Free City of God (Penguin Classics) by Saint Augustine Page B

mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous and laudable way of life, removing to a better state those whose life is approved, or else keeping them in this world for further service.
     
    Moreover, they should give credit to this Christian era for the fact that these savage barbarians showed mercy beyond the custom of war – whether they so acted in general in honour of the name of Christ, or in places specially dedicated to Christ’s name, buildings of such size and capacity as to give mercy a wider range. For this clemency our detractors ought rather to give thanks to God; they should have recourse to his name in all sincerity, so as to escape the penalty of everlasting fire, seeing that so many of them assumed his name dishonestly, to escape the penalty of immediate destruction. Among those whom you see insulting Christ’s servants with such wanton insolence there are very many who came unscathed through that terrible time of massacre only by passing themselves off as Christ’s servants. And now with ungrateful pride and impious madness they oppose his name in the perversity of their hearts, so that they may incur the punishment of eternal darkness; but then they took refuge in that name, though with deceitful lips, so that they might continue to enjoy this transitory light.
     
2.
That victors should spare the vanquished out of respect for their gods, is something unexampled in history
     
    We have the records of many wars, both before the foundation of Rome and after its rise to power. Let our enemies read their history, and then produce instances of the capture of any city by foreign enemies when those enemies spared any whom they found taking refuge in the temples of their gods. 8 Let them quote any barbarian general who gave instructions, at the storming of a town, that no one should be treated with violence who was discovered in this temple or that Aeneas saw Priam at the altar,
                  polluting with his blood
The fire which he had consecrated. 9
     
    And Diomedes and Ulysses
Slew all the warders of the citadel
And snatched with bloody hands the sacred image;
Nor shrank to touch the chaplets virginal
Of the dread goddess.
     
    And there is no truth in the statement that comes after,
The Grecian hopes then failed, and ebbed away. 10
     
    For what in fact followed was the Greek victory, the destruction of Troy by fire and sword, the slaughter of Priam at the altar.
    And it was not because Troy lost Minerva that Troy perished. What loss did Minerva herself first incur, that led to her own disappearance? Was it, perhaps, the loss of her guards? There can be no doubt that their death made her removal possible – the image did not preserve the men; the men were preserving the image. Why then did they worship her, to secure her protection for their country and its citizens? She could not guard her own keepers.
     
3.
The folly of the Romans in confiding their safety to the household gods who had failed to protect Troy
     
    There you see the sort of gods to whom the Romans gladly entrusted the preservation of their city. Pitiable folly! Yet the Romans are enraged by such criticisms from us, while they are not incensed at the authors of such quotations; in fact they pay money to become acquainted with their works, and they consider that those who merely instruct them in these works merit an official salary and an honoured position in the community. Virgil certainly is held to be a great poet; in fact he is regarded as the best and the most renowned of all poets, and for that reason he is read by children at an early age – they take great draughts of his poetry into their unformed minds, so that they may not easily forget him, for, as Horace remarks,
New vessels will for long retain the taste
Of what is first poured into them. 11
     
    Now in Virgil Juno is introduced as hostile to the Trojans, and when she urges Aeolus, king of the winds, against them, she says,
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