{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030179.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030179.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030179.htm","text":"A Fragment Concerning the Execrable Gods of the Heathen.\nSo great blindness has fallen on the Roman race, that they call their enemy Lord, and preach the filcher of blessings as being their very giver, and to him they give thanks. They call those (deities), then, by human names, not by their own, for their own names they know not. That they are d\u00e6mons 1101 they understand: but they read histories of the old kings, and then, though they see that their character 1102 was mortal, they honour them with a deific name.\nAs for him whom they call Jupiter, and think to be the highest god, when he was born the years (that had elapsed) from the foundation of the world 1103 to him 1104 were some three thousand. He is born in Greece, from Saturnus and Ops; and, for fear he should be killed by his father (or else, if it is lawful to say so, should be begotten 1105 anew), is by the advice of his mother carried down into Crete, and reared in a cave of Ida; is concealed from his father\u2019s search) by (the aid of) Cretans\u2014born men! 1106 \u2014rattling their arms; sucks a she-goat\u2019s dugs; flays her; clothes himself in her hide; and (thus) uses his own nurse\u2019s hide, after killing her, to be sure, with his own hand! but he sewed thereon three golden tassels worth the price of an hundred oxen each, as their author Homer 1107 relates, if it is fair to believe it. This Jupiter, in adult age, waged war several years with his father; overcame him; made a parricidal raid on his home; violated his virgin sisters; 1108 selected one of them in marriage; drave 1109 his father by dint of arms. The remaining scenes, moreover, of that act have been recorded. Of other folks\u2019 wives, or else of violated virgins, he begat him sons; defiled freeborn boys; oppressed peoples lawlessly with despotic and kingly sway. The father, whom they erringly suppose to have been the original god, was ignorant that this (son of his) was lying concealed in Crete; the son, again, whom they believe the mightier god, knows not that the father whom himself had banished is lurking in Italy. If he was in heaven, when would he not see what was doing in Italy? For the Italian land is \u201cnot in a corner.\u201d 1110 And yet, had he been a god, nothing ought to have escaped him. But that he whom the Italians call Saturnus did lurk there, is clearly evidenced on the face of it, from the fact that from his lurking 1111 the Hesperian 1112 tongue is to this day called Latin, 1113 as likewise their author Virgil relates. 1114 (Jupiter,) then, is said to have been born on earth, while (Saturnus his father) fears lest he be driven by him from his kingdom, and seeks to kill him as being his own rival, and knows not that he has been stealthily carried off, and is in hiding; and afterwards the son-god pursues his father, immortal seeks to slay immortal (is it credible? 1115 ), and is disappointed by an interval of sea, and is ignorant p. 150 of (his quarry\u2019s) flight; and while all this is going on between two gods on earth, heaven is deserted. No one dispensed the rains, no one thundered, no one governed all this mass of world. 1116 For they cannot even say that their action and wars took place in heaven; for all this was going on on Mount Olympus in Greece. Well, but heaven is not called Olympus, for heaven is heaven.\nThese, then, are the actions of theirs, which we will treat of first\u2014nativity, lurking, ignorance, parricide, adulteries, obscenities\u2014things committed not by a god, but by most impure and truculent human beings; beings who, had they been living in these days, would have lain under the impeachment of all laws\u2014laws which are far more just and strict than their actions. \u201cHe drave his father by dint of arms.\u201d The Falcidian and Sempronian law would bind the parricide in a sack with beasts. \u201cHe violated his sisters.\u201d The Papinian law would punish the outrage with all penalties, limb by limb. \u201cHe invaded others\u2019 wedlock.\u201d The Julian law would visit its adulterous violator capitally. \u201cHe defiled freeborn boys.\u201d The Cornelian law would condemn the crime of transgressing the sexual bond with novel severities, sacrilegiously guilty as it is of a novel union. 