During the three years his reign lasted the altars
streamed
with blood.
Bertrand - Saint Augustin
His build and
bloated flesh gave those who saw him at a distance a false notion of his
strength. The Romans were most favourably impressed by him, especially the
young men.
But the army, the safeguard of the country, was perhaps even more admired
than the Emperor. The legions, following the ruler, had almost deserted
the capital. The flower of the troops were almost unknown there. In
consequence, the march past of the cavalry was quite a new sight for the
people. A great murmur of admiration sounded as the _cataphracti_ appeared,
gleaming in the coats of mail which covered them from head to foot. Upon
their horses, caparisoned in defensive armour, they looked like equestrian,
statues--like silver horsemen on bronze horses. Childish cries greeted each
_draconarius_ as he marched by carrying his ensign--a dragon embroidered on
a long piece of cloth which flapped in the wind. And the crowd pointed at
the crests of the helmets plumed with peacock feathers, and the scarfs of
scarlet silk flowing over the camber of the gilded cuirasses. . . .
The military show poured into the Forum, swept up the _Via Sacra_, and when
it had passed under the triumphal arches of the old emperors, halted at the
Palace of Septimus Severus. In the Stadium, the crowd awaited Honorius.
When he appeared on the balcony of the Imperial box, wild cheering burst
out on all the rows of seats. The Emperor, diadem on head, bowed to the
people. Upon that the cheers became a tempest. Rome did not know how to
express her happiness at having at last got her master back.
On the eve of the worst catastrophes she had this supreme day of glory, of
desperate pride, of unconquerable faith in her destiny. The public frenzy
encouraged them in the maddest hopes. The poet Claudian, who had followed
the Court, became the mouthpiece of these perilous illusions. "Arise! " he
cried to Rome, "I prithee arise, O venerable queen! Trust in the goodwill
of the gods. O city, fling away the mean fears of age, _thou who art
immortal as the heavens_! . . . "
For all that, the Barbarian danger continued to threaten. The victory
of Pollentia, which, moreover, was not a complete victory, had settled
nothing. Alaric was in flight in the Alps, but he kept his eye open for a
favourable chance to fall back upon Italy and wrench concessions of money
and honours from the Court of Ravenna. Supported by his army of mercenaries
and adventurers in the pay of the Empire like himself, his dealings with
Honorius were a kind of continual blackmail. If the Imperial Government
refused to pay the sums which he protested it owed him for the maintenance
of his troops, he would pay himself by force. Rome, where fabulous riches
had accumulated for so many centuries, was an obvious prey for him and his
men. He had coveted it for a long time; and to get up his courage for this
daring exploit, as well as to work upon his soldiers, he pretended that he
had a mission from Heaven to chastise and destroy the new Babylon. In his
Pannonian forests it would seem he had heard mysterious voices which said
to him: "Advance, and thou shalt destroy the city! "
This leader of clans had nothing of the conqueror about him. He understood
that he was in no wise cut out to wear the purple; he himself felt the
Barbarian's cureless inferiority. But he also felt that neither was he
born to obey. If he asked for the title of Prefect of the City, and if he
persisted in offering his services to the Empire, it was as a means to get
the upper hand of it more surely. Repulsed, disdained by the Court, he
tried to raise himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of the common people
by giving himself the airs of an instrument of justice, a man designed by
fate, who marches blindly to a terrible purpose indicated by the divine
wrath. It often happened that he was duped by his own mummery. This turbid
Barbarian soul was prone to the most superstitious terrors.
Notwithstanding his rodomontades, it is certain that in his heart he was
scared by Rome. He hardly dared to attack it. In the first place, it was
not at all a convenient operation for him. His army of mercenaries had no
proper implements to undertake the siege of this huge city, of which the
defence lines were thrown out in so wide a perimeter. He had to come back
to it twice, before he could make up his mind to invest it seriously. The
first time, in 408, he was satisfied with starving the Romans by cutting
off the food supply. He had pitched his camp on the banks of the Tiber in
such a way as to capture the shipping between the capital and the great
store-houses built near the mouth of the river. From the ramparts, the
Romans could see the Barbarian soldiers moving about, with their sheepskin
coats dyed to a crude red. Panic-stricken, the aristocracy fled to its
villas in Campania, or Sicily, or Africa. They took with them whatever
they were able to carry. They sought refuge in the nearest islands, even
in Sardinia and Corsica, despite their reputation for unhealthiness. They
even hid among the rocks of the seashore. The terror was so great that the
Senate agreed to everything demanded by Alaric. He was paid an enormous
indemnity which he claimed as a condition of his withdrawal.
The following year he used the same method of intimidation to force on the
people an emperor he had chosen, and to get conferred on him the title of
Prefect of the City which he had desired so long. Finally, in the year 410,
he struck the supreme blow.
The Barbarian knew what he was about, and that he did not risk much in
blockading Rome. Famine would open the gates to him sooner or later. All
who were able had left the city, especially the rich. There was no garrison
to defend it. Only a lazy populace remained behind the walls, unused to
arms, and still more enfeebled by long starvation. And yet this wretched
and decimated population, in an outburst of patriotism, resisted with
desperate energy. The siege was long. Doubtless it began before the spring;
it ended only at the end of the summer. In the night of the twenty-fourth
of August, 410, amid the glare of lightning and crashes of thunder, Alaric
entered Rome by the Salarian gate. It is certain that he only managed it
even then by treachery. The prey was handed to him.
The sack of Rome seems to have lasted for three days and three nights. Part
of the town was burned. The conquered people underwent all the horrors
which accompany such events--violent and stupid destruction, rapes, murders
of individuals, wholesale slaughter, torture, and mutilation. But in
reality the Barbarians only wanted the Roman gold. They acted like perfect
highway robbers. If they tortured their victims without distinction of age
or sex, it was to pluck the secret of their treasure-houses out of them.
It is even said that in these conditions the Roman avarice produced some
admirable examples of firmness. Some let themselves be tortured to their
last gasp rather than reveal where their treasures were hid. At last, when
Alaric decided that his army was gorged enough with spoil, he gave the
order to evacuate the city, and took to the roads with his baggage-waggons
full.
Let us be careful not to judge these doings after our modern notions. The
capture of Rome by Alaric was not a national disaster. It was plundering on
a huge scale. The Goth had no thought at all of destroying the Empire. He
was only a mercenary in rebellion--an ambitious mercenary, no doubt--but,
above all, a looter.
As a consequence of this attack on the Eternal City, one after another
caught the disease of plunder, which contaminated even the functionaries
and the subjects of Rome. Amid the general anarchy, where impunity seemed
certain, nobody restrained himself any longer. In Africa especially, where
the old instinct of piracy is always half-awake, they applied themselves to
ransack the fugitive Romans and Italians. Many rich people were come there,
seeking a place of safety in the belief that they would be more secure when
they had put the sea between themselves and the Barbarians. The report of
their riches had preceded them, exaggerated out of all measure by popular
rumour. Among them were mentioned patricians such as the Anicii, whose
property was so immense and their palaces so splendid that they could not
find purchasers. These multi-millionaires in flight were a miraculous
windfall for the country. They were bled without mercy.
Quicker than any one else, the military governor of Africa, Count
Heraclianus, was on the spot to pick the pockets of the Italian immigrants.
No sooner were they off the boat than he had very distinguished ladies
seized, and only released them when he had extorted a large ransom. He sold
those unable to pay to the Greek and Syrian slave-merchants who provided
human flesh for the Oriental harems. When the example came from such a
height, the subordinates doubtless said to themselves that they would
be very wrong to have the least shame. From one end of the province to
the other, everybody struggled to extract as much as possible from the
unfortunate fugitives. Augustin's own parishioners at Hippo undertook to
tear a donation from one of those gorgeous Anicii, whose lands stretched
further than a kite could fly--from Pinian, the husband of St. Melania
the younger. They wanted to force him to be ordained priest in spite of
himself, which, as has been explained, involved the handing over of his
goods to the Catholic community. Augustin, who opposed this, had to give in
to the crowd. There was almost a riot in the basilica.
