The City of God stands as Augustine's masterwork of theological defense and construction, written over thirteen years in response to accusations that Christianity brought ruin upon Rome. This first volume contains the first ten books of sustained refutation—demolishing pagan claims that traditional worship secured either temporal prosperity or eternal happiness—followed by the beginning of his positive vision in Books Eleven through Thirteen, where he traces the origin of two societal orders to the primordial division among the angels. What emerges is not merely an apology for Christianity but a philosophy of history that subordinate the fate of empires to the hidden providence of the one true God, whose sovereignty extends from creation through the fall to the final judgment.
In the final chapters, Augustine exposes the true motive of the pagan critics. They complain of Christianity not because they love virtue but because they desire to live in shameful luxury without disturbance. Their longing for peace and prosperity is not for the sake of using these blessings temperately and piously but for the sake of running riot in every kind of pleasure. Augustine cites the example of Scipio Nasica, the Roman pontiff who was unanimously judged the best citizen of his time. When the senate debated whether to destroy Carthage, Nasica opposed the measure, fearing that the removal of a great rival would lead to moral decay. He understood that fear is a wholesome guardian for citizens and that security is the enemy of weak minds. When Carthage was destroyed, his fears were realized: concord was destroyed by sedition, civil wars brought massacres and proscriptions, and the lust of rule subdued the citizens under the yoke of a few. Nasica also opposed the construction of a permanent theater, warning that the luxurious manners of Greece would sap Roman virtue. So persuasive was his speech that the senate prohibited even the temporary benches that had been used for theatrical performances.
Augustine reminds his readers that the scenic games, those exhibitions of shameless folly, were established at Rome not by human vice but by the appointment of the gods. The gods had commanded these games to appease a physical pestilence; their pontiff had prohibited the theater to prevent a moral pestilence. If the Romans had any wisdom, they would judge which was more important: the health of the body or the health of the soul. The physical pestilence would have ceased in time regardless, but the moral pestilence introduced by the games has corrupted Roman souls for generations. Even now, after the sack of Rome, the refugees who fled to Carthage crowd the theaters, competing with one another in their mad pursuit of actors. While distant nations mourn the fall of Rome, the Romans themselves rush to the very spectacles that Scipio warned against. They have been made wretched by calamity but have not been reformed; they have missed the profit of their suffering. What they desire in the restoration of peace is not the tranquility of the commonwealth but the impunity of their own vice.
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