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Arnobius
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Introductory Notice to Arnobius.
[3650] i.e., who must therefore have received it if they have it at all.
[3651] Lit., “out, reduced to nothing with annihilation, not to be returned from.”
[3652] Lit., “they are held in a lasting bond,” i.e., of being.
[3653] Plato makes the supreme God, creator of the inferior deities, assure these lesser gods that their created nature being in itself subject to dissolution, His will is a surer ground on which to rely for immortality, than the substance or mode of their own being (Timæus, st. p. 41; translated by Cicero, de Univ., xi., and criticised de Nat. Deor., i. 8 and iii. 12).
[3654] The ms. and both Roman edd. read neque ullo ab-olitio-nis unintelligibly, for which Gelenius proposed nexusque abolitione—“and by the destruction of the bond;” but the much more suitable reading in the margin of Ursinus, translated above, ullo ab alio nis-i, has been adopted by later edd.
[3655] Lit., “be gifted with a saving order.” So the ms., reading salutari iussione, followed by both Rom. edd.; LB. and Orelli read vinctione—“bond;” Gelenius, Canterus, Elmenh., and Oberthür, m-issione—“dismissal.”
[3656] Lit., “that to the gods themselves the natures are intermediate.”
[3657] Lit., “supreme”—principali.
[3658] Cf. i. 48. On this passage Orelli quotes Irenæus, i. 21, where are enumerated several gnostic theories of the creation of the world and men by angels, who are themselves created by the “one unknown Father.” Arnobius is thought, both by Orelli and others, to share in these opinions, and in this discussion to hint at them, but obscurely, lest his cosmology should be confounded by the Gentiles with their own polytheistic system. It seems much more natural to suppose that we have here the indefinite statement of opinions not thoroughly digested.
[3659] Lit., “a generation of.”
[3660] Canterus, Elmenhorst, Oberthür, and Orelli omit ut, which is retained as above by the rest.
[3661] Lit., “obscene.”
[3662] Elmenhorst endeavours to show that Arnobius coincides in this argument with the Epicureans, by quoting Lucr. v. 165 sqq. and Lact. vii. 5, where the Epicurean argument is brought forward, What profit has God in man, that He should have created him? In doing this, it seems not to have been observed that the question asked by Arnobius is a very different one: What place has man in the world, that God should be supposed to have sent him to fill it?
[3663] i.e., so far from this being the case.
[3664] i.e., from one horse to another—desultores.
[3665] Rationibus et constitutionibus.
[3666] Lit., “it should be believed.”
[3667] Lit., “unless there were joined.”
[3668] So the ms., reading contentio, which Orelli would understand as meaning “contents,” which may be correct. LB. reads conditio—“condition,” ineptly; and Ursinus in the margin, completio—“the filling up.”
[3669] So the later edd., from the margin of Ursinus, reading quod temeritatis est maximæ for the ms. quem—“whom it shows the greatest rashness to speak of.”
[3670] Lit., “goddesses.”
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