Such were the far-off reverberations of the capture of Rome by Alaric.
Carthaginians and Numidians pillaged the Romans just like the Barbarians.
Now, how did it come about that this monstrous loot took on before the eyes
of contemporaries the magnitude of a world-catastrophe? For really nothing
was utterly lost. The Empire remained standing. After Alaric's retreat,
the Romans had come back to their city and they worked to build up the
ruins. Ere long, the populace were crying out loud that if the circus
and amphitheatre games were given back to them, they would look upon the
descent of the Goths as a bad dream.
It is no less certain that this sensational occurrence had struck the whole
Mediterranean world into a perfect stupor. It seized upon the imaginations
of all. The idea that Rome could not be taken, that it was integral and
almost sacred, had such a hold on people's minds, that they refused to
credit the sinister news. Nobody reflected that the sack of Rome by the
Barbarians should have been long ago foreseen--that Rome, deprived of
a garrison, abandoned by the Imperial army, was bound to attract the
covetousness of the Goths, and that the pillage of a place without defence,
already enfeebled by famine, was not a very glorious feat, very difficult,
or very extraordinary. People only saw the brutal fact: the Eternal City
had been captured and burned by the mercenaries. All were under the
influence of the shock caused by the narratives of the refugees. In one of
his sermons, Augustin has transmitted to us an echo of the general panic:
"Horrible things," said he, "have been told us. There have been ruins, and
fires, and rapine, and murder, and torture. That is true; we have heard it
many times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have often wept, and
we have hardly been able to console ourselves. "
This capture of Rome was plainly a terrible warning for the future. But
party spirit strangely exaggerated the importance and meaning of the
calamity. For pagans and Christians alike it became a subject for speeches,
a commonplace of religious polemic. Both saw the event as a manifestation
of the wrath of Heaven.
"While we sacrificed to our gods," the pagan said, "Rome was standing, Rome
was happy. Now that our sacrifices are forbidden, you see what has become
of Rome. . . . "
And they went about repeating that Christianism was responsible for the
ruin of the Empire. On their side, the Christians answered: In the first
place, Rome has not fallen: it is always standing. It has been only
chastised, and this happened because it is still half pagan. By this
frightful punishment (and they heightened the description of the horrors
committed), God has given it a warning. Let it be converted, let it return
to the virtues of its ancestors, and it will become again the mistress of
nations.
There is what Augustin and the bishops said. Still, the flock of the
faithful were only half convinced. It was all well enough to remonstrate
to them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans,
had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader had
bestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas of
the holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that many
Christians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virgins
had experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all the
inhabitants had been robbed of their property. . . . Was it thus that God
protected His chosen? What advantage was there in being Christian if they
had the same treatment as the idolaters?
This state of mind became extremely favourable for paganism to come back
again on the offensive. Since the very hard laws of Theodosius, which
forbade the worship of the ancient gods, even within the house, the pagans
had not overlooked any chance to protest against the Imperial severity.
At Carthage there were always fights in the streets between pagans and
Christians, not to say riots. In the colony of Suffetula, sixty Christians
had been massacred. The year before the capture of Rome, there had been
trouble with the pagans at Guelma. Houses belonging to the Church were
burned, a monk killed in a brawl. Whenever the Government inspection
relaxed, or the political situation appeared favourable, the pagans hurried
to proclaim their belief. Only just lately, in Rome beleaguered by Alaric,
the new consul, Tertullus, had thought fit to revive the old customs.
Before assuming office, he studied gravely the sacred fowls in their cages,
traced circles in the sky with the augur's wand, and marked the flight of
birds. Besides, a pagan oracle circulated persistently among the people,
promising that after a reign of three hundred and sixty-five years
Christianity would be conquered. The centuries of the great desolation were
fulfilled; the era of revenge was about to begin for the outcast gods.
These warlike symptoms did not escape Augustin's vigilance. His indignation
no longer arose only from the fact that paganism was so slow in dying; he
was now afraid that the feebleness of the Empire might allow it to take on
an appearance of life. It must be ended, as Donatism had been ended. The
old apostle was summoned to a new campaign, and in it he would spend the
best of his strength to the eve of his death.
II
THE CITY OF GOD
For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a
thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the
Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his _City of God_,
the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also
the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and
defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal.
It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our sole
aim is to study Augustin's soul, and we quote scarcely anything from his
books save those parts wherein a little of this ardent soul pulsates--those
which are still living for us of the twentieth century, which contain
teachings and ways of feeling still likely to move us. Now, Augustin's
attitude towards paganism is one of those which throw the greatest light on
his nature and character. And it may even yet come to be our own attitude
when we find opposed to us a conception of life and the world which
may indeed be ruined for a time, but is reborn as soon as the sense of
spirituality disappears or grows feeble.
"Immortal Paganism, art thou dead? So they say.
But Pan scoffs under his breath, and the Chimæra laughs. " [1]
[Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve. ]
Like ourselves, Augustin, brought up by a Christian mother, knew it only
through literature, and, so to speak, æsthetically. Recollections of
school, the emotions and admirations of a cultivated man--there is what the
old religion meant for him. Nevertheless, he had one great advantage over
us for knowing it well: the sight of the pagan customs and superstitions
was still under his eyes.
That the lascivious, romantic, and poetic adventures of the ancient gods,
their statues, their temples, and all the arts arising from their religion,
had beguiled him and filled him with enthusiasm before his conversion, is
only too certain. But all this mythology and plastic art were looked upon
as secondary things then, even by pagans. The serious, the essential part
of the religion was not in that. Paganism, a religion of Beauty, is an
invention of our modern æsthetes; it was hardly thought of in that way in
Augustin's time.
Long before this, the Roman Varro, the great compiler of the religious
antiquities of paganism, made a threefold distinction of the doctrine
concerning the gods. The first--that of the theatre, as he calls it, or
fabulous mythology, adapted to poets, dramatists, sculptors, and jesters.
Invented by these, it is only a fantasy, a play of imagination, an ornament
of life. The third is civil theology, serious and solid, which claims the
respect and piety of all. "It is that which men in cities, and chiefly the
priests, _ought to be_ cunning in. It teaches which gods to worship in
public, and with what ceremonies and sacrifices each one must be served. "
Finally, the second, physical or metaphysical theology, is reserved for
philosophers and exceptional minds; it is altogether theoretical. The
only important and truly religious one, which puts an obligation on the
believer, is the third--the civil theology.
Now, we never take account of this. What we persist in regarding as
paganism is what Varro himself called "a religion for the theatre"--matter
of opera, pretext for ballets, for scenery, and for dance postures.
Transposed into another key by our poets, this mythology is inflated now
and then by mysticism, or by a vague symbolism. Playthings of our pretty
wits! The living paganism, which Augustin struggled against, which crowds
defended at the price of their blood, in which the poor believed and the
wisest statesmen deemed indispensable as a safeguard of cities--that
paganism is quite another matter. Like all religions which are possible,
it implied and it _enforced_ not only beliefs, but ritual, sacrifices,
festivals. And this is what Augustin, with the other Christians of that
time, spurned with disgust and declared to be unbearable.
He saw, or he had seen with his own eyes, the reality of the pagan worship,
and the most repellent of all to our modern delicacy--the sacrifices. At
the period when he wrote _The City of God_, private sacrifices, as well as
public, were forbidden. This did not prevent the devout from breaking the
law whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when they
sacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The rites
could not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of the
pontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of former
times. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustin
could have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp and
according to all the ritual forms. They were veritable scenes of butchery.
For Heaven's sake let us forget the frieze of the Parthenon, and its
sacrificers with their graceful lines! If we want to have a literal
translation of this sculpture, and find the modern representation of a
hecatomb, we must go to the slaughter-houses at La Villette.
Among the heaps of broken flesh, the puddles of blood, the mystic Julian
was attacked by a kind of drunkenness. There were never enough beasts
strangled or slaughtered to suit him. Nothing satisfied his fury for sacred
carnage. The pagans themselves made fun of this craze for sacrificing.
