# To the Nations - Author: [Tertullian](https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/authors/tertullian/) - Latin title: *Ad nationes* - Date: 197 (probable) - Source: Franz Oehler, ed., Quinti Septimii Florentis Tertulliani quae supersunt omnia, vol. 1 (Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1853), 305–395 (Latin text: Franz Oehler (Oehler 1), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0) - Translation: Claude, from the original text; each passage below gives the model and date - Work page: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/ - Passages: 37 ## To the Nations 1.1 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/1/ - Source: Oehler 1:305–307 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Those who come to know Christianity stop hating it and join it, and unlike real wrongdoers, Christians are not ashamed of their way of life but confess it gladly. ### Latin text Testimonium ignorantiae vestrae, quae iniquitatem dum defendit, revincit, in promtu est, quod omnes qui vobiscum retro ignorabant et vobiscum oderant, simul eis contigit scire, desinunt odisse qui desinunt ignorare, immo fiunt et ipsi quod oderant et incipiunt odisse quod fuerant. Adeo quotidie adolescentem numerum Christianorum ingemitis, obsessam vociferamini civitatem; in agris, in castellis, in insulis Christianos; omnem sexum, omnem aetatem, omnem denique dignitatem transgredi a vobis quasi detrimento doletis. Nec tamen hoc ipso ad aestimationem alicuius latentis boni animos promovetis. Non licet rectius suspicari, non libet propius experiri; hic tantum curiositas humana torpescit. Amatis ignorare quod alii gaudeant invenisse; mavultis nescire, quia iam odistis, quasi certe non odituros vos sciatis. Atquin si nullum erit odii debitum, reperietur optimum utique ab iniustitia priore discedere: sin vero causa constiterit, nihil odio detrahetur, quod adeo amplius iustitiae conscientia cumulabitur. Nisi si emendari pudet, aut excusari piget. Scio plane qua responsione soletis redundantiae nostrae testimonium convenire: non utique eo bonum praeiudicari quia plerosque convertat et sibi rapiat, inquitis. Novi demutationem mentis in malas partes. Quot desertores bonae vitae? quot transfugae in perversum? Multi bona fide, immo iam plures pro extremitatibus temporum. Verum deficit adaequatio comparationis istius. Nam de malo ita constat apud omnes, ut ne ipsi quidem rei, qui ad malum transeunt et a bonis in perversa divertunt, defendere malum pro bono audeant. Turpia timori, pudori impia habent. Denique gestiunt latere, devitant apparere, trepidant deprehensi, negant accusati; ne torti quidem facile aut semper confitentur, certe damnati maerent. Exprobrant etenim quod erant in semetipsos, malae mentis ab innocentia transitum vel fato imputant. Adeo nolunt suum esse, quia malum negare non possunt. Christiani vero quid tale consequuntur? Neminem pudet, neminem paenitet, nisi tantum pristinorum. Si denotatur, gloriatur, si trahitur, non subsistit, si accusatur, non defendit, interrogatus confitetur, damnatus gloriatur. Quod hoc malum est in quo mali natura cessat? ### English translation (Claude) The evidence of your ignorance, which condemns the injustice even while it defends it, is ready to hand: all who formerly were ignorant along with you and hated along with you, as soon as it befalls them to know, cease to hate as they cease to be ignorant; indeed they themselves become what they hated, and begin to hate what they had been. So it is that every day you groan over the growing number of Christians. You cry out that the city is besieged, that there are Christians in the fields, in the fortified villages, in the islands; you grieve, as over a loss, that every sex, every age, in short every rank is passing over from you. And yet not even by this do you move your minds to consider some hidden good. You are not permitted to suspect more rightly; you do not care to test it more closely; here alone human curiosity grows numb. You love to be ignorant of what others rejoice to have found; you prefer not to know, because you already hate, as though you were quite sure that, if you knew, you would not hate. And yet if no ground for hatred is found, it will surely be found best to depart from the former injustice; but if a cause is established, nothing will be taken from the hatred, which will rather be heaped up all the more by the consciousness of its justice. Unless, perhaps, you are ashamed to be corrected or unwilling to be excused. I know well the reply with which you usually meet the evidence of our great numbers: a thing is not, you say, to be judged good in advance merely because it converts very many and carries them off to itself. I know of the change of mind toward the worse. How many deserters of a good life are there? How many runaways into perversity? Many, in good faith; indeed more now, as the times draw to their end. But the comparison does not hold. For about evil all are so agreed that not even the guilty, who go over to evil and turn aside from good ways into perverse ones, dare to defend evil as good. Their shameful deeds they hold in fear, their impious deeds in shame. In short, they long to lie hidden, they avoid being seen, they tremble when caught, they deny when accused; not even under torture do they confess easily or always; certainly when condemned they grieve. For they reproach themselves with what they were, and they impute the passage of an evil mind from innocence to fate. So little do they want it to be their own, because they cannot deny that it is evil. But what of this kind happens with the Christians? None is ashamed, none repents, except only of his former life. If he is pointed out, he glories; if he is dragged off, he does not resist; if he is accused, he makes no defense; questioned, he confesses; condemned, he glories. What evil is this, in which the nature of evil ceases? ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/1/). ## To the Nations 1.2 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/2/ - Source: Oehler 1:307–309 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Magistrates torture others to make them confess but torture Christians to make them deny, and never investigate the crimes they claim Christians commit. ### Latin text In qua ipsi etiam contra formam iudicandorum malorum iudicatis. Nam nocentes quidem perductos, si admissum negent, tormentis urgetis ad confessionem, Christianos vero sponte confessos tormentis comprimitis ad negationem. Quae tanta perversitas, ut confessioni repugnetis, tormentorum officia mutetis, gratis reum evadere, invitum compellentes negare? Praesides extorquendae veritatis de solis nobis mendacium exquiritis, ut dicamus nos non esse quod sumus. Opinor, non vultis nos malos esse, ideoque gestitis de isto nomine excludere. Sane ceteros ad hoc tenditis et carnificatis. ut negent quod esse dicuntur. Atquin illis negantibus non creditis: nobis, si negaverimus, statim creditis. Si certi estis nos nocentissimos esse, cur etiam in hoc aliter quam nocentes a vobis agimur? Non dico quod neque accusationi neque recusationi spatium commodetis (soletis inaccusatos et indefensos non temere damnare): sed, verbi gratia, si de homicida consultatur, non statim confesso eo nomen homicidae dispuncta causa est aut satiata cognitio. Quamquam confessis difficile creditis, verum insuper consequentia exigitis, quotiens caedem egerit, quibus telis, quibus in locis, quibus spoliis, sociis, receptoribus, ne quid omnino mali hominis delitescat aut desit aliquid instruendae ad sententiam veritati. Porro de nobis, quos atrocioribus ac pluribus criminibus deputatis, breviora ac leviora elogia conficitis. Credo, non vultis oneratos quos omni opere perditos vultis, aut non putatis requirenda quae nostis. Hoc ergo perversius, si cogitis negare de quibus certissime scitis. Immo, quo magis odio vestro competebat seposita forma iudicandi proprio studio non ad negationem certare, ne quos odistis liberaretis, sed ad confessionem singulorum scelerum, quo magis inimicitiae satiarentur exaggeratione poenarum, dum recognoscitur quot quisque iam convivia illa celebrasset, quotiens in tenebris incursasset incesta? Quid? quod eradicandi generis diffundenda erat requisitio, porrigenda quaestio in socios consciosque. Perducerentur infantariae et coci, ipsi canes pronubi, emendata res esset. Etiam spectaculis gratia adgregaretur. Quanto enim studio in caveam conveniretur depugnaturo aliquo qui centum infantes devorasset? Si enim tam horrenda tamque monstruosa de nobis deferuntur, utique erui debuerunt, ne incredibilia viderentur et odium in nos publicum refrigesceret. Nam et plerique fidem talium temperant, horrentes naturam quaerere pabulum ferinum quod concubitu ab humano genere praeclusit. ### English translation (Claude) In this very matter you judge even against the form for judging crimes. For guilty persons brought before you, if they deny the charge, you press with tortures to confess; but Christians who confess of their own accord you crush with tortures to make them deny. What perversity is this, that you fight against confession, change the office of torture, and let the accused escape for nothing by compelling him against his will to deny? You governors, appointed to extort the truth, seek a lie from us alone: that we should say we are not what we are. I suppose you do not want us to be wicked, and so you are eager to shut us out of that name. Others, to be sure, you stretch on the rack and butcher for this, that they may deny what they are said to be; and yet when they deny, you do not believe them; us, if we deny, you believe at once. If you are certain that we are the most guilty of all, why are we treated by you, even in this, differently from the guilty? I do not say that you allow no room either for accusation or for defense (it is not your custom to condemn rashly people who are unaccused and undefended); but, for example, if a case of murder is being tried, the case is not closed nor the inquiry satisfied the moment the man has confessed to the name of murderer. Although you have difficulty believing those who confess, you further demand the details: how often he has killed, with what weapons, in what places, with what spoils, what accomplices, what harborers, so that nothing whatever about the evil man may lie hidden, nor anything be lacking to the truth being prepared for sentence. But in our case, whom you charge with more atrocious and more numerous crimes, you draw up shorter and lighter charge sheets. I suppose you do not wish to burden those whom you wish utterly destroyed, or you think there is no need to inquire into what you already know. This, then, is all the more perverse, if you force us to deny things that you know most certainly. Rather, how much better it would have suited your hatred to set aside the form of trial and strive, out of your own zeal, not for denial, lest you set free those you hate, but for the confession of each crime, so that your enmity might be sated by heaping up the punishments, while it was being established how many of those banquets each had already celebrated, how often he had rushed into incest in the dark! What more? Since the race was to be rooted out, the inquiry ought to have been spread wide and the questioning extended to accomplices and confidants. Let the dealers in infants and the cooks be brought in, and the dogs themselves that serve as bridal attendants: the matter would have been settled. Favor would even have been added to the shows. With what eagerness would people crowd into the arena to see someone fight who had devoured a hundred infants! For if such horrible and monstrous things are reported of us, they surely ought to have been brought to light, lest they seem incredible and the public hatred against us cool. For many do in fact temper their belief in such things, shuddering at the thought that human nature should seek the food of wild beasts, and a union that it has shut off from the human race. ### Translation notes - The last clause (quod concubitu ab humano genere praeclusit) is obscure; it is taken as referring to the charge of incest. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/2/). ## To the Nations 1.3 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/3/ - Source: Oehler 1:309–310 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Since Christians are condemned only for confessing the name, the charge is against a name, and the name “Christian” (from “anointed”) is harmless. ### Latin text Vos igitur, alias diligentissimi ac pertinacissimi discussores scelerum longe minorum, cum talibus tam horrendis et omnem impietatem supergressis eam diligentiam deseratis, neque confessionem recipiendo, iudicantibus semper laborandam, neque exquisitionem digerendo, damnatoribus semper consulendam, iam apparet omne in nos crimen non alicuius sceleris, sed nominis dirigi. Adeo, si de criminum veritate constaret, ipsa criminum nomina damnarent, si accommodarent, ut ita pronuntiaretur in nos: Illum homicidam, vel incestum, vel quodcunque iactamur, duci, suffigi, ad bestias dari placet. Porro sententiae vestrae nihil nisi Christianum confessum notant. Nullum criminis nomen exstat, nisi nominis crimen est. Haec etenim est revera ratio totius odii adversus nos. Nomen in causa est, quod quaedam occulta vis per vestram ignorantiam oppugnat, ut nolitis scire pro certo quod vos pro certo nescire certi estis, et ideo nec creditis quae non probantur, et ne reprobentur facile, non vultis inquirere, ut nomen inimicum sub praesumptione criminum puniatur. Adeo ut de nomine inimico recedatur, ideo negare compellimur, dehinc negantes liberamur, tota impunitate praeteritorum, iam non cruenti neque incesti, quia nomen illud amisimus. Sed dum haec ratio suo loco ostenditur, vos quam insequimini ad expugnationem nominis, edite: quod nominis crimen, quae offensa, quae culpa? Praescribitur enim vobis non posse crimina obicere quae neque institutum dirigit neque prolatio adsignat neque sententia enumerat. Quod praesidi offeratur, quod de reo inquiratur, quod respondetur vel negatur, quod de consilio recitatur, id reum agnosco. Itaque de nominis merito si qui reatus est nominum, si qua accusatio vocabulorum, ego arbitror nullam esse vocabulo aut nomini querellam, nisi cum quid aut barbarum sonat aut infaustum sapit vel inpudicum, vel aliter quam enuntiantem deceat aut audientem delectet. Haec vocabulorum aut nominum crimina, sicuti verborum atque sermonum barbarismus est vitium et soloecismus et insulsior figura. Christianum vero nomen, quantum significatio est, de unctione interpretatur. Etiam cum corrupte a vobis Chrestiani pronuntiamur (nam ne nominis quidem ipsius liquido certi estis), sic quoque de suavitate vel bonitate modulatum est. Detinetis igitur in hominibus innoxiis etiam nomen innoxium nostrum, non incommodum linguae, non auribus asperum, non homini malum, non patriae infestum, sed et Graecum cum aliis, et sonorum et interpretatione iucundum. Et utique non gladio aut cruce aut bestiis punienda sunt nomina. ### English translation (Claude) You, then, at other times the most diligent and persistent investigators of far lesser crimes, abandon that diligence in the case of such horrible deeds, surpassing all impiety, neither accepting a confession, which judges must always work for, nor sifting the evidence, which those who condemn must always consult; so it is now plain that the whole charge against us is aimed not at some crime but at a name. So much so that, if the truth of the crimes were established, the very names of the crimes would condemn us, if they applied, so that sentence would be pronounced against us thus: “It is decreed that this murderer,” or “this incestuous man,” or whatever we are charged with, “be led away, crucified, given to the beasts.” But your sentences brand nothing except a confessed Christian. No name of a crime appears, unless the name is the crime. For this in truth is the reason for the whole hatred against us. The name is on trial, which a certain hidden power attacks through your ignorance, so that you are unwilling to know for certain what you are certain you certainly do not know; and therefore you do not believe the things that are not proved, and, lest they be easily disproved, you will not inquire, so that the hated name may be punished on a presumption of crimes. So, that the hated name may be given up, we are compelled to deny; then, denying, we are set free, with complete impunity for the past, no longer bloody nor incestuous, because we have lost that name. But while this principle is being shown in its own place, you, who pursue us to destroy the name, declare: what crime is in a name, what offense, what fault? For there is a ruling against you that you cannot charge crimes which neither the procedure sets out, nor the indictment specifies, nor the sentence enumerates. What is laid before the governor, what is inquired of the accused, what is answered or denied, what is read out from the council: that is what I recognize as a charge. So, as to the desert of the name, if there is any guilt in names, any accusation of words, I think there is no complaint to be made against a word or a name, unless it sounds barbarous, or smacks of ill omen, or is indecent, or is otherwise than befits the one who speaks it or pleases the one who hears it. These are the faults of words or names, just as barbarism is a fault of words and speech, and so are solecism and a clumsy figure. But the name “Christian,” as far as its meaning goes, is interpreted from anointing. Even when you mispronounce us as “Chrestians” (for you are not clearly certain even of the name itself), even so it is formed from sweetness or kindness. So in harmless men you put on trial our harmless name as well: not awkward to the tongue, not harsh to the ears, not evil to anyone, not hostile to the fatherland, but Greek like others, and pleasant both in sound and in meaning. And surely names are not to be punished with sword or cross or beasts. ### Translation notes - “Chrestians” plays on Greek chrēstos, “kind, good.” ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/3/). ## To the Nations 1.4 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/4/ - Source: Oehler 1:310–313 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Christians are hated for their name, like Socrates for truth, even when their lives visibly improve, and their true marks are wisdom, self-restraint, chastity, compassion, truth, and freedom. ### Latin text Sed dicitis sectam nomine puniri sui auctoris. Primo quidem sectam de auctoris appellatione notari utique probum usitatumque ius est, dum philosophi quoque de auctoribus cognominentur Pythagorici et Platonici, ut medici Erasistratei et grammatici Aristarchii. Itaque si ob auctorem malum mala secta, tradux mali nominis plectitur. Atquin temeritate praesumeretur. Prius erat cognoscere auctorem, ut cognosceretur secta, quam de secta inspectionem auctoris retinere. At nunc necessario ignorando sectam, quia ignoratis auctorem, aut non recensendo auctorem, quia nec sectam recensetis, in solum nomen inpingitis, quasi in illo detinentes sectam et auctorem, quos omnino non nostis. Et tamen philosophis patet libertas transgrediendi a vobis in sectam et auctorum et suum nomen, nec quisquam illis odium movet, cum in mores, ritus, cultus victusque vestros palam ac publice omnem eloquii amaritudinem elatrent, cum legum contemptu, sine respectu personarum, ut quidam etiam in principes ipsos libertatem suam inpune iaculentur. Sed veritatem saeculo operosissimam philosophi quidem affectant, possident autem Christiani, ideoque qui possident, magis displicent, quia qui affectat, inludit, qui possidet, defendit. Denique Socrates ex ea parte damnatus est, qua propius temptaverat veritatem, deos vestros destruendo. Quamquam nondum tunc in terris nomen Christianum, tamen veritas semper damnabatur. Itaque et sapientem non negabitis cui etiam Pythius vester testimonium dixerat. Virorum, inquit, omnium Socrates sapientissimus. Vicit Apollinem veritas, ut ipse adversus se pronuntiaret; confessus est enim se deum non esse, sed eum quoque sapientissimum affirmans qui deos abnuebat. Porro apud vos eo minus sapiens, quia deos abnuens, cum ideo sapiens, quia deos abnuens. Quo more etiam nobis soletis: Bonus vir Lucius Titius, tantum quod Christianus. Item alius: Ego miror Gaium Seium gravem virum factum Christianum. Pro stultitiae caecitate laudant quae sciunt, vituperant quae nesciunt, et id quod sciunt eo quod nesciunt vitiant. Nemini subvenit, ne ideo bonus quis et prudens, quia Christianus, aut ideo Christianus, quia prudens et bonus, cum sit humanius occulta manifestis adiudicare quam manifesta de occulto praeiudicare. Alii quos retro ante hoc nomen vagos, viles, improbos norant, emendatos repente mirantur, et tamen mirari quam assequi norunt: alii tanta obstinatione certant, ut cum suis utilitatibus depugnent, quas de commercio istius nominis capere possunt. Scio maritum unum atque alium, anxium retro de uxoris suae moribus, qui ne mures quidem in cubiculum inrepentes sine gemitu suspicionis sustinebat, comperta causa novae sedulitatis et inusitatae captivitatis omnem uxori patientiam obtulisse, se negasse zelotypum, maluisse lupae quam Christianae maritum; ipsi suam licuit in perversum demutare naturam, mulieri non permisit in melius reformari. Pater filium, de quo queri desierat, exheredavit. Dominus servum, quem praeterea necessarium senserat, in ergastulum dedit. Simul quis intellexerit Christianum, mavult nocentem. Nam et ipsa per se traducitur disciplina, nec aliunde prodimur quam de bono nostro, si et mali de suo malo radiant. Aut nos soli contra instituta naturae pessimi de bono denotamur? Quid enim insigne praeferimus, nisi primam sapientiam, qua frivola humanae manus opera non adoramus, abstinentiam, qua ab alieno temperamus, pudicitiam, quam nec oculis contaminamus, misericordiam, qua super indigentes flectimur, ipsam veritatem, qua offendimus, ipsam libertatem, pro qua mori novimus? Qui vult intellegere qui sint Christiani, istis indicibus utatur necesse est. ### English translation (Claude) But you say that the sect is punished in the name of its founder. First, it is surely a proper and customary rule that a sect should be marked by its founder's name, since philosophers too are named after their founders, Pythagoreans and Platonists, as physicians are called Erasistrateans and grammarians Aristarcheans. So if a sect is bad because its founder is bad, the offshoot of a bad name is punished. But that would be presumed rashly. The first thing was to know the founder, so that the sect might be known, rather than to put off examining the founder on account of the sect. But as it is, being necessarily ignorant of the sect because you are ignorant of the founder, or not reviewing the founder because you do not review the sect either, you strike at the name alone, as if in it you had hold of the sect and the founder, neither of whom you know at all. And yet philosophers are free to pass over from you into a sect and to take their founders' name as their own, and no one stirs up hatred against them, though they bark out, openly and publicly, every bitterness of speech against your morals, rites, worship, and way of life, in contempt of the laws, without respect of persons, so that some even hurl their freedom of speech at the emperors themselves with impunity. But the truth, so very troublesome to the world, the philosophers only aspire to, while the Christians possess it; and so those who possess it displease more, because the one who aspires to it plays with it, while the one who possesses it defends it. In fact Socrates was condemned on the side on which he had come nearest to the truth, by destroying your gods. Although the Christian name was not yet on earth then, truth was always condemned. And you will not deny that he was wise, to whom even your Pythian bore witness: “Of all men,” he said, “Socrates is the wisest.” Truth overcame Apollo, so that he pronounced against himself; for he confessed that he was not a god when he affirmed that the man who denied the gods was most wise. But with you he is the less wise for denying the gods, when he was wise precisely because he denied them. You speak of us in the same way: “Lucius Titius is a good man, only he is a Christian.” And another: “I am surprised that Gaius Seius, a serious man, has become a Christian.” In the blindness of folly they praise what they know, censure what they do not know, and spoil what they know by what they do not know. It occurs to no one that a man may be good and prudent because he is a Christian, or a Christian because he is prudent and good, although it is more humane to judge hidden things from manifest ones than to prejudge manifest things from what is hidden. Others marvel that people whom they formerly knew, before this name, as vagrant, worthless, and wicked have suddenly been reformed, and yet they know better how to marvel than how to follow. Others fight with such obstinacy that they fight against their own advantage, which they could gain from association with this name. I know of more than one husband, formerly anxious about his wife's conduct, who could not bear even mice creeping into the bedroom without a groan of suspicion, but who, on discovering the cause of her new diligence and her unusual keeping at home, offered to put up with anything from his wife, denied that he was jealous, and preferred to be the husband of a harlot rather than of a Christian: he was allowed to change his own nature for the worse; he did not allow the woman to be reformed for the better. A father disinherited a son of whom he had ceased to complain. A master sent to the workhouse a slave whom until then he had found indispensable. As soon as anyone discovers that someone is a Christian, he would rather have a criminal. For our discipline betrays itself by itself, and we are betrayed by nothing but our own goodness, just as the wicked shine out by their own wickedness. Or are we alone, against the ordinances of nature, branded as the worst for our goodness? For what distinguishing mark do we display, if not, first, wisdom, by which we do not worship the trifling works of human hands; self-restraint, by which we keep from what belongs to others; chastity, which we do not defile even with our eyes; compassion, by which we are moved toward the needy; truth itself, by which we give offense; freedom itself, for which we know how to die? Whoever wishes to understand who the Christians are must use these signs. ### Scripture references - Matt 5:28: allusion, medium confidence ### Extrabiblical texts - Plato, Apol. 21a (Plato (works)): allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - The oracle's praise of Socrates is told in Plato, Apology 21a. The digital text is damaged in the second “deos ab(??)ens”; the sense requires abnuens (“denying”). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/4/). ## To the Nations 1.5 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/5/ - Source: Oehler 1:313–314 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Some who are called Christians are wicked, but Christians disown them, and the wickedness belongs to the individuals, not to the name. ### Latin text Quod ergo dicitis: Pessimi et probrosissimi avaritia, luxuria, improbitate, non negabimus quosdam. Sufficit et hoc ad testimonium nominis nostri, si non omnes, si non plures. Necesse est in corpore, et quantum velis integro aut puro, uti naevus aliqui effruticet aut verrucula exsurgat aut lentigo sordescat. Caelum ipsum nulla serenitas tam colata purgat, ut non alicuius nubiculae flocculo resignetur. Modica macula in fronte, in parte quadam exemplari visa, a quo universitas munda est. Maior boni portio modico malo ad testimonium sui utitur. Cum tamen aliquos de nostris malos probatis, iam hoc ipso Christianos non probatis. Quaerite sectam cui malitiae deputatur. Ipsi in conloquio, si quando adversus nos, Cur ille, inquitis, fraudator, si abstinentes Christiani? cur immitis, si misericordes? Adeo testimonium redditis non esse tales Christianos, dum cur tales sint qui dicuntur Christiani retorquetis. Multum distantiae inter crimen et nomen, inter opinionem et veritatem. Nam et nomina sic sunt instituta, ut fines suos habeant inter dici et esse. Quot denique philosophi dicuntur nec tamen legem philosophiae adimplent? Omnes nomen de professionibus gestant, sed ducunt nomen sine professionis praestantia qui superficie vocabuli infamant veritatem. Non statim sunt quia dicuntur, sed quia non sunt, frustra dicuntur, et fallunt eos qui rem nomini addicunt, cum de re status nominis competat. Et tamen eiusmodi neque congregant neque participant nobiscum, facti per delicta denuo vestri, quando ne illis quidem misceamur quos vestra vis atque saevitia ad negandum subegit. Utique enim facilius inter nos inviti desertores disciplinae quam voluntarii continerentur. Ceterum sine causa vocatis Christianos quos ipsi negant Christiani, qui se negare non norunt. ### English translation (Claude) As for what you say, “The worst and most disgraceful in avarice, luxury, and wickedness,” we will not deny that some are. It is enough for the testimony of our name if not all are, if not the greater number. In a body, however sound or clean you like, it must be that some mole sprouts, or a little wart rises, or a freckle discolors. The sky itself is never cleansed by any fair weather so clear that it is not marked by the tuft of some little cloud. A small spot on the forehead, seen on one part as a sample, shows that the whole is clean. The greater portion of good uses a small evil as testimony to itself. When, however, you prove some of ours to be wicked, by that very fact you prove that they are not Christians. Look for the sect to which the wickedness is charged. You yourselves, in conversation, when you speak against us, say: “Why is that man a cheat, if the Christians are self-restrained? Why is he cruel, if they are merciful?” So you bear witness that Christians are not such, when you throw back the question why those who are called Christians are such. There is a great difference between a crime and a name, between opinion and truth. For names too are so established that they have their own boundaries between being called and being. How many, after all, are called philosophers and yet do not fulfill the law of philosophy? All bear a name from their professions; but those bear the name without the excellence of the profession who defame the truth by the mere surface of the word. They are not what they are called merely because they are called so; rather, because they are not, they are called so in vain, and they deceive those who assign the thing to the name, when the standing of the name ought to follow from the thing. And yet such people neither assemble nor share with us, having become yours again through their offenses, since we do not mix even with those whom your force and savagery have compelled to deny. For surely the unwilling deserters of our discipline would more easily be kept among us than the willing ones. For the rest, you call Christians, without cause, those whom the Christians themselves disown, who do not know how to deny themselves. ### Translation notes - The sentence about the spot on the forehead (Modica macula in fronte … a quo universitas munda est) is obscure; the rendering is approximate. