The Seven Books of Arnobius
Against the Heathen.
(Adversus
Gentes.)
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Book I.
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1. Since I have
found some who deem themselves very wise in their opinions, acting as
if they were inspired,3239
| 3239
The words insanire, bacchari, refer to the appearance of the
ancient seers when under the influence of the deity. So Virgil
says, Insanam vatem aspicies (Æn., iii. 443),
and, Bacchatur vates(Æn., vi.
78). The meaning is, that they make their asseverations with all
the confidence of a seer when filled, as he pretended, with the
influence of the god. |
and announcing with all the
authority
of an
oracle,
3240
| 3240 Et
velut quiddam promptum ex oraculo dicere, i.e., to declare a matter
with boldness and majesty, as if most certain and undoubted. |
that from the
time when the
Christian people began to exist in the
world the universe
has gone to
ruin, that the human race has been visited with ills of
many kinds, that even the very gods, abandoning their accustomed
charge, in
virtue of which they were wont in former days to regard with
interest our affairs, have been driven from the
regions of
earth,—I have
resolved, so
far as my capacity and my
humble power
of
language will allow, to oppose
public prejudice, and to refute
calumnious
accusations; lest, on the one
hand, those persons should
imagine that they are declaring some weighty matter, when they are
merely retailing vulgar rumours;
3241
| 3241
Popularia verba, i.e., rumours arising from the ignorance of the
common people. |
and on the other, lest, if we refrain
from such a contest, they should suppose that they have
gained a cause,
lost by its own inherent demerits, not abandoned by the
silence of its
advocates. For I should not deny that that charge is a most
serious one, and that we fully deserve the
hatred attaching to
public
enemies,
3242
if it should
appear that to us are attributable causes by reason of which the
universe has deviated from its laws, the gods have been driven far
away, and such swarms of miseries have been inflicted on the
generations of men.
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