Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 10, 11 39
learn from literature, neither the Greek Diodorus nor Thallus
nor Cassius Severus nor Cornelius Nepos, nor any other recorder
of such ancient beliefs, has proclaimed him anything but a man;
if to proofs from facts, I find nowhere more reliable proofs than
in Italy itself, in which Saturn after many expeditions and after
a residence in Attica took up his abode, ha-ving been welcomed
by Janus, or Janes, as the Salii prefer to call him. The mountain
which he had inhabited was called Saturnian, the city, the
bounds of which he had marked out -with stakes, is even to this
day Saturnia, finally the whole of Italy was named Saturnian,
in succession to the name Oenotria. With him it was that
accounts began and the impress of a human figure upon a coin,
and thus it is that he presides over the treasury. But if Saturn
was a man, he was of course sprung from'a man, and because
he was sprung from a man, it follows that he did not come from
heaven or earth. But when a man's parents were unknown, it
was easy to call him a son of those whose sons we also can all
of us be considered; for who would not call heaven and earth
father and mother respectively out of reverence and respect?
even in accordance with human custom, by which unknown
persons or those who appear unexpectedly are said to have
come upon us from heaven. Thus it is that Saturn who appeared
suddenly happened everywhere to be called divine; indeed the
common people call those also 'sons of earth' whose origin is
uncertain. I say nothing of the fact that till then men were
so unsophisticated, that they were stirred by the appearance
of any new man, as if it were di-vine, since to-day men who are
already cultivated deify those who a few days before they
confessed by a public funeral were dead. Enough now about
Saturn, though in few words. We will show that even Jupiter
was himself as much man as he was sprung from man, and that
in succession the whole swarm of his descendants were as mortal
as they were like the' seed from which they sprang.
CHAP. XI. And since you have established the custom of
maintaining that they were deified after death, in spite of the
fact that you dare not deny them to have been men, let us
review the causes that have led to this result. In the first
place of course, you must admit that there is some superior
god, a sort of proprietor of deity, who has made gods out of
men. For neither could they have taken to themselves a
deity which they did not possess, nor could anyone else have
offered it to those who did not possess it unless he possessed it
in his own right. If there was no one to make them gods, it is
in vain that you assume their deification to have taken place.