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

by Arnobius

14. Your theologians, then, and authors on unknown antiquity, say that in the universe there are three Joves, one of whom has Æther for his father; another, Cœlus; the third, Saturn, born and buried^[1] in the island of Crete. They speak of five Suns and five Mercuries,—of whom, as they relate, the first Sun is called the son of Jupiter, and is regarded as grandson of Æther; the second is also Jupiter’s son, and the mother who bore him Hyperiona;^[2] the third the son of Vulcan, not Vulcan of Lemnos, but the son of the Nile; the fourth, whom Acantho bore at Rhodes in the heroic age, was the father of Ialysus; while the fifth is regarded as the son of a Scythian king and subtle Circe. Again, the first Mercury, who is said to have lusted after Proserpina,^[3] is son of Cœlus, who is above all. Under the earth is the second, who boasts that he is Trophonius. The third was born of Maia, his mother, and the third Jove;^[4] the fourth is the offspring of the Nile, whose name the people of Egypt dread and fear to utter. The fifth is the slayer of Argus, a fugitive and exile, and the inventor of letters in Egypt. But there are five Minervas also, they say, just as there are five Suns and Mercuries; the first of whom is no virgin but the mother of Apollo by Vulcan; the second, the offspring of the Nile, who is asserted to be the Egyptian Sais; the third is descended from Saturn, and is the one who devised the use of arms; the fourth is sprung from Jove, and the Messenians name her Coryphasia; and the fifth is she who slew her lustful^[5] father, Pallas.

Footnotes

1. Lit., “committed to sepulture and born in,” etc.
2. Arnobius repeats this statement in ch. 22, or the name would have been regarded as corrupt, no other author making mention of such a goddess; while Cicero speaks of one Sun as born of Hyperion. It would appear, therefore, to be very probable that Arnobius, in writing from memory or otherwise, has been here in some confusion as to what Cicero did say, and thus wrote the name as we have it. It has also been proposed to read “born of Regina” (or, with Gelenius, Rhea), “and his father Hyperion,” because Cybele is termed βασίλεια; for which reading there seems no good reason.—Immediately below, Ialysus is made the son, instead of, as in Cicero, the grandson of the fourth; and again, Circe is said to be mother, while Cicero speaks of her as the daughter of the fifth Sun. These variations, viewed along with the general adherence to Cicero’s statements (de N. D., iii. 21 sqq.), seem to give good grounds for adopting the explanation given above.
3. i.e., in Proserpinam genitalibus adhinnivisse subrectis.
4. Lit., “of Jupiter, but the third.”
5. i.e., incestorum appetitorem.