31.
These narratives of yours, say they, are but fables which have to be interpreted by the wise, or else they are fit only to be laughed at; but we revere that Jupiter of whom Maro says that
"All things are full of Jove,"
--Virgil's Eclogues, iii. v. 60;
that is to say, the spirit of life 1 that vivifies all things. It is not without some reason, therefore, that Varro thought that Jove was worshipped by the Jews; for the God of the Jews says by His prophet, "I fill heaven and earth." 2 But what is meant by that which the same poet names Ether? How do they take the term? For he speaks thus:
"Then the omnipotent father Ether, with fertilizing showers,
Came down into the bosom of his fruitful spouse."
--Virgil's Georgics, ii. 325.
They say, indeed, that this Ether is not spirit, 3 but a lofty body in which the heaven is stretched above the air. 4 Is liberty conceded to the poet to speak at one time in the language of the followers of Plato, as if God was not body, but spirit, and at another time in the language of the Stoics, as if God was a body? What is it, then, that they worship in their Capitol? If it is a spirit, or if again it is, in short, the corporeal heaven itself, then what does that shield of Jupiter there which they style the AEgis? The origin of that name, indeed, is explained by the circumstance that a goat 5 nourished Jupiter when he was concealed by his mother. Or is this a fiction of the poets? But are the capitols of the Romans, then, also the mere creations of the poets? And what is the meaning of that, certainly not poetical, but unmistakeably farcical, variability of yours, in seeking your gods according to the ideas of philosophers in books, and revering them according to the notions of poets in your temples?
