OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XXV

25. In her wanderings on that quest, she reaches the confines of Eleusis as well as other countries—that is the name of a canton in Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited by aborigines named Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Eumolpus, Dysaules: Triptolemus, who yoked oxen; Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine; Eumolpus, of sheep, from whom also flows the race of Eumolpidæ, and from whom is derived that name famous among the Athenians, and those who afterwards flourished as caduceatores, hierophants, and criers. So, then, that Baubo who, we have said, dwelt in the canton of Eleusis, receives hospitably Ceres, worn out with ills of many kinds, hangs about her with pleasing attentions, beseeches her not to neglect to refresh her body, brings to quench her thirst wine thickened with spelt, which the Greeks term cyceon. The goddess in her sorrow turns away from the kindly offered services, and rejects them; nor does her misfortune suffer her to remember what the body always requires. Baubo, on the other hand, begs and exhorts her—as is usual in such calamities—not to despise her humanity; Ceres remains utterly immoveable, and tenaciously maintains an invincible austerity. But when this was done several times, and her fixed purpose could not be worn out by any attentions, Baubo changes her plans, and determines to make merry by strange jests her whom she could not win by earnestness. That part of the body by which women both bear children and obtain the name of mothers, this she frees from longer neglect: she makes it assume a purer appearance, and become smooth like a child, not yet hard and rough with hair. In this wise she returns to the sorrowing goddess; and while trying the common expedients by which it is usual to break the force of grief, and moderate it, she uncovers herself, and baring her groins, displays all the parts which decency hides; and then the goddess fixes her eyes upon these, and is pleased with the strange form of consolation. Then becoming more cheerful after laughing, she takes and drinks off the drought spurned before, and the indecency of a shameless action forced that which Baubo’s modest conduct was long unable to win.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Lit., “also.”
* ↑ Lit., “(they were) earth-born who inhabited.”
* ↑ The ms. wants this name; but it has evidently been omitted by accident, as it occurs in the next line.
* ↑ Lit., “of woolly flock.”
* ↑ Cecropios et qui.
* ↑ i.e. staff-bearers.
* ↑ Cinnus, the chief ingredients, according to Hesychius (quoted by Oehler), being wine, honey, water, and spelt or barley. [P. 503, inf.]
* ↑ Lit., “offices of humanity.”
* ↑ Lit., “common health.” Arnobius is here utterly forgetful of Ceres’ divinity, and subjects her to the invariable requirements of nature, from which the divine might be supposed to be exempt.
* ↑ So the conjecture of Livineius, adopted by Oehler, gene-t-ri-cum for the ms. genericum.
* ↑ So Stewechius, followed by Oehler, reading redit itafor the ms. redita; the other edd. merely drop a.
* ↑ Omnia illa pudoris loca.
* ↑ Pubi.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XXII

22. I do not think it necessary here also with many words to go through each part, and show how many base and unseemly things there are in each particular. For what mortal is there, with but little sense even of what becomes a man, who does not himself see clearly the character of all these things, how wicked they are, how vile, and what disgrace is brought upon the gods by the very ceremonies of their mysteries, and by the unseemly origin of their rites? Jupiter, it is said, lusted after Ceres. Why, I ask, has Jupiter deserved so ill of you, that there is no kind of disgrace, no infamous adultery, which you do not heap upon his head, as if on some vile and worthless person? Leda was unfaithful to her nuptial vow; Jupiter is said to be the cause of the fault. Danae could not keep her virginity; the theft is said to have been Jupiter’s. Europa hastened to the name of woman; he is again declared to have been the assailant of her chastity. Alcmena, Electra, Latona, Laodamia, a thousand other virgins, and a thousand matrons, and with them the boy Catamitus, were robbed of their honour and chastity. It is the same story everywhere—Jupiter. Nor is there any kind of baseness in which you do not join and associate his name with passionate lusts; so that the wretched being seems to have been born for no other reason at all except that he might be a field fertile in crimes, an occasion of evil-speaking, a kind of open place into which should gather all filthiness from the impurities of the stage. And yet if you were to say that he had intercourse with strange women, it would indeed be impious, but the wrong done in slandering him might be bearable. Did he lust after his mother also, after his daughter too, with furious desires; and could no sacredness in his parent, no reverence for her, no shrinking even from the child which had sprung from himself, withhold him from conceiving so detestable a plan?

