Apologeticum, and Roman Hypocrisy

This post analyzes ancient texts and historical claims in their original context. Descriptions of violence appear only as part of critical examination and do not reflect endorsement.

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Tertullian (c. 155–240 AD) was one of the earliest and most formidable Christian writers of the Latin West. A trained jurist and rhetorician from Roman Carthage, he wrote not as a theologian detached from public life, but as a man steeped in Roman law, fully aware of its principles, procedures, and pretensions to justice. His Apologeticum is not a plea for mercy, but an indictment of the Roman Empire’s moral and legal hypocrisy.

Addressed directly to Roman magistrates, the work exposes a contradiction at the heart of imperial justice: Christians were condemned not for proven crimes, but for bearing a name. They were denied the basic legal rights afforded to all other accused persons; no hearing, no defense, no investigation; while being punished under the guise of law. Rome, which prided itself on reason, order, and jurisprudence, abandoned its own standards when faced with a faith it did not understand and refused to examine.

Tertullian demonstrates that persecution was sustained not by evidence, but by ignorance, fear, and public hatred. Christians were tortured not to confess crimes, but to deny their faith; punished not because guilt was established, but because conversion was refused. Justice became an instrument of coercion rather than truth.

This pattern did not end with pagan Rome. The same logic; criminalizing conscience, equating refusal to conform with guilt, suppressing inquiry, and enforcing “unity” through punishment; reappeared centuries later in the Inquisitions. What Rome did to Christians for refusing pagan sacrifice, later authorities would do to believers who refused submission to an institutionalized Catholicism increasingly removed from apostolic Christianity. Practices unknown to the early Church; such as the veneration of relics, enforced Sunday observance, and sanctioned forms of idolatry; were imposed not by persuasion, but by threat and violence.

Tertullian’s Apologeticum therefore stands not only as a defense of early Christians, but as a timeless warning: when power replaces truth, and conformity replaces conscience, persecution cloaks itself in law: while justice is the first casualty.

Chapter II

Tertullian presses the contradiction to its limit by showing that Roman authority, while claiming to extort truth through lawful means, in fact labors to extract falsehood. The Christian confesses plainly what he is, yet this confession, which in every other case would conclude inquiry and lead to judgment, instead becomes the pretext for torture. Torture, whose sole legal purpose is to uncover hidden truth, is now used to compel the speaker to deny a truth already revealed. The accused is forced, not to confess wrongdoing, but to lie against his conscience. When others deny crimes, their denial is distrusted; when Christians deny being Christians, they are believed immediately. When Christians confess, they are punished; when they deny, they are released. This inversion alone proves that the court is not interested in truth at all, but in the erasure of a name. Tertullian therefore suggests that the judges are acting under a power that moves them against reason, against justice, and even against the laws they claim to serve. Roman law commands that offenders be sought out, not ignored, that confessed crimes be punished, not undone, and that torture be employed only as an instrument of inquiry, never as a punishment in itself. Under tyrants, torture might be punishment; under lawful government, it is merely a means of investigation. Yet here confession precedes torture, torture precedes denial, and denial produces acquittal.

This alone demonstrates that Christians are not treated as criminals at all, since no criminal is ever compelled to deny his crime in order to be freed. If Christians were truly guilty of the monstrous acts imputed to them, judges would cling to confession, not try to destroy it. A spontaneous confession is always more credible than a denial wrung from pain, and a denial extracted by force cannot reasonably be trusted. Indeed, the judge’s conduct undermines his own supposed goal, since a man compelled to deny may leave the court acquitted in law while remaining unchanged in conviction, and thus mock the hostility directed against him. The entire process reveals that there is no actual crime under examination, only a name targeted for extinction. This is further exposed by the fact that no specific crimes are ever entered into the records. The tablets record “Christian,” not murderer, not incestuous, not sacrilegious, though these accusations are freely repeated in rumor. If the name necessarily implied such crimes, the crimes would be named; if the crimes were real, they would be investigated. Instead, both are avoided, because inquiry would dissolve the charge. The law is thus not merely misapplied but logically refuted by its own behavior. A legal system that punishes confession, rewards denial, forbids investigation, and condemns without naming crimes has already conceded that it is not judging acts but suppressing truth. By Roman legal principles themselves, guilt requires proof, confession requires sentencing, and justice requires hearing; where these are absent, condemnation is not law but violence disguised as law. In criminalizing a name rather than an act, Roman authority abandons its own jurisprudence and reveals that what it truly fears is not crime, but the exposure of its ignorance.

Chapter III

Tertullian then carries the argument forward by isolating the final absurdity: the hostility is directed not merely at the Christian, but at the name itself, and specifically at the fact that the name derives from a founder. He points out that there is nothing novel, suspicious, or criminal in a group bearing the name of the one who founded it. All through Roman intellectual and social life this practice is normal and unquestioned. Philosophical schools are named after their founders without scandal or reproach: Platonists from Plato, Epicureans from Epicurus, Pythagoreans from Pythagoras. Others are named from places of instruction or gathering, such as Stoics and Academics. Entire professions accept the same convention: physicians from Erasistratus, grammarians from Aristarchus, even cooks from Apicius. In none of these cases does the name itself provoke hostility. The transmission of a name together with a body of teaching or practice is accepted as natural and rational. From this, Tertullian draws a decisive inference: if the name “Christian” is hated, it cannot be because it is a name derived from a founder, since that principle is universally accepted elsewhere. The only legitimate reason for disliking such a name would be if the sect itself were shown to be morally corrupt, or if its founder were proven to be wicked. In that case, the name would rightly share in the condemnation. But this requires investigation. One must examine the sect through its founder, or the founder through the sect, before judging either. Instead, Roman authority does neither. Without inquiry, without knowledge, without examination of Christ or of Christian life, the name alone is treated as sufficient for condemnation. A mere sound, a word spoken aloud, becomes the basis of punishment. In doing this, the judges condemn both the sect and its founder while admitting by their conduct that they know nothing of either. The name is prosecuted not because it has been shown to signify evil, but because it signifies something unknown and feared. This completes the exposure of Roman injustice: law, which should judge actions, now condemns a name they refuse to look beyond. By its own standards, such a judgment is void, for no legal system can coherently punish what it refuses to define, investigate, or prove. The name “Christian” is thus revealed not as evidence of guilt, but as a mirror held up to the irrational fear of a power that senses its own foundations being questioned and therefore chooses persecution over understanding.

