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ARNOBIUS

THE SEVEN BOOKS OF ARNOBIUS AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOKS IV-VII.

[Translated by Archdeacon Hamilton Bryce, LL.D., D.C.L. and Hugh Campbell, 
M.A.]

BOOK IV.

    1. We would ask you, and you above all, O Romans, lords and princes of 
the world, whether you think that Piety, Concord, Safety, Honour, Virtue, 
Happiness, and other such names, to which we see you rear(1) altars and 
splendid temples, have divine power, and live in heaven?(2) or, as is 
usual, have you classed them with the deities merely for form's sake, 
because we desire and wish these blessings to fall to our lot? For if, 
while you think them empty names without any substance, you yet deify them 
with divine honours,(3) you will have to consider whether that is a 
childish frolic, or tends to bring your deities into contempt,(4) when you 
make equal, and add to their number vain and feigned names. But if you have 
loaded them with temples and couches, holding with more assurance that 
these, too, are deities, we pray you to teach us in our ignorance, by what 
course, in what way, Victory, Peace, Equity, and the others mentioned among 
the gods, can be understood to be gods, to belong to the assembly of the 
immortals?

    2. For we--but, perhaps, you would rob and deprive us of common-sense--
feel and perceive that none of these has divine power, or possesses a form 
of its own;(5) but that, on the contrary, they are the excellence of 
manhood,(6) the safety of the safe, the honour of the respected, the 
victory of the conqueror, the harmony of the allied, the piety of the 
pious, the recollection of the observant, the good fortune, indeed, of him 
who lives happily and without exciting any ill-feeling. Now it is easy to 
perceive that, in speaking thus, we speak most reasonably when we 
observe(7) the contrary qualities opposed to them, misfortune, discord, 
forgetfulness, injustice, impiety, baseness of spirit, and unfortunate(8) 
weakness of body. For as these things happen accidentally, and(9) depend on 
human acts and chance moods, so their contraries, named(10) after more 
agreeable qualities, must be found in others; and from these, originating 
in this wise, have arisen those invented names.

    3. With regard, indeed, to your bringing forward to us other bands of 
unknown(11) gods, we cannot determine whether you do that seriously, and 
from a belief in its certainty; or, merely playing with empty fictions, 
abandon yourselves to an unbridled imagination. The goddess Luperca, you 
tell us on the authority of Varro, was named because the fierce wolf spared 
the exposed children  Was that goddess, then, disclosed, not by her own 
power, but by the course of events? and was it only after the wild beast 
restrained its cruel teeth, that she both began to be herself and was 
marked by(12) her name? or if she was already a goddess long before the 
birth of Romulus and his brother, show us what was her name and title. 
Praestana was named, according to you, because, in throwing the javelin, 
Quirinus excelled all in strength;(13) and the goddess Panda, or Pantica, 
was named because Titus Tatius was allowed to open up and make passable a 
road, that he might take the Capitoline. Before these events, then, had the 
deities never existed? and if Romulus had not held the first place in 
casting the javelin, and if the Sabine king had been unable to take the 
Tarpeian rock, would there be no Pantica, no Praestana? And if you say that 
they(1) existed before that which gave rise to their name, a question which 
has been discussed in a preceding section,(2) tell us also what they were 
called.

    4. Pellonia is a goddess mighty to drive back enemies. Whose enemies, 
say, if it is convenient? Opposing armies meet, and fighting together, hand 
to hand, decide the battle; and to one this side, to another that, is 
hostile. Whom, then, will Pellonia turn to flight, since on both sides 
there will be fighting? or in favour of whom will she incline, seeing that 
she should afford to both sides the might and services of her name? But if 
she indeed(3) did so, that is, if she gave her good-will and favour to both 
sides, she would destroy the meaning of her name, which was formed with 
regard to the beating back of one side. But you will perhaps say, She is 
goddess of the Romans only, and, being on the side of the Quirites alone, 
is ever ready graciously to help them.(4) We wish, indeed, that it were so, 
for we like the name; but it is a very doubtful matter. What! do the Romans 
have gods to themselves, who do not help(5) other nations? and how can they 
be gods, if they do not exercise their divine power impartially towards all 
nations everywhere? and where, I pray you, was this goddess Pellonia long 
ago, when the national honour was brought under the yoke at the Caudine 
Forks? when at the Trasimene lake the streams ran with blood? when the 
plains of Diomede(6) were heaped up with dead Romans when a thousand other 
blows were sustained in countless disastrous battles? Was she snoring and 
sleeping;(7) or, as the base often do, had she deserted to the enemies' 
camp?

    5. The sinister deities preside over the regions on the left hand only, 
and are opposed to those(8) on the right. But with what reason this is 
said, or with what meaning, we do not understand ourselves; and we are sure 
that you cannot in any degree cause it to be clearly and generally 
understood.(9) For in the first place, indeed, the world itself has in 
itself neither right nor left neither upper nor under regions, neither fore 
nor after parts. For whatever is round, and bounded on every side by the 
circumference(10) of a solid sphere, has no beginning, no end; where there 
is no end and beginning, no part can have(11) its own name and form the 
beginning. Therefore, when we say, This is the right, and that the left 
side, we do not refer to anything(12) in the world, which is everywhere 
very much the same, but to our own place and position, we being(13) so 
formed that we speak of some things as on our right hand, of others as on 
our left; and yet these very things which we name left, and the others 
which we name right, have in us no continuance, no fixedness, but take 
their forms from our sides, just as chance, and the accident of the moment, 
may have placed us. If I look towards the rising sun, the north pole and 
the north are on my left hand; and if I turn my face thither, the west will 
be on my left, for it will be regarded as behind the sun's back. But, 
again, if I turn my eyes to the region of the west, the wind and country of 
the south are now said to be on(14) my left. And if I am turned to this 
side by the necessary business of the moment, the result is, that the east 
is said to be on the left, owing to a further change of position,(15)--from 
which it can be very easily seen that nothing is either on our right or on 
our left by nature, but from position, time,(16) and according as our 
bodily position with regard to surrounding objects has been taken up. But 
in this case, by what means, in what way, will there be gods of the regions 
of the left, when it is clear that the same regions are at one time on the 
right, at another on the left? or what have the regions of the right done 
to the immortal gods, to deserve that they should be without any to care 
for them, while they have ordained that these should be fortunate, and ever 
accompanied by lucky omens?

    6. Lateranus,(17) as you say, is the god and genius of hearths, and 
received this name because men build that kind of fireplace of unbaked 
bricks. What then? if hearths were made of baked clay, or any other 
material whatever, will they have no genii? and will Lateranus, whoever he 
is, abandon his duty as guardian, because the kingdom which he possesses 
has not been formed of bricks of clay? And for what purpose,(18) I ask, has 
that god received the charge of hearths? He runs about the kitchens of men, 
examining and discovering with what kinds of wood the heat in their fires 
is produced; he gives strength(1) to earthen vessels that they may not fly 
in pieces, overcome by the violence of the flames; he sees that the flavour 
of unspoilt dainties reaches the taste of the palate with their own 
pleasantness, and acts the part of a taster, and tries whether the sauces 
have been rightly prepared. Is not this unseemly, nay--to speak with more 
truth--disgraceful, impious, to introduce some pretended deities for this 
only, not to do them reverence with fitting honours, but to appoint them 
over base things, and disreputable actions?(2)

    7. Does Venus Militaris, also, preside over the evil-doing(3) of camps, 
and the debaucheries of young men? Is there one Perfica,(4) also, of the 
crowd of deities, who causes those base and filthy delights to reach their 
end with uninterrupted pleasure? Is there also Pertunda, who presides over 
the marriage(5) couch? Is there also Tutunus, on whose huge members(6) and 
horrent fascinum you think it auspicious, and desire, that your matrons 
should be borne? But if facts themselves have very little effect in 
suggesting to volt a right understanding of the truth, are you not able, 
even from the very names, to understand that these are the inventions of a 
most meaningless superstition, and the false gods of fancy?(7) Puta, you 
say, presides over the pruning of trees, Peta over prayers; Nemestrinus(8) 
is the god of groves; Patellana is a deity, and Patella, of whom the one 
has been set over things brought to light, the other over those yet to be 
disclosed. Nodutis is spoken of as a god, because he(9) brings that which 
has been sown to the knots: and she who presides over the treading out of 
grain, Noduterensis;(10) the goddess Upibilia(11) delivers from straying 
from the right paths; parents bereaved of their children are under the care 
of Orbona,--those very near  to death, under that of Naenia. Again,(12) 
Ossilago herself is mentioned as she who gives firmness and solidity to the 
bones of young children. Mellonia is a goddess, strong and powerful in 
regard to bees, caring for and guarding the sweetness of their honey.

    8. Say, I pray you,--that Peta, Puta, Patella may graciously favour 
you,--if there were no(13) bees at all on the earth then, or if we men were 
born without bones, like some worms, would there be no goddess 
Mellonia;(14) or would Ossilago, who gives bones their solidity, be without 
a name of her own? I ask truly, and eagerly inquire whether you think that 
gods, or men, or bees, fruits, twigs, and the rest, are the more ancient in 
nature, time, long duration? No man  will doubt that you say that the gods 
precede all things whatever by countless ages and generations. But if it is 
so, how, in the nature of  things, can it be that, from things produced 
afterwards, they received those names which are earlier in point of time? 
or that the gods were charged with the care(15) of those things which were 
not yet produced, and assigned to be of use to men? Or were the gods long 
without names; and was it only after things began to spring up, and be on 
the earth, that you thought it right that they should be called by these 
names(16) and titles? And whence could you have known what name to give to 
each, since you were wholly ignorant of their existence; or that they 
possessed any fixed powers, seeing that you were equally unaware which of 
them had any power, and over what he should be placed to suit his divine 
might?

    9. What then? you say; do you declare that these gods exist nowhere in 
the world, and have been created by unreal fancies? Not we alone, but truth 
itself, and reason, say so, and that common-sense in which all men share. 
For who there who believes that there are gods of gain, and that they 
preside over the getting of it, seeing that it springs very often from the 
basest employments, and is always at the expense of others? Who believes 
that Libentina, who that Burnus.(17) is set over those lusts which wisdom 
bills us avoid, and which, in a thousand ways, vile and filthy wretches(18) 
attempt and practise? Who that Limentinus and Lima have the care of 
thresholds, and do the duties of their keepers, when every day we see the 
thresholds of temples and private houses destroyed and overthrown, and that 
the infamous approaches to stews are not without them? Who believes that 
the Limi(1) watch over obliquities? who that Saturnus presides over the 
sown crops? who that Montinus is the guardian of mountains; Murcia,(2) of 
the slothful? Who, finally, would believe that Money is a goddess, whom 
your writings declare, as though she were the greatest deity, to give 
golden rings,(3) the front seats at games and shows, honours in the 
greatest number, the dignity of the magistracy, and that which the indolent 
love most of all,--an undisturbed ease, by means of riches.

    10. But if you urge that bones, different kinds of honey, thresholds, 
and all the other things which we have either run over rapidly, or, to 
avoid prolixity, passed by altogether, have(4) their own peculiar 
guardians, we may in like manner introduce a thousand other gods, who 
should care for and guard innumerable things. For why should a god have 
charge of honey only, and not of gourds, rape, cunila, cress, figs, beets, 
cabbages? Why should the bones alone have found protection, and not the 
nails, hair, and all the other things which are placed in the hidden parts 
and members of which we feel ashamed, and are exposed to very many 
accidents, and stand more in need of the care and attention of the gods? Or 
if you say that these parts, too, act under the care of their own tutelar 
deities, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things; nor will 
the cause be stated why the divine care does not protect all things, if you 
say that there are certain things over which the deities preside, and for 
which they care.

    11. What say you, O fathers of new religions, and powers?(5) Do you cry 
out, and complain that these gods are dishonoured by us, and neglected with 
profane contempt, viz. Lateranus, the genius of hearths; Limentinus, who 
presides over thresholds; Pertunda,(6) Perfica, Noduterensis:(7) and do you 
say that things have sunk into ruin, and that the world itself has changed 
its laws and constitution, because we do not bow humbly in supplication to 
Mutunus(8) and Tutunus? But now look and see, lest while you imagine such 
monstrous things, and form such conceptions, you may have offended the gods 
who most assuredly exist, if only there are any who are worthy to bear and 
hold that most exalted title; and it be for no other reason that those 
evils, of which you speak, rage, and increase by accessions every day.(9) 
Why, then, some one of you will perhaps say, do you maintain(10) that it is 
not true that these gods exist? And, when invoked by the diviners, do they 
obey the call, and come when summoned by their own names, and give answers 
which may be relied on, to those who consult them? We can show that what is 
said is false, either because in the whole matter there is the greatest 
room for distrust, or because we, every day, see many of their predictions 
either prove untrue or baffled expectation to suit the opposite issues.

    12. But let them(11) be true, as you maintain, yet will you have us 
also believe(12) that Mellonia, for example, introduces herself into the 
entrails, or Limentinus, and that they set themselves to make known(13) 
what you seek to learn? Did you ever see their face their deportment, their 
countenance? or can even these be seen in lungs or livers? May it not 
happen, may it not come to pass, although you craftily conceal it, that the 
one should take the other's place, deluding, mocking, deceiving, and 
presenting the appearance of the deity invoked? If the magi, who are so 
much akin to(14) soothsayers, relate that, in their incantations, pretended 
gods(15) steal in frequently instead of those invoked; that some of these, 
moreover, are spirits of grosser substance, (16) who pretend that they are 
gods, and delude the ignorant by their lies and deceit,--why(17) should we 
not similarly believe that here, too, others substitute themselves for 
those who are not, that they may both strengthen your superstitious 
beliefs, and rejoice that victims are slain in sacrifice to them under 
names not their own?

