J. C. Orelli, Praefatio in Appendicem ad Arnobium

PREFACE.

What was the reason for this appendix to my Arnobius, and what has been accomplished in it, receive in a few words, kind reader. Namely, when at the spring fair of the past year I had received my edition of Arnobius sent forth from the presses of that most honourable man Vogel, from that time onward I held nothing either more important or more urgent than that, surveying again more attentively both the text of this edition and the annotations subjoined to it, I should note down for myself each particular that had been either committed in error or omitted in them, and at the same time should diligently seek out, either by myself or through friends, whatever things conducive to the emendation or illustration of a writer most difficult on account of his recondite learning, scattered in other philological books, had escaped my notice at the time when I had been occupied in editing Arnobius. As I did this through several months, no very abundant harvest of graver errors indeed appeared,

unless you wish to reckon among them twelve to fifteen most true emendations of former interpreters, which, though approved in my annotations, I had forgotten to receive into the text, and which are now noted in the list of errors added at the end of this appendix. Yet all the fuller a supply of new aids, which it had not previously been permitted me to use, offered itself to my search, especially when (as the reviewer of my Arnobius in the Leipzig Literary Journal, the only one hitherto known to me and at the same time most fair, desired) to that end I had surveyed certain most splendid and in part rarely met with works which contain monuments of ancient art, for example Visconti's Museum Pio-Clementinum and Museum Chiaramonti, Gori's Museum Etruscum, the antiquities and paintings dug up from Herculaneum (of which in editing Arnobius I had used only the edition printed at Augsburg and furnished with some rather meagre notes of Murr), Zoëga's most learned work, moreover, on the ancient reliefs found at Rome (Li Bassirilievi antichi di Roma), and also the new edition of the Works of Winckelmann cared for by three most learned men—Fernow, already some years ago snatched away by bitter fate from humane letters, of which he had been a distinguished glory and ornament, Meyer, and Schulze. By the labours of which most learned men, most skilled in antiquity, I profess with a feeling of most grateful heart that light has now been restored to more than thirty, and those the more difficult, passages of my Arnobius. Yet not content with these resources, I read through anew the commentaries of the former interpreters of Arnobius—of Heraldus above all, Stewechius, and Elmenhorstius—and the Apparatus of Le Nourry (from which previously, since the manuscript of my Arnobius had already been sent to Leipzig, it had been permitted me to gather only a few gleanings, as it were), granted to me a second time by the kindness of the same most courteous men whom I praised in the Preface to Arnobius, so that if I found any things of good fruit in them which in editing Arnobius had either escaped my diligence, or which I myself, because they seemed to contain matters already long since well known to me, not suspecting that they would perchance be unknown to others, had thought should be passed over in silence, I might now receive them into these second thoughts. I consulted besides some editions of ancient writers not yet employed for editing Arnobius, and also various philological books of the most diverse kind,

SEGMENT.

Which the Royal manuscript codex of Arnobius, and from it the Roman edition, has woven into the text at the beginning of chapter 41 of Book VII of our edition, after the words: lest weariness be produced by excess.

We do not deny that all these things which have been brought forward by you in opposition are contained in the writings of the annals: for we ourselves also, according to our small measure and the capacity of our understanding, both have read these same things and know that they are set down; but the sum of the question lies in this, whether these are gods, whom you assert to rage when offended, and to be rendered mild by games and sacrifices,

for example Casaubon's Exercitationes Ecclesiasticae, Salmasius's Epistles, Philippus Carolus's by no means despicable Animadversions upon Aulus Gellius and Quintus Curtius, Christopher Cellarius's little book on the Barbarisms of the Latin Tongue, most full of good fruit, Schelling's Dissertation on the Samothracian Gods, brief indeed, but crammed with manifold and recondite learning (to which, as it seems to me at least, I owe the solely true explanation of the most difficult passage of all, Book III, ch. 40, on the Dii Consentes, concerning which I had sought the judgements of learned men in the Preface to Arnobius), and moreover the most excellent work of Creuzer—a man to have named whom is to have praised him—entitled Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, and several other books. Finally, a by no means unwelcome addition was made by several conjectures of the late Heumann, written in the margin of a copy of Elmenhorstius's edition printed at Hamburg in the year 1610, preserved in the most ample Library of Georgia Augusta, which Benecke, Professor at Göttingen, a man at once most learned and most courteous, and one who has already deserved right well of my editions both of the Socratic Epistles and of Memnon of Heraclea and Chion, communicated to me. When therefore all these things had been excerpted, collected, arranged, and adapted to the several pages of my edition, and my own additions, such as they are, subjoined, and finally all the faults both of the straying pen and of the types that it had been permitted me to track down by a repeated reading of it had been corrected, there came forth at length this final gleaning for my Arnobius, which I now offer to you, kind reader, hoping that in it, brief though it be and consisting of only a few sheets, you will nevertheless find several things not altogether to be despised, nor, as the saying is, picked up from the crossroads, and that, if you compare it with my edition, you will no longer miss very many things that could aid either the criticism or the explanation of Arnobius. To whom I now say a last farewell as to a most dear friend, with whom for not a few years I had the closest intimacy, wishing most earnestly that among the cultivators of sacred and humane disciplines an author most worthy of being read, powerful in learning and acuteness, and second to none of the Fathers of the Latin Church, may find very many readers.

Written at Zurich in Switzerland, 11 February 1817.

or whether they are something far different, and ought to be separated from the force both of this name and of this power. For who is there, first, who would think that those are gods, or believe that they exist, who by theatrical movements and dances, and by geldings running in vain, are relaxed into the joys of pleasures, and set forth from heaven to behold foolish and frigid actions,

and complain that they are offended and their honours slighted, if a player has stood still for a little, or a piper, being tired, has paused a moment? who declare that the presiding magistrate has displeased them, if some guilty man passes through the middle of the circus about to pay the penalties and punishments he has deserved? If all these things are looked at thoroughly and without any partiality, they will be found foreign not only to gods, but to any refined man, and one not trained to the highest summits of seriousness and weight. For who, first, is there who would think that those were gods, or believe that they are, who have a nature of harming and raging, and cast it off again, softened by a single cup of blood and a fumigation of incense? Who spend their festal days and the fullest pleasures of merriment in the movements of the stage and the dances of actors; who set out from heaven to watch geldings running to no purpose and without any reason: and rejoice that of these some pass by headlong and fall face down, that others are overturned on their backs with their chariots, others are dragged along crippled

and limping with their legs broken; who declare that the presiding magistrate has displeased them, if some guilty man passes through the middle of the circus about to pay the penalties and punishments he has deserved; who complain that they are offended and their honours slighted, if a player has stood still for a little, a piper, being tired, has paused, or that boy with a living mother falls, having slipped by chance through some unsteadiness? If all these things are weighed thoroughly and without any partisan favour, they are found to be far, far foreign not only to gods, but to any man of common sense, and one not trained to the pursuit of truth by the knowledge of reasons.