# CHAPTER 5 — How the Changes in Religious Sects and Languages, Along With Such Occurrences as Floods and Plagues, Erase the Memory of Things

To those philosophers who have claimed that the world has existed eternally, I believe one could reply that if it really were this old, it would be reasonable to assume that there is some record of it dating back more than 5,000 years, were it not for the fact that we see how records of past times are destroyed for many different reasons, some of which originate with men themselves, and others with heaven. Those originating with men are changes in religious sects and in languages. Thus, whenever a new sect springs up—that is, a new religion—its first inclination is to extinguish the old religion in order to enhance its reputation, and whenever it happens that the founders of the new sect speak a different language, they can easily destroy it. This matter can be understood by considering the methods the Christian sect employed against that of the pagans; they obliterated all of its institutions, all of its religious ceremonies, and suppressed the memory of its ancient theology. It is true that they did not succeed in destroying the entire record of the deeds accomplished by the illustrious men of that time; this occurred because they maintained the Latin language, which they were forced to do, because they had to write down their new law in this language. Thus, had they been capable of writing in a new language, considering the other persecutions they committed, there would have remained no record whatsoever of past events. And anyone who reads of the methods employed by St Gregory and by other leaders of the Christian religion will witness with what stubbornness they pursued every record from ancient times, burning the works of poets and historians, destroying images, and ruining everything else that retained any sign of antiquity. Thus, had they added a new language to this persecution, everything would have been forgotten in a very short period of time. It is credible to suppose, moreover, that what the Christian sect wanted to do to the pagans, the pagans did to the religion that preceded their own. And, because these sects change two or three times in five or six thousand years, the recollection of things done long before is lost, and even if some traces remain, they are considered to be mythical and nobody believes them, as occurred in the case of the history by Diodorus Siculus, * which provides an account of between forty and fifty thousand years but is nevertheless considered untrustworthy, as I believe it to be.

As for the causes that originate in heaven, those are the ones which destroy the human race and reduce the inhabitants in one region to a bare few, and this occurs either because of pestilence, famine, or flood, and the most important cause is this last one, both because it is the most universal and also because those who save themselves are all mountaineers and crude people who, having no knowledge of anything from antiquity, cannot bequeath it to posterity. If among them someone is saved who has some knowledge of it, he conceals it and modifies it to his own purposes in order to enhance his reputation, so that nothing is left for the survivors but what he has wished to set down in writing and nothing else. And that such floods, pestilences, and famines occur, I believe there can be no doubt, because all the histories are full of them, both because this effect of things falling into oblivion is an obvious one, and also because it seems reasonable that this should be the case. Thus, just as in a simple body, when too much superfluous material accumulates, nature herself moves it on many occasions and effects a purgation which restores it to health, so this also occurs in the mixed body of the human race, for when all the provinces are full of inhabitants (so that people are unable to live there, nor are they able to go elsewhere, since every other place is occupied and filled), and when human cunning and wickedness have increased as much as they can, the world of necessity must purge itself in one of three ways, so that men, having been reduced in number and vanquished, will live more comfortably and become better. Thus, as was said above, Etruria was once powerful, full of religion and ability; it possessed its own customs and native language, all of which were destroyed by Roman power, so that as was said, only the memory of its name remains.