Liber

And so at one time they called by the name of a god the thing which was born of a god, as when we call the crops Ceres and wine Liber — whence that line of Terence,

Hence Hercules, hence Castor and Pollux, hence Aesculapius, hence Liber too (I mean the Liber born of Semele, not him whom our forefathers solemnly and reverently consecrated as Liber with Ceres and Libera, the nature of which may be understood from the mysteries;

These, then, must be held gods, though born of mortal mothers.

and the man, given over to glory, of whose nature and limit he knew nothing, following the footsteps of Hercules and of Liber, and not halting even where these had failed, looked away from the givers to the partner of his honor, as though he held the heaven which in his most empty fancy he embraced, because he was being matched with Hercules!

1 Nor was this the vice of Alexander only, whom a fortunate rashness drove along the footsteps of Liber and Hercules, but of all whom fortune has goaded by filling them.

For when the games were promiscuously called Liberalia, they plainly sounded the honour of Father Liber.

For other scenic games too they properly called Liberalia—besides those devoted to Liber, which are the Dionysia among the Greeks—instituted also by Liber.

Will that one too please who changes his countenance with a razor, faithless toward his own face, which, not content to make next door to that of Saturn and Isis and Liber, he moreover exposes to the insults of slaps, as though he made sport of the Lord's precept?

And as it has been given by nature to bulls that they contend for their calves against lions with the utmost force and onset, so those who are strong in resources and able to do it — as we have heard of Hercules and of Liber — are incited by nature to the saving of the human race.

and Liber was called the discoverer of wine not because of any license of the tongue, but because he frees the mind from the slavery of cares, sets it at liberty, quickens it, and makes it bolder for every undertaking.

We are driven to the beasts — the very beasts, surely, that you attach to Liber and Cybele and the Heavenly Goddess.

likewise that every fruit teemed forth from the earth before Liber and Ceres and Minerva — nay, before that first man — since nothing that was provided for the sustenance and preservation of man could be brought in after man.

Otherwise, if Liber is a god because he showed the vine, then Lucullus, who first introduced cherries from Pontus into Italy, was ill-treated, in that he was not therefore consecrated as the author of a new fruit, when he was its discoverer.

These things being thus established beforehand, we can also call to mind those too who, drawn alive from their mother's womb cut open, drank the air — certain men named Liber and Scipio.