During those times the kingdom of Argos came to an end; being transferred to Mycene, from which Agamemnon came, and the kingdom of Laurentum arose, of which Picus son of Saturn was the first king, when the woman Deborah judged the Hebrews; bill it was the Spirit of God who used her as His agent, for she was also a prophetess, although her prophecy is so obscure that we could not demonstrate, without a long discussion, that it was uttered concerning Christ.Now the Laurentes already reigned in Italy, from whom the origin of the Roman people is quite evidently derived after the Greeks; yet the kingdom of Assyria still lasted, in which Lampares was the twenty-third king when Picus first began to reign at Laurentum.The worshippers of such gods may see what they are to think of Saturn the father of Picus, who deny that he was a man; of whom some also have written that he himself reigned in Italy before Picus his son; and Virgil in his well-known book says, "That race indocile, and through mountains high Dispersed, he settled, and endowed with laws, And named their country Latium, because Latent within their coasts he dwelt secure.Tradition says the golden ages pure Began when he was king."(1)But they regard these as poetic fancies, and assert that the father of Picus was Sterces rather, and relate that, being a most skillful husbandman, he discovered that the fields could be fertilized by the dung of animals, which is called stercus from his name.Some say he was called Stercutius.But for whatever reason they chose to call him Saturn, it is yet certain they made this Sterces or Stercutius a god for his merit in agriculture; and they likewise received into the number of these gods Picus his son, whom they affirm to have been a famous augur and warrior.Picus begot Faunus, the second king of Laurentum; and he too is, or was, a god with them.These divine honors they gave to dead men before the Trojan war.
CHAP.16.--OF DIOMEDE, WHO AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY WAS PLACEDAMONG THE
GODS, WHILE HIS COMPANIONS ARE SAID TO HAVE BEEN CHANGED INTO BIRDSTroy was overthrown, and its destruction was everywhere sung and made well known even to boys; for it was signally published and spread abroad, both by its own greatness and by writers of excellent style.And this was done in the reign of Latinus the son of Faunus, from whom the kingdom began to be called Latium instead of Laurentum.The victorious Greeks, on leaving Troy destroyed and returning to their own countries, were torn and crushed by divers and horrible calamities.Yet even from among them they increased the number of their gods for they made Diomede a god.They allege that his return home was prevented by a divinely imposed punishment, and they prove, not by fabulous and poetic falsehood, but by historic attestation, that his companions were turned into birds.Yet they think that, even although he was made a god, he could neither restore them to the human form by his own power, nor yet obtain it from Jupiter his king, as a favor granted to a new inhabitant of heaven.They also say that his temple is in the island of Diomedaea, not far from Mount Garganus in Apulia, and that these birds fly round about this temple, and worship in it with such wonderful obedience, that they fill their beaks with water and sprinkle it; and if Greeks, or those born of the Greek race, come there, they are not only still, but fly to meet them; but if they are foreigners, they fly up at their heads, and wound them with such severe strokes as even to kill them.For they are said to be well enough armed for these combats with their hard and large beaks.
CHAP.17.--WHAT VARRO SAYS OF THE INCREDIBLE TRANSFORMATIONS OF MEN.
In support of this story, Varro relates others no less incredible about that most famous sorceress Circe, who changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians, who, by lot, swam across a certain pool, and were turned into wolves there, and lived in the deserts of that region with wild beasts like themselves.But if they never fed on human flesh for nine years, they were restored to the human form on swimming back again through the same pool.Finally, he expressly names one Demaenetus, who, on tasting a boy offered up in sacrifice by the Arcadians to their god Lycaeus according to their custom, was changed into a wolf, and, being restored to his proper form in the tenth year, trained himself as a pugilist, and was victorious at the Olympic games.And the same historian thinks that the epithet Lycaeus was applied in Arcadia to Pan and Jupiter for no other reason than this metamorphosis of men into wolves, because it was thought it could not be wrought except by a divine power.For a wolf is called in Greek <greek>lukos</greek>, from which the name Lycaeus appears to be formed.
He says also that the Roman Luperci were as it were sprung of the seed of these mysteries.
CHAP.18.--WHAT WE SHOULD BELIEVE CONCERNING THE TRANSFORMATIONS WHICHSEEM TO
HAPPEN TO MEN THROUGH THE ART OF DEMONS.
Perhaps our readers expect us to say something about this so great delusion wrought by the demons; and what shall we say but that men must fly out of the midst of Babylon?(2) For this prophetic precept is to be understood spiritually in this sense, that by going forward in the living God, by the steps of faith, which worketh by love, we must flee out of the city of this world, which is altogether a society of ungodly angels and men.Yea, the greater we see the power of the demons to be in these depths, so much the more tenaciously must we cleave to the Mediator through whom we ascend from these lowest to the highest places.