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# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Apologetic/Ad Nationes/Elucidations/The Charge of Infanticide Retorted on the Heathen

Chapter XV.—The Charge of Infanticide Retorted on the Heathen.
Since we are on a par in respect of the gods, it follows that there is no difference between us on the point of sacrifice, or even of worship, if I may be allowed to make good our comparison from another sort of evidence. We begin our religious service, or initiate our mysteries, with slaying an infant. As for you, since your own transactions in human blood and infanticide have faded from your memory, you shall be duly reminded of them in the proper place; we now postpone most of the instances, that we may not seem to be everywhere handling the selfsame topics. Meanwhile, as I have said, the comparison between us does not fail in another point of view. For if we are infanticides in one sense, you also can hardly be deemed such in any other sense; because, although you are forbidden by the laws to slay new-born infants, it so happens that no laws are evaded with more impunity or greater safety, with the deliberate knowledge of the public, and the suffrages of this entire age. Yet there is no great difference between us, only you do not kill your infants in the way of a sacred rite, nor (as a service) to God. But then you make away with them in a more cruel manner, because you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning. If, however, there does occur any dissimilarity between us in this matter, you must not overlook the fact that it is your own dear children whose life you quench; and this will supplement, nay, abundantly aggravate, on your side of the question, whatever is defective in us on other grounds. Well, but we are said to sup off our impious sacrifice! Whilst we postpone to a more suitable place whatever resemblance even to this practice is discoverable amongst yourselves, we are not far removed from you in voracity. If in the one case there is unchastity, and in ours cruelty, we are still on the same footing (if I may so far admit our guilt) in nature, where cruelty is always found in concord with unchastity. But, after all, what do you less than we; or rather, what do you not do in excess of us? I wonder whether it be a small matter to you to pant for human entrails, because you devour full-grown men alive? Is it, forsooth, only a trifle to lick up human blood, when you draw out the blood which was destined to live? Is it a light thing in your view to feed on an infant, when you consume one wholly before it is come to the birth?

## Footnotes

* ↑ Comp. The Apology, c. ix.
* ↑ Sacri.
* ↑ He refers in this passage to his Apology, especially c. ix.
* ↑ Tabellis.
* ↑ Unius ætatis. This Oehler explains by “per unam jam totam hanc ætatem.”
* ↑ Genere.
* ↑ Pignora, scil. amoris.
* ↑ See Apology, c. ix.
* ↑ Si forte.
* ↑ Parum scilicet?
* ↑ Elicitis.
* ↑ Infantem totum præcocum.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Apologetic/Ad Nationes/Elucidations/The Christian Refusal to Swear by the Genius of Caesar. Flippancy and Irreverence Retorted on the Heathen

Chapter XVII.—The Christian Refusal to Swear by the Genius of Cæsar. Flippancy and Irreverence Retorted on the Heathen.
As to your charges of obstinacy and presumption, whatever you allege against us, even in these respects, there are not wanting points in which you will bear a comparison with us. Our first step in this contumacious conduct concerns that which is ranked by you immediately after the worship due to God, that is, the worship due to the majesty of the Cæsars, in respect of which we are charged with being irreligious towards them, since we neither propitiate their images nor swear by their genius. We are called enemies of the people. Well, be it so; yet at the same time (it must not be forgotten, that) the emperors find enemies amongst you heathen, and are constantly getting surnames to signalize their triumphs—one becoming Parthicus, and another Medicus and Germanicus. On this head the Roman people must see to it who they are amongst whom there still remain nations which are unsubdued and foreign to their rule. But, at all events, you are of us, and yet you conspire against us. (In reply, we need only state) a well-known fact, that we acknowledge the fealty of Romans to the emperors. No conspiracy has ever broken out from our body: no Cæsar’s blood has ever fixed a stain upon us, in the senate or even in the palace; no assumption of the purple has ever in any of the provinces been affected by us. The Syrias still exhale the odours of their corpses; still do the Gauls fail to wash away (their blood) in the waters of their Rhone. Your allegations of our insanity I omit, because they do not compromise the Roman name. But I will grapple with the charge of sacrilegious vanity, and remind you of the irreverence of your own lower classes, and the scandalous lampoons of which the statues are so cognizant, and the sneers which are sometimes uttered at the public games, and the curses with which the circus resounds. If not in arms, you are in tongue at all events always rebellious. But I suppose it is quite another affair to refuse to swear by the genius of Cæsar? For it is fairly open to doubt as to who are perjurers on this point, when you do not swear honestly even by your gods. Well, we do not call the emperor God; for on this point sannam facimus, as the saying is. But the truth is, that you who call Cæsar God both mock him, by calling him what he is not, and curse him, because he does not want to be what you call him. For he prefers living to being made a god.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Comp. The Apology, c. xxxv.
* ↑ Secunda.
* ↑ Severus, in a.d. 198.
* ↑ These titles were borne by Caracalla.
* ↑ Or, “topic”—hoc loco.
* ↑ i.e., whether among the Christians or the heathen.
* ↑ A cavil of the heathen.
* ↑ Sane.
* ↑ Galliæ.
* ↑ Vesaniæ.
* ↑ Conveniam.
* ↑ Recognoscam.
* ↑ Festivos libellos.
* ↑ A concilio.
* ↑ Ex fide.
* ↑ Literally, “we make faces.”
* ↑ Comp. The Apology, c. xxxiii., p. 37, supra, and Minucius Felix, Octavius, c. xxiii. [Vol. IV. this Series.]
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Apologetic/Ad Nationes/Elucidations/The Absurd Cavil of the Ass's Head Disposed of

