And men become the occasion of their apostasy. For having displayed to them a diagram of the placement of the stars, like those who play with dice, they introduced fate, which is exceedingly unjust. For both the one who judges and the one judged have come into being according to fate, and the murderers and the murdered, the rich and the poor, are all the offspring of the same fate; and every birth, as in a theater, furnished amusement to these beings, among whom, as Homer says, "unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods." For those who behold gladiators, each cheering on his man, and the man who marries and corrupts boys and commits adultery, who laughs and grows angry, who flees and is wounded—how shall he not be reckoned mortal? For by the very things through which they revealed to men what sort of beings they are by nature, through these they incited their hearers toward like deeds. And have not the demons themselves, together with their leader Zeus, fallen under fate, being mastered by the same passions as men? And in any case, how can these be honored among whom there is such great contradiction of teachings? For Rhea, whom those from the Phrygian mountains call Cybele, they say ordained the cutting off of the genitals on account of her beloved Attis; while Aphrodite delights in the weavings of marriage. Artemis is a sorceress, Apollo a healer. And after the beheading of the Gorgon, the beloved of Poseidon, from whom sprang the horse Pegasus and Chrysaor, Athena and Asclepius divided between them the drops of blood; and the one healed from them, while the other, from the same gore, became a slayer of men and a maker of wars. This is why, it seems to me, the Athenians, unwilling to slander her, attribute to the earth the offspring born of intercourse with Hephaestus, lest she be thought, as Atalanta on account of Meleager, so Athena on account of Hephaestus, to have been deprived of her manliness. For he, the lame one, naturally, who fashions buckles and bent spirals, deceived the motherless and orphan maiden with trinkets. Poseidon goes sailing, Ares delights in wars, Apollo is a lyre-player, Dionysus tyrannizes over the Thebans, Cronus is a slayer of tyrants. Zeus has intercourse with his own daughter, and the daughter conceives by him. Eleusis will bear me witness now, and the mystic serpent, and Orpheus, who says, "Shut the doors against the profane." Aïdoneus (Hades) seizes the Maiden, and his deeds have become mysteries; Demeter weeps for her daughter, and certain people are deceived on account of the Athenians. In the precinct of the son of Leto there is one called Omphalos; and the Omphalos is the tomb of Dionysus. I praise you now, O Daphne; for by conquering the incontinence of Apollo you exposed his power of divination, since, having failed to foreknow the things concerning you, he gained nothing from his art. Let the far-darter tell me now how Zephyr did away with Hyacinthus. Zephyr conquered him; and—while the tragic poet says, "the breeze, most honored chariot of the gods"—conquered by a slight breeze, he lost his beloved.