## Footnotes

* ↑ Lit., “of.”
* ↑ Lit., “that he might be a crop of”—seges, a correction in the margin of Ursinus for the ms. sedes—“a seat.”
* ↑ So all edd., reading scenarum (ms. scr-, but r marked as spurious), except LB, followed by Orelli, who gives sentinarum—“of the dregs.” Oehler supplies e, which the sense seems to require. [Note our author’s persistent scorn of Jove Opt. Max.]
* ↑ Lit., “neigh with appetites of an enraged beast.”
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XXIX

29. Now, to prevent any one from thinking that we have devised what is so impious, we do not call upon him to believe Heraclitus as a witness, nor to receive from his account what he felt about such mysteries. Let him ask the whole of Greece what is the meaning of these phalli which ancient custom erects and worships throughout the country, throughout the towns: he will find that the causes are those which we say; or if they are ashamed to declare the truth honestly, of what avail will it be to obscure, to conceal the cause and origin of the rite, while the accusation holds good against the very act of worship? What say you, O peoples? what, ye nations busied with the services of the temples, and given up to them? Is it to these rites you drive us by flames, banishment, slaughter, and any other kind of punishments, and by fear of cruel torture? Are these the gods whom you bring to us, whom you thrust and impose upon us, like whom you would neither wish yourselves to be, nor any one related to you by blood and friendship? Can you declare to your beardless sons, still wearing the dress of boys, the agreements which Liber formed with his lovers? Can you urge your daughters-in-law, nay, even your own wives, to show the modesty of Baubo, and enjoy the chaste pleasures of Ceres? Do you wish your young men to know, hear, and learn what even Jupiter showed himself to more matrons than one? Would you wish your grown-up maidens and still lusty fathers to learn how the same deity sported with his daughter? Do you wish full brothers, already hot with passion, and sisters sprung from the same parents, to hear that he again did not spurn the embraces, the couch of his sister? Should we not then flee far from such gods; and should not our ears be stopped altogether, that the filthiness of so impure a religion may not creep into the mind? For what man is there who has been reared with morals so pure, that the example of the gods does not excite him to similar madness? or who can keep back his desires from his kinsfolk, and those of whom he should stand in awe, when he sees that among the gods above nothing is held sacred in the confusion caused by their lusts? For when it is certain that the first and perfect nature has not been able to restrain its passion within right limits, why should not man give himself up to his desires without distinction, being both borne on headlong by his innate frailty, and aided by the teaching of the holy deities?

## Footnotes

* ↑ i.e., the sceptic.
* ↑ Cumwanting in the ms..
* ↑ Lit. “by right of friendship.”
* ↑ Lit., “of.”
* ↑ Lit., “of holy divinity.” Orelli thinks, and with reason, that Arnobius refers to the words which Terence puts into the mouth of Chærea (Eun., iii. 5, vv. 36–43), who encourages himself to give way to lust by asking, “Shall I, a man, not do this?” when Jove had done as much. [Elucidation III.]
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XX

20. It was our purpose to leave unnoticed those mysteries also into which Phrygia is initiated, and all that race, were it not that the name of Jupiter, which has been introduced by them, would not suffer us to pass cursorily by the wrongs and insults offered to him; not that we feel any pleasure in discussing mysteries so filthy, but that it may be made clear to you again and again what wrong you heap upon those whose guardians, champions, worshippers, you profess to be. Once upon a time, they say, Diespiter, burning after his mother Ceres with evil passions and forbidden desires, for she is said by the natives of that district to be Jupiter’s mother, and yet not daring to seek by open force that for which he had conceived a shameless longing, hits upon a clever trick by which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of the sort. Instead of a god, he becomes a bull; and concealing his purpose and daring under the appearance of a beast lying in wait, he rushes madly with sudden violence upon her, thoughtless and unwitting, obtains his incestuous desires; and the fraud being disclosed by his lust, flies off known and discovered. His mother burns, foams, gasps, boils with fury and indignation; and being unable to repress the storm and tempest of her wrath, received the name Brimo thereafter from her ever-raging passion: nor has she any other wish than to punish as she may her son’s audacity.

