Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XXV

by Arnobius

25. In her wanderings on that quest, she reaches the confines of Eleusis as well as other countries^[1]—that is the name of a canton in Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited by aborigines^[2] named Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Eumolpus,^[3] Dysaules: Triptolemus, who yoked oxen; Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine; Eumolpus, of sheep,^[4] from whom also flows the race of Eumolpidæ, and from whom is derived that name famous among the Athenians,^[5] and those who afterwards flourished as caduceatores,^[6] hierophants, and criers. So, then, that Baubo who, we have said, dwelt in the canton of Eleusis, receives hospitably Ceres, worn out with ills of many kinds, hangs about her with pleasing attentions, beseeches her not to neglect to refresh her body, brings to quench her thirst wine thickened with spelt,^[7] which the Greeks term cyceon. The goddess in her sorrow turns away from the kindly offered services,^[8] and rejects them; nor does her misfortune suffer her to remember what the body always requires.^[9] Baubo, on the other hand, begs and exhorts her—as is usual in such calamities—not to despise her humanity; Ceres remains utterly immoveable, and tenaciously maintains an invincible austerity. But when this was done several times, and her fixed purpose could not be worn out by any attentions, Baubo changes her plans, and determines to make merry by strange jests her whom she could not win by earnestness. That part of the body by which women both bear children and obtain the name of mothers,^[10] this she frees from longer neglect: she makes it assume a purer appearance, and become smooth like a child, not yet hard and rough with hair. In this wise she returns^[11] to the sorrowing goddess; and while trying the common expedients by which it is usual to break the force of grief, and moderate it, she uncovers herself, and baring her groins, displays all the parts which decency hides;^[12] and then the goddess fixes her eyes upon these,^[13] and is pleased with the strange form of consolation. Then becoming more cheerful after laughing, she takes and drinks off the drought spurned before, and the indecency of a shameless action forced that which Baubo’s modest conduct was long unable to win.

Footnotes

1. Lit., “also.”
2. Lit., “(they were) earth-born who inhabited.”
3. The ms. wants this name; but it has evidently been omitted by accident, as it occurs in the next line.
4. Lit., “of woolly flock.”
5. Cecropios et qui.
6. i.e. staff-bearers.
7. Cinnus, the chief ingredients, according to Hesychius (quoted by Oehler), being wine, honey, water, and spelt or barley. [P. 503, inf.]
8. Lit., “offices of humanity.”
9. Lit., “common health.” Arnobius is here utterly forgetful of Ceres’ divinity, and subjects her to the invariable requirements of nature, from which the divine might be supposed to be exempt.
10. So the conjecture of Livineius, adopted by Oehler, gene-t-ri-cum for the ms. genericum.
11. So Stewechius, followed by Oehler, reading redit itafor the ms. redita; the other edd. merely drop a.
12. Omnia illa pudoris loca.
13. Pubi.