On the Consistency of the Jurisprudent

Translation © 2002 Mark Reynolds

[1] You are aware, most distinguished Francesco Ventura, that the Roman jurists defined jurisprudence in the same way as the Greek philosophers defined wisdom. Wisdom moreover was solemnly described by Plato as the "perfecter of man."

The parts of the inner man -- From a true mind an upright spirit.

[2] Now, the inner man is comprised of two parts, mind and spirit, commonly called by the schoolmen 'understanding' and 'will'. Moreover, we have shown that each part was corrupted by original sin, the mind deceived by errors, the spirit rent by desires, and that the desires of the spirit arise from the errors of the mind, and that these are the sources of all human unhappiness. And yet we have shown too that even in corrupted man there is an impulse of the mind for truth, and that from a clear knowledge of truth there arises a will for justice: which is as much as to say that from a true mind proceeds an upright spirit.

How does wisdom perfect man? -- What is the source of the wise man's consistency?

[3] Wisdom purifies the mind with eternal truths, and by these truths furnishes the spirit with virtues, so that in each inner part wisdom completes man and brings him to perfection. Therefore, just as it is characteristic of fools to err constantly, to repent continuously, to be always pulled in different directions, to be forever dissatisfied with themselves (whence we have called them folly's 'self-punishers'), so too is it a feature of wisdom to be always consistent in thought, from which it follows that the wise man is always consistent in life.

The arrangement of the subjects to be discussed -- The two main classes of disciplines: philosophy and philology -- The method of the discussion.

[4] So then, that we might in this second book accord to jurisprudence a consistency of its own, let us demonstrate that whatever has been said or written anywhere about the principles of divine and human learning is true if it agrees with the principles we set forth in the first book, and is false if it disagrees; and let us demonstrate this through the following corollaries which are derived from these same principles of ours and which form the third part of the whole treatise. And since all disciplines fall under these two main categories, some of them dealing with the things of nature which happen of necessity, and others with the decisions of the human will, let us for the sake of our argument assign the former subjects to philosophy and the latter to philology; but let us do it in such a way that philology is not detached from philosophy, as has been done up to now by all the Greek and Latin writers, but rather that the one follow the other as a necessary consequence, as is proper. And in this way we shall try to form and establish the consistency of the jurisprudent in each of the two functions he performs when interpreting the law, on the one hand examining eternal reason as a philosopher, and on the other weighing the language of the law as a philologian.

Part One

On the Consistency of Philosophy

[Principle]

So then, in the order in which we demonstrated the principles of divine and human learning in the previous book, in the same order, I say, let us discuss the propositions derived from these principles so as to establish the consistency of the jurisprudent.

Chapter I

The true method of discussing divine and human matters comes from a proper knowledge of one's own nature

Within man is the principle of the sciences and virtues, not their buried memory.

[1] First of all, since we have derived the principles of all human and divine learning from a most definite understanding of our own nature, which is the knowledge, will, and power in each of us, these exist in man as the principles not only of the sciences, but of the virtues as well. Socrates accordingly said that neither sciences nor virtues could not be taught, but that they could be drawn from students by their teachers: he accordingly proclaimed himself "a midwife of minds," who could stimulate that impulse for the truth we mentioned, but could not instill it. As evidence of this, by asking the proper questions he drew geometrical proofs from boys scarcely seven years old and entirely ignorant of geometry: and so he declared that half of a science is contained by properly formed questions. The Platonists followed his lead and defined dialectic as "the art of asking questions." All of which leads to the conclusion that the truest method of discussing divine and human matters comes from a proper understanding of one's own nature.

In the quest for truth the vices of the spirit are more damaging than the errors of the mind.

[2] Although the vices of the spirit arise from the errors of the mind, yet in the quest for truth the vices of the spirit are the greater impediment; for from corrupt morals proceeds a passion for sects or factions, our favorite intellectual pastime, by which we cause the errors of the mind to become entrenched. Aristotle therefore sought to keep adolescents from studying ethics, because they are of the age most disturbed by the emotions, and do not yet possess the first principle of that discipline.

Chapter 2

Skepticism must be eliminated from every branch of learning, especially ethics

Continuing on then in the order in which we began, with metaphysics, the mother of all sciences, since we have demonstrated that the whole human race possesses certain common concepts of eternal truth, and that those who do not share in these concepts seem to be completely lacking in basic human understanding, let us banish from the entire range of human and divine learning skepticism, an enemy of every religion, a blight on every state, with its inability to comprehend the truth, and that vile suspension of judgment, which causes a man to be so uncertain of right and wrong that even if his own father were in mortal danger he would not go to his aid. And as for those Carneadeses, who on one day argue that there is justice in human affairs and on the following day argue with equal force that there is not, let them be publicly expelled from every state, just as in olden times Carneades himself was expelled from Rome.

Chapter 3

On the truth of Christian metaphysics

God is true being - The double life of man: in God divine, in the body brutish - For a Christian, civil theology is the same as the natural theology of the Platonists.

We have seen that through the idea of an eternal order men know the principles of the sciences in God, and accordingly that the principles of the things themselves [that the sciences treat of] are from God. And from this we have understood that God is infinite power, knowledge, and will, and, because these three things are one, is true being. Therefore Christian metaphysics is true, by which God defined himself to Moses: "Who is sent me; I am who am"; wherefore the divine Plato, when he says "being," means God, as if all created things have no real existence in comparison to God. This is the source of that metaphysical analysis of the apostle: "In God we live, and move, and have our being." And indeed in God we live in accordance with truth and reason, which is the divine life of man; just as in the body we live from the falseness of the senses and from desire, which is the brutish life of man. Therefore we have demonstrated too the Christian criterion for truth, which divine wisdom itself teaches us: "I am truth" and "God is the father of light."

Chapter 4

On the truth of the Christian religion

What is true religion?

[1] We demonstrated at the very beginning that Adam, created man by God and of an uncorrupted nature, fell by his own sin: whence we demonstrated the principles of sacred history, and accordingly the principles of revealed theology. And since God himself is truth and the one true thing, and we know the truth not by sense but by mind, it follows that true religion is the worship of the one God, perceived by mind.

The duty of a true grammarian, according to the weighty example of Varro.

[2] Varro, commonly eulogized as "the most learned of the Romans," who in his capacity as perfect grammarian wrote the books On divine and human things and On philosophy, by subordinating philology to philosophy perceived this to be the true religion, and, if he had been given the power to decide religious matters, would maintain that in accordance with a "formula of nature," that is from an idea of truth, one God should be worshiped in the form of no image.

Of true divine worship . . .

[3] The uncorrupted Adam contemplated God with a pure mind, and loved Him with a pure spirit. This is the worship of God which was conjectured by Varro.

. . . there are two parts: purity of mind and piety of spirit, whence truth of life and love for man.

[4] So then there were two parts of this worship: purity of mind, which was undefiled by the errors of the senses and the perturbations of the spirit; and piety of spirit, which is properly termed 'love for God'. Through purity of mind it was a characteristic of uncorrupted man to live in truth with all throughout his days; through piety of spirit it would have been his habit also to love the elderly as parents, those his own age as true brothers and sisters, younger folk as sons and daughters, all without exception. As a result piety later came to be spoken of as something directed not only toward God, but toward parents, relatives and homeland as well. It was in misguided pursuit of this piety that Plato in his Republic proposed that wives be held in common.

Complete or heroic wisdom - Philosophical wisdom and civil wisdom in corrupted man.

[5] And this purity of Adam's, this piety toward God was complete and truly heroic wisdom, which later, when nature had been corrupted, was divided; and the term wisdom was applied to the contemplation of the highest things, which had been but a single part of uncorrupted human wisdom, namely the contemplation of God from a pure mind. And wisdom was also used to describe the exceptional prudence of statesmen, by which they preserve the human race to the greatest possible extent, as for instance those who establish commonwealths with excellent laws or govern them with wise counsel, or aid men with useful precepts for the conduct of their lives. This civil prudence had been the second part of uncorrupted wisdom, by virtue of which uncorrupted man, animated by piety for God, loved all men. The Greeks consider their Seven Sages to be of this type, like Solon, who by his laws established the liberty of the Athenians; and the Roman people called Sempronius Sophos, wise, because of his vast knowledge of law, and called Scipio Nasica, judged to be the wisest of mortals by the senate, as Socrates was by the oracle, Corculum, or wise heart.

A passage of Polybius interpreted in a good sense - The uncorrupted Adam alone was truly wise - Justice is greater than valor - Friendship is greater than justice.

[6] And we should quote here that statement of Polybius, which the impious twist to their own purpose: "If all men were wise, there would be no need of these laws and religions." Surely it is better to believe that this very wise historian was speculating on true human wisdom, of the sort possessed by the uncorrupted Adam. For indeed if Adam, in his uncorrupted state the only possessor of true human wisdom, had not sinned, we would be living united with God by a pure mind, and by contemplating God we would not hear the troubling voices of desire; and so we would be living, not only a blameless life, but even a blessed one. And so Polybius was speaking in the very same fashion as Themistocles when he said: "If men cultivated justice, there would be no need of valor"; and as Aristotle when he said much more forcefully in his Ethics: "If the human race cultivated friendship, which ordains that all property be held in common by all, we would need not even justice itself, and so neither laws nor state." Therefore these prayerful utterances of the wisest men can only be speculations concerning the uncorrupted human nature created by God. In other respects Polybius acted in the manner of men, and judged all religions false on the basis of his own false religion.

When man was corrupted, piety was replaced by religion, and purity of mind by purity of body, which took both a permanent and temporary form for the Hebrews, for the gentiles only a temporary one.

[7] But when nature was corrupted through the sin of Adam, piety was replaced by religion, which is properly defined as 'fear of the supreme deity', the fear in fact arising from a consciousness of guilt. In this sense that statement of the poet is true, which the impious claim as their own: "It was fear that created the first gods on earth." Moreover, purity of mind was replaced by purity of body, which took a permanent form for the Hebrews in the practice of circumcision, which scholars note was adopted by a number of gentile peoples for hygienic reasons; but purity of body was sought too by these same Hebrews by the practice of ritual baths before offering sacrifice. The only means by which the gentiles sought purity of body was by washing before making sacrifice, from which rite Cicero derived that rule in De legibus: "Approach the gods in purity." The second part of the injunction - "observe piety" - was transferred from uncorrupted nature to corrupted nature, where piety was held to be the fear and awe of the gods.

Honor properly belongs to God - What is it? and where does it come from? - Its difference among Hebrews and gentiles.

[8] And because as a result of fear piety for the Deity, or love for God, in uncorrupted nature was replaced in corrupted nature by honor, a word which Aristotle teaches is properly used in reference to the gods; and because honor is a sign, made by altars, temples and sacrifices, of our own weakness and the divine power, the Law of the Twelve Tables, as quoted by Cicero, after commanding piety, which we have interpreted as 'honor', immediately adds: "Leave riches behind." And so the gentiles, in place of the true worship of God from a pure mind, instead gave honor to the gods only with a pure body. The Hebrews gave honor with a body purified by both circumcision and ritual baths, but especially with a "broken spirit" and a "humble and contrite heart," and therefore with purity of mind more than of body they made sacrifice to the true God.

The contemplative life provides the pattern for the active life - Contemplation is the mother of divination - The Hebrew people were founded on the basis of no divination - The twin birth of idolatry and divination.

[9] And since uncorrupted man used to contemplate eternal truth with a pure mind, men in a corrupted state began to contemplate the heavens with their sight, which is the original meaning of contemplatio, from the augural term templa caeli, that is the regions of heaven that the augurs marked out before taking the auguries (and extemplo is used in the sense of immediately, because when they had taken the auguries they came down from the augural tower without delay). And since in former times man by contemplating eternal truth from a pure mind learned the proper conduct of life from God himself, the human race later sought to discover the proper conduct of life by contemplating the heavens. For this reason the Hebrew people, who worshiped the true God, were founded on the basis of no divination, which is the chief reason why they lived segregated from the gentiles, among whom divination sprang up at the same time as its twin sister idolatry. In Asia among the Chaldeans the planets, because of their unusual movement and luminosity, were regarded as gods, and the future was foretold from viewing them. This practice was called magia and its adepts magi, or wise men. In Europe, as among the Greeks and Romans, divination consisted of the taking of auspices.

The true in uncorrupted nature was replaced in corrupted nature by the certain - Civil divine matters - Natural divine matters - How metaphysics is the material of religions - How the parts of uncorrupted wisdom, divided by the corruption of nature, coalesced.

[10] And yet the worship of God with a pure mind from a knowledge of eternal truth would have been eternal in uncorrupted man, for it would have always been uniform. Hence, when man through sin forfeited the knowledge of truth from a pure mind in the conduct of his life, the true was replaced by the certain; and certain gods, certain ceremonies, certain verbal formulas were established by the laws, so that the religions might be, as far as was allowed in human affairs, eternal. These are the divine things the laws prescribe, and among the masses correspond to the divine things which the philosophers teach by reason, and are the primary eternal truths that metaphysics establishes. Therefore those things that metaphysics deals with were established by the peoples as religions: a true religion by the Hebrews, who worshiped a single uncreated Creator in the form of no image; false religions by the gentiles, who worshiped in the guise of idols the world, and the soul of the world, and the mind of that soul, or a moving force coeval with the world, acting of necessity and divided among the parts of the world, just as for example Jove was the moving force of the air, and Neptune of the sea. And so the two parts of uncorrupted wisdom, as far as was permitted through corrupted nature, again coalesced: the contemplation of the highest things and the taking thought for the preservation of humanity. And so the peoples were founded, and the human race propagated by religions.

The religion of the deists is demonstrated to be false.

[11] Furthermore, because original sin corrupted human nature, since it could no longer be restored by nature, it could only be restored by the provision of divine aid superior to nature. But I have said "as far as was permitted through corrupted nature": for the civil religions of the gentiles prove well enough of themselves that they are false; the religions of the gentile philosophers are confuted in accordance with our principles as follows: -- I perceive that my mind is finite, for I do not understand an infinite number of things: but through the idea of an eternal order I recognize eternal truths, through which I could communicate with infinite intelligences, were there any such. Therefore the idea of an eternal order is not the idea of a finite mind; and yet it must belong to mind, since through the idea of body I understand that I am bounded and limited. It therefore belongs to an infinite mind, and an infinite mind is God. And yet that mind is not my mind, which I comprehend to be finite. Therefore all deists are wrong, who think that God, an infinite mind in an infinite body, assumes in me when I think a form peculiar to a part.

A demonstration of Christian faith.

[12] Furthermore, because original sin corrupted human nature, since it could not be restored by nature, it had to be restored by the provision of divine aid superior to nature. By original sin man forfeited a pure knowledge of eternal truth: therefore eternal truth, that it might be recovered by the human race, had to be restored by the provision of a reason superior to nature, not by arguments, but through a single virtue of the mind - faith.

A demonstration of the incarnation - The superiority of Christian virtue to that of the pagans - A demonstration of Christian charity.

[13] Hence the Word invested human nature with divine wisdom, and it laid down a law - one contrary to the law of the members, and truly heroic - which set forth the obligations imposed by a virtue far superior to that taught by any of the gentile philosophers: infinite love for God, and from that love charity of all for all, whether strangers, or the deserving, or the undeserving, or even enemies. This, as we have said, had been the God-given piety of the uncorrupted Adam.

A demonstration of divine grace - A demonstration of the sacraments of baptism and penance.

[14] And since human nature in its fallen state could not provide precepts unaided, the Word by its supernatural aid restored to it not purity of the body, but purity of the mind, which was in uncorrupted nature the second part of divine worship. This was not indeed the same purity of mind as was in uncorrupted nature, since nature had now fallen, but it was of the same kind. And this purity was composed of two parts: the one a perpetual purity, the mystery of circumcision, restored by the establishment of baptism, which provides us with a sure knowledge of the true God and of all things revealed by Him, and thus cleanses the mind of errors; and the other a temporary purity, restored by the establishment of penance, through which we grieve for having wounded His infinite godhead, and which thus cleanses the spirit of passions.

A demonstration of the Christian hero.

[15] Hence that pleasure of the spirit, which the pagan philosophers teach is felt by their hero in curbing the pleasures of the body from his now strongly developed state of virtue (though they themselves do not experience it, for because of the corruption of nature they cannot, and they ease their pain by striving for earthly glory, like that won by Codrus, Scaevola, Curtius, and Decius); that pleasure of the spirit, I say, is engendered for the glory of God by divine grace in the Christian hero as he bears up under hardships with contempt of self.

A demonstration of the New Covenant.

[16] For indeed, because the infinite will of God was violated by the sin of Adam, the Word took human form, and, serving as both eternal priest and eternal lamb, offered itself up to the Father in an eternal sacrifice of infinite honor, so as to reconcile God to the human race. By the merits of this divine sacrifice divine grace draws men to God, for, just as St. Augustine teaches, quoting most aptly from the poet, "each man is drawn by his own pleasure."

A demonstration of eternal blessesedness, and hence of Christian hope.

[17] Finally, man through original sin forfeited the enjoyment of eternal goodness in this life. Therefore eternal blessedness had to be restored from the merits of Christ to those who, aided by the virtue and example of Christ and trusting in divine hope, do battle with desire in this life and bear up under hardships.

God is the beginning and end of Christian charity.

[18] And so that piety toward God, and through Him the whole human race, which would have reigned in uncorrupted nature, was transformed into the charity which Christ commanded above all else. This charity prescribes rules in accordance with the law of nature with such earnestness that the duties it enjoins belong to a virtue far superior to the virtue of the pagans: and by this virtue, and his law and example Christ restored corrupted nature, so that the divine life of man, which began with the contemplation of God with a pure mind, might by the same kind of contemplation return at length to God after this life.

The principle of the new jurisprudence is the same as that of Christian metaphysics.

[19] Moreover, because religion is the foundation of the laws, since the religion of the Romans was a false one the Law of the Twelve Tables, the source of all ancient law, began with purity of the body. Once true religion spread to the Roman government, the imperial regulations, which founded a new law on the basis of the natural order, began with purity of the mind, which is to say a true knowledge of divine nature, that is, with the title On the supreme Trinity and the Catholic faith: so that what the philosophers of the gentiles classified as duties in accordance with the power of truth and judged on the basis of shame, the Christians performed in accordance with laws prescribed by the dictates of conscience. And so it is a duty imposed by philosophy itself that a philosopher be Christian.

Chapter 5

The metaphysical doctrines of Plato which should be accepted

[1] And since uncorrupted nature enjoyed the pure contemplation of eternal truth, and was corrupted by the sin of Adam, as we have demonstrated, three doctrines of Plato are true:

On eternal ideas.

[2] First, the doctrine on the class of things which are beyond the corporeal, and therefore eternal, and are not perceived by sense but by understanding, in other words the doctrine of ideas, insofar as these communicate eternal truths to the mind. But the conclusion drawn from this, that men's spirits exist prior to their conception, is false. For God either implants ideas in the mind when he creates it, as René Descartes believes, or through occasional causes either creates ideas in the mind, as Antonio Arnaldo holds, or displays them to the mind, as Malebranche.

On the immortality of spirits.

[3] Second, the doctrine on the immortality of spirits, since the spirit is the foundation of the human mind, and the mind is the abode and dwelling place of eternal truths, and it is impossible for the eternal to be founded on the temporal.

On divine providence.

[4] Third, the doctrine on divine providence, or an eternal mind, which dispenses and guides all by the eternal order of things, in the idea of which eternal order we know eternal truths.

Chapter 6

How must the metaphysical doctrines of the Stoics be regarded?

In what way is their doctrine on fate false? In what way true?

Therefore the doctrine of the Stoics on fate is false, insofar as they hold that it is a necessary course of events which by its power sweeps along all things with it, even the free will of man; but insofar as they teach that fate [fatum ] is the word with which God speaks [fatur] eternal truth to the human mind, whence the philosophers called later natural law fas, their opinion is entirely true, since that law is completely immutable.

Chapter 7

The war declared on metaphysics by Epicurus an unjust one

The void is nothing.

[1] Epicurus then was wrong when he taught that there exists a single class of things, namely body, and that what is not body is void, or nothing; whence he decreed that there were two principles of all nature, body and void. By this doctrine he declares an impious and destructive war on the mind and all that consists of mind.

The doctrine of chance a product of weak minds.

[2] And since he recognized nothing but body and void, he was led to that highly improbable and completely ridiculous doctrine on chance, which holds that all things arise from the fortuitous collision of atoms in the void and are governed by blind lot. Thus in the judgment of Horace, himself a member of the epicurean sect, "while steeped in mad wisdom he wandered astray," he eliminated divine providence.

Autopsia is an uncertain guide to the truth.

