Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book VI/Chapter VI

6. What can you say as to this, that it is attested by the writings of authors, that many of these temples which have been raised with golden domes and lofty roofs cover bones and ashes, and are sepulchres of the dead? Is it not plain and manifest, either that you worship dead men for immortal gods, or that an inexpiable affront is cast upon the deities, whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the dead? Antiochus, in the ninth book of his Histories, relates that Cecrops was buried in the temple of Minerva, at Athens; again, in the temple of the same goddess, which is in the citadel of Larissa, it is related and declared that Acrisius was laid, and in the sanctuary of Polias, Erichthonius; while the brothers Dairas and Immarnachus were buried in the enclosure of Eleusin, which lies near the city. What say you as to the virgin daughters of Celeus? are they not said to be buried in the temple of Ceres at Eleusin? and in the shrine of Diana, which was set up in the temple of the Delian Apollo, are not Hyperoche and Laodice buried, who are said to have been brought thither from the country of the Hyperboreans? In the Milesian Didym&#230;on, Leandrius says that Cleochus had the last honours of burial paid to him. Zeno of Myndus openly relates that the monument of Leucophryne is in the sanctuary of Diana at Magnesia. Under the altar of Apollo, which is seen in the city of Telmessus, is it not invariably declared by writings that the prophet Telmessus lies buried? Ptolem&#230;us, the son of Agesarchus, in the first book of the History of Philopator which he published, affirms, on the authority of literature, that Cinyras, king of Paphos, was interred in the temple of Venus with all his family, nay, more, with all his stock. It would be an endless and boundless task to describe in what sanctuaries they all are throughout the world; nor is anxious care required, although the Egyptians fixed a penalty for any one who should have revealed the places in which Apis lay hid, as to those Polyandria of Varro, by what temples they are covered, and what heavy masses they have laid upon them.