regia tunc omnis vim maiestatis et omnis, parva licet, caeli imperium retinere potestas credita: ture etiam ducibus parvoque sacello inpertitus honos, quem dum metus aut amor autspes adcumulant, longum miseris processit in aevum mos patrius: coepit falsae pietatis imago ire per ignaros nebuloso errore nepotes; tum quia, quae vivis veneratio regibus ante contigerat, functis eadem iam munere lucis cessit et ad nigras altaria transtulit urnas.
At that time men believed that kingly power, however small, possessed the strength of all majesty and the government of all the heaven, and leaders had honour paid to them with incense and a little shrine. Fear or love or hope kept adding to it, and the inherited tradition went marching on among wretched men to distant ages, the false semblance of piety spreading through succeeding generations whose ignorant minds were clouded in a mist of error. And then too, the same reverence that had first fallen to living kings was paid to them also after they had passed from the light, and carried their worship over to their dark tombs.
final_alignments\Prudentius_Reply_to_Symmachus_Book1.json