41. And yet, O ye who laugh
because we worship one who died an ignominious death, do not ye too, by
consecrating shrines to him, honour father Liber, who was torn limb
from limb by the Titans? Have you not, after his punishment and
his death by lightning, named Æsculapius, the discoverer of
medicines, as the guardian and protector of health, of strength, and of
safety? Do you not invoke the great Hercules himself by
offerings, by victims, and by kindled frankincense, whom you yourselves
allege to have been burned alive after his punishment,
3313
and to have
been consumed on the fatal pyres? Do you not, with the unanimous
approbation of the Gauls, invoke as a propitious
3314
and as a holy god, in the temples of
the Great Mother,
3315
that
Phrygian Atys
3316
who was
mangled and deprived of his virility? Father Romulus himself, who
was torn in pieces by the hands of a hundred senators, do you not call
Quirinus Martius, and do you not honour him with priests and with
gorgeous couches,
3317
and do you
not worship him in most spacious temples; and in addition to all this,
do you not affirm that he has ascended into heaven? Either,
therefore, you too are to be laughed at, who regard as gods men slain
by the most cruel tortures; or if there is a sure ground for your
thinking that you should do so, allow us too to feel assured for what
causes and on what grounds we do this.
3313
The words
post pœnas
in the text are regarded as spurious
by Orelli, who supposes them to have crept in from the preceding
sentence: but they may be defended as sufficiently expressing the
agonies which Hercules suffered through the fatal shirt of Nessus.
3314
The
words
deum propitium
are indeed found in the
ms.
, but according to Rigaltius are not in the same
handwriting as the rest of the work.
3315
Cybele whose worship was conjoined with that of Atys.
3316
So Orelli, but the
ms.
Attis.
3317
This refers to the practice of placing the images of the gods on
pillows at feasts. In the temples there were
pulvinaria
,
or couches, specially for the purpose.