The City of God, Volume I

He further illustrates the malice of the demons by recounting their support for the tyrant Sylla. When Sylla sacrificed, the augurs found the auspices so favorable that they predicted his success, yet the gods gave him no hint of the cruel disasters that would befall the city and himself. They promised him victory and power to recover the republic, though with great bloodshed, but never commanded him to forbear his villanies. A messenger of Bellona even cried out that the Capitol should be burned, and it was so. These signs, Augustine argues, were not sent by just gods but by wicked demons who cared nothing for justice, only for the bloodshed that would accompany their worship. They feared Sylla’s amendment more than his defeat, preferring that he be conquered and led captive by his own vices, becoming a submissive slave to the demons. The demons’ goal is not the welfare of men but their eternal perdition; they stir up strife, prophecy false victories, and celebrate the destruction of the virtuous, all while demanding worship.

Augustine addresses the pagan defense that the gods gave secret, obscure instructions in morals to the initiated, while their public solemnities inculcated wickedness. He argues that this is a malicious craft of the demons. Because probity and chastity are naturally esteemed by almost all men, the devil must sometimes transform himself into an angel of light to deceive the virtuous few. Thus, in public, bold impurity fills the ear with noisy clamor, while in private, feigned chastity speaks in whispers. A wicked deed draws an overflowing house, while a virtuous speech finds scarce a hearer. Augustine argues that the secret precepts are a sop to the virtuous few, while the wicked examples are exhibited to encourage the vicious masses. He cites the specific example of the goddess Cœlestis, before whose shrine obscene games were played in the presence of a vast crowd, teaching the people that such licentiousness was pleasing to the virgin deity. The very structure of pagan worship reveals its demonic origin: it appeals to base desires under the guise of religion, making sin sacred and virtue shameful.

Augustine concludes the book by contrasting the health-giving Christian religion with the destructive pagan rites. He describes the Christian churches as places where a seemly separation of the sexes is observed, where Holy Scripture and instruction in righteousness are proclaimed, and where no filthy action is set forth to be gazed at or imitated. The Christian worship nourishes the soul with truth, while the pagan spectacles poison it with vice. He exhorts the Romans, the progeny of Scævolas and Scipios, of Regulus and Fabricius, to turn away from the false gods and embrace the true God. He urges them not to listen to degenerate sons who slander Christ and impute disastrous times to Him, but rather to lay hold on the celestial country where they will reign truly and forever. He reminds them that they have already judged these demons unworthy, for they have banished actors from the number of their citizens because they acted the crimes of the gods. How much more, then, should they banish the gods who take pleasure in such crimes? Augustine asserts that the heavenly city is incomparably more glorious than Rome, for it has truth for victory, holiness for dignity, felicity for peace, and eternity for life. He bids the Romans to shun the society of devils and to seek the true God, by whose grace alone they can attain to the blessed city. The final appeal is a passionate call to renounce the worship of demons, whose festivals are a pollution, and to embrace the worship of the one true God, whose religion heals the soul and leads to eternal life. The chapter ends with a poetic quotation from Virgil, transformed to describe the endless reign of the City of God, in stark contrast to the fleeting and corrupt empire of Rome. This conclusion serves as a bridge to the next book, where Augustine will address the question of the demons’ power over temporal affairs, showing that even if they possess some limited influence, they are not to be feared or worshipped, for their ultimate defeat is assured by the providence of the true God.

Augustine shifts from moral to bodily disasters, noting pagans fear losing property more than virtue. Despite exclusive worship by all nations except the Hebrews, the gods failed to avert famine, war, and pestilence before Christ. Focusing on Rome, he cites Troy’s destruction as proof. Since the gods permitted the ruin of this Roman cradle despite shared worship, they cannot be relied upon to save the city.

Augustine initiates his comprehensive refutation of pagan theology by interrogating the standard explanations for Troy’s destruction. The pagan apologists claim their gods abandoned Troy because of moral outrages committed by its inhabitants, yet Augustine demonstrates that this defense collapses under scrutiny. The first charge concerns Laomedon’s alleged fraud against Apollo and Neptune, who were said to have labored as mortal workmen building the city’s walls only to be cheated of their wages. Augustine finds this narrative preposterous on multiple grounds. If these deities possessed genuine divine foreknowledge, they would have anticipated Laomedon’s treachery before undertaking the work. That they could be deceived by a mortal king reveals either profound ignorance or profound impotence—neither attribute befitting a god worthy of worship. The pagan poets themselves cannot maintain consistency in this tale, for Homer depicts Neptune as Troy’s enemy while showing Apollo as its defender, though both supposedly suffered the same injury. This internal contradiction exposes the unreliable nature of these sacred narratives. Augustine presses the logical conclusion: it is more disgraceful to venerate deities capable of being swindled than to condemn the swindler himself.

The second justification for Troy’s fall—the gods’ indignation at Paris’s abduction of Helen—receives equally withering treatment. Augustine confronts his opponents with an inescapable dilemma. If the myths about divine parentage are true, then Venus committed adultery with Anchises to produce Aeneas, and Mars violated the Vestal Rhea Sylvia to father Romulus. How can the gods punish in mortals what they themselves practice without shame? The divine perpetrators of such acts have no standing to avenge similar transgressions in human beings. If, conversely, these stories are false, then the gods cannot legitimately claim offense at real adulteries while delighting in fictional ones attributed to themselves. Augustine sharpens this point by noting that Rhea Sylvia’s seduction constituted a particularly grave sacrilege, for as a Vestal she was consecrated to divine service. The Romans themselves punished such violations in their priestesses with death by live burial. Yet Mars faced no consequences, and Rome flourished under his son’s founding. The gods’ selective indignation—destroying an entire civilization for Paris’s crime while blessing Rome despite Romulus’s far more serious offenses—reveals their moral bankruptcy.