celebrunt_; their errors, _luctus et
gaudia, amores, iras, nuptias et liberorum procreationes_ ([6511]as
Eusebius well taxeth), weddings, mirth and mournings, loves, angers, and
quarrelling they did celebrate in hymns, and sing of in their ordinary
songs, as it were publishing their villainies. But see more of their
originals. When Romulus was made away by the sedition of the senators, to
pacify the people, [6512]Julius Proculus gave out that Romulus was taken up
by Jupiter into heaven, and therefore to be ever after adored for a god
amongst the Romans. Syrophanes of Egypt had one only son, whom he dearly
loved; he erected his statue in his house, which his servants did adorn
with garlands, to pacify their master's wrath when he was angry, so by
little and little he was adored for a god. This did Semiramis for her
husband Belus, and Adrian the emperor by his minion Antinous. Flora was a
rich harlot in Rome, and for that she made the commonwealth her heir, her
birthday was solemnised long after; and to make it a more plausible
holiday, they made her goddess of flowers, and sacrificed to her amongst
the rest. The matrons of Rome, as Dionysius Halicarnassaeus relates,
because at their entreaty Coriolanus desisted from his wars, consecrated a
church _Fortunes muliebri_; and [6513]Venus Barbata had a temple erected,
for that somewhat was amiss about hair, and so the rest. The citizens
[6514]of Alabanda, a small town in Asia Minor, to curry favour with the
Romans (who then warred in Greece with Perseus of Macedon, and were
formidable to these parts), consecrated a temple to the City of Rome, and
made her a goddess, with annual games and sacrifices; so a town of houses
was deified, with shameful flattery of the one side to give, and
intolerable arrogance on the other to accept, upon so vile and absurd an
occasion. Tully writes to Atticus, that his daughter Tulliola might be made
a goddess, and adored as Juno and Minerva, and as well she deserved it.
Their holy days and adorations were all out as ridiculous; those Lupercals
of Pan, Florales of Flora, Bona dea, Anna Perenna, Saturnals, &c., as how
they were celebrated, with what lascivious and wanton gestures, bald
ceremonies, [6515]by what bawdy priests, how they hang their noses over the
smoke of sacrifices, saith [6516]Lucian, and lick blood like flies that was
spilled about the altars. Their carved idols, gilt images of wood, iron,
ivory, silver, brass, stone, _olim truncus er