The Octavius of Minucius Felix.

 The Octavius of Minucius Felix.

 Chapter II.—Argument:  The Arrival of Octavius at Rome During the Time of the Public Holidays Was Very Agreeable to Minucius.  Both of Them Were Desir

 Chapter III.—Argument:  Octavius, Displeased at the Act of This Superstitious Man, Sharply Reproaches Minucius, on the Ground that the Disgrace of Thi

 Chapter IV.—Argument:  Cæcilius, Somewhat Grieved at This Kind of Rebuke Which for His Sake Minucius Had Had to Bear from Octavius, Begs to Argue with

 Chapter V.—Argument:  Cæcilius Begins His Argument First of All by Reminding Them that in Human Affairs All Things are Doubtful and Uncertain, and tha

 Chapter VI.—Argument:  The Object of All Nations, and Especially of the Romans, in Worshipping Their Divinities, Has Been to Attain for Their Worship

 Chapter VII.—Argument:  That the Roman Auspices and Auguries Have Been Neglected with Ill Consequences, But Have Been Observed with Good Fortune.

 Chapter VIII.—Argument:  The Impious Temerity of Theodorus, Diagoras, and Protagoras is Not at All to Be Acquiesced In, Who Wished Either Altogether t

 Chapter IX.—Argument:  The Religion of the Christians is Foolish, Inasmuch as They Worship a Crucified Man, and Even the Instrument Itself of His Puni

 Chapter X.—Argument:  Whatever the Christians Worship, They Strive in Every Way to Conceal:  They Have No Altars, No Temples, No Acknowledged Images. 

 Chapter XI.—Argument:  Besides Asserting the Future Conflagration of the Whole World, They Promise Afterwards the Resurrection of Our Bodies:  and to

 Chapter XII.—Argument:  Moreover, What Will Happen to the Christians Themselves After Death, May Be Anticipated from the Fact that Even Now They are D

 Chapter XIII.—Argument:  Cæcilius at Length Concludes that the New Religion is to Be Repudiated And that We Must Not Rashly Pronounce Upon Doubtful M

 Chapter XIV.—Argument:  With Something of the Pride of Self-Satisfaction, Cæcilius Urges Octavius to Reply to His Arguments And Minucius with Modesty

 Chapter XV.—Argument:  Cæcilius Retorts Upon Minucius, with Some Little Appearance of Being Hurt, that He is Foregoing the Office of a Religious Umpir

 Chapter XVI.—Argument:  Octavius Arranges His Reply, and Trusts that He Shall Be Able to Dilute the Bitterness of Reproach with the River of Truthful

 Chapter XVII.—Argument:  Man Ought Indeed to Know Himself, But This Knowledge Cannot Be Attained by Him Unless He First of All Acknowledges the Entire

 Chapter XVIII.—Argument:  Moreover, God Not Only Takes Care of the Universal World, But of Its Individual Parts.  That by the Decree of the One God Al

 Chapter XIX.—Argument:  Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit.  And, Be

 Chapter XX.—Argument:  But If the World is Ruled by Providence and Governed by the Will of One God, an Ignorant Antipathy Ought Not to Carry Us Away i

 Chapter XXI.—Argument:  Octavius Attests the Fact that Men Were Adopted as Gods, by the Testimony of Euhemerus, Prodicus, Persæus, and Alexander the G

 Chapter XXII.—Argument:  Moreover, These Fables, Which at First Were Invented by Ignorant Men, Were Afterwards Celebrated by Others, and Chiefly by Po

 Chapter XXIII.—Argument:  Although the Heathens Acknowledge Their Kings to Be Mortal, Yet They Feign that They are Gods Even Against Their Own Will, N

 Chapter XXIV.—Argument:  He Briefly Shows, Moreover, What Ridiculous, Obscene, and Cruel Rites Were Observed in Celebrating the Mysteries of Certain G

 Chapter XXV.—Argument:  Then He Shows that Cæcilius Had Been Wrong in Asserting that the Romans Had Gained Their Power Over the Whole World by Means o

 Chapter XXVI.—Argument:  The Weapon that Cæcilius Had Slightly Brandished Against Him, Taken from the Auspices and Auguries of Birds, Octavius Retorts

 Chapter XXVII.—Argument:  Recapitulation.  Doubtless Here is a Source of Error:  Demons Lurk Under the Statues and Images, They Haunt the Fanes, They

 Chapter XXVIII.—Argument:  Nor is It Only Hatred that They Arouse Against the Christians, But They Charge Against Them Horrid Crimes, Which Up to This

 Chapter XXIX.—Argument:  Nor is It More True that a Man Fastened to a Cross on Account of His Crimes is Worshipped by Christians, for They Believe Not

 Chapter XXX.—Argument:  The Story About Christians Drinking the Blood of an Infant that They Have Murdered, is a Barefaced Calumny.  But the Gentiles,

 Chapter XXXI.—Argument:  The Charge of Our Entertainments Being Polluted with Incest, is Entirely Opposed to All Probability, While It is Plain that G

 Chapter XXXII.—Argument:  Nor Can It Be Said that the Christians Conceal What They Worship Because They Have No Temples and No Altars, Inasmuch as The

 Chapter XXXIII.—Argument:  That Even If God Be Said to Have Nothing Availed the Jews, Certainly the Writers of the Jewish Annals are the Most Sufficie

