Pagan rites and gods are mourning, mutilation, and mockery
Octavius is continuing his attack on the pagan gods, now turning from their births and deaths to their rites and images.
Consider, finally, the sacred rites and the mysteries themselves. You will find sad outcomes: deaths, funerals, griefs, and lamentations of wretched gods. Isis mourns her lost son with her dog-headed god and her bald priests. She wails, she searches, and the miserable worshippers of Isis beat their breasts and imitate the grief of that most unhappy mother. Then, when the little one is found, Isis rejoices, the priests exult, the dog-headed god boasts as the finder, and they do not stop losing what they find or finding what they lose year after year. Is it not ridiculous either to mourn what you worship or to worship what you mourn? Yet these rites, once Egyptian, are now also Roman.
Ceres, with torches lit and a serpent coiled around her, anxiously and restlessly tracks Libera, who was snatched away and defiled in her wandering. These are the Eleusinian rites. And what are the sacred rites of Jupiter? His nurse is a she-goat, and the infant is hidden from his greedy father so that he will not be devoured, and the ringing of the Corybantes' cymbals drowns out his wailing so that his father will not hear it.
I am ashamed to speak of Cybele on Mount Dindyma. She cut off her adulterer, who had pleased her only unhappily, because she herself, both ugly and old, as the mother of many gods, could not entice him to defilement. She did it, of course, to make him a eunuch god. Because of this story the Galli, her eunuch priests, worship her and punish their own bodies by castrating themselves. These are no longer sacred rites; they are tortures.
What of the forms and appearances themselves? Do they not expose the mockeries and disgraces of your gods? Vulcan is a lame and crippled god. Apollo is smooth-faced through so many ages. Aesculapius has a fine beard, though he is always the son of the youthful Apollo. Neptune has gray-green eyes, Minerva blue-gray, Juno ox-eyes, Mercury winged feet, Pan hoofed feet, Saturn shackled feet. Janus indeed wears two faces, as if he walked backwards. Diana, meanwhile, is a huntress girt up high, and the Ephesian Diana is built up with many breasts and teats, and Trivia, the three-formed goddess, is horrifying with three heads and many hands.
What of your Jupiter himself? Now he is set up beardless, now he is placed bearded. When he is called Hammon, he has horns. When he is called Capitoline, then he wields thunderbolts. When he is called Latiaris, he is drenched in blood. When he is called Feretrius, he does not hear. And not to go through many Jupiters at length, there are as many monstrosities of Jupiter as there are names.
Erigone is hung from a noose, so that as a virgin she may be set among the stars. The Castors die in turns so that they may live. Aesculapius is struck by lightning so that he may rise as a god. Hercules is burned in the fires of Oeta so that he may put off the man.
Latin
Considera denique sacra ipsa et ipsa mysteria: inuenies exitus tristes, fata et funera et luctus atque planctus miserorum deorum. Isis perditum filium cum Cynocephalo suo et caluis sacerdotibus luget, plangit, inquirit, et Isiaci miseri caedunt pectora et dolorem infelicissimae matris imitantur: mox inuento paruulo gaudet Isis, . exultant sacerdotes, Cynocephalus inuentor gloriatur, nec desinunt annis omnibus uel perdere quod inueniunt uel inuenire quod perdunt.
nonne ridiculum est uel lugere quod colas uel colere quod lugeas? haec tamen Aegyptia quondam nunc et sacra Romana sunt. Ceres facibus accensis et serpente circumdata errore subreptam et corruptam Liberam anxia et sollicita uestigat: haec sunt Eleusinia. et quae Iouis sacra sunt?
nutrix capella est et auido patri subtrahitur infans, ne uoretur, et Corybantum cymbalis, ne pater audiat uagitus, tinnitus eliditur.
Cybelae Dindyma pudet dicere, quae adulterum suum infeliciter placitum, quoniam ipsa et deformis et uetula, ut multorum deorum mater, ad stuprum inlicere non poterat, exsecuit, ut deum scilicet faceret eunuchum. propter hanc fabulam Galli eam et semiuiri sui corporis supplicio colunt. haec iam non sunt sacra, tormenta sunt.
quid? formae ipsae et habitus nonne arguunt ludibria et dedecora deorum uestrorum? Vulcanus claudus deus et debilis, Apollo tot aetatibus leuis, Aesculapius bene barbatus, etsi semper adulescentis Apollinis filius, Neptunus glaucis oculis, Minerua caesiis, bubulis Iuno, pedibus Mercurius alatis, Pan ungulatis, Saturnus compeditis. Ianus uero frontes duas gestat, quasi et auersus incedat: Diana interim est alte succincta uenatrix et Ephesia mammis multis et uberibus exstructa et Triuia trinis capitibus et multis manibus horrifica.
quid ipse Iuppiter uester? modo inberbis statuitur, modo barbatus locatur; et cum Hammon dicitur, habet cornua, et cum Capitolinus, tunc gerit fulmina, et cum Latiaris, cruore perfunditur, et cum Feretrius, t non auditur. et ne longius multos Ioues obeam, tot sunt Iouis monstra quot nomina.
Erigone suspensa de laqueo est, ut uirgo inter astra ignita sit, Castores alternis moriuntur ut uiuant, Aesculapius ut in deum surgat fulminatur, Hercules ut hominem exuat, Oetaeis ignibus concrematur.