27. Are then your deities
carried off by force, and do they seize by violence, as their holy and
hidden mysteries relate? do they enter into marriages sought stealthily
and by fraud?4455
| 4455
Lit., “by stealthy frauds.” |
is their honour
snatched from
virgins4456
resisting and
unwilling? have they no
knowledge of impending injury, no acquaintance with what has happened
to those carried off by force? Are they, when lost, sought for as
men are? and do they traverse the
earth’s vast extent with
lamps
and
torches when the sun is shining most brightly? Are they
afflicted? are they
troubled? do they assume the squalid
garments of
mourners, and the
signs of misery? and that they may be able to turn
their
mind to victuals and the taking of
food, is use made not of
reason, not of the right time, not of some weighty words or pressing
courtesy, but is a display made of the shameful and indecent parts of
the body? and are those members exposed which the
shame felt by all,
and the
natural law of modesty, bid us conceal, which it is not
permissible to name among pure
ears without permission, and saying,
“by your leave?”
4457
| 4457
Sine veniâ ac sine honoribus præfatis. |
What, I ask you, was there in
such a sight,
4458
| 4458
So Stewechius, LB., and Orelli, reading spec-t-u in t-ali
for the ms. in specu
ali. |
what in the
privy parts of Baubo, to move to wonder and laughter a
goddess of the
same sex, and formed with similar parts? what was there such that, when
presented to the
divine eyes4459
| 4459
Lit., “light.” [Note Clement, vol. ii. p. 175, col.
2, line 12.] |
and sight, it should at the same time
enable her to
forget her miseries, and bring her with sudden
cheerfulness to a happier state of mind? Oh, what have we had it
in our power to bring forward with scoffing and jeering, were it not
for respect for the reader,
4460
| 4460
So the ms., Hild. and Oehler
reading noscentis. |
and the dignity of
literature!
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