Chapter XI.—The Absurd Cavil of the Ass’s Head Disposed of.
In this matter we are (said to be) guilty not merely of forsaking the religion of the community, but of introducing a monstrous superstition; for some among you have dreamed that our god is an ass’s head,—an absurdity which Cornelius Tacitus first suggested. In the fourth book of his histories, where he is treating of the Jewish war, he begins his description with the origin of that nation, and gives his own views respecting both the origin and the name of their religion. He relates that the Jews, in their migration in the desert, when suffering for want of water, escaped by following for guides some wild asses, which they supposed to be going in quest of water after pasture, and that on this account the image of one of these animals was worshipped by the Jews. From this, I suppose, it was presumed that we, too, from our close connection with the Jewish religion, have ours consecrated under the same emblematic form. The same Cornelius Tacitus, however,—who, to say the truth, is most loquacious in falsehood—forgetting his later statement, relates how Pompey the Great, after conquering the Jews and capturing Jerusalem, entered the temple, but found nothing in the shape of an image, though he examined the place carefully. Where, then, should their God have been found? Nowhere else, of course, than in so memorable a temple which was carefully shut to all but the priests, and into which there could be no fear of a stranger entering. But what apology must I here offer for what I am going to say, when I have no other object at the moment than to make a passing remark or two in a general way which shall be equally applicable to yourselves? Suppose that our God, then, be an asinine person, will you at all events deny that you possess the same characteristics with ourselves in that matter? (Not their heads only, but) entire asses, are, to be sure, objects of adoration to you, along with their tutelar Epona; and all herds, and cattle, and beasts you consecrate, and their stables into the bargain! This, perhaps, is your grievance against us, that, when surrounded by cattle-worshippers of every kind we are simply devoted to asses!

## Footnotes

* ↑ Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
* ↑ In The Apology (c. xvi.) the reference is to “the fifth book.” This is correct. Book v. c. 3, is meant.
* ↑ In vobis, for “in vos” ex pari transferendorum.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Apologetic/Ad Nationes/Elucidations/The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort

Chapter XIII.—The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.
Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, in preference to the preceding day as the most suitable in the week for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers. For the Jewish feasts on the Sabbath and “the Purification,” and Jewish also are the ceremonies of the lamps, and the fasts of unleavened bread, and the “littoral prayers,” all which institutions and practices are of course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
* ↑ Sunday.
* ↑ Saturday.
* ↑ Ex diebus.
* ↑ On the “Cœna pura,” see our Anti-Marcion, p. 386, note 4.
* ↑ See Lev. xxiv. 2; also 2 Chron. xiii. 11. Witsius (Ægyptiaca, ii. 16, 17) compares the Jewish with the Egyptian “ritus lucernarum.”
* ↑ Tertullian, in his tract de Jejun. xvi., speaks of the Jews praying (after the loss of their temple, and in their dispersion) in the open air, “per omne litus.”
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/gemein

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/gemein | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ gemein, adj., ‘common, public; mean, vulgar,’ from MidHG. gemeine, OHG. gimeini, ‘belonging to one another, in common, universal, belonging to the great body’; an adj. common to Teut.; comp. Goth. gamains, ‘in common, joint, general, unholy,’ AS. gemœ̂ne, E. mean, Du. gemeen. The common Teut. ga-maini-s is primit. allied to the equiv. Lat. com-mûnis (for com-moini-s); comp. Lat. ûnus with Goth. ains, Aryan oino-s. Since ‘in common’ is the primary meaning of the class, Meineid (which see) cannot be very closely allied to its OTeut. cognates.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/genießen

