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.” Iliad1, 33 ff. 
Consequently, he so discomfited Apollo by his talk that he


 

caught up his bow and arrows, sat. himself down
above the ships, and shot down the Achaeans with the
plague, even to their mules and dogs.
 
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; Of Troy. 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


 

Telephus was nursed by a doe and the Persian, Cyrus
the Elder, by a bitch) and then drove his father out,
threw him into prison, and held the sovereignty
himself; that, in addition to many other wives, he at
last married his sister, following the laws of the
Persians and the Assyrians ; that, being passionate
and prone to the pleasures of love, he soon filled
Heaven with children, some of whom he got by his
equals in station and some illegitimately of mortal,
earthly stock, now turning into gold, this gallant
squire, now into a bull or a swan or an eagle, and in
short, showing himself more changeable than even
Proteus; and that Athena was the only one to be
born of his head, conceived at the very root of his
brain, for as to Dionysus, they say, Zeus took, him
prematurely from his mother while she was still
ablaze, implanted him hastily in his own thigh, and
cut him out when labour came on.