[3] And with the same impious consistency of doctrine he all too ambitiously established autopsia, or the evidence of the senses, as the criterion for truth, proclaiming that things are such as they appear to each person. And so he rejects eternal truths, on which there is the most steadfast agreement among all men, though they are vastly different, and sometimes even opposite and antagonistic in their perceptions, temperaments, habits and pursuits.

Chapter 8

On the truth of Christian morality

What is the Christian life? - What is Christian virtue?

After demonstrating with the aid of metaphysics that the principles of the Christian religion are true, we moved on to Christian morality, the principal offshoot of Christian metaphysics and revealed theology; and we saw that virtue is the power of truth which does battle with desire. Therefore Christian ethics is true, which teaches that "the life of man on earth is one of warfare," and along with the Apostle defines virtue as "the law of the mind, which does battle with the law of the members."

Chapter 9

Every pagan philosophy is wrong concerning the ends of the good

There is no human blessedness - The hero of the philosophers a conjecture concerning the uncorrupted Adam.

Therefore that human blessedness extolled by the pagan philosophers is a deceptive fantasy born of human misery. For since they could not divine the grace of Christ, that hero of theirs, who refrains from the pleasures of the body with pleasure of spirit, and bears with joy terrors and hardships even unto death, is a conjecture of superior minds concerning uncorrupted man.

Chapter 10

None of the virtues of the pagans is perfect

Self-love is the stimulus to gentile virtue - The impious pride of the Stoics.

And the very thing that the pagan philosophers teach, that no true virtue exists in isolation, but where one is truly present, there all its companions are as well, is their public admission of the imperfection of their pagan virtues, which are all based on self-love, for they arose from a desire for earthly glory. Whence that impious pride of the Stoic sage, who is inferior to almighty God only in the eternity of His blessed life.

Chapter 11

Divine grace alone can bestow true virtue

A demonstration of divine grace.

[1] But self-love has its source in our fallen nature: therefore a virtue that can overcome it is a virtue greater than human. This is divine grace, the vanquisher of human desire, which produces in us contempt and abasement of self, through which we might recognize that all good comes from above.

Abasement of self is the foundation of Christian virtue.

[2] Therefore humility of spirit is the basis of all Christian virtues.

Chapter 12

The moral doctrines of Plato which agree with our own Christian doctrines

How is philosophy the contemplation of death?

[1] Hence the definition of philosophy handed down by Plato is true, that it is the "contemplation of death," by which we suppress as much as possible our senses and desire, that we might more easily live in accordance with truth and reason.

The end of philosophy is the union of the mind with God.

[2] This is likewise true: the principal, nay rather the supreme fruit of philosophy is the union of the mind with God.

What is the divine life of man? the human life? the brutish life?

[3] And so too is the following true: the divine life of man is to contemplate eternal truth; the human life is to do all things in accordance with eternal truth; the life of the brute it to do all things in accordance with the falsity of the senses.

Honestas is the beauty of virtue. How great is it?

[4] Finally, this too is true, which follows as a consequence of all we have said: man must live with honestas, which is to say in accordance with eternal reason. Plato calls this honestas the beauty of virtue; and he perceives this beauty to be so great that, if it could be seen with the eyes of the body, all men would be consumed by a burning love for virtue.

Chapter 13

Which moral doctrines of the Stoics agree with Christian teachings

What things do the Stoics consider good, what bad, what neither?

[1] The Stoics agree with Plato on this point, for they define the good in terms of beauty, the bad in terms of ugliness; as for everything else - belonging to the nature of the body and to fortune - they proclaim to be adiaphora, which is to say, indifferent things; that is, good for those who know how to use them, bad for those who do not.

What it means "to follow God."

[2] And that celebrated phrase of theirs, "to follow God," means to live in harmony with rational nature.

For the ancient interpreters of the law and the Stoics, the principles of ethics are the same.

[3] For the Stoics, these principles are what they call consequentia naturae, natural consequences, which we have demonstrated are exactly the same as the later natural law of the ancient interpreters, which is to say, natural reason, which rules and guides the adiaphora. In these adiaphora are the prima naturae, the primary objects of nature, as the Stoics themselves call them, with which the earlier natural law of the ancient interpreters concerned itself.

What is the meaning and derivation of officium? - Where the grammarians are censured.

[4] And they call that which is in harmony with rational nature officium [duty], a word which the grammarians wrongly believe is, by antiphrasis, quod non officiat [that which does not obstruct], when in fact it is derived from the particle ob, which denotes perfection to the highest degree, and facio, I do, so that officium is something done perfectly (or correctly, or well).

The vanity of apathy.

[5] And as for apathy, or the freedom from passions, had this too not been a conjecture of the sharpest philosophers of that sect concerning the kind of uncorrupted man who must surely have been created by God, it would clearly be but an empty hope born of human frailty.

Chapter 14

The error of Epicurus in his moral teachings

Epicurus's procedure was correct, but his premise was flawed - Bodily pleasure is not the end of the good.

[1] Epicurus then was wrong in his belief, when he recognized only body in nature and nothing beyond nature, and so was compelled by doctrinal consistency, or I should say wretched necessity, to maintain that the spirit was either body or a modification of the body; and hence judging the truth of things by the senses, he defined human felicity as bodily pleasure; yet comparison and choice are required, as he says in that glorious canon of ethics, when he prescribes that the wise man pursue those pleasures which bring the least pain and those pains that bring the most pleasure.

Epicurus is confuted by Epicurus.

[2] But he did not recognize that this choice, this comparison are not performed by the senses, but by the mind. For the comparison and choice of bodies are not themselves bodies, nor are they void, or nothingness; nor is comparison a property of void, since nothingness has no attributes; nor in turn is it a property of body, for it would then be possessed by the bodies themselves, and everyone who was endowed with sense would be wise.

[3] For example, measurement is a comparison of a body, but it is not performed by that body. For it is a characteristic of a body to be able to be measured, just as it is a characteristic of a body to be able to be moved. But the ruler belongs to the craftsman, just as it requires the agency of another to be moved: unless perhaps, as the chance swerve of an atom created the universe, so too does chance create a wise man. Let Epicurus admit then that philosophy is the creation of a thing other than body and void, which is not a modification of body and void; and that it is this thing that is the creator of so splendid and clearly divine a work as philosophy.

[4] And let us not argue with Epicurus and his followers over the meanings of the words 'spirit', 'mind', and 'God', since they admit that these things are exactly as we perceive them to be.

Chapter 15

Aristotle's doctrines on ends are corrected

Aristotle is refuted by Aristotle himself.

[1] Aristotle too is proved to be wrong by those golden thoughts on the felicity of the contemplative life, which he presented in his books on ethics.

Compared to the moral life, the metaphysical life is far the more blessed.

[2] For he says that that life is the most blessed of all, which is centered entirely on the activity which is deepest in man; the activity which is most tranquil, most continuous and always available; which is not impinged on, as is the activity of the senses, nor sought by the senses from without; which gives us a certain knowledge of ourselves, not uncertain, as does the activity of the senses; is the least dependent on body; and finally, unites man to God: whence he calls the contemplative life of man 'divine'. All of this he learned from Plato. And yet he establishes something else as the supreme end of life, namely, activity in accordance with virtue, which he says is toilsome, is known to us by the testimony of the senses (he beautifully explains this as the reason we take such delight in the senses), and requires the body and the senses of the body and even fortune; for one needs the keenness of the senses to exercise prudence, the enticement of pleasure to exercise temperance, bodily strength to exercise fortitude, political office to exercise justice.

As metaphysics is the source of every truth, so is it the end of every good.

[3] And yet activity in accordance with virtue is not an end, but a means to felicity, whereby through the frequent exercise of virtue we extinguish desire, and so are able more easily to contemplate eternal truth with a pure mind, and thus earn that which is not vouchsafed us in this life, eternal blessedness, which is nothing other than the contemplation of God with a pure mind. For if there is a single truth, there must also be a single true good; and, if there is a single eternal truth, there must also be a single eternal felicity which we should strive for.

With every distinction between metaphysical, moral and civil good eliminated, there is a single true blessedness, which is eternal.

[4] Metaphysics then does not have one end, and ethics another and politics a third; rather let us make the end of ethics and politics the same as that of metaphysics. We might then be led to a true and clearly eternal felicity by reflecting on eternal truths, to the degree possible given the corruption of nature and our enfeebled minds, and so be able to do all things in accordance with eternal truth, whereby we might in turn contemplate eternal truth with a pure mind in the afterlife. Of course, if men did this, not just separate individuals, not just the citizens of a single state, but the whole human race would live a life of supreme blessedness, to the degree allowed by corrupted nature.

Christian charity alone teaches the practice of metaphysical good.

[5] Therefore, the one end proposed by Christian wisdom, which we spoke of earlier, prescribes a virtue far surpassing any virtue of the pagans; and, as we have said, enjoins charity, of God and through God, toward all, whether strangers, or the deserving, or the undeserving, or even enemies.

The end of Christian ethics is superior not only to every ethical but even every civil end of the pagans.

[6] Therefore, if Aristotle considers the end of political philosophy to be superior to that of moral philosophy for this reason, because the end of politics spreads the good over a broader area than does the end of ethics, then the end of Christian ethics is superior to all, for it spreads the good to the entire human race.

Chapter 16

On the superiority of Christian civil doctrine

The divine origin of civil power.

[1] Civil doctrine emerges from moral doctrine, like a shoot from the bud of a vine. In our treatment of civil doctrine we demonstrated that man is by nature social, and that this social character of ours was implanted in us by God through the eternal idea of equal justice. It was in pursuit of this justice that men assembled in communities and founded states. The Apostle therefore rightly called the highest powers "the ordinances of God."

Commonwealths originate from a desire for equal justice.

[2] Commonwealths have their origin from God in the desire for equal justice. For we proved in the previous book that it was due to the secession of the primitive clients, who were being treated unfairly by the heroes, that the first commonwealths, those of the optimates, arose on earth. Therefore Christian civil doctrine is true, which teaches that commonwealths should likewise be administered with equal justice. This is in accord with that well-known precept of the political philosophers, which maintains that kingdoms and empires, if they are to be preserved, must be ruled by the same arts by which they are founded.

The benefit of the Christian religion.

[3] And indeed if we survey the whole of history, we will not find more peaceful commonwealths or milder princes than among the Christians; and whenever we read of Christian princes who were tyrants, or of Christian peoples beset by civil war, it was in those times when the moral teachings of the Christian religion, at least as regards the practice of those teachings, suffered greatly because of the sinfulness of Christians.

Chapter 17

On the principles of law that are in conformity with the Christian religion

The new jurisprudence is in conformity with the Christian religion.

[1] The spirit of the commonwealth is equal justice for all, the eternal idea of which we have demonstrated is from God. From this we concluded that the eternal form of states is the natural order; and accordingly that the spirit of the state is just, not on the basis of civil justice, but of natural justice. This justice was not founded or interpreted by the followers of Capito, that is the political jurists, but by the followers of Labeo, or the moral jurists.

Remarks on conatus.

[2] Moreover, along with the ancient interpreters of the law, philosophers highly skilled in investigating natural equity, we have divided natural law into two parts, earlier and later; and we have said that both consist of a certain power, or conatus. But we have denied all conatus to bodies: for conari, the verb from which conatus is derived, means nothing more than to resist the movement of something else. A curved branch bent back on itself is indeed in a state of conatus, but the conatus does not belong to the branch, but to the hand that keeps it from moving back in the opposite direction. Therefore in our Metaphysics, and in the letters which we appended to that book, we banished conatus entirely from physics and assigned it to metaphysics: for that which can resist the movement of a body is the same thing as that which can impart movement, namely the mind and God. And clearly no philosopher would deny that the conatus of bodies are their true movements. For conatus is of the body, but not by the body; and one who attributes conatus to bodies would also attribute to them the secret designs of nature, personalities, aspirations, sympathies and antipathies.

[3] It was for this reason that we denied earlier natural law to brute animals, which is a power of the body that is activated by desire, and brute animals do not possess desire, but only a certain likeness of it, which men term "appetite." This is not true desire, since brutes don't have a principle of freedom which can resist their own movements. But the later natural law is the power of truth and reason, which holds desire in a state of conatus, that is, it resists the movement of desire; and we have said that later natural law gives the form of law to the earlier, because it gives to it the quality of immutability in that which cannot be done through nature, that the former is not permitted through nature.

The principles of law of the ancient interpreters are in conformity with the sounder doctrine of God's grace.

[4] These principles of law are in close conformity with the sounder doctrine of grace. They are in fact natural reason, by which the peoples themselves are their own law: they are equally the light of the divine visage shining on all, and immutably preserve the freedom of the human will, so that we can, if we choose, resist the movements of desire. But the peoples, even Christian peoples, lacking divine grace, do not so much resist the movements of desire as deflect them with other desires, like the desire for human glory, and so they perform acts of imperfect virtue. Only the victorious grace of Christ grants us the power, through the glory of God, to make the proper choices; and only the virtue of God provides all virtues in a single virtue, which we have said is the mark of true virtue.

Chapter 18

Epicurus is baneful to Christian jurisprudence

Epicurus is both a materialist and hostile to geometry, and accordingly ignorant of natural justice.

Hence you see how baneful Epicurus is to Christian jurisprudence. Just as in his hostility to metaphysics he denied the class of eternal things beyond the corporeal, so too in his scorn for mathematics he ignored the fact that eternal truth forms the basis of the demonstrated sciences of measurement, arithmetic and geometry, which we have demonstrated are the foundation of commutative and distributive justice. And so he thought that the law does not exist in nature, and he placed it in the category of opinions. He did not base his assessment on eternal honestas, but on the transient needs of the body; and he figured that since these needs vary, the law too varies. He was therefore obedient to the senses, and so found ready followers in Macchiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle. But this was perhaps the weightiest proof that all were in error, especially Spinoza, who judges the truth of things by the mind, not the senses, and rejects anything that has not been clearly demonstrated, and in these opinions he agrees with Epicurus, and the skeptics agree with the both of them.

Chapter 19

The Platonists are well-suited to matters of jurisprudence

The metaphysics of law rests on the metaphysics of the Platonists.

And let the followers of Vinnius see for themselves whether it is in fact true what they say in jest, that laws are Platonic ideas. Plato demonstrated the immortality of the human soul, which the jurists teach is the seat and residence of universal law, and further demonstrated that the reason the human soul is immortal is because it belongs to the class of things beyond the corporeal: whence it is clearly established that laws belong to the class of eternal things by reason of the fact that they are not bodies, nor do they belong to bodies. The metaphysics of universal law rests on that distinction which the jurists make between corporeal and non-corporeal things, establishing that the corporeal consist entirely in sense and the non-corporeal in understanding, and we have given strong confirmation of this in the previous book.

Chapter 20

The jurists are more useful to the Christian religion than the philosophers

The metaphysics of indivisible laws confutes the deists.

But the jurists are superior to the philosophers for this reason, for, as we have demonstrated that by the power of truth they have reached the same conclusions as the Platonists, quite unawares, while engaged in another activity, namely interpreting the law; for the same reason they are more useful to the Christian religion than the philosophers themselves. For when they judge laws to be indivisible, they deny that they can ever assume the form of a part, but answer that they, in whole or in common, pertain to the allies of some law, because laws are spiritual things, or the modes of a spiritual thing: and we would accede to that false doctrine of the deists, that God is an infinite mind in an infinite body, and assumes separate forms peculiar to parts, reason in man, sensation in animals, life in plants, extension in bodies.

On the Consistency of Philology

There are two sources for all that is knowable: understanding and will.

Now, as man is comprised of understanding and will, all that is known to man is derived either from the human understanding or the human will; accordingly, all that is knowable can be ascribed either to the necessity of reason or to the choice of authority. Philosophy establishes the consistency of reason; let us try to have philology establish the consistency of authority, just as we have said that authority is a part of reason.

Chapter I

A New Science Is Attempted

What is philology? - The two parts of philology: the history of words and the history of things.

[1] Philology is the study of language, the activity which deals with words. It recounts the history of words by explaining their origins and development and assigning them to the various stages of the language, so as to understand their literal and figurative meanings and their usage. But since attached to all words are the ideas of things, it is primarily the responsibility of philology to understand the history of things as well.

Its auxiliary arts: epigraphy, numismatics, chronology - The vast resources of the philologist provide a vital service to the state.

[2] It is proper then for philologists to write commentaries on commonwealths, the customs of nations and peoples, laws, institutions, the branches of learning and works of art. They devote careful attention to epigraphy, numismatics and chronology, which enables them to provide weightier evidence concerning ancient times. The purpose of all this is so that they can explicate all writers of learned tongues, whether orators, or philosophers, or historians, and especially the poets. They thus confer on the commonwealth this vital benefit, the ability to interpret the ancient language of its laws and religion.

[3] But before we begin to treat of historical matters, it might be useful here to present a chronological scheme which is accepted by all, that we might have a display of those facts that are relevant to establishing our principles of history.

[Chronological chart]

What is history?

[5] History is the witness of time.

Varro's divisions of time.

[6] Up to now, men have followed Varro in indentifying three periods of time: the dark age, the mythical age and the historical age.

[7] The history of the dark age has up to now been despaired of, and because the history was despaired of, the age is dark.

The division of the mythical age in accordance with our principles.

[8] The history of the mythical or heroic age can be conveniently divided into two parts, that of the greater gentes and that of the lesser gentes. And since Hercules established the Olympic games, which for the Greeks was their most celebrated epoch, the history of the mythical age of the greater gentes, which recounts the story of their twelve gods, must extend all the way to Hercules.

Why has mythology, the first history of things, up to now been so barren?

[9] But students of this mythical period have believed that it was not so much the customs and commonwealths of the age that have been veiled in fable, as the nature of the gods, so that divine matters might be concealed from the common people. Consequently, they presume that after so long a span of time, it is excusable that their mythology is so uncertain, so contradictory, and so utterly barren.

[10] Moreover, the history of the mythical age, which concluded with the founder of the Olympic games, includes the Argonauts. And because it recounts the rest of the fables which took place after the assumption of Hercules into heaven, it embraces the Trojan War, the wanderings of Ulysses and the landing of Aeneas in Italy. Both these periods we refer to as 'the mythical age of the lesser gentes', properly called by all scholars 'the heroic age'.

An oversight common to all scholars.

[11] There is vigorous debate among the more sagacious scholars as to whether the events of even this period truly took place, and whether the heroes of this age were realistically portrayed. I am indeed amazed that those scholars with their sharp memories, who know the exact number of years by which Hercules preceded Theseus and Theseus Nestor, accept so tamely certain chronological monstrosities. They believe, for example, that Theseus was the same age as Amphitryon, whose wife was the mother of Hercules, and at the same time that Theseus was inspired by the glory of Hercules, and performed such noble deeds in imitation of him that Plutarch reports he was called "a second Hercules." They include Orpheus among the Argonauts, and must convince themselves that the Greek race suddenly went from being the wild beasts that Orpheus tamed with the music of his lyre to achieving such a sophisticated society that they were knowledgeable about shipbuilding and navigation and the long routes over the Aegean and Pontic seas to Colchis. And they make that same Orpheus a contemporary of Castor and Pollux, the brothers of Helen; so that within a single human lifetime the Greeks went from living like savages to having such powerful states that they could fight a war on land and sea and overthrow the wealthiest kingdom of Asia.

The error of all learned ages: that it was from choice that poetry arose and from choice that poetic speech differed from common speech.

[12] Moreover, up to now everyone has thought that poets concocted the fables by their own special divine talent, and invented a poetic language for themselves by their own art. Two things follow from this. One, if Homer, the father of all poets and, as Plutarch has it, of all philosophers as well, had been fathered by his own talent and formed by his own art, in a time ignorant of all philosophy, why, after humanity had been graced with all the arts of philosophy, did Homer's closest rival lag so far behind him? It is incredible that so great a man was suddenly created by his own efforts. Which leads to a question disturbing to pious minds: Were the various races each destroyed by its own special flood, and did the members of each race who had by chance survived in the high mountains preserve the antediluvian wisdom? This question, which suggests that the world is eternal, must be confronted by the Christian philosopher.

The reasons why principles of history are needed.

[13] The second conclusion that can be drawn is this: If poetic inventions and poetic speech arise from the special talent and artistry of poets, and if languages are the witnesses of history, then the poets cannot provide evidence concerning the common customs and commonwealths of the entire heroic period. And so, just as the history of the dark age is unknown, so too is the history of the heroic age false. But all respected authors, especially Plato, constantly cite the poets as witnesses of remotest antiquity.

[14] Moreover, the principles of the historic period are very few, and lie scattered about like a heap of rubble from the ancient world. For instance, there is the famous Tanaus, who set out from Scythia and subdued all the Orient and even Egypt. And likewise there is that Egyptian Sesostris, who repaid the Scythians in kind by conquering the Orient and even subdued a great part of Europe and Africa, conquests whose monuments Herodotus says he saw scattered throughout Asia. And yet both of them, like Hercules, returned home with nothing to show for their victories save a glorious reputation for having conquered the world.

