43. But what the meaning of
this is, is already clear to all. For because you are ashamed of
such writers and histories, and do not see that these things can be got
rid of which have once been committed to writing in filthy language, you strive to make base things honourable, and by every kind of subtlety you pervert and corrupt the real senses of words for the sake of spurious interpretations; and, as oft times happens to the sick, whose senses and understanding have been put to flight by the distempered force of disease, you toss about confused and uncertain conjectures, and rave in empty fictions.
Let it be granted that the irrigation of
the earth was meant by the union of Jupiter and Ceres, the burying of
the seed by the
ravishing of Proserpine by father Dis, wines scattered over the
earth by the limbs of Liber torn asunder by the Titans, that the
restraining of lust and
rashness has been spoken of as the binding of the adulterous Venus and
Mars.