40.
[105]
Behold, behold, O priests, this religious man, and if it seems good to you,
(and it is only the duty of virtuous priests,) warn him that there are some
fixed limits to religion that a man ought not to be too superstitious. Why
was it necessary for you, O fanatical man, with an old woman's superstition,
to go to see a sacred ceremony which was being performed at another person's
house? And how was it that you were possessed with such weakness of mind as
to think it not possible for the gods to be sufficiently propitiated, unless
you intruded yourself into the religious ceremonies of women? Whom of your
ancestors did you ever hear of, of those men who were attentive to their
private religious duties, and who presided over the public priesthoods, who
were present when a sacrifice was being offered to the Bona Dea? No one; not
even that great man who became blind: from which it may be easily seen that
in this life men form many erroneous opinions; when he, who had not
knowingly seen anything which it was impious to see, lost his eye-sight; but
in the case of that fellow, who has polluted the ceremonies, not only by his
presence, but also by his incestuous guilt and, adultery, all the punishment
due to his eyes has fallen on the blindness of his mind. Can you, O priests,
avoid being influenced by the authority of this man, so chaste, so
religious, so holy, so pious a man, when he says that he, with his own
hands, pulled down the house of a most virtuous citizen, and with the same
hands consecrated it to the gods?
[106]
What was that consecration of yours? “I had carried a
bill,” says he, “to make it lawful for me to
act.” What? had you not inserted this clause in it, that if there
was anything contrary to what was right in the bill, it should be invalid?
Will you then, O priests, by your decision, establish the point that it is
right that the home of every one of you, and your altars, and your hearths,
and your household gods, should be at the mercy of the caprice of the
tribunes? that it is right for any one, not only to throw down the house of
that man whom he may have chosen to attack with a body of excited men, and
may have driven away by violence,—which is an act of present
insanity, like the effect of a sudden terror,—but for him to bind
that man and property for all future time by the everlasting obligation of
religion?
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