The family deities you call Lares, you exercise a domestic authority over, pledging them, selling them, changing them—making sometimes a cooking-pot of a Saturn, a firepan of a Minerva, as one or other happens to be worn done, or broken in its long sacred use, or as the family head feels the pressure of some more sacred home necessity. In like manner, by public law you disgrace your state gods, putting them in the auction-catalogue, and making them a source of revenue. Men seek to get the Capitol, as they seek to get the herb market, under the voice of the crier, under the auction spear, under the registration of the quæstor. Deity is struck off and farmed out to the highest bidder. But indeed lands burdened with tribute are of less value; men under the assessment of a poll-tax are less noble; for these things are the marks of servitude. In the case of the gods, on the other hand, the sacredness is great in proportion to the tribute which they yield; nay, the more sacred is a god, the larger is the tax he pays. Majesty is made a source of gain. Religion goes about the taverns begging. You demand a price for the privilege of standing on temple ground, for access to the sacred services; there is no gratuitous knowledge of your divinities permitted—you must buy their favours with a price.

Tertullian. 1885. “The Apology.” In Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, translated by S. Thelwall, 3:29. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company.

This chapter is summarized by Grok like this:

Chapter 13 in plain modern English (short and punchy)

“Look, everyone knows how Roman religion really works: it’s a giant money-making machine.
The bigger the temple, the fatter the donations.

The more expensive the animal you slaughter, the ‘greater’ people say the god is.

Jupiter gets the biggest shrine on the Capitoline Hill because he rakes in the most cash and cattle.

Priests, temple staff, and contractors all get their cut.

Whole industries (garland-sellers, incense dealers, animal breeders, professional sacrificers) live off the take.

You literally grade your gods by how much revenue they generate.
‘Great god = great tax.’

And then you have the nerve to call us irreligious because we refuse to pay into the scam?
We don’t have temples, statues, or salaried priests.
When we collect money, every penny goes to feed widows, orphans, the sick, and prisoners—not to buy gold-plated oxen or keep some lazy augur in business.

So spare us the lectures about ‘piety.’
Your religion is just organised extortion with incense on top.”