JUPITER IN THEBAID 1 AGAIN 137
most inappropriate story to exemplify men’s sin and Jupiter’s need to
punish it. Mozley and Shackleton Bailey solve the problem by assum-
ing that erroresque feros nemorum is part of mala gaudia matrum and
refers to Agaue and the other Bacchanals. But not even I can believe
that Jupiter is so incompetent a rhetorician that he would regard mala
gaudia matrum and erroresque feros nemorum as a single element.
Just try reading mala ... crimina aloud with a pause only at nemorum!
If this passage really does refer to Athamas and his family (and I am
unaware of any counter suggestion apart from incorporating it with
Agaue and Pentheus) it is much more plausible that Jupiter had been
reading his Metamorphoses rather carelessly. Finally, what is to be
made of et reticenda deorum crimina? Lactantius Placidus offers
this comment:
et hoc ἀμφίβολον: aut quae homines in deos commiserunt aut quae dei
irrogauere mortalibus. si hominum in deos, haec sunt: quia praetulit se
in pulchritudine Niobe Latonae, Pentheus Libero, Semele Iunoni; uel
propter Tantalum, qui uolens deorum mentes inquirere Pelopem filium
suum diis posuit epulandum. haec enim deorum crimina. quae a Pen-
theo inlata sunt in Liberum, Ouidius refert.
Also this is ambiguous: either what men have committed against the
gods or what the gods have inflicted on mortals. If it is acts of men
against the gods there are these: because Niobe preferred herself in
beauty to Latona, Pentheus to Bacchus, Semele to Juno; or because of
Tantalus who, wanting to test the minds of the gods, served his son,
Pelops, to the gods at a banquet. For these were the crimes against the
gods. Ovid reports what was inflicted by Pentheus upon Bacchus.Shackleton Bailey, heavily dependent on Lactantius Placidus, writes:
Sometimes understood as “crimes against the gods,” which makes
doubtful Latin and indifferent sense (with reticenda). Jupiter may be
supposed to be thinking of his own affairs with Semele and the slaying
of the Niobids and Pentheus.However surprising it may seem to suppose that here deorum is an
objective genitive with crimina, the context, as Heuvel saw, ensures
that there is no other possibility. Furthermore, Lactantius was pre-
sumably a native Latin speaker and better able than we are to pro-
nounce on whether a particular interpretation is possible or not. Jupiter
cannot possibly wish, at this point, to dwell on the gods’ sins against
the human race or even against one another. Nor can he suddenly, as a
parenthesis, be stating that the gods’ sins against mankind should not