Augustine, Saint, Confessiones

Recolo etiam, cum mihi theatrici carminis certamen inire placuisset, mandasse mihi nescio quem haruspicem, quid ei dare uellem mercedis, ut uincerem, me autem foeda illa sacramenta detestatum et abominatum respondisse, nec si corona illa ita esset inmortaliter aurea, muscam pro uictoria mea necari sinere. necaturus enim erat ille in sacrificiis suis animantia et illis honoribus inuitaturus mihi suffragatura daemonia uidebatur. sed hoc quoque malum non ex tua castitate repudiaui, deus cordis mei. non enim amare te noueram, qui nisi. fulgores corporeos cogitare non noueram. talibus enim figmentis suspirans anima nonne fornicatur abs te et fidit in falsis et pascit uentos? sed uidelicet sacrificari pro me nollem daemonibus, quibus me illa superstitione ipse sacrificabam. quid est enim aliud uentos pascere quam ipsos pascere, hoc est errando eis esse uoluptati atque derisui?

I remember too that, when I had decided to enter a competition of theatrical verse, some haruspex [diviner from entrails] or other sent to ask me what fee I would give him to make me win; but I, detesting and abhorring those foul rites, replied that even if that crown were of undying gold, I would not allow a fly to be killed for my victory. For he was going to kill living creatures in his sacrifices, and by those honours he seemed set on inviting demons to support me. But this evil too I rejected not out of chastity toward you, God of my heart. For I did not know how to love you, I who knew how to think of nothing but bodily splendours. For does not a soul that sighs after such fictions commit fornication away from you, and trust in false things, and feed the winds? But of course I would not have [victims] sacrificed for me to demons, to whom by that superstition I was sacrificing myself. For what else is feeding the winds than feeding them, that is, by straying to be a pleasure and a laughing-stock to them?

Erat eo tempore uir sagax, medicinae artis peritissimus atque in ea nobilissimus, qui proconsul manu sua coronam illam agonisticam inposuerat non sano capiti meo, sed non ut medicus. nam illius morbi tu sanator, qui resistis superbis, humilibus autem das gratiam. numquid tamen etiam per illum senem defuisti mihi aut destitisti mederi animae meae? quia enim factus ei eram familiarior et eius sermonibus — erant enim sine uerborum culta uiuacitate sententiarum iucundi et graues — adsiduus et fixus inhaerebam, ubi cognouit et ex conloquio meo libris genethliacorum esse me deditum, benigne ac paterne monuit, ut eos abicerem neque curam et operam rebus utilibus necessariam illi uanitati frustra inpenderem, dicens ita se illa didicisse, ut eam professionem primis annis aetatis suae deferre uoluisset, qua uitam degeret, et si Hippocraten intellexisset, et illas utique litteras potuisse intellegere: et tamen non ob aliam causam se postea illis relictis medicinam adsecutum, nisi eas falsissimas conperisset et nollet uir grauis decipiendis hominibus uictum quaerere. "at tu" inquit "quo te in hominibus sustentas, rhetoricam tenes, hanc autem fallaciam libero studio, non necessitate rei familiaris sectaris. quo magis mihi te oportet de illa credere, qui eam tam perfecte discere elaboraui, quam ex ea sola uiuere uolui." a quo ego cum quaesissem, quae causa ergo faceret, ut multa inde uera pronuntiarentur, respondit ille, ut potuit, sortem hoc facere in rerum natura usquequaque diffusam. si enim de paginis poetae cuiuspiam longe aliud canentis atque intendentis, cum forte quis consulit, mirabiliter consonus negotio saepe uersus exiret, et mirandum non esse dicebat, si ex anima humana superiore aliquo instinctu nesciente, quid in se fieret, non arte, sed sorte sonaret aliquid, quod interrogantis rebus factisque concineret.

There was at that time a shrewd man, very skilled in the art of medicine and most renowned in it, who as proconsul had with his own hand placed that crown of the contest on my unsound head, but not as a doctor. For of that disease you are the healer, you who resist the proud but give grace to the humble. Yet did you fail me even through that old man, or cease to heal my soul? For since I had become rather intimate with him and clung constantly and attentively to his conversation — for without refinement of words it was pleasant and weighty through the liveliness of its thoughts — when he learned from my talk that I was devoted to the books of the casters of nativities, he warned me kindly and like a father to throw them away and not to waste on that vanity the care and effort needed for useful things, saying that he had learned those things so well that in the early years of his life he had wanted to take up that profession as the means by which he would make his living, and that if he had understood Hippocrates, he could certainly have understood those writings as well; and yet he had afterwards abandoned them and taken up medicine for no other reason than that he had found them utterly false and, being a serious man, did not want to seek his living by deceiving people. “But you,” he said, “have rhetoric to support yourself among men, whereas you pursue this deception out of free interest, not because of the needs of your household. All the more, then, ought you to believe me about it, since I worked to learn it as thoroughly as one who meant to live by it alone.” When I asked him what cause, then, made many true things to be foretold from it, he answered as best he could that it was the work of chance, which is spread everywhere throughout the nature of things. For if, when someone happens to consult the pages of some poet who sang of and meant something quite different, a verse often came out wonderfully in harmony with the matter in hand, he said it was no wonder either if from a human soul, by some higher instinct, without its knowing what was happening in it, something sounded forth, not by art but by chance, that chimed with the affairs and deeds of the questioner.

His itaque auditis et creditis-talis quippe narrauerat—omnis illa reluctatio mea soluta concidit, et primo Firminum ipsum conatus sum ab illa curiositate reuocare, cum dicerem, constellationibus eius inspectis ut uera pronuntiarem, debuisse me utique uidere ibi parentes inter suos esse primarios, nobilem familiam propriae ciuitatis, natales ingenuos, honestam educationem liberalesque doctrinas; at si me ille seruus ex eisdem constellationibus — quia et illius ipsae essent — consuluisset, ut eidem quoque uera proferrem, debuisse me rursus ibi uidere abiectissimam familiam, conditionem seruilem et cetera longe a prioribus aliena longeque distantia. unde autem fieret, ut eadem inspiciens diuersa dicerem, si uera dicerem — si autem eadem dicerem, falsa dicerem - inde certissime colligi ea, quae uera consideratis constellationibus dicerentur, non arte dici, sed sorte, quae autem falsa, non artis inperitia, sed sortis mendacio.

So when I had heard and believed these things — for such was the man who had told them — all that resistance of mine gave way and collapsed, and first I tried to call Firminus himself back from that curiosity, telling him that, on inspecting his constellations, if I was to pronounce truly, I ought certainly to have seen in them parents foremost among their own people, a family noble in its own city, free birth, a respectable upbringing and a liberal education; but if that slave had consulted me on the same constellations — since they were his too — then, to tell him the truth as well, I ought in turn to have seen in them a most abject family, a servile condition and other things far removed from the former and far distant from them. And from the fact that, looking at the same things, I would say different things if I spoke truly — while if I said the same things, I would speak falsely — from this it is most surely inferred that what was said truly from consideration of the constellations was said not by art but by chance, and what was said falsely, not through lack of skill in the art but through the falsehood of chance.