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In this matter I would prefer to have as my assessors in judgment,
not those men who rather take pleasure in these infamous customs than
take pains to put an end to them, but that same Scipio Nasica who was
chosen by the senate as the citizen most worthy to receive in his hands
the image of that demon Cybele, and convey it into the city. He
would tell us whether he would be proud to see his own mother so highly
esteemed by the state as to have divine honors adjudged to her; as the
Greeks and Romans and other nations have decreed divine honors to men
who had been of material service to them, and have believed that their
mortal benefactors were thus made immortal, and enrolled among the
gods. Surely he would desire that his mother should enjoy such
felicity were it possible. But if we proceeded to ask him whether,
among the honors paid to her, he would wish such shameful rites as
these to be celebrated, would he not at once exclaim that he would
rather his mother lay stone-dead, than survive as a goddess to lend
her ear to these obscenities? Is it possible that he who was of so
severe a morality, that he used his influence as a Roman senator to
prevent the building of a theatre in that city dedicated to the manly
virtues, would wish his mother to be propitiated as a goddess with
words which would have brought the blush to her cheek when a Roman
matron? Could he possibly believe that the modesty of an estimable
woman would be so transformed by her promotion to divinity, that she
would suffer herself to be invoked and celebrated in terms so gross and
immodest, that if she had heard the like while alive upon earth, and
had listened without stopping her ears and hurrying from the spot, her
relatives, her husband, and her children would have blushed for her?
Therefore, the mother of the gods being such a character as the most
profligate man would be ashamed to have for his mother, and meaning to
enthral the minds of the Romans, demanded for her service their best
citizen, not to ripen him still more in virtue by her helpful counsel,
but to entangle him by her deceit, like her of whom it is written,
"The adulteress will hunt for the precious soul." Her intent was to
puff up this high souled man by an apparently divine testimony to his
excellence, in order that he might rely upon his own eminence in
virtue, and make no further efforts after true piety and religion,
without which natural genius, however brilliant, vapors into pride and
comes to nothing. For what but a guileful purpose could that goddess
demand the best man seeing that in her own sacred festivals she requires
such obscenities as the best men would be covered with shame to hear at
their own tables?
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