haec si non ita sunt, edatur, cur sacra vobis ex tabulis cerisque poetica fabula praestat? cur Berecyntiacus perdit truncata sacerdos inguina, cum pulchrum poesis castraverit Attin? cur etiam templo Triviae lucisque sacratis cornipedes arcentur equi, cum Musa pudicum raptarit iuvenem volucri per litora curru, idque etiam paries tibi versicolorus adumbret? desine, si pudor est, gentilis ineptia, tandem res incorporeas simulatis fingere membris, desine terga hominis plumis obducere: frustra fertur avis mulier magnusque eadem dea vultur.
If it is not so, let it be stated why poets tales furnish you with objects of worship from pictures and waxen figures. Why does the Berecyntian priest mutilate and destroy his loins, after poetry has castrated the fair Attis? Why also are horny-hoofed horses excluded from the precinct of the goddess of the cross-ways and her consecrated groves, after the Muse has carried away a chaste youth along the shore in a flying chariot, and a wall too gives you a picture of the scene delineated in many colours. Cease, silly pagan, if you have any modesty, cease at last to model incorporeal things in counterfeit bodies ; cease to cover a human back with feathers; it is in vain that a woman passes as a bird, a great vulture and a goddess both in one.
final_alignments\Prudentius_Reply_to_Symmachus_Book2.json