[187]
—And you, O Ceres and Libera, whose sacred worship, as the opinions and religious
belief of all men agree, is contained in the most important and most abstruse
mysteries; you, by whom the principles of life and food, the examples of laws,
customs, humanity, and refinement are said to have been given and distributed to
nations and to cities; you, whose sacred rites the Roman people has received from
the Greeks and adopted, and now preserves with such religious awe, both publicly and
privately, that they seem not to have been introduced from other nations, but rather
to nave been transmitted from hence to other nations, but which nave been polluted
and violated by that man alone, in such a manner, that he had one image of
Ceres (which it was impious for a man not
only to touch, but even to look upon) pulled down from its place in the temple at
Catina, and taken away; and another image
of whom he carried away from its proper seat and home at Enna; which was a work of such beauty, that men,
when they saw it, thought either that they saw Ceres herself, or an image of Ceres not wrought by human hand, but one that had fallen from
heaven;—
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.