    13. Or, if you refuse to believe this on account of its novelty,(18) 
how can you know whether there is not some one, who comes in place of all 
whom yon invoke, and substituting himself in all parts of the world,(1) 
shows to you what appear to be(2) many gods and powers? Who is that one? 
some one will ask. We may perhaps, being instructed by truthful authors, be 
able to say; but, lest you should be unwilling to believe us, let my 
opponent ask the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chaldeans, Armenians, and 
all the others who have seen and become acquainted with these things in the 
more recondite arts. Then, indeed, you will learn who is the one God, or 
who the very many under Him are, who pretend to be gods, and make sport of 
men's ignorance.

    Even now we are ashamed to come to the point at which not only boys, 
young anti pert, but grave men also, cannot restrain their laughter, and 
men who have been hardened into a strict and stern humour.(3) For while we 
have all heard it inculcated and taught by our teachers, that in declining 
the names of the gods there was no plural number, because the gods were 
individuals, and the ownership of each name could not be common to a great 
many;(4) you in fogetfulness, and putting away the memory of your early 
lessons, both give to several gods the same names, and, although you are 
elsewhere more moderate as to their number, have multiplied them, again, by 
community of names; which subject, indeed, men of keen discernment and 
acute intellect have before now treated both in Latin and Greek.(5) And 
that might have lessened our labour,(6) if it were not that at the same 
time we see that some know nothing of these books; and, also, that the 
discussion which we have begun, compels us to bring forward something on 
these subjects, although it has been already laid hold of, and related by 
those writers.

    14. Your theologians, then, and authors on unknown antiquity, say that 
in the universe there are three Joves, one of whom has Aether for his 
father; another, CAElus; the third, Saturn, born and buried(7) in the 
island of Crete. They speak of five Suns and vie Mercuries,--of whom, as 
they relate, the first Sun is called the son of Jupiter, and is regarded as 
grandson of Aether; the second is also Jupiter's son, and the mother who 
bore him Hyperiona;(8) the third the son of Vulcan, not Vulcan of Lemnos, 
but the son of the Nile; the fourth, whom Acantho bore at Rhodes in the 
heroic age, was the father of Ialysus; while the fifth is regarded as the 
son of a Scythian king and subtle Circe. Again, the first Mercury, who is 
said to have lusted after Proserpina,(9) is son of Coelus, who is above 
all. Under the earth is the second, who boasts that he is Trophonius. The 
third was born of Maia, his mother, and the third Jove;(10) the fourth is 
the offspring of the Nile, whose name the people of Egypt dread and fear to 
utter. The fifth is the slayer of Argus, a fugitive and exile. and the 
inventor of letters in Egypt. But there are five Minervas also, they say, 
just as there are five Suns and Mercuries;  the first of whom is no virgin 
but the mother of Apollo by Vulcan; the second, the offspring of the Nile, 
who is asserted to be the Egyptian Sais; the third is descended from 
Saturn, and is the one who devised the use of arms; the fourth is sprung 
from Jove, and the Messenians name her Coryphasia; and the fifth is she who 
slew her lustful(11) father, Pallas.

    15. And lest it should seem tedious and prolix to wish to consider each 
person singly, the same theologians say that there are four Vulcans and 
three Dianas, as many Aesculapii and five Dionysi, six Hercules and four 
Venuses, three  sets of Castors and the same number of Muses, three winged 
Cupids, and four named Apollo;(12) whose fathers they mention in like 
manner, in like manner their mothers, and the places where they were born, 
and point out the origin and  family of each. But if it is true and 
certain, and is told in earnest as a well-known matter, either they are not 
all gods, inasmuch as there cannot be several under the same name, as we 
have been taught; or if there is one of them, he will not be known and 
recognised, because he is obscured by the confusion of very similar names. 
And thus it results from your own action, however unwilling you may be that 
it should be so, that religion is brought into difficulty and confusion, 
and has no fixed end to which it can turn itself, without being made the 
sport of equivocal illusions.

    16. For suppose that it had occurred to us, moved either by suitable 
influence or violent fear of you,(1) to worship Minerva, for example, with 
the rights you deem sacred, and the usual ceremony: if, when we prepare 
sacrifices, and approach to make the offerings appointed for her on the 
flaming altars, all the Minervas shall fly thither, and striving for the 
right to that name, each demand that the offerings prepared be given to 
herself; what drawn-out animal shall we place among them, or to whom shall 
we direct the sacred offices which are our duty?(2) For the first one of 
whom we spoke will perhaps say: "The name Minerva is mine, mine(3) the 
divine majesty, who bore Apollo and Diana, and by the fruit of my womb 
enriched heaven with deities, and multiplied the number of the gods." "Nay, 
Minerva," the fifth will say, "are you speaking,(4) who, being a wife, and 
so often a mother, have lost the sanctity of spotless purity? Do you not 
see that in all temples(5) the images of Minervas are those of virgins, and 
that all artists refrain from giving to them the figures of matrons?(6) 
Cease, therefore, to appropriate to yourself a name not rightfully(7) 
yours. For that I am Minerva, begotten of father Pallas, the whole band of 
poets bear witness, who call me Pallas, the surname being derived from my 
father." The second will cry on hearing this: "What say you? Do you, then, 
bear the name of Minerva, an impudent parricide, and one defiled by the 
pollution of lewd lust, who, decking yourself with rouge and a harlot's 
arts, roused upon yourself even your father's passions, full of maddening 
desires? Go further, then, seek for yourself another name for this belongs 
to me, whom the Nile, greatest of rivers, begot from among his flowing 
waters, and brought to a maiden's estate from the condensing of 
moisture.(8) But if you inquire into the credibility of the matter, I too 
will bring as witnesses the Egyptians, in whose language I am called Neith, 
as Plato's Timoeus(9) attests." What, then, do we suppose will be the 
result? Will she indeed cease to say that she is Minerva, who is named 
Coryphasia, either to mark her mother, or because she sprung forth from the 
top of Jove's head, bearing a shield, and girt with the terror of arms? Or 
are we to suppose that she who is third will quietly surrender the name? 
and not argue(10) and resist the assumption of the first two with such 
words as these: "Do you thus dare to assume the honour of my name, O 
Sais,(11) sprung from the mud and eddies of a stream, and formed in miry 
places? Or do you usurp(12) another's rank, who falsely say that you were 
born a goddess from the head of Jupiter, and persuade very silly men that 
you are reason? Does he conceive and bring forth children from ms head? 
That the arms you bear might be forged and formed, was there even in the 
hollow of his head a smith's workshop? were there anvils, hammers, 
furnaces, bellows, coals, and pincers? Or if, as you maintain, it is true 
that you are reason, cease to claim for yourself the name which is mine; 
for reason, of which you speak, is not a certain form of deity, but the 
understanding of difficult questions." If, then, as we have said, five 
Minervas should meet us when we essay to sacrifice,(13) and contending as 
to whose this name is, each demand that either fumigations of incense be 
offered to her, or sacrificial wines poured out from golden cups; by what 
arbiter, by what judge, shall we dispose of so great a dispute? or what 
examiner will there be, what umpire of so great boldness as to attempt, 
with such personages, either to give a just decision, or to declare their 
causes not founded on right? Will he not rather go home, and, keeping 
himself apart from such matters, think it safer to have nothing to do with 
them, test he should either make enemies of the rest, by giving to one what 
belongs to all, or be charged with folly for yielding(14) to all what 
should be the property of one?

    17. We may say the very same things of the Mercuries, the Suns,--indeed 
of all the others whose numbers you increase and multiply. But it is 
sufficient to know from one case that the same principle applies to the 
rest; and, lest our prolixity should chance to weary our audience, we shall 
cease to deal with individuals, lest, while we accuse you of excess, we 
also should ourselves be exposed to the charge of excessive loquacity. What 
do you say, you who, by the fear of bodily tortures, urge us to worship the 
gods, and constrain us to undertake the service of your deities? We can be 
easily won, if only something befitting the conception of so great a race 
be shown to us. Show us Mercury, but only, one; give us Bacchus, but only 
one; one Venus, and in like manner one Diana. For you will never make us 
believe that there are four Apollos, or three Jupiters, not even if you 
were to call Jove himself as witness, or make the Pythian god your 
authority.

    18. But some one on the opposite side says, How do we know whether the 
theologians have written what is certain and well known, or set forth a 
wanton fiction,(1) as they thought and judged? That has nothing to do with 
the matter; nor does the reasonableness of your argument depend upon this,-
-whether the facts are as the writings of the theologians state, or are 
otherwise and markedly different. For to us it is enough to speak of things 
which come before the public; and we need not inquire what is true, but 
only confute and disprove that which lies open to all, and which men's 
thoughts have generally received. But if they are liars, declare yourselves 
what is the truth, and disclose the unassailable mystery. And how can it be 
done when the services of men of letters are set aside? For what is there 
which can be said about. the immortal gods that has not reached men's 
thoughts from what has been written by men on these subjects?(2) Or can you 
relate anything yourselves about their rights and ceremonies, which has not 
been recorded in books, and made known by what authors have written? Or if 
you think these of no importance, let all the books be destroyed which have 
been composed about the gods for you by theologians, pontiffs, and even 
some devoted to the study of philosophy; nay, let us rather suppose that 
from the foundation of the world no man ever wrote(3) anything about the 
gods: we wish to find out, and desire to know, whether you can mutter or 
murmur in mentioning the gods,(4) or conceive those in thought to whom no 
idea(5) from any book gave shape in your minds. But when it is clear that 
you have been informed of their names and powers by the suggestions of 
books,(6) it is unjust to deny the reliableness of these books by whose 
testimony and authority you establish what you say.

    19. But perhaps these things will turn out to be false, and what you 
say to be true. By what proof, by what evidence, will it be shown? For 
since both parties are men, both those who have said the one thing and 
those who have said the other, and on both sides the discussion was of 
doubtful matters, it is arrogant to say that that is true which seems so to 
you, but that that which offends your feelings manifests wantonness and 
falsehood. By the laws of the human race, and the associations of mortality 
itself, when you read and hear, That god was born of this father and of 
that mother, do you not feel in your mind(7) that something is said which 
belongs to man, and relates to the meanness of our earthly race? Or, while 
you think that it is so,(8) do you conceive no anxiety lest you should in 
something offend the gods themselves, whoever they are, because you believe 
that it is owing to filthy intercourse ...(9) that they have reached the 
light they knew not of, thanks to lewdness? For we, lest any one should 
chance to think that we are ignorant of, do not know, what befits the 
majesty of that name, assuredly(10) think that the gods should not know 
birth; or if they are born at all, we hold and esteem that the Lord and 
Prince of the universe, by ways which He knew Himself, sent them forth 
spotless, most pure, undefiled, ignorant of sexual pollution,(11) and 
brought to the full perfection of their natures as soon as they were 
begotten? (12)

    20. But you, on the contrary, forgetting how great(13) their dignity 
and grandeur are, associate with them a birth,(14) and impute to them a 
descent,(14) which men of at all refined feelings regard as at once 
execrable and terrible. From Ops, you say, his mother, and from his father 
Saturn, Diespiter was born with his brothers. Do the gods, then, have 
wives; and, the matches having been previously planned, do they become 
subject to the bonds of marriage? Do they take upon themselves(15) the 
engagements of the bridal couch by prescription, by the cake of spelt, and 
by a pretended sale?(16) Have they their mistresses,(17) their promised 
wives, their betrothed brides, on settled conditions? And what do we say 
about their marriages, too, when indeed you say that some celebrated their 
nuptials, and entertained joyous throngs, and that the goddesses sported at 
these; and that some threw all things into utter confusion with dissensions 
because they had no share in singing the Fescennine verses, and occasioned 
danger and destruction(18) to the next generation of men?(19)

    21. But perhaps this foul pollution may be less apparent in the rest. 
Did, then, the ruler of the heavens, the father of gods and men, who, by 
the motion of his eyebrow, and by his nod, shakes the whole heavens and 
makes them tremble,--did he find his origin in man and woman? And unless 
both sexes abandoned themselves to degrading pleasures in sensual 
embraces,(1) would there be no Jupiter, greatest of all; and even to this 
time would the divinities have no king, and heaven stand without its lord? 
And why do we marvel that you say Jove sprang from a woman's womb, seeing 
that your authors relate that he both had a nurse, and in the next place 
maintained the life given to him by nourishment drawn from a foreign(2) 
breast? What say you, O men? Did, then, shall I repeat, the god who makes 
the thunder crash, lightens and hurls the thunderbolt, and draws together 
terrible clouds, drink in the streams of the breast, wail as an infant, 
creep about, and, that he might be persuaded to cease his crying most 
foolishly protracted, was he made silent by the noise of rattles,(3) and 
put to sleep lying in a very soft cradle, and lulled with broken words? O 
devout assertion of the existence of gods, pointing out and declaring the 
venerable majesty of their awful grandeur! Is it thus in your opinion, ask, 
that the exalted powers(4) of heaven are produced? do your gods come forth 
to the light by modes of birth such as these, by which asses, pigs. dogs, 
by which the whole of this unclean herd(5) of earthly beasts is conceived 
and begotten?

