|
To what purpose, then, is it that this most learned and most acute
man Varro attempts, as it were, with subtle disputation, to reduce
and refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He cannot do it. They
go out of his hands like water; they shrink back; they slip down and
fall. For when about to speak of the females, that is, the
goddesses, he says, "Since, as I observed in the first book
concerning places, heaven and earth are the two origins of the gods,
on which account they are called celestials and terrestrials, and as I
began in tile former books with heaven, speaking of Janus, whom some
have said to be heaven, and others the earth, so I now commence with
Tellus in speaking concerning the goddesses." I can understand what
embarrassment so great a mind was experiencing. For he is influenced
by the perception of a certain plausible resemblance, when he says that
the heaven is that which does, and the earth that which suffers, and
therefore attributes the masculine principle to the one, and the
feminine to the other, not considering that it is rather He who made
both heaven and earth who is the maker of both activity and passivity.
On this principle he interprets the celebrated mysteries of the
Samothracians, and promises, with an air of great devoutness, that
he will by writing expound these mysteries, which have not been so much
as known to his countrymen, and will send them his exposition. Then
he says that he had from many proofs gathered that, in those
mysteries, among the images one signifies heaven, another the earth,
another the patterns of things, which Plato calls ideas. He makes
Jupiter to signify heaven, Juno the earth, Minerva the ideas.
Heaven, by which anything is made; the earth, from which it is
made; and the pattern, according to which it is made. But, with
respect to the last, I am forgetting to say that Plato attributed so
great an importance to these ideas as to say, not that anything was
made by heaven according to them, but that according to them heaven
itself was made. To return, however, it is to be observed that
Varro has, in the book on the select gods, lost that theory of these
gods, in whom he has, as it were, embraced all things. For he
assigns the male gods to heaven, the females to earth; among which
latter he has placed Minerva, whom he had before placed above heaven
itself. Then the male god Neptune is in the sea, which pertains
rather to earth than to heaven. Last of all, father Dis, who is
called in Greek IIloutwn, another male god, brother of both
(Jupiter and Neptune), is also held to be a god of the earth,
holding the upper region of the earth himself, and allotting the nether
region to his wife Proserpine. How, then, do they attempt to refer
the gods to heaven, and the goddesses to earth? What solidity, what
consistency,what sobriety has this disputation? But that Tellus is
the origin of the goddesses, the great mother, to wit, beside whom
there is continually the noise of the mad and abominable revelry of
effeminates and mutilated men, and men who cut themselves, and indulge
in frantic gesticulations, how is it, then, that Janus is called the
head of the gods, and Tellus the head of the goddesses? In the one
case error does not make one head, and in the other frenzy does not
make a sane one. Why do they vainly attempt to refer these to the
world? Even if they could do so, no pious person worships the world
for the true God. Nevertheless, plain truth makes it evident that
they are not able even to do this. Let them rather identify them with
dead men and most wicked demons, and no further question will remain.
|
|