Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book III/Chapter XXX

by Arnobius

30. But what shall we say of Jove himself, whom the wise have repeatedly asserted to be the sun, driving a winged chariot, followed by a crowd of deities;^[1] some, the ether, blazing with mighty flames, and wasting fire which cannot be extinguished? Now if this is clear and certain, there is, then, according to you, no Jupiter at all; who, born of Saturn his father and Ops his mother, is reported to have been concealed in the Cretan territory, that he might escape his father’s rage. But now, does not a similar mode of thought remove Juno from the list of gods? For if she is the air, as you have been wont to jest and say, repeating in reversed order the syllables of the Greek name,^[2] there will be found no sister and spouse of almighty Jupiter, no Fluonia,^[3] no Pomona, no Ossipagina, no Februtis, Populonia, Cinxia, Caprotina; and thus the invention of that name, spread abroad with a frequent but vain^[4] belief, will be found to be wholly^[5] useless.

Footnotes

1. Cf. Plato, Phædr., st. p. 246.
2. Lit., “the reversed order of the Greek name being repeated,” i. e., instead of ἥ-ρα, ἀ-ήρ.
3. The ms. gives Fluvionia.
4. Lit., “with the frequency (or fame) of vain,” etc.
5. Lit., “very.”