## Footnotes

* ↑ So the ms. and edd., reading gens illa, for which Memmius proposed Ilia—“and all the Trojan race.”
* ↑ Lit., “riding upon”—inequitare.
* ↑ Lit., “most open.”
* ↑ Subsessoris.
* ↑ Lit., “growling”—fremitum.
* ↑ The ms. reads primo, emended as above by the brother of Canterus, followed by later edd.
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XVII

17. Or if the things which we say are not so, declare, say yourselves—those effeminate and delicate men whom we see among you in the sacred rites of this deity—what business, what care, what concern have they there; and why do they like mourners wound their arms and breasts, and act as those dolefully circumstanced? What mean the wreaths, what the violets, what the swathings, the coverings of soft wools? Why, finally, is the very pine, but a little before swaying to and fro among the shrubs, an utterly inert log, set up in the temple of the Mother of the gods next, like some propitious and very venerable deity? For either this is the cause which we have found in your writings and treatises, and in that case it is clear that you do not celebrate divine rites, but give a representation of sad events; or if there is any other reason which the darkness of the mystery has withheld from us, even it also must be involved in the infamy of some shameful deed. For who would believe that there is any honour in that which the worthless Galli begin, effeminate debauchees complete?

## Footnotes

* ↑ Lit., “with.”
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XVIII

18. The greatness of the subject, and our duty to those on their defence also, demand that we should in like manner hunt up the other forms of baseness, whether those which the histories of antiquity record, or those contained in the sacred mysteries named initia, and not divulged openly to all, but to the silence of a few; but your innumerable sacred rites, and the loathsomeness of them all, will not allow us to go through them all bodily: nay, more, to tell the truth, we turn aside ourselves from some purposely and intentionally, lest, in striving to unfold all things, we should be defiled by contamination in the very exposition. Let us pass by Fauna Fatua, therefore, who is called Bona Dea, whom Sextus Clodius, in his sixth book in Greek on the gods, declares to have been scourged to death with rods of myrtle, because she drank a whole jar of wine without her husband’s knowledge; and this is a proof, that when women show her divine honour a jar of wine is placed there, but covered from sight, and that it is not lawful to bring in twigs of myrtle, as Butas mentions in his Causalia. But let us pass by with similar neglect the dii conserentes, whom Flaccus and others relate to have buried themselves, changed in humani penis similitudinem in the cinders under a pot of exta. And when Tanaquil, skilled in the arts of Etruria, disturbed these, the gods erected themselves, and became rigid. She then commanded a captive woman from Corniculum to learn and understand what was the meaning of this: Ocrisia, a woman of the greatest wisdom divos inseruisse genitali, explicuisse motus certos. Then the holy and burning deities poured forth the power of Lucilius, and thus Servius king of Rome was born.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Lit., “and the duty of defence itself.”
* ↑ i.e., secret rites, to which only the initiated were admitted.
* ↑ Lit., “which you deliver”—traditis; so Elmenh., LB., and later edd., for the unintelligible ms. tradidisse, retained in both Roman edd.
* ↑ Lit., “deformity affixed to all.”
* ↑ ms. fetam f. Cf. i. 36, n. 2, p. 422, supra.
* ↑ So Heraldus, from Plutarch, Rom., 21, where Butas is said to have written on this subject (αἰτίαι) in elegiacs, for the ms. Putas.
* ↑ Lit., “in like manner and with dissimulation.”
* ↑ i.e., heart, lungs, and liver, probably of a sacrifice.
* ↑ i.e., “divination, augury,” etc.
* ↑ Vis Lucilii, i.e., semen. [He retails Pliny xxxvi. 27.]
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book V/Chapter XVI

