d
evening, nor did the seasons return in order crowned with wreaths from
the fruitful harvest. The land was also spoiled by the inundations of
disorderly rivers; and a great part of it was deformed with marshes, and
utterly wild by reason of deep quagmires, unfertile forests, and woods.
There was then no production of tame fruits, nor any instruments of art
or invention of wit. And hunger gave no time, nor did seed-time then
stay for the yearly season. What wonder is it if we made use of the
flesh of beasts contrary to Nature, when mud was eaten and the bark of
wood, and when it was thought a happy thing to find either a sprouting
grass or a root of any plant! But when they had by chance tasted of
or eaten an acorn, they danced for very joy about some oak or esculus,
calling it by the names of life-giver, mother, and nourisher. And this
was the only festival that those times were acquainted with; upon all
other occasions, all things were full of anguish and dismal sadness. But
whence is it that a certain ravenousness and frenzy drives you in these
happy days to pollute yourselves with blood, since you have such an
abundance of things necessary for your subsistence? Why do you belie the
earth as unable to maintain you? Why do you profane the lawgiver Ceres,
and shame the mild and gentle Bacchus, as not furnishing you with
sufficiency? Are you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood and
slaughter? You are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and lions
savage creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and
come nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary
nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare."

For we eat not lions and wolves by way of revenge; but we let those go,
and catch the harmless and tame sort, and such as have neither stings
nor teeth to bite with, and slay them; which, so may Jove help us,
Nature seems to us to have produced for their beauty and comeliness
only. [Just as if one seeing the river Nilus overflowing its banks,
and thereby filling the whole country with genial and fertile moisture,
should not at all admire that secret power in it that produces plants
and plenteousness of most sweet and useful fruits, but beholding
somewhere a crocodile swimming in it, or an asp crawling along, or mice
(savage and filthy creatures), should presently affirm these to be the
occasion of all that is amiss, or of any want or defect that may happen.
Or as if indeed one contemp