Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
the divine worship of the Gods have been strengthened and improved from
time to time. And this is not to be imputed to chance or folly, but to
the frequent appearance of the Gods themselves. In the war with the
Latins, when A. Posthumius, the dictator, attacked Octavius Mamilius,
the Tusculan, at Regillus, Castor and Pollux were seen fighting in our
army on horseback; and since that the same offspring of Tyndarus gave
notice of the defeat of Perses; for as P. Vatienus, the grandfather of
the present young man of that name, was coming in the night to Rome
from his government of Reate, two young men on white horses appeared to
him, and told him that King[105] Perses was that day taken prisoner.
This news he carried to the senate, who immediately threw him into
prison for speaking inconsiderately on a state affair; but when it was
confirmed by letters from Paullus, he was recompensed by the senate
with land and immunities.[106] Nor do we forget when the Locrians
defeated the people of Crotone, in a great battle on the banks of the
river Sagra, that it was known the same day at the Olympic Games. The
voices of the Fauns have been often heard, and Deities have appeared in
forms so visible that they have compelled every one who is not
senseless, or hardened in impiety, to confess the presence of the Gods.
III. What do predictions and foreknowledge of future events indicate,
but that such future events are shown, pointed out, portended, and
foretold to men? From whence they are called omens, signs, portents,
prodigies. But though we should esteem fabulous what is said of
Mopsus,[107] Tiresias,[108] Amphiaraus,[109] Calchas,[110] and
Helenus[111] (who would not have been delivered down to us as augurs
even in fable if their art had been despised), may we not be
sufficiently apprised of the power of the Gods by domestic examples?
Will not the temerity of P. Claudius, in the first Punic war, affect
us? who, when the poultry were let out of the coop and would not feed,
ordered them to be thrown into the water, and, joking even upon the
Gods, said, with a sneer, "Let them drink, since they will not eat;"
which piece of ridicule, being followed by a victory over his fleet,
cost him many tears, and brought great calamity on the Roman people.
Did not his colleague Junius, in the same war, lose his fleet in a
tempest by disregarding the auspices? Claudius, therefore, was
condemned by the people, and Junius killed himself. Coelius says that
P. Flaminius, from his neglect of religion, fell at Thrasimenus; a loss
which the public severely felt. By these instances of calamity we may
be assured that Rome owes her grandeur and success to the conduct of
those who were tenacious of their religious duties; and if we compare
ourselves to our neighbors, we shall find that we are infinitely
distinguished above foreign nations by our zeal for religious
ceremonies, though in other things we may be only equal to them, and in
other respects even inferior to them.
Ought we to contemn Attius Navius's staff, with which he divided the
regions of the vine to find his sow?[112] I should despise it, if I
were not aware that King Hostilius had carried on most important wars
in deference to his auguries; but by the negligence of our nobility the
discipline of the augury is now omitted, the truth of the auspices
despised, and only a mere form observed; so that the most important
affairs of the commonwealth, even the wars, on which the public safety
depends, are conducted without any auspices; the Peremnia[113] are
discussed; no part of the Acumina[114] performed; no select men are
called to witness to the military testaments;[115] our generals now
begin their wars as soon as they have arranged the Auspicia. The force
of religion was so great among our ancestors that some of their
commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the solemn, formal
expressions of religion, sacrificed themselves to the immortal Gods to
save their country.[116] I could mention many of the Sibylline
prophecies, and many answers of the haruspices, to confirm those
things, which ought not to be doubted.
IV. For example: our augurs and the Etrurian haruspices saw the truth
of their art established when P. Scipio and C. Figulus were consuls;
for as Tiberius Gracchus, who was a second time consul, wished to
proceed to a fresh election, the first Rogator,[117] as he was
collecting the suffrages, fell down dead on the spot. Gracchus
nevertheless went on with the assembly, but perceiving that this
accident had a religious influence on the people, he brought the affair
before the senate. The senate thought fit to refer it to those who
usually took cognizance of such things. The haruspices were called, and
declared that the man who had acted as Rogator of the assembly had no
right to do so; to which, as I have heard my father say, he replied
with great warmth, Have I no right, who am consul, and augur, and
favored by the Auspicia? And shall you, who are Tuscans and Barbarians,
pretend that you have authority over the Roman Auspicia, and a right to
give judgment in matters respecting the formality of our assemblies?
Therefore, he then commanded them to withdraw; but not long afterward
he wrote from his province[118] to the college of augurs, acknowledging
that in reading the books[119] he remembered that he had illegally
chosen a place for his tent in the gardens of Scipio, and had afterward
entered the Pomoerium, in order to hold a senate, but that in repassing
the same Pomoerium he had forgotten to take the auspices; and that,
therefore, the consuls had been created informally. The augurs laid the
case before the senate. The senate decreed that they should resign
their charge, and so they accordingly abdicated. What greater example
need we seek for? The wisest, perhaps the most excellent of men, chose
to confess his fault, which he might have concealed, rather than leave
the public the least atom of religious guilt; and the consuls chose to
quit the highest office in the State, rather than fill it for a moment
in defiance of religion. How great is the reputation of the augurs!
