This too was of the ancient custom: that they should greet not only the land, but also the Deities [Numina] of some place, and all the gods, and sacrifice to them. Now [it] is — as Donatus explained upon the Phormio — [that] “to greet the gods [is] to adore them with prayers.” Whence also (Aeneid 7), when Aeneas had first come into Italy:
“He binds his temples with a leafy bough, and prays to the Genius of the place, and Earth, first of the gods, and the Nymphs, and the rivers still unknown; then he invokes the Night, and the rising stars of night, and Idaean Jove, and the Phrygian Mother in order, and both his parents, in heaven and in Erebus.”
And the same rite is plain from Ovid, cited before, and from others which Brissonius heaps up in bk. 1 of the Formulae. Nay indeed, these blind Gentiles seem to have greeted even the earth itself for this reason — that they thought [it] a Goddess, as Virgil himself has already clearly proclaimed; and that [certain] someone (I know not who) in the cited Menander says [that] he greets his own little countryside for this cause: that he accounted as God whatever supplied him nourishment:
Τὸ γὰρ τρέφον με, τοῦτ᾽ ἐγὼ κρίνω θεόν. [To gar trephon me, tout’ egō krinō theon, “For that which nourishes me, this I judge [to be] God.”]
But far be it [that] any of the pious greeted the earth, rivers, stars, and the like in that manner; far be it [that] the Israelites venerated any Genii or Lares of a place. For although [there] were perhaps, in so great a multitude, still some to whom something of the Egyptian mud and darkness clung — as will be said elsewhere — yet, when one is to speak of them universally, no account is to be made of a few such and obscure [persons]. Yet [that], according to this custom — whether nature herself leading, or by the admonition and institution of [their] elders and of Joshua himself — they then greeted God the Best and Greatest, or adored [him], and to some degree celebrated [him] with thanksgiving, I do affirm. For who [is] so ignorant of all things and forgetful of the heavenly [ones], so stupid and blockish, that — when, after so many years at last, [he] had found and obtained the thing which he had most ardently desired [and] most studiously sought with the greatest labors and troubles — [he would] not, exulting with joy, cry out with that Geometer “εὕρηκα, εὕρηκα” [heurēka, heurēka, “I have found [it], I have found [it]!”], and give thanks to God — especially indeed if so illustrious and so recent a proof of the divine goodness toward him—
(col. 475, lower; printed “482”)
—and a miracle of the same [divine] power, were present, which would call the mind away from all forgetfulness; nay, would invite and rouse [it] up by its very marvellousness and most-welcome novelty? For my part, I would not at all doubt [that] Joshua himself — either falling upon [his] knees, or standing — lifted [his] eyes and hands to heaven, [and] turned himself, full of reverence, toward the ark of the covenant, the witness and seat of the divine presence, and gave thanks to the most holy Deity with [his] whole soul, with most religious gesture, and with most chaste words.
Yet [that] a Canticle, such as [was] made at the crossing of the Red Sea, was here sung by him, I denied above — and, as I think, not wrongly. For if [there] had been here any ode, why [was it], as there, either not committed to memory, or at least indicated by some word? There, moreover,—
(col. 476 — right column; printed “483”)
—[there, moreover,] she gave the beginning to the hymn, inspired [afflata] by the Holy Spirit [as] a Prophetess — and, as certain of the fathers relate, the Virgin Miriam, sister of Moses; [but] here she had by now already met [her] death; nor, endowed with the same divine gifts, or stirred certainly by the same impulse, was she now present. And the matter and theme of the whole hymn [there] was not so much the division of the sea (although that too is celebrated) as the submersion of Pharaoh, and of his so many horsemen and chariots. But here no enemies [were] overwhelmed in the Jordan-waters; none [were] affected with even the least loss. Nor were the Israelites here going to have a fixed halt; but, a little after, [being] about to go on further, and girded and ready only for the journey, they waited [only] for a little while. And therefore the Talmudists say [that] the “new song” [canticum novum] is [what] Psalm 95 [96] is called — which [was] sung at the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity, and set over against the old [song], which was [sung] at the Egyptian deliverance. But although the name of “Genii” is taken — profanely enough, and in a novel way — for “Angels” by certain Innovators [Novatores] (whom that otherwise great Innovator, Beza, also reproves at the end of his Annotations on First Timothy) — [yet] such “genii” of this land could be greeted by the Israelites: not as gods, by adoring [them] (God forbid! [Nefas]), but as ministers of the true God, whom he had appointed for the guardianship and safety of this land — by a certain worship, which the Theologians call dulia [the veneration due to God’s servants, distinct from latria, the worship due to God alone], that is, by venerating and invoking [them]. But whether they [actually] did this, I am not [able] to affirm — although both by the apparition of that Angel, of which [in] ch. 5, and by ancient custom, I am drawn so to think. For nearly all the superstitions of the Gentiles flowed from the most holy religions of the ancient worshippers of God and of the Fathers, but [were] disturbed and defiled by the various accession of the Satanic slime, as Junilius Firmicanus long ago showed.