During the three years his reign lasted the altars streamed with blood.
Oxen by hundreds were slain upon the floors of the temples, and the
butchers throttled so many sheep and other domestic animals that they gave
up keeping count of them. Thousands of white birds, pigeons or sea-gulls,
were destroyed day by day by the piety of the prince. He was called the
_Victimarius_, and when he started upon his campaign against the Persians,
an epigram was circulated once more which had been formerly composed
against Marcus Aurelius (the philosophic emperor! ) who was equally generous
of hecatombs: "To Marcus Cæsar from the white oxen. It will be all over
with us if you come back a conqueror. " People said that Julian, on his
return, would depopulate stables and pasture-lands.
The populace, who gathered their very considerable profit from these
butcheries, naturally encouraged such an excess of devotion. At Rome, under
Caligula, more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims were immolated in
three months--nearly two thousand a day. And these massacres took place
upon the approaches of the temples; in the middle of the city; on the
forums; in narrow squares crowded with public buildings and statues. Just
try to call up the scene in summer, between walls at a white heat, with the
smells and the flies. Spectators and victims rubbed against one another,
pressed close in the restricted space. One day, Caligula, while he was
attending a sacrifice, was splashed all over by the blood of a flamingo as
they cut its neck. But the august Cæsar was not so fastidious; he himself
operated in these ceremonies armed with a mallet and clad in the short
shirt of the killers. The ignominy of all this revolted the Christians,
and whoever had nerves at all sensitive. The bloody mud in which passers
slipped, the hissing of the fat, the heavy odour of flesh, were sickening.
Tertullian held his nose before the "stinking fires" on which the victims
were roasting. And St. Ambrose complained that in the Roman Curia the
senators who were Christians were obliged to breathe in the smoke and
receive full in the face the ashes of the altar raised before the statue of
Victory.
The manipulations of the _haruspicina_ seemed an even worse abomination in
the eyes of the Christians. Dissection of bowels, examination of entrails,
were practices very much in fashion in all classes of society. The
pagans generally took more or less interest in magic. One was scarcely
a philosopher without being a miracle-worker. In this there was a kind
of perfidious rivalry to the Christian miracles. The ambitious or the
discontented opened the bellies of animals to learn when the Emperor was
going to die, and who would succeed him. But although it did not pretend to
magic, the _haruspicina_ made an essential part of the sacrifices. As soon
as the dismemberment was done, the diviners examined the appearance of
the entrails. Consulting together, they turned them over frequently with
anxious attention. This business might continue for a long time. Plutarch
relates that Philip, King of Macedonia, when sacrificing an ox on the
Ithomæa, with Aratus of Sicyon and Demetrius of Pharos, wished to inquire
out from the entrails of the victim concerning the wisdom of a piece of
strategy. The _haruspex_ put the smoking mass in his hands. The King shewed
it to his companions, who derived contradictory presages from it. He
listened to one side and the other, holding meanwhile the ox's entrails
in his hands. Eventually, he decided for the opinion of Aratus, and then
tranquilly gave the handful back to the sacrificer. . . .
No doubt in Augustin's time these rites were no longer practised openly.
For all that, they were of the first importance in the ancient religion,
which desired nothing better than to restore them. It is easy to understand
the repulsion they caused in the author of _The City of God_. He who would
not have a fly killed to make sure of the gold crown in the contest of
poets, looked with horror on these sacred butchers, and manglers, and
cooks. He flung the garbage of the sacrifices into the sewer, and shewed
proudly to the pagans the pure oblation of the eucharistic Bread and Wine.
But what, above all, he attacked, because it was a present and permanent
scandal, was the gluttony, the drunkenness, and lust of the pagans. Let us
not exaggerate these vices--not the two first, at least. Augustin could not
judge them as we can. It is certain that the Africans of his time--and for
that matter, those of to-day--would have struck us modern people as very
sober. The outbursts of intemperance which he accuses them of only happened
at intervals, at times of public festivity or some family celebration. But
as soon as they did begin they were terrible. When one thinks of the orgies
of our Arabs behind locked doors!
But it is no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves out
cynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses of
eating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivals
and sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals,
barrels of wine broached in the street. These were called the Dishes,
_Fercula_, or else, the Rejoicing, _Lætitia_. The poor people, who knew
meat only by sight, ate it on these days, and they drank wine. The effect
of this unaccustomed plenty was felt at once. The whole populace were
drunk. The rich in their houses possibly did it with more ceremony, but it
was really the same brutishness. The elegant Ovid, who in the _Art of Love_
teaches fine manners to the beginners in love, advises them not to vomit at
table, and to avoid getting drunk like the husbands of their mistresses.
Plainly, religion was only an excuse for these excesses. Augustin goes too
far when he makes the gods responsible for this riot of sensuality. What is
true is that they did nothing to hinder it. And it is also true that the
lechery, which he flings so acridly in the face of the pagans, the gross
stage-plays, the songs, dances, and even prostitution, were all more or
less included in the essence of paganism. The theatre, like the games of
the arena and circus, was a divine institution. At certain feasts, and in
certain temples, fornication became sacred. All the world knew what took
place at Carthage in the courts and under the porticoes of the Celestial
Virgin, and what the ears of the most chaste matrons were obliged to hear,
and also what the use was of the castrated priests of the Great Mother
of the gods. Augustin, who declaims against these filthy sports, has not
forced the note of his denunciation to make out a good case. If anybody
wants to know in more detail the sights enjoyed at the theatre, or what
were the habits of certain pious confraternities, he has only to read what
is told by Apuleius, the most devout of pagans. He takes evident pleasure
in these stories, or, if he sometimes waxes indignant, it is the depravity
of men he accuses. The gods soar at a great height above these wretched
trifles. To Augustin, on the contrary, the gods are unclean devils who fill
their bellies with lust and obscenities, as if they were hankering for the
blood and grease of sacrifices.
And so he puts his finger on the open wound of paganism--its basic
immorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day,
it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. What
Augustin has written on this subject in _The City of God_, is perhaps the
strongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this are
very timely indeed to consider:
"But such friends and such worshippers of those gods, whom they rejoice
to follow and imitate in all villainies and mischiefs--do they trouble
themselves about the corruption and great decay of the Republic? Not so.
Let it but stand, say they; let it but prosper by the number of its troops
and be glorious by its victories; or, _which is best of all, let it but
enjoy security and peace_, and what care we? Yes, what we care for above
all is that every one may have the means to increase his wealth, to pay the
expenses of his usual luxury, and that the powerful may still keep under
the weak. Let the poor crouch to the rich to be fed, or to live at ease
under their protection; let the rich abuse the poor as things at their
service, and to shew how many they have soliciting them. Let the people
applaud such as provide them with pleasures, not such as have a care for
their interests. _Let naught that is hard be enjoined, nothing impure
be prohibited_. . . . Let not subdued provinces obey their governors as
supervisors of their morality, but as masters of their fortune and the
procurers of their pleasures. What matters it if this submission has no
sincerity, but rests upon a bad and servile fear! _Let the law protect
estates rather than fair justice_. Let there be a good number of public
harlots, either for all that please to enjoy themselves in their company,
or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuous
houses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his liking
or his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmed
tinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights,
the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in the
theatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let him
be condemned as a public enemy. And if any one try to alter or suppress
them--let the people stifle his voice, let them banish him, let them
kill him. On the other hand, those that shall procure the people these
pleasures, and authorize their enjoyment, let them be eternized for the
true gods. ". . .
