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

by Arnobius

20. But you, on the contrary, forgetting how great^[1] their dignity and grandeur are, associate with them a birth,^[2] and impute to them a descent,^[3] which men of at all refined feelings regard as at once execrable and terrible. From Ops, you say, his mother, and from his father Saturn, Diespiter was born with his brothers. Do the gods, then, have wives; and, the matches having been previously planned, do they become subject to the bonds of marriage? Do they take upon themselves^[4] the engagements of the bridal couch by prescription, by the cake of spelt, and by a pretended sale?^[5] Have they their mistresses,^[6] their promised wives, their betrothed brides, on settled conditions? And what do we say about their marriages, too, when indeed you say that some celebrated their nuptials, and entertained joyous throngs, and that the goddesses sported at these; and that some threw all things into utter confusion with dissensions because they had no share in singing the Fescennine verses, and occasioned danger and destruction^[7] to the next generation of men?^[8]

Footnotes

1. Lit., “forgetting the so great majesty and sublimity.”
2. Both plural.
3. Both plural.
4. The ms., first four edd., and Oberthür read conducunt—“unite;” for which the rest read condic-unt, as above.
5. i.e., usu, farre, coemptione.
6. The word here translated mistresses, speratas, is used of maidens loved, but not yet asked in marriage.
7. Lit., “dangers of destructions.”
8. Instead of “occasioned,” sevisse, which the later editions give, the ms. and first four edd. read sævisse—“that danger and destruction raged against,” etc.