Commodian — Instructiones 16
A few wicked empty seers delude you while they seek to untangle their own life. They suborn for others from themselves a falsehood under mysteries. Then pretending, shaken by some divinity, they sing majesty and wear themselves under a figure. You have often seen the Bellona-fighters — with what crash they enter luxuries while they seek to feign furies, or when they strike their own backs with a spare two-edged axe, though by their own teaching they discern that they heal by blood. Look: when divinities do not compel them, they themselves first compose themselves with whole mind; but they seek such tricks to take a stipend. From that see that all things are feigned. They shade the suppliant people lest the perishing believe. The matter once proceeded in vain from antiquity, that false things handed over be believed by the soothsayer; but no majesty of theirs has spoken.
Latin
16 DE SIMULACRIS EORUM. Deludunt uos pauci scelerati uates inanes, Extricare suam dum quaerunt ** uitam. Subornant aliis ex se sub mysteria falsum. Inde simulantes concussi numine quodam Maiestatemque canunt et se sub figura fatigant. Uidistis saepe Duellonarios, quali fragore Luxurias ineunt, dum furias fingere quaerunt, Aut cum dorsa sua allidunt parca bipinne, Cum doctrina sua cernant, quod cruore sanent. Respicite, quando non illos numina cogunt, Ipsi qui se primum conponunt integra mente; Sed stipem ut tollant ingenia talia quaerunt. Ex eo uidete, quoniam sunt omnia ficta. Obumbrant populum supplicem, perituri ne credant. Res semel in uano de uetustate processit, Ut uaticinanti credatur prodita falsa; Maiestas autem illorum nulla locutust.