    22. And, not content to have ascribed these carnal unions to the 
venerable Saturn,(6) you affirm that the king of the world himself begot 
children even more shamefully than he was himself born and begotten. Of 
Hyperiona,(7) as his mother, you say, and Jupiter, who wields the 
thunderbolt, was born the golden and blazing Sun; of Latona and the same, 
the Delian archer, and Diana,(8) who rouses the woods; of Leda and the 
same,(9) those named in Greek Dioscori; of Aclmena and the same, the Theban 
Hercules, whom his club and hide defended; of him and Semele, Liber, who is 
named Bromius, and was born a second time from his father's thigh; of him, 
again, and Main, Mercury, eloquent in speech, and bearer of the harmless 
snakes. Can any greater insult be put upon your Jupiter, or is there 
anything else which will destroy and ruin the reputation of the chief of 
the gods, further than that you believe him to have been at times overcome 
by vicious pleasures, and to have glowed with the passion of a heart roused 
to lust after women? And what had the Saturnian king to do with strange 
nuptials? Did Juno not suffice him; and could he not stay the force of his 
desires on the queen of the deities, although so great excellence graced 
her, such  beauty, majesty of countenance, and snowy and marble whiteness 
of arms? Or did he, not content with one wife, taking pleasure in 
concubines, mistresses, and courtezans, a lustful god, show(10) his 
incontinence in all directions, as is the custom with dissolute(11) youths; 
and in old age,  after intercourse with numberless persons, did he renew 
his eagerness for pleasures now losing their zest? What say you, profane 
ones; or what vile thoughts do you fashion about your love? Do you not, 
then, observe do you not see with what disgrace you brand him? of what 
wrong-doing you make him the author? or what stains of vice, how great 
infamy you heap upon  him?

    23. Men, though prone to lust, and inclined, through weakness of 
character, to yield to the allurements of sensual pleasures, still punish 
adultery by the laws, and visit with the penalty of death those whom they 
find to have possessed themselves of others rights by forcing the marriage-
bed. The greatest of kings, however, you tell us, did not know how vile, 
how infamous the person of the seducer and adulterer was; and he who, as is 
said, examines our merits and demerits, did not, owing to the reasonings of 
his abandoned heart, see what was the fitting course for him to resolve on. 
But this misconduct might perhaps be endured, if you were to conjoin him 
with persons at least his equals, and if he were made by you the paramour 
of the immortal goddesses. But what beauty, what grace was there, I ask 
you, in human bodies, which could move, which could turn to it(12) the eyes 
of Jupiter? Skin, entrails, phlegm, and all that filthy mass placed under 
the coverings of the intestines, which not Lynceus only with his searching 
gaze can shudder at, but any other also can be made to turn from even by 
merely thinking.

    24. If you will open your minds' eyes, and see the real(1) truth 
without gratifying any private end, you will find that the causes of all 
the miseries by which, as you say, the human race has long been afflicted, 
flow from such beliefs which you held in former times about your gods; and 
which you have refused to amend, although the truth was placed before your 
eyes. For what about them, pray, have we indeed ever either imagined which 
was unbecoming, or put forth in shameful writings that the troubles which 
assail men and the loss of the blessings of life(2) should be used to 
excite a prejudice against us? Do we say that certain gods were produced 
from eggs,(3) like storks and pigeons? Do we say that the radiant Cytherean 
Venus grew up, having taken form from the sea's foam and the severed 
genitals of Coelus? that Saturn was thrown into chains for parricide, and 
relieved from their weight only on his own days?(4) that Jupiter was saved 
from death(5) by the services of the Curetes? that he drove his father from 
the seat of power, and by force and fraud possessed a sovereignty not his 
own? Do we say that his aged sire, when driven out, concealed himself in 
the territories of the Itali, and gave his name as a gift to Latium,(6) 
because he had been there protected from his son? Do we say that Jupiter 
himself incestuously married his sister? or, instead of pork, breakfasted 
in ignorance upon the son of Lycaon, when invited to his table? that 
Vulcan, limping on one foot, wrought as a smith in the island of Lemnos? 
that AEculapius was transfixed by a thunderbolt because of his greed and 
avarice, as the Boeotian Pindar(7) sings? that Apollo, having become rich, 
by his ambiguous responses, deceived the very kings by whose treasures and 
gifts he had been enriched? Did we declare that Mercury was a thief? that 
Laverna is so also, and along with him presides over secret frauds? Is the 
writer Myrtilus one of us, who declares that the Muses were the handmaids 
of Megalcon,(8) daughter of Macarus?(9)

    25. Did we say(10) that Venus was a courtezan, deified by a Cyprian 
king named Cinyras? Who reported that the palladium was formed from the 
remains of Pelops? Was it not you? Who that Mars was Spartanus? was it not 
your writer Epicharmus? Who that he was born within the confines of Thrace? 
was it not Sophocles the Athenian, with the assent of all his spectators? 
Who that he was born in Arcadia? was it not you? Who that he was kept a 
prisoner for thirteen months?(11) was it not the son of the river Meles? 
Who said that dogs were sacrificed to him by the Carians, asses by the 
Scythians? was it not Apollodorus especially, along with the rest? Who that 
in wronging another's marriage couch, he was caught entangled in snares? 
was it not your writings, your tragedies? Did we ever write that the gods 
for hire endured slavery, as Hercules at Sardis(12) for lust and 
wantonness; as the Delian Apollo, who served Admetus, as Jove's brother, 
who served the Trojan Laomedon, whom the Pythian also served, but with his 
uncle; as Minerva, who gives light, and trims the lamps to secret lovers? 
Is not he one of your poets, who re resented Mars and Venus as wounded by 
men's hands? Is not Panyassis one of you, who relates that father Dis and 
queenly Juno were wounded by Hercules? Do not the writings of your Polemo 
say that Pallas(13) was slain,(14) covered with her own blood, overwhelmed 
by Ornytus? Does not Sosibius declare that Hercules himself was afflicted 
by the wound and pain he suffered at the hands of Hipocoon's children? Is 
it related at our instance that Jupiter was committed to the grave in the 
island of Crete? Do we say that the brothers,(15) who were united in their 
cradle, were buried in the territories of Sparta and Lacedaemon? Is the 
author of our number, who is termed Patrocles the Thurian in the titles of 
his writings, who relates that the tomb and remains of Saturn are found(16) 
in Sicily? Is Plutarch of Chaeronea(17) esteemed one of us, who said that 
Hercules was reduced to ashes on the top of Mount (Eta, after his loss of 
strength through epilepsy?

    26. But what shall I say of the desires with which it is written in 
your books, and contained in your writers, that the holy immortals lusted 
after women? For is it by us that the king of the sea is asserted in the 
heat of maddened passion to have robbed of their virgin purity 
Amphitrite,(1) Hippothoe, Amymone, Menalippe, Alope?(2) that the spotless 
Apollo, Latona's son, most chaste and pure, with the passions of a breast 
not governed by reason, desired Arsinoe, AEthusa, Hypsipyle, Marpessa, 
Zeuxippe, and Prothoe, Daphne, and Sterope?(1) Is it shown in our poems 
that the aged Saturn, already long covered with grey hair, and now cooled 
by weight of years, being taken by his wife in adultery, put on the form of 
one of the lower animals, and neighing loudly, escaped in the shape of a 
beast? Do you not accuse Jupiter himself of having assumed countless forms, 
and concealed by mean deceptions the ardour of his wanton lust? Have we 
ever written that he obtained his desires by deceit, at one time changing 
into gold, at another into a sportive satyr; into a serpent, a bird, a 
bull; and, to pass beyond all limits of disgrace, into a little ant, that 
he might, forsooth, make Clitor's daughter the mother of Myrmidon, in 
Thessaly? Who represented him as having watched over Alcmena for nine 
nights without ceasing? was it not you?--that he indolently abandoned 
himself to his lusts, forsaking his post in heaven? was it not you? And, 
indeed, you ascribe(3) to him no mean favours; since, in your opinion, the 
god Hercules was born to exceed and surpass in such matters his father's 
powers. He in nine nights begot(4) with difficulty one son; but Hercules, a 
holy god, in one night taught the fifty daughters of Thestius at once to 
lay aside their virginal title, and to bear a mother's burden. Moreover, 
not content to have ascribed to the gods love of women, do you also say 
that they lusted after men? Some one loves Hylas; another is engaged with 
Hyacinthus; that one burns with desire for Pelops; this one sighs more 
ardently for Chrysippus; Catamitus is carried off to be a favourite and 
cup-bearer; and Fabius, that he may be called Jove's darling, is branded on 
the soft parts, and marked in the hinder.

    27. But among you, is it only the males who lust; and has the female 
sex preserved its purity?(5) Is it not proved in your books that Tithonus 
was loved by Aurora; that Luna lusted after Endymion; the Nereid after 
AEacus; Thetis after Achilles' father; Proserpina after Adonis; her mother, 
Ceres, after some rustic Jasion, and afterwards Vulcan, Phaeton,(6) Mars; 
Venus herself, the mother of AEneas, and founder of the  Roman power, to 
marry Anchises? While, therefore, you accuse, without making any exception, 
not one only by name, but the whole of the gods alike, in whose existence 
you believe, of such  acts of extraordinary shamefulness and baseness, do 
you dare, without violation of modesty, to say either that we are impious, 
or that you are pious, although they receive from you much greater occasion 
for offence on account of all the shameful acts which you heap up to their 
reproach, than in connection with the service and duties required by their 
majesty, honour, and worship? For either all these things are false which 
you bring forward about them individually, lessening their credit and 
reputation; and it is in that case a matter quite deserving, that the gods 
should utterly destroy the race of men; or if they are true and certain, 
and perceived without any reasons for doubt, it comes to this issue, that, 
however unwilling you may be, we believe them to be not of heavenly, but of 
earthly birth.

    28. For where there are weddings, marriages, births, nurses, arts,(7) 
and weaknesses; where there are liberty and slavery; where there are 
wounds, slaughter, and shedding of blood; where there are lusts, desires, 
sensual pleasures; where there is every mental passion arising from 
disgusting emotions,--there must of necessity be nothing godlike there; nor 
can that cleave to a superior nature which belongs to a fleeting race, and 
to the frailty of earth. For who, if only he recognises and perceives what 
the nature of that power is, can believe either that a deity had the 
generative members, and was deprived of them by a very base operation; or 
that he at one time cut off the children sprung from himself, and was 
punished by suffering imprisonment; or that he, in a way, made civil war 
upon his father, and deprived him of the right of governing; or that he, 
filled with fear of one younger when overcome, turned to flight, and hid in 
remote solitudes, like a fugitive and exile? Who, I say, can believe that 
the deity reclined at men's tables, was troubled on account of his avarice, 
deceived his suppliants by an ambiguous reply, excelled in the tricks of 
thieves, committed adultery, acted as a slave, was wounded, and in love, 
and submitted to the seduction of impure desires in all the forms of lust? 
But yet you declare all these things both were, and are, in your gods; and 
you pass by no form of vice, wickedness, error, without bringing it 
forward, in the wantonness of your fancies, to the reproach of the gods. 
You must, therefore, either seek out other gods, apply; or if there are 
only these whose names and character you have declared, by your beliefs you 
do away with them: for all the things of which you speak relate to men.

    29. And here, indeed, we can show that all those whom you represent to 
us as and call gods, were but men, by quoting either Euhemerus of 
Acragas,(1) whose books were translated by Ennius into Latin that all might 
be thoroughly acquainted with them; or Nicanor(2) the Cyprian; or the 
Pellaean Leon; or Theodorus of Cyrene; or Hippo and Diagoras of Melos; or a 
thousand other writers, who have minutely, industriously, and carefully(3) 
brought secret things to light with noble candour. We may, I repeat, at 
pleasure, declare both the acts of Jupiter, and the wars of Minerva and the 
virgin(4) Diana; by what stratagems Liber strove to make himself master of 
the Indian empire; what was the condition, the duty, the gain(5) of Venus; 
to whom the great mother was bound in marriage; what hope, what joy was 
aroused in her by the comely Attis; whence came the Egyptian Serapis and 
Isis, or for what reasons their very names(6) were formed.

    30. But in the discussion which we at present maintain, we do not 
undertake this trouble or service, to show and declare who all these were. 
But this is what we proposed to ourselves, that as you call us impious and 
irreligious, and, on the other hand, maintain that you are pious anti serve 
the gods, we should prove and make manifest that by no men are they treated 
with less respect than by you. But if it is proved by the very insults that 
it is so, it must, as a consequence, be understood that it is yon who rouse 
the gods to fierce and terrible rage, because you either listen to or 
believe, or yourselves invent about them, stories so degrading. For it is 
not he who is anxiously thinking of religious rites,(7) and slays spotless 
victims, who gives piles of incense to be burned with fire, not he must be 
thought to worship the deities, or alone discharge the duties of religion. 
True worship is in the heart, and a belief worthy of the gods; nor does it 
at all avail to bring blood and gore, if you believe about them things 
which are not only far remote from and unlike their nature, but even to 
some extent stain and disgrace both their dignity and virtue.

    31. We wish, then, to question you, and invite you to answer a short 
question, Whether you think it a greater offence to sacrifice to them  
being neither wishes nor desires these; or, with foul beliefs, to hold 
opinions about them so degrading, that they might rouse any one's spirit to 
a mad desire for revenge? If the relative importance of the matters be 
weighed, you will find no judge so prejudiced as not to believe it a 
greater crime to defame by manifest insults any one's reputation, than to 
treat it with silent neglect. For this, perhaps, may be held and believed 
from deference to reason; but the other course manifests an impious spirit, 
and a blindness despaired of in fiction. If in your ceremonies and rites 
neglected sacrifices and expiatory offerings may be demanded, guilt is said 
to have been contracted; if by a momentary forgetfulness(8) any one has 
erred either in speaking or in pouring wine;(9) or again,(10) if at the 
solemn games and sacred races the dancer has halted, or the musician 
suddenly become silent,--you all cry out immediately that something has 
been done contrary to the sacredness of the ceremonies; or if the boy 
termed patrimus let go the thong in ignorance,(11) or could not hold to the 
earth:(12) and yet do you dare to deny that the gods are ever being wronged 
by you in sins so grievous, while you confess yourselves that, in less 
matters, they are often angry, to the national ruin?