However, Augustin acknowledges a number of praiseworthy minds among
pagans--those philosophers, with Plato in the first rank, who have done
their best to put morality into the religion. The Christian teacher renders
a magnificent tribute to Platonism. But these high doctrines have scarcely
got beyond the portals of the schools, and this moral teaching which
paganism vaunts of, is practically limited to the sanctuaries. "Let them
not talk," says he, "of some closely muttered instructions, taught in
secret, and whispered in the ear of a few adepts, which hold I know not
what lessons of uprightness and virtue. But let them shew the temples
ordained for such pious meetings, wherein were no sports with lascivious
gestures and loose songs. . . . Let them shew us the places where the gods'
doctrine was heard against covetousness, the suppression of ambition, the
bridling of luxury, and where wretches might learn what the poet Persius
thunders unto them, saying:
'Learn, wretches, and conceive the course of things,
What man is, and why nature forth him brings;. . .
How to use money; how to help a friend;
What we on earth, and God in us, intend. '
Let them shew where their instructing gods were used to give such lessons;
and where their worshippers used to go _often_ to hear these matters.
As for us, we can point to our churches, built for this sole purpose,
wheresoever the religion of Christ is diffused. "
Can it surprise, then, if men so ignorant of high morality, and so deeply
embedded in matter, were also plunged in the grossest superstitions?
Materialism in morals always ends by producing a low credulity. Here
Augustin triumphs. He sends marching under our eyes, in a burlesque array,
the innumerable army of gods whom the Romans believed in. There are so many
that he compares them to swarms of gnats. Although he explains that he is
not able to mention them all, he amuses himself by stupefying us with the
prodigious number of those he discovers. Dragged into open day by him, a
whole divine population is brought out of the darkness and forgetfulness
where it had been sleeping perhaps for centuries: the little gods who work
in the fields, who make the corn grow and keep off the blight, those who
watch over children, who aid women in labour, who protect the hearth, who
guard the house. It was impossible to take a step among the pagans, to make
a movement, without the help of a god or goddess. Men and things were as if
fettered and imprisoned by the gods.
"In a house," says Augustin scoffingly, "there is but one porter. He is but
a mere man, yet he is sufficient for that office. But it takes three gods,
Forculus for the door, Cardea for the hinge, Limentinus for the threshold.
Doubtless, Forculus all alone could not possibly look after threshold, door
and hinges. " And if it is a case of a man and woman retiring to the bridal
chamber after the wedding, a whole squadron of divinities are set in motion
for an act so simple and natural. "I beseech you," cries Augustin, "leave
something for the husband to do! "
This African, who had such a strong sense of the unity and fathomless
infinity of God, waxed indignant at this sacrilegious parcelling of the
divine substance. But the pagans, following Varro, would answer that it was
necessary to distinguish, among all these gods, those who were just the
imagination of poets, and those who were real beings--between the gods of
fable and the gods of religion. "Then," as Tertullian had said already,
"if the gods be chosen as onions are roped, it is obvious that what is not
chosen is condemned. " "Tertullian carries his fancy too far," comments
Augustin. The gods refused as fabulous are not held reprobate on that
account. The truth is, they are a cut of the same piece as the admitted
gods. "Have not the pontiffs, like the poets, a bearded Jupiter and a
Mercury without beard? . . . Are the old Saturn and the young Apollo so much
the property of the poets that we do not see their statues too in the
temples? . . . "
And the philosophers, in their turn, however much they may protest against
the heap of fabulous gods and, like Plato and Porphyry, declare that there
exists but one God, soul of the universe, yet they no less accepted the
minor gods, and intermediaries or messengers betwixt gods and men, whom
they called demons. These hybrid beings, who pertained to humanity by their
passions, and to the divinity by the privilege of immortality, had to be
appeased by sacrifices, questioned and gratified by magic spells. And there
is what the highest pagan wisdom ended in--yes, in calling up spirits, and
the shady operations of wizards and wonder-smiths. That is what the pagans
defended, and demanded the continuation of with so much obstinacy and
fanaticism.
By no means, replied Augustin. It does not deserve to survive. It is not
the forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which has
brought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the temples
of your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions.
At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom and
impunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence!
Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste,
sober, brave, and poor, as your ancestors were. Have children, agree to
compulsory military service, and you will conquer as they did. Now, all
these virtues are enjoined and encouraged by Christianity. Whatever certain
heretics may say, the religion of Christ is not contrary to marriage or the
soldier's profession. The Patriarchs of the old law were blest in marriage,
and there are just and holy wars.
And even supposing, that in spite of all efforts to save it, the Empire is
condemned, must we therefore despair? We should be prepared for the end
of the Roman city. Like all the things of this world, it is liable to old
age and death. It will die then, one day. Far from being cast down, let
us strengthen ourselves against this disaster by the realization of the
eternal. Let us strengthen our hold upon that which passes not. Above the
earthly city, rises the City of God, which is the communion of holy souls,
the only one which gives complete and never-failing joy. Let us try to be
the citizens of that city, and to live the only life worth calling life.
For the life here below is but the shadow of a shadow. . . .
The people of those times were wonderfully prepared to hearken to such
exhortations. On the eve of the Barbarian invasions, these Christians, for
whom the dogma of the Resurrection was perhaps the chief reason of their
faith, these people, sick at heart, who looked on in torture at the ending
of a world, must have considered this present life as a bad dream, from
which there should be no delay in escaping.
At the very moment even that Augustin began to write _The City of God_, his
friend Evodius, Bishop of Uzalis, told him this story.
He had as secretary a very young man, the son of a priest in the
neighbourhood. This young man had begun by obtaining a post as stenographer
in the office of the Proconsul of Africa. Evodius, who was alarmed at what
might happen to his virtue in such surroundings, having first made certain
of his absolute chastity, offered to take him into his service. In the
bishop's house, where he had scarcely anything to do but read the Holy
Scripture, his faith became so enthusiastic that he longed for nothing now
but death. To go out of this life, "to be with Christ," was his eager wish.
It was heard. After sixteen days of illness he died in the house of his
parents.
"Now, two days after his funeral, a virtuous woman of Figes, a servant of
God, a widow for twelve years, had a dream, and in her dream she saw a
deacon who had been dead some four years, together with men, and women too,
virgins and widows--she saw these servants of God getting ready a palace.
This dwelling was so rich that it shone with light, and you would have
believed it was all made of silver. And when the widow asked whom these
preparations were for, the deacon replied that they were for a young man,
dead the evening before, the son of a priest. In the same palace, she saw
an old man, all robed in white, and he told two other persons, also robed
in white, to go to the tomb of this young man, and lift out the body, and
carry it to Heaven. When the body had been drawn from the tomb and carried
to Heaven, there arose (said she) out of the tomb a bush of virgin-roses,
which are thus named because they never open. . . . "
So the son of the priest had chosen the better part. What was the good of
remaining in this abominable world, where there was always a risk of being
burned or murdered by Goths and Vandals, when, in the other world, angels
were preparing for you palaces of light?
III
THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION
Augustin was seventy-two years old when he finished the _City of God_. This
was in 426. That year, an event of much importance occurred at Hippo, and
the report of it was inserted in the public acts of the community.
"The sixth of the calends of October," _The Acts_ set forth, "the very
glorious Theodosius being consul for the twelfth time, and Valentinian
Augustus for the second, Augustin the bishop, accompanied by Religianus
and Martinianus, his fellow-bishops, having taken his place in the
Basilica of Peace at Hippo, and the priests Saturnius, Leporius, Barnaby,
Fortunatianus, Lazarus, and Heraclius, being present, with all the clergy
and a vast crowd of people--Augustin the bishop said:
"'Let us without delay look to the business which I declared yesterday to
your charity, and for which I desired you to gather here in large numbers,
as I see you have done. If I were to talk to you of anything else, you
might be less attentive, seeing the expectation you are in.
"'My brothers, we are all mortal in this life, and no man knows his last
day. God willed that I should come to dwell in this town in the force of my
age. But, as I was a young man then--see, I am old now, and as I know that
at the death of bishops, peace is troubled by rivalry or ambition (this
have I often seen and bewailed it)--I ought, so far as it rests with me, to
turn away so great a mischief from your city. . . . I am going then to tell
you that my will, which I believe also to be the will of God, is that I
have as successor the priest Heraclius. '
"At these words all the people cried out:
"'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!
bloated flesh gave those who saw him at a distance a false notion of his
strength. The Romans were most favourably impressed by him, especially the
young men.
