Exhortation 1 part 2/7

for the things customarily reckoned mysteries among men are celebrated unholily. Custom, then, and empty supposition, and the deceit of the serpent—these are the mysteries that are worshipped, men turning with bastard piety to initiations that are truly uninitiated and to rites that are unhallowed.

(continued) ...turning with bastard piety to these unhallowed rites.

And of what sort, too, are the mystic chests!

For I must strip bare their holy things and tell out their unspeakable contents.

Are these not sesame-cakes and pyramid-cakes and lumps of wool and many-navelled cakes, and grains of salt, and a serpent, the token of Dionysus Bassareus? And besides these, are there not pomegranates and fig-branches and fennel-stalks and ivy, and besides also round cakes and poppies? These are their holy things.

And in addition, the secret symbols of Themis: marjoram, a lamp, a sword, a woman's comb—which is, to put it euphemistically and mystically, a woman's private part.

O the open shamelessness!

Of old, for men of sober mind, night that was kept silent was the veil of pleasure;

but now, for those being initiated, night that is talked about is the test of incontinence, and the fire, borne as a torch, convicts the passions.

Quench the fire, O hierophant;

be ashamed, O torchbearer, of the torches;

the light convicts your Iacchus;

permit night to hide the mysteries;

let the rites be honored with darkness;

the fire does not play a part: it is commanded to convict and to chastise.

These are the mysteries of the godless;

and I rightly call these men godless, who have been ignorant of the God who truly is, but, ashamed as the deed truly is, shamelessly revere a little child torn apart by Titans, and a wailing woman, and members unspeakable—being entangled in a twofold godlessness: the first, by which they are ignorant of God, not recognizing the God who truly is; and the other, this second, in their error, reckoning as existing those that do not exist, and naming as gods these that do not truly exist—or rather do not exist at all, but have merely obtained a name.

For this reason, indeed, the apostle reproves us, saying: "And you were strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope, and atheists in the world."

Many good things befall the king of the Scythians, whoever he was [Anacharsis],

...who shot down with his arrows one of his own countrymen who had taken up among the Scythians the celebration of the Mother of the gods, deeming him a teacher of a womanish disease to the rest of the Scythians.

For which reason, then (for it is by no means to be concealed), it occurs to me to marvel in what manner men have nicknamed "atheists" Euhemerus of Acragas, and Nicanor of Cyprus, and Diagoras, and Hippo the two Melians, and besides these that famous Cyrenaean (Theodorus is his name) and certain others in numbers—men who had lived soberly and had perceived more sharply than the rest of mankind the error concerning these gods—even though they had not understood the truth itself, yet had suspected the error; which is no small living spark of a seed of wisdom that springs up toward truth;

of whom one charges the Egyptians: "If you regard them as gods, do not lament them nor beat your breasts;

but if you mourn them, no longer count these to be gods." And another, taking up a Heracles wrought of wood (he happened to be boiling something at home, as was natural),

"Come now, O Heracles," he said;

"now is the time for you—just as you served Eurystheus—so now also to do us this service, this thirteenth labor, and to prepare the meal for Diagoras"; and then he put it into the fire as firewood.

Atheism, then, and superstition are extremes of ignorance, outside of which one must strive to remain.

Do you not see Moses, the hierophant of truth, commanding that the eunuch and the castrated should not enter the assembly, and besides, the one born of a harlot? He hints, through the former, at the godless way of life, deprived of the divine and generative power; and through the last, the third, at the man who inscribes to himself many falsely-named gods in place of the one true God—just as the son of the harlot inscribes to himself many fathers, in ignorance of his true father.

There was a certain innate, ancient fellowship of men with heaven, darkened indeed by ignorance, yet now and then bursting suddenly out of the darkness and shining forth; such, indeed, as that which was said by someone: "Do you see this boundless ether on high, holding the earth round about in its moist embraces?" And: "O thou support of the earth and having thy seat upon the earth, whoever thou art, hard to discern by sight"—and all the other such things that the sons of poets sing.

But notions that are erroneous and led astray from the straight way—truly destructive—turned man, the heavenly plant, away from the heavenly mode of life and stretched him out upon the earth, having persuaded him to attach himself to earthly fashioned things.