    32. But all these things, they say, are the fictions of poets, and 
games arranged for pleasure. It is not credible, indeed, that men by no 
means thoughtless, who sought to trace out the character of the remotest 
antiquity, either did not(13) insert in their poems the fables which 
survived in men's minds(14) and common conversation;(15) or that they would 
have assumed to themselves so great licence as to foolishly feign what was 
almost sheer madness, and might give them reason to be afraid of the gods, 
and bring them into danger with men. But let us grant that the poets are, 
as yon say, the inventors anti authors of tales so disgraceful; you are 
not, however, even thus free from the guilt of dishonouring the gods, who 
either are remiss in punishing such offences, or have not, by passing laws, 
and by severity of punishments, opposed such indiscretion, and 
determined(1) that no man should henceforth say that which tended to the 
dishonour,(2) or was unworthy of the glory of the gods.(3) For whoever 
allows the wrongdoer to sin, strengthens his audacity; and it is more 
insulting to brand and mark any one with false accusations, than to bring 
forward and upbraid their real offences. For to be called what you are, and 
what you feel yourself to be, is less offensive, because your resentment is 
checked by the evidence supplied against you on privately reviewing your 
life;(4) but that wounds very keenly which brands the innocent, and defames 
a man's honourable name and reputation.

    33. Your gods, it is recorded, dine on celestial couches, and in golden 
chambers, drink, and are at last soothed by the music of the lyre, and 
singing. You fit them with ears not easily wearied;(5) and do not think it 
unseemly to assign to the gods the pleasures by which earthly bodies are 
supported, and which are sought after by ears enervated by the frivolity of 
an unmanly spirit. Some of them are brought forward in the character of 
lovers, destroyers of purity, to commit shameful and degrading deeds not 
only with women, but with men also. You take no care as to what is said 
about matters of so much importance, nor do you check, by any fear of 
chastisement at least, the recklessness of your wanton literature; others, 
through madness and frenzy, bereave themselves, and by the slaughter of 
their own relatives cover themselves with blood, just as though it were 
that of an enemy. You wonder at these loftily expressed impieties; and that 
which it was fitting should be subjected to all punishments, you extol with 
praise that spurs them on, so as to rouse their recklessness to greater 
vehemence. They mourn over the wounds of their bereavement, and with 
unseemly wailings accuse the cruel fates; you are astonished at the force 
of their eloquence, carefully study and commit to memory that which should 
have been wholly put away from human society,(6) and are solicitous that it 
should not perish through any forgetfulness. They are spoken of as being 
wounded, maltreated, making war upon each other with hot and furious 
contests; you enjoy the description; and, to enable you to defend so great 
daring in the writers, pretend that these things are allegories, and 
contain the principles of natural science.

    34. But why do I complain that you have disregarded the insults(7) 
offered to the other deities? That very Jupiter, whose name you should not 
have spoken without fear and trembling over your whole body, is described 
as confessing his faults when overcome by lust(8) of his wife, and, 
hardened in shamelessness, making known, as if he were mad and ignorant,(9) 
the mistresses he preferred to his spouse, the concubines he preferred to 
his wife; you say that those who have uttered so marvellous things are 
chiefs and kings among poets endowed with godlike genius, that they are 
persons most holy; and so utterly have you lost sight of your duty in the 
matters of religion which you bring forward, that words are of more 
importance, in your opinion, than the profaned majesty of the immortals. So 
then, if only you felt any fear of the gods, or believed with confident and 
unhesitating assurance that they existed at all, should you not, by bills, 
by popular votes, by fear of the senate's decrees, have hindered, 
prevented, and forbidden any one to speak at random of the gods otherwise 
than in a pious manner?(10) Nor have they obtained this honour even at your 
hands, that you should repel insults offered to them by the same laws by 
which you ward them off from yourselves. They are accused of treason among 
you who have whispered any evil about your kings. To degrade a magistrate, 
or use insulting language to a senator, you have made by decree a crime, 
followed by the severest punishment. To write a satirical poem, by which a 
slur is cast upon the reputation and character of another, you determined, 
by the decrees of the decemvirs, should not go unpunished; and that no one 
might assail your ears with too wanton abuse, you established formulae(11) 
for severe affronts. With you only the gods are unhonoured, contemptible, 
vile; against whom you allow any one liberty to say what he will, to accuse 
them of the deeds of baseness which his lust has invented and devised. And 
yet you do not blush to raise against us the charge of want of regard for 
deities so infamous, although it is much better to disbelieve the existence 
of the gods than to think they are such, and of such repute.

    35. But is it only poets whom you have thought proper(12) to allow to 
invent unseemly tales about the gods, and to turn them shamefully into 
sport? What do your pantomimists, the actors, that crowd of mimics and 
adulterers?(13) Do they(14) not abuse your gods to make to themselves gain, 
and do not the others(1) find enticing pleasures in(2) the wrongs and 
insults offered to the gods? At the public games, too, the colleges of all 
the priests and magistrates take their places, the chief Pontiffs, and the 
chief priests of the curiae; the Quindecemviri take their places, crowned 
with wreaths of laurel, and the flamines diales with their mitres; the 
augurs take their  places, who disclose the divine mind and will; and the 
chaste maidens also, who cherish and guard the ever-burning fire; the whole 
people and the senate take their places; the fathers who have done service 
as consuls, princes next to the gods, and most worthy of reverence; and, 
shameful to say, Venus, the mother of the race of Mars, and parent of the 
imperial people, is represented by gestures as in love,(3) and is 
delineated with shameless mimicry as raving like a Bacchanal, with all the 
passions of a vile harlot.(4) The Great Mother, too, adorned with her 
sacred fillets, is represented by dancing; and that Pessinuntic 
Dindymene(5) is, to the dishonour of her age, represented as with shameful 
desire using passionate gestures in the embrace of a herdsman; and also in 
the Trachiniae of Sophocles,(6) that son of Jupiter, Hercules, entangled in 
the toils of a death-fraught garment, is exhibited uttering piteous cries, 
overcome by his violent suffering, and at last wasting away and being 
consumed, as his intestines soften and are dissolved.(7) But in these tales 
even the Supreme Ruler of the heavens Himself is brought forward, without 
any reverence for His name and majesty, as acting the part of an adulterer, 
and changing His countenance for purposes of seduction, in order that He 
might by guile rob of their chastity matrons, who were the wives of others, 
and putting on the appearance of their husbands, by assuming the form of 
another.

    36. But this crime is not enough: the persons of the most sacred gods 
are mixed up with farces also, and scurrilous plays. And that the idle 
onlookers may be excited to laughter and jollity, the deities are hit at in 
jocular quips, the spectators shout and rise up, the whole pit resounds 
with the clapping of hands and applause. And to the debauched scoffers(8) 
at the gods gifts and presents are ordained, ease, freedom from public 
burdens, exemption and relief, together  with triumphal garlands,--a crime 
for which no amends can be made by any apologies. And after this do you 
dare to wonder whence these ills come with which the human race is deluged 
and overwhelmed without any interval, while you daily both repeat and learn 
by heart all these things, with which are mixed up libels upon the gods and 
slanderous sayings; and when(9) you wish your inactive minds to be occupied 
with useless dreamings, demand that days be given to you, and exhibition 
made without any interval? But if you felt any real indignation on behalf 
of your religious beliefs, you should rather long ago have burned these 
writings, destroyed those books of yours, and overthrown these theatres, in 
which evil reports of your deities are daily made public in shameful tales. 
For why, indeed, have our writings deserved to be given to the flames? our 
meetings to be cruelly broken up,(10) in which prayer is made to the 
Supreme God, peace and pardon are asked for all in authority, for soldiers, 
kings, friends, enemies, for those still in life, and those freed from the 
bondage of the flesh;(11) in which all that is said is such as to make men 
humane,(12) gentle, modest, virtuous, chaste, generous in dealing with 
their substance, and inseparably united to all embraced in our 
brotherhood?(13)

    37. But this is the state of the case, that as you are exceedingly 
strong in war and in military power, you think you excel in knowledge of 
the truth also, and are pious before the gods,(14) whose might you have 
been the first to besmirch with foul imaginings. Here, if your fierceness 
allows. and madness suffers, we ask you to answer us this: Whether you 
think that anger finds a place in the divine nature, or that the divine 
blessedness is far removed from such passions? For if they are subject to 
passions so furious,(15) and are excited by feelings of rage as your 
imaginings suggest.--for you say that they have often shaken the earth with 
their roaring,(16) and bringing woful misery on men, corrupted with 
pestilential contagion the character of the times,(1) both because their 
games had been celebrated with too little care, and because their priests 
were not received with favour, and because some small spaces were 
desecrated, and because their rites were not duly performed,--it must 
consequently be understood that they feel no little wrath on account of the 
opinions which have been mentioned. But if, as follows of necessity, it is 
admitted that all these miseries with which men have long been overwhelmed 
flow from such fictions, if the anger of the deities is excited by these 
causes, you are the occasion of so terrible misfortunes, because you never 
cease to jar upon the feelings of the gods, and excite them to a fierce 
desire for vengeance. But if, on the other hand, the gods are not subject 
to such passions, and do not know at all what it is to be enraged, then 
indeed there is no ground for saying that they who know not what anger is 
are angry with us, * and they are free from its presence,(2) and  the 
disorder(3) it causes. For it cannot be, in the nature of things, that what 
is one should become  two; and that unity, which is naturally uncompounded, 
should divide and go apart into separate things.(4) 

BOOK V.

    1. Admitting that all these things which do the immortal gods 
dishonour, have been put forth by poets merely in sport, what of those 
found in grave, serious, and careful histories, and handed down by you in 
hidden mysteries? have they been invented by the licentious fancy of the 
poets? Now if they seemed(1) to you stories of such absurdity, some of them 
you would neither retain in their constant use, nor celebrate as solemn 
festivals from year to year, nor would you maintain them among your sacred 
rites as shadows of real events. With strict moderation, I shall adduce 
only one of these stories which are so numerous; that in which Jupiter 
himself is brought on the stage as stupid and inconsiderate, being tricked 
by the ambiguity of words. In the second hook of Antias--lest any one 
should think, perchance, that we are fabricating charges calumniously--the 
following story is written:--

    The famous king Numa, not knowing how to avert evil portended by 
thunder, and being eager to learn, by advice of Egeria concealed beside a 
fountain twelve chaste youths provided with chains; so that when Faunus and 
Martius(2) Picus came to this place(3) to drink,--for hither they were wont 
to come(4) to draw water,--they might rush on them, seize and bind them. 
But, that this might be done more speedily, the king filled many(5) cups 
with wine and with mead,(6) and placed them about the approaches to the 
fountain, where they would be seen--a crafty snare for those who should 
come. They, as was their usual custom, when overcome by thirst, came to 
their well-known haunts. But when they had perceived cups with sweetly 
smelling liquors, they preferred the new to the old; rushed eagerly upon 
them; charmed with the sweetness of the draught, drank too much; and 
becoming drunk, fell fast asleep. Then the twelve youths threw themselves 
upon the sleepers, and cast chains round them, lying soaked with wine; and 
they,(7) when roused, immediately taught the king by what methods and 
sacrifices Jupiter could be called down to earth. With this knowledge the 
king performed the sacred ceremony on the Aventine, drew down Jupiter to 
the earth, and asked from him the due Form of expiation. Jupiter having 
long hesitated, said, "Thou shalt avert what is portended by thunder with a 
head."(8) The king answered. "With an onion."(9) Jupiter again, "With a 
man's." The king returned, "But with hair."(10) The deity in turn, "With 
the life.(1) With a fish,"(2) rejoined Pompilius. Then Jupiter, being 
ensnared by the ambiguous terms used, uttered these words: "Thou hast 
overreached me, Numa; for I had determined that evils portended by thunder 
should be averted with sacrifices of human heads, not(3) with hair and an 
onion. Since, however, your craft has outwitted me, have the mode which you 
wished; and always undertake the expiation of thunder-portents with those 
things which you have bargained for."

    2. What the mind should take up first, what last, or what it should 
pass by silently, it is not easy to say, nor is it made clear by any amount 
of reflection; for all have been so devised and fitted to be laughed at, 
that you should strive that they may be believed to be false--even if they 
are true--rather than pass current as true, and suggest as it were 
something extraordinary, and bring contempt upon deity itself. What, then, 
do you say, O you--? Are we to believe(4) that that Faunus and Martius 
Picus--if they are of the number of the gods, and of that everlasting and 
immortal substance--were once parched with thirst, and sought the gushing 
fountains, that they might be able to cool with water their heated veins? 
Are we to believe that, ensnared by wine, and beguiled by the sweetness of 
mead, they dipped so long into the treacherous cups, that they even got 
into danger of becoming drunk? Are we to believe that, being fast asleep, 
and plunged in the forgetfulness of most profound slumbers, they gave to 
creatures of earth an opportunity to bind them? On what parts, then, were 
those bonds and chains flung? Did they have any solid substance, or had 
their hands been formed of hard bones, so that it might be possible to bind 
them with halters and hold them fast by tightly drawn knots? For I do not 
ask, I do not inquire whether they could have said anything when swaying to 
and fro in their drunken maunderings; or whether, while Jupiter was 
unwilling, or rather unwitting, any one could have marie known the way to 
bring him down to earth. This only do I wish to hear, why, if Faunus and 
Picus are of divine origin and power, they did not rather themselves 
declare to Numa, as he questioned them, that which he desired to learn from 
Jove himself at a greater risk? Or(5) did Jupiter alone have knowledge of 
this--for from him the thunderbolts fall--how training in some kind of 
knowledge should avert impending dangers? Or, while he himself hurls these 
fiery bolts, is it the business of others to know in what way it is fitting 
to allay his wrath and indignation? For truly it would be most absurd to 
suppose that he himself appoints(6) the means by which may be averted that 
which he has determined should befall men through the hurling of his 
thunderbolts. For this is to say, By such ceremonies you will turn aside my 
wrath; and if I shall at any time have foreshown by flashes of lightning 
that some evil is close at hand, do this and that, so that(7) what I have 
determined should be done may be done altogether in vain, and may pass away 
idly through the force(8) of these rites.

