nus, "all kind of human provisions," or because penitus insident (they reside within), from which, by the poets, they are called penetrales also. Apollo, a Greek name, is called Sol, the sun; and Diana, Luna, the moon. The sun (sol) is so named either because he is solus (alone), so eminent above all the stars; or because he obscures all the stars, and appears alone as soon as he rises. Luna, the moon, is so called a lucendo (from shining); she bears the name also of Lucina: and as in Greece the women in labor invoke Diana Lucifera, so here they invoke Juno Lucina. She is likewise called Diana omnivaga, not a venando (from hunting), but because she is reckoned one of the seven stars that seem to wander.[1] She is called Diana because she makes a kind of day of the night;[2] and presides over births, because the delivery is effected some times in seven, or at most in nine, courses of the moon; which, because they make mensa spatia (measured spaces), are called menses (months). This occasioned a pleasant observation of Timæus (as he has many). Having said in his history that "the same night in which Alexander was born, the temple of Diana at Ephesus was burned down," he adds, "It is not in the least to be wondered at, because Diana, being willing to assist at the labor of Olympias,[3] was absent from home." But to this Goddess, because ad res omnes veniret—"she has an influence upon all things"—we have given the appellation of Venus,[4] from whom the word venustas (beauty) is rather derived than Venus from venustas.
XXVIII. Do you not see, therefore, how, from the productions of nature and the useful inventions of men, have arisen fictitious and imaginary Deities, which have been the foundation of false opinions, pernicious errors, and wretched superstitions? For we know how the different forms of the Gods—their ages, apparel, ornaments; their
- ↑ Stellæ vagantes.
- ↑ Noctu quasi diem efficeret. Ben Jonson says the same thing:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.—Ode to the Moon. - ↑ Olympias was the mother of Alexander.
- ↑ Venus is here said to be one of the names of Diana, hecause ad res omnes veniret; but she is not supposed to be the same as the mother of Cupid.