For some, at once deceived concerning the spectacle of heaven, and trusting in sight alone, gazing upon the motions of the stars, both marveled and deified them, naming the stars "gods" (theoi) from their "running" (thein), and worshipped the sun, as the Indians do, and the moon, as the Phrygians;

while others, plucking the cultivated fruits of the things that grow from the earth, named the grain Deo, as the Athenians do, and the vine Dionysus, as the Thebans.

Others, observing the requitals of evil, deify the retributions, worshipping even calamities.

Hence the poets about the stage have fabricated the Erinyes and the Eumenides and the Palamnaei and the Prostropaei, and further the Alastores.

And now certain even of the philosophers themselves, after the poets, fashion into idols the types of the passions among you—Fear and Eros and Joy and Hope—just as, indeed, Epimenides of old set up at Athens altars of Insolence and Shamelessness;

while others, setting out from the very deeds, are deified by men and are fashioned in bodily form—a certain Justice (Dike), and Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, and Destiny (Heimarmene), and Auxo and Thallo, the Attic ones.

There is a sixth introductory mode of deception, conferring gods, according to which they reckon the twelve gods;

of whom Hesiod sings his own theogony, and all that Homer expounds in his theology.

And last remains (for these modes are seven in all) the one that sets out from the divine beneficence bestowed upon men.

They fashioned certain saviors—the Dioscuri, and Heracles the averter of evil, and Asclepius the healer.

These, then, are the slippery and injurious deviations from the truth, dragging man down from heaven and overturning him into the pit.

But I wish to show you the gods themselves, close at hand, of what sort they are, and whether they are anything at all, so that at last you may cease from error, and may run back again to heaven.

For we too were once, somehow, children of wrath, even as the rest;

but God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, made us alive together with Christ when we were already dead in our trespasses. For the Word, being living and buried together with Christ, is exalted together with God.

But those who are still unbelieving are called children of wrath, nourished by wrath;

while we are no longer nurslings of wrath, we who have been torn away from error, and are darting toward the truth.

In this way, indeed, we who were once sons of lawlessness have now, through the benevolence of the Word, become sons of God;

but for you, your own poet too, Empedocles of Acragas, sinks down:

"Therefore, distraught with grievous miseries, never shall you relieve your spirit of its wretched woes."

The most part, indeed, of the tales told about your gods are mythologized and fabricated;

but as for those things which are supposed actually to have happened, these have been recorded concerning shameful men who lived licentiously;

"in vainglory and madness you walk, and, having forsaken the upright, straight path, you have gone off along the way through thorns and stakes."

"Why do you wander, O mortals? Cease, O vain ones; leave the gloom of night, and lay hold of the light."

These things the prophetic and poetic Sibyl enjoins upon us;

and truth also enjoins them, stripping bare from these stunning and astounding masks the mob of the gods, refuting the false opinions by means of certain synonymies.

For instance, then, there are those who record three Zeuses: the one, son of Aether, in Arcadia; the two remaining, sons of Cronus, of whom the one is in Crete, and the other again in Arcadia.

And there are those who posit five Athenas: the one of Hephaestus, the Athenian;

another of the Nile, the Egyptian;

a third of Cronus, the inventress of war;

a fourth, the daughter of Zeus, whom the Messenians have surnamed Coryphasia after her mother;

and over all these, the daughter of Pallas and of Titanis the daughter of Oceanus, who, having impiously sacrificed her father, adorned herself with her father's skin as with a fleece.

Yes indeed, as for Apollo, Aristotle reckons the first to be the son of Hephaestus and Athena (here, then, Athena is no longer a virgin), the second in Crete the son of Corybas, the third the son of Zeus, and the fourth the Arcadian, the son of Silenus;

this last is called Nomios among the Arcadians;

in addition to these, he reckons the Libyan, the son of Ammon;

and Didymus the grammarian adds to these a sixth, the son of Magnes.

And how many Apollos are there even now—innumerable mortals and certain perishable men—who have been named in like manner with those aforesaid? But what if I should tell you of the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermae that are numbered, or the Hephaestuses that are mythologized? Shall I not seem superfluous, flooding your ears with these many names? But their fatherlands and their crafts and their lives, and besides, their very tombs, convict them of having been men.

Ares, at any rate—even the one honored among the poets, so far as may be: "Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, blood-stained, stormer of walls," this fickle and hostile one—was, as Epicharmus says, a Spartan;

but Sophocles knows him to be a Thracian;

and Homer says that this one was bound for thirteen months:

"Ares endured it, when Otus and mighty Ephialtes, the sons of Aloeus, bound him in a strong bond;

and in a bronze jar he was bound for thirteen months."