Chapter IV

In this passage Tertullian signals a transition in his argument and explains his method. Up to this point, he says, he has been laying a foundation by exposing the injustice and irrationality of the hatred directed against Christians. He has shown that Christians are condemned without inquiry, punished for a name, and denied the protections of law. Having established that the public hostility itself is unjust, he now announces that he will take a firmer stand: he will argue positively for Christian innocence. He will not only deny the crimes alleged against Christians, but will turn the accusations back upon their accusers. The effect he intends is twofold. First, to demonstrate that Christians are free from the very crimes of which they are accused. Second, to expose that these crimes are in fact widespread and openly practiced within pagan society itself. The shame, therefore, lies not with Christians but with those who accuse them. His point is not that Christians are better than other men by nature, but that they are not guilty of the crimes uniquely imputed to them, and that their accusers condemn in Christians what they tolerate or excuse in themselves.

When magistrates pronounce the sentence “It is not lawful for you to exist,” he argues that this reveals not justice but naked power. If something is declared unlawful merely because authority wills it so, rather than because it is intrinsically harmful or wrong, that is tyranny, not law. True law forbids what is evil because it is evil. By that same principle, whatever is good is legitimate. If Christians can show that what the law forbids is in fact good, then the law has forfeited its moral authority. A law that forbids good cannot claim obedience simply by virtue of its existence.

Tertullian then dismantles the idea that laws are unchangeable or sacred simply because they exist. Laws are human products; they do not descend from heaven. Human lawgivers can err, and history shows that they often do. He gives concrete Roman and Greek examples to make this undeniable. The Spartans themselves revised the laws of Lycurgus, their revered lawgiver, even at the cost of his life. Roman emperors constantly revise ancient statutes through new edicts and rescripts. Severus, he notes, repealed the Papian laws, even though they were old and backed by tradition, because they were absurd and unjust. Earlier Roman laws permitted grotesque cruelty toward debtors, even dismemberment, yet these were later abolished by common agreement and replaced with penalties that preserved life. In every case, injustice, once recognized, led to reform. This shows that age, authority, and tradition do not make a law just; justice alone does.

From this, Tertullian draws a decisive principle: laws are not vindicated by their antiquity or by the dignity of their authors, but by their justice. When their injustice is exposed, they deserve to be condemned, even if they themselves condemn others. If laws punish mere names, he says, they are not only unjust but irrational. Law exists to regulate actions, not words. Yet in the case of Christians, acts are punished solely on the basis of a name, while in all other cases actions must be proved independently of labels.

He presses the inconsistency with sharp questions. If Christians are guilty of incest, why is there no inquiry? If they murder infants, why is torture not used to extract proof, as it would be in any other criminal case? If they commit crimes against the gods or the emperor, why are they not allowed to defend themselves? No law, he insists, forbids the investigation of crimes it prohibits. A judge cannot exercise righteous vengeance unless he knows a crime has actually been committed. Likewise, a citizen cannot truly obey a law unless he understands what the law forbids and why. Obedience based on blind submission is not justice but coercion.

Tertullian then articulates one of his most profound legal principles: it is not enough that a law be just in itself, or that a judge be convinced of its justice. Those who are required to obey must also be convinced. A law that refuses examination, that does not permit itself to be tested and approved, stands under suspicion. A law that tyrannizes without proof is not merely flawed; it is morally corrupt. In refusing inquiry, in condemning without hearing, and in punishing a name rather than a deed, the Roman legal system reveals that it fears examination because examination would expose its injustice. What claims to be law thus exposes itself as violence wearing the mask of authority.

Chapter V

Tertullian here turns from abstract legal reasoning to history, because history exposes the origin, character, and moral weight of the laws used against Christians. He begins by explaining how Roman law treated divinity itself. There was, he says, “an old decree that no god [deified human] should be consecrated by the emperor till first approved by the senate.” In other words, even the gods of Rome were subject to human judgment. He gives a concrete example: “Marcus Aemilius had experience of this in reference to his god Alburnus.” This establishes a striking inversion: divinity is not recognized by its own power, but by political approval. Tertullian draws the conclusion explicitly: “among you divinity is allotted at the judgment of human beings.” A god must please men in order to be a god. “Unless gods give satisfaction to men, there will be no deification for them: the god will have to propitiate the man.” This is not a passing remark; it is a direct critique of Roman religion as fundamentally human-centered and therefore unstable.

Against this background, he introduces the case of Christ. “Tiberius, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world,” received reports from Palestine about events “which had clearly shown the truth of Christ’s divinity.” Acting consistently with Roman procedure, Tiberius brought the matter before the senate, “with his own decision in favour of Christ.” The senate rejected the proposal, not because Christ had been examined and found false, but “because it had not given the approval itself.” Authority, not truth, was decisive (sounds familiar!). Yet Tertullian adds something crucial: “Caesar held to his opinion, threatening wrath against all accusers of the Christians.” This means that, at the very beginning, Christianity was not opposed by imperial power as such, but by the senate’s refusal and later by particular emperors of a certain moral type.

He then names those emperors, beginning with Nero. “Consult your histories,” he says, “you will there find that Nero was the first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect.” Nero becomes a moral touchstone. Tertullian does not try to soften this association; he embraces it. “We glory in having our condemnation hallowed by the hostility of such a wretch.” Why? Because Nero’s character discredits whatever he condemned. “For any one who knows him, can understand that not except as being of singular excellence did anything bring on it Nero’s condemnation.” The argument is sharp: if Nero hated Christianity, that alone is evidence in its favor.

