24. These are your ideas,
these are your sentiments, impiously conceived, and more impiously
believed. Nay, rather, to speak out more truly, the augurs, the
dream interpreters, the soothsayers, the prophets, and the priestlings,
ever vain, have devised these fables; for they, fearing that their own
arts be brought to nought, and that they may extort but scanty
contributions from the devotees, now few and infrequent, whenever they
have found you to be willing3276
3276
So the ms., which is corrected in the
first ed. “us to be willing”—nos
velle: Stewechius reads, “us to be making good
progress, are envious, enraged, and cry aloud,” etc.—nos
belle provenire compererunt, invident, indignantur,
declamitantque, etc.; to both of which it is sufficient
objection that they do not improve the passage by their departure from
the ms. |
that their
craft should come into disrepute,
cry aloud, The gods are neglected, and in the
temples there is now a
very thin attendance. Former ceremonies are exposed to derision,
and the time-honoured rites of institutions once
sacred have sunk
before the
superstitions of new
religions. Justly is the human
race
afflicted by so many pressing calamities, justly is it racked by
the
hardships of so many toils. And men—a senseless
race—being unable, from their inborn blindness, to see even that
which is placed in open light, dare to assert in their frenzy what you
in your sane mind do not blush to believe.
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