Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book IV/Chapter X

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Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VI, Adversus Gentes, Book IV
by Arnobius, translated by Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell

Chapter X

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158874Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VI, Adversus Gentes, Book IV — Chapter XHamilton Bryce and Hugh CampbellArnobius

10. But if you urge that bones, different kinds of honey, thresholds, and all the other things which we have either run over rapidly, or, to avoid prolixity, passed by altogether, have^[1] their own peculiar guardians, we may in like manner introduce a thousand other gods, who should care for and guard innumerable things. For why should a god have charge of honey only, and not of gourds, rape, cunila, cress, figs, beets, cabbages? Why should the bones alone have found protection, and not the nails, hair, and all the other things which are placed in the hidden parts and members of which we feel ashamed, and are exposed to very many accidents, and stand more in need of the care and attention of the gods? Or if you say that these parts, too, act under the care of their own tutelar deities, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things; nor will the cause be stated why the divine care does not protect all things, if you say that there are certain things over which the deities preside, and for which they care

Footnotes

↑ The ms. reading is quid si haberet in sedibus suos, retained by the first five edd., with the change of -ret into -rent—“what if in their seats the bones had their own peculiar guardians;” Ursinus in the margin, followed by Hild. and Oehler, reads in se divos suos—“if for themselves the bones had gods as their own peculiar,” etc.; the other edd. reading, as above, si habere insistitis suos.

[1] The ms. reading is quid si haberet in sedibus suos, retained by the first five edd., with the change of -ret into -rent—“what if in their seats the bones had their own peculiar guardians;” Ursinus in the margin, followed by Hild. and Oehler, reads in se divos suos—“if for themselves the bones had gods as their own peculiar,” etc.; the other edd. reading, as above, si habere insistitis suos.

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