Arnobius, Against the Pagans (Adversus Nationes)

Book I.

mals on the earth and those living in the waters do not hunger, do not conceive, do not keep the fetuses taken into their wombs according to their own customs and their own f. 2 law? Finally, do men themselves, whom the first and beginning birth scattered across two habitable shores of the earth, not join marriages with the just solemnities of the wedding? Do they not beget the sweetest offspring of children? Do they not carry on public business, and private and domestic affairs? Do they not, as each pleases, direct their intellects through the diverse rationales of arts and disciplines, and report the returns of their studious labor? Do they not reign, do they not command, to whom the lot of such affairs has been attributed? Do they not become greater daily in dignities and powers, preside over the discussions of judgments, and interpret laws and rights? Do not all other things, by which human life is surrounded and contained, celebrate their own in all nations according to the institutions of their ancestral customs? Since, therefore, these things are so, and no novelty has broken in that has 3 pulled apart the perpetual tenor of things with a disconnected sequence, what is this that is said, that a blight has been brought upon the earth after the Christian religion brought itself into the world and revealed the mysteries of hidden truth? But they say that pestilences and droughts, wars, famine of crops, locusts, mice, and hail, and other harmful things by which human affairs are attacked, are brought upon us by the gods, exasperated by your injuries and offenses. If it were not a matter of stupidity to linger longer on things that are clear and require no defense, I would surely show, by unfolding the preceding centuries, that those evils you speak of were not unknown, and did not break in—and begin to infest mortal affairs with a variety of crises—after our people were worthy to be gifted with the happiness of this name. For if we are the cause, and in merit of our crime these things have been devised

Critical apparatus: 1 hunger Urs: hunger P; 3 keep? the men themselves finally Urs; 4 shores Sab, r: hours P; 7 domestic P corr; 8 and om Sab; 9 studious Urs: studious P; labor Urs: birth P; 10 is it? such Sab; 16 led/pulled apart Gel: led down P; 23 if m. post. in ras. added later in an erasure P; 26 sudden things but I have written: sudden things but P; before Urs; people Sab: genus P; 27 to be infested Sab; to be infested Urs.