He then mentions Domitian, “a man of Nero’s type in cruelty,” who also persecuted Christians. Yet even Domitian, he notes, “had something of the human in him,” for he soon stopped the persecution and even restored those he had banished. From these examples Tertullian draws a pattern: “Such as these have always been our persecutors,; men unjust, impious, base.” He adds that even the Romans themselves recognize this, since “the sufferers under whose sentences you have been wont to restore.” In other words, later authorities regularly reversed the judgments of these persecutors, which is an implicit confession that those judgments were wrong.

He then challenges his readers directly. Among all the emperors from that time onward who possessed “anything of divine and human wisdom,” he asks them to “point out a single persecutor of the Christian name.” He insists there is none. Instead, he offers the opposite: an imperial protector. He cites Marcus Aurelius, “that most grave of emperors,” and refers to his letters, which testify that during a Germanic campaign, “that drought was removed by the rains obtained through the prayers of the Christians who chanced to be fighting under him.” This episode is used to show not only that Christians were present even in the army, but that their prayers benefited the empire itself. Marcus Aurelius did not formally abolish anti-Christian laws, Tertullian admits, but “in another way he put them openly aside,” by protecting Christians and by “adding a sentence of condemnation, and that of greater severity, against their accusers.” The target of imperial punishment, in this case, was not Christians but those who falsely charged them.

From here Tertullian returns to the laws themselves and exposes their inconsistency. “What sort of laws are these,” he asks, “which the impious alone execute against us; the unjust, the vile, the bloody, the senseless, the insane?” He lists emperors whose actions undermine the supposed authority of these laws. Trajan weakened them by “forbidding Christians to be sought after.” Hadrian, despite being “fond of searching into all things strange and new,” did not enforce them. Nor did Vespasian, “the subjugator of the Jews,” nor Pius, nor Verus. This accumulation is deliberate: the more reasonable, stable, and competent the ruler, the less willing he is to persecute Christians.

Tertullian ends with a final moral inversion: “It should surely be judged more natural for bad men to be eradicated by good princes as being their natural enemies, than by those of a spirit kindred with their own.” In other words, if Christianity were truly evil, the best emperors would have opposed it most vigorously. The fact that persecution comes instead from the worst rulers exposes its true nature. The laws against Christians are not upheld by wisdom, justice, or virtue, but by cruelty and fear. History itself testifies that these laws do not arise from concern for the common good, but from the moral character of those who choose to enforce them.

Tertullian appears to uncover a pattern in which human power attempts to secure permanence by assuming divine attributes through ritualized elevation after death. In doing so, such systems inevitably oppose the true God, whose return would dismantle these false claims to immortality and bring judgment upon the moral corruption they conceal.

Chapter VI

In this passage Tertullian turns the accusation of disloyalty to ancestral law back upon its loudest defenders, (Ancestor worship is the worship of the dead, as seen plainly in the Roman veneration of the Manes). Christians, he says, are charged with abandoning the traditions of the fathers, yet those who make this charge are themselves the most blatant violators of those very traditions. He therefore challenges the so-called “most religious protectors and vindicators of the laws and institutions of their fathers” to examine their own conduct. He asks whether they have truly “departed from nothing” and whether they have “in nothing gone out of the old paths.” The question is rhetorical, because the answer is plainly no. Far from preserving what their ancestors established, they have discarded precisely “whatsoever is most useful and necessary as rules of a virtuous life.”

He begins with the old Roman sumptuary laws, which were designed to restrain luxury and moral decay. These laws once “forbade more than a hundred asses to be expended on a supper,” limited the table to “more than one fowl at a time,” and specifically prohibited extravagance by forbidding even a “fatted” bird. Another law expelled a patrician from the senate merely because he had amassed “ten pounds of silver,” which was regarded as dangerous ambition. Others shut down theatres “as quickly as they arose to debauch the manners of the people,” and forbade the casual or fraudulent use of “the insignia of official dignities or of noble birth.” These were not marginal rules; they were central to Rome’s early moral discipline.

Tertullian then contrasts those laws with present reality. The famous “Centenarian suppers,” once named from the hundred asses allowed by law, now take their name “not from the hundred asses, but from the hundred sestertia expended on them.” Luxury has grown so obscene that “mines of silver are made into dishes,” and this excess is no longer confined to senators but extends even to freedmen and “mere whip-spoilers,” former slaves. What was once punished is now admired. Likewise, theatres are no longer restrained but multiplied and even roofed over, so that “immodest pleasure might not be torpid in the wintertime.” Tertullian’s sarcasm is sharp: the Lacedaemonians invented cloaks for the cold, but Romans now invent architecture to protect vice from discomfort.

Tertullian then extends the argument to religion itself, exposing an even deeper contradiction. The Romans claim to defend the gods of their fathers, yet they have openly overturned ancestral religious laws. He reminds them that the consuls, by senatorial authority, once “banished Father Bacchus and his mysteries not merely from the city, but from the whole of Italy.” Later consuls, Piso and Gabinius, “no Christians surely,” expelled Serapis, Isis, Harpocrates, and even Anubis, the “dog-headed friend,” from the Capitol itself. They overthrew their altars and expelled their cults to prevent “the vices of their base and lascivious religion from spreading.” These acts were performed by pagan magistrates in defense of Roman morality.

Yet what have later Romans done? “These, you have restored, and conferred highest honours on them.” gods once judged corrupt and dangerous are now exalted. Tertullian asks bluntly, “What has come to your religion, of the veneration due by you to your ancestors?” He answers by listing the evidence of total cultural abandonment: “In your dress, in your food, in your style of life, in your opinions, and last of all in your very speech, you have renounced your progenitors.” Romans endlessly praise antiquity, yet “every day you have novelties in your way of living.” The contradiction is complete: they abandon what was good and restraining in their tradition, while clinging fiercely to what was mistaken.

