy the remains of
that previous evil one together with itself.1
This one will fight against the prophet of God; he will
conquer and kill him and suffer him to lie unburied. But
after the third day, he will rise again and will be taken into
heaven while all look on and marvel. That king, indeed, will
be most offensive and will himself, but as the prophet of liars,
set himself up as and call himself a god. He will order himself
to be worshiped as the son of God. And there will be given
to him power, so that he may do signs and wonders with the
sight of which he may ensnare men to adore him. He will
order fire to descend from heaven, and the sun to stand still
in its course, and a statue to speak; and these things will be
done at his word. By these miracles even many of the wise will
be attracted to him.2 Then, he will try to overturn the temple
of God, and he will persecute the just people, and there will
be pressure and contrition such as there never has been from
the beginning of the world. 3 Those who believe and come to
him will be branded by him as though cattle; those who
reject his mark will either flee into the mountains, or they will
be seized and killed by well-contrived tortures. 4 He will pile
the books of the prophets upon the just and thus he will burn
them.
And it will be given to him to make the earth desolate
in forty-two months. That will be the time in which justice
will be cast forth and innocence will be held in hatred, when
the evil will hostilely ravage the good. No law or order or
military discipline will be observed; no one will reverence gray
1 Cf. Apoc. 11.3,5-9,11.
2 Cf. Matt. 24.11,24.
3 Cf. Matt. 24.21.
4 Cf. Apoc. 13.4·8; 12-17; also 2 Thess. 2.3 f.
 BOOK SEVEN 519

hairs; men will not recognize the duty of piety; nor will they
show mercy to sex or infancy; all things will be confounded
and mixed up against the right, against the law of nature. So,
in one common game of freebooting, as it were, the whole
world will be destroyed.
When these things take place, then, the just and the fol-
lowers of truth will separate themselves from the evil and will
flee into the deserts. Upon hearing of this the impious one,
inflamed with wrath, will come with a great army and, with
all the troops he has summoned, he will surround the moun-
tain in which the just are staying in order to seize them. 5 And
when they see themselves surrounded and besieged on all sides,
they will cry out to God with a loud voice and will beg
heavenly aid. God will hear them and will send a great king
from heaven who will save them, and set them free, and
destroy all the impious with fir~ and sword.

Chapter 18

That these things would thus come to be, both all the
prophets of the Spirit of God and also those seers with the
inspiration of demons have foretold. That Hystaspes whom
I mentioned above,! when he had described the evil of the
end of this world, said that the just and the faithful ones,
separated from the wicked, would stretch their hands to heaven
and with mourning and weeping would implore the faith of
Jupiter, and that Jupiter would look down to earth and hear-
ing the prayers of men would wipe out the evil ones. All of
this rings true, except for the one point, that he said Jupiter
would do those things which God will do. But that point also
was withdrawn-not without the deceit of the demons-that
the Son of God would be sent then by His Father to set free
5 cr. Reb. 11.38; Matt. 24.16; Apoc. 6.15.
1 Ch. 15, n. 8.
520 LACTANTIUS

the just by destroying all evils. Hermes did not dissimulate this.
For in that book which is inscribed The Perfect Work (Logos
Teleios), after an enumeration of the evils of which we have
been speaking, he added these words: 'When these things thus
came to pass, 0 Asclepius, then the Lord and Father and God
and Designer, the First and One God, looking upon such
things as had come to pass by His will, and setting that which
was good against that which was in disorder, and calling back
that which was straying, and cleansing that which was evil,
dissolving it now with much water, now consuming it with
swiftest fire, at times wiping it out by wars and by pestilences,
reinstated His world and brought it to its former state.'2
The Sibyls also show that it will not be otherwise than that
the Son of God will be sent by the Father Most High to
liberate the just from the hands of the wicked and to put an
end to the unjust with their raging tyrants. Of these one Sibyl
speaks in this manner: 'And that lucky one will come desiring
to sack the city. And then some king sent from God to his
own will destroy the great kings and the best among mortals.
Oh, and this judgment will be of an unchanging nature for
menI'S
Another Sibyl says: 'And then God will send a king from the
East who will stop the whole world from evil war.'4 And still
a third Sibyl made this foretelling: 'Behold he will come mild
and gentle in order to lift up the intolerable yoke of our
slavery which was imposed upon our necks and he will break
the unholy laws and harsh chains.'5

Chapter 19

Therefore, when the earth has been oppressed and when

2 Hermes, p. 51a (Patricius); d. Pseudo·Apuleius AsclePius c. 26; d. also
Sedulius p. 247.
3 Sibylline Oracles 5.107·110.
4 Ibid. 3.652,653.
5 Ibid. 8.326-328.
 BOOK SEVEN 521

human resources have failed to destroy the tyranny of im-

mense powers, inasmuch as there will be a settling down, when
the world is captured with great forces of robbers, that disaster,
so great, will need divine help. God, then, moved by the un-
certain peril and by the pitiable praying of the just, will send
forthwith a liberator. Then, the middle of the heavens will
be opened, though the night be stormy and dark, so that the
light of the descending God might shine as a flame in the
whole world. 1 The Sibyl spoke of this in these verses: 'When
he shall come, there will be brilliant fire in the midst of
darksome night.'2
This is the night which is celebrated by us with a vigil on
account of the coming of the King, our God. The plan of this
night is twofold because in it, on the other hand, He received
life when He suffered; and then, afterwards, He is to receive
the kingdom of the world. 3 For He is Liberator and Judge
and Avenger and King and God, whom we call Christ, who
will give this sign before He descends. Suddenly, a sword will
fall from the heavens so that the just may know that the
Leader of the holy warfare is about to descend, and He will
come down in the company of angels to the middle of the
earth. There will come before Him an inextinguishable flame,
and the power of angels will draw into bands that multitude
of just souls which have surrounded the mountain. Then,
there will be slaughter from the third hour until evening, and
blood will flow in the manner of a torrent. And after all his
forces have been destroyed, that impious one alone will flee,
and his power will perish from him.
Now this is the one who is called Antichrist, but he wil1lie
that he is the Christ and will struggle against the truth. Con-
quered, he will flee, but often he will renew the war, and often
he will be conquered again until, in the fourth battle, by the
destruction of all his troops rendered unfit for war and finally
captured, he will pay the penalty of his crimes.
1 Cf. Matt. 24.27; for this entire section cf. Apoc. 19.11-2l.
2 Sibylline Oracles frg. 3.
3 Cf. Isidore, Origines 6.17.12.
522 LACTANTIUS

The other chiefs and tyrants who have trodden upon the
world will be led along with him, bound, to the King, and
He will accuse them and convict them and reprove them for
their deeds, and He will condemn them and give them over
to the tortures they have merited.
So, when malice has been wiped out and impiety checked,
the world which, subjected to error and crime for so many
ages, has endured shameful servitude will be at rest. Those
gods made by hand will not be worshiped any longer; but
torn down from their temples and shrines, the images will be
given to the fire, and they will burn with their wonderful
gifts. Even the Sibyl, agreeing with the prophets, foretold that
this would come to be. 'Men will tear down the idols and all
their riches.'4 The Erythraean Sibyl also made the same pro-
nouncement: 'The works and images of the gods made by
hand will be burned.'5

Chapter 20

After these things, the lower regions will be opened up and

the dead will rise, on whom the same King and God Himself
will pass a great judgment, for the Father Most High will give
to Him the greatest power of judging and ruling. We find this
pronouncement on this judgment and reign in the Erythraean
Sibyl'S verses: 'When, therefore, this day shall have received its
fatal end, then, there will come upon men the judgment of the
immortal God; there will come upon men great judgment and
power.'l
Then, in another we find: 'Chaos then shall show Tartarus;
then the earth will gape open, and all will come before the
tribunal of their God and King.'2 And in another part of the
same Sibyl's prophecy: 'I will roll back heaven and 1 will open
4 Sibylline Oracles 8.224.
5 Ibid. 3.618.
I Sibylline Oracles 3.741-743; cf. Apoc. 20.4,5.
2 Ibid. 8.241,242.
 BOOK SEVEN 523
the depths of the earth, and then I will make the dead to
rise again, resolving fate and the stings of death; and after-
wards I will bring them to judgment, judging the lives of
both the godly and the ungodly meno's
Not all, however, will be judged, then, by God, but those
only who have been engaged in the religion of God. For those
who do not know God, because sentence on them cannot be
brought unto absolution, are already judged and condemned;
the holy writings giving this testimony: 'The unjust shall not
rise again unto judgmento'4 Those who have known God,
therefore, will be judged, and their deeds, that is, their evil
works, will be weighed in the balance with their good works,
so that, if the good and just works are more numerous and
heavier, they will be given that blessed life; but, if the evil
deeds outweigh the good, they will be condemned to punish-
ment.
Here, perhaps, someone will say: 'If the soul is immortal,
how is it set down as passible and an experiencer of punish-
ment? If it is punished on account of its deserts, it will surely
feel pain, and so death also. If it is not subject to death, then
it is not subject to pain either: therefore, it is not passible.'
This question or argument is thus met by the Stoics. The souls
of men, as a matter of fact, do endure, nor are they reduced
to annihilation by the intervention of death. Now the souls
of those who have been just return pure, and impassible, and
happy, to that celestial abode whence they have come, or
they are drawn into certain blissful regions where they may
enjoy marvelous delights. The impious, however, because they
have been defiled with evil desires, tread a certain middle
course between immortal and mortal nature. These have some-
thing of weakness or perishableness from the contagion of the
flesh, being addicted to the desires and passions of which they
drag a certain indelible alloy and earthly stain with them.
Since this adheres deeply with the lastingness of time, souls of

3 Ibid. 413 ff.

4 Ps. 1.5, LXX.
524 LACTANTIUS

this nature are restored (for punishment) , so that if they are

not extinguishable completely since they are of God, yet they
become subject to suffering because of the stain of the body,
which having been seared by sins, adds the sense of pain.
The poet expressed this idea in this manner:
Nay, when their life has left with the last light of day,
however, not all the evil goes; nor do all bodily evils
completely leave the wretched creatures. And it is neces-
sary that many deeds piled up over a long time should
get deeply rooted in them in strange ways. Therefore, they
are exercised in sufferings and the punishments of old
evils hang over them. 5
These lines are very nearly true. For when the soul has made
its departure from the body, it is, as the same poet says, 'like
gentle winds and very much like a swift dream.'6
This is because it is a spirit and incomprehensible by its
very lightness, but only to us because we are corporal; to God,
however, to whom everything is subject, it is comprehensible.

