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

by Arnobius

34. Some of your learned men^[1]—men, too, who do not chatter merely because their humour leads them—maintain that Diana, Ceres, Luna, are but one deity in triple union;^[2] and that there are not three distinct persons, as there are three different names; that in all these Luna is invoked, and that the others are a series of surnames added to her name. But if this is sure, if this is certain, and the facts of the case show it to be so, again is Ceres but an empty name, and Diana: and thus the discussion is brought to this issue, that you lead and advise us to believe that she whom you maintain to be the discoverer of the earth’s fruits has no existence, and Apollo is robbed of his sister, whom once the horned hunter^[3] gazed upon as she washed her limbs from impurity in a pool, and paid the penalty of his curiosity.

Footnotes

1. Cf. Servius ad Virg., Georg., i. 5: “The Stoics say that Luna, Diana, Ceres, Juno, and Proserpina are one; following whom, Virgil invoked Liber and Ceres for Sol and Luna”
2. Triviali—“common,” “vulgar,” seems to be here used for triplici.
3. Actæon.