Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XXII/Chapter 6

Chapter 6.—That Rome Made Its

Founder Romulus a God Because It Loved Him; But the Church Loved

Christ Because It Believed Him to Be God.

Let us here recite the passage in

which Tully expresses his astonishment that the apotheosis of

Romulus should have been credited.  I shall insert his words as

they stand:  “It is most worthy of remark in Romulus, that other

men who are said to have become gods lived in less educated ages, when there was a greater propensity to the fabulous, and when the uninstructed were easily persuaded to believe anything. But the age of Romulus was barely six hundred years ago, and already literature and science had dispelled the errors that attach to an uncultured age.” And a little after he says of the same Romulus words to this effect:

“From this we may perceive

that Homer had flourished long before Romulus, and that there was

now so much learning in individuals, and so generally diffused an

enlightenment, that scarcely any room was left for fable.  For

antiquity admitted fables, and sometimes even very clumsy ones; but

this age [of Romulus] was sufficiently enlightened to reject

whatever had not the air of truth.”  Thus one of the most