23. I should wish, therefore, to see Jupiter, the father of the gods, who ever controls the world and men, adorned with the horns of an ox, shaking his hairy ears, with his feet contracted into hoofs, chewing green grass, and having behind him a tail, hams, and ankles smeared over with soft excrement, and bedaubed with the filth cast forth. I should wish, I say,—for it must be said over and over again,—to see him who turns the stars in their courses, and who terrifies and overthrows nations pale with fear, pursuing the flocks of wethers, inspicientem testiculos aretinos, snatching these away with that severe and divine hand with which he was wont to launch the gleaming lightnings and to hurl in his rage the thunderbolt. Then, indeed, I should like to see him ransacking their inmost parts with glowing knife; and all witnesses being removed, tearing away the membranes circumjectas prolibus, and bringing them to his mother, still hot with rage, as a kind of fillet to draw forth her pity, with downcast countenance, pale, wounded, pretending to be in agony; and to make this believed, defiled with the blood of the ram, and covering his pretended wound with bands of wool and linen. Is it possible that this can be heard and read in this world, and that those who discuss these things wish themselves to be thought pious, holy, and defenders of religion? Is there any greater sacrilege than this, or can any mind be found so imbued with impious ideas as to believe such stories, or receive them, or hand them down in the most secret mysteries of the sacred rites? If that Jupiter of whom you speak, whoever he is, really existed, or was affected by any sense of wrong, would it not be fitting that, roused to anger, he should remove the earth from under our feet, extinguish the light of the sun and moon; nay more, that he should throw all things into one mass, as of old?
Reproduced in full. Translation: Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6 (Roberts and Donaldson, 1886), public domain (Public domain).