Who, then, is so stupid as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth and opening up so diligently the civil theology, and by exhibiting its likeness to that fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful theology, and also by teaching that that fabulous sort is also a part of this other, was laboring to obtain a place in the minds of men for none but that natural theology, which he says pertains to philosophers, with such subtlety that he censures the fabulous, and, not daring openly to censure the civil, shows its censurable character by simply exhibiting it; and thus, both being reprobated by the judgment of men of right understanding, the natural alone remains to be chosen? But concerning this in its own place, by the help of the true God, we have to discuss more diligently.
CHAP.10.--CONCERNING THE LIBERTY OF SENECA, WHO MORE VEHEMENTLY CENSUREDTHE
CIVIL THEOLOGY THAN VARRO DID THE FABULOUS.
That liberty, in truth, which this man wanted, so that he did not dare to censure that theology of the city, which is very similar to the theatrical, so openly as he did the theatrical itself, was, though not fully, yet in part possessed by Annaeus Seneca, whom we have some evidence to show to have flourished in the times of our apostles.It was in part possessed by him, I say, for he possessed it in writing, but not in living.For in that book which he wrote against superstition,(1) he more copiously and vehemently censured that civil and urban theology than Varro the theatrical and fabulous.For, when speaking concerning images, he says, "They dedicate images of the sacred and inviolable immortals in most worthless and motionless matter.They give them the appearance of man, beasts, and fishes, and some make them of mixed sex, and heterogeneous bodies.They call them deities, when they are such that if they should get breath and should suddenly meet them, they would be held to be monsters." Then, a while afterwards, when extolling the natural theology, he had expounded the sentiments of certain philosophers, he opposes to himself a question, and says, "Here some one says, Shall I believe that the heavens and the earth are gods, and that some are above the moon and some below it? Shall I bring forward either Plato or the peripatetic Strato, one of whom made God to be without a body, the other without a mind?"In answer to which he says, "And, really, what truer do the dreams of Titus Tatius, or Romulus, or Tullus Hostilius appear to thee? Tatius declared the divinity of the goddess Cloacina; Romulus that of Picus and Tiberinus; Tullus Hostilius that of Pavor and Pallor, the most disagreeable affections of men, the one of which is the agitation of the mind under fright, the other that of the body, not a disease, indeed, but a change of color." Wilt thou rather believe that these are deities, and receive them into heaven? But with what freedom he has written concerning the rites themselves, cruel and shameful ! "One," he says, "castrates himself, another cuts his arms.Where will they find room for the fear of these gods when angry, who use such means of gaining their favor when propitious? But gods who wish to be worshipped in this fashion should be worshipped in none.
So great is the frenzy of the mind when perturbed and driven from its seat, that the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of the greatest ferocity and fable-renowned cruelty vent their rage.Tyrants have lacerated the limbs of some; they never ordered any one to lacerate his own.For the gratification of royal lust, some have been castrated;but no one ever, by the command of his lord, laid violent hands on himself to emasculate himself.They kill themselves in the temples.They supplicate with their wounds and with their blood.If any one has time to see the things they do and the things they suffer, he will find so many things unseemly for men of respectability, so unworthy of freemen, so unlike the doings of sane men, that no one would doubt that they are mad, had they been mad with the minority; but now the multitude of the insane is the defence of their sanity."He next relates those things which are wont to be done in the Capitol, and with the utmost intrepidity insists that they are such things as one could only believe to be done by men making sport, or by madmen.For having spoken with derision of this, that in the Egyptian sacred rites Osiris, being lost, is lamented for, but straightway, when found, is the occasion of great joy by his reappearance, because both the losing and the finding of him are reigned;and yet that grief and that joy which are elicited thereby from those who have lost nothing and found nothing are real;--having I say, so spoken of this, he says, "Still there is a fixed time for this frenzy.It is tolerable to go mad once in the year.
Go into the Capitol.One is suggesting divine commands(1)to a god; another is telling the hours to Jupiter; one is a lictor;another is an anointer, who with the mere movement of his arms imitates one anointing.There are women who arrange the hair of Juno and Minerva, standing far away not only from her image, but even from her temple.These move their fingers in the manner of hairdressers.There are some women who hold a mirror.