[81] ‘aer autem, ut Stoici disputant, Iunonis nomine consecratur ... effeminarunt autem eum Iunonique tribuerunt, quod nihil est eo mollius’ ib. ii 26, 66.
[82] ‘quoniam tenuitate haec elementa paria sunt, dixerunt esse germana’ Serv. ad Verg. Aen. i 47 (Arnim ii 1066).
[83] Rival philosophers in the earlier times, and the church fathers later, concurred in reviling Chrysippus because he extended this principle of interpretation to a ‘disgraceful’ representation found in Argos or Samos, in which Hera receives the divine seed in her mouth; yet Christian antiquity was about to absorb the similar notion of the conception of the Virgin Mary through the ear (‘quae per aurem concepisti’ in an old Latin hymn). Chrysippus of course rightly estimated the absurdity of criticising cosmic processes as if they were breaches of social decency, and by so doing relieved the pious souls of his own day from a real source of distress. See Arnim ii 1071-1074.
[84] Cic. N. D. ii 26, 66.
[85] ib. i 15, 40 and ii 26, 66.
[86] ‘Proserpinam, quam frugum semen esse volunt absconditamque quaeri a matre fingunt’ ib.
[87] ib. 27, 68.
[88] καὶ ὁ χρόνος δὲ τοιοῦτόν τί ἐστι· δαπανᾶται γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὰ γινόμενα ἐν αὐτῷ Cornutus N. D. 6. The castration of Uranus by Cronus is thus explained by the Stoics: ‘caelestem naturam, id est igneam, quae per sese omnia gigneret, vacare voluerunt ea parte corporis, quae coniunctione alterius egeret ad procreandum’ Cic. N. D. ii 24, 64.
[89] Justin Apol. i 64 (Arnim ii 1096).
[90] Sen. Ben. i 3, 9.