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And as to those very offices of the gods, so meanly and so minutely
portioned out, so that they say that they ought to be supplicated,
each one according to his special function, about which we have spoken
much already, though not all that is to be said concerning it, are
they not more consistent with mimic buffoonery than divine majesty? If
any one should use two nurses for his infant, one of whom should give
nothing but food, the other nothing but drink, as these make use of
two goddesses for this purpose, Educa and Potina, he should
certainly seem to be foolish, and to do in his house a thing worthy of
a mimic. They would have Liber to have been named from
"liberation," because through him males at the time of copulation are
liberated by the emission of the seed. They also say that Libera
(the same in their opinion as Venus) exercises the same function in
the case of women, because they say that they also emit seed; and they
also say that on this account the same part of the male and of the
female is placed in the temple, that of the male to Liber, and that
of the female to Libera. To these things they add the women assigned
to Liber, and the wine for exciting lust. Thus the Bacchanalia are
celebrated with the utmost insanity, with respect to which Varro
himself confesses that such things would not be done by the Bacchanals
except their minds were highly excited. These things, however,
afterwards displeased a saner senate, and it ordered them to be
discontinued. Here, at length, they perhaps perceived how much power
unclean spirits, when held to be gods, exercise over the minds of
men. These things, certainly, were not to be done in the theatres;
for there they play, not rave, although to have gods who are delighted
with such plays is very like raving.
But what kind of distinction is this which he makes between the
religious and the superstitious man, saying that the gods are feared by
the superstitious man, but are reverenced as parents by the religious
man, not feared as enemies; and that they are all so good that they
will more readily spare those who are impious than hurt one who is
innocent? And yet he tells us that three gods are assigned as
guardians to a woman after she has been delivered, lest the god
Silvanus come in and molest her; and that in order to signify the
presence of these protectors, three men go round the house during the
night, and first strike the threshold with a hatchet, next with a
pestle, and the third time sweep it with a brush, in order that these
symbols of agriculture having been exhibited, the god Silvanus might
be hindered from entering, because neither are trees cut down or pruned
without a hatchet, neither is grain ground without a pestle, nor corn
heaped up without a besom. Now from these three things three gods have
been named: Intercidona, from the cut made by the hatchet;
Pilumnus, from the pestle; Diverra, from the besom;, by which
guardian gods the woman who has been de livered is preserved against the
power of the god Silvanus. Thus the guardianship of kindly-disposed
gods would not avail against the malice of a mischievous god, unless
they were three to one, and fought against him, as it were, with the
opposing emblems of cultivation, who, being an inhabitant of the
woods, is rough, horrible, and uncultivated. Is this the innocence
of the gods? Is this their concord? Are these the health-giving
deities of the cities, more ridiculous than the things which are
laughed at in the theatres?
When a male and a female are united, the god Jugatinus presides.
Well, let this be borne with. But the married woman must be brought
home: the god Domiducus also is invoked. That she may be in the
house, the god Domitius is introduced. That she may remain with her
husband, the goddess Manturnae is used. What more is required? Let
human modesty be spared. Let the lust of flesh and blood go on with
the rest, the secret of shame being respected. Why is the
bed-chamber filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen
have departed? And, moreover, it is so filled, not that in
consideration of their presence more regard may be paid to chastity,
but that by their help the woman, naturally of the weaker sex, and
trembling with the novelty of her situation, may the more readily yield
her virginity. For there are the goddess Virginiensis, and the
god-father Subigus, and the goddess-mother Prema, and the goddess
Pertunda, and Venus, and Priapus. What is this? If it was
absolutely necessary that a man, laboring at this work, should be
helped by the gods, might not some one god or goddess have been
sufficient? Was Venus not sufficient alone, who is even said to be
named from this, that without her power a woman does not cease to be a
virgin? If there is any shame in men, which is not in the deities,
is it not the case that, when the married couple believe that so many
gods of either sex are present, and busy at this work, they are so
much affected with shame, that the man is less moved, and the woman
more reluctant? And certainly, if the goddess Virginiensis is
present to loose the virgin's zone, if the god Subigus is present
that the virgin may be got under the man, if the goddess Prema is
present that, having been got under him, she may be kept down, and
may not move herself, what has the goddess Pertunda to do there? Let
her blush; let her go forth. Let the husband himself do something.
It is disgraceful that any one but himself should do that from which
she gets her name. But perhaps she is tolerated because she is said to
be a goddess, and not a god. For if she were believed to be a male,
and were called Pertundus, the husband would demand more help against
him for the chastity of his wife than the newly-delivered woman against
Silvanus. But why am I saying this, when Priapus, too, is
there, a male to excess, upon whose immense and most unsightly member
the newly-married bride is commanded to sit, according to the most
honorable and most religious custom of matrons?
Let them go on, and let them attempt with all the subtlety they can to
distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous, the cities from the
theatres, the temples from the stages, the sacred things of the
priests from the songs of the poets, as honorable things from base
things, truthful things from fallacious, grave from light, serious
from ludicrous, desirable things from things to be rejected, we
understand what they do. They are aware that that theatrical and
fabulous theology hangs by the civil, and is reflected back upon it
from the songs of the poets as from a mirror; and thus, that theology
having been exposed to view which they do not dare to condemn, they
more freely assail and censure that picture of it, in order that those
who perceive what they mean may detest this very face itself of which
that is the picture, which, however, the gods themselves, as though
seeing themselves in the same mirror, love so much, that it is better
seen in both of them who and what they are. Whence, also, they have
compelled their worshippers, with terrible commands, to dedicate to
them the uncleanness of the fabulous theology, to put them among their
solemnities, and reckon them among divine things; and thus they have
both shown themselves more manifestly to be most impure spirits, and
have made that rejected and reprobated theatrical theology a member and
a part of this, as it were, chosen and ap-proved theology of the
city, so that, though the whole is disgraceful and false, and
contains in it fictitious gods, one part of it is in the literature of
the priests, the other in the songs of the poets. Whether it may have
other parts is another question. At present, I think, I have
sufficiently shown, on account of the division of Varro, that the
theology of the city and that of the theatre belong to one civil
theology. Wherefore, because they are both equally disgraceful,
absurd, shameful, false, far be it from religious men to hope for
eternal life from either the one or the other.
In fine, even Varro himself, in his account and enumeration of the
gods, starts from the moment of a man's conception. He commences the
series of those gods who take charge of man with Janus, carries it on
to the death of the man decrepit with age, and terminates it with the
goddess Naenia, who is sung at the funerals of the aged. After
that, he begins to give an account of the other gods, whose province
is not man himself, but man's belongings, as food, clothing, and
all that is necessary for this life; and, in the case of all these,
he explains what is the special office of each, and for what each ought
to be supplicated. But with all this scrupulous and comprehensive
diligence, he has neither proved the existence, nor so much as
mentioned the name, of any god from whom eternal life is to be sought,
the one object for which we are Christians. Who, then, is so stupid
as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth and opening up so
diligently the civil theology, and by exhibiting its likeness to that
fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful theology, and also by teaching
that that fabulous sort is also a part of this other, was laboring to
obtain a place in the minds of men for none but that natural theology,
which he says pertains to philosophers, with such subtlety that he
censures the fabulous, and, not daring openly to censure the civil,
shows its censurable character by simply exhibiting it; and thus, both
being reprobated by the judgment of men of right understanding, the
natural alone remains to be chosen? But concerning this in its own
place, by the help of the true God, we have to discuss more
diligently.
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