the gods._
In this matter I would prefer to have as my assessors in judgment,
not those men who rather take pleasure in these infamous customs
than take pains to put an end to them, but that same Scipio Nasica
who was chosen by the senate as the citizen most worthy to receive
in his hands the image of that demon Cybele, and convey it into the
city. He would tell us whether he would be proud to see his own
mother so highly esteemed by the state as to have divine honours
adjudged to her; as the Greeks and Romans and other nations have
decreed divine honours to men who had been of material service to
them, and have believed that their mortal benefactors were thus made
immortal, and enrolled among the gods.[88] Surely he would desire
that his mother should enjoy such felicity were it possible. But if
we proceeded to ask him whether, among the honours paid to her, he
would wish such shameful rites as these to be celebrated, would he
not at once exclaim that he would rather his mother lay stone-dead,
than survive as a goddess to lend her ear to these obscenities? Is it
possible that he who was of so severe a morality, that he used his
influence as a Roman senator to prevent the building of a theatre in
that city dedicated to the manly virtues, would wish his mother to
be propitiated as a goddess with words which would have brought the
blush to her cheek when a Roman matron? Could he possibly believe
that the modesty of an estimable woman would be so transformed by her
promotion to divinity, that she would suffer herself to be invoked
and celebrated in terms so gross and immodest, that if she had heard
the like while alive upon earth, and had listened without stopping
her ears and hurrying from the spot, her relatives, her husband, and
her children would have blushed for her? Therefore, the mother of
the gods being such a character as the most profligate man would be
ashamed to have for his mother, and meaning to enthral the minds of
the Romans, demanded for her service their best citizen, not to ripen
him still more in virtue by her helpful counsel, but to entangle
him by her deceit, like her of whom it is written, "The adulteress
will hunt for the precious soul."[89] Her intent was to puff up this
high-souled man by an apparently divine testimony to his excellence,
in order that he might rely upon his own eminence in virtue, and
make no further efforts after true piety and religion, without which
natural genius, however brilliant, vapours into pride and comes to
nothing. For what but a guileful purpose could that goddess demand
the best man, seeing that in her own sacred festivals she requires
such obscenities as the best men would be covered with shame to hear
at their own tables?