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Crepitus is an alleged Roman god of flatulence. It is unlikely that Crepitus was ever actually worshipped. The only ancient source for the claim that such a god was ever worshipped comes from Christian satire. The name ''Crepitus'' standing alone would be an inadequate and unlikely name for such a god in Latin . The god appears, however, in a number of important works of French literature. ==Sources of the legend== The origin of the myth of a god of flatulence is somewhat obscure, and it is possible that the existence of this god is an invention. No ancient polytheistic source appears for such a deity. The earliest mention of a god of flatulence is as an Egyptian, not a Roman deity. This comes from the hostile pen of the author of the ''Recognitions'' dubiously attributed to Pope Clement I, in which it is reported that: :''alii ... crepitus ventris pro numinibus habendos esse docuerunt.'' ::"others (among the Egyptians) teach that intestinal noise (Latin: ''crepitus ventris'') ought to be regarded as a god."〔Pseudo-Clement, ''(Recognitiones )'' 5.20. English version available in ''The Ante-Nicene Fathers'', Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Vol. VIII. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company) ()〕 It is unlikely that Clement I was the author of the extant ''Recognitiones''; these are extant chiefly in a Latin translation, presumably out of the original Greek, made by Tyrannius Rufinus in the late fourth or early fifth century. The passage of Pseudo-Clement stands within a Western Christian tradition of satire against the variety of minor deities worshipped by classical pagans; similar passages exist in ''The City of God'' by Saint Augustine of Hippo, and Tertullian's ''Ad Nationes''.〔Tertullian, ''(Ad Nationes )'' 2.11; Augustine, ''(The City of God )'' 4.34〕 Robert Burton, in ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'', mentions a god ''Crepitus Ventris'' among a variety of other deities allegedly worshipped in classical antiquity: :Lilius Giraldus repeats many of her ceremonies: all affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods, love, and sorrow, virtue, honour, liberty, contumely, impudency, had their temples, tempests, seasons, ''Crepitus Ventris, dea Vacuna, dea Cloacina'', there was a goddess of idleness, a goddess of the draught, or jakes, Prema, Premunda, Priapus, bawdy gods, and gods for all offices.〔(Robert Burton, ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'', sect. 2, book 1, memb. 3 )〕 Burton cites a work called ''Syntagma de Diis'' ("A Compendium of the Gods") by Lilius Giraldus as his source for the existence of such a god; by this reference, Burton probably meant Giraldus' ''Historia de diis gentium'' ("History of the Pagan Gods"); but because Burton wrote in what he called an "extemporean" style, ''quicquid in buccam venit'' ("whatever came into his head"),〔Robert Burton, ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'', Preface, "Democritus Junior to the Reader"〕 Burton's quotations and references are not always reliable.〔"A Note on the Text" by William H. Gass to ''The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics)'' (New York Review of Books, 1991), ISBN 0-940322-66-8〕 Because of Burton's mixed Latin and English style, this passage may not say that there was a god ''named'' "Crepitus Ventris", (Latin for "intestinal noise"), but only that there was a god of intestinal noise. The Latin word ''crepitus'', moreover, did not exclusively mean the sound generated by intestinal gas; it referred to squeaks, groans, knocks, and any nondescript noise in general. In ''The City of God'', Augustine elsewhere refers to ''crepitus cymbalorum'', the clang of cymbals.〔''The City of God'' 7.24, referring to the use of cymbals in the cult of Cybele.〕 Medical jargon gives the name ''crepitus'' to the creaking or popping noises made by the joints. The Latin word for "to fart" is ''pēdere''.〔The Latin noun ''crepitus'' is in the fourth Latin declension, and its genitive case would also be ''crepitūs''. See generally ''The Classic Latin Dictionary'' (Follett, Chicago, 1961) sub. tit. ''crepitus''〕 Voltaire, in a passage of his ''Philosophical Dictionary'' devoted to changing conceptions of deity, alludes to a number of real or alleged Roman deities of a less exalted status: :''La déesse des tétons, dea Rumilia ; la déesse de l’action du mariage, dea Pertunda ; le dieu de la chaise percée, deus Stercutius ; le dieu Pet, deus Crepitus, ne sont pas assurément bien vénérables. . . Il est sûr que deus Crepitus, le dieu Pet, ne donnait pas la même idée que'' deus divum et hominum sator, ''la source des dieux et des hommes.'' ::"The goddess of breasts, ''dea Rumilia''; the goddess of the marital act, ''dea Pertunda''; the god of the toilet, ''deus Stercutius''; the god Fart, ''deus Crepitus'', were surely not quite objects of reverence. . . It is certain that ''deus Crepitus'', the god Fart, did not give the same sort of idea as ''deus divum et hominum sator'', the creator of gods and men." :: — "Polytheism", entry in the ''Philosophical Dictionary'' of Voltaire.〔("Polytheism", entry in the ''Philosophical Dictionary'' of Voltaire. )〕 Through these passages, the noun ''Crepitus'' moves from a common noun to a proper noun. Previous authorities had only claimed that the ancient polytheists, whether Egyptian or Roman, worshipped a god of intestinal noises. Perhaps in Burton's mention, and certainly in Voltaire, ''Crepitus'' is the name of a god of flatulence. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Crepitus (mythology)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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