On Sacrifices (1-5)

In view of what the dolts do at their sacrifices and their feasts and processions in honour of the gods, what they pray for and vow, and what opinions they hold about the gods, I doubt if anyone is so gloomy and woe-begone that he will not laugh to see the idiocy of their actions. Indeed, long before he laughs, I think, he will ask himself whether he should call them devout or, on the _ contrary, irreligious and pestilent, inasmuch as they have taken it for granted that the gods are so low and mean as to stand in need of men and to enjoy being flattered and to get angry when they are slighted.

Anyhow, the Aetolian incidents—the hardships of the Calydonians, all the violent deaths, and the dissolution of Meleager—were all due, they say, to Artemis, who held a grudge because she had not been included in Oeneus’ invitation to his sacrifice; so deeply was she impressed by the superiority of his victims! Methinks I can see her in Heaven then, left all by herself when the other gods and goddesses had gone to the house of Oeneus, fussing and scolding about being left out of such a feast!

The Ethiopians, on the other hand, may well be called happy and thrice-blessed, if Zeus is really paying them back for the kindness that they showed him in dining him for twelve days running, and that too when he brought along the other gods!

So nothing, it seems, that they do is done without compensation. They sell men their blessings, and one can buy from them health, it may be, for a calf, wealth for four oxen, a royal throne for a hundred, a safe return from Troy to Pylos for nine bulls, and a fair voyage from Aulis to Troy for a_king’s daughter! Hecuba, you know, purchased temporary immunity for Troy from Athena for twelve oxen and a frock. One may imagine, too, that they have many things on sale for the price of a cock or a wreath or nothing more than incense.

Chryses knew this, I suppose, being a priest and an — old man and wise in the ways of the gods; so when he came away from Agamemnon unsuccessful, it was just as if he had loaned his good works to Apollo; he took him to task, demanded his due, and all but insulted him, saying: “My good Apollo, I have often dressed your temple with wreaths when it lacked them before, and have burned in your honour all those thighs of bulls and goats upon your .altars, but you neglect me when I[ am in such straits and take no account of your benefactor.”[*] Consequently, he so discomfited Apollo by his talk that he

Having once alluded to Apollo, I wish to mention something else that gifted men say about him, not his misfortunes in love, such as the slaying of Hyacinthus and the superciliousness of Daphne, but that when he was found guilty of killing the Cyclopes and was banished from Heaven on account of it, he was sent to earth to try the lot of a mortal. On this occasion he actually became a serf in Thessaly under Admetus and in Phrygia under Laomedon, where, to be sure, he was not alone, but had Poseidon with him; and both of them were so poor that they had to make bricks and work upon the wall;[*] what is more, they did not even get full pay from the Phrygian, who owed them, it is said, a balance of more than thirty Trojan drachmas!

Is it not true that the poets gravely tell these tales about the gods, and others, too, far more hallowed than these, about Hephaestus, Prometheus, Cronus, Rhea and almost the whole family of Zeus? Yet, in beginning their poems, they invite the Muses to join their song! Inspired, no doubt, by the Muses, they sing that as soon as Cronus had castrated his father Heaven, he became king there and devoured his own children, like the Argive Thyestes in later time; that Zeus, stolen away by Rhea, who put the stone in his place, and abandoned in Crete, was nursed by a nanny-goat (just as