The City of God

Having pointed out the fact that Rome’s many disasters do not accord with the view that pagan gods were faithfully protecting the city, Augustine now answers a corollary question: What could account for Rome’s broad success in building a stable empire, despite those periodic disasters? He first critiques the question by pointing out that Rome’s imperial accomplishment is not necessarily morally good: “Is it reasonable, is it sensible, to boast of the extent and grandeur of empire, when you cannot show that men lived in happiness, as they passed their lives amid the horrors of war […]?” (138). Great empires typically serve merely for the collection and amplification of human vices, and without a moral center based on justice, they are little more than “gangs of criminals on a large scale” (139). The continual hunger to acquire more territories, Augustine suggests, is not a characteristic of moral human beings.

Augustine notes that Rome’s success is sometimes attributed to its chief god, Jupiter, but questions whether the portrayal of Jupiter is coherent. He cites many writers who associate Jupiter with a broad range of phenomena, identities, and names, and then suggests that it is both simpler and more reasonable to worship the one God who created and governs all things.