Chapter 21

In the first place, then, we say that the power of God is so

great that it comprehends even incorporal substances and
affects them as He wishes. The angels also fear God since they
can be chastised by Him in a certain indescribable manner,
and the demons are in dread because they are tortured and
punished by Him. Why, then, is it strange if our souls, al-
though they are immortal, should, nevertheless, be subject to
punishment by God? Since they have nothing solid and touch-
able in them, they can suffer no force on the part of solid and
corporal beings. But because they live in spirit only, they are
tractable by God alone whose power and substance is spiritual.
Still, the holy books show us how the unjust are going to

5 Vergil, Aeneid 6.735-738.

6 Ibid. 702.
 BOOK SEVEN 525

pay their penalties. Because they have committed sins with

their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh so that they
may bear the sin-suffering in bodies. Yet, it will not be that
flesh which God added to man, but very similar to this earthly
flesh, and yet insoluble and lasting forever, in order that it
may pay the penalty by tortures and by everlasting fire, the
nature of which is different from that fire of ours, which we
use for the necessities of life, and which is extinguished unless
it be fed by a spark of some kindling material. That divine
fire, on the other hand, lives forever of itself and keeps strong
without any nutriment; nor does it have any mixture of fumes,
but is pure and clear and fluid in the manner of water. For it
is not driven in an upward direction by some force, as ours is,
but the defect of the earthly body by which it is held and the
inter-mingled smoke force it to leap about and fiy upwards
toward the sky with jumpy movement. The same divine fire
with one and the same force and power will cremate and re-
create the impious, and as much as it takes away from their
bodies it will replace and will supply for itself eternal food.
The poets transferred this quality to the vulture of Tityos.l
Thus, without any loss of ever-replenishing body-supply, it
will keep burning and afflict with a sense of pain.
The just also, however, when God will judge them, will be
tried by Him with fire. Then, those whose sins shall warrant
it, either by their weight or number, will be scorched with fire
and burned. And when the fullness of their justice and ma-
turity of virtue has been boiled free of dross, they will not
feel the fire, for they have something of God in them which
may, then, repel and ward off the power of the flame. So great
is the power of innocence that that fire shrinks from it without
doing harm, because it has received this power from God to
burn the impious, and to refresh the just.2
I Tityos, the giant-son of Jupiter was slain by Apollo for his attempt on
the chastity of Latona. As he lay, in the lower regions stretched out
over a space of nine jugera, a vulture kept feeding on his liver which
was constantly reproduced. Cf. Lucretius 3.992 If.; Vergil, Aeneid
6.595; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.457.
2 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 2.253-255; 8.410,411.
526 LACTANTIUS

Neither should anyone think that souls are judged im-

mediately after death. 3 All are detained in one common cus-
tody, until the time will come when the Great Judge is to
hold examination of merits. Then, those whose justice will be
approved will receive the reward of immortality. Those whose
sins and crimes will be revealed will not rise again, but will be
buried with the impious in that same darkness, destined for
certain punishments.

Chapter 22

Certain people think that these are figments of poetic

imaginations, not knowing from where the poets took them,
and they say that it is not possible for these things to happen.
It is not strange that it seems so to them. The case is different
from what is related by the poets. Though these are much
more ancient than the historians and orators and other kinds
of writers, still, because they were ignorant of the mystery of
the divine dispensation, and because mention of the future
resurrection had come to them from some obscure rumor, they
published what they had heard rashly and lightly in the style
of an imaginary fable. They themselves even testified that they
were not following a sure authority, but opinion; Maro, for
instance, said, 'It is all right for me to tell what I have heard.'l
Although the secrets of truth have been corrupted, then, in
part, the matter itself, however, is found to be more true
because of the fact that the poets agree in part with the
prophets, which is enough for us for proof of the thing. Some
reason, though, underlies their error. For although the proph-
ets in constant pronouncements declared that the Son of God
would judge concerning the dead, and although this pro-
nouncement was not a hidden one, because they (the poets)
thought that the God-Ruler of the heavens was none other
3 It seems unnecessary to comment on the obvious errors in Lactantius'
theology. Cf. the General Introduction.
TVergil, Aeneid 6.266.
 BOOK SEVEN 527

than Jupiter, they handed down that the Son of Jupiter

presided in judgment over the lower regions. They did not
select, however, Apollo or Liber or Mercury, who are re-
garded as heavenly dwellers (of Olympus), but Minos or
Aeacus or Rhadamanthus; someone who was both a mortal
and just.2 With poetic license, therefore, they corrupted what
they had heard, or opinion changed the truth, scattered abroad
on different tongues and by various words. With reference to
that about which they sang, a restoration to life again for the
shades below after a thousand years, we have Maro's treatment
as follows: 'All these, when a thousand years shall have finished
their course, the god calls out to the river Lethe in a great
company, to be sure forgetful now of the realms above, so
that they may visit again those arches and begin to wish to
return into bodies.'s
This reckoning deceived them because the dead will rise
again, not after a thousand years of their death, but so that
they may reign with God for a thousand years after being again
restored to life. For God will come that He may raise up to
everlasting beatitude the returned-to-life souls of the just,
all stain from this world cleansed, and with their bodies re-
newed. And so, beyond the waters of oblivion, the other
things are true. That (the water of oblivion) they made up
for this reason, lest anyone make this objection to them: Why
did they not remember that they had at one time lived or who
they were or what they did? Nevertheless, it is not very likely,
and the whole thing is rejected as though contrived with
story-telling license.
To us who affirm the resurrection and teach that souls do
not go to another life, forgetful of themselves, but return in
the same sense and aspect, this is objected: 'So many ages have
already passed by. Has anyone ever risen from the dead, that
2 Minos, a son of Zeus, lawgiver in Crete. Rhadamanthus was his brother.
According to fable, Aeacus was still another son of Zeus by Europa.
This one became king of Aegina, father of Peleus and Telamon, and
grandfather of Achilles and Ajax. All three were made judges in the
lower regions because of their just rule.
3 Vergil, Aeneid 6.748-751.
528 LACTANTIUS

from his example we may believe it possible?' Resurrection is

not possible while injustice still holds sway. In this age men
are killed by force, by the sword, by treachery, by poison; they
are afflicted with all injuries, want, prisons, tortures, pro-
scriptions. From this it is inferred that justice is hated because
all who wish to follow God are not only held in hatred, but
are even visited with all disgraces and tortured with many
kinds of punishments, and they are forced to the worship of
the gods made with hands, not by reason or truth, but by
abominable laceration of their bodies. Is it fitting, then, for
men to rise to these same things or to return to a life in which
they cannot be safe?
Since the just are treated so vilely and removed so easily,
what should we think would have happened if someone, re-
turning from the underworld, had received life back again?
Surely, he would be removed from the eyes of men, lest upon
his being seen or heard of all would abandon the gods and be
converted to the worship and religion of the one God. There-
fore, it is necessary that the resurrection take place once, when
all evil shall have been removed, since it is not right that those
who have risen again should die any more or be violated in
any way, so that they may enjoy the blessed life of those whose
death has been canceled.
The poets, since they knew that this life abounded in all
evils, introduced the idea of the 'river of forgetfulness,' lest
souls remembering evils and labors might refuse to return to
the world above. Vergil, for example, wrote: '0 Father, must
it be thought that some souls go from here to the heavens
above and then again return to sluggish bodies? What so dire
longing for light is this that the wretched things possess?'4
They did not know how or when this was supposed to take
place, and so they thought that they were reborn and, at
length, went back into the womb and returned to infancy.
Whence, even Plato, treating of the soul, said: 'From this it
can be learned that souls are immortal and divine, the fact
4 Ibid. 719-721.
 BOOK SEVEN 529

that in children genius is mobile and easy to perceive, be-

cause they quickly seize upon those things which they learn,
and because they do not seem to learn them for the first time,
but it seems as though they recall and remember them.'5 In
this matter, a wise man very foolishly believed the poets.

