20. And yet, O you—if
it is plain and clear to you that the gods live, and that the
inhabitants of heaven dwell in the inner parts of the images, why do
you guard, protect, and keep them shut up under the strongest keys, and
under fastenings of immense size, under iron bars, bolts,4720
| 4720
Claustris repagulis pessulis. |
and other such
things, and
defend them with a
thousand men and a
thousand women to
keep
guard, lest by chance some
thief or nocturnal robber should
creep
in? Why do you
feed dogs in the capitols?
4721
| 4721
Cf. p. 481, n. 5. Geese as well as dogs guarded the Capitol,
having been once, as the well-known legend tells, its only guards
against the Gauls. |
Why do you give
food and
nourishment to geese? Rather, if you are assured that the gods
are there, and that they do not depart to any place from their figures
and images, leave to them the care of themselves, let their
shrines be
always unlocked and open; and if anything is secretly carried off by
any one with reckless
fraud, let them show the might of
divinity, and
subject the sacrilegious robbers to fitting punishments at the
moment
4722
| 4722
The ms., first four edd., and Elm.
read nomine—“under the name of,”
corrected momine by Meursius and the rest. |
of their
theft and
wicked deed. For it is unseemly, and subversive
of their power and majesty, to entrust the guardianship of the highest
deities to the care of dogs, and when you are seeking for some means of
frightening thieves so as to keep them away, not to beg it from
the
gods themselves, but to set and place it in the cackling of
geese.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
