12. From such causes as
these this also has followed, with your connivance, that the wanton
fancy of artists has found full scope in
representing
the bodies
of the gods, and giving forms to them, at which even the sternest might
laugh. And so Hammon is even now formed and represented with a
ram’s horns; Saturn with his crooked sickle, like some guardian
of the fields,
and
pruner of too luxuriant branches; the son of
Maia with a broad-brimmed travelling cap, as if he were preparing to
take the road, and avoiding the sun’s rays and the dust; Liber
with tender limbs, and with a woman’s perfectly free and easily
flowing lines of body;
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Venus, naked and unclothed, just as if
you said that she exposed publicly, and sold to all comers,
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the beauty of
her prostituted body; Vulcan with his cap and hammer, but with his
right hand free, and with his dress girt up as a workman
prepares
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for his work;
the Delian god with a plectrum and lyre, gesticulating like a player on
the cithern and an actor about to sing; the king of the sea with his
trident, just as if he had to fight in the gladiatorial contest:
nor can any figure of any deity be found
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which does not have certain
characteristics
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bestowed
on it
by the generosity of its makers. Lo, if some witty
and cunning king were to remove the Sun from
his place before
the gate
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and transfer
him to that of Mercury,
and
again were to carry off Mercury and
make him migrate to the shrine of the Sun,—for both are made
beardless by you, and with smooth faces,—and to give to this one
rays
of light
to place a little cap
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on the Sun’s head, how will you
be able to distinguish between them, whether this is the Sun, or that
Mercury, since dress, not the peculiar appearance of the face, usually
points out the gods to you? Again, if, having transported them in
like manner, he were to take away his horns from the unclad Jupiter,
and fix them upon the temples of Mars, and to strip Mars of his arms,
and, on the other hand, invest Hammon with them, what distinction can
there be between them, since he who had been Jupiter can be also
supposed to be Mars, and he who had been Mavors can assume the
appearance of Jupiter Hammon? To such an extent is there
wantonness in fashioning those images and consecrating names, as if
they were
peculiar to them; since, if you take away their dress,
the
means of
recognising each is put an end to, god may be
believed to be god, one may seem to be the other, nay, more, both may
be considered both!
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Lit., “and most dissolved with the laxity of feminine
liquidity.”
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Divendere.
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Lit., “with a workman’s preparing.”
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Lit., “is there any figure to find.”
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Habitus.
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Ex foribus
. Cf. Tertull.,
de Idol.
, ch.
15: “In Greek writers we also read that Apollo
Θυραῖος
and the
dæmones Antelii
watch over doors.”
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So
the edd, reading
petas-un-culum
for the
ms.
-io-
.