    3. But let us admit that, as is said, Jupiter has himself appointed 
against himself ways and means by which his own declared purposes might 
fittingly be opposed: are we also to believe that a deity of so great 
majesty was dragged down to earth, and, standing on a petty hillock with a 
mannikin, entered into a wrangling dispute? And what, I ask, was the charm 
which forced Jupiter to leave the all-important(9) direction of the 
universe, and appear at the bidding of mortals? the sacrificial meal, 
incense, blood, the scent of burning laurel-boughs,(10) and muttering of 
spells? And were all these more powerful than Jupiter, so that they 
compelled him to do unwillingly what was enjoined, or to give himself up of 
his own accord to their crafty tricks? What! will what follows be believed, 
that the son of Saturn had so little foresight, that he either proposed 
terms by the ambiguity of which he was himself ensnared, or did not know 
what was going to happen, how the craft and cunning of a mortal would 
overreach him? You shall make expiation, he says, with a head when 
thunderbolts have fallen. The phrase is still incomplete, and the meaning 
is not fully expressed and defined; for it was necessarily right to know 
whether Diespiter ordains that this expiation be effected with the head of 
a wether, a sow, an ox, or any other animal. Now, as he had not yet fixed 
this specifically, and his decision was still uncertain anti not yet 
determined, how could Numa know that Jupiter would say the head of a man, 
so as to(7) anticipate and prevent him, and turn his uncertain and 
ambiguous words(11) into "an onion's head?"

    4. But you will perhaps say that the king was a diviner. Could he be 
more so than Jupiter himself? But for a mortal's anticipating(1) what 
Jupiter--whom(2) he overreached--was going to say, could the god not know 
in what ways a man was preparing to overreach him? Is it not, then, clear 
and manifest that these are puerile and fanciful inventions, by which, 
while a lively wit is assigned(3) to Numa, the greatest want of foresight 
is imputed to Jupiter? For what shows so little foresight as to confess 
that you have been ensnared by the subtlety of a man's intellect, and while 
you are vexed at being deceived, to give way to the wishes of him who has 
overcome you, and to lay aside the means which you had proposed? For if 
there was reason and some natural fitness that(4) expiatory sacrifice for 
that which was struck with lightning should have been made with a man's 
head, I do not see why the proposal of an onion's was made by the king; but 
if it could be performed with an onion also, there was a greedy lust for 
human blood. And both parts are made to contradict themselves: so that, on 
the one hand, Numa is shown not to have wished to know what he did wish; 
and, on the other, Jupiter is shown to have been merciless, because he said 
that he wished expiation to be made with the heads of men, which could have 
been done by Numa with an onion's head.

    5. In Timotheus, who was no mean mythologist, and also in others 
equally well informed, the birth of the Great Mother of the gods, and the 
origin of her rites, are thus detailed, being de-rived--as he himself 
writes and suggests--from learned books of antiquities, and from his 
acquaintance with the most secret mysteries:--Within the confines of 
Phrygia, he says, there is a rock of unheard-of wildness in every respect, 
the name of which is Agdus, so named by the natives of that district. 
Stones taken from it, as Themis by her oracle(5) had enjoined, Deucalion 
and Pyrrha threw upon the earth, at that time emptied of men; from which 
this Great Mother, too, as she is called, was fashioned along with the 
others, and animated by the deity. Her, given over to rest and sleep on the 
very summit of the rock, Jupiter assailed with lewdest(6) desires. But 
when, after long strife, he could no accomplish what he had proposed to 
himself, he, baffled, spent his lust on the stone. This the rock received, 
and with many groanings Acdestis(7) is born in the tenth month, being named 
from his mother rock. In him there had been resistless might, and a 
fierceness of disposition beyond control, a lust made furious, and derived 
from both sexes.(8) He violently plundered and laid waste; he scattered 
destruction wherever the ferocity of his disposition had led him; he 
regarded not gods nor men, nor did he think anything more powerful than 
himself; he contemned  earth, heaven, and the stars.

    6. Now, when it had been often considered in the councils of the gods, 
by what means it might be possible either to weaken or to curb his 
audacity, Liber, the rest hanging back, takes upon himself this task. With 
the strongest wine he drugs a spring much resorted to by Acdestis(9) where 
he had been wont to assuage the heat and burning thirst(10) roused in him 
by sport and hunting. Hither runs Acdestis to drink when he felt the 
need;(11) he gulps down the draught too greedily into his gaping veins. 
Overcome by what he is quite unaccustomed to, he is in consequence sent 
fast asleep. Liber is near the snare which he had set; over his foot he 
throws one end of a halter(12) formed of hairs, woven together very 
skilfully; with the other end he lays hold of his privy members. When the 
fumes of the wine passed off, Acdestis starts up furiously, and his foot 
dragging the noose, by his own strength he robs himself of his(13) sex; 
with the tearing asunder of these parts there is an immense flow of blood; 
both(14) are carried off and swallowed up by the earth; from them there 
suddenly springs up, covered with fruit, a pomegranate tree, seeing the 
beauty of which, with admiration, Nana,(15) daughter of the king or river 
Sangarius, gathers and places in her bosom some  of the fruit. By this she 
becomes pregnant; her father shuts her up, supposing that she had been(16) 
debauched, and seeks to have her starved to death; she is kept alive by the 
mother of the gods with apples, and other food,(17) and brings forth a 
child, but Sangarius(18) orders it to be exposed. One Phorbas having found 
the child, takes it home,(19) brings it up on goats' milk; and as handsome 
fellows are so named in Lydia, or  because the Phrygians in their own way 
of speaking call their goats attagi, it happened in consequence that the 
boy obtained the name Attis.(1) Him the mother of the gods loved 
exceedingly, because he was of most surpassing beauty; and Acdestis, who 
was his companion, as he grew up fondling him, and bound to him by wicked 
compliance with his lust in the only way now possible, leading him through 
the wooded glades, and presenting him with the spoils of many wild beasts, 
which the boy Attis at first said boastfully were won by his own toil and 
labour. Afterwards, under the influence of wine, he admits that he is both 
loved by Acdestis, and honoured by him with the gifts brought from the 
forest; whence it is unlawful for those polluted by drinking wine to enter 
into his sanctuary, because it discovered his secret.(2)

    7. Then Midas, king of Pessinus, wishing to withdraw the youth from so 
disgraceful an intimacy, resolves to give him his own daughter in marriage, 
and caused the gates of the town to be closed, that no one of evil omen 
might disturb their marriage joys. But the mother of the gods, knowing the 
fate of the youth, and that he would live among men in safety only so long 
as he was free from the ties of marriage, that no disaster might occur, 
enters the closed city, raising its walls with her head, which began to be 
crowned with towers in consequence. Acdestis, bursting with rage because of 
the boy's being torn from himself, and brought to seek a wife, fills all 
the guests with frenzied madness:(3) the Phrygians shriek aloud, panic-
stricken at the appearance of the gods;(4) a daughter of adulterous(5) 
Gallus cuts off her breasts; Attis snatches the pipe borne by him who was 
goading them to frenzy; and he, too, now filled with furious passion, 
raving frantically and tossed about, throws himself down at last, and under 
a pine tree mutilates himself, saying, "Take these,(6) Acdestis, for which 
you have stirred up so great and terribly perilous commotions."(7) With the 
streaming blood his life flies; but the Great Mother of the gods gathers 
the parts which had been cut off, and throws earth on them, having first 
covered them, and wrapped(8) them in the garment of the dead. From the 
blood which had flowed springs a flower, the  violet, and with(9) this the 
tree(10) is girt. Thence the custom began and arose, whereby you even now 
veil and wreath with flowers the sacred pine. The virgin who had been the 
bride, whose name, as Valerius(11) the pontifex relates, was Ia, veils the 
breast of the lifeless youth with soft wool, sheds tears with Acdestis, and 
slays herself After her death her blood is changed into purple violets. The 
mother of the gods sheds tears also,(12) from which springs an almond tree, 
signifying the bitterness of death.(13) Then she bears away to her cave the 
pine tree, beneath which Attis had unmanned himself; and Acdestis joining 
in her wailings, she beats and wounds her breast, pacing round the trunk of 
the tree now at rest.(14) Jupiter is begged by Acdestis that Attis may be 
restored to life: he does not permit it. What, however, fate allowed,(15) 
he readily grants, that his body should not decay, that his hairs should 
always grow, that the least of his fingers should live, and should be kept 
ever in motion; content with which favours, it is said that Acdestis 
consecrated the body in Pessinus, and honoured it with yearly rites and 
priestly services.(16)

    8. If some one, despising the deities, and furious with a savagely 
sacrilegious spirit, had set himself to blaspheme your gods, would he dare 
to say against them anything more severe than this tale relates, which you 
have reduced to form, as though it were some wonderful narrative, and have 
honoured without ceasing,(17) lest the power of time and the remoteness(18) 
of antiquity should cause it to be forgotten? For what is there asserted in 
it, or what written about the gods, which, if said with regard to a man 
brought up with bad habits and a pretty rough training, would not make you 
liable to be accused of wronging and insulting him, and expose you to 
hatred and dislike, accompanied by implacable resentment? From the stones, 
you say, which Deucalion and Pyrrha threw, was produced the mother of the 
gods. What do you say, O theologians? what, ye priests of the heavenly 
powers? Did the mother of the gods, then, not exist at all for the sake of 
the deluge? and would there be no cause or beginning of her birth, had not 
violent storms of rain swept away the whole race of men? It is through man, 
then, that she feels herself to exist, and she owes it to Pyrrha's kindness 
that she sees herself addressed as a real being;(1) but if that is indeed 
true, this too will of necessity not be false, that she was human, not 
divine. For if it is certain that men are sprung originally from the 
casting of stones, it must be believed that she too was one of us, since 
she was produced by means of the same causes. For it cannot be, for nature 
would not suffer it,(2) that from one kind of stones, and from the same 
mode of throwing them, some should be formed to rank among the immortals, 
others with the condition of men. Varro, that famous Roman, distinguished 
by the diversity of his learning, and unwearied in his researches into 
ancient times, in the first of four books which he has left in writing on 
the race of the Roman people, shows by careful calculations, that from the 
time of the deluge, which we mentioned before, down to the consulship of 
Hirtius and Pansa,(3) there are not quite two thousand years; and if he is 
to be believed, the Great Mother, too, must be said to have her whole life 
bounded by the limits of this number. And thus the matter is brought to 
this issue, that she who is said to be parent of all the deities is not 
their mother, but their daughter; nay, rather a mere child, a little girl, 
since we admit that in the never-ending series of ages neither beginning 
nor end has been ascribed to the gods.

    9. But why do we speak of your having bemired the Great Mother of the 
gods with the filth of earth, when you have not been able for but a little 
time even to keep from speaking evil of Jupiter himself? While the mother 
of the gods was then sleeping on the highest peak of Agdus, her son, you 
say, tried stealthily to surprise her chastity while she slept. After 
robbing of their chastity virgins and matrons without number, did Jupiter 
hope to gratify his detestable passion upon his mother? and could he not be 
turned from his fierce desire by the horror which nature itself has excited 
not only in men, but in some other animals also, and by common(4) feeling? 
Was he then regardless of piety(5) and honour, who is chief in the temples? 
and could he neither reconsider nor perceive how wicked was his desire, his 
mind being madly agitated? But, as it is, forgetting his majesty and 
dignity, he crept forward to steal those vile pleasures, trembling and 
quaking with fear, holding his breath, walking in terror on tiptoe, and, 
between hope and fear, touched her secret parts, trying how soundly his 
mother slept, and what she would suffer.(6) Oh, shameful representation! 
oh, disgraceful plight of Jupiter, prepared to attempt a filthy contest! 
Did the ruler of the world, then, turn to force, when, in his heedlessness 
and haste, he was prevented from stealing on by surprise;(7) and when he 
was unable to snatch his pleasure by cunning craft, did he assail his 
mother with violence, and begin without any concealment to destroy the 
chastity which he should have revered? Then, having striven for a very long 
time when she is unwilling, did he go off conquered, vanquished, and 
overcome? and did his spent lust part him whom piety was unable to hold 
back from execrable lust after his mother?