 Chapter XXXIV.—Argument:  Moreover, It is Not at All to Be Wondered at If This World is to Be Consumed by Fire, Since Everything Which Has a Beginning

 Chapter XXXV.—Argument:  Righteous and Pious Men Shall Be Rewarded with Never-Ending Felicity, But Unrighteous Men Shall Be Visited with Eternal Punis

 Chapter XXXVI.—Argument:  Fate is Nothing, Except So Far as Fate is God.  Man’s Mind is Free, and Therefore So is His Action:  His Birth is Not Brough

 Chapter XXXVII.—Argument:  Tortures Most Unjustly Inflicted for the Confession of Christ’s Name are Spectacles Worthy of God.  A Comparison Instituted

 Chapter XXXVIII.—Argument:  Christians Abstain from Things Connected with Idol Sacrifices, Lest Any One Should Think Either that They Yield to Demons,

 Chapter XXXIX.—Argument:  When Octavius Had Finished This Address, Minucius and Cæcilius Sate for Some Time in Attentive and Silent Wonder.  And Minuc

 Chapter XL.—Argument:  Then Cæcilius Exclaims that He is Vanquished by Octavius And That, Being Now Conqueror Over Error, He Professes the Christian

 Chapter XLI.—Argument:  Finally, All are Pleased, and Joyfully Depart:  Cæcilius, that He Had Believed Octavius, that He Had Conquered And Minucius,

Chapter XXX.—Argument:  The Story About Christians Drinking the Blood of an Infant that They Have Murdered, is a Barefaced Calumny.  But the Gentiles, Both Cruelly Expose Their Children Newly Born, and Before They are Born Destroy Them by a Cruel Abortion.  Christians are Neither Allowed to See Nor to Hear of Manslaughter.

“And now I should wish to meet him who says or believes that we are initiated by the slaughter and blood of an infant.  Think you that it can be possible for so tender, so little a body to receive those fatal wounds; for any one to shed, pour forth, and drain that new blood of a youngling, and of a man scarcely come into existence?  No one can believe this, except one who can dare to do it.  And I see that you at one time expose your begotten children to wild beasts and to birds; at another, that you crush them when strangled with a miserable kind of death.  There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations,102    By medicaments and drinks. extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth.  And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your gods.  For Saturn did not expose his children, but devoured them.  With reason were infants sacrificed to him by parents in some parts of Africa, caresses and kisses repressing their crying, that a weeping victim might not be sacrificed.  Moreover, among the Tauri of Pontus, and to the Egyptian Busiris, it was a sacred rite to immolate their guests, and for the Galli to slaughter to Mercury human, or rather inhuman, sacrifices.  The Roman sacrificers buried living a Greek man and a Greek woman, a Gallic man and a Gallic woman; and to this day, Jupiter Latiaris is worshipped by them with murder; and, what is worthy of the son of Saturn, he is gorged with the blood of an evil and criminal man.  I believe that he himself taught Catiline to conspire under a compact of blood, and Bellona to steep her sacred rites with a draught of human gore, and taught men to heal epilepsy with the blood of a man, that is, with a worse disease.  They also are not unlike to him who devour the wild beasts from the arena, besmeared and stained with blood, or fattened with the limbs or the entrails of men.  To us it is not lawful either to see or to hear of homicide; and so much do we shrink from human blood, that we do not use the blood even of eatable animals in our food.

CAPUT XXX.

0333A

ARGUMENTUM.---Impudentissimam quoque esse de potato a Christianis infantis a se occisi sanguine calumniam evincit Octavius. Ethnici vero, inquit, et pueros recens natos crudeliter exponunt et priusquam nascantur, crudeli necant abortu. Christianis homicidium nec videre fas, nec audire.

Illum jam velim convenire qui initiari nos dicit aut credit de caede infantis et sanguine. Putas posse fieri ut tam molle, tam parvulum corpus fata vulnerum capiat? ut quisquam illum rudem sanguinem novelli, et vixdum hominis caedat, fundat, exhauriat? Nemo hoc potest credere, nisi qui possit audere. Vos enim video procreatos filios nunc feris et avibus exponere, nunc adstrangulatos misero mortis genere elidere. 0333B Sunt quae in ipsis visceribus, medicaminibus et potis, 0334A originem futuri hominis exstinguant, et parricidium faciant antequam pariant. Et haec utique de deorum vestrorum disciplina descendunt; nam Saturnus filios suos non exposuit, sed voravit. Merito et ei in nonnullis Africae partibus a parentibus infantes immolabantur, blanditiis et osculo comprimente vagitum, ne flebilis hostia immoletur. Tauris etiam Ponticis et Aegyptio Busiridi ritus fuit hospites immolare, et Mercurio Gallos humanas vel inhumanas victimas caedere: Romani Graecum et Graecam, Gallum et Gallam, sacrificii viventes obruere; hodieque ab ab ipsis Latiaris Jupiter homicidio colitur; et, quod Saturni filio dignum est, mali et noxii hominis sanguine saginatur. Ipsum credo docuisse sanguinis foedere conjurare Catilinam, et Vellonam sacrum suum 0334B haustu humani cruoris imbuere; et comitialem morbum 0335A hominis sanguine, id est morbo graviore, sanare. Non dissimiles et qui de arena feras devorant illitas et infactas cruore, vel membris hominis et viscere saginatas. Nobis homicidium nec videre fas, nec audire; tantumque ab humano sanguine cavemus, ut nec edulium pecorum in cibis sanguinem noverimus.