10. But you will perhaps say
the human race shuns and execrates such unions;4344
| 4344
So Heraldus, reading conventionis hujusmodi cœtum for
the ms. cœptum. |
among the gods there is no
incest. And why,
then, did his mother
resist with the
greatest vehemence her son when he offered her
violence? Why did
she
flee from his embraces, as if she were avoiding
unlawful
approaches? For if there was nothing wrong in so doing, she
should have gratified him without any reluctance, just as he eagerly
wished to satisfy the cravings of his
lust. And here, indeed,
very thrifty men, and frugal even about shameful works, that that
sacred seed may not seem to have been poured forth in
vain—the
rock, one says, drank up
Jupiter’s foul incontinence. What
followed next, I ask? Tell. In the very
heart of the
rock,
and in that flinty hardness, a
child was formed and quickened to be the
offspring of great
Jupiter. It is not easy to object to
conceptions so unnatural and so wonderful. For as the human race
is said by you to have sprung and proceeded from
stones, it must be
believed that the
stones both had genital parts, and drank in the
seed
cast on them, and when their time was full were pregnant,
4345
and at last
brought forth, travailing in
distress as
women do. That impels
our curiosity to inquire, since you say that the
birth occurred after
ten months, in what
womb of the
rock was he enclosed at that time? with
what
food, with what juices, was he supplied? or what could he have
drawn to support him from the hard
stone, as unborn
infants usually
receive from their
mothers! He had not yet reached the
light,
my informant
says; and already bellowing and imitating his
father’s
thunderings, he reproduced
their sound.
4346
And after it was given him to
see the
sky and the
light of day, attacking all things which lay in his
way, he made
havoc of them, and assured himself that he was able to
thrust down from
heaven the gods themselves. O cautious and
foreseeing mother of the gods, who, that she might not undergo the
ill-will of so
4347
| 4347
Perhaps, “that she might not be subject to ill-will for having
borne so.” |
arrogant
a son, or that his bellowing while still unborn might not disturb her
slumbers or
break her repose, withdrew herself, and sent far from her
that most hurtful seed, and gave it to the rough
rock.
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