Chapter XIV.

I wish now to review your sacred rites; and I pass no censure on your sacrificing, when you offer the worn-out, the scabbed, the corrupting; when you cut off from the fat and the sound the useless parts, such as the head and the hoofs, which in your house you would have assigned to the slaves or the dogs; when of the tithe of Hercules you do not lay a third upon his altar (I am disposed rather to praise your wisdom in rescuing something from being lost); but turning to your books, from which you get your training in wisdom and the nobler duties of life, what utterly ridiculous things I find!—that for Trojans and Greeks the gods fought among themselves like pairs of gladiators; that Venus was wounded by a man, because she would rescue her son Æneas when he was in peril of his life from the same Diomede; that Mars was almost wasted away by a thirteen months’ imprisonment; that Jupiter was saved by a monster’s aid from suffering the same violence at the hands of the other gods; that he now laments the fate of Sarpedon, now foully makes love to his own sister, recounting (to her) former mistresses, now for a long time past not so dear as she. After this, what poet is not found copying the example of his chief, to be a disgracer of the gods? One gives Apollo to king Admetus to tend his sheep; another hires out the building labours of Neptune to Laomedon. A well-known lyric poet, too—Pindar, I mean—sings of Æsculapius deservedly stricken with lightning for his greed in practising wrongfully his art.  A wicked deed it was of Jupiter—if he hurled the bolt—unnatural to his grandson, and exhibiting envious feeling to the Physician. Things like these should not be made public if they are true; and if false, they should not be fabricated among people professing a great respect for religion.  Nor indeed do either tragic or comic writers shrink from setting forth the gods as the origin of all family calamities and sins. I do not dwell on the philosophers, contenting myself with a reference to Socrates, who, in contempt of the gods, was in the habit of swearing by an oak, and a goat, and a dog. In fact, for this very thing Socrates was condemned to death, that he overthrew the worship of the gods. Plainly, at one time as well as another, that is, always truth is disliked. However, when rueing their judgment, the Athenians inflicted punishment on his accusers, and set up a golden image of him in a temple, the condemnation was in the very act rescinded, and his witness was restored to its former value. Diogenes, too, makes utter mock of Hercules and the Roman cynic Varro brings forward three hundred Joves, or Jupiters they should be called, all headless.

CAPUT XIV.

Nolo et ritus vestros recensere; non dico 0349A quales sitis in sacrificando, cum enecta et tabidosa et scabiosa quaeque mactatis; cum de opimis et integris supervacua quaeque truncatis capitula et ungulas , quae domi quoque pueris vel canibus destinassetis; 0350A cum de decima Herculis nec tertiam partem in aram ejus imponitis . Laudo magis sapientiam, quod de perdito aliquid eripitis . Sed conversus ad litteras vestras, quibus informamini ad 0351A prudentiam et ad liberalia officia, quanta invenio ludibria! deos inter se propter Trojanos et Achivos ut gladiatorum paria congressos depugnasse; Venerem humana sagitta sauciatam, quod filium suum Aenean pene interfectum ab eodem Diomede rapere vellet ; Martem tredecim mensibus in vinculis pene consumptum; Jovem, ne eamdem vim a caeteris coelitibus experiretur, opera cujusdam monstri liberatum, et nunc flentem Sarpedonis casum, nunc foede subantem 0352A in sororem sub commemoratione non ita dilectarum jampridem amicarum ! Exinde quis non poeta ex auctoritate principis sui dedecorator invenitur deorum? Hic Apollinem Admeto regi pascendis pecoribus addicit , ille Neptuni structorias operas Laomedonti locat. Est et illis de lyricis (Pindarum dico) , qui Aesculapium canit avaritiae merito, qua medicinam nocenter exercebat , fulmine vindicatum . Malus Jupiter, si fulmen illius est , impius 0353A in nepotem, invidus in artificem. Haec neque vera prodi , neque falsa confingi apud religiosissimos oportebat. Nec tragici quidem aut comici parcunt, ut non aerumnas vel errores domus alicujus dei praefentur . Taceo de philosophis, Socrate contentus, qui in contumeliam deorum quercum et hircum et canem 0354A dejerabat. Sed propterea damnatus est Socrates, quia deos destruebat . Plane olim, id est semper, veritas odio est. Tamen cum poenitentia sententiae Athenienses et criminatores Socratis postea afflixerint , et imaginem ejus auream in templo 0355A collocarint, rescissa damnatio testimonium Socrati reddidit. Sed et Diogenes nescio quid in Herculem ludit, et Romanus Cynicus Varro trecentos 0356A Joves, sive Jupiteres dicendum, sine capitibus introducit .