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/5/). ## To the Nations 1.6 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/6/ - Source: Oehler 1:314–315 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Appealing to the laws does not help, because even laws require an inquiry into the deed, and a law that will not be examined is suspect and unjust. ### Latin text His propositionibus responsionibusque nostris, quas veritas de suo suggerit, quotiens comprimitur et coartatur conscientia vestra, tacita ignorantiae suae testis, confugitis aestuantes ad arulam quandam, id est legum auctoritatem, quod utique non plecterent sectam istam, nisi de meritis apud conditores legum constitisset. Quid ergo prohibuit apud exsecutores quoque legum proinde constare, cum de ceteris criminibus quae similiter legibus arcentur ac puniuntur, nisi prius requiratur, poena cessat? Verbi gratia homicidam, adulterum lege: discutitur tamen de ordine admissi, et tamen cognitum est omnibus genus facti. Christianum puniunt leges. Si quod est factum Christiani, erui debet. Nulla lex prohibet inquirere, atquin pro legibus facit inquisitio. Quomodo enim legem observabis cavendo quod lege prohibetur, adempta diligentia cavendi per defectionem agnoscendi quid observes? Nulla sibi lex debet conscientiam iustitiae suae, sed eis a quibus captat obsequium. Ceterum suspecta lex est, si probare se non vult. Merito igitur tamdiu iustae in Christianos et reverendae et observandae censentur, quamdiu ignoratur quod persequuntur, merito post agnitionem iniquissimae repertae cum suis machaeris et patibulis et leonibus despuuntur. Legis iniustae honor nullus est. Ut opinor autem, dubitatur de iniquitate legum quarundam, cum quotidie novis consultis constitutisque duritias nequitiasque earum temperetis. ### English translation (Claude) Whenever your conscience, the silent witness of its own ignorance, is pressed and hemmed in by these propositions and answers of ours, which truth supplies from its own store, you run in a sweat to a kind of little altar of refuge, that is, the authority of the laws: that they would surely not punish this sect unless its deserts had been established before the makers of the laws. What then prevented them from being established likewise before the executors of the laws, since for the other crimes, which the laws likewise forbid and punish, the penalty is withheld unless there has first been an inquiry? For example, the law deals with a murderer, an adulterer; yet the course of the deed is examined, even though the kind of act is known to all. The laws punish the Christian. If there is any deed of the Christian, it must be brought to light. No law forbids inquiry; on the contrary, inquiry works on the laws' behalf. For how will you keep the law by guarding against what the law forbids, if the care for guarding against it is taken away through your failure to find out what you are to keep? No law owes the consciousness of its justice to itself, but to those from whom it seeks obedience. Besides, a law is suspect if it will not have itself proved. Rightly, then, are the laws against the Christians thought just, venerable, and to be observed, for as long as what they persecute is unknown; rightly, once it is known, are they found most unjust and spat upon, with their swords and gibbets and lions. An unjust law has no honor. But, as I think, the justice of certain laws is itself in doubt among you, since every day you temper their harshness and wickedness by new decrees and ordinances? ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/6/). ## To the Nations 1.7 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/7/ - Source: Oehler 1:315–320 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The charges of ritual murder and incest rest only on rumor, which has never been proved in all the years Christians have been watched and arrested; no one would buy eternal life at such a price. ### Latin text Unde ergo, inquitis, tantum de vobis famae licuit, cuius testimonium suffecerit forsitan conditoribus legum? Quis, oro, sponsor aut illis tunc aut exinde vobis de fide? Fama est. Nonne haec est, Fama malum, quo non aliud velocius ullum? Cur malum, si vera semper sit? Non mendacio, plurimumque ne tum quidem, cum vera defert, a libidine mendacii cessat, ut non falsa veris intexat adiciens, detrahens, varietate confundens. Quid? quod ea condicio illi, ut nonnisi quod mentitur perseveret. Tamdiu enim vivit quamdiu non probat quicquam; siquidem approbata cadit et quasi officio nuntiandi functa decedit; exinde res tenetur, res nominatur, nec quisquam dicit verbi gratia: Hoc Romae aiunt factum, aut: Fama est illum provinciam sortitum, sed: Ille provinciam sortitus est, et; Hoc factum est Romae. Nemo famam nominat nisi incertus, quia nemo sit fama sed conscientia certus; nemo famae credit nisi stultus, quia sapiens non credit incerto. Fama quantacumque ambitione diffusa est, ab uno aliquando ore exorta sit necesse est, exinde in traduces quodammodo linguarum et aurium serpit et modicum originum vitium rumoris obscurat, ut nemo recogitet, ne primum illud os mendacia seminaverit, quod saepe fit aut aemulationis ingenio, aut suspicionis arbitrio, aut etiam nova mentiendi voluptate. Sed bene, quod omnia tempus revelat, testibus sententiis et proverbiis vestris ipsaque natura, quae ita ordinata est, ut nihil lateat, etiam quod fama non prodidit. Videte, qualem prodigiam adversus nos subornastis, quia quod semel detulit tantoque tempore ad fidem corroboravit usque adhuc probare non potuit. Principe Augusto nomen hoc ortum est, Tiberio disciplina eius inluxit, sub Nerone damnatio invaluit, ut iam hinc de persona persecutoris ponderetis: si pius ille princeps, impii Christiani, si iustus, si castus, iniusti et incesti Christiani, si non hostis publicus, nos publice hostes; quales simus damnator ipse demonstravit, utique aemula sibi puniens. Et tamen permansit erasis omnibus hoc solum institutum Neronianum, iustum denique ut dissimile sui auctoris. Igitur aetati nostrae nondum anni ccl. Tot iniqui interea, tot cruces divinitatem consecutae, tot infantiae trucidatae, tot panes cruentati, tot strages lucernarum, tot errores nuptiarum, et adhuc Christianis sola fama decernit. Habet quidem grande fundamentum de vitio ingenii humani: felicius in acerbis atrocibusque mentitur. Quanto enim proni ad malitiam, tanto ad mali fidem oportuni estis; facilius denique falso malo quam vero bono creditur. Si quem tamen apud vos prudentiae locum iniquitas reliquisset, ad explorandam famae fidem utique iustitia poscebat dispicere, a quibus potuisset fama in vulgus, et ita in totum orbem dari. Ab ipsis enim Christianis non opinor, cum vel ex forma ac lege omnium mysteriorum silentii fides debeatur. Quanto magis talium quae prodita non vitarent interim animadversione praesentanea supplicium? Si ergo non ipsi proditores sui, sequitur ut extranei. Oro vos, extraneis unde notitia, cum etiam iusta et licita mysteria omnem arbitrum extraneum caveant, nisi inlicita minus spernunt? Atquin extraneis tam ignorare quam confingere magis competit. Domesticorum curiositas furata est per rimulas et cavernas. Quid? cum domestici eas. vobis prodent res? Omnes a nullis magis prodimur, quanto magis, si atrocitas tanta sit, quae iustitia indignationis omnem familiaritatis fidem rumpit? Non potuerit continere quod horruit mens, quod expavit oculus. Hoc quoque mirum, si et ille, qui tanto impatientiae iure prosiluit deferre, non et probare gestiit, et ille, qui audiit, non et videre curavit; siquidem par fructus est et delatoris, si quod detulit probet, et auditoris, si quod audit etiam sibi credat. Tunc, inquitis, primo delatum et exhibitum est, auditum et inspectum est, atque exinde famae commendatum. Hoc quidem superscendit omnem admirationem, si semel deprehensum est quod semper admittitur; nisi desivimus iam talia factitare. Atquin et idem vocamur, et in isdem deputamur, et de die redundamus; quod plures, hoc pluribus odiosi. Magis increscit odium increscente materia: proficiente multitudine reorum quid ita non proficit multitudo nuntiatorum? Quod sciam, et conversatio notior facta est, scitis et dies conventuum nostrorum, itaque et obsidemur et opprimimur et in ipsis arcanis congregationibus detinemur. Quis unquam tamen semeso cadaveri supervenit? quis in cruentato pane vestigia dentium deprehendit? quis tenebris repentino lumine inruptis inmunda aliqua, ne dixerim incesta, indicia recognovit? Si praemio impetramus, ne tales in publicum extrahamur, quare et opprimimur? Possumus et omnino non extrahi. Quis enim proditionem criminis alicuius sine crimine ipso aut vendit aut redimit? Sed quid extraneis speculatoribus et indicibus detractem, qui talia obiciatis quae non ab ipsis nobis cum maxima vociferatione publicentur, aut statim audita, si prius demonstrantur, aut postea reperta, si interim celantur? Sine dubio enim initiari volentibus mos est prius ad magistrum sacrorum vel patrem adire. Tum ille dicet: Infans tibi, qui ad hoc vadetur, necessarius, qui immoletur, et panis aliquantum, qui in sanguine infringatur; praeterea candelabra, quae canes annexi deturbent, et offulae, quae eosdem canes: sed et mater aut soror tibi necessaria est. Quid, si nullae erunt? Opinor, legitimus Christianus esse non poteris. Haec, oro vos, denuntiata ab aliis sustinent prodi? Diversum opus non est scire illos. Prius fallaciae negotium perpetratur: ignaris et dapes et nuptiae subiciuntur; nihil enim unquam retro de Christianis mysteriis audierant. Tamen postea cognoscant necesse est, vel aliis quos inducunt praeministranda. Ceterum quam vanum est profanes scire quod nesciat sacerdos? Tacent igitur et accepto ferunt, et nihil tragoediae Thyestae vel Oedipodis erumpunt, et non protrahunt ad populum. Fidei de ministris et magistris et de ipsis potiores morsus iam doctis nihil rapiunt. Si nihil tale probetur, grande nescio quid aestimari oportet, cuius compensatio tantarum atrocitatum tolerantia constat. Miserae atque miserandae nationes, ecce proponimus vobis disciplinae nostrae sponsionem. Vitam aeternam sectatoribus et conservatoribus suis spondet, e contrario profanis et aemulis supplicium aeternum aeterno igni comminatur; ad utramque causam mortuorum resurrectio praedicatur. Viderimus de fide istorum, dum suo loco digeruntur; interim credite, quemadmodum nos. Volo enim scire, si per talia scelera adire parati estis, quemadmodum nos? Veni, si quis es, demerge ferrum in infantem; vel si alterius officium est, tum modo specta morientem animam antequam vixit, certe excipe rudem sanguinem in quo panem tuum saties, vescere libenter; interea discumbe, dinumera loca, ubi mater aut soror torum presserit; nota diligenter, ut, cum tenebrae inruerint, temptantes scilicet diligentiam singulorum, non erres extraneam incursans: piaculum feceris, nisi incestum. Haec cum expunxeris, vives in aevum. Cupio respondeas, si tanti facis aeternitatem? Immo idcirco nec credis, etiam si credideris, nego te velle, etiam si velles, nego te posse. Cur autem alii possint, si vos non potestis? cur non possitis, si alii possunt? Inpunitatem, aeternitatem quanto constare vultis? An hae nobis omni modo redimendae videntur? an alii ordines dentium Christianorum, et alii specus faucium, et alii ad incesti libidinem nervi? Non opinor. Satis enim est nobis sola veritate a vestra positione discerni. ### English translation (Claude) “Whence, then,” you say, “did so great a report about you gain currency, whose testimony was perhaps enough for the makers of the laws?” Who, I ask, stood surety for its reliability, either to them then or to you since? It is rumor. Is this not the one of whom it is said, “Rumor, an evil than which no other is swifter”? Why an evil, if it is always true? It is not free of lying, and very often, even when it carries the truth, it does not cease from its lust for lying, weaving falsehood into truth by adding, subtracting, and confusing with variations. What is more, its condition is such that it lasts only as long as it lies. For it lives only as long as it proves nothing; once proved, it falls and, as if it had discharged its office of reporting, it departs; from then on the fact is held, the fact is named, and no one says, for example, “They say this was done at Rome,” or “Rumor has it that he has drawn a province,” but “He has drawn a province,” and “This was done at Rome.” No one names rumor except one who is uncertain, because no one is certain by rumor but by knowledge; no one believes rumor but a fool, because the wise man does not believe what is uncertain. Rumor, however widely it has spread in its ambition, must at some time have arisen from one mouth; thence it creeps somehow along the channels of tongues and ears, and the small fault at the origin of the report is so obscured that no one reflects whether that first mouth sowed lies, as often happens, from a spirit of rivalry, or from the whim of suspicion, or even from the fresh pleasure of lying. But it is well that time reveals all things, as your own maxims and proverbs testify, and nature itself, which is so ordered that nothing stays hidden, not even what rumor has not betrayed. See what a prodigy you have suborned against us: what it once reported and has strengthened into belief over so long a time, it has not been able to prove to this day. This name arose under the emperor Augustus; under Tiberius its teaching shone forth; under Nero its condemnation grew strong, so that from this point you may weigh it by the character of the persecutor. If that emperor was pious, the Christians are impious; if he was just, if chaste, the Christians are unjust and unchaste; if he was not a public enemy, we are public enemies. What we are, our condemner himself has shown, for he surely punished what was the opposite of himself. And yet, when all his other acts were erased, this one institution of Nero's alone has remained: just, no doubt, as being unlike its author. So for our age it is not yet two hundred and fifty years. So many criminals in the meantime, so many crosses that have attained divinity, so many infants slaughtered, so many loaves bloodied, so many lamps overturned, so many confusions of unions, and still rumor alone passes judgment on the Christians. It has, indeed, a great foundation in a fault of human nature: it lies more successfully about harsh and atrocious things. For the more you are inclined to malice, the readier you are to believe evil; indeed, a false evil is believed more easily than a true good. Yet if injustice had left any room among you for prudence, justice surely demanded, in order to test the reliability of the rumor, that you examine from whom the rumor could have been given out to the crowd, and so to the whole world. Not from the Christians themselves, I think, since by the very form and law of all mysteries the pledge of silence is owed: how much more for such things as, once betrayed, would not escape instant punishment? If, then, they did not betray themselves, it follows that outsiders did. How, I ask you, did outsiders come to know, since even just and lawful mysteries guard against every outside witness, unless unlawful ones are less careful? And yet it suits outsiders rather to be ignorant, and to invent. The curiosity of members of the household, you say, stole a look through chinks and holes. What then, if members of the household betray these things to you? We are all betrayed by none more than by them; how much more, if the atrocity were so great that the justice of indignation broke every bond of household loyalty? The mind could not have held in what it shuddered at, what the eye was terrified to see. This too is strange, if the one who leapt out with such a right of indignation to report it did not also long to prove it, and the one who heard it did not also take care to see; since the reward is equal for the informer, if he proves what he reported, and for the hearer, if he can believe on his own evidence what he hears. “Then,” you say, “it was first reported and exhibited, heard and inspected, and thereafter committed to rumor.” This indeed passes all wonder, if what is always being committed was caught once, unless we have now stopped doing such things. Yet we are still called by the same name and counted among the same people, and we grow more numerous day by day; the more we are, the more people hate us. Hatred grows as its material grows: as the multitude of the accused advances, why does the multitude of informers not advance with it? As far as I know, our way of life has become better known; you know the days of our meetings too, and so we are besieged and overpowered and held in our very secret gatherings. Yet who ever came upon a half-eaten corpse? Who ever found the marks of teeth in bloodied bread? Who, bursting into the darkness with a sudden light, ever found any foul, not to say incestuous, traces? If we obtain by bribes that we are not dragged out in public as such, why are we overpowered at all? We could avoid being dragged out altogether. For who either sells or buys off the betrayal of a crime without the crime itself? But why should I disparage outside spies and informers, when you charge us with such things as we ourselves would be publishing with the loudest outcry, either heard at once, if they are shown beforehand, or found out later, if they are hidden meanwhile? For no doubt it is the custom for those who wish to be initiated first to go to the master of the rites, or the father. Then he will say: “You need an infant, pledged for this purpose, to be sacrificed, and some bread to be broken in its blood; also candlesticks, for dogs tied to them to knock over, and morsels to draw those same dogs; and you also need a mother or a sister.” What if you have none? I suppose you could not be a lawful Christian. Tell me, do such things, when announced beforehand by others, bear being kept from betrayal? It is no strange thing that those people know. First the business of deceit is carried out: the banquet and the unions are foisted on the ignorant, for they had never before heard anything of the Christian mysteries. Yet afterward they must come to know, if only to prepare them in advance for others whom they bring in. Besides, how absurd it is that the profane should know what the priest does not know! So they keep silent and take it in good part, and break out into no tragedy of Thyestes or Oedipus, and do not drag it before the people. … If nothing of the kind is proved, something great, I know not what, must be judged to exist, the reward for which consists in bearing such atrocities. Wretched and pitiable nations, see, we set before you the promise of our discipline. It promises eternal life to its followers and keepers, and on the other hand threatens the profane and hostile with eternal punishment in eternal fire; for both outcomes the resurrection of the dead is preached. We shall see about the credibility of these things when they are treated in their own place; meanwhile, believe, as we do. For I want to know whether you are ready to come to it through such crimes, as we are said to do. Come, whoever you are, plunge the knife into the infant; or if that is someone else's office, then just watch a soul dying before it has lived; at least catch the fresh blood in which to soak your bread; eat heartily. Meanwhile, recline at table; count the places where mother or sister has lain; note them carefully, so that when darkness falls, testing, no doubt, the carefulness of each, you may not err by falling upon a stranger: you will have committed a sacrilege if it is not incest. When you have carried all this out, you will live forever. I want you to answer: do you value eternity so highly? No; that is why you do not believe it; even if you believed it, I deny that you would want it; even if you wanted it, I deny that you could do it. Why then can others, if you cannot? Why can you not, if others can? At what price would you have impunity and eternity cost? Or do these seem to us things to be bought at any price whatever? Or do Christians have other rows of teeth, other caverns of the throat, other sinews for incestuous lust? I think not. It is enough for us to be distinguished from your position by the truth alone. ### Scripture references - Matt 25:41: allusion, medium confidence - Matt 25:46: allusion, medium confidence ### Extrabiblical texts - Virgil, Aen. 4.174 (Virgil): quotation, high confidence ### Translation notes - “Rumor, an evil than which no other is swifter” is Virgil, Aeneid 4.174. The figure “250 years” is as printed (ccl). The sentence “Fidei de ministris et magistris et de ipsis potiores morsus iam doctis nihil rapiunt” is corrupt and is marked “…”; its sense is uncertain. The dogs overturning the lamps before the incestuous “unions” refers to the pagan slander of Christian meetings. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/7/). ## To the Nations 1.8 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/8/ - Source: Oehler 1:320–322 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tertullian mocks the name “third race” for Christians, ridiculing the tale of Psammetichus's experiment to find the first nation and asking who, then, the first and second races are. ### Latin text Plane, tertium genus dicimur. Cynopaene aliqui vel Sciapodes? vel aliqui de subterraneo Antipodes? Si qua istic apud vos saltem ratio est, edatis velim primum et secundum genus, ut ita de tertio constet. Psammetichus quidem putavit sibi de ingenio exploratum esse de primogenitis. Dicitur enim infantes recenti e partu seorsum a commercio hominum alendos tradidisse nutrici quam et ipsam propterea elinguaverat, ut in totum exsules vocis humanae non auditu formarent loquellam, sed suo promentes eam primam nationem designarent cuius sonum natura dictasset. Prima vox BEKKOS renuntiata est; interpretatio eius panis apud Phrygas nomen est; Phryges primi genus exinde habentur. Sed unum hoc erit de vanitatibus vestrarum fabularum non otiose nobis retractandum, quo fidem vestram vanitatibus quam veritatibus deditam demonstrare gestimus. An omnino credibile sit, tali membro desecto, vastato ipsius animae organo et utique radicitus caeso, castratis faucibus quae etiam extrinsecus periculose vulnerantur, exinde tabo in praecordia refluente, postremo aliquandiu cessantibus alimentis, vitam nutrici illi perdurasse? Age nunc, perseveraverit Philomelae medicamentis suam vitam, quam et ipsam prudentiores non linguae caede, sed ex pudoris rubore mutam interpretantur. Si ergo vixit, potuit effutire aliquid obtusum. Et exarticulatum sonum tinnitumque sine modultu labellorum, ex panso ore, lingua stupente de solis faucibus cogi licet. Id fors tunc infantes, quia unicum, facilius commentati paulo modulatius, utpote linguatuli, in inventum alicuius interpretationis impegerint. Sint nunc primi Phryges, non tamen tertii Christiani. Quantae enim aliae gentium series post Phrygas? Verum recogitate, ne quos tertium genus dicitis principem locum obtineant, siquidem non ulla gens non Christiana. Itaque quaecumque gens prima, nihilominus Christiana. Ridicula dementia novissimos dicitis et tertios nominatis. Sed de superstitione tertium genus deputamur, non de natione, ut sint Romani, Iudaei, dehinc Christiani. Ubi autem Graeci? vel si in Romanorum superstitionibus censentur, quoniam quidem etiam deos Graeciae Roma sollicitavit, ubi saltem Aegyptii, et ipsi, quod sciam, privatae curiosaeque religionis? Porro si tam monstrosi qui tertii loci, quales habendi qui primo et secundo antecedunt? ### English translation (Claude) Plainly, we are called “the third race.” Dog-faced men, perhaps, or Shadow-feet? Or some Antipodes from under the earth? If you have any reasoning at all in this, I should like you to state the first and second race, so that the third may thus be established. Psammetichus, indeed, thought he had found out by his ingenuity which race was born first. For he is said to have handed over infants fresh from birth, cut off from all human intercourse, to be reared by a nurse whose tongue he had cut out for this very purpose, so that, wholly exiled from the human voice, they might form their speech not by hearing, but, bringing out their own, might mark out as the first nation the one whose sound nature had dictated. The first word reported was BEKKOS; its meaning is the Phrygians' word for bread; so from then on the Phrygians are held to be the first race. But this will be one of the vanities of your fables that we must not handle idly, since by it we are eager to show that your belief is given to vanities rather than to truths. Is it at all credible that, with such a member cut out, the very instrument of the soul laid waste and severed at the root, the throat mutilated (which is dangerously wounded even from outside), the gore then flowing back into the chest, and finally with nourishment cut off for some time, the life of that nurse endured? Come now, suppose she prolonged her life with the remedies of Philomela, whom wiser people take to have been mute not from the cutting out of her tongue but from the blush of shame. If, then, she lived, she could blurt out something dull. And an inarticulate sound, a ringing without the shaping of the lips, can be forced from an open mouth, with the tongue lifeless, from the throat alone. Perhaps the infants, because it was the only sound they heard, imitated it the more easily and a little more tunefully, having tongues, and so stumbled on something that seemed to have a meaning. Let the Phrygians now be first; the Christians are still not third. For how many other successions of nations are there after the Phrygians? But reflect, lest those whom you call the third race should hold the first place, since there is no nation that is not Christian. So whatever nation is first is nonetheless Christian. With ridiculous madness you call us the newest and name us the third. But it is in respect of religion that we are counted the third race, not of nation: so that there are Romans, Jews, and then Christians. But where are the Greeks? Or if they are reckoned among the religions of the Romans, since indeed Rome courted even the gods of Greece, where at least are the Egyptians, who also, as far as I know, have a religion peculiar and curious? Moreover, if those in the third place are so monstrous, what are we to think of those who go before them in the first and second? ### Extrabiblical texts - Herodotus, Hist. 2.2 (Herodotus, Histories): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The experiment of Psammetichus is told by Herodotus, Histories 2.2. Philomela's tongue was cut out in the myth of Tereus. BEKKOS is the Phrygian word given in Herodotus. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/8/). ## To the Nations 1.9 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/9/ - Source: Oehler 1:322–324 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Christians are blamed for every disaster, yet disasters came long before Christians, and gods who need men to avenge them are weak. ### Latin text Sed quid ego mirer vana vestra, cum ex forma naturali concorporata et concreta intercessit malitia et stultitia sub eodem mancipe erroris? Sane, quia non miror, enumerem necesse est, ut vos recognoscendo miremini, in quantam stultitiam incidatis, qui omnis cladis publicae vel iniuriae nos causas esse vultis. Si Tiberis redundaverit, si Nilus non redundavit, si caelum stetit, si terra movit, si Libitina vastavit, si famis afflixit, statim omnium vox: Christianorum meritum! Quasi modicum habeant aut aliud metuere qui deum verum. Opinor, ut contemptores deorum vestrorum haec iacula eorum provocamus. Ut supra edidimus, aetatis nostrae nondum anni trecenti: quantae clades ante id spatium supra universum orbem ad singulas urbes et provincias ceciderunt? quanta bella externa et intestina? quot pestes, fames, ignes, hiatus motusque terrarum saeculum digessit? Ubi tunc Christiani, cum res Romana tot historias laborum suorum subministravit? Ubi tunc Christiani, cum Hiera, Anaphe et Delos et Rhodos et Cea insulae multis cum milibus hominum pessum ierunt, vel quam Plato memorat maiorem Asia aut Africa in Atlantico mari mersam? cum Vulsinios de caelo, Pompeios de suo monte perfudit ignis? cum terrae motu mare Corinthium ereptum est? cum totum orbem cataclysmus abolevit? Ubi tunc, non dicam contemptores deorum Christiani, sed ipsi dei vestri, quos clade illa posteriores loca, oppida approbant in quibus nati, morati, sepulti sunt, etiam quae condiderunt? Non alias enim superfuissent ad hodiernum, nisi postuma cladis illius. Si relegere et revolvere non curatis testimonia temporum, aliter vobis renuntiata, inprimis ne deos vestros iniustissimos pronuntietis, qui propter contemptores etiam cultores suos laedunt, tunc nec vosmetipsos errare probatis, si deos traditis qui vos a meritis profanorum non discernunt? Quodsi, ut unus atque alius vanissimus ait, idcirco vobis quoque irascuntur, quoniam de nostra eradicatione neglegitis, absolutum est de infirmitate et mediocritate eorum: nam non irascerentur vobis in animadversione cessantibus, si ex se quid possent. Quanquam et alias confitemini istud, si quando illos supplicio nostro videmini ulcisci. Si ab alio aliud, a maiore defenditur. Pudeat igitur deos ab homine defendi. ### English translation (Claude) But why should I marvel at your vanities, when malice and folly, joined and grown together from your natural make, have come in under the same owner, error? Indeed, because I do not marvel, I must list them, so that on recognizing them you may marvel into what folly you fall, you who want us to be the causes of every public disaster or harm. If the Tiber overflows, if the Nile does not overflow, if the sky stands still, if the earth moves, if plague lays waste, if famine afflicts, at once the cry of all is: “The Christians' fault!” As if those who fear the true God had little to fear, or anything else! I suppose that, as despisers of your gods, we provoke these darts of theirs. As we stated above, for our age it is not yet three hundred years: how many disasters fell before that span upon the whole world, upon particular cities and provinces? How many wars, foreign and civil? How many plagues, famines, fires, chasms and earthquakes has the world gone through? Where were the Christians then, when the Roman state furnished so many histories of its own troubles? Where were the Christians then, when the islands Hiera, Anaphe, Delos, Rhodes, and Cea went to ruin with many thousands of people, or the island larger than Asia or Africa which Plato records was sunk in the Atlantic sea? When fire poured down on the Volsinii from heaven, and on Pompeii from its own mountain? When by an earthquake the Corinthian sea was snatched away? When the flood wiped out the whole world? Where were then, I will not say the Christians, despisers of the gods, but your gods themselves, whom the places and towns in which they were born, lived, and were buried, and even those which they founded, prove to be later than that disaster? For otherwise they would not have survived to this day, had they not come after that disaster. If you do not care to reread and review the testimonies of the ages, which report things otherwise to you, in the first place so as not to pronounce your gods most unjust, who for the sake of their despisers harm their worshippers too, do you not then prove that you yourselves are in error, if you hand down as gods beings who do not distinguish you from the deserts of the profane? But if, as one or another of the silliest says, they are angry with you too because you neglect to root us out, the question of their weakness and meanness is settled: for they would not be angry with you for being slack in punishing if they could do anything by themselves. And you confess this in other ways too, whenever you think you avenge them by our punishment. If one thing is defended by another, it is defended by a greater. Let the gods, then, be ashamed to be defended by a man. ### Extrabiblical texts - Plato, Tim. 24e–25d (Plato (works)): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - Here the age of Christianity is given as “not yet three hundred years” (trecenti), although 1.7 has 250 (ccl); both are as printed. Plato's sunken island is Atlantis (Timaeus 24e–25d). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/9/). ## To the Nations 1.10 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/10/ - Source: Oehler 1:324–331 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tertullian turns the charge of neglecting the gods back on the pagans, who sell, tax, mock, and parody their own gods and give the same honors to their dead. ### Latin text Effundite iam omnia venena, omnia calumniae tela infligite huic nomini, non cessabo ultra repellere, at postmodum obtundentur expositione totius nostrae disciplinae. Nunc vero eadem ipsa de nostro corpore vulsa in vos retorquebo, eadem vulnera criminum in vobis defossa monstrabo, quo machaeris vestris admentationibusque cadatis. Iam primo quod in nos generali accusatione dirigitis, divortium ab institutis maiorum, considerate etiam atque etiam, ne vobiscum communicemus crimen istud. Ecce enim per omnia vitae ac disciplinae corruptam, immo deletam in vobis antiquitatem recognosco. De legibus quidem iam supra dictum est, quod eas novis de die consultis constitutisque obruistis. De reliqua vero conversationis humanae dispositione palam subiacet, quanta a maioribus mutaveritis, cultu, habitu, apparatu, ipsoque victu, ipsoque sermone; nam pristinum ut rancidum relegatis. Exclusa ubique antiquitas in negotiis, in officiis; totam auctoritatem maiorum vestra auctoritas deiecit. Sane, quod vobis magis probro est, laudatis semper vetustates, et nihilominus recusatis. Qua perversitate tanta vana maiorum apud vos permanere, probari debuerunt, cum ea, quae probatis, recusetis? Sed et ipsum quod videmini a maioribus traditum fidelissime custodire et defendere, vel quo maxime reos nos transgressionis postulatis, de quo totum odium Christiani nominis animatur, deorum dico culturam, perinde a vobis destrui ac despici ostendam. Nisi quod perinde nos etiam contemptores deorum haberi nulla ratio est, quia nemo contemnit quod sciat omnino non esse. Quod omnino est, id contemni potest, quod nihil est, nihil patitur. Igitur quibus est, ab eis patiatur necesse est. Quo magis oneramini credentes esse et contemnentes, colentes et despuentes, honorantes et lacescentes. Licet etiam hinc recognoscere inprimis: cum alii alios deos colitis, eos, quos non colitis, utique contemnitis. Praelatio alterius sine alterius contumelia non potest, nec ulla electio non reprobatione componitur. Qui de pluribus suscipit aliquem, eum, quem non suscipit, despexit. Sed tot ac tanti ab omnibus coli non possunt. Iam ergo tunc primo contempsistis, non veriti scilicet ita instituere, ut omnes coli non possent. At enim illi sapientissimi ac prudentissimi maiores, quorum institutis renuntiare non nostis maxime in persona deorum vestrorum, ipsi quoque impii deprehenduntur. Mentior, si nunquam censuerant, ne qui imperator fanum, quod in bello vovisset, prius dedicasset quam senatus probasset; ut contigit M. Aemilio, qui voverat Alburno deo. Utique enim impiissimum, immo contumeliosissimum admissum est, in arbitrio et libidine sententiae humanae locare honorem divinitatis, ut deus non sit nisi cui esse permiserit senatus. Saepe censores inconsulto populo adsolaverunt. Certe Liberum Patrem cum sacris suis consules senatus auctoritate non urbe solummodo, verum tota Italia eliminaverunt. Ceterum Serapem et Isidem et Arpocraten et Anubem prohibitos Capitolio Varro commemorat, eorumque aras a senatu deiectas nonnisi per vim popularium restructas. Sed tamen et Gabinius consul Kalendis Ianuariis, cum vix hostias probaret prae popularium coetu, quia nihil de Serape et Iside constituisset, potiorem habuit senatus censuram quam impetum vulgi, et aras institui prohibuit. Habetis igitur in maioribus vestris, etsi non nomen, attamen sectam Christianam, quae deos neglegit. Horum si vos saltem integri in honoribus vestris rei essetis laesae religionis, sed invenio conspirasse a vobis tam superstitionis quam impietatis profectum. Quanto enim inreligiosiores deprehendimini? Privatos enim deos, quos Lares et Penates domestica consecratione perhibetis, domestica et licentia inculcatis, venditando, pignerando pro necessitate ac voluntate. Essent quidem tolerabiliora eiusmodi contumaciae sacrilegia, nisi quod eo iam contumeliosiora quod modica. Sed aliquo solatio privatorum et domesticorum deorum querellae iuvantur, quod publicos turpius contumeliosiusque tractetis. Iam primum, quos in hastarium regessistis, publicanis subdidistis, omni quinquennio inter vectigalia vestra proscriptos addicitis. Sic Serapeum, sic Capitolium petitur, addicitur, conducitur, ut forum, sub eadem voce praeconis, eadem exactione quaestoris. Sedenim agri tributo onusti viliores, hominum capita stipendio censa ignobiliora (nam hae sunt captivitatis notae poenae): dei vero, qui magis tributarii, magis sancti, immo qui magis sancti, magis tributarii. Maiestas constituitur in quaestum, negotiatio religione proscribitur, sanctitas locationem mendicat. Exigitis mercedem pro solo templi, pro aditu sacri, pro stipibus, pro hostiis. Venditis totam divinitatem. Non licet eam gratis coli. Plus denique publicanis refigitur quam sacerdotibus. Non suffecerat vectigalium deorum contumelia, de contemptu scilicet aestimanda, nec contenti estis deis honorem non habuisse, nisi etiam quemcumque habetis depretietis aliqua indignitate. Quid enim omnino ad honorandos eos facitis, quod non etiam mortuis vestris ex aequo praebeatis? Exstruitis deis templa, aeque mortuis templa; extruitis aras deis, aeque mortuis aras; eisdem titulis superscribitis litteras, easdem statuis inducitis formas, ut cuique ars aut negotium aut aetas fuit: senex de Saturno, imberbis de Apolline, virgo de Diana figuratur, et miles in Marte, et in Vulcano faber ferri consecratur. Nihil itaque mirum, si hostias easdem mortuis quas et deis caeditis eosdemque odores excrematis. Quis istam contumeliam excuset, quae utut mortuos cum deis deputet? Regibus quidem etiam sacerdotia adscripta sunt sacrique apparatus, et tensae et currus et solisternia et lectisternia, laetitiae et ludi. Plane, quoniam illis caelum patet, hoc quoque non sine contumelia deorum: primo quidem, quod non decuerit alios eis adnumerari, si datum sit post mortem deos fieri; secundum, quod tam libere atque manifeste coram populo non peieraret contemplator hominis in caelum recepti, nisi contemneret quos deieraret quam ipse quam ei qui ei peierare permittunt. Consentiunt enim ipsi nihil esse quod deierant, immo insuper et praemio afficiunt, quia publice contempserit periurii vindices. Quanquam periurii apud vos quotusquisque purus est? Immo iam per deos deierandi periculum evanuit, potiore habita religione per Caesarem deierandi, quod et ipsum ad offuscationem pertinet deorum vestrorum; facilius enim per Caesarem peierantes punirentur quam per ullum Iovem. Sed contemptus honestior est, habens quandam superbiae gloriam; venit enim aliquando etiam de fiducia vel conscientiae securitate vel naturali sublimitate animi. Derisus vero quanto lascivior, tanto denotatior ad contumeliae morsum. Recognoscite igitur, quam derisores inveniamini numinum vestrorum. Non dico quales sitis in sacrificando, quod enecta et tabida quaeque mactatis, de opimis autem et integris supervacua esui capitula et ungulas et plumarum setarumque praevulsa, et si quid domi quoque abiecturi fuissetis. Omitto quae vulgi aut sacrilegae gulae videbuntur maiorum prope religionem convenire: atquin doctissimi, gravissimi, quatenus gravitas atque prudentia de doctrina proficere credunt, et inreverentissimi erga deos vestros semper existunt, nec eis cessat litteratura, quam ut eo turpius aut vana aut falsa de deis inferat. Ab ipso exordiar studio vestro eius unde somniat omnis nequior, cui quantum honorem adiudicatis, tantum deis vestris derogastis, magnificando qui de eis lusit. Adhuc meminimus Homeri. Ille, opinor, est qui divinam maiestatem humana condicione tractavit, casibus et passionibus humanis deos imbuens, qui de illis favore diversis gladiatoria quodammodo paria composuit, Venerem sauciat sagitta humana, Martem tredecim mensibus in vinculis detinet fortasse periturum, eadem Iovem paene perpessum a caelitum plebe traducit, aut lacrimas eius super Sarpedonem excutit, aut luxuriantem cum Iunone foedissime inducit commendato libidinis desiderio per commemorationem et enumerationem amicarum. Exinde quis non poetarum ex auctoritate principis sui in deos insolens aut vera prodendo aut falsa fingendo? Et tragici quidem aut comici pepercerunt, ut non aerumnas ac poenas dei praefarentur? Taceo de philosophis, quos superbia severitatis et duritia disciplinae ab omni timore securos nonnullus etiam afflatus veritatis adversus deos erigit. Denique et Socrates in contumeliam eorum quercum et canem et hircum iurat. Nam etsi idcirco damnatus est, cum paenituerit Athenienses damnationis, ut criminatores quoque inpenderint, restituitur testimonium Socrati, et possum retorquere probatum esse in illo quod nunc reprobatur in nobis. Sed et Diogenes nescio quid in Herculem lusit, et Romani stili Diogenes Varro trecentos Ioves, seu Iuppiteres dicendum est, sine capitibus inducit. Cetera lasciviae ingenia etiam voluptates vestras per dedecus deorum administrant. Dispicite apud vos Lentulorum et Hostiorum sacrilegas venustates, utrum mimos an deos vestros in strophis et iocis rideatis; sed et histrionicas litteras magna cum voluptate suscipitis, quae omnem foeditatem designant deorum. Constuprantur coram vobis maiestates in corpore inpuro. Famosum et diminutum caput imago cuiuslibet dei vestit. Luget Sol filium fulmine extinctum laetantibus vobis, Cybela pastorem suspirat fastidiosum non erubescentibus vobis, et sustinetis Iovis elogia modulari. Plane religiosiores estis in gladiatorum cavea, ubi super sanguinem humanum, super inquinamenta poenarum proinde saltant dei vestri argumenta et historias nocentibus erogandis, aut in ipsis deis nocentes puniuntur. Vidimus saepe castratum Attin deum a Pessinunte, et qui vivus cremabatur, Herculem induerat. Risimus et meridiani ludi de deis lusum, quod Ditis Pater, Iovis frater, gladiatorum exsequias cum malleo deducit, quod Mercurius, in calvitio pennatulus, in caduceo ignitulus, corpora exanimata iam mortemve simulantia e cauterio probat. Singula ista quaeque adhuc investigare quis possit, si honorem inquietant divinitatis, si maiestatis fastigium adsolant? De contemptu utique censentur quam eorum qui eiusmodi factitant quam eorum qui ita suscipiunt. Quare nescio, ne plus de vobis dei vestri quam de nobis querantur Contemptis ex alia parte adulamini, redimitis si qua delinquitis, et postremo licet vobis in eos quos esse voluistis. Nos vero in totum aversamur. ### English translation (Claude) Pour out now all your poisons, hurl every dart of calumny at this name: I shall not stop to repel them any further; later they will be blunted by an account of our whole discipline. For now, I will turn back upon you these same darts plucked from our body; I will show the same wounds of crimes buried in yourselves, so that you may fall by your own swords and javelins. First, then, as to what you aim at us in a general accusation, desertion of the institutions of the ancestors, consider again and again whether you do not share that crime with us. For see: in every department of life and discipline I recognize that antiquity is corrupted, indeed destroyed, among you. Of the laws it has already been said above that you have buried them under new decrees and ordinances day by day. As for the rest of the ordering of human life, it lies open how much you have changed from your ancestors, in dress, bearing, furnishings, in food itself, in speech itself; for you banish what is old as stale. Antiquity is shut out everywhere, in business, in duties; your authority has thrown down the whole authority of your ancestors. Indeed, what is more to your disgrace, you always praise the olden times and nonetheless reject them. By what perversity did the vanities of your ancestors deserve to remain and be approved among you, when you reject the things you approve? But even that very thing which you appear to keep and defend most faithfully as handed down from the ancestors, the chief thing for which you arraign us for transgression, from which the whole hatred of the Christian name draws its life, I mean the worship of the gods: I will show that it is likewise destroyed and despised by you. Except that there is no reason why we should likewise be held despisers of the gods, since no one despises what he knows does not exist at all. What exists at all can be despised; what is nothing suffers nothing. So it must suffer from those for whom it exists. All the more are you weighed down, who believe they exist and despise them, worship them and spit on them, honor them and provoke them. One may recognize this at once from this: since you worship different gods, some one and some another, you surely despise those whom you do not worship. One cannot be preferred without insult to another, and no choice is made without rejection. He who takes up one out of many has looked down on the one he does not take up. But so many and so great gods cannot be worshipped by all. So you despised them already from the first, not afraid, of course, to arrange things so that not all could be worshipped. And indeed those most wise and prudent ancestors, whose institutions you do not know how to renounce, above all in the matter of your gods, are themselves also found guilty of impiety. I lie if they had not decreed that no general should dedicate a temple he had vowed in war before the senate had approved it, as happened to Marcus Aemilius, who had vowed one to the god Alburnus. Surely it is a most impious, nay a most insulting deed, to place the honor of divinity at the discretion and whim of human judgment, so that he is not a god unless the senate has allowed him to be. The censors have often razed shrines without consulting the people. Certainly the consuls, on the authority of the senate, banished Father Liber with his rites not only from the city but from all Italy. Moreover, Varro records that Serapis and Isis and Harpocrates and Anubis were kept out of the Capitol, and that their altars, thrown down by the senate, were rebuilt only by the violence of the populace. And yet the consul Gabinius, on the Kalends of January, when he could scarcely get the victims approved because of the throng of the populace, since he had made no decision about Serapis and Isis, held the senate's judgment weightier than the rush of the mob and forbade the altars to be set up. You have, then, among your ancestors, if not the name, yet the Christian sect, which neglects the gods. If at least you were blameless in your honors toward the gods, they would stand accused of injuring religion; but I find that among you the advance of superstition and of impiety have conspired together. For how much more irreligious you are found! The private gods whom you call Lares and Penates by a household consecration you trample with a household license too, selling them and pawning them as need or fancy takes you. Such sacrileges of contempt would indeed be more tolerable, except that they are the more insulting for being petty. But the complaints of the private and household gods are relieved by some comfort, in that you treat the public gods more shamefully and insultingly still. First, those whom you have put up at the auction spear and subjected to the tax-farmers, you knock down every five years, posted for sale among your revenues. So the Serapeum, so the Capitol is bid for, knocked down, and leased like the forum, under the same crier's voice and the same exaction of the quaestor. Yet lands burdened with tribute are the cheaper, and persons of men assessed for the poll tax are the less noble (for these are the marks of captivity); but the gods: the more tributary, the more holy; or rather, the more holy, the more tributary. Majesty is turned into a source of gain, trade is advertised through religion, holiness begs to be leased. You demand payment for the ground of the temple, for access to the rite, for offerings, for victims. You sell the whole of divinity. It may not be worshipped free of charge. In fact more is paid to the tax-farmers than to the priests. The insult of taxing the gods, which is surely to be reckoned as contempt, was not enough; you are not content to have withheld honor from the gods unless you also cheapen whatever honor you do give by some indignity. For what at all do you do to honor them that you do not offer equally to your dead? You build temples to the gods, and temples equally to the dead; you build altars to the gods, and altars equally to the dead; you inscribe the same titles, you give statues the same forms, according to each one's art or business or age: an old man is figured as Saturn, a beardless youth as Apollo, a maiden as Diana, a soldier is consecrated in Mars, and a smith in Vulcan. No wonder, then, if you slaughter the same victims for the dead as for the gods and burn the same incense. Who could excuse this insult, which in whatever way ranks the dead with the gods? To kings, indeed, priesthoods have also been assigned, and sacred equipment, sacred wagons and chariots, couches for goddesses and banquets for gods, festivals and games. Plainly, since heaven lies open to them, this too is not without insult to the gods: first, because it would not be fitting for others to be numbered among them, even if it were granted to become gods after death; second, because the man who saw someone received into heaven would not perjure himself so freely and openly before the people unless he despised those by whom he swore, as do those who permit him to perjure himself. For they themselves agree that what they swear by is nothing; indeed they even reward him besides, because he has publicly despised the avengers of perjury. And yet how few among you are clean of perjury? Indeed the danger of swearing by the gods has now vanished, since swearing by Caesar is held the weightier religious act, which itself tends to eclipse your gods; for those who perjure themselves by Caesar would be punished more readily than those who swear by any Jupiter. But contempt is the more honorable, having a certain glory of pride; for it sometimes comes from confidence, or from a secure conscience, or from a natural loftiness of mind. Derision, however, the more wanton it is, the more marked is its bite of insult. Recognize, then, how you are found to be deriders of your divinities. I do not speak of how you behave in sacrificing: that you slaughter every animal that is worn out and wasting, and of the fat and sound ones offer the parts useless for eating, heads and hoofs, feathers and bristles plucked off, and whatever you would have thrown away at home too. I pass over what the common people or sacrilegious gluttony will think fits the religion of your ancestors; yet the most learned and most weighty, in so far as they believe that weight and prudence advance through learning, are always the most irreverent toward your gods, and their literature never stops, except to bring in the more shamefully vain or false things about the gods. I will begin with that very study of yours from which every worthless fellow gets his dreams: as much honor as you award him, so much you have taken from your gods, by glorifying the one who made sport of them. We still remember Homer. He, I think, is the one who treated divine majesty on the terms of the human condition, steeping the gods in human mishaps and passions; who, setting them at odds in their favors, matched them in pairs like gladiators; who wounds Venus with a human arrow, keeps Mars in chains for thirteen months, perhaps to perish there, parades Jupiter as having nearly suffered the same at the hands of the heavenly rabble, or wrings tears from him over Sarpedon, or presents him most foully in lust with Juno, recommending his lustful desire by recalling and listing his mistresses. After that, which of the poets, on the authority of their chief, was not insolent toward the gods, either by revealing what was true or by inventing what was false? And did the tragic or comic poets spare them, so as not to set forth the troubles and punishments of a god? I say nothing of the philosophers, whom pride of severity and hardness of discipline, secure from all fear, and some breath of truth as well, raise up against the gods. In fact Socrates, to insult them, swears by an oak, a dog, and a goat. For though he was condemned for this, yet since the Athenians repented of the condemnation, so far as even to punish his accusers, testimony is restored to Socrates, and I can retort that what is now condemned in us was approved in him. Diogenes too made some jest or other at Hercules, and the Diogenes of the Roman pen, Varro, brings in three hundred Joves, or Jupiters as they should be called, without heads. Other wanton wits even serve up your pleasures through the disgrace of the gods. Examine among yourselves the sacrilegious elegances of your Lentuli and Hostii, whether in their tricks and jokes you laugh at the mimes or at your gods. You also receive with great pleasure the writings of actors, which depict every foulness of the gods. Majesties are debauched before your eyes in an impure body. The mask of some god or other covers a disreputable and degraded head. The Sun mourns his son struck down by the thunderbolt, while you rejoice; Cybele sighs for a disdainful shepherd, and you do not blush; and you endure the recital of Jupiter's charges set to music. Plainly you are more religious in the gladiators' arena, where over human blood, over the filth of punishments, your gods dance out plots and stories for the dispatch of the guilty, or else the guilty are punished in the person of the gods themselves. We have often seen Attis, the god from Pessinus, castrated, and a man who was being burned alive had been dressed as Hercules. We have laughed, too, at the midday games' sport with the gods, when Father Dis, Jupiter's brother, leads away the gladiators' corpses with a mallet, and when Mercury, with his little wings on his bald head and his caduceus heated red, tests with the branding iron bodies already lifeless or feigning death. Who could track down every one of these things further, whether they disturb the honor of divinity, whether they bring the summit of majesty to the ground? Surely they are reckoned as contempt, both on the part of those who do such things and of those who accept them. So I do not know whether your gods do not complain more of you than of us. Having despised them on the one side, you flatter them on the other; you buy them off if you commit any offense; and in the end you may do as you please with those whom you willed to exist. We, however, turn away from them altogether. ### Extrabiblical texts - Homer, Il. 5.330–340 (Homer, Iliad): allusion, high confidence - Homer, Il. 5.385–391 (Homer, Iliad): allusion, high confidence - Homer, Il. 14.313–328 (Homer, Iliad): allusion, high confidence - Homer, Il. 1.396–406 (Homer, Iliad): allusion, high confidence - Homer, Il. 16.459–461 (Homer, Iliad): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The Homeric episodes are Iliad 5.330–340 (Venus wounded), 5.385–391 (Mars bound thirteen months), 1.396–406 (Jupiter nearly bound), 16.459–461 (tears for Sarpedon), and 14.313–328 (Jupiter and Juno). Varro's “three hundred Joves” is from a lost work. Socrates' oaths by the dog and the plane tree appear in Plato's dialogues (e.g. Gorgias 482b, Phaedrus 236e). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/10/). ## To the Nations 1.11 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/11/ - Source: Oehler 1:331–332 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The slander that Christians worship an ass's head comes from Tacitus, who contradicts himself, and pagans themselves worship asses and all kinds of animals. ### Latin text Nec tantum in hoc nomine rei desertae communis religionis, sed superductae monstruosae superstitionis. Nam ut quidam somniastis caput asininum esse deum nostrum, hanc Cornelius Tacitus suspicionem fecit. Is enim in quarta Historiarum suarum, ubi de bello Iudaico digerit, ab origine gentis exorsus, et tam de ipsa origine quam de nomine religionis ut voluit argumentatus, Iudaeos refert in expeditione vastis in locis aquae inopia laborantes onagris, qui de pastu aquam petituri aestimabantur, indicibus fontis usos evasisse; ita ob eam gratiam consimilis bestiae superficiem a Iudaeis coli. Inde opinor praesumptum, nos quoque, ut Iudaicae religionis propinquos, eidem simulacro initiari. At enim idem Cornelius Tacitus, sane ille mendaciorum loquacissimus, oblitus affirmationis suae in posterioribus refert Pompeium Magnum de Iudaeis debellatis captisque Hierosolymis templum adisse et perscrutatum nihil simulacri reperisse. Ubi ergo is deus fuerit? Utique nusquam magis quam in templo tam memorabili, praesertim omnibus praeter sacerdotibus clauso, quo non vererentur extraneum. Sed quid ego defendam, professus interim confessionem temporalem omnium in vobis ex pari transferendorum? Credatur deus noster asinina aliqua persona; certe negabitis vos eadem habere nobiscum? Sane vos totos asinos colitis et cum sua Epona, et omnia iumenta et pecora et bestias, quae perinde cum suis praesepibus consecratis. Et hoc forsitan crimini datis, quod inter cultores omnium tantum asinarii sumus. ### English translation (Claude) Nor are we charged under this name only with having deserted the common religion, but with having brought in a monstrous superstition. For some of you have dreamed that our god is an ass's head. Cornelius Tacitus planted this suspicion. For in the fourth book of his Histories, where he treats the Jewish war, beginning from the origin of the nation and arguing as he pleased about both that origin and the name of their religion, he reports that the Jews, when on a march through desert places they were suffering from want of water, escaped by using as guides to a spring some wild asses, which were thought to be going to look for water after grazing; and that for this favor the likeness of a similar beast is worshipped by the Jews. From this, I suppose, it was presumed that we too, as near to the Jewish religion, are initiated into the same image. But the same Cornelius Tacitus, surely the most talkative of liars, forgetting his assertion, reports later that Pompey the Great, having defeated the Jews and taken Jerusalem, entered the temple, searched it, and found no image. Where then was that god? Surely nowhere more than in so memorable a temple, especially one closed to all but the priests, where they need not fear an outsider. But why should I defend this, when I have for the moment declared a confession of everything, all of which is to be turned back equally upon you? Let our god be believed to be some asinine person: surely you will not deny that you have the same thing as we? Indeed you worship whole asses, together with their Epona, and all beasts of burden, cattle, and wild beasts, which you likewise consecrate together with their stalls. And perhaps this is what you charge as a crime: that among worshippers of every beast, we worship only asses. ### Extrabiblical texts - Tacitus, Hist. 5.3–4 (Tacitus): allusion, high confidence - Tacitus, Hist. 5.9 (Tacitus): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The passage is Tacitus, Histories 5.3–4, and Pompey's entry into the temple is Histories 5.9; the text reads “fourth” (quarta), though the account stands in book 5 of modern editions. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/11/). ## To the Nations 1.12 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/12/ - Source: Oehler 1:332–334 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Pagans who mock Christians as worshippers of the cross themselves venerate crosses in their wooden idols, in the frames of their statues, and in their military standards. ### Latin text Sed et qui nos crucis antistites affirmat, consacraneus erit noster. Crucis qualitas signum est de ligno: etiam de materia colitis penes vos cum effigie. Quanquam sicut vestrum humana figura est, ita et nostrum sua propria. Viderint nunc lineamenta, dum una sit qualitas; viderit forma, dum ipsum sit dei corpus. Quodsi de hoc differentia intercedit, quanto distinguitur a crucis stipite Pallas Attica et Ceres Pharia, quae sine forma rudi palo et solo staticulo ligni informis repraesentatur? Pars crucis et quidem maius est omne robur quod derecta statione defigitur. Sed nobis tota crux imputatur, cum antemna scilicet sua et cum illo sedilis excessu. Hoc quidem vos incusabiliores, qui mutilum et truncum dicastis lignum, quod alii plenum et structum consecraverunt. Enimvero de reliquo integra est religio vobis integrae crucis, sicut ostendam. Ignoratis autem etiam originem istam deis vestris de isto patibulo provenisse. Nam omne simulacrum, seu ligno seu lapide desculpitur, seu aere defunditur, seu quacunque alia locupletiore materia producitur, plasticae manus praecedant necesse est. Plasta autem lignum crucis in primo statuit, quoniam ipsi quoque corpori nostro tacita et secreta linea crucis situs est Quod caput emicat, quod spina dirigitur, quod humerorum obliquatio excedit. si statueris hominem manibus expansis, imaginem crucis feceris. Huic igitur exordio et velut statumini argilla desuper intexta paulatim membra complet, et corpus struit, et habitum, quem placuit argillae, intus cruci ingerit; inde circino et plumbeis modulis praeparatio simulacri in marmor, in lutum, vel aes, vel quodcumque placuit deum fieri, transmigratura. A cruce argilla, ab argilla deus: quodammodo transit crux in deum per argillam. Crucem igitur consecratis, a qua incipitur consecratus. Exempli gratia dictum erit: nempe de olivae nucleo et nuce persici et grano piperis sub terra temperato arbor exsurgit in ramos, in comam, in speciem sui generis. Eam si transferas, vel de brachiis eius in aliam subole utaris, cui deputabitur quod de traduce provenit? Non illi grano aut nuci aut nucleo? Nam cum tertius gradus secundo adscribitur, aeque primo secundus, sic tertius redigetur ad primum, transmissus per secundum. Nec diutius super isto argumentandum est, quando naturali praescriptione omne omnino genus censum ad originem refert, quantoque genus censetur origine, tanto origo convenitur in genere. Si igitur in genere deorum crucem originem colitis, hic erit nucleus et granum primordiale, ex quibus apud vos simulacrorum silvae propagantur. At manifesta iam. Victorias ut numina, et quidem augustiora quanto laetiora, veneramini. Constructionem quibus mediis extollant, cruces erunt, intestina quodammodo tropaeum. Itaque in Victoriis et cruces colit castrensis religio, signa adorat, signa deierat, signa ipsi Iovi praefert. Sed ille imaginum suggestus et totius auri cultus monilia crucum sunt. Sic etiam in cantabris atque vexillis, quae non minore sanctitate militia custodit, siphara illa vestes crucum sunt. Erubescitis, opinor, incultas et nudas cruces colere. ### English translation (Claude) And whoever asserts that we are priests of the cross will be our fellow worshipper. The nature of a cross is a sign made of wood; you too worship the material, with an image on it. Although, just as yours has a human figure, so ours has its own. Never mind the features, so long as the nature is the same; never mind the shape, so long as it is the very body of a god. But if a difference arises on this point, how does the Athenian Pallas, or the Pharian Ceres, differ from the stake of a cross, when they are represented without shape by a rough stake and a mere unformed block of wood? Every piece of timber that is fixed upright is part of a cross, and indeed the greater part. But the whole cross is charged to us, with its crossbar, of course, and with that projecting seat. In this you are the more blameworthy, who have dedicated a maimed and truncated wood, which others have consecrated whole and built up. Yet for the rest you have the religion of the whole cross intact, as I shall show. You do not know that the very origin of your gods came from this gibbet. For every image, whether carved from wood or stone, or cast in bronze, or produced from any other richer material, must be preceded by the modeller's hands. Now the modeller first sets up a wooden cross, since our own body too has the line of a cross silently and secretly placed in it: the head rises up, the spine runs straight, the shoulders project crosswise; if you set a man with his hands outstretched, you will have made the image of a cross. On this beginning, and as it were a prop, the clay, woven on over it, gradually fills out the limbs, builds up the body, and puts over the cross within whatever posture the clay was meant to take; from there, by compass and leaden rules, the preparation of the image will pass over into marble, or clay, or bronze, or whatever the god is to be made of. From the cross the clay, from the clay the god: in a way the cross passes into the god through the clay. So you consecrate the cross, from which the consecrated one begins. Let it be said by way of example: from an olive stone, a peach kernel, or a peppercorn tempered under the earth, a tree rises up into branches, foliage, and the appearance of its kind. If you transplant it, or use a shoot from its branches for another, to what will what comes from the layer be attributed? Surely to that grain, kernel, or stone? For when the third stage is ascribed to the second, and likewise the second to the first, the third will be traced back to the first, passing through the second. No more need be argued on this, since by a natural rule every kind refers its standing to its origin, and the more a kind is valued by its origin, the more the origin is found in the kind. If, then, in the kind of the gods you worship the cross as their origin, this will be the kernel and primordial grain from which whole forests of images are propagated among you. But now for the plain facts. You venerate Victories as divinities, and indeed as the more august the more joyful they are. The supports in the middle by which they raise the structure will be crosses; the trophy is, so to speak, crosses within. So the religion of the camp worships crosses even in its Victories: it adores the standards, swears by the standards, prefers the standards even to Jupiter himself. But that whole array of images and all that worship of gold are necklaces of crosses. So too in the banners and flags, which the soldiery guards with no less sanctity, those streamers are the clothing of crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship crosses unadorned and bare. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/12/). ## To the Nations 1.13 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/13/ - Source: Oehler 1:334–335 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Christians are thought to worship the sun because they pray eastward and keep Sunday, but pagans themselves honor the sun and have even borrowed Jewish sabbath customs. ### Latin text Alii plane humanius solem Christianum deum aestimant, quod innotuerit ad orientis partem facere nos precationem, vel die solis laetitiam curare. Quid? vos minus facitis? Non plerique affectatione adorandi aliquando etiam caelestia ad solis initium labra vibratis? Vos certe estis, qui etiam in laterculum septem dierum solem recepistis, et ex diebus ipso priorem praelegistis, quo die lavacrum subtrahatis aut in vesperam differatis, aut otium et prandium curetis. Quod quidem facitis exorbitantes et ipsi a vestris ad alienas religiones. Iudaei enim festi sabbata et coena pura et Iudaici ritus lucernarum et ieiunia cum azymis et orationes litorales, quae utique aliena sunt a diis vestris. Quare, ut ab excessu revertar, qui solem et diem eius nobis exprobratis, agnoscite vicinitatem; non longe a Saturno et sabbatis vestris sumus. ### English translation (Claude) Others, indeed, more humanely think that the sun is the Christians' god, because it has become known that we pray toward the east, or make holiday on the day of the sun. What? Do you do less? Do not most of you, in an affectation of worshipping the heavenly bodies, at times move your lips toward the sunrise? It is you, surely, who have even taken the sun into the calendar of the seven days, and among the days have preferred it to the day before it, a day on which you give up your bath or put it off until evening, or devote yourselves to rest and feasting. This you do in turning aside from your own religions to foreign ones. For the Jewish feasts, the sabbaths and the “pure supper,” and the Jewish rites of lamps, and fasts with unleavened bread, and prayers by the shore, are all surely foreign to your gods. So, to return from this digression: you who reproach us with the sun and its day, acknowledge the kinship; we are not far from your Saturn and your sabbaths. ### Translation notes - The “pure supper” (coena pura) is the Friday meal before the sabbath; the “day before” the sun's day is Saturn's day, Saturday. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/13/). ## To the Nations 1.14 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/14/ - Source: Oehler 1:335–336 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: A renegade Jew paraded a caricature of the Christians' god as a donkey-eared figure, but pagans themselves worship many gods with animal heads. ### Latin text Nova iam de deo nostro fama suggessit, nec adeo nuper quidam perditissimus in ista civitate, etiam suae religionis desertor, solo detrimento cutis Iudaeus, utique magis post bestiarum morsus, ut ad quas se locando quotidie toto iam corpore decutiendus incedit, picturam in nos proposuit sub ista proscriptione: ONCOETES. Is erat auribus canteriorum et in toga, cum libro, altero pede ungulato. Et credidit vulgus infami Iudaeo. Quod enim aliud genus seminari est infamiae nostrae? Itaque in tota civitate Onocoëtes praedicatur. Sed et hoc tamquam hesternum et auctoritate temporis destitutum et qualitate auctoris infirmum libenter excipiam studio retorquendi. Videamus igitur, an hic quoque nobiscum deprehendamini. Neque enim interest qua forma, dum deformia simulacra curemus. Sunt penes vos et canino capite, et leonino, et de bove et de ariete et hirco cornuti dii, caprigenae vel anguini, et alites planta, fronte et tergo. Quid itaque nostrum unicum denotatis? Plures Onocoëtae penes vos deprehenduntur. ### English translation (Claude) Rumor has now put about something new concerning our god. Not long ago a most abandoned fellow in this city, a deserter even of his own religion, a Jew only by the loss of his skin, and all the more so after the bites of beasts, since by hiring himself out to them every day he now goes about with his whole body ripe for flaying, exhibited a picture against us with this inscription: ONOCOETES. The figure had the ears of a donkey, wore a toga, held a book, and had one foot hoofed. And the crowd believed the infamous Jew. For what other kind of seed is there for our infamy? So throughout the whole city “Onocoetes” is proclaimed. But this too, being a thing of yesterday, lacking the authority of time and weak from the character of its author, I will gladly take up in my zeal for turning things back. Let us see, then, whether here too you are caught along with us. For it makes no difference of what shape they are, so long as we give our care to deformed images. You have gods with a dog's head and a lion's head, gods horned like the ox, the ram, and the goat, goat-born or snake-bodied, winged on foot, forehead, and back. Why then do you single out our one? Many Onocoetae are found among you. ### Translation notes - The digital text prints ONCOETES in the inscription and Onocoëtes twice after it; the translation follows the latter. The word is probably formed from Greek onos (“ass”) and koitēs (“one who lies with”), but its intended sense is uncertain. “A Jew only by the loss of his skin” refers to circumcision, with a pun on skin in the following clause. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/14/). ## To the Nations 1.15 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/15/ - Source: Oehler 1:336–337 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Pagans who accuse Christians of killing infants themselves expose and drown their newborns in defiance of the law, and commit worse acts besides. ### Latin text Si in deis aequalitate concurrimus, sequitur ut sacrificii vel sacri quoque inter nos diversitas nulla sit, ut ex alia specie comparationi satisfiat. Nos infanticidio litamus sive initiamus. Vos, si de memoria abierunt quae caede hominis quaeque infanticidiis transegistis, recognoscetis suo ordine; nunc enim differimus pleraque, ne eadem videamur ubique retractare. Interim, ut dixi, ex alia parte non deest adaequatio. Nam etsi nos aliter, tamen non aliter vos quoque infanticidae, qui infantes editos enecantes legibus quidem prohibemini, sed nullae magis leges tam impune, tam secure sub omnium conscientia unius aetatis tabellis eluduntur. Sed nec eo distat, si vos non ritu sacri neque deo eos necatis. Atquin hoc asperius, quod frigore et fame aut bestiis erogatis, aut longiore in aquis morte summergitis. At et si quo genere dissimilius penes vos fit, eo adicite, quod vestra pignora extinguitis, et supplebitur, immo superacervabitur in vobis quicquid ab alia ratione defecerit. Sed de ea impietatis hostia dicimur coenare. Dum ita quoque in vobis recognoscitur ubi opportunius positum est, non multo secernimur a vestra voracitate. Si illa impudica est, nostra vero crudelis, coniungimur, si forte, natura, qua semper saevitia cum impudicitia concordat. Quanquam quid minus, immo quid non amplius facitis? Parum scilicet humanis visceribus inhiatis, quia vivos et puberes devoratis? parum humanum sanguinem lambitis, quoniam futurum sanguinem elicitis? parum infante vescimini, quia infantem totum praecocum perhauritis? ### English translation (Claude) If we meet on equal terms in the matter of gods, it follows that there is no difference between us in sacrifice or rite either, so that the comparison may be satisfied from another angle. We, it is said, offer sacrifice or initiate by infanticide. As for you, if what you have done by the slaughter of human beings and by infanticides has slipped your memory, you will recognize it in its proper order; for now we put off most of it, lest we seem to handle the same things everywhere. Meanwhile, as I said, the match is not lacking on another side. For even if we do it one way, you too are no less infanticides, you who are indeed forbidden by the laws to kill newborn infants; yet no laws are evaded with such impunity and such security, with everyone knowing, by the connivance of a whole generation. Nor does it make a difference that you do not kill them in a sacred rite or for a god. Indeed this is the harsher, that you dispatch them by cold and hunger or to the beasts, or drown them in water, a longer death. And if in any respect it is done differently among you, add this, that you extinguish your own offspring, and whatever falls short on the other count will be made up, nay heaped up over, in you. But we are said to dine on that victim of impiety. While this too is recognized in you, where it is more fittingly placed, we are not far removed from your voracity. If yours is lewd and ours cruel, we are joined, perhaps, by nature, in which cruelty always agrees with lewdness. And yet what do you do less, nay, what do you not do more? Do you gape too little after human flesh, because you devour it living and grown? Do you lap human blood too little, because you draw out blood that was yet to be? Do you feed too little on an infant, because you drink up the whole infant before its time? ### Translation notes - The phrase unius aetatis tabellis eluduntur is obscure; the rendering is approximate. The closing questions allude obliquely to sexual vices and abortion. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/15/). ## To the Nations 1.16 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/16/ - Source: Oehler 1:337–341 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The charge of incest at Christian meetings is turned back on the pagans, whose exposed children and casual unions make incest common, as a recent case at Rome showed. ### Latin text Ventum est ad horam lucernarum et caninum ministerium et ingenia tenebrarum. Quo in loco metuo ne cedam. Quid enim tale in vobis detinebo? Verum iam laudate consilium incesti verecundi, quod adulteram noctem commenti sumus, ne aut lucem aut veram noctem contaminaremus, quod etiam luminibus terrenis parcendum existimavimus, quod nostram quoque conscientiam ludimus; quodcunque enim facimus, si volumus, suspicamur. Ceterum incesta vestra pro sua libertate et luce omni et nocte omni et tota caeli conscientia fruuntur, quoque felicius proveniant, cum palam misceatis incesta toto conscio caelo, soli ipsi ignoratis; nos vero etiam in tenebris scelera nostra recognoscere possumus. Plane Persae, Ctesias edit, tam scientes quam non horrentes cum matribus libere vivunt. Sed et Macedones, id quod probaverunt, palam est factitare, siquidem, cum primum scenam eorum Oedipus intravit trucidatus oculos, risu ac derisu exceperunt. Tragoedus consternatus retracta persona, Numquid, ait, domini, displicui vobis? Responderunt Macedones: Immo tu quidem pulchre, at scriptor vanissimus si finxit, aut Oedipus dementissimus si ita fecit: atque exinde alter ad alterum, Ἤλαυνε, dicebat, εἰς τὴν ματέρα. Sed una vel alia gens quantula macula totius orbis? Nos enim omnem infecimus solem, omnem polluimus oceanum. Date igitur aliquam nationem vacantem ab eis quae omne hominum genus ad incestum trahunt. Si qua gens concubitu ipso et aetatis ac sexus necessitate, ne dixerim libidine et luxuria, caret, ea erit quae carebit incesto. Si qua ab humana condicione privata quaedam natura remota est, ut neque ignorantiae neque errori neque casui opposita sit, ea erit quae sola Christianis respondere constantius possit. Respicite igitur luxuriam inter errores ut ventos fluctuantem, si desunt populi quos ad hoc sceleris incursent lata vada et aspera erroris. Inprimis cum infantes vestros alienae misericordiae exponitis aut in adoptionem melioribus parentibus, obliviscimini quanta materia incesti sumministratur, quanta occasio casibus aperitur? Plane ex aliqua disciplina severiores aut certo respectu eiusmodi eventum a libidine temperatis quocunque loco, domi aut peregre, ut non dispersio seminum et saltus ubique luxuriae nescientibus filios edat, quos aut ipsi postmodum parentes aut alii filii incursent, quando etiam aetatum moderatio libidine exclusa sit. Quotcunque adulteria, quotcunque stupra, quotcunque publicatae libidinis errores, sive stativo vel ambulatorio titulo, tot sanguinis mixtiones, tot compagines generis, tot inde traduces ad incestum; unde adeo mimis et comoedis argumentorum venae fluunt, unde ista quoque talis ante tragoedia erupit, Fusciano praefecto Urbi iudicata. Puer nobili genere natus fortuita neglegentia comitum ultra ianuam progressus iter praetereuntibus tractus domo excidit. Qui eum nutrierat Graeculus, vel a limine Graeculo more captaverat intrans. Inde mutatus Asiae aetate Romam in venalicio refertur. Emit inprudens pater et utitur Graeco; dehinc, ut suerat, adulescentem dominus in agrum et vincula legat. Illic iam dudum paedagogus et nutrix poenas dabant. Repraesentatur eis tota causa, referunt invicem exitus suos: illi, quod alumnus in pueritia perisset, ille, se quoque a pueritia perisse; ceterum eodem eventu, Romae natum honesta domo; forsitan et signa quaedam retexuerit. Igitur dei voluntate, ut tanta saeculo macula exprobraretur, spiritus de die concutit, tempora cum aetate respondent, aliquid et oculi de lineamentis recordantur, proprietates nonnullae in corpore recensentur. Dominos, immo iam parentes tantum, prolatae inquisitionis diligentia impellit. Investigatur venaliciarius, infeliciter invenitur. Revelato scelere parentes sibi laqueo medentur, bona filio male superstiti praefectus adscribit, non ad hereditatem, sed ad stipendium stupri et incesti. Satis erat unum istud exemplum publicae eruptionis eiusmodi scelerum delitiscentium in vobis. Nihil semel evenit in rebus humanis. Semel plane erui potest de sacramentis nostrae religionis, opinor. Intentatis, et sunt paria vestris etiam non sacramentis. ### English translation (Claude) We come to the hour of the lamps, the ministry of the dogs, and the devices of darkness. Here I fear I may have to give way. For what such thing shall I charge against you? But come, praise the plan of our bashful incest: that we have contrived an adulterous night, so as to defile neither the light nor true night; that we have thought it right to spare even earthly lights; that we play a trick even on our own conscience; for whatever we do, if we like, we can merely suspect it. But your incests enjoy, in their freedom, every light and every night and the whole witness of heaven; and, that they may turn out the more happily, while you commit incest openly with all heaven for witness, you alone do not know it; we, however, can recognize our crimes even in the dark. Plainly the Persians, as Ctesias reports, live freely with their mothers, as knowingly as they do without horror. And the Macedonians too clearly practise what they approved: for when Oedipus with his eyes torn out first came on their stage, they received him with laughter and derision. The tragic actor, dismayed, drew back his mask and said, “Gentlemen, have I displeased you?” The Macedonians answered: “No, you played it finely; but the writer is most foolish if he invented it, or Oedipus most mad if he did it.” And from then on one said to another, “He drove at his mother.” But one nation or another: how small a stain on the whole world! We, of course, have infected every sun and polluted every ocean! Name, then, some nation free of the things that drag the whole human race into incest. If any nation lacks intercourse itself and the constraints of age and sex, not to say lust and luxury, that will be the nation free of incest. If there is some nature set apart from the human condition, so as to be exposed neither to ignorance nor to error nor to chance, that alone will be able to answer the Christians more firmly. Consider, then, lust tossed among errors as among winds, and see whether peoples are lacking on whom the broad and rough shoals of error may drive them into this crime. Above all, when you expose your infants to the mercy of strangers, or give them for adoption to better parents, do you forget how much material for incest is supplied, how great an opening is made for accidents? Plainly those of you who are stricter from some discipline, or from a definite scruple, hold back your lust from such an outcome in every place, at home or abroad, lest the scattering of seed and the leaps of lust everywhere produce children unknown to you, on whom either the parents themselves or other children might later fall, since lust shuts out even the restraint of age. As many adulteries, as many acts of defilement, as many errors of public lust, whether under a fixed or a roaming signboard, so many minglings of blood, so many joinings of families, so many channels to incest. From this the veins of plots flow for the mimes and comedies; from this too came that tragedy which broke out not long ago and was judged when Fuscianus was prefect of the City. A boy of noble birth, through the chance negligence of his attendants, went out beyond the door, was carried off by passers-by, and was lost to his home. A Greek who had nursed him … Then, changed by age, he was brought back from Asia to Rome to the slave market. His father unknowingly bought him and used him in the Greek fashion; then, as was his custom, the master sent the youth to the fields and to chains. There his tutor and his nurse had long been undergoing punishment. The whole story is laid before them; they tell each other their fortunes: they, that their charge had been lost in boyhood; he, that he too had been lost from boyhood; and moreover, by the same event, that he had been born at Rome of a respectable house; perhaps he also recounted certain tokens. So, by the will of God, that so great a stain might be brought home to the world, their spirit is shaken day by day, the times correspond with his age, the eyes recall something of the features, some peculiarities of the body are recognized. The diligence of the inquiry, once pressed, drives on the masters, or rather now only the parents. The slave-dealer is traced and, unhappily, found. When the crime is revealed, the parents cure themselves with a noose; the prefect assigns the property to the son who unhappily survived, not as an inheritance but as the wages of defilement and incest. That one example of a public outbreak of such crimes lurking among you was enough. Nothing happens only once in human affairs. Only once, plainly, could it be dug out of the sacraments of our religion, I suppose! You make the charge, and the same things are found among you even without sacraments. ### Translation notes - Ctesias's report on Persian marriage is not extant in full. The Macedonians' jest is in Greek: “He drove at his mother.” The clause “vel a limine Graeculo more captaverat intrans” is obscure and is marked “…”. The case under Fuscianus (urban prefect ca. 188–189) is not otherwise known. “Used him in the Greek fashion” means sexually. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.16 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/16/). ## To the Nations 1.17 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/17/ - Source: Oehler 1:341–343 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Christians are called disloyal because they will not swear by the emperor's genius or call him a god, yet it is pagans who rebel, mock, and curse the emperors. ### Latin text De obstinationibus vero vel praesumptionibus, si qua proponitis, ne istae quidem ad communionem comparationis absistunt. Prima obstinatio est quae secunda a dei religio constituitur Caesarianae maiestatis, quod inreligiosi dicamur in Caesares, neque imagines eorum repropitiando neque genios deierando. Hostes populi nuncupamur. Ita vero sit, cum ex vobis nationibus quotidie Caesares et Parthici et Medici et Germanici fiant. Hoc loco Romana gens viderit in quibus indomitae et extraneae nationes. Vos tamen de nostris adversus nostros conspiratis. Agnoscimus sane Romanam in Caesares fidem. Nulla umquam coniuratio erupit, nullus in senatu vel in palatiis ipsis sanguis Caesaris notam fixit, nulla in provinciis affectata maiestas. Adhuc Syriae cadaverum odoribus spirant, adhuc Galliae Rhodano suo non lavant. Sed omitto vesaniae crimina, quia nec ista Romanum nomen admittunt. Vanitatis sacrilegia conveniam, et ipsius vernaculae gentis inreverentiam recognoscam, et festivos libellos quos statuae sciunt, et illa obliqua nonnunquam dicta a concilio atque maledicta quae circi sonant. Si non armis, saltim lingua semper rebelles estis. Sed aliud, opinor, est non iurare per genium Caesaris; dubitatur enim de periuris iure, cum ne per deos quidem vestros ex fide deieretis. Sed non dicimus deum imperatorem; super hoc enim, quod vulgo aiunt, sannam facimus. Immo qui deum Caesarem dicitis, et deridetis, dicendo quod non est, et maledicitis, quia non vult esse quod dicitis. Mavult enim vivere quam deus fieri. ### English translation (Claude) As for the charges of obstinacy or presumption, if you put any forward, not even these stand outside a common comparison. The first obstinacy is the one reckoned second after the religion of God, that concerning Caesar's majesty: we are called irreligious toward the Caesars, because we neither propitiate their images nor swear by their genii. We are named enemies of the people. So be it, when from among you nations Caesars arise every day, Parthian, Median, and Germanic! Here let the Roman race see in whom the untamed and foreign nations are. Yet it is you who, from among our own people, conspire against our own rulers. We certainly acknowledge the Roman loyalty to the Caesars! No conspiracy ever broke out, no Caesar's blood left its stain in the senate or in the very palace, no majesty was ever usurped in the provinces! Syria still reeks with the stench of corpses; Gaul still does not wash in its Rhone. But I pass over the crimes of madness, since not even these allow the name of Roman. I will address the sacrileges of frivolity and recognize the irreverence of the native race itself: the festive lampoons that the statues know, those sly sayings now and then from the assembly, and the curses that ring in the circus. If not with arms, at least with your tongue you are always rebels. But it is another thing, I suppose, not to swear by Caesar's genius; for there is a question about the right to perjury, since you do not swear in good faith even by your gods. But we do not call the emperor a god; on this point, as the common saying goes, we make a face. Rather, you who call Caesar a god both mock him, by calling him what he is not, and curse him, because he does not wish to be what you call him. For he prefers to live rather than to become a god. ### Translation notes - The corpses in Syria and the Rhone in Gaul refer to the civil wars of Septimius Severus against Pescennius Niger (194) and Clodius Albinus (197, at Lyons). Calling the emperor a god implies his death (deification after death). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.17 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/17/). ## To the Nations 1.18 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/18/ - Source: Oehler 1:343–345 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Christians are called obstinate for despising death, yet pagans praise the same courage in their heroes and still hire themselves out daily to the sword, the beasts, and the fire. ### Latin text Reliquum obstinationis in illo capitulo collocatis, quod neque gladios neque cruces neque bestias vestras, non ignem, non tormenta ob duritatem ac contemptum mortis animo recusemus. At enim haec omnia apud priores maioresque vestros non contemni modo, sed etiam magna laude pensari a virtute didicerunt. Gladius quot et quantos viros voluntarios! Piget prosequi. Crucis vero novitatem numerosae, abstrusae, Regulus vester libenter dedicavit; regina Aegypti bestiis suis usa est, ignes post Carthaginensem feminam Asdrubale marito in extremis patriae constantiorem docuerat invadere ipsa Dido. Sed et tormenta mulier Attica fatigavit tyranno negans, postremo, ne cederet corpus et sexus, linguam suam pastam expuit, totum eradicatae confessionis ministerium. Sed vestris ista ad gloriam, nostris ad duritiam deputatis. Destruite nunc gloriam maiorum, quo nos quoque destruatis. Contenti estote detrahere etiam laude parentum ad praesens, ne nobis locum detis de his. Forsitan et temporum qualitas robustioris antiquitatis exegerit ingenia duriora. At nunc tranquillitate pacis et ingenia mitiora et mentes hominum etiam in extraneos. Esto, inquitis, veteribus vos comparate; nobis necesse est in vobis odio prosequi quod a nobis non probatur, quia nec invenitur in nobis. Respondete igitur ad singulas species. Non eadem voce exempla deposco. Si contemptu scilicet mortis gladius de maioribus fabulas fecit, utique non vitae amore gladio vos ad lanistas auctoratis, metu mortis nomen militiae datis. Si feminae alicui de bestiis famosa mors est, medio quotidie pacis sponte libera ad bestias itis. Si crucem, configendi corporis machinam, nullus adhuc ex vobis Regulus pepigit, attamen iam ignis contemptus evasit, ex quo se quidam proxime vestiendum incendiali tunica ad certum usquequaque locum auctoravit. Si flagris mulier insultavit, hoc quoque proxume inter venatorios ordine transcurso remensus est, ut taceam de Laconica gloria. ### English translation (Claude) The rest of our obstinacy you place under this heading: that out of hardness and contempt of death we do not refuse in our minds your swords, crosses, and beasts, nor fire nor tortures. But your forebears and ancestors learned from virtue not only to despise all these things but even to hold them in high praise. How many and how great men has the sword found willing! It is tiresome to go through them. The novelty of a cross, many-spiked and enclosed, your Regulus willingly dedicated; the queen of Egypt made use of her own beasts; and the fire which, after her, the Carthaginian woman entered in her country's last hour, more steadfast than her husband Hasdrubal, Dido herself had taught women to rush into. And an Athenian woman wore out the tortures, refusing the tyrant; at last, lest her body and her sex give way, she bit off her tongue and spat it out, the whole instrument of the confession she had torn out. But you count these things as glory in your own people, and as hardness in ours. Destroy now the glory of your ancestors, so that you may destroy us as well. Be content even to detract from the praise of your forefathers for the moment, so as not to give us room on these points. Perhaps the character of the times, in a sturdier antiquity, demanded harder spirits. But now, in the tranquillity of peace, spirits are milder, and men's minds too, even toward strangers. “Very well,” you say, “compare yourselves with the ancients; we must pursue with hatred in you what we do not approve, because it is not found in us.” Answer, then, point by point. I do not ask for examples in the same terms. If contempt of death, of course, made the sword the stuff of legends for your ancestors, surely it is not from love of life that you hire yourselves out to the trainers of gladiators for the sword, and it is from fear of death that you enlist in the army! If a woman has a famous death by beasts, you go of your own free will to the beasts every day in the midst of peace. If no Regulus among you has yet bargained for the cross, the engine for nailing the body, yet contempt of fire has now appeared, since recently a man hired himself out to be clothed in a burning tunic and to run a set distance. If a woman defied the scourges, this too was lately repeated by one who ran the gauntlet through the rank of the huntsmen, to say nothing of the Spartan glory. ### Translation notes - The examples are Regulus (killed in a spiked box by the Carthaginians), Cleopatra (the asp), the wife of Hasdrubal (146 BC) and Dido (both by fire), and the Athenian courtesan Leaena, who bit out her tongue under torture rather than betray the tyrannicides. The “Spartan glory” is the flogging of Spartan youths at the altar of Artemis Orthia. The Latin of the Regulus clause (numerosae, abstrusae) is compressed and the rendering approximate. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.18 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/18/). ## To the Nations 1.19 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/19/ - Source: Oehler 1:345–346 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Christian courage rests on hope of resurrection and judgment, beliefs that pagans mock though their own poets and philosophers teach the return of souls and a judgment after death. ### Latin text Hucusque, opinor, horrenda obstinationum Christianarum. Quae si vobiscum communicamus, superest deridenda personarum conferamus. Quanquam de persuasionibus omnis obstinatio nostra praestruitur; mortuorum enim praesumimus resurrectionem. Spes resurrectionis fastidium est mortis. Ridete igitur quantumlibet stupidissimas mentes quae moriuntur ut vivant, sed quo facilius rideatis et resolutius decachinnetis, arrepta spongia vel interim lingua delete litteras interim vestras, quae similiter asseverant animas in corpora redituras. Attamen quanto acceptabilior nostra praesumptio est, quae in eadem corpora redituras defendit? vobis autem quanto vanius traditum est hominis spiritum in cane vel mulo aut pavone rediturum? Item iudicium annuntiamus a deo pro cuiusque meritis post interitum destinatum. Id vos Minoi et Rhadamantho adscribitis, iustiore interim Aristide recusato. Eo iudicio iniquos aeterno igni, pios et insontes amoeno in loco dicimus perpetuitatem transacturos. Apud vos quoque Pyriphlegethontis et Elysii non alias condicio disponitur. Nec mythici ac poetici soli talia canunt, sed et philosophi de animarum reciprocatione et iudicii distributione confirmant. ### English translation (Claude) So far, I think, the dreadful charges of Christian obstinacy. If we share these with you, it remains for us to compare the matters in which we are ridiculed. And yet all our obstinacy is built on convictions; for we look forward to the resurrection of the dead. The hope of resurrection is contempt of death. Laugh, then, as much as you like at these most stupid minds that die in order to live; but that you may laugh more easily and guffaw more freely, take a sponge, or meanwhile your tongue, and wipe out for the moment your own writings, which likewise assert that souls will return into bodies. And yet how much more acceptable is our belief, which maintains that they will return into the same bodies! And how much vainer is your tradition that a man's spirit will return in a dog or a mule or a peacock! Likewise we announce a judgment appointed by God after death according to each one's deserts. You ascribe this to Minos and Rhadamanthus, while meanwhile rejecting the more just Aristides. By that judgment, we say, the wicked will pass eternity in eternal fire, and the pious and innocent in a delightful place. With you too the state of Pyriphlegethon and of Elysium is arranged in no other way. Nor do the mythmakers and poets alone sing such things; the philosophers too affirm the return of souls and the allotment of judgment. ### Scripture references - 2 Cor 5:10: allusion, medium confidence - Matt 25:46: allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - The peacock alludes to Ennius's dream in which Homer's soul had passed into a peacock. Pyriphlegethon (the river of fire) and Elysium are the pagan places of punishment and bliss. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.19 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/19/). ## To the Nations 1.20 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/20/ - Source: Oehler 1:346–348 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Since the pagans are guilty of everything they charge against Christians, they should correct themselves first, and if they did, they would become Christians. ### Latin text Quonam igitur usque, iniquissimae nationes, non agnoscitis, immo insuper execramini vestros, si nihil inter nos diversitas habet, si unum et eidem sumus? Quia non odistis quod estis, date dextras potius, compingite oscula, miscete complexus, cruenti cum cruentis, incesti cum incestis, coniurati cum coniuratis, obstinati et vani cum aequalibus. Pariter deorum numina laesimus, pariter indignationem eorum provocamus. Habetis et vos tertium genus etsi non de tertio ritu, attamen de tertio sexu. Illud aptius de viro et femina viris et feminis iunctum. Aut numquid ipso vos collegio offendimus? Solet aequalitas aemulationis materiam sumministrare. Sic figulus figulo, faber fabro invidet. Immo iam desine simulata confessio! Rediit conscientia ad veritatem et ad constantiam veritatis. Nam omnia ista in nobis solis erunt et a nobis solis revincuntur quibus inlata sunt, agnitione scilicet diversae partis, unde scientia instructa et consilium inspirat et iudicium gubernat. Vestra denique sententia est, ne causam quis iudicet nisi duobus auditis, quod in nobis solis neglegitis. Naturae vitio satisfacitis, ut quae in vobis non refutetis, in aliis damnetis, aut quorum reatum in vobis memineritis, ea in alios iactetis. Diverso opere occupati eritis: in extraneos casti, in vosmetipsos incesti, exertiores foris, subiecti domi. Haec est iniquitas, ut gnari ab ignaris, absoluti a reis iudicemur. Auferte stipulam de oculo vestro, aut trabem de oculo vestro, ut stipulam de alieno extrahatis. Emendate vosmetipsos prius, ut Christianos puniatis. Nisi quod emendaveritis, non punietis, immo eritis Christiani; immo si fueritis Christiani, eritis emendati. Discite quid in nobis accusetis, et non accusabitis: recognoscite quid in vobis non accusetis, et accusabitis. Patet iam hinc vobis, quantum aperire potuerimus e pauculis istis libellulis, erroris inspectio et veritatis recognitio. Damnate veritatem, sed inspectam si potestis, et probate errorem, sed repertum si putatis. Quodsi praescribitur vobis errorem amare et odisse veritatem, cur quod amatis et odistis non noveritis? ### English translation (Claude) How long then, most unjust nations, will you fail to acknowledge, nay, go on to curse, your own kind, if there is no difference between us, if we are one and the same? Since you do not hate what you are, give us your right hands instead, join kisses, mingle embraces, the bloody with the bloody, the incestuous with the incestuous, conspirators with conspirators, the obstinate and vain with their equals. We have alike injured the divinity of the gods; alike we provoke their indignation. You too have a third race, if not of a third rite, then of a third sex. That one is more aptly made of man and woman joined to men and women. Or do we offend you by the very fellowship? Equality usually supplies material for rivalry: so potter envies potter, and smith envies smith. But now, pretended confession, stop! Conscience has returned to the truth and to the constancy of the truth. For all these things will be found in us alone, and are refuted by us alone on whom they are laid, by knowledge, that is, of the other side, from which instructed knowledge both inspires counsel and governs judgment. Your own rule, after all, is that no one should judge a case without hearing both parties; this you neglect in our case alone. You indulge a fault of nature, condemning in others what you do not refute in yourselves, or hurling at others things whose guilt you remember in yourselves. You will be busy in contrary ways: chaste toward strangers, incestuous toward yourselves; vigorous abroad, submissive at home. This is the injustice: that we who know are judged by those who do not, the acquitted by the guilty. Take the straw out of your eye, or rather the beam out of your eye, so that you may draw the straw out of another's. Correct yourselves first, so that you may punish the Christians. Except that, once you have corrected yourselves, you will not punish them; nay, you will be Christians; nay, if you become Christians, you will be corrected. Learn what you accuse in us, and you will not accuse it; recognize what you do not accuse in yourselves, and you will accuse it. From this point, as far as we have been able to open it up in these few little books, the inspection of error and the recognition of truth lie open to you. Condemn the truth, but after inspecting it, if you can; and approve error, but after finding it out, if you think fit. But if it is laid down for you to love error and hate truth, why do you not know what you love and what you hate? ### Scripture references - Matt 7:3–5: quotation, high confidence ### Translation notes - The saying about the straw and the beam is Matt 7:3–5 (Luke 6:41–42). “Pretended confession” addresses the hypothetical admission of the charges that Tertullian has used throughout this part of the book for the sake of argument. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 1.20 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/1/20/). ## To the Nations 2.1 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/1/ - Source: Oehler 1:349–350 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tertullian takes up Varro's three kinds of theology, natural, mythical, and national, and argues that none of them can yield a true god, since true divinity must be certain, pure, and common to all. ### Latin text Nunc de deis vestris, miserandae nationes, congredi vobiscum defensio nostra desiderat, provocans ipsam conscientiam vestram ad censendum, an vere dei, ut vultis, an falso, ut scire non vultis. Haec enim materia est erroris humani per artificem eius, ne ignorantia erroris vacet, quo magis rei sitis. Patent oculi, nec vident; hiant aures, nec audiunt; cor stupet saliens, nescit animus quod agnoscit. Denique si tantam perversitatem una praescriptione discuti liceret, in expedito esset nuntiatio, cum omnes istos deos ab hominibus institutos novimus, iam hinc excidere fidem verae divinitatis, quod nihil utique aliquando coeptum divinum videri iure possit. Sedenim multa sunt, quibus teneritas conscientiae obduratur in callositatem voluntarii erroris. Ingenti manu veritas obsidetur, et ipsa de sua virtute secura est! Quidni? quemcumque vult, de ipsis adversariis socios protectoresque sibimet assumit et omnem illam expugnatorum multitudinem prosternit. Adversus haec igitur nobis negotium est, adversus institutiones maiorum, auctoritates receptorum, leges dominantium, argumentationes prudentium, adversus vetustatem, consuetudinem, necessitatem, adversus exempla, prodigia, miracula, quae omnia adulterinam istam divinitatem corroboraverint. Quare secundum vestros commentarios, quos ex omni theologiae genere cepistis, gradum conferens, quoniam maior in huiusmodi penes vos auctoritas literarum quam rerum est, elegi ad compendium Varronis opera, qui rerum divinarum ex omnibus retro digestis commentatus idoneum se nobis scopum exposuit. Hunc si interrogem, qui insinuatores deorum, aut philosophos designat aut populos aut poëtas. Triplici enim genere deorum censum distinxit: unum esse physicum, quod philosophi retractant, aliud mythicum, quod inter poëtas volutetur, tertium gentile, quod populi sibi quique adoptaverunt. Igitur cum philosophi physicum coniecturis concinnarint, poëtae mythicum de fabulis traxerint, populi gentile ultro praesumpserint, ubinam veritas collocanda? In coniecturis? Sed incerta conceptio est. In fabulis? Sed foeda relatio est. In adoptionibus? Sed passiva et municipalis adoptatio est. Denique apud philosophos incerta, quia varia, apud poëtas omnia indigna, quia turpia, apud populos passiva omnia, quia voluntaria. Porro divinitas, si veram retractes, ea definitione est, ut ista neque argumentationibus incertis colligatur, neque fabulis indignis contaminetur, neque adoptionibus passivis iudicetur; haberi enim debet, sicut est, certa, integra, communis, quia scilicet omnium. Ceterum quem deum credam? Quem suspicio aestimavit? Quem historia iactavit? Quem civitas voluit? Dignius multo neminem credam quam dubitandum, aut pudendum, aut adoptivum. ### English translation (Claude) Now our defense desires to engage with you, pitiable nations, about your gods, calling on your own conscience to judge whether they are truly gods, as you would have it, or falsely, as you would rather not know. For this is the material of human error, supplied by its contriver, that ignorance of the error may not be lacking, so that you may be the more guilty. The eyes are open, and they do not see; the ears gape, and they do not hear; the heart, though it beats, is benumbed; the mind does not know what it recognizes. Indeed, if such perversity could be dispelled by a single prescription, the verdict would be ready to hand: since we know that all these gods were instituted by men, the credit of true divinity falls away at once, because nothing that ever had a beginning can rightly be regarded as divine. But there are many things by which the tenderness of conscience is hardened into the callousness of willful error. Truth is besieged by a huge host, and yet is secure in its own strength! And why not? It takes whomever it will from among its very adversaries as allies and protectors for itself, and lays low that whole multitude of assailants. Against these things, then, we have to contend: against the institutions of the ancestors, the authority of accepted writers, the laws of rulers, the arguments of the wise; against antiquity, custom, and necessity; against examples, portents, and miracles, all of which have strengthened this adulterated divinity. So, following step by step your own commentaries, which you have drawn from every kind of theology, since among you in such matters the authority of writings counts for more than that of facts, I have chosen for brevity the works of Varro, who, having written on divine matters from everything set out before him, has offered himself to us as a suitable target. If I ask him who introduced the gods, he points either to the philosophers, or to the peoples, or to the poets. For he divided the roll of the gods into three kinds: one natural, which the philosophers treat; another mythical, which is passed about among the poets; the third national, which the peoples have each adopted for themselves. So, since the philosophers have put together the natural kind by conjectures, the poets have drawn the mythical from fables, and the peoples have taken up the national of their own accord, where then is truth to be placed? In conjectures? But the conception is uncertain. In fables? But the account is foul. In adoptions? But the adoption is arbitrary and local. In short, with the philosophers everything is uncertain, because varied; with the poets everything is unworthy, because shameful; with the peoples everything is arbitrary, because voluntary. But divinity, if you consider the true one, is by definition such that it is neither gathered by uncertain arguments, nor defiled by unworthy fables, nor decided by arbitrary adoptions; for it ought to be held, as it is, certain, whole, and common, because it belongs to all. For the rest, what god am I to believe? One whom suspicion guessed at? One whom story boasted of? One whom a city chose? Far more fittingly would I believe in none than in one who is doubtful, or shameful, or adopted. ### Scripture references - Matt 13:13: allusion, medium confidence - Ps 115:5–6 (113:13-Ps Vulg.): allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - “The eyes are open, and they do not see” echoes Ps 115:5–6 (113:13–14 Vulg.) and Matt 13:13. The “contriver” of error is the devil. Varro's threefold theology (physicum, mythicum, gentile) is from his lost Antiquities of Divine Matters. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/1/). ## To the Nations 2.2 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/2/ - Source: Oehler 1:350–352 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Philosophers, lacking the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom, disagree endlessly about the gods, borrowing scraps of Scripture and distorting them. ### Latin text Sed physicorum auctoritas philosophorum ut mancipium sapientiae patrocinatur. Sane mera sapientia philosophorum, cuius infirmitatem prima haec contestatur varietas opinionum, veniens de ignorantia veritatis. Quis autem sapiens expers veritatis, qui ipsius sapientiae ac veritatis patrem et dominum deum ignoret? Nam et divina alias enuntiatio Solomonis, Initium, inquit, sapientiae metus in deum. Porro timoris origo notitia est; quis enim timebit quod ignorat? Ita qui deum timuerit ignotior omnium, deum omnium notitiam et veritatem adsecutus plenam atque perfectam sapientiam obtinebit. Hoc autem philosophiae non liquido successit. Licet enim per curiositatem omnimodae litteraturae inspiciendae divinis quoque scripturis, ut antiquioribus, possint videri incursasse et inde nonnulla dempsisse, cum tamen interpolarunt, probant sese aut omnia despexisse aut non omnibus credidisse (nam et alias veritatis simplicitas per scrupulositatem passivae fidei nutat), et ita accedente libidine gloriae ad proprii ingenii opera mutasse, per quod in incertum abiit etiam quod invenerant et facta est argumentationum inundatio de stillicidio uno atque alio veritatis. Invento enim solummodo deo non ut invenerunt exposuerunt, ut de qualitate eius et de natura, etiam de sede disceptent: Platonici quidem curantem rerum et arbitrum et iudicem, Epicurei otiosum et inexercitum et, ut ita dixerim, neminem, positum vero extra mundum Stoici, intra mundum Platonici. Quem non penitus admiserant, neque nosse potuerunt neque timere nec inde sapere, exorbitantes scilicet ab initio sapientiae, id est metu in deum. Extant testimonia tam ignoratae quam dubitatae inter philosophos divinitatis. Diogenes consultus, quid in caelis agatur, Numquam, inquit, ascendi. Item, an dei essent, Nescio, inquit, nisi ut sint expedire. Thales Milesius Croeso sciscitanti, quid de deis arbitraretur, post aliquot deliberandi commeatus, Nihil, renuntiavit. Socrates ipse deos istos quasi certus negabat. Idem Aesculapio gallinaceum secari quasi certus iubebat. Et ideo cum tam incerta et inconstans definiendi de deo philosophia deprehenditur, quem potuit metum habere eius quem non liquido tenebat determinare? De mundo deo didicimus. Hunc enim physicum theologiae genus cogunt, quando ita deos tradiderunt, ut Dionysius Stoicus trifariam eos dividat. Unam vult speciem quae in promptu sit, ut Solem, Lunam, Astra; aliam, quae non compareat, ut Neptunum; reliquam, quae de hominibus ad divinitatem transisse dicitur, ut Herculem, Amphiaraum. Aeque Arcesilaus trinam formam divinitatis ducit, Olympios, Astra, Titaneos, de Caelo et Terra: ex his, Saturno et Ope Neptunum, Iovem et Orcum, et ceteram successionem. Xenocrates Academicus bifariam facit, Olympios et Titanios, qui de Caelo et Terra. Aegyptiorum plerique quattuor deos credunt, Solem et Lunam, Caelum ac Terram. Cum reliquo igni superno deos ortos Democritus suspicatur, cuius instar vult esse naturam Zenon. Unde et Varro ignem mundi animum facit, ut perinde in mundo ignis omnia gubernet sicut animus in nobis. Atqui vanissime. Nam cum est, inquit, in nobis, ipsi sumus; cum exivit, emorimur. Ergo et ignis cum de mundo per fulgura proficiscitur, mundus emoritur. ### English translation (Claude) But the authority of the natural philosophers is pleaded as if they owned wisdom outright. Pure wisdom indeed is that of the philosophers, whose weakness is first attested by this very variety of opinions, which comes from ignorance of the truth. But what wise man is without truth, who is ignorant of God, the father and lord of wisdom and truth itself? For the divine utterance of Solomon says elsewhere: “The beginning of wisdom is fear toward God.” Now the origin of fear is knowledge; for who will fear what he does not know? So he who fears God, even if he knows nothing else, having attained God, who is the knowledge and truth of all things, will possess full and perfect wisdom. This, however, did not clearly befall philosophy. For although, through curiosity in examining every kind of literature, they may seem to have come upon the divine Scriptures too, as being more ancient, and to have taken some things from them, yet by interpolating them they prove that they either despised all of them or did not believe all of them (for in any case the simplicity of truth wavers through the scruples of a wandering faith); and so, with the lust for glory added, they changed them into works of their own ingenuity, through which even what they had found went off into uncertainty, and a flood of arguments was made from one or two drops of truth. For having merely found God, they did not set him forth as they found him, but disputed about his quality and nature, and even his seat: the Platonists making him one who cares for things, their arbiter and judge; the Epicureans, idle and inactive and, so to speak, nobody; the Stoics placing him outside the world, the Platonists within it. Whom they had not admitted deeply, they could neither know nor fear nor thence be wise, straying, of course, from the beginning of wisdom, that is, from fear toward God. There are testimonies to a divinity as much unknown as doubted among the philosophers. Diogenes, asked what goes on in the heavens, said, “I have never gone up.” Likewise, asked whether gods existed, he said, “I do not know, except that it is expedient that they should.” Thales of Miletus, when Croesus inquired what he thought of the gods, after several extensions of time for deliberation, answered, “Nothing.” Socrates himself denied these gods as if he were certain; the same man, as if he were certain, ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Aesculapius. And so, since philosophy is found so uncertain and inconsistent in defining God, what fear could it have of one it could not clearly define? We have learned of the world as god. For they force the natural kind of theology to this, since they have handed down the gods in such a way that Dionysius the Stoic divides them in three. One class, he holds, is that which is in plain view, like the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars; another, that which does not appear, like Neptune; the rest, those said to have passed from men to divinity, like Hercules and Amphiaraus. Likewise Arcesilaus derives a threefold form of divinity: the Olympians, the Stars, and the Titans, from Heaven and Earth; from these, from Saturn and Ops, came Neptune, Jupiter, and Orcus, and the rest of the succession. Xenocrates the Academic makes two classes, Olympians and Titans, who come from Heaven and Earth. Most of the Egyptians believe in four gods: the Sun and the Moon, Heaven and Earth. Democritus supposes that the gods arose together with the rest of the fire above, and Zeno would have nature be of the same kind. Hence Varro too makes fire the soul of the world, so that in the world fire governs all things just as the soul does in us. But this is most foolish. For when it is in us, he says, we exist; when it has gone out, we die. Therefore when fire goes forth from the world in lightning, the world dies! ### Scripture references - Prov 9:10: quotation, high confidence - Prov 1:7: allusion, medium confidence ### Extrabiblical texts - Plato, Phaed. 118a (Plato (works)): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The quotation is Prov 9:10 (cf. Prov 1:7; Ps 111:10). Socrates' cock for Aesculapius is Plato, Phaedo 118a. The clause qui deum timuerit ignotior omnium is probably corrupt; the rendering follows the evident sense. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/2/). ## To the Nations 2.3 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/3/ - Source: Oehler 1:352–355 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The elements cannot be gods: the world either had a beginning and so is not eternal, or else Varro's reasons for calling the elements living beings point instead to an unseen mover behind them. ### Latin text His ita expeditis videmus physicum istud ad hoc subornatum, ut deos elementa contendat, cum ex his etiam alios deos natos alleget; dei enim nonnisi de deis nascerentur. Quos quoniam in mythico apud poëtas plenius suo loco examinabimus, tamen, quod de ipsis interim retractandum est quod ad praesentem speciem facit, simul et de praesenti specie ad ipsos conversi forsan ostensuri sumus deos nullo modo videri posse qui de elementis nati dicuntur, ut iam hinc praeiudicatum sit deos elementa non esse, cum qui de elementis nati dicuntur, dei non sunt; aeque demonstrantes elementa deos non esse ad illam agnatorum speciem praestruemus recte deos non esse defendi quorum parentes, id est elementa, dei non sunt. Scitum deum e deo nasci, quemadmodum de non deo non deum. Igitur quod elementa contineat mundus iste, ut summaliter tractem de universitate, partibus eius praeministrans (nam quae condicio eius, eadem utique erit et elementorum et membrorum), aut ab aliquo institutus sit necesse est, qua Platonis humanitas, aut a nullo, qua Epicuri duritia; et si institutus est, habendo initium habebit etiam finem. Ita quod aliquando non fuit ante initium et quandoque non erit post finem, non capit utique videri deus, carens substantia divinitatis id est aeternitate, quae sine initio et fine censetur. Si vero institutus omnino non est ac propterea deus habendus, quod ut deus neque initium neque finem sui patitur, quomodo quidam assignant elementis, quae deos volunt, generationem, cum Stoici negent quicquam deo nasci? Item quomodo volunt quos de elementis natos ferunt deos haberi, cum deum negent nasci? Itaque quod mundi erit, hoc elementis adscribetur, caelo dico et terrae et sideribus et igni, quae deos et deorum parentes adversus negatam generationem dei et nativitatem frustra vobis credi proposuit Varro, ut qui Varro indicaverat animalia esse caelum et astra. Quod si ita est, etiam mortalia sint necesse est, secundum animalis formam; nam etsi immortalem constat animam, ipsi hoc soli licebit, non etiam illi cui adnectatur, id est corpori. Nemo autem negabit elementis corpus esse, cum et contingamus ea et contingamur ab eis, certaque corpora ex illis decidere videamus. Ergo si animalia deposita ratione animae, qua corporum condicio, mortalia, non utique immortalia. Et tamen unde animalia Varroni videntur elementa? Quoniam elementa moventur. Ac ne ex diverso proponatur, multa alia moveri, ut rotas, ut plaustra, ut machinas ceteras, ultro praevenit dicens eo animalia credita, quod per semetipsa moverentur, nullo extrinsecus apparente motatore eorum aut incitatore, sicuti apparet qui rotam compellit et plaustra volvit et machinam temperat. Igitur nisi animalia, non mobilia per se. Porro allegans quid non appareat, ostendit quid quaesisse debuerat, id est artificem et arbitrum motus; neque enim statim non est quod, quia non videmus, non credimus esse. Immo eo altius investigandum est quod non videatur, ut quod videatur quale sit scire possimus. Alioquin si tantum ea quae comparent ideo esse credantur quia comparent, quomodo deos etiam eos recipitis qui non comparent? si autem videntur esse qui non sunt, cur non sint et qui non videntur? Motatorem dico caelestium rerum. Sint ergo et animalia, quia mobilia per se, etiam mobilia per se, quia non per alium, tamen ut ea non statim dei, quia animalia, ita nec ideo, quia per se mobilia: aut quid vetat universa animalia, ut mobilia per se, deos haberi? Et hoc alia sane vanitate Aegyptiis licet. ### English translation (Claude) These points being settled, we see that this natural theology has been suborned to maintain that the elements are gods, while it alleges that other gods too were born from them; for gods would be born only of gods. We shall examine these gods more fully in their own place, under the mythical kind, among the poets; yet as regards what must meanwhile be treated about them that bears on the present subject, turning at the same time from the present subject to them, we shall perhaps show that those who are said to be born of the elements can in no way be regarded as gods, so that it is thereby prejudged that the elements are not gods, since those said to be born of the elements are not gods; and likewise, by showing that the elements are not gods, we shall lay the ground for that class of offspring, that those cannot rightly be maintained to be gods whose parents, that is the elements, are not gods. It is an accepted maxim that god is born of god, as non-god of non-god. So, since this world contains the elements (to treat of the whole summarily, as a preliminary to its parts; for whatever its condition, the same will surely be that of its elements and members), it must either have been established by someone, as Plato's humanity holds, or by no one, as Epicurus's hardness holds; and if it was established, then having a beginning it will also have an end. So what once did not exist, before its beginning, and at some time will not exist, after its end, cannot possibly be regarded as god, since it lacks the substance of divinity, that is, eternity, which is reckoned to be without beginning and end. But if it was not established at all, and for that reason is to be held god, because like a god it admits neither beginning nor end, how do some assign generation to the elements, which they want to be gods, when the Stoics deny that a god has any birth? Likewise, how do they want those whom they report born of the elements to be held gods, when they deny that a god is born? So whatever belongs to the world will be ascribed to the elements: I mean heaven and earth and the stars and fire, which Varro has proposed to you, to no purpose, for belief as gods and parents of gods, against the denial of the generation and birth of a god, since this same Varro had indicated that heaven and the stars are living beings. If this is so, they must also be mortal, according to the form of a living being; for even if it is agreed that the soul is immortal, this will be permitted to it alone, not also to that to which it is joined, namely the body. But no one will deny that the elements have body, since we touch them and are touched by them, and we see certain bodies fall from them. Therefore if they are living beings, then, setting aside the account of the soul, they are mortal, as is the condition of bodies, and by no means immortal. And yet why do the elements seem to Varro to be living beings? Because the elements move. And lest it be objected on the other side that many other things move, such as wheels, wagons, and other machines, he anticipates it of his own accord, saying that they were believed to be living because they moved by themselves, with no mover or driver appearing from outside, as one appears who drives the wheel, rolls the wagon, and regulates the machine. So if they were not living, they would not be self-moving. But in alleging what does not appear, he points to what he ought to have sought, namely the artificer and director of the motion; for a thing does not at once fail to exist because, since we do not see it, we do not believe that it exists. Rather, what is not seen must be investigated all the more deeply, so that we may know the nature of what is seen. Otherwise, if only the things that appear are believed to exist because they appear, how do you receive as gods also those who do not appear? And if those who do not exist seem to exist, why should not those also exist who are not seen? I mean the mover of the heavenly things. Let them be living beings, then, because they are self-moving, and self-moving because not moved by another; still, just as they are not at once gods because they are living, so neither are they gods because they are self-moving: or what forbids all living things, as self-moving, to be held gods? And this, indeed, with another kind of vanity, is permitted to the Egyptians. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/3/). ## To the Nations 2.4 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/4/ - Source: Oehler 1:355–357 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The Greek word for god does not come from “running,” as some claim, but was borrowed from the name of the true God, who is unseen and distinct from matter; the philosophers' speculations about the heavens are futile. ### Latin text Aiunt quidam propterea deos fuisse appellatos quod θέειν et σείεσθαι procurrere ac motari interpretatio est. Ergo iam vocabulum istud non est alicuius maiestatis; a cursu enim et motu, non ab divinitatis eis dominatione formatum est. Sed cum etiam ille unus Deus quem colimus θεός cognominetur, nec tamen aut motus ullus aut cursus eius appareat, quia nec visibilis cuiquam sit, palam est ut vocabulum istud sit aliunde desumptum, propriumque, quia a se nativum, divinitatis inventum. Itaque semota interpretationis eius astutia verisimilius est non a cursu et motu θεούς dictos, sed de appellatione veri dei mutuatum, uti quos aeque deos excudissetis, θεούς cognominaretis. Denique quam ita sit, probatio suppetit, cum etiam universos deos vestros, in quibus nullius cursus aut motus officium denotatur, θεούς communiter appelletis. Itaque si aeque θεούς aeque immobiles, disceditur vocabuli interpretatione pariter et divinitatis opinione, quae a cursu et motu modulata rescinditur. Quod si nomen istud proprium divinitatis, et simplex nec interpretatorium in illo deo, reprehensum in cetera quae deos vultis, docete etiam qualitatis inter illos esse consortium, ut iure consistat collegium nominis communione substantiae. Porro θεός ille iam hoc solo, quod non sit in promptu, vacat a comparatione eorum quae in promptu sunt et visui et sensui (sed sensui satis), quod est testimonii ad diversitatem occulti et manifesti renuntiatio. Si elementa palam proposita omnibus, si contra deus nemini, quomodo poteris ex ea parte quam non vidisti quae vides congredi? Cum ergo non habes coniungere sensu neque ratione, quid vocabulo coniungis, ut coniungas etiam potestate? Ecce enim Zeno quoque materiam mundialem a deo separat, vel eum per illam tamquam mel per favos transisse dicit. Itaque materia et deus duo vocabula, duae res. Pro discrimine vocabulorum etiam res separantur, etiam materiae condicio vocabulum sequitur. Quodsi materia non est, quia sic et appellatio praescribit, quomodo quae sunt in materia, id est elementa, dei habebuntur, cum membra a corpore alienigena esse non possint? Sed quid ego cum argumentationibus physiologicis? Sursum mens ascendere debuit de statu mundi, non in incerta descendere. Rotunda mundo Platonica forma. Quadratum eum angulatumque commentum ab aliis, credo, circino rotundo ita collegit, quod sine capite solum credi laborat. Sed Epicurus, qui dixerat, Quae super nos, nihil ad nos, cum et ipse caelum inspicere desiderat, solis orbem pedalem deprehendit. Adhuc scilicet frugalitas et in caelis agebatur. Denique ut ambitio profecit, etiam sol aciem suam extendit; ita illum orbem maiorem Peripatetici denotaverunt. Oro vos, quid sapit coniecturarum libido? Quid probat tanta praesumptione asseverationis otium affectatae morositatis eloquii artificio adornatum? Merito ergo Milesius Thales dum totum caelum examinat et ambulat oculis, in puteum cecidit turpiter, multum inrisus Aegyptio illi: In terra, inquit, nihil perspiciebas, caelum tibi speculandum existimas? Itaque casus eius per figuram philosophos notat, scilicet eos, qui stupidam exerceant curiositatem in res naturae quam prius in artificem eius et praesidem, in vacuum suum studium habituros. ### English translation (Claude) Some say that they were called gods (theoi) because theein and seiesthai, “to run” and “to be moved,” is the interpretation. So this word is not one of any majesty, for it is formed from running and motion, not from their dominion as divine. But since the one God whom we worship is also named theos, and yet no motion or running of his appears, since he is not visible to anyone, it is plain that the word was taken from elsewhere, and was found as the proper name of divinity, being native to it. So, setting aside the cleverness of that interpretation, it is more likely that the theoi were not so called from running and motion, but that the name was borrowed from the designation of the true God, so that you named theoi those whom you had likewise forged as gods. Indeed, proof that this is so is at hand, since you call all your gods in common theoi, even those in whom no function of running or motion is observed. So if they are all alike theoi and alike immobile, the interpretation of the word is abandoned, and so too the opinion of their divinity, which, being framed from running and motion, is cut away. But if that name is proper to divinity, simple and not a matter of interpretation in that God, and is misapplied in the other things that you would have be gods, show also that there is a fellowship of nature among them, so that the partnership in the name may rightly rest on a communion of substance. Now that theos, by this alone, that he is not in view, is exempt from comparison with the things that are in view both to sight and to the senses (though to the senses enough), which is a declaration bearing witness to the difference between the hidden and the manifest. If the elements are set openly before all, while God, on the contrary, is set before none, how can you bring the things you see into company with that side which you have not seen? Since, then, you cannot join them by sense or by reason, why do you join them by a word, so as to join them also in power? For see, Zeno too separates the matter of the world from God, or says that he passed through it like honey through the combs. So matter and God are two words and two things. According to the distinction of the words, the things too are separated; the condition of matter also follows its word. But if God is not matter, as the very name prescribes, how will the things that are in matter, that is, the elements, be held gods, since members cannot be foreign to their body? But why do I deal with physiological arguments? The mind ought to have ascended upward from the state of the world, not descended into uncertainties. The Platonic shape of the world is round. Others imagined it square and angular … But Epicurus, who had said, “What is above us is nothing to us,” when he too wished to look at the sky, found the sun's disk to be a foot across. Frugality, no doubt, was still practised even in the heavens! Then, as ambition advanced, the sun too extended its beam; so the Peripatetics declared its disk to be larger. I ask you, what wisdom is there in this lust for conjectures? What does it prove, this idleness of affected fastidiousness, decked out with the art of eloquence, with such presumption of assertion? Rightly, then, did Thales of Miletus, while examining the whole sky and walking with his eyes on it, fall shamefully into a well, much mocked by that Egyptian: “On earth,” she said, “you saw nothing; do you think you should gaze at the sky?” So his fall marks the philosophers figuratively: those, that is, who exercise a stupid curiosity on the things of nature rather than first on its maker and ruler, and who will have their study for nothing. ### Extrabiblical texts - Plato, Theaet. 