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

by Arnobius

11. You laugh because in ancient times the Persians worshipped rivers, as is told in the writings which hand down these things to memory; the Arabians an unshapen stone;^[1] the Scythian nations a sabre; the Thespians a branch instead of Cinxia;^[2] the Icarians^[3] an unhewn log instead of Diana; the people of Pessinus a flint instead of the mother of the gods; the Romans a spear instead of Mars, as the muses of Varro point out; and, before they were acquainted with the statuary’s art, the Samians a plank^[4] instead of Juno, as Aëthlius^[5] relates: and you do not laugh when, instead of the immortal gods, you make supplication to little images of men and human forms—nay, you even suppose that these very little images are gods, and besides these you do not believe that anything has divine power. What say you, O ye—! Do the gods of heaven have ears, then, and temples, an occiput, spine, loins, sides, hams, buttocks, houghs,^[6] ankles, and the rest of the other members with which we have been formed, which were also mentioned in the first part of this book^[7] a little more fully, and cited with greater copiousness of language? Would that it were possible^[8] to look into the sentiments and very recesses of your mind, in which you revolve various and enter into the most obscure considerations: we should find that you yourselves even feel as we do, and have no other opinions as to the form of the deities. But what can we do with obstinate prejudices? what with those who are menacing us with swords, and devising new punishments against us? In your rage^[9] you maintain a bad cause, and that although you are perfectly aware of it; and that which you have once done without reason, you defend lest you should seem to have ever been in ignorance; and you think it better not to be conquered, than to yield and bow to acknowledged truth.

Footnotes

1. It is worthy of notice that although in this passage, as often elsewhere, Arnobius adheres pretty closely to the argument proposed by Clemens Alexandrinus, he even in such passages sometimes differs from it, and not at random. Thus Clement speaks merely of a “stone,” and Arnobius of an “unshaped stone.” The former expression harmonizes with the words of Maximus Tyrius (Serm., xxxviii. p. 225, Steph.), “The Arabians worship I know not whom, but the image which I saw was a square stone;” while Suidas (Küster’s ed., s.v. θεὺς ῎Αρης) agrees with Arnobius in calling it a “stone, black, square, unfashioned” (ἀτύπωτος). This is the more noteworthy, as at times Arnobius would almost seem to be following Clement blindly. [See Clement, cap. iv. vol. ii. p. 184, this series.]
2. So Arnobius renders Clement’s Cithæronian Hera.
3. So corrected in the notes of Canterus from Clem. for the ms. reading Carios, retained by the first four edd. and Elmenh. In Icaria there was a temple of Diana called Ταυροπόλιον.
4. The ms. and first four edd. read p-uteum—“a well,” corrected plut., as above, by Gifanius, and in the notes of Canterus.
5. The ms. reads ethedius, corrected in the notes of Canterus.
6. So all edd., except both Roman edd., which retain the ms. reading in the singular, suffraginem.
7. i. e., iii. 13. p. 467.
8. Lit., “it was allowed.”
9. So Meursius suggested amentes for the ms. reading animantis for which Heraldus proposed argumentis—“by arguments.”