if, when these are taken away, virtue will also vanish and be lost?
14. Or do you desire to understand the greatest sweetness of his
eloquence and persuasion? “For,” says he, “as comedies have in them
sometimes ridiculous epigrams, which, though bad in themselves,
give nevertheless a certain grace to the whole poem; so, though you
may blame vice in itself, yet is it not useless to other things.”
First then to say that vice was made by the providence of God, as a
wanton epigram by the will of the poet, transcends in absurdity all
imagination. For this being granted, how will the Gods be rather
givers of good than evil? How will wickedness be displeasing to them,
and hated by them? And what shall we have to oppose against these
ill-sounding sentences of the poets:
A cause to men God sends,
When to chastise some house his wrath intends;[179]
and again,