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20. It was our purpose to leave unnoticed those mysteries also into which Phrygia is initiated, and all that43924392    So the ms. and edd., reading gens illa, for which Memmius proposed Ilia—“and all the Trojan race.” race, were it not that the name of Jupiter, which has been introduced by them, would not suffer us to pass cursorily by the wrongs and insults offered to him; not that we feel any pleasure in discussing43934393    Lit., “riding upon”—inequitare. mysteries so filthy, but that it may be made clear to you again and again what wrong you heap upon those whose guardians, champions, worshippers, you profess to be. Once upon a time, they say, Diespiter, burning after his mother Ceres with evil passions and forbidden desires, for she is said by the natives of that district to be Jupiter’s mother, and yet not daring to seek by open43944394    Lit., “most open.” force that for which he had conceived a shameless longing, hits upon a clever trick by which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of the sort. Instead of a god, he becomes a bull; and concealing his purpose and daring under the appearance of a beast lying in wait,43954395    Subsessoris. he rushes madly with sudden violence upon her, thoughtless and unwitting, obtains his incestuous desires; and the fraud being disclosed by his lust, flies off known and discovered. His mother burns, foams, gasps, boils with fury and indignation; and being unable to repress the storm43964396    Lit., “growling”—fremitum. and tempest of her wrath, received the name Brimo43974397    The ms. reads primo, emended as above by the brother of Canterus, followed by later edd. thereafter from her ever-raging passion: nor has she any other wish than to punish as she may her son’s audacity.


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