The Seven Books of Arnobius
Against the Heathen.
(
Adversus
Gentes
.)
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Book I.
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1.
Since
I have
found some who deem themselves very wise in their opinions, acting as
if they were inspired,
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and announcing with all the authority
of an oracle,
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that from the
time when the Christian people began to exist in the world the universe
has gone to ruin, that the human race has been visited with ills of
many kinds, that even the very gods, abandoning their accustomed
charge, in virtue of which they were wont in former days to regard with
interest our affairs, have been driven from the regions of
earth,—I have resolved, so far as my capacity and my humble power
of language will allow, to oppose public prejudice, and to refute
calumnious accusations; lest, on the one hand, those persons should
imagine that they are declaring some weighty matter, when they are
merely retailing vulgar rumours;
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and on the other, lest, if we refrain
from such a contest, they should suppose that they have gained a cause,
lost by its own inherent demerits, not abandoned by the silence of its
advocates. For I should not deny that that charge is a most
serious one, and that we fully deserve the hatred attaching to public
enemies,
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if it should
appear that to us are attributable causes by reason of which the
universe has deviated from its laws, the gods have been driven far
away, and such swarms of miseries have been inflicted on the
generations of men.
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The words
insanire, bacchari
, refer to the appearance of the
ancient seers when under the influence of the deity. So Virgil
says,
Insanam vatem aspicies
(
Æn.
, iii. 443),
and,
Bacchatur vates
(
Æn.
, vi.
78). The meaning is, that they make their asseverations with all
the confidence of a seer when filled, as he pretended, with the
influence of the god.
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Et
velut quiddam promptum ex oraculo dicere
, i.e., to declare a matter
with boldness and majesty, as if most certain and undoubted.
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Popularia verba
, i.e., rumours arising from the ignorance of the
common people.
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The
Christians were regarded as “public enemies,” and were so
called.