Chapter 23

They will not, therefore, be reborn, which is not possible,

but they will rise and will be clothed with bodies by God, and
they will be mindful of all the deeds of their past life. And,
settled among celestial blessings and enjoying the happiness
of innumerable good things, they will give thanks to God in
whose presence they will be because He has destroyed all evil,
and because He has raised them to His kingdom and perpetual
life. The philosophers tried to say something about this resur-
rection! also, but they did it in as corrupt a manner as the
poets did. Pythagoras held that souls passed into new bodies,
but he prated foolishly; for from men they went into animals
and from animals into men, and he said that he himself had
been remodeled from Euphorbus. Chrysippus did better who
Cicero says held up the porch of the Stoics.2 For in the books
which he wrote on providence, when he was speaking of the
beginning of the world, he said this: 'Since this is so, it is clear
that nothing is impossible, even that we, after our death, when
a certain space of time has gone by, are to be restored into
the same state in which we seem to be now.'3
But let us go from human to divine words. The Sibyl speaks
these verses: 'Difficult is every kind of matter. When judgment
of the world and of mortals shall have come, which god him-
5 Plato, Meno 85 C; Phaedo 72 E; d. Cicero, Tusculans 1.24.57 f.; De
Senectute 21.78.
1 It is strange that in this one place Lactantius uses the transliterated
Greek word for resurrection, anastasis.
2 Cf. Prior Academics 2.54.75.
3 Cf. Gercke, Chrysippea, frg. 14.
530 LACTANTIUS

self shall make, judging both the impious and the just together
with them, then he will consign the impious to the shadows
and the fire. Those who are the just, however, will come again
upon the earth, god giving them spirit and honor and life.'4
Now if not only the prophets, but also the seers and poets
and philosophers agree that there will be a resurrection of the
dead, let no one ask of us how it can be. A reckoned account
of the divine works cannot be rendered; but, if from the be-
ginning God has set up man in some indescribable way or
other, let us believe that 'he can be restored when old by the
Same One who made him new.

Chapter 24

N ow I will add the rest. The Son of the Most High and
Mighty God will come, therefore, to judge the living and the
dead. The Sibyl bears witness to this in saying: 'In all the
earth, then, there will be confusion of mortals, when the om-
nipotent one himself shall come before the tribunal to judge
the souls of all the living and dead and the whole world.'l
When He shall have destroyed injustice and made the great
judgment and restored to life those who were just from the
beginning, He will stay among men for a thousand years and
will rule them with most just dominion. Another Sibyl in her
rage and incantation proclaims this: 'Listen to me, ye humans,
the King Eternal will come.'2
Then, those who will be living in bodies will not die, but
will generate an infinite multitude during those same thousand
years, and their offspring will be holy and dear to God.s Those
who will be raised from the dead will be in charge of the living
as judges. The nations, however, will not be completely ex-
4 Sibylline Oracles 4.40-43; 186; 187.
1 Sibylline Oracles 8.81-83; d. Apoc. 20.1-6.
2 Frg. 1.
3 Cf. Isa. 6.12.
 BOOK SEVEN 531

tinguished, but certain ones will be left unto the victory of the
Lord, so that they may be triumphed over by the just and
subjugated to perpetual slavery. At this same time, also, the
prince of demons who is the contriver of all evils will be
bound in chains, and he will be in custody for the thousand
years of the heavenly power whereby justice will reign on
earth, lest any evil be exerted against the people of God. After
his arrival, the just will be gathered together from the whole
earth, and when judgment has been passed, the holy city will
be set up in the center of the earth in which the Founder
Himself may abide with the just who are its rulers.4 The Sibyl
designates this city when she says: 'And the city which God
desired, He made it brighter than the stars and the sun and
the moon.'5
Then, there will be taken away from the world those dark-
nesses with which the sky is obscured and blocked from sight,
and the moon will receive the brightness of the sun, nor will
it be diminished any more. The sun, however, will become
seven times brighter than it now is. 6 The earth, in truth, will
disclose its fecundity and will produce the richest crops of its
own accord. Mountain rocks will ooze with honey, wines will
flow down through the streams, and rivers will overflow with
milk. The world itself will rejoice and the nature of all things
will be glad, since the dominion of evil and impiety and crime
will have been broken and cut off from it. Beasts will not feed
on blood during this time nor birds on prey, but all things
will be quiet and at rest. Lions and calves will stand together
at the manger to feed; the wolf will not steal the sheep; the
dog will not hunt; hawks and eagles will not do harm; a
child will play with snakes. 7
4 For this section, cf. Jerome, On Illustrious Men 18. Papias held this
view and Jerome says that many follow him and say that after the
resurrection the Lord will reign with the saints. Cf. also Tertullian, On
the Hope of the Faithful; Gennadius (edition by Oehler) 1, p. 349;
Pseudo-Augustine, De Ecclesiaticis dogmatibus, c. 25 (Vol. 8, appendix
p. 78 E Maurist ed.).
5 Sibylline Oracles 5.420,421.
6 Cf. Isa. 30.26.
7 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 3.619·623; 8.210 if.; Isa. 11.6 if.; 65.25.
532 LACTANTIUS

Then, there will take place those things which the poets
said happened in the golden times when Saturn was reigning.
Their error arose from this, because the prophets generally
give out and pronounce the happenings of the future as
though they were already finished. Visions were presented to
their eyes by the Divine Spirit, and they saw those as though
they were happening and taking place within the bounds of
their sight, as it were. When rumor had carried their proph-
ecies abroad little by little, since those who were not initiated
to the revelation did not know to what purpose they were
spoken, they thought that all those things had been completed
in past ages; but, certainly, these things could not have taken
place and been completed under the reign of man. However,
when the false religions are destroyed and crime is checked
and the earth is subjected to God, 'The trader himself shall
leave the sea, nor shall the sea-going pine trade wares; every
land will bear all things. The earth shall not suffer the plows
nor the vine the pruning hook. And the sturdy ploughman,
too, will unyoke the bulls.'s
Then, also, 'Slowly shall the plains grow yellow with waving
corn, and on wild brambles purple grapes shall hang, and the
hard oak shall exude dewy honey. Wool shall no longer learn
to counterfeit different colors, but the ram in the meadows will
itself change its fleece, now to a sweetly reddening purple, and
again to a saffron yellow. Scarlet shall clothe the grazing
lambs of its own accord. The very goats shall bring home
udders filled with milk, and cattle shall not fear great lions.'9
The poet spoke these things according to the songs of the
Cumaean Sibyl. The Erythraean one, however, gives us these
verses: 'Then the wolves and sheep will be given a feeding
place together in the mountain haunts, and will feed together
on panthers laid before them and the bears with calves along
with all grazing animals; and the carnivorous lion eats bran

8 Vergil, Eclogues 4.38·41.

9 Ibid. 28·30; 42·45; 21,22. Lactantius modifies Vergil's arrangement, or
perhaps he is quoting the lines from memory.
 BOOK SEVEN 533

from the feed box with the cubs; and dragons will go to
sleep with asps.'lO
In another place the prophecy is on the richness of things:
'And then God will give to men a great song. For the earth
and the trees and all the countless creatures of earth will give
their real products to men-wine and honey and sweet, white
milk, and grain, whatever is best of all for men.'ll
And yet another Sibyl in the same manner: 'The holy earth
alone having reverence will see all these things; the streams
from the honey-dripping rocks and from the water fountains
sweet nectar will flow for all mortals.'12
Men will enjoy, therefore, the most tranquil and most
abundant life, and they will reign together with God. Kings
of the nations will come from the ends of the earth with gifts
and presents to adore and honor the great King, whose name
will be famous and venerable to all peoples which will be
under heaven and to the kings who will rule on the earth. 13

Chapter 25

These are the things to come which were spoken of by the

prophets. I have not deemed it necessary to put down their
testimonies and words, since it would be an endless task, and
the size of a book would not hold such a great amount of
illustrative material, and, lest it be at the same time, with so
many saying similar things in one vein, boring to the readers.
Furthermore, so that it might prove very strongly those things
which I said, not by our own sources, but from the writings of
others; and that I might show that, not only among us, but
also among those who press against us, is there held consigned
the truth which they refuse and reject. If anyone wishes to

10 Sibylline Oracles 3.787-791.

11 Ibid. 3.619-623.
12 Ibid. 5.281-283.
13 Cf. Isa. 60.6.1; Ps. 71.10,11.
534 LACTANTIUS

study and know these prophecies more carefully, let him drink
from the very font itself and he will find more wonderful
things than we have included in this book.
Perhaps someone may ask now when those things we men-
tioned are going to take place. I have already showed above!
that that change must take place when six thousand years
have been completed and that that last day of the final con-
clusion is already approaching. It may be known from the
signs which have been predicted by the prophets. For they
foretold the signs by which the end of time was both to be
expected by us and feared, even unto the single days. Since,
however, this summary is being completed, those who wrote
on the times, gathering material from the sacred books and
from various historians, show how large the number of years
is from the beginning of the world. Though they may vary
and disagree somewhat in the sum-total, however, the entire
expectation or length of time left seems to be no greater than
two hundred years. 2 Even the general condition itself makes
clear that the fall and ruin of things will be soon, except for
the fact that with the city of Rome being unharmed, it seems
that nothing of that sort has to be feared. But when the head
of the world shall fall and the onrush begin to take place,
which the Sibyls say will take place,3 who will doubt that the
end has then come for human affairs and for the world?
That is the state which up to now holds up all things, and
we must pray and adore the God of heaven, if His statutes
and decrees can, however, be put off, lest that abominable
tyrant come more quickly than we think, that one who works
such great havoc and wipes out that light at whose destruction
the world itself will collapse. Now let us get back to com-
menting on those other things which are going to follow these
events.

I Cf. ch. 14.