But the army, the safeguard of the country, was perhaps even more admired
than the Emperor. The legions, following the ruler, had almost deserted
the capital. The flower of the troops were almost unknown there. In
consequence, the march past of the cavalry was quite a new sight for the
people. A great murmur of admiration sounded as the _cataphracti_ appeared,
gleaming in the coats of mail which covered them from head to foot. Upon
their horses, caparisoned in defensive armour, they looked like equestrian,
statues--like silver horsemen on bronze horses. Childish cries greeted each
_draconarius_ as he marched by carrying his ensign--a dragon embroidered on
a long piece of cloth which flapped in the wind. And the crowd pointed at
the crests of the helmets plumed with peacock feathers, and the scarfs of
scarlet silk flowing over the camber of the gilded cuirasses. . . .
The military show poured into the Forum, swept up the _Via Sacra_, and when
it had passed under the triumphal arches of the old emperors, halted at the
Palace of Septimus Severus. In the Stadium, the crowd awaited Honorius.
When he appeared on the balcony of the Imperial box, wild cheering burst
out on all the rows of seats. The Emperor, diadem on head, bowed to the
people. Upon that the cheers became a tempest. Rome did not know how to
express her happiness at having at last got her master back.
On the eve of the worst catastrophes she had this supreme day of glory, of
desperate pride, of unconquerable faith in her destiny. The public frenzy
encouraged them in the maddest hopes. The poet Claudian, who had followed
the Court, became the mouthpiece of these perilous illusions. "Arise! " he
cried to Rome, "I prithee arise, O venerable queen! Trust in the goodwill
of the gods. O city, fling away the mean fears of age, _thou who art
immortal as the heavens_! . . . "
For all that, the Barbarian danger continued to threaten. The victory
of Pollentia, which, moreover, was not a complete victory, had settled
nothing. Alaric was in flight in the Alps, but he kept his eye open for a
favourable chance to fall back upon Italy and wrench concessions of money
and honours from the Court of Ravenna. Supported by his army of mercenaries
and adventurers in the pay of the Empire like himself, his dealings with
Honorius were a kind of continual blackmail. If the Imperial Government
refused to pay the sums which he protested it owed him for the maintenance
of his troops, he would pay himself by force. Rome, where fabulous riches
had accumulated for so many centuries, was an obvious prey for him and his
men. He had coveted it for a long time; and to get up his courage for this
daring exploit, as well as to work upon his soldiers, he pretended that he
had a mission from Heaven to chastise and destroy the new Babylon. In his
Pannonian forests it would seem he had heard mysterious voices which said
to him: "Advance, and thou shalt destroy the city! "
This leader of clans had nothing of the conqueror about him. He understood
that he was in no wise cut out to wear the purple; he himself felt the
Barbarian's cureless inferiority. But he also felt that neither was he
born to obey. If he asked for the title of Prefect of the City, and if he
persisted in offering his services to the Empire, it was as a means to get
the upper hand of it more surely. Repulsed, disdained by the Court, he
tried to raise himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of the common people
by giving himself the airs of an instrument of justice, a man designed by
fate, who marches blindly to a terrible purpose indicated by the divine
wrath. It often happened that he was duped by his own mummery. This turbid
Barbarian soul was prone to the most superstitious terrors.
Notwithstanding his rodomontades, it is certain that in his heart he was
scared by Rome. He hardly dared to attack it. In the first place, it was
not at all a convenient operation for him. His army of mercenaries had no
proper implements to undertake the siege of this huge city, of which the
defence lines were thrown out in so wide a perimeter. He had to come back
to it twice, before he could make up his mind to invest it seriously. The
first time, in 408, he was satisfied with starving the Romans by cutting
off the food supply. He had pitched his camp on the banks of the Tiber in
such a way as to capture the shipping between the capital and the great
store-houses built near the mouth of the river. From the ramparts, the
Romans could see the Barbarian soldiers moving about, with their sheepskin
coats dyed to a crude red. Panic-stricken, the aristocracy fled to its
villas in Campania, or Sicily, or Africa. They took with them whatever
they were able to carry. They sought refuge in the nearest islands, even
in Sardinia and Corsica, despite their reputation for unhealthiness. They
even hid among the rocks of the seashore. The terror was so great that the
Senate agreed to everything demanded by Alaric. He was paid an enormous
indemnity which he claimed as a condition of his withdrawal.
The following year he used the same method of intimidation to force on the
people an emperor he had chosen, and to get conferred on him the title of
Prefect of the City which he had desired so long. Finally, in the year 410,
he struck the supreme blow.
The Barbarian knew what he was about, and that he did not risk much in
blockading Rome. Famine would open the gates to him sooner or later. All
who were able had left the city, especially the rich. There was no garrison
to defend it. Only a lazy populace remained behind the walls, unused to
arms, and still more enfeebled by long starvation. And yet this wretched
and decimated population, in an outburst of patriotism, resisted with
desperate energy. The siege was long. Doubtless it began before the spring;
it ended only at the end of the summer. In the night of the twenty-fourth
of August, 410, amid the glare of lightning and crashes of thunder, Alaric
entered Rome by the Salarian gate. It is certain that he only managed it
even then by treachery. The prey was handed to him.
The sack of Rome seems to have lasted for three days and three nights. Part
of the town was burned. The conquered people underwent all the horrors
which accompany such events--violent and stupid destruction, rapes, murders
of individuals, wholesale slaughter, torture, and mutilation. But in
reality the Barbarians only wanted the Roman gold. They acted like perfect
highway robbers. If they tortured their victims without distinction of age
or sex, it was to pluck the secret of their treasure-houses out of them.
It is even said that in these conditions the Roman avarice produced some
admirable examples of firmness. Some let themselves be tortured to their
last gasp rather than reveal where their treasures were hid. At last, when
Alaric decided that his army was gorged enough with spoil, he gave the
order to evacuate the city, and took to the roads with his baggage-waggons
full.
Let us be careful not to judge these doings after our modern notions. The
capture of Rome by Alaric was not a national disaster. It was plundering on
a huge scale. The Goth had no thought at all of destroying the Empire. He
was only a mercenary in rebellion--an ambitious mercenary, no doubt--but,
above all, a looter.
As a consequence of this attack on the Eternal City, one after another
caught the disease of plunder, which contaminated even the functionaries
and the subjects of Rome. Amid the general anarchy, where impunity seemed
certain, nobody restrained himself any longer. In Africa especially, where
the old instinct of piracy is always half-awake, they applied themselves to
ransack the fugitive Romans and Italians. Many rich people were come there,
seeking a place of safety in the belief that they would be more secure when
they had put the sea between themselves and the Barbarians. The report of
their riches had preceded them, exaggerated out of all measure by popular
rumour. Among them were mentioned patricians such as the Anicii, whose
property was so immense and their palaces so splendid that they could not
find purchasers. These multi-millionaires in flight were a miraculous
windfall for the country. They were bled without mercy.
Quicker than any one else, the military governor of Africa, Count
Heraclianus, was on the spot to pick the pockets of the Italian immigrants.
No sooner were they off the boat than he had very distinguished ladies
seized, and only released them when he had extorted a large ransom. He sold
those unable to pay to the Greek and Syrian slave-merchants who provided
human flesh for the Oriental harems. When the example came from such a
height, the subordinates doubtless said to themselves that they would
be very wrong to have the least shame. From one end of the province to
the other, everybody struggled to extract as much as possible from the
unfortunate fugitives. Augustin's own parishioners at Hippo undertook to
tear a donation from one of those gorgeous Anicii, whose lands stretched
further than a kite could fly--from Pinian, the husband of St. Melania
the younger. They wanted to force him to be ordained priest in spite of
himself, which, as has been explained, involved the handing over of his
goods to the Catholic community. Augustin, who opposed this, had to give in
to the crowd. There was almost a riot in the basilica.
Such were the far-off reverberations of the capture of Rome by Alaric.
