Minucius Felix — Octavius 6
VI. "Since therefore either fortune is fixed or nature uncertain, how much more venerable and better it is for a priest of truth to take up the discipline of the ancestors, to cultivate the religions handed down, to adore the gods whom from your parents you were imbued to fear before you knew them more familiarly, and not to pass sentence on the divinities but to believe the earlier ones who, in a still rude age at the very birthdays of the world, deserved to have the gods either easy or as kings!
Hence indeed through all empires, provinces, and towns we see each people have their ancestral rites of the sacred and municipal citizens worship gods—as the Eleusinians Ceres, the Phrygians the Mother, the Epidaurians Asclepius, the Chaldeans Belus, the Syrians Astarte, the Taurians Diana, the Gauls Mercury, the Romans all of them. So their power and authority occupied the circuit of the whole world; so they propagated their empire beyond the sun's paths and the limits of ocean itself, while they exercise religious virtue in arms, while they fortify the city with religions of rites, chaste virgins, many honors and names of priests,
while besieged and captured this side of the Capitol alone they cultivate the gods whom another would already have scorned as angry, and through the lines of Gauls marveling at the boldness of superstition they go on unarmed with weapons but armed with the cult of religion, while with enemy walls taken and victory still fierce they venerate the conquered divinities, while from everywhere they seek guest gods and make them their own, while they build altars even to unknown divinities and to the Shades.
So, while they take up the rites of all nations, they have even earned kingdoms. Hence a perpetual tenor of veneration has remained, which is not broken by long age but increased: for antiquity has been accustomed to grant ceremonies and shrines as much holiness as it has built on of oldness."
Latin
VI. "Cum igitur aut fortuna certa aut incerta natura sit, quanto venerabilius ac melius antistitem veritatis maiorum excipere disciplinam, religiones traditas colere, deos, quos a parentibus ante inbutus es timere quam nosse familiarius, adorare, nec de numinibus ferre sententiam, sed prioribus credere, qui adhuc rudi saeculo in ipsius mundi natalibus meruerunt deos vel faciles habere vel reges! Inde adeo per universa imperia, provincias oppida videmus singulos sacrorum ritus gentiles habere et deos colere municipes, ut Eleusinios Cererem, Phrygas Matrem, Epidaurios Aesculapium, Chaldaeos Belum, Astarten Syros, Dianam Tauros, Gallos Mercurium, universa Romanos. Sic eorum potestas et auctoritas totius orbis ambitus occupavit, sic imperium suum ultra solis vias et ipsius oceani limites propagavit, dum exercent in armis virtutem religiosam, dum urbem muniunt sacrorum religionibus, castis virginibus, multis honoribus ac nominibus sacerdotum, dum obsessi et citra solum Capitolium capti colunt deos, quos alius iam sprevisset iratos, et per Gallorum acies mirantium superstitionis audaciam pergunt telis inermes, sed cultu religionis armati, dum captis in hostilibus moenibus adhuc ferociente victoria numina victa venerantur, dum undique hospites deos quaerunt et suos faciunt, dum aras extruunt etiam ignotis numinibus et Manibus. Sic, dum universarum gentium sacra suscipiunt, etiam regna meruerunt. Hinc perpetuus venerationis tenor mansit, qui longa aetate non infringitur, sed augetur: quippe antiquitas caerimoniis atque fanis tantum sanctitatis tribuere consuevit quantum adstruxerit vetustatis.