24. But, my opponent
says, these are not the rites of our state. Who, pray, says
this, or who repeats it? Is he Roman, Gaul, Spaniard,
African, German, or Sicilian? And what does it avail your cause
if these stories are not yours, while those who compose them are on
your side? Or of what importance is it whether you approve of
them or not, since what you yourselves say4426
| 4426
Lit., “what are your proper things.” |
are found to be either just as foul,
or of even greater baseness? For do you wish that we should
consider the
mysteries and those ceremonies which are named by the
Greeks Thesmophoria,
4427
| 4427
Every one since Salmasius (ad solinum, p. 750) has supposed
Arnobius to have here fallen into a gross error, by confounding the
Eleusinian mysteries with the Thesmophoria; an error the less
accountable, because they are carefully distinguished by Clemens
Alexandrinus, whom Arnobius evidently had before him, as usual.
There seems to be no sufficient reason, however, for charging Arnobius
with such a blunder, although in the end of ch. 26 he refers to the
story just related as showing the base character of the Eleusinia
(Eleusiniorum vestrorum notas); as he here speaks of
mysteria(i.e., Eleusinia, cf. Nepos, Alc., 3,
16) et illa divina quæ Thesmophoria nominantur a
Græcis. It should be remembered also that there was much
in common between these mysteries: the story of Ceres’
wanderings was the subject of both; in both there was a season of
fasting to recall her sadness; both had indecent allusions to the way
in which that sadness was dispelled; and both celebrated with some
freedom the recovery of cheerfulness by the goddess, the great
distinguishing feature of the Thesmophoria being that only women could
take part in its rites. Now, as it is to the points in which the
two sets of mysteries were at one that allusion is made in the passage
which follows, it was only natural that Arnobius should not be very
careful to distinguish the one from the other, seeing that he was
concerned not with their differences, but with their coincidence.
It seems difficult, therefore, to maintain that Arnobius has here
convicted himself of so utter ignorance and so gross carelessness as
his critics have imagined. [Vol. ii. p. 176.] |
in which those holy vigils and
solemn watchings were
consecrated to the goddess by the Athenians? Do you wish
us, I say, to see what beginnings they have, what causes, that we may
prove that Athens itself also, distinguished in the arts and pursuits
of civilization, says things as insulting to the gods as others, and
that
stories are there publicly related under the mask of
religion just
as disgraceful as are thrown in
our way by the
rest of
you? Once, they say, when Proserpine, not yet a
woman and still a
maiden, was gathering
purple flowers in the meadows of Sicily, and when
her eagerness to
gather them was leading her hither and thither in all
directions, the king of the shades, springing forth through an opening
of unknown
depth,
seizes and bears away with him the
maiden, and
conceals himself again in the
bowels4428
of the
earth. Now when Ceres
did not know what had happened, and had no idea where in the
world her
daughter was, she set herself to
seek the lost one all over
the
4429
| 4429
Lit., “in the whole.” |
world.
She
snatches up two
torches lit at the fires of Ætna;
4430
| 4430
The ms. is utterly
corrupt—flammis onere pressas etneis, corrected as
above by Gelenius from c. 35., f.
comprehensas.—Æl. |
and giving
herself light by means of these, goes on her quest in all parts of the
earth.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