    10. But you will perhaps say the human race shuns and execrates such 
unions;(8) among the gods there is no incest. And why, then, did his mother 
resist with the greatest vehemence her son when he offered her violence? 
Why did she flee from his embraces, as if she were avoiding unlawful 
approaches? For if there was nothing wrong in so doing, she should have 
gratified him without any reluctance, just as he eagerly wished to satisfy 
the cravings of his lust. And here, indeed, very thrifty men, and frugal 
even about shameful works, that that sacred seed may not seem to have been 
poured forth in vain--the rock, one says, drank up Jupiter's foul 
incontinence. What followed next, I ask? Tell. In the very heart of the 
rock, and in that flinty  hardness, a child was formed and quickened to be 
the offspring of great Jupiter. It is not easy to object to conceptions so 
unnatural and so wonderful. For as the human race is said by you to have 
sprung and proceeded from stones, it must be believed that the stones both 
had genital parts, and drank in the seed cast on them, and when their time 
was full were pregnant,(9) and at last brought forth, travailing in 
distress as women do. That impels our curiosity to inquire, since you say 
that the birth occurred after ten months, in what womb of the rock was he 
enclosed at that time? with what food, with what juices, was he supplied? 
or what could he have drawn to support him from the hard stone, as unborn 
infants usually receive from their mothers! He had not yet reached the 
light, my informant says; and already bellowing and imitating his father's 
thunderings, he reproduced their sound.(1) And after it was given him to 
see the sky and the light of day, attacking all things which lay in his 
way, he made havoc of them, and assured himself that he was able to thrust 
down from heaven the gods themselves. O cautious and foreseeing mother of 
the gods, who, that she might not undergo the ill-will of so(2) arrogant a 
son, or that his bellowing while still unborn might not disturb her 
slumbers or break her repose, withdrew herself, and sent far from her that 
most hurtful seed, and gave it to the rough rock.

    11. There was doubt in the councils of the gods how that unyielding and 
fierce violence was to be subdued; and when there was no other way, they 
had recourse to one means, that he should be soaked with much wine, and 
bereft of his members, by their being cut off. As if, indeed, those who 
have suffered the loss of these parts become less arrogant, and as if we do 
not daily see those who have cut them away from themselves become more 
wanton, and, neglecting all the restraints of chastity and modesty, throw 
themselves headlong into filthy vileness, making known abroad their 
shameful deeds. I should like, however, to see--were it granted me to be 
born at those times--father Liber, who overcame the fierceness of Acdestis, 
having glided down from the peaks of heaven after the very venerable 
meetings of the gods, cropping the tails of horses,(3) plaiting pliant 
halters, drugging the waters harmless while pure with much strong wine, and 
after that drunkenness sprung from drinking, to have carefully introduced 
his hands, handled the members of the sleeper, and directed his care 
skilfully(4) to the parts which were to perish, so that the hold of the 
nooses placed round them might surround them all.

    12. Would any one say this about the gods who had even a very low 
opinion of them? or, if they were taken up with such affairs, 
considerations, cares, would any man of wisdom either believe that they are 
gods, or reckon them among men even? Was that Acdestis, pray, the lopping 
off of whose lewd members was to give a sense of security to the immortals, 
was he one of the creatures of earth, or one of the gods, and possessed 
of(5) immortality? For if he was thought to be of our lot and in the 
condition of men, why did he cause the deities so much terror? But if he 
was a god, how could he be deceived, or how could anything be cut off from 
a divine body?(6) But we raise no issue on this point: he may have been of 
divine birth, or one of us, if you think it more correct to say so. Did a 
pomegranate tree, also, spring from the blood which flowed and from the 
parts which were cut off? or at the time when(7) that member was concealed 
in the bosom of the earth, did it lay hold of the ground with a root, and 
spring up into a mighty tree, put forth branches loaded with blossoms,(8) 
and in a moment bare mellow fruit perfectly and completely ripe? And 
because these sprang from red blood, is their colour therefore bright 
purple, with a dash of yellow? Say further that they are juicy also, that 
they have the taste of wine, because they spring from the blood of one 
filled with it, and you have finished your story consistently. O Abdera, 
Abdera, what occasions for mocking you would give(9) to men, if such a tale 
had been devised by you! All fathers relate it, and haughty states peruse 
it; and you are considered foolish, and utterly dull and stupid.(10)

    13. Through her bosom, we are told,(11) Nana conceived a son by an 
apple. The opinion is self-consistent; for where rocks and hard stones 
bring forth, there apples must have their time of generating.(12) The 
Berecyntian goddess fed the imprisoned maiden with nuts(13) and figs, fitly 
and rightly; for it was right that she should live on apples who had been 
made a mother by an apple. After her offspring was born, it was ordered by 
Sangarius to be cast far away: that which he believed to be divinely 
conceived long before, he would not have(14) called the offspring of his 
child. The infant was brought up on he-goats' milk. O story ever opposed 
and most inimical to the male sex, in which not only do men lay aside their 
virile powers, but beasts even which were males become mothers!(15) He was 
famous for his beauty, and distinguished by his remarkable(16) comeliness. 
It is wonderful enough that the noisome stench of goats did not cause him 
to be avoided and fled from. The Great Mother loved him--if as a 
grandmother her grandson, there is nothing wrong; but if as the theatres 
tell, her love is infamous and disgraceful. Acdestis, too, loved him above 
all, enriching him with a hunter's gifts. There could be no danger to his 
purity from one emasculated, you say; but it is not easy to guess what 
Midas dreaded? The Mother entered bearing(1) the very walls. Here we 
wondered, indeed, at the might and strength of the deity; but again(2) we 
blame her carelessness, because when she remembered the decree of fate,(3) 
she heedlessly laid open the city to its enemies. Acdestis cites to fury 
and madness those celebrating the nuptial vows. If King Midas had 
displeased who was binding the youth to a wife, of what had Gallus been 
guilty, and his concubine's daughter, that he should rob himself of his 
manhood, she herself of her breasts? "Take and keep these," says he,(4) 
"because of which you have excited such commotions to the overwhelming of 
our minds with fear." We should none of us yet know what the frenzied 
Acdestis had desired in his paramour's body, had not the boy thrown to him, 
to appease his wrath,(5) the parts cut off.

    14. What say you, O races and nations, given up to such beliefs? When 
these things are brought forward, are you not ashamed and confounded to say 
things so indecent? We wish to hear or learn from you something befitting 
the gods; but you, on the contrary, bring forward to us the cutting off of 
breasts, the lopping off of men's members, ragings, blood, frenzies, the 
self-destruction of maidens, and flowers and trees begotten from the blood 
of the dead. Say, again, did the mother of the gods, then, with careful 
diligence herself gather in her grief the scattered genitals with the shed 
blood?(6) With her own sacred, her own divine(7) hands, did she touch and 
lift up the instruments of a disgraceful and indecent office? Did she also 
commit them to the earth to be hid from sight; and lest in this case they 
should, being uncovered, be dispersed in the bosom of the earth, did she 
indeed wash and anoint them with fragrant gums before wrapping and covering 
them with his dress? For whence could the violet's sweet scent have come 
had not the addition of those cintments modified the putrefying smell of 
the member? Pray, when you read such tales, do you not seem to yourselves 
to hear either girls at the loom wiling away their tedious working hours, 
or old women seeking diversions for credulous children,(8) and to be 
declaring manifold fictions under the guise of truth? Acdestis appealed 
to(9) Jupiter to restore life to his paramour: Jupiter would not consent, 
because he was hindered by the fates more powerful than himself; and that 
he might not be in every respect very hard-hearted, he granted one favour--
that the body should not decay through any corruption; that the hair should 
always grow; that the least of his fingers alone in his body should live, 
alone keep always in motion. Would any one grant this, or support it with 
an unhesitating assent, that hair grows on a dead body,--that part(10) 
perished, and that the rest of his mortal body, free from the law of 
corruption, remains even still?

    15. We might long ago have urged you to ponder this, were it not 
foolish to ask proofs of such things, as well as to say(11) them. But this 
story is false, and is wholly untrue. It is no mat ter to us, indeed, 
because of whom you maintain that the gods have been driven from the earth, 
whether it is consistent and rests on a sure foundation,(12) or is, on the 
contrary, framed and devised in utter falsehood. For to us it is enough--
who have proposed this day to make  it plain--that those deities whom you 
bring for ward, if they are anywhere on earth, and glow  with the fires of 
anger, are not more excited to  furious hatred by us than by you; and that 
that story, has been classed as an event and committed to writing by you, 
and is willingly read over by you every day, and handed down in order for 
the edifying of later times. Now, if this story is indeed true, we see that 
there is no reason in it why the celestial gods should be asserted to he 
angry with us, since we have neither declared things so much to their 
disgrace, nor committed them to writing at all, nor brought them publicly 
to light(13) by the celebration of sacred rites; but if, as you think, it 
is untrue, and made up of delusive falsehoods, no man can doubt that you 
are the cause of offence, who have either allowed certain persons to write 
such stories, or have suffered them, when written, to abide in the memory 
of ages.

    16. And yet how can you assert the falsehood of this story, when the 
very rites which you celebrate throughout the year testify that you believe  
these things to be true, and consider them per fectly trustworthy? For what 
is the meaning of that pine(1) which on fixed days you always bring into 
the sanctuary of the mother of the gods? Is it not in imitation of that 
tree, beneath which the raging and ill-fated youth laid hands upon himself, 
and which the parent of the gods consecrated to relieve her sorrow?(2) What 
mean the fleeces of wool with which you bind and surround the trunk of the 
tree? Is it not to recall the wools with which la(3) covered the dying 
youth, and thought that she could procure some warmth for his limbs fast 
stiffening with cold? What mean the branches of the tree girt round and 
decked with wreaths of violets? Do they not mark this, how the Mother 
adorned with early flowers the pine which indicates and bears witness to 
the sad mishap? What mean the Galli(4) with dishevelled hair beating their 
breasts with their palms? Do they not recall to memory those lamentations 
with which the tower-bearing Mother, along with the weeping Acdestis, 
wailing aloud,(5) followed the boy? What means the abstinence from eating 
bread which you have named castus? Is it not in imitation of the time when 
the goddess abstained from Ceres' fruit in her vehement sorrow?

    17. Or if the things which we say are not so declare, say yourselves--
those effeminate and delicate men whom we see among you in the sacred rites 
of this deity--what business, what care, what concern have they there; and 
why do they like mourners wound their arms and(6)  breasts, and act as 
those dolefully circumstanced? What mean the wreaths, what the violets, 
what the swathings, the coverings of soft wools? Why, finally, is the very 
pine, but a little before swaying to and fro among the shrubs, an utterly 
inert log, set up in the temple of the Mother of the gods next, like some 
propitious and very venerable deity? For either this is the cause which we 
have found in your writings and treatises, and in that case it is clear 
that you do not celebrate divine rites, but give a representation of sad 
events; or if there is any other reason which the darkness of the mystery 
has withheld from us, even it also must be involved in the infamy of some 
shameful deed. For who would believe that there is any honour in that which 
the worthless Galli begin, effeminate debauchees complete?

    18. The greatness of the subject, and our duty to those on their 
defence also,(7) demand that we should in like manner hunt up the other 
forms of baseness, whether those which the histories of antiquity record, 
or those contained in the sacred mysteries named initia,(8) and not 
divulged(9) openly to all, but to the silence of a few; but your 
innumerable sacred rites, and the loath-someness of them all,(10) will not 
allow us to go through them all bodily: nay, more, to tell the truth, we 
turn aside ourselves from some purposely and intentionally, lest, in 
striving to unfold all things, we should be defiled by contamination in the 
very exposition. Let us pass by Fauna(11) Fatua, therefore, who is called 
Bona Dea, whom Sextus Clodius, in his sixth book in Greek on the gods, 
declares to have been scourged to death with rods of myrtle, because she 
drank a whole jar of wine without her husband's knowledge; and this is a 
proof, that when women show her divine honour a jar of wine is placed 
there, but covered from sight, and that it is not lawful to bring in twigs 
of myrtle, as Butas(12) mentions in his Causalia. But let us pass by with 
similar neglect(13) the dii conserentes, whom Flaccus and others relate to 
have buried themselves, changed in humani penis similitudinem in the 
cinders Under a pot of exta.(14) And when Tanaquil, skilled in the arts of 
Etruria,(15) disturbed these, the gods erected themselves, and became 
rigid. She then commanded a captive woman from Corniculum to learn and 
understand what was the meaning of this: Ocrisia, a woman of the greatest 
wisdom divos inseruisse genitali, explicuisse motus certos. Then the holy 
and burning deities poured forth the power of Lucilius,(16) and thus 
Servius king of Rome was born.

    19. We shall pass by the wild Bacchanalia also, which are named in 
Greek Omophagia, in which with seeming frenzy and the loss of your senses 
you twine snakes about you; and, to show yourselves full of the divinity 
and majesty of the god, tear in pieces with gory mouths the flesh of 
loudly-bleating goats. Those hidden mysteries of Cyprian Venus we pass by 
also, whose founder is said to have been King Cinyras,(17) in which being 
initiated, they bring stated fees as to a harlot, and carry away phalli, 
given as signs of the propitious deity. Let the rites of the Corybantes 
also be consigned to oblivion, in which is revealed that sacred mystery, a 
brother slain by his brothers, parsley sprung from the blood of the 
murdered one, that vegetable forbidden to be placed on tables, test the 
manes of the dead should be unappeasably offended. But those other 
Bacchanalia also we refuse to proclaim, in which there is revealed and 
taught to the initiated a secret not to be spoken; how Liber, when taken up 
with boyish sports, was torn asunder by the Titans; how he was cut up limb 
by limb by them also, and thrown into pots that he might  be cooked; how 
Jupiter, allured by the sweet savour, rushed unbidden to the meal, and 
discovering what had been done, overwhelmed the revellers with his terrible 
thunder, and hurled them to the lowest part of Tartarus. As evidence and 
proof of which, the Thracian bard handed down in his poems the dice, 
mirror, tops, hoops, and smooth balls, and golden apples taken from the 
virgin Hesperides.