The principles of profane history are incompatible with sacred history - Roman history confutes the false principles of profane history, as they have been formulated up to now - And the law of the gentes supports Roman history.

[15] These things, were they true, would provide the Chinese with proof that the world is incredibly old. This must not be ignored by the Christian philosopher, but completely denied and refuted. This will be easy to do, because we have learned the truth from Roman history. The Romans came to know foreign peoples through the injuries those peoples inflicted on them, and foreign peoples came to know the Romans through the wars the Romans waged to avenge those injuries; and the punishments of war were always captivity and slavery. And that custom, which began with the founding of the first communities on earth, persisted for a very long time, that the peoples dwelled in seclusion from one another without any communication, as the war with the Tarentines sufficiently teaches us, waged 475 years after the founding of Rome. Although the Romans were from the same small peninsula of Italy and had already subdued a great part of it in war and were now the masters not only of the Tyrrhenian but even the Adriatic Sea, when they sailed with their fleet to Tarentum they were insulted by the Tarentines and prevented from landing, because the Tarentines, to use the words of Florus, "did not know who they were or where they came from."

The Greeks were ignorant of ancient times.

[16] The Egyptians forbid us to trace the principles of profane history from the Greeks, for when the Greeks were boasting that they were the original founders of civilization, the Egyptians corrected the notion with the witty response, "The Greeks have always been children." Therefore Plato in the Timaeus used this incident of the Egyptian priests as an occasion to censure the Greeks for their grave ignorance of antiquity. And Aristotle in his Politics is critical of the Greeks for relating fabulous accounts of Assyrian history, which is as much as to say that they were ignorant of the history of the greatest empire on earth. And of course Ptolemy records a long list of Assyrian kings completely unknown to the Greeks. But why wouldn't the Greeks be ignorant for so long of the Assyrians, since they were known to them neither by peace nor by war, and from the most ancient times it had been the habit of peoples to become acquainted with one another either through war or alliances of friendship.

The Greek character took the greatest delight in falsehoods.

[17] But why do we expect the Greeks to have knowledge of foreign matters when they were quite ignorant of their own ancient history? For how many fantastic tales surround Plutarch's Theseus, with whom Greek history begins? Therefore, before we published in Italian the synopsis of this work, we not only without reluctance, but right willingly took heed of that line from the satirist: ". . . whatever outrageous thing the lying Greeks write in their histories."

[18] Rome, moreover, was founded a long time after even the lesser gentes; and that custom long persisted among the Romans, which Sallust relates in the Conspiracy of Catiline: "They wished rather to perform noble deeds that others might praise than to relate the accomplishments of others."

The writers of history deny in word what they confess in fact: that history does not have principles - What would they be?

[19] So then we must conclude that profane history up to now does not have principles, though these are advertised in the grandiose titles of books written on the subject. The writers on history confess as much when they openly admit that profane history has neither certain origins nor a certain sequence of events. If it had, the events of the dark age would have been brought to light, and the events of the heroic age would have been extracted from the fables; and if we knew the events of the heroic age, we would know the causes from which the events of the historical age arose.

Etymology has been weak up to now: why so? - The first proof of weakness - The second proof.

[20] And following from this is another conclusion, which I present as a reproach to all philologists: Up to now their etymology has been quite weak. If history had provided us with the true origins and sequences of things, etymology would have provided us with the true origins and evolution of words. As a result philologists often, from the similar sound of a single syllable or even a single letter, and a most general resemblance between the things represented, fancy that they have explained the origins of Latin words, for example, by deriving them from Greek or Hebrew or some other distant tongue. But they did not realize that among those words which must by nature have been the first words in the Latin language, none of them has anything in common even with the nearby Greek: not pronouns, not even interjections. Which means the Latin and Greek peoples used different words to express fear and sorrow, and to give vent to their joy and wonder and similar passionate feelings. For the more erudite grammarians of the Greek language maintain that the word Dios was not used until a later period.

The two errors of all philology - The first: that the poets spoke improperly.

[21] Hence those absurd beliefs of all philologists: the first, that words belonging to prose speech are proper, for example, to be born, live, die, see, hear, fear, rage; and that the equivalent expressions of the poets are improper: to issue into the realms of light; to inhale the heavenly breezes or the spirit guides the limbs; the soul retreats into the breezes; to possess a thing with the eyes; to imbibe speech with the ears; a chill runs through the bones; the blood boils in the vitals. And in turn they maintain, and with good reason, that poets are much more ancient than writers of prose. This suggests that in the time of Homer, and still more in the time of Hesiod, or even Orpheus, that is in the heroic age, the Greek peoples spoke that language which after an extremely long interval of time was used by the writers of prose speech. Whereas among the peoples, especially seafaring peoples who have trade relations with foreigners, a language, even within a span of 500 years, undergoes such significant change that it seems an entirely different tongue.

The second error: Homer, Hesiod, and Orpheus spoke their own special language.

[22] With the same perversity they share these two contradictory beliefs: One, that the poets spoke "in a different tongue," to use the expression of Cicero, than the people, and accordingly that Homer, Hesiod and Orpheus did not speak in the common tongue of their race, but in their own peculiar language; two, that the poets were the first founders of commonwealths. If in fact the poets took a mob of savages living in the woods and formed them into a civil society, why did they use a language so remote from common speech that grammar was invented primarily to interpret their meaning?

A grave doubt: Has the true origin of poetry been unknown up to now?

[23] These two things, so very contradictory and yet so very true, cause me to seriously wonder whether the true origin of poetry has up to now lain hidden and unknown.

Why are philosophers averse to the studies of philology? Is this right?

[24] And for all these reasons I, who throughout my life have always been one to take more pleasure in exercising my reason than my memory, discovered that the more I learned in philology the more ignorant I seemed to be. And so not without reason René Descartes and Malebranche said that it was unsuitable for a philosopher to devote much time and effort to philology. But if this dictum were taken too far, with the endorsement of such great authorities, it would certainly come to destroy Christian commonwealths. For the laws in each part of our Bible were written in other tongues, those of the Old Testament in Hebrew and other eastern tongues, those of the New Testament in Greek; and the laws in the Corpus of Justinian Law were formulated in Latin, and these in turn are greatly illuminated by the Basilica and other books on eastern law written in Greek. Theology and jurisprudence depend in large measure on a knowledge of these languages, and translators do not have the authority of the original authors.

It is an appropriate task for a Christian philosopher to reduce philology to the form of a science - Why was Plato's Cratylus unsuccessful?

[25] And so those two preeminent philosophers, had they been more devoted to the common glory of the Christian name than to the personal glory of philosophers, would have so advanced philology that the philosophers might see whether it was possible to relate philology to the principles of philosophy, following the weighty example of Plato, who tried to do this in the Cratylus. Yet Plato met with poor success, because he didn't know the specific language which had been introduced by the first laws. This of course was the language which had been a living tongue in the age of the poet heroes, who were the first to found commonwealths with laws. And the reason he didn't know this language was because at Athens the laws had long been couched in a modern idiom, since they were revised every year by the nomothetes, or legislators.

The attempts made by Julius Caesar Scaliger and Sanchez and Schoppe contain more cleverness than truth.

[26] The quite capable philosopher Julius Caesar Scaliger, followed later by Sanchez and Schoppe, sought to investigate the causes of the Latin language by means of philosophical reasons, but the reasons were derived from Aristotelian philosophy, which arose many centuries after languages were first established, and which cannot be considered a philosophy of the entire human race, since it was not accepted even by the other philosophical sects in Greece.

[27] Therefore, embarking on a perhaps ill-fated but certainly pious venture, we have decided to discuss in this book the principles of humanity, the study of which is philology, using necessary arguments drawn from the nature of corrupted man, so that in this way we might bring philology into conformity with the standards of a science.

Chapter 2

On the Principles of Humanity

What is humanitas? - Why are language studies called studia humanitatis?

[1] Humanitas, humanity, is man's inclination to help man. This help is rendered mostly through speech, in the form of advice, admonition, exhortation, consolation, criticism, and the like, and for this reason, I think, language studies came to be called studia humanitatis, or studies of humanity. It could be though that they were called this because humanity is chiefly acquired through language.

The two parts of humanity, shame and liberty, which together give birth to liberality.

[2] But humanity, in the broader sense in which we are using the word here, consists of two principles, shame and liberty. These unite to form liberality, the virtue which directs and perfects this quality of man's. For man helps man either by word or by service or by thing, and if these three types of aid are to be properly rendered, it is necessary that both shame and liberty be present in unison. For example, servile shame is a characteristic of fawners, who not only do not aid the human race, but utterly ruin it, for they transform men from fools into utter madmen, who are then subjected to the gravest ills. On the other hand, harsh and bitter reproof serves more often to provoke men than to deter them from evil deeds or wicked schemes. Moreover, service, unless it is freely given, is forced labor, like that of farm animals. Finally, unrestrained liberty in aiding others is prodigality, which most often lavishes a thing on the undeserving, and ruins giver and receiver alike.

Shame the form, liberty the matter of humanity.

[3] Therefore, taking as our starting point the power of human nature itself, let us examine these two principles of humanity, one of which, shame, will serve as a kind of form, and the other, liberty, will be the matter, as it were, in accordance with those statements we made in the previous book concerning the form and matter of voluntary universal law.

Chapter 3

On One Principle of Humanity: Shame

[1] We said in the previous book that desire arises from finite things, and that it is a defect of the spirit contracted from the body through the sin of Adam, and for corrupted man is the fomenter of all sins.

Why did the angels and the uncorrupted Adam sin for the sake of the false and infinite goods of the mind?

[2] For there is clearly no theologian who would deny this statement: The reason that the angels, though incorporeal, nevertheless sinned, was not only because they wanted to sin in complete freedom and with no impulse of desire, but at the same time because - since they had felt no impulse of desire from body, which is finite - they sinned for the sake of something infinite, that is, they sought to be as God. Therefore they suffer the just punishment of infinite unhappiness, for they wish that God did not exist, who is infinite good, and thus they hold every good in eternal hatred, and love nothing except falsehood, which is nothing. The sin of Adam was almost of the same kind, for in his uncorrupted state he could, if he wished, have paid no heed to desire, but an evil demon tempted him, not with any good of the body, which would have necessarily been finite, but with an infinite good of the spirit, the very wisdom of God. The demon said, "You will be as gods, knowing good and evil."

Shame is the consciousness of wrongdoing - The first divine punishment visited on man by God.

[3] So then, since man scorned his own knowledge, which he enjoyed through the kindness of God, and longed to obtain infinite knowledge, God gave him a most appropriate punishment, a consciousness of error or wrongdoing, which is nothing other than shame for not having known truth. And this was the first punishment of all, and a truly divine one. For the Latin word for punishment, poena, is properly derived from the verb poenitere, to regret, which Plato judged to be the single punishment inflicted by Nemesis, that is, divine vengeance.

The greatest proof of the supreme wisdom of God - Shame, the source of natural law, was put in the place of uncorrupted simplicity.

[4] But because God rules all things and does everything by the simplest possible means, since he had foreseen that the first parent would sin, and that in him the nature of the human race would be corrupted, and that desire would oppress reason, and consequently that the senses would deceive the mind, he created man in such a way that he would be afflicted with shame, which is the source of all natural law. And so as soon as man lost his simplicity it was immediately replaced by shame. This is why immediately after the Fall our first parents became aware of their nakedness.

Shame was the inventor of religion.

[5] It was because of shame that, to replace the lost piety, which is love toward God, there came into being religion, that is, fear of the divine will; and the reason for this fear is that shame tells us that we have violated the divine will.

Whence the phrase rei stipulandi et promittendi?

[6] It is my guess that the phrase rei stipulandi et promittendi, 'guilty of the stipulation and promise', goes back to this earliest period of antiquity, and that this wording was used to warn both parties to fulfill their obligations at the proper time; and that if they failed to do so, they would be rei pudoris, subject to shame. You would say that this phrase applies to all who follow the strict letter of the law in disregard of equity and are thwarted by a plea, as though by an action of natural law. This type of plea was called by the Romans exceptio doli, 'the plea of deceit', which we said in the earlier book was prescribed by temperance.

Infamy, the second divine punishment.

[7] And from shame comes a respect for public opinion [sensus communis], which leads to a second divine punishment awaiting the reckless, infamy, which is the common judgment of men that condemns wrongdoing.

The glorious progeny of all the virtues are said to have sprung from shame - What is infamia facti?

[8] Similarly, from shame comes frugality and probity, which are the noble arts of the spirit that strengthen temperance; from shame too comes faith in keeping promises, honesty of speech, respect for what belongs to others, which are the noble arts of the spirit that strengthen justice; and from a concern for public opinion comes the suppression of wickedness, impudence, and recklessness, which are the sources of all crimes and wrongs. Those who commit these are subject by natural law to infamia facti, 'infamy of the deed', as the jurists call it, that is, they are convicted by public opinion.

The most ancient origin of the words arbitrari and decernere - What is the proper meaning of arbiter? - What is the origin of the expression decernere armis? - The history of the two words decidere and iudicare.

[9] Shame also taught the human race to conceal all that is foul and ugly in life, and to observe [arbitrari] and determine [decernere] by sight inequalities of useful things, at a time when all commerce was conducted by barter and, since a common system of measurement had not yet been developed, men assessed things by their bulk. I assign to those ancient times these two words along with their proper meanings. For arbiter properly means an observer, and one who judges a thing by observation is called an arbiter, as can be seen in the expression remotis arbitris, 'in the absence of arbiters'. So the term was later used in courts of good faith, which are chiefly based on shame, just as the term iudices, judges, was used in courts of strict law, as can be seen in the familiar formula inter iudices arbitrosque. Decernere, moreover, means to determine the equality of utilities by close observation. For cernere means to see with discrimination, so to speak, and decernere means to do this perfectly: therefore decernere belongs to those ancient times as well. Since later according to the law of the greater gentes this determination was made by violence, the expression decernere armis, to determine by arms, was used, which is properly rendered in Italian as vederla con l'armi. The proper expression for this was decidere, 'to determine by bloodshed', as it were. Finally, when civil law [ius] was introduced and courts [iudicia] were established, the word iudicare, to judge, was used.

A sense of shame was the first parent of fallen humanity and all civil life.

[10] Finally, it was at the bidding of shame that men in their lawless state, fearing the gaze of the sky, which they thought to be a god, ceased to couple promiscuously like beasts, and selected certain women to be their permanent consorts, chosen in obedience to the divine will, which they sought by auspices. And they ceased to wander like idle vagrants wherever there was pasturage, but settled in fixed abodes, determined by auspices, and began to cultivate the lands they occupied. Whence first families arose, then the greater gentes, next clientships were established, which led at last to the birth of commonwealths and empires, which in turn gave rise to the lesser gentes.

Shame is a stimulus to virtue.

[11] And with the same simplicity God the Best and Greatest, since he had created man of body and spirit, bestowed on man's spirit conatus, which we have demonstrated belongs to spirit. He did this so that when man had fallen, shame might exert this power of the spirit, whereby the spirit might command the mind and body.

Curiosity, the third divine punishment, by which corrupted man could be purified and invested with prudence - The derivation of delicta and vitia.

[12] For shame for not knowing the truth exerts that power which the spirit wields over the mind, causing the mind to persist in its search for truth until it has a full knowledge of it. This is the third divine punishment, curiosity, visited upon man that he might be purified by the very thing that caused him to sin. And from curiosity comes prudence, which causes its possessor to avoid rashness and its offspring delicta, offenses, a word which is properly derived from delinquere, which means 'to be deficient'. Prudence thus also causes man to avoid vitia, vices, the term that the Latins applied to the deficiencies themselves, as if the depraved habits of the spirit become ingrained by repeated offenses, which is to say, deficiencies in the effort necessary to seek out the truth.

The origin of human wisdom.

[13] From this power of the mind to seek out the truth, there arose wise men, who formed a higher conception of virtue than that possessed by the common folk. In conformity with this virtue and guided by the rule by truth, the philosophers prescribe duties of a higher order than those required by the law.

The fourth divine punishment, industry (which produced the strong men who founded states), has enriched the human race with all of life's benefits.

[14] Finally, with that same simplicity God in His supreme wisdom, because He had foreseen that fallen man, weak and alone, would be reduced to complete deprivation, formed him in such a way that strong men would emerge, who, living separated from the lawless mob out of shame for bestial sex, would exercise the power of spirit over body as well as mind, and cultivate the fields they had taken possession of, and receive the weak and destitute under their protection, so that commonwealths might be formed comprised of both strong and weak, the strong to rule, the weak to obey. Thus from the fourth divine punishment, industry - which God enjoined on the fallen Adam when He said "You will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow" - there arose on earth all the commodities of human life, which industry by its discoveries introduced to the human race, so that both those who were rich in these resources and those who lacked them were impelled to dwell in human societies.

In carrying out his designs God the Best and Greatest shows a woundrous simplicity . . .

[15] And so God the Best and Greatest used a single natural method of the greatest simplicity, that of shame, composed of a blending of the human body and the human spirit, and the same shame with which He punished the sin of our first parent, that very shame, I say, he made the basis of all natural law. From shame was born that power of the spirit which governs the mind and body, and through that power God brought forth in fallen man all the noble arts, with which He formed human societies, and sustained and preserved them in a natural way.

. . . and providence.

[16] Let the impious dismiss divine providence and deny, if they can, this order, everywhere self-consistent and of the utmost simplicity, which through the very things that would bring the human race to ruin, has blessed and enriched it with all the advantages of social life that we enjoy, so that it preserves man entirely by natural means. Consider the many great and various commodities of human life which lie scattered across the wide globe, are conveyed to a single market by sailors at huge risk and toil, are then refined by the labors of countless craftsmen, and finally put up for sale for the benefit of others. Who is it who is offering these things? Let Epicurus, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle answer the question. Is it this person, or that one, who like a wild beast seeks only his own advantage?

An invincible demonstration of divine providence, against the philosophers of Necessity and Chance.

[17] For when did wild beasts ever contribute anything to their own common good? But of course these things are offered by man: although not this man or that one, yet surely man. For neither did this man or that one contribute everything, nor did my mode of perception produce this huge display of merchandise; nor did void, or nothingness, ever provide anyone with the least little thing, much less things of such number, value and variety. Therefore it is man, who is neither this one or that one, nor a mode, nor nothing. This is the nature of man, which does not make this man or that one a wolf to man, but commands that he be a God to man. And if so many great goods have come together from a single principle solely for the well-being of the human race, and this was not done randomly, or by blind Chance: was it then blind Necessity that assembled these things? If it was not blind, but intelligent, it was not necessity, but eternal providence, which divides and assigns the private activities of men, in such a way that, in addition to and even contrary to men's purposes, they might in the end come to reveal the infinite goodness of providence.

Chapter 4

On the second principle of humanity: liberty

Man alone is free, all other mortal things are slaves.

[1] To continue, man alone was created by God with liberty: all else are slaves without authority. Therefore as soon as God created Adam He granted him supreme authority over all other mortal things.

Dominion, corrupted when man was corrupted, must be moderated by shame.

[2] But just as human nature, though weakened by the Fall, was not entirely destroyed, so too this part of human nature, namely man's authority over things, was not lost, but corrupted, so that it had to moderated by shame. It was for this reason that God, since He had known that man would sin and, due to the weakness of his corrupted nature, would be reduced by poverty and solitude from a life of eternal goodness to one of acquiring the transient utilities of life, bestowed upon him shame, by which he might moderate these utilities.

What is natural liberty? - How is man by nature suus? - The servitude of nature is defined.

[3] This moderated authority over useful things is natural liberty, by virtue of which man is called suus, belonging to himself: just as what is under the power or dominion of another is called alienum, belonging to another. Whence comes the servitude of nature, whereby man becomes a bondsman to money, lust, and honor and lives as a slave.

What is suitas originaria? - Commerce was derived from liberty, and humanity from commerce.

[4] From this suitas of man, the quality of being his own person, which one might elegantly call originaria, original, and which we have defined as natural liberty, there arose commerce, from which, as though from a river flowing from a second source - liberty - humanity was derived. This is why we see that those communities celebrated for their commerce are the most humane, and those to whom commerce is unknown are quite savage.

The two parts of liberty: dominion and defense - The three primary sources of laws and commonwealths.

[5] There are two parts of this natural liberty, which branch off from it as though from a tree trunk, dominion and defense. For one who is free at least has dominion over his own liberty; and one who cannot defend himself against injury is a slave. These are the three primary rights from which, as we have seen, all laws and commonwealths arose, and on which all humanity was founded.

Natural authority.

[6] It is by virtue of liberty that man is his own person, which we have said is natural authority.

