Lactantius, Divine Institutes 18

Here I must also refute those who not only confess that gods originated from human beings, but actually boast of it in order to honor them—whether for their virtue, as with Hercules, for their gifts, as with Ceres and Liber, or for their discovery of arts, as with Aesculapius and Minerva. Such claims are utterly foolish and unworthy; they lead people to defile themselves with inexpiable guilt and make themselves enemies of God, since they despise the true God while devoting sacred rites to the dead. I will demonstrate the falsity of each point in turn. They claim that the virtue which elevates a human to heaven is not the moral excellence that philosophers discuss—the kind rooted in the goods of the soul—but merely physical strength. Because this bodily prowess was preeminent in Hercules, he is said to have earned immortality. Who could be so foolish as to judge divine or even human worth by bodily strength, when beasts possess it in greater measure, and a single illness or old age itself can break or diminish it? Hence, when Hercules saw his own flesh deformed by ulcers, he refused both healing and the prospect of growing old, lest he ever appear lesser or more deformed to himself. People imagined that he ascended to heaven from the pyre on which he burned himself alive, and they revered and consecrated the very things that are most absurd, preserving them in statues and images so that monuments to their vanity would endure forever—all because they believed gods could be made through the killing of beasts. Perhaps this is a Greek failing, since they have always treated the most trivial things as the greatest. But what of our own people? Are they any wiser? They scorn athletic virtue because it serves no practical purpose, yet they admire royal virtue precisely because it tends to cause widespread harm. Consequently, they assume that brave and warlike commanders gain a place among the gods, and they insist that the only road to immortality is to lead armies, ravage foreign lands, demolish cities, raze towns, and either slaughter or enslave free peoples. Clearly, the more men they afflict, plunder, and kill, the more noble and renowned they consider themselves; seduced by the illusion of empty glory, they attach the name of virtue to their own crimes. I would rather they invented gods from the slaughter of beasts than validate an immortality so drenched in blood. If someone kills a single human being, he is regarded as polluted and accursed, and it is deemed unlawful to admit him into this earthly dwelling of the gods. Yet the one who has slaughtered countless thousands, flooded fields with blood, and poisoned rivers is welcomed not only into the temple but into heaven itself. In Ennius, Africanus declares: "If it is permitted for anyone to ascend to the heavenly realms, the widest gate of heaven stands open to me alone" —precisely because he has wiped out and destroyed a great portion of the human race. Oh, what profound darkness you dwell in, Africanus—or rather, oh poet, who imagined that the ascent to heaven lies open to mortals through slaughter and bloodshed! Even Cicero gave his assent to this vanity. "It is true," he says, "Africanus; for that same gate was open to Hercules" —as if he himself had been the doorkeeper of heaven when it happened. I cannot decide whether to weep or laugh when I see serious, learned men, who regard themselves as wise, tossed about in such wretched waves of error. If this is the virtue that makes us immortal, I would rather die than become the cause of destruction for countless people. If immortality can be obtained only through bloodshed, what happens when all humanity agrees to live in harmony—something that can certainly occur if people renounce their ruinous and impious fury and choose to be innocent and just? Will no one then be worthy of heaven? Will virtue perish simply because men are no longer allowed to rage against one another? But those who count the overthrow of cities and peoples as the highest glory will never tolerate public peace; they will seize, rampage, and insolently inflict injuries, shattering the covenant of human society just so they can have an enemy to destroy more wickedly than they provoked. Now let us proceed to the remaining cases. Tradition assigned the title of gods to Ceres and Liber because of their gifts. I could prove from divine writings that grain and wine were already in human use before the offspring of Caelus and Saturn appeared, but let us suppose for argument's sake that these two discovered them. Can gathering grain and teaching people to bake bread from it, or pressing grapes from vines and making wine, really appear greater or more remarkable than creating the grain and the vines themselves and bringing them forth from the earth? Even if God left such discoveries to human ingenuity, it remains impossible that they are not His, since He gave human beings the wisdom to discover them and brought the discoverable things into existence. The arts, too, are said to have conferred immortality on their discoverers—medicine on Aesculapius, metalworking on Vulcan. Then let us also honor those who taught fulling or shoemaking. Why does the inventor of pottery receive no honor? Is it because the rich despise Samian ware? There are other arts whose discoverers have enormously benefited human life; why have temples not been dedicated to them as well? But perhaps Minerva is credited with discovering everything, and so craftsmen pray to her. Thus Minerva ascends to heaven from these lowly origins. Is it really plausible that anyone would abandon the One who created the earth with its living creatures and the heavens with their stars and lights, in order to venerate the one who merely taught how to weave a web? And what of the one who taught how to heal bodily wounds? Can he be more excellent than the One who formed the bodies themselves, gave them the capacity to feel and live, and originally devised and brought forth the herbs and all the other substances on which the art of healing depends?