70. But why do I speak
of these trivial things? The immortal gods themselves, whose
temples you now enter with reverence, whose deity you
suppliantly adore, did they not at certain times, as is handed down by
your writings and traditions, begin to be, to be known and to be
invoked by names and titles which were given to them? For if it
is true that Jupiter with his brothers was born of Saturn and his wife,
before Ops was married and bore children Jupiter had not existed both
the Supreme and the Stygian,3881
no, nor the
lord of the
sea, nor
Juno, nay more, no one inhabited the heavenly seats except the two
parents; but from their union
the other gods were conceived and
born, and breathed the
breath of
life. So, then, at a certain
time the
god Jupiter began to be, at a certain time to merit
worship
and sacrifices, at a certain time to be set above his
brothers in
power.
3882
But,
again, if Liber, Venus,
Diana, Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, the Muses,
the Tyndarian
brothers,
3883
| 3883 Lit., “Castors,” i.e.,
Castor and Pollux. |
and Vulcan the
lord of
fire, were
begotten by
father Jupiter, and
born of a
parent sprung from Saturn,
before that Memory, Alcmena, Maia, Juno, Latona, Leda, Dione, and
Semele also bore
children to Diespiter; these
deities, too, were
nowhere in the
world, nor in any part of the universe, but by
Jupiter’s embraces they were begotten and
born, and began to have
some sense of their own existence. So then, these, too, began to
be at a certain time, and to be summoned among the gods to the
sacred
rites. This we say, in like manner, of Minerva. For if, as
you assert, she
burst forth from
Jupiter’s head
ungenerated,
3884
| 3884
i.e., sine ullius seminis jactu. |
before
Jupiter was begotten, and received in his mother’s
womb the shape
and outline of his body,
3885
| 3885
Lit., “forms of bodily circumscription.” |
it is quite certain that Minerva did
not exist, and was not reckoned among things or as existing at all; but
from Jove’s head she was
born, and began to have a real
existence. She therefore has an origin at the first, and began to
be called a
goddess at a certain time, to be set up in
temples, and to
be
consecrated by the inviolable obligations of
religion. Now as
this is the case, when you talk of the novelty of our
religion, does
your own not come into your thoughts, and do you not take care to
examine when your gods sprung up,—what origins, what causes they
have, or from what stocks they have burst forth and sprung? But
how shameful, how shameless it is to censure that in another which you
see that you do yourself,—to take occasion to revile and accuse
others for things which can be retorted upon you in
turn!
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