Opening the library…
Ad Nationes
Tertullian
Such are the more obvious or more remarkable points which we
Vitii pueritatem.
Recipere (with a dative).
Ignotis Deis. Comp. Acts xvii. 23.
Ut bulbi. This is the passage which Augustine quotes (de Civit. Dei, vii. 1) as “too facetious.”
Adventicii, “coming from abroad.”
Touching these gods of the vanquished nations, compare The Apology, xxv.; below, c. xvii.; Minucius Felix, Octav. xxv.
Diligentem.
See Homer, Il. v. 300.
Invenitur.
Referred to also above, i. 18.
The obscure “formam et patrem” is by Oehler rendered “pulchritudinem et generis nobilitatem.”
The word is “eorum” (possessive of “principum”), not “suæ.”
Dejerant adversus.
What Tertullian himself thinks on this point, see his de Corona, xi.
Cleobis and Biton; see Herodotus i. 31.
See Valerius Maximus, v. 4, 1.
We need not stay to point out the unfairness of this statement, in contrast with the exploits of Æneas against Turnus, as detailed in the last books of the Æneid.
Usque in.
We have thus rendered “quiritatem est,” to preserve as far as one could the pun on the deified hero of the Quirites.
We insert the Latin, to show the pun on Sterculus; see The Apology, c. xxv. [See p. 40, supra.]
Curaria quam consecrari.
Bona Dea, i.e., the daughter of Faunus just mentioned.
See Livy, viii. 20, xxxii. 1; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 213, etc. Compare also Augustine, de Civ. Dei, xviii. 19. [Tom, vii. p. 576.]