Chapter 5

On One Part of Liberty: Dominion

Dominion, or proprietorship.

[1] And we have said that dominion is that part of authority which is specifically called proprietas, proprietorship.

Dominion is divided into use and enjoyment - The two main types of things: those for use, those for enjoyment.

[2] Dominion thus defined has two subdivisions, use and enjoyment. And in fact there exist in nature only two categories of things over which man has dominion in this universe, the things which can be used and the things which can be enjoyed.

Things useful by nature - What is the proper meaning of utilitas? - How do things common by nature belong to no one? - What was the first dominion on earth?

[3] Utenda natura, things useful by nature, are those things which by their use confer some utility, utilitas, a word which most properly derives its name from these things. Things of this category include the air for sight, running water for bathing, the sea for sailing, and the shores of the sea for landing ships, and it is for these reasons that rivers and their banks are public property. These things are accordingly said in Roman law to be common in use to all and under the proprietorship of no one. The word proprietorship of course was being used with its current meaning, when the ownership of the land had been divided, not that primitive proprietorship of which we are speaking here. This communal dominion Grotius rightly defined as "use common to all mankind."

How is the land common by nature even now? - How are the rights of passage, drive, and way parts of dominion?

[4] And it follows from this that -- since the land itself belongs to the category of things useful by nature, insofar as it can be used to stand upon and travel over - sovereign princes, when the forces of other kings wish to make a journey through their domains, are most often obliged to provide them with safe passage, just as they are obliged to provide them an open sea and the right to land their fleets on the shores; and, if the kings should be prohibited from doing so, they can assert their right of passage through arms. In private affairs too the rights of passage, drive, and way are part of the dominion of those to whose estates these rights are attached, and if they should be impeded from exercising them, by the power of dominion they can claim their rights by an actio confessoria, which is a type of claim of dominion.

What are things that are useful according to the human will? - Why have they been assigned to the class of enjoyable things?

[5] But men have chosen to assign those useful things that are made by art, that is, all things that pertain to clothing and shelter and other human uses, except food, to the second type of dominion, the dominion over enjoyable things, since these are by nature superfluous, whereas use by nature applies only to necessities. This is the reason for the distinction commonly made by jurists and philosophers between usus and fructus.

What things are enjoyable by nature? - What is the derivation of frui? - Abusus properly means fructus.

[6] Moreover, those things are enjoyable by nature which by their enjoyment provide growth, as do fruges and fructus, fruits and produce, from which the word frui, to enjoy, properly derives. If Julianus had considered this he would not have entirely faulted the man who had defined fructus as those things that a man eats. For from these things comes the original signification of proprietas, because by fructus, enjoyment (we now use the term abusus, consumption), they become propria, our very own, and most properly of all pass into our substance.

What usufruct would truly be caussalis?

[7] And these things which I am saying are confirmed by the ancient interpreters of the law, when they say that dominion is the usufruct which they call caussalis, causal. If by caussalis they mean that dominion that is the most ancient of all, which the earliest men exercised, nothing can be said more elegantly. Nothing indeed prevents even barbarians from sometimes saying things elegantly, as the Latins did often, and the Athenians always. I say this to correct those who have believed elegance to be synonymous with Latin, not knowing that among the desiderata of Francis Bacon was a dictionary composed of the elegancies of all languages.

What is the true proprietorship of things? - What is the proper meaning of meum and tuum? - What is the derivation of mutuum?

[8] And so originally proprietorship was of those things which become our own by consuming: and this is the most proper meaning of meum and tuum, mine and thine, from which according to the jurists the word mutuum, loan, is derived. And so we have established the reason why this dominion over the property of another given in loan is acquired by consumption.

The words meum and tuum originated before there was a division of ownership - Meum and tuum, though a source of discord when property was held in common, after the division of ownership gave rise to human society, through the power of commerce.

[9] Therefore these two words, meum and tuum, which Plato said were the seed-bed of all discord, arose before there was a division of ownership. For when the desire that was the result of Adam's sin grew stronger, and humanity could no longer be preserved among men by communal ownership, which had been the most proper form of ownership for them, and meum and tuum began to sow discord, which threatened to destroy the human race, the division of land was introduced by divine providence, and meum and tuum gave rise to commerce, which we have said fosters humanity.

The metaphorical uses of proprietas.

[1] But the term proprietas was not immediately transferred to real property; this was rather a gradual process which happened by stages, which we shall now describe from the very nature of things.

First, the word was applied to the fruits separated from the soil - The gathering of fruits was the first act of appropriation that took place on earth, and was introduced by natural law, not the law of the gentes.

[11] First the term proprietas was transferred to the fruits separated from the soil by our labor, when the earliest men made the fruits of the earth their own by gathering them. This was the first type of appropriation that took place on earth, and the very first means of dividing ownership, and was introduced by natural law. Note I say "dividing," not acquiring ownership, and "by natural law," not the law of the gentes. This is because this appropriation of fruits was initiated by single individuals, before the gentes were established, and was done according to the right of dominion, which was born at the same time as man himself, and accordingly was called by Grotius dominium universale, universal dominion. The gathering of fruits then did not create ownership, but divided it.

How is liberty fostered by nature?

[12] And at this stage, as a result not of natural reason, but rather owing to the rich abundance of resources and a very sparse human population, men were temperate and courteous and took from the common store only what was enough; and so nature itself fostered liberty, which thrives in those places where men exercise temperance in their use of common goods.

The derivation of the expression frugi homines? - Among the Romans frugalitas encompassed every virtue.

[13] Hence, thrifty men were later called frugi homines, "fruit men," and the quality of temperance itself frugalitas. According to Cicero this word as used by the Romans encompassed every virtue, because in every virtue there exists a mean, "departing from which righteousness cannot abide." A vestige of this ancient usage survives even today, when we call a virtuous, temperate man homo frugi.

How the first foundation of justice, moderation, was established among men.

[14] And by this means, dictated by the circumstances themselves, moderation, the foundation of all virtues, was established among men by divine providence. For man had been deprived of divine aid so that he could not live an upright life on the basis of rational deliberation, and the occasions of common utility had not yet arisen to advise man of just and unjust.

The transfer of moveable goods, a method of acquiring ownership introduced by natural law, was adopted into the law of the gentes - The first occasion of utility to arise among men, which made them mindful of justice.

[15] And from what we have said so far it is clear that the transfer of moveable goods is a means of acquiring ownership, introduced by natural law, but adopted into the law of the gentes. For it is necessary, or at least possible, that before the founding of the gentes it happened that one person had an abundance of a particular kind of essential commodity, and another was in need of it. Shame would then dictate that the needy man receive the thing with the consent of the possessor, and promise to give in return either an equal amount of the same commodity, or some other thing that the other by chance lacked. This was the first occasion of utility that arose among men, which made them mindful of justice.

Exchanges were the first contracts on earth - Promises were in common use before the founding of the gentes - The transfer of real property was introduced by the law of the gentes.

[16] And in like manner we can infer that exchanges were the first contracts among men, and promises were commonly employed before the founding of the gentes, but only as regards moveable goods. But after the ownershop of the land was divided by the gentes, the concept of transfer was expanded and came to be applied to acquiring ownership of real property as well.

What is the derivation of industria? - What was man's first labor? - When did custodia begin to be used in the sense of proprietas? - What is the derivation of dominium?

[17] The word proprietas then took on a broader meaning, when men of foresight began to gather fruit and wood in the summer and store them for the winter. For this reason the men were described as industrii, and the quality they displayed industria, from the verb struere, to pile, because the noun struix, pile, was originally used of a stack of wood. And industria acquired the meaning of "labor," because this was man's first labor. At this stage custodia began to be used in the sense of proprietas; and dominium is perhaps derived from domus, house, because men preserved their ownership of goods by keeping them in the house, that is, by custodia.

When did the intention of the owner (spiritus domini), as soon as it was made known, begin to be equivalent to proprietas? - In what sense are the terms usus and auctoritas used by the law of the gentes? - To whom was the term auctores first applied?

[18] Later proprietas took on an even more improper meaning, when men increased in number and began to reserve for themselves plots of land, which the jurists call fundi, by setting up boundary markers, and the intention of the owner, signified by the erection of these boundary markers, established proprietas. From this time usus was understood in the sense of possession, and auctoritas in the sense of ownership. These two terms, belonging to the law of the gentes, were part of the formula appearing in the section of the Law of the Twelve Tables entitled De usucapionibus: Usus et auctoritas fundi biennium esto [Let there be possession and ownership of the farm for two years]; and in Roman law auctores are those from whom we receive the right of ownership, who are most often called venditores, sellers. The word auctor is not derived, as those most learned interpreters of the law wrongly believe, from augere or auctio.

Hermogenianus illustrated.

[19] These things that we have said concerning the history of auctoritas, or proprietorship, are in agreement with what Hermogenianus writes, namely, that ownership was divided by the law of the gentes, not introduced by it. For in accordance with natural law, ownership, born with man, was held in common. Then, through the stages we have described, it was divided by the law of the gentes, who established boundary markers in the fields, divided ownership, constructed buildings and founded kingdoms, as Hermogenianus recounts in the same passage. These were the gentes maiores, the greater gentes, by whom kingdoms were founded, not the gentes minores, the lesser gentes who emerged from those kingdoms that were founded, as we have demonstrated throughout the previous book

What is the proper meaning of "greater" and "lesser gentes"? What is their transferred meaning?

[20] This passage offorded us for the first time an opportunity to understand the origin of that expression, "the gods of the greater and lesser gentes," which I had previously heard many scholars use, but never learned from them what these words conveyed. To be sure, unless they are understood as we have distinguished them, neither this passage of Hermogenianus, nor countless other passages dealing with Roman history can be properly explained, as we shall see below. But the Romans transferred the meanings of these terms, as they did so many others, to signify something similar, and applied them to the patricians of the greater and lesser gentes. The patricians of the greater gentes were the descendants of the senators chosen by Romulus, before the founding of the Roman race, while those of the lesser gentes were of course the descendants of those senators chosen after the founding of the Roman race. These two terms have up to now been commonly understood in their tranferred, rather than their proper meaning, making much of Roman history extremely obscure, as we shall see.

Finally, proprietas was sufficiently indicated by the mere intention of the spirit - The spirit itself, and the things belonging to the spirit were called by the jurists substantia hominis.

[21] Finally, after the establishment of societies, proprietas, or auctoritas, acquired its most improper meaning of all, when rights became our own special property not by some physical occupation, not by custody, not by any permanent physical sign of our spirit, but rather were sufficiently indicated by the mere intention of the spirit; and the entire patrimonium was called substantia patris, a father's substance, and this substantia was termed hereditas. These were not bodies that were inherited, but a right, which belongs to the understanding.

How rights gradually and by degrees returned to their own incorporeal and eternal origin - Nothing is more man's own than his will - An extremely brief but highly interesting history of universal law.

[22] But from this history of the word proprietas you can see that while the term acquired improper meanings, the thing itself by its own power approached its own most proper nature, so that rights were transferred from the body to the spirit; and each man's property, which is the same as each one's right, passed first from consumption, then gathering, later occupation, next custody, afterwards boundaries, and finally returned to the will, which is man's most personal possession; and beginning from earlier natural law, and passing by these stages first through the law of the greater gentes and then through civil law, rights finally arrived at later natural law, which is to say, shame alone. You could elegantly say that all rights were introduced by the natural law of primitive man, refined by the natural law of the greater gentes, reduced by the natural law of the lesser gentes, and finally purged of almost all corporeality by the natural law of the philosophers.

Chapter 6

On the second part of liberty: defense

What is defense? - Defense is a power born with man.

[1] It remains to speak of tutela, defense. We have defined it as the freedom to defend oneself and one's own through the use of force, which is to say, it is a natural power born with man, whereby one who kills an unjust aggressor to defend himself and his property, if he cannot defend them otherwise, kills by the right of the superior.

Why was virtus originally a property of the body? Why was it then applied to the mind? - Actions and accusations: types of defense.

[2] Virtus took its name from vis, force, and originally meant that which might oppose with bodily force an outside force and overcome it: but later, when laws had been passed, it was transferred from a force of the body to a force of the spirit, and the force returned to its own nature, and is the right of claiming one's own or exacting retribution in court. In civil proceedings it is called actio, or action, in criminal proceedings accusatio, accusation. While formulas were in use, each of these defenses of our rights was formulated by statute. But when the natural law of the philosophers flourished, the defense of our rights was dictated by reason.

What is the origin of civil liberty? of truly civil dominion, which is commonly called 'eminent domain'? of civil power, that is, supreme power? of civil authority? Civil authority is the philosophy of the common people.

[3] But in the foundation of commonwealths, as we said in the earlier book, the liberty of individuals gave rise to civil liberty, which flourishes most when all are subject to the law. The dominion of individuals combined to form dominium eminens, eminent domain, in which, as if it were a kind patrimonium of the commonwealth, the rights of all private individuals are contained; and from the defense of individuals there arose supreme power, which defends all citizens with the armed force of the law; and from the authority of individuals arose civil authority, which, besides the duties required by nature, can enjoin the honorable duties of nature as well, and can prohibit those things that are permitted by nature. And so this humanity by which we are civilized must be ascribed to civil authority, a sort of philosophy of the common people.

What would the principles of profane history be?

[4] So that we might know the reasons by which this civil authority evolved from the lawlessness of earliest man to these commonwealths in which we now abide, the history of the dark age must be reconstructed according to our principles. These of course would be the principles, which up to now have been lacking, of universal profane history. If we fail in our attempt, our desire at least of aiding the human race with such important knowledge is surely worthy of some praise.

Chapter 7

On the principles of universal history

The two parts of history: the history of things and the history of words.

[1] Universal history is comprised of the history of things and the history of words; and it is clear that the history of words is derived from the history of things, just as there can be no doubt that things exist prior to their symbols.

The history of words: etymology - The first history of things: mythology.

[2] The history of words, etymology, is uncertain, because the earliest history of profane things, which is to say, mythology, or the history of the mythical age, has neither a certain origin nor a certain sequence. And the reason why its origin and sequence are uncertain, is because up to now a knowledge of the events of the dark age has been considered beyond all hope of recovery.

The certain origin and sequence of universal history must be sought from sacred history.

[3] So then, if sacred history presents us with an account of events which took place during the dark age and the mythical, or heroic age of profane history, we will then have a way to link the history of these two periods with true history. Therefore, just as it is true what has been said concerning the measurement of the natural world, that it derives its certainty from the certain measurement of the heavens, so too can it be said concerning the truth of the civil world, that the truth of profane history can only be sought from sacred history.

Chapter 8

A demonstration of the antiquity, continuity, and truth of sacred history.

[1] And so let us establish these three propositions concerning sacred history:

[2] One: that it is more ancient than all profane histories.

[3] Two: that it alone provides profane universal history with certain origins and a certain sequence.

[4] Three: that the events described by sacred history - even setting aside divine faith, though this is greater than any demonstration - are demonstrated by human arguments, and approach geometric truth as closely as the subject matter allows.

The antiquity of sacred history.

[5] The following three facts prove the antiquity of sacred history:

[6] One: No profane history clearly relates that both before and after the Flood, prior to the founding of commonwealths and the passage of laws, the human race lived unbound by law under a theocracy. The poets alone in their fables hinted, albeit very obscurely, that this was the most ancient state of affairs.

[7] Two: The Hebrew commonwealth itself was in the beginning founded as a theocracy by the laws of the Decalogue, which proposed no humanly ordained penalties; and it is related in a number of places in the Holy Bible that this theocracy lasted from the time of Moses all the way down to the kings, a span of 499 years. It was under a theocracy too that the twelve gods of the greater gentes, which is to say the most ancient of the gods, were consecrated by false religions, and that the greater gentes, which is to say the most ancient of all, were constrained by their faith in them.

[8] Three: As others too have noted before us, Homer, without a doubt the first of all profane writers, describes his kings as having pastoral customs very similar to those of the first Hebrew kings of sacred history; and yet the kingdom of the Hebrews was founded 500 years after Moses, the author of sacred history.

The continuity of sacred history.

[9] That sacred history alone can provide us with the certain origin and certain sequence of profane history is proved by that most ancient custom of the peoples that we mentioned earlier, that they took no interest in foreign peoples. The reason why this was so was because they remained confined within their own boundaries, and became acquainted with foreign peoples only by the occasions afforded by war, whose punishments were always captivity and slavery. The Hebrews endured these punishments at the hands of the Assyrians at a time when the Greeks, though already civilized, were almost completely ignorant of Assyrian power, and were to remain so for a long time afterward; and so the Hebrews can teach us the certain origins and certain progress of profane history, which among the profane writers begins with the monarchy of the Assyrians.

The truth of sacred history.

[10] The following three arguments provide solid proof that what sacred history hands down to us is true:

[11] One: The Hebrew people were so faithful to their law and ancestral customs, even to the point of obstinacy, that it must be thought that they preserved inviolate their ancient historical records and excluded from them all that was foreign.

[12] Two: Their history itself preserved for them the continuity of their language, which is proved by the fact - previously unnoticed by scholars of the Hebrew tongue when dealing with this question - that the proper form of the verb, which in Greek and Latin is in the present tense, in Hebrew is in the preterite tense, the tense proper to historians, and is even in the third person.

[13] The third (others before us have advanced this argument from Jerome's Commentary on Daniel, but nevertheless it follows from our principles) is that Xenophon -- who was the first Greek historian to write of foreign affairs, for he wrote a firsthand account of the encounters the Greeks had with foreigners, and was likewise a most distinguished philosopher, and played a major role in the events he describes, and on his expedition into Persia he penetrated further than previous military commanders - wrote an account of Persian history that closely conforms with sacred history.

Chapter 9

A demonstration of giants, who provide a link between antediluvian and postdiluvian history.

The principles of history, when unsupported by rational explanations, generate wonderment rather than knowledge.

[1] But the great scholar Hugo Grotius, displaying more zeal than judgment, demonstrates the truth of sacred history by confirming its origins, not by any irrefutable explanations, but by a generous interpretation of certain passages found in pagan writers. For instance, he says that a common tradition among the gentiles attests to a universal flood, and that the chance exposure of tombs provides evidence for the existence of giants. These two statements, because he does not support them with rational explanations, contribute nothing, except to excite the same wonderment among the learned as they do among laymen.

Principles not firmly established generate absurdities.

[2] The physical explanations moreover, which others use to prove the existence of giants, are scarcely worth listing. For since we know for certain that the humans who lived two or even three thousand years ago were no taller than the men of today, those who maintain that men become shorter and smaller with time had best beware lest they be forced unwittingly into some very absurd reasoning. Because if this shrinking of our bodies has been imperceptible over such a long span of time, we would have to go back at least a hundred thousand years to reach the time of the giants. Why then were the giants, "the mighty men of old," as sacred history calls them, contemporary with pious believers? Why weren't the earliest humans, Cain and Abel, giants? Why is it that giants weren't born immediately after the Flood, but Nimrod is reported by sacred history to have been of gigantic stature a full two hundred years after the Flood? Why did men shrink so suddenly and remarkably from so great a size to their current small stature? Or are we to say, like many interpreters of sacred history, that angels gathered human seed and, like incubi, sired giants from pagan women? Men with more shrewdness than piety have been compelled by these difficulties to deny entirely the literal existence of giants, and regard them as a metaphor for the tyrants of the gentiles. These are the well-established principles with which up to now men have begun universal history, because they did not seek to ground authority on unshakeable reason, of which authority is surely a part.

Nine philological axioms.

[3] First off then, let me propose in advance a number of axioms of philology, which are both very well-known and can be said without danger of contradiction.

I

[4] A year after the Flood, before the confusion of tongues in Babylon, Shem, Ham and Japheth, unbound by law, divided the earth among them; and Shem remained in Assyria, Ham migrated to nearby Phoenicia and Egypt, Japheth to Europe.

II

[5] The civilized arts reappeared in the East very early, so that within 200 years of the flood there arose among the Chaldaeans astrology, which otherwise, since it depends on the observation of the stars, would have required a much longer time to be reduced to an art, not to mention a science.

III

[6] In the West the type of divination that arose was as crude as that in the East was learned. The divination practiced in the West held that thunder, lightning, the flight and cries of birds, and the propitious or inauspicious entrails of sacrificial victims were messages from the gods.

IV

[7] From the earliest times there persisted among the Greeks the belief, noted by Homer, that their ancestors once lived like wild beasts, and that they left the bodies of their dead to be devoured by crows and dogs.

V

[8] Mythologists are in agreement that these were the wild beasts which Orpheus tamed with the music of his lyre, and were the stones which Amphion assembled, also with the music of the lyre, to form the walls of Thebes.