2 Cf. Hippolytus, In Danielem prophetam in Photius, Bibliotheca cod.
202; frg. 59 (de Lagarde's edition).
3 Cf. Sibylline Oracles 3.364; 8.165.
 BOOK SEVEN 535

Chapter 26

A little while ago! we said that, at the beginning of the

holy reign, it would happen that the prince of demons would
be bound by God. But the same one, when a thousand years
of this reign, that is, seven thousand years in all, begin to be
terminated, will be let loose at last; and, when let out from
custody, he will proceed and stir up all the peoples, who will
then be under the sway of the just, to bring war upon the
holy city. And there will be gathered together from the
whole world innumerable peoples of the nations, and they
will beseige and surround the city.2 Then will come a very
strange wrath of God upon the nations and it will reduce
them by war to one man. As soon as it shall strike the earth
as violently as possible, the mountains of Syria will be ripped
by its motion and valleys will sink into a chasm and the walls
of all cities shall fall. And God shall cause the sun to stand
for three days lest it fall, and He will inflame it and the
heat will descend too close, and there will be a great com-
bustion over the warlike and impious peoples, rains of sul-
phur, hail stones and drops of fire. Their spirits shall melt in
the heat; their bodies shall be worn down in the storms; and
they will strike each other with the sword.3 The mountains
shall be filled with corpses and the fields shall be covered
with bones. And in those three days the people of God will
be hidden in the bowels of the earth, until the wrath of God
against the nations and the last judgment is ended. Then,
the just will come up from their hiding places and will find
everything covered with cadavers and bones. But the whole
race of the wicked will utterly perish; nor will there be in
this world any longer any nation except the people of God
alone. Then, through seven continuous years, the forests will
be untouched, wood will not be cut away from the mountains,
1 Ch.24.
2 Cf. Apoc. 20.1-9.
3 Cf. Ezech. 38.20-22.
536 LACTANTIUS

but the arms of the nations will be burned, and there will be
no longer war, but peace and everlasting rest.4
When, however, the thousand years shall be completed, the
world will be renewed by God, heaven will be folded up, and
the earth changed. And God will transform men into the like-
ness of angels, and they will be white and shining as snow,
and they will always be in the sight of the Omnipotent and
will sacrifice to their God and serve Him forever. At the same
time, there will take place that second and public resurrection
of all, during which the unjust will be raised unto everlasting
sufferings. These are they who worshiped idols made by hands,
who did not know or who denied the Lord and Parent of the
universe. 5 But their master will be seized with his ministers
and will be condemned to punishment, and together with him
the whole band of the impious will be burned in perpetual
fire forever in the sight of the angels and the just.
This is the teaching of the holy prophets which we Chris-
tians follow. This is our wisdom which those who worship
perishable images or embrace an empty philosophy deride as
though it were folly and vanity, because we are not accustomed
to defend it and proclaim it publicly, since God orders us to
quietly and silently keep His secret in hiding and within the
depths of our conscience and not to strive in stubborn con-
tention against those ignorant of the truth, who revile God
and His religion mercilessly, not for the sake of learning, but
of arguing and mocking. It is fitting and proper, then, that our
revelation be concealed and protected as faithfully as possible,
especially by us who bear the name of the faithfu1. 6 They
attack this silence on our part as if it were from a bad con-
4 Ibid. 39.9,10; d. Sibylline Oracles 3.724-734.
5 Cf. Apoc. 20.10-15.
6 This is a concluding witness to Lactantius' role as a representative of
his milieu. He is rightly charged with doing a better job of denounc-
ing paganism than of explaining and upholding Christianity. No doubt,
this is chiefly because he was not any better prepared or qualified.
Perhaps, too, he was cautious and wary, by habit, of betraying the
secret to the world at large; and, even though his work was intended to
be an open apology of the faith, his natural inhibitions may have
remained too strong.
 BOOK SEVEN 537

science; whence they fabricate even certain horrible notions

about the chaste and innocent, and they willingly believe
those things which they have feigned.

Chapter 27

Since we have been brought to the goal of the proposed

work, the seven divisions having been gone over, there re-
mains for us to exhort all to take up wisdom with true religion,
the power and function of which turn on this, that despising
and casting aside the earthly error by which we were previ-
ously held (when we were doing service to perishable things
and desiring perishable goods), we might be drawn to the
eternal rewards of the heavenly treasure. In order to be able
to secure these, we ought to put aside as soon as possible the
seductive pleasures of this present life which captivate the
souls of men by their pernicious sweetness. How great a happi-
ness must it be considered to be withdrawn from these defects
of earth and set out to that most just Judge and most indul-
gent Father who for labors bestows rest, for death life, for
darkness light, for earthly and ephemeral goods eternal and
heavenly ones. The bitterness and misery which we endure in
this world doing the works of justice cannot be compared in
any way with this reward.
Now,! all fictions have been laid to rest, Most Holy Emperor,
from that time in which the Most High God raised you up
for the restoration of the domicile of justice and the protec-
tion of mankind. Under your rule of the Roman state, we who
are the worshipers of God are not any longer regarded as
criminal and wicked. Now, the truth is coming forth into the
clear light, and we are not convicted as unjust men who
attempt to do the works of injustice. No one casts reproach
upon us any longer for the name of God. No one any longer
I The next five paragraphs form the concluding panegyric of Constan-
tine. Cf. Bk. I, ch. 12; also the Introduction.
538 LACTANTIUS

labels us, who are alone of all men religious, as irreligious,

because we despise images of dead beings and worship the
One God, living and true.
The providence of the Supreme Godhead has brought you
to the height of princely eminence, so that you might be able,
with true piety, to rescind the evil decrees of others, to correct
abuses, to provide with a father's clemency for the safety of
men, and, finally, to remove those evil men from the state,
men whom God cast down from their heights of power into
your hands, so that it might be clear to all what true majesty
is.
For those who wished to take away the worship of the one
God of heaven, in order to defend impious cults, now lie in
ruin. You who defend and love His Name are excelling in
virtue and prosperity, and you will enjoy your immortal re-
wards most happily. They suffer and have suffered the penal-
ties of their crimes. The powerful right hand of God protects
you from all dangers; it bestows upon you a quiet and tranquil
reign with the greatest approval of all men.
Not undeservedly has the Lord and Ruler of all by a love of
preference chosen you as the one through whom He restored
His holy religion, since you alone stood out among all as one
who might furnish outstanding examples of virtue and holi-
ness in which you would not only equal, but even surpass
(which is truly great) the glory of ancient princes whom fame
numbers among the good. They were in their nature, perhaps,
only like the just, for one who knows not God, the Master of
the universe, can attain a likeness of justice, but not justice
itself. But you, both by the innate sanctity of your manners,
and by the knowledge of the truth of God, are fulfilling the
works of justice in every action.
It was fitting, therefore, that in rearranging the condition
of the human race, the Divine Plan should make use of you
as an organizer and assistant. We beseech Him with daily
prayers; first, that He may guard you especially whom He
wished to be a guardian of affairs; and then, that He may in-
 BOOK SEVEN 539

spire you with the desire to ever persevere in the love of the
Divine Name. This is salvific to all: to you for happiness, to
others for peace.2
So, if we wish to be wise, if we wish to be happy, we ought
to consider and set before ourselves, not only those Terentian
grades of punishment, where 'There must be labor, even in a
mill; there has to be flogging; shackles must be worn,'3 but
those that are much more atrocious still: prison, chains, and
torments must be suffered; pains must be sustained; finally,
death itself must be undergone and borne, since it is clear
to our consciousness that that perishable pleasure will not be
without punishment nor virtue without divine reward. There-
fore, all should strive to steer themselves to the right way as
soon as possible, or if the virtues have been undertaken and
practiced and the labors of this life patiently undergone, to
merit to have God as their Consoler.
For our Father and Lord, who established and supported
the sky, who brought in the sun and the other stars, who
walled in the earth, held in balance by its weight with moun-
tains, who surrounded it with the sea and marked it off by
the rivers, and who breathed into being and made from
nothing whatever there is in this world, perceiving the errors
of men, sent a Guide who opened up for us the way of justice.
Let us all follow this Guide. Let us hear Him. Let us obey
Him most devoutly. For He alone, to use the words of Lucre-
tius, 'has purged the hearts of men with true-speaking words
and has fixed an end of desire and fear. He has revealed the
highest good to which we are tending. He showed what is to
come to be, and the way, and the small path by which we
might be able to struggle toward it on the right course.'4 He
did not show it merely, but He also went before us on the
way, in case anyone might shrink from the way of virtue by
reason of its difficulty.
2 Here we find also the triumphant theme of The Deaths of the Per"
secutors.
3 Terence, Phormio 2.1.19.
4 Lucretius 6.24-28.
540 LACTANTIUS