1117 This being is shown to have had no divinity either, for he was a human being; his father\u2019s flight escaped him. To this human being, of such a character, to so wicked a king, so obscene and so cruel, God\u2019s honour has been assigned by men. Now, to be sure, if on earth he were born and grew up through the advancing stages of life\u2019s periods, and in it committed all these evils, and yet is no more in it, what is thought 1118 (of him) but that he is dead? Or else does foolish error think wings were born him in his old age, whence to fly heavenward? Why, even this may possibly find credit among men bereft of sense, 1119 if indeed they believe, (as they do,) that he turned into a swan, to beget the Castors; 1120 an eagle, to contaminate Ganymede; a bull, to violate Europa; gold, to violate Dana\u00eb; a horse, to beget Piritho\u00fcs; a goat, to beget Egyppa 1121 from a she-goat; a Satyr, to embrace Antiope. Beholding these adulteries, to which sinners are prone, they therefore easily believe that sanctions of misdeed and of every filthiness are borrowed from their feigned god. Do they perceive how void of amendment are the rest of his career\u2019s acts which can find credit, which are indeed true, and which, they say, he did without self transformation? Of Semele, he begets Liber; 1122 of Latona, Apollo and Diana; of Maia, Mercury; of Alcmena, Hercules. But the rest of his corruptions, which they themselves confess, I am unwilling to record, lest turpitude, once buried, be again called to men\u2019s ears. But of these few (offsprings of his) I have made mention; off-springs whom in their error they believe to be themselves, too, gods\u2014born, to wit, of an incestuous father; adulterous births, supposititious births. And the living, 1123 eternal God, of sempiternal divinity, prescient of futurity, immeasurable, 1124 they have dissipated (into nothing, by associating Him) with crimes so unspeakable.\nD\u00e6mons. Gr. \u03b4\u03b1\u03af\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd, which some hold to = \u03b4\u03b1\u03ae\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd, \u201cknowing,\u201d \u201cskilful,\u201d in which case it would come to be used of any superhuman intelligence; others, again, derive from \u03b4\u03b1\u03af\u03c9, \u201cto divide, distribute,\u201d in which case it would mean a distributor of destinies; which latter derivation and meaning Liddell and Scott incline to.\n149:1102 149:1103 149:1104 149:1105\nPareretur. As the word seems to be used here with reference to his father, this, although not by any means a usual meaning, would seem to be the sense. [As in the equivalent Greek.]\n149:1106\nA Cretibus, hominibus natis. The force seems to be in the absurdity of supposing that, 1st, there should be human beings (hominibus) born, (as Jupiter is said to have been \u201cborn,\u201d) already existing at the time of the \u201cbirth\u201d of \u201cthe highest god;\u201d 2ndly, that these should have had the power to do him so essential service as to conceal him from the search of his own father, likewise a mighty deity, by the simple expedient of rattling their arms.\n149:1107\nSee Hom. Il. ii. 446\u20139; but Homer says there were 100 such tassels.\n149:1108\nOehler\u2019s \u201cvirginis\u201d must mean \u201cvirgines.\u201d\n149:1109\nSo Scott: \u201cHe drave my cows last Fastern\u2019s night.\u201d\u2014Lay of Last Minstrel.\n149:1110\nSee Acts xxvi. 26.\n149:1111 149:1112\ni.e., Western: here=Italian, as being west of Greece.\n149:1113 149:1114\nSee Virg. \u00c6n. viii. 319\u2013323: see also Ov. Fast. i. 234\u2013238.\n149:1115\nOehler does not mark this as a question. If we follow him, we may render, \u201cthis can find belief.\u201d Above, it seemed necessary to introduce the parenthetical words to make some sense. The Latin is throughout very clumsy and incoherent.\n150:1116 150:1117\nLex Cornelia transgressi f\u0153deris ammissum novis exemplis novi coitus sacrilegum damnaret. After consulting Dr. Holmes, I have rendered, but not without hesitation, as above. \u201cF\u0153dus\u201d seems to have been technically used, especially in later Latin, of the marriage compact; but what \u201clex Cornelia\u201d is meant I have sought vainly to discover, and whether \u201clex Cornelia transgressi f\u0153deris\u201d ought not to go together I am not sure. For \u201cammissum\u201d (=admissum) Migne\u2019s ed. reads \u201camissum,\u201d a very different word. For \u201csacrilegus\u201d with a genitive, see de Res. Carn, c. xlii. med.\n150:1118\nQuid putatur (Oehler) putatus (Migne).\n150:1119 150:1120\nThe Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.\n150:1121\nPerhaps \u00c6gipana (marginal reading of the ms. as given in Oehler and Migne).\n150:1122 150:1123\nOehler reads \u201cvide etem;\u201d but Migne\u2019s \u201cviventem\u201d seems better: indeed, Oehler\u2019s is probably a misprint. The punctuation of this treatise in Oehler is very faulty throughout, and has been disregarded.\n150:1124\n\u201cImmensum,\u201d rendered \u201cincomprehensible\u201d in the \u201cAthanasian Creed.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part I: Appendi...","type":"page"}