Voltaire - A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01

One only God being adored throughout the known world, shall those who acknowledge Him as their Father never cease to present to Him the revolting spectacle of His children detesting, anathematizing, persecuting and massacring one another by way of argument?

It is hard to determine precisely what the Greeks and Romans understood by adoring , or whether they adored fauns, sylvans, dryads and naiads as they adored the twelve superior gods. It is not likely that Adrian's minion, Antinous, was adored by the Egyptians of later times with the same worship which they paid to Serapis; and it is sufficiently proved that the ancient Egyptians did not adore onions and crocodiles as they did Isis and Osiris. Ambiguity abounds everywhere and confounds everything; we are obliged at every word to exclaim, What do you mean? we must constantly repeat — Define your terms.

Is it quite true that Simon, called the Magician , was adored among the Romans? It is not more true that he was utterly unknown to them. St. Justin in his "Apology," which was as little known at Rome as Simon, tells us that this God had a statue erected on the Tiber, or rather near the Tiber, between the two bridges, with this inscription: Simoni deo sancto. St. Irenæus and Tertullian attest the same thing; but to whom do they attest it? To people who had never seen Rome – to Africans, to Allobroges, to Syrians, and to some of the inhabitants of Sichem. They had certainly not seen this statue, the real inscription on which was Semo sanco deo fidio , and not Simoni deo sancto . They should at least have consulted Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who gives this inscription in his fourth book. Semo sanco was an old Sabine word, signifying half god and half man ; we find in Livy, Bona Semoni sanco censuerunt consecranda . This god was one of the most ancient in Roman worship, having been consecrated by Tarquin the Proud, and was considered as the god of alliances and good faith. It was the custom to sacrifice an ox to him, and to write any treaty made with a neighboring people upon the skin. He had a temple near that of Quirinus; offerings were sometimes presented to him under the name of Semo the father , and sometimes under that of Sancus fidius , whence Ovid says in his "Fasti" :

Such was the Roman divinity which for so many ages was taken for Simon the Magician . St. Cyril of Jerusalem had no doubts on the subject, and St. Augustine in his first book of "Heresies" tells us that Simon the Magician himself procured the erection of this statue, together with that of his Helena , by order of the emperor and senate.

This strange fable, the falsehood of which might so easily have been discovered, was constantly connected with another fable, which relates that Simon and St. Peter both appeared before Nero and challenged each other which of them should soonest bring to life the corpse of a near relative of Nero's, and also raise himself highest in the air; that Simon caused himself to be carried up by devils in a fiery chariot; that St. Peter and St. Paul brought him down by their prayers; that he broke his legs and in consequence died, and that Nero, being enraged, put both St. Peter and St. Paul to death.

Abdias, Marcellinus and Hegisippus have each related this story, with a little difference in the details. Arnobius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Sulpicius Severus, Philaster, St. Epiphanius, Isidorus of Damietta, Maximus of Turin, and several other authors successively gave currency to this error, and it was generally adopted, until at length there was found at Rome a statue of Semo sancus deus fidius , and the learned Father Mabillon dug up an ancient monument with the inscription Semoni sanco deo fidio .

It is nevertheless certain that there was a Simon, whom the Jews believed to be a magician, as it is certain that there was an Apollonius of Tyana. It is also true that this Simon, who was born in the little country of Samaria, gathered together some vagabonds, whom he persuaded that he was one sent by God; he baptized, indeed, as well as the apostles, and raised altar against altar.

The Jews of Samaria, always hostile to those of Jerusalem, ventured to oppose this Simon to Jesus Christ, acknowledged by the apostles and disciples, all of whom were of the tribe of Benjamin or that of Judah. He baptized like them, but to the baptism of water he added fire, saying that he had been foretold by John the Baptist in these words: "He that cometh after me is mightier than I; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."

Simon lighted a lambent flame over the baptismal font with naphtha from the Asphaltic Lake. His party was very strong, but it is very doubtful whether his disciples adored him; St. Justin is the only one who believes it.

Menander, like Simon, said he was sent by God to be the savior of men. All the false Messiahs, Barcochebas especially, called themselves sent by God ; but not even Barcochebas demanded to be adored. Men are not often erected into divinities while they live, unless, indeed, they be Alexanders or Roman emperors, who expressly order their slaves so to do. But this is not, strictly speaking, adoration; it is an extraordinary homage, an anticipated apotheosis, a flattery as ridiculous as those which are lavished on Octavius by Virgil and Horace.

We are not indebted for this expression to the Greeks; they called adultery moicheia , from which came the Latin mœchus , which we have not adopted. We owe it neither to the Syriac tongue nor to the Hebrew, a jargon of the Syriac, in which adultery is called niuph . In Latin adulteratio signified alteration — adulteration, one thing put for another – a counterfeit, as false keys, false bargains, false signatures ; thus he who took possession of another's bed was called adulter .

In a similar way, by antiphrasis, the name of coccyx , a cuckoo, was given to the poor husband into whose nest a stranger intruded. Pliny, the naturalist, says: "Coccyx ova subdit in nidis alienis; ita plerique alienas uxores faciunt matres" – "the cuckoo deposits its eggs in the nest of other birds; so the Romans not unfrequently made mothers of the wives of their friends." The comparison is not over just. Coccyx signifying a cuckoo, we have made it cuckold . What a number of things do we owe to the Romans! But as the sense of all words is subject to change, the term applied to cuckold , which, according to good grammar, should be the gallant, is appropriated to the husband . Some of the learned assert that it is to the Greeks we owe the emblem of the horns , and that they bestowed the appellation of goat upon a husband the disposition of whose wife resembled that of a female of the same species. Indeed, they used the epithet son of a goat in the same way as the modern vulgar do an appellation which is much more literal.

These vile terms are no longer made use of in good company. Even the word adultery is never pronounced. We do not now say, "Madame la Duchesse lives in adultery with Monsieur le Chevalier — Madame la Marquise has a criminal intimacy with Monsieur l'Abbé;" but we say, "Monsieur l'Abbé is this week the lover of Madame la Marquise ." When ladies talk of their adulteries to their female friends, they say, "I confess I have some inclination for him ." They used formerly to confess that they felt some esteem , but since the time when a certain citizen's wife accused herself to her confessor of having esteem for a counsellor, and the confessor inquired as to the number of proofs of esteem afforded, ladies of quality have esteemed no one and gone but little to confession.