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However, any one who eagerly seeks for celebrity and renown, might
congratulate those select gods, and call them fortunate, were it not
that he saw that they have been selected more to their injury than to
their honor. For that low crowd of gods have been protected by their
very meanness and obscurity from being overwhelmed with infamy. We
laugh, indeed, when we see them distributed by the mere fiction of
human opinions, according to the special works assigned to them, like
those who farm small portions of the public revenue, or like workmen in
the street of the silversmiths, where one vessel, in order that it may
go out perfect, passes through the hands of many, when it might have
been finished by one perfect workman. But the only reason why the
combined skill of many workmen was thought necessary, was, that it is
better that each part of an art should be learned by a special workman,
which can be done speedily and easily, than that they should all be
compelled to be perfect in one art throughout all its parts, which they
could only attain slowly and with difficulty. Nevertheless there is
scarcely to be found one of the non-select gods who has brought infamy
on himself by any crime, whilst there is scarce any one of the select
gods who has not received upon himself the brand of notable infamy.
These latter have descended to the humble works of the others, whilst
the others have not come up to their sublime crimes. Concerning
Janus, there does not readily occur to my recollection anything
infamous; and perhaps he was such an one as lived more innocently than
the rest, and further removed from misdeeds and crimes. He kindly
received and entertained Saturn when he was fleeing; he divided his
kingdom with his guest, so that each of them had a city for himself,
the one Janiculum, and the other Saturnia. But those seekers after
every kind of unseemliness in the worship of the gods have disgraceed
him, whose life they found to be less disgracful than that of the other
gods, with an image of monstrous deformity, making it sometimes with
two faces, and sometimes, as it were, double, with four faces. Did
they wish that, as the most of the select gods had lost shame through
the perpetration of shameful crimes, his greater innocence should be
marked by a greater number of faces?
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