Book IV.
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1. We would ask you, and you above all, O
Romans, lords and princes of the world, whether you think that Piety,
Concord, Safety, Honour, Virtue, Happiness, and other such names, to
which we see you rear4079
| 4079
Lit., “see altars built.” |
altars and splendid
temples, have
divine power, and
live in
heaven?
4080
or, as is usual, have you classed them
with the deities merely for form’s sake, because we desire and
wish these blessings to fall to our lot? For if, while you think
them empty names without any substance, you yet deify them with
divine
honours,
4081
| 4081
The ms. reads tam
(corrected by the first four edd. tamen) in
regionibus—“in the divine seats;” corrected,
religionibus, as above, by Ursinus. |
you will have
to consider whether that is a childish frolic, or tends to bring your
deities into contempt,
4082
| 4082
Lit., “to the deluding of your deities.” |
when you make equal, and add to their
number
vain and feigned names. But if you have loaded them with
temples and couches, holding with more assurance that these, too, are
deities, we
pray you to
teach us in our ignorance, by what
course, in what way, Victory, Peace, Equity, and the others mentioned
among the gods, can be understood to be gods, to belong to the assembly
of the immortals?
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