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/genießen | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ genießen, vb., ‘to enjoy, partake of,’ from the equiv. MidHG. genieȥen, OHG. ginioȥan, str. vb., with the variants MidHG. nieȥen, OHG. nioȥan; corresponding to Goth. niutan, ‘to take part in something,’ ganiutan, ‘to catch’ (nuta, ‘captor, ​fisher’). OIc. njóta, ‘to enjoy, derive joy from, have the use of,’ AS. neótan, ‘to take, use, enjoy,’ Du. genieten, OSax. niotan, ‘to enjoy.’ The primary meaning of the Teut. root nut, found in str. verbs, was ‘to get something for one's own use,’ then ‘to use or enjoy something, have the use of.’ See Nuß, Nießnutz. Akin to the primit. allied Lith. naudà, ‘use, produce,’ pa-nústu, -nūdau, -nūsti, ‘to long, yearn for.’ —
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/geloben

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/geloben | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ geloben, vb. ‘to promise, vow,’ from the equiv. MidHG. geloben, OHG. gilobôn (akin to loben); lit. ‘to assent, applaud.’
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/gelten

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/gelten | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ gelten, vb., ‘to be worth, pass current, prove effectual,’ from MidHG. gëlten, OHG. gëltan, str. vb., ‘to repay, pay, cost, be worth, requite, compensate’; comp. Goth. us-, fra-gildan, ‘to requite’ (akin to Goth. gild and gilstr, n., ‘tax’), OIc. gjalda (OSwed., also gialla, from Teut. gelþan), ‘to pay,’ AS. gildan, E. to yield, Du. gelden, ‘to be worth, cost,’ OSax. geldan. The common Teut. stem gelþ, the þ of which is proved by OSwed. from pre-Teut. ghel-t, points to the fact that OSlov. žlědą, ‘I pay, atone for,’ was borrowed. The prim. meaning of the Teut. cognates is ‘to make good, pay over something’; it seems to be specially applied to religious sacrifices; comp. AS. gild, OSax. gëld, ‘sacrifice’ (akin to Gr. τέλθος, ‘duty’?). See Geld, Gilde. — The particle gelt, which first occurs in early ModHG., is properly the subj. pres. of the vb. gelten.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/genau

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/genau | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ genau, ‘accurate, precise, strict, parsimonious,’ from late MidHG. (MidG.) nouwe, ‘careful, exact,’ akin to nouwe, genouwe, adv., ‘scarcely’; comp. Du. naauw, ‘narrow, exact, punctual.’ Probably these cognates, in their Goth. form *ga-nêws, are to be connected with Goth. nêhws, HG. nahe. Others refer them to a root nau, ‘to narrow,’ in Not and its cognates.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/genesen

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/genesen | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ genesen, vb., ‘to get well, recover,’ from MidHG. genësen, OHG. ginësan, str. vb., ‘to be left alive, be healed, escape alive,’ also ‘to be delivered of a child’; corresponding to Goth. ganisan, ‘to recover health, be rescued, saved,’ AS. genësan, OSax. ginësan, ‘to be rescued, be left alive’; also Du. genezen, ‘to heal, cure.’ The Teut. root nes, with which nähren and its cognates are connected as factitives, corresponds to the Sans. root nas, ‘to approach in an affectionate manner, join,’ and especially to Gr. νέομαι (root νεσ-), ‘to come back,’ and νόσ-τος, ‘return home.’ From Teut. are derived OSlov. gonĭząti (goneznąti), ‘to be redeemed,’ and gonoziti, ‘to redeem,’ allied to gonoziteljĭ, ‘Saviour.’ See nähren.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/gelt

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/gelt | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ gelt (1.), particle. See gelten.
gelt (2.), adj., ‘giving no milk, barren,’ from the equiv. MidHG. and OHG. galt; corresponding to OIc. geldr, OSwed. galder, which have the same sense. They are connected perhaps with OHG. galza, MidHG. galze, OIc. gǫltr, ‘gelded pig’ (E. dial., gilt, ilt). The stem on which it is based, gald, galt (from pre-Teut. ghalt, ghaltn-), perhaps meant orig. ‘to castrate’; comp. E. to geld, OIc. gelda, ‘to geld’; akin to Goth. gilþa, ‘sickle’?.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/gen

