20. It was our purpose to
leave unnoticed those mysteries also into which Phrygia is initiated,
and all that
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race, were
it not that the name of Jupiter,
which has been
introduced by
them, would not suffer us to pass cursorily by the wrongs and insults
offered to him; not that we feel any pleasure in discussing
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mysteries
so filthy, but that it may be made clear to you again and again what
wrong you heap upon those whose guardians, champions, worshippers, you
profess to be. Once upon a time, they say, Diespiter, burning
after his mother Ceres with evil passions and forbidden desires, for
she is said by the natives of that district
to be
Jupiter’s mother, and yet not daring to seek by open
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force that
for which he had conceived a shameless longing, hits upon a clever
trick by which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of
the sort. Instead of a god, he becomes a bull; and concealing his
purpose and daring under the appearance of a beast lying in
wait,
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he rushes
madly with sudden violence upon her, thoughtless and unwitting, obtains
his incestuous desires; and the fraud being disclosed by his lust,
flies off known and discovered. His mother burns, foams, gasps,
boils with fury and indignation; and being unable to repress the
storm
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and tempest
of her wrath, received the name Brimo
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thereafter from her ever-raging
passion: nor has she any other wish than to punish as she may her
son’s audacity.
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So the
ms.
and edd., reading
gens illa
, for which Memmius proposed
Ilia
—“and all the Trojan race.”
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Lit., “riding upon”—
inequitare.
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Lit., “most open.”
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Subsessoris.
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Lit., “growling”—
fremitum.
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The
ms.
reads
primo
,
emended as above by the brother of Canterus, followed by later edd.