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

by Arnobius

27. Are then your deities carried off by force, and do they seize by violence, as their holy and hidden mysteries relate? do they enter into marriages sought stealthily and by fraud?^[1] is their honour snatched from virgins^[2] resisting and unwilling? have they no knowledge of impending injury, no acquaintance with what has happened to those carried off by force? Are they, when lost, sought for as men are? and do they traverse the earth’s vast extent with lamps and torches when the sun is shining most brightly? Are they afflicted? are they troubled? do they assume the squalid garments of mourners, and the signs of misery? and that they may be able to turn their mind to victuals and the taking of food, is use made not of reason, not of the right time, not of some weighty words or pressing courtesy, but is a display made of the shameful and indecent parts of the body? and are those members exposed which the shame felt by all, and the natural law of modesty, bid us conceal, which it is not permissible to name among pure ears without permission, and saying, “by your leave?”^[3] What, I ask you, was there in such a sight,^[4] what in the privy parts of Baubo, to move to wonder and laughter a goddess of the same sex, and formed with similar parts? what was there such that, when presented to the divine eyes^[5] and sight, it should at the same time enable her to forget her miseries, and bring her with sudden cheerfulness to a happier state of mind? Oh, what have we had it in our power to bring forward with scoffing and jeering, were it not for respect for the reader,^[6] and the dignity of literature!

Footnotes

1. Lit., “by stealthy frauds.”
2. Lit. “is the honour of virginity snatched from them?”
3. Sine veniâ ac sine honoribus præfatis.
4. So Stewechius, LB., and Orelli, reading spec-t-u in t-ali for the ms. in specu ali.
5. Lit., “light.” [Note Clement, vol. ii. p. 175, col. 2, line 12.]
6. So the ms., Hild. and Oehler reading noscentis.