Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.71

71.1. "But what we do is new; what you do is ancient and of excessive oldness." — And how does that either help you or sadden our cause and reason? The new thing we carry will itself someday become old; what you practice is old, but in the times when it began it was new and sudden. But the authority of religion is not to be estimated by time but by the divinity, and it is fitting to look not on what day you began to worship but what you began.

2. "Three hundred years ago your religion was not." — And your gods were not before two thousand years. "By what reasons can that be gathered, or by what reckonings?" — Not difficult, not obscure, but such as anyone who wishes can see and, as it is said, handle with hands.

3. "Who begot Jupiter with his brothers?" — Saturn joined to Ops in marriage, as you hold, begotten from Caelus and Hecate. "Who Picus, father of Faunus and grandfather of Latinus?" — Saturn, as you likewise hand down by your writings and authors.

4. Therefore if these things are so, it follows that Picus and Jupiter are joined to each other by the right of brotherhood, as begotten from one blood and one seed. "It is consistent that what is said is so." — From Jupiter and Picus how many degrees of the line are there as far as Latinus? "Three, as the series shows." — Do you wish Faunus, Latinus, and Picus to have lived with years twenty and a hundred? "For beyond that a human life is denied to be able to be drawn out." — The estimate is just and clear. — Therefore after these are there three hundred and sixty full years? "The matter is so, as the reckoning shows." — Whose father-in-law was Latinus? "Of Aeneas." — Aeneas father of whom? — "Of Ascanius, founder of the Alban town." — How many years was there reigning at Alba? "Four hundred and nearly twice ten." — Of whose age is the city Rome indicated in the annals to be? "It draws fifty and a thousand years, or not much less than these."

5. — Therefore from Jupiter, who is brother of Picus and who is father of the lesser and remaining gods, there are to these times nearly two thousand years, or full, as we grant to the age. Which since it cannot be refuted, not only is the religion you go about shown recently born, but the gods themselves to whom you offer bulls and other victims at risk of corruption are still infants and little ones, who ought still to be nourished with breasts and dripping milk.