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

by Arnobius

22. And, not content to have ascribed these carnal unions to the venerable Saturn,^[1] you affirm that the king of the world himself begot children even more shamefully than he was himself born and begotten. Of Hyperiona,^[2] as his mother, you say, and Jupiter, who wields the thunderbolt, was born the golden and blazing Sun; of Latona and the same, the Delian archer, and Diana,^[3] who rouses the woods; of Leda and the same,^[4] those named in Greek Dioscori; of Alcmena and the same, the Theban Hercules, whom his club and hide defended; of him and Semele, Liber, who is named Bromius, and was born a second time from his father’s thigh; of him, again, and Maia, Mercury, eloquent in speech, and bearer of the harmless snakes. Can any greater insult be put upon your Jupiter, or is there anything else which will destroy and ruin the reputation of the chief of the gods, further than that you believe him to have been at times overcome by vicious pleasures, and to have glowed with the passion of a heart roused to lust after women? And what had the Saturnian king to do with strange nuptials? Did Juno not suffice him; and could he not stay the force of his desires on the queen of the deities, although so great excellence graced her, such beauty, majesty of countenance, and snowy and marble whiteness of arms? Or did he, not content with one wife, taking pleasure in concubines, mistresses, and courtezans, a lustful god, show^[5] his incontinence in all directions, as is the custom with dissolute^[6] youths; and in old age, after intercourse with numberless persons, did he renew his eagerness for pleasures now losing their zest? What say you, profane ones; or what vile thoughts do you fashion about your Jove? Do you not, then, observe, do you not see with what disgrace you brand him? of what wrong-doing you make him the author? or what stains of vice, how great infamy you heap upon him?

Footnotes

1. Lit., “Saturnian gravity.”
2. Cf. ch. 14, note 8, supra.
3. It is worth while to compare this passage with ch. 16. Here Arnobius makes Latona the mother of Apollo and Diana in accordance with the common legend; but there he represents the first Minerva as claiming them as her children.
4. In the ms. there is here an evident blunder on the part of the copyist, who has inserted the preceding line (“the archer Apollo, and of the woods”) after “the same.” Omitting these words, the ms. reading is literally, “the name in Greek is to the Dioscori.” Before “the name” some word is pretty generally supposed to have been lost, some conjecturing “to whom;” others (among them Orelli, following Salmasius) “Castores.” But it is evidently not really necessary to supplement the text.
5. Lit., “scatter.”
6. Orelli reads with the ms., LB., and Hild., babecali, which he interprets belli, i.e., “handsome.”