Chapter 16.—What Was the Reason
Why the Romans, in Detailing Separate Gods for All Things and All
Movements of the Mind, Chose to Have the Temple of Quiet Outside
the Gates.
But I wonder very much, that while
they assigned to separate gods single things, and (well nigh) all
movements of the mind; that while they invoked the goddess
Agenoria, who should excite to action; the goddess Stimula, who
should stimulate to unusual action; the goddess Murcia, who should
not move men beyond measure, but make them, as Pomponius says,
murcid—that is, too slothful and inactive; the goddess Strenua,
who should make them strenuous; and that while they offered to all
these gods and goddesses solemn and public worship, they should yet
have been
unwilling to give public acknowledgment to her whom they
name Quies because she makes men quiet, but built her temple
outside the Colline gate. Whether was this a symptom of an
unquiet mind, or rather was it thus intimated that he who should
persevere in worshipping that crowd, not, to be sure, of gods, but
of demons, could not dwell with quiet; to which the true Physician
calls, saying, “Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls?”