174a (Plato (works)): allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - The sentence Quadratum eum angulatumque commentum ab aliis, credo, circino rotundo ita collegit, quod sine capite solum credi laborat is obscure and is marked “…”. The saying “What is above us is nothing to us” is usually attributed to Socrates; its attribution here to Epicurus is as printed. Thales' fall into a well is told in Plato, Theaetetus 174a, where the one who mocks him is a Thracian maid. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/4/). ## To the Nations 2.5 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/5/ - Source: Oehler 1:357–360 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: People thank the physician, not the medicine, and blame the robber, not the sword; so the orderly service of the elements should lead them to the Maker who rules the elements, not to worship the elements themselves. ### Latin text Quin ergo ad humaniorem aliquanto convertimur opinionem, quae de communi omnium sensu et simplici coniectura deducta videatur? Nam et Varro meminit eius, creditam praeterea dicens elementorum divinitatem, quod nihil omnino sine suffragio illorum gigni, ali, provehi possit ad vitae humanae et terrae sationem, quando ne ipsa quidem corpora aut animas sufficere licuisset sine elementorum temperamento, quo habitatio ista mundi circulorum condicionibus foederata praestatur, nisi quod hominum incolatui denegavit enormitas frigoris aut caloris, proptereaque deos credi solem, qui diei de suo cumulet, fruges caloribus maturet, annum stationibus servet: lunam, solatium noctium, patrocinium mensum gubernaculis: item sidera, signacula quaedam temporum ad rurationem notandorum: ipsum denique caelum, sub quo omnia, terram, super quam omnia, et quicquid illorum inter se ad commoda humana conspirat. Nec tantum beneficiis fidem divinitatis elementis convenire, sed etiam de diversis quae tamquam de ira et offensa eorum incidere soleant, ut fulmina, ut grandines, ut ardores, ut aurae pestilentes, item diluvia, item hiatus motusque terrarum, et iure credi deos quorum natura honoranda sit in secundis, metuenda sit in adversis, domina scilicet iuvandi et nocendi. Porro si ita sentiuntur in civium conversatione, non perinde rebus ipsis quibus iuvantur sive laeduntur aut gratias referunt aut querellas intendunt, sed his sub quorum vi et potestate operatio rerum decurrit. Nam in voluptatibus quoque non tibiae aut citharae coronam ad praemium adiudicatis, sed artifici qui tibiam et citharam suavitatis temperet vi. Aeque cum quis valetudine male est, non lanis nec antidotis aut malagmatibus ipsis gratiam meministis, sed medicis, quorum opera atque prudentia remedia proveniunt. Item in adversis qui ferro sauciantur, non gladium ipsum aut lanceam accusant, sed hostem vel latronem, et quos tecta opprimunt, non tegulas aut imbrices arguunt, sed vetustatem, sicut et naufragi non petrae et fluctibus imputant, sed procellae. Merito. Certum enim est, quodcunque fit, ei adscribendum, non per quod fit, sed a quo fit, quia is est caput facti qui et ut fiat et per quid fiat instituit (et sunt in omnibus rebus tres tituli isti: quod est, per quod est, et a quo est), quia prius est qui quid velit fieri et quo possit inveniri. Et ita recte in ceteris agitis, auctorem considerantes, at in physicis contra naturam regula vestra, qua in ceteris sapientiam iudicatis, auferendo summum gradum auctoris, et quae fiunt non a quo fieri considerando. Ita credere contingit elementorum potestates et arbitria esse quae sunt servitutes et officia. Non in ista investigatione alicuius artificis intus et domini servitutis artem ostendimus elementorum certis ex operis eorum quas facis potestatis? Sed dei non serviunt; ea igitur quae serviunt dei non sunt. Aut doceant vulgo fieri, ut de licentia passivitatis libertas approbetur, de libertate dominatio, de dominatione divinitas intellegatur. Nam si omnia haec super nos certis curriculis, legitimis decursibus, propriis spatiis, aequis vicibus sub legis instar constituta volvendis temporibus et exercendis temporum ducatibus occurrere meminerunt, num non ex ipsa observatione condicionum suarum, et fide operum, et instantia curriculorum, et cura demutationum, memoria reciprocatorum, aliquam dominationem sibi praeesse persuadeant vobis, cui apparere videatur universa negotiatio mundialis perveniens ad humani generis utilitatem et laesionem? Non enim potes dicere ea sibi agere ista ac sibi curare nec quicquam hominum causa disponere, cum propterea defendas elementis divinitatem quod ab illis aut iuvari te aut laedi sentias. Nam si sibi praestant, nihil eis debes. ### English translation (Claude) Why, then, do we not turn to a somewhat more humane opinion, which seems drawn from the common sense of all and from simple conjecture? For Varro too mentions it, saying that the divinity of the elements was believed besides because nothing at all could be born, nourished, or brought forward for human life and the sowing of the earth without their support, since not even bodies or souls could have sufficed without the tempering of the elements, by which this dwelling-place of the world, bound by the conditions of its zones, is provided, except where excessive cold or heat has denied it to human habitation; and that therefore the sun is believed a god, because he adds to the day from his own store, ripens the crops by his heat, and keeps the year by his stations; the moon, the comfort of the nights, the patron of the months by her guidance; likewise the stars, signs of the seasons to be marked for husbandry; and finally heaven itself, under which are all things, and earth, on which are all things, and whatever among them works together for human benefit. Nor, he says, does the belief in the divinity of the elements rest only on their benefits, but also on the contrary things that usually befall as if from their anger and offense, such as thunderbolts, hail, scorching heat, pestilential winds, likewise floods, likewise chasms and earthquakes; and rightly are those believed gods whose nature is to be honored in prosperity and feared in adversity, being, of course, masters of helping and harming. But if that is so, in the dealings of citizens people do not likewise return thanks or bring complaints to the very things by which they are helped or harmed, but to those under whose force and power the working of the things runs its course. For in your pleasures too you do not award the crown as a prize to the flute or the lyre, but to the artist who by his skill tunes the flute and the lyre to sweetness. Likewise, when someone is ill, you do not remember to thank the wool, or the antidotes or poultices themselves, but the physicians, by whose work and skill the remedies come. Again, in adversity, those wounded by iron do not accuse the sword itself or the lance, but the enemy or the robber; and those crushed by a house do not blame the tiles or gutters but its age; just as shipwrecked men do not impute their wreck to the rock and the waves but to the storm. And rightly. For it is certain that whatever happens is to be ascribed not to that through which it happens but to him by whom it happens, because he is the head of the deed who has determined both that it be done and by what means it be done (and in all things there are these three titles: what it is, through what it is, and by whom it is), since he who wills something to be done comes first, and then that by which it can be brought about. And so in other matters you act rightly, considering the author; but in natural things your rule, by which you judge wisdom in other matters, runs against nature, taking away the highest rank, that of the author, and considering the things done and not by whom they are done. So it happens that you believe to be the powers and free choices of the elements what are in fact services and duties. Have we not, in this investigation, shown from the fixed works of the elements, which you take for works of power, the art of some artificer within them and master of their service? But gods do not serve; therefore the things that serve are not gods. Or let them show that it commonly happens that from the license of wandering freedom is proved, from freedom dominion, and from dominion divinity is understood. For if all these things above us, established as under a law in fixed courses, lawful runs, proper spaces, and equal alternations, are mindful to meet their appointments for the rolling of the seasons and the exercise of the seasons' guidance, would they not, by the very observance of their conditions, the faithfulness of their works, the persistence of their courses, the care of their changes, and the memory of their returns, persuade you that some dominion presides over them, to whom the whole business of the world seems to be subject, reaching to the benefit and the harm of the human race? For you cannot say that they do these things for themselves and care for themselves and arrange nothing for the sake of men, since the very reason you claim divinity for the elements is that you feel yourselves helped or harmed by them. For if they serve only themselves, you owe them nothing. ### Scripture references - Rom 1:20: allusion, low confidence ### Translation notes - The sentence Non in ista investigatione … certis ex operis eorum quas facis potestatis is garbled in the digital text; the rendering follows the evident sense. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/5/). ## To the Nations 2.6 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/6/ - Source: Oehler 1:360–361 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The heavenly bodies suffer eclipse and loss, which no god could suffer, so they are ruled by another; still, worshipping them is a lesser error than the gods of myth. ### Latin text Age iam, conceditisne divinitatem non modo non serviliter currere, sed inprimis integre stare neque minui neque intercipi neque corrumpi debere? Ceterum abiit omnis felicitas eius, si quid patitur umquam. Ecce autem et astra intercidunt et intercidisse se attestantur. Confitetur et luna quantum amiserit, cum resumit. Iam maiora eius detrimenta soletis in aquae speculo considerare, ut nihil amplius ulla in parte credam quod magi norunt. Ipse etiam sol saepe defectione temptatus est. Fingite qualibet rationes caelestium casuum, non volet deus aut minor fieri aut esse desinere. Viderint igitur humanae doctrinae patrocinia quae coniectandi artificio sapientiam mentiuntur et veritatem. Nam alias natura sic est, ut qui melius dixerit, hic verius dixisse videatur, non qui verius, is melius. Ceterum cui res examinabitur, verisimilius utique dicet elementa ista ab aliquo regi quam ultro moveri: igitur non deos quae sub aliquo. At si in isto erratur, melius est errare simpliciter quam ut physici diligenter. Sedenim si ad mythicum spectes, melius iam in physico mortalitas errat eis divinitatem adscribendo quae super hominem putat situ et vi et magnitudine et divinitate sentiri. Quod enim super hominem, credas deo proximum. ### English translation (Claude) Come now, do you not grant that divinity not only does not run its course like a slave, but above all stands whole, and ought not to be diminished, interrupted, or corrupted? Otherwise all its blessedness is gone, if it ever suffers anything. But see, the stars too are eclipsed and bear witness that they have been eclipsed. The moon too confesses how much she has lost, when she recovers it. Her greater losses you are accustomed to observe in the mirror of water, so that I would no longer believe in any respect what the magi claim to know. The sun himself has often been assailed by eclipse. Invent whatever explanations you like for these heavenly mishaps: a god will not wish either to be made less or to cease to be. Let the champions of human learning see to it, who by the art of conjecture counterfeit wisdom and truth. For in other matters nature is so ordered that he who has spoken better seems to have spoken more truly, not that he who spoke more truly spoke better. But the one for whom the matter is weighed will surely say that it is more likely that these elements are ruled by someone than that they move of themselves; therefore things that are under someone are not gods. But if one errs in this, it is better to err simply than diligently, like the natural philosophers. And yet, if you look at the mythical kind, mortals err better in the natural kind, in ascribing divinity to things which they think are perceived to be above man in position, force, greatness, and divinity. For what is above man you may believe to be nearest to God. ### Translation notes - The sentence about observing the moon's losses in water and the magi is obscure; the rendering is approximate. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.6 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/6/). ## To the Nations 2.7 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/7/ - Source: Oehler 1:361–364 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: The heroes and gods of myth were men, many of them wicked, and pagans cannot both honor the poets who tell of their crimes and deny those stories while basing rites on them. ### Latin text Ceterum ut ad mythicum transeamus, quod poëtis deputatur, nescio an tantum par quaerere mediocritati nostrae, an tanti de documentis divinitatis confirmentur, ut Mopsus Africanus et Boeotus Amphiaraus. Delibanda enim nunc est species ista, cuius suo loco ratio reddetur. Interim hos certe homines fuisse vel eo palam est, quod non constanter deos illos, sed heroas appellatis. Quid ergo contendimus? Si addicenda mortuis divinitas erat, non utique talibus. Ecce vos, cum eadem licentia praesumptionis sepulchris regum vestrorum caelum infamatis, nonne probatos quosque iustitia, virtute, pietate et omni bono eiusmodi consecrationis solatio honestatis, contenti pro talibus etiam inrideri peierantes, at e contrario impios, turpes etiam pristinis humanae gloriae praemiis aufertis, decreta eorum et titulos lancinatis, imagines detrahitis, monetam repercutitis? Ille autem conspector omnium, comprobator, immo largitor bonorum, tantae indulgentiae suae ordinationem vulgo prostituet, et plus diligentiae atque iustitiae hominibus licebit in distribuendis divinitatibus sapere? Mundiores erunt regum et principum comites quam summi dei? Atquin horretis et aversamini vagos, exules, pauperes, debiles, sordide natos, inhoneste institutos, contra incestos, adulteros, raptores, parricidas etiam legibus exornatis. Ridendum an irascendum sit, tales deos credi quales homines esse non debeant? Sedenim in isto mythice genere, quod poetae ferunt, quam incerti agitis circa conscientiae pudorem et pudoris defensionem! Nam quotiens misera vel turpia vel atrocia deorum exprobramus, allegatione poëticae licentiae ut fabulosa defenditis, quotiens ultro siletur de eiusmodi poëtica, non modo non horretis, sed insuper honoratis utque in necessariis artibus habetis, denique per hanc initiatricem litteraturae ingenuitatis studia producitis. Criminatores deorum poëtas eliminari Plato censuit, ipsum Homerum sane coronatum civitate pellendum. At cum recipiatis illos et retineatis, cur non credatis talia retexentibus de deis vestris? Igitur si creditis poëtis, cur tales deos colitis? Si ideo colitis quia non creditis poëtis, cur laudem mendacibus fertis nec cavetis ne offendatis eos quorum detractatores honoratis? Sane fides a poëtis non exigenda. Nonne, qui dicitis deos post mortem factos, homines confitemini ante mortem? Quid ergo novi, si, qui homines fuerint, humanis aut casibus aut criminibus aut fabulis polluuntur? Non creditis poëtis, cum de relationibus etiam sacra quaedam disposueritis? Cur rapitur sacerdos Cereris, si non tale Ceres passa est? Cur Saturno alieni liberi immolantur, si ille suis pepercit? Cur Idaeae masculus amputatur, si nullus illi fastidiosior adulescens libidinis frustratae dolore castratus est? Cur Herculeum polluctum mulieres Lanuvinae non gustant, si non mulierum causa pracivit? Mentiuntur sane poetae! sed non ideo quod talia gesserint vestri dei, homines quando fuerint, nec quod divinas adscripserint foeditates divinitatis, cum interim vobis credibilius visum est deos fuisse, sed non tales, quam tales, sed non deos. ### English translation (Claude) But to pass on to the mythical kind, which is assigned to the poets: I do not know whether it befits our small capacity to inquire so far, or whether such figures as Mopsus the African and Amphiaraus the Boeotian are confirmed by any evidences of divinity. For this class must now be only touched on; an account of it will be given in its own place. Meanwhile it is plain that these were certainly men, if only from this, that you do not consistently call them gods but heroes. What, then, do we contend? If divinity was to be assigned to the dead, surely not to such as these. See: when with the same license of presumption you disgrace heaven with the tombs of your kings, do you not honor those approved for justice, virtue, piety, and every good with the consolation of such a consecration, content even to be laughed at as perjurers on their behalf; and on the contrary, do you not strip the impious and base even of the former rewards of human glory, tear up their decrees and titles, pull down their images, and restrike their coinage? And will that beholder of all things, the approver, nay the bestower, of good things, prostitute to the crowd the ordinance of his great indulgence, and will men be permitted to show more diligence and justice in distributing divinities? Will the companions of kings and emperors be cleaner than those of the supreme God? And yet you shudder at and turn away from vagrants, exiles, the poor, the weak, the low-born, and the dishonorably reared, while the incestuous, adulterers, ravishers, and parricides you even honor with laws. Should one laugh or be angry that such beings are believed gods as men ought not to be? But in this mythical kind, which the poets bring forward, how uncertainly you handle the shame of your conscience and the defense of that shame! For whenever we reproach the gods with wretched or shameful or atrocious deeds, you defend them as fables by pleading poetic license; whenever nothing is said against such poetry, you not only do not shudder at it, but even honor it and count it among the necessary arts; in fact, through it, as the initiator into letters, you bring forth the studies of liberal education. Plato judged that the poets, as slanderers of the gods, should be banished, and that Homer himself, though crowned, should be driven from the city. But since you receive and retain them, why do you not believe them when they tell such things of your gods? If, then, you believe the poets, why do you worship such gods? If you worship them because you do not believe the poets, why do you give praise to liars, and why are you not careful not to offend those whose detractors you honor? Certainly truth is not to be demanded of the poets. But do you not, who say that the gods were made gods after death, confess that they were men before death? What is new, then, if those who were men are defiled by human mishaps, or crimes, or fables? Do you not believe the poets, when you have even arranged certain rites according to their accounts? Why is the priestess of Ceres carried off, if Ceres suffered no such thing? Why are other people's children sacrificed to Saturn, if he spared his own? Why is a male castrated for the Idaean mother, if no disdainful youth was castrated for her in the pain of frustrated lust? Why do the women of Lanuvium not taste the sacrifice to Hercules, if he did not take precautions on account of women? The poets lie, to be sure! But not in saying that your gods did such things when they were men, nor in ascribing foulness to those they called divine; and meanwhile it seemed more credible to you that they were gods, but not such, than that they were such, but not gods. ### Extrabiblical texts - Plato, Resp. 398a (Plato (works)): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - Plato's banishment of the poets, with Homer crowned and sent away, is Republic 398a. In the clause contra incestos … etiam legibus exornatis (“you even honor with laws”) the incestuous, adulterers, and parricides are the gods of myth, whose cults are established by law. The reading pracivit (the Lanuvian rite of Hercules) is uncertain; it is rendered “take precautions” (praecavit). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.7 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/7/). ## To the Nations 2.8 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/8/ - Source: Oehler 1:364–367 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Local gods are unknown even to their own towns, and the Egyptians worship animals and even a man: Serapis, Tertullian argues, was really the patriarch Joseph, deified for his grain policy. ### Latin text Superest gentile illud genus inter populos deorum, quos libidine sumptos, non pro notitia veritatis, docet privata notitia. Deum ergo existimo ubique notum, ubique praesentem, ubique dominantem, omnibus colendum, omnibus demerendum. At enim cum illi quoque, quos totus orbis communiter colit, excidant probationi verae divinitatis, quanto magis isti quos ne ipsi quidem municipes sui norunt? Nam quae idonea auctoritas praecucurrit eiusmodi theologiae quam etiam fama destituit? Quanti sunt qui norint visu vel auditu Atargatim Syrorum, Caelestem Afrorum, Varsutinam Maurorum, Obodan et Dusarem Arabum, Belenum Noricum, vel quos Varro ponit: Casiniensium Deluentinum, Narniensium Visidianum, Atinensium Numiternum, Asculanorum Anchariam, et quam perceperint Vulsiniensium Nortiam, quorum ne nominum quidem dignitas humanis cognominibus distat? Satis rideo etiam deos decuriones cuiusque municipii, quibus honor intra muros suos determinatur. Haec libertas adoptandorum deorum quousque profecerit Aegyptiorum superstitiones docent, qui etiam bestias privatas colunt feles, crocodilos et anguem suum. Parum est, si etiam hominem consacraverunt, illum dico quem non iam Aegyptus aut Graecia, verum totus orbis colit et Afri iurant, de cuius statu quid conici potest apud nostras litteras, ut verisimile videatur, positum est. Nam Serapis iste quidam olim Ioseph dictus fuit, de genere sanctorum. Iunior inter ceteros fratres, sed excelsior ingenio ab isdem fratribus per livorem venum in Aegyptum datus serviebat in familia regis Aegyptiorum Pharao. A regina minus pudica desideratus, sed quia non obsequebatur, e contrario ab eadem delatus a rege in carcerem datur. Illic somnia quibusdam non perperam interpretatus vim spiritus sui ostendit. Interea rex quoque somniat terribilia quaedam. Illi detractus quod convocatus erat valuit exponere Ioseph, experimenta de carcere edocuit, somnium regi aperit: illos boves septem opimissimos, diffluentes, totidem annorum ubertatem significare, posteriores aeque septem enectos subsequentium septem annorum inopiam praedicare. Suadet itaque de recondendis praesidiis in futuram famem de copia priore. Credidit rex: exitus rerum et prudentem et sanctum semper et necessarium probavit. Itaque Pharao universae Aegypto et frumentandae et exinde curandae eum praefecit. Hunc Serapidem ex suggestu, quo caput eius ornatum, vocaverunt; cuius suggestus modialis figura frumentationis eius memoriam obsignat, et curam frugum super caput eius fuisse ipsis spicis, quibus per ambitum notatur, apparet. Propterea et canem, quem apud inferos deputant, sub dextera eius dicaverunt, quod sub manu eius compressa cura Aegyptiorum. Et Phariam adiungunt, quam filiam regis Pharao derivatio nominis esse demonstrat. Nam et tunc Pharao inter cetera honorum et remunerationum filiam quoque in matrimonium ei dederat. Sed quia et feras et homines colere susceperant, utramque faciem in unum Anubin contulerunt, in quo naturae condicionisque suae potius argumenta videri posset consecrasse gens rixosa, suis regibus recontrans, in extraneis deiecta, sane et gula et spurcitia canina etiam servi ipsa. ### English translation (Claude) There remains that national kind of gods among the peoples, which a merely local knowledge shows to have been taken up by whim, not out of knowledge of the truth. I consider God, then, to be known everywhere, present everywhere, ruling everywhere, to be worshipped by all and to be won over by all. But since even those whom the whole world worships in common fall short of the proof of true divinity, how much more these whom not even their own townsmen know? For what fit authority has gone before such a theology, which even rumor has abandoned? How many are there who know by sight or by hearing Atargatis of the Syrians, Caelestis of the Africans, Varsutina of the Moors, Obodas and Dusares of the Arabs, Belenus of Noricum, or those whom Varro lists: Delventinus of the people of Casinum, Visidianus of Narnia, Numiternus of Atina, Ancharia of Asculum, and Nortia, whom the Volsinians have received, gods whose names do not even differ in dignity from human surnames? I laugh enough, too, at the gods who are town councillors of each municipality, whose honor is confined within their own walls. How far this freedom of adopting gods has gone is shown by the superstitions of the Egyptians, who even worship their own private beasts, cats, crocodiles, and their snake. It is a small matter that they have also deified a man: I mean the one whom not only Egypt or Greece but the whole world worships, and by whom the Africans swear. What can be conjectured about his state from our writings, so as to seem likely, is set down here. For this Serapis was once called Joseph, of the race of the saints. Younger than his other brothers, but loftier in mind, he was sold into Egypt by those same brothers out of envy and served in the household of Pharaoh, king of the Egyptians. Desired by the unchaste queen, but refusing to comply, he was instead denounced by her and cast into prison by the king. There, by interpreting dreams for certain persons correctly, he showed the power of his spirit. Meanwhile the king too dreams certain terrible things. Joseph was brought out to him, because, when summoned, he was able to explain them, having given proof of this in prison; and he opens the dream to the king: that those seven very fat and sleek cows signified the plenty of as many years, and the seven after them, likewise starved, foretold the want of the seven years following. So he advises laying up stores out of the earlier plenty against the famine to come. The king believed him; the outcome proved him prudent, holy, and always indispensable. So Pharaoh set him over all Egypt, to gather in the grain and afterwards to manage it. Him they called Serapis from the headdress with which his head was adorned; the bushel-shaped figure of this headdress seals the memory of his grain-gathering, and the ears of grain with which it is marked round about show that the care of the crops rested on his head. For this reason too they placed under his right hand the dog, which they assign to the underworld, because the Egyptians were held under his hand and care. And they join to him Pharia, whom the derivation of her name shows to be the daughter of king Pharaoh. For at that time Pharaoh, among his other honors and rewards, had also given him his daughter in marriage. But since they had undertaken to worship both beasts and men, they combined both faces into one Anubis, in whom one might rather see the proofs of its own nature and condition which that quarrelsome nation had consecrated: rebellious toward its own kings, abject before foreigners, and indeed a slave itself to a dog's gluttony and filth. ### Scripture references - Gen 37:28: allusion, high confidence - Gen 39:7–20: allusion, high confidence - Gen 41:1–45: allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The identification of Serapis with Joseph is Tertullian's own euhemerist conjecture. The story follows Gen 37, 39, and 41, but differs in details: Genesis has the wife of Potiphar, not a queen, and gives Joseph Asenath, daughter of the priest of On (Gen 41:45), not a daughter of Pharaoh. