Commentaria in Esther
Fifth, Gabriel Vasquez, On Adoration, book I, disputation 5, chapter iii, thinks that Mardochai refused to kneel and adore Aman because he himself daily knelt and adored God; because this daily genuflection was reserved by the custom of the Jews. But Aman, entering the royal court daily, daily exacted this genuflection from Mardochai and the palatines. But Mardochai would not kneel and adore Aman even once. For if it had been lawful once, it would have been lawful daily too.
I say therefore: Mardochai himself assigns the true cause, chapter xiii, verse 14, saying: “But I feared lest I should transfer the honour of my God to a man, and lest I should adore any one except my God.” Josephus teaches the same, book XI, chapter vi. For, as Severus Sulpicius rightly says, book II, Ahasuerus had made Aman his equal, and therefore had properly commanded him to be adored as a god. For the kings of the Persians demanded from their subjects divine honour and the adoration due to God, as is plain from Justin, book VI, and Herodotus, book VII, where he says that the Lacedaemonians, though commanded, would not adore Xerxes, because he was a Persian. In Plutarch, in Artabanus: “To us,” they say, “it is the fairest law to honour the king, and to adore the image of God who preserves all things.” Q. Curtius of Darius: “The king, who a little before had been carried in a chariot, was honoured by his people with the honours of the gods.” Hence Aeschylus said that the Persians hold their kings in place of gods. The same of the Persians is asserted by Xenophon, in the Oration on Agesilaus, and Aristotle, book III of the Rhetoric, Isocrates in the Panegyric, Strabo, book X, Heliodorus, books VII and IX, Seneca, book III On Benefits, chapter xii, Herodian, book I, Lampridius in the life of Alexander Severus, so that there is no doubt about it. Hence, according to Curtius, book VIII, when Cleo the Sicilian urged Alexander to assume a divine name, he adduced the example of the Persians, whom Alexander had before subdued; for he said: “The Persians not only piously but also prudently worship their kings among the gods; for the majesty of the empire is the safeguard of safety.” And when the Macedonians could not bear the pride of Alexander, who had already decided to be numbered among the gods, and some of them conspired to kill him, one of them, caught, used the excuse that his pride did not seem tolerable. This was Hermolaus. “The dress and discipline of the Persians,” he said, “delight you; you hate the customs of your fathers; we wished therefore to kill a king of the Persians, not of the Macedonians, and we pursue you, a deserter, by the law of war. You wished the Macedonians to kneel to you, and to venerate you as a god. You disown your father Philip, and if any of the gods were held before Jupiter, you would disdain even Jupiter. Do you wonder that free men cannot bear your pride?” So Curtius. In like manner Nabuchodonosor wished to be adored as a god in his statue, and the three companions of Daniel who refused were cast by him into the burning furnace, and were preserved unhurt by God, Daniel chapter iii. And the other Nabuchodonosor commanded Holofernes to take away all gods, that he alone might be worshipped as a god, Judith iii, 13. So of Augustus Caesar Virgil sings, Eclogue the first: “For he will be ever a god to me; his altar oft a tender lamb from our folds shall stain.”
So Caius Caligula wished to be adored as a god; and Domitian, to whom therefore Martial, flattering, says:
The edict of our Lord and God.
Hence also the Persian adoration was made with a rite that savoured of divinity. For the worshippers bent the knee, and prostrate fell on the ground and struck the earth with the forehead, and kissed the ground, according to Curtius, books V and VIII, and Valerius Maximus, book VII, chapter iii, Josephus, Antiquities XX, chapter iii, Martial, book X, Epigram lxxii, who therefore blame and mock it as too proud and savouring of divinity. See on the rite of adoration of the Persian kings Brisson, book I On the Kingdom of the Persians, page 10 ff., where he also tells that Pelopidas and other Greeks would not adore Artaxerxes with this rite; nay the Athenians punished Themagoras with death, because he had adored Darius in this manner, as Valerius Maximus relates, VI.
You will say: Mardochai could have dissembled Aman’s intention and simply adored him with civil and political adoration, namely by bending the knee to him and prostrating himself on the ground as to a prince, not as to a god; for these external gestures are indifferent, and are distinguished by the mind of the doer, so that if he have the intention of one truly adoring, they are deemed gestures of adoration and latria; if of one merely honouring, they are deemed gestures of reverence and civil honour; so Salianus, who therefore thinks that Mardochai, Esdras and Nehemias at times exhibited these gestures of adoration to the kings of the Persians, not as to gods but as to princes. I answer that he could not do this, because the king had publicly commanded that he be adored as a god, and Aman wished to be adored as such, and expressly demanded it, as is gathered from chapters xiii and xiv. Wherefore if Mardochai had complied, he would have been judged by all to adore Aman as a divinity, as the rest adored. Add that, had he done so, he would have given grave scandal to all the Jews, most of all at that time, when the Jews, living among idolaters, avoided every appearance of idolatry, even the slightest. Hence Esdras, Nehemias, Mardochai, Zorobabel, Jesus, and the rest living in the court of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, are never read to have adored; but, as Josephus says, having received great benefits from these kings, they gave them thanks, and adored God first author of these benefits. It was otherwise with Judith, who, chapter x, verse 20, with bent knee adored Holofernes with political worship as a prince, not as a god; because Holofernes professed that he was not a god, but only Nabuchodonosor. Some add that Mardochai was of more delicate, timid and scrupulous conscience, so as to admit not even a shadow of idolatry, or any sign by which the worship of God might seem in the least violated and a neighbour offended. Hence he himself says, chapter xiii, verse 14: “I feared lest I should transfer the honour of my God to a man.”