Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
"But certain men," you say, "discovered fruits and the necessities of life." I ask you: when you say they "discovered" them, are you not admitting that these things already existed before they were discovered? Why then do you not honor the Author instead, whose gifts these are, but transfer the Author's glory onto the discoverers? [3] <...> and whoever discovered a thing gave thanks to the Author for it, surely felt that this was God, <...> the service of the one who established it, by whom the very discoverer, and the very thing discovered, were themselves established. [4] Rome knew no green African fig until Cato brought one before the senate, to show how near lay the hostile province he was forever pressing to be subdued. [5] Gnaeus Pompey was the first to make the cherry-tree of Pontus known to Italy. Could these men too, discoverers of new fruits among the Romans, have deserved to be proclaimed as gods?
This is as empty a claim as the notion that men are made gods on account of the invention of the arts. If our own age's craftsmen were compared to them, how much more fittingly would consecration belong to their successors than to their forerunners! [7] I lie if antiquity has not by now been outdone in virtually every art, daily practice everywhere schooling novelty to surpass it. And so, in the very arts for which you deify certain men, you wrong them, and you provoke unbeaten rivals against them.
XVII.