Let the way of perdition and deceit be deserted, if it is

possible, as a way on which death is concealed, covered over
by the enticements of pleasure. And the more one discerns,
as the years bring on old age, that the day is approaching on
which he must pass out of this life, the more should he con-
sider how he may depart from it in purity; how he may come
innocent before the Judge. Nor should he act as certain peo-
ple do in their reliance upon blinded minds who, the strength
of the body already failing, are warned in this point of the last
pressing necessity to strive more eagerly and ardently to ex-
haust the pleasures of passion. Let each one set himself free
from the chasm while he may, while he has the opportunity;
and let him be converted to God with his whole heart, so that
he may wait in security for that day when the Ruler and
Lord-God of the world will hold judgment on the deeds and
thoughts of individual men.
Whatever things are sought after here on earth, let him not
only disregard them, but even shun them, and let him judge
his soul preferable to those deceitful goods, the possession of
which is uncertain and faltering. For they migrate daily and
go out much more quickly than they had entered, and still,
even if it is permitted to us to enjoy them up to the end, they
must be abandoned, certainly, for others. We men can take
nothing with us except a life well spent, lived without any
harm. He will come rich to God, he will be wealthy, in whose
favor there will stand continence, mercy, patience, charity,
faith. This is our inheritance which cannot be snatched from
anyone or transferred to another.
Is there anyone who would wish to procure and gain these
goods for himself? Let those come who hunger, so that filled
with celestial food they may put down a constant hunger. Let
those come who thirst, so that they may draw the water of
salvation from the everlasting fountain with filled throats. By
this food and drink of God, the blind will see, and the deaf
will hear, and the dumb will speak, and the lame will walk,
 BOOK SEVEN 541

and the simple will be wise, and the sick will grow strong, and
the dead will rise again. 5
Whoever will tread upon the delights of the world with
virtue, that highest and true Judge will raise him up to per-
petual light and life. Let no one trust in riches, in public
office, even in royal power; those things do not make a man
immortal. And whoever shall cast aside the purpose of man,
and, pursuing present goods, shall prostrate himself on the
ground, shall be punished as a deserter of the Lord and
Commander, his Father.
Therefore, let us tend toward justice, which alone will
guide us as an inseparable companion toward God; and,
'While the spirit controls these members,'6 let us show an in-
defatigable service to God. Let us keep stations and vigils. Let
us bravely engage with the enemy whom we know, so that,
as victors and in triumph over our vanquished adversary, we
may attain from the Lord the reward of virtue which He
Himself promised.

5 Cf. Matt. 11.5.

6 Vergil, Aeneid 4.336.
 GENERAL INDEX
Academicians, 6, 20, 31, 169, Anti-Christ, 8, 521.
174, 176-177, 362, 490. Antisthenes, 29.
Academy, 171, 174, 199, 201, Apis, 265.
238, 438. Apocalypse, 499, 516-519, 521-
Adonis, 69. 522, 530, 536, 539.
adultery, 457, 458, 460, 461. Apollo, 42, 62, 108, 253, 274,
Aeacus, 527. 280, 316, 317, 334, 353, 469
Aeneas, 62, 91, 351. n., 508, 527.
Aesculapius, 42, 61, 64, 70-71, apologetics, x, xii, xiv, xv,
108, 123, 220, 316. xviii, xx, xxiii, 3, 11, 14,
ages of man, 248. 329-333, 337, 378-379.
Alcibiades, 220. Appius Claudius, 123.
Alcmena, 40. Appollonius, 334-336.
Alexander, 123, 278. Apuleius, 334, 336.
Allard, P., xx n. Arcesilas, 171-174, 243.
altars, shrines of gods, 103. Areopagites, 334.
Amalec, 289. Argonauts, 90.
Amalthea, 86, 91. Aristides, 217, 409.
Amann, E., xxi n. Aristippus, 177, 178,203,492.
Amos, 296. Aristotle, 30, 141, 143, 177,
Amphitryon, 63. 182, 239, 333, 363, 369, 433
Anaxagoras, 183, 185, 192, n., 471, 492.
243. Arnobius, teacher of Lactan-
Anaximines, 29. tius, xi, xii, xix, xxii, 89 n.
Anchises, 62. arts, the, 73, 74, 231.
angels, xxi, 260, 485, 488, 524. asceticism, 13.
anger, 41. Asclepiades, xiii, 483, 520.
animals, noxious, 482. Asclepius, 155, 256 n., 468.
Anthropians, 324. Athens, 219, 412, 414.
545
546 INDEX

Atlas, 53. 362,409.

atomic theory, 210-211. Catulus, 395.
augury, 80, 155, 157. Castor and Pollux, 42, 61, 64,
Augustine, Saint, xvii, xx, 122.
xxiii,4, 17, 47 n., 69 n., 70 Catiline, 96 n., 148 n., 217.
n., 156 n., 157 n., 248 n., causes of things, 168-169, 187,
263 n., 269 n., 283 n., 293 210, 242.
n., 297 n., 318 n., 455 n. Ceres, 59, 69, 71, 73, 85, 109,
Aulus Gellius, 510 n. 110, 123, 157, 220.
Chaldaeans, 509.
Balbus, 119. chastity, 459-462.
Baruch, 273 n. Chiron, 42.
Battifol, P., 13 n. Christ, ascension of, 6, 300-
Baynes, N. R., ix n. 301; cross of, 309, 312, 313,
beatitudes, 500 n. 314, 315; incarnation of, 6,
belief, reasonableness of, 119. 273, 274, 284, 320, 323;
Bellona, 353. kingdom of, 274, 299, 322,
body, mortality of, 500, 501, 325; kingship of, 298, 300;
502; nature and plan, 486, liberator, 521; meaning of
487; body and soul, 189- Name of, 258, 271, 274, 279;
190,216,217. the mediator, 6, 308; the
Bona Dea, 220. Messias, 6, 258; miracles of,
Brandt-Laubmann, 273 n., 280-284, 309-311; passion of,
314 n. 6, 263, 271, 284-287, 291-
Brutus, 124, 255 n., 514. 296, 300, 309, 311, 312, 313,
burial, duty of, 428-429. 315, 322; power of, 258,
261, 26~ 266, 271, 27~ 27~
Cadmus, 63. 277, 279, 280-284, 298-299,
Caelus, 73, 253. 311-314, 322; priesthood of,
Caesar, Augustus, xviii, 123, 6, 258, 271, 274, 277, 279,
124. 299; prophecies of, 261, 262,
Caesar, Julius, 215, 408 n. 263, 26~ 26~ 26~ 26~ 27~
Caesar, Tiberius, 265, 278. 271, 272, 273-279, 291-300;
Capitol, 52, 78, 198, 208, 209. the two comings of, 271,
Carneades, 243, 362, 363, 366, 473, 521, 527, 530; resurrec-
369, 370, 373. tion of, 6,263, 297-298; two-
Carthage, 159, 514. fold nativity of, 258-259,
Cassiodorus, xxiii. 261-262, 268-270, 273, 280.
Cato, Marcus, 214, 215, 217, Christianity, spirit and tenets
 INDEX 547

of, 5, 12, 13. panegyrics on, ix, 8, 9, 17,

Christians, 332, 452 n., 536; 537-539.
brotherhood of, 378, 417- continency, 461, 462.
418; exhortation to, 541; Corybantes, 57, 86.
hatred of, 327, 350, 379. Cotta, 119, 132.
Chrysippus, 29, 214, 529 n. courage in suffering, 360, 361,
Church, 259 n., 300-301, 323, 378.
325,393 n. Crassus, 432.
Cicero, x, xii, xvi, xvii, 4, 6, creation, 23, 475; days of, 485;
29 n., 30 n., 31, 44, 48 n., theories of, 5, 27-29.
49 n., 51, 55, 63, 72, 75 n., Crete, 52, 57, 60.
96 n., 101, 102 n., 105, 108- Crispus, xi, 10.
111, 113, 114, 119, 126-128, Croesus, 432.
131-133, 136 n., 139 n., 141 Cronos, 58.
n., 143 n.; 145, 164, 181, Cupid,44.
186, 196, 198, 200, 202, 204, cupidity, source of evils, 341.
208, 215-218, 232, 237, 239, Curetes, 52, 86, 87.
240, 242, 246, 260 n., 283, Cynics, 203.
292, 318, 339, 340, 343 n., Cyprian, xix, 12,96 n., 100 n.,
346-347, 354, 357, 362, 367, 106 n., 291 n., 255 n., 259
369, 374, 382, 395, 403, 406 n., 324 n., 329, 337-338, 429
n., 408-409, 412-414, 418- n., 454 n.
419, 421-427, 430, 434, 436 Cyrenaics, 6, 178, 203.
n., 440 n., 442, 445, 447- Cyrus, 254, 265, 267.
451, 455 n., 463, 465-468,
475,482,492, 494, 495, 499, Damasus, Pope, xiii.
500, 501 n., 503 n., 509,529. Danae, 47.
Circe, 84. Daniel, 270, 300, 515 n.
circumcision, 287-290. Darius, 255, 278.
Claudia, 122, 123, 125. David, 261, 267, 270-271, 273,
Cleanthes, 29,214. 275-277, 280, 285-286, 293-
Cnossos, 52. 295,297.
Codrus of Athens, 192. death, 211, 215; of body, 499,
Collatinus, 255 n. 500; of soul, 500; the pun-
community of ownership, 223- ishment of, 147.
225, 339, 341. Demetrianus, 337, 141.
conscience, its openness to Democritus, 6, 212, 214, 227,
God, 465. 238,243,471,479,491,494,
Constantine, ix, xxiii, 8, 11; 508.
548 INDEX

demons, 37, 125, 153-155, 316- Epicureans, 131, 384, 464.