This leads to a crucial accusation. By failing to preserve the virtues of their ancestors, they reveal that they selectively defend tradition only where it serves their hostility to Christians. “While you abandon the good ways of your fathers, you retain and guard the things you ought not.” Chief among these is “zeal in the worship of the gods,” which Tertullian calls “the point in which antiquity has mainly erred.” Even this zeal, however, is inconsistently applied. Though they have rebuilt altars to Serapis (a syncretic deity combining Osiris and Apis, associated with the bull and the serpent)and celebrate Bacchic orgies, he promises to show later that they themselves “despise, neglect, and overthrow” the authority of the ancients in religious practice as well.

He ends by marking a transition. Having exposed the hypocrisy of those who accuse Christians in the name of ancestral law, he declares that he will now proceed to answer “that infamous charge of secret crimes,” moving from these broader cultural and legal inconsistencies to a direct refutation of the specific allegations made against Christians. The force of the passage lies in its cumulative effect: Romans persecute Christians for abandoning tradition, while they themselves have abandoned tradition in law, morality, family life, and religion. The charge against Christians is thus exposed as not only unjust, but profoundly dishonest.

One might almost admire the consistency: the dishonesty Tertullian exposes in pagan Rome appears to have survived remarkably well through the centuries, merely changing its vocabulary

Chapter VII

In this passage Tertullian directly confronts the most shocking accusations leveled against Christians and dismantles them with relentless logic. He begins by naming the charges in their most grotesque form, without softening them: Christians were accused of a so-called “holy rite” said to involve the ritual killing of an infant followed by a forbidden meal, followed by incestuous orgies carried out in darkness, with dogs deliberately used to overturn the lamps and provide cover for shameful lusts. By stating the accusations so plainly, he exposes their monstrosity and prepares to show how irrational it is that such claims are endlessly repeated yet never investigated.

His first argument is procedural. These crimes are said to be committed constantly and over a long period, yet no serious effort has ever been made to verify them. He challenges the authorities directly: either bring these matters into the open “if you believe it,” or stop giving them credit if you have never inquired into them. A charge that dares not be investigated, he argues, is already self-condemned. On the basis of this double dealing, he draws a firm conclusion: “there is no reality in the thing which you dare not expiscate,” that is, which you refuse to examine thoroughly. This ties back to his earlier legal critique: the judicial system does not seek confession of crimes, but denial of identity. The executioner’s task, he says, is reversed; he is ordered “not to make them confess what they do, but to make them deny what they are.”

Tertullian then situates Christianity historically. The religion begins, he reminds them, “from the reign of Tiberius.” From that moment, truth and hostility toward truth arise together. “Truth and the hatred of truth come into our world together.” The appearance of truth inevitably provokes opposition, and the enemies of Christianity are precisely those who have reasons to fear or resent it: “the Jews, as was to be looked for, from a spirit of rivalry; the soldiers, out of a desire to extort money; our very domestics, by their nature.” Christians are constantly surrounded by hostility, betrayal, and surveillance. Their meetings are frequently interrupted, and their lives are far from hidden.

From this reality, he presses a devastating empirical argument. If such crimes were real, someone would have found evidence. Who ever caught Christians in the act, preserving “the gory mouths of Cyclops and Sirens” for the judge? Who ever detected traces of incest in their wives? Where is the man who discovered such horrors and then concealed them, or who dragged the criminals before a magistrate only to be bribed into silence? The questions pile up to make one point unavoidable: no one has ever seen, found, or proven any of these things.

He then addresses the objection that these crimes are “secret.” If Christians always keep their secrets, he asks, how did the accusations ever become known? Who disclosed them? Not the guilty themselves, for secrecy is intrinsic to any mystery cult, even harmless ones. He notes that the Samothracian and Eleusinian mysteries never reveal their rites, and yet they involve no capital crimes. How much more, then, would silence be preserved if Christians were committing acts that would bring immediate punishment from men and divine wrath afterward? If Christians are not the source of the accusations, then outsiders must be. But this leads to another impossibility: how could outsiders know? Religious initiations universally exclude the profane and avoid witnesses. Are Christians, if truly so wicked, supposed to be more reckless than everyone else?

This brings Tertullian to the true source of the accusations: rumor. He dissects rumor with precision. Everyone knows, he says, how rumor behaves. One of the Romans’ own sayings declares that “among all evils, none flies so fast as rumour.” Why is it considered an evil? Not because it is fast, nor because it communicates information, but because it is fundamentally false. Even when rumor carries a fragment of truth, it is always corrupted, “either detracting, or adding, or changing from the simple fact.” Its very nature is to live only as long as proof is absent. Once proof appears, rumor disappears and gives way to fact. When something is known to be true, people no longer say “it is rumored,” but state it plainly as fact. Rumor, therefore, is the mark of uncertainty, and only a fool, he says, trusts in it; “a wise man never believes the dubious.”

He goes further, analyzing how rumors originate. Every rumor begins at a single source, a “fountain,” and then spreads from tongue to tongue. In the process, a small initial falsehood multiplies and darkens the entire story. No one can later determine whether the original speaker lied out of hostility, suspicion, or an ingrained love of falsehood. Time, however, exposes everything. Nature itself ensures that nothing remains hidden forever, even without rumor. This is why it is so telling that, after so many years, “fame for so long a period has been alone aware of the crimes of Christians.” Rumor is the only witness produced, a witness that has never once been able to prove its charge, but by repetition has hardened into public opinion.

Tertullian closes with a confident appeal not merely to logic or law, but to Nature itself, which he calls “ever true.” Against this reliable witness he sets the groundless beliefs of those who accept monstrous accusations without proof. The entire passage demonstrates that the charges against Christians are sustained solely by rumor, that rumor thrives only where investigation is refused, and that the persistence of accusation without evidence over time is not proof of guilt but proof of falsehood.