VI

[9] And all philologists, when they recount the origins of languages, show that interjections were the first human utterances, which burst forth at the onset of strong emotions; later pronouns were developed, with which men could express things with a very few number of words. What is more, in all languages almost all of these are monosyllables. And we have already demonstrated that the first proper words to arise among the Latins, nouns, were also all monosyllables.

VII

[10] This too is beyond doubt: the more esoteric disciplines were brought to Egypt and Greece from Asia.

VIII

[11] And this is an established fact as well: poetic speech originated long before prose speech.

IX

[12] Finally, the first founders of commonwealths were poets.

An observation.

[13] A person considering our chronology might be amazed that within 200 years after the Flood the population of the human race had grown so large that Nimrod could construct a tower of enormous height. But let him grant this, which no one at all can deny. Males reach puberty at the age of fifteen, and females become fertile at the age of twelve, barren at fifty, and are able to bear a child every year. If you calculate that the first woman, bearing a child a year till the fiftieth year, could have 37 children, the second 36 children, the third 35, and so on down the line; and if you repeat the calculation for their granddaughters, great-granddaughters and great-great-granddaughters, you will find that within a span of 200 years many tens of thousands of people can be born.

The problem for which a new science of philology is called into being.

[14] Now it behooves us to ask the following question: Why was there such a sharp distinction between wild and civilized man, considering that Ham was lawless when he led his posterity into Phoenicia, and then later into neighboring Egypt; and Japheth, called Iapetus in Greek, was also lawless when he migrated to Europe? And why were the Chaldaeans in Assyria the first wise men among the gentiles, when Ham and Japheth brought with them the antediluvian language, which should have enabled them to preserve the earlier civilization, whereas the languages of the Semites were confused at Babylon?

Up to now chronology has been confused.

[15] For those figures like the Egyptian Cecrops, the Phoenician Cadmus, and the Phrygian Danaus, who brought civilization to Greece by establishing colonies, and Orpheus and Amphion, who bear witness to the fact that 300 years after Cecrops and Cadmus, and 200 years after Danaus, their Greek countrymen were wild beasts and rocks, were not assigned to their proper periods. While I was marveling at these chronological absurdities, this thought came to my mind: What if these events, though reversed in time, are nevertheless true in fact? What if the Greek peoples, after they had become aware of the power of Egypt and Syria and even Asia, in order to make their origins seem more august, made them more ancient? What if this is the solution to the problem we have posed?

Humanity must be credited to religion alone.

[16] Ham's neighbor Shem preserved among his posterity the true religion of God the creator, and by cultivating the true religion he preserved innocence, and by innocence human society, and by society language all the way down to the Babylonian confusion. In this way he kept alive a memory of the antediluvian civilization, although in the beginning, due to the small number of people, the only arts practiced were agriculture and herding. This explains why, when even the descendants of Shem turned to idolatry, the first wise men of the gentiles were the Chaldaeans; and why too the posterity of Ham in Phoenicia on account of their proximity to the Chaldaeans, and the Egyptians on account of their proximity to the Phoenicians, were soon able to discover the more arcane disciplines. But the progeny of Japheth were transformed into the wild beasts of Orpheus and the stones of Amphion, and they long remained in that state, since Japheth had withdrawn a long way from the Semites. Therefore, as Japheth himself sloughed off the true religion, so did his descendants cast off all religion, and with religion, all humanity.

How were men transformed into the wild beasts of Orpheus and scattered throughout the world's great forest?

[17] The reason why the Hamites as well as the Japhites were scattered through the world's great forest and lived in solitude, must have been because in their flight from wild animals men became separated from women and women from men, children from their mothers and mothers from their children; and so the younger folk, abandoned by their elders or driven away from them by fear of wild animals, gradually became more primitive, and wandering in solitude they grew deaf first to all religion, then to all language, and finally to all humanity, and descended to the wantonness and vagrancy of wild animals. This state of affairs lasted for a thousand years, if anyone cares to make an accurate calculation. During this time a great many of their number perished of hunger in the winter and of thirst in the summer, or were killed by wild animals; nevertheless, in their flight from beasts or search for food and water, by a monumental effort over trackless and difficult terrain, by blind chance they made their way in safety to Scythia, Ethiopia, the West and the Indies.

Why was divination early and erudite in the East, late and crude in the West?

[18] There was also this necessary difference between East and West: The Chaldeans remained in contact with civilization through the neighboring Semites, who lived in fixed abodes and were united by the power of true religion, and protected themselves and their families and herds from wild animals with valor. And because they inhabited vast open plains the Chaldaeans could easily observe the rising and setting of the stars; and so from the movement of the stars they fancied that the sky was a god, and adopted, if not a true, then at least a learned form of divination, magia. But the Japhites, living far from the Hamites and Semites, with no one nearby who cultivated humanity, were all reduced to a brutish torpor, and had to be excited by lightning to believe that the sky was a god and to think that Jove was its will. Therefore, the brand of divination practiced in the West was quite crude and was slow to be introduced.

A demonstration of the universal Flood.

[19] And here is an irrefutable demonstration that the whole earth was overwhelmed by the Flood, and that the human race was preserved in the person of Noah, and that the ark settled in some place near Assyria, such as Armenia: Civilization appeared early among the Assyrians, whence the first monarchy arose among them, and for the rest of the world a bestial lifestyle long endured, persisting for a thousand years after the Flood even among the Greeks; and no other explanation can be offered for this than that the true religion was preserved among the Semites. If Japheth had likewise preserved true religion among his family, or, like Ham, though abandoning piety had dwelt near the pious Semites, the same things would have happened in the West as happened in the East. And in this way through our principles of humanity not only is sacred history consistent with profane history, but profane history confirms a celebrated epoch in sacred history, the universal Flood.

A demonstration of giants.

[20] As a result of the utterly savage lifestyle of these impious and lawless men, there emerged in profane history after the Flood giants, concerning whom sacred history relates the following five facts:

I

[21] They existed before the Flood, and were the chief reason God caused the Flood.

II

[22] They were sired by "the sons of God," who had entered "the daughters of men."

III

[23] They were "the mighty ones of old" and "men of renown."

IV

[24] They are mentioned in sacred history some time after the Flood, in the person of Nimrod.

V

[25] They were not born among pious believers.

[26] That a filthy way of life is the cause of giantism is demonstrated first by civil history, then by natural history.

Demonstration by civil history.

[27] Civil history provides evidence in the works of Julius Caesar and Cornelius Tacitus, who, exploring the reasons for the vast size of the Germans, each advanced a single cause. These two causes must be combined, since both contribute to the phenomenon. Caesar says that German children were completely exempt from all training, because the entire life of the Germans "consists of hunting and warlike pursuits" (which of course children take no part in), and that "from childhood they devote themselves to toil and hardships, and believe that this is the reason for their large stature." According to Tacitus, "in every home" (even of princes) "children live in nakedness and filth, and for this reason they develop those bodies that are such a marvel to the Romans." These are established facts concerning a people already supported by religion, customs, and institutions. What are we to think of the lifestyle of children before all humanity was introduced, reared solely by their mothers, and forced to suffer cruel hardships as they scrambled naked through a trackless wilderness overgrown with briars and brambles in search of acorns or a spring?

Demonstration by natural history.

[28] Natural history, or the observation of nature, shows to what degree the fear of a teacher breaks the spirit of children, and crushes every noble impulse for rapid maturation. Natural history shows too that nitrous salts, which are present in great abundance in urine, are extremely potent, as is evident in spirit of ammonia. For country folk know that fields that have been manured are very fertile, and yet cannot match the fertility of fields where armies have encamped, which produce the richest crops for many years. It is my conjecture that it is due to the same primitive lifestyle that giants exist even today in the southernmost part of America. I invite those who travel over the world to check and see whether my conjecture is correct.

A proof of divine providence.

[29] And so we conclude that those ancient children matured and developed strong limbs much sooner than do the children of today. For this too we must honor divine providence above all. For at the very moment the human race in its impiety was sinking to that foul lifestyle, and the world's great forest was beginning to teem with wild animals, children began to mature quickly and develop large, strong bodies, so that they could either flee from the animals or vanquish them.

Why were there giants before the Flood? - The truly pious were the strongest of the peoples.

[30] Sacred history relates that the reason giants were born before the Flood was that the "sons of God," that is the descendants of Seth, according to the interpretation of Samuel Bochart, entered into the "daughters of man," or the women of pagan religions, because the sons of God were captivated by their beauty. These women must have been descendants of Cain, since Cain had founded cities, as sacred history also relates, and the women of his race must have had a certain refinement, not to mention being cleaner. And we must imagine too that these women burned with desire for these descendants of Seth, since they were held to be the true heroes of the golden age, who protected themselves and their herds and crops from wild beasts not with walls, but with valor.

[31] And just as later it was a common custom among postdiluvian peoples not to intermarry with foreign women, so too among the antediluvian peoples it must be thought that sexual relations between men and women of different religions were condemned, just as they are forbidden today between us Christians and the Turks or Hebrews. Therefore those men and women who interbred must have been excluded from the community (which we shall later show in detail was the oldest type of punishment and arose from the customs of the peoples). And so they wandered through the woods as solitary exiles, and forced upon their progeny a savage life of flight and wandering. Later these gave rise to peoples of gigantic stature, among whom persisted the ancient savage custom of not bathing children nor subjecting them to any training. These were later the "mighty ones of old" and "men of renown."

When did the postdiluvian giants appear?

[32] Mythical history relates that there were giants after the Flood, but sacred history tells us that they were not born immediately after the Flood, for Nimrod is the only giant mentioned as such. This is because at least 200 years had to pass for the descendants of Shem to descend through their impiety to the savage lifestyle which produces giants, and then by a humane mode of life to become a civilized people again.

Why did giants disappear in the East at an early date?

[33] Later, giants disappeared in the East, because with the introduction of civil culture women began to wash their children, and the fear of fathers and teachers arose, and, more importantly, the terrifying superstitions of false religions.

Why weren't giants born among the truly pious?

[34] Giants weren't born among the truly pious posterity of Shem, because in accordance with antediluvian culture women washed their children, and children grew up under the authority and discipline of their fathers.

Why did the Germans have huge bodies?

[35] Giantism persisted among the Germans because, though they had abandoned their abominable sexual practices, due to their savage way of life they retained the primitive custom of rearing their children.

Why did abominable sexual practices persist among the Persians?

[36] The Assyrians, and accordingly the Persians, maintained the abominable sexual practices from this savage way of life; but giants disappeared among them, because astrology soon restored the civilized arts. And I hope that these facts concerning giants, which up to now have been told in fables which didn't square well with sacred history, will in the future lend support to the science of philology, and not empty erudition.

The impiety of westerners was shattered by a thunderbolt.

[37] But this is an appropriate place to deal with this question: Why were the westerners so late in adopting religions, if it was a thunderbolt that caused them to turn from impiety?

The physical explanation for this.

[38] Physical science, not without an admiring nod to divine providence, solves this difficulty, and sheds great light on profane history, which for a second time demonstrates the truth of sacred history.

[39] It must have been that for many generations after the universal Flood, the earth, long drenched by water, did not discharge into the air the dry exhalations, or ignitible materials which generate lightning (as happens now in places far distant from the tropics); but after many ages, when the land had become as dry as it is now, the sky began to lighten and thunder.

The war of the giants - Terrae filii, terrigenae, indigenae, ingenui - Neither religions nor commonwealths were founded by imposture.

[40] And these are the giants who in their impiety declared war on Jove, were struck by his thunderbolt and hid themselves in the mountains, as we touched upon in the earlier book and will discuss more fully below. They were called Terrae filii, sons of the Earth, because they were the ancestors of those aborigines who were called by the Greeks terrigenae [earth-born], and by the Latins indigenae or ingenui [in-born, natives]. Since they were ignorant of their ultimate origin, with no intent to deceive, they said that they were the sons of those lands where they abided, and accordingly they boasted to those fleeing to their altars that they were the masters of those lands, as we said above. This, as Livy relates, was the origin of commonwealths. So little aware were they that Danaus, Cadmus, Pelops and suchlike were the founders of their race!

Why Hercules and Bacchus were born from lightning - The derivation of Olympiades - Why Olympus is the abode of the twelve gods - Why the earth is called humus - The derivation of deus [god].

[41] This was the reason why Hercules and Bacchus, the former the conqueror of the West, the latter of the East, were born from a lightning bolt, and why Hercules established the Olympic games, which is to say, the historical age of the Greeks. For humanity began with a bolt of lightning, and since the lightning came from Olympus, or the region of the upper air, Olympus was thought to be the abode of the greater gods. And another reason for giantism - in addition to the filth described by Tacitus and Caesar's hard and toilsome liberty - may have been that the air was dense because the ground had been wet for a long time, since peoples who dwell in swampy places grow to a remarkable height. Is it then from moisture, humor, that the ground is called humus? Or rather does humor derive its name from humus, because men saw that the waters were born from the earth? And on account of the dense atmosphere giants were not only incredibly large, but also remarkably stupid, so that it took a bolt of lightning to rouse in them a fear of the gods. And it is for this reason that to the Greeks deos meant fear, whence is derived deido, I fear. This too is the origin of that verse: "It was fear that created the first gods on earth."

[42] Religion was not introduced so late in the East, because, as we have said, it wasn't introduced by a lightning bolt.

Chapter 10

A demonstration of the first four epochs of sacred history, during which time profane history passed for the most part in obscurity.

[1] From these things that we have said so far in our demonstration of giants there follows as a necessary consequence a demonstration of the four first epochs of sacred history, during which time profane history passed in large part in obscurity.

The first epoch: the creation of the world by God.

[2] In this period, when the world was new and commonwealths had not yet arisen, agriculture and herding were preserved among the sons of Seth by the religion of the true God. By the virtue of God they lived in innocence in their fields and pastures without laws, and protected themselves and their families and belongings from the impious, that is, the violent men of false religions. And so as regards these men the golden age of the poets has some foundation of truth.

The second epoch: the universal flood.

[3] In this epoch Noah and his pious descendants, the Semites, by their guardianship of the true religion preserved at least a memory of the antediluvian arts of humanity which had been destroyed by the Flood; though on account of the small number of men, so that they might obtain the necessary fruits of life, before the founding of commonwealths they practiced only agriculture and herding; and, by the virtue of the true God, they protected their crops and livestock from external injuries. As a result, due to the recurrence of the same causes [i.e. the same conditions that prevailed in the first epoch], they were the first heroes on earth after the Flood.

The third epoch: the call of Abraham by God.

What was paternal authority among the Hebrews? What was ius nexi? - Abraham, since a father without law, wages war as a sovereign prince and founds the race.

[4] At this time Abraham was called from the midst of an idolatrous people to his own special land, and remained under the regimen of the true God, which Philo elegantly calls theocracy, and founded paternal authority, differing from that of the gentiles, in that the power of life and death belonged not to the father, but to God, as we can see in the story of Isaac. As for the story of the miserable vow of Jephthah, the Church Fathers frankly acknowledge that this is still an unfathomable mystery of the divine will. And Abraham established the ius nexi, the right of bondage, also differing from that of the gentiles. For no foreigners (who had to be either impious or falsely pious) ever held any kind of ownership in the land of the Hebrews, but only supported themselves by their labors. And so, preserving the tradition of the true religion, in the pastures and fields he maintained his family in innocence, and with them he waged war against neighboring kings as a sovereign prince (for he waged the wars with no clear command from God). These then were the second heroes on earth after the Flood. And on account of his true piety God made with Abraham a second covenant after Noah, by which Abraham founded the Hebrew people, and was called primus patrum princeps, the first patriarch.

The fourth epoch: the Law is given to Moses by God.

Praise of the Decalogue - With a single agrarian law Moses established the entire Hebrew commonwealth.

[5] The law enjoined by the Decalogue is of a most perfect nature, and forbids not only deeds that are evil by nature, as do the laws of the gentiles, but even evil intentions, and, unlike the gentile laws, establishes no humanly ordained punishments for these evil deeds. And the ius nexi established by Abraham - forbidding foreigners, because they were idolatrous, from any type of ownership in Hebrew territory - by an agrarian law in conformity with natural law and fully compatible with civil equity (which was never done by the first lawgivers of the gentiles), through the greatest justice and wisdom, distinguished the Hebrews from other peoples, and so preserved inviolate the purity of their religion. This agrarian law maintained certain tribes, and in each tribe certain descendants and certain hereditary successions, certain marriages, certain possessions, certain dominions, certain contractual obligations, and even a certain private civil law among the Hebrews, and founded a commonwealth largely free from strife. Whereas among the gentiles the ius nexi was unjust, so that among the Athenians and Romans riots and rebellions frequently arose, and among the Egyptians, as Cunaeus relates in his Commonwealth of the Hebrews, the country folk often fought with the priests, though with ill success.

Chapter 11

Corollaries on the demonstration of the first four epochs of sacred history.

[1] Hence the reasons for the following are clear:

I

[2] All men on earth were either Hebrews or gentiles.

II

[3] The religion of the one creator God was preserved among the Hebrews without images.

III

[4] In a lawless state, that is, in a state of nature, the Hebrews lived under a theocracy.

IV

[5] Among the Hebrews alone religion was established without divination.

V

[6] A father's authority over his sons was not based on the fear of death, as among the gentiles.

VI

[7] Clientship differed from the ungenerous custom of the gentiles, who provided no more than bare sustenance to those who took refuge with them.

VII

[8] Agriculture and herding were held in honor among the Hebrews.

VIII

[9] The other arts were given over to foreigners to profit from.

IX

[10] The supreme deity was called by the Hebrews "God of might."

X

[11] Agriculture differed from that of the gentiles, in that it always prohibited men of foreign religions from owning the land.

XI

[12] And so the Hebrews always jealously preserved their ancestral rites and customs.

XII

[13] And they were unsociable to all of foreign religions.

XIII

[14] From this preservation of the true religion the first nations arose in the East.

XIV

[15] And soon after the Flood all civil arts were restored among the peoples of the East.

XV

[16] And among the same peoples monarchies were immediately established.

XVI

[17] And Ninus was the first figure in profane history.

XVII

By the virtue of the true religion Moses was the greatest philosopher, the greatest lawgiver, and the greatest historian.

[18] And so due to the continuous preservation of the true religion of God, the creator of all, from its original origin, Moses emerged as the preeminent philosopher, who recognized that God was not the sky, as the gentiles believed, nor the universe, as the philosophers of the gentiles, but was something beyond the sky, beyond the universe. This was the understanding that the divine Plato achieved only after Greece was cultivated by all the arts of humanity. And the ancestral custom regarding bondage handed down by Abraham made Moses the wisest lawgiver as well, so that he far surpassed men such as Lycurgus and Solon and the Roman decemvirs, though they followed him much later in time. And so the humanity of fallen nature, beginning with Adam and sustained by the fear of the true God, brought it about that in all human memory Moses, the supreme philosopher and supreme lawgiver, has come down to us as the supreme historian as well, long before the times of the poet heroes and the unjust legislators and the crude philosophers and the fabulist historians of the gentiles.

Philosophy and philology were born on earth at the same time from legislation.

[19] But let us establish this not only from sacred but also from profane learning: That from legislation philosophy and philology were born as twins both among the Hebrews and the gentiles.

Chapter 12

On the origin of heroic language, or poetry

The two reasons why the origin of poetry is unknown.

[1] But up to now the reason why humanity was restored in the west has been unknown, because a single error, which has become inveterate over the course of the ages, has taken possession of the minds of all scholars; and because a single truth, which has been apparent for the same length of time, has been overlooked by these same scholars.

The first language of the peoples was poetic.

[2] The error is in believing that the language used by poets was always their own special language and never in common use. The truth is that languages are preserved by laws and religion. Everyone says that the first poets founded the false religions of the gods, and, through these religions, commonwealths; they acknowledge too that the first authors were poets; and yet they overlook the obvious conclusion, that the first language of the peoples, by which their first laws and religions were established, was poetic.

[3] Hence we must adopt a new line of reasoning in our discussion of the origin of poetry. I pray that the reader seriously consider what we say not on the basis of our prestige (which is very slight, if not non-existent), but according to the importance of the topic: for we hope that the only obstacles to be overcome in our discussion are the opinions our readers have attached to this subject.

Seven precepts derived from the nature of things.

[4] Therefore, so that we might examine this matter according to the nature of things, we present in advance these seven precepts derived from nature itself.

I

The ingenious are more humane.

[5] We are here speaking of the principles of humanity, which is more readily embraced by ingenious peoples. For indeed the purpose of our inquiry is to shed light on the law of the gentes, which the jurist defines as the law which "is in use among humane peoples (not savages and barbarians, who are savages and barbarians because their sense of ingenuity is dull)."

II

What is the power of ingenuity?

[6] The power of ingenuity [ingenium] is to discover, just as the power of reason is to perfect.

III

Ingenuity is produced by the climate . . .