317, 376, 389. Epicurus, 143, 176, 191, 208-
Demosthenes 447 n. 213, 231-232, 234-235, 333,
Deuca1ion, 140, 142. 353, 471 n., 478, 479 n.,
Deuteronomy, 288, 295, 298 484, 492, 494, 508.
n. Epitome, xiv, 12.
devil, xxii, 5, 52; deceits of, Erichthonius, 70.
152; destroyer of human error, origin of, 5; of philos-
race, 518, 531, 535; power ophers, ll2, ll3, 170, 171,
of, 518. 178-179, 163, 164, 165, 177,
Dicaearchus, 212, 492, 508. 180, 181, 207-242, 248-249,
Didymus, 91, 92. 328, 332, 333, 361, 366, 373,
Diocletian, ix, xii, xiii, 3. 374, 395, 398,405, 4ll, 439,
Diogenes Laertius, 232, 262 n. 450,474,476,477,480, 484,
Dionysius, 108, 109. 489,492.
Dioscuri, 27 n. eschatology, xxiii, 8, 248.
Dis, 59. Esdras, 267, 294.
disciples, 282, 291, 297, 300. eternal life, 485, 486, 487,
Divine Name, the, 255, 257, 488, 497, 500, 509, 541.
324, 405. eternal punishment, 474, 488,
Divine Spirit, 477, 502, 532. 492, 499, 504, 509, 522, 523,
dualism, xxii, 9. 526, 536.
eternity, 56.
Egypt, 264, 273, 299, 5ll-513. ethics, moral philosophy, 6,
Egyptians, 248, 264, 313, 314, 12, 13.
383, 408, 512-513. Euclides, 191.
eloquence, the art of persua- Euhemerus, 50 n., 54, 92.
sion, 165, 166, 196, 202, 329, Euphorbus, 216, 529.
378-379. Europa, 47.
Elysian fields, 398. Eurystheus, 41.
Emmanuel, 269-270. Eusebius, ix, xv, xvii.
Empedocles, 146,214,243. evil, abolition of, 510, 520,
end of world, 18,513; signs of, 529; necessity of, 344, 384·
534. 390; nature of, 159; prob·
Ennius, 47, 51, 54, 59 n., 72, lem of, xxii; punishment
327. of,525.
entertainments, seductions of, Exodus, 298 n.
453,454, 455.
Epicureanism, xiv, 4. Fabricius, 409.
 INDEX 549

Faunus, 89, 90. of, xiv, 7, 517, 535.

faith, 325. gods, adornments of, 106-107;
festivals, Roman, 76. crimes of, 75; histories of,
Festus, Pescennius, 82. 35-68; marriage of, 47-48,
Fetiales, 414. 53, 59; names of, 44, 55-56,
Firmium, xi n. 58, 60; nature of, 21, 39,
Flaccus, see Horace. 44, 61, 62-70, 126; origin of,
Fortuna Muliebris, 122, 157. 42, 45-46, 53, 58-60, 73;
fortune, 237, 240, 241. progeny of, 59-60, 68-70;
friendship, 371, 372. propagation of, 44, 67, 70;
Furies, 449. violations by, 109, Ill, 394;
Furius, Lucius, 362, 368, 369, worship of, 78, 79.
370, 375. Golden Age, 339, 340, 342-
343.
Galerius, xiii, 8, 30. Gnostics, 324 n.
Ganymede, 48, 158 n. good, greatest or supreme,
generation, see sex, purpose 392, 397, 486, 493, 496, 499;
of. theories of, 176-177, 179,
Gentiles, 267, 280, 299. 180-185, 189, 203, 216-218,
Glauca, 59. 233-235, 239-241, 493, 499.
God, the Creator, 96, 100, 116· good and evil, opposi tion of,
1I8, 125-131, 135, 139, 145- 398-400, 402, 404-405, 408,
146, 168, 184,201,255,257, 410-411, 433, 444-445, 482,
336, 345, 373, 375,455,476, 487-488, 495, 497, 500, 519,
478, 480, 491, 510, 539; 523.
fatherhood of, 51, 488, 537; goods, of body, 179, 180, 184,
knowledge of, 476, 495-496, 188, 189, 194,204,209,212,
517; as judge, 166,540,541; 245, 392, 397, 487; of earth,
majesty of, 23, 313, 321, 399,406; natural, 415; true,
476,495,512,524; Name of, 397.
32, 36, 38; oneness of, 22-24, Gospel, 300.
38, 320-322; people of, 512, governance of world, 22, 30.
535; ruler of the world, 307, gravitation, 228-229.
312, 315, 476, 477, 530; Great Mother Goddess, 84, 91,
source of wisdom, 252, 324; 123.
the origin of things, 52-53; Greeks, 258, 262, 308, 314 n.,
workmanship of, 429; war· 337, 364,513.
ship of, 470, 484, 487, 488,
501; wra th and vengeance Hannibal, 159.
550 INDEX

Harmonia, 69. ignorance, 382, 384.

hatred, 346-348, 349, 528. images, value of, 105-106; wor-
healing, art of, 74. ship of, 5, 48, 52, 97, 98-
Hebrews, 151, 264, 279 n., 100, 102, 162.
313-314, 511, 519 n.; blind- immortality, 191-194, 213,
ness of, 278, 296; history of, 216-217, 236, 252, 277, 397-
265, 301. 398, 405, 416, 468, 492-498,
Hector, 232. 504,509.
Helen, 43. Inachus, 47, 53.
Hellenistic culture, i, x. injustice, acts of, 345, 347,
Heraclitus, 137. 349-350, 358; confused with
Hercules, 40, 61, 64, 71, 80 n., justice, 341, 347, 349, 350,
82, 85, 123, 157, 353. 357,362.
heresies, origin of, 322-325. 10,47.
Hermes, 134, 141, 155, 256, Irenaeus, 510 n.
257, 259, 507. Isaia, 267, 270-271, 273-275,
Hermes Trismegistus, xix, 281, 287-288, 293-294, 300,
xxiii, 4, 6, 8, 54, 468, 481, 530 n., 531 n., 533 n.
496,520. Isidore, 28 n., 47 n., 48 n., 55
Herod, 265, 292. n., 59 n., 62 n., 90 n., 97 n.,
Hesiod, 28 n., 133. 139 n., 141, 142 n., 147
Hierocles, 10, 332. n., 153 n., 168 n., 169 n.,
Hieronymus, 177. 186 n., 204 n., 258 n., 265
Hippolytus, 42, 534 n. n., 269 n., 318 n., 337 n.,
Holy City, 531. 458 n., 460 n., 515 n., 521 n.
Isis, 47, 69.
Holy Spirit, 280.
Israel, 267, 289, 295, 299.
Homer, 43, 317.
Iulus, 352.
homosexuality, 458.
Horace, xviii, 45 n., 137 n.,
404. Jacob, 273-274.
Janus, 57, 250.
Hortensius, 205, 206, 395.
Jeremia, 259, 266, 268, 273-
hospitality, 425, 426. 274, 294, 296, 299.
humaneness, 421. Jerome, xi, xiv, xvi, xx, xxi,
humanism, xi, xvi, xix, 5. xxiii, 93, 283 n., 397 n.,
human race, creation of, 480- 531 n.
481, 483-484, 488-489, 492, Jerusalem, 288, 295.
507; destruction of, 150. Jesse, 275.
Hydaspes, 371, 515. Jews, 248, 254, 258, 265-267,
 INDEX 551

270, 275, 278-281, 285-286, 357; sources of, 351, 356;

289, 291, 294, 296, 298-300, works of, 346, 351, 361, 367-
301, 313, 334-335, 388; dis- 368, 427, 428.
persion of, 266, 301; enmity Justin, 294 n.
of, 266, 268-269, 275, 278, Juvenal,242.
296-297; history of, 248,
264-266, 419-420; origin of, knowledge, 173, 175, 403-405,
15. 495.
John, 261, 280, 288, 293 n.
Jordan, 280. Lactantius, doctrines of, xix,
J osedech, 278. xxi-xxii, 13; psychology of,
Josue, 254, 289. xxii; sources of, xiii, xix, 4;
Juda, 288, 299. style of, x, xvi-xviii; texts
Judas, 265, 291. of, xxiii-xiv, 9, 10; works
Judea, 265, 294. of, xiv-xviii, 8-11.
Judges, 254, 265. LaeIius, Gaius, 368-369, 374,
judgment of God, 18, 390, 387,409.
473, 488,494, 508, 522, 523, Lares, 79.
526, 530, 540. Latinus, 90.
Juno, 47, 51, 59, 62, 69, 122, Latium, 53, 81, 89, 340.
123, 157, 159. Latona, 69.
Jupiter (Zeus), 7, 43, 44, 45, lavacrum (baptismus), 381 n.
48, 50, 52, 54, 57, 58, 59, law, divine, 359, 409, 412;
62, 64, 66, 70, 80, 82, 86-88, human, 120,366-367,414.
91-92, 108, 156-157, 250, Leda (Nemesis), 84.
253, 262, 316-317, 336, 340, Lethe, 527.
342-343, 353, 519, 527; Leucippus, 6, 210.
names of, 43; violations by, Liber (Bacchus), 43, 61, 62,
46,47,69. 64, 71, 73, 85, 90, 150, 250,
justice, 7, II, 95, 307-308, 325, 253, 255 n., 353, 454, 527.
473, 487, 500, 509-510, 517- liberality, 421-425, 440-441.
518,531,537,541; apparent Licinius, 10.
folly of, 368-373, 384-386; Livy, 122 n.
disputes concerning, 357, logos, 262.
358; duties of, 346, 367-368, Lucian, 4l.
443-446, 468-469; nature of, Lucilius, 41, 112-113, 132,250,
341, 343, 363-365, 368-369, 362, 403 n., 406, 407 n., 408
395, 430-431, 468-469; per- n.,444.
secution of, 348-349, 356- Lucretius, 6, 66, 103, 143 n.,
552 INDEX

147, 197,206,208,209,320, millennianism, 13.

