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During this period, that is, from Israel's exodus from Egypt down
to the death of Joshua the son of Nun, through whom that people
received the land of promise, rituals were instituted to the false gods
by the kings of Greece, which, by stated celebration, recalled the
memory of the flood, and of men's deliverance from it, and of that
troublous life they then led in migrating to and fro between the heights
and the plains. For even the Luperci, when they ascend and descend
the sacred path, are said to represent the men who sought the mountain
summits because of the inundation of water, and returned to the
lowlands on its subsidence. In those times, Dionysus, who was also
called Father Liber, and was esteemed a god after death, is said to
have shown the vine to his host in Attica. Then the musical games
were instituted for tile Delphic Apollo, to appease his anger,
through which they thought the regions of Greece were afflicted with
barrenness, because they had not defended his temple which Danaos
burnt when he invaded those lands; for they were warned by his oracle
to institute these games. But king Ericthonius first instituted games
to him in Attica, and not to him only, but also to Minerva, in
which games the olive was given as the prize to the victors, because
they relate that Minerva was the discoverer of that fruit, as Liber
was of the grape. In those years Europa is alleged to have been
carried off by Xanthus king of Crete (to whom we find some give
another name), and to have borne him Rhadamanthus, Sarpedon, and
Minos, who are more commonly reported to have been the sons of
Jupiter by the same woman.
Now those who worship such gods regard what we have said about Xanthus
king of Crete as true history; but this about Jupiter, which the
poets sing, the theatres applaud, and the people celebrate, as empty
fable got up as a reason for games to appease the deities, even with
the false ascription of crimes to them. In those times Hercules was
held in honor in Tyre, but that was not the same one as he whom we
spoke of above. In the more secret history there are said to have been
several who were called Father Liber and Hercules. This Hercules,
whose great deeds are reckoned as twelve (not including the slaughter
of Antaeus the African, because that affair pertains to another
Hercules), is declared in their books to have burned himself on
Mount (Eta, because he was not able, by that strength with which he
had subdued monsters, to endure the disease under which he languished.
At that time the king, or rather tyrant Busiris, who is alleged to
have been the son of Neptune by Libya the daughter of Epaphus, is
said to have offered up his guests in sacrifice to the gods. Now it
must not be believed that Neptune committed this adultery, lest the
gods should be criminated; yet such things must be ascribed to them by
the poets and in the theatres, that they may be pleased with them.
Vulcan and Minerva are said to have been the parents of Ericthonius
king of Athens, in whose last years Joshua the son of Nun is found
to have died. But since they will have it that Minerva is a virgin,
they say that Vulcan, being disturbed in the struggle between them,
poured out his seed into the earth, and on that account the man born of
it received that name; for in the Greek language eris is "strife,"
and kqpn "earth," of which two words Ericthonius is a compound.
Yet it must be admitted that the more learned disprove and disown such
things concerning their gods, and declare that this fabulous belief
originated in the fact that in the temple at Athens, which Vulcan and
Minerva had in common, a boy who had been exposed was found wrapped up
in the coils of a dragon, which signified that he would become great,
and, as his parents were unknown, he was called the son of Vulcan and
Minerva, because they had the temple in common. Yet that fable
accounts for the origin of his name better than this history. But what
does it matter to us? Let the one in books that speak the truth edify
religious men, and the other in lying fables delight impure demons.
Yet these religious men worship them as gods. Still, while they deny
these things concerning them they cannot clear them of all crime,
because at their demand they exhibit plays in which the very things they
wisely deny are basely done, and the gods are appeased by these false
and base things. Now, even although the play celebrates an unreal
crime of the gods, yet to delight in the ascription of an unreal crime
is a real one.
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