Carthaginians and Numidians pillaged the Romans just like the Barbarians.
Now, how did it come about that this monstrous loot took on before the eyes
of contemporaries the magnitude of a world-catastrophe? For really nothing
was utterly lost. The Empire remained standing. After Alaric's retreat,
the Romans had come back to their city and they worked to build up the
ruins. Ere long, the populace were crying out loud that if the circus
and amphitheatre games were given back to them, they would look upon the
descent of the Goths as a bad dream.
It is no less certain that this sensational occurrence had struck the whole
Mediterranean world into a perfect stupor. It seized upon the imaginations
of all. The idea that Rome could not be taken, that it was integral and
almost sacred, had such a hold on people's minds, that they refused to
credit the sinister news. Nobody reflected that the sack of Rome by the
Barbarians should have been long ago foreseen--that Rome, deprived of
a garrison, abandoned by the Imperial army, was bound to attract the
covetousness of the Goths, and that the pillage of a place without defence,
already enfeebled by famine, was not a very glorious feat, very difficult,
or very extraordinary. People only saw the brutal fact: the Eternal City
had been captured and burned by the mercenaries. All were under the
influence of the shock caused by the narratives of the refugees. In one of
his sermons, Augustin has transmitted to us an echo of the general panic:
"Horrible things," said he, "have been told us. There have been ruins, and
fires, and rapine, and murder, and torture. That is true; we have heard it
many times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have often wept, and
we have hardly been able to console ourselves. "
This capture of Rome was plainly a terrible warning for the future. But
party spirit strangely exaggerated the importance and meaning of the
calamity. For pagans and Christians alike it became a subject for speeches,
a commonplace of religious polemic. Both saw the event as a manifestation
of the wrath of Heaven.
"While we sacrificed to our gods," the pagan said, "Rome was standing, Rome
was happy. Now that our sacrifices are forbidden, you see what has become
of Rome. . . . "
And they went about repeating that Christianism was responsible for the
ruin of the Empire. On their side, the Christians answered: In the first
place, Rome has not fallen: it is always standing. It has been only
chastised, and this happened because it is still half pagan. By this
frightful punishment (and they heightened the description of the horrors
committed), God has given it a warning. Let it be converted, let it return
to the virtues of its ancestors, and it will become again the mistress of
nations.
There is what Augustin and the bishops said. Still, the flock of the
faithful were only half convinced. It was all well enough to remonstrate
to them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans,
had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader had
bestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas of
the holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that many
Christians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virgins
had experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all the
inhabitants had been robbed of their property. . . . Was it thus that God
protected His chosen? What advantage was there in being Christian if they
had the same treatment as the idolaters?
This state of mind became extremely favourable for paganism to come back
again on the offensive. Since the very hard laws of Theodosius, which
forbade the worship of the ancient gods, even within the house, the pagans
had not overlooked any chance to protest against the Imperial severity.
At Carthage there were always fights in the streets between pagans and
Christians, not to say riots. In the colony of Suffetula, sixty Christians
had been massacred. The year before the capture of Rome, there had been
trouble with the pagans at Guelma. Houses belonging to the Church were
burned, a monk killed in a brawl. Whenever the Government inspection
relaxed, or the political situation appeared favourable, the pagans hurried
to proclaim their belief. Only just lately, in Rome beleaguered by Alaric,
the new consul, Tertullus, had thought fit to revive the old customs.
Before assuming office, he studied gravely the sacred fowls in their cages,
traced circles in the sky with the augur's wand, and marked the flight of
birds. Besides, a pagan oracle circulated persistently among the people,
promising that after a reign of three hundred and sixty-five years
Christianity would be conquered. The centuries of the great desolation were
fulfilled; the era of revenge was about to begin for the outcast gods.
These warlike symptoms did not escape Augustin's vigilance. His indignation
no longer arose only from the fact that paganism was so slow in dying; he
was now afraid that the feebleness of the Empire might allow it to take on
an appearance of life. It must be ended, as Donatism had been ended. The
old apostle was summoned to a new campaign, and in it he would spend the
best of his strength to the eve of his death.
II
THE CITY OF GOD
For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a
thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the
Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his _City of God_,
the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also
the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and
defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal.
It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our sole
aim is to study Augustin's soul, and we quote scarcely anything from his
books save those parts wherein a little of this ardent soul pulsates--those
which are still living for us of the twentieth century, which contain
teachings and ways of feeling still likely to move us. Now, Augustin's
attitude towards paganism is one of those which throw the greatest light on
his nature and character. And it may even yet come to be our own attitude
when we find opposed to us a conception of life and the world which
may indeed be ruined for a time, but is reborn as soon as the sense of
spirituality disappears or grows feeble.
"Immortal Paganism, art thou dead? So they say.
But Pan scoffs under his breath, and the Chimæra laughs. " [1]
[Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve. ]
Like ourselves, Augustin, brought up by a Christian mother, knew it only
through literature, and, so to speak, æsthetically. Recollections of
school, the emotions and admirations of a cultivated man--there is what the
old religion meant for him. Nevertheless, he had one great advantage over
us for knowing it well: the sight of the pagan customs and superstitions
was still under his eyes.
That the lascivious, romantic, and poetic adventures of the ancient gods,
their statues, their temples, and all the arts arising from their religion,
had beguiled him and filled him with enthusiasm before his conversion, is
only too certain. But all this mythology and plastic art were looked upon
as secondary things then, even by pagans. The serious, the essential part
of the religion was not in that. Paganism, a religion of Beauty, is an
invention of our modern æsthetes; it was hardly thought of in that way in
Augustin's time.
Long before this, the Roman Varro, the great compiler of the religious
antiquities of paganism, made a threefold distinction of the doctrine
concerning the gods. The first--that of the theatre, as he calls it, or
fabulous mythology, adapted to poets, dramatists, sculptors, and jesters.
Invented by these, it is only a fantasy, a play of imagination, an ornament
of life. The third is civil theology, serious and solid, which claims the
respect and piety of all. "It is that which men in cities, and chiefly the
priests, _ought to be_ cunning in. It teaches which gods to worship in
public, and with what ceremonies and sacrifices each one must be served. "
Finally, the second, physical or metaphysical theology, is reserved for
philosophers and exceptional minds; it is altogether theoretical. The
only important and truly religious one, which puts an obligation on the
believer, is the third--the civil theology.
Now, we never take account of this. What we persist in regarding as
paganism is what Varro himself called "a religion for the theatre"--matter
of opera, pretext for ballets, for scenery, and for dance postures.
Transposed into another key by our poets, this mythology is inflated now
and then by mysticism, or by a vague symbolism. Playthings of our pretty
wits! The living paganism, which Augustin struggled against, which crowds
defended at the price of their blood, in which the poor believed and the
wisest statesmen deemed indispensable as a safeguard of cities--that
paganism is quite another matter. Like all religions which are possible,
it implied and it _enforced_ not only beliefs, but ritual, sacrifices,
festivals. And this is what Augustin, with the other Christians of that
time, spurned with disgust and declared to be unbearable.
He saw, or he had seen with his own eyes, the reality of the pagan worship,
and the most repellent of all to our modern delicacy--the sacrifices. At
the period when he wrote _The City of God_, private sacrifices, as well as
public, were forbidden. This did not prevent the devout from breaking the
law whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when they
sacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The rites
could not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of the
pontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of former
times. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustin
could have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp and
according to all the ritual forms. They were veritable scenes of butchery.
For Heaven's sake let us forget the frieze of the Parthenon, and its
sacrificers with their graceful lines! If we want to have a literal
translation of this sculpture, and find the modern representation of a
hecatomb, we must go to the slaughter-houses at La Villette.
Among the heaps of broken flesh, the puddles of blood, the mystic Julian
was attacked by a kind of drunkenness. There were never enough beasts
strangled or slaughtered to suit him. Nothing satisfied his fury for sacred
carnage. The pagans themselves made fun of this craze for sacrificing.
During the three years his reign lasted the altars streamed with blood.
