Chapter XX.

20. But you, on the contrary, forgetting how great⁴¹⁸⁴ their dignity and grandeur are, associate with them a birth,⁴¹⁸⁵ and impute to them a descent,⁴¹⁸⁶ which men of at all refined feelings regard as at once execrable and terrible. From Ops, you say, his mother, and from his father Saturn, Diespiter was born with his brothers. Do the gods, then, have wives; and, the matches having been previously planned, do they become subject to the bonds of marriage? Do they take upon themselves⁴¹⁸⁷ the engagements of the bridal couch by prescription, by the cake of spelt, and by a pretended sale?⁴¹⁸⁸ Have they their mistresses,⁴¹⁸⁹ their promised wives, their betrothed brides, on settled conditions? And what do we say about their marriages, too, when indeed you say that some celebrated their nuptials, and entertained joyous throngs, and that the goddesses sported at these; and that some threw all things into utter confusion with dissensions because they had no share in singing the Fescennine verses, and occasioned danger and destruction⁴¹⁹⁰ to the next generation of men?⁴¹⁹¹