22. But you will perhaps say
that the gods do not trouble themselves about these losses, and do not
think that there is sufficient cause for them to come forth and inflict
punishment upon the offenders for their impious sacrilege.
4728
Neither, then, if this is the case, do they wish to have these images,
which they allow to be plucked up and torn away with impunity; nay, on
the contrary, they tell
us
plainly that they despise these
statues
, in which they do not care to show that they were
contemned, by taking any revenge. Philostephanus relates in his
Cypriaca
, that Pygmalion, king
4729
of Cyprus, loved as a woman an image
of Venus, which was held
by the Cyprians holy and venerable from
ancient times,
4730
his mind,
spirit, the light of his reason, and his judgment being darkened; and
that he was wont in his madness, just as if he were dealing with his
wife, having raised the deity to his couch, to be joined with it in
embraces and
face to
face, and to do other vain things,
carried away
by a foolishly lustful imagination.
4731
Similarly, Posidippus,
4732
in the book which he mentions
to
have been
written about Gnidus and about its affairs,
4733
relates
that a young man, of noble birth,—but he conceals his
name,—carried away with love of the Venus because of which Gnidus
is famous, joined himself also in amorous lewdness to the image of the
same deity, stretched on the genial couch, and enjoying
4734
the
pleasures which ensue. To ask, again, in like manner: If
the powers of the gods above lurk in copper and the other substances of
which images have been formed, where in the world was the one Venus and
the other to drive far away from them the lewd wantonness of the
youths, and punish their impious touch with terrible
suffering?
4735
Or, as
the goddesses are gentle and of calmer dispositions, what would it have
been for them to assuage the furious joys of
4736
the wretched men, and to bring back
their insane minds again to their senses?
4728
Lit., “punishment of violated religion.”
4729
Clemens says merely “the Cyprian Pygmalion.”
4730
Lit., “of ancient sanctity and religion.”
4731
Lit., “imagination of empty lust.”
4732
Cf. ch. 13.
4733
So Gelenius, reading
rebus
for the
ms.
and first ed.
re a
(
ms.
ab
)
se
.
4734
Lit., “in the limits of.”
4735
Lit., “agonizing restraint.”
4736
Lit., “to.”