4. But you will perhaps say that
the king was a diviner. Could he be more so than Jupiter
himself? But for a
mortal’s anticipating4300
| 4300 Lit.,
“unless a mortal
anticipated”—præsumeret, the ms. reading. |
what
Jupiter—whom
4301
| 4301 So
Oehler, supplying quem. |
he overreached—was going to say,
could the
god not know in what ways a man was preparing to overreach
him? Is it not, then, clear and manifest that these are puerile
and fanciful inventions, by which, while a
lively wit is
assigned
4302
| 4302
Lit., “liveliness of heart is procured.” |
to Numa, the
greatest want of foresight is imputed to
Jupiter? For what shows
so little foresight as to confess that you have been
ensnared by the
subtlety of a man’s intellect, and while you are
vexed at being
deceived, to give way to the wishes of him who has overcome you, and to
lay aside the means which you had proposed? For if there was
reason and some
natural fitness that
4303
expiatory
sacrifice for that which was
struck with
lightning should have been made with a man’s head, I
do not see why the proposal of an onion’s was made by the king;
but if it could be performed with an onion also, there was a
greedy
lust for human blood. And both parts are made to contradict
themselves: so that, on the one hand, Numa is shown not to have
wished to know what he did wish; and, on the other, Jupiter is shown to
have been merciless, because he said that he wished expiation to be
made with the heads of men, which could have been done by Numa with an
onion’s head>
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