This pattern did not end with Rome’s accusations against Christians. In later centuries, similar claims were directed against Jewish communities in what came to be known as the blood libel; a demonstrably false accusation that Jews used human blood for ritual purposes. These claims were repeatedly investigated, never substantiated, and are now universally recognized as fabrications used to justify persecution. The continuity is striking: the charge is always secret, ritualized, and unverifiable; the accused are always a religious minority; and the accusation often mirrors practices, symbols, or anxieties present within the accusing culture itself. History suggests a recurring dynamic in which the finger is pointed outward, while the crimes or obsessions that inspire the accusation remain closer to home.

Chapter VIII

In this chapter, Tertullian confronts the most extreme accusations brought against Christians; charges of secret crimes and ritual violence; and exposes them as legally unexamined, evidentially unsupported, and morally implausible. He shows that these allegations survive only as rumor, protected from scrutiny by a judicial system that punishes Christians for a name while refusing to investigate the acts supposedly associated with it. What is never tested, he argues, cannot claim to be true.

Tertullian demonstrates that the accusations collapse under ordinary human experience. They require entire communities of men and women to participate in acts that violate conscience, family bonds, and basic humanity, and to do so without witnesses, defections, or exposure over decades. No religion operates this way. No society sustains itself on practices that its members would flee the moment they became known. The continued spread of Christianity, across all classes and regions of the empire, therefore stands as evidence against the accusations, not in their favor.

This brings the reader to a deeper question, one that Tertullian implicitly presses and which must be faced historically: how did Roman pagan society know how to frame such accusations at all? The charges are not random or abstract. They are ritualized, specific, and structured. They presume familiarity with sacrificial logic, blood symbolism, secrecy, and initiation rites.

Historically, such familiarity did not come from Christianity. It was already embedded in the religious culture of the Greco-Roman world. Roman religion was inseparable from sacrifice. Blood offerings to the gods were public, normative, and central to civic life. Earlier Mediterranean religions; Phoenician, Carthaginian, and even archaic Roman traditions; were known, even by Roman historians, to have practiced forms of human sacrifice in times of crisis. Livy records that in 216 BC, during the Second Punic War, human victims were buried alive in the Forum Boarium as a religious expiation. Plutarch and Porphyry both attest that such practices, while later restricted or symbolically replaced, were part of Rome’s religious memory.

Beyond state religion, mystery cults flourished throughout the empire. The rites of Dionysus (Bacchus), which Roman authorities themselves once suppressed, were associated with nocturnal assemblies, ecstatic behavior, and ritual excess. The cults of Cybele, Isis, Mithras, and others involved secret initiations, oaths of silence, symbolic blood rites, and sacramental meals. Roman writers frequently accused these cults of moral corruption, secrecy, and transgression; precisely the categories later transferred wholesale onto Christians.

It is therefore historically implausible to treat the accusations against Christians as neutral discoveries. A society does not spontaneously invent detailed ritual crimes without a cultural vocabulary for them. The imagery used against Christians; sacrifice, blood consumption, secret rites, taboo violation; was already present within pagan religious imagination and practice. What Christianity did was refuse participation in these systems, reject sacrifice altogether, and proclaim a faith centered on moral transformation rather than ritual appeasement of the gods.

Seen in this light, the accusations appear not as evidence, but as projection. What pagan society recognized in Christianity was not familiarity, but threat. Unable to classify a religion without sacrifice, temples, or mystery rites, it interpreted Christianity through the only categories it knew. What it could not understand, it demonized. What it refused to investigate, it condemned.

Tertullian’s argument therefore stands not merely as a defense of Christians, but as an exposure of pagan hypocrisy. The crimes attributed to Christians were never proven because they were never committed. Their persistence tells us less about Christian practice and more about a religious culture attempting to defend itself by projecting its own disordered past onto a faith that stood outside its sacrificial logic.

Chapter IX

Disclaimer

The following chapter analyzes an early Christian text and its historical argumentation, including claims and accusations drawn from the religious and cultural practices of the ancient Roman world. The material is presented for historical and critical examination only. Readers who may find discussion of ancient accusations or religious polemic uncomfortable are invited to skip this chapter and continue with the next.

Here Tertullian explicitly explains where the accusations against Christians came from: they arose out of existing pagan practices, both public and private. He is no longer speculating or merely asking questions; he is demonstrating historical continuity between pagan ritual life and the crimes imputed to Christians.

Tertullian begins by stating his purpose clearly: he will refute the charges against Christians by showing that practices resembling them exist “in part openly, in part secretly” among the pagans themselves, and that this is likely why pagans believed such things about Christians (and later Jews) in the first place. In other words, the accusations are not discoveries but transfers. Pagan society projected onto Christians what it already knew from its own religious and social life.

He first addresses ritual killing in a historical and geographical way. He notes that in Africa, children were openly sacrificed to Saturn “as lately as the proconsulship of Tiberius.” This is not myth or distant legend; it is recent Roman administrative history. He adds that the Roman proconsul punished the priests responsible by executing them publicly, and that Roman soldiers still living could testify to this fact. This is crucial: Tertullian is grounding his argument in Roman eyewitness memory, not Christian polemic. He then adds that although such practices were publicly punished, they “still continue to be done in secret.” Pagan religion, therefore, has not eradicated these crimes; it has merely concealed them.

From this he draws a sharp conclusion: it is not only Christians who “despise” Roman authority; pagan society itself fails to reform its crimes or restrain its gods. Saturn, he says, who did not spare his own children, could hardly be expected to restrain his worshippers. He emphasizes that in these rites, parents themselves willingly offered their children, soothing them so they would not cry. The point is not sensationalism, but culpability: these acts were religiously sanctioned, socially embedded, and voluntary.

He then broadens the scope beyond Africa. In Gaul, a more mature age was sacrificed to Mercury. He alludes to Greek myth and drama (“the Tauric fables”), where ritual killing appears openly on the stage. In Rome itself, he says, there exists a form of Jupiter worship in which human blood is used during public games. The defense offered; that the blood comes from condemned fighters; is dismissed as irrelevant. “Is it less, because of that, the blood of a man?” Whether the victim is guilty or innocent, the act remains ritualized killing, carried out before the gods [deified humans through satanic rituals within mystery cults].