Oxen by hundreds were slain upon the floors of the temples, and the
butchers throttled so many sheep and other domestic animals that they gave
up keeping count of them. Thousands of white birds, pigeons or sea-gulls,
were destroyed day by day by the piety of the prince. He was called the
_Victimarius_, and when he started upon his campaign against the Persians,
an epigram was circulated once more which had been formerly composed
against Marcus Aurelius (the philosophic emperor! ) who was equally generous
of hecatombs: "To Marcus Cæsar from the white oxen. It will be all over
with us if you come back a conqueror. " People said that Julian, on his
return, would depopulate stables and pasture-lands.
The populace, who gathered their very considerable profit from these
butcheries, naturally encouraged such an excess of devotion. At Rome, under
Caligula, more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims were immolated in
three months--nearly two thousand a day. And these massacres took place
upon the approaches of the temples; in the middle of the city; on the
forums; in narrow squares crowded with public buildings and statues. Just
try to call up the scene in summer, between walls at a white heat, with the
smells and the flies. Spectators and victims rubbed against one another,
pressed close in the restricted space. One day, Caligula, while he was
attending a sacrifice, was splashed all over by the blood of a flamingo as
they cut its neck. But the august Cæsar was not so fastidious; he himself
operated in these ceremonies armed with a mallet and clad in the short
shirt of the killers. The ignominy of all this revolted the Christians,
and whoever had nerves at all sensitive. The bloody mud in which passers
slipped, the hissing of the fat, the heavy odour of flesh, were sickening.
Tertullian held his nose before the "stinking fires" on which the victims
were roasting. And St. Ambrose complained that in the Roman Curia the
senators who were Christians were obliged to breathe in the smoke and
receive full in the face the ashes of the altar raised before the statue of
Victory.
The manipulations of the _haruspicina_ seemed an even worse abomination in
the eyes of the Christians. Dissection of bowels, examination of entrails,
were practices very much in fashion in all classes of society. The
pagans generally took more or less interest in magic. One was scarcely
a philosopher without being a miracle-worker. In this there was a kind
of perfidious rivalry to the Christian miracles. The ambitious or the
discontented opened the bellies of animals to learn when the Emperor was
going to die, and who would succeed him. But although it did not pretend to
magic, the _haruspicina_ made an essential part of the sacrifices. As soon
as the dismemberment was done, the diviners examined the appearance of
the entrails. Consulting together, they turned them over frequently with
anxious attention. This business might continue for a long time. Plutarch
relates that Philip, King of Macedonia, when sacrificing an ox on the
Ithomæa, with Aratus of Sicyon and Demetrius of Pharos, wished to inquire
out from the entrails of the victim concerning the wisdom of a piece of
strategy. The _haruspex_ put the smoking mass in his hands. The King shewed
it to his companions, who derived contradictory presages from it. He
listened to one side and the other, holding meanwhile the ox's entrails
in his hands. Eventually, he decided for the opinion of Aratus, and then
tranquilly gave the handful back to the sacrificer. . . .
No doubt in Augustin's time these rites were no longer practised openly.
For all that, they were of the first importance in the ancient religion,
which desired nothing better than to restore them. It is easy to understand
the repulsion they caused in the author of _The City of God_. He who would
not have a fly killed to make sure of the gold crown in the contest of
poets, looked with horror on these sacred butchers, and manglers, and
cooks. He flung the garbage of the sacrifices into the sewer, and shewed
proudly to the pagans the pure oblation of the eucharistic Bread and Wine.
But what, above all, he attacked, because it was a present and permanent
scandal, was the gluttony, the drunkenness, and lust of the pagans. Let us
not exaggerate these vices--not the two first, at least. Augustin could not
judge them as we can. It is certain that the Africans of his time--and for
that matter, those of to-day--would have struck us modern people as very
sober. The outbursts of intemperance which he accuses them of only happened
at intervals, at times of public festivity or some family celebration. But
as soon as they did begin they were terrible. When one thinks of the orgies
of our Arabs behind locked doors!
But it is no less true that the pagan vices spread themselves out
cynically under the protecting shadow of religion. Popular souses of
eating and drinking were the obligatory accompaniments of the festivals
and sacrifices. A religious festival meant a carouse, loads of victuals,
barrels of wine broached in the street. These were called the Dishes,
_Fercula_, or else, the Rejoicing, _Lætitia_. The poor people, who knew
meat only by sight, ate it on these days, and they drank wine. The effect
of this unaccustomed plenty was felt at once. The whole populace were
drunk. The rich in their houses possibly did it with more ceremony, but it
was really the same brutishness. The elegant Ovid, who in the _Art of Love_
teaches fine manners to the beginners in love, advises them not to vomit at
table, and to avoid getting drunk like the husbands of their mistresses.
Plainly, religion was only an excuse for these excesses. Augustin goes too
far when he makes the gods responsible for this riot of sensuality. What is
true is that they did nothing to hinder it. And it is also true that the
lechery, which he flings so acridly in the face of the pagans, the gross
stage-plays, the songs, dances, and even prostitution, were all more or
less included in the essence of paganism. The theatre, like the games of
the arena and circus, was a divine institution. At certain feasts, and in
certain temples, fornication became sacred. All the world knew what took
place at Carthage in the courts and under the porticoes of the Celestial
Virgin, and what the ears of the most chaste matrons were obliged to hear,
and also what the use was of the castrated priests of the Great Mother
of the gods. Augustin, who declaims against these filthy sports, has not
forced the note of his denunciation to make out a good case. If anybody
wants to know in more detail the sights enjoyed at the theatre, or what
were the habits of certain pious confraternities, he has only to read what
is told by Apuleius, the most devout of pagans. He takes evident pleasure
in these stories, or, if he sometimes waxes indignant, it is the depravity
of men he accuses. The gods soar at a great height above these wretched
trifles. To Augustin, on the contrary, the gods are unclean devils who fill
their bellies with lust and obscenities, as if they were hankering for the
blood and grease of sacrifices.
And so he puts his finger on the open wound of paganism--its basic
immorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day,
it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. What
Augustin has written on this subject in _The City of God_, is perhaps the
strongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this are
very timely indeed to consider:
"But such friends and such worshippers of those gods, whom they rejoice
to follow and imitate in all villainies and mischiefs--do they trouble
themselves about the corruption and great decay of the Republic? Not so.
Let it but stand, say they; let it but prosper by the number of its troops
and be glorious by its victories; or, _which is best of all, let it but
enjoy security and peace_, and what care we? Yes, what we care for above
all is that every one may have the means to increase his wealth, to pay the
expenses of his usual luxury, and that the powerful may still keep under
the weak. Let the poor crouch to the rich to be fed, or to live at ease
under their protection; let the rich abuse the poor as things at their
service, and to shew how many they have soliciting them. Let the people
applaud such as provide them with pleasures, not such as have a care for
their interests. _Let naught that is hard be enjoined, nothing impure
be prohibited_. . . . Let not subdued provinces obey their governors as
supervisors of their morality, but as masters of their fortune and the
procurers of their pleasures. What matters it if this submission has no
sincerity, but rests upon a bad and servile fear! _Let the law protect
estates rather than fair justice_. Let there be a good number of public
harlots, either for all that please to enjoy themselves in their company,
or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuous
houses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his liking
or his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmed
tinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights,
the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in the
theatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let him
be condemned as a public enemy. And if any one try to alter or suppress
them--let the people stifle his voice, let them banish him, let them
kill him. On the other hand, those that shall procure the people these
pleasures, and authorize their enjoyment, let them be eternized for the
true gods. ". . .