    20. It was our purpose to leave unnoticed those mysteries also into 
which Phrygia is initiated, and all that(1) race, were it not that the name 
of Jupiter, which has been introduced by them, would not suffer us to pass 
cursorily by the wrongs and insults offered to him; not that we feel any 
pleasure in discussing(2) mysteries so filthy, but that it may be made 
clear to you again and again what wrong you heap upon those whose 
guardians, champions, worshippers, you profess to be. Once upon a time, 
they say, Diespiter, burning after his mother Ceres with evil passions and 
forbidden desires, for she is said by the natives of that district to be 
Jupiter's mother, and yet not daring to seek by open(3) force that for 
which he had conceived a shameless longing, hits upon a clever trick by 
which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of the sort. 
Instead of a god, he becomes a bull; and concealing his purpose and daring 
under the appearance of a beast lying in wait,(4) he rushes madly with 
sudden violence upon her, thoughtless and unwitting, obtains his incestuous 
desires; and the fraud being disclosed by his lust, flies off known and 
discovered. His mother burns, foams, gasps, boils with fury and 
indignation; and being unable to repress the storm(5) and tempest of her 
wrath, received the name Brimo(6) thereafter from her ever-raging passion: 
nor has she any other wish than to punish as she may her son's audacity.

    21. Jupiter is troubled enough, being overwhelmed with fear, and cannot 
find means to soothe the rage of his violated mother. He pours forth 
prayers, and makes supplication; her ears are closed by grief. The whole 
order of the gods is sent to seek his pardon; no one has weight enough to 
win a hearing. At last, the son seeking how to make satisfaction, devises 
this means: Arietem nobilem bene grandibus cum testiculis deligit, exsecat 
hos ipse et lanato exuit ex folliculi tegmine. Approaching his mother sadly 
and with downcast looks, and as if by his own decision he had condemned 
himself, he casts and throws these(7) into her bosom. When she saw what his 
pledge was,(8) she is somewhat softened, and allows herself to be recalled 
to the care of the offspring which she had conceived.(9) After the tenth 
month she bears a daughter, of beautiful form, whom later ages have called 
now Libera, now Proserpine; whom when Jupiter Verveceus(10) saw to be 
strong, plump, and blooming, forgetting what evils and what wickedness, and 
how great recklessness, he had a little before fallen into,(11) he returns 
to his former practices; and because it seemed too(12) wicked that a father 
openly be joined as in marriage with his daughter, he passes into the 
terrible form of a dragon: he winds his huge coils round the terrified 
maiden, and under a fierce appearance sports and caresses her in softest 
embraces. She, too, is in consequence filled with the seed of the most 
powerful Jupiter, but not as her mother was, for she(13) bore a daughter 
like herself; but from the maiden was born something like a bull, to 
testify to her seduction by Jupiter. If any one asks(14) who narrates this, 
then we shall quote the well-known senarian verse of a Tarentine poet which 
antiquity sings,(15) saying: "The ball begot a dragon, and the dragon a 
bull." Lastly, the sacred rites themselves, and the ceremony of initiation 
even, named Sebadia,(16) might attest the truth; for in them a golden snake 
is let down into the bosom of the initiated, and taken away again from the 
lower parts.

    22. I do not think it necessary here also with many words to go through 
each part, and show how many base and unseemly things there are in each 
particular. For what mortal is there, with but little sense even of what 
becomes a man, who does not himself see clearly the character of all these 
things, how wicked they, are, how vile, and what disgrace is brought upon 
the gods by the very ceremonies of their mysteries, and by the unseemly 
origin of their rites? Jupiter, it is said, lusted after Ceres. Why, I ask, 
has Jupiter deserved so ill of you, that there is no kind of disgrace, no 
infamous adultery, which you do not heap upon his head, as if on some vile 
and worthless person? Leda was unfaithful to her nuptial vow; Jupiter is 
said to be the cause of the fault. Danae could not keep her virginity; the 
theft is said to have been Jupiter's. Europa hastened to the name of woman; 
he is again declared to have been the assailant of her chastity. Alcmena, 
Electra, Latona, Laodamia, a thousand other virgins, and a thousand 
matrons, and with them the boy Catamitus, were robbed. of their honour 
and(1) chastity. It is the same story everywhere--Jupiter. Nor is there any 
kind of baseness in which you do not join and associate his name with 
passionate lusts; so that the wretched being seems to have been born for no 
other reason at all except that he might be a field fertile in(2) crimes, 
an occasion of evil-speaking, a kind of open place into which should gather 
all filthiness from the impurities of the stage.(3) And yet if you were to 
say that he had intercourse with strange women, it would indeed be impious, 
but the wrong done in slandering him might be bearable. Did he lust(4) 
after his mother also, after his daughter too, with furious desires; and 
could no sacredness in his parent, no reverence for her. no shrinking even 
from the child which had sprung from himself, withhold him from conceiving 
so detestable a plan?

    23. I should wish, therefore, to see Jupiter, the father of the gods, 
who ever controls the world and men,(5) adorned with the horns of an ox, 
shaking his hairy ears, with his feet contracted into hoofs, chewing green 
grass, and having behind him(6) a tail, hams,(7) and ankles smeared over 
with soft excrement,(8) and bedaubed with the filth cast forth. I should 
wish, I say,--for it must be said over and over again,--to see him who 
turns the stars in their courses, and who terrifies and overthrows nations 
pale with fear, pursuing the flocks of wethers, inspicientem testiculos 
aretinos, snatching these away with that severe(9) and divine hand with 
which he was wont to launch the gleaming lightnings and to hurl in his rage 
the thunderbolt.(10) Then, indeed, I should like to see him ransacking 
their inmost parts with glowing knife;(11) and all witnesses being removed, 
tearing away the membranes circumjectas prolibus, and bringing them to his 
mother, still hot with rage, as a kind of fillet(12) to draw forth her 
pity, with downcast countenance, pale, wounded,(13) pretending to be in 
agony; and to make this believed, defiled with the blood of the rain, and 
covering his pretended wound with bands of wool and linen. Is it possible 
that this can be heard and read in this world,(14) and that those who 
discuss these things wish themselves to be thought pious, holy, and 
defenders of religion? Is there any greater sacrilege than this, or can any 
mind(15) be found so imbued with impious ideas as to believe such stories, 
or receive them, or hand them down in the most secret mysteries of the 
sacred rites? If that Jupiter of whom you speak, whoever he is, really(16) 
existed, or was affected by any sense of wrong, would it not be fitting 
that,(17) roused to anger, be should remove the earth from under our feet, 
extinguish the light of the sun and moon; nay more, that he should throw 
all things into one mass, as of old?(18)

    24. But, my opponent says, these are not the rites of our state. Who, 
pray, says this, or who repeats it? is he Roman, Gaul, Spaniard, African, 
German, or Sicilian? And what does it avail your cause if these stories are 
not yours, while those who compose them are on your side? Or of what 
importance is it whether you approve of them or not, since what you 
yourselves say(19) are found to be either just as foul, or of even greater 
baseness? For do you wish that we should consider the mysteries and those 
ceremonies which are named by the Greeks Thesmophoria,(20) in which those 
holy vigils and. solemn watchings were consecrated to the goddess by the 
Athenians? Do you wish us, I say, to see what beginnings they have, what 
causes, that we may prove that Athens itself also, distinguished in the 
arts and pursuits of civilization, says things as insulting to the gods as 
others, and that stories are there publicly related under the mask of 
religion just as disgraceful as are thrown in our way by the rest of you? 
Once, they say, when Proserpine, not yet a woman and still a  maiden, was 
gathering purple flowers in the meadows of Sicily, and when her eagerness 
to gather them was leading her hither and thither in all directions, the 
king of the shades, springing forth through an opening of unknown depth, 
seizes and bears away with him the maiden, and conceals himself again in 
the bowels(1) of the earth. Now when Ceres did not know what had happened, 
and had no idea where in the world her daughter was, she set herself to 
seek the lost one all over the(2) world. She snatches up two torches lit at 
the fires of AEtna;(3) and giving herself light by means of these, goes on 
her quest in all parts of the earth.

    25. In her wanderings on that quest, she reaches the confines of 
Eleusis as well as other countries(4)--that is the name of a canton in 
Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited by aborigines(5) named 
Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Eumolpus,(6) Dysaules: Triptolemus, who yoked 
oxen; Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine; Eumolpus, of 
sheep,(7) from whom also flows the race of Eumolpidae, and from whom is 
derived that name famous among the Athenians,(8) and those who afterwards 
flourished as caduceatores,(9) hierophants, and criers. So, then, that 
Baubo who, we have said, dwelt in the canton of Eleusis, receives 
hospitably Ceres, worn out with ills of many kinds, hangs about her with 
pleasing attentions, beseeches her not to neglect to refresh her body, 
brings to quench her thirst wine thickened with spelt,(10) which the Greeks 
term cyceon. The goddess in her sorrow turns away from the kindly offered 
services,(11) and rejects them; nor does her misfortune suffer her to 
remember what the body always requires.(12) Baubo, on the other hand, begs 
and exhorts her--as is usual in such ca-lamities--not to despise her 
humanity; Ceres remains utterly immoveable, and tenaciously maintains an 
invincible austerity. But when this was done several times, and her fixed 
purpose could not be worn out by any attentions, Baubo changes her plans, 
and determines to make merry by strange jests her whom she could not win by 
earnestness. That part of the body by which women both bear children and 
obtain the name of mothers,(13) this she frees from longer neglect: she 
makes it assume a purer appearance, and become smooth like a child, not yet 
hard and rough with hair. In this wise she returns(14) to the sorrowing 
goddess; and while trying the common expedients by which it is usual to 
break the force of grief, and moderate it, she uncovers herself, and baring 
her groins, displays all the parts which decency hides;(15) and then the 
goddess fixes her eyes upon these,(16) and is pleased with the strange form 
of consolation. Then becoming more cheerful after laugh ing, she takes and 
drinks off the drought spurned before, and the indecency of a shameless 
action forced that which Baubo's modest conduct was long unable to win.

    26. If any one perchance thinks that we are speaking wicked calumnies, 
let him take the hooks of the Thracian soothsayer,(17) which you speak of 
as of divine antiquity; and he will find that we are neither cunningly 
inventing anything, nor seeking means to bring the holiness of the gods 
into ridicule, and doing so: for we shall bring forward the very verses 
which the son of Calliope uttered in Greek,(18) and published abroad in his 
songs to the human race throughout all ages:--

    "With these words she at the same time drew up her garments from the 
lowest hem,
    And exposed to view formatas inguinibus res,
    Which Baubo grasping(19) with hollow hand, for
    Their appearance was infantile, strikes, touches gently.
    Then the goddess, fixing her orbs of august light,
    Being softened, lays aside for a little the sadness of her mind;
    Thereafter she takes the cup in her hand, and laughing,
    Drinks off the whole draught of cyceon with gladness."(20) 

What say you, O wise sons of Erectheus?(1) what, you citizens of 
Minerva?(2) The mind is eager to know with what words you will defend what 
it is so dangerous to maintain, or what arts you have by which to give 
safety to personages and causes wounded so mortally. This(3) is no false 
mistrust, nor are you assailed with lying accusations:(4) the infamy of 
your Eleusinia is declared both by their base beginnings and by the records 
of ancient literature, by the very signs, in fine, which you use when 
questioned in receiving the sacred things,--"I have fasted, and drunk the 
draught;(5) I have taken out of the mystic cist,(6) and put into the 
wicker-basket; I have received again, and transferred to the little 
chest."(7)

    27. Are then your deities carried off by force, and do they seize by 
violence, as their holy and hidden mysteries relate? do they enter into 
marriages sought stealthily and by fraud?(8) is their honour snatched from 
virgins(9) resisting and unwilling? have they no knowledge of impending 
injury, no acquaintance with what has happened to those carried off by 
force? Are they, when lost, sought for as men are? and do they traverse the 
earth's vast extent with lamps and torches when the sun is shining most 
brightly? Are they afflicted? are they troubled? do they assume the squalid 
garments of mourners, and the signs of misery? and that they may be able to 
turn their mind to victuals and the taking of food, is use made not of 
reason, not of the right time, not of some weighty words or pressing 
courtesy, but is a display made of the shameful and indecent parts of the 
body? and are those members exposed which the shame felt by all, and the 
natural law of modesty, bid us conceal, which it is not permissible to name 
among pure ears without permission, and saying, "by your leave?"(10)  What, 
I ask you, was there in such a sight,(11) what in the privy parts of Baubo, 
to move to wonder and laughter a goddess of the same sex, and formed with 
similar parts? what was there such that, when presented to the divine 
eyes(12) and sight, it should at the same time enable her to forget her 
miseries, and bring her with sudden cheerfulness to a happier state of 
mind? Oh, what have we had it in our power to bring forward with scoffing 
and jeering, were it not for respect for the reader,(13) and the dignity of 
literature!

    28. I confess that I have long been hesitating, looking on every side, 
shuffling, doubling Tellene perplexities;(14) while I am ashamed to mention 
those Alimontian(15) mysteries in which Greece erects phalli in honour of 
father Bacchus, and the whole district is covered with images of men's 
fascina. The meaning of this is obscure perhaps, and it is asked why it is 
done. Whoever is ignorant of this, let him learn, and, wondering at what is 
so important, ever keep it with reverent care in a pure heart.(16) While 
Liber, born at Nysa,(17) and son of Semele, was still among men, the story 
goes, he wished to become acquainted with the shades below, and to inquire 
into what went on in Tartarus; but this wish was hindered by some 
difficulties, because, from ignorance of the route, he did not know by what 
way to go and proceed. One Prosumnus starts up, a base lover of the god, 
and a fellow too prone to wicked lusts, who promises to point out the gate 
of Dis, and the approaches to Acheton, if the god will gratify him, and 
suffer uxorias voluptates ex se carpi. The god, without reluctance, swears 
to put himself(18) in his power and at his disposal, but only immediately 
on his return from the lower regions, having obtained his wish and 
desire.(19) Prostmmus politely tells him the way, and sets him on the very 
threshold of the lower regions. In the meantime, while Liber is 
inspecting(20) and examining carefully Styx, Cerberus, the Furies, and all 
other things, the informer passed from the number of the living, and was 
buried according to the manner of men. Evius(21) comes up froth the lower 
regions, and learns that his guide is dead. But that he might fulfil his  
promise, and free himself from the obligation of his oath, he goes to the 
place of the funeral, and--"ficorum ex arbore ramum validissimum praesecans 
dolat, runcinat, levigat et humani speciem fabricatur in penis, figit super 
aggerem tumuli, et postica ex parte nudatus accedit, subsidit, insidit. 
Lascivia deinde surientis assumpta, huc atque illuc clunes torquet et 
meditatur ab ligno pati quod jamdudum in veritate promiserat."

