<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xmlns:py="http://codespeak.net/lxml/objectify/pytype" py:pytype="TREE"><text><body><div n="urn:cts:latinLit:phi1017.phi011.perseus-eng2" type="edition" xml:lang="eng"><div n="8" type="textpart" subtype="card"><p><quote>No wonder you have forced your way into the Senate House: no bars or bolts
                    can hold against you. Only do say what species of god you want the fellow to be
                    made. An Epicurean god he cannot be: for they take no trouble and cause
                        none.<note>Compare Diogenes Laertius x, 139: <foreign xml:lang="grc">τὸ</foreign>: <quote>The Blessed and Incorruptible neither
                            itself has trouble nor causes trouble to another.</quote></note> A
                    Stoic, then? How can he be globular, as Varro<note>Author or <hi rend="italics">Saturae Menippeae</hi> (now lost), which no doubt burlesqued the Stoic
                            <quote>perfect man,</quote><hi rend="italics">totus teres atque
                            rotundus.</hi></note> says, without a head or any other projection?
                    There <hi rend="italics">is</hi> in him something of the Stoic god, as I can see
                    now: he has neither heart nor head. Upon my word, if he had asked this boon from
                    Saturn, he would not have got it, though he kept up Saturn's feast all the year
                    round, a truly Saturnalian prince. A likely thing he will get it from Jove, whom
                    he condemned for incest as far as<pb n="p.389"/> in him lay:<note>Because Juno
                        was <hi rend="italics">et soror et coniunx.</hi></note> for he killed his
                    son-in-law Silanus, because Silanus had a sister, a most charming girl, called
                    Venus by all the world, and he preferred to call her Juno. Why, says he, I want
                    to know why, his own sister? Read your books, stupid: you may go half-way at
                    Athens, the whole way at Alexandria.<note>Marriage with a half-sister was
                        allowed at Athens; the Egyptian royal family married brother and
                    sister.</note> Because the mice lick meal<note>Another proverb of uncertain
                        meaning; probably <quote>because people like nice things at Rome, as they do
                            everywhere.</quote></note> at Rome, you say. Is this creature to mend
                    our crooked ways? What goes on in his own closet he knows not;<note>Perhaps
                        alluding to a mock marriage of Silius and Messalina.</note> and now he
                    searches the regions of the sky, wants to be a god. Is it not enough that he has
                    a temple in Britain, that savages worship him and pray to him as a god, so that
                    they may find a fool<note>Again <foreign xml:lang="grc">μωροῦ</foreign> for
                            <foreign xml:lang="grc">θεοῦ</foreign> as in ch. 6.</note> to have mercy
                    upon them?</quote></p></div></div></body></text></TEI>