16. And yet how can you assert the falsehood of this story, when the very rites which you celebrate throughout the year testify that you believe these things to be true, and consider them perfectly trustworthy? For what is the meaning of that pine which on fixed days you always bring into the sanctuary of the mother of the gods? Is it not in imitation of that tree, beneath which the raging and ill-fated youth laid hands upon himself, and which the parent of the gods consecrated to relieve her sorrow? What mean the fleeces of wool with which you bind and surround the trunk of the tree? Is it not to recall the wools with which Ia covered the dying youth, and thought that she could procure some warmth for his limbs fast stiffening with cold? What mean the branches of the tree girt round and decked with wreaths of violets? Do they not mark this, how the Mother adorned with early flowers the pine which indicates and bears witness to the sad mishap? What mean the Galli with dishevelled hair beating their breasts with their palms? Do they not recall to memory those lamentations with which the tower-bearing Mother, along with the weeping Acdestis, wailing aloud, followed the boy? What means the abstinence from eating bread which you have named castus? Is it not in imitation of the time when the goddess abstained from Ceres’ fruit in her vehement sorrow?

## Footnotes

* ↑ The festival of Cybele began on the 22d of March, when a pine tree was introduced into the mysteries, and continued until the 27th, which was marked by a general purification (lavatio), as Salmasius observed from a calendar of Constantine the Great. [An equinoctial feast, which the Church deposed by the Paschal observances. March 22 is the prima sedes Paschæ.]
* ↑ Lit., “for solace of so great a wound.”
* ↑ So Stewechius, followed by Orelli and Oehler, reading quibus Ia for the ms. jam, which would refer the action to Cybele, whereas Arnobius expressly says (c. 7) that it was the newly wedded wife who covered the breast of Attis with wools. Jam is, however, received from the ms. by the other edd., except Hild., who asserts that the ms. reads Iam, and Elmenh., who reads Ion.
* ↑ i.e., priests of Cybele, their names being derived from the Phrygian river Gallus, whose waters were supposed to bring on frenzy ending in self-mutilation.
* ↑ Lit., “with wailing.”
# Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VII/Lactantius/The Divine Institutes/Book V/Chap. XIV

Chap. XIV.—Of the Fortitude of the Christians.
But this is true virtue, which the vaunting philosophers also boast of, not in deed, but with empty words, saying that nothing is so befitting the gravity and constancy of a wise man as to be able to be driven away from his sentiment and purpose by no torturers, but that it is worth his while to suffer torture and death rather than betray a trust or depart from his duty, or, overcome by fear of death or severity of pain, commit any injustice. Unless by chance Flaccus appears to them to rave in his lyrics, when he says,
“Not the rage of the million commanding things evil; Not the doom frowning near in the brows of the tyrant, Shakes the upright and resolute man In his solid completeness of soul.”
And nothing can be more true than this, if it is referred to those who refuse no tortures, no kind of death, that they may not turn aside from faith and justice; who do not tremble at the commands of tyrants nor the swords of rulers, so as not to maintain true and solid liberty with constancy of mind, which wisdom is to be observed in this alone. For who is so arrogant, who so lifted up, as to forbid me to raise my eyes to heaven? Who can impose upon me the necessity either of worshipping that which I am unwilling to worship, or of abstaining from the worship of that which I wish to worship? What further will now be left to us, if even this, which must be done of one’s own will, shall be extorted from me by the caprice of another? No one will effect this, if we have any courage to despise death and pain. But if we possess this constancy, why are we judged foolish when we do those things which philosophers praise? Seneca, in charging men with inconsistency, rightly says the highest virtue appears to them to consist in greatness of spirit; and yet the same persons regard him who despises death as a madman, which is plainly a mark of the greatest perverseness. But those followers of vain religions urge this with the same folly with which they fail to understand the true God; and these the Erythræan Sibyl calls “deaf and senseless,” since they neither hear nor perceive divine things, but fear and adore an earthen image moulded by their own fingers.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Tanti est…ne.
* ↑ Horat., Carm., iii. 3, Lord Lytton’s translation.
* ↑ i.e., of provinces.
* ↑ Voluntate.
* ↑ κωφοὺς καὶ ἀνοήτους.
# Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/53

