6. And yet let no one think
that we are perversely determined not to submit to3936
| 3936
Lit., “take the oaths of allegiance” or military oaths,
using a very common metaphor applied to Christians in the preceding
book, c. 5. |
the other deities, whoever they
are! For we
lift up pious minds, and stretch forth our
hands in prayer,
3937
| 3937
Lit., “suppliant hands.” It has been thought that the
word supplices is a gloss, and that the idea originally was that
of a band of soldiers holding out their hands as they swore to be true
to their country and leaders; but there is no want of simplicity and
congruity in the sentence as it stands, to warrant us in rejecting the
word. |
and do
not refuse to draw near whithersoever you may have summoned us; if only
we
learn who those
divine beings are whom you press upon us, and with
whom it may be right to share the
reverence which we show to the king
and
prince who is over all. It is Saturn,
my opponent
says, and Janus, Minerva, Juno, Apollo, Venus, Triptolemus,
Hercules, Æsculapius, and all the others, to whom the
reverence of
antiquity dedicated magnificent temples in almost every city. You
might, perhaps, have been able to attract us to the
worship of these
deities you mention, had you not been yourselves the first, with foul
and unseemly fancies, to devise such tales about them as not merely to
stain their honour, but, by the natures assigned to them, to
prove that
they did not exist at all. For, in the first place, we cannot be
led to believe this,—that that
immortal and
supreme nature has
been divided by sexes, and that there are some male, others
female. But this point, indeed, has been long ago fully treated
of by men of ardent genius, both in
Latin and
Greek; and Tullius, the
most eloquent among the
Romans, without dreading the vexatiousness of a
charge of impiety, has above all, with greater
piety,
3938
declared—boldly, firmly, and
frankly—what he thought of such a fancy; and if you would proceed
to receive from him opinions written with true discernment, instead of
merely brilliant sentences, this case would have been concluded;
nor would it require at our weak hands
3939
| 3939
Lit., “from us infants;” i.e., as compared with such a man
as Cicero. |
a second pleading,
3940
| 3940
Secundas actiones. The reference is evidently to a second
speaker, who makes good his predecessor’s defects. |
as it is termed.
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