![]() ![]() For he is introduced by Homer (who lived and wrote before the building of Rome) as predicting something great of the posterity of Æneas, who in fact founded Rome. And Neptune too, his uncle, brother of Jupiter, king of the sea, it really was not seemly that he should be ignorant of what was to happen. ![]() ![]() I wonder that famous diviner Apollo toiled at so huge a work, and never suspected Laomedon was going to cheat him of his pay. For the story goes that he promised them wages, and then broke his bargain. Then it is true that Laomedon hired Apollo and Neptune as his workmen. Whether the gods, whom the Greeks and Romans worshipped in common, were justified in permitting the destruction of Ilium.įirst, then, why was Troy or Ilium, the cradle of the Roman people (for I must not overlook nor disguise what I touched upon in the first book), conquered, taken, and destroyed by the Greeks, though it esteemed and worshipped the same gods as they? Priam, some answer, paid the penalty of the perjury of his father Laomedon. For in various times and places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities and at that time what gods but those did the world worship, if you except the one nation of the Hebrews, and, beyond them, such individuals as the most secret and most just judgment of God counted worthy of divine grace? But that I may not be prolix, I will be silent regarding the heavy calamities that have been suffered by any other nations, and will speak only of what happened to Rome and the Roman empire, by which I mean Rome properly so called, and those lands which already, before the coming of Christ, had by alliance or conquest become, as it were, members of the body of the state.Ģ. But not even such evils as were alone dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they were most unrestrictedly worshipped. It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man’s greatest good to have everything good but himself. For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise. I see I must now speak of those evils which alone are dreaded by the heathen-famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre, and the like calamities, already enumerated in the first book. Of moral and spiritual evils, which are above all others to be deprecated, I think enough has already been said to show that the false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them from being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated the ruin. ![]() Of the ills which alone the wicked fear, and which the world continually suffered, even when the gods were worshipped. Argument-As in the foregoing book Augustin has proved regarding moral and spiritual calamities, so in this book he proves regarding external and bodily disasters, that since the foundation of the city the Romans have been continually subject to them and that even when the false gods were worshipped without a rival, before the advent of Christ, they afforded no relief from such calamities. ![]()
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