37. But this is the state of
the case, that as you are exceedingly strong in war and in military
power, you think you excel in knowledge of the truth also, and are
pious before the gods,4271
| 4271
i.e., in their sight or estimation. |
whose might you have been the first to
besmirch with foul imaginings. Here, if your fierceness allows,
and madness
suffers, we ask you to answer us this: Whether you
think that
anger finds a place in the
divine nature, or that the
divine
blessedness is
far removed from such passions? For if they are
subject to passions so furious,
4272
| 4272
Lit., “conceive these torches.” |
and are excited by feelings of
rage
as your imaginings suggest,—for you say that they have often
shaken the
earth with their roaring,
4273
and bringing woful misery on men,
corrupted with pestilential contagion the character of the
times,
4274
| 4274
The ms. reads conru-isse auras
temporum, all except the first four edd. inserting p as
above. Meursius would also change temp. into
ventorum—“the breezes of the winds.” |
both because
their games had been celebrated with too little care, and because their
priests were not received with favour, and because some
small spaces
were desecrated, and because their rites were not duly
performed,—it must consequently be understood that they feel no
little
wrath on account of the opinions which have been
mentioned. But if, as follows of necessity, it is admitted that
all these miseries with which men have long been overwhelmed flow from
such fictions, if the
anger of the deities is excited by these causes,
you are the occasion of so
terrible misfortunes, because you never
cease to jar upon the feelings of the gods, and excite them to a
fierce
desire for
vengeance. But if, on the other
hand, the gods are not
subject to such passions, and do not know at all what it is to be
enraged, then indeed there is no ground for saying that they who know
not what
anger is are
angry with us, * and they are free from its
presence,
4275
| 4275
So the ms., reading
comptu—tie, according to Hild., followed by LB. and
Orelli. |
and the
disorder
4276
it
causes. For it cannot be, in the
nature of things, that what
is one should become two; and that
unity, which is naturally
uncompounded, should divide and go apart into separate things.
4277
| 4277
The words following the asterisk (*) are marked in LB. as spurious or
corrupt, or at least as here out of place. Orelli transposes them
to ch. 13, as was noticed there, although he regards them as an
interpolation. The clause is certainly a very strange one, and
has a kind of affected abstractness, which makes it seem out of place;
but it must be remembered that similarly confused and perplexing
sentences are by no means rare in Arnobius. If the clause is to
be retained, as good sense can be made from it here as anywhere
else. The general meaning would be: The gods, if angry, are
angry with the pagans; but if they are not subject to passion, it would
be idle to speak of them as angry with the Christians, seeing that they
cannot possibly at once be incapable of feeling anger, and yet at the
same time be angry with them. [See cap. 13, note 4, p. 480,
supra.] |
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