Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter LXIX

by Arnobius

69. But our name is new, we are told, and the religion which we follow arose but a few days ago. Granting for the present that what you urge against us is not untrue, what is there, I would ask, among the affairs of men that is either done by bodily exertion and manual labour, or attained by the mind’s learning and knowledge, which did not begin at some time, and pass into general use and practice since then? Medicine,^[1] philosophy, music, and all the other arts by which social life has been built up and refined,—were these born with men, and did they not rather begin to be pursued, understood, and practised lately, nay, rather, but a short time since? Before the Etruscan Tages saw the^[2] light, did any one know or trouble himself to know and learn what meaning there was in the fall of thunderbolts, or in the veins of the victims sacrificed?^[3] When did the motion of the stars or the art of calculating nativities begin to be known? Was it not after Theutis^[4] the Egyptian; or after Atlas, as some say, the bearer, supporter, stay, and prop of the skies?

Footnotes

1. The ms. reads edi in filosophia; the first four edd., Philos.; Elmenh. and Orelli, Etenim phil.—“For were phil.;” LB., Ede an phil.—“say whether phil.,” which is, however faulty in construction, as the indicative follows. Rigaltius, followed by Oehler, emended as above, Medicina phil.
2. Lit., “reached the coasts of.”
3. Lit., “of the intestines”—extorum.
4. In both Roman edd., Theutatem, i.e., Theutas. Cf. Plato, Phædrus, st. p. 274.