3. So, then, if these things
are so, we desire to learn this, first, from you—what is the
cause, what the reason, that you offer them sacrifices;
and
then, what gain comes to the gods themselves from this, and remains to
their advantage. For whatever is done should have a cause, and
should not be disjoined from reason, so as to be lost
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among useless works, and tossed
about among vain and idle uncertainties.
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Do the gods of heaven
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live on
these sacrifices, and must materials be supplied to maintain the union
of their parts? And what man is there so ignorant of what a god
is, certainly, as to think that they are maintained by any kind of
nourishment, and that it is the food given to them
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which causes them to live and endure
throughout their endless immortality? For whatever is upheld by
causes and things external to itself, must be mortal and on the way to
destruction, when anything on which it lives begins to be
wanting. Again,
it is impossible to suppose that any one
believes this
, because we see that of these things
which are brought to their
altars, nothing is added to and reaches the substance of the deities;
for either incense is given, and is lost melting on the coals,
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or the
life only of the victim is offered to the gods,
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and its blood is licked up by
dogs; or if any flesh is placed upon the altars, it is set on fire in
like manner, and is destroyed,
and
falls into
ashes,—unless perchance the god seizes upon the souls of the
victims, or snuffs up eagerly the fumes and smoke
which rise
from the blazing altars, and feeds upon the odours which the burning
flesh gives forth, still wet with blood, and damp with its former
juices.
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But
if a god, as is said, has no body, and cannot be touched at all, how is
it possible that that which has no body should be nourished by things
pertaining to the body,—that what is mortal should support what
is immortal, and assist and give vitality to that which it cannot
touch? This reason for sacrifices is not valid, therefore, as it
seems; nor can it be said by any one that sacrifices are kept up for
this reason, that the deities are nourished by them, and supported by
feeding on them.
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The
ms.
and edd. read
ut in operibus feratur
cassis
—“so as to be borne among,” emended by
Hild. and Oehler
teratur
—“worn away
among.”
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Lit., “in vain errors of inanity.”
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The
ms.
and edd. have here
forte
—“perchance.’”
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Lit., “gift of food.”
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[It must have taken much time to overcome this distaste for the use of
incense in Christian minds. Let us wait for the testimony of
Lactantius.]
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Or perhaps, simply, “the
sacrifice is a living one,”
animalis est
hostia
. Macrobius, however (
Sat.
, iii. 5),
quotes Trebatius as saying that there were two kinds of sacrifices, in
one of which the entrails were examined that they might disclose the
divine will, while in the other the life only was consecrated to the
deity. This is more precisely stated by Servius (
Æn.
,
iii. 231), who says that the
hostia animalis
was only
slain, that in other cases the blood was poured on the altars, that in
others part of the victim, and in others the whole animal, was
burned. It is probable, therefore that Arnobius uses the words
here in their technical meaning, as the next clause shows that none of
the flesh was offered, while the blood was allowed to fall to the
ground. [I am convinced that classical antiquities must be more
largely studied in the Fathers of the first five centuries.]
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i.e., the juices which formerly flowed through the living body.