ABSTRACT
THERE arose in those days a great controversy between the gods of the Goths and those of Byzantium as to which should pronounce or carry out the penalty of correction upon the other if an offence deserving punishment were committed when one of them deviated from proper conduct. 1 If, in fact, the Gothic gods were ever discovered to have stained their divine lustre by some act of abominable villainy, the Byzantine gods, being the greater (through the fame of their crimes rather than the merit of their virtues), had the authority not only to expel them from their guild of deities but to drive them from their place of eminence, strip them of their local honour and worship, outlaw them, and afflict them with other sufferings. Tradition has it that they quite often exercised this privilege with severity, thinking it preferable that the power of some infamous god should be demolished than that a nation’s religion should be violated by any instance of sacrilege, and fearing that they might find the penalties due to another’s crime transferred to themselves. Indeed they discovered that, when crimes of their fellow gods had been commonly reported, worshippers of their own godhead had substituted scorn for obedience and mockery for divine worship; holy rites were held to be a profanation and regular, solemn ceremonies were valued no more than stage plays. So, by removing those and putting others in their places, they showed by this very act that they were gods and kings with the power to create and to demote.
Controversy between gods of Goths and Byzantines
Byzantine gods more famous for crime
Power of infamy harms the community
Religion is held a mockery
