The City of God

Of the captivity of the saints, to whom divine consolations were never lacking.

Chap. XIV

C

But many, they say, were even led away as captives. This would indeed be most miserable if they could be led somewhere where they did not find their God. There are great consolations for this calamity in the Holy Scriptures. There were the three youths in captivity; there was Daniel; there were other prophets, and God was not lacking as a comforter. Thus, He who did not desert the prophet even in the belly of the beast did not desert his faithful under the dominion of a nation—barbarous, it is true, yet human. Those with whom we are dealing prefer to mock this rather than believe it, yet in their own writings, they believe that Arion of Methymna, a most noble cithara player, when he was cast from the ship, was received upon the back of a dolphin and carried to land. Truly, our story about the prophet Jonah is more incredible. It is clearly more incredible because it is more miraculous, and more miraculous because it is more powerful.

Of Regulus, in whom there exists an example of captivity to be endured even voluntarily for the sake of religion, which nonetheless could not profit him, even though he worshipped the gods.

Chap. XV

Yet these people have a most noble example among their own illustrious men of captivity to be endured voluntarily for the sake of religion. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a commander of the Roman people, was a captive among the Carthaginians. Because they preferred to have their own people returned by the Romans rather than keep their captives, they sent this Regulus, among others, to Rome with their legates to obtain this, having first bound him by an oath that if he did not accomplish what he wished, he would return to Carthage. He went, but in the Senate, he persuaded them of the opposite, because he did not think it useful for the Roman Republic to exchange captives. After this persuasion, he was not compelled by his own people to return to the enemies, but because he had sworn, he fulfilled it voluntarily. But they killed him with devised and horrendous tortures. Indeed, they shut him in a narrow wooden crate where he was forced to stand, pierced on all sides with sharp nails, so that he could not lean in any direction without the most atrocious pain, and they killed him by sleep deprivation. They justly praise the man, who was greater than such great misfortune. D And he had sworn by the gods, whose worship these men believe to have been abandoned, thereby inflicting these calamities upon the human race. Therefore, if those who were worshipped to restore this prosperous life either willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted upon one who swore truly, what could they have done more grievous in their anger against a perjurer?

But why should I not conclude my reasoning towards both sides? Certainly, he worshipped the gods in such a way that, because of the faith of his oath, he would neither remain in his homeland, nor go anywhere else, but would not hesitate to return to his most bitter enemies. If he considered this useful to this life, for which he deserved such a horrendous end, he was undoubtedly deceived. By his own example, he taught that the gods profit their worshippers nothing for this temporal happiness, since he, devoted to their worship, was nonetheless defeated and taken captive. Because he did not wish to act otherwise than he had sworn by them, he was tortured and destroyed by a new, previously unheard of, and all-too-horrible kind of punishment. If, however, the worship of the gods returns happiness as a reward after this life, why do they slander Christian times, saying that the city suffered that calamity because it ceased to worship its gods, when one who worshipped them most diligently could become as unhappy as that Regulus was? Unless, perhaps, someone struggles against the clearest truth with such madness of strange blindness that he dares to contend that an entire city worshipping gods cannot be unhappy, but one man can be: implying that the power of their gods is more capable of preserving the many than individuals, when a multitude consists of individuals. If they say that Marcus Regulus could have been happy even in that captivity and those bodily tortures by the virtue of his mind, then let true virtue be sought, by which a city can also be happy. For a city is not happy from one source and a man from another, since a city is nothing other than a harmonious multitude of men. Wherefore, I am not yet debating for the time being what kind of virtue was in Regulus. It is enough now that, by this most noble example...