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:
“It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them! Thus the rights of men are immense, and his greatest misfortune is to be unaware of them.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)