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/8/). ## To the Nations 2.9 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/9/ - Source: Oehler 1:367–372 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tertullian mocks Varro's classes of Roman gods and the deified Romans, Aeneas the deserter, Romulus the fratricide, and others, who were worth less than many ordinary people never deified. ### Latin text Haec secundum tripertitam dispositionem Varronis divinitatis aut notiora aut insigniora digessimus, ut possit iam videri satis responsum de physico genere, de poëtico, de gentili. Sed quoniam omnis substitutio non iam philosophorum nec poëtarum nec populorum, a quibus tradita est, sed dominantium Romanorum, a quibus occupata est, a quibus auctoritatem sibi extruxit, alia iam nobis ineunda est humani erroris latitudo, immo silva caedenda, quae undique conceptis superstitionum seminibus vitii pueritatem obumbravit. Sed et Romanorum deos Varro trifariam disposuit in certos, incertos et electos. Tantam vanitatem! Quid enim erat illis cum incertis, si certos habebant? Nisi si Attico stupori recipere voluerunt. Nam et Athenis ara est inscripta: IGNOTIS DEIS. Colit ergo quis quod ignorat? Tum si certos habebant, contenti esse debuerunt, nec electos desiderare. In quo etiam inreligiosi deprehenduntur. Si enim dei ut bulbi seliguntur, qui non seliguntur improbi pronuntiantur. Nos vero bifariam Romanorum deos recognoscimus communes et proprios, id est quos cum omnibus habent et quos ipsi sunt commenti. Et numquid hi sunt publici et adventicii dicti? Hoc enim arae docent, adventiciorum ad fanum Carnae, publicorum in Palatio. Quare cum communes dei quam in physico quam in mythico comprehendantur, actum est iam de istis. Speciebus de propriis dicere iam libet. De Romanis stupeamus tertium illud genus hostilium deorum, propterea quod nulla gens alia tantum sibi superstitionis invenerit. Ceteros in duas species dirigimus, alios de hominibus assumptos, alios modo alio conceptos. Igitur quoniam idem illis color suppetit consecrationis mortuorum, tanquam ob merita vitae, eandem et nos responsionem opponamus necesse est, neminem ex his quoque tanti fuisse. Patrem diligentem Aenean crediderunt, militem numquam gloriosum, lapide debilitatum. Quod telum quantum volgare, atque caninum, tanto ignobile volnus! Sed et proditor patriae Aeneas invenitur, tam Aeneas quam Antenor. Ac si hoc verum nolunt, Aeneas certe patria flagrante dereliquit socios, feminae Punicae subiciendus, quae maritum Hasdrubalem Aeneae timiditate miti supplicantem hosti non comitata raptis secum filiis formam et patrem sibi habere non in fugam sapit, sed in ignes ardentis Carthaginis ut in amplexus patriae pereuntis incubuit. Pius Aeneas ob unicum puerum et decrepitum senem Priamo et Astyanacte destitutis? Atquin Romanis magis detestandus, qui pro salute principum et domus eorum adversus liberos et coniuges et omne pignus suum deierant. Consecrant filium Veneris, et hoc Volcanus sciens patitur et Iuno concedit. Filii si pietate parentum in caelo sedent, cur non potius Argivi iuvenes dei habiti, quod matrem, ne in sacris piaculum committeret, plus quam humano more iugales provexerunt? Cur non magis dea, quae magis pia, illa filia patris in carcere fame defecti uberibus suis educatrix? Quid aliud Aeneae gloriosum, nisi quod proelio Laurentino nusquam comparuit? Rursus forsitan solito more quasi desertor e proelio fugerit. Romulus aeque post mortem deus. Si quia urbem condidit? Cur non alii usque in feminas urbium auctores? Sane Romulus et fratrem interfecit et alienas virgines dolo rapuit. Ideo deus, ideo Quirinus est, quia tunc parentibus quiritatum est per illum. Quid Sterculus meruit ad divinitatem? Si agros stercoribus iuvando diligens fuit, plus fimi Augias conferebat. Si Faunus Pici filius in ius agitabatur mente ictus, curari cum magis quam consecrari decebat. Si Fauni filia pudicitia praecellebat, ut ne conversaretur quidem inter viros, aut barbaria aut conscientia deformitatis aut rubore insaniae paternae, quanto dignior Bona Dea Penelopa, quae inter tot vilissimos amatores diversata obsessam castitatem tenere protexit? Est et Sanctus propter hospitalitatem a rege Plotio fanum consecutus: potuit et Vlixes de humanissimo Alcinoo unum amplius deum vobis contulisse. ### English translation (Claude) We have set out these more familiar or more notable forms of divinity according to Varro's threefold arrangement, so that enough may now seem to have been answered about the natural, the poetic, and the national kind. But since the whole substitution now belongs no longer to the philosophers, the poets, or the peoples, by whom it was handed down, but to the ruling Romans, by whom it was taken over and on whom it has built up its authority, we must now enter another breadth of human error, or rather cut down a forest which, with seeds of superstition sown on every side, has overshadowed the childishness of vice. Varro divided the gods of the Romans too into three classes: certain, uncertain, and select. What vanity! For what did they want with uncertain gods, if they had certain ones? Unless they wished to take in the Athenian stupidity; for at Athens too there is an altar inscribed: TO UNKNOWN GODS. Does anyone, then, worship what he does not know? Again, if they had certain gods, they ought to have been content and not have wanted select ones. In this they are even found irreligious. For if gods are picked out like onions, those not picked are declared worthless. We, however, recognize the gods of the Romans in two classes, common and proper: that is, those they share with everyone, and those they themselves devised. And are not these called public and foreign? The altars teach this: that of the foreign gods at the shrine of Carna, that of the public gods on the Palatine. So, since the common gods are included in both the natural and the mythical kind, we have already done with them. Now I would speak of the particular kinds. Let us marvel at that third class of the Romans, the gods of their enemies, since no other nation has found so much superstition for itself. The rest we arrange in two classes: some taken from among men, others conceived in another way. So, since they have the same pretext for the consecration of the dead, as if for the merits of their lives, we too must set against them the same answer: that none of these either was worth so much. They believed Aeneas a devoted father, a soldier never glorious, disabled by a stone. How common a weapon, fit for dogs, and how ignoble a wound! But Aeneas is also found to be a traitor to his country, Aeneas as much as Antenor. And if they will not have this be true, Aeneas at least deserted his comrades while his country was burning, to be put to shame by a Punic woman, who, when her husband Hasdrubal, with the timidity of Aeneas, was supplicating the enemy, did not go with him, but, taking her children with her … threw herself, not into flight, but into the fires of burning Carthage, as into the embrace of her dying country. “Pious” Aeneas, for the sake of one boy and a decrepit old man, abandoning Priam and Astyanax? Yet he ought to be the more detested by the Romans, who swear for the safety of the emperors and their house over their own children and wives and every pledge they have. They deify the son of Venus, and Vulcan knowingly puts up with it, and Juno allows it. If sons sit in heaven for piety toward their parents, why were not rather the Argive youths held to be gods, who, lest their mother commit a sacrilege in the rites, drew her themselves in the yoke, beyond the manner of men? Why is not she rather a goddess, who was more pious, that daughter who nourished at her own breasts her father wasting away from hunger in prison? What else was glorious about Aeneas, except that he appeared nowhere in the battle at Laurentum? Perhaps, in his usual fashion, he fled from the battle again as a deserter. Romulus likewise became a god after death. If because he founded a city, why not others too, even women, founders of cities? Romulus, to be sure, killed his brother and carried off other people's maidens by a trick. That is why he is a god, why he is Quirinus: because then the parents raised their cries (quiritatum est) on his account. What did Sterculus do to deserve divinity? If he was diligent in helping the fields with dung, Augeas contributed more manure. If Faunus, the son of Picus, was dragged into court because his mind was deranged, it was more fitting to cure him than to deify him. If the daughter of Faunus excelled in chastity so that she did not even mix among men, whether from boorishness, or from consciousness of her ugliness, or from shame at her father's madness, how much worthier a Good Goddess was Penelope, who, living among so many most worthless suitors, tenderly guarded her besieged chastity? There is also Sanctus, who obtained a shrine from king Plotius for his hospitality: Ulysses too could have given you one more god from the most humane Alcinous. ### Scripture references - Acts 17:23: allusion, high confidence ### Extrabiblical texts - Herodotus, Hist. 1.31 (Herodotus, Histories): allusion, medium confidence ### Translation notes - The altar “to unknown gods” recalls Acts 17:23, where Paul cites an altar to an unknown god. The clause raptis secum filiis formam et patrem sibi habere non in fugam sapit is corrupt and is marked “…”. The Argive youths are Cleobis and Biton (Herodotus 1.31); the daughter nursing her father in prison is the story of Roman Charity (Valerius Maximus 5.4.7). “Quiritatum est” is a pun on Quirinus. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.9 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/9/). ## To the Nations 2.10 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/10/ - Source: Oehler 1:372–373 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tertullian retells the tale of Larentina, a harlot won by Hercules at dice and later deified, to show how cheaply the Romans hand out divinity. ### Latin text Ad foediora festino. Non puduit auctores vestros de Larentina palam facere. Scortum haec meritorium fuit, sive dum Romuli nutrix et ideo lupa quia scortum, sive dum Herculis amica est, et iam mortui Herculis, id est iam dei. Nam ferunt aedituum eius solum forte in aede calculis ludentem ut sibi conlusorem, quem non habebat, repraesentaret, una manu Herculis nomine, alia ex sua persona lusum inisse, si ipse vicisset, coenulam et scortulum ex stipibus Herculis sumeret, si vero Hercules, id est manus altera, eadem Herculi exhiberet. Vicit manus Herculis. Id quoque potuit duodecim titulis eius adscribi. Aedituus coenam Herculi dependit, scortum Larentinam conducit; coenat ignis, qui solvit ipsius Herculis corpus, et omnia ara consumpsit. Larentina in aede sola dormit et mulier de lenonio ludo iactitat se somniis Herculi functam, et potuit, dum animo contemplatur, somnio pati. Eam de aede progredientem mane primo quidam adulescens, tertius quod aiunt Hercules, concupiscit, ad se invitat. Illa obsequitur, memor commodo fore id dictum sibi ab Hercule, utique impetrat, ut legitimo connubio commisceantur (non-enim impune licuit cum dei scorto rem habuisse); coniux heredem quoque scribit. Mox illa prope mortem populo Romano legavit quem per Herculem fuerat insecuta agrum satis amplum. Hinc quaesivit divinitatem et filiabus suis, quas et ipsas heredes instituere debuit divina Larentina. Romanorum numina dignitate eius aucta. Nempe sola de tot uxoribus Herculis cara, sola enim dives, longeque adeo felicior Cerere, quae mortuo placuit. Tot exemplis et nominibus apud vos quis non deus affirmari potuit? Quis denique Antinoo controversiam divinitatis agitavit? Quo decorior Ganymedes aut carior suo amatori? Patet apud vos mortuis caelum. Viam ab inferis ad astra subigitis. Passim scorta ascendunt, ne multum putetis vos praestare regibus vestris. ### English translation (Claude) I hasten to fouler things. Your authors were not ashamed to publish the story of Larentina. She was a hired harlot, whether as the nurse of Romulus, and so called a she-wolf because she was a harlot, or as the mistress of Hercules, and of Hercules already dead, that is, already a god. For they say that his temple-keeper, happening to be alone in the temple playing at draughts, to give himself the partner he did not have, began the game with one hand in Hercules' name and the other in his own person: if he himself won, he would take a little dinner and a little harlot from Hercules' offerings; but if Hercules, that is, the other hand, won, he would provide the same for Hercules. Hercules' hand won. That too could have been added to his twelve labors! The temple-keeper paid the dinner to Hercules and hired the harlot Larentina; the fire, which had dissolved Hercules' own body, dined, and consumed everything on the altar. Larentina slept alone in the temple, and the woman from the brothel's sport boasted that she had served Hercules in her dreams; and she could well have experienced in a dream what she was contemplating in her mind. As she came out of the temple at first light, a certain young man, a third Hercules, as they say, desired her and invited her home. She complied, remembering that Hercules had told her it would be to her advantage; indeed she obtained that they be joined in lawful marriage (for it was not permitted with impunity to have had dealings with a god's harlot); her husband also wrote her down as his heir. Soon afterwards, near death, she bequeathed to the Roman people the fairly large estate which she had gained through Hercules. Thereby she won divinity, and for her daughters too, whom the divine Larentina ought also to have made her heirs. The deities of the Romans were enhanced by her dignity! Of all the many wives of Hercules she alone was dear to him, for she alone was rich; and so she was far more fortunate than Ceres, who pleased a dead man. With so many examples and names among you, who could not be declared a god? Who, in the end, raised any dispute about Antinous's divinity? Was Ganymede more comely, or dearer to his lover? Heaven lies open to the dead among you. You force a road from the underworld to the stars. Harlots go up everywhere, so do not think you do much for your kings. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/10/). ## To the Nations 2.11 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/11/ - Source: Oehler 1:373–377 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tertullian lists the minor Roman deities assigned to every stage of conception, birth, childhood, and marriage, including indecent wedding gods, to show the absurdity of such worship. ### Latin text Nec estis contenti eos deos asseverare qui visi retro, auditi contrectatique sunt, quorum effigies descriptae, negotia digesta, memoria propagata, umbras nescio quas incorporales, inanimales, et nomina de rebus efflagitant caelo et sanciunt, dividentes omnem statum hominis singulis potestatibus ab ipso quidem uteri conceptu, ut sit deus Consevius quidam, qui consationibus concubitalibus praesit, et Fluviona, quae infantem in utero retineat, hinc Vitumnus et Sentinus, per quem viviscat infans et sentiat primum, dehinc Diespiter, qui puerum perducat ad partum. Cum primum pariebant, et Candelifera, quoniam ad candelae lumina pariebant, et quae aliae deae sunt ab officiis partus dictae. Perverse natos adiuvandi Postvertae, recte natos Prosae Carmentis esse provinciam voluerunt. Deus est dictus et ab effatu Farinus et aliis a loquendo Locutius. Adest oculum gravem ad cavendum sumministratque quietem Cunina. Est educatrix et Levana et una Rumina. Mirum infantum sordibus eluendis deos non esse provisos. Exinde et primi cibi sumendi potionisque capiendae Potina et Edula, et statuendi infantis Statina. Adeundi Adeona, ab abeundo Abeona est. Domiducam et habent, et deam Mentem, quae faciat mentem bonam aeque et malam, item voluntatis Volumnum Voletamque. Habent et Paventinam pavoris, spei Veniliam, voluptatis Volupiam, praestantiae Praestitiam, aeque ab actu Peragenorem, a consiliis Consum, Iuventam novorum togatorum, virorum iam Fortuna Barbata. Si de nuptialibus disseram, Afferenda est ab afferendis dotibus ordinate, sed sunt, pro pudor! et Mutunus et Tutunus et dea Pertunda et Subigus et Prema dea et Perfica. Parcite dei impudentes! Luctantibus sponsis nemo intervenit. Ipsi, quorum votum est, foris gaudentes erubescunt. ### English translation (Claude) Nor are you content to declare as gods those who were once seen, heard, and handled, whose likenesses have been portrayed, whose deeds are recorded and whose memory is handed down; you demand from heaven and ratify certain shades, bodiless, lifeless, names taken from things, dividing the whole course of human life among separate powers from the very conception in the womb. So there is a god Consevius, who presides over the sowing in intercourse, and Fluviona, who keeps the infant in the womb; then Vitumnus and Sentinus, through whom the infant first lives and feels; then Diespiter, who brings the child through to birth. When women began to give birth, there is Candelifera too, since they gave birth by candlelight, and other goddesses named from the duties of childbirth. They made it the province of Postverta to help those born the wrong way, and of Prosa Carmentis those born the right way. A god was named Farinus from speaking out, and by others Locutius from talking. Cunina stands by to ward off the evil eye and supplies rest. Levana too is a nurse, and Rumina with her. It is a wonder that no gods have been provided for washing off infants' filth. Next, for taking the first food and drink, Potina and Edula; for making the infant stand, Statina. For going to, Adeona; from going away, Abeona. They also have Domiduca, and the goddess Mens, who makes the mind good, and likewise bad; also Volumnus and Voleta, of the will. They also have Paventina, of fear; Venilia, of hope; Volupia, of pleasure; Praestitia, of excellence; likewise Peragenor, from doing; Consus, from counsels; Iuventa, of youths newly in the toga; and, for grown men, Bearded Fortune. If I should discuss the wedding gods, Afferenda, properly, is from the bringing of dowries; but there are also, for shame, Mutunus and Tutunus, and the goddess Pertunda, and Subigus, and the goddess Prema, and Perfica. Spare us, shameless gods! No one intrudes on struggling bridegrooms. Even those whose wish it is blush while they rejoice outside. ### Translation notes - The names come from Varro's lists of the Roman di certi, as preserved also in Augustine, City of God 4.11 and 6.9. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.11 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/11/). ## To the Nations 2.12 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/12/ - Source: Oehler 1:377–382 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Tracing the gods to their origin in Saturn, Tertullian ridicules the myths of his birth and the allegory of Saturn as time, and argues from history and the Sibyl that Saturn and his line were men. ### Latin text Et quonam usque deos edam, quia disserendum quales deos receperitis? Quantum vobis erubescendum? Rideam vanitatem an exprobrem caecitatem est admodum incertum. Nam quot deos et quos utique producam? maiores an et minores? veteres an et novicios? mares an et feminas? caelibes an et lecto iunctos? artifices an et inertes? rusticos an et urbanos? cives an et peregrinos? Tot enim familiae, tot nationes census bona fide quaerunt, ut dispici et distingui describique non possint. At quanto diffusa res est, tanto substringenda nobis erit, et ideo qui in ista specie unum tuemur propositum demonstrandi illos omnes homines fuisse (non quidem ut cognoscatis, nam quasi obliti agitis), conpendium ab ipsa dispiciendi ratione sumamus, originem generis illorum retractando. Origo enim totius posteritatis. Ea origo deorum vestrorum Saturno, ut opinor, signatur. Neque enim si Varro antiquissimos deos Iovem, Iunonem et Minervam refert, nobis excidisse debet omnem patrem filiis antiquiorem, tam Saturnum Iove quam Caelum Saturno; de Caelo enim et Terra Saturnus. Et tamen Caeli et Terrae originem omitto. Erant undeunde caelibes diu et orbi antequam mariti et parentes. Longo scilicet aevo crescendum illis fuit ad tantam proceritatem. Denique simul coepit et Caelo vox insolescere et ubera Terrae lapilliscere; faciunt nuptias inter se. Credo, aut Caelum descendit ad sponsam, aut Terra ascendit ad sponsum. Concepit tamen Terra de Caelo et peperit illa acto anno Saturnum, mira ratione. Utri parentum similis? Sed et pepererit, certe ante Saturnum neminem procreaverunt, nec nisi unam postea Opem; exinde de subole cessatum est. Nam Saturnus quidem Caelum castravit dormientem. Legimus Caelum genere masculino. Ceterum quomodo pater nisi masculinus? Sed et unde castrandum? Falx illi. Hoc scilicet aevo? Nondum enim Vulcanus artifex ferri. Terra vero orbata distulit, etsi adhuc iuvenili aetate, alii nubere. Sed nec habebat Caelum alium. Quid tamen nisi illam Mare amplectitur? Sed olet salsuginem; dulcibus est aquis assueta. Ita Saturnus unicus masculus Caeli atque Terrae. Sed ipse pubescens sorori suae iungitur. Nondum leges quae incesta prohiberent, nec quae parricidium plecterent. Itaque filios virili sexu devorabat; melius ipse quam lupi, si exponeret. Timebat scilicet, ne quis illorum de paterna falce didicisset. Nato mox et abalienato Iove saxum infantis ementiti deglutivit. Hoc ingenio diu securus tandem filio quem non digesserat in tenebris adulto oppressus regnoque privatus est. Hunc vobis patriarcham deorum Caelum et Terra poëtis obstetricantibus procreaverunt. Sed eleganter quidam sibi videntur physiologice per allegoricam argumentationem de Saturno interpretari tempus esse, et ideo Caelum et Terram parentes ut et ipsos origini nullos, et ideo falcatum quia tempore omnia dirimantur, et ideo voratorem suorum quod omnia ex se edita in se ipsum consumat. Nominis quoque testimonium compellant: Κρόνον esse dictum Graece ut Χρόνον. Aeque Latini vocabuli a sationibus rationem deducunt qui eum procreatorem coniectantur, per eum seminalia caeli in terram deferri. Opem adiungunt, quod opem vivendi semina conferant, tum et quod opere semina evadant. Quae, oro, huius translatio nempe velim exponas. Aut Saturnus fuit, aut tempus. Quomodo Saturnus, si tempus? si ille, quomodo tempus? Utrumque enim non potes corporale in eo uno existimare. Quid autem prohibuit tempus coli in sua qualitate? quid corpus hominis aut fabulam hominis in sua specie, non in tempore coli? Quid sibi vult intellectio ista, nisi foedas materias mentitis argumentationibus colorare? Saturnum neque ideo, quia dicis hominem, vis tempus, aut dum eum tempus facis, iam nec hominem vis fuisse. Plane vester deus omnino Saturnus in terris humanae qualitatis apud veteres memorias recensetur. Potest incorporaliter fingi quodvis quod non merit omnino, vacat fingendi locus ubi veritas est. Cum autem Saturnum constat vixisse, frustra demutatis; non conceditur vobis quem non negabitis fuisse hominem, qui neque deus neque tempus defendi potest. Exstat apud litteras vestras usquequaque Saturni census. Legimus apud Cassium Severum, apud Cornelios Nepotem et Tacitum, apud Graecos quoque Diodorum, quive alii antiquitatum canos collegerunt. Nec fideliora vestigia eius quam in ipsa Italia signata sunt. Nam post plurimas terras et Attica hospitia Italiae, vel ut tunc vocabatur, Oenotriae consedit, exceptus ab Iano sive Iane, ut Salii vocant. Mons quem coluerat, Saturnius dictus, urbs quam depalaverat, Saturnia usque nunc est; tota denique Italia de Saturno vocabatur. Tali teste terra, quae nunc dominatur orbi, etiamsi de origine Saturni dubitatur, de actu tamen constat hominem illum fuisse. Ita si homo Saturnus, proculdubio de homine, immo quia homo, non utique de Caelo atque Terra, sed cui parentes ignoti, quibusdam facile fuit illum deorum filium dici, quorum possunt omnes videri. Quis enim non caelum ac terram patrem ac matrem venerationis gratia appellet? An de consuetudine humana, qua ignoti quique ex inopinato apparentes de caelo advenisse dicuntur? Proinde quia venisset peregrinus, repentino ubique inolevit caelitem dici. Nam et volgo generis incertos terrae filios iactitamus. Nihil allego de statu antiquitatis, qua ita rudes tunc agebantur et oculi et mentes hominum, ut cuiuslibet novi viri aspectu quasi divino commoverentur, nedum et regis, et quidem primi. Adhuc de Saturno immorabor quo et ceteris compendium praestruam, satiata primordiorum disputatione, nec praetermittam potiora testimonia divinarum litterarum, quibus fides pro antiquitate superior debetur. Ante enim Sibylla quam omnis litteratura extitit, illa scilicet Sibylla veri vera vates de cuius vocabulo daemoniorum vatibus induistis. Ea senario versu in hunc sensum de Saturni prosapia et rebus eius exponit: Decima, inquit, genitura hominum ex quo cataclysmus prioribus accidit, regnavit Saturnus et Titan et Iapetus, Terrae et Caeli fortissimi filii. Si qua ergo vel vestris scriptoribus litterisve vestris superioribus, sed idcirco magis proximis quoniam illius aetatis, fides adiacet, satis de Saturno et prosapia eius probatum est homines fuisse. Tenemus compendium, in ceteros originis praescriptionem, ne per singulos evagemur. Qualitas posteritatis a principibus generis ostenditur, mortalia de mortalibus, terrena de terrenis; gradus ad gradus comparantur, nuptiae, conceptus, natales cucurrerunt, patriae, sedes, regna, monumenta liquent. Igitur qui natos non possunt negare, mortuos credant, qui mortuos confitentur, deos non putent. ### English translation (Claude) And how far am I to go in bringing out the gods, since we must discuss what kind of gods you have received? How much you ought to blush! Whether I should laugh at your vanity or reproach your blindness is quite uncertain. For how many gods shall I bring forward, and which? The greater, or the lesser too? The old, or the new too? Male, or female too? Unmarried, or joined in wedlock too? Skilled, or idle too? Rustic, or urban too? Citizens, or foreigners too? For so many families and so many nations are seeking in good faith to be enrolled that they cannot be surveyed, distinguished, and described. But the more widespread the matter is, the more tightly we must draw it in; and so, since in this class we keep to one aim, to show that they were all men (not indeed so that you may learn it, for you behave as though you had forgotten it), let us take a shortcut from the very method of inquiry, by going back over the origin of their race. For the origin determines all the posterity. That origin of your gods is marked, I think, by Saturn. For even if Varro reports Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva as the most ancient gods, it should not escape us that every father is older than his sons, Saturn than Jupiter, as Heaven than Saturn; for Saturn is from Heaven and Earth. And yet I pass over the origin of Heaven and Earth. From wherever they came, they were for a long time unmarried and childless before they became husband and parents. They had, of course, to grow for a long age to reach such great stature. At length, as soon as Heaven's voice began to break and Earth's breasts to harden, they made a marriage between them. I suppose either Heaven came down to his bride or Earth went up to her groom. At any rate Earth conceived by Heaven and, when the year was out, bore Saturn, in a marvelous way. Which parent did he resemble? But even if she bore him, certainly they begot no one before Saturn, and afterwards only Ops; after that there was no more offspring. For Saturn castrated Heaven as he slept. We read Caelum as masculine; and how could he be a father unless masculine? But with what was he castrated? With a sickle. In that age? For Vulcan was not yet a smith of iron. Earth, bereaved, though still of youthful age, put off marrying another. But then there was no other Heaven for her. What, though, if not the Sea, embraces her? But he smells of brine; she is used to fresh waters. So Saturn was the only male child of Heaven and Earth. But when he reached puberty, he was joined to his sister. There were not yet laws to forbid incest, nor to punish parricide. So he devoured his male children; better that he should do it himself than the wolves, if he exposed them. He was afraid, no doubt, that one of them might have learned the use of his father's sickle. When Jupiter was born and soon carried off, he swallowed a stone in place of the infant. Secure for a long while by this device, he was at last overpowered by a son he had not digested, who had grown up in hiding, and he was deprived of his kingdom. This is the patriarch of the gods whom Heaven and Earth begot for you, with the poets for midwives. But some think themselves elegant in interpreting Saturn physically, by allegorical argument, as time: that Heaven and Earth are his parents because they too have no origin; that he bears a sickle because all things are cut off by time; that he devours his own because time consumes in itself everything produced from itself. They also press the testimony of the name: that he is called Kronos in Greek as being Chronos, “time.” Likewise, those who conjecture him to be a begetter derive the Latin name from sowings (sationes), since through him the seeds of heaven are brought down to earth. They join Ops to him, because seeds bestow the means (ops) of life, and also because seeds come up by work (opus). Explain to me, I pray, what this transference means. Either he was Saturn or he was time. How Saturn, if time? If Saturn, how time? For you cannot think both are bodily in one and the same being. What prevented time from being worshipped in its own character? What prevented the body of a man, or the fable of a man, from being worshipped in its own form and not as time? What does this interpretation aim at, except to color foul matters with false arguments? You do not want Saturn to be time because you call him a man; or, while you make him time, you no longer want him to have been a man. Plainly your god Saturn is recorded in the ancient memorials as a being of human character on earth. Anything whatever that never existed can be imagined as bodiless; there is no room for imagining where there is truth. But since it is established that Saturn lived, you transform him in vain; he whom you will not deny was a man is not conceded to you as either god or time, for he can be defended as neither. The record of Saturn is found everywhere in your literature. We read of him in Cassius Severus, in Cornelius Nepos and Tacitus, and among the Greeks in Diodorus and the others who have collected the hoary tales of antiquity. Nor are his traces marked more faithfully anywhere than in Italy itself. For after very many lands and a sojourn in Attica, he settled in Italy, or Oenotria as it was then called, received by Janus, or Janes as the Salii call him. The hill he had inhabited was called Saturnian; the city he had marked out is Saturnia to this day; indeed all Italy was once called after Saturn. On the witness of such a land, the land that now rules the world, even if there is doubt about Saturn's origin, it is established from his deeds that he was a man. So if Saturn was a man, he was without doubt born of a man; indeed, because he was a man, he was surely not born of Heaven and Earth; but since his parents were unknown, it was easy for some to call him the son of those whose sons all may seem to be. For who would not call heaven and earth father and mother out of veneration? Or did it come from the human custom by which unknown persons who appear unexpectedly are said to have come from heaven? So, because he had come as a stranger, it became established everywhere that he should be called heaven-sent, for he had appeared suddenly. For we also commonly call people of uncertain birth sons of earth. I say nothing of the state of antiquity, when men's eyes and minds were so rude that they were moved at the sight of any new man as at something divine, still more at a king, and indeed the first. I will dwell a little longer on Saturn, so as to lay down a shortcut for the others too, now that I have had enough of the dispute about origins; and I will not pass over the weightier testimonies of the divine writings, to which greater credit is owed for their antiquity. For the Sibyl existed before all literature: that Sibyl, of course, the true prophetess of the truth, whose name you have put on the prophets of the demons. She, in six-foot verse, sets forth to this effect the lineage of Saturn and his deeds: “In the tenth generation of men,” she says, “since the flood befell the former ones, Saturn and Titan and Iapetus reigned, the mightiest sons of Earth and Heaven.” If, then, any credit attaches either to your own writers or to your earlier literature, which is all the nearer to the facts because it belongs to that age, it has been proved enough about Saturn and his lineage that they were men. We hold a shortcut, a prescription from origin against the rest, so as not to wander through them one by one. The character of the posterity is shown by the founders of the race: mortal from mortal, earthly from earthly; stage is matched to stage; marriages, conceptions, and births have run their course; their countries, seats, kingdoms, and monuments are plain to see. So let those who cannot deny that they were born believe that they died; and let those who confess that they died not think them gods. ### Extrabiblical texts - Sib. Or. 3.108–110 (Sibylline Oracles): quotation, medium confidence - Tacitus, Hist. 5.2 (Tacitus): allusion, low confidence ### Translation notes - The Sibyl's verses correspond to Sibylline Oracles 3.108–110; Tertullian calls them senarii (six-foot verses, i.e. hexameters). Tacitus's account of Saturn is probably Histories 5.2 (Saturn driven out by Jupiter). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.12 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/12/). ## To the Nations 2.13 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/13/ - Source: Oehler 1:382–386 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: If men became gods after death, someone higher must have made them so, and no merit can explain it, since the stories of Saturn and Jupiter are full of incest, violence, and lust. ### Latin text Sed enim manifestis vis sua adsistit. Quos a primordio possunt non asserere nisi homines fuisse, recipiunt in divinitatem, affirmando illos post mortem deos factos, ut Varro, et qui cum eo somniaverunt. Hic igitur consisto: si sunt allecti dei vestri in hoc nomen et numen, ut in ordinem senatorium, sapientia vestra esse concedatis iam necesse est aliquem summum dominatorem habentem allegandi potestatem et quasi Caesarem; neque quisquam aliis praestare potest de quo non ipse dominetur. Ceterum si potuerunt deos sese facere post mortem, age, quid deterioris condicionis ab initio esse voluerunt? Aut si nemo est qui deos fecerit, quomodo facti dicentur qui non nisi ab alio fieri potuissent? Ita nullus datur vobis renuendi locus esse mancipem quendam divinitatis. Perspiciamus itaque causas allegandae mortalitatis in caelum. Harum duplicem rationem credo proferetis. Aut enim ille quisquis id praestans facit, ut habeat vel amminicula vel munimenta vel etiam ornamenta fastigii sui, aut meritorum necessitas, conferens dignis quibusque. Aliud quid suspicare non datur. Nemo quid largiendo alicui aut non sua aut illius causa facit. Sed neque hoc potest competere numini, ut est tanta ei potestas, ut scilicet deos faciat, ut sic tanta humanitas inrogetur, quia egeat opera vel adiumento quorundam, et quidem mortuorum, quod mirum, cum ab initio sibi immortales instituere potuisset. Nec diutius de his argumentatus conquiret qui humana divinis comparavit. Sane quae posterior opinio est, discuti debet, si deus reminiscentia meritorum divinitatem tribuerit. Sed si ita est attributa, si pristinis viris caelum propter sua merita patuit, recogitandum, quod exinde nemo dignus eo honore fuit. Nisi si capere iam locus non potest. Tantis videlicet privilegiis caelestia meruerit antiquitas. Ergo an meruerit retractemus. Qui ait meruisse, proponat ipsius merita. Si quid in cunabulis admissa temporalitatis valent ad suffragium divinitatis, incesto commaculatos Opem et Saturnum fratres recepistis. Furtivus infans vester Iuppiter indignus et tecto et ubere humano, meritoque in Creta proles tam mala manebat. Adultus denique qualemcunque genitorem regno privat felicissimum, regem aurei scilicet saeculi, sub quo laboris, inopiae nescia laetaque pax quiescebat, sub quo, Nulli subigebant arva coloni; ipsaque omnia tellus nullo poscente ferebat. Sed oderat patrem incestum eius et avi quondam castratorem. Ecce autem et ipse cum sorore miscetur, ut huic primum illud dictum putem: Τοῦ πατρὸς τὸ παιδίον. Tam pius pater quam pius filius. Si iustis etiam tunc legibus ageretur, in duos culleos dividi Iovem decuit. Post haec quid dubitaret libidine ab incesto corroborata in leviora, id est adulteria se et stupra diffundere? De quo poëtica sic lusitavit quomodo fere, quando de fugitivo palam factum, solemus et operam eius percontationi alienae abusui nundinare, modo in pretia luxuriae eum figurando, tamquam si bovem aut pretium bovis pensaverit, et imbrem pergulis immiserit aut aditum pecunia ruperit, modo in similitudines actuum ipsas, in aquilam qui rapuit, cycnum qui cantaverat. Adeo non fabulae istae sunt de fastidiosissimis foeditatibus atque summis flagitiis compositae? Aut forsitan non lasciviores inde evadant mores atque ingenia hominum? Quos quomodo daemones, malorum angelorum proles, emissa iam pridem a fide per incredulitatem et fabulas similes avertere studuerint, hic non est nobis extensius agendum. Si enim et regibus et principibus et proseminatoribus suis morata plebs eadem quidem non erat natura, alibi auctoritas exigebat similitudinem morum. Illorum vero quanto deterior qui non melior? Privato enim titulo Iovem Optimum vulgo appellatis, et est Vergilii Aequus Iuppiter. Omnes proinde incesti in suos, impudici in extraneos, impii, iniusti. Cui nullam insignem infamiam fabula reliquit, is deus fieri non fuit dignus. ### English translation (Claude) But the manifest has its own force to support it. Those whom they cannot assert to have been anything but men from the beginning, they receive into divinity, affirming that they became gods after death, as Varro does and those who dreamed with him. Here, then, I take my stand: if your gods were elected into this name and divinity as into the senatorial order, your wisdom must now grant that there is some supreme ruler with the power of election, a kind of Caesar; for no one can confer on others what he does not himself control. Besides, if they could make themselves gods after death, come, why did they wish to be of worse condition from the beginning? Or if there is no one who made them gods, how will they be said to have been made, who could have been made only by another? So you are given no room to deny that there is some owner of divinity. Let us, then, examine the reasons for electing mortality into heaven. I believe you will offer a twofold reason. Either whoever does this does it to have supports, or defenses, or even ornaments for his own eminence; or it is the requirement of deserts, bestowing it on all who are worthy. Nothing else can be supposed. No one, in granting something to another, acts except either for his own sake or for the other's. But it cannot befit the deity, having such great power as to make gods, to be charged with so much human weakness as to need the work or help of certain beings, and dead ones at that; which is strange, since he could have established immortals for himself from the beginning. Nor will anyone who has compared human things with divine need to argue about this any longer. Certainly the latter opinion must be examined: whether God bestowed divinity in remembrance of deserts. But if it was so bestowed, if heaven lay open to the men of old for their deserts, we must reflect that since then no one has been worthy of that honor. Unless the place can hold no more. Antiquity, no doubt, earned heaven by great privileges! So let us consider whether it earned it. Let him who says it did set forth its merits. If the offenses committed in the cradle of time count toward the vote for divinity, you have received Ops and Saturn, brother and sister, stained with incest. Your Jupiter, a stolen infant, unworthy both of a roof and of a human breast, rightly stayed in Crete, so bad an offspring. When grown up, he deprived his father, whatever sort of father he was, of a most happy kingdom: the king of the golden age, of course, under whom glad peace rested, knowing neither toil nor want, under whom “No farmers subdued the fields; the earth herself bore all things, with no one asking.” But he hated his father for his incest and as the one who had once castrated his grandfather. Yet see, he too couples with his sister, so that I would think that saying was first spoken of him: “Like father, like child.” As pious a father as a pious son! If even then things had been done under just laws, Jupiter ought to have been divided between two sacks. After this, why should he hesitate, with his lust hardened by incest, to pour himself out into lighter offenses, that is, adulteries and seductions? Poetry has made sport of him much as we do when a runaway slave is advertised, putting his doings up for sale for others to ask about and abuse: now figuring him in the prices of his lust, as if he had paid with an ox or the price of an ox, or had poured rain into a balcony, or broken in with money; now in the very likenesses of his acts, as an eagle because he carried off, as a swan because he had sung. Are not these fables composed of the most disgusting foulness and the worst of shameful deeds? Or perhaps men's morals and minds do not come away from them more wanton? How the demons, the offspring of the evil angels, sent out long ago, have striven by unbelief and fables like these to turn people away from the faith need not be treated at length here. For even if the common people were not of the same nature as their kings, princes, and forefathers, authority elsewhere demanded likeness of morals. But how much worse than those is one who is no better? By a special title you commonly call Jupiter “Best,” and Virgil has “Just Jupiter.” So all of them were incestuous toward their own, unchaste toward strangers, impious, unjust. Any to whom fable left no notable infamy was not considered worthy to become a god. ### Extrabiblical texts - 1 En. 15.8–12 (1 Enoch): allusion, low confidence - Virgil, Georg. 1.125–128 (Virgil): quotation, high confidence - Virgil, Aen. 6.129–130 (Virgil): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - The golden-age verse is Virgil, Georgics 1.125 and 1.128; “Just Jupiter” (aequus Iuppiter) is Aeneid 6.129. “Like father, like child” renders a Greek proverb. “Two sacks” refers to the Roman penalty for parricide (sewing into a sack). The demons as offspring of the fallen angels reflect the tradition of 1 Enoch 15. The sentence Si enim et regibus … similitudinem morum is compressed and the rendering approximate. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.13 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/13/). ## To the Nations 2.14 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/14/ - Source: Oehler 1:386–389 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Hercules, Aesculapius, and Theseus did nothing that ordinary men have not surpassed, and their vices and crimes make them unworthy of heaven. ### Latin text Sed quoniam alios seorsum volunt in divinitatem ab hominibus receptos, et distingui inter nativos et factos secundum Dionysium Stoicum, de ista quoque specie adiciam. De ipso quidem Hercule erit summa responsionis, an dignus caelo et divinitate; sic enim pro voluntate meritis addicunt divinitatem. Si ob virtutem, quod feras constanter confecerit, quid tam memorabile? Nonne ludo puniti, vel etiam ad munus dati arenariae vilitatis plurimas in unum, et quidem studiosiores bestias conficiunt? Si ob peragratum orbem, quantis et locupletibus dulcis libertas aut philosophis famulatoria mendicitas idem praestitit? Non meminerunt Asclepiaden Cynicum unica vaccula, cuius et dorso vehebatur et si quando ubere alebatur, orbem totum oculis subegisse? Si Hercules etiam ad inferos adiit, quis hoc nesciat, viam ad inferos omnibus patere? Si eum consecrastis ob caedes et pugnas plurimas, edidit multo maiorem numerum magnus ille Pompeius, maritimorum praedonum victor, ipsam qui nec Ostiam salvam reliquerant: et quot, quaeso, milia usque in unum angulum Byrsae Carthaginis a Scipione caesi fuere? Quo magis Scipio quam Hercules obtinendus divinitati deputatur. Adicite potius titulis Herculaneis stupra puellarum, uxorum, et fascias Omphales, et ob decori pueri amissionem turpiter desertam militiam Argonautarum. Adicite ad gloriam post turpitudinis notam etiam furias eius, adorate sagittas quae filios et uxorem interfecerunt. Qui tunc dignius rogo sese inrogasset prae dolore parricidiorum, qui uxoris ob lasciviam venenis circumventus magis meruit ut inhonesta morte moreretur, hunc vos de pyra in caelum sublevastis, illa facilitate qua et alium ignis ex divini vi confectum, qui pauca experientiae ingenia commentus dicebatur mortuos ad vitam recurasse. Is Apollinis filius, tam homo quam Iovis nepos, Saturni pronepos (vel potius spurius ut incerto patre, ut Argivus Socrates detulit, quippe expositum repertum, turpius Iove educatum, canino scilicet ubere), merito, id quod nemo negare potest, fulmine haustus est. Malus Iuppiter Optimus hic rursus est, impius in nepotem, invidus in artificem. Sedenim Pindarus meritum eius non occultavit: cupiditatem et avaritiam lucri in eo dicit vindicatam, qua quidem ille vivos ad mortem, non mortuos autem ad vitam praevaricatione venalis medicinae agebat. Dicitur etiam mater eius eodem casu obisse, meritoque quae tam periculosam mundo bestiam ediderat isdem quasi scalis ad caelum erupisse. Et tamen Athenienses scient eiusmodi deis sacrificare. Nam Aesculapio et matri inter mortuos parentant. Quasi non et ipsi Thesea suum adorent, merito deum. Quidni? Si conservatricem suam in litore peregrino dereliquit, eadem oblivione, immo amentia, quae patri causa mortis fuit? ### English translation (Claude) But since they hold that some were received into divinity separately from among men, and that a distinction should be made between gods born and gods made, according to Dionysius the Stoic, I will add something on this class too. The sum of my answer will concern Hercules himself: whether he was worthy of heaven and divinity; for so they assign divinity to merits at their pleasure. If for his valor, because he steadfastly slew wild beasts, what is so memorable in that? Do not criminals condemned to the gladiatorial school, or even men of the cheap sort given to the arena for a show, slay very many beasts at once, and fiercer ones at that? If for traveling over the world, how many rich men has sweet leisure, or philosophers a servile beggary, enabled to do the same? Do they not remember that Asclepiades the Cynic, with a single little cow, on whose back he rode and from whose udder he was sometimes fed, brought the whole world under his eyes? If Hercules also went down to the underworld, who does not know that the road to the underworld lies open to all? If you deified him for his many slaughters and battles, the great Pompey produced a much greater number, the conqueror of the pirates who had not even left Ostia safe; and how many thousands, pray, were cut down by Scipio right into one corner of the Byrsa of Carthage? So Scipio should more rightly be counted worthy of divinity than Hercules. Add rather to Hercules' titles his seductions of girls and wives, and the swaddling-bands of Omphale, and the expedition of the Argonauts shamefully deserted over the loss of a comely boy. Add to his glory, after the mark of disgrace, his fits of madness too; adore the arrows that killed his sons and his wife. He who would then more fittingly have put himself on the pyre in grief for the killing of his own, who, entrapped by poison through his wife's wantonness, rather deserved to die a dishonorable death: him you raised from the pyre to heaven, with the same ease as you raised another, destroyed by fire from the divine power, who, having devised a few ingenious experiments, was said to have restored the dead to life. He was the son of Apollo, as much a man as he was a grandson of Jupiter and great-grandson of Saturn (or rather illegitimate, being of uncertain father, as Socrates of Argos reported: exposed, found, and, more shamefully than Jupiter, reared, on a dog's udder no less); deservedly, as no one can deny, he was consumed by the thunderbolt. Here again your Jupiter “Best” is bad: impious toward his grandson, envious of the craftsman. But Pindar did not hide what he deserved: he says that his greed and avarice for gain were punished, by which he brought the living to death, not the dead to life, through the malpractice of a venal medicine. His mother too is said to have died by the same stroke, and rightly, since she who had borne so dangerous a beast into the world burst into heaven by the same ladder, as it were. And yet the Athenians know how to sacrifice to such gods: for they offer funeral rites to Aesculapius and his mother among the dead. As if they did not also adore their Theseus, a god deservedly! Why not? Since he abandoned his rescuer on a foreign shore, with the same forgetfulness, or rather madness, which caused his father's death. ### Extrabiblical texts - Pindar, Pyth. 3.54–58 (Pindar (odes and fragments)): allusion, high confidence ### Translation notes - Pindar's account of Asclepius punished for taking a fee to raise the dead is Pythian 3.54–58. The “comely boy” is Hylas; Omphale is the Lydian queen whom Hercules served in women's clothes; Theseus abandoned Ariadne on Naxos and forgot to change his sails, causing Aegeus's death. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.14 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/14/). ## To the Nations 2.15 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/15/ - Source: Oehler 1:389–391 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Pagans have set humans and animals among the stars and invented gods for sorrow, death, and every door, hinge, and slope, yet these things happen everywhere even where such gods are unknown. ### Latin text Longum foret recensere etiam de illis quos in sidera sepelistis et audaciter deis ministratis. Sic opinor digni de caelo Castores et Perseus et Erigona, quemadmodum et Iovis exoletus. Sed quid mirandum? etiam canes et scorpios et cancros in caelum transtulistis. Differo de his quos in oraculis colitis; habet testimonium hoc divini. Quid? et tristitiae deos arbitros esse voltis, ut sit Viduus, qui animam corpore viduet, quem intra muros cludi non admittendo damnastis, item Caeculus, qui oculos sensu exanimet, item Orbana, quae in orbitatem semina extinguat; et ipsius mortis dea est. Ut cetera transvolem, etiam locorum urbisve loca deos arbitramini, Ianum Patrem (et diva arquis est Iana). et montium septem Septemontium. Geniis eisdem illi faciunt qui in isdem locis aras vel aedes habent, praeterea aliis qui in alieno loco aut mercedibus habitant. Taceo Ascensum a scansione et Clivicolam a clivis; taceo deos Forculum a foribus et Cardeam a cardinibus et liminum Limentinum, sive qui alii inter vicinos apud vos numinum ianitorum adorantur. Quid enim magnum? cum et numina sua habeant in lupanaribus, in culinis et etiam in carcere? Innumeris itaque propriis caelum impletur his aliisque Romanorum deis, quibus totius vitae officia distribuuntur, taliter ut ceteris deis opus non sit. Immo cum privatim apud Romanos deputentur quos supra signavimus, nec facile foris cogniti, quomodo ea omnia quibus illos praeesse voluerunt in omni genere humano et in omni gente proveniunt ubi praedes eorum non modo honore, sed ipsa quoque notitia carent? ### English translation (Claude) It would take long to review also those whom you have buried among the stars and boldly assign as ministers to the gods. So, I suppose, the Castors, Perseus, and Erigone are worthy of heaven, just as Jupiter's catamite is. But why wonder? You have even transferred dogs and scorpions and crabs to heaven. I put off those whom you worship in oracles; that something divine is at work there is attested. What? You even want gods to be the arbiters of sorrow: Viduus, who widows the body of its soul, whom you condemned by not allowing him within the walls; likewise Caeculus, who deprives the eyes of sight; likewise Orbana, who extinguishes the seed in childlessness; and there is a goddess of death herself. To fly past the rest, you also regard as gods the spirits of places and of the city's districts: Father Janus (and there is a goddess Jana, of the arches), and Septimontius, of the seven hills. People make offerings to the same Genii who have altars or shrines in those same places, and besides to others who live in someone else's place or for rent. I say nothing of Ascensus, from climbing, and Clivicola, from slopes; I say nothing of the gods Forculus, from doors, and Cardea, from hinges, and Limentinus, of thresholds, or whatever other door-keeping deities are adored among you by the neighbors. For what great thing is that, when they have their own deities even in brothels, in kitchens, and even in prison? So heaven is filled with countless particular gods, these and other gods of the Romans, among whom the duties of all life are divided, in such a way that there is no need of the other gods. Indeed, since those we have noted above are reckoned as peculiar to the Romans and are not readily known abroad, how do all the things over which they have set them to preside come about throughout the human race and in every nation, where their guarantors lack not only honor but even recognition? ### Translation notes - The clause habet testimonium hoc divini is compressed; it probably refers to the fuller treatment of oracles and the demons behind them elsewhere (cf. Apology 22–23). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/15/). ## To the Nations 2.16 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/16/ - Source: Oehler 1:391–392 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Those who discovered crops or invented arts deserve no divinity, since the things they found already existed by the gift of the Creator, and later craftsmen have surpassed them. ### Latin text Sedenim quidam fructus et necessaria victui demonstraverunt. Quaeso vos, cum dicitis invenisse illos, nonne confitemini prius fuisse quae invenirentur? Cur ergo non auctorem potius honoratis, cuius haec dona sunt, sed auctorem transfertis in repertores? Priusquam qui invenisset, utique auctori gratias egit, utique illum deum sensit cuius vere est ministerium institutoris, a quo et ipse institutus est qui invenit et illud ipsum quod inveniretur. Ficum viridem Romae nemo noverat Africanam cum Cato senatui intulit, ut quo iam provincia hostilis esset, cui subigendae semper instabat, exprimeret. Cerasium Cn. Pompeius de Ponto primus Italiae provolgavit. Potuerunt mihi novorum apud Romanos pomorum inventores hi meruisse praeconium divinitatis. Tam vanum hoc quam etiam propter artium commenta deos haberi. Quibus si comparentur nostrae aetatis artifices, quanto dignius posteris quam prioribus consecratio competisset? Quaeso vos, an non omnibus iam artificiis antiquitas exolevit, usu quotidiano ubique instruente novitatem? Atque adeo quos ob artes sanctificatis, laeditis in ipsis artibus et provocatis in aemulis insuperatis. ### English translation (Claude) But some, they say, pointed out the crops and the necessities of life. I ask you: when you say that they discovered them, do you not confess that the things to be discovered existed beforehand? Why then do you not rather honor the author, whose gifts these are, instead of transferring the author's honor to the discoverers? Surely the discoverer himself, before anything else, gave thanks to the author; surely he recognized as God the one to whom the ministry of the founder truly belongs, by whom both the discoverer himself and the very thing to be discovered were established. No one at Rome knew the green African fig when Cato brought one before the senate, to show how near was the enemy province which he was always pressing them to subdue. Gnaeus Pompeius first spread the cherry from Pontus through Italy. These men, for all I care, might have earned the proclamation of divinity as the discoverers of new fruits among the Romans! It is as vain as holding men to be gods for the inventions of the arts. If the craftsmen of our own age were compared with them, how much more fittingly would consecration have belonged to the later than to the earlier! I ask you, has not antiquity become obsolete in all the crafts, as daily use everywhere supplies novelty? And so those whom you sanctify for the arts you injure in the arts themselves, and you provoke them with rivals who surpass them. ### Translation notes - Cato's fig is told in Pliny, Natural History 15.74–75; Lucullus, not Pompey, is usually credited with bringing the cherry from Pontus (Pliny 15.102). ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.16 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/16/). ## To the Nations 2.17 - URL: https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/17/ - Source: Oehler 1:392–395 - Translation: Claude (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 Summary: Rome's empire was not a reward for its religion, which it plundered in conquering others; the one God who orders the times gives and takes away kingdoms. ### Latin text Denique religionis vestrae tutoribus suis non negatis omnibus his quos deos antiquitas voluit, posteritas credidit, nobis superest adhuc illa Romanarum superstitionum praegrandis praesumptio, cui adversus vos, nationes, congredi habemus, propterea scilicet Romanos totius orbis dominos atque arbitros factos fuisse, quod officiis religionum meruerint dominare sic, ut parum absit, quin ipsis suis deis praevaleant. Nimirum Sterculus, et Mutunus, et Larentina provexit hoc imperium. Unus Romanorum destinatus a suis deis dominationi populus. Peregrinos enim non putem extraneo potius populo factum voluisse quam suo, ut fierent desertores et destitutores, immo proditores patrii soli, in quo nati, adulti, nobilitati sepultique sunt. Ita ne Iuppiter quidem Cretam suam Romanis fascibus concuti sineret, oblitus antrum illud Idaeum et aera Corybantia et nutricis suae illic iucundissimum odorem. Nonne omni Capitolio tumulum illum suum praeposuisset, ut illa potius terra regnaret quae Iovis cineres texit? Vellet Iuno Punicam urbem posthabita Samo dilectam et utique Aeneadarum ignibus adoleri? Quod sciam hic illius arma, Hic currus fuit, hoc regnum dea gentibus esse, Si qua fata sinant, iam tunc tenditque fovetque. Misera adversus fata non valuit! Nec tamen tantum honoris Romani fatis decreverunt, ut dedentibus Carthaginem sibi, quantum Larentinae. Sed dei isti conferendi regni in potestate non sunt. Si regnavit enim Iuppiter Cretae et Saturnus Italiae et Isis Aegypte, et homines regnaverunt, quibus etiam operati plerique traduntur. Ita qui servit, et dominos facit, et dediticius Admeti cives Romanos imperio auget, dum liberalem cultorem suum Croesum ambiguis sortibus fallendo perdidit. Quid timebat deus verum constanter praenuntiare regno excidendum ei esse? Aucti potestate regnandi quoque veluti urbes suas tueri unquam potuissent! Si Romanis praestitisse valuerunt, cur Athenas a Xerxe Minerva non defendit? vel cur Delphos de manu Pyrrhi Apollo non eruit? Servant urbem Romam qui suas perdiderunt, si hoc religiositas Romana meruit. Atqui non post summum imperium auctis iam rebus superstitio quaesita est? Etsi a Numa sacra introducta sunt, nondum tamen aut simulacris aut templis res vestras divina frustrabant. Frugi religio et paupertina superstitio; altaria temeraria et vasa sordida, et nidor parvus ex illis, et deus ipse nusquam. Ergo non ante religiosi quam maiores, quia religiosi. Atquin quomodo summam ob religionem et deorum profundissimam curam imperium Romanis quaesitum videri possit, quod laesis potius deis auctum est? Nisi fallor enim omne regnum vel imperium bellis quaeritur et bellis ampliatur. Porro laeduntur victoribus et dei urbis. Nam eadem strages et moenium et templorum, pares caedes et civium et sacerdotum, eaedem rapinae profanorum et sacrorum. Tot sacrilegia Romanorum quot tropaea, tot deinde de deis quot de gentibus triumphi. Manent et simulacra captiva, et utique si sentiunt victores suos, non amant. Sed quia nihil sentiunt, inpune laeduntur, et quia inpune laeduntur, frustra adorantur. Itaque quorum fastigium per victorias adultum est, non possunt videri religionis meritis excrevisse, sive crescendo laesores religionis, sive laedendo creverunt. Regnum universae nationes suis quaeque temporibus habuerunt, ut Assyrii, ut Medi, ut Persae, ut Aegyptii; est et adhuc penes quosdam, et tamen qui amiserunt, non sine religionibus et cultu et depropitiorum deorum morabantur, donec postremo Romanis cessit universa paene dominatio. Sors temporum ita volutavit regna. Quaerite quis temporum vices ordinavit. Idem regna dispensat, et nunc penes Romanos eam summam tanquam pecuniam de multis nominibus exactam in unam arcam congregavit. Quid de ea statuerit sciunt proximi ei. ### English translation (Claude) Finally, since you do not deny to the guardians of your religion all these whom antiquity willed to be gods and posterity believed, there remains for us that enormous presumption of Roman superstition, over which we have to engage with you, nations: that the Romans became masters and arbiters of the whole world because by the duties of religion they deserved to rule, so much so that they come near to surpassing their gods themselves. No doubt Sterculus, and Mutunus, and Larentina advanced this empire! The Romans, one people destined by its gods for dominion! For I would not think that foreign gods wished this done for an alien people rather than their own, so as to become deserters and abandoners, nay traitors, of their native soil, in which they were born, grew up, gained renown, and were buried. So not even Jupiter would allow his Crete to be shaken by the Roman fasces, forgetting that Idaean cave, and the Corybantian bronzes, and the most pleasant smell of his nurse there. Would he not have preferred that tomb of his to the whole Capitol, so that the land which covers Jupiter's ashes might rather reign? Would Juno want the Punic city, loved above Samos, to be burned, and by the fires of Aeneas's race at that? As far as I know, “Here were her arms, here her chariot; that this should be the kingdom of the nations, if the fates allowed, the goddess even then strives and fosters.” Poor thing, she could not prevail against the fates! And yet the Romans did not decree as much honor to the fates, who surrendered Carthage to them, as they did to Larentina. But these gods do not have the power of conferring a kingdom. For if Jupiter reigned in Crete, and Saturn in Italy, and Isis in Egypt, they reigned as men, and many of them are recorded as having worked for others. So the one who serves also makes masters, and the bondsman of Admetus enlarges the Roman citizens with empire, while he ruined his generous worshipper Croesus by deceiving him with ambiguous oracles. What was the god afraid of, that he did not steadily foretell the truth, that Croesus was to lose his kingdom? As if, enriched with the power of reigning, they could ever have protected their own cities! If they had power to grant it to the Romans, why did Minerva not defend Athens from Xerxes? Or why did Apollo not rescue Delphi from the hand of Pyrrhus? Those who lost their own cities preserve the city of Rome, if Roman religiosity has earned this! And yet was not superstition sought out after the supreme empire had been won, when the state had already grown? Although rites were introduced by Numa, still the divine did not yet mock your affairs with images or temples. Religion was frugal, and superstition poor; altars were makeshift and vessels plain, the smoke from them slight, and the god himself nowhere. So they were not religious before they were great, as though they were great because they were religious. And yet how can empire seem to have been won by the Romans on account of supreme religion and the deepest care for the gods, when it was increased rather by injuring the gods? For, unless I am mistaken, every kingdom or empire is won by wars and enlarged by wars. But the gods of a city too are injured by the victors. For there is the same destruction of walls and temples, equal slaughter of citizens and priests, the same plunder of things profane and sacred. As many trophies as the Romans have, so many sacrileges; as many triumphs over nations, so many over gods. The captive images still remain, and surely, if they perceive their conquerors, they do not love them. But because they perceive nothing, they are injured with impunity, and because they are injured with impunity, they are adored in vain. So those whose eminence grew through victories cannot be thought to have grown by the merits of religion, whether they injured religion by growing or grew by injuring it. All nations have held dominion, each in its own time, as the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians; some hold it still; and yet those who lost it were not without religions and worship and gods to propitiate, until at last almost universal dominion passed to the Romans. The lot of the times has so turned kingdoms about. Ask who ordered the changes of the times. The same one dispenses kingdoms, and has now gathered that supreme power among the Romans, like money exacted from many debtors, into one chest. What he has determined about it, those near him know. ### Scripture references - Dan 2:21: allusion, high confidence - Dan 4:17: allusion, medium confidence ### Extrabiblical texts - Herodotus, Hist. 1.53 (Herodotus, Histories): allusion, medium confidence - Virgil, Aen. 1.16–18 (Virgil): quotation, high confidence ### Translation notes - The verses are Virgil, Aeneid 1.16–18. The “bondsman of Admetus” is Apollo, who served Admetus; his ambiguous oracle to Croesus is told in Herodotus 1.53. God's ordering of the times and kingdoms echoes Dan 2:21. ### Citation (SBL) Tertullian, Nat. 2.17 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-nationes/2/17/).