43. But what the meaning of this is, is already clear to all. For because you are ashamed of such writers and histories, and do not see that these things can be got rid of which have once been committed to writing in filthy language, you strive to make base things honourable, and by every kind of subtlety you pervert and corrupt the real senses1305    Lit., “natures.” of words for the sake of spurious interpretations;1306    Lit., “things.” and, as oft times happens to the sick, whose senses and understanding have been put to flight by the distempered force of disease, you toss about confused and uncertain conjectures, and rave in empty fictions.

Let it be granted that the irrigation of the earth was meant by the union of Jupiter and Ceres, the burying of the seed1307    So most edd., reading occultatiofor the ms. occupatio. by the ravishing of Proserpine by father Dis, wines scattered over the earth by the limbs of Liber torn asunder by the Titans, that the restraining1308    So all edd., reading com-, except Hild. and Oehler, who retain the ms. reading, im-pressio—“the assault of,” i.e., “on.” of lust and rashness has been spoken of as the binding of the adulterous Venus and Mars.

XLIII. Sed quid sit istud, jam promptum est omnibus: nam quia talium scriptorum, historiarumque vos pudet, nec abolere videtis posse ea, quae sunt foede semel in commentarios relata, nitimini cohonestare res turpes, atque omnibus argutiarum modis pro rebus subditis, verborum invertitis corrumpitisque naturas; atque ut olim accidere male sanis assolet, quorum turbida vis morbi sensum atque intelligentiam depulit, confusa atque incerta jactatis, 1158B et inanium per rerum figmenta bacchamini. Esto in Jovis et Cereris coetu irrigatio sit significata telluris; occultatio seminis patris in Ditis raptu, vina per terras sparsa distractis in visceribus Liberi; cupiditatis et temeritatis compressio, colligatio dicta sit adulteriorum Veneris atque Martis.