"Many good things may the Carians have, who sacrifice dogs to him."

Apollodorus says, and Callimachus: "Phoebus rises for the Hyperboreans at their sacrifices of asses";

the same poet elsewhere: "the fat slaughterings of asses delight Phoebus."

And Hephaestus, whom Zeus hurled from Olympus "from the divine threshold," falling on Lemnos plied the smith's trade, crippled in both feet, "and beneath him his slender legs tottered." ... You have, too, a physician among the gods, not merely a smith;

but the physician was a money-lover—Asclepius was his name.

And I will set before you your own poet, the Boeotian Pindar:

"Him too gold, appearing in his hands as a lordly fee, turned aside;

and so the son of Cronus, hurling with both hands, swiftly took away the breath from his breast, and the blazing thunderbolt drove down his doom."

"For Zeus, having slain my son Asclepius, is to blame, casting the flame upon his breast."

This one, then, lies thunder-struck within the borders of Cynosuris.

And Philochorus says that in Tenos Poseidon is honored as a physician, and that Sicily lies upon Cronus, and that there he was buried.

Patrocles of Thurii and Sophocles the younger, in three tragedies, relate concerning the two Dioscuri:

that these two Dioscuri were two perishable men, if Homer be sufficient witness to confirm what has been said:

"but these two the life-giving earth already held fast there in Lacedaemon, in their own dear native land."

And let the writer of the Cypriac poems come forward as well:

"Castor was mortal, and the fate of death is allotted to him;

but Polydeuces, scion of Ares, is immortal."

This he falsified poetically;

but Homer is more trustworthy than he, having spoken concerning both of the Dioscuri, and besides, having refuted Heracles also as a phantom:

"for the man Heracles..., versed in mighty deeds."

Heracles, then, even Homer himself knows to be a mortal man; and Hieronymus the philosopher describes also the build of his body—small, bristly-haired, robust;

while Dicaearchus describes him as wiry, sinewy, dark, hook-nosed, with somewhat gleaming eyes, and straight-haired.

This Heracles, then, having lived two and fifty years, brought his life to an end, having been given funeral honors by the pyre on Mount Oeta.

As for the Muses, whom Alcman traces in genealogy as daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and whom the rest of the poets and prose writers deify and revere—and now whole cities even consecrate precincts (museums) to them—Megaclo the daughter of Macar bought these as Mysian handmaids.

Now Macar reigned over the Lesbians, but he was always at variance with his wife, and Megaclo was vexed on her mother's behalf;

and why should she not be? And she buys these Mysian handmaids, so many in number, and calls them Moisai (Muses) in the dialect of the Aeolians.

These she had taught to sing and to play the cithara, the deeds of old, tunefully.

And they, continually playing the cithara and singing fair incantations, charmed Macar and made him cease from his wrath.

For which reason, then, Megaclo, as a thank-offering on her mother's behalf, dedicated them in bronze, and commanded that they be honored throughout all the sacred places.

And the Muses, then, are such as these;

and the history is found in Myrsilus the Lesbian.

Hear, then, of the loves of your gods, and the incredible mythologies of their incontinence, and their wounds and bonds and laughters and fights, their slaveries too, and banquets, embraces again and tears and passions and lustful pleasures.

Call up for me Poseidon and the chorus of women corrupted by him: Amphitrite, Amymone, Alope, Melanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, Chione, and the rest, the myriads;

and among whom, though they were so many, still the passions of your Poseidon were cramped for room.

Call up for me Apollo too;

this one is Phoebus, both a pure seer and a good counselor;

but Sterope does not say so, nor Aethusa, nor Arsinoe, nor Zeuxippe, nor Prothoe, nor Marpessa, nor Hypsipyle;

for Daphne alone escaped both the seer and the corruption.

He poured himself out so greatly over love-affairs that he desired all women, and fulfilled his desire upon all.

At any rate, he glutted himself with women no less than the he-goat of the Thmuites does with she-goats.

And at your poems too, O Homer, I have marveled:

"He spoke, and with his dark brows the son of Cronus nodded;

and the ambrosial locks streamed down from the king's immortal head;

and he made great Olympus quake."

You fashion Zeus as august, O Homer, and you attach to him a nod that is held in honor.

But if only you display the love-girdle, O man, then both Zeus is exposed and his locks are put to shame.

