{"author":null,"backreferences":[{"context_html":"<p>To what purpose, then, is it that this most learned and most\r\nacute man Varro attempts, as it were, with subtle disputation,\r\nto reduce and refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He\r\ncannot do it. They go out of his hands like water; they\r\nshrink back; they slip down and fall. For when about to\r\nspeak of the females, that is, the goddesses, he says, \"Since,\r\nas I observed in the first book concerning places, heaven and\r\nearth are the two origins of the gods, on which account they\r\nare called celestials and terrestrials, and as I began in the former\r\nbooks with heaven, speaking of Janus, whom some have said\r\nto be heaven, and others the earth, so I now commence with\r\nTellus in speaking concerning the goddesses.\" I can understand\r\nwhat embarrassment so great a mind was experiencing.<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_296\">[Pg 296]</a></span>\r\nFor he is influenced by the perception of a certain plausible\r\nresemblance, when he says that the heaven is that which does,\r\nand the earth that which suffers, and therefore attributes the\r\nmasculine principle to the one, and the feminine to the other,—not\r\nconsidering that it is rather He who made both heaven\r\nand earth who is the maker of both activity and passivity.\r\nOn this principle he interprets the celebrated mysteries of the\r\nSamothracians, and promises, with an air of great devoutness,\r\nthat he will by writing expound these mysteries, which have\r\nnot been so much as known to his countrymen, and will send\r\nthem his exposition. Then he says that he had from many\r\nproofs gathered that, in those mysteries, among the images\r\none signifies heaven, another the earth, another the patterns\r\nof things, which Plato calls ideas. He makes Jupiter to\r\nsignify heaven, Juno the earth, Minerva the ideas. Heaven,\r\nby which anything is made; the earth, from which it is made;\r\nand the pattern, according to which it is made. But, with\r\nrespect to the last, I am forgetting to say that Plato attributed\r\nso great an importance to these ideas as to say, not that anything\r\nwas made by heaven according to them, but that according\r\nto them heaven itself was made.<a id=\"FNanchor_287_287\"></a><a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_287_287\">[287]</a> To return, however,—it\r\nis to be observed that Varro has, in the book on the select\r\ngods, lost that theory of these gods, in whom he has, as it\r\nwere, embraced all things. For he assigns the male gods to\r\nheaven, the females to earth; among which latter he has\r\nplaced Minerva, whom he had before placed above heaven\r\nitself. Then the male god Neptune is in the sea, which\r\npertains rather to earth than to heaven. Last of all, father\r\nDis, who is called in Greek Πλούτων, another male god,\r\nbrother of both (Jupiter and Neptune), is also held to be\r\na god of the earth, holding the upper region of the earth\r\nhimself, and allotting the nether region to his wife Proserpine.\r\nHow, then, do they attempt to refer the gods to heaven, and\r\nthe goddesses to earth? What solidity, what consistency,\r\nwhat sobriety has this disputation? But that Tellus is the\r\norigin of the goddesses,—the great mother, to wit, beside whom\r\nthere is continually the noise of the mad and abominable\r\nrevelry of effeminates and mutilated men, and men who cut<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_297\">[Pg 297]</a></span>\r\nthemselves, and indulge in frantic gesticulations,—how is it,\r\nthen, that Janus is called the head of the gods, and Tellus the\r\nhead of the goddesses? In the one case error does not make\r\none head, and in the other frenzy does not make a sane one.\r\nWhy do they vainly attempt to refer these to the world?\r\nEven if they could do so, no pious person worships the world\r\nfor the true God. Nevertheless, plain truth makes it evident\r\nthat they are not able even to do this. Let them rather\r\nidentify them with dead men and most wicked demons, and\r\nno further question will remain.</p>","headings":["THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE,","BOOK SEVENTH.","ARGUMENT."],"marker_anchor":null,"paragraph_id":"pg45304-paragraph-543"}],"canonical_references":[],"date_end":null,"date_start":null,"deduplication_fingerprint":"27b075551938c8313212943bec28ff0382bc8e1426cc32065c99e9aafa7d6a8a","edition_title":"The City of God, Volume I","edition_translators":["Marcus Dods","George Wilson (Book IV)","J. J. Smith (Books V-VIII)"],"edition_year":1871,"explicit_reference_candidates":[],"headings":[],"id":"pg45304-Footnote_287_287","license_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html","public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"original-editor-translator-note","review_required":["work and recension attribution","original-work chronology","Bible reference numbering and citation kind","English edition rights and attribution"],"review_status":"needs_review","rights_evidence":"Provider catalog reports public domain in the USA. Original transcription title leaves state T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1871; printed translator allocation retained. Gutenberg credits Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries without an exact scan identifier. Full provider license preserved with acquired original; republication and per-work metadata remain unreviewed.","source_anchor":"Footnote_287_287","source_ebook":45304,"source_html":"<div class=\"footnote\">\n<p><a id=\"Footnote_287_287\"></a><a class=\"pginternal\" href=\"#FNanchor_287_287\"><span class=\"label\">[287]</span></a> In the <i>Timæus</i>.</p></div>","source_sha256":"d89e9a2b80bb59f394f0fb1bf313b39fab162f06af6642166d62c5912c1195f1","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45304/pg45304-images.html#Footnote_287_287","text_sha256":"f9647ed547ec50c4a9083462465ee28a625a4ecfa18982ab4ee78727beb6b92c","verified":false,"work_id":null}