    29. Now, to prevent any one from thinking that we have devised what is 
so impious, we do not call upon him to believe Heraclitus as a witness, nor 
to receive from his account what he felt about such mysteries. Let him(1) 
ask the whole of Greece what is the meaning of these phalli which ancient 
custom erects and worships throughout the country, throughout the towns: he 
will find that the causes are those which we say; or if they are ashamed to 
declare the truth honestly, of what avail will it be to obscure, to conceal 
the cause and origin of the rite, while(2) the accusation holds good 
against the very act of worship? What say you, O peoples? what, ye nations 
busied with the services of the temples, and given up to them? Is it to 
these rites you drive us by flames, banishment, slaughter, and any other 
kind of punishments, and by fear of cruel torture? Are these the gods whom 
you bring to us, whom you thrust and impose upon us, like whom you would 
neither wish yourselves to be, nor any one related to you by blood and 
friendship?(3) Can you declare to your beardless sons, still wearing the 
dress of boys, the agreements which Liber formed with his lovers? Can you 
urge your daughters-in-law, nay, even your own wives, to show the modesty 
of Baubo, and enjoy the chaste pleasures of Ceres? Do you  wish your young 
men to know, hear, and learn what even Jupiter showed himself to more 
matrons than one? Would you wish your grown-up maidens and still lusty 
fathers to learn how  the same deity sported with his daughter? Do  you 
wish full brothers, already hot with passion,  and sisters sprung from the 
same parents, to hear  that he again did not spurn the embraces, the couch 
of his sister? Should we not then flee far from such gods; and should not 
our ears be stopped altogether, that the filthiness of so pure a religion 
may not creep into the mind? For what man is there who has been reared with 
morals so pure, that the example of the gods does not excite him to similar 
madness? or who can keep back his desires from his kinsfolk, and those of 
whom he should stand in awe, when he sees that among the gods above nothing 
is held sacred in the confusion caused by(4) their lusts? For when it is 
certain that the first and perfect nature has not been able to restrain its 
passion within right limits, why should not man give himself up to his 
desires without distinction, being both borne on headlong by his innate 
frailty,  and aided by the teaching of the holy deities?(5) 

    30. I confess that, in reflecting on such monstrous stories in my own 
mind, I have long been accustomed to wonder that you dare to speak of those 
as atheists,(6) impious, sacrilegious, who either deny that there are any 
gods at all, or doubt their existence, or assert that they were men, and 
have been numbered among the gods for the sake of some power and good 
desert; since, if a true examination be made, it is fitting that none 
should be called by such names, more than yourselves, who, under the 
pretence of showing them reverence, heap up in so doing(7) more abuse and 
accusation, than if you had conceived the idea of doing this openly with 
avowed abuse. He who doubts the existence of the gods, or denies it 
altogether, although he may seem to adopt monstrous opinions from the 
audacity of his conjectures, yet refuses to credit what is obscure without 
insulting any one; and he who asserts that they were mortals, although he 
brings them down from the exalted place of inhabitants of heaven, yet heaps 
upon them other(8) honours, since he supposes that they have been raised to 
the rank of the gods(9) for their services, and from admiration of their 
virtues.

    31. But you who assert that you are the defenders and propagators of 
their immortality, have you passed by, have you left untouched, any one of 
them, without assailing him(10) with your abuse? or is there any kind of 
insult so damnable in the eyes of all, that you have been afraid to use it 
upon them, even though hindered(11) by the dignity of their name? Who 
declared that the gods loved frail and mortal bodies? was it not you? Who 
that they perpetrated those most charming thefts on the couches of others? 
was it not you? Who that children had intercourse with their mothers; and 
on the other hand, fathers with their virgin daughters? was it not you? Who 
that pretty boys, and even grown-up men of very fine appearance, were 
wrongfully lusted after? was it not you? Who declared that they(12) were 
mutilated, debauched,(13) skilled in dissimulation, thieves, held in bonds 
and chains, finally assailed with thunderbolts, and wounded, that they 
died, and even found graves on earth? was it not you? While, then, so many 
and grievous charges have been raised by you to the injury of the gods, do 
you dare to assert that the gods have been displeased because of us, while 
it has long been clear that you are the guilty causes of such anger, and 
the occasion of the divine wrath?

    32. But you err, says my opponent, and are mistaken, and show, even in 
criticising these things, that you are rather ignorant, unlearned, and 
boorish. For all those stories which seem to you disgraceful, and tending 
to the discredit of the gods, contain in them holy mysteries, theories 
wonderful and profound, and not such as any one can easily become 
acquainted with by force of understanding. For that is not meant and said 
which has been written and placed on the surface of the story; but all 
these things are understood in allegorical senses, and by means of secret 
explanations privately supplied.(1) Therefore he who says(2) Jupiter lay 
with his mother, does not mean the incestuous or shameful embraces of 
Venus, but names Jupiter instead of rain, and Ceres instead of the earth. 
And he, again, who says that he(3) dealt lasciviously with his daughter, 
speaks of no filthy pleasures, but puts Jupiter for the name of a shower, 
and by his daughter means(4) the crop sown. So,  too, he who says that 
Proserpina was carried off  by father Dis, does not say, as you suppose,(5) 
that the maiden was carried off to gratify the basest desires; but because 
we cover the seed with clods, he signifies that the goddess has sunk under 
the earth, and unites with Orcus to bring forth fruit. In like manner in 
the other stories also one thing indeed is said, but something else is 
understood; and under a commonplace openness of expression there lurks a 
secret doctrine, and a dark profundity of mystery.

    33. These are all quirks, as is evident, and quibbles with which they 
are wont to bolster up weak cases before a jury; nay, rather, to speak more 
truly, they are pretences, such as are used in(6) sophistical reasonings, 
by which not the truth is sought after, but always the image, and 
appearance, and shadow of the truth. For because it is shameful and 
unbecoming to receive as true the correct accounts, you have had 
recourse(7) to this expedient, that one thing should be substituted for 
another, and that what was in itself shameful should, in being explained, 
be forced into the semblance of decency. But what is it to us whether other 
senses and other meanings underlie these vain stories? For we who assert 
that the gods are treated by you wickedly and impiously, need only(8) 
receive what is written, what is said,(9) and need not care as to what is 
kept secret, since the insult to the deities consists not in the idea 
hidden in its meanings,(10) but in what is signified by the words as they 
stand out. And yet, that we may not seem unwilling to examine what you say, 
we ask this first of you, if only you will bear with us, from whom have you 
learned, or by whom has it been made known, either that these things were 
written allegorically, or that they should be understood in the same way? 
Did the writers summon you to take counsel with them? or did you lie hid in 
their bosoms at the time(11) when they put one thing for another, without 
regard to truth? Then, if they chose, from religions awe(12) and fear on 
any account, to wrap those mysteries in dark obscurity, what audacity it 
shows in you to wish to understand what they did not wish, to know 
yourselves and make all acquainted with that which they vainly attempted to 
conceal by words which did not suggest the truth!

    34. But, agreeing with you that in all these stories stags are spoken 
of instead of Iphigenias, yet, how are you sure, when you either explain or 
unfold these allegories, that you give the same explanations or have the 
same ideas which were entertained by the writers themselves in the silence 
of their thoughts, but expressed by words not adapted(13) to what was 
meant, but to something else? You say that the falling of rain into the 
bosom of the earth was spoken of as the union of Jupiter and Ceres; another 
may both devise with greater subtlety, and conjecture with some 
probability, something else; a third, a fourth may do the same; and as the 
characteristics of the minds of the thinkers show themselves, so each thing 
may be explained in an infinite number of ways. For since all that 
allegory, as it is called, is taken from narratives expressly made 
obscure,(14) and has no certain limit within which the meaning of the 
story,(15) as it is called, should be firmly fixed and unchangeable, it is 
open to every one to put the meaning into it which he pleases, and to 
assert that that has been adopted(16) to which his thoughts and 
surmises(17) led him. But this being the case, how can you obtain certainty 
from what is doubtful, and attach one sense only to an expression which you 
see to be explained in innumerable different ways?(1)

    35. Finally, if you think it right, returning to our inquiry, we ask 
this of you, whether you think that all stories about the gods,(2) that is, 
without any exception,(3) have been written throughout with a double 
meaning and sense, and in a way(4) admitting of several interpretations; or 
that some parts of them are not ambiguous at all, while, on the contrary, 
others have many meanings, and are enveloped in the veil of allegory which 
has been thrown round them? For if the whole structure and arrangement of 
the narrative have been surrounded with a veil of allegory from beginning 
to end, explain to us, tell us, what we should put and substitute for each 
thing which every story says, and to what other things and meanings we 
should refer(5) each. For as, to take an example, you wish Jupiter to be 
said instead of the rain, Ceres for the earth, and for Libera(6) and father 
Dis the sinking and casting of seed into the earth, so you ought to say 
what we should understand for the bull, what for the wrath and anger of 
Ceres; what the word Brimo(7) means; what the anxious prayer of Jupiter 
what the gods sent to make intercession for him, but not listened to; what 
the castrated ram; what the parts(8) of the castrated ram; what the 
satisfaction made with these; what the further dealings with his daughter, 
still more unseemly in their lustfulness; so, in the other story also, what 
the grove and flowers of Henna are; what the fire taken from Aetna, and the 
torches lit with it; what the travelling through the world with these; what 
the Attic country, the canton of Eleusin, the hut of Baubo, and her rustic 
hospitality; what the drought of cyceon(9) means, the refusal of it, the 
shaving and disclosure of the privy parts, the shameful charm of the sight, 
and the forgetfulness of her bereavement produced by such means. Now, if 
you point out what should be put in the place of all these, changing the 
one for the other,(10) we shall admit your assertion; but if you can 
neither present another supposition in each case, nor appeal to(11) the 
context as a whole, why do you make that obscure,(12) by means of fair-
seeming allegories, which has been spoken plainly, and disclosed to the 
understanding of all?

    36. But you will perhaps say that these allegories are not found in the 
whole body of the story, but that some parts are written so as to be 
understood by all, while others have a clouble meaning, and are veiled in 
ambiguity. That is refined subtlety, and can be seen through by the 
dullest. For because it is very difficult for you to transpose, reverse, 
and divert to other meanings all that has been said, you choose out some 
things which suit your purpose, and by means of these you strive to 
maintain that false and spurious versions were thrown about the truth which 
is under them.(13) But yet, supposing that we should grant to you that it 
is just as you say, how do you know, or whence do you learn, which part of 
the story is written without any double meaning,(14) which, on the other 
hand, has been covered with jarring and alien senses? For it  may be that 
what you believe to be so(15) is otherwise, that what you believe to be 
otherwise(16) has been produced with different, and even opposite modes of 
expression. For where, in a consistent whole, one part is said to be 
written allegorically, the other in plain and trustworthy language, while 
there is no sign in the thing itself to point out the difference between 
what is said ambiguously and what is said simply, that which is simple may 
as well be thought to have a double meaning, as what has been written 
ambiguously be believed to be wrapt in obscurity.(17) But, indeed, we 
confess that we do not understand at all by whom this(18) is either done, 
or can be believed to be possible.

    37. Let us examine, then, what is said in this way. In the grove of 
Henna, my opponent says, the maiden Proserpine was once gathering flowers: 
this is as yet uncorrupted, and has been told in a straightforward manner, 
for all know without any doubt what a grove and flowers are, what 
Proserpine is, and a maiden. Summanus sprung forth from the earth, borne 
along in a four-horse chariot: this, too, is just as simple, for a team of 
four horses, a chariot, and Summanus need no interpreter. Suddenly he 
carried off Proserpine, and bore her with himself under the earth: the 
burying of the seed, my opponent says, is meant by the rape of Proserpine. 
What has happened, pray, that the story should be suddenly turned to 
something else? that Proserpine should be called the seed? that she who was 
for a long time held to be a maiden gathering flowers, after that she was 
taken away and carried off by violence, should begin to signify the seed 
sown? Jupiter, my opponent says, having turned himself into a bull, longed 
to have intercourse with his mother Ceres: as was explained before, under 
these names the earth and falling rain are spoken of I see the law of 
allegory expressed in the dark and ambiguous terms. Ceres was enraged and 
angry, and received the parts(1) of a ram as the penalty demanded by(2) 
vengeance: this again I see to be expressed in common language, for both 
anger and (testes and) satisfaction are spoken of in their usual 
circumstances.(3) What, then, happened here,--that from Jupiter, who was 
named for the rain, and Ceres, who was named for the earth, the story 
passed to the true Jove, and to a most straightforward account of events?

    38. Either, then, they must all have been written and put forward 
allegorically, and the whole should be pointed out to us; or nothing has 
been so written, since what is supposed to be allegorical does not seem as 
if it were part of