24. No one, says my
opponent, makes supplication to the tutelar deities, and they therefore
withhold their usual favours and help. Cannot the gods, then, do
good, except they receive incense and consecrated offerings?3990
| 3990 Lit.,
“salted fruits,” the grits mixed with salt, strewed on the
victim. |
and do they quit
and
renounce their posts, unless they see their
altars anointed with
the
blood of
cattle? And yet I thought but now that the
kindness
of the gods was of their own free will, and that the unlooked-for
gifts
of
benevolence flowed unsought from them. Is, then, the King of
the universe solicited by any libation or
sacrifice to grant to the
races of men all the
comforts of
life? Does the
Deity not impart
the sun’s fertilizing warmth, and the
season of
night, the
winds,
the rains, the fruits, to all alike,—the good and the bad, the
unjust and the just,
3991
| 3991
Supplied by Ursinus. |
the free-
born and the
slave, the
poor
and the
rich? For this
belongs to the true and mighty
God, to
show
kindness, unasked, to that which is weary and
feeble, and always
encompassed by misery, of many kinds. For to grant your prayers
on the offering of sacrifices, is not to bring help to those who ask
it, but to sell the riches of their beneficence. We men trifle,
and are foolish in so great a matter; and, forgetting what
3992
| 3992 So
the edd. reading quid, except Hild. and Oehler, who retain
the ms.
qui—“who.” |
God is, and
the majesty of His name, associate with the tutelar deities whatever
meanness or baseness our morbid credulity can
invent.
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