18. The greatness of the
subject, and our duty to those on their defence also,4381
| 4381
Lit., “and the duty of defence itself.” |
demand that we should in like manner
hunt up the other forms of baseness, whether those which the histories
of
antiquity record, or those contained in the
sacred mysteries named
initia,
4382
| 4382
i.e., secret rites, to which only the initiated were admitted. |
and not
divulged
4383
| 4383 Lit., “which you
deliver”—traditis; so Elmenh., LB., and later
edd., for the unintelligible ms.
tradidisse, retained in both Roman edd. |
openly to
all, but to the
silence of a few; but your
innumerable sacred rites,
and the loathsomeness of them all,
4384
| 4384
Lit., “deformity affixed to all.” |
will not allow us to go through
them all bodily: nay, more, to tell the
truth, we turn aside
ourselves from some purposely and intentionally, lest, in striving to
unfold all things, we should be
defiled by contamination in the very
exposition. Let us pass by Fauna
4385
| 4385
ms. fetam f. Cf. i. 36, n. 2, p.
422, supra. |
Fatua, therefore, who is called Bona
Dea, whom Sextus Clodius, in his sixth book in
Greek on the gods,
declares to have been
scourged to
death with
rods of myrtle, because
she drank a whole jar of
wine without her
husband’s
knowledge;
and this is a
proof, that when
women show her
divine honour a jar of
wine is placed
there, but covered from sight, and that it is not
lawful to bring in twigs of myrtle, as Butas
4386
| 4386
So Heraldus, from Plutarch, Rom., 21, where Butas is said
to have written on this subject (αἰτίαι) in elegiacs,
for the ms. Putas. |
mentions in his Causalia. But
let us pass by with similar neglect
4387
| 4387 Lit., “in like manner and
with dissimulation.” |
the
dii conserentes, whom
Flaccus and others relate to have buried themselves, changed
in
humani penis similitudinem in the cinders under a
pot of
exta.
4388
And when Tanaquil, skilled in the arts of Etruria,
4389
disturbed these, the gods erected
themselves, and became rigid. She then commanded a captive
woman
from Corniculum to
learn and understand what was the meaning of
this: Ocrisia, a
woman of the greatest wisdom
divos inseruisse
genitali, explicuisse motus certos. Then the holy and burning
deities poured forth the power of Lucilius,
4390
| 4390
Vis Lucilii, i.e., semen. [He retails Pliny
xxxvi. 27.] |
and
thus Servius king of Rome
was born.
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