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| Argument: The Charge of Our Entertainments Being Polluted with Incest, is Entirely Opposed to All Probability, While It is Plain that Gentiles are Actually Guilty of Incest. The Banquets of Christians are Not Only Modest, But Temperate. In Fact, Incestuous Lust is So Unheard Of, that with Many Even the Modest Association of the Sexes Gives Rise to a Blush. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXXI.—Argument: The Charge of Our Entertainments Being
Polluted with Incest, is Entirely Opposed to All Probability, While It
is Plain that Gentiles are Actually Guilty of Incest. The
Banquets of Christians are Not Only Modest, But Temperate. In
Fact, Incestuous Lust is So Unheard Of, that with Many Even the Modest
Association of the Sexes Gives Rise to a Blush.
“And of the incestuous banqueting, the
plotting of demons has falsely devised an enormous fable against us, to
stain the glory of our modesty, by the loathing excited by an
outrageous infamy, that before inquiring into the truth it might turn
men away from us by the terror of an abominable charge. It was
thus your own Fronto1818
1818 [Fronto is
called “our Cirtensian” in cap. ix.
supra; and this suggests that the Octavius was
probably written in Cirta, circaa.d. 210. See supra, p. 178.] | acted in this
respect: he did not produce testimony, as one who alleged a
charge, but he scattered reproaches as a rhetorician. For these
things have rather originated from your own nations. Among the
Persians, a promiscuous association between sons and mothers is
allowed. Marriages with sisters are legitimate among the
Egyptians and in Athens. Your records and your tragedies, which
you both read and hear with pleasure, glory in incests: thus also
you worship incestuous gods, who have intercourse with mothers, with
daughters, with sisters. With reason, therefore, is incest
frequently detected among you, and is continually permitted.
Miserable men, you may even, without knowing it, rush into what is
unlawful: since you scatter your lusts promiscuously, since you
everywhere beget children, since you frequently expose even those who
are born at home to the mercy of others, it is inevitable that you must
come back to your own children, and stray to your own offspring.
Thus you continue the story of incest, even although you have no
consciousness of your crime. But we maintain our modesty not in
appearance, but in our heart we gladly abide by the bond of a single
marriage; in the desire of procreating, we know either one wife, or
none at all. We practise sharing in banquets, which are not only
modest, but also sober: for we do not indulge in entertainments
nor prolong our feasts with wine; but we temper our joyousness with
gravity, with chaste discourse, and with body even more chaste (divers
of us unviolated) enjoy rather than make a boast of a perpetual
virginity of a body. So far, in fact, are they from indulging in
incestuous desire, that with some even the (idea of a) modest
intercourse of the sexes causes a blush. Neither do we at once
stand on the level of the lowest of the people, if we refuse your
honours and purple robes; and we are not fastidious, if we all have a
discernment of one good, but are assembled together with the same
quietness with which we live as individuals; and we are not garrulous
in corners, although you either blush or are afraid to hear us in
public. And that day by day the number of us is increased, is not
a ground for a charge of error, but is a testimony which claims praise;
for, in a fair mode of life, our actual number both continues and
abides undiminished, and strangers increase it. Thus, in short,
we do not distinguish our people by some small bodily mark, as you
suppose, but easily enough by the sign of innocency and modesty.
Thus we love one another, to
your regret, with a mutual love, because we do not know how to
hate. Thus we call one another, to your envy, brethren: as
being men born of one God and Parent, and companions in faith, and as
fellow-heirs in hope. You, however, do not recognise one another,
and you are cruel in your mutual hatreds; nor do you acknowledge one
another as brethren, unless indeed for the purpose of
fratricide.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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