[7] No one would deny that different climates cause some peoples to be more ingenious than others. Those born where the air is cold and dense are dull by nature, while people born in a warmer, airier climate are sharp.

IV

. . . by necessity . . .

[8] "Ingenuity is honed by necessity" is a common proverb among all mankind.

V

. . . by keen senses . . .

[9] The weaker men's reason, the more powerful their senses. This explains why brutes have been assigned by nature the keenest senses, and why women are more sensitive than men to sensory stimuli.

VI

. . . and by a vivid imagination.

[10] And the people with the keenest senses have the most vivid imagination. We therefore fashion more vivid images of those things that we have seen than those we have heard.

VII

In the beginning sharpness of ingenuity is due to language.

[11] From what we have said above, we are forced to conclude that the first men possessing ingenuity, lacking all language and learning, resembled nothing so much as ingenious children. For it is language that makes the mind sharp, since for each of the almost countless number of things, whether natural or moral or domestic or civil, the mind must review in memory the huge vocabulary of life and find the proper word to call that thing.

[12] Now that we have learned these things from nature, let us in the observations which follow properly examine the ingenuity of ingenious children, in our quest for the origin of poetry.

I

The source of tropes is revealed.

[13] Ingenious children call all men similar to their father tata, and in all that they observe they notice the properties most striking to the senses.

The two reasons for all tropes - Metaphor.

[14] Hence, if you review all the tropes, especially the poetic ones, you will find that they originate from one of two sources, either from a lack of words or from a similarity of things. Examples of tropes are sitire agros, "the fields are thirsty," and laborare fructus, "the crops are suffering," which are of course, like countless others in Latin and Greek, rustic metaphors, or taken from things which make a great impression on the senses.

II

Metonymy.

[15] For ingenious children, when they don't know the proper word for a thing, indicate it indirectly by describing its sensible causes or effects. For instance, if an ingenious child doesn't know the word paveo, I fear, no one would marvel that he was wise beyond his years. And yet he will be praised for his ingenuity if he says "my heart is leaping in my chest" or "my heart is pounding my chest." It is this type of metonymy on which poetic diction in large part depends.

III

Synecdoche - Lack of speech leads to metaphysics.

[16] It is certain that synecdoche arose entirely from poverty of speech, and is unrelated to ingenuity. For when men don't know the proper words for things, they call them by their genus: whence res, thing, and facio, do, form the vocabulary of small children. And so men are from childhood led to metaphysics by the poverty of language. Conversely, they sometimes describe a genus by a particularly conspicuous species, just like small children. In Latin, for instance, the word passer, sparrow, is used for any small bird, and the word aquila, eagle, for any large one.

Poetic epithets - Pleonasm.

[17] Ingenious children, because they do not understand the substances of things, describe them by the attributes which present themselves to their senses. Here you have the source not only of emphatic epithets, but even the otiose epithets of the poets, and those descriptions which now seem to us quite feeble, in which Homer abounds.

Antonomasia: the source of heroic characters.

[18] It is from this source that antonomasia arises. It is in large part due to antonomasia that heroic characters were fashioned. One of these heroic characters sheds great light on what we are saying--Hercules, who has given his name to all strong men.

V

Hypotyposis.

[19] If you should but mention to an ingenious child some little thing that frightens or delights him, he will immediately experience terror or elation, as if that very thing were present before him. From this powerful imagination arises vivid hypotyposis, which provides poetic narratives with the quality of liveliness.

VI

Comparisons.

[20] Ingenious children, when they want to express their thoughts or feelings, use no figure of speech more often and more readily than comparisons, which are a major part of the poets' repertoire.

VII

Circumlocutions.

[21] And of course, if some rustic child can't name the year by number, and is unaware that the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac is called a year, he will describe the time by what he perceives, by naming the most important events that happen in the countryside during that course of time, and might say something like "It will be the third harvest." Or if he doesn't know how to signify the idea of continuity by the adverb 'always', he might say "As long as the rivers flow into the sea." If this lad should say everything in this rustic manner, who would marvel that he had become an exceptional bucolic poet through art?

VIII

Poetic compounds.

[22] Nature causes small children, unable to make longer statements, to join words together, just as for example among us they call a wetnurse mater mammula. This is the source of the compound words of the poets: silvicultrix, forest-dwelling, arcitenens, bow-wielding, nemorivagus, woodland-wandering.

IX

Onomatopoeia.

[23] Moreover, we see children utter nothing more often than onomatopoeic words, by which they imitate the sound of dogs, cats, mice, roosters, and other things, even the bursting of artillery shells. You will notice that our children even say sidz to represent the sound of roasting meat, a word that Dionysius Longinus praises as sublime in Homer, where it expresses the sound made by the eye of Polyphemus when it was being burnt.

X

The ellipsis of words.

[24] And you will discover that among children, on account of their ignorance of language, the ellipsis of words is very frequent.

XI

Grandiose images.

[25] You mustn't judge the imagination of children by the imagination of adults. The adult imagination has lost it suppleness with age, and its strength has been weakened by reason; but imagination is extremely strong in children, who judge things by the senses alone. The reason it is so strong is because, since the fibers of the brain are tender, the images imprinted on it by objects are larger and more vivid. When I go out for a walk, I often reflect that the gentle slopes I see seemed to me as a child steep mountains. Is it for this reason that those heroes of the poets are so huge, just as in the second age of barbarism Roland and Orlando and the other French paladins are described as being of enormous stature? It is certainly possible to observe that in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, when barbarism had unhappily destroyed a great part of humane culture, painters depicted God, Christ and Mary as being very large, just as the poets describe the gods as being of superhuman size.

XII

The impassioned style of the poets.

[26] And since nature has ordained that those with over-strong senses and a keen imagination do not understand the things they perceive with a clear mind, but rather experience everything with a perturbed spirit, like children they say almost everything in an impassioned way, under the influence of some strong emotion. Hence those phrases of the poets "the breast is churning with cares" and "the breast is churning with schemes." While I was thinking about these things, I was minded of an ingenious boy who once said to his mother: "My heart is always speaking to me -- what a lot it has to say!" It is for this reason that poetic diction is always forceful, with some underlying emotion.

XIII

The sublimity of poetic characters.

[27] We can conclude from all this that poets note what is most conspicuous in things, events, and people, and in their personalities, habits and fortunes, just like children do, and like women compose them. If a number of these should be combined to form a lively, vigorous and emotional description, as is done by women and children, there arise sublime poetic characters. According to Longinus Sappho achieved this sublimity in that ode which Catullus translated into Latin: "Peer of a god he seems to me . . ."

XIV

Among the Latins, Greeks, and Germans the periodic structure of prose arose from the periodic structure of poetry.

[28] Moreover (we are noting here the main points; the minor ones can be easily deduced from these principles by others), if we carefully observe infants, when they first try to speak, we will find that they are led by nature to put the last things they have perceived in the first place, and the first things last, because the last things have left a more vivid sensation than the first. And because verbs express the doing or receiving of an action, which is to say, they express a certain motion, which consists of a subject and an object, and because motion makes a greater impression on the senses than does substance, which moves or is moved, following the order of nature they say the verbs in the final place, so that they seem to be giving the verbs special emphasis, as if the nouns were appendices to the verbs. This is the source of the periodic structure among the Greeks and Latins, more highly developed in verse among the Greeks than the Latins. Among living tongues German most closely reproduces this structure, and in fact its word order is even more inverted, because it preserves the purity of its origin more than Latin and Greek, and by nature, as we shall soon see, makes all the German people poets.

XV

From a lack of words and the ingenuity of peoples . . .

[29] Furthermore, we observe that children and country folk and all men poor in speech say very little, due to their impoverished vocabulary. If along with this lack of words they also possess good judgment, their sayings are profound; if they are of a lofty spirit, their sayings are sublime; if they have ingenuity, their sayings are pithy.

. . . some sayings are wise . . .

[30] From the first source, good judgment, comes that poetic brevity of precepts, which Horace advises in his Ars Poetica. From this brevity there first arose the concise responses of the oracles, all of which were delivered in song, and also the brevity of the first laws, which were called in Latin carmina, songs, because they were formulated with specific words. From these specific verbal formulas, full of gravity, like oracles, there arose the responses of the jurists. The sayings of the sages are of this type, which are very brief pieces of advice very useful for the conduct of life: whence the Greek sages were much closer to Homer than to any of the philosophers.

. . . others are sublime . . .

[31] From the second source, a noble spirit, come those sayings that used to cause me amazement when I was ignorant of their causes, Laconic apophthegms, full of sublimity. The most learned poets of later times, when adorning their poems, could scarcely match them in majesty of expression. And yet the Spartans were forbidden by law to learn letters, and for this very reason, as happens in a kingdom of aristocrats, they revived in large part the customs of the heroes, as we said in the previous book. And so, due to this remarkable poverty of language, even the Spartan women preserved a heroic brevity.

. . . others witty or bitter.

[32] From the third source, ingenuity, come all the sayings of the Florentines, besprinkled with either the greatest charm or venom, which the Florentines in the forum, commonly called del Mercato vecchio, invented, when an extremely sharp people through barbarism suffered greatly from an extreme scarcity of words.

A difficult philological question is explained.

[33] From all of this you can quickly and easily solve that question which has so greatly exercised minds: Is a language excellent because of its writers, or are writers excellent because of their language? The answer is that a language provides writers with the force of their sentences, while writers provide a language with refinement, abundance, and ornament.

The poetic faculty thrives on opinions, vanishes with knowledge.

[34] Furthermore, the two weightiest precepts in Horace's Ars Poetica - the one, that the common beliefs of men should moderate the prudence of poets; the second, that a poet should select as his most proper material a credible impossibility, that is, something which cannot happen by nature, but which ordinary folk believe could have happened miraculously, either by nature or by chance, through the omnipotence of God - these two precepts, I say, prove that the poetic faculty thrives on errors and opinions, and vanishes with philosophy and truth.

The sublimity of fables is provided by childish preconceptions.

[35] Hence fables acquire their sublimity entirely from the false beliefs of the common people, beliefs which are now called infantiae praeiudicia, childish preconceptions. That the fates are fastened to the sky with a nail of adamant, for example, is very much a notion of children, who think that the stars are golden nails stuck in the sky. For those sailing out to sea, it is childish to believe that the land and city are moving backwards. Thus to those sailing to Italy from the south, if the north wind drives them back, Italy seems to be running away. That shouting strikes the stars is a notion of children, who believe they can touch the sky a few yards above the rooftops. That Aeolus confines and releases the winds in caves, as if they were billows, is the physics of blacksmiths. That the sun and moon race across the sky in chariots arose from the belief of the common folk, because they saw the spots on these heavenly bodies and conjured a nose, eyes and mouth. Isn't this a sublime notion: that the sun, to avoid seeing the feast of Thyestes, ran backwards on his course? Another belief of this type is that of those who cannot understand the antipodes, and think that the sun returns from west to east behind lofty mountains in the north. And this even more sublime notion - that Olympus feels the weight of the gods - as if the gods were reckoned by their mass, is recalled by the Peruvians, an extremely stupid people, who believed that whatever exceeded its normal limits, like a huge river, mountain or tree, was a god, as Acosta relates in his history of them.

XVII

How poetic metamorphoses arose.

[36] In conclusion, if we are willing to set aside our preconceived notions on this subject, we shall find that all the metamorphoses which the poets have invented - and they make the impossible credible by virtue of the fact that with God all is possible - are very similar to the stories mothers tell to this very day to amuse their children, about the bogeyman Orcus, and the frightful women who can foretell the future, commonly called the Fates. We shall discover that the marvelous tales of Circe and Medea, for example, greatly resemble those told in the second age of barbarism of Merlin (he was in fact an English mathematician of the sixth century, whom the savage Britons of the time thought to be a great magus).There is that famous tale in which Longinus noticed such Homeric sublimity, where Polyphemus used an enormous pine tree as a staff and hurled at Ajax a rock so huge it held forests and meadows and shepherds wandering with their flocks; and yet you can observe many things even more sublime in the stories of Orcus and the Fates, stories which like the Homeric rhapsodies also originated in an age of barbarism completely devoid of learning and erudition and have survived to the present day.

Nor must it be thought that metamorphoses were originally invented for the sake of amusement, since even today with all our intellectual sophistication women, children and rustics believe in the miraculous metamorphoses staged by street performers in their shows. But let me present the following conjecture: In an age in which men were frequently slaughtered by wild beasts, when someone disappeared from where he was last seen and was nowhere to be found, and all that was left of him were traces of blood, people thought that that he had been changed into a flower or a plant that sprouted in the vicinity, or a bird that chanced to be flying off, or an animal scurrying away, or a spring or a stone.

XVIII

As philosophy waxes, poetry wanes.

[37] But as philosophy began to free itself more and more from the defilement of the senses, so did poetry become farther removed from human nature, so that today poets are obliged to become imaginative by art and industry, whereas once, when the age of the senses was thriving rather than the age of reason, they were imaginative by nature. Concerning which time, and no other, the following statement is true: "Poets are born, orators are made." Whereas today, if it is not more difficult to become a poet than an orator, it certainly requires as much art.

XIX

The art of poetry according to our principles.

[38] Therefore in accordance with our principles the entire art of poetry comes down to this: If someone should wish to excel in this art, he must first unlearn completely the language they call proper and confine himself to the limited vocabulary that prevailed in the most ancient times; he will then be forced to express his thoughts through the most distinctive and sensible characteristics of the things themselves, and by the aid of the senses and the imagination fashion extremely vivid and sublime images of things, habits and feelings. And whereas one who wants to discuss philosophical matters properly must first purge himself of the false beliefs of children and the common people, one who wishes to write a sublime poem must do the opposite, and must in all his judgments and perceptions adopt the viewpoint of the common people and especially that of children. He will then be transformed into a creature of the imagination, and all that he sings will be grand, and at the same time adapted to the sensibility of the common man.

XX

Why is all philology wrong about the origin of poetry?

[39] You see then that all scholars who have investigated the origin of poetry, be they Greek or Latin or from a later era, did not consider at all these things that we have said concerning poetic fable, expression and style, but confined their inquiry to song and rhythm. For although it was a fact well-known to all that poets certainly preceded the writers of prose, nevertheless not one of these scholars had even an inkling that poetic language was the first to arise on earth, and was the language spoken by the earliest peoples, namely the poet heroes, such as Orpheus, Amphion and Linus are portrayed.

And how was philology even more mistaken concerning the origin of verse?

[40] But even on the question of poetic song the views of even the most distinguished philosophers, such as Francesco Patrizzi, have been quite weak. They believed that song first arose among shepherds, who in their leisure had learned it from the birds or the whistling of the wind, and accordingly they say that the first poetry to arise on earth was bucolic.

Why did men first begin to speak by singing?

[41] But the explanation I will now give in accordance with our principles is, I swear, the true one: We observe that it is natural for stammerers, when they cannot enunciate what they want to say, burst into song. We must imagine that the very same thing happened to primitive men, and that it must have been from this same impulse that they burst into song, since the fibers of the tongue were very stiff, and not made pliant and flexible by early training (as are those of our own children who grow up among an abundance of languages), and they had difficulty pronouncing words which at that time were rarely heard and were all of them new and difficult to pronounce. At first their song was arrhythmical and unmodulated, like the song by which Roman boys learned the Law of the Twelve Tables, "a kind of necessary song," according to Cicero. Now we have said of Latin that the first words to arise were monosyllables; it has not been similarly established of Greek, because the Greeks didn't know how to preserve the original language of their laws; though it is clear of Hebrew, because they scrupulously preserved the language of their history from the very beginning. Because, then, the first words to arise were monosyllables, and because from monosyllables rhythms are easily composed (whence the musical elements are monosyllables, which are easily joined together to form a song), verses slipped from the first men unawares. Shepherds noted their pleasantness, and since they were the ones with the most leisure, they were the first to make up verses, and so pastoral verse was the first to be invented.

XXI

Why is Homer the prince of poets?

[42] And from all these facts which I feel we have clearly demonstrated concerning the origin of poetry, it is clear why Homer was the prince of all poets: He flourished in the age closest to the age of the poets, that is, at a time when the language spoken by the Greek peoples was still in large part poetic.

Against Plutarch's On Homer.

[43] But indeed it has been thought by every age that Homer sowed in his poems countless divine seeds of sublime wisdom; therefore, just as many Greek cities claim him as a fellow-citizen, so do almost all philosophical sects claim him as their founder, especially the Platonists; whence Homer has been called 'the Plato of the poets', and Plato 'the Homer of the philosophers'.

[44] This opinion, confirmed by the authority of all generations, arose from the false belief that the first poets were natural theologians. We undertook to demolish this erroneous belief with three objections: one we derived from a property of human nature, namely that men pursue first what is necessary, then what is useful, and last what is pleasurable in life - and if anyone should doubt this, he is completely lacking in common sense; and two others, derived from the certain history of philosophers and poets, both of which we linked with the nature of human ingenuity. Through these objections we firmly established that the first poets must have been entirely ignorant of natural theology.

[45] We can now easily add to these objections, by way of augmentation, from the observations we have just made concerning the origin of poetry. Homer is said to have flourished in the year 899, that is, 129 years before the founding of the first Olympiad; Thales, born in the 36^th Olympiad, that is, 269 years after Homer, was the first among the Greeks to teach physics, which scholars maintain did not even originate in Greece, but was imported from Egypt, and he crudely established water as the primal element of the universe. Where then did Homer get those seeds of profound wisdom which the Platonists especially, in addition to other excellent philosophers, find in him? They have recourse to the argument that Homer learned them from the Egyptians. But Homer flourished more than 200 years before Psammeticus opened up Egypt to the Ionians and Carians. Yet even if we suppose that he secretly entered Egypt, is it credible that he learned these sublime things from the Egyptians, a people from whom Thales learned, 269 years later, that the primal element was something so crude and coarse as water? Christian scholars say that his teachers were the Hebrews and the school of Moses. But we have shown that early peoples, even within the narrow confines of a single peninsula, lived in ignorance of one another, and learned of each other only through the occasion of war; and we showed too in the previous book that the greater gentes kept their laws and religions concealed even from their own plebs. So much for their revealing them to foreigners! And are we to think that the Hebrews, who were so inhospitable that they wouldn't even break bread with gentiles, profaned their doctrine by sharing it with them? Or will they say (we have demonstrated by irrefutable arguments that this blasphemy is false) that the race of Homer survived the flood on some mountain top, and so preserved the antediluvian wisdom?

Why is Achilles a hero who appeals to the senses and not to reason? - Why did Homer use all dialects?

[46] What then are we to conclude? First of all, that the learned philosophers who followed Homer, wishing to find in him these thoughts of sublime wisdom, conjured them up - because they were eager to buttress their own ideas with the testimony of antiquity, through the false belief that the first poets were natural theologians. Secondly, we must say that Homer, who was endowed with the richest ingenuity, held the chief place among poets because he was born in the age closest to poetic times, when language was still impoverished and the senses still thrived and reason was still quite weak. Whence his hero Achilles is appealing to the senses and not to reason, seeing as how he was inexorable and scorned natural law and even after death thirsted for the blood of princesses. And because Homer inherited an impoverished tongue, he gathered and combined poetic expressions from all the cities of Greece, and as a result he speaks in all dialects. The very same fate befell Dante Alighieri, who also lived in an age of extreme barbarism with no models to guide him, and like Homer became a supreme poet through his own efforts.

Chapter 13

Corollaries on the recovered origin of poetry

[1] It is useful now to develop the following corollaries from what we have said so far.

I

A proof of divine providence.

[2] In the history of poetry that we have presented we may honor above all divine providence. For it was by divine providence that, at a time when men had to rely on their strength alone, even the false religions gave them an idea of the omnipotence of God, for fear of whom they might live in society, so that later, when they were perfected by reason, they might worship Him for his infinite wisdom and justice.

II

Poetry arose from necessity . . .

[3] Poetry arose from natural necessity, though up to now all have thought it was the result of human design and art.

III

. . . and was the language of the first peoples.

[4] And so the first language of the peoples was poetic, and was represented by heroic characters, which expressed things by natural signs.

IV

The heroic characters of the Egyptians.

[5] Tacitus then was correct when he called the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians "the native tongue of their ancestors."

V

Of the Chaldaeans and Greeks.

[6] In like manner, we should call the magical characters of the Chaldaeans and the fables of the Greeks the original ancestral tongue of each people.

VI

Of the Scythians and Romans.

[7] Olaus Magnus then speaks the truth when he relates that when Darius was threatening King Idanthyrsus with war, and the king sent to him a mouse, a frog, a bird, a spear and a plow, this was a kind of letter. The reply of Tarquinius Superbus to his son was of exactly the same kind, when he had been asked through a messenger about what should be done at Gabii, as Livy reports in his history of Rome.

VII

Of the Ethiopians.

