33. These are all quirks, as
is evident, and quibbles with which they are wont to bolster up weak
cases before a jury; nay, rather, to speak more truly, they are
pretences, such as are used in
4487
sophistical reasonings, by which
not the truth is sought after, but always the image, and appearance,
and shadow of the truth. For because it is shameful and
unbecoming to receive as true the correct accounts, you have had
recourse
4488
to this
expedient, that one thing should be substituted for another, and that
what was in itself shameful should, in being explained, be forced into
the semblance of decency. But what is it to us whether other
senses and other meanings underlie
these
vain stories? For
we who assert that the gods are treated by you wickedly and impiously,
need only
4489
receive
what is written, what is said,
4490
and need not care as to what is kept
secret, since the insult to the deities consists not in the idea hidden
in its meanings,
4491
but in what
is signified by the words as they stand out. And yet, that we may
not seem unwilling to examine what you say, we ask this first of you,
if only you will bear with us, from whom have you learned, or by whom
has it been made known, either that these things were written
allegorically, or that they should be understood in the same way?
Did the writers summon you to
take
counsel
with them
? or
did you lie hid in their bosoms at the time
4492
when they put one thing for another,
without regard to truth? Then, if they chose, from religions
awe
4493
and fear on
any account, to wrap those mysteries in dark obscurity, what audacity
it shows in you to wish to understand what they did not wish, to know
yourselves and make all acquainted with that which they vainly
attempted to conceal by words which did not suggest the
truth!
4487
Lit., “colours of.”
4488
The
ms.
and both Roman edd. read
indecorum est
,
which leaves the sentence incomplete. LB., followed by later
edd., proposed
de-cursum est
, as above (Oehler,
inde
d.
—“from these recourse has been had”), the other
conjectures tending to the same meaning.
4489
“We need only;” lit., “it is enough for us
to.”
4490
Lit., “heard.”
4491
Lit., “in the obscure mind of senses.”
4492
“Or at the time,”
aut tum
, the correction of
LB, for the
ms.
sutum.
4493
Lit., “fear of any reason and of religion.”