Varro has not spoken of that Atys, nor sought out any interpretation for him, in memory of whose being loved by Ceres the Gallus is mutilated.But the learned and wise Greeks have by no means been silent about an interpretation so holy and so illustrious.The celebrated philosopher Porphyry has said that Atys signifies the flowers of spring, which is the most beautiful season, and therefore was mutilated because the flower falls before the fruit appears.(1) They have not, then, compared the man himself, or rather that semblance of a man they called Atys, to the flower, but his male organs,--these, indeed, fell whilst he was living.Did I say fell? nay, truly they did not fall, nor were they plucked off, but tom away.Nor when that flower was lost did any fruit follow, but rather sterility.What, then, do they say is signified by the castrated Atys himself, and whatever remained to him after his castration? To what do they refer that? What interpretation does that give rise to? Do they, after vain endeavors to discover an interpretation, seek to persuade men that that is rather to be believed which report has made public, and which has also been written concerning his having been a mutilated man? Our Varro has very properly opposed this, and has been unwilling to state it; for it certainly was not unknown to that most learned man.
CHAP.26.--CONCERNING THE ABOMINATION OF THE SACRED RITES OF THE GREATMOTHER.
Concerning the effeminates consecrated to the same Great Mother, in defiance of all the modesty which belongs to men and women, Varro has not wished to say anything, nor do I remember to have read anywhere aught concerning them.These effeminates, no later than yesterday, were going through the streets and places of Carthage with anointed hair, whitened faces, relaxed bodies, and feminine gait, exacting from the people the means of maintaining their ignominious lives.Nothing has been said concerning them.Interpretation failed, reason blushed, speech was silent.The Great Mother has surpassed all her sons, not in greatness of deity, but of crime.To this monster not even the monstrosity of Janus is to be compared.His deformity was only in his image; hers was the deformity of cruelty in her sacred rites.He has a redundancy of members in stone images; she inflicts the loss of members on men.This abomination is not surpassed by the licentious deeds of Jupiter, so many and so great.
He, with all his seductions of women, only disgraced heaven with one Ganymede; she, with so many avowed and public effeminates, has both defiled the earth and outraged heaven.Perhaps we may either compare Saturn to this Magna Mater, or even set him before her in this kind of abominable cruelty, for he mutilated his father.But at the festivals of Saturn, men could rather be slain by the hands of others than mutilated by their own.
He devoured his sons, as the poets say, and the natural theologists interpret this as they list.History says he slew them.
But the Romans never received, like the Carthaginians, the custom of sacrificing their sons to him.This Great Mother of the gods, however, has brought mutilated men into Roman temples, and has preserved that cruel custom, being believed to promote the strength of the Romans by emasculating their men.
Compared with this evil, what are the thefts of Mercury, the wantonness of Venus, and the base and flagitious deeds of the rest of them, which we might bring forward from books, were it not that they are daily sung and danced in the theatres? But what are these things to so great an evil,--an evil whose magnitude was only proportioned to the greatness of the Great Mother,--especially as these are said to have been invented by the poets? as if the poets had also invented this that they are acceptable to the gods.Let it be imputed, then, to the audacity and impudence of the poets that these things have been sung and written of.But that they have been incorporated into the body of divine rites and honors, the deities themselves demanding and extorting that incorporation, what is that but the crime of the gods? nay more, the confession of demons and the deception of wretched men? But as to this that the Great Mother is considered to be worshipped in the appropriate form when she is worshipped by the consecration of mutilated men, this is not an invention of the poets, nay, they have rather shrunk from it with horror than sung of it.Ought any one, then, to be consecrated to these select gods, that he may live blessedly after death, consecrated to whom he could not live decently before death, being subjected to such foul superstitions, and bound over to unclean demons? But all these things, says Varro, are to be referred to the world.(1) Let him consider if it be not rather to the unclean.(2) But why not refer that to the world which is demonstrated to be in the world? We, however, seek for a mind which, trusting to true religion, does not adore the world as its god, but for the sake of God praises the world as a work of God, and, purified from mundane defilements, comes pure(3) to God Himself who rounded the world.(4)CHAP.27.--CONCERNING THE FIGMENTS OF THE PHYSICAL THEOLOGISTS, WHONEITHER
WORSHIP THE TRUE DIVINITY, NOR PERFORM THE WORSHIP WHEREWITH THE TRUEDIVINITY
SHOULD BE SERVED.