For we are not playing the fool, O men of Greece, nor are we reporting nonsense, when we announce that God came into being in the form of a man. You who revile us, compare your myths with our narratives. Athena, as they say, became Deiphobus for the sake of Hector, and for the sake of Admetus unshorn Phoebus tended the swing-footed cattle, and the wife of Zeus came as an old woman to Semele. But while you rehearse such things, how do you deride us? Your Asclepius died, and the one who deflowered the fifty maidens of Thespiae in a single night, having given himself over as fodder for fire, is gone. Prometheus, fastened to the Caucasus, endured punishment for the benefit he conferred upon men. Zeus, according to you, is envious, and hides the dream from men, wishing them to perish. Therefore, looking to your own memorials, accept us too as fellow myth-tellers, if you will. And we, for our part, are not playing the fool; it is your tales that are babble. If you say there is a genesis of gods, you also declare them mortal. For why does Hera not conceive now? Has she grown old, or is she at a loss for someone to report it to you? Be persuaded by me now, O men of Greece, and do not allegorize either your myths or your gods. For even if you attempt to do this, the divinity according to you is abolished, and by you yourselves; for such beings as your demons are, of whatever sort they are even said to be, are base in their manner; or, if they are taken in a more naturalistic sense, they are not such as they are even said to be. As for revering the substance of the elements, I would neither be persuaded, nor would I persuade my neighbor. And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his work On Homer, has discoursed very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera nor Athena nor Zeus is that which those who established enclosures and precincts for them suppose, but rather substances of nature and arrangements of the elements. And Hector too, of course, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and absolutely all the Greeks and barbarians together with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will say were brought in for the sake of an economy, none of the aforesaid men having existed. But these things we have put forward as it were by way of hypothesis; for it is not even lawful to compare our apprehension concerning God with those who wallow in matter and mire.