ABSTRACT
1 BESIDES these three gods several others were also worshipped, who, as Saxo says, after winning possession of simple folk’s minds by their skill in some marvellous trick of jugglery, laid claim to the rank of deity. For not only the Goths but all the northern provinces too were encompassed by them in nooses of idle credulity, excited with zeal to 153pay them worship, and, worst of all, defiled with their derisive contamination. The effect of their deception became so prevalent that the other nations, revering a divine power in these impostors and thinking them to be gods, or confederates of gods, offered solemn prayers to such inventors of sorceries and devoted to sacrilegious error the regard which properly belongs to sacred beings.
Three lesser gods
Solemn prayers
