Book VI. ———————————— 1. Having shown briefly how impious and infamous are the opinions which you have formed about your gods, we have now to 4559 speak of their temples, their images also, and sacrifices, and of the other things which are 4560 united and closely related to them. For you are here in the habit of fastening upon us a very serious charge of impiety because we do not rear temples for the ceremonies of worship, do not set up statues and images 4561 of any god, do not build altars, 4562 do not offer the blood of creatures slain in sacrifices, incense, 4563 nor sacrificial meal, and finally, do not bring wine flowing in libations from sacred bowls; which, indeed, we neglect to build and do, not as though we cherish impious and wicked dispositions, or have conceived any madly desperate feeling of contempt for the gods, but because we think and believe that they 4564 —if only they are true gods, and are called by this exalted name 4565 —either scorn such honours, if they give way to scorn, or endure them with anger, if they are roused by feelings of rage. 4559     Lit., “it remains that we.” 4560     Lit., “series which is,” etc. 4561     Singular. [But costly churches were built about this time.] 4562     Non altaria, non aras , i.e., neither to the superior nor inferior deities. Cf. Virgil, Ecl. , v. 66. 4563     [It is not with any aversion to incense that I note its absence, so frequently attested, from primitive rites of the Church.] 4564     The earlier edd. prefix d to the ms. eos —“that the gods,” etc. 4565     Lit., “endowed with the eminence of this name.”