From here Tertullian turns from formal cult to social practice. He asks how many among those clamoring for Christian blood; including rulers celebrated for justice; are guilty in their own consciences of killing their offspring.

In other words, pagan society condemns Christians for imaginary crimes while tolerating or legalizing real ones.

He then contrasts this with Christian teaching, which forbids killing at every stage. Christians, he says, are forbidden even to destroy the unborn, because “that is a man which is going to be one.” This line is important because it shows that Christians were known precisely for rejecting practices common in pagan society. That rejection itself made them suspect.

Tertullian next addresses the accusation of consuming blood. Instead of denying that such practices ever existed anywhere, he catalogs them; carefully. He refers to historical accounts (Herodotus) of blood rituals used to seal treaties, to stories from Roman history, and to known cult practices of his own day. He notes that initiation into the cult of Bellona involved drinking blood drawn from the body. He mentions the common practice at gladiatorial games of consuming blood for supposed healing purposes. He points out that people eat animals that have fed on human flesh, and even prize such meat. His question is devastating: if these practices exist openly among pagans, how can they accuse Christians of monstrous rites simply because Christians speak of blood spiritually and refuse sacrifice?

He then turns the accusation around sharply. Christians are known to abstain from blood entirely, even animal blood, precisely to avoid ritual pollution. Roman authorities knew this so well that they tempted Christians with blood sausages to force them to transgress. Tertullian exposes the contradiction: how can people who recoil from animal blood be believed eager for human blood? The accusation collapses under the weight of known Christian practice.

From here he pushes the logic to its limit. If blood consumption were the test of Christianity, he says sarcastically, then Christians should be identified by their refusal to consume blood just as they are identified by their refusal to sacrifice. The Roman courts could easily test this; but they do not, because the accusation is not about truth.

He concludes with, if pagans would observe the crimes that actually prevail among themselves, they would see that those crimes do not exist among Christians. But the same blindness that prevents them from seeing their own practices causes them to imagine crimes where none exist. They “do not see what is, and think they see what is not.”

When one considers the documented brutality of ancient Rome, it becomes difficult to reconcile how that same tradition later justified the seizure of Indigenous lands under the claim that God had granted such authority to the pope; on the basis of a statement attributed to Christ to Peter, despite Christ never speaking of Rome at all. It raises a troubling question: how a power structure historically opposed to Yahweh, whom Christians confess as Christ incarnate, could so seamlessly recast itself as His representative. The continuity is unsettling, and it invites reflection on whether the empire described in Scripture as hostile to God is not, in fact, far closer and more familiar than we are often willing to admit.

Chapter X

In this passage Tertullian addresses what he identifies as the central accusation against Christians: that they refuse to worship the Roman gods and refuse to offer sacrifices for the emperors, and are therefore guilty of sacrilege and treason. He deliberately strips the charge down to its essence and insists that, if justice rather than prejudice were judging the case, this single issue would have to be examined carefully and rationally.

He begins by conceding the factual point: Christians do not worship the Roman gods, nor do they offer sacrifices for the emperors. But he immediately explains why. Christians do not sacrifice for others for the same reason they do not sacrifice for themselves: because the beings called “gods” are not, in their understanding, divine at all. From this refusal arise the accusations of sacrilege and treason. Tertullian insists that this makes the issue worthy of inquiry, not suppression. If the gods truly exist as gods, then refusal to worship them would indeed be culpable. If they do not, then no crime has been committed.

He therefore shifts the burden of proof. Instead of Christians being forced to justify why they do not worship the gods, the authorities should require Christians to demonstrate that these gods have no claim to divinity. If the gods are not divine, then worship is not owed to them, and punishment would be unjust. Punishment would only be deserved “if it were made plain that those to whom they refused all worship were indeed divine.” The argument is precise: obligation depends on reality. False gods generate no moral duty.

When the pagans respond simply, “They are gods,” Tertullian rejects this as assertion without proof. He appeals away from the judges’ prejudice and toward their own knowledge and sources. Let their own learning judge the matter, he says. Let it condemn Christians if it can deny that the gods were originally men. If it attempts to deny this, it will be refuted by the pagans’ own historical and antiquarian writings. These writings preserve the birthplaces, deeds, travels, and burial sites of the gods. Gods with biographies, cities of origin, and graves are not eternal beings.

He then explains why he will not list every god individually. There are too many: new and old, Greek, Roman, foreign, adopted, male and female, public and private, rural and military. Instead, he will proceed by example. What can be proven of the earliest god applies to the rest. He identifies Saturn as the oldest of the Roman gods, the source from whom the others are traced. If Saturn is shown to be human, then all who descend from him are human as well.

Tertullian then appeals again to pagan authorities. No reputable historian or writer on sacred antiquities; Greek or Roman; has claimed that Saturn was anything other than a man. He cites well-known names to make the point that this is not a Christian invention but a pagan consensus. He then recounts Saturn’s story as preserved in Roman tradition. Saturn arrived in Italy after wanderings and was received hospitably by Janus (the month of January is named after him). He lived on a mountain called Saturnius, founded a city called Saturnia, and gave his name to Italy itself. He introduced writing and coinage, which is why he presides over the treasury. These are the acts of a civilizing ruler, not an eternal deity.

From this, Tertullian draws a crucial inference. If Saturn was a man, then he had a human origin. If he had a human origin, then he was not literally the offspring of heaven and earth. The explanation for calling him “heaven-born” is linguistic and cultural, not factual. When a person’s parentage is unknown, people commonly attribute it to the heavens or to the earth. Even in Tertullian’s own time, people say that strangers or unexpected figures have “fallen from the sky.” In earlier, less reflective ages, such expressions hardened into myth. Thus Saturn, a stranger who appeared suddenly, was called “son of heaven,” not because it was true, but because it was customary speech elevated into belief.

