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

by Arnobius

6. What can you say as to this, that it is attested by the writings of authors, that many of these temples which have been raised with golden domes and lofty roofs cover bones and ashes, and are sepulchres of the dead? Is it not plain and manifest, either that you worship dead men for immortal gods, or that an inexpiable affront is cast upon the deities, whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the dead? Antiochus,^[1] in the ninth book of his Histories, relates that Cecrops was buried in the temple of Minerva,^[2] at Athens; again, in the temple of the same goddess, which is in the citadel of Larissa,^[3] it is related and declared that Acrisius was laid, and in the sanctuary of Polias,^[4] Erichthonius; while the brothers Dairas and Immarnachus were buried in the enclosure of Eleusin, which lies near the city. What say you as to the virgin daughters of Celeus? are they not said to be buried^[5] in the temple of Ceres at Eleusin? and in the shrine of Diana, which was set up in the temple of the Delian Apollo, are not Hyperoche and Laodice buried, who are said to have been brought thither from the country of the Hyperboreans? In the Milesian Didymæon,^[6] Leandrius says that Cleochus had the last honours of burial paid to him. Zeno of Myndus openly relates that the monument of Leucophryne is in the sanctuary of Diana at Magnesia. Under the altar of Apollo, which is seen in the city of Telmessus, is it not invariably declared by writings that the prophet Telmessus lies buried? Ptolemæus, the son of Agesarchus, in the first book of the History of Philopator^[7] which he published, affirms, on the authority of literature, that Cinyras, king of Paphos, was interred in the temple of Venus with all his family, nay, more, with all his stock. It would be^[8] an endless and boundless task to describe in what sanctuaries they all are throughout the world; nor is anxious care required, although^[9] the Egyptians fixed a penalty for any one who should have revealed the places in which Apis lay hid, as to those Polyandria^[10] of Varro,^[11] by what temples they are covered, and what heavy masses they have laid upon them.

Footnotes

1. A Syracusan historian. The rest of the chapter is almost literally translated from Clement, who is followed by Eusebius also (Præp. Evang., ii. 6). [See vol. ii. p. 184, this series.]
2. i.e., the Acropolis.
3. In Thessaly, whither (acc. to Pausanias) he had fled in vain, to avoid the fulfillment of the oracle that he should be killed by his daughter’s son.
4. i.e., Athena Polias, or guardian of cities. Immediately below, the ms. reads Immarnachus, corrected in LB. and Orelli Immarus from Clem., who speaks of “Immarus, son of Eumolpus and Dæira.”
5. So the unintelligible reading of the ms., humation-ibus officia, was emended by Heraldus, followed by LB. and Orelli, is habuisse.
6. i.e., the temple near Didyma, sacred to Apollo, who was worshipped then under the name Didymus.
7. i.e., “lover of his father,” the name given ironically to the fourth Ptolemy, because he murdered his father.
8. Lit., “is.”
9. So the ms., both Rom. edd., Hild., and Oehler, reading quamvis pœnam; Gelenius, Canterus, Elm., and Oberthür omit vis, and the other edd. v, i.e., “as to what punishment the Egyptian,” etc. This must refer to the cases in which the sacred bull, having outlived the term of twenty-five years, was secretly killed by the priests, while the people were taught that it had thrown itself into the water.
10. i.e., “burial-places.” By this Oehler has attempted to show is meant the Hebdomades vel de Imaginibus of Varro, a series of biographical sketches illustrated with portraits, executed in some way which cannot be clearly ascertained.
11. ms. Barronis.