328, 343 n., 364 n., 393 n., Miltiades, 414 n.
418, 444 n., 478, 484 n., Minerva, 51, 62, 73-74, 124,
492 n., 501-505, 511 n., 525 157.
n.,539. Minos, 88, 527.
Luke, 280 n., 293 n., 431 n. Minucius Felix, x, xix, 42, 53,
58 n., 96, 121, 153 n., 321 n.,
Magi, 153, 156. 326 n., 329, 360 n., 454 n.
Magians, 248. miracles, 334, 335.
magnificence, 423-424. Mirandola, Pico de la, xvi.
Malachia, 267. Montanists, 324 n.
man, creation of, 133, 485, MontefaIconius, 281 n.
486, 507, 511, 530; nature morals, regeneration of, 12,
and status of, 481-483, 507; 13.
origin of, 138-142, 419; up- Moses, 254, 274, 287-289, 295,
right position of, 96, 97, 298-299, 314, 364-365.
101, 161, 162, 391, 412, 484, Mount Olympus, 50, 209, 527.
486,496. muses, 28.
Marcionites, 324. mutations, by the gods, 44,
Marcus Tullius, see Cicero. 55-57, 59-60.
Mark, 293 n., 296 n.
Mark Anthony, 49, 65, III n., Nathan, 276.
123, 447 n. nativity, 284.
Maro, see Vergil. nature, 172, 176,227,228,233,
Mars, 42, 64, 69, 250, 334, 353. 250, 303,476,496, 519.
matter, origin of, 128-130. Nepos, 58, 202, 414 n.
Matthew, 281 n., 282 n., 293 Neptune, 49, 64, 250, 317,
n., 366, 516 n., 518 n., 519 362, 454.
n., 521 n., 541 n. Nero, 301.
Maxentius, 10. New Testament Apocrypha,
Maximin Daia, 10. 301 n.
Medes, 514. Nicaea, Council of, i, xvii,
Megaricians, 191. xxi.
Menoecus of Thebes, 192. N icomedia, xiii, xii, 3, 11.
Mercury, 43, 54, 62, 64, 69, N ovatians, 324.
353, 507, 527. Numa, 89-90.
mercy, 432-433. Nun, 289.
Michea, 288.
Milan, Edict of, ix, 8. Octavian, 96 n., 102 n., Ill.
 INDEX 553

Odyssey, 258 n. persecutions, ix, x, xii, xv, 3,

Oedipus, 453 n. 7, 10,301, 327, 356-359, 360,
Omphala,41. 388-390, 518.
Ops, 48, 50, 57, 59, 92. Persians, 248, 255, 513.
Orcus, 362. Persius, 100 n., 107, 206, 294.
Origen, 263 n. Peter, 301, 333.
Orient, 513. Phaethon, 142.
Orientius, 486 n., 491 n. Pha1aris, 109, 217, 235.
Orion, 283. Pherecydes, 492, 494.
Orosius, 248. Phidias, 107.
Orpheus, 27, 28, 58, 90, 259. Philip of Macedon, 102 n.,
Orphica, 27. 447 n.
Osee, 289, 297, 322. Philippics, 102.
Osiris, 83, 84. Philoctetes, 42.
Ovid, 4, 55, 57 n., 76 n., 82, philosophers, 6, 16, 29, 170,
97 n., 112 n., 115, 137, 246 171, 204, 223, 226, 233, 239;
n., 340 n., 440 n., 525 n. character of, 207-244; pre-
cepts of, 303-304.
paganism, i, ix, x, 4, 6. philosophy, false, 4, 6, 7, 13,
pain, 523-524. 50, 173-174, 177, 207-242;
pallium, 231. meaning of, 167, 180-181,
Pan, 54, 62. 197-198, 200-201, 204, 206,
Panaetius the Stoic, 430. 223, 239, 242; schools of, 6.
pantheism, 116-117. phoenix, xv.
Paschal Lamb, 314. Phrygians, 324.
Passion, 280, 284, 291, 298, pietas, 319.
300, 309-315. piety, 155, 351-354, 363-364,
passions, xiv, xv, 7, 24, 95, 382, 391, 407; meaning of,
303, 392, 405, 434-438, 440, 318-320.
442, 448-449, 461-462, 472, Piganio1, A., 10 n.
475, 498, 501, 523, 540. Pilate, Pontius, 291-292.
paterfamilias, 250 n. Plato, xiii, 6, 7, 30, 38, 63,
patience, 360, 380, 385-388, 131, 139, 143, 153, 199,211,
400, 439-440, 446. 214-215, 219-220, 223-225,
Patricius, 256 n., 257 n. 230-232, 248, 252, 333, 363-
Paul, 301, 333. 364, 369,439,467,471,475,
Paulus, 122, 158. 477-478, 491-494, 501, 507,
Peripatetics, 7, 131, 177, 179, 509, 528.
434,437,440,448. Plautus, 358, 421.
554 INDEX

pleasure, nature of, 7, 41, 78, 439 n., 460 n.

179, 188, 191-] 94, 203, 204. Punic War, 514.
pleasures of senses, 333, 392, punishments of God, 346, 355,
450-451,455-462, 464. 359, 388, 390.
Pliny, 492 n. Pythagoras, 6, 29, 167, 198,
Pluto, 49, 59. 216, 219, 247.
poets, fictions of, 47, 48, 50, Pythagoreans, 6, 131,213, 371,
55, 57, 59, 62, 454. 494, 506-507, 529.
Polites, 507. Pyrrhus, 123.
Polycleitus, 107.
polytheism, 22, 23, 31, 245, Quintilian, 147 n., 344,461.
249,251. Quirinus, 62, 64, 65, 84, 250.
Pompey, 83, 408.
power, nature of, 22. reason, 13, 16, 25, 482, 490,
Priam, 43, 90. 495.
Priapus, 84, 106. Regulus, 360.
prodigies, accounts of, 122- religion, x, 248-250, 256, 266,
124, 151. 316-319, 324-325, 332-333,
Prometheus, 139, 140. 337, 359, 378-379, 383, 391,
Propertius, 120. 393, 417, 464-466, 500, 528,
prophecies, 335-336, 442, 443. 538; destruction of, 522-
prophets, 25, 26, 254, 276, 507, 532; meaning of, 104, 318-
518-519, 522, 526, 532-534, 320; power of, 89, 104, 185-
536. 187, 233-234, 236, 241, 243-
Proserpina, 84, llO, 123, 137. 244; rites of, 243, 320, 377-
prostitution, 45, 66-67, 69-70. 381, 391-392.
providence, xiv, xxi, 5, 16, 20· religions, false, 103-104, 160,
21, 24, 38, 125-126, 131-132, 252, 279, 325, 326, 361, 362,
209-210, 237, 248, 386-388, 377-382, 385, 392-394, 470;
455, 476, 478, 480, 483, 495- origins of, 61, 75-79, 83-85,
496, 529, 538. 92.
prudence, 45. Renaissance, xvi.
Prudentius, xxiii. repentance, 359, 430, 431, 463,
Psalms, 261, 271, 274-277, 285, 464.
286, 293-295, 297, 533. reproduction, organs of, 56.
Pseudo-Apuleius, 469 n., 507 Republic, The, 139 n., 255,
n., 520 n. 354 n., 367 n., 369 n.
Pseudo-Augustine, 531 n. resurrection of dead, 297, 298,
Pseudo-Seneca, 41 n., 430 n., 313, 522, 526-530, 536, 541.
 INDEX 555

revelation, 413, 471, 474, 494, 89, 92, 93, 150, 250, 253,
532, 536. 317, 339, 340, 353, 454, 532.
reward, divine, 470, 474, 488, Sedulius, 256 n., 274 n., 507
509, 526, 537, 539. n., 520 n.
rewards and punishments, selection, by God, 343, 387-
399-402. 390.
Rhadamanthus, 220, 527. Senate, 120, 408.
Rhea, 57. Seneca, 6, 30, 31, 99, 128, 191,
rhetoric, x, xii, 17. 202, 206, 228, 232, 361, 387,
rhetoricians, 165. 418 n., 464, 465, 513.
Romanitas, xviii, 5. Septuagint, 298 n.
Roman Empire, 515. Sera pis, 84.
Romans, 258, 292, 364, 367, Seven Sages, 29, 246-247, 409.
513. sex, desire of, 457-562; diver-
Rome, 157,255,301,412,514, sity of, 67, 69-70, 39, 138,
534; ages of, 514; end of, 139, 146, 453, 454, 457-462;
513-514. purpose of, 457-462.
Romulus, 65, 84, 120, 514. Sibyls (Sibylline fragments,
oracles, prophecies), xxiii,
Sabin us, king of Romans, 88. 6, 8, 33, 34, 60 n., 110, 149,
sacramentum, 335 n. 155, 256, 257, 267, 275, 280
Sacred Scriptures, 254, 255, n., 281-284, 287, 288, 293-
261, 298, 328, 332, 338, 455 299, 311 n., 361, 362 n., 466
n., 471, 491, 499, 509-511, n., 513 n., 514, 516 n., 517
523, 529; simplicity of, 328, n., 520, 521, 529-534.
455; style of, 166. Silenus, 218.
sacrifice, duty of, 359, 380, sky, abode of divinity, Ill.
391, 467, 468, 469. society, origin of, 419.
sacrifices, 7, 319, 351. Socrates, 6, 131, 169, 174, 195,
sacrilege, 108, 109, Ill, 123, 2Il, 219-223, 238, 243, 364,
161, 326, 351, 383, 390. 439, 475; inconsistency of,
Sallust, 96 n., 148, 285, 392 n., 222; wisdom of, 220-222.
447, 477, 514. Solomon, 256, 261, 269, 276,
salvation, 325. 285, 286, 295.
Sa1vian, 28 n., 29 n., 30 n., 326 Son of God, 519-520.
n., 438 n., 470. soul, xiv, xv, xxii, 148, 189-
Samos, 69. 190, 194, 213-214, 216-218;
Saturn, 7, 44, 45, 48, 52, 54, distinguished from mind,
57, 58, 59, 60, 73, 81, 82, 503; immortality of, 500-
556 INDEX