Tertullian strengthens this by observing human behavior more generally. Even in his own day, educated people deify men whom they had recently mourned as dead. This habit of transforming memory into worship explains the origin of the gods far better than any claim to real divinity.

He concludes this section by saying that these brief observations about Saturn are sufficient. Once Saturn is shown to be human, Jupiter must also be human, since he is Saturn’s son. And once that is admitted, “the whole swarm” of gods follows: all are mortal, because all descend from mortal stock. The refusal of Christians to worship such beings, therefore, is not treason or sacrilege, but a rational rejection of claims that collapse under the weight of pagan history itself.

It is significant that the bronze statue venerated as “St. Peter” is often regarded by scholars as a reused pagan statue, commonly identified with Jupiter, adapted to a new religious context.

Chapter XI

This chapter brings Tertullian’s argument to a decisive theological exposure. By using pagan history, philosophy, and moral reasoning, he shows that the gods of the Roman world were not eternal, self-existent beings, but men later exalted by tradition, myth, and political convenience. In doing so, pagan religion is revealed not as divine revelation, but as the deification of humanity itself.

What emerges with particular clarity is the ancient lie that underlies this system; the promise first spoken in Eden, “you shall be as gods.” Tertullian demonstrates that this promise was not fulfilled by truth, but by illusion: men were not made divine by righteousness or power, but were called gods despite vice, corruption, and mortality. Paganism thus appears not as an ascent to heaven, but as a confusion of heaven and earth, where fallen humanity crowns itself with divine titles.

Readers are encouraged to return to the original text in the accompanying PDF to see how thoroughly and patiently Tertullian develops this argument from pagan sources themselves. Having exposed the false divinization of man, the work now turns to its next subject, where the contrast between human religion and divine truth becomes even more sharply defined.

Chapter XII

In this passage Tertullian moves from arguing what the pagan gods are not to exposing what they actually are, using irony, material reality, and moral contrast. His aim is to show that Christian refusal to worship the gods is not impiety but clear-sighted realism.

He begins by stating that he will now demonstrate the nature of the gods positively, not by abstract denial but by observation. What he finds, he says, are merely “names of dead men of ancient times,” surrounded by “fabulous stories” and sustained by “sacred rites founded on mere myths.” In other words, pagan religion rests on memory, legend, and ritual repetition, not on living divine reality. The gods exist in stories and ceremonies, not in being.

He then turns to the most tangible evidence: the images themselves. These statues, he says, are nothing more than pieces of ordinary matter; wood, stone, metal; no different in substance from everyday household utensils. Their only distinction comes from human craftsmanship. Worse still, their “consecration” is itself degrading. Objects once useful are violently transformed by “reckless art,” cut, torn, scraped, nailed, and reshaped. In the very act of making a god, the artisan commits what would be called sacrilege if done to a living being. Tertullian sharply notes the irony: Christians are punished for offending the gods, yet the gods themselves undergo abuse far worse in their manufacture.

At this point he introduces a sustained comparison between the punishments inflicted on Christians and the process by which idols are made. Christians are fastened to crosses and stakes; idols begin their existence mounted on stakes and frames. Christians are torn with hooks and claws; idols are hacked, planed, and rasped on every limb. Christians are beheaded; idols are literally headless until craftsmen attach one. Christians are exposed to beasts; idols are assigned to Bacchus, Cybele, and other cults involving animals. Christians are burned; idols are hardened or refined by fire. Christians are condemned to the mines; idols come from mines. Christians are exiled to islands; gods are said to be born or die on islands. The implication is devastating: if suffering and degradation confer divinity, then persecutors are manufacturing gods in abundance. Torture itself would be divine.

Yet, he points out, the statues feel none of this. They are unaware both of the insults inflicted during their making and of the honors paid afterward. This unconsciousness proves the point. A being that cannot feel injury cannot receive worship. A thing that cannot perceive honor cannot be divine.

Anticipating outrage, Tertullian mocks the expected reaction. Pagans will cry “impiety” and “blasphemy” at Christians, yet they tolerate far harsher critiques from their own philosophers. He points specifically to Seneca, who criticized Roman superstition “at much greater length and far more sharply.” The anger toward Christians, therefore, is not about reverence but about refusal to conform.

He then states the Christian position plainly. Christians refuse to worship statues; “frigid images,” lifeless copies of dead men; objects so insignificant that animals and insects crawl over them without consequence. Such refusal, he argues, deserves praise, not punishment, because it rejects error rather than truth. Worshipping what is not divine is not piety; it is confusion.

He closes with a final, decisive claim: Christians cannot be accused of injuring the gods, because they are “certain [the gods] are nonentities.” What does not exist cannot suffer harm. Non-being cannot be offended. Therefore, the charge of sacrilege collapses entirely. Christians do not attack the gods; they simply refuse to mistake matter for divinity.

The force of this passage lies in its grounding. Tertullian does not argue theology alone; he appeals to sight, touch, craft, and common sense. By tracing the gods back to dead men, inert matter, and violent fabrication, he shows that pagan worship is not directed toward divine reality at all, but toward objects fashioned by human hands and sustained by human imagination.

Chapter XIII

In this passage Tertullian exposes what he sees as the internal incoherence and hypocrisy of pagan worship. His argument is not that pagans fail to honor the gods, but that they dishonor them constantly, even while accusing Christians of irreverence. He shows that pagan practice itself proves that pagans do not truly believe their gods are divine in any meaningful sense.

He begins by quoting the pagan response: “But they are gods to us.” He then asks how this claim can be taken seriously when pagan behavior toward these gods is itself impious. Pagans, he says, are guilty of neglecting some gods, destroying others, and mocking still others; all while claiming to avenge their honor. This contradiction, he insists, is demonstrable, not rhetorical.

