have been better dealt with than the select gods, whose
infamies are celebrated._
However, any one who eagerly seeks for celebrity and renown, might
congratulate those select gods, and call them fortunate, were it not
that he saw that they have been selected more to their injury than to
their honour. For that low crowd of gods have been protected by their
very meanness and obscurity from being overwhelmed with infamy. We
laugh, indeed, when we see them distributed by the mere fiction of
human opinions, according to the special works assigned to them, like
those who farm small portions of the public revenue, or like workmen
in the street of the silversmiths,[254] where one vessel, in order
that it may go out perfect, passes through the hands of many, when
it might have been finished by one perfect workman. But the only
reason why the combined skill of many workmen was thought necessary,
was, that it is better that each part of an art should be learned by
a special workman, which can be done speedily and easily, than that
they should all be compelled to be perfect in one art throughout all
its parts, which they could only attain slowly and with difficulty.
Nevertheless there is scarcely to be found one of the non-select
gods who has brought infamy on himself by any crime, whilst there
is scarce any one of the select gods who has not received upon
himself the brand of notable infamy. These latter have descended to
the humble works of the others, whilst the others have not come up
to their sublime crimes. Concerning Janus, there does not readily
occur to my recollection anything infamous; and perhaps he was such
an one as lived more innocently than the rest, and further removed
from misdeeds and crimes. He kindly received and entertained Saturn
when he was fleeing; he divided his kingdom with his guest, so that
each of them had a city for himself,[255]--the one Janiculum, and the
other Saturnia. But those seekers after every kind of unseemliness
in the worship of the gods have disgraced him, whose life they found
to be less disgraceful than that of the other gods, with an image
of monstrous deformity, making it sometimes with two faces, and
sometimes, as it were, double, with four faces.[256] Did they wish
that, as the most of the select gods had lost shame[257] through the
perpetration of shameful crimes, his greater innocence should be
marked by a greater number of faces?[258]