However, Augustin acknowledges a number of praiseworthy minds among
pagans--those philosophers, with Plato in the first rank, who have done
their best to put morality into the religion. The Christian teacher renders
a magnificent tribute to Platonism. But these high doctrines have scarcely
got beyond the portals of the schools, and this moral teaching which
paganism vaunts of, is practically limited to the sanctuaries. "Let them
not talk," says he, "of some closely muttered instructions, taught in
secret, and whispered in the ear of a few adepts, which hold I know not
what lessons of uprightness and virtue. But let them shew the temples
ordained for such pious meetings, wherein were no sports with lascivious
gestures and loose songs. . . . Let them shew us the places where the gods'
doctrine was heard against covetousness, the suppression of ambition, the
bridling of luxury, and where wretches might learn what the poet Persius
thunders unto them, saying:
'Learn, wretches, and conceive the course of things,
What man is, and why nature forth him brings;. . .
How to use money; how to help a friend;
What we on earth, and God in us, intend. '
Let them shew where their instructing gods were used to give such lessons;
and where their worshippers used to go _often_ to hear these matters.
As for us, we can point to our churches, built for this sole purpose,
wheresoever the religion of Christ is diffused. "
Can it surprise, then, if men so ignorant of high morality, and so deeply
embedded in matter, were also plunged in the grossest superstitions?
Materialism in morals always ends by producing a low credulity. Here
Augustin triumphs. He sends marching under our eyes, in a burlesque array,
the innumerable army of gods whom the Romans believed in. There are so many
that he compares them to swarms of gnats. Although he explains that he is
not able to mention them all, he amuses himself by stupefying us with the
prodigious number of those he discovers. Dragged into open day by him, a
whole divine population is brought out of the darkness and forgetfulness
where it had been sleeping perhaps for centuries: the little gods who work
in the fields, who make the corn grow and keep off the blight, those who
watch over children, who aid women in labour, who protect the hearth, who
guard the house. It was impossible to take a step among the pagans, to make
a movement, without the help of a god or goddess. Men and things were as if
fettered and imprisoned by the gods.
"In a house," says Augustin scoffingly, "there is but one porter. He is but
a mere man, yet he is sufficient for that office. But it takes three gods,
Forculus for the door, Cardea for the hinge, Limentinus for the threshold.
Doubtless, Forculus all alone could not possibly look after threshold, door
and hinges. " And if it is a case of a man and woman retiring to the bridal
chamber after the wedding, a whole squadron of divinities are set in motion
for an act so simple and natural. "I beseech you," cries Augustin, "leave
something for the husband to do! "
This African, who had such a strong sense of the unity and fathomless
infinity of God, waxed indignant at this sacrilegious parcelling of the
divine substance. But the pagans, following Varro, would answer that it was
necessary to distinguish, among all these gods, those who were just the
imagination of poets, and those who were real beings--between the gods of
fable and the gods of religion. "Then," as Tertullian had said already,
"if the gods be chosen as onions are roped, it is obvious that what is not
chosen is condemned. " "Tertullian carries his fancy too far," comments
Augustin. The gods refused as fabulous are not held reprobate on that
account. The truth is, they are a cut of the same piece as the admitted
gods. "Have not the pontiffs, like the poets, a bearded Jupiter and a
Mercury without beard? . . . Are the old Saturn and the young Apollo so much
the property of the poets that we do not see their statues too in the
temples? . . . "
And the philosophers, in their turn, however much they may protest against
the heap of fabulous gods and, like Plato and Porphyry, declare that there
exists but one God, soul of the universe, yet they no less accepted the
minor gods, and intermediaries or messengers betwixt gods and men, whom
they called demons. These hybrid beings, who pertained to humanity by their
passions, and to the divinity by the privilege of immortality, had to be
appeased by sacrifices, questioned and gratified by magic spells. And there
is what the highest pagan wisdom ended in--yes, in calling up spirits, and
the shady operations of wizards and wonder-smiths. That is what the pagans
defended, and demanded the continuation of with so much obstinacy and
fanaticism.
By no means, replied Augustin. It does not deserve to survive. It is not
the forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which has
brought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the temples
of your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions.
At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom and
impunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence!
Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste,
sober, brave, and poor, as your ancestors were. Have children, agree to
compulsory military service, and you will conquer as they did. Now, all
these virtues are enjoined and encouraged by Christianity. Whatever certain
heretics may say, the religion of Christ is not contrary to marriage or the
soldier's profession. The Patriarchs of the old law were blest in marriage,
and there are just and holy wars.
And even supposing, that in spite of all efforts to save it, the Empire is
condemned, must we therefore despair? We should be prepared for the end
of the Roman city. Like all the things of this world, it is liable to old
age and death. It will die then, one day. Far from being cast down, let
us strengthen ourselves against this disaster by the realization of the
eternal. Let us strengthen our hold upon that which passes not. Above the
earthly city, rises the City of God, which is the communion of holy souls,
the only one which gives complete and never-failing joy. Let us try to be
the citizens of that city, and to live the only life worth calling life.
For the life here below is but the shadow of a shadow. . . .
The people of those times were wonderfully prepared to hearken to such
exhortations. On the eve of the Barbarian invasions, these Christians, for
whom the dogma of the Resurrection was perhaps the chief reason of their
faith, these people, sick at heart, who looked on in torture at the ending
of a world, must have considered this present life as a bad dream, from
which there should be no delay in escaping.
At the very moment even that Augustin began to write _The City of God_, his
friend Evodius, Bishop of Uzalis, told him this story.
He had as secretary a very young man, the son of a priest in the
neighbourhood. This young man had begun by obtaining a post as stenographer
in the office of the Proconsul of Africa. Evodius, who was alarmed at what
might happen to his virtue in such surroundings, having first made certain
of his absolute chastity, offered to take him into his service. In the
bishop's house, where he had scarcely anything to do but read the Holy
Scripture, his faith became so enthusiastic that he longed for nothing now
but death. To go out of this life, "to be with Christ," was his eager wish.
It was heard. After sixteen days of illness he died in the house of his
parents.
"Now, two days after his funeral, a virtuous woman of Figes, a servant of
God, a widow for twelve years, had a dream, and in her dream she saw a
deacon who had been dead some four years, together with men, and women too,
virgins and widows--she saw these servants of God getting ready a palace.
This dwelling was so rich that it shone with light, and you would have
believed it was all made of silver. And when the widow asked whom these
preparations were for, the deacon replied that they were for a young man,
dead the evening before, the son of a priest. In the same palace, she saw
an old man, all robed in white, and he told two other persons, also robed
in white, to go to the tomb of this young man, and lift out the body, and
carry it to Heaven. When the body had been drawn from the tomb and carried
to Heaven, there arose (said she) out of the tomb a bush of virgin-roses,
which are thus named because they never open. . . . "
So the son of the priest had chosen the better part. What was the good of
remaining in this abominable world, where there was always a risk of being
burned or murdered by Goths and Vandals, when, in the other world, angels
were preparing for you palaces of light?
III
THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION
Augustin was seventy-two years old when he finished the _City of God_. This
was in 426. That year, an event of much importance occurred at Hippo, and
the report of it was inserted in the public acts of the community.
"The sixth of the calends of October," _The Acts_ set forth, "the very
glorious Theodosius being consul for the twelfth time, and Valentinian
Augustus for the second, Augustin the bishop, accompanied by Religianus
and Martinianus, his fellow-bishops, having taken his place in the
Basilica of Peace at Hippo, and the priests Saturnius, Leporius, Barnaby,
Fortunatianus, Lazarus, and Heraclius, being present, with all the clergy
and a vast crowd of people--Augustin the bishop said:
"'Let us without delay look to the business which I declared yesterday to
your charity, and for which I desired you to gather here in large numbers,
as I see you have done. If I were to talk to you of anything else, you
might be less attentive, seeing the expectation you are in.
"'My brothers, we are all mortal in this life, and no man knows his last
day. God willed that I should come to dwell in this town in the force of my
age. But, as I was a young man then--see, I am old now, and as I know that
at the death of bishops, peace is troubled by rivalry or ambition (this
have I often seen and bewailed it)--I ought, so far as it rests with me, to
turn away so great a mischief from your city. . . . I am going then to tell
you that my will, which I believe also to be the will of God, is that I
have as successor the priest Heraclius. '
"At these words all the people cried out:
"'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!
