46[The word "from" appears here in the first seven editions of the Natural History.]
47VERRIUS FLACCUS, cited by PLINY (Natural History, Bk. XXVIII, Ch. 4, Sect. 18-19), affirmed, that it was usual for the ROMANS, before they laid siege to any town, to invocate the tutelar deity of the place, and by promising him greater honours than those he at present enjoyed, bribe him to betray his old friends and votaries. The name of the tutelar deity of ROME was for this reason kept a most religious mystery; lest the enemies of the republic should be able, in the same manner, to draw him over to their service. For without the name, they thought, nothing of that kind could be practised. PLINY says, that the common form of invocation was preserved to his time in the ritual of the pontifs. And MACROBIUS has transmitted a copy of it from the secret things of SAMMONICUS SERENUS.
48Xenophon, Memorabilia, Bk. I, Ch. 3, Sect.
1.
49Plutarch, Moralia, Bk. V, "Isis and Osiris,"Ch. 72.
50Herodotus, History, Bk. II, Ch. 180.
51Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum.
52Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, Bk. III, Ch.
16, Sect. 3-9, and Bk. VII, Ch. 17.
53Ibid., Bk. III, Ch. 16, Sect. 5.
54Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Bk. II, "The Deified Augustus," Ch. 93.
55Corruptio optimi pessima.
56MOST nations have fallen into this guilt of human sacrifices; though, perhaps, that impious superstition has never prevailed very much in any civilized nation, unless we except the CARTHAGINIANS. For the TYRIANS soon abolished it. A sacrifice is conceived as a present; and any present is delivered to their deity by destroying it and rendering it useless to men; by burning what is solid, pouring out the liquid, and killing the animate. For want of a better way of doing him service, we do ourselves an injury; and fancy that we thereby express, at least, the heartiness of our good-will and adoration. Thus our mercenary devotion deceives ourselves, and imagines it deceives the deity.
57Strabo, Geography, Bk. V, Ch. 3, Sect. 12;Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Bk. IV, "Gaius Caligula," Ch. 35, Sect. 3.
58Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, Bk. IV, Ch.
28, Sect. 4; Bk. V, Ch. 26, Sect. 5.
59Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Bk. V, Ch.
11.
60Plutarch, Moralia, Bk. III, "Sayings of Kings and Commanders," Brasidas, Sect. 190b.
61Pierre Bayle, Dictionary Historical and Critical, (London: 1734-41), article on Bellarmine.
62It is strange that the EGYPTIAN religion, though so absurd, should yet have borne so great a resemblance to the JEWISH, that ancient writers even of the greatest genius were not able to observe any difference between them.
For it is remarkable that both TACITUS, and SUETONIUS, when they mention that decree of the senate, under TIBERIUS, by which the EGYPTIAN and JEWISH proselytes were banished from ROME, expressly treat these religions as the same; and it appears, that even the decree itself was founded on that supposition. "Actum et de sacris AEGYPTIIS, JUDAICISQUE pellendis; factumque patrum consultum, ut quatuor millia libertini generis ea superstitione infecta, quis idonea aetas, in insulam Sardiniam veherentur, coercendis illic latrociniis; et si ob gravitatem coeli interissent, vile damnum: Ceteri cederent ITALIA, nisi certam ante diem profanos ritus exuissent." ['Another debate dealt with the proscription of the Egyptian and Jewish rites, and a senatorial edict directed that four thousand descendants of enfranchised slaves, tainted with that superstition and suitable in point of age, were to be shipped to Sardinia and there employed in suppressing brigandage: if they succumbed to the pestilential climate, it was a cheap loss. The rest had orders to leave Italy, unless they had renounced their impious ceremonial by a given date.']
Tacitus, Annals, Bk. II, Ch. 85. "Externas caeremonias, AEGYPTIOS, JUDAICOSQUE ritus compescuit; coactus qui superstitione ea tenebantur, religiosas vestes cum instrumento omni comburere, etc." ['He abolished foreign cults, especially the Egyptian and the Jewish rites, compelling all who were addicted to such superstitions to burn their religious vestments and all their paraphernalia.'] Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Bk. III, "Tiberius," Ch. 36. These wise heathens, observing something in the general air, and genius, and spirit of the two religions to be the same, esteemed the differences of their dogmas too frivolous to deserve any attention.
63Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Bk.
I, Ch. 83, Sect. 8-9.
64When LOUIS the XIVth took on himself the protection of the Jesuits' College of CLERMONT, the society ordered the king's arms to be put up over the gate, and took down the cross, in order to make way for it: Which gave occasion to the following epigram: Sustulit hinc Christi, posuitque insignia Regis: Impia gens, alium nescit habere Deum.
65On the Nature of the Gods, Bk. I, Ch. 29, Sect. 82.
66Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Bk. V, Ch.
27, Sect. 78.
67Augustine, City of God, Bk. VII, Ch. 17.
68Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, A Voyage Home to Gaul, Bk. I, Lines 387-398.
69Aelius Spartianus, "Life of Hadrian," Bk.
XIV, Sect. 2.
70Cicero, Letters to his Friends, Bk. XIV, Letter 7, Sect. 1.
71Cicero, "On Divination," Bk. II, Ch. 24.
72Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Bk. II, "The Deified Augustus," Ch. 90-92. Pliny, Natural History, Bk. II, Ch. 5, Sect. 24-25.
73Witness this remarkable passage of TACITUS:
"Praeter multiplices rerum humanarum casus, coelo terraque prodigia, et fulminum monitus et futurorum praesagia, laeta, tristia, ambigua, manifesta. Nec enim unquam atrocioribus populi Romani cladibus, magique justis Judiciis approbatum est, non esse curae Diis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem." History, Bk. I, Ch. 3. AUGUSTUS'S quarrel with NEPTUNE is an instance of the same kind.