The City of God, Volume I

Since the select gods labor alongside obscure gods in minute tasks, and since greater gifts are bestowed by gods not deemed worthy of selection, Augustine concludes that selection was based not on merit but on popular fame. Varro himself admits that obscurity befell some father gods and mother goddesses just as it befalls men. If selection occurred by chance rather than merit, Fortune herself should have held the highest place among the select, for she distributes gifts capriciously, making things famous or obscure according to whim rather than truth. Yet Fortune is not among the select. Perhaps even Fortune suffered adverse fortune, remaining obscure while ennobling others.

This fame, Augustine observes, has brought injury rather than honor upon the select gods. The obscure gods have been protected by their very obscurity from being overwhelmed with infamy. We may laugh, Augustine says, at the distribution of minute functions among many gods, like workmen in a silversmiths’ street passing one vessel through many hands when a single perfect craftsman could finish it. Yet scarcely any obscure god has brought infamy upon himself through crime, while scarcely any select god has escaped the brand of notorious infamy. The select gods have descended to the humble works of the obscure ones, while the obscure ones have not ascended to the select gods’ sublime crimes. Janus alone appears relatively innocent—he hospitably received the fleeing Saturn and shared his kingdom with him. Yet those who seek unseemliness in worship have disgraced him with monstrously deformed images, giving him two faces or even four, as though his greater innocence required a greater number of faces.

Augustine now turns to the physical interpretations by which pagan theologians attempt to dignify their myths with the appearance of profound doctrine. Varro commends these interpretations strongly, claiming that the ancients invented divine images so that worshippers seeing them with bodily eyes might perceive with their mind’s eye the soul of the world and its parts—the true gods. The human form signifies the rational soul, just as a wine-vessel in Liber’s temple signifies wine. Augustine acknowledges Varro’s learning but grieves that his soul, so acute and learned, could never through these mysteries reach its God—the God by whom, not with whom, it was made, of whom it is not a part but a work, who is not the soul of all things but the Maker of every soul, and in whose light alone every soul finds blessedness.

Varro’s natural theology posits that God is the soul of the world, and the world itself is God. As a wise man is called wise from his mind though he consists of body and mind, so the world is called God from its soul though it consists of soul and body. The world divides into heaven and earth, each subdivided: heaven into ether and air, earth into water and land. All four parts are filled with souls—ethereal and aerial souls immortal, those in water and on earth mortal. From the highest heavens to the moon’s orbit are the stars and planets, visible gods; between the moon and the clouds are aerial souls, perceived by the mind, called Heroes, Lares, and Genii. This natural theology has satisfied not only Varro but many philosophers.

Augustine begins his detailed critique with Janus, whom Varro identifies as the world. If beginnings belong to Janus and ends to Terminus, the division fails. Do not all things that begin in the world also end in it? The separation of these powers is logically incoherent. The two-faced image is interpreted as representing the human palate with its two openings—the mouth and the gullet—a comparison Augustine finds absurd. When Janus is depicted with four faces, this is said to represent the four quarters of the world. But if Janus is the world and the world has four quarters, the two-faced image is false; if the two-faced image is true because the world can be understood as east and west, then calling him “double” when he has four faces is inconsistent. No soul escapes this vanity except the one that hears the truth saying, “I am the door.”

Jupiter is defined as the god holding power over the causes by which anything comes into being. Varro argues that Janus governs first things, Jupiter highest things, and therefore Jupiter is king, for highest things excel in dignity though first things precede in time. Augustine dismantles this: efficient causes are always prior to what they produce, so Jupiter, governing causes, is prior to Janus, governing beginnings. Moreover, if Jupiter is the god of causes, it is shocking sacrilege to attribute to him the base and criminal acts found in the myths. It would be better to assign those crimes to a fiction than to the ruler of the world.

If Janus is the world and Jupiter is also the world, why are they two gods with separate temples, altars, rites, and images? If the distinction rests on the different natures of beginnings and causes, does one man with two offices become two men? Augustine illustrates from Jupiter’s many surnames—Victor, Invictus, Opitulus, Impulsor, Stator, Centumpeda, Supinalis, Tigillus, Almus, Ruminus—that diverse powers do not require multiple gods. The functions of causes and beginnings are closer to each other than the functions of Tigillus (holding the world together) and Ruminus (giving suck to animals), yet the latter did not necessitate two gods. Augustine mocks the surname Pecunia (Money), arguing that to call the king of gods by the name of that which no wise man has desired is base and contemptible.

Saturn, governing sowings, and Genius, governing begetting, are both absorbed into Jupiter, for the world emits and receives all seeds. Mercury and Mars, not easily referred to parts of the world, are assigned to human acts—speech and war. If Mercury is speech, he is not a god; if Mars is war, he is not a god. Regarding the stars, some gods are identified with planets, yet Jupiter’s star is dimmer than Venus’s—a strange condition for the king of gods. Janus has no star, though he is the world. The constellations of the Zodiac, each containing many stars, are not worshipped as gods.

Apollo and Diana are identified with the sun and moon; Vulcan with fire; Neptune with the waters; Father Dis with the lower earth; Liber and Ceres with seeds; Minerva with the ether or moon. The result is chaos: one god is many things, and one thing is many gods. Even Varro expressed doubt, admitting he stated opinions rather than certainties. Augustine suggests a more credible origin: these were men, deified and adorned by poets, their rites exploited by demons.