Legatio Ad Gaium

And yet why, O Caius! did you think yourself in need of spurious honours, such as the temples and statues of the beings above-mentioned are often filled with? You ought rather to have imitated their virtues. Hercules purified both the earth and the sea, performing labours of the greatest possible importance and of the highest benefit to all mankind, in order to eradicate all that was mischievous and calculated to injure the nature of each of the elements.

Bacchus rendered the vine susceptible of cultivation, and extracted a most delicious drink from it, which is at the same time most beneficial to the souls and bodies of men, leading the first to cheerfulness, working in them a forgetfulness of evils and a hope of blessings, and making the latter more healthy, and vigorous, and active, and supple.

And individually it renders each man better, and alters populous families and households, leading them from a squalid and laborious life of vexation to a course of relaxation and cheerful happiness, and causing to every city on earth, both Grecian and barbarian, incessant festivity, and mirth, and [*](The passage in Homer is to be found at Odyssey iv. 363. It is imitated more concisely by Virgil, who makes Cyrene tell Aristaeus— Verum ubi correptum manibus vinclisque tenebis Turn variae eludent species atque ora ferarum; Fiet enim subito sus horridus atraque tigris Squamosusque draco et fulva cervice Icaena Aut acrem flammae sonitum dabit, atque ita vinclis Excidet, aut in aquas tenues dilapsus abibit.-Georg. iv. 410. Which is thus translated by "Instant he wears, elusive of the rape, The mimic force of every savage shape: Or glides with liquid lapse a murm’ring stream, Or wrapt in flame, he glows at every limb. Yet still retentive, with redoubled might Thro’ each vain passive form constrains his flight. But when, his native shape resumed, he stands Patient of conquest, and your muse demands; The cause that urg’d the bold attempt declare, And soothe the vanquish’d with a victor’s prayer. The bands relaxed, implore the seer to say What godhead interdicts the wat’ry way." )

Again, it is said that the twin sons of Jupiter, Castor and Pollux, are partakers of immortality. For since the one was mortal and the other immortal, the one who had had the more excellent portion assigned to him did not choose to behave in a selfish manner, but rather to display his good will and affection towards his brother;

for having acquired the idea that eternity was never-ending, and considering that he was to live for ever, and that his brother was to be dead for ever, and that in conjunction with his own immortality he should likewise be enduring an undying sorrow on account of his brother, he conceived and carried out a most marvellous system of counterbalancing, mingling mortality with himself and immortality with his brother, and thus he modified inequality, which is the beginning of all injustice, by equality, which is the fountain of justice.

All these beings, O Caius! were admired on account of the benefits which they had conferred on mankind, and they are admired for them even up to the present time, and they were deservedly thought worthy of veneration and of the very highest honours. But come now, and tell us yourself in what achievement of yours do you pride yourself and boast yourself as being in the least similar to their actions?

Have you imitated the twin sons of Jupiter in their brotherly affection, that I may begin with that point? Did you not rather, O hard-hearted and most pitiless of men! inhumanly slaughter your brother, the joint inheritor of the kingdom with you, even before he had arrived at the full vigour of manhood, when he was still in early youth. Did you not afterwards banish your sisters, lest they also should cause you any reasonable apprehension of the deprivation and loss of your imperial power?

Have you imitated Bacchus in any respect? Have you been an inventor of any new blessings to mankind? Have you filled the whole of the habitable world with joy as he did? Are all Asia and Europe inadequate to contain the gifts which have been showered upon mankind by you?

No doubt you have invented new arts and sciences, like a common pest and murderer of your kind, by which you have changed all pleasant and acceptable things into vexation and sorrow, and have made life miserable and intolerable to all men everywhere, appropriating

But I suppose you imitated Hercules in your unwearied labours and your incessant displays of valour and virtue; you, O most wretched of men! having filled every continent and every island with good laws, and principles of justice, and wealth, and comfort, and prosperity, and abundance of other blessings, you, wretched man, full of all cowardice and iniquity, who have emptied every city of all the things which can conduce to stability and prosperity, and have made them full of everything which leads to trouble and confusion, and the most utter misery and desolation.

Tell me then, O Caius! do you, after having made all these contributions to universal destruction, do you, I say, seek to acquire immortality in order to make the calamities which you have heaped upon mankind, not of brief duration and short-lived, but imperishable and everlasting? But I think, on the contrary, that even if you had previously appeared to be a god, you would beyond all question have been changed on account of your evil practises into an ordinary nature, resembling that of common perishable mortals; for if virtues can make their possessors immortal, then beyond all doubt vices can make them mortal.

Do not, therefore, inscribe your name by the side of that of the twin sons of Jupiter, those most affectionate of deities, you who have been the murderer and destruction of your brethren, nor claim a share in the honours of Hercules or Bacchus, who have benefited human life. You have been the undoer and destroyer of those good effects which they produced.

But the madness and frenzy to which he gave way were so preposterous, and so utterly insane, that he went even beyond the demigods, and mounted up to and invaded the

And first of all he dressed himself up with the caduceus, and sandals, and mantle of Mercury, exhibiting a regularity in his disorder, a consistency in his confusion, and a ratiocination in his insanity.

Afterwards, when he thought fit to do so, he laid aside these ornaments, and metamorphosed and transformed himself into Apollo, crowning his head with garlands, in the form of rays, and holding a bow and arrows in his left hand, and holding forth graces in his right, as if it became him to proffer blessings to all men from his ready store, and to display the best arrangement possible on his right hand, but to contract the punishments which he had it in his power to inflict, and to allot to them a more confined space on his left.

And immediately there were established choruses, who had been carefully trained, singing paeans to him, the same who had, a little while before, called him Bacchus, and Evius, and Lyaeus, and sang Bacchic hymns in his honour when he assumed the disguise of Bacchus.

Very often, also, he would clothe himself with a breastplate, and march forth sword in hand, with a helmet on his head and a shield on his left arm, calling himself Mars, and on each side of him there marched with him the attendants of this new and unknown Mars, a troop of murderers and executioners who had already performed him all kinds of wicked services when he was raging and thirsting for human blood;

and then when men saw this they were amazed and terrified at the marvellous sight, and they wondered how a man who did exactly the contrary to what was done by those beings to whom he claimed to be equal in honour, did not choose to imitate their virtues, but assumed the outward character of each with I the most abominable conduct. And yet all those ornaments and decorations which belonged to them were attached to his statues and images, which indicated by symbols the benefits which the beings who are thus honoured confer upon the race of mankind.

Mercury, for instance, requires wings attached to his ankles. Why so? Is it not because it behoves him to be the interpreter and declarer of the will of the gods (from

Again, he takes with him his caduceus or herald’s wand, as a token of reconciliation and peace, for wars receive their respites and terminations by means of heralds, who restore peace; and wars which have no heralds to terminate them cause endless calamities to both parties, both to those who invade their neighbours and to those who are endeavouring to repel the invasion.