5.
But let it be assumed that there are these gods, as you wish and believe, and are persuaded; let them be called also by those names by which the common people suppose that those meaner gods 1 are known. 2 Whence, however, have you learned who make up the list of gods under these names? 3 have any ever become familiar and known to others with whose names you were not acquainted? 4 For it cannot be easily known whether their numerous body is settled and fixed in number; or whether their multitude cannot be summed up and limited by the numbers of any computation. For let us suppose that you do reverence to a thousand, or rather five thousand gods; but in the universe it may perhaps be that there are a hundred thousand; there may be even more than this,--nay, as we said a little before, it may not be possible to compute the number of the gods, or limit them by a definite number. Either, then, you are yourselves impious who serve a few gods, but disregard the duties which you owe to the rest; 5 or if you claim that your ignorance of the rest should be pardoned, you will procure for us also a similar pardon, if in just the same way 6 we refuse to worship those of whose existence we are wholly ignorant.
So all edd., reading populares, except Hild. and Oehler, who receive the conj. of Rigaltius, populatim--"among all nations;" the ms. reading popularem. ↩
Censeri, i.e., "written in the list of gods." ↩
Otherwise, "how many make up the list of this name." ↩
So Orelli, receiving the emendation of Barth, incogniti nomine, for the ms. in cognitione, -one being an abbreviation for nomine. Examples of such deities are the Novensiles, Consentes, etc., cc. 38-41. ↩
Lit., "who, except a few gods, do not engage in the services of the rest." ↩
Orelli would explain pro parte consimili as equivalent to pro uno vero Deo--"for the one true God." ↩
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