69. But our name is new, we are told, and the religion which we follow arose but a few days ago. Granting for the present that what you urge against us is not untrue, what is there, I would ask, among the affairs of men that is either done by bodily exertion and manual labour, or attained by the mind’s learning and knowledge, which did not begin at some time, and pass into general use and practice since then? Medicine,3877 philosophy, music, and all the other arts by which social life has been built up and refined,—were these born with men, and did they not rather begin to be pursued, understood, and practised lately, nay, rather, but a short time since? Before the Etruscan Tages saw the3878 light, did any one know or trouble himself to know and learn what meaning there was in the fall of thunderbolts, or in the veins of the victims sacrificed?3879 When did the motion of the stars or the art of calculating nativities begin to be known? Was it not after Theutis3880 the Egyptian; or after Atlas, as some say, the bearer, supporter, stay, and prop of the skies?
Footnotes
- 3877
The ms. reads edi in filosophia; the first four edd., Philos.; Elmenh. and Orelli, Etenim phil.—“For were phil.;” LB., Ede an phil.—“say whether phil.,” which is, however faulty in construction, as the indicative follows. Rigaltius, followed by Oehler, emended as above, Medicina phil.
- 3878
Lit., “reached the coasts of.”
- 3879
Lit., “of the intestines”—extorum.
- 3880
In both Roman edd., Theutatem, i.e., Theutas. Cf. Plato, Phædrus, st. p. 274.