First, he points out that pagan worship is selective. Different people worship different gods. But preference necessarily implies rejection. If one god is chosen, another is ignored. To ignore a god is to show no fear of offending him. Thus pagans inevitably despise many gods by the very act of choosing others. This undermines the idea that pagans genuinely believe the gods are powerful or worthy of reverence. Fear and reverence cannot coexist with casual exclusion.

He then recalls a point he has already established: no god became a god without human approval, specifically senatorial approval. A being whom humans can refuse to recognize as a god is not divine by nature. Such a being depends on human decision for status and honor. This makes divinity a political title, not a reality.

Tertullian moves next to domestic religion, exposing its absurdity. Household gods (the Lares) are treated as property. They are pledged, sold, exchanged, repurposed, or melted down when damaged or inconvenient. A statue of Saturn might become a cooking pot; Minerva might become a firepan. The head of the household decides their fate according to practical need. This, Tertullian argues, is not reverence but domination. Gods treated as household utensils cannot reasonably be considered divine.

He then extends the argument to public religion, where the situation is no better. State gods are auctioned off under public law. Temples (tombs to the dead) and sacred offices are leased for profit. Even the Capitol can be “bid on” like a marketplace. Deities are taxed and farmed out as sources of revenue. Tertullian highlights the irony: among humans, taxation is a sign of subjugation; yet among gods, the more revenue they generate, the more “sacred” they are considered. Divine majesty becomes a business model. Religion, he says bitterly, “goes about the taverns begging.”

Access to sacred space and knowledge is not free. One must pay to enter temples, to participate in rites, even to learn about the gods. Their favor is purchased, not bestowed. This commercialism strips worship of sincerity and reveals it as transaction rather than devotion.

He then draws a devastating comparison between pagan worship of the gods and pagan treatment of the dead. Everything is the same: temples, altars, statues, garments, insignia. The gods have ages, professions, and attributes just as the dead do. Religious feasts mirror funerary feasts. Sacred vessels resemble offerings to ancestral spirits (saints). Even the officials overlap: the soothsayer attends both gods and the dead, just as the undertaker does. The conclusion is unavoidable: the gods are treated exactly like glorified corpses.

This prepares the next point. Pagans deify emperors after death; and even worship them while alive. Tertullian mockingly notes that the gods should be grateful: their former masters are now elevated to equality with them. But this only reinforces the Christian critique. If emperors can be made gods, then godhood is clearly a human honorific, not a divine nature.

He then sharpens the accusation by naming specific examples that expose the moral emptiness of pagan deification. Pagans worship Larentina, a public prostitute, among their goddesses. They erect a statue to Simon Magus (black magic magician) and call him a “holy god.” They elevate morally corrupt figures to divine status. Tertullian remarks with irony that the ancient gods themselves are no better; but that only worsens the problem. If divinity can be bestowed on such figures, then the entire system lacks moral discernment.

He ends by noting the final contradiction: even the ancient gods would have reason to feel insulted, since privileges once reserved for them alone are now handed out freely to others. Paganism cannot maintain a stable hierarchy of divinity because it has no true standard for divinity at all.

Continuity of Imperial Apotheosis and Later Religious Practice

What Tertullian exposes in this chapter is not merely an error unique to pagan Rome, but a repeatable religious mechanism: the posthumous exaltation of men through ritual, symbolism, sacred space, and public veneration until they occupy a functionally divine role. This mechanism was well established in Roman imperial culture and can be documented with precision.

In the Roman world, imperial apotheosis followed a recognizable pattern. Upon death, emperors were given elaborate public funerals marked by procession, incense, acclamations, and ritual lamentation. Ancient sources such as Herodian (History of the Roman Empire, IV.2) and Cassius Dio (Roman History, LVI.46) describe how an image of the deceased emperor was displayed, honored, and ceremonially elevated. The climax of the rite involved the symbolic ascent of the emperor’s soul—often represented by an eagle released toward the heavens—signifying his transition from mortal ruler to divine figure. Temples were erected in his honor, priests appointed, sacrifices offered, and his cult integrated into public religion.

“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Revelation 13:15

The beast is identified as the name and number of a man—one who exalts himself through false divinization, standing in contrast to true divinity, symbolized not by 777 but by 666.

Crucially, deified emperors were often buried beneath temples or within sacred precincts. Augustus was interred in his mausoleum, which became a site of ongoing reverence; later emperors were honored with shrines and cult centers embedded within Rome’s sacred geography. Burial beneath or within a holy structure was not incidental; it signaled sacral elevation and ongoing access to divine favor.

When one compares this with later papal funerary and commemorative practices, the structural similarities are difficult to dismiss. Popes are laid out publicly, surrounded by incense, lights, chanting, and formal acclamations. Their bodies are processed ceremonially, addressed in exalted language, and finally interred beneath major basilicas, frequently beneath altars; precisely the spatial logic used in antiquity to mark sacral authority. St. Peter’s Basilica itself is built over what is presented as the tomb of Peter, and later popes are buried in its crypts, continuing the pattern of sacred burial beneath monumental religious architecture.

One must ask why a tomb, or even a temple, would be erected over Peter when Christ expressly rebuked those who honored prophets by building their tombs (Matthew 23:29), exposing such acts as hypocrisy rather than faithfulness.

The resemblance becomes still clearer when later popes venerate the remains or relics of earlier popes in public liturgical settings, presenting them in reliquaries or monstrances before the faithful. Historically, reliquaries function in a manner analogous to imperial cult statues: they localize sanctity, mediate access, and focus ritual attention. While theological language insists on distinction (rather like dulia and latria: when the behavior stays the same, but a new vocabulary is introduced to reassure everyone that nothing problematic is happening), the ritual grammar remains strikingly similar.

At this point Tertullian’s argument presses forward with renewed force. Pagan Rome openly admitted that it made gods of men. Later religious systems deny doing so, while reproducing the same symbolic structure under different terminology. The question therefore becomes unavoidable: if the ritual form, sacred space, bodily treatment, and public function are the same, in what meaningful sense has the practice changed?

“For thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” Revelation18:23

I wonder how good old George W is getting on?