Divine Redundancy
The proliferation of deities among the Romans was mocked by the Church Fathers:
| “ | The inability of Romans of the classical period to explain just who were the di Indigetes and di Novensiles caused Christian apologists no end of amusement, and the whole project of classifying gods was denounced by Tertullian in a question: 'Shall I run through them individually, as many as they are, and as great: the new, the old, the barbarian, the Greek, Roman, foreign, captive, adopted, private, public, male, female, rustic, urban, naval, and military?' | ” |
Tertullian took a euhemerizing approach in explaining why the gods of the Romans kept multiplying; they were all, he said, merely people (homines) with birthplaces (civitatibus, in quibus nati sunt) and tombs (sepulti). Arnobius, similarly attempting to demonstrate the logical flaws in the Roman conception of divinity, offers what is perhaps the most extended discussion of the novensiles in any extant source, and lists seven authorities whose explanations of their identity strike him as mutually exclusive. Several other sources, he notes, say that the novensiles are people (homines) who have become divus, "divine" or "deified'; among these divi are Hercules, Romulus, Aesculapius, Liber, and Aeneas.
Read more about this topic: Novensiles
Famous quotes containing the word divine:
“We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)