And is not the art of the soothsayers divine? And must not every one
who sees what innumerable instances of the same kind there are confess
the existence of the Gods? For they who have interpreters must
certainly exist themselves; now, there are interpreters of the Gods;
therefore we must allow there are Gods. But it may be said, perhaps,
that all predictions are not accomplished. We may as well conclude
there is no art of physic, because all sick persons do not recover. The
Gods show us signs of future events; if we are occasionally deceived in
the results, it is not to be imputed to the nature of the Gods, but to
the conjectures of men. All nations agree that there are Gods; the
opinion is innate, and, as it were, engraved in the minds of all men.
The only point in dispute among us is, what they are.
V. Their existence no one denies. Cleanthes, one of our sect, imputes
the way in which the idea of the Gods is implanted in the minds of men
to four causes. The first is that which I just now mentioned--the
foreknowledge of future things. The second is the great advantages
which we enjoy from the temperature of the air, the fertility of the
earth, and the abundance of various benefits of other kinds. The third
cause is deduced from the terror with which the mind is affected by
thunder, tempests, storms, snow, hail, devastation, pestilence,
earthquakes often attended with hideous noises, showers of stones, and
rain like drops of blood; by rocks and sudden openings of the earth; by
monstrous births of men and beasts; by meteors in the air, and blazing
stars, by the Greeks called _cometae_, by us _crinitae_, the appearance
of which, in the late Octavian war,[120] were foreboders of great
calamities; by two suns, which, as I have heard my father say, happened
in the consulate of Tuditanus and Aquillius, and in which year also
another sun (P. Africanus) was extinguished. These things terrified
mankind, and raised in them a firm belief of the existence of some
celestial and divine power.
His fourth cause, and that the strongest, is drawn from the regularity
of the motion and revolution of the heavens, the distinctness, variety,
beauty, and order of the sun, moon, and all the stars, the appearance
only of which is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of
chance; as when we enter into a house, or school, or court, and observe
the exact order, discipline, and method of it, we cannot suppose that
it is so regulated without a cause, but must conclude that there is
some one who commands, and to whom obedience is paid. It is quite
impossible for us to avoid thinking that the wonderful motions,
revolutions, and order of those many and great bodies, no part of which
is impaired by the countless and infinite succession of ages, must be
governed and directed by some supreme intelligent being.
VI. Chrysippus, indeed, had a very penetrating genius; yet such is the
doctrine which he delivers, that he seems rather to have been
instructed by nature than to owe it to any discovery of his own. "If,"
says he, "there is anything in the universe which no human reason,
ability, or power can make, the being who produced it must certainly be
preferable to man. Now, celestial bodies, and all those things which
proceed in any eternal order, cannot be made by man; the being who made
them is therefore preferable to man. What, then, is that being but a
God? If there be no such thing as a Deity, what is there better than
man, since he only is possessed of reason, the most excellent of all
things? But it is a foolish piece of vanity in man to think there is
nothing preferable to him. There is, therefore, something preferable;
consequently, there is certainly a God."
When you behold a large and beautiful house, surely no one can persuade
you it was built for mice and weasels, though you do not see the
master; and would it not, therefore, be most manifest folly to imagine
that a world so magnificently adorned, with such an immense variety of
celestial bodies of such exquisite beauty, and that the vast sizes and
magnitude of the sea and land were intended as the abode of man, and
not as the mansion of the immortal Gods? Do we not also plainly see
this, that all the most elevated regions are the best, and that the
earth is the lowest region, and is surrounded with the grossest air? so
that as we perceive that in some cities and countries the capacities of
men are naturally duller, from the thickness of the climate, so mankind
in general are affected by the heaviness of the air which surrounds the
earth, the grossest region of the world.
Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the
existence of some intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than
ourselves; for, as Socrates says in Xenophon, from whence had man his
portion of understanding? And, indeed, if any one were to push his
inquiries about the moisture and heat which is diffused through the
human body, and the earthy kind of solidity existing in our entrails,
and that soul by which we breathe, and to ask whence we derived them,
it would be plain that we have received one thing from the earth,
another from liquid, another from fire, and another from that air which
we inhale every time that we breathe.
VII. But where did we find that which excels all these things--I mean
reason, or (if you please, in other terms) the mind, understanding,
thought, prudence; and from whence did we receive it? Shall the world
be possessed of every other perfection, and be destitute of this one,
which is the most important and valuable of all? But certainly there is
nothing better, or more excellent, or more beautiful than the world;