Commodian — Instructiones 5

You say, O fools: Jupiter himself thunders and hurls lightning. Even if littleness felt so, why do years still say it? You were infants: will you be so forever? Infancy’s use does not take up mature turning; childish play has yielded — so let hearts also withdraw; your counsels are owed to character. Senseless, then, do you believe Jupiter thunders — born here on earth and nursed on goat’s milk? So if father Saturn had eaten him, in those times who was raining when he was dead? Especially — is a god believed born of a mortal father? Saturn grew old on earth and failed on it. No one prophesied him before he was born. Or, if he himself thunders, law would have been given by him. Histories seduce, when he himself had been made. But he reigned in Crete and failed there. The Omnipotent has been made for you Semele’s lover. Scarcely would he himself likewise love now, if that one lived. You pray to the impure and say they are celestial, born of mortal seed from those Giants. You hear and read he was born on earth: whence did a corrupter well deserve to climb heaven? You also say the Cyclopes made him a thunderbolt. For the immortal had arms from mortals. So guilty of crimes, a parricide of his own too — by your authority you have conferred him on high.