[4408] Lit., "of."
[4409] Lit., "that he might be a crop of"--seges, a correction in the margin of Ursinus for the ms. sedes--"a seat."
[4410] So all edd., reading scenarum (ms. scr-, but r marked as spurious), except LB, followed by Orelli, who gives sentinarum--"of the dregs." Oehler supplies e, which the sense seems to require. [Note our author's persistent scorn of Jove Opt. Max.]
[4411] Lit., "neigh with appetites of an enraged beast."
23. I should wish, therefore, to see Jupiter, the father of the gods, who ever controls the world and men, [4412] adorned with the horns of an ox, shaking his hairy ears, with his feet contracted into hoofs, chewing green grass, and having behind him [4413] a tail, hams, [4414] and ankles smeared over with soft excrement, [4415] 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 [4416] and divine hand with which he was wont to launch the gleaming lightnings and to hurl in his rage the thunderbolt. [4417] Then, indeed, I should like to see him ransacking their inmost parts with glowing knife; [4418] 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 [4419] to draw forth her pity, with downcast countenance, pale, wounded, [4420] pretending to be in agony; and to make this believed, defiled with the blood of the ram, and covering his pretended wound with bands of wool and linen. Is it possible that this can be heard and read in this world, [4421] 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 [4422] 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 [4423] existed, or was affected by any sense of wrong, would it not be fitting that, [4424] roused to anger, he 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? [4425]
[4412] This clearly refers to the Æneid, x. 18.
[4413] Lit., "on the rear part."
[4414] Suffragines.
[4415] So the margin of Ursinus, Elmenh. L.B., Oberth., Orelli, and Oehler, reading molli fimo for the ms. molissimo.
[4416] Lit., "censorial."
[4417] Lit., "rage with thunders."
[4418] So Gelenius, followed by Stewechius and Orelli, reading smilia for the corrupt and unintelligible ms. nullas.
[4419] Infulæ, besides being worn by the priest, adorned the victim, and were borne by the suppliant. Perhaps a combination of the two last ideas is meant to be suggested here.
[4420] i.e., seemingly so.
[4421] Lit., "under this axis of the world."
[4422] So the ms., followed by Hild. and Oehler; the other edd. reading gens for mens.
[4423] Lit., "felt himself to be."
[4424] Lit., "would the thing not be worthy that angry and roused."
[4425] i.e., reduce to chaos, in which one thing would not be distinguished from another, but all be mixed up confusedly.
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 [4426] 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, [4427] 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 [4428] 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 [4429] world. She snatches up two torches lit at the fires of Ætna; [4430] and giving herself light by means of these, goes on her quest in all parts of the earth.
[4426] Lit., "what are your proper things."
[4427] Every one since Salmasius (ad solinum, p. 750) has supposed Arnobius to have here fallen into a gross error, by confounding the Eleusinian mysteries with the Thesmophoria; an error the less accountable, because they are carefully distinguished by Clemens Alexandrinus, whom Arnobius evidently had before him, as usual. There seems to be no sufficient reason, however, for charging Arnobius with such a blunder, although in the end of ch. 26 he refers to the story just related as showing the base character of the Eleusinia (Eleusiniorum vestrorum notas); as he here speaks of mysteria(i.e., Eleusinia, cf. Nepos, Alc., 3, 16) et illa divina quæ Thesmophoria nominantur a Græcis. It should be remembered also that there was much in common between these mysteries: the story of Ceres' wanderings was the subject of both; in both there was a season of fasting to recall her sadness; both had indecent allusions to the way in which that sadness was dispelled; and both celebrated with some freedom the recovery of cheerfulness by the goddess, the great distinguishing feature of the Thesmophoria being that only women could take part in its rites. Now, as it is to the points in which the two sets of mysteries were at one that allusion is made in the passage which follows, it was only natural that Arnobius should not be very careful to distinguish the one from the other, seeing that he was concerned not with their differences, but with their coincidence. It seems difficult, therefore, to maintain that Arnobius has here convicted himself of so utter ignorance and so gross carelessness as his critics have imagined. [Vol. ii. p. 176.]
[4428] Lit., "caverns."
[4429] Lit., "in the whole."
[4430] The ms. is utterly corrupt--flammis onere pressas etneis, corrected as above by Gelenius from c. 35., f. comprehensas.--Æl.
25. In her wanderings on that quest, she reaches the confines of Eleusis as well as other countries [4431] --that is the name of a canton in Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited by aborigines [4432] named Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Eumolpus, [4433] Dysaules: Triptolemus, who yoked oxen; Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine; Eumolpus, of sheep, [4434] from whom also flows the race of Eumolpidæ, and from whom is derived that name famous among the Athenians, [4435] and those who afterwards flourished as caduceatores, [4436] 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, [4437] which the Greeks term cyceon. The goddess in her sorrow turns away from the kindly offered services, [4438] and rejects them; nor does her misfortune suffer her to remember what the body always requires. [4439] Baubo, on the other hand, begs and exhorts her--as is usual in such calamities--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, [4440] 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 [4441] 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; [4442] and then the goddess fixes her eyes upon these, [4443] and is pleased with the strange form of consolation. Then becoming more cheerful after laughing, 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.
[4431] Lit., "also."
[4432] Lit., "(they were) earth-born who inhabited."
[4433] The ms. wants this name; but it has evidently been omitted by accident, as it occurs in the next line.
[4434] Lit., "of woolly flock."
[4435] Cecropios et qui.
[4436] i.e. staff-bearers.
[4437] Cinnus, the chief ingredients, according to Hesychius (quoted by Oehler), being wine, honey, water, and spelt or barley. [P. 503, inf.]
[4438] Lit., "offices of humanity."
[4439] Lit., "common health." Arnobius is here utterly forgetful of Ceres' divinity, and subjects her to the invariable requirements of nature, from which the divine might be supposed to be exempt.
[4440] So the conjecture of Livineius, adopted by Oehler, gene-t-ri-cum for the ms. genericum.
[4441] So Stewechius, followed by Oehler, reading redit itafor the ms. redita; the other edd. merely drop a.
[4442] Omnia illa pudoris loca.
[4443] Pubi.
26. If any one perchance thinks that we are speaking wicked calumnies, let him take the hooks of the Thracian soothsayer, [4444] 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, [4445] 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 [4446] 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." [4447]
What say you, O wise sons of Erectheus? [4448] what, you citizens of Minerva? [4449] 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 [4450] is no false mistrust, nor are you assailed with lying accusations: [4451] 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; [4452] I have taken out of the mystic cist, [4453] and put into the wicker-basket; I have received again, and transferred to the little chest." [4454]
[4444] Orpheus, under whose name there was current in the time of Arnobius an immense mass of literature freely used, and it is probable sometimes supplemented, by Christian writers. Cf. c. 19.
[4445] Lit, "put forth with Greek mouth."
[4446] Lit., "tossing."
[4447] It may be well to observe that Arnobius differs from the Greek versions of these lines found in Clem. Alex. (vol. ii. p. 177) and Eusebius (Præpar. Evang. ii. 3), omitting all mention of Iacchus, who is made very prominent by them; and that he does not adhere strictly to metrical rules, probably, as Heraldus pointed out, because, like the poets of that age, he paid little heed to questions of quantity. Whether Arnobius has merely paraphrased the original as found in Clement and Eusebius, or had a different version of them before him, is a question which can only be discussed by means of a careful comparison between the Greek and Latin forms of the verses with the context in both cases.
[4448] So LB., Hild., and Oehler, reading Erechthidæ O(inserted by Hild.) for the ms. erithideo.