Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 40 119
The land still smells of fire, and if any tree bears fruit there,
it can only be looked at, but when touched it turns to ashes.
But neither did Tuscany nor Campania even in those days complain
about the Christians when fire from heaven fiooded
Vulsinii, and fire from its own mountain Pompeii. No one
as yet worshipped the true God at Rome, when Hannibal by
means of the Roman rings measured by bushel the extent of
the slaughter he had inflicted at Cannae. All your gods were
worshipped by all, when the Senones' had seized the Capitol
itself. And fortunately anj?- misfortune that happened to cities
involved temples in the same disasters as the city walls, which
enables me now to prove that such disasters do not come from
the gods, because they come upon themselves also. The human
race has always deserved ill of God: in the first place, indeed
as neglecting its duty towards him, whom though it understood
partly, it did not search out, but also de-vised for itself other
deities besides to worship; in the second place because, by not
seeking out the teacher of uprightness and judge and avenger
of guilt, it has grown in all vices and crimes. But if it had
sought him out, it would have followed that, when it had
sought him, it might learn to know him, and when it recognised
him it might worship him, and when it had worshipped him
it might find him by experience to be propitious rather- than
wrathful. Therefore we ought now also to know that the same
god is angry, as always in the past also, before Christians
received their name. Seeing that it enjoyed his blessings, which
were displayed before it fashioned gods for itself, why should
it not understand that evils also come from him, to whom it
was not conscious that the blessings belonged ? It is guilty of
that towards which it is also ungrateful. And yet if we were
to compare the disasters of old, those of the present day are
shghter, since God gave the Christians as his gift to the world.
For from that time uprightness has moderated the injustices
of the world and likewise men have begun to be intercessors
with God. For example, when summer weather keeps the
winter from rains, and the crops are a subject of anxiety, you
to be sure, feeding daily and yet immediately ready to resume
your meals, while the baths, the taverns and the brothels are
busy, sacrifice offerings to Jupiter for rain, order the people
to go for a season with bare feet, seek the heaven at the
Capitol, and watch for clouds from its panelled roofs, turning
away both from God himself and from heaven itself. But
we, parched with fastings and pinched with every sort of selfrestraint,
separated from all bread necessary to life, wallowing
in sackcloth and ashes, importune heaven with reproach, we