[8] And Diodorus Siculus, as cited in Clement of Alexandria, is correct in what he writes about the Ethiopians, that in the most ancient times they used heroic characters, which they represented with various animals and parts of the human body, but most often with workmen's tools.

VIII

Of the Chinese.

[9] Therefore there is a basis of truth when the Chinese say that their tongue, which they write with similar characters, is the most ancient of all and was born with their race.

IX

Why the Hebrew language is almost entirely poetic.

[10] From what we have established we can gather the antiquity of the Hebrew language, which is almost entirely poetic, full of similes and parables. The Hebrews themselves call every pointed statement formed from either of these tropes masal, which properly refers to similes and parables.

X

A demonstration of the universal flood . . .

[11] This poverty in all the primitive languages throughout the entire world demonstrates that the Flood was universal.

XI

. . . and of the Babylonian confusion of tongues.

[12] And this fact proves the Babylonian confusion of tongues as well, [because the language of even the Chaldaeans was impoverished,] in spite of the fact that they had discovered the arts at an early date, due to the preservation of the memory of antediluvian humanity by the Semites. For although they knew the things, after the confusion they were unable to call each thing by its proper name; therefore, driven by the same necessity as the mute men in the rest of the world, they designated them by heroic characters.

XII

Why even Hebrew verbs are very short.

[13] This demonstration is confirmed by the fact that not only the nouns in Hebrew, but even the verbs are in large part monosyllabic, and almost all of them have no more than two syllables; whereas in Latin monosyllabic verbs represent the primary generic categories: sum of being, sto of rest, fio (which I believe derived originally from fit) of motion, for of humanity, do of commerce. This means that the first verbs to arise were monosyllables.

XIII

Why Moses was the first poet.

[14] And we have shown too why Moses, who was the first historian, philosopher and lawgiver, was also the first poet, as evidenced by his Song of Songs.

XIV

No religions were born of imposture.

[15] Moreover, if the first founders of commonwealths were poets, and if poets were such by nature, then no religions were originally born of imposture, but were either false out of ignorance, or true by the grace of God. Because nothing is so proper to children as to speak the truth, for lies are the result of a force applied to the truth, and this force does not come from nature, but from choice.

XV

The poet heroes were the children of the human race.

[16] And so we have rightly called the age of the poets the childhood of the human race.

XVI

The political theologians - How the gods of the gentiles arose.

[17] Therefore, since the poet heroes were the ingenious children of the human race, all sense and imagination, and expressed little or nothing with a clear mind, they were political theologians. For why are we to think of them as natural theologians, who, for example, since they were ignorant of the causes of lightning, said that it was Jove that lightened and thundered; just as the American Indians, when they first experienced the sudden flash and mighty roar of cannons, and saw the dreadful carnage they wrought from a distance, and were ignorant of the causes of this strange art, believed the Spaniards to be gods.

XVII

The mythical age and the dark age are the same.

[18] Since then the poets were political theologians, the mythical age is not separate from the dark age, but rather is the history of the dark age.

XVIII

The earliest mythology is civil mythology.

[19] It is therefore the task of mythology to uncover the commonwealths of the dark age which have been concealed in the fables.

XIX

The language of religion and law is poetic.

[20] For the earliest peoples, the language of religion and law was poetic.

XX

Fas gentium - The derivation of fabula.

[21] This language was called fas gentium, the divine law of the gentes, from the word for, I speak, which remained in use among the poets. And from the same source as fas is derived fabula, in the sense which the Italians - and this supports what we're saying - translate as favella, or speech.

XXI

Why were the laws called carmina?

[22] You have here the reason why among the Romans legal formulas were called carmina, songs, phrased in certain words, not certain meters; just as among the Greeks laws were also called songs, nomoi.

XXII

Whence the term fasti dies [i.e. the days on which legal business could be conducted]?

[23] And those days were called fasti on which the praetor speaks, fatur, that is, the days on which he recites those formulas.

XXIII

The religious scruple concerning formulas.

[24] And among the Romans it always remained a matter of religious scruple not to deviate from the formulas even in the slightest.

XXIV

The earliest wisdom of the poets . . .

[25] You know now why the earliest wisdom of the poets consisted in the founding of commonwealths, as Horace tells us in his Ars Poetica.

XXV

. . . knowledge of the laws . . .

[26] This was the wisdom of the laws, which they preserved by a knowledge of the language.

XXVI

. . . secret among the gentiles . . .

[27] And so the only ones versed in the language of the law among the Assyrians were the Chaldaeans, among the Egyptians the priests, and among the Greeks the poets, just as today among the Chinese it is known only to the king and nobles.

XXVII

. . . the divine language of the Romans.

[28] Such was the divine tongue among the Romans, in which they thought that the gods spoke through the entrails of victims and the ominous warnings of thunderbolts and the flight of birds.

Why was divination a secret?

[29] They called this knowledge divination, which was known only to the haruspices, auspices and pontiffs.

XXVIII

Why were the poets sacred?

[30] Hence the poets were called divine, and soothsayers, and priests, and interpreters of the gods.

XXIX

Vulgus profanum.

[31] And the plebeians were all considered vulgus profanum, the profane rabble, because they did not know the divine language.

XXX

[32] Hence from the founding of Rome and for a long time after, jurisprudence, the chief part of which is divine law, remained the preserve of the college of pontiffs.

XXXI

[33] And the jurisconsults were called oracula civitatis, the oracles of the state, and [like oracles] were said to give responses, dare responsa.

XXXII

The jurists were like the first poets.

[34] Because the jurists were the Romans' own special poets, who in their most ancient origin closely resembled the poet heroes.

XXXIII

[35] Hence the poets use archaic expressions, for they once spoke the language of the ancient laws.

XXXIV

Why were the jurists the guardians of the purity of Latin?

[36] This custom remained among the jurists, as is shown by the following phrases: familiae erciscundae, communi dividundo, finium regundorum, iure dicundo, inter bonos bene agier, res mancipi, and countless other archaic expressions. And so later, as the language decayed, the jurists maintained its purity by preserving the formulas, a fact that Lorenzo Valla failed to understand.

Chapter 14

On the origin of popular tongues and characters

The first sciences must be credited to religion.

[1] But when 200 years after the Flood, according to the reckoning of the chronologists, astrology arose among the Chaldaeans, the first elements of a purer philosophy were restored by false religions; but, as we demonstrated above, they must be credited to the true religion of the Semites. These elements were geometry and arithmetic, on both of which astronomy depends. This is shown by the term astronomy itself, which means the science concerning the laws of the stars. And the meaning of the element nomos, or song, reminds us that these laws were sung, as we also said above.

Why were circles and songs used in magical rites?

[2] It was perhaps for this reason that there persisted among the gullible populace the belief that songs and circles are used in the practice of the magical arts, and that "song can shatter the serpent." The Italians therefore call the magical arts incantesimi.

The Egyptians brought mathematics down from the heavens to the earth.

[3] Then the Egyptians applied the science of quantities to the earth - whence the Greek geometria, meaning 'the measurement of the earth' - on account of the flooding of the Nile, so that they might have the knowledge to restore in the fields the boundary markers that had been washed away by the floodwaters. And this must have been the sequence of events, since the kingdom of the Chaldaeans preceded that of the Egyptians.

Geometry was transferred from the earth to writing.

[4] Then, when mathematics was brought to Greece and Italy, they assigned geometric figures, or parts of them, to the elements of the human voice, based on the quality of the sounds or the shape of the mouth in pronouncing them. These might be a single straight line, or two or more straight lines either separated from one another, or joined together to form an acute angle or one, two or more right angles; or oblique lines, or semicircles alone; or geometrical figures themselves, either formed by a continuous line, like a circle, or a circle divided by the extension of a diametrical line, or figures composed of at most three lines, a triangle. And so they represented the sound of I, the thinnest sound of all, by a single verticle line; O, the fullest of all, by a circle; A, the most stable and vocal of all, by an equilateral triangle with legs extended from the base, which represented the emission of sound from the mouth.

Characters of things were made characters of sound.

[5] And so characters, which were previously heroic and signified the things themselves and were natural, came to be used as symbols of sounds. Writing therefore arose from choice.

For children writing is their first geometry . . .

[6] Hence geometric synthesis was transferred to the learning of writing, and letters were the elements of sounds in the same way as certain proofs, later set down in the books of Euclid, are the elements of magnitudes. Because just as in order to form any geometric word, that is to demonstrate any geometric magnitude, the elements of geometry must be reviewed, so too to form any spoken word it is necessary to review the elements of writing, so as to speak or write the word with all the proper letters, neither too few nor too many nor incorrect ones.

. . . and their first instruction in philosophy - Induction is prior to syllogism.

[7] And in this way, when children spent a long time poring over these fine, delicate forms so as to gain the skill of reading quickly and well, they began to purify their minds from the coarseness of the senses, and became more skilled at understanding pure reasons. This was done first by the aid of induction, which is a synthetic form of argumentation, just as the syllogism is an analytic one. And history confirms this, because the first method of argumentation to be discovered among the philosophers was induction, which Socrates, the father of philosophy, used more than any other. And reason confirms history, because men first gather species, then are taught by the species to recognize genera.

Popular words are common, heroic words are proper.

[8] Hence through writing the human mind became resourceful and perceived the genera of things, and so invented common words for things, which are not proper for the very reason that they are common. And so popular tongues developed, different from heroic tongues, which described things according to their nature and, as far as possible, properly.

What first caused the division between philosophy and philology among the Greeks? . . .

[9] It was then that philosophers began to investigate the nature of things, philologists to describe the origins of words. Since these words were for the most part foreign, and almost all formed randomly, one may conjecture how true an exposition of words etymology really is.

. . . which remained linked among the Romans.

[10] But among the Romans the patricians zealously preserved the language of the laws, and so the jurists used a different language than the common people. Cicero's Topica, which presents examples from the laws by way of precepts, shows very well how these laws were barely understood by those who had no knowledge of ancient Roman law, even though they were otherwise expert in the Latin language.

[11] As we have said, from this preservation of the heroic language jurisprudence was born on earth among the Romans; and the jurists, who were the philosophers of the Romans, were also their grammarians. This is the reason why the Romans preserved the origins of their language with more devotion than the Greeks.

Chapter 15

Corollaries on the origin of popular tongues and characters

I

[1] If then mathematics preceded writing, then customs existed long before laws.

II

[2] And customs were examples.

III

[3] And examples were the first laws.

IV

[4] And the laws were dictated to individuals orally, just as in Livy the law for treason was recited to Horatius by the duumvirs.

V

[5] And the laws were songs, which, since writing had not yet been invented, were communicated by singing, and were more easily committed to memory. This happened not by design, but by nature.

VI

[6] Whence the single word nomos means both law and song.

VII

[7] And so poets were the first lawgivers.

VIII

[8] Thus it is true that it is writing that distinguishes laws from customs.

IX

[9] And this too is true: laws were later called leges from lego, I read.

X

[10] And the first laws were plebiscites; because, since they could not be set down in writing, the plebs had to be assembled to learn the examples orally from the Order.

XI

In the beginning law was by nature secret.

[11] And so the laws were by their nature secret, because they were the exclusive preserve of the Order, who handed them down by oral tradition.

XII

[12] And the language of the laws was known only to the members of the Order, that is, the patricians, because the plebs spoke a foreign and uncertain tongue.

XIII

[13] And since the laws that were formulated dealt for the most part with divine law, because the laws were secret the religions were secret, and the laws themselves were a great part of religion.

XIV

[14] Hence poets alone were sacred; the common people were profane.

XV

[15] And so it was a natural consequence that in the beginning wisdom, priesthood, and kingship were one and the same thing.

XVI

[16] It was a natural consequence too that those who belonged to the Order, who governed the heroic kingdoms in primitive times, taught the plebs the laws.

XVII

[17] And so it was nature itself, and not design, that dictated to the nobles those features of clientship which persisted among the Romans: The patricians made the law known to their clients; the patricians alone were jurisconsults; for a long time pontiffs and augurs were created from members of the patrician class; the college of pontiffs at first kept the law secret, and then, after the passage of the Law of the Twelve Tables, kept the actions of the law secret.

XVIII

Why was the heroic history of the gentiles secret?

[18] But the following important facts must be noted. If popular writing arose late, then histories must have been preserved among the priests by oral tradition. Scholars agree that this is what happened among the Egyptians, Chaldaeans and Persians. Therefore, just as in later times the annals were preserved by the Roman pontiffs, so at an earlier period the histories of commonwealths were preserved in secret by the fables of the poets. It was for this reason that the fables were unknown to the common people and all profane history before the invention of popular writing was most uncertain.

A proof of the truth of sacred history.

[19] And it is for this reason that sacred history is true, because the first law was given to the Hebrews in written form, that records of sacred history might be available to the common people. But the priests preserved the autograph, and preserved by oral tradition a knowledge of the vowel characters, of which that language had no forms.

XIX

The first letters were uncials.

[20] If the first popular characters arose from geometric forms, then the first letters to arise among the Greeks and Romans were uncials, which is verified by the study of the inscriptions and coinage.

XX

Characters smaller than uncials arose late.

[21] If the first characters were uncials, then smaller characters arose very late, in fact in the second age of barbarism. Indeed, we can see in the manuscripts, inscriptions and coinage of the most debased Greek and Latin, and even now in the writing of illiterates, how crude letters could have arisen from very elegant ones. Therefore all crude scripts either were not patterned on geometrical forms or were corrupted by barbarism.

XXI

Why the Homeric rhapsodies were corrupt all the way down to Aristarchus.

[22] If geometry preceded writing, since geometry was imported to Greece by the Egyptians, and since before Psammeticus Egypt was closed to foreigners, and since Homer flourished a long time before Psammeticus, the Homeric poems must have been preserved for a long time by oral tradition. Consequently, Aristarchus used the art of criticism to purge the text of a great many verses and stories that were unworthy of Homer.

Hesiod was a compiler of the customs of the greater gentes.

[23] And it is even more indisputable that the songs of Orpheus and Linus were traditions of the poet heroes, and that they were compiled by Hesiod, who lived before Homer, and conveyed in verse form the customs by which the greater gentes were founded. They were in fact those laws which before the time of the Romans the Latin peoples called carmina, and the most ancient of the Greeks called nomoi.

Chapter 16

From the Holy Bible a demonstration of Tanaus and Sesostris, who connect sacred history with the profane history of the dark age.

[1] Just as earlier we showed that the giants of the Holy Bible provided a link between antediluvian and postdiluvian history, so shall we now demonstrate from these same sacred books the identity of Tanaus and Sesostris, who link sacred history with the history of the dark age, which we shall describe a little later.

Two observations.

[2] But before we begin two important facts need to be noted. The first is that before popular tongues came into widespread use, when things were designated by heroic characters, the greater gentes must have used distinctive symbols, their form determined by the ingenuity of each people, to name not only things, but even individuals, with the result that the same man was given different names by different peoples. This is the reason - still unknown to the philologians, as they themselves admit - why different peoples gave to the same city and the same king distinct names which have nothing at all in common with one another. The second fact to be noted is that due to the poverty of words at that time, a name given to one man was applied to a number of other men of the same genus. This, as we said earlier, was the source of antonomasia. The ignorance of these two facts has brought enormous obscurity to history and geography.

The second captivity of the Hebrews.

[3] This is the episode from sacred history that confirms that the monarchy of the Assyrians did not pass intact directly from Sardanapalus to the Medes, but at the time of the second Hebrew captivity was divided into two opulent kingdoms, the second Assyrian kingdom and a second Egyptian kingdom. Xenophon is in perfect accord with this passage, because more than any other Greek general he penetrated deepest into Persia, and was a weighty philosopher as well, and gained a much better knowledge of Persian affairs than Trogus Pompeius, or rather Justin. Polybius actually writes in his second book that Asian affairs were unknown to the Greeks until the wars of Alexander.

[4] Cornelius Tacitus gives weighty confirmation to this passage from sacred history, when he relates the following of Germanicus: "Then he visited the great ruins of ancient Thebes, where there still remained on the massive stones Egyptian letters describing its prior opulence. One of the elder priests was ordered to translate these from his native tongue, and he read to them of how there once dwelled in Egypt more than 700,000 men of military age, and with that host king Ramses (I will prove that this Egyptian Ramses is Sesostris, who is mentioned in Herodotus and who Trogus Pompeius and his epitomator Justin relate lived before Ninus, that is, before the beginning of all profane history) conquered Libya, Ethiopia, the Medes and the Persians, Bactria and Scythia, and held under his sway the lands inhabited by the Syrians and Armenians and the neighboring Cappadocians, reaching from the Bithynian to the Lycian Sea. And the priest read of the tribute imposed on these peoples, the weight of silver and gold, the number of weapons and horses, and the gifts for the temples, ivory and perfume . . . tribute no less magnificent than that now demanded by the powerful Romans and Parthians." Therefore that Sesostris mentioned by Herodotus returned home from his conquests with more than just the glory of victory.

Italy is of greater antiquity than Greece - Italy was a great source of fables for the Greeks - Italy is proved not to have been Greek in the time of Homer.

[5] In view of the power of their empire, the Egyptians must certainly have controlled the whole Mediterranean, and therefore have founded colonies along its various shores, and especially the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea; because after the Trojan War this region of the world, from the Sicilian strait all the way to the Circeian promontory, provided an almost endless source of material for Greek poetry, as is shown by the tales surrounding the wanderings of Ulysses: the stories of Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, the Sirens, Circe, Avernus, the threshold of the underworld, and on the Adriatic side the metamorphosis of the comrades of Diomedes into birds. So far over the sea had the fame of these cities and places traveled in the time of Homer! Such was the delicacy of the Italian peoples-- proof of their early civilization--that the Sirens enticed passing sailors to ruin with their song, and Circe turned stout heroes into pigs! And even Homer himself, unless he was a fool, provides evidence that these peoples and cities were not originally Greek, for he says of Ulysses at the beginning of the Odyssey: " . . . after the capture of Troy he saw the ways and cities of many men." Now how could it have it been praiseworthy for that hero, how could his valor and prudence have been tempered by his wanderings, if the customs and cities he came to know were those of his own people? And if he wanted to learn the ways of his own people, he would not be "wandering about in ignorance of the men and places," but would be traveling a fixed course in full knowledge of them.

Cumae was famous before any Greek city.

[6] Here Vergil, a most diligent student of antiquity, relates that in the time of Aeneas Cumae was already famous for a magnificent temple of Apollo, and he locates his Sibyl near Cumae. That this ancient line of prophetesses arose not among the Greeks but in the Orient is proved by the belief that Persis, said to be the first of the Sibyls, was the daughter of the Chaldaean Berosus. Therefore the more learned grammarians, aware that the word Sibyl comes from the Hebrew, regard as utter nonsense the claims of those who trace its origin from the Greeks. Vergil calls Cumae Euboicae, after this woman with superhuman powers, just as Pliny relates that Chalcis was called Euboea after a woman with the same powers. Because if Vergil had been referring to the Chalcidians, he would have called them Abantes, as Homer always does, and not Euboeans, a word that Homer never uses. Profane history relates that this first city was founded well over 200 years before the first Olympiad, which for our Varro is the beginning of historic time. And as for those who think Vergil was saying that Cumae was founded by the Chalcidians, well, this is one of the reasons why the Egyptians called the Greeks "eternal children."

A weighty proof that Italy was first civilized by the Egyptians.

[7] For let us examine this ancient matter not by memory, but by reason. If someone should ask us how it came about that the Greeks, at a time when the whole Mediterranean was subject to Egypt, occupied the most beautiful and fertile coast of Italy, from which Capua later wielded a power which was formidable even to the Romans, our response [that the Greeks are eternal children] will surely be sufficient.

The civilization of the Etruscans is proved to be more ancient than any Greek civilization.

[8] But, [one might object], Italy is very famous for the Greek cities along both its coasts. But what if there were in Italy an empire much more powerful than all the Greek states, when the Greek people were still obscure? For while Athens and Sparta were still small cities, confined within their own narrow borders, there flourished in Italy the kingdom of the Etruscans, a kingdom so powerful that it gave its name to the entire lower sea from the shore of Etruria all the way to the straits of Sicily (and the Tyrrhennian Sea of course did not receive this name after the rise of Roman power); and by its religion, architecture, military art and trappings of empire, it bears witness to a far greater antiquity than any Greek state.

By divination.

[9] For the callous art of divination, later adopted by the Romans, which examined the pulsing, smoking entrails of lambs and calves, provides evidence that man had long before lost his primal innocence in regard to harmless creatures. It is for this reason that Polybius called the ceremonies of the Romans 'tragic'. And although the original founder of the science of augury is unknown, and Suidas provides evidence that it was introduced to Greece from Telegonus, Cicero relates that the Etruscans certainly proclaimed themselves its authors.