53 (k-d 14)
| I was an armed fighter. Now a young home-dweller covers me proudly with twisted wires, with gold and silver. Sometimes men kiss me. Sometimes with my song I summon to battle happy comrades. Sometimes a steed carries me over the marches. Sometimes a sea-horse bears me over waves with my bright trappings. Sometimes a maiden fills my ring-adorned bosom. Sometimes I must lie hard and headless stripped on the tables. Sometimes I hang, with ornaments proud, on the wall where men drink. Sometimes a good weapon, the warriors bear me, riding on horseback, with treasure laden, I must breathe in the breath of a man’s breast. Sometimes with my music I summon proud warriors to drink their wine. Sometimes with my voice I rescue the booty, put foe to flight. Ask me my name. | 10 | Ic wæs wæpen wiga nu mec wlonc þeceð geong hagostealdmon golde ⁊ sylfore woum wirbogum hwilum weras cyssað hwilum ic to hilde hleoþre bonne wilgehleþan hwilum wycg byreþ mec ofer mearce hwilū merehengest fereð ofer flodas frætwum beorhtne hwilū mægða sum minne gefylleð bosm beaghroden hwilum ic bordum sceal heard heafodleas behlyþed licgan hwilū hongige hyrstum frætwed wlitig on wage þær weras drincað freolic fyrd sceorp · hwilū folcwigan wicge wegað þōn ic winde sceal sincfag swelgan of sumes bosme · hwilū ic gereordum rincas laðige wlonce to wine · hwilū wraþþum sceal stefne minre forstolen hreddan flyman feondsceaþan frige hwæt ic hatte |
Horn, described under various aspects marked by the “Sometimes” repeated ten times in nineteen lines: on the head of a steer, as war-horn (also on ships), as drinking horn, as hunting horn, as warning against thieves. “Ring-adorned,” l. 8, ‘adorned with a necklace.’
# Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/59

59 (k-d 27)
| I am honored among men both near and far; brought from the groves and inhabited hills, from vales and from downs. By day I was borne on wings through the air and happily wafted to the shelter of roofs. Then they bathed me in butts. Now I bind and I scourge and I overthrow the young to the ground and the elders sometimes, and this he soon finds who takes me on and attacks me with violence; he falls on his back unless he flees from his folly. Robbed of his strength, though strong in speech, he is deprived of his powers, and control of his mind, of his feet and his hands. Ask what my name is who bind men to the ground, the foolish after fighting, in broad daylight. | 10 | Ic eom weorð werum wide funden brungen of bearwum ⁊ of burghleoþū of denum ⁊ of dunum dæges mec wægun feþre on lifte feredon mid liste under hrofes hleo hæleð mec siþþan baþedan in bydene · nu ic eom bindere ⁊ swingere sona weorpere efne to eorþan hwilum ealdne ceorl · sona ꝥ onfindeð se þe mec fehð ongean ⁊ wið mægenþisan minre genæsteð, þæt he hrycge sceal hrusan secan gif he unrædes ær ne geswiceð strengo bistolen strong on spræce mægene binumen nah his modes geweald fota ne folma frige hwæt ic hatte :⁊ ðe on eorþan swa esnas binde dole æfter dyntum be dæges leohte |
Mead—the blossoming trees, bees, honey, stored to ferment, and then….
# Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/6

6 (k-d 33)
| A thing came marvelously moving over the waves, comely from the keel up. It called out to the land, loudly resounding. Its laughter was horrible, awful in its place. Its edges were sharp; hateful it was, and sluggish to battle, bitter in its hostile deeds. It dug into shield-walls, hard, ravaging. It spread mischievous spells. It spoke with cunning craft about its creation: “Dearest of women is indeed my mother; she is my daughter grown big and strong. It is known to men of old, among all people, that she shall stand up beautifully everywhere in the world.” | 10 | Wiht cwom æfter wege wrætlico liþan cymlic frō ceole cleopode to londe hlinsade hlude— leahtor wæs gryrelic egesful on earde ecge wæron scearpe wæs hio hetegrim hilde to sæne biter beadoweorca bordweallas grof heardhiþende heterune bond sægde searocræftig ymb hyre sylfre gesceaft is min modor mæg da cynnes þæs deorestan ꝥ is dohtor min eacen uploden swa þæt is ældum cuþ firum on folce ꝥ seo on foldan sceal on ealra londa gehwam lissum stondan |
Iceberg, slow but deadly as it damages ships. The mother–daughter relationship is simple: water into ice, ice into water.