The City of God, Volume IAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
The City of God, Volume I
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Apologetics -- Early works to 1800; Kingdom of God -- Early works to 1800
And as to those very offices of the gods, so meanly and so minutely
portioned out, so that they say that they ought to be supplicated,
each one according to his special function,--about which we have
spoken much already, though not all that is to be said concerning
it,--are they not more consistent with mimic buffoonery than divine
majesty? If any one should use two nurses for his infant, one of whom
should give nothing but food, the other nothing but drink, as these
make use of two goddesses for this purpose, Educa and Potina, he
should certainly seem to be foolish, and to do in his house a thing
worthy of a mimic. They would have Liber to have been named from
"liberation," because through him males at the time of copulation
are liberated by the emission of the seed. They also say that Libera
(the same in their opinion as Venus) exercises the same function in
the case of women, because they say that they also emit seed; and
they also say that on this account the same part of the male and
of the female is placed in the temple, that of the male to Liber,
and that of the female to Libera. To these things they add the
women assigned to Liber, and the wine for exciting lust. Thus the
Bacchanalia are celebrated with the utmost insanity, with respect to
which Varro himself confesses that such things would not be done by
the Bacchanals except their minds were highly excited. These things,
however, afterwards displeased a saner senate, and it ordered them
to be discontinued. Here, at length, they perhaps perceived how
much power unclean spirits, when held to be gods, exercise over the
minds of men. These things, certainly, were not to be done in the
theatres; for there they play, not rave, although to have gods who
are delighted with such plays is very like raving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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