By architecture.

[10] Etruscan architecture was cruder and simpler and more stable than all Greek architecture, and similar to that of Egypt, which is say, it was of a type that must by nature have been earliest; for as time goes on buildings become more delicate, refined and decorative.

[By the art of arranging battle lines.]

[11] But the Roman art of arranging battle lines, in the judgment not only of Livy but even Polybius, was far superior to the Macedonian phalanx, in spite of the fact that this art is the application of geometry and arithmetic to warlike uses. And since it was the special genius of the Romans to adopt the inventions of civilized peoples while at the same time preserving barbarism in their homeland, so as not to lose their ferocity, they surely learned this art from the neighboring Etruscans, the first foreign people with whom they waged war.

By the most splendid emblems of power.

[12] Finally, the fasces, the trabeae, the curule chairs, the rings, the military cloaks, the custom of riding in a triumphal procession on a golden chariot drawn by four horses, the embroidered togas, the tunics adorned with palm leaves, and all the other regalia with which, as we have seen from Florus, even at the height of their power the majesty of the Roman people shone forth, were adopted by Tarquinius Priscus from the display of spoils taken from the Etruscans.

Proof that Pythagoras did not found, but refined the Italian school.

[13] To all these arguments you can add the following: Almost two centuries before Plato traveled to Egypt, Pythagoras came to Italy. His purpose in coming was to learn philosophy and not, like the sophists, to sell his empty wisdom abroad. (It was due to this habit of the sophists that Plato, in the dialogues in which he mocks them, often makes sure to assign to Socrates an honorable motive for initiating a conversation.) And when Pythagoras discovered that the Italians were very learned, he elected to remain here. We must say then that he did not found the Italian school, but refined it. The very nature of things demands this conclusion. For Pythagoras did not teach that the world consists of water, as did Thales, the first Greek sage, who flourished no more than 100 years before Pythagoras; nor that it consists of homoiomereiai [homogeneous elements], as did Anaxagoras, the teacher of Socrates; nor of atoms, as did Democritus, a contemporary of Plato and like the two previous a materialist philosopher. Pythagoras taught rather that the universe consists of numbers, which in a way are more abstract than lines. This tells us that the ingenuity of the Italians was much more highly developed than that of the Greeks and freer from the defilement of the senses. Perhaps if was for this reason that Plato established as the principles of things their eternal ideas, and perhaps too it was from this superiority of Italian learning that the same Plato in the Timaeus chides his fellow Greeks as being ignorant of antiquity.

Justin's Tanaus is at variance with sacred history, whereas ours is in conformity with it.

[14] By these arguments which I consider irrefutable, derived from the very nature of things and consistent with the truth of sacred history, we have demonstrated one principle of universal profane history, Sesostris, who must have given his name to the kings of Egypt, in accordance with our previous statements and the observation made at the beginning of this chapter. We have not demonstrated the second principle, Tanaus, whom Justin describes as older than Sesostris. But if the world was divided among the sons of Noah in the year 1556, and if it took the Egyptians, a people of superior ingenuity who had learned the civil arts from the Chaldaeans at an early date, a span of almost 2,000 years to develop so splendid an empire, it would have required a much longer time for the crude Scythians to attain sufficient power to conquer the east, including Egypt. The epoch of the Flood would therefore be called into grave question. And so we must conclude that Tanaus was a heroic character of the first commonwealths, and represented the form of the commonwealths which prevailed throughout the east, and even in Egypt.

Chapter 17

Corollaries derived from our account of Tanaus and Sesostris.

[1] Hence the following facts are brought to light:

I

The antiquity of the Scythians.

[2] Scythes, the nation's founder, was a son of Hercules, because, as we said in the previous book and will establish more firmly in this one, the sons of Hercules, that is, the best and strongest of the lawless, founded the first aristocratic commonwealths.

II

The Scythian language is a mother tongue.

[3] The Scythian language is the mother tongue of German, Parthian and Persian; and those who are fluent in both German and Persian, among them Hugo Grotius, have noticed countless words that the two languages share in common.

III

The customs of Scythia.

[4] Hence the Scythians continued for a long time to be celebrated for their moral rectitude, modesty, simplicity and justice, so that Horace considers them superior to the Romans, and Curtius commends them for their wisdom.

IV

The Scythians are more ancient than the Egyptians.

[5] There was a long dispute between the Scythians and Egyptians over which people was the more ancient, a dispute eventually won by the Scythians. This is because, in accordance with our principles, the Scythians were greater gentes, whereas the Egyptians were lesser gentes, since they greatly expanded their domain, which is only done by lesser gentes, that is, by peoples who are living under a pure monarchy or in a democracy.

V

The perpetual punishments of war: slavery and tribute.

[6] And everywhere and in all times it was the established law of the gentes to impose on those vanquished in war either slavery or tribute, or even to confiscate their arms, and thus take away their power to do injury. And for this reason it is certain that Tanaus never conquered so large a part of the world solely for the sake of glory, just as it is certain that Sesostris imposed tribute on the territory he conquered.

VI

The founders of peoples: Hercules, Bacchus.

[7] The Egyptians then were correct when, as is related by Tacitus, they maintained that Hercules was born among them and was extremely ancient; they were wrong, though, when they went on to say that those who came after him who were of equal valor were given his name. For all peoples founded by religion and virtue (and no people anywhere was founded without religion) had some Hercules as their founder, or some other heroic personage they invoked with different names in different parts of the world, that is to say, a heroic character. The Indians, for example, made Bacchus a heroic character of a similar kind, and endowed him with almost the same qualities as the Egyptians, Scythians, Greeks, and other peoples endowed Hercules, as we shall show more fully below.

VII

Why were the Scythians temperate by nature? - Why were they founded by no agrarian law?

[8] And we have also brought to light the reasons for the celebrated customs of the Scythians, whose religion established temperance and honesty, virtues which were preserved by the huge expanse of fertile land under their control. And so they enjoyed an equality that flourished among them for this reason, because with such an abundance of land there was no need for the kind of agrarian law that gave rise in the west to clientship, as we shall explain in detail below. And from this social equality there arose among them industry and justice, so that in alternating years some cultivated the fields while others rested.

VIII

Why was there no distinction of birth among the Scythians?

[9] But as a result of this equality the Scythians enjoyed in cultivating their fields by annual alternations of leisure and labor, the commonwealths they founded were based on paternal power alone, without clientship. Hence there was no distinction between nobility and commoners. This was because due to the abundance of land no occasion arose of violent men attacking the weak, causing them to flee to the altars of the strong to escape injury and, once adopted, form at a later time the plebeian order, as we said in the previous book and will say in greater detail below. Therefore the Szeklers, a Transylvanian tribe of great martial prowess, who boast that they are the descendants of the ancient Huns, all practice herding and agriculture, and yet all are considered equally noble.

IX

Scythia was the mother of the strongest people in the West, and of the mildest and most just in the East.

[10] Therefore the strongest peoples emerged from Scythia. There went forth into rugged Europe first the Thracians, Germans, and Parthians, and then later the Vandals, Huns, Goths, Herulians, Lombards, Turks, and others, while into gentle Asia migrated the Chinese, the mildest of men, and the most devoted to justice.

The Chinese preserve vestiges of the ancient Scythians, especially in their heroic writing.

[11] And just as in recent times the Tartars broke through the impenetrable wall of China and seized that mighty empire, so too is it not only plausible, but necessary that the supremely just and humane Chinese people were once founded by these same Scythians. Because it is an acknowledged characteristic of the Chinese to shun the society of foreigners, and like the ancient Scythians they boast that they are the oldest of mankind, and arose many centuries before the creation of the world. But they reveal this certain sign of extreme antiquity: all their words are monosyllables, and in writing they add dots to homonyms, to denote their proper meaning.

The Japanese came from Scythia - The Japanese language is similar to Latin.

[12] And since geographers are in doubt as to whether Japan is connected in the north to the mainland, we can with justice claim that the Scythians originally introduced the Japanese race to that island. The Japanese language is virile and of a kind similar to Latin, as has been observed by those versed in both languages.

And the Americans.

[13] We learn from Grotius that the natives in the northern part of America originated in Norway and came to America by a land route through Greenland; but it is more credible that they spread from there and later populated the whole western hemisphere all the way to the Strait of Magellan.

X

How is it that the Ethiopians descended from the Chaldaeans? - How were they originally white, and now black?

[14] Turning our attention to another part of the world, it is more likely that the Ethiopians arose from the earliest Egyptians, their neighbors on the continent, since Tacitus calls Ethiopia Chaldaean, and Strabo Phoenician, meaning that the Ethiopians were descended from the Chaldaeans or the Phoenicians through the Egyptians. They were originally an attractive white people, but, as Isaac Voss notes, because they flattened the round heads of their infants, believing this would make them more intelligent, when these disfigured children became parents their offspring were disfigured as well. And they colored their faces with black lead, because they thought black a more sacred color, just as even today we observe paintings from the European age of barbarism in which the faces of God, Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints are of a black color, and the faces of statues have been covered with a black encaustic work. Then over the course of time, by the power of the imagination of their sires, children were born black, and what was originally a cosmetic treatment became part of their nature. Those who deny this are not even familiar with Hofmann's Lexicon.

The first Ethiopians were temperate by nature - A proof of the natural wisdom of the first peoples.

[15] Surely the Ethiopians were by nature content with little, and considered their wealth to consist entirely of their liberty and that physical strength with which they stretched their huge bows and shot their huge arrows. So said the Ethiopian king Thearcus to the ambassadors of Cambyses, when he rejected their gifts of gold and gems and said that he knew no use for them. This story reveals that the first Egyptians, and still more the first men after the Flood, possessed a certain natural wisdom.

XI

The propagation of the whole human race.

[6] And now you know that through the Chaldaeans, Scythians and Egyptians the human race spread throughout the entire world.

XII

Why was Tanaus earlier than Sesostris?

[17] And it is related by profane history that Tanaus was earlier than Sesostris, because the Scythians were closer to Armenia, where the ark came to rest on a mountaintop when the waters of the Flood subsided.

XIII

How did wild beasts spread from Asia throughout the world?

[18] And like the Scythians the Ethiopians were skilled archers, which means that the earliest men were excellent hunters, who either slew the animals descended from those saved in the ark, or caused them to flee to other regions of the world. This is why so many heroes named Hercules were slayers of monsters and wild beasts.

XIV

Why is nothing said of Nimrod and Belus in obscure profane history? - Why was Nimrod called "a mighty hunter"?

[19] But the reason why Tanaus and Sesostris provide us with evidence for the sequence of profane history, while Nimrod and his successor Belus are passed over in silence, is explained by these irrefutable causes: Since navigation progressed slowly, if not last of all, from the rafts and skiffs which the Egyptians used when the Nile overflowed, to the ships with which they crossed the sea, it must have been that the first warriors in the east, since they conducted wars only with land forces, drove before them throughout the earth both the wild beasts and the humans who wandered like beasts, and so the Assyrians extended the first kingdom throughout the eastern continent of Asia. It is for this reason that Nimrod is called in sacred history "a mighty hunter," just as in profane history Hercules is called "a slayer of beasts."

The religious scruple among ancient peoples concerning observing the sea - The earliest men dwelled in the hinterland, while the lesser gentes inhabited the coast.

[20] And it must have been too that the earliest peoples had religious scruples concerning observing the sea. This may have been due to the oppressive fear of the still recent Flood, or, especially among the Assyrians, who thought it a god, to avoid seeing the sun set, just as Roman history relates of Decimus Brutus on the shore of the Ocean at a much later time. For of course the first poetry of all, pastoral, contained no allusion to the sea, which means that Sicily, where pastoral poetry first originated, must originally have been connected to the Italian mainland. Hence we can conclude that the earliest men inhabited inland regions (like Noah and his family; whence the first Assyrian empire was entirely inland); later, the lesser gentes inhabited the coasts.

XV

Their exceptional ingenuity and the flooding of the Nile caused the Egyptians to quickly become very learned and powerful.

[21] But it was due to the exceptional ingenuity of the Egyptians, an ingenuity sharpened by the flooding of the Nile, that they quickly learned the antediluvian arts which were preserved by the Chaldaeans. Faced with the need of recognizing the boundary markers that had been buried by the floodwaters, they applied to the measurement of the earth the mathematics they had learned from the Chaldaeans, from whom, according to Herodotus, they had also learned the elevation of the pole and the use of the quadrant. Whence they later learned the art of marshaling troops for battle. Similarly they built massive dikes to check the violence of the river when it overflowed, and so the type of architecture that arose among them was simple and solid and crude, like that of the Etruscans, but also magnificent and durable, as we can see in the miraculous pyramids; and so, skilled in urban architecture, they easily discovered military architecture. And for building massive structures from marble blocks they needed iron tools, and so later they easily discovered heavy armor. And because of this same overflowing of the Nile, they were the first to recover the arts of navigation and shipbuilding. Hence Egypt was called the "mother of the arts," and the Egyptians "the parents of philosophy and all disciplines." Because of their skill in these arts they easily conquered primitive and defenseless and unorganized peoples, and quickly attained power over the Mediterranean coastline; when in the meantime the Assyrians had become less advanced and extended their empire inland, in a region entirely unknown to the Greeks until the time of the Persian wars.

XVI

Why did Phoenicia become powerful very quickly?

[22] And the reason why the Phoenicians quickly became masters of the sea is because they learned the art of seafaring from the Egyptians. And the fact that Tyre in Syria was celebrated for its seafaring and colonies shows that the power of the second Assyrian kingdom was coeval with the power of the second Egyptian kingdom.

XVII

How did the languages of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians become sacred by nature?

[23] And this is clearly established: When the Chaldaeans and Egyptians emerged victorious, their languages naturally came to be regarded as sacred by the conquered peoples, since they were foreigners. Because the language of the laws was unknown to the conquered, and it was by a knowledge of the laws that the Chaldaeans among the Medes, and the priests among the Egyptians established an aristocrat class, from whose families kings were created. And so as we have said, for the earliest peoples wisdom, priesthood and kingship were all one thing.

How were the plebeians and aristocrats everywhere distinguished by language?

[24] And in the same way, in the east and Egypt by conquest, in the west by clientship, the aristocrats and plebeians in kingdoms and empires were distinguished by a double language, heroic and popular. And Papirius promulgated the laws in the plebeian tongue, Superbus answered his son in the heroic language.

XVIII

[25] But to move a little closer to home, from what we have said so far it is not only plausible, but altogether necessary that it was the Egyptians who founded Cumae, which in the time of Aeneas, that is, a few years after the destruction of Troy, was so magnificent that it must have been founded at least 400 years before, a time when according to Greek legend the Egyptian Cecrops founded the twelve small colonies in Attica that later were united by Theseus to form Athens.

XIX

[26] Therefore it is not at all strange if we said in our Italian Synopsis that when Athens and Sparta were small cities the opulent kingdom of the Etruscans was flourishing in Italy. For as we have stated, such was the power and splendor of their empire that it must have been a commonwealth for at least six or seven hundred years.

When was Italy Egyptian and in what part?

[27] And so when the Egyptian Danaus, as those same Greeks also relate, seized from the Inachids the kingdom of Argos, the Egyptians must have long before founded a colony in Etruria, which was already extremely powerful in the time of Tullus, as Roman history relates in the account of the war against the Albans. And yet Rome was founded in the year 3250. Consider this date carefully.

XX

When and where did Italy begin to become Greek?

[28] And the thing itself compels us to contend that at the time the inhabitants of Attica and Aetolia began to send colonies to Ionia, or Asia Minor, almost 140 years after the destruction of Troy - so that gradually almost all Asia Minor was filled with Greek cities - they would have sent colonies to Italy too, since they had at that time control of the Mediterranean Sea. Therefore there were a great number of Greek cities situated along the coastline of Italy, especially on the Adriatic side closest to Greece. This receives weighty confirmation from the fact that indigenous peoples inhabited the whole hinterland of Italy. Vergil indicated this when he made the aborigine Turnus a very fierce warrior, and the seaborne immigrant Aeneas a hero admirable to reason. And so for the reasons stated above, when aborigines inhabited the hinterland of Italy the Egyptians populated its coasts, and when the Latins held the hinterland the Greeks populated the coasts.

Chapter 18

On the elements of profane history

On the Roman preservation of the law of the gentes.

[1] Romulus then, a native, with extreme boldness of spirit dared found a new city between the extremely powerful empire of the Etruscans and countless little aristocratic kingdoms. And the Romans under the kings, which is to say, within a span of 250 years, conquered around 20 Latin and Etruscan peoples, and yet, as we said in the previous book, did not extend their domain more than twenty stadia. Moreover, it took them 250 more years to subdue the whole of Italy. Therefore, amid so many powerful and fierce peoples, it was necessary for them to rigorously observe the law of the gentes, and not wage wars unless provoked by injury.

[2] We have taught that the inland peoples of Italy were the most ancient, certainly more ancient than the Greeks. And we noted in the previous book that the Romans preserved traces of their earliest tongue more faithfully than did the Athenians and Spartans. This was because in the time of Solon the Athenians changed their laws; and by a law of Lycurgus the Spartans were forbidden to write down their laws; and so among both peoples the laws were phrased in the language that was current at the time, and accordingly vulgar and uncertain. But for the Romans the Law of the Twelve Tables, written 300 years after the founding of the city, was considered by Tacitus as the fixed limit, and by Livy as the fount, of all Roman law. This is the demonstration we omitted from our Italian Synopsis, because it was subtle and hence longer than proper.

[3] Finally, as we have seen, it is certain that the law of debt bondage was not brought to Rome from Athens. For before the Law of the Twelve Tables, because the fathers exercised it cruelly on debtors, the plebs had made their first succession; and yet Theseus, with the law De nexo soluto forte sanate, founded liberty for the Athenians all the way back in heroic times, as Plutarch relates. 300 years after the founding of the city, the Romans included a similar law in the Twelve Tables, the heading of which Jacob Gottfried rightly entitles On the equality of the law.

[4] And from all these things it is established that - since humanity was founded on laws and religion, and it is this humanity which the jurists define as ius gentium humanarum, the law of the nations of man, and the Romans faithfully preserved the customs of the greater gentes, upon which Romulus founded his commonwealth, and the customs of the Latin peoples, as we have seen, are very ancient - this Roman preservation of the law of the gentes can provide us with both a certain origin, and a certain sequence for profane universal history.

The elements of history.

[5] We have then not in word, but in very fact established these elements of history, of which all profane history was originally composed and into which it will in the end be dissolved.

I

One definition.

[6] A general definition of civil law was handed down by Gaius, whereby "all peoples use partly their own law, partly the law common to all mankind."

II

Two axioms.

[7] The first of these axioms: A double torch illuminates voluntary law, the history of words and the history of things.

[8] The second: In interpreting laws the common rule is that words must be understood in their proper sense, unless this results in some absurdity.

III

Three postulates.

[9] The first postulate: Whatever we have established according to these principles that the earliest men must have done in the dark age, unless it contradicts sacred history or, more importantly, if it is in accordance with sacred history, must be accepted as fact.

[10] The second: Since all civil law is a combination of the law of nations and a nation's own law, whatever in the Law of the Twelve Tables is in conformity with the customs of the gentes, customs which we have described in accordance with our first postulate, must be thought to be derived from the law of the gentes.

[11] The third: Since the language of the first peoples was poetic, as we have demonstrated above in a number of places, poetic expressions and fables, which is to say, heroic characters, which receive definitions and mythological interpretations in conformity with the customs of the peoples described through our principles, bear witness to the law of the gentes, and this must be thought their proper meaning.

Chapter 19

On the history of the dark age, the torch that illuminates the law of the gentes

The duration of the dark age in Italy.

[1] Now that we have laid these foundations, let us proceed to consider the following: The earth was divided among the sons of Noah in the year of the world 1656, and Rome was founded in the year 3250. The entire span then of the dark age in Italy is 1594 years, with which span of time what we are about to relate concerning the dark age will very closely coincide.

The epochs of the dark age.

[2] We have discovered that natural authority, from the time when the human race was living in lawlessness down to these commonwealths in which we now dwell, passed through five epochs of the dark age, each of which marked a significant transformation in the universal law of the gentes.

[3] In the first epoch the human race was governed by theocracies, one of them true, the rest false, in which all authority was divine, and this divine authority pervaded individual or family authority.

[4] In the second family authority was increased by clienteles.

[5] In the third all commonwealths were poetic kingdoms, which is to say, heroic kingdoms, or kingdoms of aristocrats.

[6] In the fourth all commonwealths passed either into pure monarchies, or, after the passage of the first laws, into mixed monarchies or free republics.

[7] In the fifth and final epoch the law of the lesser gentes was introduced, and the laws of war and peace were adopted into the customs of these gentes.

[8] We will discuss these epochs individually, in the order in which we discovered them.