hey should be so far forth affrighted
with their fictitious gods, as to spend the goods, lives, fortunes,
precious time, best days in their honour, to [6521]sacrifice unto them, to
their inestimable loss, such hecatombs, so many thousand sheep, oxen with
gilded horns, goats, as [6522]Croesus, king of Lydia, [6523] Marcus
Julianus, surnamed _ob crebras hostias Victimarius, et Tauricremus_, and
the rest of the Roman emperors usually did with such labour and cost; and
not emperors only and great ones, _pro communi bono_, were at this charge,
but private men for their ordinary occasions. Pythagoras offered a hundred
oxen for the invention of a geometrical problem, and it was an ordinary
thing to sacrifice in [6524]Lucian's time, "a heifer for their good health,
four oxen for wealth, a hundred for a kingdom, nine bulls for their safe
return from Troja to Pylus," &c. Every god almost had a peculiar
sacrifice--the Sun horses, Vulcan fire, Diana a white hart, Venus a turtle,
Ceres a hog, Proserpine a black lamb, Neptune a bull (read more in [6525]
Stuckius at large), besides sheep, cocks, corals, frankincense, to their
undoings, as if their gods were affected with blood or smoke. "And surely"
([6526]saith he) "if one should but repeat the fopperies of mortal men, in
their sacrifices, feasts, worshipping their gods, their rites and
ceremonies, what they think of them, of their diet, houses, orders, &c.,
what prayers and vows they make; if one should but observe their absurdity
and madness, he would burst out a laughing, and pity their folly." For what
can be more absurd than their ordinary prayers, petitions, [6527]requests,
sacrifices, oracles, devotions? of which we have a taste in Maximus Tyrius,
_serm. 1._ Plato's Alcibiades Secundus, Persius _Sat. 2._ Juvenal. _Sat.
10._ there likewise exploded, _Mactant opimas et pingues hostias deo quasi
esurienti, profundunt vina tanquam sitienti, lumina accendunt velut in
tenebris agenti_ (Lactantius, _lib. 2. cap. 6_). As if their gods were
hungry, athirst, in the dark, they light candles, offer meat and drink. And
what so base as to reveal their counsels and give oracles, _e viscerum
sterquiliniis_, out of the bowels and excremental parts of beasts?
_sordidos deos_ Varro truly calls them therefore, and well he might. I say
nothing of their magnificent and sumptuous temples, those majestical
structures: to the roof of Apollo Didymeus' temple, _ad branchidas_, as
[6528]Strabo writes, a tho