By Water & Blood

Book 1, Chapter 8: Temple and Nature of Saturn

"Now a few things must be related about the temple of the god himself. I find that Tullus Hostilius, when he had thrice triumphed—twice over the Albans, a third time over the Sabines—consecrated a shrine to Saturn from a vow and that the Saturnalia were then first instituted at Rome, although Varro in the sixth book, which is On Sacred Buildings, writes that King Tarquinius contracted for building a temple of Saturn at the forum, but that Titus Larcius the dictator dedicated it at the Saturnalia. Nor does it escape me that Gellius writes that the Senate decreed that a temple of Saturn be made and that Furius a military tribune was set over that matter. He has also an altar before the Senaculum: there by Greek rite divine service is made with head uncovered, because they think it was first so practiced from the beginning by the Pelasgi, afterward by Hercules. But the Romans wished the temple of Saturn to be the treasury, because in the time when he inhabited Italy it is said that no theft was committed within his borders, or because under him nothing of anyone's was private: nor was it lawful only to stamp or to divide the field with a boundary; they sought things in common... Therefore under him the common money of the people was to be placed, under whom all things had been common to all.

"I would not omit this, that Tritons with trumpets are set upon the pediment of Saturn's temple, since from his commemoration to our age history is clear and as it were vocal, but before mute and obscure and unknown, which the tails of the Tritons plunged in the ground and hidden testify. But why Saturn himself is seen in fetters Verrius Flaccus says he does not know the cause; yet the reading of Apollodorus thus suggests to me: Apollodorus says that Saturn is bound through the year with a woolen bond and is loosed on his festival day, that is in this month of December, and thence the proverb is drawn that the gods have woolen feet; but it is signified that in the tenth month the seed animated in the womb grows into life, which until it bursts into light is held by the soft bonds of nature.

"Further, the same is Kronos (Κρόνος) and Chronos (Χρόνος). For as far as the mythic writers pull Saturn apart with fictions, so far the physicists recall him to a certain likeness of truth. They say that he cut off the private parts of his father Heaven (Caelum), by which cast into the sea Venus was begotten, who from the foam whence she coalesced received the name Aphrodite (Ἀφροδίτη). From which they wish it understood that when there was chaos there were not times, since indeed time is a certain measure which is gathered from the turning of heaven. Thence time began. Hence from him himself Kronos is thought born, who, as we have said, is Chronos. And since the seeds of all things to be begotten after heaven flowed from heaven, and all the elements which make fullness for the world were founded from those seeds, when the world was perfected in all its parts and members, at a certain time already an end was made of producing from heaven seeds for the conception of the elements, which already full had been procreated. But the eternal propagation of animals was transferred to Venus as the faculty of generating from moisture, so that through the coition of male and female all things thereafter might be begotten. Because of the fable of the cut-off private parts our people also called him Saturn from sathē (παρὰ τὴν σάθην), which declares the male member, as it were Sathurnus: thence also they think the satyrs are called as it were sathyri, because they are prone to lust. Some judge that a sickle has been attributed to him because time mows, cuts out, and cuts into all things. They say that he was accustomed to devour his own sons and again to vomit the same, by which similarly it is signified that he is time, by which in turns all things are begotten and consumed and from him are born again. That the same was driven out by his son—what else is it than that aging times are driven away by those which have been born afterward? But that he is bound, because times are connected by a certain law of nature, or because all fruits alternate with certain bonds and knots. For the fables also wish that the sickle fell into Sicily, because that land is especially fertile."