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But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the philosophers,
and their disputations? In the first place, these belong not to
Rome, but to Greece; and even if we yield to them that they are now
Roman, because Greece itself has become a Roman province, still the
teachings of the philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but
the discoveries of men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative
ability, made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature, and the
right and wrong in ethics, and in dialectic what was consequent
according to the rules of logic, and what was inconsequent and
erroneous. And some of them, by God's help, made great
discoveries; but when left to themselves they were betrayed by human
infirmity, and fell into mistakes. And this was ordered by divine
providence, that their pride might be restrained, and that by their
example it might be pointed out that it is humility which has access to
the highest regions. But of this we shall have more to say, if the
Lord God of truth permit, in its own place. However, if the
philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men
to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been greater justice to
vote divine honors to them? Were it not more accordant with every
virtuous sentiment to read Plato's writings in a "Temple of
Plato," than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the
priests of Cybele mutilating themselves, the effeminate being
consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and whatever
other cruel or shameful, or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful,
ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these?
Were it not a more suitable education, and more likely to prompt the
youth to virtue, if they heard public recitals of the laws of the
gods, instead of the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their
ancestors? Certainly all the worshippers of the Roman gods, when
once they are possessed by what Persius calls "the burning poison of
lust," prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to hear
what Plato taught or Cato censured. Hence the young profligate in
Terence, when he sees on the wall a fresco representing the fabled
descent of Jupiter into the lap of Dana in the form of a golden
shower, accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own
licentiousness, and boasts that he is an imitator of God. "And what
God?" he says. "He who with His thunder shakes the loftiest
temples. And was I, a poor creature compared to Him, to make bones
of it? No; I did it, and with all my heart."
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