501, 506, 508, 523-524, 528; 291 n., 296 n., 298 n., 300
origin of, 504; separation n., 314 n., 326 n., 337 n.,
of, 502, 504-506, 524; spir- 378 n., 390 n., 531 n.
ituality of, 523-524; union Testaments, Old and New,
with body, 502, 504, 505. 266, 280, 288-290, 298-299,
soul and body, nature of, 501- 301.
502. Thales of Miletus, 29, 137,
souls, dissolution of, 508; 198, 206.
transmigration of, 213-214, Themistis, 232.
216-220, 506. theoganies, 5.
Spartans, 79. Theophilus, 35 n., 36 n., 39
spirits, world of, 153-155. n., 149 n., 254 n., 255 n.
spiritual life, 400. Theophrastus, 425.
Stoicism (Stoics), xxii, 4, 6, Thetis, 45.
20-21, 31, 55-56, ll2, 131, Thomas Aquinas, 433 n., 434
141, 170, 174, 177, 179, 191, n.
213, 215, 228, 231, 234-235, Titans, 43, 59, 86.
434,440,448,476,480,491, Tityos, 525.
523, 529. Toleration, Edict of, xiii, 8,
sufferings, 401, 442, 443. 12.
suicide, 214-215. Trinity, xxi.
sun, as origin of things, 55-56. Trismegistus, see Hermes
superstition, 19, 46, 61, 63, Trismegistus.
66, 68-69, 155-158, 318-319, Trojan War, 92, 254; Troy
326, 380-384. (Trojans) 159, 261.
Publilius Syrus, 461 n. truth, 16,31, 254-255, 324-325,
Syrtes, 371. 472,473,475,490,502, 533;
ignorance of, 382, 474; ob-
Tarquin, 80, 122, 255, 278, scurity of, 164, 216, 242;
514. power of, 165, 239; pursuit
Tarquitius, 42. of, 165, 248, 251, 320, 325;
Tartarus, 399, 522. revelation of, 16, 391.
teacher, 268, 304-307, 311-312. Tuditanus, 227.
Teachings of the Twelve Tusculan Disputations, 196,
Apostles, 396 n. 499.
Tellus, 92. Twelve Tables, 414.
Terence, 128 n., 215.
TertulIian, xix, xxii, 42 n., universe, order of, ll3, ll4,
112, 260 n., 262 n., 263 n., ll5, 143; origin of, 128, 135-
 INDEX 557

137, 168, 184, 209-210. 344, 356, 380, 402, 403, 406,
Uranus, 54, 58, 60, 92, 150. 446, 447, 460-461, 469; re-
wards of, 397, 487, 498, 499,
Valerius Maximus, 87 n., 89 54l.
n., 157 n., 158 n. vows, 103.
Varro, Marcus, 32, 58, 69, 89, Vulcan, 55, 62, 70, 73, 118,
137 n., 147, 149, 150,283. 253, 317.
Venantius Fortunatus, xv.
Venus, 42, 62, 69, 107. wisdom, 167, 176, 197, 201,
Vergil, xviii, 28 n., 47 n., 70, 233-234, 239, 243, 246, 248,
74 n., 80 n., 106 n., 125 n., 24~ 252, 279, 327, 329, 335,
159 n., 160, 240, 264 n., 269 336, 373, 405, 409-410, 472,
n., 283 n., 315 n., 320, 328 474,475,482,493, 496, 503,
n., 341 n., 348, 354 n., 379 504; false, 5, 6, 7, 13, 164;
n., 464 n., 466 n., 476, 526, human, 105, 121, 134; true,
527,528. 6, 16, 19, 121,470,475,488.
Verres, 109, 110, 111. world, creation of, 471, 477,
Vespasian, 301. 478, 479, 491, 529; duration
Vesta, 55, 59, 82, 85, 118, 220. of, 471, 474, 478, 479, 530;
vices, 189, 197, 203-204, 212, end of, 512, .913, 515, 516,
233,472,486,498,499,503; 517, 518,519, 534; parts of,
enticements of, 396, 399, 471; plan of, 471, 479, 480,
434-435; in name of re- 485, 489; reason for crea-
ligion, 75, 76, 77; nature of, tion of, 478, 479, 483, 484,
435, 436, 437; punishments 486, 481, 491; renewal of,
of, 397, 460. 536.
Virgin birth, 269. worship, true, 16, 19, 319-322,
virginity, 55, 70. 391, 413, 466, 469; false,
virtue, 178, 180, 181-183, 189, 248, 249, 279, 353, 354, 489,
191, 198, 222, 233-234, 470, 500, 528.
471,473,485,486,488,492,
497, 498, 500, 503, 504, 509;
Xenophanes, 227.
difficulty of, 396, 399-401;
411, 416, 446, 447, 459-461,
468-469, 473; distinguished Zacharia, 255, 277, 279 n., 295.
from vice, 344, 352-353, 356, Zeno, 30, 170, 174, 177, 180,
360, 361, 372-375, 379-380, 214, 223, 227, 262, 333,46'1,
386, 394, 407, 41O-411, 416- 492.
417, 433, 434; nature of, Zeus, 153.
 INDEX OF CITATIONS
I. INDEX OF PAGAN AUTHORS

Aglaopha (Oracles of Apollo), Festus, Pescennius (Historica

36. Romana), 82.

Caesar Germanicus, 86, 339, Hermes Trismegistus, 147,

340. 468, 469, 507, 520.
Cicero, 30, 36, 40, 42, 52 n., Hesiod, 153.
55 n., 56,61, 63, 64, 68, 77, Homer, 43.
105, 1l0, 113, 119, 126, 128, Horace, 105, 361, 371, 404.
145, 186, 196, 197, 198, 199,
200, 202, 205, 206, 209,216, Juvenal, 242.
217,218,222,230,232,235,
238, 239, 240, 242, 292, 318, Lucan, 83, 84.
339, 343, 347, 354, 357, 367, Lucretius, 82, 88, 90, 103, 143,
368, 374, 375, 382, 387, 395, 144, 197,206,208,209,214,
403, 408, 409, 413, 421, 422, 215, 216, 235, 320, 343, 350,
423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 442, 362, 403, 406, 407, 408, 418,
445, 448, 451, 463, 465,467, 444, 478, 501, 502, 503, 504,
468, 470, 482, 493, 494, 496, 505, 506, 539.
499,500.
Nepos, Cornelius, 202.
Diogenes Laertes, 211.
Ovid, 28, 55, 57, 67, 82, 83,
Ennius, 52, 54, 57, 58, 65, 72, 84, 85, 86, 87, 97, 112, 133,
91. 137, 340,477.
Epicurus, 20, 484.
Euhemerus, 50. Persius, 100, 107, 206, 394.
559
560 INDEX

Plato, 223, 467, 493, 529. 284, 287, 288, 293, 294, 297,
Plautus, 358, 421. 298, 300, 362, 517, 520, 521,
Propertius, 120. 522, 523, 530, 531, 533.
Pseudo-Apuleius, 469.
Terence, 128, 171, 215, 233,
Quintilian, 83, 147, 344, 461. 348,474, 539.

Sallust, 87, 148, 241. Vergil, 28, 29, 39, 43, 44, 45,
Seneca, 36, 38, 67, 99, 107, 46, 47, 58, 62, 70, 80, 106,
191,200,202,203,206,2Il, 125, 141, 159, 160, 180, 181,
361, 368, 443, 464, 465, 467, 264, 269, 283, 315, 320, 328,
514. 340, 341, 348, 351, 352, 354,
Sibylline Oracles, 35, 39, 52, 368, 369, 379, 397, 399, 464,
62, 63, 139, 146, 149, 156, 472, 476, 524, 526, 527, 528,
256, 257, 275, 281, 282, 283, 532, 541.

II. INDEX OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

(Books of the Old Testament)

Numbers, 274, 295. Isaia, 267, 268, 269, 270, 273,

274, 275, 281, 287, 293, 291,
Deuteronomy, 288, 289, 295.
300, 321, 322.
Josue, 289.
Jeremia, 259, 266, 268, 274,
1 Kings, 277. 288, 295, 296, 299.
2 Kings, 276.
Baruch, 273.
3 Kings, 267, 296.
Daniel, 270, 300.
2 Esdras, 267.
Osee, 297, 322.
Psalms, 261, 267, 270, 271,
273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 280, Amos, 296.
285, 286, 293, 294, 295, 297,
Michea, 288.
523.
Proverbs, 257. Zacharia, 278, 279, 295.
Sirach (Ecclus.), 261. Malachia, 267.
 INDEX 561

(Books of the New Testament)

Matthew, 366. John, 261-262, 291.

Mark,291. Ephesians, 448.
Luke, 280. 1 Timothy, 271.