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.
When a fetus is conceived, Janus opens the way for the seed’s reception; Saturn presides over the seed itself; Liber enables the male to emit seed; Libera, identified with Venus, does the same for the woman; Juno, queen of the select gods, presides over menstruation alongside the obscure goddess Mena. Yet two exceedingly unknown gods—Vitumnus and Sentinus—bestow life and sensation upon the fetus. These gifts, Augustine insists, are incomparably greater than those of the select gods. Without life and sensation, the fetus is mere slime and dust. The seed’s admission, sowing, and emission are worthless unless the fetus attains life. Therefore, the obscure Vitumnus and Sentinus ought to rank among the select rather than Janus and Saturn.
Augustine anticipates the defense that Janus governs all beginnings, Saturn all seeds, Liber and Libera all emissions, and Juno all purgations and births. But he presses the question: do Vitumnus and Sentinus govern all things that live and feel? If so, their position would be sublime, for living and feeling are properties attributed even to the heavenly bodies, while springing from seeds is earthly. If they govern only fleshly life, then why does the universal Governor of life and sense not bestow these gifts directly? And if these lowest matters have been delegated to minor gods as servants, are the select gods so lacking in attendants that they must work alongside ignoble ones? Juno herself, queen of the gods, serves as conductor of boys on journeys alongside the obscure Abeona and Adeona. The goddess Mena, who gives boys a good mind—a gift greater than the memory assigned to Minerva—remains outside the select. Virtue and Felicity, acknowledged as goddesses, are excluded, while Mars, who causes death, and Orcus, who receives the dead, are included.
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.
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