Κρόνος, which is the same with Χρόνος, that is, a "space of time." But he is called Saturn, because he is filled (saturatur) with years; and he is usually feigned to have devoured his children, because time, ever insatiable, consumes the rolling years; but to restrain him from immoderate haste, Jupiter has confined him to the course of the stars, which are as chains to him. Jupiter (that is, juvans pater) signifies a "helping father," whom, by changing the cases, we call Jove,[1] a juvando. The poets call him "father of Gods and men;"[2] and our ancestors "the most good, the most great;" and as there is something more glorious in itself, and more agreeable to others, to be good (that is, beneficent) than to be great, the title of "most good" precedes that of "most great." This, then, is he whom Ennius means in the following passage, before quoted—
Look up to the refulgent heaven above,
Which all men call, unanimously, Jove:
which is more plainly expressed than in this other passage[3] of the same poet—
On whose account I'll curse that flood of light,
Whate'er it is above that shines so bright.
Our augurs also mean the same, when, for the "thundering and lightning heaven," they say the "thundering and lightning Jove." Euripides, among many excellent things, has this:
The vast, expanded, boundless sky behold,
See it with soft embrace the earth enfold;
This own the chief of Deities above,
And this acknowledge by the name of Jove.
XXVI. The air, according to the Stoics, which is between the sea and the heaven, is consecrated by the name of Juno, and is called the sister and wife of Jove, because
- ↑ Cicero means by conversis casibus, varying the cases from the common rule of declension; that is, by departing from the true grammatical rules of speech; for if we would keep to it, we should decline the word Jupiter, Jupiteris in the second case, etc.
- ↑ Pater divûmque hominumque.
- ↑ The common reading is, planiusque alio loco idem; which, as Dr. Davis observes, is absurd; therefore, in his note, he prefers planius quam alio loco idem, from two copies, in which sense I have translated it.
