[4372] So the ms., according to Crusius, the edd. inserting s, di-s-cere--"to learn."
[4373] Lit., "on firmness of faith."
[4374] Lit., "sent to public testifying."
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 perfectly trustworthy? For what is the meaning of that pine [4375] 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? [4376] 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 Ia [4377] 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 [4378] 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, [4379] 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?
[4375] The festival of Cybele began on the 22d of March, when a pine tree was introduced into the mysteries, and continued until the 27th, which was marked by a general purification (lavatio), as Salmasius observed from a calendar of Constantine the Great. [An equinoctial feast, which the Church deposed by the Paschal observances. March 22 is the prima sedes Paschæ.]
[4376] Lit., "for solace of so great a wound."
[4377] So Stewechius, followed by Orelli and Oehler, reading quibus Ia for the ms. jam, which would refer the action to Cybele, whereas Arnobius expressly says (c. 7) that it was the newly wedded wife who covered the breast of Attis with wools. Jam is, however, received from the ms. by the other edd., except Hild., who asserts that the ms. reads Iam, and Elmenh., who reads Ion.
[4378] i.e., priests of Cybele, their names being derived from the Phrygian river Gallus, whose waters were supposed to bring on frenzy ending in self-mutilation.
[4379] Lit., "with wailing."
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 [4380] 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?
[4380] Lit., "with."
18. The greatness of the subject, and our duty to those on their defence also, [4381] 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, [4382] and not divulged [4383] openly to all, but to the silence of a few; but your innumerable sacred rites, and the loathsomeness of them all, [4384] 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 [4385] 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 [4386] mentions in his Causalia. But let us pass by with similar neglect [4387] 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. [4388] And when Tanaquil, skilled in the arts of Etruria, [4389] 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, [4390] and thus Servius king of Rome was born.
[4381] Lit., "and the duty of defence itself."
[4382] i.e., secret rites, to which only the initiated were admitted.
[4383] Lit., "which you deliver"--traditis; so Elmenh., LB., and later edd., for the unintelligible ms. tradidisse, retained in both Roman edd.
[4384] Lit., "deformity affixed to all."
[4385] ms. fetam f. Cf. i. 36, n. 2, p. 422, supra.
[4386] So Heraldus, from Plutarch, Rom., 21, where Butas is said to have written on this subject (aitiai) in elegiacs, for the ms. Putas.
[4387] Lit., "in like manner and with dissimulation."
[4388] i.e., heart, lungs, and liver, probably of a sacrifice.
[4389] i.e., "divination, augury," etc.
[4390] Vis Lucilii, i.e., semen. [He retails Pliny xxxvi. 27.]
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, [4391] 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, lest 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.
[4391] Cf. iv. 24.
20. It was our purpose to leave unnoticed those mysteries also into which Phrygia is initiated, and all that [4392] 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 [4393] 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 [4394] 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, [4395] 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 [4396] and tempest of her wrath, received the name Brimo [4397] thereafter from her ever-raging passion: nor has she any other wish than to punish as she may her son's audacity.
[4392] So the ms. and edd., reading gens illa, for which Memmius proposed Ilia--"and all the Trojan race."
[4393] Lit., "riding upon"--inequitare.
[4394] Lit., "most open."
[4395] Subsessoris.
[4396] Lit., "growling"--fremitum.
[4397] The ms. reads primo, emended as above by the brother of Canterus, followed by later edd.
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 [4398] into her bosom. When she saw what his pledge was, [4399] she is somewhat softened, and allows herself to be recalled to the care of the offspring which she had conceived. [4400] After the tenth month she bears a daughter, of beautiful form, whom later ages have called now Libera, now Proserpine; whom when Jupiter Verveceus [4401] saw to be strong, plump, and blooming, forgetting what evils and what wickedness, and how great recklessness, he had a little before fallen into, [4402] he returns to his former practices; and because it seemed too [4403] 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 [4404] 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 [4405] who narrates this, then we shall quote the well-known senarian verse of a Tarentine poet which antiquity sings, [4406] saying: "The bull begot a dragon, and the dragon a bull." Lastly, the sacred rites themselves, and the ceremony of initiation even, named Sebadia, [4407] 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.
[4398] i.e., testiculi.
[4399] Virilitate pignoris visa.
[4400] So Ursinus suggested, followed by Stewechius and later edd., concepti foetus revocatur ad curam; the ms. reads concepit--"is softened and conceived," etc.
[4401] Jupiter may be here called Verveceus, either as an epithet of Jupiter Ammon--"like a wether," or (and this seems most probable from the context), "dealing with wethers," referring to the mode in which he had extricated himself from his former difficulty, or "stupid." The ms. reads virviriceus.
[4402] Lit., "encountered"--aggressus.
[4403] Lit., "sufficiently."
[4404] i.e., Ceres.
[4405] Lit., "will any one want."
[4406] i.e., handed down by antiquity. [Vol. ii. p. 176, this series.]
[4407] These seem to have been celebrated in honour of Dionysius as well as Zeus, though, in so far as they are described by Arnobius, they refer to the intrigue of the latter only. Macrobius, however (Saturn., i. 18), mentions that in Thrace, Liber and Sol were identified and worshipped as Sebadius: and this suggests that we have to take but one more step to explain the use of the title to Jupiter also.
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 [4408] 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 [4409] crimes, an occasion of evil-speaking, a kind of open place into which should gather all filthiness from the impurities of the stage. [4410] 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 [4411] 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?