20. It was our purpose to leave unnoticed those mysteries also into which Phrygia is initiated, and all that4392 race, were it not that the name of Jupiter, which has been introduced by them, would not suffer us to pass cursorily by the wrongs and insults offered to him; not that we feel any pleasure in discussing4393 mysteries so filthy, but that it may be made clear to you again and again what wrong you heap upon those whose guardians, champions, worshippers, you profess to be. Once upon a time, they say, Diespiter, burning after his mother Ceres with evil passions and forbidden desires, for she is said by the natives of that district to be Jupiter’s mother, and yet not daring to seek by open4394 force that for which he had conceived a shameless longing, hits upon a clever trick by which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of the sort. Instead of a god, he becomes a bull; and concealing his purpose and daring under the appearance of a beast lying in wait,4395 he rushes madly with sudden violence upon her, thoughtless and unwitting, obtains his incestuous desires; and the fraud being disclosed by his lust, flies off known and discovered. His mother burns, foams, gasps, boils with fury and indignation; and being unable to repress the storm4396 and tempest of her wrath, received the name Brimo4397 thereafter from her ever-raging passion: nor has she any other wish than to punish as she may her son’s audacity.
Footnotes
- 4392
So the ms. and edd., reading gens illa, for which Memmius proposed Ilia—“and all the Trojan race.”
- 4393
Lit., “riding upon”—inequitare.
- 4394
Lit., “most open.”
- 4395
Subsessoris.
- 4396
Lit., “growling”—fremitum.
- 4397
The ms. reads primo, emended as above by the brother of Canterus, followed by later edd.