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 civil strife that eventually destroyed the republic began with the Gracchi brothers, whose attempt to redistribute land from the wealthy to the poor provoked murderous resistance from the senatorial class. Both brothers fell to violence, and their deaths unleashed a torrent of blood. The consul Opimius, having defeated Gaius Gracchus in street fighting, conducted a judicial massacre that claimed three thousand lives. The head of Gracchus was sold for its weight in gold. On the site of this slaughter, the senate decreed a temple to Concord—a monument to hypocrisy that Augustine savages with bitter irony. If Concord had truly dwelt in Rome, she would have prevented such discord; if she had abandoned the city, then building her temple on the scene of her absence was an act of derision rather than devotion. The Romans, who worshipped both good and evil deities, had neglected to honor Discord, and she repaid the slight by tearing their city apart. The temple to her rival, erected on ground soaked with civil blood, could only provoke her to greater fury.
The social wars, the servile wars, and the pirate conflicts that followed the Gracchan crisis devastated Italy and the provinces. Augustine notes the strange portent that preceded the social war: domestic animals throughout Italy suddenly turned wild and attacked their masters, as if nature itself were rebelling against human order. The civil wars that followed exceeded these horrors. Marius and Sulla transformed Roman politics into a charnel house. When Marius returned from exile with Cinna, they slaughtered their political enemies in the streets, in the temples, in their very homes. The heads of consuls were displayed on the rostra; senators were dragged from the curia to their deaths; the pontifex maximus was cut down at the altar of Vesta, his blood nearly extinguishing the sacred flame. Sulla’s victory brought no relief but rather a more systematic terror. He massacred thousands of prisoners in cold blood and posted proscription lists that condemned citizens to death and confiscation. The number of victims exceeded computation until the victors realized they needed survivors to govern. Peace proved as bloody as war, for the condemned were tortured before execution, their bodies torn apart while they still lived. Cities were sold at auction; entire populations were condemned to death collectively. The cruelty of citizens toward citizens exceeded anything foreign enemies had ever inflicted. The Gauls had spared the Capitol; the Goths in Augustine’s own day had spared many senators. But Sulla issued death warrants from that very sanctuary, and his partisans killed more Roman nobles than any barbarian invasion.
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