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.
The history of the Roman kings demolishes any notion that the gods rewarded piety or punished wickedness during this formative period. Romulus’s death remains shrouded in suspicious circumstances—torn apart by the senate, according to some accounts, with his supposed ascension to heaven a political fabrication designed to placate an angry populace. Tullus Hostilius, the destroyer of Alba, perished with his entire household when lightning struck his palace. Tarquin Priscus fell to assassins, the sons of the king he had supplanted. Most damningly, Servius Tullius, widely regarded as Rome’s best monarch, was murdered by his own son-in-law Tarquin the Proud, who then seized the throne and ruled successfully for years. The gods did not abandon Rome when a parricide sat on the throne; they did not prevent the murderer from building the Capitol, their own temple, from the spoils of his wars. Jupiter himself presided over a sanctuary constructed by a king whose hands were stained with his father-in-law’s blood. The eventual expulsion of Tarquin came not through divine intervention but through human outrage at his son’s violation of Lucretia—and even then, the gods offered no assistance to either side.
The early republic proved no less violent than the monarchy it replaced. The first year of consulship saw five men hold the office, most dying or being driven into exile. Brutus, celebrated as a liberator, executed his own sons for conspiring to restore the Tarquins—a deed that even Virgil could only praise with ambivalent sorrow. His colleague Collatinus, the husband of the violated Lucretia, was banished for the crime of bearing the Tarquin name, though he had committed no offense against the state. The republic’s founding was stained with family blood and political persecution. The subsequent decades brought constant warfare abroad and bitter class conflict at home. The patricians oppressed the plebeians, reducing them to practical servitude through debt and arbitrary punishment. The people seceded to the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, forcing concessions through the threat of abandonment rather than through any divine concern for justice.
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