To what a pitch of licentiousness did that Zeus go, who spent so many nights of pleasure with Alcmene? For not even the nine nights were long for the dissolute one (whereas, on the contrary, his whole life was short through incontinence), so that he might sow for us the god who averts evil.

The son of Zeus is Heracles—truly of Zeus—he who was begotten of that long night, having toiled through the twelve labors over a long time, but having ruined in a single night the fifty daughters of Thestius, becoming at once both adulterer and bridegroom of so many maidens.

Not unfittingly, then, do the poets call this one wretched and a worker of impious deeds.

But it would be a long task to recount his manifold adulteries and corruptions of boys.

For neither did your gods abstain even from boys: one was in love with Hylas, another with Hyacinthus, another with Pelops, another with Chrysippus, another with Ganymede.

Let your women worship these as gods; and let them pray that their own husbands may be such, so self-controlled, that they may be like the gods, having emulated the same things.

Your children are trained to revere these gods, so that growing up they too may take the gods as a vivid image of fornication.

But perhaps it is only the male gods among them who rush headlong after the pleasures of love.

“The goddesses kept to their homes in shame, each one,” says Homer, the goddesses being ashamed for very modesty to look upon Aphrodite caught in adultery.

Yet they too run riot, the more passionately bound in adultery—Eos with Tithonus, Selene with Endymion, the Nereid with Aeacus, Thetis with Peleus, Demeter with Iasion, and Pheredphatta (Persephone) with Adonis.

Aphrodite, put to shame over Ares, went off to Cinyras, married Anchises, ensnared Phaethon, and loved Adonis; she vied with the ox-eyed Hera, and the goddesses, stripping themselves naked for the sake of an apple, presented themselves to the shepherd, that he might judge which of them was the more beautiful.

Come now, let us briefly survey the games as well, and put an end to these funereal festivals—the Isthmian, the Nemean, the Pythian, and the Olympian besides.

At Pytho the Pythian serpent is worshipped, and the festival of the snake is proclaimed as the Pythian games.

At the Isthmus the sea spat up a pitiable piece of refuse, and the Isthmian games mourn Melicertes.

At Nemea another little child, Archemorus, was buried, and the funeral games for that child are called the Nemean games.

Pisa, O all you Greeks, is the tomb of a Phrygian charioteer; and Pheidias’ Zeus appropriates the libations to Pelops, which are the Olympic games.

So these games, it seems, contested over the dead, were really mysteries, as were the oracles too; and both have been made public property.

But the mysteries at Agra and those at Halimus in Attica are confined to Athens; whereas the games and the phalli celebrated in honour of Dionysus are now a worldwide disgrace, an evil pestilence that has overrun human life.

For Dionysus, longing to descend into Hades, did not know the way; a man named Prosymnus promised to tell him—not without a fee.

The fee was not a seemly one—though to Dionysus it seemed fair.

The favour, the fee that was demanded of Dionysus, was a carnal one.

The request was agreeable to the god’s wish; and so he promised to grant it, should he return, confirming the promise with an oath.

He did not find Prosymnus alive, for he had died.

To discharge his vow to his lover, Dionysus hurried to the tomb and indulged his lust.

He fashioned a member out of a branch of a fig tree, sat down upon it, and so fulfilled his promise to the dead man.

As a mystic memorial of this deed, phalli are set up to Dionysus throughout the cities.

“For if it were not to Dionysus that they held the procession and sang the hymn to the shameful parts, they would be acting most shamelessly,” says Heraclitus; “but Hades and Dionysus are one and the same, for whom they rave and keep the Lenaea”—not so much, as I think, because of the body’s drunkenness as because of the disgraceful hierophany of their licentiousness.

It is fitting, then, that such gods of yours, having become slaves of their passions, should serve—indeed, even before those called Helots among the Lacedaemonians, Apollo came under the yoke of slavery to Admetus in Pherae, Heracles to Omphale in Sardis; and Poseidon and Apollo served Laomedon like a useless household slave, not even able, it seems, to obtain freedom from their former master.

It was then that they two also rebuilt the walls of Ilium for the Phrygian.

Homer is not ashamed to show Athena holding a golden lamp in her hands to light the way for Odysseus.

And we have read of Aphrodite, like some wanton little serving-maid, carrying and setting the adulterer’s couch right before Helen’s face, in order to lure her into intercourse.