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/gen | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ gen, prep., ‘against, towards,’ from the equiv. MidHG. gên, a variant of gein, gęgen. See gegen.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/gemäß

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/gemäß | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ gemäß, adv., ‘conformably, proportionally, suitably,’ from MidHG. gemœȥe, OHG. gimâȥȥi, adj., ‘adapted’; akin to messen.
# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/genehm

| Expand abbreviations An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/genehm | Random word Special:RandomInCategory/Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language |
​ genehm, see angenehm.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter VII

7. But if, say my opponents, no damage is done to human affairs by you, whence arise those evils by which wretched mortals are now oppressed and overwhelmed? You ask of me a decided statement, which is by no means necessary to this cause. For no immediate and prepared discussion regarding it has been undertaken by me, for the purpose of showing or proving from what causes and for what reasons each event took place; but in order to demonstrate that the reproaches of so grave a charge are far removed from our door. And if I prove this, if by examples and by powerful arguments the truth of the matter is made clear, I care not whence these evils come, or from what sources and first beginnings they flow.

## Footnotes

* ↑ The ms. here inserts a mark of interrogation.
* ↑ So the ms. si facto et, corrected, however, by a later copyist, si facio ut, “if I cause that,” etc.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter X

10. And if anything happens which does not foster ourselves or our affairs with joyous success, it is not to be set down forthwith as an evil, and as a pernicious thing. The world rains or does not rain: for itself it rains or does not rain; and, though you perhaps are ignorant of it, it either diminishes excessive moisture by a burning drought, or by the outpouring of rain moderates the dryness extending over a very long period. It raises pestilences, diseases, famines, and other baneful forms of plagues: how can you tell whether it does not thus remove that which is in excess, and whether, through loss to themselves, it does not fix a limit to things prone to luxuriance?
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter XII

12. It is rather presumptuous, when you are not your own master, even when you are the property of another, to dictate terms to those more powerful; to wish that that should happen which you desire, not that which you have found fixed in things by their original constitution. Wherefore, if you wish that your complaints should have a basis, you must first inform us whence you are, or who you are; whether the world was created and fashioned for you, or whether you came into it as sojourners from other regions. And since it is not in your power to say or to explain for what purpose you live beneath this vault of heaven, cease to believe that anything belongs to you; since those things which take place are not brought about in favour of a part, but have regard to the interest of the whole.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter XIII

13. Because of the Christians, my opponents say, the gods inflict upon us all calamities, and ruin is brought on our crops by the heavenly deities. I ask when you say these things, do you not see that you are accusing us with bare-faced effrontery, with palpable and clearly proved falsehoods? It is almost three hundred years—something less or more—since we Christians began to exist, and to be taken account of in the world. During all these years, have wars been incessant, has there been a yearly failure of the crops, has there been no peace on earth, has there been no season of cheapness and abundance of all things? For this must first be proved by him who accuses us, that these calamities have been endless and incessant, that men have never had a breathing time at all, and that without any relaxation they have undergone dangers of many forms.

## Footnotes

* ↑ See Introduction.
* ↑ [Our author thus identifies himself with Christians, and was, doubtless, baptized when he wrote these words.]
* ↑ Sine ullis feriis, a proverbial expression, “without any holidays;” i.e. without any intermixture of good.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book I/Chapter VIII

8. And yet, that I may not seem to have no opinion on subjects of this kind, that I may not appear when asked to have nothing to offer, I may say, What if the primal matter which has been diffused through the four elements of the universe, contains the causes of all miseries inherent in its own constitution? What if the movements of the heavenly bodies produce these evils in certain signs, regions, seasons, and tracts, and impose upon things placed under them the necessity of various dangers? What if, at stated intervals, changes take place in the universe, and, as in the tides of the sea, prosperity at one time flows, at another time ebbs, evils alternating with it? What if those impurities of matter which we tread under our feet have this condition imposed upon them, that they give forth the most noxious exhalations, by means of which this our atmosphere is corrupted, and brings pestilence on our bodies, and weakens the human race? What if—and this seems nearest the truth—whatever appears to us adverse, is in reality not an evil to the world itself? And what if, measuring by our own advantages all things which take place, we blame the results of nature through ill-formed judgments? Plato, that sublime head and pillar of philosophers, has declared in his writings, that those cruel floods and those conflagrations of the world are a purification of the earth; nor did that wise man dread to call the overthrow of the human race, its destruction, ruin, and death, a renewal of things, and to affirm that a youthfulness, as it were, was secured by this renewed strength.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Plato, Tim., st. p. 22.