Tertullian, Apology 25

I have, I think, sufficiently proven the distinction between false and true divinity by showing that the proof rests not merely on debates and arguments, but also on the testimonies of the very beings you call gods, so that nothing further remains to be retracted on this point. Yet since the Roman name has been formally invoked, I will not pass over the challenge raised by the presumption that the Romans were elevated to such heights of world domination as a reward for their diligent religiosity — indeed, that they have become gods themselves, flourishing beyond all others because they render those others a service beyond all others. A fine reward the gods have paid the Romans for their gratitude: Sterculius, Mutunus, and Larentina advanced the empire. I hardly think foreign gods chose to favor a foreign nation over their own, handing over the native soil where they were born, grew up, were ennobled, and buried to men who crossed the sea. Let Cybele judge whether she loved the Roman city as a memorial of the Trojan race — her own people, shielded against the arms of the Achaeans — if she looked to the avengers she knew would subdue Greece, the conqueror of Phrygia. And so she has offered our own age a grand testament of her majesty bestowed upon the city: when Marcus Aurelius was away from the capital at Sirmium, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of April, that most holy Archigallus, on the ninth day before those same Kalends — the very day he was offering impure blood and even castrating himself — issued the usual orders for the salvation of the Emperor Marcus, already dead. O slow messengers, o sleepy dispatches, whose fault it was that Cybele did not learn of the emperor's death beforehand, lest Christians ridicule such a goddess. But Jupiter would not immediately allow his Cretan land to be shaken by the Roman rods, forgetting that Idaean cave, the Corybantic bronze, and the most pleasant odor of his nurse there. Would he not have preferred that tomb of his to the whole Capitol, so that the earth might rather excel in the ashes that cover Jupiter? Would Juno have wished the Punic city, setting aside Samos, to be destroyed — the city beloved by the race of the Aeneadae? What if these were her arms, this her chariot, this the kingdom of the goddess among the nations — if the fates allow, even then she was striving and fostering it. That wretched wife and sister of Jupiter could not prevail against the fates: Jupiter himself is established by fate. Nor did the fates, yielding to themselves, devote as much honor to the Roman name as to the most prostituted she-wolf Larentina, against the destined vow and will of Juno. It is certain that many of your gods have reigned. Therefore, if they hold the power of conferring empire, from whom did they receive that grace when they themselves reigned? Whom did Saturn and Jupiter worship? Some Sterculius, I think — but later in Rome, with their own indigenous people. Even if some did not reign, they were still ruled by others who were not yet their worshipers, so that they were not yet considered gods. It is therefore the province of others to give the kingdom, because the kingdom was ruled long before these gods were encountered. But how vain to attribute the heights of the Roman name to the merits of religiosity, when religion progressed only after the empire — or even the kingdom — had grown. For even if the curiosity of superstition was conceived by Numa, the divine was still not established among the Romans either by statues or by temples; religion was frugal, rites were poor, there were no Capitols competing with the sky, only reckless altars of turf, Samian vessels, the smell from them, and God himself was nowhere. For the ingenuity of the Greeks and Tuscans had not yet flooded the city with fabricated statues. Therefore the Romans were not religious before they were great; and so they were not great because they were religious. But how can they be great because of religion when their greatness springs from irreligion? For, if I am not mistaken, every kingdom or empire is sought by wars and propagated by victories. And wars and victories consist in the capture and destruction of countless cities. This business is not without injury to the gods: the same massacres of walls and temples, the same slaughter of citizens and priests, the same plundering of sacred and profane wealth. So many Roman sacrileges, so many trophies; so many triumphs over gods as over nations; so many spoils, as many statues of captured gods still remain. And they are worshiped by their enemies, and they decree endless empire to those whose injuries they ought to have avenged rather than flattered. But those who feel nothing are injured as impunely as they are worshiped in vain. It certainly cannot be consistent with faith that they appear to have grown by the merits of religion, when, as we have suggested, they either increased religion by injuring it, or injured it by increasing. Even those whose kingdoms were gathered into the sum of the Roman empire, when they lost them, were not without religions of their own.