For Panyassis, besides these, records that the gods served as labourers for very many other men, writing somewhat as follows:

“Demeter endured it, and the famed Lame One (Hephaestus) endured it, Poseidon endured it, and silver-bowed Apollo endured to serve a mortal man for a year;”

“and fierce-spirited Ares endured it under his father’s compulsion,” and what follows thereupon.

It follows naturally from this that these amorous and passion-ridden gods of yours are by every means represented as subject to human passions.

“For indeed in those gods too the flesh is mortal.”

Homer testifies to this most precisely, when he brings in Aphrodite shrieking sharp and loud over her wound, and describes Ares himself, the most warlike of all, pierced through the flank by Diomedes.

And Polemon says that even Athena was wounded by Ornytus.

Indeed, Homer says that Aidoneus (Hades) too was shot through by Heracles, and Panyassis records the same of Helios [Augeas].

This same Panyassis also records that Hera the goddess of marriage was wounded by the same Heracles in sandy Pylos.

And Sosibius says that Heracles too was wounded in the hand by the sons of Hippocoon.

And if there are wounds, there is blood too.

For the ichor of the poets is even more loathsome than mortal blood, since ichor is understood to be putrefied blood.

It is necessary, then, to introduce treatments and nourishment for them, of which they stand in need.

Hence tables and drunkenness and laughter and sexual unions—which would have no place if they did not indulge in human pleasures of love, nor beget children, nor indeed sleep, supposing they were immortal, free from need, and ageless.

Zeus himself even partook of a human table among the Ethiopians, and of an inhuman and lawless one when he was feasted by Lycaon the Arcadian.

Indeed, he gorged himself on human flesh, though unwittingly.

For the god did not know that Lycaon the Arcadian, his host, had slaughtered his own child (Nyctimus was his name) and set him as a dish before Zeus.

A fine Zeus indeed—the prophetic, the protector of strangers, the helper of suppliants, the gracious, the all-oracular, the averter of evil!

Or rather the unjust, the lawless, the iniquitous, the unholy, the inhuman, the violent, the corrupter, the adulterer, the lecher.

But that was once upon a time, when he was such, when he was a man; whereas now, it seems to me, even your myths have grown old along with him.

Zeus is no longer a serpent, nor is he a swan, nor an eagle, nor an amorous man.

The god does not fly, he does not pursue boys, he does not make love, he does not ravish—and yet even now there are many fair women more comely than Leda and in fuller bloom than Semele, and youths more beautiful and more refined than the Phrygian cowherd.

Where now is that eagle? Where the swan? Where Zeus himself? He has grown old along with his feathers.

The myth is being stripped bare before you.

Leda is dead, the swan is dead, the eagle is dead.

Are you seeking your Zeus? Do not pry into heaven, but busy yourself with the earth.

The Cretan will tell you, in whose land he also lies buried.

“For indeed, O Lord, the Cretans fashioned a tomb for you.”

For Zeus is dead (do not take it ill)—like Leda, like the swan, like the eagle, like the amorous man, like the serpent.

And by now even the superstitious themselves are seen, unwillingly indeed yet nonetheless, to perceive the error concerning their gods.

“For they are not sprung from the oak of ancient story, nor from the rock, but are of the race of men”—though a little later they will also be found to be oaks and rocks.

Staphylus, at any rate, records that a certain Agamemnon was honoured as Zeus in Sparta.

And Phanocles, in his Loves, or Fair Youths, says that Agamemnon, king of the Greeks, erected a temple of Aphrodite-Argynnis in memory of Argynnus, his beloved.

The Arcadians invoke an Artemis called “the Hanged,” as Callimachus says in his Aetia.

And another Artemis, called Condylitis, is honoured at Methymna.

There is also in Laconia a sanctuary of yet another Artemis, called “of the gout,” as Sosibius says.

And Polemon knows of a statue of “gaping” Apollo, and again of another “gluttonous” Apollo honoured in Elis.

There the Eleans sacrifice to Zeus the fly-averter; and the Romans sacrifice to Heracles the fly-averter, and to Fever and to Fear, whom they also enroll among the company of Heracles.

I pass over the Argives and the Laconians.

The Argives worship Aphrodite the “tomb-robber,” and the Spartans revere Artemis Chelytis.

For they call coughing “chelyttein.”

Do you suppose that these things which I cite are smuggled in from somewhere by us? You seem not even to recognize your own writers, whom I call as witnesses against your unbelief—you wretches who have filled your whole truly unlivable life with godless mockery.

