presides over every human affair, there is one who presides over the travail of matrons, whose name, Natio, is derived a nascentibus, from nativities, and to whom we used to sacrifice in our processions in the fields of Ardæa; but if she is a Deity, we must likewise acknowledge all those you mentioned, Honor, Faith, Intellect, Concord; by the same rule also, Hope, Juno, Moneta,[1] and every idle phantom, every child of our imagination, are Deities. But as this consequence is quite inadmissible, do not you either defend the cause from which it flows.
XIX. What say you to this? If these are Deities, which we worship and regard as such, why are not Serapis and Isis[2] placed in the same rank? And if they are admitted, what reason have we to reject the Gods of the barbarians? Thus we should deify oxen, horses, the ibis, hawks, asps, crocodiles, fishes, dogs, wolves, cats, and many other beasts. If we go back to the source of this superstition, we must equally condemn all the Deities from which they prooceed. Shall Ino, whom the Greeks call Leucothea, and we Matuta, be reputed a Goddess, because she was the daughter of Cadmus, and shall that title be refused to Circe and Pasiphae,[3] who had the sun for their father, and Perseis, daughter of the Ocean, for their mother? It is true, Circe has divine honors paid her by our colony of Circæum; therefore you call her a Goddess; but what will you say of Medea, the granddaughter of the Sun and the Ocean, and daughter of Æetes and Idyia? What will you say of her brother Absyrtus, whom Pacuvius calls Ægialeus, though the other name is more frequent in the writings of the ancients? If you did not deify one as well as the other, what will become of Ino? for all these Deities have the same origin.
Shall Amphiaraus and Tryphonius be called Gods? Our publicans, when some lands in Bœotia were exempted from the tax, as belonging to the immortal Gods, denied that
- ↑ See Cicero de Divinatione, and Ovid. Fast.
- ↑ In the consulship of Piso and Gabinius sacrifices to Serapis and Isis were prohibited in Rome; but the Roman people afterward placed them again in the number of their gods. See Tertullian's Apol. and his first book Ad Nationes, and Arnobius, lib. 2.—DAVIS.
- ↑ In some copies Circe, Pasiphae, and Æa are mentioned together; but Æa is rejected by the most judicious editors.
