6. What can you say
as to this, that it is attested by the writings of authors, that many
of these temples which have been raised with golden domes and lofty
roofs cover bones and ashes, and are sepulchres of the dead? Is
it not plain and manifest, either that you worship dead men for
immortal gods, or that an inexpiable affront is cast upon the deities,
whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the
dead? Antiochus,45974597 in the ninth book of his
Histories, relates that Cecrops was buried in the temple of
Minerva,45984598 at Athens;
again, in the temple of the same goddess, which is in the citadel of
Larissa,45994599 it is related
and declared that Acrisius was laid, and in the sanctuary of
Polias,46004600 Erichthonius;
while the brothers Dairas and Immarnachus were
buried in the enclosure of Eleusin, which lies near the
city. What say you as to the virgin daughters of Celeus? are they
not said to be buried46014601
in the temple of Ceres at Eleusin? and in the shrine of Diana,
which was set up in the temple of the Delian Apollo, are not Hyperoche
and Laodice buried, who are said to have been brought thither from the
country of the Hyperboreans? In the Milesian
Didymæon,46024602 Leandrius
says that Cleochus had the last honours of burial paid to him.
Zeno of Myndus openly relates that the monument of Leucophryne is in
the sanctuary of Diana at Magnesia. Under the altar of Apollo,
which is seen in the city of Tel509messus, is it not invariably declared by
writings that the prophet Telmessus lies buried? Ptolemæus,
the son of Agesarchus, in the first book of the History of
Philopator46034603 which he
published, affirms, on the authority of literature, that Cinyras, king
of Paphos, was interred in the temple of Venus with all his family,
nay, more, with all his stock. It would be46044604 an endless and boundless task to
describe in what sanctuaries they all are throughout the world; nor is
anxious care required, although46054605 the Egyptians fixed a penalty for any one
who should have revealed the places in which Apis lay hid, as to those
Polyandria46064606 of
Varro,46074607 by what
temples they are covered, and what heavy masses they have laid upon
them.