Is there not a bald Zeus in Argos, and another avenging Zeus honoured in Cyprus? Do not the Argives sacrifice to a “wide-straddling” Aphrodite, the Athenians to a “courtesan” Aphrodite, and the Syracusans to one “of the fair buttocks,” whom the poet Nicander somewhere called “the fair-buttocked”? As for Dionysus the “sow-fingerer,” I now pass him over in silence.

The Sicyonians worship this Dionysus, having appointed him over the female parts, revering as guardian of shame the very originator of outrage.

Such, then, are their gods, and such are they themselves—sporting with their gods, or rather mocking and insulting their own selves.

And how much better are the Egyptians, who, village by village and city by city, honour the irrational animals, than the Greeks who worship such gods as these? For the Egyptians’ animals, even if they are beasts, are at least not adulterous, not lustful, and none of them hunts after pleasure contrary to nature.

But as for what sort these gods are, what need is there to say more, since they have been sufficiently exposed? Yet the Egyptians, of whom I just now made mention, are also divided in their forms of worship.

The people of Syene revere the phagrus fish, the inhabitants of Elephantine the maeotes (this is another fish), the Oxyrhynchites likewise the fish that bears the name of their region; the Heracleopolites moreover revere the ichneumon, the people of Sais and Thebes a sheep, the Lycopolites a wolf, the Cynopolites a dog, the Memphites the Apis bull, and the Mendesians a goat.

But you who are in all things better than the Egyptians (I shrink from saying worse), who never cease daily to laugh at the Egyptians—what sort of people are you yourselves with regard to the irrational animals? The Thessalians among you have honoured storks because of custom, and the Thebans weasels because of the birth of Heracles.

And again, what of the Thessalians? They are said to revere ants, since they have learned that Zeus, having taken the likeness of an ant, mated with Eurymedusa the daughter of Cletor, and begot Myrmidon.

And Polemon records that the inhabitants of the Troad worship the native mice which they call “sminthoi,” because these had gnawed through the bowstrings of their enemies’ bows.

And Heraclides, in his Foundings of Sanctuaries concerning Acarnania, where the promontory Actium lies and the sanctuary of Apollo Actius, says that an ox is offered in preliminary sacrifice to the flies.

Nor indeed shall I forget the Samians (the Samians revere a sheep, as Euphorion says), nor the Syrians who inhabit Phoenicia, of whom some revere doves and others fish as extravagantly as the Eleans revere Zeus.

Since, then, those whom you worship are not gods, it seems good to me to inquire next whether they are really daemons, enrolled, as you say, in this second rank.

For if they are daemons, they are both gluttonous and foul.

One can indeed discover, openly thus, even local daemons reaping honour city by city—among the Cythnians Menedemus, among the Tenians Callistagoras, among the Delians Anius, among the Lacedaemonians Astrabacus.

At Phalerum, too, a certain hero is honoured “at the stern.”

And the Pythia (priestess of Apollo) instructed the Plataeans to sacrifice to Androcrates, Democrates, Cyclaeus, and Leucon during the height of the Persian wars.

It is possible for anyone able to observe even a little to discern very many other daemons besides.

“For thrice ten thousand are they upon the bountiful earth, immortal daemons, guardians of mortal men.”

Who are these guardians, O Boeotian (Hesiod)? Do not grudge to tell us.

Or is it clear that these, and those more august than they, the great daemons—Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Demeter, Kore, Pluto, Heracles, Zeus himself—are meant?

But it is not from running away that they guard us, O man of Ascra (Hesiod), but perhaps from sinning—they who have surely had no experience of sins!

Here, then, it is fitting to add the proverbial saying: “A father in need of admonishment admonishes his child.”

But if these really are guardians, it is not out of any goodwill toward you that they are deeply concerned; rather, intent on your destruction, like flatterers they fasten themselves upon your life, lured by the savour of sacrificial smoke.

The daemons themselves somewhere confess their own gluttony: “of libation and of savour of fat.”

For “this is the privilege we have obtained,” they say.

And what other voice would the gods of the Egyptians utter, if they should get a voice—such as cats and weasels—than the Homeric and poetic one, dear to the savour of fat and to cookery? Such, indeed, among you are the daemons and the gods, and any so-called demigods who, like mules (hemionoi), are called “half-gods.”